The reasons for the East/West schism are complicated and developed over a period of many centuries; even the date of 1054 is largely symbolic of a process that started much earlier and ended much later.
There were cultural, linguistic, and liturgical differences from rather early, and although these were never seen as church-dividing, they probably contributed to mutual misunderstandings.
The two biggest issues were the addition of the word filioque (and the Son) to the Western text of the Creed, and the growth of papal power. In addition were a host of smaller conflicts, over matters such as the use of leavened bread vs. unleavened bread for the Eucharist, fasting on Saturday, etc.
The schism was probably inevitable by the ninth century, but a case can be made that it was not "final" until the East repudiated the reunion Council of Florence in 1453. During the period of persecution, the Early Christian Church developed differently according to the part of the Roman Empire; the Church in the East developed differently from the West and the Church in Africa (Copts) differed again. After the legalisation of Christianity, the Church came to accept that there were 3 main leaders (Patriarchs): the bishops of Alexandria, Antioch and Rome. To these were added the bishop of Constantinople (by the Council of Constantinople in 381) and the bishop of Jerusalem (by the Council of Chalcedon in 451).
With Constantine's transfer of the capital of the Empire to Constantinople, the Empire was effectively split into two sections: East and West. (Diocletian formally divided the Empire into 2 sections in early part of the 4th century)
The Church
When the western part of the Empire fell into decay, and was eventually overrun by invaders, the political, judicial and social responsibilities of its officials were assumed by the leaders of the Church in the West, centred on Rome. Inevitably, this dual responsibility led to a centralisation and codification of the manner in which things were done in the Western part of the Church. The Church in the East, largely unaffected by the collapse of the Western Empire, continued to be less centralised.
As time progressed, the Bishop of Rome (acknowledged by the others as being First Among Equals) began to claim greater authority due to the apostles Peter and Paul being martyred in that city. This claim was refuted by the other patriarchs. However, Rome's position became strengthened when the spread of Islam effectively isolated and diminished the influence the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, leaving Rome and Constantinople in something of a state of rivalry.
A further cause of tension arose when the Western Church inserted the "filioque" into Nicene Creed. Traditionally, the Holy Spirit was seen to proceed from God the Father; the insertion of the "filioque" clause meant that, in the West, the Holy Spirit was believed to proceed from God the Father and God the Son. For the Church in the East, Rome had overstepped its authority by altering a Creed which had been approved by an ecumenical council. In 867 the Patriarch of Constantinople (Photius I)declared the insertion to be heretical, thereby accusing the Patriarch of the West (the Bishop of Rome) of heresy.
Other factors also caused the East and West to drift apart: language, different manners of liturgical celebration, different approaches to solving ecclesiastical conflict, different ways of explaining doctrine and the gradual imposition of clerical celibacy in the West.
The consummation of the schism is generally dated to 16 July 1054 due to a disagreement between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the papal legate who had been sent to solve a disagreement several matters: the type of bread to be used in the Eucharist, the claim to greater power by the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch's use of the title "Ecumenical". However, in reality little changed in the lives of ordinary Christians or the clergy. The two churches continued to drift apart with the rise of nation states in the West (the Byzantine Empire continued) and the disaster of the Fourth Crusade when the crusaders attacked and looted Constantinople.
In brief, as was already mentioned in the first answer, the schism between East and West developed over centuries and the reasons are several: linguistic, societal, judicial, ecclesiastical, political and theological.
So as we know the Great Schism was manly about political issues.
What about the 451 Council of Chalcedony?: Not only the Coptic, but also the Armenian, Syrian, Ethiopian and a few others form a group called the Oriental Orthodox Churches.
They did not accept the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 since it declared Christ to be "in two natures" (human and divine), rather than "from two natures". The difference is merely semantical (although some Eastern Orthodox would disagree), a misunderstanding at the time, fuelled by political issues.
Efforts to unite the two strands of Orthodoxy are underway, but unlikely to succeed, given this may split the Eastern Orthodox (eg Greek, Russian) communion in two.
So it was about the divinity of our Lord.
But why did the Roman Empire split and caused the Church to split?: Despite the fact that the gospel message of Jesus found a hostile, stormy, and crisis-ridden reception in the second and third century, it is astounding to note how quickly the Christian community spread throughout the Roman empire. In addition to the concentration of Christians in Palestine and Asia Minor, by the end of the second century Christians were to be found in sizeable numbers in Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia, and also along the north African coast with its centre in Carthage. In the third century, the south of Spain was home to a large Christian community in Cordoba and the city of Elvira. In southern France in the area from the Rhine to the Mosel, as well as in the British Isles, Christian centres were established under the leadership of local bishops.
The favourable travel conditions that existed facilitated access to the far corners of the empire allowing the Christian faith to proliferate rapidly. Persecutions in Italy, Greece and in Asia Minor often meant that believing Christians became itinerant, moving to less threatening areas within the Roman empire. This peregrination became in itself a cause for the rapid dissemination of the Christian message.
It has been estimated that in the first century there existed almost half a million Christians. By the close of the second century, their number had risen to two million; at the close of the third century, their number had again more than doubled - to almost five million. This is astonishing when we realize that at the beginning of the fourth century, it was reputed that the Roman empire had almost 50 million adherents within its borders. In that century, after the conversion of emperor Constantine, and after the Church received its freedom, the numbers of Christians in the total Roman empire quickly rose to almost ten million.
How was this phenomenon to be understood? And how was it that the shift from the Semitic mentality and religious framework to one characterised by Platonic philosophy and Roman law was to be so complete? The Roman empire presented a fascinating mixture of diverse religious philosophies and beliefs. Rome itself became a centre for a variety of eccentric and extraordinary religious practices that had their origins in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Gaul, Africa and other far-flung outposts of the empire. The intellectual environment was open to all types of philosophies and religious experiences. The Roman Stoic, Seneca, (4 BC - 135 AD) believed that within each person a spark of the divine existed:
- God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian.... No man can be good without the help of God (Seneca, Epistles, 41, quoted in Chester Starr, 1965: 228).
Certainly, the message about Jesus found an acceptance among people who believed in the commerce of gods with mortals. Both the Greeks and the Romans were accustomed to deification of rulers and other outstanding personalities. We even have the incident recorded in Acts (14,8-13) of Paul and Barnabas being acclaimed as gods after the curing of the cripple at Lystra :
- And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked. He heard Paul speak, who steadfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed, said with a loud voice, "Stand upright on thy feet". And he leaped and walked. And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, "The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men". And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people.
It was a curious blend that had occurred. Gentile believers in Jesus, enculturated within the worldview of ancient Greece and Rome, could not possibly see him as inferior in dignity or status to the Caesars. We find in the gospels the term Son of God (the imperial Divi Filius) conjoined with the Jewish royal title of Messiah. It is evident that the emerging Christian community would sooner or later experience internal conflict with regard to its own theology. It also becomes obvious, that many of the practices of the Cives Romanorum were considered totally unacceptable to the Christian community: it also afforded an appropriate excuse for the Roman authority to inaugurate waves of persecution against the `atheistic' Christians who were reputed to practise cannibalism and who refused to acknowledge the divinity of Caesar. In 64 AD a huge fire, raging for nine days, destroyed more than half of Rome. The historian Tacitus left this account of how the emperor Nero blamed the unpopular Christians for the fire:
- ... large numbers ... were condemned - not so much for incendiarism as for their anti-social tendencies. Their deaths were made farcical. Dressed in wild animals' skins, they were torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or made into torches to be ignited after dark....Nero provided his Gardens for the spectacle, and exhibited displays in the Circus... Despite their guilt as Christians, and the ruthless punishment it deserved, the victims were pitied. For it was felt they were being sacrificed to one man's brutality rather than to the national interest (Tacitus, Annals, 15:44, trans. Grant, 1959: 354).
But it was not only the refusal to worship the emperor as a deity that led to brutal persecutions of the early Christian communities. Generally, Christians till the fourth century refused to do military service and this was seen as civil disloyalty to the State - a crime punishable by death. It was not until Augustine in the 4th century that the Church was to begin its abandonment of the pacifism preached by Jesus and practised by his followers for three centuries. The mechanisms of Realpolitik after 313 AD were to supplant the praxis of three centuries and the teachings of Jesus by a process of accomodation between Church and Empire allowing for the embryonic development of a Just War theory based on principles of natural justice. The reality was that in the first centuries, Christians took seriously the precept that one forgave even one's enemies and those that persecuted them. Tertullian (c. 160-22 AD), who is the first to mention the presence of Christians in the imperial army, also condemns them saying that "Christ in ungirding Peter, ungird every soldier". Hippolytus made it clear in his Canons that if a man served in the army of the Emperor, he should not be accepted as a Christian, and also that if a catechumen showed military aspirations then he should not be received into the fold of the Church.
It is obvious that this `obstinancy' could not be tolerated by Rome and persecutions were inevitable. Already in the second and third centuries the Church had to learn that the proclamation of the message of Jesus would be met with controversy and rejection from within and without. Yet it was at this time that the cultural heritage and character of the western Church in its external organization and also in its theological deliberations would begin to be forged.
Already within the Pauline community tensions had became apparent between the Church's leadership and certain charismatic individuals. With emphasis Paul had once written:"...for God has not called us to be disorderly, but peaceful" (1 Cor 14:33).
He definitely defended his own teaching authority, and would stand no opposition to this interpretations. Sharply he says: "even if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be damned!" (Gal 1:8). Towards the end of the first century it became more important to reaffirm the need for believers to maintain fidelity to the teachings of "true teachers" (1 Tim 1:10; 2 Tim 4:3) though the belief was still strong that the end-times were upon them, and that the imminent return of Jesus necessitated an urgent and fervent preaching of the Good News (2 Tim 4:2).
As this message was received by more and more people, it became necessary to structure the community in such a way that the needs of the group could be satisfactorily met. Various ministries were instituted, with authority granted, to exercise services of alms-giving and caring for the poor, the widowed, and the less fortunate. Taking the example that Jesus had given in his love for the sinner and the poor, the Apostolic fellowship was confronted by practical issues that demanded leadership and internal re-organization. The people of God began to have a organic identity: "look at these Christians; see how they love one another."
After the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and the dispersal of the Judeo-Christian Church, the early Christian community began to identify more and more with the city which witnessed the martyrdom of Peter and Paul: Rome itself. Ignatius of Antioch at the beginning of the second century called the Roman Church "the protectors and dispenser of love." Irenaeus of Lyon (c 115- 202 A.D.) referred to the Roman Church as being superior and pre-eminent in relation to all other sister Churches (propter potiorem principalitatem). Cyprian of Carthage (200-258) spoke of a necessary union of faith with Rome: "To be bound to the Catholic faith, means to be bound to the Roman bishop".
I now want to examine some of the key beliefs and perspectives held by the early Church Fathers in the first three centuries of the Christian era. It is important to stress that these centuries were often characterized by violent persecution and tension between the fledgling Christian communities and the State authorities. Yet, the preserved early writings of this period show us a fascinating portrait of diverse theological developments relating to the way in which the Church understood itself, the role and character of the primacy, the episcopate, and the notion of the Church's infallibility in teaching and guiding its flock.
In the writings of these earliest Fathers of the Church, we are faced for the first time with questions that have equal importance, and are still debated in our own twentieth century : What is the hierarchical (and monarchial) structure of the Church? What is the true meaning of collegiality? How does one ascertain what is orthodox doctrine? What is authentic history of the primitive Church? Did Jesus Found the Church or did it pre-exist from the beginning of all time? How is the Church the continuance of the life of Christ on earth? How does the Church deal with heretics and schismatics, the good and the wicked within its fold? What is the true relationship that should exist between the secular and spiritual powers? Why is it that Rome and not Jerusalem or one of the early Christian Churches that is to be regarded as the center of unity? How is the transmission of apostolic jurisdiction to be made in the primitive Churches? Why did the Church, particularly in the personage of the Pontiff, consider itself to be infallible?
Below I will list some key passages for your reflection that will address some of these issues. The quotes are taken from William A. Jurgens' excellent translations of early patristic writings : The Faith of the Early Fathers, (Vol.I), The Liturgical Press, Minnesota, 1970. Beneath each passage, in the space provided, write a brief reaction from your own personal standpoint. Remember, the quotes come from people who lived under persecution, in a culture and society very different from your own. Note the changes (if any) that have occurred in the past two millenia that either confirm or challenge the presented perspectives. What does each statement say about the theology of the time? How was the Church perceived and understood? Do we have similar or different opinions or beliefs today? What are they in the context of our own understanding of Church? Does the ancient teaching have relevance for us today? How would we re-phrase the "truths" contained in each statement?
