Catholic dominance in Middle Ages

As with all gigantic historical Questions

LloydBrown said:

Medievalist, I'm expecting to hear from you here, but everyone is welcome to chime in.

Exactly how monolithic was the Catholic church in Europe during the Middle Ages? What other churches, heresies, and religions were there? How many Jews lived in Europe? How far into Europe did the Eastern & Russian Orthodox influence extend?

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You have to focus a little or the questions don't make much sense. The world of Medieval Latin Christendom lasted in some ways from say around 300 AD or so until right now (if you count the Modern Sciences, Roman Law, Universities, and the Catholic Church as continuous entities right out of the Middle Ages). Or you could add some very specific aspects and narrow the question down: Where and when has Papal Authority been supreme, infallable and unquestioned in Papal Theory? If that is the question, then you have to go far out of what you might think of as the Middle Ages and Say that from 1870 (Vatican I, I think) to 1960 (Vatican II, I think) that was the case. So there is your monolithic Catholic Church and by most chronologies 1870-1960 is not a very "Medieval" period.

Although Christianity - i.e. Catholicism - was the predominant religion for much of Western Europe, there were other faiths.

Jews during the Middle Ages were treated very badly by society as a whole and were segreated into ghettos, apart from mainstream society. Pogroms and attacks on Jews were common. In some places, Jews were driven out of communities.

In the earliest periods of the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon for some to still follow the old gods that predated Christianity. And there were a minority of Muslims scattered through Europe.

Eastern Europe - or most of what we think of today as Eastern Europe - would have been Orthodox.

Most heresies were put down very fast until the later Middle Ages when the first stirrings of Protestantism began. Martin Luther began the first true shift away from the Catholic Church in 1517 when the Reformation period began in earnest.

The Situation in 500AD

johnnysannie said:

Although Christianity - i.e. Catholicism - was the predominant religion for much of Western Europe, there were other faiths.

Jews during the Middle Ages were treated very badly by society as a whole and were segreated into ghettos, apart from mainstream society. Pogroms and attacks on Jews were common. In some places, Jews were driven out of communities.

In the earliest periods of the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon for some to still follow the old gods that predated Christianity. And there were a minority of Muslims scattered through Europe.

Eastern Europe - or most of what we think of today as Eastern Europe - would have been Orthodox.

Most heresies were put down very fast until the later Middle Ages when the first stirrings of Protestantism began. Martin Luther began the first true shift away from the Catholic Church in 1517 when the Reformation period began in earnest.

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If we go sort of frame-by-frame you can get a better idea of how non-Monolithic things could be. In 500AD, the Ostrogoths dominated Northern Italy. They were followers of Arius' interpretation of Christ's nature as the Highest Created Being (ie 'made' not 'begotten')...so they were not Orthodox Trinitarians. However, the Ostrogothic Chancellor, Cassiadorus was one of the most important figures for the developing the solid intellectual structure of the Othodox Trinitarianism that has been a crucial part of Western Latin Christendom (even though these days no one seems to have the slightest idea of what Christ's metaphysical 'hypostasis' is so my guess is that strictly speaking everybody is a heretic these days). The Franks were about to become (at least nominally) Orthodox Trinitarians partly as a political move in their struggle against the Visigoths in southern Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula. The Visigoths were of course followers of Arius' interpretation of Christ's hypostatic being.
The Christians of the British Isles were not under any comprehensive Trinitarian Orthodox supervision until after the Synod of Whitby in 664 and they had generated the Pelagsian Heresy in the early 5th century.
Non-Christians were in power in most of Northern Europe and Eastern Europe.
There were no Muslims on the Planet yet, but Latin Orthodox Trinitarianism
was pretty patchy extending only to the area around Rome and nominally to Northern Gaul. So in 500AD, there wasn't much monolithic going on.

I interpreted the original post to mean "monotheistic" rather than "monolithic" so perhaps Lloyd can clarify his meaning and intent.

Vatican I and Vatican II were about church issues and theology.

This link to a Christian timeline is from Wiikopedia but appears to be fairly accurate for the time period you are interested in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity

Flavorless 1000-1500?

LloydBrown said:

From roughly 1000 AD or so to the Reformation, most of Western Europe was Catholic and Catholic only. There was largely politicial dissension in the form of antipopes, but the catholic church pretty effectively squashed religious dissension (Arian heresy, Pelagian, the Hussites, etc.).

Obviously, the Catholic church did not control all of Europe, even as late as the 1500s. Greece, Romania, Russia, and parts of the east were Orthodox after the Great Schism.

Ideally, what I'd like to see is a nice color-coded map showing who believed what in Western Europe around, oh, 1200 (or any date within this time frame). By then, most of the nations of western Europe had abandoned their old polytheistic beliefs in favor of Christianity, in the only flavor they knew--Catholicism.

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Hmmm...seems to lack some verisimilitude. This flavorless color map might do as a quick scheme for Martians planning to vaporize the greatest possible proportion of people who lived under a regime that used Latin in its correspondence, but this would not relate well to the experience of non-vaporized people or people pre-vaporization. For example, the Hussites/Utrequists were not obliterated completely unless you count the 30-years War as the end of the Hussites. Prussia was mostly non-christian until the 16th Century. In the 18th century Herder was able to see a Prussian Sun Dance.

If you look in detail at any point of the supposed Monolithic Catholic Dominance, its just not there. There are invariably a lot more flavors apparent when you look at the actual details.

Don't forget Islam; Muhammad lived from 570-632, (this is a generally accepted date; there's some waffling sometimes about the birth).The first Caliph was Abu Bakr in 632, when Islam mostly a faith of the Bedouin. About ten years later, during the reign of Abu Bakr's successor, Umar, (634-644) All of Palestine, Syria and everything but a few tiny pockets of the former Persian empire was under Muslim control. By 956 the Seljuk Turks not only accepted Islam, they actively embraced and evangelized Islam.

Keep in mind that the Islam religious and social powers, while evangelical, did not prohibit or otherwise restrict other religions; you've got Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Zoroastrianism, the "forgotten" medieval religion, living side by side. By 720 all of the modern Middle East (but not Asia minor) all of North Africa, and most of Spain was under Islamic political and social control--though other religions still flourished, they were social and political minorities; the language was Arabic, and the faith Islamic.

This is pretty standard intro to Medieval History stuff; I'm cribbing from my own lecture notes. See if you can find an undergraduate Medieval history text book; they tend to have just the sorts of maps you're looking for. My personal favorite is Medieval Western Civilization and the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds, by Deno J. Geanakoplos, because it does cover the fact that Yes Virginia, There Were Other Religions.

Also keep in mind that Iceland was a little slow to convert. There was a sort of mixed Pagan Norse/Christian thing happening for a very long time, as the early settlement included Vikings and Christian hermits, and you read about people offering blood sacrifices at the foot of a cross, and the like.

In 1200 most of the areas bordering on the eastern Baltic were still pagan. Prussia (as noted above), northern Poland, the modern Baltic states, Finland were all subjugated and converted by the northern crusades.

waylander said:

In 1200 most of the areas bordering on the eastern Baltic were still pagan. Prussia (as noted above), northern Poland, the modern Baltic states, Finland were all subjugated and converted by the northern crusades.

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That's an excellent point. My Finnish colleagues tell me that the Lapps are not exactly members of the standard theological camps even today.