How important was the church in the Middle Ages?

Answer 1

AnswerThe Church in medieval times was Catholic and it took control to give salvation to the people. The Church also started many crusades to gain back the Holy Land. Most failed but one a success. Today, Christians are able to enter due to these crusades. The Church is a valuable prized religion and still is today. The Church also was supreme. AnswerThe greatest reason the Church was important during the Middle Ages, was because the Middle Ages were a time in which people believed their souls were the most important things they had, and the true Religion was the only way to save them. In terms of the day to day lives of ordinary people, the Church guided them through their lives with baptism, confession and absolution, confirmation, Eucharist, unction, and, when they died, it buried them and conducted prayers for their souls.

The Church provided services beyond those that were purely spiritual. This was partly because it was important for Christians to be charitable. The result was that Church organizations provided hospital care, medicines, care for orphans, education, safe lodgings for travelers, and safe places where people who wanted to live out their lives in contemplation and prayer could do so, the monasteries and convents. (please see link below on Christian monasticism)

The Church had organizations such as the Knights Templar, who accompanied travellers as they made their ways through the lands. The travelers included pilgrims, but they also included merchants, and really anyone on the road. (please see link below on Knights Templar)

From a historic perspective, the crusades represent a great exercise of power of the Church, and possibly one of its greatest failures. They took over the Holy Land and held it briefly, but at a cost that in retrospect was extraordinarily high. The crusaders also contributed greatly to the destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the eventual fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Turks.

Monasteries, convents, and ordinary churches also provided places of refuge to those who sought it. A woman who was running away from an abusive husband or a predatory admirer could seek protection in such a place. So could a felon. And while felons often had only a limited amount of time to be protected, during which they could confess and possibly make a better deal for justice (usually no more than six weeks), others often stayed as long as they needed to. And no one, not even agents of a king, could remove them. (please see link below on Right of Asylum)

The Church was a counter to kings who wanted absolute power, because the Church had one power the kings could not take away: it could excommunicate a king. Today this does not sound like much, but at the time, excommunication was a disaster. The Middle Ages were a time in which everything was controlled by oaths, from oaths of allegiance to treaties. When a pope excommunicated a king, everyone, from the king's subjects to his enemies, could be freed from those oaths, and all treaties could be cancelled. Enemies could rise up in revolt or invade, without fear of condemnation by the Church. Subjects of the king who did not like him, could switch sides with a clear conscience. There are king and emperors who were examples of this, such as King John of England, who found the difficulties he encountered from excommunication so onerous that he was willing to swear fealty to the pope to get out of them. (please see link below on King John)

The idea that the Catholic Church was politically supreme is not correct. For one thing, Christianity was not the only religion in Europe. There were pagans and Jews in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, and in such places as Spain, there were large numbers of Muslims, many in Muslim countries. Jewish and Muslim contributions to European civilization profoundly altered the nature of the later parts of the Middle Ages. (please see link below on Islamic contributions to medieval Europe)

But also, the Roman Catholic Church was not the only brand of Christianity. Apart from a number of very powerful heresies, whose followers controlled whole areas of the continent from time to time, there were other Church Organizations, such as the Celtic Church, which the Catholic Church absorbed in time, and the Oriental Orthodox and the Coptic Orthodox Churches, which have existed from the beginning and to this day. More importantly, the Catholic Church was never well unified, with various schisms always either threatening or under way. The greatest of these, the East-West Schism, divided the main body of the Church into the Roman Catholic, in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox, in the East, in 1054. But there were others that were patched up, both before and after that event. One was the Great Schism of the West, which produced a time when there were two popes in Europe, one in Rome, and one in France. (please see links below on heresy, Orthodox Christianity, East-West Schism, and the Western Schism)

Nor is it correct that the Church was somehow responsible for the suppression of science or witch hunts. Such meddling in affairs came after the Middle Ages were over. There was a set of condemnations issued by the Church, in 1210, 1270, and 1277, and these had a profound influence on science, but the influence was positive, freeing students and scientists from restraints imposed by university teachers who insisted that Aristotle was always right about science. The effect of these condemnations was so profound that some historians have referred to them is a beginning point of modern science. The witch hunts were a thing of the Renaissance and Reformation, as was the meddling in science. (Please see the links on witch hunts and the condemnations of 1210 to 1277)

Answer 2

The church was the most important in the middle ages. They ruled everybody including the kings and emperors. The church at this time was the Roman Catholic Church which was headed by the Pope. All the pope had to do was tell a king, "Do such and such or I will excommunicate you and all your people." Excommunication was the biggest threat you could give since it meant that the king and his people would not be able to do the holy sacraments and therefore (according to the Catholics) they would go to hell instead of heaven.

Answer 3

Because people believed that by only the church you could go to heaven and if you weren't Christian you could get killed and being a good Christian would please God in heaven but sinner will face hell is a HORRIBLE PLACE!!!! you DONT WANNA to GO THERE!!

Answer 4

The church ran the government and society of Europe. They made the rules and if a king didn’t follow their laws they excommunicated him. In medieval Europe this was the worse thing to happen to a person. The church taught that they were the only means to communicate with God and it wasn’t until the Neoplatonic thought and the printing press man finally realized they didn’t need a Middle man to communicate with God.

Answer 5

Churches during the medival times was important by giving sancutary and or help those in need. And it's a symbol of God as well.

Answer 6

a church in this time was important because people were christian, obviously, and well... pretty much why it's important in this time.