- I presume that you are not ignorant of the fact that the living Church is the body of Christ. The Scripture says, "God made man male and female." The male is Christ, and the female is the Church. Moreover, the Books and the Apostles declare that the Church belongs not to the present, but has existed from the beginning. She was spiritual, just as was our Jesus; but He was manifested in the last days so that he might save us. And the Church, being spiritual, was manifested in the flesh of Christ. [From the so called Second Letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, ca. A.D. 150], in: Jurgens, 1970: 43].
- From what has been said then, it seems clear to me that the true Church, that which is really ancient, is one; and in it are enrolled those who, in accord with a design, are just... We say, therefore, that in substance, in concept, in origin and in eminence, the ancient and Catholic Church is alone, gathering as it does into the unity of the one faith which results from the familiar covenants, - or rather, from the one covenant in different times, by the will of the one God and through the one Lord, - those already chosen, those predestined by God who knew before the foundation of the world that they would be just. (From St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, after 202 AD, in Jurgens, 1970: 185).
- Furthermore, the more anyone observes that a bishop remains silent, the more he should stand in fear of him. For anyone whom the master of the house sends to manage his business ought to be received by us as we would receive him by whom he was sent. It is clear, then, that we must look upon the bishop as the Lord Himself. (St.Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, ca. 110 AD, in Jurgens, 1970: 18).
- The Bride of Christ cannot be defiled. She is inviolate and chaste... Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adultress is separated from the promises of the Church; nor will he that forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is an alien, a worldling, and an enemy. He cannot have God for his Father who does not have the Church for his Mother... Does anyone believe that in the Church this unity which proceeds from the divine stability and which is welded together after the heavenly patterns can be divided, and can be separated by the parting asunder of opposing wills? Whoever holds not fast to this unity holds not to the law of God; neither does he keep faith with the Father and the Son, nor does he have life and salvation. (St. Cyprian of Carthage, The Unity of the Catholic Church, [AD 251/256], in: Jurgens, 1970: 221).
- The Church, instituted by the Lord and confirmed by the Apostles, is one for all men; but the frantic folly of the diverse impious sects has cut them off from her. It cannot be denied that this tearing asunder of the faith has arisen from the defect of poor intelligence, which twists what is read to conform to its opinion, instead of adjusting its opinion to the meaning of what is read. However, while individual parties fight among themselves, the Church stands revealed not only by her own doctrines, but by those also of her adversaries. And although they are all ranged against her, she confutes the most wicked error which they all share, by the very fact that she is alone and one. (St. Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, ca. 356 - 359 AD, in Jurgens, 1970: 376).
- Confess your offenses in Church, and do not go up to your prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of life. (Didache, ca. AD 140, in Jurgens, 1970: 2).
- What the soul is to the body, that the Christians are to the world. The soul is spread through all parts of the body, and the Christians through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but it is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, though they are not of the world. The soul is invisible, but it is sheathed in a visible body. Christians are seen, for they are in the world; but their religion remains invisible. (Letter to Diognetus, AD 125/200, in Jurgens, 1970: 41).
- It is evident that no one can terrify us or hold us to servitude, who have believed in Jesus over all the earth. For, though beheaded and crucified, and thrown to the beasts and in chains and fire and subjected to all the other tortures, we do not give up our confession. On the contrary, the more do such things happen, the more do others in greater numbers become faithful worshippers of God through the name of Jesus. (St. Justin the Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, (ca. AD 155), in Jurgens, 1970: 62).
- Elect for yourselves, therefore bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, humble men and not lovers of money, truthful and proven; for they also serve you in the ministry of the prophets and teachers. Do not therefore despise them; for they are your honourable men, together with the prophets and teachers. Correct one another, not in anger but in peace, as you find it in the gospel; and let no one speak with you who has done a wrong to his neighbour, nor let him hear, until he repents. (Didache, in: Jurgens, 1970: 4).
- There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one Chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering. (St. Cyprian of Carthage, Letter to all his People, AD 251, in Jurgens, 1970: 229).
- Peter alone among the Apostles do I find married, and through mention of his mother-in-law. I presume he was a monogamist; for the Church, built upon him, would for the future, appoint to every degree of Orders none but monogamists. (Tertullian, Monogamy, post AD 213, in: Jurgens, 1970: 158).
- In like manner let everyone respect the deacons, as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of Apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a Church. (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians, ca.AD 110, in Jurgens, 1970: 20 - 21)
It has often been asserted that the Church as a community of faith is not of this world. However, the Church lives and works within the world. For almost three hundred years the political might and power of Rome and her Empire had stood fast against those who professed to be Christians. Yet at the beginning of the fourth century, both forces were to undergo a radical change - a mutation which found the Church and the empire in mutual patronage and support. This relationship between Rome and the Christian community signalled a total change of direction - a change that had irreversible repercussions for Christianity in its future history.
As we have observed, for the first three hundred years of the Christian movement, this faith was seen by the official forces within Rome as being a banned religion (religio illicita). Christians were perceived as enemies of the State and were actively persecuted. But by the middle of the third century opinion was beginning to change. A large number of Christians settled in the Eastern provinces and, despite persecution and anti-Christian propaganda, began to exert considerable political and economic influence.
Caesaropapism finally formalized the edict of tolerance which had been proclaimed by emperor Galerius in 311 AD. It was to be a decision with vast consequences: the Edict of Milan proclaimed the freedom of worship for all Christians. In January 313, Constantine legalized Christianity with an edict that read:
Yet, within the space of seventy years, the Christian faith was to be declared the official religion of the Roman empire under an edict proclaimed by emperor Theodosius I on February 28, 380 AD. Within a century, Christianity usurped every political and social office which had been in the hands of the pagan priestly and State administration.
It was not long before this mutual support of State and Church began to find expression in the Church's accommodation to the needs of the State. As Christianity gained not only respectability but finally official status as an official religion, we see that the Church's image became more and more linked to the political stability of the State. If Rome fell, then the Church would also fall - such was the rationale with which the pragmatists of the period contended.
If you look back over the history and theological development in the Church since the death of Jesus to the reign of Constantine, you will note significant changes in the Church's self-understanding. As the Church began this new phase of political interaction with the temporal powers of the State, new pressures began to be imposed that were to change the Church structurally, in its administration, and in its theological emphasis.
As far back as the Council of Arles in 314, the Church saw that "to deny the State the right to go to war was to condemn it to extinction." Faced by this dilemma, the Church turned its back on the teachings of the scriptures an the example of three centuries of pacifist practice. Rather, an emphasis on the principles of natural law justified changes in theological reflection and attitude. Right had to be defended and wrong had to be rectified. It became easy to identify right and justice with the causes of Rome and the Church, and wrong, with that which stood against them.
The emperor was the protector of the Church. This political concern necessitated a concern for Church unity in faith and action. It was under Constantine's direction that the Council of Nicaea was to be convened in 325 AD - the Church was responsible and answerable to the emperor. This coalition of Church and State, of pope and emperor, of religion and politics was to bring about an uneasy marriage of convenience. This history of the Church would reflect in coming centuries the bitter struggle for power and temporal supremacy. It was to bring discredit to the spiritual leaders of the time transforming the spiritual harmony of the gospel message into a Church that reflected unbending legalism in interpretation and administration.
The new freedom that came with the proclamation of the Edict of Milan (313 AD) in no way brought about a sense of unity and community into the Church. On the contrary, as the Christian groups no longer had to concern themselves with self-protection from persecution, they had more time to occupy themselves with the meanings and interpretations of the Christian message. This period of time, which on the whole meant peace on the political plane, inaugurated a difficult era of tensions in faith stances from various Christian groups.
A central preoccupation of the age was with the mystery of the integration of the human and divine realities within Christ. Philosophy began to intrude on theological interpretations, as deeper clarity was sought into the meaning of Jesus' life, words and actions. What did it mean when Jesus said, "The Father is greater than I" (Jn. 14:28)? How was Jesus' own knowledge and equality perceived in relation to his incarnate divinity and the Trinity when he admits that he is not privy to information that only the Father knows (Mk. 13:32)? What were the meanings behind Jesus' cry of isolation and abandonment on the cross - "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!" (Mk. 15:34; Mt. 27:46)? Was Jesus only a man? Was he really the only begotten incarnate son of God? How can the unity between "true man and true God" be reconciled in Christ? Had the incarnate son of God only one will - i.e. a divine will and nature? How did the man Jesus understand his own divinity and godliness?
These were among the questions that caused division and dissent within Constantinian christendom. Opposing answers, responses and thesies were promoted so that unity could not be a reality. It seemed that the Christian community which had survived two centuries of bitter persecution would be rendered apart and destroyed through these theological confrontations.
It is fascinating to note how this inner-Church conflict was resolved. The early Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea praises the vigor with which Emperor Constantine quickly realized that a semblance of order and stability was paramount in the Church if his political control was to be maintained. As protector of the Church Constantine was instrumental in convening the Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325 AD.
In the next 125 years four important councils were to be convened which determined resolutions to christological problems. They must be seen as imperative in promoting a sense of Christian unity in faith, as well as aiding the political stability of a vastly expanding empire.
You may wish to explore these councils more fully in your own private readings. You will find that Constantine, and later his successors, enforced and defended Christianity even to the point of persecuting those forces that stood against it. Through the resolution of these politico-religious conflicts the bond between Church and State was inextricably drawn together. Constantine had realised that the unity of the Empire was best protected by protecting and promoting a common religion throughout that empire.
Let us briefly look at the Arian conflict. Arius was presented as teaching that Jesus came from the Father as a creation of God, and he was strongly refuted by Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria. Although Arius believed that Christ was the Word of God, incarnate in human form, and divine, nevertheless Christ was subordinate to God the Father; he denied that the Son had the same nature and substance as God. The bishop of Alexandria however insisted that Christ was of the same nature and substance as God. The bitter theological struggle threatened to destroy the delicate balance within the Church until Constantine intervened and commanded the collected bishops at Nicaea to repudiate this teaching as a heresy. The Council of Nicaea finally resolved that
It is important to note that the first seven ecumenical councils of the Church took place in the predominantly Greek-speaking world. Byzantine thought and philosophy permeated the conceptual framework within which Christian theology was developed. The mysteries of faith became objects of philosophical debate, investigation and interpretation. A systematization of faith into precise dogmas, teachings, rules, and beliefs which would be accepted and defended by the universal Church was inevitable. Still, lest my comments give the impression that the theology of this era quickly became theoretical, abstract, and isolated, may I hasten to add that the greatest incentive was a pastoral one. Most of the influential theologians of the 4th and 5th century were bishops who placed heavy accent on the caring of their dioceses. Theological resolutions were seen not in abstract, but as an aid to strengthen the faith-stance of the general Christian community. It was in this light that John Chrysostom in the late 5th century placed emphasis on the Church as a Mystical Communion and stated that the eucharistic bread and wine actually constituted the body and blood of Christ slain at the altar. John Chrysostom (c.347 - 407 AD) was one of the greatest eastern theologians. As bishop of Antioch for sixteen years, he was renowned as an eloquent speaker and proclaimer of the Gospel.
In 451 a further council in Chalcedon "resolved" the controversies surrounding the definition of the "person of Christ". In the final edict we read : "We confess one and the same, our lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly god and truly man, the same of a rational soul and body..."(Wiles, 1981: 79). Later in the western Church, Augustine and Ambrose were to define the Trinity in the same manner as the Cappadocian Fathers. Both of these early Fathers of the Church made an outstanding contribution to the development of Christian theology and exerted a commanding influence on all the theological questions of their age.
Eusebius, in his writings on "Church History", stresses an inter-dependence of Church and State often interweaving accounts and political affairs of State with issues that related to ecclesial matters. The emperors had converted to Christianity and in so doing, it obligated them to offer the Church protection and support even to the point of convening synods to quell internal dissent and theological heresy (Schaff, 1979).
As the ruler empowered from above, Constantine viewed himself as the protector of the Church. He laboured on its behalf, making evident his intention to make Christianity the preferred religion of the empire. In his mind, the bishops were commissioned to care for the inner life of the Church, while he cared for the external affairs. It was his verdict that if the Church was to be of the greatest assistance of the empire, it must be united. Its policies, activities, teachings and liturgy were being influenced more by political necessity than by the Gospels.
