Protestant Reich Church
The term state church is applied to different phases and regions of the history of church and state. He referred to a narrow ideological, institutional and personal connection between a political system of government and the spread in the area concerned Christian Church. The church is subordinate to the state and monarchical authority, they legitimized moral and is secured and supported materially by it.
Roman Empire Church
The association of worldly power and spiritual authority was known in ancient times mainly by the Egyptian Pharaoh, who was also the highest priest, God and secular ruler of his polity. Similarly, this trend in the Ancient Orient was seen. In the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar combined the functions of head of state and Pontifex Maximus ( high priest ) on you. This personal union was always maintained by the Roman emperors from Augustus (from 12 BC), imperator next to the title as a term secular power came the title Augustus ( " the Exalted ") with the Roman in the imperial period, the right to worship and worship of the emperor was raised during his lifetime. The refusal of many Christians to perform this form of worship the head of state, founded the first clashes with the Roman state.
Constantine the Great was finally at the beginning of the 4th century, the first Roman emperor, who officially privileged Christianity. Already 313 he had in the Milan agreement ( often wrongly referred to as the " Edict of Toleration " ) are explained together with Emperor Licinius, to want to grant to the Christians and all citizens of the Empire now on full religious freedom. In the following years he promoted further Christianity and caused quite named after him Constantinian turning point in Roman religion policy. After his death in 337, his sons continued, especially Constantius II, continuing the promotion of Christianity and with it the disadvantage of paganism.
An essential step towards Roman imperial church was finally the Three Emperors edict from the year 380, which declared the Roman Alexandrine Trinitarian faith the official religion of the Roman Empire to end the inter-Christian disputes, and the edict of 391, in which Theodosius I the pagan cults banned. Thus, Christianity was finally become Reich Church. After today's perspective, many researchers however, it was not until Justinian I, which Christianity actually sat in the middle of the 6th century in the Roman Empire against paganism.
Christianity had thus taken over the political function as a link between the parts of the empire, which was previously carried out by the Roman religion. The grant to the Christian religion was a civic duty. The Roman Empire saw its part to promote a unified church as his duty, since he saw the force against further fragmentation of the empire in the imperial church.
Sequence included the imperial convocation of councils, imperial influence on dogma as well as strengthening the power of the bishops. The latter in particular meant that even after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire a largely intact legal and administrative structure remained intact in the form of the Roman Church. In the Byzantine Empire lasted this Caesaropapism continued.
After the disappearance of the Western Roman co-emperor of the Roman emperors were in Constantinople Opel again the sole legitimate ruler of formerly Roman territory, which also weakened the position of the popes in Rome against their Mitpatriarchen to Konstantin Opel. After the end of the unity of the empire, Pope Gelasius I. Emperor Anastasius I end of the 5th century, the two-sword theory contrary and no later than by the separation of the Eastern Roman Church ( all eastern schism 1054 ) was both the unity of the Reich territory and the unity of church and state finally over.
Imperial church system in the Holy Roman Empire
The medieval Holy Roman kings had to recognize that the feudal system was not enough to manage the land, as it was the tendency among the vassals, to transform into hereditary fief own property and thus to escape the clutches of the king. Therefore, the kings and emperors proceeded to to borrow against bishops with territories and rights as they had to remain childless, thus the problem of heredity not arise. To reinforce the principle still, despising the emperor usually careful to appoint a man as bishop of a region, who came from another territory. All secular and regional forces, the dukes, counts and noble landowners who were opposed to the claim to power of the emperor, inevitably threatened the interests of the dependent by the monarch bishop. The problem was this ratio, when the Church reform of Cluny the pastoral mission of the church took over and demanded serious, clergy - the bishops - to set up independently of secular rulers. This led to bitter disputes between pope and emperor, culminating in the Investiture Controversy (see also De Civitate Dei ).
The interdependence between emperor and pope remained tight, especially since Otto the Great, many German bishops were to Empire in 1803 at the same time imperial princes.
German Reich Church ( National Socialism )
Developed in the Weimar Republic within Protestantism national religious movement German Christians (DC ) welcomed deeply the power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi German state. The DC installed the Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller and called the church of the empire in which all Protestant and should rise denominational churches. They set out the program of Gleichschaltung own, by requiring, in addition, the Old Testament and all " alien " customs impeachment does not conform to the system clergyman as well as the application of the Aryan paragraph for the Church overrule. The imperial church failed. The numerically vanishing Confessing Church played a far smaller role than the ideology of National Socialism itself, whose representatives Himmler or Rosenberg soon open (and thus also the Church ) proclaimed the policy of elimination of all independent movements.