How did religion affect politics during the Middle Ages?

Question

I realise this is a simple, easy question. I have trouble articulating my thoughts. Help?

Answer 1

No, it's not an easy simple question, so don't feel bad about not being able to articulate thought on this. Entire books have been written on the subject. One of the best I've read lately is called the "The Victory of Reason" by Rodney Stark (put out by Princeton University Press). He points out that a lot of what popular culture "knows" about the middle ages is propaganda that was put out by philosopes of the so-called "Enlightenment" who had an axe to grind with the Catholic Church.

Another good book, although it is LONG, is "Inventing the Middle Ages" by Norman F. Cantor. He breaks the book down into sections looking not so much at the middle ages themselves, but at the influences and biases of the people writing about the middle ages in the 20th century. Facinating stuff.

Finally, I'm currently reading "Violence & Daily Life" by Rudolph Conrad. Mostly it is about the illuminations at the beginning of each chapter of a copy of the "Moralia in Job" (an important book in the middle ages) made in Citeaux, France in A.D. 1111. However, he gives a lot of insight in the political situtation in early 12th century France, both secular and monastic.

People are people and to think that interactions between groups of people (because at its base level, that's what politics is) were simpler in the pre-Modern era is frankly naive. There is a reason the word "Byzantine" is sometimes used to mean "unduly complicated".

Answer 2

It's not quite as easy as it sounds. The affect religion had on politics varied widely throughout Europe and throughout different time periods.(One European king had a arab harem)(One of the Louis of France wsa Beatified) As a general rule, religion was a vital component of every walk of life during the Middle Ages.

Various popes claimed to hold power over every kingdom, a source of obvious friction with other leaders. At the time there was no real division of church and state as we have today. Most leaders of the time had a confessor, a private priest who served as a chaplain-type individual within a household, which is reason enough to say the two were so intertwined during the Middle Ages, and the Rennaissance for that matter, to be easily distinguishable.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

Simply put: politics was religion, religion was politics.