European at a Religious Crossroad

After the fall of the Roman empire in 500 A.D to the beginning of the Modern Era in the 17th century, Western Europe went through expressive changes in their religious identities and significance. In the beginning of the Middle Ages, Roman Catholicism was the dominant religion in Western Europe with a small population of Muslims. With desperation and lack of hope in their life people leaned towards Catholicism as the last hope for afterlife, but throughout the 1300 year period many events changed the original standard of religion, and people’s view of religion that motivated to develop a new branch of Christianity or approach to God in their own way. The key events that caused the dramatic changes were the Crusades, Plague, and the Reformation.

Before the events Europe was feudally organized with a another powerful organization, the Roman Catholic Church. Christians in western Europe blindly obeyed the Catholic Church and followed the rules. They didn’t doubt them at all because of the fear of excommunication and the strong belief of afterlife. Most people were illiterate during the beginning of the Medieval Era, and they thought the Church was the main, and only link to God and communicated with God through them. The people didn’t dare to criticize or complain to the powerful Church or they met death. The followers were forced to follow the Church even though they didn’t like the orders of the Church.

The Crusades were a series of war between the Christian Europeans and the Muslims in the Middle East. The Crusades was conducted by the Pope who was eager to take over the Holy Land and sent soldiers over for battle. Before the Crusades majority of the Europeans were Christians, but to become a Crusader you had to be a Christian. Through the convincing of the Church about the glorious riches and a pass to heaven many people who were not Christians were converted to become a Crusader and to set on a journey. With the unanimous followers the Church turned greedy and turned their backs onto focusing on religion and began to look for wealth and ways to lure more tax and followers. Although the Crusades brought wealth and new goods to Europe, the loss of Jerusalem and failure kindled the doubt of the Catholic followers towards the Pope. After the Crusades religion became a huge factor of life and it’s value. Even though the Church gained wealth and followers to tax, they lost their credit that snowballed with the approaching event, the Bubonic Plague.

The Plague was a disease started in Eurasia during the 1300’s that spread through many different ways. It wiped out one third of the population in Europe, and this plague was known as the “Black Death”. As the crisis was unstoppable Christians saw the plague as a punishment of their sins and relied on their religion more and closely. Many Christians believed that the Pope knew the way to stop the plague as it was eradicating the population fast. Regardless of faith the Pope couldn’t prevent his own death either. The powerless and incapable Church’s boast of cure led into cynicism among the followers. Also as the plague was in it’s climax many priests died trying to aid the sick, but the people was urgent for a new priests so they chose less qualified priests who were not skilled. Most of the replacement priests were illiterate and couldn’t teach the people based on the Bible. They teached false and less reliable teachings, which caused the stories to be untrustworthy.  The Plague made people doubt and question the Church and as they couldn’t trust the church they looked for ways to follow in their own ways . After the plague as desperate as they were the people were brought closer to religion. The Christians presented their questions and requests to the Church which led to more conflicts in Europe.