Christendom

The essential thing to grasp is that the period was one of transition, a time in which medieval characteristics were decaying and modern characteristics were growing up, but in which the former had not disappeared and the latter were not yet strong enough to take their place.

Popes and emperors still claimed to be the joint heads of Western Christendom and sometimes acted as if their supremacy was still recognized, but their claims were practically obsolete.

Some emperors, such as Rudolf and Charles IV, recognized the change and tried to devise a new policy to suit the altered times.

Others, such as Henry VII and Sigismund, talked and acted as if the old traditions were still unshaken.

So again we find a pope like Boniface VIII defying national independence in the tones of an Innocent III or an Honorius IV, whereas a more prudent pontiff, Martin V, evaded the control of the Council of Constance by making separate terms with the various states of Europe and devoted himself not so much to the task of ruling the church as to that of restoring the temporal power in the papal states.

It is the same with the growth of nations which ultimately shattered the medieval conception of a united Christendom.

England was the only state which was really organized in the early part of the period, and even England passed in the 15th century through a prolonged civil war, the Wars of the Roses, which for a time seemed almost fatal to national unity.

France underwent horrible convulsions during this period, but the dawn of better things began with the inspiring career of Joan of Arc and with the administrative reforms of the reign of Charles VII.

Naturally the Pope as the head of the Church became the supreme court of appeal in all cases amenable to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

He thus assumed the attribute of the fountain of justice for the whole of Christendom, while emperors, kings, and princes bore the sword, according to this ambitious conception, simply as his ministers to carry into effect his sentences and decrees.

Soon after the death of Charlemagne the empire fell into decay and was not revived until 962, when Otto the Great secured the imperial crown to the German race.

It henceforth became the rule that whoever was elected by the German princes as their king had a right to the crown of Italy and also to the imperial title.

Exerting his authority as protector of the Church, he nominated for the Holy Office a series of devout and strong-minded men, and thus restored the moral repute of a power which was to bring his successors to ruin.

In 1073 Gregory VII, or Hildebrand, was elected to the papal chair and flung down the gauge of battle with the secular authority.

Discarding with scorn the theory that the pope and the emperor were two co-equal world powers ordained to act in conjunction for the general good of Christendom, he asserted that the spiritual power was to stand related to the temporal power as the sun to the moon.

He conceived the ambitious ideal of an universal theocracy with the pope at its head as God's vicar on earth.

Naturally the pope as the head of the church became the supreme court of appeal in all cases amenable to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

He thus assumed the attribute of the fountain of justice for the whole of Christendom while emperors, kings, and princes bore the sword, according to this ambitious conception, simply as his ministers to carry into effect his sentences and decrees.

Soon after the death of Charlemagne the empire fell into decay and was not revived until 962 when Otto the Great secured the imperial crown to the German race.

It henceforth became the rule that whoever was elected by the German princes as their king had a right to the crown of Italy and also to the imperial title.

Exerting his authority as protector of the church he nominated for the holy office a series of devout and strong-minded men and thus restored the moral repute of a power which was to bring his successors to ruin.

In 1073 Gregory VII or Hildebrand was elected to the papal chair and flung down the gauge of battle with the secular authority.

Discarding with scorn the theory that the pope and the emperor were two co-equal world powers ordained to act in conjunction for the general good of Christendom he asserted that the spiritual power was to stand related to the temporal power as the sun to the moon.

He conceived the ambitious ideal of an universal theocracy with the pope at its head as God's vicar on earth.

But, you know, they are articulated anew in distinctive ways.

So in the same way that Christendom, the meaning of Christendom, changed over time from something which described medieval Catholic Europe in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion, it comes to describe, in the 19th century, when they talk about Christendom, they're talking about a clutch of rivalrous states engaged in a kind of global project of commercial and political expansion.

So similarly, the meaning-- and again, you know, I mean, I'm taking existing scholars' work.

This isn't kind of my view, but I'm simply using the work of existing scholars, primarily Debschi, but some others as well, to make the case that these categories are re-articulated.