How Important Was the Church in Medieval Europe?

The Church was the single, largest, most important unifying structure in all of Medieval Europe. It touched the heart of all of the Medieval European society, from the richest, most powerful King, down to the poorest peasant. Almost everyone was a Christian in the Middle Ages. Every child in Medieval Europe was baptized, as everyone was a supporter of the Christian beliefs, people went to Church, either healthy or sick, and they all put their life, hope and trust into the Roman Catholic Church of Medieval Europe.

The Church was any good person’s path to Heaven. Every person in society would keep to the laws and be shown the path to everlasting life and happiness. They would often take certain offerings, gifts or sacrifices to the Church to be placed in a certain part of heaven. These gifts would include crops and fiefs, sometimes even serfs! This helped and allowed the church to become immensely important and even gave it the power to rule over the Kings of Medieval Europe. This really shows how important religion was to the people, and the Church was the only path to religion.

The head of the Church was known as the Pope. The Pope was regarded as being Gods representative. This gave him a huge amount of power and importance. Anyone who turned against the Pope would be banned from the Church and go straight to hell when they died. As this was a time when everyone believed in Heaven and Hell, and everyone attended the Church this was considered even worse a punishment than being sentenced to death.

Something that really strongly helped the Church was its astounding number of supporters and followers .Over ninety percent of those people who lived in Medieval Europe were supporters of the Roman Catholic Church. Because religion was so important during these times, many people devoted their entire life to being closer to God. They spent their days preying or working for the Church in silence. They even lived in the Church. The Church was their life.

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