Changes in religion shaped the social, cultural, and political landscape of the Middle Ages. Religion was at the center of medieval society. Therefore internal reform and conflict between religions impacted daily life in profound ways. What did religious change look like in the Middle Ages, and what was its impact?
Religious Change Definition
Religious change is reform within a single religion that changes the practice of faith from within the Church's administration. It can also mean converting to another religion, abandoning the beliefs of one faith in favor of another.
The Conversion of Mary Magdalene by Paolo Veronese, c. 1548. Source: National Gallery, UK, CC-PD-Mark, Wikimedia Commons
Causes of Religious Change
Religious change can occur as the result of social and political change. In the medieval world, religion was at the center of everything. The Catholic Church was a major political player with vast landholdings and influence within every European realm until the Protestant Reformation. As a result, daily life revolved around religion after the papacy implemented Gregorian reforms in the eleventh century.
To showcase their importance and centrality in the medieval social landscape, the Church built massive cathedrals in cities across Europe.
Religious Change as a Result of Social Change and Vice Versa
Religious and social change go hand in hand. This was especially the case in the Middle Ages because of religion's centrality in the medieval world. But how did the Church become the center of medieval society? A series of reforms known as the Gregorian Reform was implemented to consolidate a fractured Church in the face of social changes resulting from population growth, economic expansion, and the rise of urban centers.
Gregorian Reform
In the year 1000, the Church was fragmented. Secular rulers controlled Church appointments, and there was little administrative cohesion. This situation changed as a result of socio-religious change known as Gregorian Reform. Aristocrats, Church leaders, and zealous reformers envisioned the Church as a structure free from the influence of secular authorities and sought to consolidate it under one leader: the Pope. They believed that the Church should dominate society.
One crucial social change the Gregorian reform movement brought was the abolishment of married clergy. Before the reforms, priests often had wives, a position of respect in the parish community.
After priests were ordered to live celibate lives, some women remained with their priest-husbands but were now considered lowly concubines and social pariahs.
The visual landscape of medieval Europe also changed due to Gregorian Reform. Massive cathedrals replaced earlier Romanesque architecture in significant towns and cities as symbols of Church importance and power. Cathedrals were the seats of Bishops, who were now completely under Papal authority. Significant cathedrals from this period include Canterbury Cathedral in England (1174), Léon Cathedral in modern-day Spain (1205), and Santa Maria del Spina Cathedral in Pisa, Italy (1230).
Canterbury Cathedral. Source: WyrdLight.com, CC-BY-SA-4.0, Wikimedia Commons
One of the most influential thinkers from this period was Thomas Aquinas. Because of the Crusades and a commercial revolution, the works of classical philosophers such as Aristotle returned to Europe. Aquinas utilized Aristotle to examine questions about the relationship between faith and reason, which combined subjects we know today as philosophy and theology.
His masterwork Summa Theologiae defined the difference between mortal and venial, or lesser sins, and how the Church should punish them. While mortal sins were unforgivable, venial sins could be removed "when the debt of punishment is taken away." The Church determined that this debt could be removed through indulgences, or certificates of a sin's removal, granted to the sinner by a priest. Indulgences would have a crucial role in the events of the Protestant Reformation.
Thomas Aquinas, by Francisco Herrera the Younger, c.1656. Source: Musea des Bellas Artes de Sevilla, CE0506P, PD-Art, Wikimedia Commons
Formation of a Persecuting Society
Jews often lived and worked alongside their Christian counterparts in the early Middle Ages. However, this began to change by the eleventh century. Historian R.I. Moore argues that as the Church gained power, it focused on rooting out those who did not conform, namely Jews and those they considered heretics. This religious change caused dramatic social change because it was now legally and ecclesiastically favorable to persecute others who were not part of the dominant religion. In addition, it set a precedent for a society based on identifying the other as a threat and extricating nonconformists using every means necessary.
The Crusades are a notable example of this new focus on violent persecution. The Crusades were Holy Wars against the Infidel, or non-Christian. The primary target was Muslims who lived in the Holy Land of Jerusalem, but they were not the only ones to fall victim to the violence of holy zeal. On the way to Jerusalem, Crusaders often performed pogroms against European Jewish communities, killing hundreds using the same justification they used to kill Muslims. Jews were non-Christians and therefore evil and should be eradicated.
