HST 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Poor Clares, Anti-Clericalism, Blood Libel
Gregorian Reform and Church Order
Gregorian Reform
• Germanic time period had caused literacy to drop
o Uneducated members of the church order
o Big push within the church towards purity
• Pope Gregory VII (1073 – 1085)
o Spearheaded the Gregorian reform
o Unmarried priests
▪ Pure and good
o Uses monasticism as the model for a good priesthood
• Emphasis on apostolic purity
o Simony
▪ The practice of paying for clerical office
▪ Started during the middle ages
▪ Gregorian reforms wanted to stop this
• Because it took away church’s choice
o Nicolaitism- clerical marriage
▪ Church began to view this as impurity
▪ Priests should follow christs example of celibacy
• Priests could give their place to their children
▪ It had been forbidden
• Papacy should be the ultimate authority
o Higher clergy should follow Popes’ wishes
o Gregory pushes this as well
• Dictatus Papae
o Proclamation that the pope is supreme and that the pope has certain powers over
everything
• Rediscovery of Corpus Iuris Civilis
o Found by Gregory and his followers
Investiture Controversy
• Gregory vs. Henry IV (The Holy Roman Emperor)
o Problem of lay investiture
▪ When someone of the secular side chooses who can be a priest
▪ From the Pope’s standpoint this shackled the church
• Henry had relied on bishops
o Pope wanted the primacy though
• Henry was excommunicated
o Gregory refuses to step down
▪ Power struggle
o Gets in trouble because his people use that as a justification to create civil war
o Concordant of Worms and a compromise
▪ Pope lifts the excommunication
▪ Archbishops become the one to elect the bishops but have to pay homage to
the king
• The Papal Curia
o The pope’s court
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o Very similar to a medieval kings court
▪ Treasury and things like a kingdom
o Cardinals and officials
Saints and Relics
• Saints and the laity – popular religion
o Veneration of saints
o Saints acted as exemplars
▪ Holy, missionary, noble, etc.
o Saints’ cults and saints as intercessors
o Initially local, later the decision of the pope
▪ Local belief gives way to more uniform belief
o Beatification and canonization
▪ Beatified: holy people but not saints
▪ Canonized: put onto the church calendar and made a canonical saint
o Hagiography and miracles
▪ Asked saints for help if they were patron saints
▪ Live both on earth and heaven
▪ Hagiography: writing of a saints life
• Veneration of the Virgin Mary
o Veneration is remembrance not worship
o Forefront as the main saint
▪ Jesus’s mother
▪ Born without sin
▪ Timeless
▪ “perfect storm”
• Relics – objects associated with the saint
o Physical remembrance of this person
o Pilgrimages to visit relics
▪ Way to show your faith
o Radiate holiness
• Idea of purgatory and indulgences
o A place to wait for your sins to be forgiven
o Led to the idea of indulgences for venial sins
o Pilgrimages could be indulgences
o Becomes a payment towards the church
Fourth Lateran Council 1215
• Development of the sacraments
o Seven sacraments dealing with all aspects of life
o Transubstantiation, Marriage, Baptism, Penance, Confirmation, Holy Order, Extreme
Unction
▪ Transubstantiation: commune elements become body and blood of Christ
• Canon 5: officially proclaims the primacy of the pope
• Clergy should behave properly
• Protection of the church from outside elements
o Prohibited improper preaching practices, only sanctioned preachers
o Set up a system like Henry’s Juries to find heretics
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• Yearly confession of sins by all Christians
o Requirement
• Canon 68-69: Required Muslims and Jews in Christian lands to distinguish faith with
clothing
• Religious tensions grew
o Jews were seen as “Christ killers”
• Muslims and Jews begin to be seen as “heretical”
o Rejected the path of Jesus, followed a path of error
• Secular rulers were charged with upholding the prohibitions
o Popular prohibitions, allowed for secular rulers to charge Jews
o Secular rulers also knew who Jews were now, and could expel tem
• Philip Augustus: expelled Jews in 1182, took their property, and let them back in in 1193
Apostolic Life, heresy, Inquisition, and Persecution
Apostolic Life – The Franciscans
• Church says money is the root of evil, but there is growing prosperity = anxiety
• Francis of Assisi (1181 – 1226) – young man born into a wealthy merchant family
o Had visions of Christ
▪ Christ asks Francis to fix his church, so he does
▪ Realizes he meant the symbolic church
▪ Realizes everyone needs to live simply
o Bishop adopts him into the Church order and he preaches
o Travels from town to town preaching as he goes
▪ Bishop allowed him to do this
o Chooses to live a Life of Poverty
▪ Mathew 10:7, 9-11
▪ Franciscans becomes an Official order 4/16/1210
• Monks without a monastery
• Interface between laity and church
▪ Mirror Christ’s life – no possessions
• Preach the idea of simplicity
o The Canticle of Creatures
▪ Song about the natural world
▪ Known for his dealing with animals
o Stigmata
▪ Physical reproduction of Christ’s wounds at the crucifixion spontaneously
▪ Happened to Francis
o The Poor Clares
▪ Women who wanted to mimic Francis but couldn’t preach
Catholic Order and Heresy
• Albigensian heresy – cathars from the town of Albi
o Southern French movement believed in dualism
o Believed world was a battle between two forces of good and evil
▪ Believed the world we lived in was created by an evil force (demiurge) and
that our spiritual beings belong in heaven
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