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Church and state in medieval Europe was the relationship between the Catholic Church and the various monarchies and other states in Europe during the Middle Ages (between the end of Roman authority in the West in the fifth century to their end in the East in the fifteenth century and the beginning of the [Modern era]]).
Church gradually became a defining institution of the Roman Empire. [1] Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 proclaiming toleration for the Christian religion, and convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325 whose Nicene Creed included belief in "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church". Emperor Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Thessalonica of 380. [2]
Pope Leo the Great defined the role of the state as being a defender of the church's cause and a suppressor of heresies in a letter to the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo I: "You ought unhesitatingly to recognize that the Royal Power has been conferred to you not only for the Rule of the world, but especially for the defense of the Church, so that by suppressing the heinous undertakings you may defend those Statutes which are good and restore True Peace to those things which have been disordered". [3]
After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, there emerged no single powerful secular government in the West. There was however a central ecclesiastical power in Rome, the Catholic Church. In this power vacuum, the church rose to become the dominant power in the West. The church started expanding in the 10th century, and as secular kingdoms gained power at the same time, there naturally arose the conditions for a power struggle between church and state over ultimate authority.
The earliest vision of Christendom was a vision of a Christian theocracy, a government founded upon and upholding Christian values, whose institutions are spread through and over with Christian doctrine. In this period, members of the Christian clergy wield political authority. The specific relationship between the political leaders and the clergy varied but, in theory, the national and political divisions were at times subsumed under the leadership of the Catholic Church as an institution. This model of Church–State relations was accepted by various Church leaders and political leaders in European history. [4]
The classical heritage flourished throughout the Middle Ages in both the Byzantine Greek East and the Latin West. In the Greek philosopher Plato's ideal state there are three major classes, which was representative of the idea of the "tripartite soul", which is expressive of three functions or capacities of the human soul: "reason", "the spirited element", and "appetites" (or "passions"). Will Durant made a convincing case that certain prominent features of Plato's ideal community were discernible in the organization, dogma and effectiveness of "the" Medieval Church in Europe: [5]
... For a thousand years Europe was ruled by an order of guardians considerably like that which was visioned by our philosopher. During the Middle Ages it was customary to classify the population of Christendom into laboratores (workers), bellatores (soldiers), and oratores (clergy). The last group, though small in number, monopolized the instruments and opportunities of culture, and ruled with almost unlimited sway half of the most powerful continent on the globe. The clergy, like Plato's guardians, were placed in authority... by their talent as shown in ecclesiastical studies and administration, by their disposition to a life of meditation and simplicity, and ... by the influence of their relatives with the powers of state and church. In the latter half of the period in which they ruled [800 AD onwards], the clergy were as free from family cares as even Plato could desire [for such guardians]... [Clerical] Celibacy was part of the psychological structure of the power of the clergy; for on the one hand they were unimpeded by the narrowing egoism of the family, and on the other their apparent superiority to the call of the flesh added to the awe in which lay sinners held them.... In the latter half of the period in which they ruled, the clergy were as free from family cares as even Plato could desire. [5]
The Catholic Church's peak of authority over all European Christians and their common endeavours of the Christian community — for example, the Crusades, the fight against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula and against the Ottomans in the Balkans — helped to develop a sense of communal identity against the obstacle of Europe's deep political divisions. This authority was also used by local Inquisitions to root out divergent elements and create a religiously uniform community.
The conflict between Church and state was in many ways a uniquely Western phenomenon originating in Late Antiquity (see Saint Augustine's City of God (417)). The Papal States in Italy, today downsized to the State of Vatican, were ruled directly by the Holy See. Moreover, throughout the Middle Ages the Pope claimed the right to depose the Catholic kings of Western Europe, and tried to exercise it, sometimes successfully (see the investiture controversy, below), sometimes not, as with Henry VIII of England and Henry III of Navarre. [6] However, in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, Church and state were closely linked and collaborated in a "symphony", with some exceptions (see Iconoclasm).
Before the Age of Absolutism, institutions, such as the Church, legislatures, or social elites, [7] restrained monarchical power. Absolutism was characterized by the ending of feudal partitioning, consolidation of power with the monarch, rise of the state, rise of professional standing armies, creation of professional bureaucracies, codification of state laws, and the rise of ideologies that justify the absolutist monarchy. Hence, absolutism was made possible by new innovations and characterized as a phenomenon of Early Modern Europe, rather than that of the Middle Ages, where the clergy and nobility counterbalanced as a result of mutual rivalry.
When the Holy Roman Empire developed as a force from the tenth century, it was the first real non-barbarian challenge to the authority of the Church. A dispute between the secular and ecclesiastical powers emerged known as the Investiture Controversy, beginning in the mid-eleventh century and was resolved with the Concordat of Worms in 1122. While on the surface it was over a matter of official procedures regarding the appointments of offices, underneath was a powerful struggle for control over who held ultimate authority, the King or the Pope.