Pogrom:
A pogrom is a targeted massacre of a particular ethnic group or religion. The word is most commonly associated with massacres of the Jewish people throughout history.
Manuscript illustration by Pierart dou Tielt showing Jews being burned at the stake, fourteenth century. Source: PD-Art, Wikimedia Commons
To add further insult to injury, Jews were expelled from lands they had been called home for centuries by the monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire, England, Spain, and France, and forced to relocate to regions that would take them. Many wound up in Poland and the Netherlands, known for religious toleration at the time. Some converted to Christianity to remain in their homeland, but these individuals were often never entirely accepted by Christians. For example, the Spanish Inquisition of the fifteenth century specifically targeted recent converts to uncover how sincere they were about their new faith.
The Inquisition
The Inquisition began in the thirteenth century under Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216). To root out heresy, this organization utilized the judicial practice of inquiring, hence its name, Inquisition. Church-appointed inquisitors, many friars from the Dominican or Franciscan orders, wielded considerable power in their investigations. They employed torture to extract confessions from the accused because they did not believe a confession made under torture could be untrue. Inquisitors thought they were doing God's work in protecting Christians from the dangerous threat of heretics.
Examples and Importance of Religious Change
Religious change can profoundly affect society and is crucial to understanding historical and social movements. Questions of a religious or theological nature have inspired deep societal divides. The Protestant Reformation is one event where religious change permanently altered the European social, cultural, and political landscape.
The Protestant Reformation
Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1529. Source: St. Anne's Church, Augsburg, Germany, CC-PD-Mark, Wikimedia Commons
While religious differences were nothing new before the Reformation, deviations from the established Church had never before gained such widespread support. Religious nonconformity was quickly declared heresy and rooted out by zealous Inquisitors. But something different happened when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses criticizing the Catholic Church to the door of a Wittenberg church. Why was this the catalyst of one of the most extensive religious fractures in history?
- As shown above, the Catholic Church held considerable religious and political power. Unfortunately, such power often leads to abuse and corruption. One such example was the practice of selling indulgences to parishioners to absolve venial sin, as defined by Thomas Aquinas. Martin Luther directly criticized this practice and offered a theological alternative to a life dominated by a corrupt Catholic Church.
Luther emphasized a personal relationship between a person and God and the importance of reading the Bible for oneself. These two revolutionary ideas weakened the central place of Catholic clergy in the practice of faith and, by extension, daily life. As a result, the Church denounced Luther and named him a heretic, but his ideas had given him powerful friends. Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, protected Luther and sheltered him not only because he agreed with him theologically but also because helping him was a way to protest against the political regime of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
Protestantism referred to political protest before it became associated with religious reformers!
Religious Change Effects
As stated above, religious change in the Middle Ages had widespread and often devastating effects on the social landscape. For example, the Protestant Reformation affected Europe in both politics and culture. Let's take a closer look at how.One example of how religious change affected society is during the English Reformation. In 1534, King Henry VIII passed an Act of Supremacy formally breaking away from the Catholic Church and declaring himself head of a new Church of England. This act created a new religion in England and required all English people to convert. In addition, Henry dissolved monasteries, seized their assets, and then sold the lands to noblemen for more money. This act changed the social and physical landscape of England forever.Another example is the French Wars of Religion, which lasted from 1562 to 1598. Religious differences led to political fracturing throughout France. The kings of France had always been Catholic, but King Henri III died in 1589 without children, and his successor was Protestant. This last phase of the war saw a Catholic league of world powers set up to block the accession of Henry, King of Navarre, the Protestant heir to the French throne. France was torn apart by war in the name of religion. Hostilities only ceased when Henry converted to Catholicism, stating, "Paris is worth a mass." He issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, granting religious tolerance to Protestants.
Religious Change - Key takeaways
- Religious change is reform within a single religion or the act of converting to another faith.
- Religious change can be either an effect or a cause of social or political change.
- Religious change has altered the social landscape in many instances, particularly those surrounding the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.
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