by Lance Ralston | Feb 1, 2015 | English |
This 74th Episode of CS is the 2nd Overview, where we pause to sum up the journey we’ve taken since the last overview in Episode 35.
That summary began with the Apostolic Church and ran up through the 5th C marking the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. This Overview starts where that left off and brings us up to the 15th C. We’re about to move into what’s called the Reformation and Counter- Reformation Era, but have a bit more work to do in looking at some trends that took place in the Church in Europe in the waning decades of the Middle Ages.
Turns out, there was a lot of reform-oriented activity that took place in the Church well before the birth of Martin Luther. So we’ll take a look at that, filling in some of the holes left in the story so far.
The reason these overview / review episodes are important is because of the need to set the events of Church history into the larger context of world history. But a danger lies in the very thing many dislike in the study of history; that inevitable list of names and dates. We have an advantage here because the assumption is – you LIKE history > Or for goodness sake, why would you be listening? I sure hope no home-school student has to listen to these, and no parent uses them as a form of discipline. Although, I guess they could be used in some kind of enhanced interrogation technique.
Anyway à Here we go . . . Picking up where we left off in the last Overview à
Christianity came to England early, at the end of the 3rd C. Patrick took the Gospel to Ireland in the 5th.
The Goth and Hun invasions of Europe altered both the political and religious landscape. As the political structures of the Western Roman Empire fragmented, people looked to the Church to provide leadership. Being generally pretty capable leaders, the task of providing guidance fell to the dozens of Christian bishops.
Then we briefly examined a subject that could have occupied us for much longer; the emergence of the Roman bishop as the Pope and de-facto leader of the Church.
We spent an episode considering Pope Gregory the Great’s monumental impact on the Church in the 6th C, how the Church proved to be a crucial feature of the Middles Ages and how Augustine’s work on theology formed the intellectual core of that era.
We charted the Faith’s expansion into Africa, Mesopotamia, Asia and the Far East.
Charlemagne’s tenure as Holy Roman Emperor was reviewed. The Iconoclast Controversy in the Eastern Church was covered. Then we saw the rift between the Eastern and Western churches that occurred in the 11th C.
The Crusades occupied us for 4 episodes; the growth of monasticism for 5 as we took a closer look at both Francis of Assisi and Dominic. We were fascinated by the career of the brilliant Bernard of Clairvaux. We attempted an examination of two major controversies –Investiture and the Eucharist.
Universities were founded; the two most important at Paris and Oxford, but several lesser schools as well – giving rise to the movement known as Scholasticism which we took 3 episodes to cover. Scholasticism was fueled by the earlier work of Anselm and Abelard, but really took off with the labor of Thomas Aquinas and Dun Scotus.
Thomas Beckett was made the Archbishop of Canterbury, then killed by over-zealous knights.
In the mid-late 12th C, Peter Waldo started a movement of mendicants that would birth a movement that lasts to this day. We haven’t said much about that yet but will in a near episode.
The Third Lateran Council met in 1179 and a Middle Eastern Church known as the Maronites made common cause with the Roman Catholic Church rather than the Eastern Orthodox.
In 1187, Saladin captured Jerusalem and the 3rd Crusade set out.
Innocent III became the most powerful Pope of the Middle Ages and convened the monumental Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
A Crusade was launched against the Cathars in Southern France.
King John issued the Magna Carta.
Pope Gregory IX appointed the first Inquisitors, another episode of church history we need to devote an episode to.
Coming up to recent episodes, we looked at the emerging tension between the Church and State, Popes and Princes, that was a harbinger of Europe’s emergence into the Modern world. Pope Boniface VIII’s papal edict Unam Sanctum in 1302 was the proverbial gauntlet hurled at the foot of the secular power, denying salvation to anyone outside the Church.
We reviewed the Great Papal Schism when there was—count them; not 1, nor 2, but for a time, 3 popes!
In 1312, the Knights Templar were suppressed.
Nine years later the Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy.
1337, the Hundred Year’s War began and a decade later the Plague killed off a third of Europe.
Then, as we start to move inexorably toward the emergence of serious reform attempts, we saw the central place of Sacramentalism in the mindset of people in the Middle Ages – that salvation is free and by grace, but that it’s dispensed THROUGH the Church, BY the clergy performing the sacraments.
One episode looked at the Mystics who managed to keep the focus on God while it seemed so much of the rest of the clergy had been consumed by the intrigues of European politics.
We paused to see what was happening with the Mongols and their rapacious conquest of the East, and ended with a look at John Wycliffe, Morningstar of the Reformation.
It’s important we understand, the reform of the Church was not something that began with Martin Luther in the 16th C. Far from it. There’d been many reform movements and the century and half before Luther went far to prepare the ground for his emergence.
Jesus spoke of the problem of wineskins. New wine needs a new skin. If you put new juice in an old skin, as it ferments, the already stretched bottle will burst, ruining both skin and wine. Noà Jesus wasn’t giving wine-making lessons. He illustrated a spiritual axiom. When God does a new thing, He often goes outside the current religious “skin”, the existing structure, and uses a new vessel, medium, or method.
From one perspective, we could say that Church History is a long tale of fresh movements of the Spirit, and how the Faith has embodied, or given expression to those new movements.
The challenge of the modern student of history is to avoid layering back onto history our own particular experience and evaluation. People with smartphones and the Internet with a vast searchable electronic encyclopedia, literally at their fingertips, could easily consider people just a hundred years ago to be terribly uninformed; and people 500 years ago to be bereft of knowing much of anything. It’s said by some that the brilliant polymath Thomas Young, who died in 1829, was the last man to know everything. What that means is that until the early 19th C, the body of information available in the form of books, the repositories of knowledge in that time, was of such a volume that a single human being could potentially have at least a working knowledge of ALL of it. But after that, the proliferation of knowledge began to grow exponentially so that it became impossible for one person to have such knowledge.
We don’t need to attempt such a knowledge upload today when we can download any piece of knowledge we need in an instant.
I say all that as a preface for this: As we soon move in our podcasts into the Reformation Era and the breakaway of the Protestants, it’s easy for us who’ve lived so long with the tension between Roman Catholics and Protestants, to project that paradigm back onto the Church before the Reformation. That would be wrong, a gross distortion of the facts.
Before the Reformation, there really was just one church in Europe – and we ought not call it the “Roman Catholic Church” because what we think of TODAY as the RC Church was not that! The Roman Catholic Church today is what it is, in good measure, BECAUSE of the Reformation, as we’ll see. Western Christians today probably ought to understand the Church of Europe before the Reformation as “our church” – regardless what your denominational stripe is now. Eastern Christians, of course, look to the Eastern or Greek Orthodox Church as their Church and have for a thousand years.
The point is, the numerous attempts at reform prior to the Reformation were all kept in-house. Most of the monastic movements were attempts at reforming, not just monasteries, but the entire Church. Some of the popes had a reform agenda and were able to accomplish somewhat in the way of getting the Church back to its Apostolic ideal. The Reformation split the Church precisely because of a perfect storm of several factors that combined in Europe when it was obvious to just about everyone there was something seriously wrong in the leadership of the Church. And when the Church wouldn’t install the reforms it so obviously needed, a door had opened to allow those who wanted out, to leave.
The factors that contributed to that perfect storm were . . .
First, the growing tension between Popes and Princes.
As the Investiture Controversy made clear, there’d been strife between secular rulers and the Pope for a while. It all went back to Charlemagne and his descendants who ruled by having their crowns bestowed by the Pope; their rule sanctioned by the Church. But as the different rulers of Europe jostled each other for territory and wealth became more important to fielding ever larger armies, these rulers competed with the Church for income. As the borders of Europe became thicker, the tension between Church and State grew.
Second, the emergence of the European middle-class meant the feudalism that dominated European politics and economics began to loosen its grip on society. Though the social structure was still tightly controlled, new options began to appear. The emerging middle-class possessed more disposable income, fueling more markets and options. Cities began to grow. More were educated. Questions were asked, and the Church didn’t always have satisfying answers.
Third, the printing press arrived and books began to proliferate. Ideas that had taken months to move from one place to another were now making the trip in days.
Fourth, the scandal of the Papal Schism, with the governance of the Church being argued over by three claimant-popes all at the same time was simply embarrassing to many of Europe’s faithful. It was clear to everyone, including the Pope’s themselves, that serious changes was needed. This Church, divided as it was, could NOT be what Jesus and the Apostles had in mind.
So, in the next episodes, we’ll take a look at some of the attempts at reform that occurred in the Late Middle Ages that act as precursors, foreshocks, if you will, to the eventual rift brought by the Protestants.
by Lance Ralston | Jan 25, 2015 | English |
The title of this episode of Communio Santorum is A Glimmer of Reform.
I assume most listening to this are students of history, or—why would you be listening? Some like history in general. Others find a fascination with certain eras or moments of the past. Whatever your interest, every student recognizes that as time passes, things change. Sometimes that change is merely incidental to the thing changed, a cosmetic difference that does little to the substance. Other change is deep, fundamentally altering the thing changed; and in some cases, doing away with it altogether.
Institutions and beliefs held for long periods can be swept away in a matter of days, while others abide for centuries without being touched.
Jesus challenged the Guardians of Tradition of His day with the Parable of the Wine-skins. The point of the parable is that while truth doesn’t change, the container it’s put in and dispensed from will change, it MUST change. The rabbinic and Pharisaical Judaism of Jesus’ day had become an inflexible complex of traditions that obscured the Spirit behind the Law. The Rabbis and Pharisees played an important role after the Babylonian Captivity in moving the Jews away from their age old tendency to idolatry. But their exaltation of tradition had become so rigid it ended up missing what the Law of Moses was intended to promote. Jesus came to cut through the thick vines of tradition and make a path back to God.
Sadly, some seem to think the parable of the wineskins only referred to 1st C Judaism. They don’t realize what Jesus said is an abiding truth with application to every age; including the Church. Historically, God births a fresh move of the Spirit and people are mobilized to maximize the effect of that movement. Spiritual inspiration builds a structure, a vehicle for the movement to take place in and through. But as time passes, man makes policies and procedures regulate the movement. They’re needed so people can work together. Leaders want to ensure future members of the movement know where they came from and why. The problem is, those policies and procedures often become a limit, a line, a defining mark that says, “This is us, and beyond that line is NOT us. This is who we are; we are not that. This is what we do, we do NOT do that.”
Traditions. à Which can be good and necessary for passing on values and identity; but can get in the way of hearing what else God might say.
All of this is crucial to the next phase of Churchy History we’re looking at. So bear with me as I use an illustration I hope makes all this clear.
Let’s say as a young Christian, I’m addicted to TV. I watch TV hours a day. What I watch isn’t the issue – just that I spend way too much time on it. At church one day, while in worship, I’m convicted about the TV, so I decide to only watch an hour each night, and spend the rest of the time reading, visiting other Christians and volunteering at the local mission.
I experience such amazing spiritual growth, I decided to forego TV altogether. After a couple months of astounding deepening, I get angry at all the time I wasted and come to loath TV. So I take it out to the dumpster and toss it. I now abhor TV and when invited over to a friend’s house on the weekend, when he turns on the TV, I excuse myself and go home. As I drive home I grumble about how immature he is for watching TV. After that I use every opportunity I have to “encourage” others to turn off their TV’s and spend that time in more profitable and God-honoring ways. Several of my friends see major spiritual progress and become equally energetic in their anti-TV crusade as I. We form a group that makes watching TV a test as to whether or not someone is a real follower of Jesus. Then something interesting happens. The loss of visual entertainment moves a couple in the group to suggest we start performing dramas that enact Biblical stories and faith lessons. An acting group forms that stages weekly plays. And three years later what’s developed is a whole movement of TV bashers who’ve made mini-plays a part of their traditional church services.
When someone in the group suggests they film one of their plays and put it on TV, he’s kicked out of the church.
The spiritual condition of the leadership of the Western European church had sunk abysmally in the 14th C. The papacy and its supporting mechanism had become little more than a political battlefield. When the papacy was split between three contenders, all claiming to be Peter’s legitimate successor, it was a evidence things had gotten completely out of hand.
It was time for reform; for a new wineskin to contain and dispense God’s Grace and Truth.
I want to be clear. While the upper echelons of Roman Catholic hierarchy had become hideously corrupt, thousands of local priests and monks continued to serve God faithfully. Don’t forget that the original Reformers were members of the Roman church.
The Babylonian Captivity at Avignon and the Great Schism of the Papacy that followed it revealed a grotesque abuse of power. The failure of the counciliar movement made it clear no real reform would come from within the Church. People believed the Pope was essential, not just for providing leadership of the spiritual realm, but as a means of sanctioning political rule as well. By the end of the 14th C, Europeans recognized that the Popes were often grossly self-interested, power-hungry despots. But they couldn’t shake the assumption the Pope was the cornerstone of Christendom.
It was two brave souls, an Englishman named John Wyclif, and a Czech named Jan Hus, who got the dialog rolling on what the Church is and ought to look like. Of course, they weren’t the first to broach this important topic. Augustine had done back in the 4th C. His ideas shaped the Roman church’s doctrine and polity. It was time to hold them up to the light of Scripture and see if they’d been properly interpreted and implemented.
In a word, John Wyclif was a zealot. And, as is typical of zealots, there was no gray with him; it was all black or white. He was a polarizer. People either supported or opposed him. He left no room for no-opinion.
There’s considerable confusion about the real Wyclif because we know little about him. He had a habit of hiding himself under many pages of scholarly discourse. So we know what he believed but not much about him personally.
His early life is hazy; we don’t even know when he was born. He was brought up in North England but emerges from the fog when he became a student at Oxford. He attained a doctorate in 1372 and rose quickly as a leading professor there.
The hot topic at that time was the nature of authority, specifically as it related to governance. Everyone knew authority comes from God, but the question was HOW it was conferred to men so they could rule.
The majority-view said all authority was only just when it was bestowed by the Roman hierarchy. God entrusted the Pope with ‘catholic’, that is universal dominion over all things and persons. So, any authority used by civil rulers not under the auspices of the Pope was unlawful and invalid.
The minority-view said authority inhered in civil rulers as a work of God’s general grace and was not officially bestowed by the Church. As long as a ruler remained within the scope of God’s grace, his rule was legitimate. This group went further and said if such grace was the basis of rule by civil authorities, how much more was it necessary for spiritual leaders?
Wyclif was in the minority and dove into the debate with an important addition. He said the English government had a divinely assigned responsibility to correct abuses in the church and remove from office those clergy who’d proven by immoral or unethical behavior to be abusers of God’s grace. Wyclif went further, saying the State could even seize the property of corrupt church officials.