Pope Boniface VIII put some of the strongest claims to temporal as well as spiritual supremacy of any Pope and intervened incessantly in foreign affairs. He proclaimed that it "is necessary for salvation that every living creature be under submission to the Roman pontiff", pushing Papal Supremacy to its historical extreme. Boniface's quarrel with Philip the Fair became so resentful that he excommunicated him in 1303. However, before the Pope could lay France under an interdict, Boniface was seized by Philip. Although he was released from captivity after three days, he died of shock one month later. No subsequent popes were to repeat Boniface VIII's claims.
Although initially close to King Henry II, as Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket became an independent figure. King Henry devoted his reign to the restoration of the royal customs of his grandfather King Henry I, as part of this he wanted to extend his authority over the Church and limit its freedoms. The Becket dispute revolved around the Constitutions of Clarendon, a document which Becket and the Pope largely condemned. Becket eventually fled England and went into exile in France; during these six years there were a number of attempts at restoring peace. The fourth meeting at Fréteval ended in an agreement and Becket decided to return to Canterbury. However the King reneged on his promises made at Fréteval and in response Becket produced a number of censures on royal officials and clergymen. Four barons of the King sought to gain the King's favour and therefore proceeded to Canterbury Cathedral to confront Becket; some claim that they intended to scare and possibly arrest Becket rather than to kill him. Nonetheless after a heated argument the four barons murdered Becket on the steps of the altar in Canterbury Cathedral. The King publicly expressed remorse for this killing, but took no action to arrest Becket's killers. He attended Canterbury in sackcloth and ashes as an act of public penance. Later in 1174 he submitted himself before the tomb of Thomas Becket, thus recognizing St. Thomas's sanctity.
The conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines began as part of the secular-papal struggle. Guelf (also spelled Guelph) and Ghibelline, were members of two opposing factions in German and Italian politics during the Middle Ages. The split between the Guelfs, who were sympathetic to the papacy, and the Ghibellines, who were sympathetic to the German (Holy Roman) emperors, contributed to chronic strife within the cities of northern Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries.
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There was some uncertainty about what would happen to Jerusalem after it was conquered in 1099. Godfrey de Bouillon refused to take the title "king", and was instead called "Defender of the Holy Sepulcher". Dagobert of Pisa was named Patriarch in 1100, and attempted to turn the new state into a theocracy, with a secular state to be created elsewhere, perhaps in Cairo. Godfrey soon died however and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, who did not hesitate to call himself king and actively opposed Dagobert's plans. By Dagobert's death in 1107, Jerusalem was a secular kingdom.
Christendom refers to Christian states, Christian-majority countries or countries in which Christianity is dominant or prevails.
Pope Boniface V was the bishop of Rome from 23 December 619 to his death. He did much for the Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England, and enacted the decree by which churches became places of sanctuary.
The Avignon Papacy was the period from 1309 to 1376 during which seven successive popes resided in Avignon rather than in Rome. The situation arose from the conflict between the papacy and the French crown, culminating in the death of Pope Boniface VIII after his arrest and maltreatment by Philip IV of France. Following the subsequent death of Pope Benedict XI, Philip forced a deadlocked conclave to elect the French Clement V as pope in 1305. Clement refused to move to Rome, and in 1309 he moved his court to the papal enclave at Avignon, where it remained for the next 67 years. This absence from Rome is sometimes referred to as the "Babylonian captivity" of the Papacy.
In English law, the benefit of clergy was originally a provision by which clergymen accused of a crime could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead in an ecclesiastical court under canon law. The ecclesiastical courts were generally seen as being more lenient in their prosecutions and punishments, and defendants made many efforts to claim clergy status, often on questionable or fraudulent grounds.
The Investiture Controversy or Investiture Contest was a conflict between the Church and the state in medieval Europe over the ability to choose and install bishops (investiture) and abbots of monasteries and the pope himself. A series of popes in the 11th and 12th centuries undercut the power of the Holy Roman Emperor and other European monarchies, and the controversy led to nearly 50 years of conflict.
Clericis laicos was a papal bull issued on February 5, 1296, by Pope Boniface VIII in an attempt to prevent the secular states of Europe—in particular France and England—from appropriating church revenues without the express prior permission of the pope. The two expansionist monarchies had come to blows, and the precedents for taxation of the clergy for a "just war" if it was declared a crusade and authorized by the papacy had been well established. The position of Boniface was that prior authorization had always been required and that the clergy had not been taxed for purely secular and dynastic warfare.
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting respectively the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor in the Italian city-states of Central Italy and Northern Italy during the Middle Ages. During the 12th and 13th centuries, rivalry between these two parties dominated political life across medieval Italy. The struggle for power between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire arose with the Investiture Controversy, which began in 1075 and ended with the Concordat of Worms in 1122.
