what was the most prominent religion in the victorian era
Victorian morality Religious morality changed drastically during the Victorian Era. When Victoria took the throne the Anglican Church was very powerfulâ€”running schools and universities, and with high ranking churchmen holding offices in the House of Lords.[6] The Church's power continued to rule in rural areas throughout the Victorian Era; however that was not the case in industrialised cities.[6] In the cities those against the Church were many and dissent was rampant.[6] However, dissent has been running its pressure since the onset of Puritanism in politics even before the Oliver Cromwell days. The dissenting sects were against what the Anglican church was using its power for.[7] The Church demanded obedience to God, submissiveness and resignation with the goal of making people more malleable to the will of the Church.[7] The Church was accused of appeasing the will of the elite, and of caring little if at all about the needs and wants of the lower, peasant class,[7] from which dissent emerged Methodism, Congregationalism, The Society of Friends (Quakers) and Presbyterianism.[7] The Methodists and Presbyterians in particular stressed personal salvation through direct individual faith in Jesus Christ's sacrificial death and resurrection on the behalf of sinners, citing the New Testament Gospels and the writings of the Apostles Peter, James and Paul.[7] This stress on individualism is seen throughout the Victorian Era and becomes even more developed in middle class life.
Early Middle Ages Though much of Roman civilization north of the Po River had been wiped out in the years after the end of the Western Roman Empire, between the 5th and 8th centuries, new political and social infrastructure began to develop. Much of this was initially Germanic and pagan. Arian Christian missionaries had been spreading Arian Christianity throughout northern Europe, though by 700 the religion of northern Europeans was largely a mix of Germanic paganism, Christianized paganism, and Arian Christianity.[26] Catholic Christianity had barely started to spread in northern Europe by this time. Through the practice of simony, local princes typically auctioned off ecclesiastical offices, causing priests and bishops to function as though they were yet another noble under the patronage of the prince.[27] In contrast, a network of monasteries had sprung up as monks sought separation from the world. These monasteries remained independent from local princes, and as such constituted the "church" for most northern Europeans during this time. Being independent from local princes, they increasingly stood out as centres of learning, of scholarship, and as religious centres where individuals could receive spiritual or monetary assistance.[26]