Middle ages witness many struggles between kings and popes towards gaining the ultimate power. Their main reason of such struggles was to bring strong control upon Europe and introduce their own policies and developments of reformation. For many centuries, monarchs had rule over the crown and church, whereas according to Catholic Church many had a belief that pope should be given power as being Christ’s representative on this earth. Roman Empire continued until the 5th century when it finally fell and power to govern was in the hands of Catholic Church, having dominant position in the Western Europe (Gorski, pp. 138-167). The same time secular kingdoms were also busy in getting power and making its position even stronger that actually and finally developed conditions between popes and kings to fight over the power. The root cause of the fact of struggle and fight between popes and monarchs was that church wanted free ruling with no interference in their matters. The feudal Europe encountered various weak governments that did not favor people rights. As a result, pope emerged and proved to be the true representative of people, serving their rights and acting as their protectors by holding political role as well. However, at time the authority of popes was questioned who could just hold spiritual matters but not political ones.
According to Nascimento, Popes had spiritual beliefs but same time ability to handle people and empire in political matters too (Nascimento, pp. 84-85). Things could not go the way popes and kings were trying. They were not even ready to go for positive solutions to handle the spiritual and political matters living in their boundaries. Popes who had church authority made strict rules, rituals, and set of beliefs that were to be followed by kings, Christians, and even the peasants. The failure to follow such things would result in harsh punishments such as excommunication and interdict. The clashes continued for centuries and during that, many rulers came such as Otto who ruled the Roman Empire also named as Holy Roman Empire. Years went by and Frederick I became the ruler with whom not only the people but also current pope was unhappy. This resulted in Germany’s merchants and pope to join hands and make the force to give Frederick an astonishing failure. At last, Frederick learnt a lesson and accepted his defeat. The attempts to keep hold of empire resulted in many more battles, clashes between popes, and kings.
For many centuries, the popes dominated in power. In 1305, popes were given strong hold by the French monarchs but that did not mean it was the end of conflicts and struggles over power. In the beginning of 14th century, the kings of France and England faced opposition from Pope Boniface VIII who had some issues over the imposition of taxes on clerics. The strong and intense relationship of popes and French monarchs seemed to vanish during 14th century. It was even at that time during 13th-14th century that many events took place when the church and its practices were challenged and many Christians started to disbelieve the Catholic Church’s teachings and leadership and monarchs finally dominated the power and won in struggle.
Work Cited
Gorski, P. S. “Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700” American Sociological Review, Vol. 65, No. 1, Looking Forward, Looking Back: Continuity and Change at the Turn of the Millenium (2000), pp. 138-167
Nascimento, A. "Church and State Separation." Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right: Volume 1: The Left and Volume 2: The Right. Ed. Rodney P. Carlisle, Ph.D. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., (2005). pp. 84-85.
