Poland and France are both Catholic countries. The main difference is the level of observance between the two countries. Not many French people are religious while Poland is quite religious. If the President of France is making policy and the Archbishop of Paris objects to it, the President will probably laugh and ignore it. If the Prime Minister of Poland is making policy and the Archbishop of Warsaw objects, he has to seriously reconsider the policy.
This might seem obvious. Many Poles go to Church while hardly any French go to Church. In Catholic countries in the medieval era, it was very different. This Poland-France analogy is quite a modern thing and we often anachronistically project this view onto the medieval church. Everyone in the medieval era went to church so therefore the bishops held the hammer of power over the secular rulers, right? Well, they did for a bit. Let’s take a look at two examples.
In the 11th century when Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, we see how powerful the Pope was. Henry IV comes to the castle at Canossa, dresses up like a homeless person and begs for three days and nights out in the snow to be let back into the Church. This is the most powerful secular ruler on the European continent.
Two decades after that Pope Urban II called the first crusade at the Council of Clermont. Men from all over Europe took up the sword, sold all they had, and went thousands of miles away to liberate the holy land. This kind of power if unprecedented in history. A religious figure rallying people from all over the continent to fight a war on a different continent. Pretty amazing when you think about it.
In the 1480’s the Spanish inquisition was underway and there were abuses in the early days. Some conversos fled from Spain to Rome and told the Pope about this. Pope Sixtus IV wrote a letter to King Fernando or Aragon telling him to reform the inquisition. He proposed many reforms including getting the local bishops involved and having Rome as a court of appeal. King Fernando of Aragon wrote a nasty letter back to the Pope telling him to stay out of Spanish affairs.
I use this example because this was on the eve of the reformation. It’s also a country that would stay Catholic and fight to preserve Catholicism in Europe and around the globe for hundreds of years. Why would he do this? Because the days of the Papal political power were at an end. The days when the most powerful monarch in Europe would travel to the Pope, dress up like a beggar and throw themselves at his mercy were long gone. Now he couldn’t even propose religious changes to a devout Catholic King.
What happened in these four hundred years? A lot happened. I can’t get into it now, but by the time of the reformation, Popes wielded very little political power. The Protestants in Germany didn’t fear the Pope. They feared Charles V because he was a politician who wanted his domain to remain Catholic and it would have if he didn’t have to deal with military threats from the Turks and the French.
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