Editing Christendom (section)

===Later Middle Ages and Renaissance===
{{Main|High Middle Ages|Late Middle Ages}}
{{Further|East–West Schism|Western Schism|Crusades|Reconquista}}
{{Further|Latin Empire|Frankokratia|Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologos dynasty|Byzantine–Ottoman Wars|Fall of Constantinople}}

After the [[collapse of Charlemagne's empire]], the southern remnants of the [[Holy Roman Empire]] became a collection of [[papal states|states loosely connected]] to the [[Holy See|Holy See of Rome]]. Tensions between [[Pope Innocent III]] and secular rulers ran high, as the [[pontiff]] exerted control over their temporal counterparts in the west and vice versa. The [[pontificate]] of Innocent III is considered the height of temporal power of the papacy. The ''[[Corpus Christianum]]'' described the then-current notion of the [[community]] of all [[Christians]] united under the [[Roman Catholic Church]]. The community was to be guided by Christian values in its politics, economics and social life.<ref>Shaping a global theological mind By Darren C. Marks. Page 45</ref> Its legal basis was the ''[[Canon Law|corpus iuris canonica]]'' (body of canon law).<ref>Somerville, R. (1998). Prefaces to Canon Law books in Latin Christianity: Selected translations, 500-1245; commentary and translations. New Haven [u.a.: Yale Univ. Press</ref><ref>VanDeWiel, C. (1991). History of canon law. Leuven: Peeters Press.</ref><ref>Canon law and the Christian community By Clarence Gallagher. Gregorian & Biblical BookShop, 1978.</ref><ref>Catholic Church., Canon Law Society of America., Catholic Church., & Libreria editrice vaticana. (1998). Code of canon law, Latin-English edition: New English translation. Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America.</ref>

In the East, Christendom became more defined as the [[Byzantine Empire]]'s gradual loss of territory to an [[Early Muslim conquests|expanding Islam]] and the [[Muslim conquest of Persia]]. This caused Christianity to become important to the Byzantine identity. Before the [[East–West Schism]] which divided the Church religiously, there had been the notion of a ''universal Christendom'' that included the East and the West. After the East–West Schism, hopes of regaining religious unity with the West were ended by the [[Fourth Crusade]], when [[Crusades|Crusaders]] [[Siege of Constantinople (1204)|conquered the Byzantine capital of Constantinople]] and hastened the [[decline of the Byzantine Empire]] on the [[Byzantine–Ottoman Wars|path to its destruction]].<ref>Mango, C. (2002). The Oxford history of Byzantium. Oxford: Oxford University Press.</ref><ref>Angold, M. (1997). The Byzantine Empire, 1025-1204: A political history. New York: Longman.</ref><ref>{{cite book| last = Schevill| first = Ferdinand| title = The History of the Balkan Peninsula: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day| url = https://archive.org/details/historybalkanpe00schegoog| year = 1922| publisher = Harcourt, Brace and Company| page = [https://archive.org/details/historybalkanpe00schegoog/page/n142 124] }}</ref> With the breakup of the Byzantine Empire into individual nations with nationalist Orthodox Churches, the term Christendom described Western Europe, Catholicism, Orthodox Byzantines, and other Eastern rites of the Church.<ref>{{cite book| last = Schaff| first = Philip| title = The history of creeds| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=WVsvAAAAYAAJ| year = 1878| publisher = Harper }}</ref><ref>{{CathEncy|wstitle=Christendom}}</ref>

The [[Catholic Church]]'s peak of authority over all European Christians and their common endeavours of the Christian community—for example, the [[Crusades]], the fight against the [[Moors]] in the [[Iberian Peninsula]] and against the [[Ottoman Turks|Ottomans]] in the [[Balkans]]—helped to develop a sense of communal identity against the obstacle of Europe's deep political divisions. The popes, formally just the bishops of Rome, claimed to be the focus of all Christendom, which was largely recognised in Western Christendom from the 11th century until the Reformation, but not in Eastern Christendom.<ref>MacCulloch (2010), p. 625.</ref> Moreover, this authority was also sometimes abused, and fostered the [[Inquisition]] and [[Anti-Judaism|anti-Jewish]] [[pogroms]], to root out divergent elements and create a religiously uniform community.<ref name="lazare61">{{harvp|Lazare|1903|p=61}}</ref> Ultimately, the Inquisition was done away with by order of Pope Innocent III.<ref>{{CathEncy|wstitle=Inquisition}}</ref>

Christendom ultimately was led into specific crisis in the [[late Middle Ages]], when the [[monarch|kings]] of France managed to establish a French national church during the 14th century and the papacy became ever more aligned with the [[Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation]]. Known as the [[Western Schism]], western Christendom was a split between three men, who were driven by politics rather than any real theological disagreement for simultaneously claiming to be the true pope. The [[Avignon Papacy]] developed a reputation for corruption that estranged major parts of Western Christendom. The Avignon schism was ended by the [[Council of Constance]].<ref>Stump, P. H. (1994). The reforms of the Council of Constance, 1414-1418. Leiden: E.J. Brill</ref>