There appeared at this time to be a growing conviction that bishops were more than officers charged with caring for the Church, governing its affairs and defending it against internal and external threats. They were viewed as having a special sacred character which separated them from the community as a whole. They were not longer simply representatives of the people. In time, the priest presiding at the Eucharist was no longer viewed as the offerer of the prayers of the community but as another Christ making sacrifices for the sake of the people. This development indeed illuminates the conditions of the time and makes apparent, the Church was on the road to institutionalization characterised by a distinct hierarchy, and it appears that this situation was necessary for the continuance and welfare of the community.
Christianity had become in many striking ways a mirror image of the empire itself. It was catholic, universal, orderly, multi-racial and increasingly legalistic. It was administered by a professional class of literates, wealthy landowners, urban bourgeoisie who functioned like bureaucrats, and its bishops like imperial governors. It appeared to be a marriage of convenience between State and Church.
In an epistle from Constantine to the clergy in which the emperor commands that the rulers of the Church be exempted from all political duties, it appears that the emperor attempted to diffuse the clergy and get them on side in order to exercise some power over them. He also began to transfer other privileges to the Christian clergy, which implies a class status situation. Later Emperor Theodosius strove to establish and maintain a unified society also, which was to be the centre of the Christian faith. To achieve this, he exerted authority in and over the Church, for it was inconceivable to him, as emperor, that the emperor's should be independent of imperial power.
The bishop of the Roman community continued to see his role, as the successor of Peter, to be responsible for the unity and purity of the Christian faith. Deference was paid to the bishop of Rome by the bishops of Asia Minor, Spain, North Africa; Synods respected the politics shaped and implemented within Rome. This was recognized by the State and emperor Gratian (375-378 AD) in 378 AD passed a State law which acknowledged the pre-eminence of the Pontiff in relation to all other bishops. In that same year, Pope Damasus I (366-384 AD) held a Synod "at the sublime and holy Apostolic See". It was to be the first time that the Roman Church was addressed in this manner. A new consciousness began to arise that the power and primary of the Roman bishop echoed the words of the Lord and Saviour: "You are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my Church" (Mt. 16:18).
Under Damasus, the liturgy became more elaborate and formalized. Latin was taken over from the secular world and introduced as the language of the liturgy replacing Greek; the use of colourful vestments, gold and silver ornaments, incense and candles became commonly associated with the pomp and pageantry of worship.
Under Damasus' secretary, Jerome, the Old and New Testaments were translated into Latin (Vulgate). By the end of the fifth century the Church had become the main religion in the empire. In your further readings you may wish to explore the contributions of the three great theologians of the 4th and 5th century: Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, and Jerome.
Each in his own way not only shaped the Christianity of his own day, but would have far reaching effects in the way the Church would develop its theology for centuries to come. Ambrose, in the twenty-five years he ruled the Church in Milan (375-393 AD), influenced the policies of three western emperors: Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius. He was a skilled administrator who structured the basic models of the medieval cathedral. Under him, the cult of relics, and particularly the veneration of the Virgin Mary, strongly developed. It was under his influence that Augustine entered the Church.
Ambrose advocated the autonomy of the Church. He wanted the Church to have the right to self-determination and the freedom of its ministers, as representatives of the Church, to speak and act as they deemed necessary; to be a herald who is there to receive the message of God and is commissioned to pass it on. Ultimately, he saw the Church's responsibility as being not necessarily to produce conversion, still less to build the Kingdom of God, but really to evangelize all the nations in accordance with the commission given by Jesus in Matthew's Gospel.
Ambrose realised the Church was increasing in wealth, due to imperial favour, but in accepting such things it was indebted to the emperor and lost its autonomy. If the Church was freed from its links to the State, Ambrose deduced, it could fulfil its prophetic role, reminding the people that the State was not absolute and was in need of reform. Ambrose and Augustine had a similar notion that the Church was a higher and independent society in comparison to the State.
Aurelius Augustinus was born in 354 AD and died in 430 AD living most of his life in Roman north Africa. In his youth he had been a Manichee, and the pessimism of Manichean philosophy coloured his post-conversion Christian thinking particularly in relation to views on sexuality. The religion of Mani, intermingled astrology with occult theosophy, taught that "the lower half of the body was the disgusting work of the devil... Mani also denied any presumption of the goodness of the material order of creation... and interpreted everything he took from Christianity within a dualistic and pantheistic framework" (Chadwick, 1990: 11 - 12). In 384 AD Augustine took up the post as professor of rhetoric in Milan, where he was influenced by Christian intellectuals, particularly the cities' bishop, Ambrose. After his conversion, Augustine was destined to become one of the greatest thinkers of ancient Christianity; through his work the Christian faith was to be filtered through the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy.
Augustine believed that the Church's teaching mandate was catholic (universal). He also believed that the Christian society was Christ's mystical body where Christ existed as the eternal Word, the mediator God-man:
Augustine also believed that the Church is a fellowship of love, its members being united with one another as one body as an organic entity. This notion represents in some way the mystical communion model which is much more democratic than the institutional or hierarchical model. It emphasises the immediate relationship of all believers to the Holy Spirit, who directs the whole Church. Attention is focussed on the mutual service of the particular good of any one group to that of the whole people. Augustine developed the image of the Body of Christ with particular stress on the mystical all invisible communion that binds together all those who are enlivened by the grace of Christ. He speaks of a Church that includes both earthly and heavenly aspects.
The Edict of Milan, although making the way free for people to worship and practice openly, did not lead to a total unity within the Church. On the contrary, there was separation, because different groups saw the Church, as it stood, not fulfilling their needs.
The Donatists, Montanists, Novantianists and Apotactites were several Church groups that separated themselves from the mainstream Church. They did so in search of a more fulfilling existence, less hampered by institutional structures and persecution (under Diocletian 303-305 AD) and with the promise of accounting for their own needs. These groups, to some extent, reflect the pilgrim model.
The Donatists, for example, were conscious of their identity, and for them the true Church consisted of the pure in heart and in outward discipleship, and seeing that they had been called to make a positive contribution to all humanity by following Jesus' example and coming not to be served but to serve.
It has been stated that the Church was based on the institutional model to an extreme degree. By the time of Emperor Julian's rule (361 - 363 AD), the Church was becoming wealthy and powerful and it was continually extending its legal privileges. In his brief reign, Julian, who had been raised as a Christian, attempted unsuccessfully to revive paganism. Contrary to some Christian apologists who branded him as 'Julian the Apostate' he did not persecute the Christians: "Those who are in the wrong in matters of supreme importance, are objects of pity rather than of hate." On his deathbed he is supposed to have said, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean" (Betterson, 1943: 28).
Critics of the early Church included St. Jerome who states, "Our walls glitter with gold... yet Christ is dying at our doors in the persons of His poor and hungry" (Jerome quoted in Johnson, 1976: 111). There seems to be a contradiction with the models of communion and service stressed by Augustine. Jerome, who appears to have a bleak outlook on life, sees the mission of the Church proclaiming the Word of God to the whole world. The Church is not held responsible for human failure to listen and act upon God's Word but it is only to proclaim it diligently. Jerome saw God as an agent, who encourages us to improve in a continuous process and move slowly towards God. He saw the Christian message was addressed to all humanity and ultimately all would be accommodated in the forgiveness and benevolence of God.
By the fourth century the Church had built up an impressive following: it began to act like a State Church. Christianity was the true and ancient religion of the empire. The only real model that appeared to flourish was the institutional, the others seemed to be lost in the day to day happenings, Councils and the like.
They appeared so concerned with the theological truths like explaining the Divinity of God and whether the Son was subordinate to the Father, and with gaining more wealth, that they lost their true mission, as stressed by Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose. Rome itself was experiencing vast political upheavals. The process of integration of Church and State which had been begun by Constantine continued to involve the Church more and more in State politics, and the State, more and more in ecclesial affairs. Many bishops assumed the role of "defenders of the State" (defensor civitatis) and by 455 AD when Attila the Hun threatened Rome, it was the Pope who played a major role in negotiating with hostile forces.
Why was this so? Since the fourth century, more and more bishops came from the aristocratic land owning Roman ruling classes, and under their leadership the Church began to make inroads into new areas by penetrating northwards to convert the Franks and Burgundians in France, the Goths and the Vandals in Germany. In all this, the See of Rome stood supreme, and new bishoprics all over the west increasingly looked to it for support and guidance. With its growing political strength, Rome became a symbol of the increasing power of faith as expressed by the Council Fathers in Chalcedon in 451 AD: "This is the faith of the Fathers and of the Apostles. Through Leo, Peter has spoken." The same Pontiff described Rome as the "Seat of Peter, the head of the world" (caput orbis).
Without a doubt that the western world is indebted to the Church for acting as a "carrier" of culture and civilization during this turbulent period of history. Through the writings of Augustine, the Church possessed a blueprint of how a christianized society should look: the Roman world of Augustine had ended with the confrontation between the Christian world and barbarism. Tribal migration from the north, the movements of the Vandals, and the various Gothic tribes changed the political sphere of Rome's influence.
Furthermore, the political and ecclesial uncertainties had created a rift between the Byzantine and Roman world - as Rome trembled under the pillage of Alarich in 410, the threat of Attila, and the plundering of the Vandals in 455, the eastern Roman empire grew in stature and strength in the city of Constantinople. With it, the growing strength of the position of the Patriarch of that city also increased.
Yet Rome was endowed with particular gifted forces. Upon the throne of Peter sat Leo I (440-461), who through his personality and strength of character gave the Papacy unprecedented power and authority. The sixth century historian Gregory of Tours gives a detailed account of the conversion of the Franks and the early germanic people to Christianity. According to Gregory, Clovis was converted to Christianity in 496 following the battle against the Alemanni where Clovis called on the Christian god for help:
Between the sixth and tenth centuries the Church gave barbarian society institutions, laws, and a concept of belonging through written history. All of Italy, and vast areas of Spain, Sicily, Germany, France, Britain, Ireland, North Africa, as well as Greece and its empire came under the aegis of Rome. The millions of illiterate Vandals, Goths, Franks and Lombards that swept into the empire were to become part of a new Christian force. At this time of the Church's history, the political allegiance between Rome and Byzantium became more and more strained. Equally tensions were developing between the Eastern and Western Churches in matters relating to theological interpretation. Consequently, the Roman Church began to look more towards her new found allies. The rise of the Franks had been meteoric, while the Byzantine empire saw an internal erosion of its military power, and erosion of its ecclesiastical and political influence, and a coming confrontation with a new religious force - the faith of Islam. By the year 700, Christianity had already lost half of its territory to the Mohammedans: these Islamic victories had closed the world south and east of the Mediterranean to both Rome and Constantinople.
So we can see that by the end of the seventh century three distinct powers co- existed in Europe. Firstly the power of the West controlled by the ruler of the Christian people, the pontiff who was to be king-maker and king-breaker. Secondly, the power of Byzantium, a power based on a neat compound of Rome, Hellenism and Christianity. It perceived Rome's new allegiances with the rising Frankish territories as a betrayal - a transfer of alliance which weakened an already precarious position.
The Islamic conquests represented the third power. It was perceived by both Rome and Constantinople with alarm, yet in the end it was not enough for this mutual self-interest to heal the rifts emerging in the two Churches. With the Pope becoming more and more committed to the maintenance of the empire in the West, Eastern Christendom became increasingly isolated, ultimately falling before the onslaught of Islamic forces.
