Medieval European society reaches unprecedented heights as peace reigns, allowing for improved trade, urban expansion, wider missionary efforts, intellectual and artistic pursuits, and more. The papacy also benefits from the period of development, as the most powerful pope in Christian history, Innocent III, wields his authority over kings and nations alike. But dissent would be fomented against the papacy following the transfer of the papal residence to Avignon.
Show Transcript
Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.
Part 21: Medieval High Point
A series of monumental changes began to shape the development of the medieval world of Europe between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Further monastic reforms were implemented; the papal monarchy grew and thus attracted a bevy of clerics and lawyers to Rome; trade and commerce expanded, leading to the rise of urban life; and political stability was realized in many areas, creating peace between peoples and thus stimulating communication, intellectual pursuits, a focus on the arts, philosophy and science, the furtherance of missionary work, and the invention and spread of new architecture.
In this period, cities began to grow, trade increased exponentially, and money was predominantly used in place of the barter system. The increased use of money brought many changes, not least being the focus on specialized production, where goods were produced by skilled labor and sold to specific markets. A greater divide began to develop between rich and poor as a result and, with the growth of cities, populations began to migrate, swelling large towns and urban areas. Then, as now, this urban sprawl created the beggar, or in the medieval sense, the mendicant friar, that is, a monk who begged for a living. This was a new low for the Christian movement, which established a system that countered the wise words of King David and clearly highlighted their lack of righteousness and the leaven that permeated their movement:
[25] “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.”
—Psalm 37:25
This mendicant movement could be credited to Francis of Assisi, an Italian of the merchant class who gave up his inheritance to found a monastic order of beggars called the Franciscans via papal approval.
“About the same time that the Franciscans were established, Dominic began another order of mendicant (‘begging’) monks.”
Writes John M. Riddle in A History of the Middle Ages.
“Born of minor nobility in Castile, he joined the canons regular in Osma (Spain) and accompanied his bishop to southern France, where he encountered the Cathars (a cult)…. He attracted imitators and soon had a following that was organized in 1215 at Toulouse as the Order of Friars Preachers, later known as the Dominicans.”
Ironically, the Dominicans, a less turbulent order than the Franciscans, made study their main objective, along with preaching and teaching, whereas poverty was set aside when circumstances allowed members of the order to own property. In the same period, theological universities were being established, the most prominent of which were Paris and Oxford, and the Dominicans gained a foothold by setting up professors in both. The Franciscans later established their own teachers in major universities across western Europe. Following the death of Francis of Assisi, a moderate party developed within the Franciscan order who appealed to the pope to relax the rule of poverty. Pope Gregory IX did as they requested and many of these beggars who were never to own property later acquired vast holdings.
When the mendicant orders of Franciscan and Dominican monks were founded, the most powerful pope in Christian history occupied the papal throne. He took the name Innocent III. The widow of a dead king, fearing that her son, the heir to the throne of Sicily, would be murdered by German rivals, named Pope Innocent III his protector, and made the kingdom of Sicily an official fiefdom of Innocent’s papacy.
Pope Innocent wielded his might far and wide, excommunicating kings, intervening in the political affairs of nations, and forcing kings to turn their lands into additional fiefdoms of the papacy. But prior to his papal ascension, previous popes of the papal monarchy had been granted fiefdoms by kings. Professor Thomas F. Madden says of this:
“William of Sicily, who was the leader of the Normans in southern Italy, was confirmed as a kingdom by the pope, and as a result of this the entire southern Italy and Sicily was given to the pope. Basically, it was a papal fief. In other words, the pope was the lord of it, and the Normans were considered to be the vassals of the pope.”
However …
“The greatest of these popes of the papal monarchy, and probably the most powerful of the popes in the middle ages, was Pope Innocent III, who reigned from 1198 – 1216. This is really the pinnacle of papal monarchy. Innocent and his curia were active in a dizzying array of activities all across Europe.”
That included England, Spain, Bohemia, Portugal, Hungary, Denmark, Iceland, Bulgaria, and even Armenia in southwestern Asia. After a powerful French king put away one wife for another, Pope Innocent III ordered the king to return to the wife he had cast aside. When the king refused, the pope prohibited the entire country from taking the cherished sacraments. The nobles and bishops of the land sided with the pope, which forced the king to yield to his demands. Pope Innocent’s reform programs also had far-reaching effect through the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. When Constantinople was taken during the Fourth Crusade, and the Latin Empire created against his wishes, his authority extended to that region as well. It was because of Pope Innocent III that Christendom, in this period, was considered nearly one fold under the supreme rule of the papacy.
