Role Of Pope Gregory

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.

The Pope is the head of the Church: he represents the ultimate religious authority. However, as a Bishop of Rome, the Pope is also in command of certain secular affairs, including some military aspects. Certainly, the Pope is a link between the earthly and the divine realms. Problems arise when the imperfect world the Pope physically lives in interferes with his heavenly objectives. Taking Pope Gregory I as an example, I am going to look at his letters to analyze how he reconciled his political and spiritual goals, whether he valued one category over the other, and how he justified it.

In the cool foggy streets of Rome people busily going about their days work. Walking through the marketplace, Pope Gregory spotted a queer sight. There at the slave auction stood three fair skinned boys. The slave auctioneer told him they were from Britain and their people were called Anglo Saxons. Pope Gregory felt sorry for the boys and bought all three and went home to teach and take care of them.

Pope: The Pope is the bishop of Rome and the leader of the Western Church of Christianity. Pope comes from the word “papa” meaning father.

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.”

If we travel back to the year 1500, the Church (what we now call the Roman Catholic Church) was very powerful both politically and spiritually in Western Europe. For some time the Church was seen as an institution weighed down by internal power struggles. Popes and Cardinals often lived more like kings than spiritual leaders. Popes claimed political as well as spiritual power. They commanded armies, made political alliances and enemies, and, sometimes, even waged war.

After four months of deliberation, Lorenzo Corsini was chosen to be Pope Clement XII. The Cardinals thought

However, soon enough Gregory became involved in leading the Church, serving as chaplain to Pope Gregory VI. Gregory VI was removed from power with charges of simony, and was sent to Germany. Hildebrand followed and crossed the alps. His stay in Germany was of amazing educative value, and helped his ruling as pope in the future. In Cologne he pursued his studies and became aware of the circles of Lorraine where interest of the church and its life was at the top. Soon he returned to Rome and served as advisor to Pope Leo IX. With the death of Alexander II, Hildebrand became pope and took the name Gregory VII. His election was bitterly berated by his enemies. From the beginning Gregory tried to assert his authority over political leaders, and thus issued an order against lay investiture. This brought the controversy of the struggle between church authority and secular authority. It was questioned whether the king had final authority. A common belief was that was that kings were choosing bishops and abbots to benefit themselves and not the churches.This might not be entirely true; kings have been the origin of funds for churches. It only seems correct they should appoint who runs them. Kings wanted to show how if they didn`t provide the funds of the churches they wouldn't exist. So kings electing who is runs the

Dictatus Papae The disagreement between pope and emperor has always been an issue of Middle Ages. As soon as 1059 (sixteen years earlier than the Dictatus Papae) a papal bull was introduced which eliminated the laity from the election of the pope, plus, the role of emperor was further decreased (even if emperors were practicing the right of veto) in order to accept the decision of Church. Consequently, anti-popes appeared and only a few official popes were accepted. Then methods were implemented for dissolving the complication of unanimous agreement such as s 'acclamation', 'scrutiny' and 'compromissum' although the conflict of elections still exsisted.

It was in 601 that Pope Gregory I wrote to Melitus (his missionary in England) telling him “not to stop such ancient Pagan festivities” but to “adapt them to the rites of the Church, only changing the reason of them from a heathen to a Christian impulse”. So all those who have been claiming for years that Christmas was, in fact, actually a pagan holiday - you were right and Pope Gregory I handily put it in writing for you.

The challenge thrown out by Gregory VII forced the emperors to seek new foundations for their position. Gregory’s great opponent, the emperor Henry IV, had still asserted the traditional rights of his father. His successors in the 12th century, Henry V (1106–25), Lothar II (1125–37), Frederick I Barbarossa (1152–90), and Henry VI (1190–97), shifted their ground. To counter the arguments of church lawyers they grasped the weapons provided by the revival of Roman law. A new and more exalted conception of the empire was the result. Best known was the addition by Frederick I Barbarossa, in 1157, of the word sacrum to the name of the empire, which then became the Sacrum Imperium (Holy Empire) as a counterbalance to the Sancta Ecclesia (Holy Church). Equally characteristic was the canonization of Charlemagne by Frederick’s antipope Paschal III in 1165. In this way Frederick emphasized continuity with the Frankish past and asserted his rights as Charlemagne’s successor. They derived, he argued, not from conferment by the pope or by the Roman people but from Frankish conquest.

The differences made it difficult to consolidate the church into a central body of power of Christianity. In addition to the problem of what the core message of the religion was and who the leaders should be preaching to, there was the argument of who should be head of the church (219). Several candidates were nominated for this position, including the bishop of Rome who believed he had the right to rule as a successor of the primary apostle, Peter; though this had no avail at the time, this argument would later become important in the formation of the Catholic Church.

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