Pope Boniface Viii's Challenges To The King

In 1493 Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull to Spain granting them the land "west and south" of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Cape Verde islands. A papal bull is a particular type of patent or charter issued by a Pope. The Pope decided which country would gain the heathen lands not controlled by Christians. (1.4) Within a century of its issuing the papal bull was no longer a model for settling territorial boundary questions. The papal bull had become defunct. The three main factors in Europe and North America that lead to the undermining of the papal bull can be placed in the categories of political, religious, and financial.

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

In a testimony given shortly before his execution, Aske stated that the monasteries that once helped the poor and sick have fallen to ruin, and that “many tenants who were fed and aided by abbeys now can barely live. Traveling strangers and beggars have no help on the roads.” (Document 7). He went on to say that “no hospitality is shown to travelers. Instead, farmers rent out farms and taverns for profit. Any monies earned from abbey lands are now going to the king” (Document 7). In this statement, Aske touches upon the fact that Henry was unfairly taxing poor farmers who could not afford to keep their own land, and by confiscating church lands and closing abbeys and monasteries, he has forced beggars and travelers into the streets, with no way to support themselves.

Louis XI and the Valois line formed a royal army, overpowered unruly nobles and bandits, and increased the monarch’s power over both parliament and the clergy. Louis XI was able to raise taxes without the approval of parliament and eventually parliament asked for him to rule without their input. The monarch’s power over the clergy increased due to the Concordat of Bologna. In the Concordat of Bologna, King Francis I and Pope Leo X signed an agreement that stated that the pope was to be paid by French ecclesiastics, religious figures such as priests or the clergy, and the king would appoint bishops and abbots.

These two kings were fighting over land in modern southwestern France. The men both prepared to go to war with each other, so they both wanted the churches in their kingdoms to pay taxes to help fund for the war. However, according to the canon law they church didn’t have to pay taxes to the lay ruler, unless the lay ruler got approval from the pope to tax the church. Despite, knowing the rulers both kings taxed the churches from their kingdoms without papal authorization, thus testing the Papacy’s power. The clergy had to choose between the kings or the Pope. Although, the pope had to power to excommunicate any clergy that disobeyed him, he didn’t win the conflict. The French king Philip IV cut off the wealth from France that was sent to the Pope. This cut off a major amount of Boniface income, causing the pope to back down. Meaning the kings of England and France had the power to tax their clergy, no matter what the canon law

Furthermore, in England, King Henry VIII considered himself a worthy Catholic king. He had “enthusiastically attacked the outbreak of Protestant heresy when it began, and the papacy gave him the title Defender of the Faith as a result”. This did not matter when Henry wanted to divorce from Catherine of Aragon. When the church would not grant the divorce he wanted, Henry’s resulting decision to create the Church of England set the standards for more than a century of religious conflict/isues in England. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 essentially “took power away from the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.” Henry VIII made an entirely new church which he made himself head of, because he was the king. This demonstrates the actions that politics affected Europe and that they were not always necessarily for religious purposes but for power and personal

A main focus of this idea is with cultural, The church a powerful influence to the people in the middle age, especially the serf due to their quality of life. The peasants not having much in their current lives or much hope in the future, now have this new hope that is equal for everyone. This idea gave the church a lot power in the Middle Ages,”The most powerful unifying institution”(Doc 3). Therefore, the church had a strong political presents and well as a strong cultural influence as it often does now and again. Now exploring something that isn’t fully known it could be assumed that the church at the time was not a cause for a lot of trading.

Prior to the work of St. Boniface in central Germany from 716 to 754 A.D., the local Hessian and Thuringian people worshiped pagan gods and honored living things essential to daily life, such as the oak trees of the surrounding forests, which provided everything from building materials to nuts for food. Though Christianity had been introduced to this area, the current practice was actually heresy because people practiced a blend of Christian and pagan beliefs and rituals. St. Boniface not only returned Catholicism to Germany, but kept heresy, the Church’s main challenge during this time period, out of central Germany.

One of the many challenges to traditional authority was evident in a passage written by Guibert of Nogent, which explained his view of the riots and brutality of the citizens of Laon against their bishop. The citizens lashed out at their bishop because they were tired of paying for taxes, which were to be paid every year to their lords, also fines were increased if the person done an illegal act. This passage showed a challenge to traditional authority by the citizens acting against their bishop and taking charge because they wanted more control in their government (ch. 5, rd. 2, pp. 176-177). The commune, which was the organization of people that attacked the bishop, expanded the economy in the central Middle Ages by the people of the town having to pay fines that were determined by the law to the bishop of Laon for their illegal acts. The paying of fines by the citizens put money into the hands of the church, which in turn filled the churches pockets with wealth, which in turn put wealth into the economy (ch. 5, rd. 2, p. 176). The wealth of the bishop boosted the economy because the bishop was the government of the town (ch. 5, rd. 2,

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.

Tension grew between the Catholic Church and France during the French Revolution, leading to a schism, which deeply devastated the Church’s economy. Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte came into power as the French Revolution was ending. For different reasons they both saw the importance of restoring Roman Catholicism’s position in France. The Catholic Church’s initial support of Napoleon greatly affected both parties (O’Dwyer 12-14, 43, 49). This statement has led me to ask the following question: To what extent did the support of Napoleon affect the Church’s role as a political and economic power in France? In this paper I will argue against the traditional view that Napoleon’s contract with the Catholic Church was solely beneficial to

King Philip’s advisers challenged the Pope by quoting the Roman Law, which stated that the King of France was “completely sovereign in his kingdom and responsible to God alone” (McKay, 364). Not long King Phillip arrested Pope Boniface VIII in Italy and had foreshadowed later conflicts between the church and the state in the 14th century.

In this paper, I take a critical perspective in examining the concept of ageing. Ageing is not only biological and physical. It also is political, shaped by power relations, social structures, cultural ideals and ideologies (Wong, 2013, p.83). The social theory in relation to activity and disengagement with its roots in functionalism is fundamental in the understanding of ageing and has further recuperations in the formulation of ageing policies (Estes, Briggs and Phillipson, 2003). To briefly summarise it, the need for elderly to have a productive role in areas such as community and social work for them to be valued in society underlies ageing policies (Teo et al., 2006 cited in Wong, 2013, p.83). Absence of meaning affects older people as the sense of doubt and uncertainty permeate and influence their daily lives and social relations (Estes et al., 2003). Promotion of active ageing is the common course of action for governments dealing with ageing. For this paper, I would will be focusing on ageing in

Ockham, unlike Marsilius who, “was more concerned with subordinating the sacred to the secular than with reforming the Church”, wanted to reinstate the later papal pretensions of Pope Nicholas III from that of Pope John XXII. Ockham’s focus was to defend the Franciscan way of life by writing his Opus nonaginta dierum and declaring, that to deny the distinction between use and ownership, was to “destroy and confound every religious order which has a vow renouncing ownership of all temporal things” ; a renouncement that went against the Franciscan Order. His work went against John XXII’s papal bull Quia vir reprobus declaring, that the right to hold property was originally before the Fall, and that Scripture depicted the apostles as owning

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.