was weak, and when most people knew
little of the world outside their village or
feudal domain. Although the Holy Roman
Emperors would challenge the popes for
power in Italy, in the rest of Europe the
Catholic hierarchy remained an unques-
tioned authority; the seven sacraments ad-
ministered by a priest marked the most
important events in an individual’s life,
and the calendar of holidays, saints’ days,
feasts, and fasts guided believers through
the seasons of the year.
The Catholic Church grew into a
wealthy institution from the tradition of
the tithe, a donation of 10 percent of one’s
goods or income to the church. In Rome,
the popes lived in luxurious palaces and
presided over the Curia, the papal head-
quarters. Catholicism was a complex hier-
archy of cardinals, archbishops, bishops,
and local priests, who administered the
sacraments and guided the members of
the parish. The church was a cultural as
well as religious institution. Catholic doc-
trine guided artists in their works, univer-
sities were founded under the authority of
the church, and scholars devoted their
writings to interpretation of the Bible and
the works of the early church fathers.
The authority of the popes, however,
posed a direct challenge to secular rulers
who were attempting to consolidate their
authority and create national governments.
The kings of France had a long standing
feud with the church over the authority of
the pope to appoint bishops. Eventually, a
French faction would take the Papacy out
of Rome entirely and establish a new
Catholic capital in the French city of Avi-
gnon. This Babylonian Captivity led to a
split in the church and to several men all
claiming to be pope at the same time. To
resolve the problem, church members held
a series of councils; this conciliar move-
ment, which claimed that an assembly of
church leaders held ultimate authority over
the pope himself, became another source
of debate and division.
In the Renaissance, as communication
improved, as the Bible was translated into
new languages, and as scholarship brought
to light ancient philosophies, the Catholic
Church found its doctrines and authority
challenged. Jan Hus, a fifteenth-century re-
former from Bohemia, founded a national
church that paid no allegiance to the pope.
Martin Luther, a German priest of the
early sixteenth century, directly challenged
the pope, accusing his church of corrup-
tion, worldliness, and godlessness. Hus,
Luther, and other reformers sought to re-
turn Christianity to its roots, and restore
the simple faith and religious devotion of
the apostles and the early Christians.
Luther’s reform took Christians out of the
Catholic Church entirely, and denied the
authority of popes, bishops, and priests
over the lives of believers.
The Catholic Church fought this Prot-
estant Reformation with religious trials
and threats of excommunication, which
denied the sacraments to a heretic and
barred his entry into heaven. The church
also fought heresy with the Inquisition, a
religious court, and the Index, a list of pro-
hibited books. Catholicism was coming
into conflict with many new currents of
philosophy as well as scientific investiga-
tion. Astronomers such as Galileo Galilei
and Nicolaus Copernicus had to be cau-
tious about advancing theories that con-
flicted with accepted church doctrine.
In the century following Martin
Luther’s Reformation movement, civil and
international wars were fought in Europe
between Catholics and Protestants, with
northern Europe largely breaking away,
and southern Europe remaining loyal toCatholicism