Christian Civilization

The Building of Christendom

The Climax of Cultural Christianity

By 1050. almost all of Western Europe was formally Christian.

Radulfus Glaber, Cluniac monk in 987 wrote "The Christian nations vied for the glory of building the most remarkable temple"

Christianization: a conscious attempt to bring all of society under the law of Christ.

Many of the institutions created during this time would survive until the French revolution and even into the modem world. To historians of early generations the assumptions and institutions appeared inevitable. It is only in our age, which has seen the collapse of Christendom, that it has become possible to perceive that many issues were hard fought, and might have been differently resolved; and that much which has come to be accepted as part of the Christian heritage was not necessarily an expression of the gospel.

"Some modem Christians, as well as modem agnostics, dismiss with impatience the whole idea of Christendom... Christendom was a provincial, western and insular parody of the great civilized Roman empire which still haunted the imagination." (The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, p.199)

Unified Model

Bookish

Orderly

Upward looking

"The silence which frightened Pascal was, according to the Model wholly illusory: the sky looks black only because we are seeing it through the dark glass of our own shadow. You must conceive yourself looking up at a world lighted, warmed and resonant with music." C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image The Divine Comedy

The brilliant literary meditation on hell, purgatory and heaven by Dante.

From single Benedictine monasteries to monastic "franchisees".

Cluny: "Mother house"

Citeaux:

First house in 1112, by 1153 there were 344 abbeys, and 530 by 1200.

The Cistercians outshone all other groups, monastic or secular, in agricultural energy and skill; they set up new centers of their order in unsettled regions, subdued marshes, jungles, and forest to cultivation, and played a leading part in colonizing eastern Germany, and in repairing the damage that William the Conqueror had done in northern England.

Bernard of Clearveaux 1090-1153

Great church statesman, son of a noble family. His leadership was the power behind the growth of the Cistercians.

Hymns: Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts and Jesus the Very Thought of Thee."

Franciscans: "A song to lady poverty"

In hearing mass in 1209, he was struck by Matthew 10:7-10 "As you go, preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. Freely you have received, freely give. Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses,

nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor staff."

He took this literally.

Lived a life of extreme poverty. It is said that in his last days he repented of his extreme asceticism, as having "offended is brother, the body." Died in October 3, 1226.

His following grew by 1280 200,000 monks in 8,000 monasteries. They became great preachers, and by their example led the secular clergy to take up the custom of preaching, heretofore confined to bishops..

All thinkers agreed that lordship arose from God. But how was this right to rule transmitted from God to earthly rulers. One widely held view argued that Lordship was only just when it derived from the Roman church. God had entrusted the pope with universal dominion over all temporal things and persons. Any authority exercised by sinful rulers was unlawful.

Others argued that the church lost that power when it was affected by sin and that God gave the state the power to corrected the church.

How one had access to the eternal not only had to do with the church and the state, but also with faith and reason. That debate would be carried on with the newly established universities.

The Power of the Church

The papacy emerged as the most powerful office in Europe. The pope's government was truly a universal monarchy. All bishops swore fealty to the pope, no religious order could be founded without his authorization ...

Innocent 1111198-12-16:

Elected at age 37. The administrator pope

"The successor of Peter is the Vicar of Christ; he has been established as a mediator between God and man, below God- but beyond man; less than God but more than man; who shall judge all

and be judge by no one."

The papacy was like the sun, the kings were like the moon.

Used "weapons" of excommunication and interdict. Innocent III used interdict 85 times against uncooperative princes.

Excommunication: could not act as judge, juror, witness or attorney. No Christian burial

Interdict: ecclesiastical lockout. Suspended all public worship.

Against King John (of Robinhood fame) over election of archbishop of Canterbury. John became the Pope's vassal, receiving England back as a fief, and paying him a sizable annual tribute.

In France, Innocent forced King Philip Augustus to comply with the church's moral code by taking back as his queen the woman he had divorced.

The power and wealth of the church not only made rulers uncomfortable, it made the common people uncomfortable as well.

In addition to the power and wealth were the moral inconsistencies within the clergy.

Bishops offices were often sought for the sons of wealthy merchants or nobles as feathers in the family cap.

The Papal Schism

The Babylonian Captivity: 72 years in Avignon France (eight popes)

3 popes claiming to the rightful pope at one time.

Peter Waldo: (1140-1218) in southern France, began to teach common folk to imitate Christ by practicing voluntary poverty. The Waldenses. Call for the church to purify itself by a return to the simple life of the apostles and the surrender of worldly power. Excommunicated by 1184.

Cathari/Albigensens: dualistic in outlook, sought purity through asceticism. In southern France and Spain.

The beginning of the Inquisition: 1220 aimed at the Waldensens and Albigensens

John Wyclif. (d. 1384) Debate with Roman over the issue of Lordship/dominion and how it was applied. Wyclif appealed for spiritual authority directly from the scriptures and not through the Roman hierarchy. "The New Testament is full of authority, and open to the understanding of simple men, as to the points that be most needful to salvation. . . "

John Huss in Bohemia: influenced by Wyclif. On the walls of Bethlehem Chapel near the University of Prague where he preached were paintings contrasting the behavior of the popes and Christ. The pope rode a horse; Christ walked barefoot. Jesus washed the disciples' feet; the pope preferred to have his kissed. There were student riots for against the teachings of Huss and Wyclif. Huss attached the sale of indulgences. Huss was condemned and burned at the Counsel of Constance, 1415.

"If the church was to be reformed from within, it had ample opportunities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries" Bruce Shelly

The Identity of the State

The rise of national identity that began to chaff against the international presence of the church and its control within their territory:

Investiture Controversy: Who gets to appoint a bishop?

The Authority to tax the Clergy: how to raise money to fund wars against other states?

The Spiritual Role of the State

To correct the church? Wyclif

To protect from the church? William of Ockham, John Wyclif, Martin Luther

People began to think in terms of "national churches"

Cathedral Schools gave birth to medieval universities and Scholasticism; the attempt to reconcile Christian doctrine and human reason and to arrange the teachings of the church in an orderly system.

Lectures in wayside sheds at Oxford and Cambridge, cathedral cloisters in Paris, and the squares in Italy. Eventually teachers rented rooms, and students sat on the floor, usually covered with straw against the dampness.

Nominalism and Experimentalism

Roger Bacon: 13^th Century Oxford. Knowledge of the physical world through experimentation.

There were two forms of revelation, scripture and the natural world.

William of Ockham: born about 1280 near Guilford in Surrey.

Ockham's Razor: The simplest explanation is best and there is no need for multiply hypothesis to explain phenomena.

Ockham's Razor worked against the tendency for church leaders to posit dual causation for things-one natural and one spiritual. Thus according to Ockham, if a law of nature explains why a rock fell down a mountainside there is no point in also claiming an angel or a demon pushed it.

Ockham rejected all forms of realism and grounded knowledge on direct apprehension of individual objects.

"The defeat of logical realism is the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modem decadence." Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences.

The issue is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of man.

"The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modem empiricism."

"We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent." Weaver

"One of the strangest disparities of history lies between the sense of abundance felt by older and simpler societies and the sense of scarcity felt by the ostensibly richer societies of today." Weaver.