This period is defined by the rise of monasteries, the domination of the Eastern Church, and the spread of Islam.

Monasteries

In the first two decades of the sixth century, St. Benedict founded the monastery of Monte Cassino and wrote the Rule of St Benedict, which established the universal form of Western monasticism. In AD 533, the Abbey of Kells was founded in Ireland; Celtic monks would compose the Book of Kells there later that same century.

The Byzantine Empire

Emperor Justinian I expanded the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire and recovered some of the Western territories; he began his re-conquest of Italy in AD 533. From AD 555 to 571, newly elected popes were sent to the emperor in Constantinople for confirmation. Pope Gregory I sent a mission to convert England in AD 596; he also made the popes virtual rulers of central Italy.

Rise of Islam

Muslims began to convert Syria, Egypt, and North Africa. Most of Spain was conquered by invaders from North Africa in AD 711, but the Islamic tide was stopped before it could engulf France.

The Church

Emperor Leo III confiscated papal territories in Greek-speaking Sicily and southern Italy in AD 732. The balance of power shifted from Constantinople back to Rome. The populations of England and Germany were converted to Christianity in the second half of the seventh century. In AD 754, the Frankish King Pepin and Pope Stephen II establish a Papal State in Italy.

Medieval Church: Emperors and Popes (ninth to twelfth centuries)

This epoch is defined by the crowning of Charlemagne as the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the founding of the Roman Curia by Pope Urban II.

Charlemagne

In AD 800, Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, published in AD 850, asserted the absolute supremacy of the Pope over the Church. Pope Nicholas I asserted that the Pope had both absolute control over the Church and primacy over the empire.

Popes and Emperors

Battles between emperors and popes continued, with Emperor Otto I deposing Pope John XII in AD 963. Emperor Henry III installed four popes between 1039 and 1056. In 1059, the Pope issued a decree excluding secular participation in papal elections–they were now reserved exclusively for cardinals. And from 1073 to 1085, Pope Gregory VII had conflicts with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV.

Growth of the Church

Both the Church and the Church hierarchy continued to grow during the Middle Ages. Missionaries converted European nations to Christianity: Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary in the latter part of the tenth century and Norway in the early eleventh century. The monastery of Cluny was founded in AD 910, and Pope Leo IX reorganized the papal chancery and held many Church councils. The first book of Canon Law, the Collection in 74 Titles, was compiled in 1050. Decrees in the late eleventh century banned married priests, set forth a theory of papal monarchy, and argued against lay investiture. Pope Urban II also founded the Roman Curia at this time.

Medieval Church (twelfth to fifteenth centuries)

This epoch is defined by the beginning of the Crusades and the fall of Constantinople.

The Crusades

The First Crusade was launched by Pope Urban II in 1096, making him the political leader of Europe. This was followed by the Second Crusade in 1144, the Third Crusade in 1189, the Fourth Crusade in 1201, and the Albigensian Crusade in 1209.

Ecumenical Councils

A series of ecumenical councils were held during this epoch. The Lateran Councils, held at the Lateran Palace in Rome, were held from 1123 to 1517. During the First Lateran Council (1122), the Concordat of Worms was ratified. The Second Lateran Council (1139) mandated celibacy for all priests in the Western Church. The Third Lateran Council (1179) gave cardinals firmer control over papal elections. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) made annual confession and reception of the Eucharist mandatory. These ecumenical councils were followed by the First Council of Lyons (1245), which attacked papal authority, and the Second Council of Lyons (1266), which broadened the prohibition on usury. The Council of Pisa (1409) marked the beginning of the the conciliar movement. The Council of Constance (1414 to 1418) saw the election of Martin V as Pope. In 1415, this council issued a decree asserting its superiority over the Pope on the grounds that it held its power directly from Christ, and in 1417, it issued Frequens, a decree obligating all future popes to call Church councils at regular intervals. Two more ecumenical councils were held in Pavia (1423) and Basel (1431 to 1449).

