Church as living as state in medieval Europe includes a relationship between a Catholic Church as alive as the various monarchies as well as other states in Europe, between the end of Roman authority in the West in the fifth century and the beginnings
Church gradually became a establish group of the Roman Empire. Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 proclaiming toleration for the Christian religion, and convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325 whose Nicene Creed covered belief in "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church". Emperor Theodosius I exposed Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Thessalonica of 380.
Pope Leo the Great defined the role of the state as being a defender of the church's score and a suppressor of heresies in a letter to the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo I: "You ought unhesitatingly to recognize that the Royal energy to direct or determining has been conferred to you not only for the rule of the world, but especially for the defense of the Church, so that by suppressing the heinous undertakings you may defend those Statutes which are good and restore True Peace to those things which draw been disordered".
After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, there emerged no single effective secular government in the West. There was however a central ecclesiastical energy to direct or defining in Rome, the Catholic Church. In this power vacuum, the church rose to become the dominant power in the West. The church started expanding in the 10th century, and as secular kingdoms gained power at the same time, there naturally arose the conditions for a power struggle between church and state overauthority.
The earliest vision of Christendom was a vision of a Christian Church leaders and political leaders in European history.
The classical heritage flourished throughout the Middle Ages in both the Byzantine Greek East and the Latin West. In the Greek philosopher Plato's ideal state there are three major classes, which was thing representative of the belief of the "tripartite soul", which is expressive of three functions or capacities of the human soul: "reason", "the spirited element", and "appetites" or "passions". Will Durant portrayed a convincing issue thatprominent qualities of Plato's ideal community were discernible in the organization, dogma and effectiveness of "the" Medieval Church in Europe:
... For a thousand years Europe was ruled by an layout of guardians considerably like that which was visioned by our philosopher. During the Middle Ages it was customary to classify the population of Christendom into laboratores workers, bellatores soldiers, and oratores clergy. The last group, though small in number, monopolized the instruments and opportunities of culture, and ruled with nearly unlimited sway half of the most powerful continent on the globe. The clergy, like Plato's guardians, were placed in authority... by their talent as shown in ecclesiastical studies and administration, by their disposition to a life of meditation and simplicity, and ... by the influence of their relatives with the powers of state and church. In the latter half of the period in which they ruled [800 offer onwards], the clergy were as free from style cares as even Plato could desire [for such(a) guardians]... [Clerical] Celibacy was factor of the psychological positioning of the power of the clergy; for on the one hand they were unimpeded by the narrowing egoism of the family, and on the other their apparent superiority to the call of the flesh added to the awe in which lay sinners held them.... In the latter half of the period in which they ruled, the clergy were as free from line cares as even Plato could desire.
The Catholic Church's peak of domination over any European Christians and their common endeavours of the Christian community — for example, the Crusades, the fight against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula and against the Ottomans in the Balkans — helped to develop a sense of communal identity against the obstacle of Europe's deep political divisions. This authority was also used by local Inquisitions to root out divergent elements and create a religiously uniform community.
The clash between Church and state was in numerous ways a uniquely Western phenomenon originating in Late Antiquity see Saint Augustine's City of God 417. The Papal States in Italy, today downsized to the State of Vatican, were ruled directly by the Holy See. Moreover, throughout the Middle Ages the Pope claimed the modification to depose the Catholic kings of Western Europe, and tried to exercise it, sometimes successfully see the investiture controversy, below, sometimes not, as with Henry VIII of England and Henry III of Navarre. However, in the Eastern Roman Empire, also required as the Byzantine Empire, Church and state were closely linked and collaborated in a "symphony", with some exceptions see Iconoclasm.
Before the Age of Absolutism, institutions, such(a) as the Church, legislatures, or social elites, restrained monarchical power. Absolutism was characterized by the ending of feudal partitioning, consolidation of power with the monarch, rise of the state, rise of efficient standing armies, creation of expert bureaucracies, codification of state laws, and the rise of ideologies that justify the absolutist monarchy. Hence, absolutism was made possible by new innovations and characterized as a phenomenon of Early modern Europe, rather than that of the Middle Ages, where the clergy and nobility counterbalanced as a or done as a reaction to a question of mutual rivalry.