Within Rome and its sphere of influence the Church was finding a new force and strength; through the growth of western monasticism its influence was beginning to be felt at the fringes of the Christian Graeco-Roman empire. The inspiration behind the development of western monasticism was Benedict, born in 480, and a student in Rome prior to his calling to the hermit's way of life. Having become the leader of a group of hermits near Subiaco, he later founded the mother monastery of the Benedictine order in 529 on the hill of Monte Cassino about half way between Rome and Naples. There he formulated a cohesive and practical Rule which governed the way of life for his followers, who ultimately spread the Rule throughout western Europe. The Rule was not seen as being excessively ascetic as were some of the conditions governing monastic life in the East; rather it seemed to incorporate a spirit of service and ministry to the wider community and ultimately, after its acceptance by Pope Gregory, the Benedictine rule was to be viewed as the norm for monasticism in the West. Johnson (1976: 146 - 147) describes its particular virtues and appeal:
The Pontiff realised the potential of monastic life in the evangelisation of Europe. Over subsequent centuries, the monks built centres of religious, cultural, social, agricultural, commercial and educational life for the people. In Europe under Benedict of Nursia we can see the establishment of monastic houses inhabited by men and women dedicated to hard work and the Gospel message. Abbeys were to offer practical ways of helping people live in a world threatened by violence and sudden change. Most importantly, monks also began the process of copying classic works and manuscripts and they became a channel by which the arts of the ancient world were preserved as a heritage for humanity. Much of the ancient world has survived only through the efforts of these monastic copyists. The Church became a centre for learning, with the monks becoming cultural carriers transmitting the written treasures of the past by preserving and copying ancient texts. Through the establishment and maintenance of monastic and cathedral schools Christianity was able to preserve and transmit an awareness of classical heritage in an age of barbarism and superstition.
The evangelising monks spread the theology of Rome and its law, and popularised the Church liturgy; some monks were to become Popes and made up much of the clergy of Rome and the Papal court responsible for the administration of the universal church. Gregory the Great, a Benedictine monk elected Pontiff in 590 AD, brought a monk's discipline, missionary instinct and sense of order to the rule of the Church. He was the first to use the title "Servant of the servants of God."
Christian monks were ascetics whose aim was to convert and educate. The missionary vision of Gregory also served to restore the Church in England. You may wish to investigate the proselytising work of the Irish monks, particularly the work of St. Columba, whose mission established monasteries in Iona and Northumbria. Celtic Christianity from the islands, which had been mingled with the French form of worship, later collided with the mission of Augustine of Canterbury and the Gregorian reform of the Benedictines. These missions did, however, bring back into Europe Celtic liturgy and monastic life. The Celtic and the Roman traditions soon intertwined and complemented one another. This highlights the early Church's ability to absorb cultures into herself, to make them work together, and resolve evident differences. Unfortunately, later in the history of the Church we will see this ability lost, and by the sixteenth century the inflexibility of the Church became so pronounced that it lost the opportunity effectively to evangelise people of the Far East and India.
The coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800 AD must be seen as a formal recognition that the Church's unity and the political unity of the State were indivisible. One could not imagine religious unity apart from the secular interests of government. Consequently we see that the Carolingian age marks the establishment of the Church as a focal point in the conduct of everyday political, religious and economic life. When Pope Stephen II made an alliance with the new Carolingian king Pepin in 752 AD, he inexorably tied the Church to the political and military power of a secular ruler, although one may suggest that the papal goal was to direct and guide that ruler to follow the views of the Church. In the preceding seven centuries the Church had relied on the patronage, support and blessings of its secular benefactors, and this included educational concerns. In 789 Charlemagne decreed that every monastery must have a school for the education of boys in "singing, arithmetic, and grammar." In a letter to the abbot of Fulda, Charlemagne expresses his apprehension over the illiteracy of the clergy:
Peter De Rosa (1988) gives an interesting insight into the personalities and life- styles of Charlemagne and the reigning Pontiff, Leo III (795 - 816 AD):
The power of the Church spread quickly. The Germanic and Frankish races were still illiterate, yet by the ninth century a firm alliance was established between Rome and her new protectors. With the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 AD, Christian control of western society became, in theory, complete. Within two centuries, the Church established itself as a form of theocracy increasingly legislating on every aspect of conduct in politics, economics, and especially the everyday lives of individuals.
Caesaropapism finally formalized the edict of tolerance which had been proclaimed by emperor Galerius in 311 AD. It was to be a decision with vast consequences: the Edict of Milan proclaimed the freedom of worship for all Christians. In January 313, Constantine legalized Christianity with an edict that read:
- let this be so in order that the divine grace which we have experienced in such manifold ways, may always remain loyal to us and continue to bless us in all we undertake, for the welfare of the empire.
Yet, within the space of seventy years, the Christian faith was to be declared the official religion of the Roman empire under an edict proclaimed by emperor Theodosius I on February 28, 380 AD. Within a century, Christianity usurped every political and social office which had been in the hands of the pagan priestly and State administration.
It was not long before this mutual support of State and Church began to find expression in the Church's accommodation to the needs of the State. As Christianity gained not only respectability but finally official status as an official religion, we see that the Church's image became more and more linked to the political stability of the State. If Rome fell, then the Church would also fall - such was the rationale with which the pragmatists of the period contended.
If you look back over the history and theological development in the Church since the death of Jesus to the reign of Constantine, you will note significant changes in the Church's self-understanding. As the Church began this new phase of political interaction with the temporal powers of the State, new pressures began to be imposed that were to change the Church structurally, in its administration, and in its theological emphasis.
As far back as the Council of Arles in 314, the Church saw that "to deny the State the right to go to war was to condemn it to extinction." Faced by this dilemma, the Church turned its back on the teachings of the scriptures an the example of three centuries of pacifist practice. Rather, an emphasis on the principles of natural law justified changes in theological reflection and attitude. Right had to be defended and wrong had to be rectified. It became easy to identify right and justice with the causes of Rome and the Church, and wrong, with that which stood against them.
The emperor was the protector of the Church. This political concern necessitated a concern for Church unity in faith and action. It was under Constantine's direction that the Council of Nicaea was to be convened in 325 AD - the Church was responsible and answerable to the emperor. This coalition of Church and State, of pope and emperor, of religion and politics was to bring about an uneasy marriage of convenience. This history of the Church would reflect in coming centuries the bitter struggle for power and temporal supremacy. It was to bring discredit to the spiritual leaders of the time transforming the spiritual harmony of the gospel message into a Church that reflected unbending legalism in interpretation and administration.
The new freedom that came with the proclamation of the Edict of Milan (313 AD) in no way brought about a sense of unity and community into the Church. On the contrary, as the Christian groups no longer had to concern themselves with self-protection from persecution, they had more time to occupy themselves with the meanings and interpretations of the Christian message. This period of time, which on the whole meant peace on the political plane, inaugurated a difficult era of tensions in faith stances from various Christian groups.
A central preoccupation of the age was with the mystery of the integration of the human and divine realities within Christ. Philosophy began to intrude on theological interpretations, as deeper clarity was sought into the meaning of Jesus' life, words and actions. What did it mean when Jesus said, "The Father is greater than I" (Jn. 14:28)? How was Jesus' own knowledge and equality perceived in relation to his incarnate divinity and the Trinity when he admits that he is not privy to information that only the Father knows (Mk. 13:32)? What were the meanings behind Jesus' cry of isolation and abandonment on the cross - "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!" (Mk. 15:34; Mt. 27:46)? Was Jesus only a man? Was he really the only begotten incarnate son of God? How can the unity between "true man and true God" be reconciled in Christ? Had the incarnate son of God only one will - i.e. a divine will and nature? How did the man Jesus understand his own divinity and godliness?
These were among the questions that caused division and dissent within Constantinian christendom. Opposing answers, responses and thesies were promoted so that unity could not be a reality. It seemed that the Christian community which had survived two centuries of bitter persecution would be rendered apart and destroyed through these theological confrontations.
It is fascinating to note how this inner-Church conflict was resolved. The early Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea praises the vigor with which Emperor Constantine quickly realized that a semblance of order and stability was paramount in the Church if his political control was to be maintained. As protector of the Church Constantine was instrumental in convening the Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325 AD.
In the next 125 years four important councils were to be convened which determined resolutions to christological problems. They must be seen as imperative in promoting a sense of Christian unity in faith, as well as aiding the political stability of a vastly expanding empire.
You may wish to explore these councils more fully in your own private readings. You will find that Constantine, and later his successors, enforced and defended Christianity even to the point of persecuting those forces that stood against it. Through the resolution of these politico-religious conflicts the bond between Church and State was inextricably drawn together. Constantine had realised that the unity of the Empire was best protected by protecting and promoting a common religion throughout that empire.
Let us briefly look at the Arian conflict. Arius was presented as teaching that Jesus came from the Father as a creation of God, and he was strongly refuted by Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria. Although Arius believed that Christ was the Word of God, incarnate in human form, and divine, nevertheless Christ was subordinate to God the Father; he denied that the Son had the same nature and substance as God. The bishop of Alexandria however insisted that Christ was of the same nature and substance as God. The bitter theological struggle threatened to destroy the delicate balance within the Church until Constantine intervened and commanded the collected bishops at Nicaea to repudiate this teaching as a heresy. The Council of Nicaea finally resolved that
- We believe in....one Lord Jesus Christ, The only begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all Ages Light of Light, true God of true God, Begotten not made of one substance with the Father...
It is important to note that the first seven ecumenical councils of the Church took place in the predominantly Greek-speaking world. Byzantine thought and philosophy permeated the conceptual framework within which Christian theology was developed. The mysteries of faith became objects of philosophical debate, investigation and interpretation. A systematization of faith into precise dogmas, teachings, rules, and beliefs which would be accepted and defended by the universal Church was inevitable. Still, lest my comments give the impression that the theology of this era quickly became theoretical, abstract, and isolated, may I hasten to add that the greatest incentive was a pastoral one. Most of the influential theologians of the 4th and 5th century were bishops who placed heavy accent on the caring of their dioceses. Theological resolutions were seen not in abstract, but as an aid to strengthen the faith-stance of the general Christian community. It was in this light that John Chrysostom in the late 5th century placed emphasis on the Church as a Mystical Communion and stated that the eucharistic bread and wine actually constituted the body and blood of Christ slain at the altar. John Chrysostom (c.347 - 407 AD) was one of the greatest eastern theologians. As bishop of Antioch for sixteen years, he was renowned as an eloquent speaker and proclaimer of the Gospel.
In 451 a further council in Chalcedon "resolved" the controversies surrounding the definition of the "person of Christ". In the final edict we read : "We confess one and the same, our lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly god and truly man, the same of a rational soul and body..."(Wiles, 1981: 79). Later in the western Church, Augustine and Ambrose were to define the Trinity in the same manner as the Cappadocian Fathers. Both of these early Fathers of the Church made an outstanding contribution to the development of Christian theology and exerted a commanding influence on all the theological questions of their age.
- There are indeed two powers by which chiefly this world is ruled, the sacred authority of the pontiffs and the royal power. Of the two, the priesthood has the greater weight to the degree that it must render an account for kings themselves in matters divine. Know then, although you preside with dignity in human affairs, as to divine, you are to submit your neck to those from whom you look for salvation. You are to be subject rather than to rule in the religious sphere and bow to the judgement of the priests rather than seek to lend them your will. (Gelasius, Edict XII, translated in Bainton, 1962: 108).
Eusebius, in his writings on "Church History", stresses an inter-dependence of Church and State often interweaving accounts and political affairs of State with issues that related to ecclesial matters. The emperors had converted to Christianity and in so doing, it obligated them to offer the Church protection and support even to the point of convening synods to quell internal dissent and theological heresy (Schaff, 1979).
As the ruler empowered from above, Constantine viewed himself as the protector of the Church. He laboured on its behalf, making evident his intention to make Christianity the preferred religion of the empire. In his mind, the bishops were commissioned to care for the inner life of the Church, while he cared for the external affairs. It was his verdict that if the Church was to be of the greatest assistance of the empire, it must be united. Its policies, activities, teachings and liturgy were being influenced more by political necessity than by the Gospels.
There appeared at this time to be a growing conviction that bishops were more than officers charged with caring for the Church, governing its affairs and defending it against internal and external threats. They were viewed as having a special sacred character which separated them from the community as a whole. They were not longer simply representatives of the people. In time, the priest presiding at the Eucharist was no longer viewed as the offerer of the prayers of the community but as another Christ making sacrifices for the sake of the people. This development indeed illuminates the conditions of the time and makes apparent, the Church was on the road to institutionalization characterised by a distinct hierarchy, and it appears that this situation was necessary for the continuance and welfare of the community.
Christianity had become in many striking ways a mirror image of the empire itself. It was catholic, universal, orderly, multi-racial and increasingly legalistic. It was administered by a professional class of literates, wealthy landowners, urban bourgeoisie who functioned like bureaucrats, and its bishops like imperial governors. It appeared to be a marriage of convenience between State and Church.
