Clashes Between Monarch and Papal Authority Essay

The wealthy Romans would pick popes who would help them curry favor and obtain political prominence, these popes cared more for their own virtues than the virtues of the church. This caused church's to acquire more power and funding, though the church did not stay this way forever. Pope Gregory VII

2. Pope Gregory XI brought the papacy back to Rome in 1377, but then Urban VI alienated

During the late 14th century and the early 15th century there was a great division in the Catholic Church. The Papacy was becoming blurred. The center of the Roman Catholic Church had been moved from Rome to the city of Avignon during the reign of Pope Clement V; and there was now a movement to return the center of power back to Rome. This movement was first truly seen under Pope Gregory XI and his successor Pope Urban VI. Earlier Pope Urban V had moved the center to Rome but it had been proven to be no more than a temporary idea; he had gone back to Avignon to die and there his replacement, Pope Gregory XI was elected . This along with other political problems and circumstances created a split in the loyalty among

For this reason, Pope Loe IX led other church officials in implementing reform efforts that would see ensure that the church could get back its lost power. For this reason, Pope Loe IX gave orders to the Roman Catholic clergy to dismiss the church officials that had taken part in selling church offices, and to renounce their wives (McKay et al., 2014). The orders were essential for ensuring that the church could control the corruption that was becoming rampant in the church. The measures were also essential for sending a message to the secular leaders, which was presumably an indication that they were working on regaining their lost power. After the death of Pope Leo, Gregory VII, Leo’s successor, continued with the reform work based on his ideological foundation (McKay et al., 2014). One of the reforms was the expelling of secular influence within church and the papal institution, which led to the expansion of the papal powers. such reforms solved the problems that the church was facing, which means that they were appropriate for the realization of the predetermined

Rulers opposed papal power because the canon laws that restricted things the rulers were allowed to do with churches within their kingdom. They would have to get approval from the pope before they did certain things. This forced them to have to make compromises where secular and religious claims coincide.

Throughout the central Middle Ages, Europe was characterized by the power struggle between the secular and the ecclesiastic. The question of rule by God or by man was one which arose with unwavering frequency among scholars, clergy, and nobility alike. The line which separated church and state was blurry at best, leading to the development of the Investiture Conflict in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the attempts to undermine the heir to the throne in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Four men stand out among dozens in this effort to define the powers of the lay versus that of the spiritual: Emperor/kings Henry IV and John of England, and the popes who aggressively challenged their exertions of authority, Pope Gregory VII

The papacy – the office held by the pope as head of the Catholic Church - gained great power from the sixth through eighth centuries, and there are several reasons for this surge in influence. Starting around 590, Pope Gregory I sought to convert Teutonic invaders to Christianity. Islam was also in play, as it had taken over most of Asia and Africa. According to Earl Cairns, by trying to win Teutonic tribes to Christianity, the medieval church “…further centralized its organization under papal supremacy and developed the sacramental-hierarchical system characteristic of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Pope Innocent III began a sequence of changes that influenced the face of secular and ecclesiastical Europe through careful use of law and political manipulation. It has been remarked that the papacy acquired and retained the most power under the leadership of Pope Innocent III during the late 12th and early 13th centuries. I plan to examine sources primarily pertaining to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and secondly to a collection of Innocent III’s papal letters. In my analysis, I hope to draw a correlation between Innocent III's actions and these actions influence on medieval society and why this period is considered to be the height of papal power since its inception.

In addition to the horrors carried out by the Seljuk horde on Christians and their shrines, the Byzantines were also begging the pope to protect their empire from other Turkish tribes. Urban II's main incentive for answering this plea for help was not entirely contingent on the letter he received from the Holy Roman Emperor, but more so from the notion that the Eastern and Western sects of the church could be unified. Moreover, they might be fused under the Pope, granting him sovereignty over the entire Christian church. This Papal hope has been revealed to historians through, among other sources, the different accounts of his speech at Clermont. For example, Guibert of Nogent recalls the pope declaring: "And you ought, furthermore, to consider with the utmost deliberation, ..., that the Mother of churches should flourish anew to the worship of Christianity, whether perchance, [God] may not wish other regions of the East to be restored to the faith against the approaching time of the Antichrist" (Peters, Guibert of Nogent, 35). Unfortunately, the Holy Roman Emperor feared his throne was in jeopardy due to the large number of crusaders that arrived to drive out the Turks. He demanded that they press on towards the Holy Land, and for reasons that need not be discussed, strong ties with the Papacy were severed soon

