Separation Of Church And State In The Middle Ages

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.

Church and State seem to be two words which are entirely inseparable from each other. Religion in politics and the government has been present since the federal government was first put into place. The issue of

None the less the Papacy was now divide. The saying "United we stand, while divided we fall." is very valid in this instance. The church is having many problems around this time period and many people are converting, or shale we say shifting, to other forms or Christianity. Whereas before these problems occurred the church was the central power in Western Europe and had great influence over the governments in their sphere of power. This event, the schism, caused a split in the Catholic Church and divided countries among the two popes. "Everyone realized that the schism resulting from the counter-election of Cardinal Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII . . . was a tragedy for the church . . ."

The Catholic Church was by far the largest owner of land during the Middle Ages. While bishops and abbots occupied much the same place as counts and dukes in the feudal hierarchy, there was one important difference between the religious and secular lords. Dukes and counts might shift their loyalty from one overlord to another, depending on the circumstances and the balance of power involved, but the bishops and abbots always had (in principle at least) a primary loyalty to the church in Rome. This was also an age during which the religious teaching of the church had a very strong and pervasive influence throughout Western Europe. These factors combined to make the church the closest thing to a strong central government throughout this period.

In today’s society, the separation of church and state is a fundamentally important aspect of our government. Most any citizen would agree that the government should operate based on the law and the constitution, not on the individual 's religious beliefs, yet when the issue is Abortion, that stance is flipped. The debate over abortion rages on despite the supreme court giving women the right to abortion in 1973 with the ruling of Roe v Wade. Looking at both sides objectively, the pro-choice arguments lineup with facts, while the pro-life arguments are either supported by facts yet purposefully misinterpreted, or simply not factual at all. State governments pass laws that regulate abortions and abortion centers all in the attempt to close these centers down and stop women from getting abortions at all, including situations of rape or incest. Just as the government in Brave New World controls the bodies of women by keeping them on contraceptives and controlling their bodily functions through medication, the American government seeks the same control over what women do and don’t do with their body by denying them abortions and birth control.

Our society lacks a moral compass today and we need to find a way to return to our country 's founding values. Is religion the answer? some may think so others may say keep church and state separate. The original statement was in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists Association. In his letter he says “American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State” (Jefferson 1802). After this letter was written it went unnoticed or used until the mid 1800’s when a group petitioned Congress to remove Christian principles and values from government. They claimed that there needed to be a “separation of church and state”. Again it was unused officially until 1947 when in the case of Everson verses the board of education the court wanted to build the wall high and impregnable. That wall was never supposed to be as it is now referred to. We need to have the religious freedoms free from government control. How can a private petition be taken out of text and used as a guide for our federal court? Our forefathers were influenced by important values when establishing this country. Also, there were a lot of other influences in our founders thought processes; own life experiences, education, and even self gratification. Just reading The Declaration of Independence you can see where their

In today’s society, the separation of church and state is a fundamentally important aspect of our government. Most any citizen would agree that the government should operate based on the law and the constitution, not on the individual 's religious beliefs, yet when the issue is Abortion, that stance is flipped. The debate over abortion rages on despite the supreme court giving women the right to abortion in 1973 with the ruling of Roe v Wade. Looking at both sides objectively, the pro-choice arguments line up with facts, while the pro-life arguments are supported by facts yet purposefully misinterpreted, or simply not factual at all. State governments pass laws that regulate abortions and abortion centers all in the attempt to

The church in the Medieval era, however, was incredibly powerful and mostly unopposed. Salvation, to the religious, was and remains the most important aspect of faith. Religion without a fate after death is almost entirely hopeless and borders on nihilistic. The Catholic church used this incessant fear to fuel their political vendettas. This is made evident by the attempted squelching of the Reformation sparked by Martin Luther as well as the expulsion of the Moriscos, Jews, and Protestants from Spain. The church had successfully convinced an entire continent that the only true way to attain eternal life was through the doctrine of the church. This gave the Pope authority, power, and uncontested control over the Christian people, for a

The government and the Catholic Church have not always had a great correspondence. Out of the many parties that have been created for the government, through time, the Democrats and the Republicans have taken precedence. The Democrats lean more to the liberal side of things, while the Republicans lean more towards the conservative side. The Democrat party is the oldest existing party, and called the ‘party of the people.’ The Republican Party came into the existence just before the Civil War, mostly because of their stance for the abolition of slavery and their candidate’s win, Abraham Lincoln. Both parties have their pros and cons, and both parties have their problems with the Catholic Church.

