History Of The Church
Lesson 7: The Church In The Latter Middle Ages AD 1054 - 1517

Speaker:
Date: August 25^th, 2004, Wednesday Evening Adult Bible ClassJohn Phillis

The period of the latter Middle Ages was a period of stark contrasts. There existed side by side the extremes of dire poverty and great wealth, deep piety and gross immorality, acts of self-giving love and vicious religious intolerance, the drab peasant existence and the pageantry of tournaments. As this period opened, a great tide of spiritual revival was beginning to sweep across what had become the Roman Catholic Church; as the period closed, this tide was not only spent, but had so receded that a spiritual depression plagued the Catholic Curch.

In our last lesson, we finished up looking at the early part of the Middle Ages, and so, we’re going to be looking at this time at the latter part of the Middle Ages, the period from AD 1054 to about AD 1517—from the middle of the 11^th Century to the early part of the 16^th Century.

Many things, of course, occurred historically during this period of time. Some of those you will recognize as we go through this study and, once again, just hitting the very highlights of some of these historical matters, pointing out things that affected how the “church” (as it was at that time, which has become the Roman Catholic Church), the impact, the influence, that it and its leaders had on the secular world, and vice versa, the impact that the secular world and its leaders had upon the papacy and the overall Catholic Church.

We want to begin by looking at the struggles which take place during this period of time between the papacy and secular powers. In the 10^th and the 11^th Centuries (this was the latter part of the period that we were looking at in the last lesson), the papacy had basically become very corrupt. Because of the corruption—because of the things that they were doing—they had lost a great deal of their influence, there was little respect for their authority, and so on. During this same period of time, secular powers of Western Europe were also fairly weakened. They were divided by feudalism, by dynastic struggles, and the like, and where there are no great powers, either spiritual or secular, there are no great power struggles. And so, we see in this period of about 200 to 250 years, there really weren’t any particular power struggles because both the leaders of the Catholic Church, as well as secular leaders, were somewhat weakened.

Things were already changing by the time the Middle Ages began. The stage will become set for a showdown between the claims that a sort of a revived papacy will make and those of a reviving secular power.

First of all, we notice the Papal Reform that was underway. It’s ironic, as one writer pointed out, that the Papal Reform, which made the pope, once again, a serious threat, a serious challenge, to the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was actually begun by an emperor.

The first great stride, the first giant stride, so to speak, toward reform was begun by Emperor Henry III when he had Leo IX elevated to the papacy in 1048. During the 25 years that followed, Leo was succeeded by other reforming popes. Working quietly, but effectively, behind the scenes during this period was one named Hildebrand. He was an Italian monk, and he was very much committed to reform. Well, in 1073, Hildebrand himself was made pope. When he became pope, he took on the name Gregory VII (1073 – 1085).

Well, the papal reign of Gregory VII, like that of Gregory I (or, as he is often referred to, Gregory the Great), is really sort of one of the high-water marks, if you will, of the papacy. Gregory’s viewpoint of the office of the pope was far from modest. He believed that since the spiritual is superior to the physical, the pope should be superior, then, to any secular rule. Ordinarily, the two realms, the spiritual and the secular—that is, the Roman Catholic Church at this time and the Holy Roman Empire—would not really conflict. They would be involved in separate actions, and so on. However, when the two converged, when the interest, or the work, of the two overlapped, it was Gregory VII’s point of view that the spiritual—that, in this case, the pope—was superior.

Now, this was not just an idle theory as far as Gregory was concerned. When he had the opportunity, and when the occasion arose, he attempted to enforce his belief that the pope was superior, and do so with a great deal of determination. Now, it is true that secular rulers, that the emperor, had his army at his disposal, but the pope was not powerless—the pope was not without weapons of his own. A rebellious leader would be excommunicated, which would often be the invitation for his followers, for his subjects, to assassinate him. Or, in extreme cases, the pope might “interdict.” Now, an “interdiction” is a general, or a special, order that was given by “church authority.” So, on some occasions the pope might use the power of “interdiction,” whereby all public religious services would be withdrawn from the city, or from the region, in order to influence that particular ruler, whoever he might be. We find that, of course, foreign to our thinking, to our understanding, but the pope in those days held a great deal of influence over HIS subjects. And so, if he were to withdraw those who were actually conducting the religious services from a community, or from a region, and the people had no way of worshiping in the way in which they did, of course, then this was very, very troubling, because in the Middle Ages, these services were considered to be very important to the people. And when these services were denied by the pope, this meant that the ruler, the one in secular authority, would have a great deal of pressure brought to bear on him to submit to the pope.