天主教會又叫羅馬天主敎(拉丁文:Ecclesia Catholica Romana;英文:Roman Catholic Church),簡稱天主敎(拉丁文:Ecclesia Catholica),或者叫公教,係世界上最大嘅基督敎會。根據敎會統計年報(Statistical Yearbook of the Church),2004年有 1,098,366,000 信眾,而聯合國報稱嗰年世界人口有 6,388,500,000。羅馬天主敎個阿頭係教宗,即係羅馬主教,家下係敎宗方濟。
Thurston, Herbert (1908). "Catholic". 出自 Knight, Kevin (編). The Catholic Encyclopedia.第3卷. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 原先內容歸檔喺3 January 2024. 喺17 August 2012搵到.
"catholic, adj. and n." 牛津英語詞典線上版。牛津大學出版社,2014年6月。網站。2014年8月7日。摘錄:「喺東西教會分裂之後,『天主教』成為咗西方或者拉丁教會嘅描述詞,『正教』則係東方或者希臘教會嘅描述詞。喺宗教改革期間,留喺羅馬權威之下嘅教會繼續使用『天主教』呢個詞,而脫離教宗嘅教會就被稱為『新教』或者『改革教會』。呢啲教會大部分保留咗『天主教』呢個詞,賦予佢一個更廣泛、更理想化嘅意思,唔係指單一團體,而係指所有教會同聖徒嘅共融。」」參考完整嘅「天主教」定義可以睇呢度。
McBrien, Richard (2008). The Church. Harper Collins. p. xvii. Online version available Browseinside.harpercollins.com互聯網檔案館嘅歸檔,歸檔日期27 August 2009.. Quote: "[T]he use of the adjective 'Catholic' as a modifier of 'Church' became divisive only after the East–West Schism... and the Protestant Reformation. ... In the former case, the Western Church claimed for itself the title Catholic Church, while the East appropriated the name Orthodox Church. In the latter case, those in communion with the Bishop of Rome retained the adjective "Catholic", while the churches that broke with the Papacy were called Protestant."
Den Heijer, Alexandra (2011). Managing the University Campus: Information to Support Real Estate Decisions. Academische Uitgeverij Eburon. ISBN9789059724877. Many of the medieval universities in Western Europe were born under the aegis of the Catholic Church, usually as cathedral schools or by papal bull as Studia Generali.
A. Lamport, Mark (2015). Encyclopedia of Christian Education. Rowman & Littlefield. p.484. ISBN9780810884939. All the great European universities—Oxford, to Paris, to Cologne, to Prague, to Bologna—were established with close ties to the Church.
B M. Leonard, Thomas (2013). Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Routledge. p.1369. ISBN9781135205157. Europe established schools in association with their cathedrals to educate priests, and from these emerged eventually the first universities of Europe, which began forming in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Riché, Pierre (1978): "Education and Culture in the Barbarian West: From the Sixth through the Eighth Century", Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN0-87249-376-8, pp.126–27, 282–98
Verger, Jacques. "The Universities and Scholasticism", in The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume V c. 1198–c. 1300. Cambridge University Press, 2007, 257.
Rüegg, Walter: "Foreword. The University as a European Institution", in: A History of the University in Europe. Vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN0-521-36105-2, pp. xix–xx
Pirenne, Henri (1980) [1925]. [[[:Template:Googlebooks]] Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade]. Frank D. Halsey (trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp.27–32. ISBN978-0-691-00760-1.{{cite book}}: Check |url= value (help)
Richards, Jeffrey (2014). [[[:Template:Googlebooks]] The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages]. Routledge. p.230. ISBN978-1-317-67817-5.{{cite book}}: Check |url= value (help)
Duffy, Saints and Sinners (1997), p. 78, quote: "By contrast, Paschal's successor Eugenius II (824–27), elected with imperial influence, gave away most of these papal gains. He acknowledged the Emperor's sovereignty in the papal state, and he accepted a constitution imposed by Lothair which established imperial supervision of the administration of Rome, imposed an oath to the Emperor on all citizens, and required the pope–elect to swear fealty before he could be consecrated. Under Sergius II (844–47) it was even agreed that the pope could not be consecrated without an imperial mandate and that the ceremony must be in the presence of his representative, a revival of some of the more galling restrictions of Byzantine rule."
Phillips, Jonathan (2005). [[[:Template:Googlebooks]] The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople]. Penguin Books. p.PT19. ISBN978-1-101-12772-8.{{cite book}}: Check |url= value (help)
Fernández, Luis Martínez (2000). "Crypto-Protestants and Pseudo-Catholics in the Nineteenth-Century Hispanic Caribbean". Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 51 (2): 347–65. doi:10.1017/S0022046900004255. S2CID162296826.