Uhh – you can see where this is going for JohnW, can’t you?
In 1377, the Pope condemned Wyclif’s teaching. But of course he didn’t back down. It led to the kind of brouhaha that saw the Church condemn, not just Wyclif’s teachings, but Wyclif himself. But powerful friends in England made sure no action was taken beyond threats.
Wyclif’s teaching on authority was one of the early doctrinal wedges that would eventually lead to the Reformation. It posited the idea of spiritual freedom for all followers of Christ because of God’s grace, bestowed by Himself, in Himself, and through Himself, à not via the Church. Everyone, whether priest or layman is equal before God. Salvation doesn’t bring someone into the Church so they can get to God, so much as it brings people to God, and so includes them in the Church. It’s crucial we understand how radical Wyclif’s ideas were, how revolutionary. What he proposed was a personal relationship between God and man; something modern Evangelicals take as a given.
Because of this, it was God in the heart and mind of a person that qualified them to hold office in the Church. Character and Calling were everything. Based on what he found in the Bible, Wyclif said priests did NOT mediate salvation by conducting masses. How could they, He asked, if as it says in Hebrews, Jesus died once for sins? How could they, if Jesus is the ONE mediator between God and man? Wyclif’s thoughts foreshadowed Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. Both men dismantled the medieval barriers between God and man.
Wyclif’s doctrine of “authority bestowed by grace” was just the first of his theological hammer-blows delivered toward Roman doctrine. The decisive year of his reforming career was 1378, the same as the Great Papal Schism. Seeing the travesty of one pope excommunicating another, Wyclif ramped up his calls for reform.
He spent a lot of time critiquing the Pope. He said, following the example of Christ and the Apostles, the Pope should be the shepherd of the God’s flock and a preacher who brings men to Christ. His view left no room for the temporal power Popes. The papacy as a political force constantly striving for mastery over men by political means was absurd and detestable to Wyclif. He abhorred trappings of power and denounced the crass worldliness and luxury of some of Church hierarchy.
Wyclif rather welcomed the Great Schism precisely because it made obvious to all the problems in the Papacy of the 14th C. But as the Schism went on and the rhetoric of church officials grew more intense, Wyclif became more determined to call for the dismantling of the Papacy.
He listed the many ways Popes had departed from the simple faith and practice of Christ and His disciples. He scoffed at the idea that just because Peter died in Rome every bishop of Rome was above all Christendom. He reasoned, by that logic, Muslims might conclude their “sultan in Jerusalem,” where Christ died, was greater than the pope. No, Wyclif claimed, Christ alone is head of the Church and that headship is communicated through the Spirit of God working through the Word of God.
Again, remember that Wyclif WAS PART OF THE ROMAN CHURCH at this point. This was an internal discussion, where there were many priests and bishops who found Wyclif’s idea thoroughly Biblical. They might not be politically safe, but they were theologically sound.
But when Wyclif’s call for reform was met with resistance by those who could and should implement it, he took a fateful step. He passed from being an orthodox preacher of reform into a Protester; From Reformer to Protestant.
His break with the papacy was part of a new idea he’d formed of the Church.
Wyclif’s concept of the Church was prescient in its foreshadowing of what John Calvin would later propose. Wyclif said the church was less a visible institution as it was an invisible body of the elect; men and women chosen by God to be saved. Their salvation was a work of God’s sovereignty, and not subject to the ministrations of priests.
Building on this, Wyclif challenged a whole range of medieval beliefs and practices: pardons, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages, the worship of images, the adoration of the saints, the treasury of merit, and the distinction between venial and mortal sins.
He retained a belief in purgatory and extreme unction. He said if images increased devotion they need not be removed; and prayers to saints were not necessarily wrong. He considered confession to be useful if it was voluntary. We catch something of the spirit of his revolt when he declared that preaching was “of more value than the administration of any sacrament.”
The standard Wyclif used in his evaluation of the practices of the Church was Scripture. He said, “Neither the testimony of Augustine nor Jerome, nor any other saint should be accepted except in so far as it was based upon Scripture.”
He maintained the right of everyone to examine the Bible for himself: “The New Testament is of full authority, and open to the understanding of simple men, as to the points that be most needful to salvation.”
But in all his protests and call for reform, Wyclif aroused no hostility like that sparked by his attack on the doctrine of transubstantiation¸ which lies at the heart of the Mass.
In the Summer of 1380, he published twelve arguments against the idea that the bread and wine of were transformed into the literal, physical body and blood of Christ. He said the early church considered the elements as symbols of Christ’s body and blood. So, Christ is present in the elements sacramentally, not materially. The point of the sacrament he said, was the presence of the PERSON Christ in the soul, not the body of Christ in the belly.
Wyclif’s denial of transubstantiation gave his enemies their opportunity. His support dwindled to just a few at Oxford. A council condemned his doctrines and forbade him lecturing. Then, William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, convened a council that condemned ten of Wyclif s doctrines, labeling them heretical. By 1382, Wyclif was persona non-grata at Oxford.
He turned to the people for support. He called for the Bible to be produced in the language of craftsmen and peasants so they could read and study and see how far the Church had departed from its roots. He led a handful of scholars at Oxford in the translation of the Latin Bible into English and copied the methods of St. Francis and the friars by wandering around, preaching outdoors, anywhere people would listen.
Wyclif sent out priests sympathetic to his cause to win the souls of the neglected. Clad in brown robes of undressed wool, without sandals, purse, or scrip, a staff in their hand, dependent for food and shelter on the good will of their neighbors, Wyclif’s “poor priests” soon became a power in the land. Their enemies dubbed them Lollards, meaning “mumblers.” They each carried a few pages of Wyclif’s English Bible and his tracts and sermons as they went throughout the countryside, preaching. The movement spread and soon, many became lay-preachers.
Wyclif gained enough support that the authorities decided to not move against him. But his followers were hunted, expelled from Oxford, and forced to renounce their views. Wyclif, driven from the university, was left to end his days in peace at his parish at Lutterworth. He died there in 1384.
by Lance Ralston | Jan 18, 2015 | English |
This episode is titled “Meanwhile, Back in the East” because before we dive into the next phase of church history in Europe, we need to catch up on what’s happening to the East.
The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th Cs occupied the largest contiguous land empire in history. Rising originally from the steppes of Central Asia and stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan; from Siberia in the north to Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Iranian plateau, and the Middle East. At its greatest extent it spanned 6000 miles and covered about 16% of the planet’s total land area.
Genghis Khan was a shamanist, but recognizing the need to unite the Mongol clans. He adopted a policy of religious toleration that remained official policy during his reign and that of his son Ogedai. Several of the tribes that formed the core of the Mongol horde were Christians in at least a cultural sense. The Keriats, Onguds and Uighurs owed the Christianization of their culture to the Eastern expansion of Christianity we’ve looked at in earlier episodes.
It’s important to insert a short parenthetical comment here. Knowing what devastation the Mongols wrought during the 13th and 14th Cs and the literal wagon-loads of blood they spilled, we have to be careful when we call these tribes Christian. They certainly weren’t evangelical missionaries. Their faith was a highly-distorted Nestorian version of the Gospel that exercised little restraint on the barbaric rapaciousness that marked their conquests. Still, they called themselves ‘’Christians and their claimed allegiance to the Gospel had a huge impact on what happened in the Middle East.
Genghis Khan’s son Tolui, married a Christian woman from the Keriat tribe. One of their sons was the Mongol ruler Hulegu. Another was the famous Kublai Khan, founder of the Yaun Dynasty in China. While Hulegu seems to have identified as a Christian, Kublai certainly favored Christians in his court. When Hulegu conquered Baghdad, the Islamic capital of the day, his Christian wife urged him to destroy the city’s mosques but protect the churches. Her goal was to dismantle Islam in the region and hand it a permanent setback.
The Mongols took control of the Caliph’s palace and gave it to Baghdad’s Christian patriarch. It ended up being made into a grand church. With such obvious favor being shown Christians, many Mongols converted.
Asian Christians who’d suffered under the tyranny and oppression of Islamic rule for generations began to look to the advancing Mongol army as deliverers. One writer lauded the genocidal Hulegu and his wife as great luminaries and zealous combatants for the Christian religion. Beleaguered Western Crusaders were stoked by reports of allies in the East doing noble battle with the Muslims. Some Crusaders even sent emissaries to try to link up with the Mongols and help them in their conquest of the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1260. The Mameluke victory at Ain Jalut over the Mongols was a major disappointment.
Hulegu’s son married a Byzantine princess and he favored Christianity over both Buddhism and Islam. Over the next few decades the Mongols didn’t persecute Muslims but they did impose what the Muslims felt was a heavy burden. They were no longer able to treat Christians living among them as a subject people they could extract heavy tolls and fines from. The Mongol attitude was that as long as everyone paid their taxes, they were free to practice whatever religion they wanted. So a huge source of wealth to Muslims was lost.
Christians all across the Middle East took advantage of their newfound freedom and hoped things would stay that way indefinitely under a sympathetic Mongol rule. With Hulegu and his heirs in power, Christians began doing things that had been forbidden under Islam; like carrying the cross in public processions, drinking wine, and building churches where none had been permitted.
Then, in 1268 in Baghdad, I aks you to pay close attention to. Maybe this will bring a little light to why there’s such tremendous hatred on the part of certain elements within Islam towards Christians today; especially in that region of the world. The Christian Catholicos, the title of the archbishop, ordered a man drowned for converting from Christianity to Islam. Muslims were scandalized and rioted. Following Mongol policy, the rioting was brutally crushed. Christians took this as further evidence they were now the favored faith. But that favor was soon to turn against them.
The Mongol leaders became increasingly aware that Islam, with its embrace of jihad in the extension of the Faith by the power of the sword, was much more compatible with their values than either Christianity or Buddhism. They began to drift towards Islam until 1295, when the new Khan, Mahmoud Gazahn, persecuted Christianity and Buddhism. His successors followed his policies. During the early years of the 14th C, Christians found themselves under the control of a Muslim super-state. Their position radically change from what they’d known under the Arab caliphate. Now Christians were subject to intense persecution. In the regional capital of Al-Malek in 1338, all Christians in the city were killed. The few traces of faith among the Keriats and Uighurs didn’t last much into the 15th C.
Islam’s victory among the Mongols proved devastating for the remaining Christians of Central Asia and the Middle East. These communities had managed to weather the storm of the Muslim Arab conquest of the 7th C and it settled down to an uneasy peace with their new neighbors. But the brief respite brought by the Mongol invasion allowed the Christians to emerge in a dominant role for a time that they used to inflict the Muslims with real hurt. When a few years later, Muslims were back in control, this time with the authority of a Mongol Muslim powerhouse à Well, they decided it was payback-time. It was the Christians in Egypt who first bore the brunt of this new intolerance.
From the start of the 13th C, Egypt was the main target of Western Crusades. Frustrated Egyptian governments regularly retaliated for the Crusades by attacking the Copts, the native Egyptian church. In the mid-13th C, Egypt was ruled by the Mamelukes and with the loss of Baghdad to the Mongols, the center of gravity of the Muslim world shifted to Mameluke Egypt. They considered the Christians in their region as a 5th column, in cahoots with the Mongols pressing west toward Egypt. After the loss of Baghdad, it wasn’t hard to imagine a world in which Egypt would stand alone as the last great Muslim power in a Middle East dominated by Christian-Mongols.
The greatest Mameluke leader was General Baibar, the Scourge of both Crusaders and Mongols. Baibar hated Christians in general, but had an extra dose of loathing for those of the European variety. When he captured Antioch in 1268, he wrote the city’s Crusader ruler, who’d barely escaped, “Had you stayed, you’d have seen the crosses in your churches smashed, the pages of a false testament scattered, the patriarchs’ tombs overturned. You would have seen your Muslim enemy trampling over the places where you celebrated Mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests, and deacons upon your altars–bringing sudden death to the patriarchs and slavery to your royal princes.”
This attitude was radically different from the tone of earlier Muslim-Christian affairs. It reflected Baibar’s fury at the Christian alliance with the Mongols who themselves were utterly brutal in their conquests. This intolerance was increasingly evident in Egyptian policies toward their still substantial Christian minority. Persecution in Egypt wasn’t new, but things deteriorated quickly after the Mameluke-Mongol wars.
Between 1293 and 1354, the Egyptian government launched four campaigns to enforce the submission of Christians and Jews and drive them to accept Islam. Each wave of violence became more intense and better organized. A review of this half-century gives us a much better understanding of the ancient hostilities that have inflamed the Middle East ever since.
A quick sketch of what happened.
In 1293, an initial persecution fizzled when the sultan’s officials realized the Christians they were about to execute controlled the country’s finances and were the most competent scribes.
In 1301, a vizier visiting from Morocco was appalled at the wealth and status of Egyptian Christians and Jews. In Morocco, they had to pay a steep fine if they refused to convert and were subject to all kinds of public indignities. But in Egypt they held high public office, wore rich clothes and rode the best mounts. The vizier’s criticisms moved Egyptian officials to install the same rules as Morocco. A wave of repressive laws followed, and ordinances closed all the churches and synagogues outside of Cairo. Some ancient churches were demolished, relics burned. Non-Muslims were dismissed from public employment and were forced to wear distinctive clothing; blue turbans for Christians, yellow for Jews. They were forced to ride only on donkeys and whenever a Muslim approached, they had to dismount and bow. Visitors to Egypt said that the enforcement of these rules continued all the way into the 19th C.
The effects of this crisis linger to the present day, since the rigorous Muslim legalism that emerged at that time shaped modern Islamic fundamentalist movements. From the 1290s, Muslim jurists produced ever harsher interpretations of the laws governing minorities, particularly through the work of militant puritanical scholars like Ibn Taymiyyah. His life was shaped by the disasters of the Mongol wars which forced him into exile in Egypt. He saw his goal as the militant restoration of Islam in the face of its enemies at home and abroad. His work has had a long afterlife. Ibn Taymiyyah is regarded as the spiritual godfather of the Wahhabi movement and of most modern extremist and jihadist groups. Among many others, Osama bin Laden cited him as a special hero.
The Muslim hostility toward Christianity in the early 14th C was reflected in outbreaks of extreme anti-Christian violence. In 1321, Muslim mobs looted and destroyed Cairo’s Coptic churches. Usually, a Muslim cleric would give the signal for the attacks by mobilizing crowds in the mosques under the cry of “Down with the churches.”
