MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY
Under Pope Gregory VII, the Catholic Church disentangled itself from secular
influence in the eleventh century. The Church reached the height of its political power
in the thirteenth century under Pope Innocent III. Religious enthusiasm spread and
new monastic orders emerged. By the High Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had
become a dominant and forceful presence in European society.
The Papal Monarchy
Since the fifth century, the popes of the Catholic Church had claimed supremacy
over the affairs of the Church. They had also gained control of territories in central Italy
that came to be known as the Papal States. This control kept the popes involved in
political matters, often at the expense of their spiritual duties. At the same time, the
Church became increasingly involved in the feudal system. Chief officials of the
Church, such as bishops and abbots, came to hold their offices as grants from nobles.
As vassals, they were obliged to carry out the usual feudal services, including military
duties. Lords often chose their vassals from other noble families for political reasons.
Thus, the bishops and abbots they chose were often worldly figures who cared little
about their spiritual duties.
Reform of the Papacy
By the eleventh century, Church leaders realized the need to be free from the
lords’ interference in the appointment of Church officials. When an individual became
a Church official in the Middle Ages, he was given a ring and a staff. These objects
symbolized the spiritual authority with which the Church granted, or invested, the
official. Secular, or lay, rulers usually chose nominees to Church offices and gave them
the symbols of their office, a practice known as lay investiture. Pope Gregory VII
decided to fight this practice. Elected pope in 1073, Gregory was convinced that he
had been chosen by God to reform the Church. To pursue this aim, Gregory claimed
that he—the pope—was truly God’s “vicar on earth” and that the pope’s authority
extended over all the Christian world, including its rulers. Only by eliminating lay
investiture could the Church regain its independence. The Church would appoint
clergy and run its own affairs. If rulers did not accept this, the pope would remove
them. Gregory VII and Henry IV, the king of Germany, disagreed about these claims.
German kings had appointed high-ranking clerics, especially bishops, as their vassals,
in order to use them as their administrators. Without them, the king could not maintain
power over the German nobles. In 1075, Pope Gregory issued a decree forbidding
high-ranking clerics from receiving their investiture from lay leaders: “We decree that
no one of the clergy shall receive the investiture . . . from the hand of an emperor or
king or of any lay person.” Henry, however, had no intention of obeying this decree.
The struggle between Henry IV and Gregory VII, known as the Investiture Controversy,
continued until a new German king and a new pope reached the Concordat of Worms
agreement in 1122. Under it, a bishop in Germany was first elected by Church officials.
After election, the new bishop paid homage to the king as his lord. The king in
turn invested him with the symbols of temporal (earthly) office. A representative of the
pope then invested the new bishop with the symbols of his spiritual office.
The Church Supreme
Pope Gregory VII also tried to improve the Church’s ability to provide spiritual
guidance to the faithful. Twelfth-century popes did not give up the reform ideals of
Pope Gregory VII, but they were even more inclined to strengthen papal power and
build a strong administrative system. During the papacy of Pope Innocent III in the
1200s, the Catholic Church reached the height of its political power. At the beginning
of his rule in 1198, in a letter to a priest.
To achieve his political ends, Innocent used the spiritual weapons at his
command. His favorite was the interdict. An interdict forbids priests from giving the
sacraments (Christian rites) of the Church to a particular group of people. The goal
was to cause the people under interdiction, who were deprived of the comforts of
religion, to exert pressure against their ruler. With an interdict, Innocent III forced the
king of France, Philip Augustus, to take back his wife after Philip had tried to have his
marriage annulled.
New Religious Orders
In the late 1000s and early 1100s, a wave of religious enthusiasm seized Europe.
This movement led to a rise in the number of monasteries and the emergence of new
monastic orders. Both men and women joined religious orders in increasing numbers.
A New Activism
In the eleventh century, more new monastic orders arose and became important.
One of the most important new orders of the Middle Ages was the Cistercian
(sis•TUHR•shuhn) order. It was founded in 1098 by a group of monks who were
unhappy with the lack of discipline at their own Benedictine monastery. Cistercian
monasticism spread rapidly from southern France into the rest of Europe. The
Cistercians were strict. They ate a simple diet, and each had only a single robe. All
decorations were eliminated from their churches and monastic buildings. More time
for prayer and manual labor was gained by spending fewer hours at religious services.
The Cistercians played a major role in developing a new, activistic spiritual model
for twelfth-century Europe. While Benedictine monks spent hours inside the monastery
in personal prayer, the Cistercians took their religion to the people outside the
monastery. More than any other person, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux embodied the new
spiritual ideal of Cistercian monasticism: “Arise, soldier of Christ, arise! Get up off the
ground and return to the battle from which you have fled! Fight more boldly after your
flight, and triumph in glory!”