The investiture controversy, also known as the investiture conflict, was the most significant conflict between Church and State during medieval Europe, being centrally a political struggle. This conflict would result in changes to the political world in Europe that would last even to the present day. The two sides of the investiture controversy consisted of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, and Pope Gregory VII. Henry IV and his supporters held a “royalist” state view, while Gregory VII and his supporters were on the “papalist” church side of the conflict. Both sides had strong visions of the right order of the world, with the largest difference being that Gregory believed that the church should be free from state rule and any monarch authority. Gregory and his followers also believed that the church should be the only authority able to appoint church officials. Lastly, Gregory’s vison for the world included the believe that church policies on celibacy and the

This is such an important point that Gregory VII states “That he who is not at peace with the Roman church shall not be considered catholic” as his second to last topic of his reforms (Burger 331). Leaders who would be excommunicated by the Church would become unpopular as long as the citizens value loyalty to the Church over loyalty to the

This law, rooted in religious teachings, regulated many facets of daily life, including morals and marriages. During the later Middle Ages, the law of Europe was governed by the Church. An entire jurisdiction was exercised by the church which protected the widows, orphans and helpless and also dealt with offenses. Popes of the Middle Ages eventually had a power over all rulers, even kings and emperors. The pope was the leader of a bureaucratic structure of churchgoing men in charge of church-related business. Based in Rome, the pope was the medieval Church's leader. Church leaders such as bishops and archbishops sat on the king's council and played leading roles in government. Bishops, who were often wealthy and came from noble families, ruled over groups of parishes. The Roman Catholic Church was the supreme power during the Middle Ages. It was the stabilizing force in everyday life which kept the community framework together. The laws and rules of the land, public policies and governance of the people were all affected by religion during the Middle Ages. Any attempt at threatening Christianity by other religions was met with force and all measures were taken to spread the religion in other parts of the

During the period in Europe commonly known as The Middle Ages, economic reforms took place, as well as social, political, and religious changes. One common theme throughout The Middle Ages was the relationship between the Church and the State. The Catholic church during this era held a prominent role in society, and it had an abundant amount of power and authority. The Catholic Church exercised its authority in many different stages, and the people responded to the way that the Church exercised her power. Bernard Guenee in The Lives of Four French Prelates In the Late Middle Ages reflects on this controversy between church and state power throughout the Middle Ages by focusing on the lives of four distinguished French church authorities: Bernard Gui (1261-1331), Gilles Le Muisit (1272-1353), Pierre D 'Ailly (1351-1420), and Thomas Basin (1412-1490), all of whom rose from modest circumstances to the dignity of office. Guenee argues that the ambition these men displayed may be considered honorable to some, but he sees their advancement in the Church and their participation in the state as counteractive. He fails to distinguish between the good and immoral sides of ambition as a virtue and claims the cause of the separation between the church and the state comes down to an inevitable fight for the acquisition of higher power. His position only deals with the practicalities of the situation, and is

"The notion that religion and political authority, church and state, are different and that they can or should be separated is, in a profound sense, Christian. Its origins may be traced to the teachings of Christ, notably in the famous passage in Matthew 22:21, in which Christ is quoted as saying: ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are

America wastes a lot of time trying to create a democracy completely absent of the moral expectations that our ancestors have put into place. Our founding fathers’ dream of establishing a country in which all people would be accepted has begun to fall. In our attempt to rid our country of a democracy contaminated with any belief in a supreme power, we have rid ourselves of many of our values and morals. Perhaps it is impossible for religion to dominate our political country, but we have misinterpreted the original intent of “separation of church and state” and taken this concept too far.