Benjamin Of Sion

Little was known about the clergy during the Black Death. For a long time people believed that the Catholic Church had fled from its duty to serve the people, but that could not be further from the truth. In recent discovery it was found that greater than 50 percent of clergy were killed during the Black Death. This was not because the clergy were running away; rather, the clergy stayed and helped the people in villages, knowing the likelihood they would survive would be slim throughout this epidemic. It is my goal in this paper to describe what was occurring during the Black Death and how the Catholic Church and its clergy reacted to the epidemic.

The Catholic Church during the early 16th Century was rooted throughout Europe. The Church influenced every country and its respective monarchs through the Church’s wealth and power. The Catholic Church placed a tight hold on the general populace with individuals who went against the Church being branded as heretics and excommunicated. The wealth and power of the Church eventually caused the quality of the clergy to deteriorate. Priests became corrupt and subjected to their physical desires. They frequented taverns, gambled and kept mistresses. The reputation of the clergy were horrid as the general populace was relieved that “their priest [kept] a mistress” because it “[secured] their wives from seduction” The knowledge of the clergy degenerated as well as they were no longer required to learn and teach the Holy Scriptures because the Church dictated their actions. The pinnacle of the Church’s corruption was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence was the “extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment” sold by priests as a temporary relief from sins. The indulgences were then sold to the general populace for money as the monetization of a priest’s services. Johannes Tetzel was a prominent preacher of indulgences who relied on the money from the sales to subsidize the rebuilding of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. The corrupt sales did not go unnoticed as Martin Luther, in an effort to stop the corruption of the Church, posted the 95 Theses on the door of a Castle

One of the most outstanding characteristics of humans is that we have a moral conscience- the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, as well as understand the consequences of actions beforehand. Nonetheless, religion remains important to society because it helps to refine and provide a deeper understanding of humans’ moral responsibility. There are instances where either people ignore religious practices in favor of reason and logic or follow only religious teachings that suit a particular situation. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella that typifies the failure of religion to unify people and provide a common course for understanding life. The story talks about Santiago’s fight against fate and the probability of escaping death that is foretold beforehand. The priest symbolizes religion in the novella and readers observe that his actions are similar to those of ordinary people. Ordinarily, we expect the priest to uphold religious practices and bring people together when society is divided on an issue.

The significance of religious leaders during this era is evident by the fact that the writer of this poem places the bishop at the beginning of the table. Due to the fact that the “medieval society was a religious society” and that these religious leaders held a special relationship with God, it is no surprise that these individuals held the second highest social class position in the medieval time period (Feudalism and the Three Orders (Overview) 2).

In 16th century France, society was based strongly on the forces of religion and economics. In The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis, Bertrande is married into a secure farming family of Artigues. She confronts a moral dilemma when her husband leaves for years and is replaced by an imposter, challenging Bertrande’s allegiance to her faith. Bertrande’s faith exceeded personal desires, illustrating religion’s intense role in society. Agriculture was another significant force. The success of the Guerre family was measured by the productivity of their farmland. In the same way, the French economy was subordinate to agriculture. The Wife of Martin Guerre provides a glimpse into mid 16th century French

McGrath’s Christianity’s Dangerous Idea attempts to tell the story of Protestantism from its early beginnings up to its present-day form. A similar and parallel story is found in Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity in which he also gives a narrative of the origin, growth and development of the Protestant movement from the Reformation to the present day. However, Gonzalez not only gives an account of Protestantism but of Christianity as a whole while McGrath concentrates his study on Protestantism alone. In addition, McGrath not only narrates but also gives a prophetic

The Voices of Morebath is a book by Eamon Duffy about the small parish of Morebath in England during the time of the Reformation. His book is a microhistory, focusing solely on a very small and specific area in time and space. This book, like all microhistories, seeks to help the reader understand a larger area of history by showing a great amount of detail about one specific area. It helps the reader come to terms with normal daily life, and gives a more personable feeling to the history rather than cold faceless facts and statistics. In this essay I will explain first the basic everyday life of Morebath and its inhabitants. I will then look into how specifically this parish evolved during the

Towards the end of the Middle Ages and into the duration of the Renaissance, the Medieval Church’s social and political power dwindled. Centuries prior the Catholic Church gained a surplus of control, largely due to the stability it maintained during the chaotic breakdown of the Western Roman Empire . Yet toward the end of the Middle Ages the Church set in motion factors that would ultimately lead to its downfall as the definitive figure of authority. However, despite political and social controversy surrounding the church, the institutions it established cleared a path for a new way of thinking, shaping society in an enduring way.

