Question

What effect did the Black Death have on the Church?

Answer 1

After the plague was over, times were tough for the Catholic Church. Remember, in medieval times, the Church wielded incredible political power over the lives of many people whether they were kings or peasants. But when the Black Plague hit Europe, the Church was at a loss. Their promises to heal the sick turned out to be empty and people began to lose faith in the Church.

Countless priests lost their lives to the plague, often because they became infected by visiting the sick, weakening the Church's influence in many areas. After the Plague abated, the Church began to promote priests to fill in positions of power (and who were often those who were corrupt) and to replace their losses. The strict requirements were loosened allowing questionable candidates to march right in and abuse their roles, further weakening the Church's reputation in the eyes of the public. Corruption spread even further within the Church because many of the priests being brought in now were often in it for the prestige and to simply enrich themselves. Quality had gone out the window in a desperate run to refill their ranks.

But what also weakened the Church was the sudden interest in science to try and explain what had happened. People wanted answers, and when the Church failed to provide any during the Plague, they turned to other methods to find out the truth. The Church was still a powerful institution, but it was clear that it was weakened by the Plague in many ways.

Answer 2

That seems a bit of a stretch, Cap. The Black Death peaked in Europe around 1350, and the attitudes of the Reformation and Rennaissance, which you describe here, occurred one to two hundred years later, albeit earlier in Italy. Also I think the Avignon Papacy was seen as corrupt and worldly long before the plague, because of its increasing association with (and cooperation with) the French monarchy.

Answer 3

Not entirely. The long term effects of the Plague contributed to the increasing decline in the Church's power over the state in Europe. The attitudes fostered by a devastated population and the ongoing rot further weakening the Church from within, especially when the Plague recurred (albeit in smaller impacts) well after its most fierce and widespread infection of the continent had passed in the 1350s, didn't immediately occur overnight. But the Plague was certainly a contributor to the kind of conditions that Martin Luther and the Reformation would question centuries later as the ripples of its passing left parts of Europe a post-apocalyptic landscape of empty villages and bones.

As for Avignon, in hindsight, the Avignon papacy was an embarrassment to the Church. But to the medieval courts and the papacy itself, it was seen as something of a safe move away from the intrigues of Italy's ruling families who regularly picked which popes would sit on the papal throne. By relocating to Avignon, it was seen as an act of preservation - by some - and a reflection of French power by others.

Both regular peasants to the greatest of kings recognized the temporal presence of the Church as a unifying tool greater than their own borders, and the Church leaders knew this whether they were in Rome or Avignon. Regardless of its corruption, people still turned to it as an institution of power and prestige. Only now, after the Plague, more people would wonder why the Church was unable to help them while it grew rich. The days of a Church that wielded unquestioned earthly power over crown and sword under Pope Innocent III were long over.

Answer 4

Well, it's an interesting speculation, but I disagree. I think you're seeing this anachronistically, thinking about how a modern person -- with modern distrust of heirarchy -- would view the devastation of the plague matched against the Church's suppsoed power. What you describe is indeed how a 21st century American would view the failure of his leadership to protect him against something as mindless as the plague.

But we are not talking about 21st century Americans. We are talking about 15th century European peasants, and they had very different attitudes. They also had a very different understanding of the plague. They didn't see it as a natural scourge, bacteria, something that science and wisdom could overcome. Generally they saw it as an Act of God, a divine punishment, and something that only moral purity could overcome. When a whole village died of the plague, the response of the neighboring village was not -- gee, how come the bishop didn't prevent this? Maybe he's a fraud! Their response was more along the lines of, wow, I guess they were REALLY far gone in moral rot, unsalvageable, a regular Sodom destroyed by a rain of fire. We better listen more closely to what the bishop recommends we do to avoid the wrath of God.

Furthermore, you should keep in mind that the Church did not assert it could control the will of God. It only said it offered the best possible advice to meeting his, somewhat mysterious, demands. The Church offered to be your lawyer in front of the throne of St. Peter -- but it did not guarantee the outcome. And the response of people at that time to the failure of the appeal -- death, disease, misery -- was not to think their "lawyer" did a bad job, but to think that their case was unwinnable from the start. Again, I suggest you are thinking anachronistically, and not quite appreciating how very different 15th century thought and perceptions were than 21st century.

Besides which, it's a matter of historical fact that during the plague (and other troubles) people became much *more* attentive to the Church, and not less. The schisms and heresies and reformations all arose during prosperious and healthy times, when people felt less urgency about being good so as to avoid God's punishment. Italy's Renaissance began, first and foremost, in economic prosperity and increased temporal security. This is generally how it is. When times are bad people hunker down, get conservative, get religion. Free-thinking belongs to the good times, when people have the luxury of questioning traditional strictures.

With respect to the Avignon papacy, we were talking not about the move to Avignon, but the move back, after the plague, driven by general disappointment in the corruption and toadying to the French kings of the Avignon popes.