Popes and Kings

Popes continued to battle with secular leaders. In 1170, Thomas Becket (the Archbishop of Canterbury) was murdered for upholding Church authority in opposition to King Henry II. From 1243 to 1254, Pope Innocent IV had conflicts with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Pope Boniface VIII had conflicts with King Philip IV of France over clerical taxation from 1294 to 1303. This conflict continued until 1400, with secular monarchs asserting control over episcopal nominations and levying taxes on the clergy. Pope Clement VI dramatically increased papal revenues by exploiting the economic potential of papal appointment to benefices. He also issued the bull Unigenitus in 1343, which approved the concept of an indulgence and an infinite “treasury of merit” under the control of the Church that could be parceled out as indulgences to worthy and contrite recipients in order to lighten their time in purgatory.

The Church during the High Middle Ages

The Church continued to struggle with issues of papal authority and reform. Under Pope Alexander III (1159 to 1181), the papacy became the center of the ecclesiastical court system and the Papal Chancery was strengthened. The expansion of papal control over the Church can be traced along three great axes: juridical, legislative, and financial.

Gradually but inevitably, Rome became Europe’s greatest judicial center. Legal business became the main and overriding preoccupation of the lawyer popes of the period. Papal judicial authority was carried out regionally by judges’ delegates appointed in the several countries, while Rome became the venue for appeals from their decisions. Increasingly, however, Rome was trying more and more cases in first instance, either through papal reservation of certain kinds of cases or because plaintiffs simply found ways of skipping the lower courts on the understandable grounds that ultimately would be decided in Rome anyway. As the popes decided more and more cases, their decisions were published in books of decretals that formed the basis for Church or Canon Law.

In 1140, Gratian produced his Concordia discordantium canonum, a collection of Canon Law that asserted the superiority of church law over secular jurisprudence. The weight and number of these decisions had the effect of rendering old laws obsolete, thereby creating the need to replace them by new legislation coming directly from the Pope.

Finally, the fiscal structure that supported the Pope and his central bureaucracy was placed on firmer foundations. There were two key elements in this newfound financial stability: new taxation and control over the levers of ecclesiastical benefices. New taxation came principally in the form of the tithe, a tax of a nominal one-tenth of the value of the harvest paid by laypersons. In addition, an income tax was levied on clerical revenues, which began as early as the reign of Innocent III and later became a regular levy fixed at one-tenth. The popes also benefited financially from their increasing measure of control over benefices both major and minor. Howsoever the individual cleric obtained his post, the papal bureaucracy derived fees and income from issuing the necessary documents that gave him legal title.

The Church reached its apogee under Pope Innocent III (1198 to 1216). Innocent asserted papal authority over the secular monarchies as never before in European history, but his rule stirred up growing opposition among those who resented excessive centralization and authoritarianism and the growing materialism of popes and cardinals. This period marks the apogee and decline of papal monarchy during the Middle Ages. In fact, it could be argued that in terms of prestige and both temporal and spiritual authority, the papacy under such leaders as Alexander III (1159 to 1181) or Innocent III (1198 to 1216) reached a level of relative importance that it was never to enjoy again, not even under powerful twentieth century popes like Pius XII and John Paul II.

As the twelfth century wore on and the role of popes as judges, legislators, and tax collectors became more and more prominent, their spiritual authority waned and the laity became more and more dissatisfied. One obvious consequence of this growing malaise was the growth of heresies like the Waldensians and the Cathari, who rejected the materialism of the Church. The Cathari were particularly dangerous because they denied the key Catholic doctrine of the incarnation of Christ and rejected the crucifixion. By the middle of the twelfth century they had become well entrenched in Languedoc in southern France, parts of Aragon, and northern Italy. The Church’s reaction to these threats was centered on two new religious orders of friars: the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The former sought to combat the Cathari with preaching and the latter by taking vows of poverty and demonstrating by their example that the Church had not lost its connection to spirituality.

Eventually, when persuasion failed to work, the Church resorted to coercion. A Crusade against the Cathars of southern France was launched in 1209, and when that failed to wipe out the movement, a special tribunal called the Inquisition was founded in 1233 and manned by Dominican Inquisitors. The medieval Inquisition, which remained active in southwestern France and parts of Catalonia and Aragon, never seceded in entirely eradicating the Cathars.

The Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism

Pope Clement V moved the residence of the papacy to France from 1305 to 1377; this era was known as the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. The mid-fourteenth century saw the recovery of the Papal States in Italy, and in 1377, Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome. This was followed by the Great Schism (1378 to 1417), in which three rival popes were elected and divided the Western Roman Empire. Pope Martin V ended the schism, and in 1420, the papal court once more came back to Rome.

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