Pope Innocent III, for these reasons, was seen as something more than human to Christians of his day. The popes who succeeded him also enjoyed the residue of the prestige that surrounded his papal throne. Papal power did not wane following Innocent’s death either. From 1254 to 1273, the German empire fell into disorder and Pope Gregory X moved to restore order by giving papal approval to the election of Rudolf of Hapsburg as German emperor. Rudolf essentially created the Hapsburg dynasty thereby, which lasted till 1918. As a nod to the pope, the new emperor made Rome and the papal states independent of his empire.
The thirteenth century was in fact the high point of medieval life in Europe. The papacy had reached its greatest height of power, the mendicant orders extended their tentacles in attempt to convert the world to Catholicism, Catholic universities sprang up throughout Europe and became the foundation for the level of scholasticism we see today, Gothic art and architecture pushed boundaries, and the Christian world seemed to be united under one head. Population growth and an economic boom were experienced as well. In fact, there were no important European wars from 1214 to the 1290s, illustrating the relative peace of that century, which allowed for the explosive development and advancement in the period.
Europe would not long enjoy this height, however. By 1261, the Latin Empire that replaced Byzantium collapsed, and papal control in that region was undermined. A sense of nationalism would sweep through several countries as their economies continued to develop and new political attitudes emerge. In the next two centuries, war and invasion would engulf the continent, plague would leave its indelible mark, corruption would run rampant, and the medieval period would begin to give way to the modern age. As economies continued to develop, credit systems emerged, along with a new societal class: the bourgeoisie. These capitalists conflicted with the feudal lords, seeing their aims were at odds.
The structure of feudalism made it difficult for the bourgeoisie class to greatly benefit from trade, due to local disputes between nobles, excessive taxation on goods crossing their borders, and the independent spirit of barons and other lords. The bourgeoisie pushed to centralize government, which would improve trade and end petty disputes, thus they tended to back kings in order to suppress high nobles. The nobility was able to oppose kings who could not secure enough resources to support armies, but the bourgeoisie supplied all that the kings needed. This led to centralized monarchial governments that gave rise to powerful banking families and merchants. By the time we reach the end of the thirteenth century, some banks grew so large that they existed as middlemen on an international scale, such as Florence’s Bardi and Peruzzi banks, which backed a considerable degree of wool exports from England to Flanders. The bourgeoisie were not merely lenders to the merchant class, however, but to kings also, whose wars they financed with large loans that came with high interest.
“[T]hat ambition did not end well for many.”
Writes Chris Wickham in his book, Medieval Europe.
“[F]or kings, when they defaulted, did so on such a scale that whole banks collapsed: Edward I of England destroyed the Riccardi bank of Lucca in this way when he confiscated their assets in 1294 (they went under in the next decade); the Frescobaldi of Florence fell when Edward II ran into trouble in 1311; and the Bardi and Peruzzi, by now overextended, in part with loans to Edward III, fell in their turn in 1343–46.”
This system of centralized monarchies made possible by powerful banks, led to the formation of several modern European states. England, France, and the countries in Scandinavia were among the first to unite under a single monarch. Spain, which was as yet a collection of Christian kingdoms and a Muslim one in Granada, would unite at the end of the medieval period. Italy and Germany would unite well after that. However, a sense of nationalism began to emerge in Europe. Where citizens used to identify mainly with a county or city of a given region, the idea of belonging to a French or English nation slowly took root. This sense of nationalism soon led to many others undermining the papacy and its claim to divine authority. The English showed early resistance to the papacy, and the French would install its own docile pope to counter the efforts of a rival pope. The papacy lost not only authority as a result, but a great deal of prestige besides, and Christians longed for greater reform.
The thirteenth century ended with a pope announcing a “jubilee,” which promised a “full and copious pardon of all” the sins of those who visited the churches of Peter and Paul during that momentous year. It was February of 1300. The papacy was still riding high on the triumphs of the deceased Pope Innocent III, but major changes were already afoot for the church; changes that went virtually unnoticed. Christianity had been on the rise from the fourth to the fourteenth century, and was seen as a convenient marriage between the Christian empire and the Catholic church. This speaks to John’s vision of a woman riding a scarlet beast in the wilderness.
[3] “And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. [4] The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. [5] And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.’ ”
—Revelation 17:3 – 5
In the thirteen and fourteenth centuries, her daughters were not yet born. They would come during the Protestant Reformation. The beast itself was comprised of the kingdoms and nations that carved up what used to be the Roman Empire, and it was full of blasphemous names because all those kings thought themselves divine. A heavenly messenger gives John the interpretation of his vision in verses 15 – 18, saying that the ten horns (which we know are kings or kingdoms) will hate the prostitute. But the woman, she is considered a great city; the Greek word is polis, hence the modern term metropolis, meaning a chief city. The see of Rome is actually referred to as the great metropolis. Notwithstanding her perceived greatness, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the church, that decadent prostitute, would start to see her greatest decline.
