How did the Roman Catholic Church dominate in medieval life?

Answer 1

1: The Roman Catholic Church was so powerful because they were absolutely ruthless. If any other religion even tried to spread their beliefs, they were killed, or worse. 2: The Roman Catholic Church had very persuasive evangelists and priests (or whatever they were called at the time). The people who weren't happy with their religion at the time immediately found a new, appealing religion. 3: The Roman Catholic Church had so many followers, that nobody ever dared try to overthrow it. In the beginning, it was only a few people who even thought that the religion was real, but as previously noted, they were very persuasive people. Now, granted, I may not be correct but I believe I have it reasonably accurate. If you want the guaranteed correct answer, ask a Catholic priest. 1. The concept of separation of Church and State was foreign to the way things worked in the Middle Ages. Churches were usually the central building in any town and priests were considered wise men as well as rulers since they served the people in every aspect of their lives from baptism at birth to death and the last rites. Priests served as well as clerks reading and composing documentation since many did not have an education. Priests also preached and taught the people, blessed their fields and tools, handled legal issues, distributed alms and were well respected by all as both leader and father.

2. The social order took its moral and civil laws from religion, thus the Church was the center of policy and was consulted and obeyed by kings.

3. People lived their religion in every aspect of their life, rather than the typical Sunday Christians of now. To this effect someone who fought to establish a different religion was committing treason, since they threatened not only other souls by their heresy but the very social order itself for it all rested on the teachings of Christianity. For this reason, heretics were persecuted not only by the Church but by Christian kings themselves and the civil arm of the law and Jews and other religious groups were expelled or restricted to certain areas in the city lest they usurp the established order.

Answer 2

1. Control of knowledge, and knowledge is power

   From the fifth century, the Church limited access to education and literacy, on the basis that only the clergy really needed to know how to read and write.

2. Control of minds

   By defining the entire population of Western Europe as members of the Church, and by defining what they needed to know and to believe, the Roman Catholic Church defined the very identity of almost everyone in western Europe.

3. Control of power

   Until the last years of the Middle Ages, even kings felt themselves subject to papal authority. When necessary, the Church knew how to set one ruler off against another, to ensure its interests were paramount. If faced with opposition, it could offer inducements or support to a more amenable ruler in return for invading the troublesome nation.

4. Control of wealth

   The Church gradually built up vast land holdings through its churches and monasteries. It regarded itself as outside the secular law and paid no taxes, so it was often a state within a state, in some countries.

From the fall of the Roman Empire until the early renaissance the Roman Catholic Church was the only significant institution other than individual monarchies in Western Europe.

Answer 3

The Roman Catholic Church was part of the feudal system. There was the church, the nobility and the serf/peasant. The church was as much a part of the government as it was the religion and dictated to the nobility what it wanted. It controlled the people through it's teachings that man was born with sin and to be able to reach the kingdom of God that they had to go through the church. This was easy to do since 90% of the population couldn't read or write and the church taught through the use of passion plays, weekly services, and as well as the church environment ( the use of stain glass windows). The church also controlled science and did not allow dissenting facts, discovery, or opinion that was against the teachings of the church. The entire society was controlled by the church.

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It's also worth pointing out that the Catholic Church held a monopoly in Western Europe. Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean countries were Orthodox, but Western Europe in Mediaeval times Catholicism was the only sect. The Protestant and other dissenting sects were far in the future.

Answer 4

1st AnswerIt didn't "become" anything. It was the only church/religion in Europe in the middle ages and it set the tone from the rest of society. 2nd AnswerThe Roman Catholic Church was not the only religion in medieval Europe, nor was it even the only Christian Church. It was among the most important institutions, however, and an understanding of its relationship with the rest of society is vital to an understanding of the Middle Ages.

In the early days of the Church, apostles set out to various destinations to bring Christianity to all the people of the Earth. Most of them wound up in parts of the Roman Empire, but not all. The result was that there were a number of Churches from the very start, including a Celtic Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church (not to be confused with the Eastern Orthodox Church), the Coptic Orthodox Church, and so on, and some of these remain to this day. The Churches in Rome was founded by two very important figures, St. Peter and St. Paul.

In time, various Church organizations fell in together, forming a main body of the Christian religion, centered on Rome. The Celtic Church, for example, became united with the main body of the Catholic Church after the Council of Whitby, which probably took place in 664 AD.

When the West Roman Empire fell, in the 5th century, the East Roman Empire continued to exist, becoming what historians call the Byzantine Empire. Partly because its capital was Constantinople, the bishops of that city came to have great importance, comparable to that of the bishops of Rome. There were dissensions, as there always are, and schisms came and went. Finally, in 1054, a permanent East West Schism separated the main body of the Church into the Roman Catholic Church in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the East.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church both continued to practice in ways that the members of the early Church would have recognized as very much their own. Nevertheless, both Churches continued to develop in some ways.

For example, one of the most significant developments of the Middle Ages was the Investiture Controversy, which dealt with issues of separation of Church and state. Purchase of Church offices of any purpose had been regarded as a sin since the beginning, but secular leaders came more and more to assert a right to install men of their own choosing into important positions in the Church, especially as bishops. When he became pope, Gregory VII immediately set about working at eliminating the control secular governments had over the Church, and his actions put him into conflict with Emperor Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire. What followed, the Investiture Controversy, refined the position of the Roman Catholic Church with regards to secular authority.

The relationship with common people was also refined to a large degree. Throughout the history of the Church, unorthodox ideas have risen, and the Church has had to deal with them. These ideas have not always been decided to be controversial; a belief in reincarnation, for example, has never been declared heretical by a pope (I would refer anyone interested in this to Reincarnation and Christianity, by Geddes MacGregor, a highly regarded Roman Catholic theologian). But some such ideas have been heresies, and among them are the doctrines of the Bogomils, who believed that the material world was created by Satan, who was the evil eldest son of God, opposed to Jesus, and derived doctrine from that belief. Their organization seems to have been congregational, and their doctrine was clearly contrary to that of the Church, which meant that it became necessary to deal with it. Whether the resulting Albigensian Crusade was necessary is irrelevant to the question of whether there was a heresy, as, at the very least, members of the Church had to understand what was wrong with it.

There were developments within the Church itself that led to dissent. Personally, for example, I think it was a mistake for a pope to allow King John of England to become a papal vassal as a condition of being allowed back into the good graces of the Church after being excommunicated. This is not because I think it was wrong of the pope to forgive King John, but because he should have realized that Peter's pence, a tax on English peasants in excess of the traditional tithe and sent out of England to Rome, would have alienated the common folk of England against the Church; they were being made to pay for King John's sins. In light of such alienation, it is hardly surprising that reformers such as John Wycliffe would get followers among the English.

An action more commonly cited by protestants as abusive, however, was the sale of indulgences. This was eliminated when the Church addressed the issue to effect, after the Middle Ages closed, but the damage to the Church's reputation, perhaps magnified by protestant reformers, had been done. (Several previous attempts at dealing with indulgences had not cleared the matter up.)

Nevertheless, in terms of sacraments, teachings on such things as cardinal sins, grace, virtues, and so on, the Church remained as it had been. These, not reaction to heresy, not controversy, and not schism, were and remain the fundamentals of the Christian faith, and are its defining features.