Now, the sultan tried to keep order, but the hatred of Christians was too powerful to contain. They were blamed for setting fires across Cairo. When some of the accused confessed under torture, the authorities were forced to support the popular movement. At one point, the Sultan faced a mob of 20,000 calling for the forceful suppression of Christians. In order to safeguard his rule, the Sultan permitted purge. The government went further and announced that anyone who found a Christian was permitted to beat him and take his goods.
By the mid-14th C, Muslim writers had a whole catalog of anti-Christian charges that bear a close resemblance to the libelous anti-Jewish tracks – The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Christians were accused of being spies, ever on the lookout for opportunities to betray the Muslim cause. Cases in both Egypt and Syria proved, and I’m using air-quotes around that word “proved”– they were serial arsonists. Some were even reported to have planted a bomb in the Great Mosque of Medina.
Given modern-day stereotypes of Islam in the West, it’s ironic that Christian minorities were then so feared because they allegedly plotted terror attacks against prestigious symbols of Muslim power.
In a society founded on honor and family pride, the humiliations of these new policies were too much to bear for many wealthy urban Christians who then converted to Islam. Other, poorer Christians proved firmer; particularly if they were located in rural areas where government policies were slower to penetrate. But later waves of intimidation wore down there resistance. Violence in the 1320s reduced Christian numbers and prepared the way for the disasters of 1354. From the end of the 14th C, Egypt’s Coptic Christians were reduced to a minority they retain up to the present day. The Coptic Church entered a period of hibernation that lasted until the mid-19th C. This is sad when we consider that Egypt had been a major center of Christianity for hundreds of years, and the place of dozens of vital and prolific monasteries. What were once the thousand monks of Bufanda, were reduced to just two.
Once their Mongol rulers converted to Islam, conditions became equally difficult for the Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria. Between 1290 and 1330, the story of Christianity in these parts, like that in Egypt, becomes a long list of disasters and ever harsher laws. One edict commanded that churches be demolished and services halted. All clergy and Christian leaders were to be executed. The storied churches of Tabriz, Arbella, Mosul, and Baghdad were torn down. Bishops and priests were tortured and imprisoned. Some laws struck directly at ordinary believers rather than just the institutions and hierarchy. Some of these edicts came from the Khans themselves while others came from the initiation of local governors. But the effects were just as damaging. Even when the Khans tried to limit persecution, they could hardly stem the zeal of local officers. In some cities, local laws ordered forcible conversion to Islam and prohibited the exercise of Christianity upon the pain of death. One Muslim ruler in Armenia passed ruinous taxes and ordered that anyone who refused to convert to Islam should be branded, blinded in one eye, and castrated. Christians and Jews were to be instantly recognizable by wearing distinctive clothing. In the words of one contemporary, “The persecutions and disgrace and markings and ignominy which the Christian suffered at this time, especially in Baghdad, well the words cannot describe.” The persecution reached its height with wholesale massacres at Arbella in 1310 and at Amita in 1317. There at Amita, where 12,000 were sold into slavery, the destruction of churches and monasteries was so thorough the fires burned for a month. These persecutions had a greater effect on the churches of the Middle East than any other event since the conversion of the Roman Empire. The succession of church leadership that had remained unbroken since the time of the Apostles came to an abrupt end. Whole Christian communities were annihilated across Central Asia and surviving communities shrank to tiny fractions of their former size. Christianity disappeared in Persia and across southern and central Iraq the patriarchs of Babylon now literally headed for the hills, taking up residence on the safer soil of northern Mesopotamia.
by Lance Ralston | Jan 11, 2015 | English |
This episode is titled The Mystics and looks at the Mysticism of the Western Church during the Late Middle Ages.
Alongside the Scholastics we spent a couple episodes on, was another movement within Medieval Christianity in Europe led by a group known as “The Mystics.”
Don’t let that title mislead you. They weren’t wizards with black, long-sleeved robes and tall pointed hats embellished with moons and stars. Don’t picture Gandalf or some old man bent over a dusty tome reciting an incantation. The Mystics weren’t magicians. They were Christians who thought a vital part of the Faith had been left behind by the academic pursuits of the Scholastics. They aimed to reclaim it.
Think of the Medieval Christian mystics this way; if the Scholastics sought to synthesize faith and reason, to give a rational base for the Christian faith, the Mystics wanted such reason to be fervent. If Scholastics emphasized the head, Mystics emphasized the heart. They wanted there to be some heat added to the light the Scholastics shined on the Faith. They added adoration to analysis.
The primary message of the Mystics was the call for Christians to maintain a deeply personal and intimate connection to God. For some, that still meant going through the sacraments we looked at in the last episode, but the goal was to experience the divine. This is why they were called Mystics; their movement = Mysticism. That experience of the divine was inexpressible—indescribable. No formula can be given to obtain it, and once felt, to adequately describe it. It’s a mystery, one the mystics thought believers ought to aim for; the essence of the soul’s communion with God.
The word which best captures the activity of the mystics is devotion. While the Scholastics looked for evidence of God “out there” the Mystics looked within. Not for some internal divine essence, as the earlier Gnostics had or some later mystics would. Rather, they engaged in an inner quest to discover the presence of the Holy Spirit working to conform them to the image of Christ. Faith wasn’t merely an intellectual pursuit. Mystics wanted to FEEL their faith, or better, what their faith was fixed on. They relied more on experience than definitions.
There’s a common misconception about the medieval mystics that they were all hermits; living in seclusion in some esoteric pursuit of the divine. That’s not the case. For the most part, they weren’t recluses. They lived in monastic communities.
The Mystics drew a good part of their material from the 5th C Church Father Augustine, who also furnished the Scholastics with their core ideas. It was Augustine who said, “You have made us for Yourself O God and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”
While Mysticism and Scholasticism are often set over against each other as separate movements, the truth is, most of the Scholastics show a flavor of the mystical, just as the Mystics often show a surprising element of the rational. The mystical element was strong in the greatest of the Scholastics; Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure.
While Scholastic theology was developed in the cathedral schools and new universities, Mysticism grew up in convents and monasteries. Clair Vaux and St. Victor near Paris were the nurseries of medieval Mysticism. It was in the cloistered halls of monasteries that the passionate hymns of the Middle Ages were composed.
The leading Mystics of this period were Bernard of Clair Vaux, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Joachim of Fiore. Hildegard and Elizabeth of Schoenau [Sker-naw] belong in a class by themselves.
Bernard is considered one of the first medieval mystics, though he lived well before the flowering of Mysticism in the 13th C. His writings reveal an intimate acquaintance with Scripture. One historian called him the religious genius of the 12th C, the leader of his age, the greatest preacher Germany ever had. In matters of spiritual contemplation he was a new Augustine.
Bernard maintained it was prayer and devotion that led to the knowledge of God rather than doctrinal disputes. It’s the saint rather than the scholar who understands God. Humility and love are the fundamental ethical priorities of theology. In other words, Bernard said, if our learning about God does not bring us nearer His moral makeup, it’s a false knowledge.
Bernard reformed the community life of convents and monasteries. But he said the cloistered life, with its vigils and fastings, isn’t an end in itself; it’s but a means to develop the two fundamental Christian virtues of humility and love.
Sounding very much like one of our finest Bible teachers today, Bernard said our love grows alongside our apprehension of God’s love. He maintained as the soul contemplates the cross it’s pierced with the sword of love, as when the Song of Solomon says, “I am sick from love.” Love towards God has its reward, but love loves without regard for reward.
Then, moving more into what we might call classic mystical expression Bernard wrote – As the drop of water dropped into wine loses its color and taste, or as iron held in the fire loses its shape and becomes like the flame, or as air illuminated by the light of the sun, becomes itself like the light, even so all feeling in the believer is wholly infused and transmuted by God’s will, so that God becomes all and in all.
Bernard preached 86 Sermons on the Song of Solomon. Not 8, not 6 – 86! And he only made it to the 1st verse of the 3rd chapter. Every one of them was a mediation on love, both God’s prior love and man’s reply. While commentaries on the Song of Solomon are rare today, it was a favorite of the Middle Ages precisely because of the influence of the Mystics who used it as the premier text for meditations on God. Everything in it is allegorized.
The mysticism of Bernard centers in Christ. It is by contemplation of Him that the soul is filled with knowledge and ecstasy. The goal which the soul aspires to is that Christ may live in us, and our love to God becomes the all-controlling affection.
The Abbey of St. Victor in Paris became a center of mystical theology in the 12th C. The two most famous Mystical leaders who worked there were Hugo and his pupil, Richard. With both men, Mysticism was linked to the work of the Scholastics. With Bernard, mysticism was a highly developed personal experience. With the Victorines, it was brought within the limits of careful definition and became a system. Hugo and Richard centered their activity on the convent, taking no part in the public controversies of the age, where as we’ve seen in other episodes, Bernard was all over the place in the early 12th C; preaching up the 2nd Crusade, participating in the Great Papal Schism, founding the Knights Templar, and a host of other major events.
Hugo, the first of the great German theologians, was born about 1097 in Saxony. In 1115 he went to Paris and became a monk at St. Victor’s. He was a friend of Bernard’s. Hugo left behind him many writings. He was an independent and fair thinker who influenced contemporary writers by whom he’s often quoted. He wrote commentaries on Romans, Ecclesiastes, and other books of the Bible, and a treatise on what would now be called a Biblical Introduction. Going against the standard allegorical slant most Bible study of the time followed, Hugo emphasized the historical sense of the text. But having developed that historical sense, Hugo went on to allegorize the text along mystical lines.
Richard of St. Victor was Hugo’s student. If Hugo was reserved, Richard was extravagant. We know little of his life other than he was born in Scotland and became prior of St. Victor in the late 12th C.
Richard’s style was awash in exuberance. His commentaries on the Books of the Bible follow a truly mystical path as he sees all kinds of connections between the Gospel and the stories of the Old Testament. Today we’d call Richard an inveterate Possibility-thinker. In his work titled Emmanuel, a treatise directed to Jews, he praised sin as a happy misdemeanor,—felix culpa,—because it brought about the Incarnation of Christ. è I guess that’s one way to look at it.
For all Richard’s mystical leanings, he magnifies Scripture and makes it the test of spiritual experiences. This is something modern mystics should take to heart. Everything, Richard said, is to be looked upon with suspicion which does not conform to the letter of Scripture.
The leading idea of these two Victorines is that we must believe, love, and sanctify ourselves in order that the soul may reach the ecstasy and composure of contemplation in the knowledge of God. The Scriptures are the supreme guide and the soul by contemplation reaches a spiritual state which the intellect and argumentation could never bring it to.
Hildegard was born to noble parents in Germany. From the age of three she experienced visions, which over time revealed to her the nature of God and the universe. At a young age, her parents sent her to be educated at a Benedictine convent where she spent the rest of her life.
In 1141, for the first time, she informed others of her visions. They persuaded her to have the revelations she had experienced written down. It was titled Scivias and became a classic of medieval mysticism. The highest authorities in the church, including the Pope, regarded her as a prophetess.
Bernard of Clair Vaux was numbered as one of her admirers. They carried on a lifelong correspondence dealing, among other topics, with the need for church reform. Because of her leadership abilities, she eventually became abbess of her convent and in 1148 founded a new convent near Bingen where she remained until her death. Besides her administrative duties, she maintained a wide correspondence and authored books on science, medicine, hymnology, and lives of the saints. She joined other leaders of the church in condemning the heresy of the Cathars but unlike others she opposed sentencing them to death.
Caterina Benincasa’s birth into a middle-class wool dyer’s family caused scarcely a ripple; she was after all, the 23rd of 25 children. Another event that year, a flea full of the bacillus pestis entered the Italian port of Messina and brought a tidal wave of disease called the “Black Death.” In just 3 years, 1348 to 50, more than a third of Europe died. Baby Catherine somehow survived the Plague.
As a young girl, she often went to a cave near her home in Siena to meditate, fast, and pray. At 7, she claimed to have seen a vision of Jesus and announced to her parents her determination to live a religious life. Convinced of her devotion, they gave her a small room in the basement of their home that acted as a hermitage. She slept on a board with a log for a pillow. A few years later at the age of 15 her parents thought her period of religious devotion had run its course and that she ought to marry. She cut off her hair to thwart their designs.
The path for young women at that time who wanted to devote themselves to the religious life was to enter a convent as a nun. But Catherine didn’t want a contemplative life; she wanted to help the poor and sick. Her cousin was a Dominican priest who persuaded her to join the Dominicans as a lay sister. She lived at home, wore distinctive clothes, and directed her activities in sacrificial service to the needy.
From 16 to 19, Catherine continued living a secluded life at home and attracted many followers, who were drawn by her feisty personality and exemplary sanctity. She learned to read and became familiar with the Church Fathers; Gregory the Great and Augustine, as well as the popular preachers of the day. At the end of this 3-year seclusion, Catherine experienced what she later described as a “spiritual marriage” to Christ. In a vision, Jesus placed a ring on her finger, and her soul attained mystical union with God.
She returned to her ministry to the poor, sick, and imprisoned of Siena. When a wave of the plague struck her hometown in 1374, most people fled, but she and her followers stayed to nurse the ill and bury the dead. She was tireless, working day and night, healing all of whom the physicians despaired.
When the crisis ended, she began a letter-writing ministry to convert sinners and reform the Church and society. Like many reformers of the day, she was disturbed by the blatant corruption of Church officials, and believed the source of the problem was the Great Papal Schism. In a series of letters, Catherine exhorted the Pope to address the problems of the church and charged him to return to Rome. She wrote, “Respond to the Holy Spirit who is calling you! I tell you: Come! Come! Come! Don’t wait for time because time isn’t waiting for you.”
A year later, in 1377, after Catherine visited with him in Avignon, Gregory XI finally returned to Rome. It was the great moment of her public life.
In her 383 letters and book The Dialogue, Catherine describes her mystical experiences and her all-consuming desire to love God.
At the heart of Catherine’s teaching was the image of a bleeding Christ, the Redeemer—ablaze with fiery charity, eager sacrifice, and unqualified forgiveness. It wasn’t the cross or nails that held Christ to the tree; those were not strong enough to hold the God-Man. It was love that held Him there.
Catherine died in Rome at the age of just 33. What a life she lived and example she set.
by Lance Ralston | Jan 4, 2015 | English |
In this, the 70th Episode of CS , we take a look at Sacramentalism; a mindset that dominated the religious landscape of late Medieval Christianity.
