History of Christianity

===Beliefs, practices and heresy===
{{See also|Christian mysticism|Christianity in the Middle Ages|Italian Renaissance|Mary, mother of Jesus|Gregorian Reform}}
By the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, the [[parish]] church emerged as one of the fundamental institutions of medieval and Old Europe.{{sfn|Van Engen|1986|p=542}} Formed from the needs and interests of their local communities, the parish church became the center of medieval village life.{{sfn|Van Engen|1986|p=542}} By the thirteenth century, "parish" could refer indiscriminately to both village and church.{{sfn|Van Engen|1986|p=543}}

Medieval folk invoked Christian norms and practices as the ideal toward which they strove, but medieval religious life included a constant struggle to maintain those norms.{{sfn|Van Engen|1986|p=538}} Most believed that access to Heaven was available only through participating in the Church's sacraments, and living morally as defined by a list of [[Tree of virtues and tree of vices|seven virtues and seven vices]].{{sfn|Matthews|Platt|1992|pp=217–218}}{{sfn|Van Engen|1986|p=543}}{{sfn|Heather|2023|pp=VII, LXXXV}} Private [[Confession (religion)|confession]] became a routine event required annually of every Christian after 1215.{{sfn|Van Engen|1986|p=543}} Confession and [[penance]] were the chief means of personal religious formation.{{sfn|Van Engen|1986|pp=543–544}} [[Purgatory]] was officially adopted in 1215.{{sfn|Wood|2016|p=11}} 

Between 1150 and 1350, the scope of how one could transgress began to widen.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|pp=361, 368-369}}{{sfn|Matter|2008|p=519}} Heresy, which previously had applied only to bishops and church leaders who knew theology, began being applied to ordinary people as concern over heresy grew and response to it became more severe.{{sfn|Deane|2011|pp=3–4}}{{sfn|Moore|2007|p=23}}{{sfn|Arnold|2018|p=369}}{{sfn|Matter|2008|p=519}} Based on the assumption that, in order to maintain a peaceful society, it was necessary to allow only one religion, heresy became a religious, political, and social issue.{{sfn|Zagorin|2003|p=3}} Prosecuting it, therefore, included both church and state.{{sfn|Peters|1980|p=189}}{{sfn|Mout|2007|p=229}} The courts that did so are jointly referred to as the [[Medieval Inquisition]]. This includes the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230) and the Papal Inquisition (1230s–1240s), though these courts had no joint leadership or organization. Created as needed, they were not permanent but were limited to specific times and places.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|p=363}}{{sfn|Ames|2009|p=16}}{{sfn|Deane|2022|page=xv}} 

Inquisition represented a change in church juridical procedure. Echoing Roman rather than Germanic tradition, it was initially directed toward policing morality, especially sexual sin among the clergy. Sin then became aligned with crime. Crime applied to everyone. Crime justified the use of coercion.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|pp=368–369}} Torture was an aspect of civic law.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|p=361}} 

The [[Fourth Lateran Council]] allowed clerics to search out moral and religious "crimes" even when there was no accuser.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|p=368}} In theory, this granted inquisitors extraordinary powers, but in practice, without local secular support, their task became so overwhelmingly difficult that inquisitors themselves became endangered. In the worst cases, some inquisitors were murdered. Inquisitors did not possess absolute power, nor were they universally supported.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|p=365}} The belief held by Dominicans that only they could correctly discern good and evil has been cited as a contributing factor to the riots and public opposition that formed against their order.{{sfn|Ames|2005|p=28; 34}}{{sfn|Given|2001|p=14}} The Medieval Inquisition became stridently contested both in and outside the Church.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|p=363}}{{sfn|Ames|2009|pp=1–2, 4, 7, 16}}

The Medieval Inquisition brought somewhere between 8,000 and 40,000 people to interrogation and sentence.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|p=363}} Death sentences were a relatively rare occurrence.{{sfn|Arnold|2018|p=367}} The penalty imposed most often by Medieval Inquisitorial courts was some act of penance which could include public confession.{{sfn|Wood|2016|p=9}}

Between 1478 and 1542, inquisition was transformed into permanently established State controlled bureaucracies. These modern inquisitions were political institutions with a much broader reach.{{sfn|Rawlings|2006|p=1,2}}{{sfn|Marcocci|2013|pp=1–7}}{{sfn|Mayer|2014|pp=2–3}} 

==== Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) ====
{{Main|Albigensian Crusade}}
[[Pope Innocent III]] and the king of France, [[Philip II of France|Philip Augustus]], joined in 1209 in a military campaign that was promulgated as necessary for eliminating the Albigensian heresy also known as [[Catharism]].{{sfn|Marvin|2008|pp=3, 4}}{{sfn|Kienzle|2001|pp=46, 47}} Once begun, the campaign quickly took a political turn.{{sfn|Rummel|2006|p=50}} The king's army seized and occupied strategic lands of nobles who had not supported the heretics, but had been in the good graces of the Church. Throughout the campaign, Innocent vacillated, sometimes taking the side favoring crusade, then siding against it and calling for its end.{{sfn|Marvin|2008|pp=229,235–236}} It did not end until 1229. The campaign no longer had crusade status. The entire region was brought under the rule of the French king, thereby creating southern France. Catharism continued for another hundred years (until 1350).{{sfn|Marvin|2008|p=216}}{{sfn|Dunbabin|2003|pp=178–179}}

==== Baltic wars (1147–1316) ====
When the [[Second Crusade]] was called after [[County of Edessa|Edessa]] fell, the nobles in Eastern Europe refused to go to the Near East.{{sfn|Fonnesberg-Schmidt|2007|p=65}} The [[Balts]], the last major polytheistic population in Europe, had raided surrounding countries for several centuries, and subduing them was more important to the Eastern-European nobles.{{sfn|Fonnesberg-Schmidt|2007|pp=23, 65}} These rulers saw crusade as a tool for territorial expansion, alliance building, and the empowerment of their own church and state.{{sfn|Firlej|2021–2022|p=121}} In 1147, Eugenius' ''[[Divina dispensatione]]'' gave eastern nobility indulgences for the first crusade in the Baltic area.{{sfn|Fonnesberg-Schmidt|2007|p=65}}{{sfn|Christiansen|1997|p=71}}{{sfn|Fonnesberg-Schmidt|2009|p=119}} The [[Northern Crusades]] followed intermittently, with and without papal support, from 1147 to 1316.{{sfn|Christiansen|1997|p=287}}{{sfn|Hunyadi|Laszlovszky|2001|p=606}}{{sfn|Fonnesberg-Schmidt|2007|pp=65,75–77}} Priests and clerics developed a pragmatic acceptance of the forced conversions perpetrated by the nobles, despite the continued theological emphasis on voluntary conversion.{{sfn|Fonnesberg-Schmidt|2007|p=24}}