The Challenges Of The Medieval Papacy

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.

During this time, feudalism developed. In the feudal system, weak kings granted lands to greater lords in return for military aid. Greater lords in turn granted lands to lesser lords below them. These nobles governed all people, including clergyman to whom they granted a ‘fief” of land. When a clergyman, who were to pay their loyalty to the pope, became a vassal, or under the charge of a lord who granted him land, it gave the nobles and kings power. But because the papacy had the unified support of the larger peasant class and there were no strong kings to challenge him, the pope gained greater secular power than the nobility in addition to religious influence. Not only could he banish people from the Church through religious excommunication, but he could establish secular decrees like the Peace and Truce of God, which limited the appropriate locations and days for war. Secular powers such as these were previously reserved to kings, and illustrate that the pope due to the weakening of kings in the feudal system, held greater authority.

For most civilizations, religious figures have had a large influence over the lives of the common people. The Roman Catholic Church was a very influential figure in many civilizations. It can trace its origins to over 2000 years ago. One of the Church’s most influential periods of this time was the Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church played a very big role in the lives of the people during that period. For many, it was the center of their life. The three most important impacts of the Church on medieval life were their secular roles concerning laws and their position over the state, the way that the Church unified Europe, and their power over the common people.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages and into the duration of the Renaissance, the Medieval Church’s social and political power dwindled. Centuries prior the Catholic Church gained a surplus of control, largely due to the stability it maintained during the chaotic breakdown of the Western Roman Empire . Yet toward the end of the Middle Ages the Church set in motion factors that would ultimately lead to its downfall as the definitive figure of authority. However, despite political and social controversy surrounding the church, the institutions it established cleared a path for a new way of thinking, shaping society in an enduring way.

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.

For over a period of seven hundred plus years, from Gregory the Great’s papacy to Boniface VIII’s papacy, the world experienced many influential popes, whose accomplishments changed the course of history. Many of these popes become known for both their positive accomplishments, which brought prosperity to their people, and for their failures, which in many cases led to their own death. Throughout the given time period, Pope Nicholas II, Pope Gregory VII, Pope Innocent III, and Pope Gregory IX, were all influential popes whose accomplishments are what they are most remembered for. First, Pope Nicholas II decreed that the College of Cardinals would obtain authority to choose the pope. The College of Cardinals was made up of a group of Roman Church officials who were in charge of electing the pope, which was put in place to prevent kings from selecting popes.

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.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, the Catholic Church was the only powerful authority not complete disrupted by the attack by barbarians. In fact, the work of great Popes is what helped their power increase even more. The newly christened barbarians, done by the Pope Gregory the Great, inaugurated a new age in Jesus Christ called Christendom. All culture in Christendom conformed to that of the Church’s, and, with its headquarters in Rome, the powerful “papal monarchs”, as they were called, controlled the machine that was the Catholic Church.

"In the later eleventh century, mystically enchanted war turned into a categorical and cozy concern of the ameliorated papacy, one which was to transmute Christian states of mind and practices for an immensely colossal portion of a thousand years." The vicissitude was gone for ecclesiastical reinforcing and decontamination of the ministry including another procedure for the decision of incipient popes and assaulting indecencies, for example, administrative espousement and the purchasing and offering of religious workplaces. Pope Gregory VII was the primary impact behind ecclesiastical change. "With nervy tenaciousness, he distinguished what he accepted to be the main driver of the Church's issues the dirtying impact of the people and afterward start assaulting it with close out of control tirelessness, in what has been termed the 'Instatement Controversy'." For every one of his prospects and objective in ecclesiastical change and endeavoring to coalesce the Latin Church, when he kicked the bucket and Pope Urban II took office, the Church was powerless and defenseless. In the terminus however, Urban did instaurate ecclesiastical power probably in light of the fact that he was a "much more aptitudinal ambassador then his forebear, in his dealings with the mainstream and clerical forces of Europe." He had a more adaptable way to deal with change than Gregory and that availed him win back backing for the ecclesiastical reason. In 1095, the year prior to the First Crusade, the papacy was incrementing a plethora of its glory back. When he was requested avail by the Byzantines against the Turks the pope's preparatory replication was "to enhearten 'numerous to ensure, by taking a vow, to avail the sovereign most reliably to the extent they were capable against the agnostics'." This did little to motivate the masses, yet it had planted the

Second, the church was a major political force. Therefore kings and queens wanted/needed papal approval like when they were somewhat weak, as in times of conflict. This allowed the Church to exercise political power as it could help to determine which claimants to a throne would be deemed acceptable.

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 papacy of Roman Catholic Church reached its zenith in the thirteenth century. But there was a decline of the papacy in the fourteenth century due to disaster like the Black Death, The Great Schism, and many other evolutions in Europe. Many new ideas and advanced technologies were developed after series of changes. These ideas influenced the lives of many normal people in the Medieval Ages.

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 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