What effects did feudalism have on the Catholic church?

Answer 1

A:

Feudalism can be traced back to the rule of Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, so it was under Christian rule that feudalism prospered, survived and then declined. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church became perhaps the largest feudal ruler in all Europe. Not only were monasteries great landowners, but there were papal estates and the powerful Papal States.

Arguably, the decline of feudalism owes more to external events such as the Black Death and events leading up to the Renaissance than to the Church itself. In Germany, the Catholic Church was the largest landlord and even reintroduced feudalism after it had largely disappeared.

Feudalism may still exist, in a different form. According to Donald Cozzens, a theologian at John Carroll University, the Catholic Church is the last feudal institution in the Western world, a mediaeval bastion of secrecy and privilege that can not long survive in the modern world. He says that in a feudal system, the loyalty was always to the sovereign or the lord of the manor, not to the people. In the Church, the Pope is sovereign, and it is loyalty to the pope that is demanded.

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Catholic Answer

First of all, there is no "Roman Catholic Church" (other than the Catholic Church that is actually in the city of Rome!) It's just Catholic, not Roman Catholic. Roman is an epithet first commonly used in England after the protestant revolt to describe the Catholic Church. It is never used by the official Catholic Church. Secondly, the demise of feudalism became definite in the 1780's in France, after a series of bad harvests, rioting broke out, and the Estates General abolished all feudal privileges and created a "constitutional monarch"; thus its demise had nothing to do with the Catholic Church. As to the current status of feudalism in the Church, please see the discussion page.

Answer 2

Looking at this era of history (the "Dark Ages" 512 - 1000 A.D.) I'm not sure how much Feudalism itself affected the Church versus the same forces which brought about Feudalism also brought about this nadir in many aspects of the Church. Just roughly, land was all important in feudalism and was the currency with which service was bought and paid for by the local Lord's and the King. Basically all economic resources came back to land, and the Church was also given grants of land, to the point where she was eventually the largest possessor of that most valuable of earthly commodities. Beginning with Charles Martel (ruler of Francia from 718 until 741 A.D. the Frankish rulers started appropriating the Church's lands, until Charlemagne (ruler of the Franks from 768 to 814) instituted an Old Testament tithe in which a plot of land in each parish was to be reserved for the Church's support.

Churchmen had their own land, and their own vassal Knights, which they had to have to provide the needed military service to the King, and they themselves were forbidden to fight (although some priests and bishops occasionally fought in battles).

The upshot of all this was the Church got involved in politics more than spiritual matters, and the papacy declined to its nadir during this period as (with a few notable exceptions) there were a whole string of "bad popes".

On the up side of this coin, even as learning declined to virtually non-existent, the study of Latin flourished in the monasteries, and with the study of Latin, needed for the Liturgy and The Bible, many other ancient works were preserved by the monks.

During this period the vast majority of people were of the serf or feudal class, and the only way out of the rigid feudal model of society was the Church, that and a great faith of the common people resulted in many men and women entering the monasteries, and faith and learning surviving and even flourishing there. This is a gross over-simplification of a long and complicated period. I would suggest you get a hold of a good history that covers this period, one excellent one would be The Building of Christendom, 324-1100: A History of Christendom (vol. 2) by Warren H. Carroll for an in depth study of the period. For a more cursory treatment, try History of the Catholic Church by James Hitchcock, chapter 5 Light in Darkness, or Catholic History by Diane Moczar, chapters 3-6; see links below.