Why was the church important in the 1500?

Answer 1

At that point in time, in Western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church was pretty much the only place to be baptized, married, given a Christian burial, or worship in a community.

Martin Luther hadn't published his 95 Theses (considered the beginning of the Reformation) until 1517.

Answer 2

But why was the Church so powerful?

1. It owned land.

The Church owned many large areas of farmland. People who grew crops on this land had

to give one tenth of everything they grew to the Church. This was called the Tithe. This

was a lot of crops for many poor people to lose.

2. It controlled people's beliefs.

The Church told people that when they died, their souls lived on either in Heaven or in

Hell.

Hell, they said, was a place of great pain and suffering. The people were understandably

frightened of going there. So, the Church gave them hope. It said that after you die

your soul goes first to a place called Purgatory, where it would stay until any sins had

been burnt away.

3. It was rich.

As you can imagine. People wanted to be in purgatory for the shortest possible time. The

Church said that you could shorten your stay in purgatory if you did several things.

These included:

• Attend Church and live a good life

• Go on a pilgrimage

• Buy a special pardon. These pardons were known as Indulgences.

The Church made a lot of money this way, as people - especially rich people - tried to buy

their way to heaven. The Church also made money through the Tithes.

4. It was not controlled by the King.

The Church was Roman Catholic and therefore was lead by the Pope. This meant that the

King could not tell anyone from the Church what to do. Even if a churchman committed a

crime, they could not be tried by a normal court, but instead were tried by fellow

churchmen, who were often very lenient.

Answer 3

Answer from a CatholicMedieval Europe was almost exclusively Catholic and monarch ruled. As the rulers were Catholic and the "enlightenment" had not yet arisen, the people were, on the whole, of great faith, their entire lives were ruled by their faith. In addition, the Church was the only institution that was multi-national, and to a large extent, the source of education and history. This is a little difficult for us, in the modern era, to understand, but things were simpler then and people had different priorities. A lot of things that we think are important just didn't exist and were not even dreamed of. In this simpler world, heaven was very real, and the Church was larger and older than any of the nations that existed and the Church had the keys to heaven. Answer

The most important single reason why the Catholic Church was important was that most people firmly believed in its teachings. The people of the Middle Ages were people who held their religion and the condition of their souls to be the most important things in life.

Answer

The Church was the arbiter of certain kinds of problems, and had the ability to decide whether a person had to be held to an oath or could be freed from it. As such, for instance, it was able to do such a thing as release a king from the provisions of a treaty, if the other king who signed it had been excommunicated. As another example, a king could also get an annulment of a marriage, if he needed to and could provide an acceptable reason to the Church. This made the Church more powerful than kings in some ways.

Answer

It is important because it helped people.

Answer 4

The Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ (see Acts of the Apostles 9:1-5, and 1 Corinthians 12:12-14) (by the way, "catholic" just means universal or 'according to the whole'". In the year 1500 the Catholic Church had exactly the same importance that it does today-it is God reaching out to people to save them, gathering them into His Body, giving them His Grace through the Sacraments, and bringing them to heaven.

Answer 5

i did not help me