The Roman Catholic Church of the medieval period, especially during the tenth through the thirteenth centuries, established itself as the prominent social institution and, perhaps, the most dominant political institution of the Western world. Despite government persecutions, barbarian marauders, and the shifting tide of rising and falling governments, the Church exalted itself above even the Holy Roman Empire to unify the civilized peoples of Europe under a centralized authority. As perhaps the only stable authoritarian body of the Western world, the Church dominated the lives of kings and peasants, becoming a pervasive influence in all manner of social and political commerce.
The early establishment of the doctrines, dogmas, rituals, and communications of the Church, prepared the foundation upon which the power and influence of the pope would rest in the middle ages and beyond (as well as splitting the Church into its eastern and western factions centuries earlier). Catholic leaders engulfed in the Cluniac reform movement were well equipped for the expansion and solidification of the Church's hold on the world with the unified message that stressed the primary goals: the glorification of God, and the administration of spiritual needs to the faithful. Indeed, the Church, by the early middle ages,
shaped the calendar of the day and the year. It set the festivals--Christmas, Carnival, Lent, Easter, St. John's Night, Twelfth Night, Lady Day in Harvest, Halloween. It offered a panoply of intercessors to whom to pray and of evils from which to be protected. It presided over the key events of life--birth, marriage and death. Its moral code and its canon law governed human behavior . . . . It provided fundamental religious stories--Adam and Eve, Jesus and Mary, Peter and John--around which men and women could organize and give meaning to their lives.
Aurelius Augustinus (354-430 CE, later St. Augustine), "whose influe...