Outline the main changes in western latin christendom between the periods 910 and 1081

Outline the main changes in Western Latin Christendom between AD 910 and 1085.

The 10th and 11th Centuries contained some of the most important changes in Western Latin Christendom in its existence. These changes have left the Church and Europe more recognisable as the establishments we know today. The most obvious of these were the reform movements in the later part of the 10th and 11th Centuries, which climaxed under Leo IX and Gregory V11. There were also several equally important but subtly different changes which contributed to the greater part of this reform. An example of this is the evangelical revival that leads to a growth in religious life, and a cleansing of the Church which climaxed in the Orthodox Schism, and the investiture contest between the Pope and the Emperor of Germany.

The reform movements of the 10h and 11th Centuries sought out a moral reform whereby lay rulers would appoint good men as priests and Bishops, who would in turn hasten the reform. The movements also aimed to stop corruption in the Church, especially the sin of simony, which was the purchasing or selling of sacred things, e.g. Holy orders. At around 1000 AD the Church was predominantly governed by lay people, who built the Churches or monasteries on their land, and consequently felt that they had the right to appoint the next priest or abbot, this became known as ‘lay investiture,’ and in this sense the Church became ‘privatised’. This posed a series of problems for the Church, the most serious of which were revenues, as the revenues that it should have been receiving were going back to the families who owned the land, rather than back to the Church. Subsequently religious communities were loosing out as this lose of revenues meant that there was a decline in the qualities of their lives, and so undermined the idea of religious life, and as a further consequences there were increasing cases of simony and married priests. The result of these problems was that by the 10th century many priests, monks, and nuns were not happy, and this led to a series of reform movements, through several different communities and people.

The first stage of this reform was found at the monastery of Cluny in France. Founded in 910AD Cluny was a reformed Benedictine monastery. The monks tried to revive the liturgical life of the order, concentrating on the divine office and the arts e.g. plainsong. Cluny became the centre of a series of smaller monasteries, and started the first real monastic order. As a result of this, the Abbot of Cluny was exceptionally powerful and was able to influence the rest of the Christendom in a very monastic way, the Abbots of Cluny especially took a strong stance against married ...

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Around the year 1000 there was a strong evangelical revival, this was based on the general belief that in the year 1000 Christ would come again. The result of this was a surge in the revival of the Church, and a strong determination to return to the purity of the early Church, this led to a rapid growth in monasteries and several new orders of monks emerged most notably the Carthusians. There were two main fronts for this revival.

The first was through the work of individuals such as Peter Damain, and Romauld of Ravenna. These were two very influential figures in the 10th and 11th Centuries. Damain was described as: ‘A reformer of clerical laxity and a champion of eremitical and ascetic discipline.’ He had exceptional knowledge of canon law and was used by the Pope as a legate on several occasions. He wrote a book on his predecessor Romauld of Ravenna who was a hermit monk and another highly influential figure: ‘You would think that he (Romauld) was trying to turn the whole world and to involve the entire Church in his project of monastic reform’ Romauld went on to found the Camaldolese order of hermit monks.

Another approach to the reform was through Canon law, this was the study of collections of early laws that described how the Catholic Church should be governed. The largest of these collections was owned by Burchard of Worms, and was called the ‘decretum’. The idea of Canon law attracted great interest as they suggested that in the past the Church had governed itself, and so provided support to the reformers over the issue of ‘Lay investiture’ It was later used by the Pope and the reformers as a way of giving theological support to their arguments over ‘Sacred Kings’.

At the beginning of the reform movements both the Pope and the emperor worked together, in 1012 Henry II appointed Pope Benedict VIII; and they worked well together to reform the Church. This worked because they could reinforce the reform, as Henry was able to back up the Popes decrees in his own kingdom. In 1046 however, there was a new problem, and at the Synod of Sutri the new Emperor Henry III had to resolve another Papal dispute, this time he appointed his own Pope Clement II, Clement however dies quickly and Henry appoints Leo IX. Leo had a strong personality and lots of energy; he is convinced that God sent him to route out simony. He held 11 reforming councils in 5 Years, the first, which was held in 1949 in Rome aimed to Route out simony. Another held in Reims asked 20 Bishops and 40 Abbots to declare whether they were guilty of simony. All the bishops who didn’t turn up were deposed. Several other reforming councils were held e.g. At Poitiers they agree that Priests and deacons should not live with women, and at Ingelheim they agreed that laymen could not expel or appoint clergy.

