The Power and the Glory

The Rise and Reign of the Catholic Church

By Louis Blachman

The story of the Catholic Church is a story of power in its myriad complicated forms: spiritual, political, cultural. Seen by many as the oldest functioning institution on Earth, the Church’s history spans centuries and continents, from the Church’s foundation during the life of Christ to today’s Vatican City. As described in Catholic tradition, the founding was a transaction of power: Jesus said to the Apostle Peter, “I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). Jesus had established Heaven’s domain on Earth, the Church, and the keys were held by Peter the Apostle, the first pope. This Petrine primacy — Peter’s preëminence passing down through each successive pope — became the bedrock of the Church’s power.

In the first centuries CE, the Roman Empire kept its distance from early Christianity, with Roman officials considering the budding religion a threat to the state. However, the 4th century brought radical change in the person of Emperor Constantine, who decriminalized Christianity and opened the door for it to become the official religion of the Empire. With his imperial rule, Constantine turned the hostility between the Roman state and Christianity into a powerful union, setting a precedent for a government inseparable from its religious institutions. It wasn’t long before the influence of the papacy rivaled the political power of any other world government.

The pope’s direct sovereignty encompassed a wide portion of Italy known as the Papal States, but the papacy’s reach was far larger. With a far-ranging patronage and the strategic creation of alliances, the pope effectively ruled over huge swaths of Europe during the Middle Ages. For Catholics, he was an all-powerful religious icon — the sole intermediary between Heaven and Earth. For others, he was a dangerous political foe. The political might of the Church at that time can’t be overstated: the pope’s power extended far past the performance of religious rites to dictatorial control over his clergy, citizens, and the vast European expanse of Latin Christendom (the states united by shared Christian belief). To oppose the Church was to draw the fury of Christendom, a force exploited by the pope in building a military force that would defend and expand the Church, with the pope himself effectively serving as its commander-in-chief.

Additionally, the Church of the Middle Ages was a primary provider of education and the arts. Educational pursuits were foundational to the mission of the Dominican Order, and monasteries became central locations for the education of young boys from wealthy families to prepare them for a life in the Church. This schooling followed the Greek liberal arts model in which students received education in a variety of fields: Latin, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. Many of the early European universities were founded by the Roman church and served as centers both to educate and to spread religious teachings. Art flourished under the Church, too; medieval art incorporated Christian images and symbols, often commissioned by affluent patrons and churches. Cathedrals themselves were great works of art, designed with enormous precision and an eye for spectacle and functionality alike.

While the pope maintained significant power as the sovereign ruler of the Papal States, figurehead of Christendom, military leader, and supporter of the arts and sciences, the 16th century posed an unprecedented threat to the papacy. Although schisms were nothing new for the Church by the late Middle Ages — many Christian sects had branched off from the Church by that point — the Protestant Reformation of 1517 placed extraordinary pressure on the Church. The Protestants argued for less reliance on the Church and a stronger individual relationship with God, sharply contrasting the Church’s teachings of the pope as the direct line to God. If anyone could really have their own connection to God, what would that mean for the one who held “the keys of the kingdom of heaven”? What would it mean for the Church’s power if the truths on which they had built their foundation were suddenly decided — or proven — to be false?

These questions held enormous significance to the life of the Church, and the consequences of the ensuing events of the 15th and 16th centuries still reverberate to this day. Powerful forces in society — religious, political, economic, cultural — will often be threatened by new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new sources of knowledge. Today’s most controlling institutions and governments may use their strength over society to suppress those ideas: banning books, prohibiting certain words and ideas in classrooms, undermining the free press, denying the most basic of truths. Rather than adapting and accepting new knowledge, this repression and adherence to a strict orthodoxy of thought and belief becomes a means of preserving their primacy. And, just as it was done five hundred years ago, we must continue to fight — dangerous, radical, uncomfortable, scary as it may be — to tell the truth.