The question that consumed Europeans of the Middle Ages was, “How can I be saved? What must I believe and do that will preserve my soul from the torments of hell?”
Rome answered that with what’s called Sacramentalism.
Now, let me be clear; the basic answer was, “Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.” But the Church went on to define what that trust looked like with a set of rules and required practices. Yes, people are saved by grace through faith, but that grace is received by special acts only authorized clergy may conduct. These acts were called “sacraments” from the word “sacred” meaning holy. But there was a specific flavor to the word sacrament that carried the idea of mystery. Precisely HOW the sacraments communicated grace was unknown, while that they did was a certainty. So while salvation was by grace, one had to go to the Church to get that grace. The sacraments were channels of grace and necessary food of the soul. They accompanied human life from the cradle to the grave. An infant was ushered into the world by the sacrament of Baptism while the dying were sent on their way out by the sacrament of Extreme Unction.
While all the sacraments were important, the most essential were Baptism and the Eucharist.
Baptism was thought to open the door to the Kingdom of Heaven by removing the stain of original sin. But that door to glory was only opened. The baptized needed to follow up their baptism as an infant with later sacraments like Confirmation, Marriage and others. So important was baptism, in an emergency, when an infant appeared to be in distress and a bishop wasn’t close enough to perform the rite, the Church allowed the nearest available pious person to baptize.
The Lord’s Table, Communion, or as it’s referred to by some churches, the Eucharist, was the sacrament of grace by which people nourished and nurtured their spirits and progressed in sanctification.
Besides these, other rites were called sacraments, but until the time of the Scholastics, there was little agreement as to the proper number. Before the Scholastics, the number of sacraments varied from four to twelve.
Bernard of Clairvaux listed ten and including foot-washing and the ordaining or as it was called, “investiture” of bishops and abbots. Abelard named only five. A mystic theologian named Hugo of St. Victor also gave five but went on to suggested thirty possible means by which the Church dispensed special grace. Hugo divided the sacraments into three classes,—
First were the sacraments necessary for salvation; Baptism and the Eucharist.
Second were those which sanctified the worshipper and made spiritual progress possible. This includes holy water and the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday.
A third class prepared the way for the other sacraments.
Though Thomas Aquinas listed seven sacraments, he recognized some of the lesser rites as quasi-sacramental in character.
The uncertainty concerning the number of the sacraments was a heritage from the Church Fathers. Augustine defined any sacred rite as a sacrament. In 1179, the Third Lateran Council used the term in a wide sense to include the investiture of bishops and burial. The Catholic Church today makes a distinction between certain sacred rites, called sacramentalia, and the seven sacraments. Aquinas gave as the reason for the proper number to be seven—saying that three is the number of Deity, four of creation, and seven represents union of God and man. A rather interesting “reason” for the supreme Scholastic to make since it sounds far more like the work of one of the Mystics.
Following the inquisitive nature of the Scholastics however, ingenious and elaborate attempts were made to correlate the seven sacraments to all the areas of mankind’s spiritual need. They were understood as undoing the Fall and its effects.
Seven corresponds to the seven classic virtues. Bonaventura allegorized the sacraments to a military career. He said the sacraments furnish grace for the spiritual struggle and strengthened the warrior on the various stages of his/her conflict. Baptism equips him on entering the conflict, confirmation encourages him in its progress, extreme unction helps him at the finish, the Eucharist and penance renew his strength, ordination introduces new recruits into the ranks, and marriage prepares men to be recruits. Augustine compared the sacraments to the badges and rank conferred upon a soldier, a comparison Thomas Aquinas adopted from him.
By the authority of the well-regarded Peter the Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, seven was chosen as the sacred number. The seven sacraments are Baptism, Confirmation, Penance which includes confession and absolution, Eucharist, Marriage, Ordination, and Extreme Unction; sometimes called Last Rites.
Confirmation was closely connected with baptism as a kind of supplement. It was a way for someone who’d been baptized as an infant to personally appropriate the faith of his/her parents by endorsing baptism as their own choice. They “confirmed” their faith in God and His Church. In the Greek Church, Confirmation can be performed by any priest, but in the Latin church, only by a bishop.
Penance was deemed necessary for sins committed after Baptism and Confirmation. The penitent confessed his/her sins to a priest, who then prescribed certain acts that were understood to mark genuine repentance, such as praying the rosary or performing some compensatory act that rectified the error. Either upon completion of the penance, or in anticipation of its completion, the priest would announce the confessor absolved of the confessed sins. Being thus morally and spiritual clean the penitent was qualified to partake of the Eucharist.
Ordination is the sacrament by which priests are authorized to their office.
Marriage lies at the basis of the family and society in Church and State, and the rite of marriage was jealously guarded by the Church against any and all forces that would weaken it. The Church sanctioned marriage and it was to the Church one had to appeal to have a marriage annulled.
In the Middle Ages, ordination and marriage were mutually exclusive. Since priests were to be celibate, they were ordained, and since lay people weren’t ordained, they were provided the sacrament of marriage. The idea back of both was the sense of divine call and fitting to the role each was to play in the plan of God.
Extreme unction was first mentioned as a sacrament in the Synod of Pavia in 850. Originally it was a special prayer for someone gravely ill. It was meant to replace the use of amulets and incantations and could be applied by both laymen and priests. Later, priests alone were permitted to offer it and it was only given to those about to die.
The Scholastics taught that the effectiveness of the sacraments were ex opere operato, meaning that their virtue as channels of special grace were inherent in them and independent of the moral character of the priest or recipient. The only requirement was that they be performed in the proper manner with right intent.
If this sounds familiar, you may remember the Donatist controversy that so incensed Augustine. The Donatists of North Africa insisted that Baptism and Communion, the only sacraments or ordinances they recognized, were invalid if performed by a derelict priest or unqualified bishop. Augustine upheld the idea that the sacraments carried inherent virtue. His ideas shaped the theological base of Sacramentalism.
Thomas Aquinas said the sacrament imparts its virtue without the operation of faith on the part of the recipient. Protestant scholars have often claimed the Scholastics ascribed a magical virtue to the sacraments that was unaffected by the attitude of the recipient. But that’s not really their view. Aquinas said it was the activity of God that made the sacrament efficacious, not the rite as divorced from Him. The Scholastics maintained Christ gave the Sacraments to the Church, to give to the people as a way to convey saving and sanctifying grace. Only the duly ordained church hierarchy of Pope, Cardinals, bishops and priests, possess the power to administer the sacraments. Under Sacramentalism, salvation is by Christ alone, but through the mediation of the Church.
This is why and how the Medieval Church was able to exert such tight control over the lives of the people of Europe. They were the spiritual gatekeepers of heaven, declaring who was in and who was out.
To the mediaeval mind, the sacraments were essential food of the religious life, and, in building up the sacramental system, the mediaeval theologian thought he was strengthening the Church. In the authority to administer them lay the power of the priesthood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven.
Duns Scotus, whose opinions were set aside by the Church for those of Thomas Aquinas, insisted that God can confer grace apart from the sacraments, and their efficacy is dependent on the will of the recipient. Scotus said the sacraments acted indirectly. They weren’t supernatural vehicles of saving or sanctifying grace. They were symbols used to affect a change of heart and mind in someone so an opening could be made for God’s grace.
The relation the priest sustains to the sacraments is a vital one, and except in extraordinary cases his administration of the rites is essential. As already said, their effectiveness doesn’t depend upon the priest’s personal character; it’s only important that he perform them according to proper procedure. An immoral priest can confer sacramental grace. To use the mediaeval illustration, pure water may be conveyed through a lead pipe as well as thru a silver. The priest acts in the name of the Church, and in uttering the sacramental formula gives voice to the Christ-ordained authority of the Church. That’s enough for bestowing a perfect sacrament.
Bonaventura said that in the event of an emergency, when a sacrament was necessary but a priest wasn’t available, the ritual could be performed by laymen outside the Church, IF the recipient then re-enacted the rite within the Church as soon as possible.
Three of the sacraments; baptism, confirmation, and ordination, were thought to confer an indelible mark on the soul. Once baptized, always baptized. Once confirmed, forever confirmed. Once ordained, permanently ordained. However, in extreme cases, the state these marks ushered one into could be forfeited by becoming an apostate and being excommunicated.
While Sacramentalism dominated the theology and practice of the Medieval Church, the Reformers set about to dismantle it. They claimed it was based on a faulty interpretation of Scripture. Martin Luther called Sacramentalism the Church’s Babylonish captivity, in which the rights and liberty of believers were fettered by the traditions of men.
In our next episode we’ll take a look at another theological strain that operated at this time – The Medieval Mystics.
As we end, I want to once more thank those who’ve donated to CS to help defray the cost of maintaining the site and server. Every bit helps.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 28, 2014 | English |
The title of this episode of CS is The Not-So Great After All Schism.
At the end of our last episode, a Frenchman, the Archbishop of Bordeaux was elected by the College of Cardinals in 1305 as Pope Clement. But Clement never set foot in Rome, because the locus of political power had shifted to France and her King, Philip. This marks the beginning of what’s called the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy, a 72–year long period when France dominated the papacy. After Clement, the next 6 Popes, all French, made their headquarters in Avignon, France rather than Rome. Though it began as a small town when Clement first located there, over the next 70 years it grew to a population of some 80,000, nearly all of them associated in some way with the Church bureaucracy.
This transfer of the papacy from Rome to France had a profound impact on the way all Europe came to see both the Pope and the leadership of the Church. Rome was the Eternal City. The Church of Rome, with the Pope as its bishop, went all the way back to Peter. That’s why people regarded it as special; why it called the shots for everyone else. If the Pope no longer sat in Rome, if he could now reside in some other church, what did that say about his authority? Was he indeed Peter’s successor? Was he truly The Vicar of Christ? And what did it mean when the Pope seemed to be little more than the political mouthpiece for the King of France?
While the French enjoyed having the Pope close to home, the rest of Europe didn’t find it much to their liking. The duchies and other regions of what would later be called Germany in particular resented it, being in constant tension with their French neighbors.
A good part of the hostility toward the Avignon papacy revolved around the abuse of money. Since the Papal States in Italy were no longer contributing, the papacy nearly went bankrupt. To replace lost income, French popes employed a slew of schemes. There were fees for this and taxes for that. Whenever a new bishop was appointed, his first year’s income went to the Pope. Veteran bishops were transferred between churches, so the Pope could start the process all over again. Sometimes no bishop would be appointed so the entire income went to Avignon.
The most lucrative practice was the granting of indulgences. These were passed out for just about any reason; any venture the Church figured was in its interest. From minor public works to war could earn someone an indulgence. And what the indulgences earned those they were granted, grew as time passed. The common people, who couldn’t afford to purchase such spiritual extravagances, and trusted in a more sincere form of devotion, saw all of this as a gross departure from the path of genuine righteousness. Bitter feelings toward Avignon grew, especially when the Pope demanded an increase in revenue under the threat of excommunication. Hell was for un-repentant sinners, not people who couldn’t afford to pay ever more taxes and fees.
By 1360, the outcry over the French domination of the Church made it clear the Avignon papacy could not continue. But no one foresaw the incredible events a return to Rome would bring.
In 1377, the elderly Pope Gregory XI re-entered Rome. But the joy that attended the re-establishment of the papacy there was short-lived. Gregory died within a year. The College of Cardinals, still filled by Frenchmen, yielded to the clamor of a Roman mob and chose an Italian. On Easter Sunday, April 18, Urban VI was crowned as the new Vicar of Christ. As the next months unfolded, it became clear Urban was a harsh dictator. The Cardinals had second thoughts about his election. In August, they announced that in their earlier decision, a mob had forced the selection of an apostate and the proceedings were invalid.
End of Round One.
A month later, the so-called apostate Pope Urban VI fired off Round Two by creating a new College of Cardinals. The sitting College, dominated by French cardinals, chose a new Pope from among their number, Clement VII. Clement took a tour of Italy to present himself as the real Pope, then headed back to à Avignon.
This brings us to what’s known as “The Great Schism.” It lasted 39 years. Each papal court had its own College of Cardinals, insuring the succession of its choice. Each Pope claimed to be the true Vicar of Christ, with the power to excommunicate those who refused to acknowledge him. The other guy was “antichrist.”
Of course, the French went with Clement; Italy and most of the rest of Europe, with Urban. But since England went with Urban, Scotland went with – can you guess? Yep – Clement. Within each kingdom, there were minorities of support for the “other guy.” Riots broke out. Property was burned and a new crusade was called for.
In 1395, professors at the University of Paris proposed a general council, representing the Universal Church, to meet and heal the schism. Problems immediately arose. Canon Law said only the Pope could call a general council; and only the Pope could ratify any decision it made. Which Pope had those rights? In effect, Canon Law prohibited the reunion of Christendom.
By 1409, a majority of cardinals from both sides agreed something had to be done. They met for a general council at Pisa in Italy. They deposed both Popes and elected a new man, Alexander V. Wouldn’t you just know it; neither of the two deposed prelates accepted the action. Now the Church had not two, but three Popes!
One of them called for a crusade against another and sold indulgences to pay for it. This ridiculousness finally stirred the people of Europe to action. In 1414, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund assembled the most impressive Church gathering of the era at the German city of Constance. Even the Eastern Greek Orthodox Church sent representatives.
For the first time, voting took place on a purely national basis. Each nation had one vote. The national structure of the council was highly significant. It shows that the Church was reluctantly coming to realize the new alignment of power turning Europe into the modern world.
It took three years, but eventually the council got one of the Popes to step aside, deposed the other two and chose a new Pope, Martin V. One of the deposed popes tried to retain his title, but for all practical purposes, the council in Constance brought an end to the Great Schism.
Just when it seemed things would get back to normal, the new Pope made a move which seemed to slit his own throat. The instant he was seated, he repudiated all acts of the council, except the one by which he ruled. Yet it was the council’s acts that had built the authority by which they could name him Pope. It was as if he said his election was based on a fiction.
Looking back, Pope Martin’s actions seem foolish, but he had good reason to deny the work of the council. It raised an important question: Who’s greater, a council that seats a Pope, or the Pope who’s authority convenes councils?
This blatant foray into political machinations dug a trough for the papacy it would be a while getting out of.
As we end this episode on the Not-So-Great-After-All Schism, it seems a good place to pause and make an editorial comment.
