in the middle ages, what powers did the church hold? how did the church help the common man?

Answer 1

The Church was a massively corrupt institution. It was an actual country, not just the Vatican, much larger, with it's own gov. (headed by Pope) and army. Called Papal States.


Church owned 1/3 of the land in Europe, massively wealthy, quite oppressive, doing little for the peasants that barely live.

Answer 2

This is a difficult question to answer as the Middle Ages included centuries of history. You need to be more specific to get answers.

The only way to answer it in a broad sense is that the Church did the same things then that was done previously and after the Middle Ages, they delivered the Sacraments to the faithful so that they could endure to final salvation.

In Christ

Answer 3

In many ways, the church had more power than the king. The arguement used by the bishops was that the king had conrtol of your body for just the few years that you were alive, but the priests and bishops could forgive sin, and send your "soul" to heaven, or refuse to forgive their sins, and send their soul to hell for all time.
The help that the church gave was in the form of hope of heavenly reward, and eased the fear of death. It also relieved him of most of his money. In each village, the church was more expensive that all the rest of the buildings combined.