Criticism Of The Roman Catholic Church During The Late Middle Ages Greatly Influenced Attitudes Toward Religion During The Renaissance Due To Church Corruption As Demonstrated In Document 1 (Church Above The Law) And Erasmus’ Satire About Church Policies

IDENTIFY THE FOLLOWING THINGS IN THE DBQ RESPONSE: 1. Thesis Statement – underline 2. Three Categories – circle each one in the thesis statement. 3. Draw an arrow pointing to the point of view (there are 3). 4. Put a star where each document is used in the body of the response. 5. What do you think this would score?

DBQ #1 COACH P

Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church during the late Middle Ages greatly influenced attitudes toward religion during the Renaissance due to church corruption as demonstrated in Document 1 (church above the law) and Erasmus’ satire about church policies. Attitudes were also influenced through the spread of humanistic ideas as demonstrated in Mirandola’s excerpt from Oration on the Dignity of Man (document 3) and through the decline of the church demonstrated by the excerpt from the Council of Pisa and Erasmus’ excerpt from the Praise of Folly.

The corruption of the Roman Catholic church from the Pope all the way down to local churches and monks played a major factor in influencing attitudes about it. Marsiglio of Padua blames the church for many corrupt teachings and states that church members “refuse to be subject to the laws”. He may be influenced by the difficult state of affairs that are occurring in France regarding the Great Famine, likely blaming the church for these. Furthermore, Erasmus uses satire and humor to demonstrate the corruption of the church. He states that the church members are ready to call “anyone to whom they are not favorably inclined” a heretic. Erasmus was a well-respected writer of the time but his writing was oftentimes considered fallible because of the satire with which he used.

A new ideal, humanism, flourished during this time period. Europeans started to focus on their time on Earth and scholastic and secular learning, not just religion. Because of this, scholars began to question the church and it’s doctrine which had been restricted to clergy. In Document 3, Mirandola writes that man can become whatever talents God graces him with, the most important of which is “intellectual” and he states that those people will be “angel and the son of God.”

The schism in the Roman Catholic Church influenced attitudes significantly. In Document 2, Council of Pisa, the excerpt calls for unification of the church and should be brought together by the “united college of cardinals” and they go farther to call this the “detestable schism” showing their disdain for the breakup. In the painting of Pope Leo X, Raphael is showing two cardinals who are facing and looking away from the Pope, possibly demonstrating disloyalty among the cardinals. This could be biased though as Raphael may have been commissioned to paint this by someone who had political viewpoints he wanted to show with the painting.