How did the Church play a vital
role in medieval life?
The Church Dominates Medieval Life
• Priest in each village was often the only contact
people had with the Church
– Celebrated the mass and sacraments
– Explained Church teachings and the Bible (was in Latin)
– Some ran schools in the later Middle Ages
• Life was marked by important events: birth, illness,
marriage, death  Church involvement
• Church was social center, Church calendar very
important (Gregorian calendar, 1582)
• Men and women were equal in Church doctrine, but
– Church set minimum age of marriage for women
– Men were fined for hurting their wife
– Women often punished more harshly for similar offenses
Monasteries and Convents
• What are they?
• Benedictine Rule
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Created around 530
A system of rules that regulated monastic life
3 vows: obedience, poverty, chastity
Day was divided for worship, work, and study (did much
to help advance farming methods and the economy
• Provided basic health and educational services
• Helped keep learning alive—libraries, copying texts
• Many women entered convents because of
opportunities for learning
Church Power Grows
• Pope = leader of Western Christian Church, head of the
entire Church hierarchy
• Papal supremacy- authority over all secular rulers (this
would included kings and emperors)
• Church leaders were usually highly educated, & were
appointed to gov’t positions by feudal rulers
• Doing good deeds, believing in Christ, and participating in
the sacraments were all required to avoid hell.
– Only the Church could administer the sacraments
– Consequences?
• Canon law = Church law
– Disobeying could result in excommunication or worse,
interdict (excluded an entire town or kingdom from the
sacraments and Christian burial).
• Tried to stop warfare among nobles, called the Truce of
God
Corruption and Reform
• Success = problems
– Some monks and nuns had possessions of their own
– Some priests lived luxuriously
• Calls for reform:
– Cluny, France, 900s, Abbot Berno revived the
Benedictine Rule and many other monasteries
followed
– Rome, 1073, Pope Gregory VII pushed to limit secular
influence on the Church and outlawed marriage for
priests and selling of Church offices (simony)
• Friars traveled and taught to the poor (groups
like the Franciscans and Dominicans)
Jews in Medieval Europe
• Spain was center of Jewish culture—Muslim
controlled, but all religions tolerated
• 1000s- Jews began to be persecuted in W. Eur.
– Blamed for disasters
– Not part of parish structure, Christians suspicious
– Excluded from land ownership and some
occupations
• Jews migrate to E. Eur.
– Welcomed
– Formed long-lasting communities
Pilgrimage
• A religious journey
• European Christians journeyed to the Holy
Land
– Why the Holy Land?
• Holy Land occupied by Seljuk Turks (fanatical
Muslims) in the 11th century
– Unfriendly to the Christians
– Raided north and defeated a Byzantine army
• Will be the cause of the 1st Crusade in 1095
To summarize: