To return to the Introduction and Table of Contents, click here.
This unit corresponds to pp. 46-72 in our textbook.
We noted in the last unit that tensions were building between the Eastern and the Western parts of the Church. Things come to a head in our time period, with the final break between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches.
The split is often dated to the year 1054. In 1053, there was an attempt to make Greek churches in southern Italy conform to Latin practices. In response, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, closed the Latin-rite churches in Constantinople. Pope Leo IX then sent a letter to Patriarch Michael to remonstrate with him about various things. When the patriarch refused to listen to the letter, the papal legates laid a letter of excommunication against the patriarch on the altar of the great church in Constantinople, the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). In reply to this, Patriarch Michael excommunicated the papal legates.
However lamentable this series of events was, it did not by itself constitute a rupture between the Church of Constantinople or any other Eastern Church and the Church of Rome. It is often cited as the date of the Great Schism, however, because it set in motion a conflict that was never resolved and which finally resulted--but not until the 15th century--in the permanent division of much of Eastern Christianity from the Church of Rome and the Western part of the Church.
The Great Schism can be seen as the coming to full flower of the antipathy to Roman practice and authority that was really got going by Photius back in the ninth century, which we discussed in the last unit. The fundamental cause of the division, the underlying root of all the rest, I think, was a chafing against Roman authority. After the Schism, this chafing flowered into a rethinking of the role of the papacy and the creation of a theology that denied the role of the Pope as a final arbiter in terms of jurisdiction or the definition of orthodoxy, a theology that repudiated much earlier Eastern thinking such as that illustrated in the Formula of Hormisdas. Besides and subordinate to this antipathy to Roman authority were the various other concerns about Latin practices that Photius and others had complained about and which have become commonplace objections to Western practice since the Schism--such as the concern over the Filioque, the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, Latin articulations of the doctrine of purgatory, the Immaculate Conception, etc.
The Schism was also furthered by foolish and greatly harmful actions perpetrated by both sides. In the midst of much tension and political rivalry between Latins and Easterners, in 1182, a large number of Eastern Orthodox citizens of Constantinople rose up against the Latin inhabitants of the city and massacred them. Later on, in 1204, during the Fourth Crusade (we'll come to the Crusades below), the crusaders brutally sacked the city of Constantinople. These kinds of actions entrenched the theological disagreements by cementing them in a foundation of strong personal and cultural animosity.
However, the state of schism wasn't permanent or fully complete until the end of our time period. Not all Easterners were in favor of being out of communion with Rome, and various Eastern leaders worked hard with the papacy to try to heal the schism. The two greatest attempts at such healing took place in connection with the Second Council of Lyon in 1272 and the Council of Florence in 1431-1449. In both cases, a union was successfully worked out and agreed to by leaders on both sides, but in both cases the union failed to be accepted by the majority of Eastern clergy and people and so ended up coming to nothing. These attempts at union came to an end when the city of Constantinople was conquered by the Turks in 1453, thus ending the Byzantine Empire.
Although the majority of Eastern Christianity has been out of communion with Rome since the Great Schism, not all Eastern Christians or Eastern churches have been. There have always been some Eastern churches that have maintained communion with Rome, and a number of other Eastern churches have returned to communion with Rome over the centuries. These churches are known as Eastern Catholic churches. There are currently 23 Eastern churches in full communion with Rome. They are very small compared to the Latin part of the Catholic Church, but they represent an important part of the cultural diversity of the worldwide Catholic Church.
The Great Schism
We noted in the last unit that tensions were building between the Eastern and the Western parts of the Church. Things come to a head in our time period, with the final break between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches.
The split is often dated to the year 1054. In 1053, there was an attempt to make Greek churches in southern Italy conform to Latin practices. In response, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, closed the Latin-rite churches in Constantinople. Pope Leo IX then sent a letter to Patriarch Michael to remonstrate with him about various things. When the patriarch refused to listen to the letter, the papal legates laid a letter of excommunication against the patriarch on the altar of the great church in Constantinople, the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). In reply to this, Patriarch Michael excommunicated the papal legates.
However lamentable this series of events was, it did not by itself constitute a rupture between the Church of Constantinople or any other Eastern Church and the Church of Rome. It is often cited as the date of the Great Schism, however, because it set in motion a conflict that was never resolved and which finally resulted--but not until the 15th century--in the permanent division of much of Eastern Christianity from the Church of Rome and the Western part of the Church.
The Great Schism can be seen as the coming to full flower of the antipathy to Roman practice and authority that was really got going by Photius back in the ninth century, which we discussed in the last unit. The fundamental cause of the division, the underlying root of all the rest, I think, was a chafing against Roman authority. After the Schism, this chafing flowered into a rethinking of the role of the papacy and the creation of a theology that denied the role of the Pope as a final arbiter in terms of jurisdiction or the definition of orthodoxy, a theology that repudiated much earlier Eastern thinking such as that illustrated in the Formula of Hormisdas. Besides and subordinate to this antipathy to Roman authority were the various other concerns about Latin practices that Photius and others had complained about and which have become commonplace objections to Western practice since the Schism--such as the concern over the Filioque, the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, Latin articulations of the doctrine of purgatory, the Immaculate Conception, etc.
The Schism was also furthered by foolish and greatly harmful actions perpetrated by both sides. In the midst of much tension and political rivalry between Latins and Easterners, in 1182, a large number of Eastern Orthodox citizens of Constantinople rose up against the Latin inhabitants of the city and massacred them. Later on, in 1204, during the Fourth Crusade (we'll come to the Crusades below), the crusaders brutally sacked the city of Constantinople. These kinds of actions entrenched the theological disagreements by cementing them in a foundation of strong personal and cultural animosity.
However, the state of schism wasn't permanent or fully complete until the end of our time period. Not all Easterners were in favor of being out of communion with Rome, and various Eastern leaders worked hard with the papacy to try to heal the schism. The two greatest attempts at such healing took place in connection with the Second Council of Lyon in 1272 and the Council of Florence in 1431-1449. In both cases, a union was successfully worked out and agreed to by leaders on both sides, but in both cases the union failed to be accepted by the majority of Eastern clergy and people and so ended up coming to nothing. These attempts at union came to an end when the city of Constantinople was conquered by the Turks in 1453, thus ending the Byzantine Empire.
Although the majority of Eastern Christianity has been out of communion with Rome since the Great Schism, not all Eastern Christians or Eastern churches have been. There have always been some Eastern churches that have maintained communion with Rome, and a number of other Eastern churches have returned to communion with Rome over the centuries. These churches are known as Eastern Catholic churches. There are currently 23 Eastern churches in full communion with Rome. They are very small compared to the Latin part of the Catholic Church, but they represent an important part of the cultural diversity of the worldwide Catholic Church.
Although, during the High Middle Ages, the Catholic Church continued to recognize the traditional listing of the five major patriarchs--Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem--the meaningfulness of this list had, by that time, greatly diminished in practice. The sees of Antioch and Alexandria had already undergone splits at the time of the Council of Chalcedon and over the next couple of centuries, and these splits had never been healed, so that there were multiple claimants to these sees from that time forward. The Muslim conquests had further weakened Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. The real power in the East had become concentrated more and more in the hands of the Church of Constantinople, and the other Eastern sees had come to be, to a great extent, satellites of Constantinople. Other splits occurred in the other Eastern patriarchates over the years as well. Today, there is not just one Patriarch of Antioch, for example, but there are five claimants to this see, three of which are in full communion with Rome. The See of Alexandria today has four claimants, two of which are in full communion with Rome. There were also Latin versions of these patriarchates that were created at various times, particularly during the Crusades, when Latins would conquer and hold portions of the Christian East.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism - Good overview article on the history and particulars of the Schism and everything connected to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches - Good overview of the Eastern Catholic churches--their history, how they function, etc.
https://www.catholicbridge.com/orthodox/timeline-history-of-catholic-orthodox-relations.php - A timeline of the relationship between the Roman and the Eastern churches, from a Catholic point of view.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/The_Eastern_Schism - A very helpful article surveying the Schism and its causes. Written from a very strong Catholic point of view.
http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/encyc_1895.aspx - A letter from the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, written in 1895, outlining what he sees as Latin errors. Good summary of traditional complaints Eastern Orthodox have made to the Catholic Church since the Schism.
http://catholicity.elcore.net/ConfessionOfDositheus.html - An Eastern Orthodox statement of faith from 1672. It is interesting, partly, because, especially when reading it in conjunction with other Orthodox writings (such as the letter linked to just above), it illustrates the diversity that exists and has existed within Eastern Orthodoxy. Some of the things that Orthodox often complain about against Catholicism have been affirmed by Orthodox at various times as well, even after the Great Schism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism - Good overview article on the history and particulars of the Schism and everything connected to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches - Good overview of the Eastern Catholic churches--their history, how they function, etc.
https://www.catholicbridge.com/orthodox/timeline-history-of-catholic-orthodox-relations.php - A timeline of the relationship between the Roman and the Eastern churches, from a Catholic point of view.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/The_Eastern_Schism - A very helpful article surveying the Schism and its causes. Written from a very strong Catholic point of view.
http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/encyc_1895.aspx - A letter from the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, written in 1895, outlining what he sees as Latin errors. Good summary of traditional complaints Eastern Orthodox have made to the Catholic Church since the Schism.
http://catholicity.elcore.net/ConfessionOfDositheus.html - An Eastern Orthodox statement of faith from 1672. It is interesting, partly, because, especially when reading it in conjunction with other Orthodox writings (such as the letter linked to just above), it illustrates the diversity that exists and has existed within Eastern Orthodoxy. Some of the things that Orthodox often complain about against Catholicism have been affirmed by Orthodox at various times as well, even after the Great Schism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_of_Antioch - Helpful information on the Patriarchate of Antioch, its history, its splits and various claimants, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_of_Alexandria - Similar article dealing with the Patriarchate of Alexandria.
