The center of the Eastern Roman Church was in today’s...

The center of the Eastern Roman Church was in today’s Constantinople in Turkey while the center of the Western Roman Church was in the present-day Rome in Italy where the popes used to have enormous power and influence so that the kings and monarchs of different countries extending as far as Spain received orders from them.

Having at their disposal big trades and industries as well as enormous endowed properties and vast agricultural fields, the popes and Church enjoyed great economic and military power. In practice, their authority was such that they had control over the entire European continent and challenged the rulers and monarchs of other lands and confronted them.

Of course, this power was not constant and was occasionally undermined by rebellions of kings and rulers, but the pope had practical authority over the entire Christian countries, and monarchs had to submit to and obey him. This was the claim of the Church which tried its hardest to exercise it. This sovereignty and dominance covered all spheres ranging from individual aspects, laws and religious rituals to the sociopolitical aspects as well as various sciences.

Training and education, learning and teaching sciences including mathematics, literature and astronomy were also under priests’ control.

The court rulings of the Inquisition during that period such as the sentence issued against Galilei Galileo (1564-16-42) on account of his view about the earth as spherical in form which was contrary to the Ptolemaic view adopted by the Church and its revolution around the sun contrary to the Church’s notion of geocentrism i.e., the earth is the center of the universe and all planetary bodies revolve around it are proverbial to all and sundry.

This is while the Christian Church at that time had no solid intellectual and religious basis. It mainly borrowed its ideas from empirical scientists and philosophers and had no firm material of its own. Naturally, in this system with its vast extent alongside the weakness and dearth of scientific foundations and theoretical underpinnings, corruption began to develop and gave rise to movements against the papacy and the Catholic Church.

Figures such as Martin Luther (the founder of the Protestant Church) came from within the ecclesiastical establishment to carry out a reform in the Christian teachings and take actions alongside other political and cultural reform movements.