from What Every Catholic Wants to Know Catholic History from the Catacombs to the Reformation, by Diane Moczar, c 2006 by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
The five key elements that made up the "medieval synthesis" were:
- The harmony between Faith and reason.
- The balance of power among nation-states as parts of Christendom
- The balancing of the authority of the king with local self-government.
- The harmony between the goals of individual self-fulfillment and those of society.
- The equilibrium - and an uneasy one, it is true - between Church and state.
In the fourteenth century everything started to fall apart beginning with famine and plague. Cold, wet weather between 1315 and 1322 brought ruined crops in northern Europe and the resulting famine produced mass starvation, the mortality rate was as high as ten percent. But within 25-20 years the Black Death struck Europe. Between 1347-1350 an estimate average of thirty percent of the population on the continent died. In some cases, the death toll was much higher. It returned again in 1363 and would recur periodically for the next three centuries. All of this caused social friction and rebellions, not to mention some bizarre heresies. In addition to all of this the Hundred Years’s War began, the Ottoman Turks began their onslaught of Europe, and the Papacy was going through many troubles beginning with the Avignon papacy. All of this set the stage, so to speak for the protestant catastrophe.
In the 1500s the Catholic Church had a lot of power. The church had built up their power of the years and priests themselves had a lot of power.
The Catholic Church had become corrupt unfourtantely and priests and even the pope over used their power. They did such things as charged money for absolution.
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church was separated from government.
the catholic church
Roman Catholic AnswerOf course people believed in the Church in 1500. The Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and the means that He established for them to reach heaven, and He guaranteed that the Church would perdure. Martin Luther had not started preaching his heresy until 1517 leading people astray, and even then, most of the common people still believed in Christ's Church. It was the rulers looking for temporal power who used Luther as an excuse to free themselves from what they saw as the Vatican's oppression.
Roman Catholic AnswerThe only "power" that the Church has is that of her Blessed Lord. As it is His teachings that she proclaims, it is His power that she uses to uphold them.
Roman Catholic AnswerThe only "power" that the Church has is that of her Blessed Lord. As it is His teachings that she proclaims, it is His power that she uses to uphold them.
Because the church had more money than the king (henry the 8th )
In 1500 the Roman Catholic Church was all powerful in western Europe. There was no legal alternative. The Catholic Church jealously guarded its position and anybody who was deemed to have gone against the Catholic Church was labelled a heretic and burnt at the stake. The Catholic Church did not tolerate any deviance from its teachings as any appearance of 'going soft' might have been interpreted as a sign of weakness which would be exploited.
Roman Catholic AnswerThe only "power" that the Church has is that of her Blessed Lord. As it is His teachings that she proclaims, it is His power that she uses to uphold them.
The nobility and the king had power, but over them was the Catholic Church. The church was the ultimate power over everyone.
The church was Catholic so it was the Pope and the priests.