Medieval Kings and Popes Essay

1.) How did medieval rulers restore order and centralize political power? Medieval rulers restored order and centralized political powers by creating their own form of government. These leaders expanded their territory and spread their authority by creating many micro-managed systems. They developed large bureaucracies, armies, judicial systems and created taxes in order to cause the common-folk pay for all of it.

At the beginning of the 11th century, the predominant faith in Western Europe is the Catholic one, and the Church in those territories follows, in theory, the same Canon Law and has the Pope at its head as the deciding voice in religious disputes. The Church was the main unifying factor between territories that had evolved in very different ways, had different power structures in place and spoke different languages.

Throughout the time period from 800 to 1500 there were several dynamic shifts in power between the Church and the nobility of western Europe. These changes would decide if Europe would be controlled by kings and lords, or ruled by the pope. During periods of prosperity in Europe power rested in the hands of the nobility, while during fragile periods of Western Europe, the church exercised more authority, as a result rule by king was better for Europe. One example of how a European king exercised authority over Europe during a peaceful time of the middle ages was during the reign of Charlemagne.

The papacy assumed so much power in the 1200 because it had gained loyalty from a great amount of people for practical purposes.With a lot of people showing loyalty and trust towards the Papacy, it was able to expands its power over Europe. Since the papacy was the most influential and advanced government during its time it had “legislative power, law courts, bureaucracy, formal procedures, written records and considerable incomes from fees,

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

Alliance happens between the pope and emperor, with all the dominion of their territories, cooperating and promoting with each other. Leo III crowned Charlemagne the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire put an emphasis on learning, especially among the clergy could obtain and control all of the vast territory was always careful to maintain his position as emperor over the pope and anyone else. A good emperors but after his death land were divided among 3 sons popes were able to be the master and with it chaos

Kings believed they had the power because the land was theirs and the people were under their control. These power struggles led to the Investiture Controversy, excommunication of kings by popes, and the questioning of who really is the true leader of the nations. The pope and king both had a very high political standing. The king was the ruler of his nation and oversaw everything that was taking place and going on. The pope was the leader of the Catholic Church and had a lot of power, considering so many people belonged to the church.

• power of the popes was such that they even managed to unite European lords and kings who normally fought amongst themselves

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.

The Bull Unam Sanctam shows that the Pope had more power than the King. In the Bull Unam Sanctam, Boniface VIII says, ¨ Therefore if the earthly err it shall be judged by the spiritual power; but if the lesser spiritual power err, by the greater. But if the greatest, it can be judged by God alone, not by man...A spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one.¨ This means that the Church authorities have the right to judge the King, but no one has the power to judge the Pope, except God himself, which I think shows how powerful the Pope was because he can make any judgement he wants without anyone having the power to overule him.. In another part of the document, Boniface says, ¨ Surely he who denies that the temporal sword

With that being said, popes of the earlier years had to find a way to attain authority over the church. Pope

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 main conflict between the Pope and the King, derived from the everlasting problem of lay investiture. It lay at the heart of medieval world. Innocent saw this problem as a problem between the Sun and the Moon. The Sun being the Pope and the Moon, the King. One rules by day, the other by night. However, in order to shine and rule by night, the Moon requires the Sun, for without it its glow is non-existent. In other words, the Pope saw papacy standing above earthly kings, legitimizing their rule by crowning them. Without it, the kings could not demand obedience from their vassals and subjects. Therefore, the Pope had a powerful weapon in his arsenal, the excommunication and an interdict, stripping disobedient kings of their legitimacy and thus sanctioning rebellions against them.

The birth or the beginnings of the Papacy is a rather difficult task to really nail down to a specific time, place or person and also the growth of the Papacy was a rather slow and gradual process. In this modern age Rome has been associated with the birth place of the Papacy but history shows that Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in the 4th century. In Constantinople the father of the church was referred to as the Pope. The word Pope simply means “father,” and in early times was used to refer to any important and respected bishop. In Rome the father of the church was referred to as the Bishop of Rome. It is the purpose of this paper to present evidence of the individuals that gave rise to the Papacy in the centuries between the 6th and 9th.

The Pope was the supreme authority while there was an emperor who was second in the command. For example, Charlemagne served as the Roman emperor after being elevated to the position by Pope Leo III. The church became powerful in many aspects; the people were required to pay tithe to the church while there was exemption of the church from taxation. The church went to the levels of owning armies as well as cities in addition to playing a great role in the regulation of state affairs.