In an epistle from Constantine to the clergy in which the emperor commands that the rulers of the Church be exempted from all political duties, it appears that the emperor attempted to diffuse the clergy and get them on side in order to exercise some power over them. He also began to transfer other privileges to the Christian clergy, which implies a class status situation. Later Emperor Theodosius strove to establish and maintain a unified society also, which was to be the centre of the Christian faith. To achieve this, he exerted authority in and over the Church, for it was inconceivable to him, as emperor, that the emperor's should be independent of imperial power.
The bishop of the Roman community continued to see his role, as the successor of Peter, to be responsible for the unity and purity of the Christian faith. Deference was paid to the bishop of Rome by the bishops of Asia Minor, Spain, North Africa; Synods respected the politics shaped and implemented within Rome. This was recognized by the State and emperor Gratian (375-378 AD) in 378 AD passed a State law which acknowledged the pre-eminence of the Pontiff in relation to all other bishops. In that same year, Pope Damasus I (366-384 AD) held a Synod "at the sublime and holy Apostolic See". It was to be the first time that the Roman Church was addressed in this manner. A new consciousness began to arise that the power and primary of the Roman bishop echoed the words of the Lord and Saviour: "You are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my Church" (Mt. 16:18).
Under Damasus, the liturgy became more elaborate and formalized. Latin was taken over from the secular world and introduced as the language of the liturgy replacing Greek; the use of colourful vestments, gold and silver ornaments, incense and candles became commonly associated with the pomp and pageantry of worship.
Under Damasus' secretary, Jerome, the Old and New Testaments were translated into Latin (Vulgate). By the end of the fifth century the Church had become the main religion in the empire. In your further readings you may wish to explore the contributions of the three great theologians of the 4th and 5th century: Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, and Jerome.
Each in his own way not only shaped the Christianity of his own day, but would have far reaching effects in the way the Church would develop its theology for centuries to come. Ambrose, in the twenty-five years he ruled the Church in Milan (375-393 AD), influenced the policies of three western emperors: Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius. He was a skilled administrator who structured the basic models of the medieval cathedral. Under him, the cult of relics, and particularly the veneration of the Virgin Mary, strongly developed. It was under his influence that Augustine entered the Church.
Ambrose advocated the autonomy of the Church. He wanted the Church to have the right to self-determination and the freedom of its ministers, as representatives of the Church, to speak and act as they deemed necessary; to be a herald who is there to receive the message of God and is commissioned to pass it on. Ultimately, he saw the Church's responsibility as being not necessarily to produce conversion, still less to build the Kingdom of God, but really to evangelize all the nations in accordance with the commission given by Jesus in Matthew's Gospel.
Ambrose realised the Church was increasing in wealth, due to imperial favour, but in accepting such things it was indebted to the emperor and lost its autonomy. If the Church was freed from its links to the State, Ambrose deduced, it could fulfil its prophetic role, reminding the people that the State was not absolute and was in need of reform. Ambrose and Augustine had a similar notion that the Church was a higher and independent society in comparison to the State.
Aurelius Augustinus was born in 354 AD and died in 430 AD living most of his life in Roman north Africa. In his youth he had been a Manichee, and the pessimism of Manichean philosophy coloured his post-conversion Christian thinking particularly in relation to views on sexuality. The religion of Mani, intermingled astrology with occult theosophy, taught that "the lower half of the body was the disgusting work of the devil... Mani also denied any presumption of the goodness of the material order of creation... and interpreted everything he took from Christianity within a dualistic and pantheistic framework" (Chadwick, 1990: 11 - 12). In 384 AD Augustine took up the post as professor of rhetoric in Milan, where he was influenced by Christian intellectuals, particularly the cities' bishop, Ambrose. After his conversion, Augustine was destined to become one of the greatest thinkers of ancient Christianity; through his work the Christian faith was to be filtered through the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy.
Augustine believed that the Church's teaching mandate was catholic (universal). He also believed that the Christian society was Christ's mystical body where Christ existed as the eternal Word, the mediator God-man:
- Of the Church as the body of Christ Augustine used lyrical language. The word and sacraments entrusted to the Church were the very means and instruments of salvation. So the Church is the dove or the beloved Bride of the Song of Songs; the society of all faithful people; the body of which Christ is so inseparably head that 'the whole Christ' is the Lord and his Church indissolubly together; the body of which the Holy Spirit is the soul. The Church militant and the Church triumphant were symbolized by Martha and Mary (Luke 10), symbols of the active and the contemplative (Chadwick, 1990: 84).
Augustine also believed that the Church is a fellowship of love, its members being united with one another as one body as an organic entity. This notion represents in some way the mystical communion model which is much more democratic than the institutional or hierarchical model. It emphasises the immediate relationship of all believers to the Holy Spirit, who directs the whole Church. Attention is focussed on the mutual service of the particular good of any one group to that of the whole people. Augustine developed the image of the Body of Christ with particular stress on the mystical all invisible communion that binds together all those who are enlivened by the grace of Christ. He speaks of a Church that includes both earthly and heavenly aspects.
The Edict of Milan, although making the way free for people to worship and practice openly, did not lead to a total unity within the Church. On the contrary, there was separation, because different groups saw the Church, as it stood, not fulfilling their needs.
The Donatists, Montanists, Novantianists and Apotactites were several Church groups that separated themselves from the mainstream Church. They did so in search of a more fulfilling existence, less hampered by institutional structures and persecution (under Diocletian 303-305 AD) and with the promise of accounting for their own needs. These groups, to some extent, reflect the pilgrim model.
The Donatists, for example, were conscious of their identity, and for them the true Church consisted of the pure in heart and in outward discipleship, and seeing that they had been called to make a positive contribution to all humanity by following Jesus' example and coming not to be served but to serve.
It has been stated that the Church was based on the institutional model to an extreme degree. By the time of Emperor Julian's rule (361 - 363 AD), the Church was becoming wealthy and powerful and it was continually extending its legal privileges. In his brief reign, Julian, who had been raised as a Christian, attempted unsuccessfully to revive paganism. Contrary to some Christian apologists who branded him as 'Julian the Apostate' he did not persecute the Christians: "Those who are in the wrong in matters of supreme importance, are objects of pity rather than of hate." On his deathbed he is supposed to have said, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean" (Betterson, 1943: 28).
Critics of the early Church included St. Jerome who states, "Our walls glitter with gold... yet Christ is dying at our doors in the persons of His poor and hungry" (Jerome quoted in Johnson, 1976: 111). There seems to be a contradiction with the models of communion and service stressed by Augustine. Jerome, who appears to have a bleak outlook on life, sees the mission of the Church proclaiming the Word of God to the whole world. The Church is not held responsible for human failure to listen and act upon God's Word but it is only to proclaim it diligently. Jerome saw God as an agent, who encourages us to improve in a continuous process and move slowly towards God. He saw the Christian message was addressed to all humanity and ultimately all would be accommodated in the forgiveness and benevolence of God.
By the fourth century the Church had built up an impressive following: it began to act like a State Church. Christianity was the true and ancient religion of the empire. The only real model that appeared to flourish was the institutional, the others seemed to be lost in the day to day happenings, Councils and the like.
They appeared so concerned with the theological truths like explaining the Divinity of God and whether the Son was subordinate to the Father, and with gaining more wealth, that they lost their true mission, as stressed by Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose. Rome itself was experiencing vast political upheavals. The process of integration of Church and State which had been begun by Constantine continued to involve the Church more and more in State politics, and the State, more and more in ecclesial affairs. Many bishops assumed the role of "defenders of the State" (defensor civitatis) and by 455 AD when Attila the Hun threatened Rome, it was the Pope who played a major role in negotiating with hostile forces.
Why was this so? Since the fourth century, more and more bishops came from the aristocratic land owning Roman ruling classes, and under their leadership the Church began to make inroads into new areas by penetrating northwards to convert the Franks and Burgundians in France, the Goths and the Vandals in Germany. In all this, the See of Rome stood supreme, and new bishoprics all over the west increasingly looked to it for support and guidance. With its growing political strength, Rome became a symbol of the increasing power of faith as expressed by the Council Fathers in Chalcedon in 451 AD: "This is the faith of the Fathers and of the Apostles. Through Leo, Peter has spoken." The same Pontiff described Rome as the "Seat of Peter, the head of the world" (caput orbis).
Without a doubt that the western world is indebted to the Church for acting as a "carrier" of culture and civilization during this turbulent period of history. Through the writings of Augustine, the Church possessed a blueprint of how a christianized society should look: the Roman world of Augustine had ended with the confrontation between the Christian world and barbarism. Tribal migration from the north, the movements of the Vandals, and the various Gothic tribes changed the political sphere of Rome's influence.
Furthermore, the political and ecclesial uncertainties had created a rift between the Byzantine and Roman world - as Rome trembled under the pillage of Alarich in 410, the threat of Attila, and the plundering of the Vandals in 455, the eastern Roman empire grew in stature and strength in the city of Constantinople. With it, the growing strength of the position of the Patriarch of that city also increased.
Yet Rome was endowed with particular gifted forces. Upon the throne of Peter sat Leo I (440-461), who through his personality and strength of character gave the Papacy unprecedented power and authority. The sixth century historian Gregory of Tours gives a detailed account of the conversion of the Franks and the early germanic people to Christianity. According to Gregory, Clovis was converted to Christianity in 496 following the battle against the Alemanni where Clovis called on the Christian god for help:
- O Christ ... if you accord me the victory ... I will believe in you and be baptized in your name. I have called on my gods, but I have found from experience that they are far from my aid ... it is you whom I believe to be able to defeat my enemies (Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks II, 30; quoted in Eleanor Duckett, 1938: 231).
- Ruins on ruins .... Where is the senate? Where the people? All the pomp of secular dignities has been destroyed .... And we, the few that we are who remain, every day we are menaced by scourges and innumerable trials (Quoted in Davis, 1957: 80).
Between the sixth and tenth centuries the Church gave barbarian society institutions, laws, and a concept of belonging through written history. All of Italy, and vast areas of Spain, Sicily, Germany, France, Britain, Ireland, North Africa, as well as Greece and its empire came under the aegis of Rome. The millions of illiterate Vandals, Goths, Franks and Lombards that swept into the empire were to become part of a new Christian force. At this time of the Church's history, the political allegiance between Rome and Byzantium became more and more strained. Equally tensions were developing between the Eastern and Western Churches in matters relating to theological interpretation. Consequently, the Roman Church began to look more towards her new found allies. The rise of the Franks had been meteoric, while the Byzantine empire saw an internal erosion of its military power, and erosion of its ecclesiastical and political influence, and a coming confrontation with a new religious force - the faith of Islam. By the year 700, Christianity had already lost half of its territory to the Mohammedans: these Islamic victories had closed the world south and east of the Mediterranean to both Rome and Constantinople.
So we can see that by the end of the seventh century three distinct powers co- existed in Europe. Firstly the power of the West controlled by the ruler of the Christian people, the pontiff who was to be king-maker and king-breaker. Secondly, the power of Byzantium, a power based on a neat compound of Rome, Hellenism and Christianity. It perceived Rome's new allegiances with the rising Frankish territories as a betrayal - a transfer of alliance which weakened an already precarious position.
The Islamic conquests represented the third power. It was perceived by both Rome and Constantinople with alarm, yet in the end it was not enough for this mutual self-interest to heal the rifts emerging in the two Churches. With the Pope becoming more and more committed to the maintenance of the empire in the West, Eastern Christendom became increasingly isolated, ultimately falling before the onslaught of Islamic forces.
Within Rome and its sphere of influence the Church was finding a new force and strength; through the growth of western monasticism its influence was beginning to be felt at the fringes of the Christian Graeco-Roman empire. The inspiration behind the development of western monasticism was Benedict, born in 480, and a student in Rome prior to his calling to the hermit's way of life. Having become the leader of a group of hermits near Subiaco, he later founded the mother monastery of the Benedictine order in 529 on the hill of Monte Cassino about half way between Rome and Naples. There he formulated a cohesive and practical Rule which governed the way of life for his followers, who ultimately spread the Rule throughout western Europe. The Rule was not seen as being excessively ascetic as were some of the conditions governing monastic life in the East; rather it seemed to incorporate a spirit of service and ministry to the wider community and ultimately, after its acceptance by Pope Gregory, the Benedictine rule was to be viewed as the norm for monasticism in the West. Johnson (1976: 146 - 147) describes its particular virtues and appeal:
- The great merit of Benedict's system is common sense. It steered a skilful middle way between severity and decency. Monks were to have separate beds... They were to be properly and warmly clad, with two tunics and cowls each; and they were issued with a mattress, a woollen blanket, under-blanket and pillow, shoes, stockings, girdle, knife, pen and writing tablets, needle and handkerchiefs. Otherwise no property was to be held individually, "neither a book, nor tablets, nor a pen...nothing at all"; and beds were to be searched frequently for private possessions. Monks were to be adequately but simply fed: two cooked dishes a day, a pound of bread, a pint of wine, and fruit and vegetables in season, but no meat, at any rate of four-footed beasts. On the other hand monks who were ill were to have a special diet; they must be kept healthy. "Before all things, and above all things, care must be taken of the sick." "All guests are to be received as Christ himself," for which a special separate kitchen (also used by the abbot) was to be provided. The monks were to spend their time in manual labour and sacred reading, when not attending divine services. They were to "practise silence at all times, especially during the night." Grumbling was the "greatest sin", and "idleness is the enemy of the soul." Infractions of the rule were to be met by withdrawal of communion; the abbot and the older and wiser brothers were to try to reconcile the excommunicated; but "the punishment of the lash" was to be used if necessary, and "the surgeon's knife" (expulsion) in the last resort...
