section_path: Background/Church life
section_name: Church life
paragraph_text: Church life
  
  Latin was the language of public worship in most dioceses of Catholic Europe although few laymen understood it. The Eucharist, the central element of liturgy, was also celebrated in Latin. Western Christians believed that the sacramental bread and wine of the Eucharist transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. This belief in the transubstantiation was declared a Catholic dogma in 1215. For unknown reasons, laymen only received the bread during the ceremony. The Catholic Church taught that entry into heaven required dying in a state of grace. Based on Christ's parable on the Last Judgement, the Church considered the performance of good works, such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, as an important condition of salvation. The faithful made pilgrimages to the saints' shrines, but the proliferation in the saints' number undermined their reputation. The church buildings were richly decorated with paintings, sculptures, and stained glass windows. While Romanesque and Gothic art made a clear distinction between the supernatural and the human, Renaissance artists depicted God and the saints in a more human way.
  
  The sources of religious authority included the Bible and its authoritative commentaries, apostolic tradition, decisions by ecumenical councils, scholastic theology, and papal authority. Catholics regarded the Vulgate as the Bible's authentic Latin translation. Commentators applied several methods of interpretations to resolve contradictions within the Bible. Apostolic tradition verified religious practices that had no explicit Biblical foundations, such as infant baptism. The ecumenical councils' decisions were binding to all Catholics. The crucial elements of mainstream Christianity had been first summarised in the Nicene Creed in 325. Its western text contained a unilateral addition which contributed to the schism between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The Creed contained the dogma of Trinity about one God uniting three equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Church authorities acknowledged that an individual might exceptionally receive direct revelations from God but maintained that a genuine revelation could not challenge traditional religious principles.
  
  Legitimate debates among scholastic theologians were not uncommon. Predestination —God's decision about an individual's fate in afterlife—was frequently discussed. Ockhamist theologians taught that God destined to salvation those about whom foreknew that they would accept the divine offer of grace (by acquiring merit.) In contrast, Duns Scotus (d. 1308) and Gregory of Rimini (d. 1358) argued that an individual's choice could not influence God's decision; Rimini also asserted that God predestined the fate of both the saved and the damned. Justification before God and the timing of grace was also the subject of controversy. Many theologians such as Scotus, Ockham, and Gabriel Biel (d. 1495) taught that God established rules how the faithful could gain divine grace. Other theologians such as Rimini, and Hugolino of Orvieto (d. 1374) proposed that no one could deserve divine favour without God's direct intercession.