Leo IX however had a serious problem in South Italy; the Normans had invaded and were encroaching into Papal land. Leo IX planned to stand up to them but at the battle of Civilate in 1053 he suffers a humiliating defeat and was captured, he is finally released; however he is a broken man. In 1054 he holds another reforming council in South Italy; this however causes an argument with the Byzantines who also owned a large area of Southern Italy. At this time there are strong tensions between Latins and the Greeks, they disagreed over the role of the Papacy and the Holy Spirit. In 1054 this argument got out of hand, and eventually Cardinal Humbert was sent to Byzantium to excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople, who in turn excommunicated the Pope this was the beginning of the East-West Schism. Leo dies shortly afterwards, and soon after Henry III also dies leaving behind a 6 month old son to rule. The reformers see this as an opportunity to get rid of lay investiture; this was particularly attacked by Cardinal Humbert who called for an end to lay domination as it caused moral and financial abuses among clergy. The next three Popes tried to push forward the idea that Christendom should be ruled by the Papacy. In 1959 Pope Nicholas II issued a precedent saying the new pope was to be elected through a College of Cardinals, this eliminated the power of the German King. When Henry IV claimed the crown in 1071 he found himself in a much weaker position than his father had left him. In 1072 there was a disputed election, Pope Alexander II backed one side Henry IV backed the other, each side saw the balance of power and neither side was prepared to back down, however before the dispute could be settled Alexander died, and Gregory VII was elected Pope.

Gregory was a devoted man who was devoted to St Peters’ rights, and held the view that Peters Church would be the mother of all churches. He was however a very controversial figure, 26 German bishops and the German emperor agreed that Gregory was ‘not Pope but a false monk’ and called on him to resign. Gregory however intensified his campaign on for moral reform challenging the idea of ‘Sacred Kingship’ saying that the clergy should be elected. He called on the lay people not to accept ministry from those known to be guilty of Simony or sexual acts. In 1075 he forbade the clergy to accept investiture into office from a layman, he put his ideas into pamphlets which he sent round Christendom, however his opponents simply destroyed them. In 1076 Gregory excommunicated Henry IV for trying to dispose of a Synod of imperial bishops, the result of this was that Henry IV could not function and a rebellion broke out. In January 1077 Henry went to see the Pope in Italy dressed only in his nightshirt to beg reconciliation. Gregory granted it, however he reserved the right to judge Henry at a later date. After this Henry soon regained power, and in 1080 a new conflict broke out, this time when Henry was excommunicated he simply seized Rome and the pope was forced to flee south with the Normans where he died in 1085.

Even though Henry elected a Pope: Clement III the papacy had broken away from lay control. The Reformers elected their own popes who were accepted by the rest of the Church. Henry struggled to regain control but failed, eventually it came to a compromise, the King agreed not to invest in the Papacy; however the king was allowed to be present in the elections of Bishops and Abbots. In Europe the Lay ruler’s power over the Church was limited but not abolished.

The result of this reform was clear, within society there was a shift towards the Church, and the attack on the ‘sacred kingship’ was successful. The prestige of the Papacy increased dramatically, however the papal victory appeared more complete within the Church. The pope made a series of declarations known as the dictatus papae which outlined the main development of the Church over the next two centuries. The Reformers made a new vision of the Church in which the Clergy were separated from the hierarchal chain that stretched from God to humanity. The reform however was not just for Kings and Popes, many ordinary citizens were forced to make religious choices, which were made more difficult in that for as long as people could remember anointed Kings had ruled the church, but were held in the balance, because the Pope had a more powerful theological argument based on Canon Law. In the end the reforms added a new level of tension and a new dimension of a new level of life which we can still see in Christendom today. The position of the Pope became much more similar to the view we have of him today, and the Church got rid of the idea of Sacred Kingship which would be brought up in Britain at a later date under Henry VIII. The Reformers had successfully brought the Church out of a difficult moral situation and created a modern yet classical opinion of the Church, and started many traditions which are still around today.