How did the church help the poor in the middle ages?

Answer 1

The church got wealthy during the middle ages because people were so afraid of going to hell. People paid their offering to church because the church told them they would go to hell if they didn't.

Answer 2

A lot of people tried to do things so they would not have to suffer though the pains of Hell. So they made donations to the church. The church acquired money, land and jewelry. But since the church did not pay taxes, it never had any reason to give land up, and so became continually richer as time went by.

The limit to all this was that kings needed money, too, and when all the money seemed to be going to the church, they exercised their authority to take it away. This happened when Henry VII of England took over the monasteries, after the Middle Ages ended. But it also happened earlier, when King Philip IV of France closed down the richest monastic organization in Europe, the Knights Templar, in 1307, so it happened during the middle ages, too.

Answer 3

The Church of Rome was the only religion in Western Europe, headed by the pope and regulated in each country by archbishops. As an institution it was extremely wealthy, with income from a variety of sources.

In England, the Church was the second biggest landowner after the king - this situation applied as soon as the Normans arrived in 1066. Under the feudal system everybody else held land from either the Church or the king (nobody else owned any land); the rents, taxes and other incomes from these lands went to the relevant landowner (such as the bishop of Winchester, the Abbot of Walden Abbey or the Prior of Christchurch Cathedral Priory, Canterbury. Naturally huge amounts of money were raised in this way - although the king might then tax the Church to raise money for specific purposes.

The Church levied a tithe on everyone in the country - one tenth of their produce, normally in the form of crops. This might be returned as a form of charity if crop yields were low in a particular year, otherwise it went to feed Church clergy or was sold at a profit.

Wealthy nobles would frequently donate money, land holdings, valuables and even villages to a monastery, church or cathedral, adding to its income. This was seen as a passport for the soul of the nobleman or noblewoman into Heaven and such donations were very common.

Some nobles paid for the building of a chapel and they also paid for a chaplain to staff it, saying prayers for themselves and their families.

Certain parts of the Church, such as the Cistercian monks, were extremely astute businessmen, raising vast numbers of sheep, dealing in wool production and supplying the clothing industry on a large scale (and making huge sums of money in the process).

Taken as a whole, the Church in England was second in wealth only to the king. Monks and nuns, however, were sworn to a life of poverty and saw very little of this wealth.

Answer 4

they raised there taxes

Answer 5

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Answer 6

they didn't