Roman Catholicism was the supreme political and religious force that dominated the Middle Ages. Although one would assume that Rome’s affairs were overwhelmingly religious, a vast majority of the Church’s relationship with its people remained political. Furthermore, the Catholic Church was in charge of providing all the necessary social services such as running local orphanages, facilitating religious orders, giving alms to the poor, and providing education. Religious orders were especially popularized in the Middle Ages. Some included monastic orders, military orders, and pilgrimages which were often taken to sacred statues. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales satirizes the common motivations of many while taking a pilgrimage, in this instance, to the shrine of Sir Thomas Becket. Additionally, education was mainly accessible to the landholding class and usually only available to young men who were preparing to seek office in the church. Students would take classes from the most educated of their day, bishops and priests, in either their local monastery, convent, or church. These classes revolved around learning the syntax and structure of the Latin language, through straightforward memorization, while class lasted from sunrise to sunset. There was no guaranteed depth of understanding in Medieval education and only the brightest of students would break free of their educational monotony and arrive at some established universities in Western Europe, such as Cambridge and Oxford, which were also headed by the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, widespread education for women was limited in this time period. Young women frequently found themselves being lectured on the ins and outs of running the family manor and sometimes were fortunate enough to be briefed in a rudimentary instruction regarding music. Overall, with the priesthood being designed for men and education geared towards the priesthood, women fell short of the curve when it came to educational benefits in what we may assert as a fairly patriarchal society. Yet, with women absent from the schools, they still could not escape the mastery of the Catholic Church, for around one-third of all the land in Europe was owned by the church. Therefore, women and families, who may have not considered themselves to be apart of the political discourse of their day, still felt the scope of influence of the Church in their own homes. In fact, each village had been designated a community parish (a church) and therefore designated a parish priest, who was ultimately involved in the lives of all the people within his village. The priest was in charge of keeping the town records, including the task of scribing detailed lists of the townspeople and noting important dates such as riots, local skirmishes, and really any sort of significant social event. The local priest not only had a substantial amount of responsibility within the Medieval community but was also the most educated in the town, the product of the previously discussed mode of education. His responsibility did not merely cover the advent of each person's life but the entirety of each individual’s being in the community, the priest baptized infants (usually before the tenth day of life), lead marriage ceremonies, took confessions, and provided last rites before death. Also, because the priest was typically the only fairly educated person within each community he was subsequently the sole source of scripture reading and teaching, for biblical illiteracy was a rampant issue in this period. If one wished to gain any meaningful tidbit of spiritual guidance they had to go through their parish priest. Although this is not a thorough description of the Catholic Church’s role within the European social landscape, it does give us a momentary glimpse into an all-encompassing reality. So, how exactly did the Roman Catholic Church justify their expansive scope of influence over Europe? For this explanation, we will venture to take a theological route. Consider the following passage from the book Matthew:
“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Catholic doctrine has dubbed this passage the papal insignia. The insignia of the papacy (the office of the pope) is expressed in the form of two perpendicular keys, one silver one gold, crossed together with a red ribbon or cord. The two keys represent the same keys present in the passage above and remain the justification for St. Peter assuming the first office of the pope. Additionally, Christ’s statement to Cephas “whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven” is perceived as the creation of two separate dominions (the temporal world and paradise) which are symbolized in the depiction of the two keys. There is some controversy among Catholic scholars regarding which key, either silver or gold, represents “binding” and which one represents “losing”. Regardless of that matter, this is where Catholic theology claims that St. Peter assumed the first position of pope, under the divine endorsement and appointment of Jesus. This created a direct relationship between Christ’s appointment of Simon Peter and Christ's implied appointment of all papal successors. To state that St. Peter was chosen by the Son of God to the papacy meant that the future heirs to that very same position were subsequently commissioned by Christ, implying that those outside the Catholic sphere of influence were not under the authority of an institution that was brought into fruition by God himself. Overall, the Catholic Church believed that they derived their power to govern directly from God because the papacy itself was instituted by God. Thus, if the Catholic Church was absent so was God. Instead of God being within the grasp of each individual, access to God was institutionalized in the form of a sovereign economic and political power that quickly had a monopoly on the European social landscape. As any business grows to the point where they have a monopoly in a given market competition goes away and workers get reasonably lazy. This analogy is the best way we can rationalize the ills of the Catholic Church and the motivations of its newfound competitors, the Reformers.
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