Читать книгу The World's Christians - Douglas Jacobsen - Страница 48

Catholicism developed its mature form as a religious tradition during the high middle age, between the years 1000 and 1350. During this time, the Catholic Church formally approved and codified many of the doctrinal commitments that still characterize Catholicism around the world today, including the seven sacraments, belief in transubstantiation (that the bread and wine of the Eucharist become the actual body and blood of Christ), and purgatory. Additionally, celibacy was mandated for parish priests, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was formulated, the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe were built, and Christianity’s first universities were founded. This was also, however, when Catholic Christians became increasingly intolerant of people different from themselves. This intolerance led to the Crusades (military campaigns undertaken for the purpose of reclaiming the Holy Land as Catholic territory) and to widespread persecution of Jews and people declared to be heretics.

Catholic developments in the later middle age (1350–1500) were even more complex and religiously disorienting. For almost seventy years (1309–76), the papacy was relocated from Rome to the French city of Avignon, and after the popes finally returned to Rome there was an extended period (1378–1417) when two lines of opposing popes fought each other and claimed to be the true pope. During these same years (1340–1400), Europe was ravaged by the bubonic plague. Called the “Black Death,” this awful disease killed roughly a third of the European population. The impact on Catholicism was substantial. Confidence in the institutional church declined, and other ways of trying to connect with God (especially mysticism) became more popular, helping to set the stage for the Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s.