Response to Eastern Claims
By now in our history, we have several Eastern churches that are existing in a state of "permanent" separation from Rome (I say "permanent" not because these divisions will never end--we pray that they will!--but because they have attained a status of permanency different from earlier, more short-lived schisms). We have the Churches of the East (the Assyrian Church, etc.), the Oriental Orthodox, and now the Eastern Orthodox. These churches, now separated from Rome, needed to develop theologies that could justify their independent existence and their doctrinal commitments without reference to the authority of the See of Rome. This has been difficult, because, as we have seen, the universal Catholic Church has always put great importance on the role of the See of St. Peter in guiding the Church in preservation of her unity and orthodoxy. Interestingly, the separated Eastern churches never have developed a clear, consistent, official, or universally-accepted alternative epistemology.
The Eastern churches agree that the Tradition of the Church is infallible, but there is no universal, official position on how to access that infallibility. The Churches of the East (the "Nestorian" churches) accept the first two ecumenical councils as ecumenical and authoritative; the Oriental Orthodox accept the first three; the Eastern Orthodox accept the first seven. But there is no agreed-upon method of knowing how to know if a council is ecumenical or when the Church is speaking infallibly. There are various theories, such as judging councils by their conformity to earlier teaching, by how many people accepted them, by whether all five major patriarchs accepted them, by whether or not they were accepted universally later on, etc., but there is no official position on which theory (if any) is correct and no way to objectively judge between them. Catholics point out that the Catholic Church has always had an answer to that question, one that the Eastern churches traditionally accepted before the schism. It's the answer stated by St. Irenaeus back around the year 180 in his Against Heresies, which we quoted back in unit 2:
Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere. (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 3, taken from the plain text version at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01) but also found on the New Advent website at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103.htm)
The separated Eastern churches still generally place a high value on the See of Rome, even if that has no practical relevance for them at present. Some Eastern theologians (but not all) think that one of the reasons none of the separated Eastern churches have had an ecumenical council since the 8th century is because an ecumenical council can't be held without the participation of Rome and the Western part of the Church.
The Catholic response to Eastern separation and claims of the legitimacy of such separation is very much the same as the answer given to the other groups that had split off from the Catholic Church over the centuries prior to these Eastern schisms, groups like the Gnostics. Everyone agrees that schism is bad. Christ founded only one Church, and the Church is supposed to be unified. Therefore, when there is separation, that separation has to be justified. The problem is that none of the groups that have broken off from the Catholic Church can justify their separation. As we just mentioned, the separated Eastern churches don't even have a universal or official theory as to how to know what doctrinal truth is, and therefore they have no way to know how to justify their own distinctive positions, including their position that it is legitimate to be separated from Rome. Some Eastern theologians suggest that we might judge the truth or falsity of doctrines by means of comparing modern doctrines to those held by the earlier, unified Church. Some of them then argue that Catholics fail this test, because the Catholic Church has changed practices that the early Church kept and has added doctrines not believed by the early Church--such as the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, or the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. But this argument is question-begging, since it ignores the fact of doctrinal development. Everyone must acknowledge that the Church has changed over the centuries. She doesn't do everything today exactly as she did it in the first centuries of the Church. Her doctrine has progressed, so that she is more aware of certain things today than she was in the past. To justify a claim of inconsistency between the modern Catholic Church and the earlier Catholic Church it is necessary to do more than simply point out changes or differences; one must show that those differences are contradictions or illegitimate mutations and not legitimate examples of growth or adaptation or doctrinal development. And since it is the Tradition of the Church, divinely-guided by the Holy Spirit, which must be the ultimate judge of which developments are legitimate and which are not (unless, of course, an unavoidable contradiction can be proved to reason), this poses a serious problem for the Eastern argument, since, again, they have no way of knowing how to determine what the Tradition of the Church is saying.
So our situation is that the Catholic Church has a workable epistemology, well-grounded in the history of the Church. When there are disagreements within the Church, we follow the Church's Tradition. When the bishops are divided, we stick with the See of Rome, the successor of St. Peter. This gives us a way to go forward. The separated Eastern churches have rejected the role of the See of Rome but they have not replaced it with any workable or well-grounded alternative.
The Christian religion is a religion of revelation. That is, it is not simply the result of people using their reason to reflect on the world. It is a revealed religion. It comes from supernatural revelations made by God, culminating in the coming of Christ and the teaching of Christ and the apostles. This revelation can only be accessed by receiving it as it is handed down through history by the Christian tradition. We must, then, accept Christianity as we have received it and not alter it arbitrarily based on our own ideas, for if we do the latter, we are acting unreasonably, producing doctrines out of our own imagination instead of submitting to what God, in his providence, has handed down to us. To refer to one example, take the canon of Scripture. The modern canon of the Catholic Church (and that of the separated Eastern churches, and the later Protestant traditions as well) contains the Book of Jude. How do we know this book belongs in the canon? We didn't make that decision; it was made long before we were
born. This decision was made by the leaders of the early Christian Church. How do we know they got it right? We can go back and look at their reasons and try to see if we think they made a good choice. But this will only take us so far, unless we are also willing to trust in God's providential guidance of the preservation of his Word through history. Even if, through historical investigation, we can show that the Book of Jude is probably a very early book, very likely written close to the times of the apostles, even if we can show that it has doctrine that agrees with the rest of the Bible, etc., how do we really know that it belongs in the Bible? There are lots of good books that no one thinks belong in the Bible. How do we know that Jude was not written very early, perhaps during the times of the apostles, perhaps even by Jude himself, but that God did not intend it to be inspired Scripture? Perhaps the Church really liked the book, and very quickly it became common belief that it is one of those books that should be in the canon. (Actually, as we've seen, the entire Church did not agree that the Book of Jude should be in the Bible until a few hundred years after the time of the apostles—it was always a well-respected book, and many thought it belonged in the Bible, but this was disputed among the churches in the earliest days of the Church.) How can we go back and figure out, by purely historical research, whether or not Jude should be in the Bible? We can't. The only way we can know that it's supposed to be there is by trusting that God guided the Church to make the right decision. We must trust God's providential handing down of his Word through history. We all recognize that it would be foolish and sinful to throw the Book of Jude out of the Bible simply because we can't provide our own independent proof that it should be there. We would be arbitrarily altering the faith as it has been handed down to us. We have no more ability to decide by ourselves that Jude should not be in the Bible than we have to decide that it should be there. Either choice, made solely on our own independent judgment, would be arbitrary and without reason. Therefore, since in order to follow God's Word we must know what it is, the reasonable thing is for us to trust that God has handed down his faith to us in the way he wanted us to receive it. Our job is to receive it humbly and live by it, not to arbitrarily alter it.
Therefore, when we have splits in the history of the Church, we must ask each side to justify its own distinctive position. If somebody can't do that, we must reject their position as a position of unwarranted schism, and we must stick to the faith and to the Church as they have been handed down to us. Early Christianity, as this has been established in history and handed down by the early Church, recognized the importance of following the divinely-guided Tradition of the Church, and it recognized the importance of the See of Rome. Those churches that have separated from the Catholic Church over the centuries have not been able to provide an objective basis to justify their separation or their distinctive positions. They have not been able to provide a workable, non-question-begging epistemology, whereas the Catholic Church has always had that in the See of Rome. Therefore, if we are to hold to the faith as God in his providence has handed it down to us, we must stick to the Catholic Church and to the See of Rome and not follow the lead of any of the groups that have broken off from it. This conclusion is even more evident when we add the fact that all the earliest records of Christianity indicate that Christ did not just throw out a disembodied teaching and tell people to find it and interpret it for themselves. He founded a visible, formal community--the Church--and he appointed apostles and gave them authority to govern and teach it. He commanded his flock to obey these shepherds he had appointed over them. And, as we've seen, these apostles appointed bishops over the churches, and these bishops appointed other bishops, who appointed other bishops, etc. We have this apostolic succession. And Christ, his apostles, and all these bishops tell us that the Church is founded as one and is to remain one. Therefore, our default must be to the unity and authority of the Church. If we are going to break that unity or defy the existing authorities in the Church, the burden of proof is on us to justify this. But none of the churches that have broken off from the Catholic Church can do this, as we've seen, and so their schism is unjustified.
In short, since Christianity is a divine revelation handed down through history in the providence of God, we must defer to the continuity of that faith as it has been handed down and to the unity and authority of the Church Christ founded. But in order to do this, we must remain connected to the historic Catholic Church and to her faith and to her shepherds, especially the successor of St. Peter in the See of Rome. The early Church knew this and often acted on it, but, as more schisms occur through history, the Church understands and articulates this more and more clearly and explicitly.
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/02/the-chair-of-st-peter/ - A selection of evidence from the Church Fathers showing their commitment to the divinely-appointed role of the Chair of St. Peter.
https://archive.org/details/DocumentsIllustratingPapalAuthorityAd96-454Giles/mode/2up - A much more thorough collection of evidence for the same (at least up to the time just after the Council of Chalcedon in the mid-400s). This book is very helpful in that it does a very careful and thorough job at looking at historical evidence presented by Catholics in favor of the papal claims and by others opposed to those claims, as well as providing the arguments of both sides, without taking a side itself. It thus allows the reader to form his/her own judgment without being prodded.
https://archive.org/details/DocumentsIllustratingPapalAuthorityAd96-454Giles/mode/2up - A much more thorough collection of evidence for the same (at least up to the time just after the Council of Chalcedon in the mid-400s). This book is very helpful in that it does a very careful and thorough job at looking at historical evidence presented by Catholics in favor of the papal claims and by others opposed to those claims, as well as providing the arguments of both sides, without taking a side itself. It thus allows the reader to form his/her own judgment without being prodded.
http://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com/2016/06/dialogue-on-claims-of-eastern-orthodoxy.html - This is a case for Catholicism over against the separated Eastern churches in a dialogue format.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-hausam/shop/mark-hausam/no-grounds-for-divorce-why-protestants-and-everyone-else-should-return-to-the-unity-of-the-catholic-church/ebook/product-23973051.html - I've written up a larger, more thorough case for Catholicism over against alternative forms of Christianity in this book, FYI.
The Crusades
Another major series of events that takes place during our time period is the Crusades. In the previous unit, I mentioned how the rapid spread of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries had threatened Christendom. Islamic civilization continued to threaten Christendom in subsequent centuries. The Muslims had taken over large portions of what had previously been Christian lands, leaving many Christians under Islamic rule. Also, Muslims had conquered the Holy Land and other important Christian pilgrimage sites. Pilgrimages were an important aspect of devotion and piety during the Middle Ages, as they still are for Catholics today. Thus, there was a growing sense in Christendom that something needed to be done to repel and push back the Muslim invaders, to rescue the Christians stranded under Muslim rule, and to liberate the sacred Christian sites and make safe again the routes of pilgrimage.
In 1095, the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I Comnenus, sent a message to the West requesting aid against the Muslim Turks. Pope Urban II responded to this request at the Council of Clermont, calling for Christians of the West to go to battle against the Muslims to liberate the Christians of the East and Christian lands. We have five major accounts of this speech at Clermont, summarizing the sorts of things that Pope Urban said. Here is a selection from the account of Fulcher of Chartres:
Although, O sons of God, you have promised more firmly than ever to keep the peace among yourselves and to preserve the rights of the church, there remains still an important work for you to do. Freshly quickened by the divine correction, you must apply the strength of your righteousness to another matter which concerns you as well as God. For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them. On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.
All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion! Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. Behold! on this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that, the rich; on this side, the enemies of the Lord, on that, his friends. Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let hem eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide.
Robert the Monk describes the people's response to Urban's speech:
When Pope Urban had said these and very many similar things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out, "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!" When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, with eyes uplifted to heaven he gave thanks to God . . .
In Robert's version, Urban tells the people to wear the sign of the cross when they take up the crusade:
Whoever, therefore, shall determine upon this holy pilgrimage and shall make his vow to God to that effect and shall offer himself to Him as a, living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, shall wear the sign of the cross of the Lord on his forehead or on his breast. When,' truly',' having fulfilled his vow be wishes to return, let him place the cross on his back between his shoulders. Such, indeed, by the twofold action will fulfill the precept of the Lord, as He commands in the Gospel, "He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
Over the next several centuries, many people of all classes took up the call of the Popes to go to battle against the Muslims to liberate captive Christendom. This took many different forms, with a wide variety of outcomes. The crusaders had a good deal of success, but also a good deal of failure. Various crusading efforts were better or more poorly organized. One of the worst problems the Crusades had was the behavior of many of the crusaders. Many of the crusaders had tendencies to what I would call "barbarism". They could be intensely cruel and uncontrolled. Many times the crusading armies would sack innocent villages (even Christian ones) along the way to their destinations, indiscriminately murdering people, stealing food, etc. When the crusaders reached their destinations, they would often not only conquer but pillage and destroy. One of the most famous examples of this was when the armies of the First Crusade finally took back Jerusalem from the Muslims. Once inside the city, they killed a large portion of the population indiscriminately and cruelly, including local native Christians. The other most famous example of crusader barbarity was the Sack of Constantinople in 1204. There were rival claimants to Byzantine leadership during that time, and in connection with this dispute the crusaders ended up going to Constantinople, attacking the city, and cruelly and mercilessly butchering many of its inhabitants while plundering or destroying its treasures.
The Crusades overall did end up having some success, at least partially and temporarily. The crusaders, at various times, did manage to take back Jerusalem and other Christian places. They set up Latin kingdoms to rule over these newly-regained territories, and they often appointed Latin church leaders to replace the Eastern ones--all of which further exacerbated the conflict between Western and Eastern Christendom. There were many centuries of back-and-forth as Christians and Muslims battled each other, Christians battled other Christians, and Muslims battled other Muslims. Eventually, by the end of it all, the crusaders had ended up losing most of what they had earlier gained.
The Crusades are, I think, a good illustration of the interplay between the divine and the human elements of the Church in the world. The Church is a divine institution, created and guided by God. She possesses the true faith, and is guided by the Spirit to preserve, articulate, and apply it accurately. She possesses the Holy Spirit and the holiness that comes from the Spirit. She possesses the sacraments and other means of grace. And yet she is still human, and the humans in her are not, in this life, entirely free from sin. There are those within her who are still, in their hearts, enemies of God. And even those who are true friends of God fundamentally lack perfection. They are beset with remaining sinful tendencies as well as other human failings, such as lack of prudence. In the Crusades, we see the concern of Western Christians to aid their Eastern brothers and to restore justice to Eastern Christendom. We see a selfless desire to put aside one's own concerns for the sake of the greater good. We see the unity of races that Christianity brought, as Europeans of all varieties came together to carry out the mission they were called to by the Popes. We see many good things. But we also see much lack of prudence and much short-sightedness. We see terrible failures of compassion and justice. We see hatred and disunity. We see good and bad, the wheat and the tares, mingled together, and it is impossible to fully separate them. We must defend what is good, and acknowledge what is evil, learning from both, as we continue to try to be the People of God in this world.
Watch in class - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bGxMcSHOmI&t=1298s - This is the first of a set of two half-hour-or-so documentary videos on the Crusades by Dr. Ryan Reeves, a Church history professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (a Protestant seminary). He does a good job of providing a historical overview of the Crusades. A little bit of Protestant bias, but not too much.
Watch in class - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju0HLYU9Z7A&t=596s - This is the second Crusades video from Dr. Ryan Reeves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dopQ1EcY3JM - For those of you who would like a more detailed account of what went on in each of the crusades (including strategies and accounts of battle), this video goes into extensive detail.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/urban2-5vers.asp - These are the five major versions we have of the speech of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, calling for the Crusades.
http://lonelypilgrim.com/2013/07/20/indulgences-gift-of-the-martyrs/ - As the video describes, Popes offered "plenary indulgences" to people who participated in the crusades. This article describes the history of indulgences, showing how they developed from practices in the early Church.
https://www.catholic.com/tract/primer-on-indulgences - This is a nice, basic overview of the theology of indulgences.
http://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-fresh-look-at-catholic-doctrines-of.html - Here is my write-up on the theology of penance, purgatory, and indulgences. I make use of a family analogy to help explain these concepts more clearly.
Rise of the Mendicants
Monasticism produced a new flowering during this period with the rise of the mendicant orders. Wikipedia defines "mendicant" orders as "certain Christian religious orders that have adopted a lifestyle of poverty, traveling, and living in urban areas for purposes of preaching, evangelization, and ministry, especially to the poor." These orders arose as God called various individuals to found communities that would live in the world and engage in acts of service or prayer, or in general live out the evangelical counsels, in ways that went beyond the boundaries of the previously established monastic orders.
The Franciscans were founded by St. Francis of Assisi. Francis was a worldly man in his early life, but he was eventually challenged by the call of Christ in the gospel to "sell all you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me." The Franciscans were (and are) committed to living in poverty and service to humanity.
The Dominicans were founded by St. Dominic de Guzman, who was inspired by the need for solid preaching and teaching to help people understand the gospel better and to combat heresy. Since that time, the Dominicans have been especially focused on preaching and teaching.
Other mendicant orders include the Carmelites and the Augustinians. And there are various subgroups and forms of many of these orders.
https://www.medievalists.net/2016/02/a-quick-guide-to-medieval-monastic-orders/ - Helpful, brief guide to various orders in the Middle Ages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendicant_orders - Article on the mendicant orders.
https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=50 - Basic biography of St. Francis of Assisi.
Watch in class - https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=178 - Basic biography of St. Dominic.
Watch in class - St. Francis of Assisi movie.
Ecumenical Councils of the Period
There were several ecumenical councils that took place during this period (1000-1500). You can read a brief description of each of them here or here.
The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1431-1439) were important in terms of their efforts to bring about reconciliation with the Eastern churches, as we talked about earlier.
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) was important for a number of reasons. It established (or re-articulated) the well-known rule, still in force, that Catholics must confess serious sins at least once a year and receive communion at least once a year at Easter if possible (as bare minimum requirements). It articulated very clearly the order of authority of the major patriarchal sees of the Church. Constantinople is granted second place. We remember that this was a source of controversy in previous centuries.
Renewing the ancient privileges of the patriarchal sees, we decree with the approval of the holy and ecumenical council, that after the Roman Church, which by the will of God holds over all others pre-eminence of ordinary power as the mother and mistress of all the faithful, that of Constantinople shall hold first place, that of Alexandria second, that of Antioch third, and that of Jerusalem fourth, the dignity proper to each to be observed; so that after their bishops have received from the Roman pontiff the pallium, which is the distinguishing mark of the plenitude of the pontifical office, and have taken the oath of fidelity and obedience to him, they may also lawfully bestow the pallium upon their suffragans, receiving from them the canonical profession of faith for themselves, and for the Roman Church the pledge of obedience. They may have the standard of the cross borne before them everywhere, except in the city of Rome and wherever the supreme pontiff or his legate wearing the insignia of Apostolic dignity is present. In all provinces subject to their jurisdiction appeals may be taken to them when necessary, saving the appeals directed to the Apostolic See, which must be humbly respected.
The council also articulated the Church's stance on what should be done about heretics when they live in Catholic lands. It calls on the secular authorities to enact civil penalties against them to rid Catholic territories of them.
Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath.
(It should be noted that the Latin word translated here as "exterminate" is a bit looser than our English word. It means simply, literally, to "push beyond the boundary," and so can have the meaning of "expel". It does not necessarily mean to kill. However, there were secular rulers during our period who punished heretics with the death penalty. We will come back to this point just below.)
The council also used the word "transubstantiation" to refer to the change of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. The word had been used earlier, but it is noteworthy that it is picked up here by an ecumenical council. The concept that the bread and wine are changed into Christ is an ancient one in the Church, but the use of this word signaled a move to articulate the idea even more clearly in philosophical language.
The Council of Constance (1414-1418) is important especially for its role in the ending of the Great Western Schism, which we will discuss below.
Describe to the class, very briefly, the basics of each council during this period using this page, in addition to the discussion of particular elements that come up elsewhere in this section or in this unit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_ecumenical_councils
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran4.asp - Text of the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council.
In the previous unit, we discussed changing views of the relationship between Church and State, spurred on in part by Christianity's rise to being the official religion of the Roman Empire. In the High and Late Middle Ages, the Church and Catholic theologians continued to reflect on this subject.
Because of the strong unity between Catholic faith and secular society that was the norm in Medieval Christendom, the questions we raised in our previous unit continued to come to the fore. False religion and heresy are greatly harmful to spiritual life. They are also harmful to the unity and authority of the secular society and to the state in a society in which Catholic Christianity forms the fundamental values on which civilization itself is based. So if the secular authority's role is to protect the good and the values of society from harm, shouldn't it help to protect the society from the spread and corruption of false religion and heresy?
That it should indeed do so was the dominant opinion during our time period. We saw above that the Fourth Lateran Council called on the secular authorities to use civil power to get rid of heretics. Some theologians and many secular authorities believed that heresy was so harmful that even the death penalty should be used to get rid of heretics. One of the strongest statements of which I am aware of this thinking comes from St. Thomas Aquinas, who articulated very clearly and succinctly the rationale for such a drastic penalty:
Looking back at this period from our present vantage point, with our very different context and culture, we must be careful to understand accurately the thinking of people who advocated the punishing of heretics. This is so foreign to our way of thinking and so jarring to us that it is hard for us to examine it objectively and carefully, so that our evaluation of it can be well-rounded and accurate.
The Medievals understood that faith is voluntary. They did not believe in trying to force people to believe in Christ. St. Thomas Aquinas, again, articulates this clearly:
Civil penalties enacted against heretics were not intended to convert them to the faith (at least not directly--no doubt there was hope that it might have this effect indirectly, as Augustine spoke about with regard to the Donatists in our previous unit). They were intended to protect the society from the harm heresy could do to souls and to the values and fabric of Christian civilization.
But what about freedom of conscience? Did the Medievals believe that people have the right to follow their own consciences?
"Freedom of conscience" is actually quite a loaded phrase, though we are so used to it we often don't notice it. Does anyone believe in complete freedom of conscience? Complete freedom of conscience would mean the end of civil society, for it would mean that the state would have to allow anyone to do anything at all that they professed themselves bound to do by their beliefs or values. So if a follower of ISIS believes he is morally bound to blow up a night club in a suicide bombing, law enforcement must let him do it. If I profess that I believe I have a moral duty to rob your house, the state must allow this to happen. Nobody believes in complete freedom of conscience. Everyone believes that if freedom of conscience is a value, it is one that has to be balanced with other values with which it is often in tension, such as the value of protecting society from harm.
Medieval Christians did not necessarily dispute that people have a right to freedom of conscience. We saw in our previous unit that in the early days of Christian persecution under the Roman Empire, Christians sometimes appealed to a concept of freedom of conscience on behalf of religious liberty. We see the ingredients of freedom of conscience in St. Paul's discussion of Christian liberty in Romans 14. When Medieval Christians advocated the punishment of heretics in civil law, it was not because they didn't understand or respect the value of free will or of conscience in religious matters, but because they believed that heresy was a great harm that needed to be curtailed by the civil magistrate.
This segment from a book by University of San Diego law professor Steven D. Smith brings this point out very well, I think:
I am not saying that Medieval Christians got everything right in how they treated heretics and unbelievers, or even that it was right of them to punish heretics in civil law at all. The Church does not claim that the decisions of the Popes or bishops of the Church will always be right or best. We recall from earlier units (and even from our discussion of the Crusades earlier in this unit) that the Church claims herself to be guided by the Holy Spirit in her teaching of the faith, but not necessarily kept from moral failings or lack of prudence or shortsightedness in her prudential applications of the principles of the faith. In her prudential acts and rulings and in her non-definitive teaching, she can make choices and take positions that turn out later to not have been right or best. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith put it in the document Donum Veritatis in 1990:
With regard to questions of religious freedom, the Church has acknowledged that "[i]n the life of the People of God, as it has made its pilgrim way through the vicissitudes of human history, there has at times appeared a way of acting that was hardly in accord with the spirit of the Gospel or even opposed to it. Nevertheless, the doctrine of the Church that no one is to be coerced into faith has always stood firm" (Dignitatis Humanae #12). In later units, we will look at the further development of the Church's teaching on this subject that has occurred since the Middle Ages.
In all her dealings with unbelievers and heretics, however, the Church always strove to act with justice and compassion, even if she sometimes fell short. In many cases, the Church pled for greater leniency against the stronger inclinations of secular rulers, and many of her laws and rulings were designed to mitigate the effects of secular laws and policies.
An important development during this time period in connection with the treatment of heretics is the development of the method of inquisition to help deal with heresy. Rather than being one traveling tribunal (which one might think by the use of the common singular, "The Inquisition"), it was more a common method of investigating charges and cases of heresy that came into use in the 12th century and continued on afterwards for several centuries. You can read about it here.
During this time, also, the Popes made clear that while there were two different kinds of authority--spiritual and temporal, or religious and civil, or Church and State--the spiritual power is higher, because it is directly appointed by God and deals with the most fundamental aspects of human existence--ultimate truth and morality. Therefore, the civil power has an obligation to submit to the spiritual power. This goes so far that if a civil authority is acting out of accord with the demands of justice and morality as determined by the spiritual authority, the spiritual authority could even declare him unworthy of office. This reality of the dominance of the spiritual over the temporal power was heightened in the Middle Ages by the fact that the Popes during this time not only had an acknowledged role as spiritual overseer within Christendom but also a kind of political role in helping to arbitrate political matters within Christendom. The Popes played an important role in preserving and managing the political and social unity of Western society, particularly after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.
Although the preeminence of spiritual over temporal power was widely acknowledged in the Middle Ages, including by temporal rulers, in practice things did not always go smoothly when Popes would challenge the authority of particular rulers. Two good examples of the sorts of conflicts that could erupt are the investiture controversy of the 11th and 12 centuries and the conflict between St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury in England, and King Henry II.
Read in class - http://www.bede.org.uk/inquisition.htm - Very helpful FAQ on inquisitions. Provides a good explanation and overview, and clarifies a lot of common misconceptions.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm - Helpful article on inquisitions, and in general on the history of how heretics have been treated by the Church throughout Church history.