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
We now continue with our podcast.
The thirteenth century not only marked the high point of the papacy and the orders of mendicant monks, it was also the apex of medieval scholasticism. A century earlier, the Catholic church had established cathedral schools that taught theology and were directly connected to the church and its bishops, but with the growth of cities and urban centers, universities were established. While the popes were seen as the primary authorities in the Christian world, the ascent of royal power challenged that authority with the aid of the universities.
“The popes, and the church, in order to get well-trained men who could work the bureaucracies and the diplomacy of the church, they had created these universities.”
Says Professor Madden.
“And in the universities, if you were of, say, a middle class—and middle class was a fairly small class in the middle ages—you could send your son to university with the concept that they would get a job with a bishop, or in some other ecclesiastical capacity, that would pay well. Because the universities that were created by the Catholic church and designed to produce well-trained men for the Catholic church, that’s why all of the students would essentially take some kind of minor religious orders, and would generally—when they graduated—go on to a clerical role someplace. Some of this is still left over even today; if you go to a commencement exercise at a university and you look at what everyone’s wearing, they’re wearing clerical vestments. These would be the vestments that the clergy would wear as they took on the symbols of their investment—of their degrees. It wasn’t too long, particularly in the thirteenth century, before the kings wanted to start making use of these well-trained men in their own royal bureaucracies, to use those same methods and that same education that was coming out of these universities.”
This resulted in many students receiving university educations but refusing to join the clergy. They would take their education and find employment in the secular courts of European rulers. Kings benefited greatly from this pattern and their governments became more efficient, productive, and powerful. Together with the backing of the bourgeoisie, centralized monarchies resulted and kings were able to exert greater control over their subjects. And again, modern European countries began to emerge. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, two of the most powerful of these emerging nations came into serious conflict, and those centuries were thereafter occupied with the Hundred Years’ War, which lasted from 1337 – 1475. While it initiated with France and England, the conflict soon involved Europe on a whole, creating the first European war.
The fourteenth century also witnessed the Great Plague, which erupted in 1347. Noted changes in the weather during this time also affected agriculture, causing widespread famine. The population was therefore vulnerable to disease. Because of improved trade between regions like the Mediterranean and northern Europe, the plague that erupted in the Black Sea region and spread to Italy easily swept through northern Europe as well. The outbreak stormed the entire continent from 1348 – 1350, claiming, by some estimates, a third of the existing population. In another three years, the plague would subside, but periodic outbreaks would follow with the passing of a dozen years or so. Europe’s economy was devasted by the disease, and lack of work and needed resources led to riots, political instability, and societal turmoil. Europe would not recover from the event for a few centuries.
The church experienced major changes as well. Around the turn of the fourteenth century, Rome was the scene of renewed political intrigue and maneuvering. The papacy saw its political power limited by the French monarchy, which had grown in strength, and in 1309, Pope Clement V transferred the residence of the popes to a principality called Avignon, which was ceded to the papacy during the Council of Lyons. Avignon, situated just across the Rhône river from French territory, was heavily influenced by the French government, and for over 70 years, the popes—subjecting themselves to this same influence after abandoning Rome—caused this period to be termed the “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy.” Yes … an irony if ever there was one. Chris Wickham adds:
“The popes … were all French-speaking until 1378, and did not base themselves in Rome; in 1309 they settled in Avignon in what is now southern France, a small city which they could control rather better than Rome, and during the century they were based there the sophistication and wealth of the papal administration reached its height, as also its power over the church appointments of Latin Europe. Although the French kings did not actually rule Avignon, this was a very French power; nearly half the funding of the papacy came from church dues in France, and, conversely, the popes by now allowed the French king to tax church land for the English war. But the sense that Rome was the ‘proper’ place for popes to be never went away, and by the 1370s it had become powerful.”
Thus, after a few years, the papal residence was moved back to Rome, the city upon which the concept of the universality of the western church, Roman imperium, was built. But it would not prove to be a smooth transition. The Avignon period of the papacy was held in bitter regard by the Germans due to extensive papal corruption. The papal court was bankrupted by a loss of revenue from the papal states. In order to raise new funds, the popes of Avignon devised schemes to keep the money flowing. Fees and taxes were levied on all manner of privileges, and the most egregious ones were collected via threat of excommunication.
In the first quarter of the fourteenth century, the seeds of dissent were already being sown against papal authority thanks to its Avignon phase. Emperor Louis the Bavarian, who ruled from 1314 – 1347, acted against the sitting pope, John XXII, by making an official appeal to a general council. Aiding him in his efforts was a scholar named Marsilius of Padua, who had to flee the University of Paris for his actions against the church. Marsilius and a colleague, John of Jandun, wrote a paper titled Defender of the Peace, which argued against the entire papal structure in favor of a democratic government.
