The Return Of Martin Guerre Essay

The Catholic Church had many reports of abuses of power, ranging from affairs to drunkenness, to sale of Church offices. Members of the clergy and even Popes have accounts of affairs with illegitimate children as proof. Gambling and public intoxication were common, with clergy members showing that they didn’t always practice what they preached. This can be seen in the movie “The Return of Martin Guerre” when the Priest engages in gambling with the gypsies. Often, members of the clergy would elevate their position by buying a higher Church office, showing that wealthy matter more than piety to the Church, which lead to absenteeism in which noblemen who bought multiple offices couldn’t be in both places at once. With such flaws in the Church,

The Church used two main forms of religious conformity: excommunication, the exclusion from sacraments, and indict, the excommunication of an entire town or city. Through these, the Church used fear to control the people and stayed involved in people’s lives through the seven sacraments. The seven sacraments are: Baptism, which purified recipient of the Original Sin (at birth), Confirmation, which admitted the baptized to the full Church privileges, Ordination, which invested those entering the clergy with priestly authority, Matrimony, which blessed the union of man and woman, Penance, which acknowledged repentance of sins and offered absolution, Eucharist which joined human being to God by means of the body and blood, and Extreme unction, the final absolution from sins (right before death). It was very hard to escape the Church’s influence, and most everyone was religious. In “Year of Wonders”, Anna Frith and the rest of the townspeople were all religious, and all looked to the rector, Michael Mompellion, for guidance and leadership. Although the novel takes place in a setting with a divide of Puritans and Quakers, with Puritans being the majority, the function of religion having complete control still