Pope Gregory VII

At one point in history the church, and even more so the Pope, was the primary power in Europe. The church was said to have control over all of people’s destiney, due to their direct link with God. People honestly believed that the Pope had a hand in their fate to either go to Heaven after death or to go to Hell. Therefore, they would seek the word of the church in almost every matter. However, this way of thinking would change for many people around 1517 with the birth of the Protestant…

wide are of land, and many feudal lords felt closer ties to the Pope than to their King. Several items led to a decline in feudalism by the end of the Middle Ages. The Black Death or plague killed hundreds of thousands in Europe. This decreased the number of serfs available to work the land and support the lords. The Crusades also distracted the lords from managing their lands. The feudal system was further weakened as the Pope called on lords to recruit people for the holy wars in the…

The church established a hierarchy of clergy throughout this time period as well. Pope Gregory the Great basically created the position of medieval pope. He was once a political figure in Rome, but departed from that path and entered a monastery. Gregory realized the purpose for his life and “by God’s grace, he turned his aptitude for worldly success wholly to the attainment of heavenly glory” (The Life of Gregory the Great, 187). He rises to higher offices within the church and ends up…

“Deus Veult!"- God wills it! cried Pope Urban II’s audience in 1095 at The Council of Clermont. This Papal sanction supposedly initiated the beginning of the First Crusade; a holy war designed to recapture Jerusalem in August 1096. Byzantine Emperor of Constantinople; Alexios I Komnenos appealed to Urban to request aid to resist the Seljuk Turks who occupied Antolia and the majority of Asian Minor. Pope Urban’s unusually secular desire for a legacy may have been a partial motivation for his…

The papacy has stretched over the course of 1982 years from the first pope Peter the Apostle to the current pope Francis I. There have been popes who have wielded great amounts of power like Innocent III and those who did not wield much power like the modern day popes. There were those who were immoral like Alexander VI and those who were kind hearted with a servant attitude like John Paul II. Throughout the reigns of the 256 popes from Peter to Francis, they were seen as spiritual leaders. For…

world today. The office of the Pope was instituted early in the history of the Church. The Papacy was established much later. The leader of the church in Rome was a Bishop as was customary in the early church. In its origin the office of the Pope was not unlike any other office in church leadership, the term was not used exclusively at the church in Rome nor did it convey any special authority not available to the bishop of any other church in the empire. The term “Pope” is derived from the…

influenced much of the attitudes which allowed for the persecution of non-adherents to Christianity or Christian orthodoxy. The letter by Pope Gregory VII earlier established that the Papacy claimed powers that allowed for the deposition of European rulers, ability to annul any agreement or law, and the general status of infallibility for any decrees by the Pope. So naturally, the church required methods of demonstrating such authorities to reduce possible challenges to its authority. Notably,…

Following the inceptive imperial coronation of Charlemagne 400 years after the widespread adoption of Christianity (c. 800 AD), the new theocratic government of the Holy Roman Empire was faced with a monumental challenge: reconciling their subject’s god given freewill with law. As the defining institution of the Holy Roman Empire, the religious schemas taught by Church’s became inextricably wound with politics. One by one, laws were enforced with divine benediction, repurposing the already…

In the early middle ages, a network of mutual obligations was the glue of the society. Powerful local lords divided their landholding among lesser lords. These lesser lords, or vassals, pledged service and loyalty to the greater lord. This system was implemented due to the Vikings, Muslims and Magyars. The powerful lords were the most powerful and influential in society, they were also called dukes and counts. The powerful lords had vassals, vassals can become other people’s vassals. Peasants…

stipulation that it was to be run according to W.B. Yeats’ vision for a national institution and ergo should operate above political pressure. That same year the Irish National Theatre Society reorganized with three principal directors. W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge, all of whom were dramatists who attempted to rid Ireland of…