The Church During the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries

            During the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, the Catholic Church in England was befallen by several serious issues, which led them into a time of dissention and eventually division between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. These problems included a dispute between the Pope and the King, which brought corrupt rules and traditions in the church as well as other controversies. Most of these altercations, especially The Great Schism, can be linked back to corruption in the ranks of both the King and the Pope, and thus an illegitimate struggle for power, almost always leads to a great estrangement in the culture. 

            Before all of the issues surfaced, the Church was successful in England and Catholicism was the dominant belief, and everything seemed to be going well, until critical drawbacks occurred. Problems began when certain  people filled the offices in the Catholic Church which led to problems, as, for instance, Simony was a common abuse of church offices, it involved unqualified people purchasing their way into church offices and then channelling the income to benefit themselves. Also people in the church spent money to buy symbols and ornaments to raise there social standing. To make matters worse, King Henry IV began to desire influence over the Church, and started to control certain aspects and traditions within it, and this is what caused his excommunication. 

With this great struggle for power, it was no surprise that tribulations began to arise between church leaders, and these intense issues are commonly thought to be a result of corrupt traditions. Due to these deceitful people in the church, unholy traditions began to be practiced such as the sale of indulgences which brought many church authorities to conflict; contrary to popular belief, an indulgence is not something you buy to receive forgiveness of sins, that would be ridiculous because in the Catholic Church all you need to be forgiven is to confess. The principal of an indulgence is that once a sin is committed you may receive forgiveness of sins, but you will still have a following punishment, and it was this that an indulgence would counter. You would buy one and it would grant you relief from the immediate judgment of your sin. Buying indulgences and later on joining the Crusades were both popular ways of getting atonement for the penalties of sin. 

Another problematic tradition that was arising in the church during this time, was that King  Henry IV was able to choose the church leaders so that he would have control, which laid the final blow, causing the schism. The reason that he did this was because he knew that the Bishops would not attempt to gain power or pass the authority to their sons because they did not have any, and this way the King, not the Pope, would exercise power over the church, and thus over the people. This resulted in Henry being excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII. Also church leaders began to have conflict with one another, Catholics argued with other Catholics, who were far more orthodox driven, and at this time there was no Orthodox Church, just orthodox teaching within the Catholic Church. However, the orthodox oriented Catholics and the regular Catholics began to have conflict, between belief and solutions to the current problems at that time, because of what the king had enacted. The solid Catholic oriented people congregated in western areas for the most part, as it was centralized in Rome, and the more orthodox driven people tended to live in the areas surrounding Constantinople in the east, hence the Eastern Orthodox Church. Eventually the issues facing the church, and the conflict between the two doctrines rose to a head, and this resulted in The Great Schism of 1054. Now this schism did not mean that the churches moved away from one another or that the people were not to speak to each other, as the only thing that really changed was the beliefs that each denomination held, and therefore, they made a distinction between the two as different churches. There are differing beliefs on why the schism occurred, but most likely the it can be linked back to the small local issues between the church and the King, and these things caused differing traditions and beliefs on both sides. Indulgences are thought of as a likely cause, or Papal Supremacy, but whatever the case most suspected causes can be followed back to the corruption in the ranks on the local level.

            In conclusion, I would say, that the root cause of The Great Schism was the extraordinary power struggle between the Pope Gregory and King Henry, and this eventually led to the division and resulted in The Roman Catholic Church and The Eastern Orthodox Church. From this whole situation we can see that even small conflicts heavily influence the surrounding culture. This can be seen in many areas of life such as family, politics, relationship, and, as we have observed, even religion, therefore, it is important to think about what exactly is being influenced by our common conflicts beyond the obvious.

 Information gathered from broominate: Mideval Church Corruption.