The Reign Of The Holy Roman Empire

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.

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.

The power of the Bishop in Rome resulted from several factors, including the barbarian invasions, the failure of the emperors to defend their homeland, the success of Christianity, and the fame of the Church. The Roman generals battled over who would rule and thus failed to defend their borders adequately. This created gaps in the land, which was a factor the fall of Rome. With the invasion of the barbarians, it was up to the Church to defend the lands. Pope Gregory greatly influenced the situation. He was responsible for the improved standing of the papacy. He became Rome’s financial officer, and he managed food and water supplies. He created peace with the Lombards, and was able to ransom prisoners from them in the 6th century. He created a new Liturgy of the church, and he believed the purpose of the papacy was to help the poor, thus establishing the papal title “Servant of the servants of Christ.” Gregory turned a self-seeking papacy into an office of kindness and humility.

The Holy Roman Empire was an empire in central Europe consisting of many territories and ethnicities. Once very powerful, the empire’s authority slowly decreased over centuries and by the Middle Ages the emperor was little more than a figurehead, allowing princes to govern smaller sections of the empire. Though the various ruling princes owed loyalty to the emperor, they were also granted a degree of independence and privileges. The emperor, an elected monarch, needed the allegiance of the princes and other aristocracy to support him, in turn giving them power or money. This tenuous allegiance between powers was greatly strained in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as religious reform dominated Europe and religious tensions

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.

Starting in the 12th century, many European countries like Italy were starting to give the pope a lot of power. This resulted in the popes becoming more powerful figures than most of the European counties princes. One example of this was with pope Gregory VII. He believed that he was one of the most

Gregory was convicted to the believe that the Church was founded by God himself. The Church was to embrace all of mankind where the only law was divine will. He didn’t believe that the nobility and leaders shouldn’t exist at the time, just that the Church was supreme and had ultimate rule over all. Henry IV didn’t hold the same vision, and continued to make appointments and executive decisions that only the Church should have been allowed to make. Gregory, because of this, excommunicated Henry and deposed his as German king. removing him from the religious community. By doing so, it removed Henry’s power as a leader as and released Christians from their oaths of allegiance. Gregory used this excommunication and deposition as a display that he was truly God’s representative for the world, and that the Church is the single authority over

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 early church was hated by the society and government of the Roman Empire for various reasons, such as the refusal of Christians to sacrifice to the gods. The Empire went through many phases of demanding that the Christians sacrifice which meant denying their faith or be killed. The earliest attacks claimed the lives of many of the apostles.This text is the story, from around 160 AD, of the martyrdom of Polycarp, the Bishop of the church in Smyrna, a city in Asia Minor (modern Izmir in Turkey) devoted to Roman worship. The account is in the form of a letter from eye-witnesses to other churches in the area. It is the earliest chronicle of a martyrdom outside the New Testament.Polycarp was an old man, at least 86, and probably the last surviving person to have known an apostle, having been a disciple of St. John. This was one reason he was greatly revered as a teacher and church leader. One interesting feature of the letter is that the writer is very conscious of how Polycarp’s death followed the pattern of Christ’s. As you read it, look for parallels between this story and the Easter story in the gospels. We are writing to you, brothers, with an account of the martyrs, especially the blessed Polycarp, whose death brought to the persecution to a close. Almost all the events that led up to it reveal it to be another martyrdom in the divine pattern that we see in the Gospel. For he waited for his betrayal, just like the Lord did, so that we might follow him, in looking out

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 renaissance and the reformation were two of the most significant changes in history that has shaped our world today. Both of these great time periods are strikingly similar in some ways and totally different in others. This is because the renaissance was a change from religion to humanism whether it is in art or literature; it is where the individual began to matter. However, the reformation was,” in a nutshell,” a way to reform the church and even more so to form the way our society is today. The first half of this paper will view the drop in faith, the economic powers, and the artistic and literary changes during the renaissance, while the second half will view the progresses and changes the church makes during the reformation.

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