Renaissance Church

The Catholic Church was a powerful and iconic presence in the Renaissance. It has always seemed to be made out as a villain, but the Catholic Church did much more good than evil in the Renaissance. It provided food and other necessities to people in need in other countries through it’s missions and provided education and financial help to those Europeans who just had some bad luck. It was the center of town and often one of the only recreational things that a post-medieval town had. It also supported the arts and artistic expression.

One of the many wonderful things that the Catholic Church did was help provide education for those people in need. It helped hundreds of thousands of people learn about trades, ancient history, English, Latin, and other languages of the era, and great life lessons that would help the followers of the church make decisions later on in life. The church built schools and colleges to make sure that the next generation was well educated. It even founded some famous universities, including Oxford, the University of Paris, and many others. The church was also a great place to go and feel that you, as an individual, had a role in society, even a larger part in humanity. It was like a social club, or a recreational center, a place to meet and talk openly about matters of importance, discuss philosophy, and science. It created a purpose in life for those who were going through hard times and gave hope to the unhopeful and ungrateful.

Thirdly, the church sponsored writers and was a strong supporter of the arts. It gave money to many famous renaissance artists, such as Michael Angelo and Donatello, as well as influential writers like Dante and Servantez. All of these people are still well-known historical figures today. The church supported artistic expression and at the same time gave artists a structure and subject they could focus on. The church also helped musicians and composers with their art form, providing the band members, instruments and venues they needed to perform their music and help define culture as it was in the renaissance. This lead to the invention of the piano and the violin, two of today’s most popular instruments. The Catholic Church truly pushed art and literature into a then-modern era.

Yet another good thing the Catholic Church did for the common-folk was to build missions across the world. These missions helped spread the Christian message of peace and loving thy neighbor as thyself. These missions also provided jobs for people in need of money, healthcare for people in need of cures, and friendship for those in need of hope. These missions stretched from Middle Asia all the way through Africa and Europe to the western edges of the Americas and was the equivalent of the Red Cross of today. It connected cultures across the world and possibly prevented many civil outbreaks. The Church also helped shape the cultures of the other countries and provinces it helped with the christian missions. The Church influenced far-off lands such as Southeast Asia and South America, as well as bringing back the innovations and some of the cultural aspects of these cultures. It took the best aspects of both worlds, combining them to create a better world, one world. Some of the items they brought back to Europe were coffee beans, from the Americas, a food source which resonates in the heart of many people living today. There are other food and other practical items, but the church also exchanged ideas. They brought the use of They funded the expedition of Christopher Columbus to find America. Without the Catholic Church, America may not have been discovered for another hundred years and would certainly not be the country it is today.

These were just some of the many things the Catholic Church did for society and the commoners back in the Renaissance. It obviously wasn’t “evil” as it still has over one billion members today in almost every single country in the entire world. It has survived as a major world religion for just under two thousand years and led to the start of at least three hundred new Christian based religions. The Catholic Church was a powerful and wonderful thing in the Renaissance and deserves to be treated as such today.