Papacy

Since the time of the early Roman Empire, when the Christian faith was banned, the bishops of Rome exercised a wide-ranging authority over Christian believers, based on the establishment of the Roman church by the apostle Peter. After the fall of the western empire in the fifth century, the city of Constantinople became the seat of power of the eastern Roman (Byzantine) emperors, and the Christian bishops of that city challenged the authority of Rome. The popes of Rome sent missionaries to northern Europe to convert pagans to the new faith, a process that took five centuries through the early Middle Ages. In the meantime, the Eastern and Western Christian churches contended for centuries over doctrine and their respective authority in Europe, with a Great Schism occurring between the two in 1054. In the meantime, the popes of Rome were fighting the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire for control of Italy, with the popes wielding the power of excommunication over the emperors, who had large, multinational armies and allied Italian cities and states on their side.

The medieval Papacy was torn by its own inner conflicts and rivalries, leading to the “Babylonian Captivity” in which the popes moved from Rome to a palace in the city of Avignon in southern France. The schism within the Papacy, which at times was claimed to be led by three different men, and the worldliness of the church inspired a movement for reform and defiance of the pope's authority. Under the leadership of Jan Hus, Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin, the Protestant Reformation sought a return to the early simplicity and purity of the Christian faith, and an end to the worldly power and wealth claimed by the popes and their representatives. In Rome, the papal court became a leading center for the patronage of artists, sculptors, scholars, and architects, and the Papacy grew wealthy from the system of tithing and the selling of indulgences—the pardoning of sins.

A Counter-Reformation began in the late Renaissance after several meetings of the Council of Trent, which set down new doctrine to be enforced by the members of the church. Making alliances with Catholic rulers, such as the Emperor Charles V, the popes sought to return Protestant lands to Catholicism, with mixed results. The popes claimed civic as well as religious authority in several principalities of central Italy, known as the Papal States. During the sixteenth century, the Papacy conquered many important cities of Italy and imposed direct rule over them. The power of the Papacy over even Catholic rulers declined after the Renaissance, until the Papal States were finally dissolved in the nineteenth century and the Papacy became a purely religious institution.

See Also: Alexander VI; Julius II; Papal States; Reformation, Protestant