Over the years I’ve done this podcast, I’ve had only a few Roman Catholics who’ve gone after me for not being fair with the Church and Papacy. A lot more have remarked on how fair they’ve found the podcast. So let me say this à The Church, whether we’re talking about the Eastern Orthodox, the Church in the East, the Roman Catholic Church, or the dozens of Protestant groups have a mixed record when it comes to faithfulness to God. There are high points and low. Golden Ages, Glided Ages, and periods of growdy mud. There’s no point in white-washing those times in Church History when the People of God didn’t act like it. This era of the Great Schism is at best an embarrassment. No amount of spin can make it anything else.
Pope Alexander VI’s real name was Roderigo Borgia. He ruled from 1492–1503 and was grossly immoral; obsessed with providing wealth and power for his children. Yes, I said “children.” So much for being celibate. The entire 15th C is an abysmal period for the Popes as they were far more interested in politics and the arts than the things of God. As Shelly puts it, “The pope often could not make up his mind whether he was the successor of Peter or Caesar. Political corruption and immorality in the Vatican reached unbelievable heights under the Borgias.”
And while things were horribly out of whack in the upper reaches of Church Hierarchy, there were many godly bishops, priests, and deacons who served their parishes well, with a heart to glorify God. It’s just that the Papacy was certainly no example to follow.
So, Pope Martin tried to up-end the Council of Constance but what happened there was not to be forgotten by the representatives. Estrangement from the Vatican was growing. Men began to think in terms of “national churches,” and a church governed by representative bodies instead of a tyrannical dictator.
The ground for the Reformation was being plowed.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 21, 2014 | English |
The title of this episode of is Of Popes and Princes.
As far as the Church in the West was concerned, the 14th C opened on what seemed a strong note. Early in 1300, Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed a Year of Jubilee, a new event on the Church calendar. The Pope’s decree announced a blanket pardon of all sins for all who visited the churches of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s in Rome over the next 10 months. Huge crowds poured into the city.
Boniface VIII was interesting. He had a flair for the pomp and circumstance of what some might call pretentious ceremony. He regularly appeared in public dressed in royal, or even better, imperial robes, announcing, “I am Caesar. I am Emperor.” His papal crown had 48 rubies, 72 sapphires, 45 emeralds, and 66 large pearls. He could afford to be generous with pardons. At the Church of St. Paul, pilgrims to Rome kept priests busy night and day collecting and counting the unending offerings.
For Boniface, looking ahead the years seemed bright. The Vatican had held unrivaled religious and political power for 2 centuries and there was nothing on the horizon that portended change. The Pope had before him the sparkling example of Innocent III, who a hundred years before dominated emperors and kings. Boniface assumed he’d carry on in the same vein.
But just 3 years later, Boniface died of a shock of the greatest personal insult ever inflicted on a Pope. Even as the Jubilee celebrants rejoiced, forces were at work to end the hegemony of medieval papal sovereignty.
You don’t have to study history long before you realize there are often major changes brewing beneath the surface, long before people are aware of them. The 14th C was such a time. The Roman popes continued on in a “business as usual” mode while radical new ideas and forces were altering the Faith. The idea of Christendom, a Christian Empire unifying Europe from the 6th thru 14th C’s, was rapidly deteriorating.
So-called Christendom had been useful in creating 7th and 8th C Europe . But its importance faded in the 12th and 13th Cs. Pope Innocent III had indeed demonstrated that papal sovereignty was effective in rallying princes for a crusade or for defending the Church against heretics. But the 14th and 15th C’s saw a marked decline in papal power and prestige.
Because we are used to thinking of the World politically, as a collection of nation-states, it’s difficult to get our heads around the idea they’re a rather recent phenomenon. For most of history, people lived regionally; their lives and thoughts circumscribed by the borders of their county or village. For centuries, Gauls and Goths defined themselves by their tribe. It never occurred to them to call themselves French or German. Such national labels don’t come into play until late, as Europe emerged from the Middle Ages into what we call the Modern World. A world, BTW, marked as modern precisely because of this new way of identifying ourselves.
By the 14th C, people were just beginning to get used to the idea they were English or French. This was possible because for the first time, they began to think of the political state in terms independent of their religious affiliation.
Europe was moving, ever so slowly, away from its feudal past. Land was less important as hard cash became the new emphasis. Those at the political top came to realize they needed ever-larger sources of revenue, which meant taxes.
Edward I of England and Philip the Fair of France were, as was typical for centuries – at odds with each other. To finance their increasingly expensive campaigns of territorial expansion, they decided to tax the clergy. But popes had long maintained the Church was exempt from such taxation, most especially if the money raised was going to be used to let some other guys’ blood out of his body at high speed.
In 1296, Pope Boniface VIII issued a decree threatening excommunication for any ruler who taxed the clergy and any clergy who paid w/o the Pope’s consent. But Edward and Philip were of the new kind of monarch advancing to Europe’s many thrones. They were unimpressed by Rome’s threats. Edward warned if the Church didn’t pay, the Crown’s protection of the Church would be removed, their properties seized in lieu of taxes. Phillip’s answer was to block the export of gold, silver, and jewels from France, depriving Rome of a major source of revenue from its collections.
Pope Boniface backed down, protesting he’d been misunderstood. He certain had not meant to cut off contributions for defense of the realm in times of need. It was a clear victory for both kings.
Their victory over papal power had a way yet to go, though. Reinforced by the success of the Jubilee, Pope Boniface assumed the reverence shown him in every corner of Europe extended to the civil sphere as well. He had another gold ornament added to his crown signifying his temporal power. Then, he went after France’s King Philip, trying to undermine his right to rule. Philip responded by challenging the Pope to show where Jesus gave the Church temporal authority.
In 1301, Philip imprisoned a French bishop on charges of treason. Boniface ordered his release and rescinded his earlier concession on taxation of Church lands. The next year Philip summoned the French nobility, clergy, and other leaders and formed a kind of French parliament. He then gained their unanimous support in his quarrel with the pope. One of the new civil ministers put the choice they had to make this way, “My master’s sword is made of steel; the Pope’s is made of words.”
Several months later Boniface issued the most extreme assertion of papal power in Church history; the papal bull known as the Unam Sanctum = The One Holy, most famous of all bulls of the Middle Ages, asserting the Pope’s authority over all other authorities. His meaning was unmistakable. He declared, “It’s altogether necessary for every human being to be subject to the Roman pontiff.”
Philip’s counter to the Unam Sanctum was no less drastic. He moved to have Boniface deposed on the grounds his election had been illegal. To carry out this plan, Philip turned to William of Nogaret, the lawyer helping him set up the political foundations of France.
Nogaret was also a master at producing so-called “evidence.” He’d gained testimony to support his case by such dubious means as stripping a witness, smearing him with honey, and hanging him near a beehive. His case against Boniface went way beyond the charge that his election was illegitimate. Nogaret claimed the Pope was guilty of heresy, simony, and gross immorality. Given authority by a French assembly of clergy and nobles, he rushed to Italy to bring the Pope to France for trial before a Church council.
Boniface was 86 and had left Rome for the Summer. He was staying in his hometown when Nogaret arrived with troops. They broke in to Boniface’s bedroom, violently manhandling him. They waited a few days for him to recover, then prepared to return to France. But the people of the town discovered what was happening and rescued the Pope. He died a few weeks later, weak and humiliated.
This tragic affair becomes something of a marker for the fact that Europe’s rulers would no longer tolerate papal interference in what they regarded as political matters. The problem was after so many centuries of Christendom, it was difficult sorting out where politics ended and Church affairs began. What was clear was that a king’s power within his own country was now a fact.
At the same time, abuse of a Pope, even an unpopular one, was deeply resented. Despite his declaration of the Jubilee, Boniface was not a beloved leader. He’d been a target of much criticism. To give you an idea of just how low Boniface’s esteem had fallen, Dante, author of The Divine Comedy, reserved a place in hell for him. Still—the Pope was the Vicar of Christ. Few people at that time could conceive of Christianity without the Pope and the Church hierarchy he presided over.
Even when there was no political vocabulary for it, people of the early 14th C began to distinguish between secular and religious authority and recognize the rights of each in its own place.
When Boniface’s successor died after a brief reign, Philip’s daring coup seemed to bear its fruit. In 1305, the College of Cardinals elected a Frenchman, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, as Pope Clement V. Clement never set foot in Rome, preferring to stay closer to home, where he was always accessible to do the royal bidding.
Clement’s election marked the start of a 72 year long period called “The Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy” named after the Jewish exile some 2000 years before. Following Clement, six popes, all French, ruled from the French town of Avignon rather than in Rome.
This relocation of the Popes to France was more than a matter of geography. In the thinking of Europeans, the Eternal City of Rome stood not only for the idea of the Apostolic Succession of the Church founded by St. Peter, but also of Roman imperium. Avignon was surrounded by what? The French kingdom. The Church was a mere tool in the hands of one nation, the power-hungry French.
This was resented bitterly in Germany. In 1324, Emperor Louis the Bavarian moved against the French Pope John XXII by appealing to a general council. Among the scholars supporting such a move was Marsilius of Padua who’d fled from the University of Paris. In 1326, Marsilius and his colleague John of Jandun presented Louis with a work titled Defender of the Peace. This questioned the entire papal structure of the Church and called for a democratic government. Defender of the Peace asserted that the Church was the community of all believers and that the priesthood was not superior to the laity. Neither popes, bishops, nor priests had any special function; they served only as agents of the community of believers.
In this revolutionary view of the church, the Pope was made over into an executive office of the Church council which were simply spiritual elders. The Pope was subordinated to the authority of the Council. This new church government form was called counciliarism. It would soon move from theory to practice.
But that – as we often say, is the subject for another podcast.
I want to take a moment at the end of this episode to once again thank all those who’ve taken the time to give us a review on iTunes. As the largest podcast portal, ratings there go a long way to promote CS.
And thanks to those who’ve donated to CS recently. Every donation is used to keep the podcast up and running.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 14, 2014 | English |
This episode of CS is titled, “No Dunce Here.”
The Franciscans had an answer to the Dominican Scholastic we looked at in the previous episode. In fact, Aquinas’ Franciscan counterpart lived at the same time. His name was John Bonaventure.
Born in Tuscany in 1221 as John Fidanza, he became known as Bonaventura when he had a miraculous recovery from a grave illness as a child of four. Upon regaining his health, his mother announced, “Bonaventura = Good fortune” and the name stuck.
While Aquinas was predominantly a theologian, Bonaventure was both theologian and accomplished administrator in the affairs of the Franciscans. Where Thomas was precise but dry, John was a mystic given to great eloquence. If Aquinas was prose, Bonaventure was poetry.
Bonaventure joined the Franciscans and immediately excelled in his studies. He spent 3 years in Paris studying under the Scholastic scholar Alexander of Hales. Alexander paid his pupil a huge compliment when he said that in Bonaventure, “Adam seems not to have sinned.”
Finishing his studies in Paris, he stayed to teach, filling the spot of John of Parma when he took on the leadership of the Franciscans. He was only 26. Anyone would have been in over their head at that age since Bonaventure became the leader of the Franciscans when they ere being split by the fracture we talked about in an earlier episode. He took a middle position between the two parties and was able to negotiate an uneasy peace. It was a brutally hard assignment, but Bonaventure pulled it off with aplomb and earned the title of 2nd founder of the order.
The entire idea of mendicancy came under assault during his term at the helm of the Franciscans. He penned a tract that silenced the opposition and reinforced support for the Mendicants.
At the direction of the first Franciscan General Council at Narbonne in 1260, he wrote the Legend of Francis, the authoritative Franciscan account of the Order’s founder.
In 1273, he was made cardinal of Albano, Italy. He died in Lyons while attending a Church council in 1274. The Pope performed extreme unction for him and his funeral was attended by dignitaries from all over the Christian world. He was declared a “Doctor of the Church” in 1587, one of the highest honors the Roman Church can bestow.
Dante, a fierce critic of sham religion, gave Bonaventure great honor by placing him beside Thomas Aquinas.
These two will always be considered by students of history side by side. One historian of mediaeval theology calls them the illuminating stars on the horizon of the 13th C. Aquinas had the sharper mind, but Bonaventure the warmer heart. Maybe this is why each joined their respective orders; Thomas the Dominicans and John the Franciscans.
Bonaventura enjoyed great popularity as a preacher. Being a poet, his sermons were far more eloquent than his peers.
When Bonaventure wrote, like Aquinas, he turned his mind to theology and provided much to the cleaning up of the thoughts of the day. To give an idea of what kinds of things the Scholastics wrestled with, here are some of the topics Bonaventure weighed in on. . . .
The Trinity, creation, sin, the Incarnation, grace, the Holy Spirit, sacraments, and the Afterlife. Having dealt with these basic topics he engaged a whole host of other subjects more popular to discuss. Things like . . .
- Could God have made a better world?
- Could He have made it sooner than He did?
- Can an angel be in several places at the same time?
- Can several angels be at the same time in the same place?
- At the moment of his creation was Lucifer corrupt?
- Did he belong to the order of angels?
- Is there a hierarchy among the fallen angels?
- Do demons have foreknowledge of contingent events?
Bonaventure discussed whether or not sexual intercourse took place before the Fall, whether or not before the Fall men and women was equal, did Adam or Eve sin more grievously by eating the forbidden fruit.
With such weighty and important stuff, no wonder these guys spent a good part of their time sitting at a desk, studying.
Bonaventure agreed with Aquinas in denying that Mary was immaculately conceived and free of original sin. He disagreed with his fellow Franciscan, Duns Scotus, on the issue of transubstantiation. Though Scotus differed from Aquinas on precisely WHAT the bread and wine became, he did accept the idea they became something MORE than mere bread and wine, while Bonaventure held to a symbolic nature for the Communion elements.
While Bonaventure was a brilliant mind, it’s not his theology he’s known for. It’s hard to be when you live at the same time as Thomas Aquinas. He’s best known as a mystic and the author of the Life of St. Francis.
While Aquinas’ Summa became the theological textbook of the Roman Church, it was Bonaventure’s devotional writings that stirred the hearts of thousands of everyday priests to seek God by grace and through His Word.
That brings us to another Franciscan and the last of the Scholastics we’ll consider, John Duns [done] Scotus.
Let me begin by saying that the Scotists, the followers of Duns Scotus, and the Thomists, who followed Aquinas, form the 2 great theological schools of the Middle Ages. The battle between them was fierce; at times violent.
Now, I have to say that in reviewing Scotus’ work, I have a difficult time grasping his thought. Being of only average intelligence, most of his work goes way over my head. Scotus was a serious brainiac and when I read him, I’m lost. I’ll attempt a summary of his work later but first, let’s take a look at his life. We can cover it quickly, because, well, we know next to nothing about him.
