What were two reasons that the power of the Roman Catholic Church began to weaken around the 1400s?

Answer 1

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Renaissance ideals that deemphasized religion became more widely accepted.

Answer 2

The Black Plague hit Europe really, really hard during this time. Also around this time two popes died one right after the other, and the third pope, Clement V moved to France to escape the turmoil in Italy. Then King Phillip of France ordered all the Jews out of France and he and Clement V started killing Templars. Then Clement the V died and John XXII took over. Twelve years later he dies and Benedict XII becomes pope. Seven years after that Clement the VI stepped up to the plate. He tried to help the Jews, who were persecuted as the Plague continued to kill people off, and huge numbers of them are systematically wiped out. But then he died and Innocent VI came to power, and died ten years later. Urban V was the next pope, and he died eight years later. Pope Gregory XI then left France for Rome, much to the protest of the French cardinals. So they elected an antipope, or pope who the Catholic officials don't recognize as pope. He was Clement VII. Gregory XI dies an a year later. "The "Great Schism of the West" begins when the election of Pope Urban VI to the papacy is challenged by French cardinals, who in turn elect Clement VII to the same office. Clement becomes known as the "antipope" and resides in Avignon. Both Rome and Avignon would have rival popes for the next 40 years." In 1389, Urban VI dies and Boniface IX replaces him. Likewise, Benedict XIII takes over for Clement VII, who died. The Catholics are having problems picking who to follow while Jews are continually killed, and the Plague dwindling but still a factor. Contributing to this confusion was Clement VII's Bull Unigenitus, which allowed for Indulgences. Many Christians were against this idea. "This doctrine was later challenged by Martin Luther and was an important factor in causing the Protestant Reformation. " Also, in 1380, John Wycliffe begins writing the first English translation of The Bible, which the church was against. He won many supporters before and after his death in 1384.

Answer 3

The Roman Catholic church began to lose power in the 1400s because people who opposed it took powerful positions in society. Also, two popes were elected, which resulted in a split of the church.

Answer 4

Aside from very poor clerical education, bishops not living in their dioceses, one or two popes who lived scandalous lives, and other abuses, the biggest factor that contributed to the weakening of the Church was people leaving it to start their own Churches and talking the rulers into supporting their churches rather than the Catholic Church.

from the Catholic Encyclopedia

The most important occurrence of Leo's pontificate and that of gravest consequence to the Church was the Reformation, which began in 1517. We cannot enter into a minute account of this movement, the remote cause of which lay in the religious, political, and social conditions of Germany. It is certain, however, that the seeds of discontent amid which Luther threw his firebrand had been germinating for centuries. The immediate cause was bound up with the odious greed for money displayed by the Roman Curia, and shows how far short all efforts at reform had hitherto fallen. Albert of Brandenburg, already Archbishop of Magdeburg, received in addition the Archbishopric of Mainz and the Bishopric of Hallerstadt, but in return was obliged to collect 10,000 ducats, which he was taxed over and above the usual confirmation fees. To indemnify hiim, and to make it possible to discharge these obligations Rome permitted him to have preached in his territory the plenary indulgence promised all those who contributed to the new St. Peter's; he was allowed to keep one half the returns, a transaction which brought dishonour on all concerned in it. Added to this, abuses occurred during the preaching of the Indulgence. The money contributions, a mere accessory, were frequently the chief object, and the "Indulgences for the Dead" became a vehicle of inadmissible teachings. That Leo X, in the most serious of all the crises which threatened the Church, should fail to prove the proper guide for her, is clear enough from what has been related above. He recognized neither the gravity of the situation nor the underlying causes of the revolt. Vigorous measures of reform might have proved an efficacious antidote, but the pope was deeply entangled in political affairs and allowed the imperial election to overshadow the revolt of Luther; moreover, he gave himself up unrestrainedly to his pleasures and failed to grasp fully the duties of his high office.

Answer 5

Probably the single biggest behavior that effected the Church in the Late Middle Ages was the Great Schism, which ran from 1378 to 1417. This was known as the Avignon Papacy, when the Pope moved to Avignon, and no one knew who the real Pope was. For most of this period there were two claimants to the Papal throne, near the end of it, three. This threw Christendom into crisis with the end result of greatly weakening the Papacy and contributing to the protestant revolt a hundred years later. That and the rise of heresies including those of the Bohemia, John Hus, the heresy of Nominalism. And then there was the rise of Renaissance thought. Originally Renaissance thought saw the good in the Greek and Latin classics and tried to bring them into the Christian present. Thomas Aquinas has done a magnificent job of this earlier in the 13th century with Aristotle, on whom he based his classic Summa Theologiae which is still used to this day in teaching theology. But later Renaissance intellectuals had a whole different mind set and through their fascination with pagan ideas, they adopted the worldly outlook of their writers. Finally there was the rise of the business culture and the love of money - the root of all evil according to the Sacred Scriptures. The love of money and business became prevalent in this era wiping out the great Age of Faith that had just ended.

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The other thing that affected people was a rise in business culture which started as early as the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century this had effected a real "coldness" in life, where people, for the first time, were more interested in making and keeping money more than they were in their eternal salvation. This was the perfect stage for Calvinism to arise in the following century.

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

The Great Schism, otherwise know as the Schism of the West was not strictly a schism at all but a conflict between the two parties within the Church each claiming to support the true pope. Three months after the election of Urban VI, in 1378, the fifteen electing cardinals declared that they had appointed him only as a temporary vicar and that in any case the election was invalid as made under fear of violence from the Roman mob. Urban retorted by naming twenty-eight new cardinals, and the others at once proceeded to elect Cardinal Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII, who went to reside at Avignon. The quarrel was in its origin not a theological or religious one, but was caused by the ambition and jealousy of French influence, which was supported to some extent for political reasons by Spain, Naples, Provence, and Scotland; England, Germany, Scandinavia, Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Flanders and Hungary stood by what they believe to be the true pope at Rome. The Church was torn from top to bottom by the schism, both sides in good faith (it was impossible to know to whom allegiance was due), which lasted with its two lines of popes (and at one time three) till the election of Martin V in 1417. It is now regarded as practically certain that the Urbanist popes were the true ones and their names are included in semi-official lists; moreover, the ordinal numbers of the Clementine claimants (who, however, are not called anti-popes,) were adopted by subsequent popes of the same name.

Extracted 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.

Answer 6

Which critic of Catholicism translated the Bible into his native language

Answer 7

Protestantism took hold, and had succeeded in part because some of Europe's king's realized they could increase their power by supporting Lutheranism against the catholic church.

Answer 8

Renaissance thinkers encouraged the worship of ancient greek and roman gods and goddesses. Answer for APEX

Answer 9

Arguments between church officials, such as the western schism, hurt it's image.