The Canterbury Tales, written and narrated by Geoffrey Chaucer, explores manipulation and dishonesty in the Catholic Church. The Nun in “The General Prologue” exemplifies improper qualities to which a Prioress should have. Along with the Nun, The Friar in “The General Prologue” uses false information to gain customer. In “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the Pardoner uses greedy tactics to wield other pilgrims into buying his relics.In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses the Nun and the Friar in “The General Prologue” and the Pardoner in “The Pardoner’s Tale” to show the hypocrisy in the Church.

Hart describes early Christians as a group of extremists, with an unrealistic set of priorities economically, civically, socially, and even in ways religiously. Hart goes into great detail of his evidence of this by examining the position of the first Christians on the accumulation of wealth. In his findings from the original koine Greek text, Hart points out that the idea that accumulating wealth is not inherently bad as long as we don’t abuse it is not, in fact, the position the first Christians had. While he did concede that modern Christian’s have come to understand this false idea as a “truism”, he points out that the original language and attitude of the first Christians towards

Luxury played an immense role in medieval Catholicism by taking the focus from God and placing it on the acquisition of riches and glory, which is shown by these sources: The Apology by Bernard of Clairvaux, The Book of Suger by The Abbot Suger and Guilty Pleasures: Luxury in the Middle Ages. These sources demonstrate the exorbitant manner that the churches and monasteries were being built in during that time. This not only drew attention away from the real reason for these buildings, but also was a form of idolatry for these monks, despite the honest intentions of some of them, including the Abbot Suger. Each source lends different insight into the corruption of the church during this medieval period.

The central Middle Ages was a period of time from the 11th century through the 13th century that was characterized by prosperous economic growth in Europe. The lead of economic growth in Europe was the movements in the Christian communities. Christian movements in the central Middle Ages included Knights Templar, first Crusade, the Franciscans, and pilgrimages. Not only were the movements in the Christian communities made changes in the economy, but they also influenced the challenges against traditional authority. Some challenges of traditional authority were the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Guibert of Nogent’s description of the Revolt in Laon will be examined in this essay. Robert the Monk’s version of Pope Urban II’s speech from 1095

The true subject of the saints’ life is Christ and his imitation. Through saint lives, events that happened a long time ago seem recent. The saint represents Christ in a different time, called time of salvation, which the reader understands through typology and prolepsis rather than chronology. This unusual construction of time is one of the two most important aspects of hagiographic narrative, the second being the revelation of grace. The negation of mundane things conveys the reader to the grace in the lives of saints (e.g. experiencing bliss in times of pain). To illustrate the ideas discussed,

Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, published in 1796, depicts the Catholic Church in Madrid as the victim of religious perversion caused by the pride and lust of its leaders. The events of the novel, including the monk Ambrosio’s surrender to temptation, leading to the rape and murder of innocent Antonia, as well as Agnes’s imprisonment by the vain Prioress of St. Clare’s Convent, serve to emphasize the lack of true religious devotion in the city of Madrid. However, despite the shocking events of the novel, the city had already fallen prey to temptation, and had ultimately strayed from the path of the Church long before these new atrocities took place.

And for two years no one spoke to me of heresy, because they could see that I was passionately in love with this girl” (Ladurie 79), this is an incredible example of the details that these reports contained. The comparison of Pierre Maury and Pierre Clergue and many other individuals and families was imperative to this book and therefore crucially important in the understanding of the reader in regards to the social and personal structures of Montaillou in the 14th century. It is emphasized in the book the significance that connections had in Montaillou, whether about families, business or alliances. By these unions and alliances, which most people achieved through marriage, families became more powerful because of the union of the two families both in social status and monetary wealth. This can be the reason to why members of poor families tried to marry into higher social classes. Though, that would prove extremely difficult since most wealthy families kept marriages between their family in order to keep the wealth in it.