How Did The Church Influence Art

For many people today, religion is not a huge part of their lives; of course there are people who are heavily devoted to their faith. What these people do not realize is that our whole world today is built upon the pillars of religion. Up until the late eighteenth century, religion was everyone’s entire world in Europe; everything they did was for the Church. Therefore, the Church was crucial to the development of our modern world. This can easily be seen by the Church’s influence on art, and the role of the Church in the world-changing events of the Reformation, and the French Revolution.
At the time of one of the most famous periods in art history, the Renaissance, the Papacy was at its most powerful point in history. During this time, those with money who commission artists to prove that they are above others and that they give plenty to the Church. Popes and bishops themselves who try to prove themselves the most powerful by paying artists to show their wealth; some of the most famous and influential pieces of art you see today are all because of them. In 1506, Pope Julius II hired many artists and architects to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica. As said by Michelangelo, who worked to perfect the building, "It cannot be
They did so through their many debates about what the Bible actually says, debates that were never successfully resolved and therefore produced multiple contradictory religious truth claims. The result was a growing lack of confidence in religious truth itself that contributed directly to the marginalization of theology and God from life in the modern period. Whereas in the Middle Ages Christianity had provided the social glue and fundamental sense of meaning and purpose for human existence, in the modern world these crucial functions have been taken over by