Cheyette v. The State

Extract

[...] The result of Gregory's reforms, besides the Investiture Controversy, and this new idea of legally defined power and position, was the Church becoming a more state like figure in the lives of its followers. The Church had been harping on about priestly celibacy for years plus the Nicene Creed had been official Church Doctrine since the fourth century. However, in the Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council, both things are yet again mentioned as being official policy. What makes this declaration so different from many of the ones that preceded it is that fact that Pope Innocent III lays out clear instructions as to who should search out non- followers, who should punish them, and how they should be punished. [...]

[...] Cheyette v. The State In his article Invention of the State,” Fredric L. Cheyette argues that the in the eleventh and twelfth centuries medieval society allowed an organized, coercive to evolve, courtesy of a small group of literate elite.[1] His idea is that following the Investiture Controversy, the intellectual abstract increasingly was enforced as common practice among medieval society. Cheyette's argument is in disagreement with what some historians have deemed the “twelfth century renaissance” in the fact that Cheyette views these developments in an ambiguous, if not negative, light while a renaissance supporter would deem it mostly as a positive occurrence. [...]