He was born “John Duns [done]”; in Scotland; thus the Latin nickname “Scotus” by which he’s best known. Scotus became a priest and joined the Franciscans. Most of his career was spent lecturing at Oxford. He eventually taught at Paris and Cologne where he died in 1308. A monument to Scotus in the Franciscan church at Cologne bears this inscription:—
Scotia gave me birth, England nursed me, Gaul educated me, Cologne holds my ashes.
Among the stories told of Duns Scotus is one that gives more insight into his thoughts than entire chapters of his complex written discourses.
Scotus engaged an English farmer on the subject of religion. The conversation came round to predestination. The farmer, who was sowing his field, said to Scotus: “Why do you speak to me? If God has foreknowledge that I will be saved, I will be saved whether I do good or ill.”
Scotus replied: “Well, if God has foreknowledge that grain in your bag will grow out of this soil, it will grow whether you sow or withhold your hand. You may as well save yourself the labor you’re at.”
Scotus’ mind was more critical than constructive. He tended to pick apart the thoughts and conclusions of others than to develop or declare his own positions. His work feels reactionary, though he was just using the dialectical method in fashion among the Scholastics.
You’ll remember that the great endeavor of the Scholastics was to link faith and reason; to show that faith wasn’t ir-rational; it was super-rational. They aimed to show that the intellect was a tool to inform and strengthen faith, not weaken it.
Scotus is regarded as last of the Scholastics because his work under-cut their endeavor. By using the questioning methodology of the dialectic, he attacked, not the sufficiency of faith as some scholastics had, he attacked the sufficiency of reason as the means to arrive at knowledge. He subjected Scholastic propositions to intense scrutiny. He showed how several of the theological propositions of the Church were difficult to support by reason, yet the Church said they were true. So, the problem had to be with reason, not with Church dogma. Some things had to be accepted, he said, by faith.
Scotus’ adeptness at asking questions that backed people into logical corners earned him both supporters and enemies. At times, his thoughts were so elaborate; his writing so confusing, today we refer to a muddle-headed person as a “dunce” a word derived from his name.
Scotus spent much of his time on the subject of the will. It’s his work on it that framed the philosophical base for the Reformers and their views on God’s Sovereignty and Election.
Scotus was the first major Catholic theologian to support the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. That says the mother of Jesus, though herself born of human parents, was conceived in holiness without the taint of original sin. That idea had been set forward a century earlier in France, where it immediately met with controversy. Scotus defended the view at a public debate in Paris, employing two-hundred lines of argument for its support and winning the university to his side. Although Aquinas rejected it, Scotus’s view won the day. In Dec. 1854, Pope Pius IX, a Franciscan, declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to be a divinely revealed fact and official Catholic dogma.
Aquinas’s reputation in philosophy and theology has eclipsed Scotus’s, though Scotus’s influenced a wide range of later thinkers, including in the 18th C German Protestant philosopher Leibniz and the 20th C French Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin. The Existentialism of the 20th C resurrected Scotus’s emphasis on will over reason.
If you take a college philosophy class today, most likely you’ll be told that faith and reason are totally separate things. Reason, it’s postulated, is based on evidence and the faculty of the mind. Faith is divorced from both reason and evidence; and reason, always trumps faith. This is an complete reversal from the Scholastics, who may be attributed with some of the loftiest moments in the long history of philosophical analysis. For them, faith came first, with reason a tool that helped fill out and bolster faith.
Duns Scotus began the drift away from that by showing how untrustworthy reason could be. His goal was to remind Scholastics that in their emphasis on reason, they’d neglected the primacy of Faith. But in the divorce he postulated between faith and reason, what happened was that later thinkers ran with reason as separate and superior to faith. If Dun Scotus showed up at a college philosophy lecture today, he’d weep that his ideas had been so poorly developed. And he’d annihilate the shoddy thinking of the secular professor.
by Lance Ralston | Dec 7, 2014 | English |
This Episode is titled “God’s Ox.”
I begin with a thanks to those who’ve given a review of CS on the iTunes store where many subscribe to the podcast. While iTunes is just one outlet for the podcast world, it turns out to be THE MAJOR venue for rating and promoting podcasts.
Look, what we’re doing here is ultra-amateur. CS is a labor of love and makes no claim at being a scholarly review of history. I share these episodes in the hope others can tag along and learn alongside me. I make no claim that this is exhaustive. On the contrary; it’s a cursory account meant to give a brief overview of Church history; a kind of verbal fly-over; with occasional moments when we linger over something interesting. I aim to give listeners a basic sense of when events occurred in relation to each other; who some of the main actors and actresses were with the part they played. And as I’ve said before, the episodes are intentionally short to make it easy to listen in the brief snatches as people are working out, doing chores, going for a walk, driving to work. What’s a kick is to hear about all the ways people HAVE connected to CS. Several have queued up a bunch of episodes and listened as they drive across country or fly overseas.
I was at a conference a while back, talking quietly to some friends when a guy sitting in the row in front of me turned around and said, “Are you Lance? Do you have the podcast, Communio Sanctorum?” He recognized my voice. We had a great time getting to know each other better. Another time while on a tour of Israel, I met a guy in the dining room of one of our hotels who’s a fan of the podcast. What a kcick that was.
Anyway – I appreciate it when people leave comments on the FB page or send an email. But best of all is to rate the podcast and write a quick review on iTunes, then tells your friends to give us a listen.
Now, back to the Scholastics.
Though fueled by the work of Abelard and Anselm, Scholasticism reached its zenith when the Greek philosopher Aristotle was re-discovered by scholars in Europe. The Crusades made contact with Muslim scholars who debated Aristotle’s philosophy. Their thoughts returned with the Crusaders and were passed on to the theological schools located in the mendicant orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans. These were the groups the Church had invested with the study of theology. During the mid-13th C, there was something of an Aristotelian revival in these schools. It’s interesting that at the dawn of the 13th C, the reading of Aristotle was banned! After all, he was a pagan Greek. What could Christians learn from him? But, as any college knows, there’s one way to make sure something gets read. Ban it, place a prohibition on it. So a couple decades later, portions of Aristotle were allowed to be read. By mid-Century, he was required reading and both he and his mentor Plato and his teacher Socrates were unofficially baptized and made over into pre-Christian saints.
It makes sense that Aristotle’s philosophy would be resurrected when we remember the goal of the Scholastics was to apply reason to faith; to seek to understand with the rational mind what the spirit already believed. It was Aristotle who’d developed the rules of formal logic.
During the Middle Ages in Europe, all learning took place under the watchful eye of the Church. Theology reigned supreme among the sciences. Philosophers like Aristotle, the Muslim Averroes [ah-ver-O –ee], and Jewish Maimonides were studied alongside the Bible. Scholars were especially fascinated by Aristotle. He seemed to have explained the entire universe, not by using Scripture but by his powers of observation and reason.
For some ultra-conservatives, this emphasis on reason threatened to undermine traditional belief. Christians had come to think that knowledge could come only through God’s revelation, that only those to whom God chose to reveal truth could understand the universe. How could this be squared with the knowledge taught by these newly re-discovered philosophies?
The pinnacle of Scholastic theology arrived with Thomas Aquinas. His work forever shaped the direction of Catholicism. His influence was so profound he was given the title “Dr. Angelicus – the Angelic Doctor.” His magnum opus was Summa Theologica in which he said philosophical reasoning and faith were perfect complements: Reason leads to faith.
He was born in Italy to Count Lundulf of Aquino and his wife Theodora. It became clear at a young age that Thomas would be a physically large child. At 5 he was sent to a school at the nearby monastery of Monte Cassino that Benedict had started 700 yrs before. At 14, Thomas went to the University of Naples, where his Dominican teacher so impressed him Thomas decided he too would join the new, study-oriented Dominican order.
His family fiercely opposed this, hoping he’d become a wealthy abbot or archbishop rather than take the mendicant’s vow of poverty. Thomas’s brothers kidnapped and confined him for over a year. His family tempted him with a prostitute and an offer to buy him the archbishopric of Naples. Thomas would have none of it. He went to Paris, medieval Europe’s HQ of theological study. There it was that he came under the spell of the scholar Albert the Great.
When Thomas began his studies, no one would suspect the future that lay before him. He was colossally obese, much of his size due to suffering from edema, AKA dropsy. He had one huge eye that dwarfed the other and gave his face a distorted aspect many found disconcerting. Socially, he was anything but the dynamic, charismatic figure some might assume; you know – something to make up for his awkward physical appearance. Aquinas was introspective and silent most of the time. When he did speak, what he said often had nothing to do with the conversation at hand. In college his classmates called him “the dumb ox,” a title that seemed apropos for both appearance and behavior.
What people didn’t realize till later was the incredibly keen mind behind the unassuming exterior, and the brilliant way he was able to marshal his thoughts into persuasive language others could understand. Remember that the goal of the Scholastics was to provide a rational understanding to what Christians believe. Aquinas gave critical support to such doctrines as the attributes of God, the Resurrection, and ex-nihilo creation; creation out of nothing. While these are things most Christians hold to, Aquinas also provided support for distinctly Roman beliefs; such as the veneration of Mary, purgatory, the role of human merit in salvation, and the seven sacraments by which God conveys grace through the Roman clergy. He also gave much support to Transubstantiation, the idea that the Communion elements are turned into the actual, literal body and blood of Christ in the Mass.
His theological and philosophical thoughts consumed him. According to one account, he was dining with King Louis IX of France. While others engaged in conversation, Thomas stared off into space, lost in thought. Forgetting or not caring where he was, he slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Ah! There’s an argument that will destroy the Manicheans!” — a heretical group from ages before.
At the beginning of his Summa Theologica, Thomas distinguished between philosophy and theology, between reason and revelation. Contrary to what some had claimed, true theology and philosophy don’t contradict each other. They are each avenues of knowledge ordained by God.
Following Aristotle’s lead, Thomas proposed that reason is based on what our senses tell us—what we can see, feel, hear, smell, and touch. Revelation is based on more. While reason can lead us to belief in God—something that other theologians like Anselm had already said—only revelation can show us God as He really is, the God of the Bible. Philosophy makes clear the existence of God. But only theology based on Revelation tells us what the God Who exists is like.
Thomas accepted Aristotle’s principle that every effect has a cause, every cause a prior cause, and so on back to the First Cause. He declared creation traces back to a divine First Cause, the Creator. However, the full knowledge of God—the Trinity, for example—comes only through revelation. From this knowledge we discover man’s origin and destiny.
Aquinas went on: Man is a sinner in need of special grace from God. Jesus Christ by his sacrifice has secured the reconciliation of man and God. All who receive the benefits of Christ’s work are justified, but the key, as in traditional Catholic teaching, lies in the way the benefits of Christ’s work are applied. Christ won grace; but the Church imparts it. Aquinas taught that Christians need the constant infusion of “cooperating grace,” whereby the Christian virtues are stimulated in the soul. Assisted by this cooperating grace a Christian can do works that please God and gain special merit in God’s sight.
This grace, said Aquinas, comes to men only through the divinely appointed sacraments placed in the keeping of the Church; that is the visible, organized Roman Church, led by the Pope. So convinced was Aquinas of the divine authority of the papacy he insisted that submission to the pope was necessary for salvation.
Following an earlier Scholastic, Peter of Lombard, Aquinas held to seven sacraments as a means by which the Church imparts grace to people. He said since sin remains a problem for the baptized believer, God provided penance, a sacrament that made for spiritual healing.
With some caution, Thomas also accepted the practice of indulgences that had gained acceptance during the Crusades. Aquinas taught that thanks to the work of Christ and the meritorious deeds of the saints, the Church had access to a “treasury of merit”—a kind of great spiritual reservoir of excess goodness. Priests were able to draw from this reservoir to aid Christians who had insufficient merit of their own. We’ll take a closer look at indulgences later when we get to the Reformation.
Aquinas said the wicked pass into hell while the faithful who’ve wisely used the means of grace pass immediately to heaven. But the bulk of Christians who’d followed Christ inadequately, had to suffer purification in purgatory before ascending to the joys of heaven. Thankfully, these souls are not beyond the help of the Church on Earth, Aquinas reasoned. Prayers to the saints and special masses could relieve the pains of souls in purgatory.
Now, there was nothing new in all this. It’d been said many times before. But Thomas set the traditional teachings of the Church in a cosmic framework.
Thomas’s writings, and there were more than what was contained in the Summa, were attacked before he was in his grave. In 1277, the archbishop of Paris tried to have Thomas condemned, but the Roman clergy put a stop to it. Though Thomas was canonized in 1325, it took another 200 years before his teaching was hailed as pre-eminent and a major rebuttal to Protestantism. His writings played a prominent role in the Counter-Reformation’s Council of Trent.
In 1879, a papal bull endorsed Aquinas’s theology, today known as Thomism, as an authentic expression of doctrine and said it should be studied by all students of theology. Both Protestant and Catholic scholars study his work deeply.
Thomas himself would probably not be pleased. Toward the end of his life, he had a vision that forced him to drop his pen. Though he’d experienced such visions for years, this was different. His secretary begged him to pick up his pen and continue, but Aquinas replied, “I cannot. Such things have been revealed to me that what I have written seems but straw.” His Summa Theologica, one of the most influential writings in Church history was left unfinished when he died three months later.
by Lance Ralston | Nov 30, 2014 | English |
The title of this episode is Scholasticism
One of the most important questions faced by philosophers and theologians throughout the centuries has been the interplay between Faith and Reason. Are they enemies or allies? Is the Christian faith reasonable, or a blind leap into an irrational darkness? A major advance in answering this came with the emergence of a group of medieval theologians known as the Scholastics. Chief among them were Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th C and Thomas Aquinas in the 13th.
In his novel Pillars of the Earth, author Ken Follett spins an intriguing tale of the construction of a cathedral in England. While the cathedral and town are fictional, Follett does a masterful job of capturing the mindset and vision of medieval architecture.
I’ve had the privilege of visiting the cathedral in Cologne, Germany a few times and am fascinated by what is found there. While some modern American evangelicals who decry tradition may be put off by all the elaborate decoration and religious symbolism of Europe’s Gothic cathedrals, most find them fascinating studies in art, architecture and with a little research, interesting expressions of theological thought. You see, the Gothic cathedral wasn’t just a building; it was an attempt to embody the period’s thoughts about God and man. As Bruce Shelly says, “The medieval masters of Gothic style tried to portray in stone and glass man’s central religious quest. They wanted to depict a tension. On one hand was man aspiring to reach the heights of heaven; on the other hand was God condescending to address the least of men.”
