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The medieval church:

The Christian church influenced life in the middle ages by numerous church activities, such as spiritual services, political powers, economic activities, social services, educational work and missionary work.

Spiritual Services:
The sacraments were a sacred ritual of the church and they were the only way to avoid eternal suffering in hell. By participation in the sacraments and following your faith you could avoid that eternal suffering.

Political Powers:
The Church has absolute power over the religious life of Christians in the middle ages. The church had created its own set of laws, which applied to religious teachings, behavior of the clergy and it also provided morals for life and marriage. Theses sets of laws were known as Canon law.
People who didn’t obey the laws would be in trouble. They would be excommunicated from the church. When you are excommunicated you cannot receive the sacraments and therefore you will suffer for eternity and they could not be buried in a sacred ground. When you are excommunicated you are also shunned by all the other Christians. There were different punishments for nobles who were excommunicated. When a superior person was excommunicated so was there whole entire region and if that happened the ruler or noble would give in to the pope because they didn’t want their people to gang up against them.

Economic Activities:
People who lived in the village took pride in their church and they decorated it with care. To support the church all people had to pay a tithe. A tithe was a tax that was equal to a tenth of their incomes. The church used the tithe to support the poor.

Social Services:
Both women and men could become religious figures, women could become nuns and men could become monks. When you became either a monk or a nun you had to take a vow, one of poverty. With the vow of poverty they also had...