Western Society And The Church In The Middle Ages
R. W. Southern
Number of quotes: 32
Book ID: 286 Page: 15/16
Section: 3A1,4B
The chief aim of this book is to understand the connection between the religious organizations and the social environment of the medieval church.. . . .
Church and society were one, and neither could be changed without the other undergoing a similar transformation.
Quote ID: 7288
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 17
Section: 3A2A,3A4C,4B
Heresy[?], again the words are those of Thomas Aquinas, is a sin which merits not only excommunication but also death, for it is worse to corrupt the Faith which is the life of the soul than to issue counterfeit coins which minister to the secular life. Since counterfeiters are justly killed by princes as enemies to the common good, so heretics also deserve the same punishment.{2}PJ note: Summa Theologiae, 2, 2, qu. xi, art. 3.
In a word, the church was a compulsory society in precisely the same way as the modern state is a compulsory society.
Quote ID: 7289
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 18
Section: 2A1,3A1
The problem of determining how someone becomes a committed member of a political community was one which gave much trouble to the theorists of the early modern state. But it was the easiest of all problems for the theorists of the medieval church-state, for the answer lay ready to hand in baptism. In baptism the godparents made certain promises on behalf of the child which bound him legally for life. From a social point of view a contractual relationship was established between the infant and the church from which there was no receding. For the vast majority of members of the church, baptism was as involuntary as birth, and it carried with it obligations as binding and permanent as birth into a modern state, with the further provision that the obligations attached to baptism could in no circumstances be renounced.
Quote ID: 7290
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 286 Page: 18
Section: 3A1,4B
In this extensive sense the medieval church was a state. It had all the apparatus of the state; laws and law courts, taxes and tax-collectors, a great administrative machine, power of life and death over the citizens of Christendom and their enemies within and without. It was the state at its highest power.
Quote ID: 7291
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 19
Section: 3A4C
Popes claimed the sole right of initiating and directing wars against the unbelievers. They raised armies, conducted campaigns, and made treaties of peace in defence of their territorial interests.
Quote ID: 7292
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 22
Section: 3A2
In directing men along this road, the church was the sole legitimate source of coercive power.
Quote ID: 7293
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 22
Section: 3A1,4B
Not only all political activity, but all learning and thought were functions of the church.
Quote ID: 7294
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 24
Section: 3A1,4B
The Middle Ages may be defined as the period in western European history when the church could reasonably claim to be the one true state, and when men (however much they might differ about the nature of ecclesiastical and secular power) acted on the assumption that the church had an overriding political authority.
Quote ID: 7295
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 24
Section: 3A1,4B
The dominating ideal in the rebuilding was that the unitary authority of the Empire should be replaced by the unitary authority of the papacy. Hobbes’s gibe about the papacy being the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof has a greater truth than he realized.
Quote ID: 7296
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 25
Section: 3A1
It is not absurd to say that the Roman Empire achieved its fullest development in the thirteenth century with Innocent IV playing Caesar to Frederick II’s Pompey.. . . .
During the whole medieval period there was in Rome a single spiritual and temporal authority exercising powers which in the end exceeded those that had ever lain within the grasp of a Roman Emperor.
Quote ID: 7297
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 26
Section: 3A1
For the whole of this period – from the age of Bede to that of Luther, from the effective replacement of imperial by papal authority in the West in the eighth century to the fragmentation of that authority in the sixteenth, from the cutting of the political ties between eastern and western Europe to Europe’s breaking out into the wider western world beyond the seas – the papacy is the dominant institution in western Europe.
Quote ID: 7298
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 30
Section: 2A3
Throughout these centuries relics were the most important feature in the religious landscape. In them the power of the unseen world was more accessible than anywhere else. Every church, every altar, every nobleman, every king, every monastery, had relics sometimes in great quantity. They were brought out to authenticate the work of justice; they were carried out with armies; they were borne in procession to encourage the drooping crops; they were instruments of state, of law and order, of personal well-being. From the eighth century, when the incessant demand for relics caused the bodies of the early saints and martyrs to be broken up, they were the object of a huge commerce. If we were able to draw up statistics of imports into England in the tenth century, relics would certainly come high on the list. They were necessary for every important undertaking.
Quote ID: 7299
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 30
Section: 2A3
Charlemagne’s throne in Aachen, built to the measurements of Solomon’s throne, was constructed with cavities which were filled with relics. The Holy Lance, which had pierced the side of the Saviour, was the most important political possession of the tenth-century emperors.
Quote ID: 7300
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 31
Section: 2A3
All kings had relics in their crowns and round their necks. In the relic collections of the king lay the safety of the kingdom.
Quote ID: 7301
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 50
Section: 3A1
The weight of established institutions was overwhelming; it could not be shifted without a vast upheaval; and this was a prospect which every ruler in the fourteenth century came to dread.
