Medieval Europe, Part 5:Religion |
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Church and religion were central to all Europeans' experience. They were probably no more religious than Native Americans. But Europeans expressed their religion through a highly organized and HIERARCHICAL CHURCH, and European religion was much more focused on the AFTERLIFE.
I. Medieval Europeans were mostly Christian. They lived and breathed their religion in almost everything they did, almost every day of their lives. Therefore, as with the Indians, we can say that Medieval Europeans had LIVED RELIGION.
A. Their lives often revolved around major religious festivals. The European calendar, for example, was filled with saints' names and punctuated at every turn by religious events. But even the simplest daily and weekly rituals and habits usually had religious elements in them.
B. Like the Indians, Medieval Europeans interpreted daily experience through a religious lens. But that lens was very different from the Indians' lens. Instead of being ECOCENTRIC, Medieval Europeans tended to be SALVATION-CENTERED and they believed in an INTERVENTIONIST GOD.
1. By SALVATION-CENTERED, I mean that they worried about what would happen to them in the afterlife. The single most important thing for almost every European Christian was whether or not s/he would achieve SALVATION after they died. Events on this world were comparatively less important. Mortal life was only a step on the road to eternal life.
(As a result, unfortunately, most Medieval Europeans gave no consideration to how to improve anything on this earth or in their own lives or the lives of their children.)
2. Europeans believed in an INTERVENTIONIST GOD. In other words, they believed that God intervened on earth constantly, tinkering with every event and every individual's life, making events happen and shaping the future according to a divine plan. Europeans saw the hand of God in almost every event, no matter how trivial. Medieval Europeans would have been horrified by our modern notions of physics and physical laws, or of "natural processes" that seem to operate without God's direct attention at all times.
II. Officially, Western Europeans claimed there was only ONE CHURCH in Europe in 1400, the MEDIEVAL CATHOLIC CHURCH. I call it the MEDIEVAL Catholic Church in order to distinguish it from the Catholic Church of today. The Catholic Church has changed a lot since 1400.
(Actually, there was a second Christian church in Eastern Europe, called the Orthodox Church. Also, there were Jews scattered throughout Europe. Medieval Europeans knew this, but they did not officially recognize it as relevant.)
A. When there is only one OFFICIAL church in a country or region, we call it an ESTABLISHED CHURCH (ESTABLISHED RELIGION). More precisely, an established church or religion is one that is supported by a government at the expense of other churches or religions (or non religions). The government usually allows the established church or religion certain special privileges.
B. In Medieval Europe, the Catholic Church had many privileges that made it very powerful.
1. Example 1: It could charge TITHES. TITHES were essentially church taxes. In many parts of Europe, the Church simply took 10% of everything produced by the common folk as a tax each year. The tithe was enforced by law and by troops. If people did not pay it, they were arrested and punished.
(Today, in the United States, Catholics have changed their view of the "tithe." Now it is seen as a voluntary but morally recommended contribution of 10% of your property.)
2. Example 2: The Medieval Catholic Church had its own laws and law courts, separated from the King's law and the Royal courts.
a. Church officials were immune to royal law. If they committed a crime according to church law, they were tried in Church courts. As a result, Kings rarely could arrest and try church people for crimes, even crimes such as treason against the King.
b. Even non-Church people were sometimes tried in Church courts instead of government courts. For example, some crimes were considered "moral crimes" rather than "state crimes" or "civil crimes." If a person committed a moral crime, s/he would be tried in a Church court.
C. In that late 1400s, the Catholic Church was extremely powerful. It had spiritual influence over almost everyone in Western Europe, touching their lives in many ways. It collected taxes from most of them. It had its own government and legal system, led by the POPE. And it owned and managed huge tracts of land throughout the continent.
(The Pope and his offices and high officials are called the PAPACY, the same way today's President and his officials are often called the WHITE HOUSE.)
1. The Pope was considered the chief interpreter of God's Will on Earth.
2. The Pope intervened in the politics of monarchs throughout Europe. Sometimes he did it because he believed it was his moral duty. Sometimes he did it because he was a huge political force in his own right and was trying to protect and expand his own territories.
D. The Medieval Catholic Church was responsible for providing SALVATION to the people of Western Europe.
1. As already noted, European people worried about their souls a lot. They were very frightened that they would not be saved. According to the doctrine of ORIGINAL SIN, human beings were INNATELY DEPRAVED. Ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, human beings had been the scum of the earth, unfit to enter heaven, SINNERS. Therefore, people were worried that God would condemn them to Hell's eternal punishment for their sins. Medieval Christians believed that Jesus, the Son of God, had died on the Cross to wipe away the sins of mankind. But that did not necessarily mean that human beings were now free of sin. It just meant that they were starting with a clean slate from that moment in time. Individuals committed plenty of new sins. Those sins needed to be forgiven by God all over again. Otherwise, the sinner was doomed.
(Christian beliefs vary and they have changed over time. Christians in the Middle Ages would not have agreed with the modern evangelical belief that Jesus' sacrifice is constantly washing away new sins in return for faith.)
2. To get to heaven, Medieval Catholics believed that you must participate in SACRAMENTS. Sacraments were frequently referred to as WORKS, or GOOD WORKS. If you participated in all the sacraments properly (or enough sacraments), God would be pleased by your pious effort and would reward you. His reward would be forgiveness and salvation. There were many sacraments at the time (more so than today). Examples of Medieval sacraments:
a.
