Why should you study the Medieval Church? Because it and its time still influence us today, for ill -- and for good. The Middle Ages were centuries of creativity and change that shaped the world in which we live, and the Christian faith that we practice. The Middle Ages were times of great persons, movements, and events fully as worthy of our study as is the Roman Empire.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Europeans faced three major issues: the struggle between the Christian world and the world of a new, rival faith to the east; a growing division within Christianity between Orthodox Christianity in the east and Roman Catholic Christianity in the west; and a growing sense of nationalism and religious liberty in Western Europe.

The Medieval Church existed within the Empire. No one alive when the Middle Ages began knew that the Byzantine Empire existed. To those alive then, the Empire ruled from Constantinople was the same empire that Caesar Augustus had founded in Rome. That empire had just moved its capital. The empire faced three major challenges of its own: internal conflicts over religion and succession to the throne, dissension from the Roman-German West, and relentless warfare with the new eastern religion's followers. How those challenges were or were not resolved have made us who we are.

In the west, the pope proclaimed that kings rule, not by right of birth, but by God's will declared by a bishop's consecration; in the east, the Church stayed subservient to the emperor. The pope showed his power by appointing Charlemagne emperor of a new empire. In this, which we now call the Holy Roman Empire, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor contended for which of two swords, the religious and the secular, was superior.

Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire contended for supremacy, just as the Catholic and Orthodox churches contended, over the Christian world. While two Christian Empires fought each other, both of them fought the rising power from the east. The age climaxed in a holy war fought for Jerusalem, sacred to three faiths -- a war not yet finished.

A time of Monks, Crusaders, and Heretics gave rise to our time. We can't fully understand it without understanding the Middle Age's conflicts of faith and politics, and the advances that came about sometimes because of them, but at other times despite them. This time of changes appears clearly, briefly, and vividly in a book that you can read in a single evening. What happened in the Middle Ages has shaped how you live today.

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• Religion & SpiritualityChristianityChurch History

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