(The Rule) does not envisage the monastery as a great centre of learning, or indeed of anything else except piety and hard work. But one can see exactly why it appealed to the practical-minded Gregory. It is wholly lacking in eccentricity. It does not expect heroic virtue. It is full of provisions for exceptions, changes and relaxations in its rules; yet at the same time it insists that rules must be kept, once made... (The) rule exuded the universality which had always been the object of Catholic Christianity, of Rome, and above all of Gregory himself as a missionary pope who wanted to convert the world and society. The rule is classless and timeless; it is not grounded in any particular culture or geographical region, and it will fit into any society which allows it to operate.
The Pontiff realised the potential of monastic life in the evangelisation of Europe. Over subsequent centuries, the monks built centres of religious, cultural, social, agricultural, commercial and educational life for the people. In Europe under Benedict of Nursia we can see the establishment of monastic houses inhabited by men and women dedicated to hard work and the Gospel message. Abbeys were to offer practical ways of helping people live in a world threatened by violence and sudden change. Most importantly, monks also began the process of copying classic works and manuscripts and they became a channel by which the arts of the ancient world were preserved as a heritage for humanity. Much of the ancient world has survived only through the efforts of these monastic copyists. The Church became a centre for learning, with the monks becoming cultural carriers transmitting the written treasures of the past by preserving and copying ancient texts. Through the establishment and maintenance of monastic and cathedral schools Christianity was able to preserve and transmit an awareness of classical heritage in an age of barbarism and superstition.
The evangelising monks spread the theology of Rome and its law, and popularised the Church liturgy; some monks were to become Popes and made up much of the clergy of Rome and the Papal court responsible for the administration of the universal church. Gregory the Great, a Benedictine monk elected Pontiff in 590 AD, brought a monk's discipline, missionary instinct and sense of order to the rule of the Church. He was the first to use the title "Servant of the servants of God."
Christian monks were ascetics whose aim was to convert and educate. The missionary vision of Gregory also served to restore the Church in England. You may wish to investigate the proselytising work of the Irish monks, particularly the work of St. Columba, whose mission established monasteries in Iona and Northumbria. Celtic Christianity from the islands, which had been mingled with the French form of worship, later collided with the mission of Augustine of Canterbury and the Gregorian reform of the Benedictines. These missions did, however, bring back into Europe Celtic liturgy and monastic life. The Celtic and the Roman traditions soon intertwined and complemented one another. This highlights the early Church's ability to absorb cultures into herself, to make them work together, and resolve evident differences. Unfortunately, later in the history of the Church we will see this ability lost, and by the sixteenth century the inflexibility of the Church became so pronounced that it lost the opportunity effectively to evangelise people of the Far East and India.
The coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800 AD must be seen as a formal recognition that the Church's unity and the political unity of the State were indivisible. One could not imagine religious unity apart from the secular interests of government. Consequently we see that the Carolingian age marks the establishment of the Church as a focal point in the conduct of everyday political, religious and economic life. When Pope Stephen II made an alliance with the new Carolingian king Pepin in 752 AD, he inexorably tied the Church to the political and military power of a secular ruler, although one may suggest that the papal goal was to direct and guide that ruler to follow the views of the Church. In the preceding seven centuries the Church had relied on the patronage, support and blessings of its secular benefactors, and this included educational concerns. In 789 Charlemagne decreed that every monastery must have a school for the education of boys in "singing, arithmetic, and grammar." In a letter to the abbot of Fulda, Charlemagne expresses his apprehension over the illiteracy of the clergy:
- Since in these years there were often sent to us from divers monasteries letters in which ... owing to neglect of learning, the untutored tongue could not express [itself] without faultiness. Whence it came that we began to fear lest, as skill in writing was less, wisdom to understand the Sacred Scriptures might be far less than it ought rightly to be (Quoted in: Laistner, 1931: 196-197).
Peter De Rosa (1988) gives an interesting insight into the personalities and life- styles of Charlemagne and the reigning Pontiff, Leo III (795 - 816 AD):
- The Church's new defender...had divorced his first wife and had six children by the second. When he dispensed with the latter's services, he had two daughters by a third wife as well as another daughter by a concubine. Childless by his fourth wife, when she died he kept four concubines - twelve was his life-long tally - and had at least one child by each...
...The reigning Pope, Leo III, was desperate for Charlemagne to come to Rome. He needed protection from outsiders; he also wanted to have his name cleared at the highest level of a pressing charge of adultery. Not long before Charlemagne arrived, Leo was attacked by a hostile mob. They tore out his eyes and cut off his tongue...
(At the coronation 800 AD) Charlemagne was kneeling in front of Peter's tomb when Leo, groping to find the head on which to place the crown, blubbered that Charlemagne was Emperor and Augustus, and knelt to adore him. According to Einhard [Charlemagne's biographer], his master was black with wrath. Charlemagne later said in his hearing "that he would not have gone to church that day, even though it was a solemn festival [Christmas], had he guessed the pontiff's plan." He wanted the honour, of course, but not at the expense of being elevated by a vassal. Having taken the trouble to come to Rome to exculpate a miserable subject, he did not want to appear the recipient of his blessing.
Charlemagne sensed what historians would see only too clearly. By a master stroke, Leo III was laying claim to a power that, in his successors, would triumph over the greatest temporal sovereigns on earth (De Rosa, 1989: 61 - 62).
The power of the Church spread quickly. The Germanic and Frankish races were still illiterate, yet by the ninth century a firm alliance was established between Rome and her new protectors. With the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 AD, Christian control of western society became, in theory, complete. Within two centuries, the Church established itself as a form of theocracy increasingly legislating on every aspect of conduct in politics, economics, and especially the everyday lives of individuals.
The eleventh century is often called the century of Saxon Popes: Gregory VI (1045 - 1046), Clement II (1046 - 1047), Damasus II (1048), Leo IX (1049 - 1054), Victor II (1055 - 1057) and Steven X (1057 - 1058) all reflected, through their ascendancy to the Papacy, the strength and power of the Holy Roman Emperor. The struggle between the temporal power of the Kings and the spiritual pressure of the popes came to a head in the reigns of Pope Nicholas II (1059 - 1061) and Gregory VII (1073 - 1085) in their opposition to King Henry IV. Henry was ultimately driven by a revolt among the German nobles to make peace with the Pope and appeared before Gregory in January 1077 at Canossa. Dressed as a penitent, the emperor is said to have stood barefoot in the snow for three days and begged forgiveness until, in Gregory's words: "We loosed the chain of the anathema and at length received him into the favor of communion and into the lap of the Holy Mother Church" ( Robinson 1904: 283).
These tensions between emperors and pontiffs were to continue into the twelfth century and ultimately gave rise to the "distinctive separation of Church and State when the emperor signed the Concordat of Worms (1122) forfeiting any right to invest bishops with the ring and the staff symbolic of spiritual authority" (Ozment, 1980: 4). This demarcation of the secular from the ecclesiastical nevertheless did not hamper papal aspirations on the part of the emperors, nor the aspirations of the popes to exercise the power of emperors.
These power struggles had already led to a clericalization of the Western Church under Gregory VII (1073-1085). It must be noted that the authority of this pontiff and those that followed him demonstrated the secular and imperial nature of the pontifical office. With Gregory we find the creation of a Christian commonwealth under papal control. In the Dictatus Papae Gregory claimed:
Lameygh lists the powers and privileges attached to the Papal office:
In Rome, the pontiff exercised supreme authority and his pontificate must be understood in the context of the twelfth century Decretum of Gratian (c.1140) and the subsequent commentaries of the "Decretists", especially Rufinus of Bologna (c.1157). They believed that the interpretation of the Matthean verse, "I will give you the kingdom of heaven..." (Matt.16:19) suggested the existence of a "heavenly empire" and an "earthly empire" over which the Pope exercised supreme authority. At the same time, Alanus of England expounded an extreme theory of papal world monarchy (Barraclough, 1968; Dwyer, 1985; Ullman, 1972).
Innocent was a natural successor to these theorists. He had been a student of the Canonists Huguccio at Bologna and Peter of Corbeil at Paris, and was regarded by his contemporaries as a brilliant canon lawyer, though his book De Contemptu Mundi et De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, written shortly before his election, shows him to be a mediocre ansd safe orthodox theologian. He was elected to the pontificate at the age of 37. He was a
In the decretal Venerabilem Innocent expounds his beliefs that he has an obligation to intervene in certain temporal matters. While it is right for princes to elect their emperor, it is the duty of the pontiff to ensure that the chosen candidate was also spiritually worthy for coronation. In Novit (1204), written to justify his intervention in the dispute between King John of England and King Phillip Augustus of France over the fief of Normandy, Innocent claimed that he could certainly judge temporal matters (Ullman, 1972: 207). He furthermore intervened in the conflict between Philip of Swabia (brother of Henry IV) and Otto of Brunswick, where he dramatically proclaimed his basic papal principle relating to the government of Christian society. According to Innocent, the emperor was given "a plenitude of power" by the pope who enjoyed " a full plenitude of power" given to him by God. In this case, papal favour eventually fell upon Otto, whose concessions in Italy to the papacy suggest that Innocent was motivated by less noble aims than the need to examine imperial candidates.
These less noble aims undoubtedly included Innocent's desire to recover lost papal territories and to rid Italy of German officials and influence. The question of imperial candidacy was the most dramatic instance of Innocent's involvement in temporal matters, but it was far from an isolated case. He intervened in the Kingdom of France to persuade Philip II to restore his legitimate wife, yet at the same time, Innocent legitimised Philip's bastard children. He also intervened in succession disputes in the Kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Bohemia. It was Innocent who excommunicated King John of England for refusing to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, and released John's subjects from their oath of allegiance to their king. Finally, King John succumbed and became a papal vassal. In addition, Innocent III could count as vassals the Kings of Bulgaria, Aragon, Portugal and Castille. During Innocent's pontificate, "papal activity and influence was displayed throughout the length and breadth of Europe. The papal curia became the busiest governmental centre in the world as it then was" (Ullman, 1972: 215).
This power was not only exerted against princes and emperors. Innocent's handling of the Albigensian heresy reinforced the contemporary concept of Church as institution. Heretics were seen as deliberately defying the authority of the Roman Church and as committing a crime against divine majesty. War was declared on the Albigensians, and, aided by the Cistercians, Innocent fought a bloody crusade against them in 1209. Papal legates, however, were keener on gaining bishoprics than on routing the heresy. "Innocent's objectives were on the one hand to combat heresy and paganism, and on the other hand, to eradicate the abuses through which, if they were not remedied, heresy was bound to flourish; and the method used was centralisation and central control" (Barraclough, 1968: 135). In southern France the Catharist heresy was particularly strong. Francis of Assisi and his followers "wanted to bring people to abandon it, not by violence, but by instructing them and preaching the love of Christ. Unfortunately his solution was not adopted, and Church leaders of the time dealt with the Cathari with appalling brutality" (Dwyer, 1985: 164).
The Church had, by the time of Innocent III, taken on the organisational role of the Crusades with all its political and economic ramifications. Crusades were to be launched against heretics at the discretion and direction of the presiding Pontiff and were used as a means of imposing the rule and will of the Church on the unbeliever. Augustinian teaching that justified the use of torture and death as legal instruments to be used by the Church to convert the heretic became widely accepted. This acted as a prelude to the legitimisation of the Inquisition, which was to receive papal approval under Gregory IX in 1233. Heresy was to be punished for the spiritual "good" of the individual as well as for the preservation and enhancement of the status of the Church and State - an attitude and mentality equally accepted by future Western reformers such as Calvin and Luther. Such was to be the patrimony and inheritance of the Crusades.