Read in class - https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/papal-bulls - A very interesting, short summary of important papal bulls concerning Jews from throughout the Middle Ages.
http://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com/2014/11/steven-d-smith-on-smuggling.html - This is a selection from University of San Diego law professor Steven D. Smith (from which my quote from him earlier was taken). Smith does an excellent job of exposing the kind of question-begging (or "smuggling", as he calls it) that often goes on when secularists attempt to argue against religious influence in law. I highly recommend Smith's writings in general as shedding a great deal of perceptive light on the often-unrecognized assumptions in modern secular political thought when it comes to religion and society.
Discuss in class - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investiture_Controversy
Talk about Becket in class and his conflict with Henry II and eventual martyrdom - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket
Just as heresies plagued the Church in earlier periods, so they continued to plague her in our period. Some of the heresies from this time period include the Cathars (also known as Albigensians), the Waldensians, the Hussites, and the Lollards. The Cathars were similar to the earlier Gnostics in some ways, having a metaphysical view of reality that differed enormously from that of orthodox Christianity. The other three had characteristics that made them somewhat "proto-Protestant" in character. That is, they anticipated ideas that would come to fore in the Protestant Reformation--like emphasizing Scripture over Tradition, opposing Transubstantiation, objecting to the common Western practice of the laity receiving communion only in one kind, etc. Not surprisingly, then, Protestants later came to look back on these movements as examples of their own ideas in pre-Reformation times. You can read a little more about these heresies here.
Discuss briefly in class - http://www.localhistories.org/heresy.html
The Treatment of Heretics
In the previous unit, we discussed changing views of the relationship between Church and State, spurred on in part by Christianity's rise to being the official religion of the Roman Empire. In the High and Late Middle Ages, the Church and Catholic theologians continued to reflect on this subject.
Because of the strong unity between Catholic faith and secular society that was the norm in Medieval Christendom, the questions we raised in our previous unit continued to come to the fore. False religion and heresy are greatly harmful to spiritual life. They are also harmful to the unity and authority of the secular society and to the state in a society in which Catholic Christianity forms the fundamental values on which civilization itself is based. So if the secular authority's role is to protect the good and the values of society from harm, shouldn't it help to protect the society from the spread and corruption of false religion and heresy?
That it should indeed do so was the dominant opinion during our time period. We saw above that the Fourth Lateran Council called on the secular authorities to use civil power to get rid of heretics. Some theologians and many secular authorities believed that heresy was so harmful that even the death penalty should be used to get rid of heretics. One of the strongest statements of which I am aware of this thinking comes from St. Thomas Aquinas, who articulated very clearly and succinctly the rationale for such a drastic penalty:
With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death.
On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, wherefore she condemns not at once, but "after the first and second admonition," as the Apostle directs: after that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death. For Jerome commenting on Galatians 5:9, "A little leaven," says: "Cut off the decayed flesh, expel the mangy sheep from the fold, lest the whole house, the whole paste, the whole body, the whole flock, burn, perish, rot, die. Arius was but one spark in Alexandria, but as that spark was not at once put out, the whole earth was laid waste by its flame." (The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas, II-II:11:3. Second and Revised Edition, 1920. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Online Edition Copyright © 2017 by Kevin Knight.)
Looking back at this period from our present vantage point, with our very different context and culture, we must be careful to understand accurately the thinking of people who advocated the punishing of heretics. This is so foreign to our way of thinking and so jarring to us that it is hard for us to examine it objectively and carefully, so that our evaluation of it can be well-rounded and accurate.
The Medievals understood that faith is voluntary. They did not believe in trying to force people to believe in Christ. St. Thomas Aquinas, again, articulates this clearly:
Among unbelievers there are some who have never received the faith, such as the heathens and the Jews: and these are by no means to be compelled to the faith, in order that they may believe, because to believe depends on the will: nevertheless they should be compelled by the faithful, if it be possible to do so, so that they do not hinder the faith, by their blasphemies, or by their evil persuasions, or even by their open persecutions. It is for this reason that Christ's faithful often wage war with unbelievers, not indeed for the purpose of forcing them to believe, because even if they were to conquer them, and take them prisoners, they should still leave them free to believe, if they will, but in order to prevent them from hindering the faith of Christ.
On the other hand, there are unbelievers who at some time have accepted the faith, and professed it, such as heretics and all apostates: such should be submitted even to bodily compulsion, that they may fulfil what they have promised, and hold what they, at one time, received. (Ibid., II-II:10:8)
Civil penalties enacted against heretics were not intended to convert them to the faith (at least not directly--no doubt there was hope that it might have this effect indirectly, as Augustine spoke about with regard to the Donatists in our previous unit). They were intended to protect the society from the harm heresy could do to souls and to the values and fabric of Christian civilization.
But what about freedom of conscience? Did the Medievals believe that people have the right to follow their own consciences?
"Freedom of conscience" is actually quite a loaded phrase, though we are so used to it we often don't notice it. Does anyone believe in complete freedom of conscience? Complete freedom of conscience would mean the end of civil society, for it would mean that the state would have to allow anyone to do anything at all that they professed themselves bound to do by their beliefs or values. So if a follower of ISIS believes he is morally bound to blow up a night club in a suicide bombing, law enforcement must let him do it. If I profess that I believe I have a moral duty to rob your house, the state must allow this to happen. Nobody believes in complete freedom of conscience. Everyone believes that if freedom of conscience is a value, it is one that has to be balanced with other values with which it is often in tension, such as the value of protecting society from harm.
Medieval Christians did not necessarily dispute that people have a right to freedom of conscience. We saw in our previous unit that in the early days of Christian persecution under the Roman Empire, Christians sometimes appealed to a concept of freedom of conscience on behalf of religious liberty. We see the ingredients of freedom of conscience in St. Paul's discussion of Christian liberty in Romans 14. When Medieval Christians advocated the punishment of heretics in civil law, it was not because they didn't understand or respect the value of free will or of conscience in religious matters, but because they believed that heresy was a great harm that needed to be curtailed by the civil magistrate.
This segment from a book by University of San Diego law professor Steven D. Smith brings this point out very well, I think:
So then did the people in premodern Europe who resisted religious toleration--the Thomas Mores, the John Calvins--somehow fail to grasp or accept the idea of "reciprocity"? Not at all. Or at least they need not have opposed the idea. Rather, they might cheerfully acknowledge the legitimate demands of "reciprocity," and they might further concede that, if Christianity, Islam, and, say, Shintoism are relevantly similar, then if Christians expect to be permitted to evangelize in territories dominated by Islam or Shinto, they likewise ought to allow representatives of those religions to proselytize in Christendom. But that premise--namely, that these religions are relevantly similar--is precisely what the premodern believers emphatically denied. In their view, one of the religions leads to salvation, while the others lead to damnation: that is hardly equivalence. And what could be more perverse than to insist that reciprocity requires truth to be treated in the same way as falsehood? It is as if a student were to argue, on grounds of reciprocity, that if the school gives credit for true answers on a test it must give equal credit for false answers.
To be sure, even the most devout adherents to the different religions might acknowledge that the religions are similar in the sense that their own followers believe them to be true. But is that similarity dispositive for the question of reciprocity? Well, it may be, if we assume, for instance, that belief, not actual truth (or salvific efficacy), is the relevant factor. And that assumption may seem natural enough--even obvious--to, say, a modern skeptic who supposes that none of the faiths is actually true in any strong sense anyway, or that in any event their truth in unknowable to us. Conversely, to a premodern true believer--to a Thomas More, once again, or a John Calvin--that assumption would likely seem as odd as would a claim by a failing student that since all humans (including teachers) are fallible, what should matter in determining grades is not whether the answers on an exam are actually correct (about which we can never be absolutely confident anyway) but whether the student sincerely believed those answers. (Steven D. Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010], 26-33.)
I am not saying that Medieval Christians got everything right in how they treated heretics and unbelievers, or even that it was right of them to punish heretics in civil law at all. The Church does not claim that the decisions of the Popes or bishops of the Church will always be right or best. We recall from earlier units (and even from our discussion of the Crusades earlier in this unit) that the Church claims herself to be guided by the Holy Spirit in her teaching of the faith, but not necessarily kept from moral failings or lack of prudence or shortsightedness in her prudential applications of the principles of the faith. In her prudential acts and rulings and in her non-definitive teaching, she can make choices and take positions that turn out later to not have been right or best. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith put it in the document Donum Veritatis in 1990:
When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question. But it would be contrary to the truth, if, proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church's Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments, or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission. In fact, the theologian, who cannot pursue his discipline well without a certain competence in history, is aware of the filtering which occurs with the passage of time. This is not to be understood in the sense of a relativization of the tenets of the faith. The theologian knows that some judgments of the Magisterium could be justified at the time in which they were made, because while the pronouncements contained true assertions and others which were not sure, both types were inextricably connected. Only time has permitted discernment and, after deeper study, the attainment of true doctrinal progress.
With regard to questions of religious freedom, the Church has acknowledged that "[i]n the life of the People of God, as it has made its pilgrim way through the vicissitudes of human history, there has at times appeared a way of acting that was hardly in accord with the spirit of the Gospel or even opposed to it. Nevertheless, the doctrine of the Church that no one is to be coerced into faith has always stood firm" (Dignitatis Humanae #12). In later units, we will look at the further development of the Church's teaching on this subject that has occurred since the Middle Ages.
