Corruption Of The Church In The Middle Ages

The issue focused on the Churches role economically in the Middle Ages is demonstrated first through the doctrine of purgatory. This doctrine was enacted in 1254 when Pope Innocent IV adopted purgatory as an official doctrine of the church . This impacted everyday people in the Middle Ages because “Desperate for more revenues, the popes turned all their prerogatives into sources of income. Boniface, for example, put church benefices on the open market and commercialized “indulgences”—acts of piety or which people were promised release from Purgatory for a specific number of days” . The sale of indulgences justified the Church receiving money from everyday Christians who simply wanted to lessen their time in purgatory and get to heaven faster

The mass corruption of the Church before the reforms was seen through simony where Church offices were often sold to the highest bidder. This was exemplified through Pope Benedict IX who was easily one of the most corrupt religious officials of the Middle Ages as he was Pope three times and once sold his office to pursue marriage despite the rule of celibacy . The economic impact of the corruption of the Church on everyday people would allow for anyone with enough money to secure a job giving them an extremely unfair advantage over everyone else. Thirdly, because of the fear of purgatory, people would pay for extravagant funerals in attempt to shorten the amount of time their loved ones would spend in purgatory and if they could not afford that then they could pay the Church to have a proper Christian burial where they would be buried in consecrated land

The first way in which the Church impacted social aspects of everyday people’s lives was through birth. The impact the Church had on birth starts with the rules imposed regarding sex which dictated that it was forbidden during lent, advent, Easter week, on feast days, fast days, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, or on their wedding nights . The social impact of this was that the Church was meddling with the everyday affairs of people by limiting when they could and when they could not have sex. In addition to that, baptisms were performed at birth so that newborn babies could be welcomed into the Catholic faith, thus indoctrinating them into the Church from a young age. Equally important to childbirth, was the sacrament of marriage. The sacrament of marriage during the Middle Ages was heavily influenced by the Church. The Church tried to control marriages by creating and enforcing marriage laws. Despite the Church enforcing a set of rules for marriages, they allowed children to be married from puberty onwards, which was at age 12 for women and age 14 for men . Marriage at such a young age often had severe impacts on the children which they carried for the rest of their lives if they did not fall victim to the high mortality rates that came with pregnancy in the