The Vatican and An Economic Model of the Medieval Church

Today on our final day in Italy, we finally explored Vatican City and all the million sights it offers us. When we first arrived at the Vatican museum we were completely lost and had no idea where to go. We ended up just starting to generally follow the crowds and found our way into exhibits of ancient hieroglyphs, mummies, statues, rugs, maps, artwork, and more statues. There were more artifacts there than I could even imagine or comprehend how so many different parts of history were represented in the museum.

This entire quest of exhibits we walked through were entirely based on us following the signs to find the Sistine Chapel, and finally after hours of walking (not an exaggeration) we finally found it! The chapel was truly something different and there were so many rules when you enter such as no talking and no use of phones. The moment we walk in there are roughly five security guards all watching and yelling at people on their phones. Then I was astonished when we walked in a little further that there are hundreds of people crammed into this chapel. It truly showed the significance of this chapel and our lost journey was a success. Also shhh, I snuck a quick photo in the chapel.

We capped off our journey with finding the exit (harder than you might think) and then making our way over to St. Peter's Basilica and the square out in front of it. The church was absolutely massive and the square was full of tourists and really quite the site. (also a picture featuring Jake and Mitch)

Now a question you have to ask when looking at all the priceless artifacts that are present in this area and the massive amounts of wealth on display is, how did they come into so much money? The answer to this question was discussed in our article reading and earlier in the day during our discussions. Our article looked at the medieval church sole as an economic organizations instead of as a religious church, although that did factor into the discussion. Essentially, when looking at the church as an economic organization, it is truly a monopoly over the "soul" industry. An industry in which the religion is basically forced upon everyone, and all these followers must following the strict commands of the church in order to reach salvation. With such an importance and belief, the church designed ways in which each level of the hierarchy would pass money along to the next until it finally came to the top level, the Vatican. This explains why so many priceless artifacts are found here and why the city is grand. The plan and goal of the highest in power of the church were able to succeed in charging every monetary and religious organization to be a part of the only real church, mainly through lump-sum taxes, and created the lavish city that is Vatican City.