In all her dealings with unbelievers and heretics, however, the Church always strove to act with justice and compassion, even if she sometimes fell short. In many cases, the Church pled for greater leniency against the stronger inclinations of secular rulers, and many of her laws and rulings were designed to mitigate the effects of secular laws and policies.
An important development during this time period in connection with the treatment of heretics is the development of the method of inquisition to help deal with heresy. Rather than being one traveling tribunal (which one might think by the use of the common singular, "The Inquisition"), it was more a common method of investigating charges and cases of heresy that came into use in the 12th century and continued on afterwards for several centuries. You can read about it here.
During this time, also, the Popes made clear that while there were two different kinds of authority--spiritual and temporal, or religious and civil, or Church and State--the spiritual power is higher, because it is directly appointed by God and deals with the most fundamental aspects of human existence--ultimate truth and morality. Therefore, the civil power has an obligation to submit to the spiritual power. This goes so far that if a civil authority is acting out of accord with the demands of justice and morality as determined by the spiritual authority, the spiritual authority could even declare him unworthy of office. This reality of the dominance of the spiritual over the temporal power was heightened in the Middle Ages by the fact that the Popes during this time not only had an acknowledged role as spiritual overseer within Christendom but also a kind of political role in helping to arbitrate political matters within Christendom. The Popes played an important role in preserving and managing the political and social unity of Western society, particularly after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.
Although the preeminence of spiritual over temporal power was widely acknowledged in the Middle Ages, including by temporal rulers, in practice things did not always go smoothly when Popes would challenge the authority of particular rulers. Two good examples of the sorts of conflicts that could erupt are the investiture controversy of the 11th and 12 centuries and the conflict between St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury in England, and King Henry II.
Read in class - http://www.bede.org.uk/inquisition.htm - Very helpful FAQ on inquisitions. Provides a good explanation and overview, and clarifies a lot of common misconceptions.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm - Helpful article on inquisitions, and in general on the history of how heretics have been treated by the Church throughout Church history.
Read in class - https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/papal-bulls - A very interesting, short summary of important papal bulls concerning Jews from throughout the Middle Ages.
http://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com/2014/11/steven-d-smith-on-smuggling.html - This is a selection from University of San Diego law professor Steven D. Smith (from which my quote from him earlier was taken). Smith does an excellent job of exposing the kind of question-begging (or "smuggling", as he calls it) that often goes on when secularists attempt to argue against religious influence in law. I highly recommend Smith's writings in general as shedding a great deal of perceptive light on the often-unrecognized assumptions in modern secular political thought when it comes to religion and society.
Discuss in class - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investiture_Controversy
Talk about Becket in class and his conflict with Henry II and eventual martyrdom - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket
High and Late Medieval Heresies
Just as heresies plagued the Church in earlier periods, so they continued to plague her in our period. Some of the heresies from this time period include the Cathars (also known as Albigensians), the Waldensians, the Hussites, and the Lollards. The Cathars were similar to the earlier Gnostics in some ways, having a metaphysical view of reality that differed enormously from that of orthodox Christianity. The other three had characteristics that made them somewhat "proto-Protestant" in character. That is, they anticipated ideas that would come to fore in the Protestant Reformation--like emphasizing Scripture over Tradition, opposing Transubstantiation, objecting to the common Western practice of the laity receiving communion only in one kind, etc. Not surprisingly, then, Protestants later came to look back on these movements as examples of their own ideas in pre-Reformation times. You can read a little more about these heresies here.
Discuss briefly in class - http://www.localhistories.org/heresy.html
(The above link is now defunct, so here, here, here, and here are four short articles which describe the same heresies discussed in the previous defunct article.)
Our time period saw a great development in the intellectual tradition of the Church. This is the era of the formation of the university system, and it is also the era that saw the development of scholasticism. The latter was a method of doing theology that focused on philosophical and logical rigor. The most famous of all the scholastic theologians was St. Thomas Aquinas, who is known in the Catholic Church as the "Angelic Doctor". Thomas's parents wanted him to enter the Benedictine order, but Thomas decided he wanted to join the Dominicans. His parents were so opposed to this that they actually had him kidnapped and kept as a prisoner for nearly a year in his house. Eventually, he escaped, apparently with his mother's help, and he became a Dominican. While he was at school, he had a tendency not to speak up a lot, and his fellow students called him the "dumb ox" because they thought he wasn't very intelligent. But his teacher, another great Dominican scholastic, St. Albert the Great, is said to have replied, "You call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world." Later, he would go on to become the Catholic Church's greatest and most well-respected theologian of all time. He would write the great Summa Theologica, his systematic examination of the theology of the Church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/ - The Summa Theologica.
Our time period also saw the age of the construction of many of the great medieval cathedrals. These structures were testimonies to the centrality of the faith in Medieval Christian society.
https://www.thefinertimes.com/cathedrals-in-the-middle-ages
https://www.timeref.com/life/cathedas.htm
https://www.timeref.com/life/parts_of_a_cathedral.htm
Look at in class - https://www.ligonier.org/blog/medieval-cathedrals/
The University, Scholasticism, and St. Thomas Aquinas
Our time period saw a great development in the intellectual tradition of the Church. This is the era of the formation of the university system, and it is also the era that saw the development of scholasticism. The latter was a method of doing theology that focused on philosophical and logical rigor. The most famous of all the scholastic theologians was St. Thomas Aquinas, who is known in the Catholic Church as the "Angelic Doctor". Thomas's parents wanted him to enter the Benedictine order, but Thomas decided he wanted to join the Dominicans. His parents were so opposed to this that they actually had him kidnapped and kept as a prisoner for nearly a year in his house. Eventually, he escaped, apparently with his mother's help, and he became a Dominican. While he was at school, he had a tendency not to speak up a lot, and his fellow students called him the "dumb ox" because they thought he wasn't very intelligent. But his teacher, another great Dominican scholastic, St. Albert the Great, is said to have replied, "You call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world." Later, he would go on to become the Catholic Church's greatest and most well-respected theologian of all time. He would write the great Summa Theologica, his systematic examination of the theology of the Church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/ - The Summa Theologica.
Cathedrals
Our time period also saw the age of the construction of many of the great medieval cathedrals. These structures were testimonies to the centrality of the faith in Medieval Christian society.
https://www.thefinertimes.com/cathedrals-in-the-middle-ages
https://www.timeref.com/life/cathedas.htm
https://www.timeref.com/life/parts_of_a_cathedral.htm
Look at in class - https://www.ligonier.org/blog/medieval-cathedrals/
Perhaps show in class - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zXtIRI3pkI - Walking tour through the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris (before the fire of 2019).
Our time period also knew one of the most difficult times the papacy has ever experienced: The Great Western Schism.
The Avignon Papacy and the Great Western Schism
Our time period also knew one of the most difficult times the papacy has ever experienced: The Great Western Schism.
When the Church grew in prominence and importance in the secular world after the Emperor Theodosius had made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, the prominence of the See of Rome, of course, grew as well. It grew even more in the latter part of the First Millennium, when the Popes began to exercise more political power in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The office of Pope began to be coveted and sought, and not always for good motives or by ethical means. Various groups of people and political rulers often tried to get control of the papacy. Sometimes they would try to get the person they wanted on the papal throne. Eventually, in the 11th century, the Church decreed that only the College of Cardinals would have the authority to elect a new Pope, in order to better protect the independence of papal elections from political control. Cardinals are people chosen by the Pope to work closely with him in the governance of the Church of Rome and the universal Church.
During the 14th century, the French exercised a great deal of influence over the papacy. This went so far that the residence of the papacy actually moved from Rome to the French city of Avignon from 1309 to 1376. The Pope was still the Bishop of Rome, but he did not reside in Rome during that time. This caused a great deal of angst, as one might imagine, and eventually the Popes were persuaded to return to Rome as their regular place of residence. (St. Catherine of Siena is famous for arguing with Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome. She was successful, and Gregory XI ended the Avignon period of the papacy.)
There were a number of French cardinals, however, who were not entirely happy about how things were going. After the return of the papacy to Rome, Urban VI (1378-1389) was elected Pope. He was an Italian. But after only about three-and-a-half months, many of the French cardinals began to regret their decision, owing to the way that Urban VI was behaving towards them (lording it over them, acting in a superior manner, etc.). They thought back on the conclave where they elected him three or so months earlier, and they decided that they had been under a lot of pressure from the people to elect him. They concluded, then, that because they weren't really free in their choice the election of Urban had been invalid. They gathered together and elected a new Pope, Clement VII (1378-1394). Clement moved his court to Avignon, so now there was a new Avignon papacy. Urban, however, remained in Rome. The Church was split in two by this division, as Germany, Italy, northern and eastern Europe, and England stood behind Urban, while France, much of the Iberian peninsula, and Scotland stood behind Clement.
Eventually, both Popes died and had successors, so the schism seemed set up to continue indefinitely. In the Roman line of succession, eventually, there was Boniface IX, Innocent VII, and Gregory XII. In the Avignon line there was Benedict XIII and Clement VIII. There had been antipopes--rival claimants to the papacy--throughout Church history, but this was different in that there was enough support on both sides that it didn't seem that the schism would come to an end on its own.
