How did the Church play a vital role in medieval life?

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How did the Church play a vital role in medieval
life?
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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

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Monasteries and Convents

• What are they?
• Benedictine Rule
• 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 alivelibraries, copying
  texts
• Many women entered convents because of
  opportunities for learning

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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 govt 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

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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)

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Jews in Medieval Europe

• Spain was center of Jewish cultureMuslim
  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

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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

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To summarize