The Roman Catholic Church During The Dark Ages

For over twenty decades the Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, has been the largest Christian church, with more than 1.2 billion members worldwide. It is among the oldest religious institutions in the world, and has played a prominent role in the history of Western civilization. The Catholic hierarchy is headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one true church founded by Jesus Christ, that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles and that the Pope is the sole successor to Saint Peter. The Church maintains that the doctrine on faith and morality is infallible.

Considering the extensive history of the Catholic Church, it is not surprising that throughout their

Seeing that the government or society as a whole couldn’t provide a strong authority figure as the church did, people innately were pulled into the church. The Catholic Church provided a place where they were had to a higher standard and placed each citizen in their own place in society. The hierarchal structure of the church gave the impression of stability and strength, because if people had an awareness of an obvious power structure they would be more likely to rely on it. Beginning with the Pope, who presided over the entire Catholic faith, then the Bishops whose jobs were to look over the parishes or a region, and then finally the priests who presided over individual churches, the hierarchal nature of the church was very organized and elaborate. The structure of the church allowed for the accountability of the parishioners to be greater because they had to go through many different layers before they could get to God. This dependence of people, during the middle ages, on the Church, stemmed directly from the Migration Periods turmoil’s from lack of political stability and the structure that the church could provide which all led to the power that the church held during the Middle