CHALLENGES TO CHURCH AUTHORITY The Church Reacts to Challengers Some Christians… • Began to question Church teachings. • Felt that the clergy were more involved in politics and finantial affairs than in God´s matters. • Did not agree with the Church´s ideas, so began to preach their own ones. Heresy • Religious ideas that oppose to those of the Church. • People who stated or followed those ideas were called heretics. • The Church sent priests and friars all around Europe to find possible heretics. • Although most of these church representatives tried to be fair, many use torture methods to make people “confess”, even if they were innocent. • The ones who were found guilty of heresy were fined, imprisoned, or even killed. How did church leaders try to fight heresy? POPE INNOCENT III • He was the most important pope during the Middle Ages, because of all his works in favor of the Holy Church. • He was elected pope on January 8th, 1198. • Introduced reforms on the Roman Catholic Church, reestablishing the authority of the pope and even expanding it. • Launched Crusades in the attempt of recovering the Holy Land. • Fought heresy in Italy and France. • In 1215, he presided the fourth Lateran Council, which reformed clerical practices within the Church. Pope Innocent III and the Fourth Crusade • August 15th, 1198: Pope Innocent III sent letters to kings and bishops to launch a new Crusade. He promised papal indulgences. • Fourth Crusade 1202-1204: Venetians set out to war against Constantinople to overthrown the emperor and replace him with another. They did not follow Pope´s instructions, so he excommunicated them. However, they plundered the city of Constantinople. • Pope Innocent III thought that this would reunite the Church, but finally the Greeks regained control of the Byzantine Empire and the church remained divided into Roman and Orthodox. Albigensian Crusade • In the early 1200s, he called a crusade against heretics in southern France. • The bloody war lasted about 20 years. Many towns were destroyed and it carried off thousands of lives. • This was a start for the Inquisition in Europe. THE RECONQUISTA The Moors • Moor, in English usage, a Moroccan, occasionally denotes a Muslim in general. • The word comes from the Latin “Maurus”, used by the Romans to refer to people that lived in the province of Mauretania (present day Algeria and Morocco). • Europeans from the Middle Ages to the 17th century described them as black, or tanned people of the Muslim religion, despite of the fact that many of them were of other complexions, such as white or reddish skin (“white moors”). Background: Years of Muslim Control • In 711, Muslim forces invaded Spain and conquered much of the Iberian peninsula. Under Muslim rule, the territory of Spain became one of the great Muslim civilizations, which was more advanced in science, arts, and medicine than the rest of Europe at that time. • By the late 900´s, Muslim government in Spain began to weaken, because political and religious leaders fought among themselves for power. There were also fights among ethnic groups. THE RECONQUISTA: Christians Fight the Moors • In Spain and Portugal, armed Christian warriors fought to drive the Muslim Moors out of their lands, with the excuse that they would not join the Christian religion. • They raided the Moors´ territories and took land away from them little by little. These set of battles was called the Reconquista. • In the 1300´s the Muslim government fell apart completely, under the hands of the little Christian kingdoms of northern Spain. But there was one last territory to be conquered: Granada. The Rise of Portugal and Spain • As a result of the Reconquista, both Portugal and Spain grew more powerful than before. • Portugal broke free from Castile, while Castile and Aragon decided to unite, but remained as separate states. • In 1469 Ferdinand, the prince of Aragon, married Isabella, a Castilian princess. When both inherited the thrones of their countries (about 1569), they ruled all of Spain together as King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. • Ferdinand and Isabella finally conquered the last territory of the Muslims in Spain, Granada, in 1492. • In this year they also created a law to force all Spanish Jews to become Christians, with the penalty of leaving the country if they did not obey. • A few years later, they also forced Muslims to convert to Catholicism under the same terms. • Finally, all Spain became a Christian kingdom. The Inquisition • A group of institutions to combat heresy. Started in France in the 12th Century. • It spread to Spain under the government of Ferdinand and Isabella. With their approval, an organization of priests ruthlessly looked for and punished anyone suspected of secretly practicing their old religion (Judaism or Islam), or for being heretics. • Later, it spread to Portugal as well. • In Spain, 2,000 people were found guilty and often tortured and burned to death. • In Portugal, 1,400 more were put to death, too. Discrimination of Jews in Europe • Jews were discriminated and killed not only in the Crusades and the Inquisition. All over Europe, rulers forced them to leave their countries, with the help of the Christian Church. • In 1290, the king of England arrested all English Jews and forced them to leave the country. • In France, the king did the same in 1306 and again in 1394. • In the Holy Roman Empire, many Jews had to escaped from angry mobs that blamed them of the Black Death. • They were also discriminated for not practicing Catholicism. Bibliography • https://www.britannica.com/biography/Innocent-III-pope • https://www.britannica.com/event/Albigensian-Crusade • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4883611/ • https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moor-people • http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat55/sub393/entry-5847.html • https://www.history.com/topics/religion/inquisition