Gallicanism is the belief that popular secular authority—often represented by the monarch's or the state's authority—over the Catholic Church is comparable to that of the pope. Gallicanism is a rejection of ultramontanism; it has something in common with Anglicanism, but is nuanced, in that it plays down the authority of the Pope in church without denying that there are some authoritative elements to the office associated with being primus inter pares. Other terms for the same or similar doctrines include Erastianism, Febronianism, and Josephinism.
The Gregorian Reforms were a series of reforms initiated by Pope Gregory VII and the circle he formed in the papal curia, c. 1050–80, which dealt with the moral integrity and independence of the clergy. The reforms are considered to be named after Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), though he personally denied it and claimed his reforms, like his regnal name, honoured Pope Gregory I.
An ecclesiastical province is one of the basic forms of jurisdiction in Christian churches, including those of both Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity, that have traditional hierarchical structures. An ecclesiastical province consists of several dioceses, one of them being the archdiocese, headed by a metropolitan bishop or archbishop who has ecclesiastical jurisdiction over all other bishops of the province.
Unam sanctam is a papal bull that was issued by Pope Boniface VIII on 18 November 1302. It laid down dogmatic propositions on the unity of the Catholic Church, the necessity of belonging to it for eternal salvation, the position of the Pope as supreme head of the Church and the duty thence arising of submission to the Pope in order to belong to the Church and thus to attain salvation. The Pope further emphasized the higher position of the spiritual in comparison with the secular order. The historian Brian Tierney calls it "probably the most famous" document on church and state in medieval Europe. The original document is lost, but a version of the text can be found in the registers of Boniface VIII in the Vatican Archives. The bull was the definitive statement of the late medieval theory of hierocracy, which argued for the temporal as well as spiritual supremacy of the pope.
The Constitutions of Clarendon were a set of legislative procedures passed by Henry II of England in 1164. The Constitutions were composed of 16 articles and represent an attempt to restrict ecclesiastical privileges and curb the power of the Church courts and the extent of papal authority in England. In the anarchic conditions of Henry II's predecessor, Stephen, the church had extended its jurisdiction by taking advantage of the weakness of royal authority. The Constitutions were claimed to restore the law as it was observed during the reign of Henry I (1100–1135).
The Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual leadership of the pope in Rome.
In Christianity, the term secular clergy refers to deacons and priests who are not monastics or otherwise members of religious life. Secular priests are priests who commit themselves to a certain geographical area and are ordained into the service of the residents of a diocese or equivalent church administrative region. That includes serving the everyday needs of the people in parishes, but their activities are not limited to that of their parish.
Dominium mundi is the idea of universal dominion. It was developed in the Middle Ages. Inspired by the memory of the Roman Empire, dominium mundi implied the recognition of one supreme authority, which generated a prolonged political and spiritual struggle between imperial and ecclesiastical power. This struggle can be said to have begun with the Investiture Controversy, and was mainly embodied by the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic Church, which elevated the emperor and Pope, respectively, to the status of supreme ruler.
Monarchia, often called De Monarchia, is a Latin treatise on secular and religious power by Dante Alighieri, who wrote it between 1312 and 1313. With this text, the poet intervened in one of the most controversial subjects of his period: the relationship between secular authority and religious authority. Dante's point of view is known on this problem, since during his political activity he had fought to defend the autonomy of the city-government of Florence from the temporal demands of Pope Boniface VIII. The work was banned by the Catholic Church in 1585.
Christianity in the 11th century is marked primarily by the Great Schism of the Church, which formally divided the State church of the Roman Empire into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches.
Christianity in the Middle Ages covers the history of Christianity from the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The end of the period is variously defined - depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used.
The history of the papacy from 1046 to 1216 was marked by conflict between popes and the Holy Roman Emperor, most prominently the Investiture Controversy, a dispute over who— pope or emperor— could appoint bishops within the Empire. Henry IV's Walk to Canossa in 1077 to meet Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), although not dispositive within the context of the larger dispute, has become legendary. Although the emperor renounced any right to lay investiture in the Concordat of Worms (1122), the issue would flare up again.
In the Middle Ages, hierocracy or papalism was a current of Latin legal and political thought that argued that the pope held supreme authority over not just spiritual, but also temporal affairs. In its full, late medieval form, hierocratic theory posited that since Christ was lord of the universe and both king and priest, and the pope was his earthly vicar, the pope must also possess both spiritual and temporal authority over everybody in the world. Papalist writers at the turn of the 14th century such as Augustinus Triumphus and Giles of Rome depicted secular government as a product of human sinfulness that originated, by necessity, in tyrannical usurpation, and could be redeemed only by submission to the superior spiritual sovereignty of the pope. At the head of the Catholic Church, responsible to no other jurisdiction except God, the pope, they argued, was the monarch of a universal kingdom whose power extended to Christians and non-Christians alike.
The whole issue had, in fact, become confused with the confusion of functions of the Church and State. In the view of the Church of England the ultimate governance of the Christian community, in things spiritual and temporal, was vested not in the clergy but in the "Christian prince" as the vicegerent of God.
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