Quote ID: 7302
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 50
Section: 3A1,4B
The greatest strength of papal government in the fourteenth century was that it had lost most of its teeth. It threatened no one. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical hierarchy could not be seriously attacked without a threat to the whole social order.
Quote ID: 7303
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 94
Section: 2E1
For the western church from the seventh to the eleventh century the existence of the tomb of St. Peter was the most significant fact in Christendom.. . . .
Men thought of him as being there, in Rome. When Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow, set out for Rome in 716, he carried a Bible with an inscription dedicating the book, not to the pope, but to the body of St. Peter. {2}
Quote ID: 7304
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 286 Page: 99
Section: 3A1
Indeed it is evident that the idea of a western empire as a means of extending papal authority was a mistake from beginning to end. It was a mistake primarily because in creating an emperor, the pope created not a deputy, but a rival or even a master.
Quote ID: 7305
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 99
Section: 3A1
the empire, which Pope Leo III had rashly created for this purpose on Christmas Day 800. This action was the greatest mistake the medieval popes ever made in their efforts to translate theory into practice.
Quote ID: 7306
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 102
Section: 3A1
There are no words which convey the spirit of the medieval papacy so brilliantly as the trenchant statements of the papal position inserted in the volume of Gregory VII’s letters, probably on the instructions of the pope himself. Among these statements we find the following:the pope can be judged by no one;
the Roman church has never erred and never will err till the end of time;
he can depose emperors;
he can absolve subjects from their allegiances;
all princes should kiss his feet;
Quote ID: 7307
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 104
Section: 2C
From about the middle of the twelfth century, the popes began for the first time to take the title ‘Vicar of Christ’ and to claim it for themselves alone.{12} In the past, kings and priests had called themselves ‘Vicars of Christ’; but not the pope. For him the title was too vague.
Quote ID: 7308
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 121
Section: 3A1
Yet, when every allowance has been made, we may still say that the papal machinery of government was as effective as any government could be before the late nineteenth century. The papal curia of the thirteenth century was, by any standards that were applicable before the days of modern mechanical aids and salaried officials, a large and efficient organization.. . . .
At most times, there were probably well over a hundred experts at the papal court engaged in legal work. Every important ecclesiastical and secular person or corporation in Europe had to be familiar with the procedure of the papal curia, and the most important had proctors permanently retained to look after their interests in the labyrinth of papal government.
Quote ID: 7309
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 125
Section: 3A1
Throughout western Europe the papal directives flowed with smooth efficiency and were received with a remarkable absence of opposition. In this area at least, Gregory VIII’s dream of papal authority seemed to have come true.
Quote ID: 7310
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 131/132
Section: 3A1
There is one fact which more than any other sums up this period of papal history: every notable pope from 1159 to 1303 was a lawyer. This fact reflects the papacy’s preeminent concern with the formulation and enforcement of law. It was here that the papal position was strongest. At a time when the tradition of ancient law and government had been almost completely obliterated in Europe, the popes retained the elements of a legal system on which they could build.
Quote ID: 7311
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 136
Section: 3A2A,3A4C
The granting of papal indulgences on a large scale goes back to 1095, when Urban II announced that participation in the Crusade would be reckoned a substitute for all other penances – or, in popular language, would ensure the immediate entry into Heaven of a Crusader who died in a state of repentance and confession. {41}
Quote ID: 7312
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 137
Section: 3A1
by the end of the thirteenth century they were being granted to secular rulers for political reasons.Soon, by a further extension of the papal clemency, individuals began to be able to buy the privilege of receiving a plenary indulgence from their confessors at the moment of death.
Quote ID: 7313
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 139
Section: 3A1
Once the bottomless treasure had been opened up there could be no restraining its distribution.
Quote ID: 7314
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 155
Section: 3A1
The exclusive right of the cardinals to elect a pope was established by a decree of Pope Nicholas II in 1059.
Quote ID: 7315
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 159
Section: 3A1
Here then, as in many other ways, the situation at the end of the Middle Ages tended – though with much greater complication and political awareness – to approximate to the situation at the beginning. The secular ruler became the residuary legatee of ecclesiastical power.
Quote ID: 7316
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 169
Section: 4B
the existence of the papacy still gave an assurance of salvation to millions of people who knew nothing about its failures. It was as much part of life as the seasons or the succession of day and night.
Quote ID: 7317
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 213
Section: 4B
Archbishops and bishops were, after all, the wealthiest ecclesiastical class in Europe. Many of them were men of high ability who came to their office already experienced in the use of authority. That their previous experience and authority had often been more secular than ecclesiastical was an advantage rather than a drawback.
Quote ID: 7318
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 286 Page: 342
Section: 2A6,4B
If people could form associations without authorization, choose a superior in some unknown manner, adopt a monastic type of life without the sanction of a monastic Rule, read the Scriptures together in the common tongue, confess their sins to one another and receive counsel and correction from no one knew whom, there could be an end to all order in the church.
Quote ID: 7319
Time Periods: 27
End of quotes