CHHI-301-D10 LUO FALL2013
PAPER 2
The Rise of the Papacy
INTRO
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 HOW AND WHY When the Roman Empire fell services that it previously
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The first factor that led to the papacy’s increase in authority is the spread of Christianity throughout the region. Coinciding with the collapse of the Roman Empire, missionaries were reaching areas of Europe not under the empire’s control. Missionaries such as Saint Patrick, Saint Columba, and Saint Columbanus spread Christianity throughout the celtic regions of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Meanwhile other missionaries including Wilfrid, Willibrord, Lullus, and Boniface concentrated their efforts in the Germania, bringing an increase to the population of Christian Saxons. In what is now France, king Clovis I converted to the faith in the late 5th century. On his insistence many of his court and peers followed suit. This strengthened the church by uniting multiple kingdoms under its control. These examples of Christianity spreading throughout Europe demonstrate the growth in power of the church. As new regions became more and more predominately Christian the number of people professing allegiance to the church also increased. The papacy had no shortage of subjects to rule over and an increasing amount of resources at its disposal. This increase in subjects and research, and the land under control of the office increasing led to a dominance over Western Europe. The second factor that
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.
At the beginning of the 11th century, the predominant faith in Western Europe is the Catholic one, and the Church in those territories follows, in theory, the same Canon Law and has the Pope at its head as the deciding voice in religious disputes. The Church was the main unifying factor between territories that had evolved in very different ways, had different power structures in place and spoke different languages.
In the Medieval times, the Roman Catholic Church played a great role in the development of England and had much more power than the Church of today does. In Medieval England, the Roman Catholic Church dominated everyday life and controlled everyone whether it is knights, peasants or kings. The Church was one of the most influential institutions in all of Medieval England and played a large role in education and religion. The Church's power was so great that they could order and control knights and sends them to battle whenever they wished to. The Church also had the power to influence the decision of Kings and could stop or pass laws which benefited them in the long run, adding to this, the Church had most of the wealth in Europe as the
In response to the how and why the papacy in Rome became the center of power as it did. Shortly after
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.
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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
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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.
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During the Medieval Ages the Catholic Church was able to rise to one of the most powerful institutions in Europe. After Rome subsequently
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.