The ecclesiastical hierarchy was not truly superior to the church laity, the paper said, nor had popes been given any high authority from the Messiah; they, along with bishops and priests, were merely to serve as agents of the body of believers, which the general council itself represented. Also, the spiritual was to be completely separate from the secular, as temporal matters were not the business of popes or the church. What Defender of the Peace did was stir up a storm of controversy that would not abate for over a century. With his paper, Marsilius laid the foundation for the modern concept of sovereign government. This was in fact the beginning of the pre-Reformation period.
With the turmoil of the Avignon phase, Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377. But the papal reentry into Rome enjoyed a brief celebration. Gregory XI would be dead within a year, and a new pope had to be elected. The Italian populace was jaded by the college of cardinals, whose membership included a large number of Frenchmen. A Roman mob stormed the building where the cardinals met and blocked a way of escape as they insisted on the election of an Italian pope. The college of cardinals, bowing to the demands of the mob, elected a new pope, Urban VI, who was crowned during a pagan celebration of Easter. Professor Thomas F. X. Noble says this of the famed event:
“In the election of 1378, the sixteen cardinals in Rome—six of them were still up in Avignon—elected Bartolomeo Prignano, who was the archbishop of Bari, largely because of the howling mob outside the door demanding a Roman, or at the very least, an Italian be elected pope. Well, Bartolomeo—Urban VI, who was pope from 1378 – 1389—initially enjoyed the good will of the cardinals in Rome. But then he utterly ruined his relationship with them by treating them wretchedly. Now, he was well-intentioned, Urban was, but he was totally inept.
“In July, the cardinals declared that the April election had been illegal because [it was] conducted under restraint and fear. Now, that’s perfectly true. Elections were not supposed to be conducted in such conditions, with a howling mob outside the door. So, the cardinals decided that Urban was deposed—he wasn’t legitimate pope—and they left Rome momentarily for Neapolitan territory to the south.”
Urban, the alleged “illegitimate” pope, retaliated by creating another college of cardinals. The original French cardinals, refusing to be outdone, chose from among them a new pope, Clement VII, who they announced to the secular rulers and church hierarchy. Urban’s papal throne remained in Rome, but Clement established his in Avignon, and this dynamic created what came to be known as the Great Schism of the papacy. Two popes enjoyed their own college of cardinals and claimed the right to excommunicate those who questioned their legitimacy. Because the cardinals themselves had created the confusion by electing a pope in April and then rejecting that pope for another that was elected in September, the question of who was the rightful pope was left to others.
In the end, France and Scotland sided with Pope Clement VII, while Italy, England, Scandinavia, Flanders, Poland, and Hungary went with Pope Urban VI. Several other kingdoms repeatedly switched sides. Chaos reigned among the populous for a time as a result of this sharp divide. With the death of Urban in 1389 another pope replaced him, but in 1395 the idea of forming a general council to settle the schism was proposed by professors of the University of Paris. Canon Law, however, dictated that the pope alone held the power to call a council of that nature, and he alone could ratify the decisions of one. Necessity forced the issue and a general council comprised of members of both colleges of cardinals met in Pisa in 1409 to depose both rival popes and elect yet a new pope, Alexander V.
Rather than ending the schism, the election of Alexander now left three men claiming to be the legitimate pope, as Boniface IX (who replaced the deceased Urban) and the pope in Avignon refused to back down. Europe could not abide more than one pope, so in 1414, an impressive gathering of representatives from various European nations was assembled at the behest of the German emperor. Known as the Council of Constance, the gathering was a kind of multinational affair that required the vote of each medieval nation. It would be another few years before the council could get one of the popes to step down, while it deposed two others. Finally, it elected Martin V, a pope who immediately disavowed the acts of the council, with the exception of the vote that made him pope. In the mind of Martin V, no council must be allowed to wield power above that of the pope. All in all, the Great Schism was ended, but immorality and corruption would plague the papacy yet again during the reigns of a succession of Renaissance popes; and that corruption would peak with the arrival of Pope Alexander VI, who ruled from 1492 – 1503. Disdain for the papal office began to build, and the Protestant Reformation was stirring in the hearts of several men.
That wraps it up for this episode of Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. A production of Kingdom Preppers.org, this episode was written, produced, and hosted by yours truly, Kingdom Prepper. All praise, honor, and glory are due to my boss, Yah Elohim, and to his right hand, Yahushua HaMashiach. You can access the transcript for this episode on our website. Yah willing, our history will continue in the next podcast. Shalom.
Keywords: mendicant friar, Francis of Assisi, Franciscan, Dominican, Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, Hapsburg dynasty, Rudolph of Hapsburg, bourgeoisie, great city, metropolis, polis, Avignon, Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy, the great schism, churchianity, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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