The pillars, arches, and steeples point up like fingers to heaven. But down comes the light through stained glass windows illuminating the Earth, and more specifically, those who’ve gathered inside to seek God. It is the architect’s version of human reason and divine revelation.
The schools these cathedrals housed gave rise to the universities of the late Middle Ages. Their task was to understand and explain Creation in light of God’s revealed Word and Ways. As the Crusades were an attempt to extend the authority of God over the Middle East, the universities hoped to extend an understanding of God and His creation over the realm of the mind.
But how did the world of ideas bow to the rule of God? How was reason to be made a servant of faith? This era in Christian thought is called “Scholasticism” because distinctive methods of scholarship arose and a unique theology emerged. The aim of the Scholastics was twofold: to reconcile Christian doctrine with human reason and to arrange the teachings of the Church in an orderly system.
But, it’s important we mark at the outset that a free search for truth wasn’t on the horizon for the Scholastics. The doctrines of the Christian faith were already fixed. The purpose of the Scholastics was to show the reasonableness of those doctrines and explain them.
The early universities were intimately linked to the Church. They were usually housed in the Cathedrals. A medieval scholar was most often a priest or monk. This began centuries before when Benedict of Nursia insisted monks study as a means of their spiritual development. In the 8th C, Charlemagne, while dreaming of a Christian empire, widened the opportunities for study through a decree that every monastery have a school to teach those able to learn. The Emperor himself set an example with a palace school for his children and court.
While the cathedral schools were set up primarily to train clergy, it wasn’t long before laymen were invited to attend as well.
The curriculum was limited to grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy—the 7 liberal arts, so-called because in ancient Rome their study had been reserved for liberi = freemen. The few texts available were writings of a handful of scholars of the early Middle Ages. Students learned from Cassiodorus, Boethius, Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great, and a handful of Church Fathers the medieval student dared not question.
We can track the birth of the great medieval universities to the influence of several outstanding teachers. It was their skill in teaching and enthusiasm for learning that attracted students.
Among the first of this new breed of scholar was Gerbert, master of the cathedral school at Rheims [reems] in the latter half of the 10th C. Though he came from peasant stock, Gerbert became Pope Sylvester II. His genius was recognized early on so he was sent to study mathematics in Spain. While there, he was exposed to what at the time was the tolerant culture of the ruling Muslims. This was the first of a several significant contributions Muslims made to the Christian intellectual awakening of the Middle Ages.
Gerbert returned to Rheims greatly impressed by the inquisitive, questing spirit of Muslim scholars. When he began to teach, he announced that quotations of the so-called authorities were no longer going to be accepted as the final say. From then on, he required his students to study the classics in their original language. He began collecting manuscripts wherever he could and built a substantial library. This was no mean feat when we remember a manuscript could take a year to copy, and cost a fortune.
The most notable figure from this early period of Scholasticism was Peter Abelard. The senior son of a minor noble of NW France, Peter turned over his inheritance rights to his younger brothers so he could roam France and learn from the great masters. But he did more than listen. He challenged those he caught in factual or philosophical error. It wasn’t long before he settled in as a lecturer in Paris, where he attracted a host of students.
He also began to write. In a tract titled Yes and No, he posed over a hundred questions from Christian teaching, then answered them using conflicting quotations from Scripture, the Church Fathers, and even pagan classics. His point was that there were still many fronts for discussion and inquiry that needed to be resolved. Abelard said, “The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning.… For by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we arrive at the truth.” This idea of using doubt to fuel the quest for knowledge was commonplace to the ancient Greeks but dangerous ground to medieval Europeans. Abelard had a few fans but many more detractors who were alarmed by his bold questioning of what were considered unimpeachable authorities. Having stirred one too many pots and poked one too many bee-hives, he decided to lay low for a while in a monastery.
A year later he left to live in an open area SE of Paris. Supporters built him a shelter, tilled his land, and begged him to teach once more. So, resuming his pursuit of reason, Abelard again fell out with the religious conservatives. It was at this point that Abelard ran afoul of Bernard of Clairvaux, the famous preacher of the 2nd Crusade and the most influential churchman in Christendom. Of Abelard, Bernard remarked, “The faith of the righteous believes, it does not dispute.” Bernard managed to have Abelard branded a heretic and excommunicated. Abelard retired to the abbey of Cluny, where its abbot, Peter the Venerable, persuaded Bernard to reconcile with Abelard. The excommunication was lifted. Abelard spent his last 2 years at the monastery at Cluny where he was regarded as a great scholar and wise counselor.
I’ll leave out of this Abelard’s marriage to Heloise, one of the most remarkable love-stories of history.
No one could stop the growth of the seeds Abelard planted. Schools popped up all over Europe. Less than 100 years after his death universities flourished at Paris, Orleans, and Montpellier in France; across the English Channel at Oxford and Cambridge; and at Bologna and Padua in Italy, all of them aflame with the ideas Abelard ignited.
Students and their teachers formed guilds. Just as craftsmen had done since the Roman Empire, scholars banded together for protection and promotion of their interests. They called themselves universitas, the medieval name for any corporate group.
Most students in Italy were grown men who pursued advanced study in law and medicine. Their guilds exercised tremendous power. Students paid teachers, determined the courses to be given, and fined any lecturer who skipped a chapter in expounding his subject. Certainly a turn around from today’s schools.
In English and French universities where students were younger, scholars’ guilds had the upper hand. They forbade swearing and gambling, fined students for breaking curfews, and set table manners.
Medieval universities, were not the ivied walls and grassy lawns we think of today. At first, lectures were given in shanties and sheds alongside roads at Oxford and Cambridge. They met in side rooms of the cathedral in Paris, open piazzas in Italy. Once the prestige and income of a teacher rose, he might rent a room for his students where they’d sit on straw-covered floors. Because they lacked any fixed property, they were able to move when they ran afoul of local authorities.
Along with lectures, teachers used what were called disputations. Two or more masters debated a text using Abelard’s question-and-answer approach. This was how Scholasticism developed. It arose from the pain-staking process of arriving at logical conclusions through questioning, examining, and arranging details into a system of logic. Scholastic disputations often caused heated clashes and bitter feelings. Wars of logic ran for years between different scholars, with supporters of each cheering their hero with loud whistling and stomping of feet. The point was, students were learning to think. The unquestioned acceptance of traditional authorities was no longer assured. Now, conclusions had to square with Christian doctrine.
Scholasticism was less a philosophy or theology as it was a method of learning. The emphasis was on harmonizing faith and reason. The Scholastics used the ancient Greek practice of relentless questioning of traditional authority. Truth would no longer be accepted just because those in authority said so. Truth was to be rigorously analyzed and brought over into the realm of reason. After all, didn’t the Bible say we are to love God with all our mind?
The Scholastics were known for their careful drawing of distinctions. In classrooms and books, topics were vigorously debated, with one of the sides of the debate not even really being believed but still proposed as a way to check the value of the side being affirmed.
Scholastics wanted to harmonize Christian theology with the philosophy of the classical era, especially that of Aristotle and the Neo-platonists.
Some scholastics of note are Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Bonaventure. Two of the greatest were Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’s masterwork, the Summa Theologica, is considered to be the greatest work of the Scholastics.
Anselm was born into one of the many noble houses of Europe in the early 11th C. Because there was little prospect for him to achieve prominence in the political realm, he became a Benedictine monk. His studies quickly marked him as a man of keen intelligence and deep philosophical reflection. He was made Archbishop of Canterbury for the last 17 years of his life.
Anselm is often called the founder of Scholasticism, and was a major influence in European theology. He’s most famous as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God and the Satisfaction theory for the Atonement; that Jesus’ death satisfied the righteous requirements of God’s justice.
Anselm spent most of his time devising reasonable arguments for theological propositions he already accepted as true by faith. His goal wasn’t to justify faith by reason. He wanted to better understand what he believed. He saw reason as the servant of faith, rather than the other way around. Faith came first and guided reason. He wrote, “I believe in order to understand.” He thought that spiritual things had to be a matter of experience before they could be comprehended by the intellect. He said, “He who does not believe has not felt, and he who has not felt, does not understand.” He contended that Christ must come to the intellect through the avenue of faith and not to faith through the intellect. He declared himself against blind belief, and called it a sin of neglect when the one who has faith doesn’t strive for knowledge.[1]
Anselm gave reasonable proofs for God’s existence and compelling reasons for God as a self-existent, immaterial, all-powerful, compassionate, just, and merciful deity. In his book Why the God-Man? Anselm demonstrated the relationship between the incarnation and the atonement. His argument that Christ’s atonement satisfied God had a powerful impact on both Luther and Calvin centuries later. He wrote on the nature of the Trinity, original sin, free will, the harmony of foreknowledge and foreordination, and why Satan fell.[2]
Anselm’s two sources of knowledge were the Bible and the teaching of the Church which, he maintained, were in total agreement with each other and with all true philosophy. He had the deepest admiration for Augustine, and his agreement with him earned Anselm the titles “The 2nd Augustine” and, “Tongue of Augustine.”[3] Besides being a man of genuine piety and devotion to God, Church Historian Philip Schaff says Anselm was probably the most original thinker since Augustine.
I want to share the interesting story of Anselm’s conflicts with two of England’s kings. The best way to do so is to tell the story as Schaff does in Vol 5 of his Church History series.
William II, called William Rufus, or the Red for the color of his hair, 3rd son of William the Conqueror, ruled from 1087 to 1100. Probably the only good he did during his entire reign was to appoint Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury. William inherited all the vices and none of the virtues of his father. He despised the clergy. It was said that, “he feared God but little, and man not at all.” He wasn’t a skeptic so much as he was profane and blasphemous. He believed in God à and hated Him. He wasn’t married but indulged in gross immorality. People said he rose a worse man every morning, and lay down a worse man every evening.
He plundered the Church and oppressed the clergy. He robbed the churches and monasteries of their income by leaving them vacant or selling them to the highest bidder. Within four years he changed thirty cemeteries into royal parks to satisfy his passion for hunting, which in the end cost him his life.
When the Archbishop of Canterbury died, William kept the seat vacant for four years. Under the influence of a severe sickness, he finally yielded to the pressure to elect Anselm who was then in England, and well-known as a profound theologian of pious character. A greater contrast of men can scarcely be imagined. Anselm did not want to be archbishop. He wanted to return to the life of a quiet monk in his abbey back in northern Italy. But he sensed the call of God, even though if he accepted he’d face a never-ending battle with the English king.
He was appointed to his seat to great celebration on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 1093 and immediately set out to revive the discipline that had fallen away during the previous years.
This was the time of the Great Papal Schism and King William supported the French Pope Clement III while Anselm owed allegiance to Urban II. The king insisted on Anselm’s receiving the archbishop’s pallium, his vestment, from Clement, then demanded that HE be the one to confer Anselm’s authority on him. Of course Anselm refused and took the pallium from Urban’s agent who’d brought the vestment to England in a special case.
When the archbishop refused to meet William’s ever increasing financial requirements, the king took him to court. Anselm refused to appear; a civil court had no jurisdiction in church affairs. It was the old question of whether a church official, in his capacity as a clergyman owed allegiance to the pope or crown.
Anselm managed to secure the king’s permission in 1097 to go to Rome. But William sent troops after him and overtook him at Dover. They searched Anselm’s baggage and seized the offerings he was taking to Rome. Anselm’s trip ended up as an exile.
Anselm was warmly received by the pope, who threatened William with excommunication and pronounced a curse on any layman who thought, as William had, that he could invest a bishop with spiritual authority. The papal curse went further, to anyone who accepted such a false investiture.
In early Aug of 1100, while hunting in the New Forest, the Red King was killed by an arrow. No one knows whether it was shot by a hunter or assassin. There was little mourning for a king nearly everyone had been hoping would drop dead. They would not have been surprised if a bolt of lightning had slain him.[4]
But this isn’t the end of Anselm’s monarch problems. When William II died, his younger brother, Henry I took the throne. Henry was generally a good king who did much to root out the worst of the corruption of court. He reconciled the clergy by recalling Anselm from exile, but renewed the investiture controversy. He appointed bishops and abbots, and demanded Anselm consecrate them. Anselm refused, time and again. So, he was sent into a 2nd exile. The queen had an extraordinary devotion to Anselm and tried to mediate between him and her husband. She urged Anselm to return even if it meant he compromise a bit and grant Henry a measure of power to have a hand in appointing clergy. She reminded Anselm that the Apostle Paul circumcised Timothy as a compromise measure.
Following Urban’s lead, Pope Pascal II excommunicated the bishops who accepted Henry’s appointments. But Henry wanted to reconcile with Anselm. They met in Normandy and agreed to make a joint appeal to the pope. Pascal confirmed the king’s previous investitures on the condition of his surrendering the right to future appointments. This decision was ratified in August, 1106. The king promised to restore to Anselm Canterbury’s income during his absence, to leave off from claiming the income of vacant bishoprics and abbeys, and to refund all fines of the clergy. And while he followed through on his promise not to appoint new clergy, he did send along to vacant seats the names of candidates he’d like to see fill them.
Anselm returned to England in triumph, and was received by the queen at the head of the monks and the clergy. At a council held at Westminster in 1107, the king formally relinquished the privilege of investiture. During the last years of his life, Anselm enjoyed the friendship and respect of the king, and during Henry’s absence on the Continent in 1108, he was entrusted with the regency and the care of the royal family.
He died in 1109. His impact on the Archbishopric was so great, the seat wasn’t filled for five years.
Next time, we’ll take a look at the real heavy-weight among the Scholastics – Thomas Aquinas.
[1] Schaff, P., and Schaff, D. S. (1910). History of the Christian church. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[4] ibid
by Lance Ralston | Nov 23, 2014 | English |
This episode is titled “The Eucharistic Controversy.”
As we round out the Middle Ages in Europe, we have several topics we need to cover before we launch into the Era of Scholasticism. Last time we took a brief look at the Investiture Controversy and an even briefer look at a doctrinal error that had a long lifespan and several flavors – Adoptionism.
Now we’ll consider another controversy that raged in the church of both East and West for a long time; how to understand the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
For Protestant listeners, the issue was; What do we mean when we say Jesus is present at Communion or the Lord’s Supper.
