Corruption Of The Roman Church In The Middle Ages

The Roman Catholic Church was an extremely powerful organization during the middle ages and for the most part controlled all aspects of people’s lives. However, this organization does not last forever and over time begins to crack and crumble until a series of schisms split the church into multiple opposing sides. The Church’s message and authority was eventually undermined by corruption and the lay people demanding reform.

This essay will identify and examine the significance of the Roman Catholic Church’s influence and governance over Europe throughout the Middle Ages. For the purposes of this essay, the Middle Ages refers to the period between the Conversion of Constantine in 313CE and the onset of the Renaissance Period during the early 14th century. In addition, this essay will examine and account for change in the institution and theology of the Roman Catholic Church. It will identify the nature and importance of continuity and the diversity of causes and outcomes of the Church’s influence through a range of historical perspectives.

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.

As one knows today, there are many Churches around the whole world. Although there are many today, back in the 1500’s, there was only one Church, and that is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was a corrupt church back at the time but no one really knew about it. One reason is because peasants and other lower-class people didn’t understand Latin so they couldn’t read the Bible except for the priests. This gave the pope and the whole church administration an idea to get huge wealth. They used relics,sacred items, to their advantage to give false hope to people, gave indulgences, a ticket to heaven, for money, and with this money the Catholic Church grew more powerful than the king. Then a man named Martin Luther started practicing the

At the beginning of the 16th Century, Europe was dominantly Catholic. The Catholic Church not only controlled vast economic resources, but wielded enormous political and social power. Reformers believed that the Catholic church had overstepped their jurisdiction in overseeing people’s faith, for example by limiting the printing of bibles to languages that only priests could read, and that the Church had become corrupted by practices such as the sale of indulgences.

During the time of corruption in the Catholic Church, Protestantism was growing because of the influences of politics, corruption within the Catholic Church, and Renaissance ideas. Many Catholics were unhappy with the Catholic Church because of all the corruption in the church, and they wanted reformation. The Catholic Church wouldn’t be able to stop the growth of Protestantism.

The Catholic Church was riddled with corruption in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Germany was in a fragmented state and dominated by Rome, Spain, and Europe as a whole. Martin Luther’s 95 theses criticised the Church in many areas, namely its blind secularistic nature. He appealed to a wide variety of people, and thus Lutheranism was carried across Europe. Eventually, Lutheranism would disrupt the balance of Europe by weakening the Catholic Church and spurring social change.

In the time of 1500s the Catholic Church, the papacy, was known to hold a large amount of power, both religiously and politically. With this power it allowed for a lot of different corruption to seep into the different seeds of the religious power. This corruption was due to the fact that the church became a lot about the different money that was gained, power in the church was able to be bought by the rich with their money. The church also used money gained from the people

In the Medieval times, the Roman Catholic Church played a great role in the development of England and had much more power than the Church of today does. In Medieval England, the Roman Catholic Church dominated everyday life and controlled everyone whether it is knights, peasants or kings. The Church was one of the most influential institutions in all of Medieval England and played a large role in education and religion. The Church's power was so great that they could order and control knights and sends them to battle whenever they wished to. The Church also had the power to influence the decision of Kings and could stop or pass laws which benefited them in the long run, adding to this, the Church had most of the wealth in Europe as the

Corruption in the Catholic Church was real; the Church has always had a strong present in Mexico since the beginnings. For instance, those in the strong circle of the Church who are not part of the clergy have always been men of power who hold swayed over the government. They have passed laws that benefit the Church, such as the example I pointed out before of Title 1. Precisely, for this reason, was why the Mexican liberals hated the clergy. The main problem and reason why the anti-clerical liberals wanted to remove the clergy in Government was “Fueros”, which means corporate immunities. For the Church, corporate immunities meant that if there was a transgression in the clerical power they were subjected to a different form of justice than the Mexican people. The Liberals saw it as the highest form a corruption because basically those part of the clergy circle who were men of power could get away with corruption. Laws like the example that was given were what ultimately what triggered the anti-clerical liberals to fight back, and that is why by 1861 when Benito Juarez re-established the Mexican government. Once Benito Juarez establishes the Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857, the Catholic Church was slowly starting to lose the control it had over the Government.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, the Catholic Church was the only powerful authority not complete disrupted by the attack by barbarians. In fact, the work of great Popes is what helped their power increase even more. The newly christened barbarians, done by the Pope Gregory the Great, inaugurated a new age in Jesus Christ called Christendom. All culture in Christendom conformed to that of the Church’s, and, with its headquarters in Rome, the powerful “papal monarchs”, as they were called, controlled the machine that was the Catholic Church.

The Catholic church played many important roles during the Middle Ages. First of all it was the only church at that time. Therefore the church did much to determine how people would live. Which means it had tremendous power over people's lives.

“The introduction of Christianity had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged… a demand of charity and devotion; and the soldiers’ pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both taxes, who only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.”

Near the beginning of the fourth century, after an age of chaos and war, the Roman Empire was now seeing an age of peace and prosperity. This new age also brought around a fairly new religion: Christianity. It first became a popular religion with emperors like Constantine, who, under his reign, united Church and State, turning Rome into a highly devout christian state. Later emperors such as Charlemagne, with the help of the Church would continue this progression of church and state being unified. Christianity during this time truly would take a firm hold of the Empire. It was during this age that Europe was flourishing. Ultimately, that age would soon end, with a disintegration of an empire, and, Europe would have to struggle to find any