Each of the Ten Commandments
b. Communion (required a priest)
c. Confession (required a priest)
d. Absolution (required a priest)
e. Last Rites (required a priest)
f. Converting other peoples to Christianity
g. Supporting the Church with donations
h. Prayer
i. Marriage (required a priest)
(Since so many sacraments required an ordained priest, the Church played an essential role in helping people get to heaven. Without the Church, Catholics believed, you could not get to Heaven.)
3. But the Church did more than just provide sacraments. It also believed that it was the guardian of morality and arbiter of all religious matters.
a. Church law courts existed to do that job. They dealt with questions of marriage, immoral behavior, sexual crimes, etc.
b. Church MISSIONARIES worked to spread Christianity to other peoples and to bring them under Church guidance.
(Missionaries would play a key role in the conquest of the Americas)
c. The Church also did its best to "protect" people from HERESY and from OTHER RELIGIONS. In other words, the Church was INTOLERANT of other beliefs. INTOLERANCE will play a major role in this course. So let's start by looking more closely at the Medieval Catholic Church and how it dealt with ideas that were DIFFERENT.
E. A HERESY is any new opinion about religion that is considered a dangerous violation of religious doctrine. Heresy always seemed to be a danger in Medieval Europe because the Church provided the only officially sanctioned interpretation of the Bible. That meant that anyone who disagreed with it had to be considered wrong. The Church could not allow heresy to exist because it could spread wrong ideas to the flock. Wrong-headed ideas could interfere with the sacraments. If a person did not get the sacraments properly, the Church believed s/he would go to Hell. The Church would have failed in its duty to protect its flock. As a shepherd tries to protect his sheep from wolves, so the Medieval Catholic Church tried to protect its people from wrong ideas that might lead them away from the sacraments and salvation. The punishments for heresy could be severe and permanent.
1. What if you had an idea the church decided was anti-Christian? The Church did not always execute you. It usually tried milder methods of persuasion to get you to mend your beliefs. It certainly would censor you to make sure you did not spread your "false" ideas. But if you did not cooperate with censorship and if you did not respond well to "persuasion" and milder punishments, you could be executed.
2. If you were an atheist or an independently thinking Christian, and you insisted on standing up for your beliefs, you would probably be tortured, and then burned at the stake for opposing the beliefs of the Church.
3.
The most famous example of someone who was punished and censored for heresy
is GALILEO. Shortly after 1600 he proposed that the earth revolved around
the sun, and that the moon had craters on it. Both statements frightened
the Catholic Church because they directly contradicted the official pronouncements
of the Church and 1,000 years of careful religious explanations about how
the world functioned and where heaven was located. Galileo was put on trial,
convicted of heresy, and forced to recant his beliefs. Even after he recanted,
the Church did not trust that he would stay silent, so it placed him under
house arrest for the rest of his life. It turns out that Galileo was right.
But the Church, at the time, sincerely believed that it was protecting the
souls of Christians and upholding its own vital authority in matters of
truth.
F. OTHER RELIGIONS were also seen as a threat to the Medieval Catholic Church. There were two religions that the Medieval Catholic Church particularly disliked -- JUDAISM and ISLAM.
1. JUDAISM was the religion of the JEWS. The Medieval Catholic Church disliked Jewish people for two reasons:
(1) First, Jews did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God. Jews believed he was a false prophet. While Jews shared a belief in God and the Ten Commandments, they did not share many of the other religious beliefs or rituals of Catholics.
(2) Second, the Medieval Catholic Church blamed the Jews for executing Jesus, 1400 years earlier. As a result, the Catholic Church condemned all Jewish people. While it sometimes tried to protect them from persecution, most of the time, it allowed and even encouraged persecution of Jews, calling them the "murderers of Christ." That idea was incorrect, of course, because 1) only a few Jews were involved in the execution of Jesus, and 2) they were long since dead. So the Church was expressing a RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE by condemning all Jews and Jewish beliefs because of the supposed actions of a few Jewish people centuries earlier.
2. The Medieval Catholic Church feared and hated ISLAM more than any other religion. ISLAM was the religion of MUSLIMS. The European Christians' fear and hatred of Muslims is very important for this history course because it is one of the reasons for the Europeans' "discovery" of America. Islam seemed to be a threat to the Catholic Church for three reasons:
(1) Muslims did not believe the Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Instead, they believed he was one prophet among seven great prophets. The Muslims believed that the Christians had misunderstood Jesus and that Christians were idol worshippers because they worshipped Jesus as a God.
(2) Islam was very popular throughout large segments of the world. Muslim rulers led perhaps 100 million people, stretching from Northwest Africa to Southeast Asia and Indonesia. The arguments of Muslim scholars were quite persuasive at the time. But Islam was particularly popular because it was a simple religion to follow (although strict in its morals and commandments), and because it was tolerant of variety in its peoples.
Today, Americans commonly stereotype Muslims as "Arabs." In fact, if you look at the map, you can see that they included a wide variety of people. Most Muslims were and are Asian, not Arab.
(3) Muslim kingdoms were powerful and some existed inside Europe. Other Muslim kingdoms were beginning to invade Europe in the 1400s. Muslim rulers, when they conquered Christian territories, usually allowed Christians to continue to worship in peace. But the Catholic Church adamantly opposed any non-Christian ruler, even if s/he was nice to Christians.
(The Catholic church did not mind if Christian rulers conquered Christian territories.)
References:
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Copyright © 1999 Toren J.F. Hudson