I need to begin by making clear à This is not an attempt to expand on ALL the various theories of the Eucharist. That’s a discussion way beyond my ability. It took me a while to compose this episode because I had to work out exactly how to phrase things. Words are the tools theologians work with. Those words carry precise meanings. But we’re dealing with multiple languages; typically, Greek and Latin. And once the ancient theologians worked out some theological formula over decades, and in some cases, centuries, picking just the right words to express truth, then refining those words, as problems with their earlier choices became clear, then we have to find words in English to accurately translate those. THEN, we face the problem of people pouring different meanings into those words.
So, if I get some of this less than totally accurate or clear, I beg your forgiveness ahead of time. I’m no Sheldon Cooper. Just a little guy with a pea-brain.
The Eucharistic Controversy owes its origin to the tension between the Bible’s call to worship God in Spirit and truth, and the desire to have something tangible to venerate and make focus attention on. The use and veneration of icons in the East had a correlation in the West with the elevation of the Communion elements.
While Christians had long discussed the true nature of the elements of Communion, the real controversy got under way in the mid-9th C by a Frankish monk named Paschasius Radbertus. In 831, he published a book titled On the Body and Blood of the Lord; the first complete treatise on the Eucharist.
The most significant part of Radbertus’ work was his insistence that the elements were the REAL, corporeal, body and blood of Jesus.
Let me back up: All Christians believed Jesus was present at Communion. Jesus said, “When two or three of you are gathered in My Name, I’m there in your midst.” Communion was just that; a time for Christians to gather in a special way together IN CHRIST. So when they passed round the bread and wine, they regarded it as a holy moment when the Spirit of God mediated the Person of Jesus in a uniquely way. Simply stated, Jesus was present in Communion.
But, people understood that presence in different ways. Augustine, with his massive influence on Medieval theology, said Jesus was spiritually present at Communion, but not physically. His presence was a mystery to be acknowledged by faith. Cyril of Alexandria and John of Damascus said Jesus was bodily present in the Eucharist, but they meant His resurrection body, which was spiritual, not corporeal. So for them Christ’s presence in the Eucharist was also a mystery.
Radbertus now proposed that the elements of Communion became the literal flesh and blood of Jesus. They were the same stuff as the body born to Mary, as he put it. Phenomenologically, they didn’t look or taste like flesh and blood because that would have been too much for people to deal with, so God graciously allowed the bread and wine to retain their outward properties, but in reality, WERE Jesus’ body and blood. Radbertus said it was in the act of partaking the Eucharist that eternal life was maintained and nurtured. They were the “medicine of immortality.”
The elements became Jesus’ body and blood, not by an act of creation but of transformation.
This raised the question: If the Eucharist is the real body and blood of Christ, do unbelievers who partake of the elements chew Christ. Radbertus denied it; saying while the elements were the corporeal body of Jesus, they still had to be taken by faith. So while unbelievers might participate in the sacrament, they didn’t in fact partake of Christ.
Radbertus got around the lack of correspondence between the reality of Jesus’ bodily presence and its appearance as bread by saying God allowed this to make sure when the elements were taken, they were done so by faith; so their spiritual benefit could accrue to the partaker. So, the bread and wine were made over as symbols once again, which moved back toward Augustine’s position, the very thing Radbertus had set out to undo.
Hrbanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda, detested Radbertus’ ideas. He denounced any view of the Eucharist that made it a materialistic manifestation of Jesus’ body. Maurus said the value of Communion lay in the communicant’s faith, not in a piece of bread or drop of wine.
Gottschalk, who we’ll come back to later, agreed with Radbertus and said the Eucharist WAS Jesus’ body and blood. But he refused to take it as far as Radbertus, who said every time Communion was celebrated, it was a fresh sacrifice of Christ, a re-crucifying.
This is where we need take a closer look at how the early church understood Communion. The ante-Nicean Fathers, that is, those church leaders before the Council of Nicaea in 325, referred to the Lords’ Table, Communion, the Eucharist, whatever you want to call it, as a commemoration of Christ sacrifice. They linked it to the Last Supper where Jesus made it an ordinance for His followers. He said, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” That’s the way the Apostles passed it on, as a commemorative moment to reflect on Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross when his Body was broken and His blood was shed. The value of Communion was the spiritual link forged between follower and their rabbi through this remembering as they were reconnected in a specific and tangible way to what Jesus did for them.
Later Christians moved away from this commemorative core of Communion to a more mystical view of Communion. And since mystery craves expression, it’s inevitable someone made the elements of Communion more than mere symbols. Then to say each time they were transformed into the corporeal body of Christ, it wasn’t just a commemoration of His sacrifice, it was a fresh sacrifice.
Radbertus was the abbot of a monastery in Corbie. King Charles the Bald asked one of his fellow monks, Ratramnus, to evaluate his abbot’s work. Ratramnus effectively agreed with Radbertus, but denied that a miracle of transformation took place with the elements. Ratramnus said communicants do indeed partake of Jesus’ body and blood. But they do so by faith, rather than by the elements being mystically transmuted into the corporeal body of the man born by Mary.
The Eucharistic Controversy of the 9th C opened a door that eventually brought about a new understanding of faith, grace and even the Church. Radbertus’ ideas eventually triumphed in the Roman Church because he set them forth in a clear way for an age that ached for assurance of salvation. Now there was a tangible way to be assured people were doing something that maintained and nurtured immortality. His ideas prevailed as well, because his opponents’ arguments were vague, complex, and frankly, not as appealing.
Radbertus also laid the ground for a paradigm shift in the ministry of the clergy and Church. With a growing emphasis on the fresh sacrifice of the Mass, a bodily presence of Christ provided the rationale for a shift in Christian devotion from its original base in the Word and Faith, to a religious life that centered on the new reality offered in a sacrament. To put it bluntly, interest shifted from what Christ did at the Cross, to what the priest does with Christ in the elements. Jesus began to morph in people’s minds from the Victorious Savior to the Eternal Victim – offered continually in the Mass.
While Radbertus’ view eventually became the majority view in the Latin West, it was never without those who rejected it and clung to a more Augustinian view. And of course, how to understand the Eucharist will re-emerge among the Reformers and see Round 2 in some pretty contentious disputes.
But, that’s the subject for a later episode.
by Lance Ralston | Nov 16, 2014 | English |
This 63rd episode is titled Invested
We’ve just concluded a series on medieval monasticism and return to the narrative of the Church during the Middle Ages in Europe.
Before we do, let’s remember the story of Church History is much bigger than just what happened in Europe. Until recently, church history spent most its time on the Western Church and only touched other places as it related TO the Western narrative. We’re trying to broaden our horizons, although it’s tough because the source material for the history of the Church beyond the Western realm is much slimmer. It isn’t that there isn’t any; there’s quite a bit; but it’s not presented in the popular format that commends a layman’s format. And an historical layman is certainly what I am So it’s thick wading through most of it.
With that said – back to the Church in the European Middle Ages . . .
We have several themes and topics to develop. It’s going to take a few episodes to do so. The first we’ll look at, because it ends up being a recurring problem, is what’s called the Investiture Controversy.
This was a theological and political dustup that came about as a result of the fusion of Church and State in Feudal Europe. Church officials had both religious and secular roles. Though they weren’t part of the official nobility, they did hold positions in the very strict social structure of the Feudal system. Serfs didn’t just work the lands of the nobility. Many of them worked church lands and holdings. So, many bishops and abbots not only oversaw ecclesiastical duties, they were secular rulers. You can imagine how these clerics were torn in their loyalty between the Pope far off in Rome, and the much closer secular feudal lord; whether a duke, earl, count, or baron, to say nothing of the emerging kings of Europe.
When the Roman Empire dissolved in the West, the role and responsibility of civil government often fell to church officials. Most people wanted them to step in. So when feudalism took hold, it wasn’t a difficult transition for these religious leaders to be invested with the duties of secular rule.
Because bishops, abbots and other church officials had secular as well as spiritual authority, many of Europe’s nobility began to take it upon themselves to appoint those bishops and abbots when vacancies occurred. It’s not difficult to see why they’d want to, instead of waiting on Rome to make the selection. Local rulers wanted someone running things amiable to their aims. Also, with the inheritance rules the way they were, with everything going to the firstborn son, a lucrative and influential career as a bishop was a plum job for all those second and third sons. This investing of church offices by secular rulers was called Lay Investiture, because it was done by the laity, rather than by ordained clergy. And as you can imagine, it was NOT something Popes were happy about.
Though the details are different today, imagine you’re a church member for thirty years. One day your pastor says he’s retiring. You expect your denomination or elders to pick a new pastor. How surprised would you be to find out the local mayor picked your pastor? Oh, and by the way; if you squawk about it, the Police will arrest and toss you in jail till you learn to shut your yap and go along with the new arrangement. è Welcome to lay investiture.
While Rome for the most part opposed lay investiture, because administrating the Church all over Europe was a monumental task, for centuries the Popes begrudgingly consented to allow secular rulers to assist in the appointment of church officials. Some of these appointments were wise and provided good and godly men to lead the Church in their domain. Other times, nepotism and crass pragmatism saw, at the best inept and at the worst, corrupt officials installed.
The issue became a controversy when the Popes decided to reign things in and required that church officials be appointed by the Church itself. Secular rulers were no longer allowed to do so. But just because the Popes said “No” to lay investiture, didn’t mean secular rulers stopped. And that’s where the brueha kicked in.
It came to a head in 1076 when Pope Gregory VII and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV came to a loggerheads over the archbishop of Milan. Both men proposed different candidates, and both believed it was his right to appoint the office. The Pope threatened excommunication if the Emperor refused to comply. Henry answered by calling a synod of German bishops at Worms in 1076. The Synod deposed Pope Gregory. Not to be outdone, Gregory excommunicated Henry and absolved his subjects of allegiance to him. A deft move—since at the time, Henry and his Saxon nobles were at odds. These nobles then demanded Henry reconcile with Gregory within a year or forfeit his throne. So the Emperor was forced to make peace with Gregory in a famous meeting at Canossa. Henry demonstrated his contrition by walking around the castle for 3 days in the snow, barefoot! The Pope reversed the excommunication and received the Emperor back into the faith.
That’s the end of the story – a happy one, right? Not quite.
Henry leveraged his return to favor into a campaign against the Pope. He marched on Rome and set up a new Pope. Gregory died in exile. Still, Pope Gregory’s position on investiture eventually prevailed.
In 1099, Pope Urban II decreed that anyone who either gave or received lay investiture was excommunicated. In 1105 a moderate compromise was reached at Bec and ratified in a Council at Westminster two yrs later.
Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV was followed by, can you guess? Yep; Henry V. It was during his reign the papacy ultimately won the investiture struggle. At Worms in 1122, a Concordat was drawn up in which the Emperor agreed The Church could elect bishops and abbots and invest them with their office. Although elections were to be held in the presence of the king, he was prohibited from influencing the decision by simony or the threat of violence. While it was the Church who selected her clergy, it was the secular rulers who handed them the symbols of their authority in the form of a crozier and a ring, representing their role as Shepherd of God’s flock and that they were married to the Church. By allowing secular rulers a hand in the bestowal of the symbols of office, it conveyed the idea of the bishop’s duty to support the secular ruler.
The political intrigues that flowed from this dual loyalty of church officials across Europe is a thing of legend; literally! I’m guessing most listeners have seen at least one movie that captures the intrigues that ruled the political and religious scene at this time.
Despite the Concordat of Worms in 1122, there were a few of Europe’s nobles who continued to practice lay investiture. And there were plenty of their appointees willing to go along with them because they were being appointed to some pretty cushy posts. But eventually, lay investiture was set aside as feudal society gave way to the modern world.
We round out this episode with a review of an aberrant doctrine that kept resurfacing in the Church of both the East and West. It was an attempt to understand the Person of Christ.
Adoptionism had an early origin, being advocated by the Ebionites in the 2nd C. The famous Gnostic heresiarch Cerinthus taught a form of adoptionism.
While the details of Adoptionism vary from time to time and place to place, the basic idea is that Jesus was merely a human being who was adopted by God into His role as Messiah and Savior. The nature of this adoption, that is, what it effected IN Jesus is where Adoptionists differ. That and when exactly God the Father adopted Jesus the man to become the Son of God. Some think it occurred at his baptism, others at his resurrection, and still others at His ascension. Adoptionists all concur with Jesus’ humanity, but deny His eternal essence as God the Son. They say he BECAME the Son of God, due to his morally excellent life.
The Church declared Adoptionism a heresy at the end of the 2nd C, but it continued to find a home in the work of several teachers and groups in the following centuries, right up thru the Middle Ages and into small groups today.
The term “Adoptionism” is used to describe another but very different flavor of the idea that arose in Spain during the 8th and 9th Cs. To differentiate it from classic adoptionism, which starts with a human Jesus who becomes the divine Christ by adoption, historians refer to this later heresy as Spanish Adoptionism. It begins with God the Son, adopting a human form, but not really the human NATURE that went with it.
The first to articulate this view in the late 8th C was Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo. His views were quickly seized on by his opponents and declared heretical. His supporters were summoned to appear before Charlemagne, whose clerics were able to persuade them away from their aberrant beliefs. That ought to have been the end of the matter. They’d been treated civilly and with respect by the Emperor, but when they arrived before the Pope in Rome they were publically humiliated. This seems to have only inflamed the adherents back in Spain who determined to resist Rome’s efforts to reign them in.
This came at an unfortunate moment as the Church in Spain was at this time dealing with Moorish-Muslim rulers.
While Adoptionism can rightly be labeled a heresy, especially its early manifestation, Spanish Adoptionism is a more tricky wicket. I don’t want to get into the technical details of the theology, so let me just say that there is in the NT some passages in the Gospels and letters of Paul that seem to speak of Jesus’ 2 sonships. When these passages are viewed through the lens of some of the early church fathers, one can see a subtle nod toward the core ideas of Spanish Adoptionism.
It gets back to that issue we’ve spoken of often here in CS; how to understand, then how to ARTICULATE the nature, person, and identity of Jesus. Theology is the fine art of distinctions – distinctions that have to be expressed in words. Finding the exact, right word has proven to be the angst-filled work of centuries and some of the keenest minds in history.
Though Spanish adoptionism was effectively quelled by the 10th C, it resurfaced in the 11th and 12th, to once again enjoy a moment in the sun, then to be sprayed with some more theological Roundup, and die out once more.
It’s the ancient, classical adoptionism that’s enjoyed a resurgence in modern times in a flavor of liberal Christianity. In this brand of Adoptionism, Jesus is a man, who by his exemplary moral path becomes an enlightened agent for God’s Spirit to work through. This Liberal Jesus isn’t a Savior so much as an Example.
