The Terrible Corruption Of The Medieval Church

Beginning in the Middle Ages and through the seventeenth centuries, witch trials occurred in Europe. Many people were accused of being witches some of these people were accused of being witches for not following Christian beliefs at that time and others followed witch prosecutions for goods and money. Furthermore, the stereotypes of witches at this period also had a role in causing witch prosecutions. In this essay I argue how these three components led to the death of so-called witches. Firstly, I will discuss how the Catholic Church had an impact on most prosecutions. Secondly, I will explain how social stereotypes of that period have also influenced with the causes of prosecution of many alleged witches. Thirdly, I will discuss how

The Catholic Church during the early 16th Century was rooted throughout Europe. The Church influenced every country and its respective monarchs through the Church’s wealth and power. The Catholic Church placed a tight hold on the general populace with individuals who went against the Church being branded as heretics and excommunicated. The wealth and power of the Church eventually caused the quality of the clergy to deteriorate. Priests became corrupt and subjected to their physical desires. They frequented taverns, gambled and kept mistresses. The reputation of the clergy were horrid as the general populace was relieved that “their priest [kept] a mistress” because it “[secured] their wives from seduction” The knowledge of the clergy degenerated as well as they were no longer required to learn and teach the Holy Scriptures because the Church dictated their actions. The pinnacle of the Church’s corruption was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence was the “extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment” sold by priests as a temporary relief from sins. The indulgences were then sold to the general populace for money as the monetization of a priest’s services. Johannes Tetzel was a prominent preacher of indulgences who relied on the money from the sales to subsidize the rebuilding of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. The corrupt sales did not go unnoticed as Martin Luther, in an effort to stop the corruption of the Church, posted the 95 Theses on the door of a Castle

In the time of 1500s the Catholic Church, the papacy, was known to hold a large amount of power, both religiously and politically. With this power it allowed for a lot of different corruption to seep into the different seeds of the religious power. This corruption was due to the fact that the church became a lot about the different money that was gained, power in the church was able to be bought by the rich with their money. The church also used money gained from the people

Henry took a big step against the Catholic Church when he began the, “Dissolution of the Monasteries” in 1538. Henry had sent inspectors to watch the behavior of the monks and if the monasteries were being run as Henry wanted. Henry discovered that doing the complete opposite of what he wanted or

While most people were fine with ignoring what the Popes were doing to the Church, there were men who, throughout the medieval period, did their best to expose and spread the news of what was really going on behind the scenes in the Church. The first of these dissenters was a florentine noble, who was exiled from the city because of the influence of Boniface VII. In his banishment Dante Alighieri wrote several books including Dante's Inferno. In it he describes hell as being made of concentric rings, each one further down in the earth, smaller then the last, and housing a sin Dante deemed worse. Down in the eighth of nine circles is where we find where Dante has planned for Boniface VII to go. This is his way of shaming the clergy of the time, because the eighth circle is where the simmers go and it is full of Popes, one of them even mistakes Dante for Boniface VII and tells him that he is destined for this circle. A little after Dante's time comes the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of two vintners who grew up to be around royalty the rest of his life. His most famous work, The Canterbury Tales, describes the journeys of several pilgrims on their way to see the bones of Thomas Beckett, and through many of the pilgrims and their stories depicts the flaws of the church in often humorous ways. Like the Pardoner's Tale for example, where the Pardoner tell of his sin of simony through three friends who get drunk, find lots of money in the woods, and end up killing

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 political turmoil became further drawn out between opposition for the empire to have power or whether the power should be held by the papacy. According to Dante and Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher and Franciscan during Dante’s time, they both agree that the church’s role did not require the amount of power they were trying to acquire. However, a lot of that changed when Pope Celestine V abandoned his duties of the papacy which gave rise to Dante’s biggest enemy, Pope Boniface VIII. Unlike Aquinas, for Dante the biggest things were the effect on the community and the infiltration of trust which most of his characters in the Inferno are guilty of. However the infiltration within the church is much too widespread and personally affected Dante; in turn in his poem he has placed them in different levels of hell to make them wish they can repent what they did on earth, as the inferno is a journey reflection of the

Pope Boniface VIII and King Phillip IV of France were leaders of a large conflict during the middle ages. The issues between church and state were very prominent. Both authoritative figures believed that the other was asserting too much power. Boniface passed his final papal bull, Unam Sanctam, in 1302 which would led to the end of the dispute.