Women in Religious Orders
Women were also actively involved in the spiritual movements of the age. The
number of women joining religious houses grew dramatically. In the High Middle Ages,
most nuns were from the ranks of the landed aristocracy. Convents were convenient
for families who were unable or unwilling to find husbands for their daughters, for
aristocratic women who did not wish to marry, or for widows. Female intellectuals found
convents a haven for their activities. Most learned women of the Middle Ages,
especially in Germany, were nuns. This was certainly true of Hildegard of Bingen, who
became abbess of a religious house for females in western Germany. She was one of
the first women composers and was an important contributor to the body of music
known as Gregorian chant. Her work is remarkable because she succeeded at a time
when music, especially sacred music, was almost exclusively the domain of men.
Franciscans and Dominicans
In the 1200s two new religious orders emerged that had a strong impact on the
lives of ordinary people. They were the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The
Franciscans were founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis was born to a wealthy
Italian merchant family in Assisi. After having been captured and imprisoned during a
local war, he had a series of dramatic spiritual experiences. These experiences led
him to abandon all worldly goods and material pursuits and to live and preach in
poverty, working and begging for his food. His simplicity, joyful nature, and love for
others soon attracted a band of followers, all of whom took vows of absolute poverty,
agreeing to reject all property and live by working and begging for their food. The
Franciscans became very popular. They lived among the people, preaching
repentance and aiding the poor. Their calls for a return to the simplicity and poverty of
the early Church, reinforced by their own example, were especially effective. The
Franciscans also undertook missionary work, first throughout Italy and then to all parts
of Europe and even to the Muslim world.
The Dominican order was founded by a Spanish priest, Dominic de Guzmán.
Dominic wanted to defend Church teachings from heresy—the denial of basic Church
doctrines. The spiritual revival of the High Middle Ages had led to the emergence of
heresies within the Church. Adherents of these movements were called heretics.
Heretical movements became especially widespread in southern France. Dominic
believed that a new religious order of men who lived in poverty and could preach
effectively would best be able to attack heresy.
The Inquisition
The Church created a court called the Inquisition, or Holy Office, to deal with
heretics. This court developed a regular procedure to find and try heretics. The
Dominicans became especially well known for their roles as examiners of people
suspected of heresy. Those who confessed to heresy performed public penance and
received punishment, such as flogging. Beginning in 1252, the Inquisition added the
element of torture to extract confessions. Those who did not confess but were still
considered guilty and those who had done penance for heresy and then relapsed were
subject to execution by the state. Thirteenth-century Christians believed the only path
to salvation was through the Church. To them, heresy was a crime against God and
humanity. In their minds, using force to save souls from damnation was the right thing
to do.
Religion in the High Middle Ages
The Church of the High Middle Ages was a crucial part of ordinary people’s lives
from birth to death. The sacraments, such as baptism, marriage, and the Eucharist
(Communion), were seen as means for receiving God’s grace and were necessary for
salvation. Since only the clergy could administer these rites, people depended on them
to achieve this goal. Ordinary people also venerated saints— men and women who,
because of their holiness, had achieved a special position in Heaven. Since saints
could ask for favors before the throne of God for people who prayed to them, they
were very popular with all Christians. Among the recognized saints were Jesus Christ’s
apostles, the Virgin Mary, and numerous local saints of special significance to a single
area. The Italians, for example, had Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, who
is known today as Santa Claus. Of all the saints, the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, was
the most highly regarded in the High Middle Ages. A sign of Mary’s importance is the
number of churches all over Europe that were dedicated to her in the 1100s and 1200s.
(Such churches in France were named Notre Dame, or “Our Lady.”).
Emphasis on the role of the saints was closely tied to the use of relics, usually
bones of saints or objects connected with saints. Relics were considered worthy of
worship because they provided a link between the earthly world and God. It was
believed that relics could heal people or produce other miracles. A twelfth-century
English monk wrote about an abbey’s relics: “There is kept there a thing more precious
than gold, . . . the right arm of St. Oswald. . . . This we have seen with our own eyes
and have kissed, and have handled with our own hands. . . . There are kept here also
part of his ribs and of the soil on which he fell.” Medieval Christians also believed that
a pilgrimage to a holy shrine produced a spiritual benefit. The greatest shrine, but the
most difficult to reach, was the Holy City of Jerusalem. On the continent two pilgrim
centers were especially popular in the High Middle Ages: Rome, which contained the
relics of Saints Peter and Paul, and the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela,
supposedly the site of the tomb of the Apostle James. Local shrines dedicated to the
Blessed Virgin Mary also became pilgrimage centers.
