history essay, due thursday

[whiteninja]

thanks for the comments, i have taken them into consideration. but pope Urban II started the crusades, and Constantine ruled the Byzantine empire, not the Roman, because he moved his capital to Constatinople (Byzantium) . this is what i think the final will be like:

The founding of the Catholic Church in Rome had a great effect on the history of Europe that followed because it’s placement there allowed the Church to spread over all of Europe and have a great political influence on the monarchs and the princes. The Catholic Church was then able to give all of Europe something in common, their religion, just like how the Roman Empire united everyone in the fact that they were Romans. The Roman Empire was able to effectively unite all of Europe and more until it slowly began to decline in the 1st century AD and eventually fall. The Roman Empire fell because of several things; mainly among them were the stretching of the Roman borders so that they could not be defended, a decline in morals, and the upset caused by the arrival of Christianity. The Roman Empire officially ended in 476 AD when the Germanic general Odovacer sacked Rome and dethroned the last of the emperors, Agustulus Romulus. After that event the whole of the European unity was shattered as barbarians invaded the land, throwing the culture into a dark age, and it would have remained that way if it had not been for one thing: the Catholic Church.

St. Peter first came to Rome around 30-40 AD and he began to preach the Christian religion and he was met with much opposition and eventually martyred. The opposition to Christianity slowly died off. In 311 AD the resistance had so died down that Galerius, a Roman emperor, issued the Edict of Toleration that ended all of the persecution, and in 380 AD Constantine made it the official religion of the Byzantine Empire. From that point onward, Rome was the unofficial head of Christianity until Pope Leo I (r. 440-461 AD), wrote the Petrine Doctrine and officially declared the bishop of Rome to be the undisputed leader of the Church. This position in the middle of the Mediterranean made the Church capable of becoming one of the greatest “empires.” The spread of the Catholic Church from Rome began with the Visigoths, Vandals, and Ostrogoths, which were barbaric tribes that were Arian Christians and converted to Catholicism as they invaded Rome and the surrounding area. This Romanization of the barbarians more than the Barbarization of the Romans helped to preserve civilization. The Catholic’s conversion of the barbarians gave a significant amount of influence on the Franks, which allowed the papacy attack the Lombards with the help of the Franks and gain control of the Papal States. The Frankish debt to the Church increased even more when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as king of the Holy Roman Empire. This caused the future Frankish kings to give high government offices and vast estates to bishops in their lands, which even more greatly increased the political influence and power of the Church.

By the 1300’s AD, Catholicism had spread through all of Europe and it had a very great political influence on all of the feudal princes and the kings that were beginning to gain power. Catholicism had become the official religion of every place in Europe. Every area had a monastery and almost 10% of the fledgling cities’ population was priests. The monasteries and cathedrals were also the first major schools and were the predecessors of the universities. The Church was so powerful that the clergy had special immunities from the law, and could only be tried by special religious courts. The Church’s main sources of power were a few things. Firstly, there was papal excommunication that could be used on any ruler that got out of line; this weapon was eventually overused though and it lost its touch. There was also a great amount of money that the Church has that was gotten from all of the monasteries and benefices of the Church. Indulgences and Church offices were also sold occasionally but as that practice increased there were also increasing opposition that led to the Reformation. The Black Death was another factor in the Church’s power because with the massive sicknesses, people sought divine help and they gave donations to the Church in hopes that God would spare them for it. Finally, the first of the four major crusades was a huge victory and it sent the Catholic religion to the Byzantine Empire and brought huge amounts of gold, land, and prestige to the papacy. The other three crusades were more of economic ventures and they were ultimately unsuccessful. The Church used all this power that it had for a few things. Firstly, the Church held crusades and inquisitions against heresies and would punish the leaders of these groups, such as those heresies started by John Wycliffe and John Huss in Bohemia (early 1300’s). There were also cathedral schools started that would teach the nobles and clergy and as these schools developed into the universities and had major courses in teaching theology of the Catholic religion. The Catholic Church also used its power to send missionaries to the “new world” along with the Spanish conquerors where it began a conversion of the natives of Yucatan Peninsula. The monarchs, who had now gained power everywhere except Germany and Italy, were also subject to the orders of the pope because they were placed under interdict if they did not and that caused a major upset among the peasants. Finally, the Church began lay orders like the Modern Devotion that would help to keep lay people faithful to God and to the Church.

This massive amount of wealth and power brought about the Reformation and led to the Church’s political downfall. It began with Martin Luther in the 1500’s when in an attempt to merely reform the Catholic Church and stop the selling of indulgences, offices, etc. and establish “salvation by faith alone” he ended up splitting from the it and forming a new religion. Germany was the best place for the Reformation to start because it had no strong central government and therefore, was not as easily controlled by the Church. The same thing happened in Switzerland at that time with Zwingli, as he differed from the Church over clergy celibacy. Other protestant groups that developed in this time were the: Calvinists, Antitrinitarians, Anabaptists, Anglicans, and Spiritualists. The massive amount of break-offs from the Church caused its political power to rapidly fall, and with “curius regio, eius religio” (issued in the Peace of Augsburg in 1555) the Church lost control over what areas would be Catholic because it became up to the monarch of the area. So, for over 1,000 years the Church had a complete dominance over the religion and lives of the people of Europe along with a great political power. As, with the Roman Empire, it grew to large to be able to defend itself (from Protestants) and was reduced to a minor power.