Martin Luther with his ninety-five theses that focus in how corrupt was the Church divided the Church.

Throughout the central Middle Ages, Europe was characterized by the power struggle between the secular and the ecclesiastic. The question of rule by God or by man was one which arose with unwavering frequency among scholars, clergy, and nobility alike. The line which separated church and state was blurry at best, leading to the development of the Investiture Conflict in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the attempts to undermine the heir to the throne in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Four men stand out among dozens in this effort to define the powers of the lay versus that of the spiritual: Emperor/kings Henry IV and John of England, and the popes who aggressively challenged their exertions of authority, Pope Gregory VII

Church a place many people go on Sunday mornings. A place to worship in the Lord and Savior or whichever God the individual believes in. Some individuals believe that church can only be held in the church building. When in reality it can be held anywhere for example the bedroom or a field. A thing that has been noticed is there are many types of people who go that fit in with a certain group. The types include everyone from the screaming child to the strict churchgoers and everything in between. Church may be a good place to go but it is believed that the churches today are corrupt.

Corruption in the Catholic Church was real; the Church has always had a strong present in Mexico since the beginnings. For instance, those in the strong circle of the Church who are not part of the clergy have always been men of power who hold swayed over the government. They have passed laws that benefit the Church, such as the example I pointed out before of Title 1. Precisely, for this reason, was why the Mexican liberals hated the clergy. The main problem and reason why the anti-clerical liberals wanted to remove the clergy in Government was “Fueros”, which means corporate immunities. For the Church, corporate immunities meant that if there was a transgression in the clerical power they were subjected to a different form of justice than the Mexican people. The Liberals saw it as the highest form a corruption because basically those part of the clergy circle who were men of power could get away with corruption. Laws like the example that was given were what ultimately what triggered the anti-clerical liberals to fight back, and that is why by 1861 when Benito Juarez re-established the Mexican government. Once Benito Juarez establishes the Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857, the Catholic Church was slowly starting to lose the control it had over the Government.

Born circa 1020 in Sovana, Tuscany, Pope Gregory VII is one of the great reforming popes, and is best known for his part in the Investiture Controversy, which was his dispute with with Henry IV that reinforced the primacy of papal authority. He excommunicated Henry three times because Henry was getting out of hand and the political struggles between the Catholic Church and his empire. Although, Gregory was also despised during his reign by some for his expansive use of papal powers, this caused his memory to be remembered on numerous occasions in later generations, both good and bad, which was often reflected in writings of the Catholic Church. Gregory was accused of necromancy, torture, attempted assassinations, unjust excommunication,

An example of one of these popes was Julius II. He was known as the Warrior-Pope because he sought to eliminate his enemies with his powerful army. These Renaissance Popes angered many Christians who believed that their pope was being unfaithful, and caused some people to lose faith and trust in the Catholic Church. Later popes sold indulgences, which were promises of the remission of one's sins after death. This angered Martin Luther, and it caused him to write his “95 Theses” on why that practice was wrong and unfaithful. Luther found enough people that agreed with him, and started the Reformation.

Christianity played a major role throughout the Middle Ages in society and politics. The Middle Ages, classified from 600 AD to 1350 AD, was significantly effected by Christianity because of the impact it had on the daily lives of people of the time. The beginning of the Early Middle Ages, after the Fall of Rome in 476 AD and the period known as the Dark Ages, the reorganization of the empire brought a desire for faith and religion, primarily Christianity. This trend of Christian importance was apparent until 1350, when the Black Death caused the end of a systematized era. The church is often viewed, during this period of time, as a center of corruption, greed, and evil, with materialistic popes and