Before the modern period, Christendom was in a general crisis at the time of the [[Renaissance Papacy|Renaissance Popes]] because of the moral laxity of these pontiffs and their willingness to seek and rely on temporal power as secular rulers did.{{Citation needed|date=April 2014}} Many in the Catholic Church's hierarchy in the Renaissance became increasingly entangled with insatiable greed for material wealth and temporal power, which led to many reform movements, some merely wanting a moral reformation of the Church's clergy, while others repudiated the Church and separated from it in order to form new sects.{{Citation needed|date=April 2014}} The [[Italian Renaissance]] produced ideas or institutions by which men living in society could be held together in harmony. In the early 16th century, [[Baldassare Castiglione]] (''[[The Book of the Courtier]]'') laid out his vision of the ideal gentleman and lady, while [[Machiavelli]] cast a jaundiced eye on "la verità effetuale delle cose"—the actual truth of things—in ''[[The Prince]]'', composed, humanist style, chiefly of parallel ancient and modern examples of [[Virtù]]. Some Protestant movements grew up along lines of [[mysticism]] or [[renaissance humanism]] ([[cf.]] [[Erasmus]]). The Catholic Church fell partly into general neglect under the Renaissance Popes, whose inability to govern the Church by showing personal example of high moral standards set the climate for what would ultimately become the Protestant Reformation.<ref>The Cambridge Modern History. Vol 2: [https://archive.today/20121206015231/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=62407231 The Reformation (1903)].</ref> During the Renaissance, the papacy was mainly run by the wealthy families and also had strong secular interests. To safeguard Rome and the connected Papal States the popes became necessarily involved in temporal matters, even leading armies, as the great patron of arts [[Pope Julius II]] did. During these intermediate times, popes strove to make Rome the capital of Christendom while projecting it through art, architecture, and literature as the center of a Golden Age of unity, order, and peace.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pape/hd_pape.htm|title = The Papacy during the Renaissance|last = Norris |first =  Michael|date = August 2007|website = The Metropolitan Museum of Art|access-date= 11 December 2013}}</ref>

Professor Frederick J. McGinness described Rome as essential in understanding the legacy the Church and its representatives encapsulated best by [[Rome|The Eternal City]]: <blockquote>No other city in Europe matches Rome in its traditions, history, legacies, and influence in the Western world. Rome in the Renaissance under the papacy not only acted as guardian and transmitter of these elements stemming from the Roman Empire but also assumed the role as artificer and interpreter of its myths and meanings for the peoples of Europe from the Middle Ages to modern times... Under the patronage of the popes, whose wealth and income were exceeded only by their ambitions, the city became a cultural center for master architects, sculptors, musicians, painters, and artisans of every kind...In its myth and message, Rome had become the sacred city of the popes, the prime symbol of a triumphant Catholicism, the center of orthodox Christianity, a new Jerusalem.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0053.xml|title = Papal Rome|last = McGinness|first =  Frederick|date = 26 August 2011|website = Oxford Bibliographies|access-date= 11 December 2013}}</ref></blockquote>

It is clearly noticeable that the popes of the Italian Renaissance have been subjected by many writers with an overly harsh tone. Pope Julius II, for example, was not only an effective secular leader in military affairs, a deviously effective politician but foremost one of the [[Art patronage of Julius II|greatest patron of the Renaissance period]] and person who also encouraged open criticism from noted humanists.<ref>{{cite web|url = http://faculty.uml.edu/CulturalStudies/Italian_Renaissance/5.htm|title = Background for Italian Renaissance|last = Cheney|first = Liana|date = 26 August 2011|website = University of Massachusetts Lowell|access-date = 11 December 2013|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140116035753/http://faculty.uml.edu/CulturalStudies/Italian_Renaissance/5.htm|archive-date = 16 January 2014|url-status = dead}}</ref>

The blossoming of renaissance humanism was made very much possible due to the universality of the institutions of Catholic Church and represented by personalities such as [[Pope Pius II]], [[Nicolaus Copernicus]], [[Leon Battista Alberti]], [[Desiderius Erasmus]], sir [[Thomas More]], [[Bartolomé de Las Casas]], [[Leonardo da Vinci]] and [[Teresa of Ávila]]. [[George Santayana]] in his work ''[[The Life of Reason]]'' postulated the tenets of the all encompassing order the Church had brought and as the repository of the legacy of [[classical antiquity]]:<ref name="Santayana">{{cite book |last= Santayana |first= George |year= 1982 |title= The Life of Reason|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15000/15000-h/vol5.html|location=New York |publisher= Dover Publications |access-date= 10 December 2013}}</ref>

<blockquote>The enterprise of individuals or of small aristocratic bodies has meantime sown the world which we call civilised with some seeds and nuclei of order. There are scattered about a variety of churches, industries, academies, and governments. But the universal order once dreamt of and nominally almost established, the empire of universal peace, all-permeating rational art, and philosophical worship, is mentioned no more. An unformulated conception, the prerational ethics of private privilege and national unity, fills the background of men's minds. It represents feudal traditions rather than the tendency really involved in contemporary industry, science, or philanthropy. Those dark ages, from which our political practice is derived, had a political theory which we should do well to study; for their theory about a universal empire and a Catholic church was in turn the echo of a former age of reason, when a few men conscious of ruling the world had for a moment sought to survey it as a whole and to rule it justly.<ref name="Santayana"/></blockquote>