The Contributions Of The Renaissance Period In The 14th Century

Europe went through a period of calamities during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Populations were wiped out and the church lost much of its power. The population of Europe faced two main crises during the early Renaissance period: the black plague and the Great Schism, and through their reactions, the Renaissance was allowed to flourish.

The wealthy Romans would pick popes who would help them curry favor and obtain political prominence, these popes cared more for their own virtues than the virtues of the church. This caused church's to acquire more power and funding, though the church did not stay this way forever. Pope Gregory VII

1. The pope had lived at Avignon since the reign of King Philip the Fair of France and thus

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 . . ."

Between the 1300s and 1500s, Europe experienced a period of cultural rebirth known as the Renaissance, marking the transition from medieval times to modern times. The Renaissance brought new importance to individual expression, self-consciousness and worldly experience.

The church and the state had to contend with the growing influence of the Enlightenment and the need to strike a new balance with religion, a more utilitarian balance determined in large part by its own political rationalism. Power was held within the monarchy and the church. The monarchy of France and the Catholic Church were allies that were unbreakable. The King was the master of the temporal realm, while the Church under his protection ruled the spiritual realm. Kings derived their authority from God and stood immediately below him in rank. The monarchy had the support of the church and the church had the support of the monarchy. Power was based on morality and the church thrived on positive morality and the monarchy was proof of this morality. The balance between these two powers in France was equivalent to one another. The whole system

Boniface and Philip were interlocked in a battle over power during the middle ages. Boniface believed that the church should have more power than the state; therefore he sent decrees to Philip in order to maintain dominance. The bulls Boniface created gave him power over not only King Philip, but over all secular rulers. Philip attempted to keep the church below the state, but Boniface continued to send these bulls effectively limiting Philip’s power.

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

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,

The idea of two popes destroyed the idea of unified church, which is The Great Schism. The two Popes were constant rivals and while the people were split, the French people obviously followed the Pope from Avignon, while the Roman people followed to Pope in Rome. (http://www.thenagain.info) To try and end the schism a third Pope was chosen John XXII, shortly after in 1414, the Council of Constance received the resignation of Pope Gregory XII and dismissed the claims of the Avignon Pope, Benedict XII. Finally the election of Pope Martin V, ended the schism, he reigned from 1417-1431.

One of the first major problems that the church faced was the Great Schism. From 1387 to 1417, three men were considered to be the pope, which had never happened in Catholic history before. In 1305, the papacy was moved to Avignon, France and began taxing bishops and cardinals, and the bishops and cardinals taxed the priests, who in turn demanded money from churchgoers. The reason why they were being taxed was because the papacy was no longer center in Rome. The Avignon papacy developed a reputation for corruption and greed, which caused for there to be a need for the Pope

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.

This series of incident started when King Philip VI wanted to tax the French clergy but the pope disagreed with him. King Philip VI replaced the pope and moved the location of the church to Avignon instead of Rome. This outlandish action put many faithful believers into outrage and disappointment. The new church officials were almost entirely French because King Philip VI wanted to secure his power. People questioned if the popes at Avignon were captives of the French monarchy. The Avignon church had a reputation of being corrupted and abusing its power which led to the decrease of Christian

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.

From having no claims to power, to being mayor of two palaces. Charles Martel unified France. In 732 he fought off the Muslim invasion into Gaul.