Early Christian Beliefs

(Document C) The religious dissagreements of the Roman and Christian church lead to the determining of the leader of the Orthodox

I believe this is one of the reasons Christianity thrived because people needed some shrivel of hope.

Going back to the days of the Byzantine Empire, the Emperor was not only the ruler of the Romans but also head of the church. The church was close with the Emperor and was given some administrative power and would essentially work as an unofficial government agency. The representation of the relationship between church and state is best depicted when looking at the Mosaics of Justinian and Theodora. These mosaics represent the main powers in the empire; the imperial family, the church, the aristocrats, and the army. We see Christianity stand out almost immediately in these mosaics. The halos

For instance, political leaders only had local power, the Church was the most powerful institution. Also, two parts of the Code of Chivalry really talked about the Church. They were, “Thou Shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions” and “Thou Shalt defend the Church” (Doc. 5). In other words, people valued the Church’s teachings and directions, so they had to protect it with all they had. This proves that the Church was important to all the people, the peasants, the kings, the nobles and the knights. Furthermore, “the Church became very powerful, and it often used this power to influence the kings to do as it wanted” (Doc. 3). In summary, the Church had even more power than the kings. As you can see the Church had the most political

The Church owned significant amounts of land since it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, mainly in the form of bishoprics and monasteries, but even at a smaller level in the shape of the lots assigned to the different parishes. The control of this resources had capital importance for the different rulers who fought for the Control of the rights to appoint clergy at all levels, but mainly abbots and bishops, excluding the Pope

Most notably, the difference in leadership sparked a lack of unity between the East and West. The West divided secular and ecclesiastical issues into two roles: the emperor and the Pope. This separation of responsibility allowed each head to focus a great amount of energy into the protection of the Church and state. In particular, the elimination of heretics in the West was a source of pride for the Roman Catholic Church and is mentioned in multiple primary sources, such as Document #63 in The Human Record and “Anna Comnena on the Suppression of Bogomil Heretics.” Unfortunately, the separate leadership positions produced an internal tension while both the Pope and emperor were aiming to be accepted as the more powerful leader. A prime example of this competition would be between Pope Leo III and King Charles when, before King Charles could declare himself emperor of all of the West, Pope Leo III invited him to Rome, where mosaics depicting shared power between the Pope and emperor had been placed, and crowned him emperor, which reinforced the idea that the religious leader held power over the secular leader. In contrast, the East’s leader was both the secular and religious leader, as shown in the Ravenna mosaics of Justinian and Theodora (Document #61, The Human Record). The couple were depicted with symbols of both legal and religious authority including purple robes, for royalty, religious, military, and domestic figures, ornate crowns, and the bread and wine for mass. The choice to keep one person as both secular and religious leader caused a lack of tension between the two aspects, but also caused less changes to be made, such as banning heretics, which the West found appalling. In Document #63 of The Human Record it reads, “all heresies have emanated from [the East] and have flourished among [the East]; among us, that is Westerners, they

“Beginning with the reign of Constantine I and the establishment of the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Christian church became a tool of the Emperors. Byzantine Emperors and Empresses played a dominant role in the Eastern church and used the Christian religion to strengthen the Empire internally, to spread Byzantine cultural and political influence, and at times, to fortify their own power”

-Once the pope got authority over the whole Christian Church, there were problems with preachers in many eastern churches—which lead to a division of eastern and western churches.

In the Roman Empire centralized religion based off of who was ruling at the time was practiced to an extent. As long as citizens respected the emperor and didn’t try to revolt they were left in peace. One example of a religion that were prosecuted against because of the potential of revolt was Christianity, derived from Judaism until the point of the worship of Jesus. Christianity went from being prosecuted against to becoming a dominate religion in Rome. There were many changes that allowed Christianity to become a dominate religion in the Roman empire. Two main things that contributed were in the end of the teachings of Jesus and the reign of emperor Constantine.

This became the religious model propagated in the Byzantine Empire. There all semblance of separation between the state and religion was eliminated. The emperor made his decrees on matters of politics and law as well as matters of faith and theology. Christianity was

The churches in the Byzantine Empire were extremely close to the government. Enough for Christianity in the government to be called caesaropapist. Caesaropapism is a polotical theory that believes the head of state should also be head of the church. The role of Christianity impacted the political views of people and the government directly. The Christian church was seen as a department of the state by the Emperors and government officials. In the patriarchs, bishops, and priest's sermons, they encouraged their followers to obey the government. In the Islamic culture, religion and government moved almost as one. The caliphate of Islam was the head leader of the government as well. Islam created a stable running bureaucracy and then began to

Centralized monarchs used religious issues to make their states stronger and to increase there our authority. They were the ones that had the most benefits do to the Reformation. The Holy Roman Empire started in the nineteenth century but its power did not go far, only to northern Italy and Germany. Charles V became the emperor in 1519 he worked to establishing the Holy Roman Empire the have ultimate authority in Europe. This was a difficult process because the empire tended to scare others such as France. The French were Catholics but they got support by allying with German Lutherans and Muslim Ottoman Turks against the emperor. Which their help they made it so that it was not possible for Charles to extend his

Byzantine and Chinese emperors both stayed in power through the use of the Mandate of Heaven, in which God(s) has chosen the ruler to be in power, and they could not be in power without God putting them there. The Byzantine emperor acted as head of the state Church. A well-trained bureaucracy was also established under the Emperor's authority in both places. Local government was very important and was also widespread and chosen by the emperor. In the Byzantine case, the emperor was responsible for enforcing religion as

In the 4th and 5th centuries, the early church was going through change. After a period of persecution against Christians, the Edict of Milan established a policy for the toleration of Christianity under Constantine. Constantine was the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity and he himself became a Christian. The Ecumenical Councils were encouraged by Constantine. The gatherings included church leaders and others who met to affirm the teachings of the church and to tackle heresy. The topic of controversy was over the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Many people have different ways of interpreting the Bible. For example, Matthew 5:43-44 states: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Early Christians interpret this verse as that they were not allowed to defend themselves or innocent people from harm. This mindset affects other Christians, especially in the early periods, such as how Athenagoras stated that they must allow themselves to be robbed without retaliation or how Tertullian stated “For Christians, ‘it is more permissible to be killed than to kill’” (Perry, “Ethics and War in Comparative Religious Perspective”). On the other hand, Luke 7:9 stated that Jesus did not order the Roman soldiers to abandon their roles.