An even darker shadow was cast over Innocent's pontificate by his involvement in the Fourth Crusade, which led to schism between Eastern and Western Christendom in the eleventh century, an event which is one of the greatest calamities in the history of the Church.The main aim of the Crusades was to try to free the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks who had conquered Jerusalem in 1071. This was not accomplished, but rather in its consequences it seriously undermined the powers of resistance of the Christian East to the advance of Islam. It also encouraged the excessive growth of papal power in the West, and this over-centralisation of Church government resulted in many abuses and provoked widespread discontent. Thus the Reformation itself, which split the West into two hostile camps, was one of its results flowing from the split between East and West. This means that both East and West have paid dearly for their loss on unity, and although they have suffered in different ways, the ultimate results have been the same: their spiritual life has become impoverished and the growth of their culture one-sided, whilst extremist tendencies have been granted a freedom which has encouraged further splits and dissensions.
The present divided state of the Christian Church, which so obviously hinders her work, is therefore the direct result of the old schism between the East and West. The re-integration of Christendom is impossible unless the members of the two streams of Christian tradition can overcome their animosity and join together in the work of evangelising the world. It has been the custom for both Eastern and Western Christians to place the blame for the loss of unity entirely on the other side. Roman Catholics have accused the East of an obstinate refusal to accept the leadership of the Pope, and of undue submissiveness towards the secular power. The Orthodox, in return, have hurled against Western Christians charges of arrogance and pride, and have insisted that both Latins and Protestants have wilfully departed from the sound tradition of the early Church and perverted their religion by arbitrary and harmful innovations.
Many controversial books have been written on this subject; but if the simple question is asked, "What was the cause of the Schism between Rome and Constantinople, and when exactly did it occur?", too often no clear answer is forthcoming. The absence of an agreed statement on such a vital issue, one which has so profoundly and so disastrously affected the life of all Christians, is puzzling indeed. Yet an explanation of it is to be found in the study of the political and ecclesiastical events which led to the break of communion between East and West.
Though conflict, disagreement and tensions in politics and theological interpretation existed from the fifth century onwards, this gradual process of open hostility and bitter hate reached its climax between the ninth and thirteenth century. It is often thought that the lasting split in the Church must have been caused by some major doctrinal disagreement. The history of the schism does not confirm this opinion. The growing alienation between the Christian East and West was provoked by political competition, petty quarrels and personal rivalries. It was a slow movement; for the Church organism vigorously resited these attacks of destructive forces. The final blow to the unity of the Church was inflicted by no heresy, but by the drunken and undisciplined mob of Crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204 and massacred its Christian population.
In order to understand how Christians were brought to this state of warfare, we have to reconstruct the main facts of the relations between the Church and the Roman State. The Christian Church first appeared in history as a fellowship of self-governing communities, scattered all over the empire, and spreading even beyond its borders. There was nothing compulsory about their unity: it arose organically from a deep realisation, shared by its members, that they all belonged to the same body, since they had all been born into the same new life. But from the fourth century, when these Christian communities received the protection of the Emperor, their constitution underwent a radical change; they lost their independence and became subject to the control of the State. Formerly, if any dispute arose within the Church, it had been settled by negotiation; but once the patronage of the Empire was granted, the Emperors began to use their political power to maintain unity among Christians, often inflicting severe penalties on those they deemed to be in the wrong.
The Emperors' intentions were praiseworthy: they wished to preserve peace and concord; but their methods were those of the old unredeemed world, and the results were fatal. The more they tried to suppress by force the disagreements among Christians the more bitter the conflicts became, until at last the Church was split up into several hostile bodies. Most of the schisms were caused by national and temperamental divergences among members of the Christian Church, but once the spirit of mutual charity had been lost, differences in doctrine made their appearance, for the divided Christian Churches fell into one-sided interpretations of the faith.
The first split appeared in the fourth century in North Africa, where the Roman and native Christians separated into two competing sects (the Donatist Schism). In the fifth century the Greeks and Copts quarrelled in Egypt, and simultaneously a split occurred after the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) in Asia Minor and Syria between the Greeks and Syrians (the Monophysite Schism). Later on the Christians in Persia broke off relations with the Byzantine Church (the Nestorian Schism). These quarrels, disastrous as they were, did not however affect the main body of Christians, who tenaciously clung to their unity, firmly believing that there could be only one Church and one Empire. Meanwhile, during the course of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries the Catholic Church developed two distinct types of Christianity. The first was shared by all Latin-speaking Christians, who formed the Western Patriarchate of Rome. The second comprised the Syriac, Armenian and Greek-speaking world, which was divided into four Eastern Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
The Byzantine and Latin traditions differed considerably, not only in liturgical practices and customs, but also in their outlook. The Christian East was mainly interested in doctrine; the Latin West in morals. The East possessed a particular gift for worship; the West for discipline and order. The East emphasised the divergence of gifts, the West the need for uniformity and obedience. It was not always easy for the two sides to understand each other; they often viewed a new problem from totally different standpoints, and sometimes these disagreements ended in an open breach between the occupants of the two principal sees of Rome and Constantinople. But the schisms invariably ended in a reconciliation, for both sides acknowledged that the Church of Christ must include both Eastern and Western Christians, and that their gifts were complementary.
A serious split between Rome and Constantinople took place in the ninth century. Its immediate cause was the irregular appointment of a new Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius (in 898) but its real origin lay in the great political conflict which occurred at the beginning of the century, when in the year 800, Charlemagne restored the Western Roman Empire. In the eyes of the Greeks, the Pope had committed a serious breach of faith when he consented to crown a barbarian like Charlemagne as Emperor of the West. It is true that the Byzantine ruler was obliged to recognise the intruder as his brother-sovereign, since he had no power to oppose him, but the Greeks strongly resented this concession. Thus two rival political powers had been set up, both claiming to be the only lawful successor the Roman Empire, and it was merely a matter of time before one or other had to be destroyed. The bitter conflict between these two competitors, which ended with the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century, involved the Church also, and was thus the root cause of the schism between the Christian East and West.
The leading roles in the ever-growing struggle fell to the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople. Under the strong political influence of the rival Emperors, the occupants of the most important sees of Christendom started a feud, seizing on every pretext in a campaign of mutual calumny and recrimination. The Patriarch Photius first produced a catalogue of Western heresies which included:
These tensions between emperors and pontiffs were to continue into the twelfth century and ultimately gave rise to the "distinctive separation of Church and State when the emperor signed the Concordat of Worms (1122) forfeiting any right to invest bishops with the ring and the staff symbolic of spiritual authority" (Ozment, 1980: 4). This demarcation of the secular from the ecclesiastical nevertheless did not hamper papal aspirations on the part of the emperors, nor the aspirations of the popes to exercise the power of emperors.
These power struggles had already led to a clericalization of the Western Church under Gregory VII (1073-1085). It must be noted that the authority of this pontiff and those that followed him demonstrated the secular and imperial nature of the pontifical office. With Gregory we find the creation of a Christian commonwealth under papal control. In the Dictatus Papae Gregory claimed:
- That the Roman pontiff alone is rightly called universal.
- That he alone has the power to depose and reinstate bishops.
- That he alone may use the imperial insignia.
- That all princes shall kiss the foot of the pope alone.
- That he has the power to depose emperors.
- That he can be judged by no one.
- That no one can be regarded as catholic who does not agree with the Roman church.
- That he has the power to absolve subjects from their oath of fealty to wicked rulers (Pope Gregory VII, quoted in: Baldwin, 1970: 182-183).
Lameygh lists the powers and privileges attached to the Papal office:
- The Pope can be judged by no one.
- The Roman Church has never erred and will never err till the end of time.
- The Roman Church was founded by Christ alone.
- The Pope alone can depose and restore bishops.
- He alone can make new laws, set up new bishoprics, and divide old ones.
- He alone can translate bishops to another see.
- He alone can call general councils and authorise canon law.
- He alone can revise his own judgements.
- He alone can use the imperial insignia.
- He can depose emperors.
- He can absolve subjects from their allegiance.
- All princes should kiss his feet.
- His legates, even though in inferior orders, have precedence over all bishops.
- An appeal to the papal courts inhibits judgement by all inferior courts.
- A duly ordained Pope is undoubtedly made a saint by the merits of St. Peter (1986: 241).
In Rome, the pontiff exercised supreme authority and his pontificate must be understood in the context of the twelfth century Decretum of Gratian (c.1140) and the subsequent commentaries of the "Decretists", especially Rufinus of Bologna (c.1157). They believed that the interpretation of the Matthean verse, "I will give you the kingdom of heaven..." (Matt.16:19) suggested the existence of a "heavenly empire" and an "earthly empire" over which the Pope exercised supreme authority. At the same time, Alanus of England expounded an extreme theory of papal world monarchy (Barraclough, 1968; Dwyer, 1985; Ullman, 1972).
Innocent was a natural successor to these theorists. He had been a student of the Canonists Huguccio at Bologna and Peter of Corbeil at Paris, and was regarded by his contemporaries as a brilliant canon lawyer, though his book De Contemptu Mundi et De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, written shortly before his election, shows him to be a mediocre ansd safe orthodox theologian. He was elected to the pontificate at the age of 37. He was a
man elected to the papacy who was destined to bring the office to the summit of its political power and, perhaps in virtue of that fact, to prepare for its decline as a spiritual and moral force. In doing this, he paved the way for rise of the Renaissance papacy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries... he intended to be both spiritual leader of Christendom, and its political master as well; and it was from his hand that the Emperor and the kings of the various Christian states were to accept office as his vassals (Dwyer, 1985: 173).- The Lord Jesus Christ has set up one ruler over all things as His universal vicar, and as all things in heaven, earth and hell bow the knee to Christ, so should all obey Christ's vicar, that there be one flock and one shepherd (Quoted in Margaret Deanesly, 1972: 141).
In the decretal Venerabilem Innocent expounds his beliefs that he has an obligation to intervene in certain temporal matters. While it is right for princes to elect their emperor, it is the duty of the pontiff to ensure that the chosen candidate was also spiritually worthy for coronation. In Novit (1204), written to justify his intervention in the dispute between King John of England and King Phillip Augustus of France over the fief of Normandy, Innocent claimed that he could certainly judge temporal matters (Ullman, 1972: 207). He furthermore intervened in the conflict between Philip of Swabia (brother of Henry IV) and Otto of Brunswick, where he dramatically proclaimed his basic papal principle relating to the government of Christian society. According to Innocent, the emperor was given "a plenitude of power" by the pope who enjoyed " a full plenitude of power" given to him by God. In this case, papal favour eventually fell upon Otto, whose concessions in Italy to the papacy suggest that Innocent was motivated by less noble aims than the need to examine imperial candidates.
These less noble aims undoubtedly included Innocent's desire to recover lost papal territories and to rid Italy of German officials and influence. The question of imperial candidacy was the most dramatic instance of Innocent's involvement in temporal matters, but it was far from an isolated case. He intervened in the Kingdom of France to persuade Philip II to restore his legitimate wife, yet at the same time, Innocent legitimised Philip's bastard children. He also intervened in succession disputes in the Kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Bohemia. It was Innocent who excommunicated King John of England for refusing to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, and released John's subjects from their oath of allegiance to their king. Finally, King John succumbed and became a papal vassal. In addition, Innocent III could count as vassals the Kings of Bulgaria, Aragon, Portugal and Castille. During Innocent's pontificate, "papal activity and influence was displayed throughout the length and breadth of Europe. The papal curia became the busiest governmental centre in the world as it then was" (Ullman, 1972: 215).
This power was not only exerted against princes and emperors. Innocent's handling of the Albigensian heresy reinforced the contemporary concept of Church as institution. Heretics were seen as deliberately defying the authority of the Roman Church and as committing a crime against divine majesty. War was declared on the Albigensians, and, aided by the Cistercians, Innocent fought a bloody crusade against them in 1209. Papal legates, however, were keener on gaining bishoprics than on routing the heresy. "Innocent's objectives were on the one hand to combat heresy and paganism, and on the other hand, to eradicate the abuses through which, if they were not remedied, heresy was bound to flourish; and the method used was centralisation and central control" (Barraclough, 1968: 135). In southern France the Catharist heresy was particularly strong. Francis of Assisi and his followers "wanted to bring people to abandon it, not by violence, but by instructing them and preaching the love of Christ. Unfortunately his solution was not adopted, and Church leaders of the time dealt with the Cathari with appalling brutality" (Dwyer, 1985: 164).