The first hope of the Church for resolving the crisis was that either one of the alleged Popes would voluntarily give up his claim or that both Popes would resign and authorize the cardinals to elect a new Pope that everyone would accept. This didn't work, as nobody could get both Popes to resign and neither Pope would resign without the other.
The cardinals decided that drastic measures needed to be taken, so they abandoned both Popes and called a council by themselves at the Italian city of Pisa, where they deposed both Popes and elected a new Pope--Alexander V (1409-1410). Unfortunately, their plan failed, as many Christians continued to accept the authority of the other two papal-claimants. So the result of the Pisan council was that matters became even worse--now, instead of two, there were three Popes! Eventually, Alexander died, and he was succeeded by John XXIII.
The cardinals got together with John XXIII--the Pope in the new, third line they had recently begun--and called a new council to try again to resolve the schism. This council took place in the city of Constance. John XXIII agreed to voluntarily resign so a new Pope could be chosen. The council tried to persuade the other two Popes--of the Roman and the Avignon lines--to resign as well. But while this was going on, John XXIII decided that he didn't really want to go along with the whole thing after all, so he fled out of Constance secretly, disguised as a stableboy. (This just gets weirder and weirder, doesn't it?) The council decided to keep going on, without him. They passed a decree (Haec Sancta) that declared that they had authority to act even without papal approval in light of the circumstances.
Eventually, John XXIII was caught and brought back to Constance. He agreed to abdicate and resign his papacy. Thus ended one line of Popes. Gregory XII, in the Roman line, also agreed to resign and allow the council to elect a new Pope. Before he resigned, he granted authority to the council to continue its work. The Avignon Pope Benedict XIII, however, refused to resign. He fled to his castle in Peniscola in Aragon and stayed there until his death. He created cardinals who appointed a successor, Clement VIII, but one of those cardinals (Jean Carrier) didn't agree and elected yet another Pope, Benedict XIV. After Benedict XIV died, Carrier elected himself Pope and called himself, again, Benedict XIV. But he was captured by Clement VIII and died in prison. Clement VIII, on the other hand, eventually abdicated and accepted the Pope elected by the Council of Constance (Martin V). So thus ended the Avignon line.
The Council of Constance, in 1417, elected a new Pope, Pope Martin V. Besides a few followers of Benedict XIII's line, which eventually fizzled out (as I described in the previous paragraph), Martin V became universally accepted as Pope. And so the Great Western Schism was finally ended. (Whew!)
So who was the Pope during the time of the Schism? Which line was valid? Well, if you look at the Vatican website towards the bottom, you will find a section that lays out all the Popes through history. If you scroll through to our period of history (the 14th and 15th centuries), you will find that it is the Roman line that is pictured. This makes sense. Urban VI had been elected with due order by the cardinals. Although some of them later repudiated him, they didn't voice their concerns until three-and-a-half-months after they elected him. No doubt they felt some pressure by the people of Rome to elect Urban, but was this enough to constitute a removal of their free choice? That's what they later argued. My own current take on this, based on my level of knowledge, is that there was insufficient reason to warrant allowing the cardinals to renege on an election they themselves had enacted and previously approved. Therefore, I side with the Roman line (while recognizing that many good men and women sided with other lines during the Schism). As it turns out, the Roman line, as I just mentioned, is the one listed on the Vatican website today. It also turns out that Gregory XII, in the Roman line, used his claimed authority before he resigned to grant legitimacy and authority to the Council of Constance and to their election of Martin V, who became universally recognized. However, practically speaking, which line one sides with during the time of the Schism is moot, since everybody eventually came together and recognized Martin V and his successors.
So what can we learn from this fascinating and strange series of events? Some people try to use it as an argument against the claims of the Catholic Church regarding the authority and divine protection of the successors of St. Peter. However, I find that these events communicate the exact opposite message to me. The more I study the history of the papacy, the more I am amazed at its survival through so many historical difficulties. Popes have been kidnapped, besieged, murdered. Rome has been captured, sacked, conquered by barbarian tribes. There have been good Popes and wicked Popes, competent Popes and incompetent Popes. There have been splits and schisms and antipopes. And yet, the papacy has survived for two thousand years and the unity of the Catholic Church under the successor of St. Peter is just as clearly evident today as it was in the first centuries of the Church. The Great Schism, humanly speaking, could very well have ended in a permanent rupture within the Catholic Church, with neither side retaining fully the evident Catholic identity and authority the Church had before the Schism. But, through all the twists and turns, through all the rapids and waterfalls, the boat came out still afloat in the end. I look at the Great Western Schism, then, as a historical testimony to God's fulfillment of his promise to preserve his Church--not without difficulties, but through them.
It should be mentioned also that the events of the Great Western Schism also had the effect of creating a theological and political movement within the Church known as conciliarism (which later, in the context of France and its peculiar politics, took also the form of what became known as Gallicanism), which argued the superiority of a Church council over the authority of the Pope. The Church had condemned this movement and affirmed the full authority of the papacy before the Great Western Schism and she would continue to do so afterwards, but the Schism gave a good deal of momentum to this aberrant theological position. As a movement, conciliarism had numerous setbacks over subsequent centuries, and was eventually squelched for good in a definitive way at the First Vatican Council in the 19th century. But we'll come to that later.
Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present, by Klaus Schatz (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996, pp. 100-109) - This was one of my primary sources for the information in this section.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13539a.htm - Another important source (on the Western Schism).
I also made use of the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Antipope John the XXIII, and the Wikipedia articles on the Western Schism, Antipope John XXIII, the Avignon Papacy, Antipope Benedict XIII, Antipope Benedict XIV, and Pope Martin V.
During the 14th century, the French exercised a great deal of influence over the papacy. This went so far that the residence of the papacy actually moved from Rome to the French city of Avignon from 1309 to 1376. The Pope was still the Bishop of Rome, but he did not reside in Rome during that time. This caused a great deal of angst, as one might imagine, and eventually the Popes were persuaded to return to Rome as their regular place of residence. (St. Catherine of Siena is famous for arguing with Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome. She was successful, and Gregory XI ended the Avignon period of the papacy.)
There were a number of French cardinals, however, who were not entirely happy about how things were going. After the return of the papacy to Rome, Urban VI (1378-1389) was elected Pope. He was an Italian. But after only about three-and-a-half months, many of the French cardinals began to regret their decision, owing to the way that Urban VI was behaving towards them (lording it over them, acting in a superior manner, etc.). They thought back on the conclave where they elected him three or so months earlier, and they decided that they had been under a lot of pressure from the people to elect him. They concluded, then, that because they weren't really free in their choice the election of Urban had been invalid. They gathered together and elected a new Pope, Clement VII (1378-1394). Clement moved his court to Avignon, so now there was a new Avignon papacy. Urban, however, remained in Rome. The Church was split in two by this division, as Germany, Italy, northern and eastern Europe, and England stood behind Urban, while France, much of the Iberian peninsula, and Scotland stood behind Clement.
Eventually, both Popes died and had successors, so the schism seemed set up to continue indefinitely. In the Roman line of succession, eventually, there was Boniface IX, Innocent VII, and Gregory XII. In the Avignon line there was Benedict XIII and Clement VIII. There had been antipopes--rival claimants to the papacy--throughout Church history, but this was different in that there was enough support on both sides that it didn't seem that the schism would come to an end on its own.
The first hope of the Church for resolving the crisis was that either one of the alleged Popes would voluntarily give up his claim or that both Popes would resign and authorize the cardinals to elect a new Pope that everyone would accept. This didn't work, as nobody could get both Popes to resign and neither Pope would resign without the other.
The cardinals decided that drastic measures needed to be taken, so they abandoned both Popes and called a council by themselves at the Italian city of Pisa, where they deposed both Popes and elected a new Pope--Alexander V (1409-1410). Unfortunately, their plan failed, as many Christians continued to accept the authority of the other two papal-claimants. So the result of the Pisan council was that matters became even worse--now, instead of two, there were three Popes! Eventually, Alexander died, and he was succeeded by John XXIII.
The cardinals got together with John XXIII--the Pope in the new, third line they had recently begun--and called a new council to try again to resolve the schism. This council took place in the city of Constance. John XXIII agreed to voluntarily resign so a new Pope could be chosen. The council tried to persuade the other two Popes--of the Roman and the Avignon lines--to resign as well. But while this was going on, John XXIII decided that he didn't really want to go along with the whole thing after all, so he fled out of Constance secretly, disguised as a stableboy. (This just gets weirder and weirder, doesn't it?) The council decided to keep going on, without him. They passed a decree (Haec Sancta) that declared that they had authority to act even without papal approval in light of the circumstances.
Eventually, John XXIII was caught and brought back to Constance. He agreed to abdicate and resign his papacy. Thus ended one line of Popes. Gregory XII, in the Roman line, also agreed to resign and allow the council to elect a new Pope. Before he resigned, he granted authority to the council to continue its work. The Avignon Pope Benedict XIII, however, refused to resign. He fled to his castle in Peniscola in Aragon and stayed there until his death. He created cardinals who appointed a successor, Clement VIII, but one of those cardinals (Jean Carrier) didn't agree and elected yet another Pope, Benedict XIV. After Benedict XIV died, Carrier elected himself Pope and called himself, again, Benedict XIV. But he was captured by Clement VIII and died in prison. Clement VIII, on the other hand, eventually abdicated and accepted the Pope elected by the Council of Constance (Martin V). So thus ended the Avignon line.
