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Christianity and Religious Freedom in Medieval Europe

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Christianity and Religious Freedom in Medieval Europe

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The Medieval period commenced with the decline of the Roman Empire as the result of the barbarian invasions. In the aftermath and over several centuries, the Christian church played a decisive role in constituting what became known as the respublica Christiana. It included, in ever shifting configurations, the Western and Eastern sectors of the former Roman Empire, namely, portions of Western Europe and Byzantium, which consisted of Asia Minor and most of the territories around the Mediterranean rim. Rome and Constantinople would eventually become, respectively, the seats of the two parts of the new empire.

Under this arrangement, differently interpreted in the two sectors, civil and religious authorities were not sharply differentiated along modern lines, but were understood as two interdependent "departments" of a common, encompassing enterprise. Accordingly, the distinction between "sword" and "spirit," between coercion and belief, so central to the early Christian experience, was retained, if only in a highly disguised form. While the relationship between spiritual and political authority was consistently intimate, it was also antagonistic, exhibiting, at various times, an intense struggle for religious authority and political power.

In the West, Charlemagne succeeded, by the ninth century, in consolidating the diverse barbarian kingdoms of Western Europe into a centralized Christian empire with himself as effective head of the church. Political power was taken to be an appropriate means for spreading, regulating, and protecting Christian belief and practice. This pattern reached its highest expression by the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, when popes, having replaced kings as the ultimate authority in the Western empire, came to possess the final say regarding the use of force. The result was the Christian Crusades, which were armed incursions against lands under both Eastern Christian and Muslim control. The purpose of these Crusades was the conversion of non-Christians as well as the recovery of the lands where Christianity was born, lost over the years to Islamic conquerors. This period of papal ascendancy also saw policies of severe religious repression known as "inquisitions," which were initiated in the thirteenth century and culminated in Spain in the fifteenth century.

These policies did not go unchallenged. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas propounded a powerful but limited doctrine of freedom of conscience. Based upon the incompatibility of belief and coercion affirmed by the young Augustine, Thomas contended that all human beings, Christian or not, had a moral obligation to follow even an erroneous conscience. This principle applied to everyone never previously exposed to the Christian message, such as Muslims and pagans. It did not apply, Thomas thought, to Christian defectors-heretics and apostates-who, like anyone defaulting on a solemn oath, should be punished. Nor did it create a political or civil "right" to error, because, Aquinas argued, an ill-formed conscience could lead to sinful acts, and, by example, could lead others into grave sin. Aquinas even compared heretical beliefs to counterfeit money, suggesting that they were damaging the "public good" of shared orthodox beliefs within the Church. He also hoped that in the process of being confronted, heretics and apostates would return to the true faith. As such, Aquinas enjoined the Church to first admonish the heretic before subjecting him to excommunication and secular authorities.

By the fourteenth century, the concept of papal supremacy-the pope as successor to Peter-was being challenged in the West by the Conciliar movement. Some asserted that representative councils possessed the final authority in church affairs. The existence of councils implied a constitutional system, including a set of rights that were attributed to ordinary members and lower church officials. Conciliarists also emphasized a greater distinction between ecclesiastical and civil government, and elevated the importance of territorial churches. The movement never had more than minority status in Western Christianity, though it would come to exert a disproportionate impact on the Protestant Reformation, and, eventually, on the shape religious freedom took as a result.

Conciliarism caught hold more successfully in Eastern Christianity, though in a form very different from the West. That was one reason, among others, the two wings of Medieval Christianity split in the eleventh century. Eastern Orthodoxy shared the Conciliarist preference for representative and consultative government over papal authority, but they embraced a system of territorial churches well before and well beyond anything that would develop in the West. Moreover, there was less emphasis on differentiating ecclesiastical and civil authority. On the contrary, the enduring image was of a set of unified Orthodox territorial states wherein the church, while exercising distinctive spiritual functions, was decidedly subservient to the temporal government. Religious freedom for the non-Orthodox would not thrive in such an environment.

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Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs

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Christianity and Religious Freedom in the Medieval Period (476 - 1453 CE)

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Author: David LittleThe Medieval period commenced with the decline of the Roman Empire as the result of the barbarian invasions. In the aftermath and over several centuries, the Christian church played a decisive role in constituting what became known as the respublica Christiana...

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Leo X with Cardinals. Courtesy: The Yorck Project

The Roman Catholic Church in Medieval Europe
For centuries, the Catholic Church straddled the world of medieval Europe. Every king, queen, knight, serf and soldier lived and died within the embrace of the Catholic faith. The church was not simply a religion and an institution; it was a category of thinking and a way of life.

In medieval Europe, the church and the state were closely linked. It was the duty of every political authority -- king, queen, prince or city councilman -- to support, sustain and nurture the church. With notable exceptions, the church reinforced the political authority of the states, and the states reinforced the authority of the church.

In Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile recognized that a strong church encouraged social stability and political cohesion. They surveyed a domain torn by more than a half century of war, social unrest and the Reconquista, a protracted struggle against the Moors, Muslims from North Africa who occupied portions of the Iberian Peninsula. Determined to consolidate and strengthen their rule, the royal monarchs conquered the last Moorish stronghold and expelled Jews who refused to convert to Roman Catholicism. With the Jews gone and the Moors defeated, Ferdinand and Isabella believed that Spain could fulfill its destiny as a pure Catholic nation -- the New Spain, the New World, the New Jerusalem.

Buoyed by this vision, the monarchs gave their approval to a Genoan seaman, Christopher Columbus, to sail west in search of the riches of the Orient. In 1492, Columbus landed on an island he named "San Salvador," or "Holy Savior," and confidently predicted that the Native inhabitants could easily be made Christian. In the years that followed, Spain colonized Mexico and the modern American Southwest, coupling its imperial ambitions with the determination to spread the Catholic faith in the New World.

The Protestant Reformation

In 1517, the German monk and theologian Martin Luther challenged Catholicism and its influence on Europe. Luther attacked the sale of indulgences, certificates sold to the faithful and intended to limit the time the dead spent in purgatory. In contrast to Catholicism, which stressed the authority of the church, Luther gave primacy to individual experience, the radical notion that the individual could communicate directly with God and seek his or her own salvation, without the intermediating authority of the church or priests. He was convinced that sins could not be washed away by penance or forgiven by indulgences; salvation came from faith in God and by faith alone. On spiritual matters, it was the Bible -- not the Vatican -- that possessed ultimate authority.

Luther's ideas struck a fundamental blow to the primacy of the Catholic Church. He was excommunicated by the pope and rejected by the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, but he had captured the imagination of many in Catholic Europe.

By the mid-16th century, two competing ideologies -- one Catholic, the other a burgeoning Protestantism -- warred for supremacy. The ideological battle raged with particular ferocity in England, where King Henry VIII wished to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Spain's Ferdinand and Isabella, in order to marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn. When the Vatican refused to grant a divorce, Henry separated himself from the Catholic Church and established the Church of England. He then became head of both the church and the state in England. Catholics who refused to swear oaths of allegiance or recognize Henry's new marriage were persecuted.

When she became the queen of England six years after her father's death, Mary Tudor, King Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon and an ardent Catholic, attempted to restore Catholicism to England and launched a systematic persecution of Protestants. At her death in 1558, her half-sister, Elizabeth I, was crowned queen of England.

For Protestants, Elizabeth's ascension in 1558 served as a symbol of their hopes. Her triumphal entry into the capital London in 1559 was carefully scripted by her advisers as a display of Protestant pageantry. That same year, Parliament, with a bare Protestant majority, passed the Religious Settlement Act. Thirty-nine articles stated the basic doctrines of the church. The Book of Common Prayer proscribed the prayers and the liturgy to be followed each day. The style of worship was in keeping with the queen's own personal tastes: She liked imagery, in moderation, appreciated choral music and was less enthusiastic about preaching. These reforms passed by Parliament were not radical ones, but steered a careful middle course that was sensitive to Catholic tradition and did not loudly proclaim a robust and assertive Protestantism. But the lingering remnants of Catholicism troubled some Protestant reformers.

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People and Ideas: Europe | American Experience | PBS

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The Roman Catholic Church in Medieval Europe For centuries, the Catholic Church straddled the world of medieval Europe. Every king, queen, knight, serf and soldier lived and died within the embrace of the Catholic faith. The church was not simply a religion and an institution; it was a category of thinking and a way of life.

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The church became dominant in Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire. The only religion recognized in Middle Ages Europe was Christianity and specifically Catholicism. Christianity in the middle ages dominated the lives of both peasants and the nobility. Religious institutors including the Church and the monasteries became wealthy and influential given the fact that the state allocated a significant budget for religious activities.

Gregory I the Great played a significant role in establishing a strong and influential papacy and church machinery. His first step in asserting the control of the papacy is elaborated by the fact that he sent monks to convert the Anglo-Saxons whom he considered pagan. Gregory established an early system in which the Church yielded as much power as the State and sometimes more. Archbishops would supervise the bishops and the pope would supervise the archbishops. more...

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LibGuides: Medieval Europe: The spread of Christianity

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The church became dominant in Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire. The only religion recognized in Middle Ages Europe was Christianity and specifically Catholicism. Christianity in the middle ages dominated the lives of both peasants and the nobility.

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Medieval Europe  Religion In Medieval Europe

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Christianity and Medieval Society Presentation - Jack Collins-Jett