Avignon Papacy

No country is immune to crisis including fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe which was a cataclysmic time marked by a momentous amount of death and dissension. Europe faced The Black Plague, the Hundred Years’ War, the Ottoman War and finally crisis in the church with the Great Schism. Each unique crisis required their own unique response such as setting up new laws, revolting, or turning away from the church. The Black Plague was brought on in Europe when merchant ships came from China. Along

Rome: The Eternal City Problems with format ?The history of Rome is shrouded in myth and legend.? Tales of glorious victories, conquering heroes, and vanquished foes color our perception of this legendary city.? Myth and reality are so closely intertwined that we would be remiss to examine the one without the other.? From a cluster of humble villages, arose a mighty people who would capture the admiration of the world for centuries thereafter.? To look at the history of Rome is to look at

The Order of Templars also called Knight Templar, were members of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon founded in about 1118. They were a military, religious order of knighthood founded at the time of the Crusades for which became a perfect and inspiration for other similar military orders. After Christian fighters had captured Jerusalem during the First Crusade, groups of pilgrims from across Western Europe began visiting the Holy Land. Many were captured and killed while crossing

The Renaissance versus the Reformation "I feel, sometimes, as the Renaissance man must have felt in finding new riches at every point and in the certainty that unexplored areas of knowledge and experience await at every turn"—Polykarp Kusch. Two very critical periods in the history of western civilization involved the eras of the Renaissance and the Reformation. The renaissance evolved mainly in direct result to the medieval times where the people where obedient to authority. The reformation

On the 27th of November in the year 1095, Pope Urban II issued a decree to a council of the Church at Clermont in the French Auvergne saying "Whoever for devotion alone, not to gain honour or money, goes to jerusalem to liberate the Church of God can substitute the journey for all penance" (Tyerman 27). As the Pope declared a first crusade against the Muslims, he used forgiveness from sins as a false incentive to get knights to join in his fight. In his letter of instruction, Urban says that "a

Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici founded the Medici bank in 1397 after splitting from his nephew to establish a bank branch in Florence. As the new bank grew and expanded, so did the wealth and power of the Medici family. When Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici, Giovanni’s son, took over the banking business in 1434, the increasing economic power of the Medici family allowed them to establish themselves as effective rulers of Florence while keeping the republican system of government nominally intact. The

The Dialogue of Saint Catherine of Siena, translated by Algar Thorold, and the play, Dante The Divine Comedy Volume 1: Inferno, translated by Mark Musa, are two completely different depictions of two unique individuals with two distinctive experiences that pertain to their view of God and His role as the Father. Catherine’s view is one of an intimate loving relationship with God. For instance, she calls Him amorous truth which means loving and candor, which characterizes God in the ultimate fatherly

The thirteenth century showed a lot of tension between religious and political groups and leaders. The church in those days had more power and control over the state. One religious tension in particular was the hatred between Cathars and Catholics. While they both came from the Christian religion, the Cathars had different beliefs and a different leading system than the Catholics, and the Catholics saw the Cathars as heretics. The Cathars were overrunning the French land of Languedoc, and so

In the Middle Ages, which sprouted from the sacking of Rome by Germanic tribes, society became more isolated and survivalism based, with merely living taking precedent over education and social activity. This was truly a dark age, with Christianity providing the only hope during this feudalistic and tumultuous time period. Throughout this time period, the clergy gained more and more power, eventually sparking the Crusades. While they failed, they did open trade routes, bringing a better economy

Following the Evangelical reform movements on the European continent against the Roman Catholic Church, England also experienced its own reform movements and reformists. During the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century, the English monarchy was Catholic, and thus opposed to reform, prosecuting evangelicals as heretics. In the first half of the reign of Henry VIII, the second Tudor monarch, this pattern continued under the administration of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey as Lord Chancellor, and