The Council of Constance, in 1417, elected a new Pope, Pope Martin V. Besides a few followers of Benedict XIII's line, which eventually fizzled out (as I described in the previous paragraph), Martin V became universally accepted as Pope. And so the Great Western Schism was finally ended. (Whew!)
So who was the Pope during the time of the Schism? Which line was valid? Well, if you look at the Vatican website towards the bottom, you will find a section that lays out all the Popes through history. If you scroll through to our period of history (the 14th and 15th centuries), you will find that it is the Roman line that is pictured. This makes sense. Urban VI had been elected with due order by the cardinals. Although some of them later repudiated him, they didn't voice their concerns until three-and-a-half-months after they elected him. No doubt they felt some pressure by the people of Rome to elect Urban, but was this enough to constitute a removal of their free choice? That's what they later argued. My own current take on this, based on my level of knowledge, is that there was insufficient reason to warrant allowing the cardinals to renege on an election they themselves had enacted and previously approved. Therefore, I side with the Roman line (while recognizing that many good men and women sided with other lines during the Schism). As it turns out, the Roman line, as I just mentioned, is the one listed on the Vatican website today. It also turns out that Gregory XII, in the Roman line, used his claimed authority before he resigned to grant legitimacy and authority to the Council of Constance and to their election of Martin V, who became universally recognized. However, practically speaking, which line one sides with during the time of the Schism is moot, since everybody eventually came together and recognized Martin V and his successors.
So what can we learn from this fascinating and strange series of events? Some people try to use it as an argument against the claims of the Catholic Church regarding the authority and divine protection of the successors of St. Peter. However, I find that these events communicate the exact opposite message to me. The more I study the history of the papacy, the more I am amazed at its survival through so many historical difficulties. Popes have been kidnapped, besieged, murdered. Rome has been captured, sacked, conquered by barbarian tribes. There have been good Popes and wicked Popes, competent Popes and incompetent Popes. There have been splits and schisms and antipopes. And yet, the papacy has survived for two thousand years and the unity of the Catholic Church under the successor of St. Peter is just as clearly evident today as it was in the first centuries of the Church. The Great Schism, humanly speaking, could very well have ended in a permanent rupture within the Catholic Church, with neither side retaining fully the evident Catholic identity and authority the Church had before the Schism. But, through all the twists and turns, through all the rapids and waterfalls, the boat came out still afloat in the end. I look at the Great Western Schism, then, as a historical testimony to God's fulfillment of his promise to preserve his Church--not without difficulties, but through them.
It should be mentioned also that the events of the Great Western Schism also had the effect of creating a theological and political movement within the Church known as conciliarism (which later, in the context of France and its peculiar politics, took also the form of what became known as Gallicanism), which argued the superiority of a Church council over the authority of the Pope. The Church had condemned this movement and affirmed the full authority of the papacy before the Great Western Schism and she would continue to do so afterwards, but the Schism gave a good deal of momentum to this aberrant theological position. As a movement, conciliarism had numerous setbacks over subsequent centuries, and was eventually squelched for good in a definitive way at the First Vatican Council in the 19th century. But we'll come to that later.
Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present, by Klaus Schatz (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996, pp. 100-109) - This was one of my primary sources for the information in this section.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13539a.htm - Another important source (on the Western Schism).
I also made use of the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Antipope John the XXIII, and the Wikipedia articles on the Western Schism, Antipope John XXIII, the Avignon Papacy, Antipope Benedict XIII, Antipope Benedict XIV, and Pope Martin V.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Cardinals
I mentioned earlier (both in this unit and in the previous unit) that the year 1453 saw the fall of the city of Constantinople as it was conquered by the Turks. Thus ended the Byzantine Empire, which, as the continuation of the Roman Empire of ancient times, had been around since 27 BC (if you count the Republic, it went all the way back to about 509 BC). (The Western Holy Roman Empire, which had been founded with Charlemagne in 800, continued in various ways until 1806.)
In honor of this momentous occasion, we should all listen to this song.
Some particularly important saints of our time period: St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare, St. Gertrude, St. Margaret of Scotland, St. Dominic, St. Bernard, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Anselm of Canterbury, St. Joan of Arc, St. Thomas Becket.
As with previous periods, there are so many amazing stories that could be told in connection with all these saints. Joan of Arc was an ordinary girl in a French village who was called by God to lead the armies of France against the English. After that, she was captured by the English, tried by them for heresy, and burnt at the stake. Her mother worked to have her case re-tried by Rome, and, after re-investigating the matter, Rome reversed her sentence and rehabilitated her, and later canonized her.
St. Anselm was the Archbishop of Canterbury in England from 1093 through 1109. He was one of the Church's greatest theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages. One of my favorite stories about him took place when he was about to die. The story is told in the wonderful blog The Clerk of Oxford, as the author quotes an eyewitness account:
Anselm did indeed end up dying, which you can read about in the rest of the account. But my favorite part is what Anselm was worried about when he was about to die. "Yes, I'm ready to die, if that is God's will. However, it would be great if he would just hold off on that for just a little while so I can finish thinking through this philosophical question I'm working on regarding the origin of the soul." As a philosophy person myself (and an INTP), I resonate with that so much!
I would like to conclude this unit by saying that the Middle Ages (around 500-1500) is one of my favorite periods of history. I've always been intrigued by it. It's just a lot of fun in so many ways! It has so much to offer, and so much has come out of it. For one thing, it is the origin of some of the great perennial stories of the human race, such as the stories of King Arthur and of Robin Hood. Dive into some of these if you get a chance. Read Le Morte d'Arthur (especially in its original Middle English!). Read the stories of Robin Hood. Go to a Renaissance Festival.
https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/ - This is one of my favorite blogs. The author does a masterful job of conveying the beauty of Medieval views and piety to modern audiences.
The Fall of Constantinople
I mentioned earlier (both in this unit and in the previous unit) that the year 1453 saw the fall of the city of Constantinople as it was conquered by the Turks. Thus ended the Byzantine Empire, which, as the continuation of the Roman Empire of ancient times, had been around since 27 BC (if you count the Republic, it went all the way back to about 509 BC). (The Western Holy Roman Empire, which had been founded with Charlemagne in 800, continued in various ways until 1806.)
In honor of this momentous occasion, we should all listen to this song.
Great Saints and Stories of the High and Late Middle Ages
Some particularly important saints of our time period: St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare, St. Gertrude, St. Margaret of Scotland, St. Dominic, St. Bernard, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Anselm of Canterbury, St. Joan of Arc, St. Thomas Becket.
As with previous periods, there are so many amazing stories that could be told in connection with all these saints. Joan of Arc was an ordinary girl in a French village who was called by God to lead the armies of France against the English. After that, she was captured by the English, tried by them for heresy, and burnt at the stake. Her mother worked to have her case re-tried by Rome, and, after re-investigating the matter, Rome reversed her sentence and rehabilitated her, and later canonized her.
St. Anselm was the Archbishop of Canterbury in England from 1093 through 1109. He was one of the Church's greatest theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages. One of my favorite stories about him took place when he was about to die. The story is told in the wonderful blog The Clerk of Oxford, as the author quotes an eyewitness account:
Palm Sunday dawned and we were sitting beside him as usual. One of us therefore said to him: 'My lord and father, we cannot help knowing that you are going to leave the world to be at the Easter court of your Lord.'
He replied: 'And indeed if his will is set on this, I shall gladly obey his will. However, if he would prefer me to remain among you, at least until I can settle a question about the origin of the soul, which I am turning over in my mind, I should welcome this with gratitude, for I do not know whether anyone will solve it when I am dead. Truly I think I might recover if I could eat something, for I feel no pain in any part of my body, except that I am altogether enfeebled by the weakness of my stomach which refuses food.'
Anselm did indeed end up dying, which you can read about in the rest of the account. But my favorite part is what Anselm was worried about when he was about to die. "Yes, I'm ready to die, if that is God's will. However, it would be great if he would just hold off on that for just a little while so I can finish thinking through this philosophical question I'm working on regarding the origin of the soul." As a philosophy person myself (and an INTP), I resonate with that so much!
I would like to conclude this unit by saying that the Middle Ages (around 500-1500) is one of my favorite periods of history. I've always been intrigued by it. It's just a lot of fun in so many ways! It has so much to offer, and so much has come out of it. For one thing, it is the origin of some of the great perennial stories of the human race, such as the stories of King Arthur and of Robin Hood. Dive into some of these if you get a chance. Read Le Morte d'Arthur (especially in its original Middle English!). Read the stories of Robin Hood. Go to a Renaissance Festival.
https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/ - This is one of my favorite blogs. The author does a masterful job of conveying the beauty of Medieval views and piety to modern audiences.
Watch in class perhaps - Joan of Arc movie.
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