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Baroque Architecture: Incorrectly Applied Essay

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Baroque Architecture: Incorrectly Applied It can be argued that although unparalleled artistic works and architecture of grand opulence arose during the Baroque from the large financial investment that the Catholic Church contributed to this movement, the actual intention of baroque architecture directly contradicts the primary complaints presented by Martin Luther in his Ninety-Five Theses, and from its start, failed to support the church in its intended manner. It logically follows that to resolve the present conflict, which largely consisted of issues regarding indulgences and financial abuse; the church should have attempted to resolve the problem at hand. Baroque architecture, although grand and ostentatious, was architecture …show more content…

Although there were more expensive churches built, Sant’ Ivo was dedicated to Saint Ivo of Kermartin, a man renowned to be a generous helper of the poor but one that also contrasts the excesses inherent in baroque architecture. In his life, he dedicated a great deal of time fighting unjust taxation by the king, which finds it’s contradictory equivalent in the Catholic Church promoting and forcing indulgences on its adherents. In the presence of a mass exodus from the church which took place due to opposition toward ecclesiastical misconduct and false doctrines, the Catholic Church chose to reaffirm its authority in a manner that failed to focus on the problematic concepts which caused adherents to seek salvation in the new church orders. Created by priests with the same grievances, these new protestant churches sought to directly address the problematic concepts such as the unethical sale of indulgences and simony which became commonplace within the Catholic Church. In a blatantly apparent act of papal hubris, Pope Julius II in 1506, petitioned nobility and clergy to secure funding with the intended act of demolishing a 1,200 year old church and construct St. Peter’s Basilica which was to become the most lavish in all Christendom (Dandelet 191). Although initially created to support the construction of this specific building, the implementation of this indulgence, in addition to another decreed by his successor Pope Leo X, provided the means for fiscal

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