He immediately found himself in a difficult position as pope, with numerous issues arising, such as the hostility escalating between the Holy Roman Emperor and the papacy, the increase of Islamic incursions into the Holy Land and of course the Mongol invasion of Europe. There was indeed prior warning of the defensive vulnerability of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as Pope Innocent IV received a letter complaining that there were only one hundred pilgrim knights defending the city, and more reinforcements from Western Europe was needed for protection. Although this may have been note by the newly appointed Pope, the struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor through the continuation of Pope Gregory IX’s policy against Frederick II may have overshadowed this plea from the Holy Land. In fact, Pope Innocent IV’s position was so untenable in Rome due to the Emperor’s actions to increase dissent, that he fled to Lyon and immediately set about organising the Council of Lyon for 1245. His letter to Henry III was part of an effort from his base in Lyon to call for a crusade in reaction to the sacking of Jerusalem by the Khwarezmians, but he struggled to garner much support for the crusade due to the internal struggles within Europe, with only King Louis IX fully committed to the campaign. The relationship between Pope Innocent IV and King Henry III is one of note, as since the ties between Rome and the English King were established early through the papal support given to Henry at the end of the Baron’s war. The papacy desperately needed political allies due to the increasing threat posed by the military might of the Holy Roman Emperor and Henry II could be said to be one of them. Although the papacy could find respite through their relationship between the King of France and King of England respectively, the relationship between the two kingdoms was strenuous. A crusade

Pope Boniface VIII wrote the bulls, ‘Clericis Laicos’ in 1296 and ‘Unam Sanctam’ in 1302, to affirm and perform the papal supremacy over his ecclesiastical persons and the kings, Philip IV of France and Edward I of England. Both bulls consist of the decrees that restrain the rulers from enforcing their derogatory authority over Christians: one forbids prelates and churchmen to pay the tax that laymen heavily imposed on them: the latter one demands suspected clergies under the papal jurisdiction, furthermore insisting the pope’s total authority over his churchmen in France. Philip had knocked off ‘Clericis Laicos’ by depriving Boniface of a major revenue source, yet the pope again threw down the gauntlet against the rulers with the new threat of excommunication. Although both bulls indicate the similar

Pope Boniface also had his own rules by which he influenced the Council of Cardinals, bringing it to its knees, causing thousands of people hurt and confusion. The papacy was full of perpetrators, among those is another Pope, Pope Alexander VI. His papacy started in 1294 and ended with his death 1303 (Catholic Answers, Para 3). In order to become Pope, he would kill many rulers of the Church and Kings of the land to get what he wanted, more power.

In the void left by the collapse of the Roman Empire, the bishop of Rome grew even more in both power and prestige beginning in the sixth century and continuing to the reformation in the ninth century. It is the aim of this paper to explain how and why the papacy in Rome became the center of power of the medieval world, the factors contributing to this dominance over Western Europe, and the positive and negative ramifications of the position becoming so powerful. Through this paper you will discover how papacy was able to fill the vacuum of power left by the fall of an empire.

People faced the rise and the fall of the Catholic Church during the medieval time. The Popes used to hold the final authority for the church and over the state. Pope Gregory VII asserted the Pope had granted the divine power from God because Saint Peter was the first of getting this

The Papacy is the office of the Pope. The word pope comes from the Latin form of the word “Papa” which means father. The office of the Pope or rather the papacy is responsible for a wide variety of things. Specifically the Papacy’s main responsibility is the spiritual well being of the members of the Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church rose to power in the 6th century and lasted throughout the 9th century. There were several different circumstantial and also coincidental factors that contributed to the high regard of the church by the 6th century. The beginning was the church’s unsolicited popularity. This could be linked to its relationship with the early apostles. The Roman Church was the first in the empire