Also, informative on how the kings and leaders of the church rivaled each other in the world. They were competing for power with the same group of people. It makes me wonder if any of these situations later compelled our own founding fathers to emphasize the separation of church and state. If anything was learned from previous medieval time periods.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Papacy
I found it very interesting seeing how different people ran the church during medieval times. Specifically, it seems that Pope Gregory I was the one that put the papacy in motion and became a true church leader. I think it was interesting how he saw slaves from England in the Roman marketplace and then converted them. In addition, then sent a delegation to England and then converted the King. Consequently, England became a christian nation. It makes me wonder, how the act of man could have a substantial impact not only on his own time but for the future.
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I agree that what Gregory did was very special, and his decisions to send missionaries to England sparked the total world takeover of the Christian faith. Also I completely think that the reason for the separation of church and state by our founding fathers was directly related to the happening of those times. The founding of our nation was based of religious freedom and escape from tyranny. Our founding fathers new from being aware of history that nothing good came from the involvement of church in state, and vice versa. In today's society the power of the Pope had considered considerably. What in history can be attributed to this decline in power?
The primary influence on the founders of our country were the terrible religious wars of the Reformation. Our Constitution was adopted in 1789. Only a hundred and one years previously the English had run their king out of the country because he tried to impose Catholicism. A hundred and fifty years before, the English had been caught up in a civil war over religion. And only a decade before that, much of Europe had been at war over the same thing.
Specifically, those conflicts (the Glorious Revolution, the English Civil War, the Thirty Years War) happened precisely because of the insistence of people that religion ought to be part of government. Even more recently, Americans themselves had had a strong dose of what that mentality means, from the split of Rhode Island to the policies of Maryland.
They did not take their position out of some theory or ideology. They knew clearly the consequences and were determined that the mistakes made in Europe would not be repeated in America.
So, no, I know of no particular influence from the Middle Ages. There were clearer and bloodier examples that were nearer to hand.
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