What role did the church have in medieval society?

Answer 1

The Roman Catholic Church dominated life in medieval society. It was important to people for spiritual reasons and thought to be necessary for people to go to heaven. It also demanded much of people in their everyday lives including the requirement that peasants work church land for free and also tithe to the church in money or in kind. The huge cathedrals built at this time were a constant reminder of the place of the church in people's' lives.

Answer 2

Role of the Church in Government:

Often, in the Middle Ages, the churches and governments ruled together. Bishops and Abbots would read and write for kings and often became vassals. Local priests were appointed by local lords, and so were expected to uphold their wishes. Thus, the role of the church and rulers was interconnected.

The Church in medieval times was Catholic and it took control to give salvation to the people. The Church also started many crusades to gain back the Holy Land. Most failed but one a success. Today, Christians are able to enter due to these crusades. The Church is a valuable prized religion and still is today. The Church also was supreme.

The greatest reason the Church was important during the Middle Ages, was because the Middle Ages were a time in which people believed their souls were the most important things they had, and the true Religion was the only way to save them. In terms of the day to day lives of ordinary people, the Church guided them through their lives with baptism, confession and absolution, confirmation, Eucharist, unction, and, when they died, it buried them and conducted prayers for their souls.

The Church provided services beyond those that were purely spiritual. This was partly because it was important for Christians to be charitable. The result was that Church organizations provided hospital care, medicines, care for orphans, education, safe lodgings for travelers, and safe places where people who wanted to live out their lives in contemplation and prayer could do so, the monasteries and convents.

The Church had organizations such as the Knights Templar, who accompanied travellers as they made their ways through the lands. The travelers included pilgrims, but they also included merchants, and really anyone on the road.

From a historic perspective, the crusades represent a great exercise of power of the Church, and possibly one of its greatest failures. They took over the Holy Land and held it briefly, but at a cost that in retrospect was extraordinarily high. The crusaders also contributed greatly to the destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the eventual fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Turks.

Monasteries, convents, and ordinary churches also provided places of refuge to those who sought it. A woman who was running away from an abusive husband or a predatory admirer could seek protection in such a place. So could a felon. And while felons often had only a limited amount of time to be protected, during which they could confess and possibly make a better deal for justice (usually no more than six weeks), others often stayed as long as they needed to. And no one, not even agents of a king, could remove them.

The Church was a counter to kings who wanted absolute power, because the Church had one power the kings could not take away: it could excommunicate a king. Today this does not sound like much, but at the time, excommunication was a disaster. The Middle Ages were a time in which everything was controlled by oaths, from oaths of allegiance to treaties. When a pope excommunicated a king, everyone, from the king's subjects to his enemies, could be freed from those oaths, and all treaties could be cancelled. Enemies could rise up in revolt or invade, without fear of condemnation by the Church. Subjects of the king who did not like him, could switch sides with a clear conscience. There are king and emperors who were examples of this, such as King John of England, who found the difficulties he encountered from excommunication so onerous that he was willing to swear fealty to the pope to get out of them.

The idea that the Catholic Church was politically supreme is not correct. For one thing, Christianity was not the only religion in Europe. There were pagans and Jews in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, and in such places as Spain, there were large numbers of Muslims, many in Muslim countries. Jewish and Muslim contributions to European civilization profoundly altered the nature of the later parts of the Middle Ages.

But also, the Roman Catholic Church was not the only brand of Christianity. Apart from a number of very powerful heresies, whose followers controlled whole areas of the continent from time to time, there were other Church Organizations, such as the Celtic Church, which the Catholic Church absorbed in time, and the Oriental Orthodox and the Coptic Orthodox Churches, which have existed from the beginning and to this day. More importantly, the Catholic Church was never well unified, with various schisms always either threatening or under way. The greatest of these, the East-West Schism, divided the main body of the Church into the Roman Catholic, in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox, in the East, in 1054. But there were others that were patched up, both before and after that event. One was the Great Schism of the West, which produced a time when there were two popes in Europe, one in Rome, and one in France.

Nor is it correct that the Church was somehow responsible for the suppression of science or witch hunts. Such meddling in affairs came after the Middle Ages were over. There was a set of condemnations issued by the Church, in 1210, 1270, and 1277, and these had a profound influence on science, but the influence was positive, freeing students and scientists from restraints imposed by university teachers who insisted that Aristotle was always right about science. The effect of these condemnations was so profound that some historians have referred to them is a beginning point of modern science. The witch hunts were a thing of the Renaissance and Reformation, as was the meddling in science.

Answer 3

The Church often intervened on behalf of people who needed help. One example of this is a series of actions in English History that resulted in the abolition of slavery during the reign of King Henry I.

The Church appealed to governments for soldiers to be sent on the crusades.

The Church defended its own rights against monarchs who wanted to take power from it. The Investiture Controversy is an example of a conflict of this type, which arose because the emperor wanted to be able to appoint his own political supporters to be bishops.The Church had several roles to play with government.

One thing the Church did was to try to impose a moral rationale to the government. One example of this was the condemnation of slavery. The effect of its condemnation was that the trade in slaves was abolished in England by William the Conqueror, and the institution of slavery was abolished by Henry I. Another example was the condemnation of the use of torture, which had some effect on how ordinary crimes were punished, even if it did not in the case of treason.

Another thing the Church did was to defend its own interests. The most notable examples of this relate to the Investiture Controversy, in which the Church successfully maintained its right to decide who should be installed as bishops in the various dioceses.

The popes had abilities to intervene in political and diplomatic matters as well. There were a number of kings or other important leaders, both civil and military, who were excommunicated because of different things they had done. Pope Innocent III excommunicate the crusaders who attacked Christian cities during the Fourth Crusade.

The Church provided an alternate path of justice. For most crimes, anyone who had benefit of clergy was able to be tried by the Church, instead of the state. Benefit of clergy was extended to all who could read, including students. The Church judicial system was aimed at penance and restoration, rather than punishment and retribution.

The Church provided sanctuary for people who went to monasteries or some churches to escape from civil authorities. In some cases, even agents of the king could not enter Church grounds to take prisoners. There is even a case of a woman who attempted to poison King Louis IX of France for revenge, who was discovered in the act, but escaped to a convent, where she lived for the remainder of her life.

Answer 4

the role the church played was nobility and they ran the government with the church.

Moe Sheikh

Decatur High School Football #57/28

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Answer 5

the roman Catholic church was a huge role in the lives of noble peasants. They were to follow all orders of the church over the fear of going to hell. If the word of the church was questioned then that person was excommunicated from the christian society.

Answer 6

Those who lived in the medieval times took their religion seriously, realizing that we are only on this earth for a short while, and that this short time determines where we are going to spend eternity. Thus the role that the Church played in their lives was huge, they lived their life around the Church, her prayers, and her set times were their times.