The Church had, by the time of Innocent III, taken on the organisational role of the Crusades with all its political and economic ramifications. Crusades were to be launched against heretics at the discretion and direction of the presiding Pontiff and were used as a means of imposing the rule and will of the Church on the unbeliever. Augustinian teaching that justified the use of torture and death as legal instruments to be used by the Church to convert the heretic became widely accepted. This acted as a prelude to the legitimisation of the Inquisition, which was to receive papal approval under Gregory IX in 1233. Heresy was to be punished for the spiritual "good" of the individual as well as for the preservation and enhancement of the status of the Church and State - an attitude and mentality equally accepted by future Western reformers such as Calvin and Luther. Such was to be the patrimony and inheritance of the Crusades.
An even darker shadow was cast over Innocent's pontificate by his involvement in the Fourth Crusade, which led to schism between Eastern and Western Christendom in the eleventh century, an event which is one of the greatest calamities in the history of the Church.The main aim of the Crusades was to try to free the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks who had conquered Jerusalem in 1071. This was not accomplished, but rather in its consequences it seriously undermined the powers of resistance of the Christian East to the advance of Islam. It also encouraged the excessive growth of papal power in the West, and this over-centralisation of Church government resulted in many abuses and provoked widespread discontent. Thus the Reformation itself, which split the West into two hostile camps, was one of its results flowing from the split between East and West. This means that both East and West have paid dearly for their loss on unity, and although they have suffered in different ways, the ultimate results have been the same: their spiritual life has become impoverished and the growth of their culture one-sided, whilst extremist tendencies have been granted a freedom which has encouraged further splits and dissensions.
The present divided state of the Christian Church, which so obviously hinders her work, is therefore the direct result of the old schism between the East and West. The re-integration of Christendom is impossible unless the members of the two streams of Christian tradition can overcome their animosity and join together in the work of evangelising the world. It has been the custom for both Eastern and Western Christians to place the blame for the loss of unity entirely on the other side. Roman Catholics have accused the East of an obstinate refusal to accept the leadership of the Pope, and of undue submissiveness towards the secular power. The Orthodox, in return, have hurled against Western Christians charges of arrogance and pride, and have insisted that both Latins and Protestants have wilfully departed from the sound tradition of the early Church and perverted their religion by arbitrary and harmful innovations.
Many controversial books have been written on this subject; but if the simple question is asked, "What was the cause of the Schism between Rome and Constantinople, and when exactly did it occur?", too often no clear answer is forthcoming. The absence of an agreed statement on such a vital issue, one which has so profoundly and so disastrously affected the life of all Christians, is puzzling indeed. Yet an explanation of it is to be found in the study of the political and ecclesiastical events which led to the break of communion between East and West.
Though conflict, disagreement and tensions in politics and theological interpretation existed from the fifth century onwards, this gradual process of open hostility and bitter hate reached its climax between the ninth and thirteenth century. It is often thought that the lasting split in the Church must have been caused by some major doctrinal disagreement. The history of the schism does not confirm this opinion. The growing alienation between the Christian East and West was provoked by political competition, petty quarrels and personal rivalries. It was a slow movement; for the Church organism vigorously resited these attacks of destructive forces. The final blow to the unity of the Church was inflicted by no heresy, but by the drunken and undisciplined mob of Crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204 and massacred its Christian population.
In order to understand how Christians were brought to this state of warfare, we have to reconstruct the main facts of the relations between the Church and the Roman State. The Christian Church first appeared in history as a fellowship of self-governing communities, scattered all over the empire, and spreading even beyond its borders. There was nothing compulsory about their unity: it arose organically from a deep realisation, shared by its members, that they all belonged to the same body, since they had all been born into the same new life. But from the fourth century, when these Christian communities received the protection of the Emperor, their constitution underwent a radical change; they lost their independence and became subject to the control of the State. Formerly, if any dispute arose within the Church, it had been settled by negotiation; but once the patronage of the Empire was granted, the Emperors began to use their political power to maintain unity among Christians, often inflicting severe penalties on those they deemed to be in the wrong.
The Emperors' intentions were praiseworthy: they wished to preserve peace and concord; but their methods were those of the old unredeemed world, and the results were fatal. The more they tried to suppress by force the disagreements among Christians the more bitter the conflicts became, until at last the Church was split up into several hostile bodies. Most of the schisms were caused by national and temperamental divergences among members of the Christian Church, but once the spirit of mutual charity had been lost, differences in doctrine made their appearance, for the divided Christian Churches fell into one-sided interpretations of the faith.
The first split appeared in the fourth century in North Africa, where the Roman and native Christians separated into two competing sects (the Donatist Schism). In the fifth century the Greeks and Copts quarrelled in Egypt, and simultaneously a split occurred after the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) in Asia Minor and Syria between the Greeks and Syrians (the Monophysite Schism). Later on the Christians in Persia broke off relations with the Byzantine Church (the Nestorian Schism). These quarrels, disastrous as they were, did not however affect the main body of Christians, who tenaciously clung to their unity, firmly believing that there could be only one Church and one Empire. Meanwhile, during the course of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries the Catholic Church developed two distinct types of Christianity. The first was shared by all Latin-speaking Christians, who formed the Western Patriarchate of Rome. The second comprised the Syriac, Armenian and Greek-speaking world, which was divided into four Eastern Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
The Byzantine and Latin traditions differed considerably, not only in liturgical practices and customs, but also in their outlook. The Christian East was mainly interested in doctrine; the Latin West in morals. The East possessed a particular gift for worship; the West for discipline and order. The East emphasised the divergence of gifts, the West the need for uniformity and obedience. It was not always easy for the two sides to understand each other; they often viewed a new problem from totally different standpoints, and sometimes these disagreements ended in an open breach between the occupants of the two principal sees of Rome and Constantinople. But the schisms invariably ended in a reconciliation, for both sides acknowledged that the Church of Christ must include both Eastern and Western Christians, and that their gifts were complementary.
A serious split between Rome and Constantinople took place in the ninth century. Its immediate cause was the irregular appointment of a new Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius (in 898) but its real origin lay in the great political conflict which occurred at the beginning of the century, when in the year 800, Charlemagne restored the Western Roman Empire. In the eyes of the Greeks, the Pope had committed a serious breach of faith when he consented to crown a barbarian like Charlemagne as Emperor of the West. It is true that the Byzantine ruler was obliged to recognise the intruder as his brother-sovereign, since he had no power to oppose him, but the Greeks strongly resented this concession. Thus two rival political powers had been set up, both claiming to be the only lawful successor the Roman Empire, and it was merely a matter of time before one or other had to be destroyed. The bitter conflict between these two competitors, which ended with the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century, involved the Church also, and was thus the root cause of the schism between the Christian East and West.
The leading roles in the ever-growing struggle fell to the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople. Under the strong political influence of the rival Emperors, the occupants of the most important sees of Christendom started a feud, seizing on every pretext in a campaign of mutual calumny and recrimination. The Patriarch Photius first produced a catalogue of Western heresies which included:
- fasting on Saturdays in Lent;
- beginning Lent on Ash-Wednesday instead of on a Monday;
- disapproval of married priests;
- objection to confirmation administered by a priest;
- the unlawful addition to the Greek of the words"and the Son", when describing the "procession of the Holy Ghost.
- the question of the Filioque clause (see above);
- the belief in a Purgatory distinct from Hell;
- the use of leavened or unleavened bread at the Eucharist.
The heroic and romantic elements in this attempt to deliver the Holy Places from the Moslems still make it difficult for the Western mind to realise the disastrous character of the movement. Yet the harm it did was so great that some of the most bitter conflicts of our own time can be traced back to the mistakes of this well-intentional but ill-advised enterprise. The chief evil of the Crusades was the belief that military aggression can serve the spread of Christianity and that the sword can sometimes be more efficient than the word in the presentation of the Gospel. They lent support, too, to the idea that the robbery, torture, or murder of a someone whose religious beliefs were erroneous was not only permitted but even approved by Christian teaching. The Orthodox East, when it heard about the Crusades, felt apprehensive from the very start. The Byzantine Empire held that her army was entrusted with the sacred duty of defending her frontiers, and that Christian soldiers who laid down their lives in the battle against the infidels and barbarians had made a righteous sacrifice for a cause approved by God. But this was very different from the idea that Christian monks and soldiers, whose homes and families were not threatened, were justified in taking up arms and starting to kill others in far-away lands, in the name of the Christian religion and for the sake of controlling the land where the Saviour had lived and died and risen again.
These doubts and forebodings developed into open hostility when Eastern Christians came under the rule of the Crusaders. War is always a brutal and destructive affair, and the Crusaders did not differ much from other soldiers. When a city was captured its population naturally suffered, and it would have been too much to expect that a careful discrimination would be made between the local Christians and Moslems. Everybody was helpless before the invaders, and one's life and property were at their mercy. Once the rule of the Crusaders was firmly established it proved of no advantage to the Eastern Christians, even when compared with their bitter experience under the Moslem yoke. In many cases it was even a change for the worse, for their former conquerors had been more tolerant than Christians of the West, and had allowed the Orthodox to continue their Church life unmolested. But the Crusaders tried to convert the Orthodox to Latin Christianity, confiscating their Church buildings, imprisoning their clergy and treating them as though they professed a wholly alien religion.
For the West, the events of the Crusades began in an aura of optimism but ended with disaster and disunity for the Church. After the death of Charlemagne, the military authority of the Franks which had supported the Papacy began to decline. The Norman incursions into Italy posed a real threat to the Church and the Papacy in 1059 acknowledged its inability to face any threat from a Norman invasion. How then could the Church reassert its lessening authority over its feudal monarchs and show that it had the necessary strength to cope with internal dissent? At this time a request arrived from the Eastern emperor Alexius Commenius and Pope Urban II for assistance against encroachments by Moslem forces into the Holy Lands. Urban II, at this time in exile, called together on the faithful to mount a crusade, appealing to the spirit of faith, to regain the Holy Lands from the sacrilegious hands of Islam while drawing attention to the political benefits of such a venture. Hollister states that "the Crusades to the Holy Lands were the most spectacular and self-conscious act of Western Christian expansionism which represented a fusion of three characteristics of medieval man: piety, pugnacity, and greed" (Hollister, 162).
The Church promised instant sanctity to all participants, a promise of full pardon for one's sins, and a guarantee of eternal life. Urban and his successors, by granting indulgences, had sanctified this war as a holy war, and by 1096 the habit of "divinising" these conflicts became so well established that the Pauline metaphor of "fighting for Christ" was well interpreted as military knight service (Heer, 127). Military sacerdotal orders supposedly were based on high ideals of charity, chivalry, and medical care for those wounded in conflict, but too often these qualities were over-ridden by grand and petty political intrigues. By the time of the Fourth Crusade the papal powers had lost control over these monastic knights, leading to the excommunication of the Templars by Innocent III.
The growing animosity between the Greeks and Crusaders flamed up into open conflict at the end of the twelfth century. In 1185, the Knights captured and sacked Salonika, the second largest city of the Byzantine Empire; they conducted themselves with such complete disregard for the sanctity of Christian Churches that horror and indignation overwhelmed the whole of the Christian East. Contemporary Greek historians describe how the drunken soldiers danced on the alters of Orthodox Churches, how the sacred vessels and reserved sacrament, together with the icons, were made the object of the most revolting abuses, and how the corpses of men, women, and children were profaned by the conquerors. The Greeks were staggered by the scenes of deliberate cruelty and sacrilege, for the Moslems, their inveterate enemies, had always showed a genuine respect for places of worship.
The sack of Constantinople on April 13, 1204, dealt the final blow to relations between these two branches of the Christian Communion. It was an occasion of plunder and destruction seldom equalled for horror even in modern history. The great city, which had remained unconquered ever since its foundation in the fourth century, contained unique treasures of Christian art and learning. This was also the place where all the great relics of Christian piety had been stored by the Emperor. The riches of its Churches and especially of its Cathedral of St. Sophia, were unsurpassed in the whole world. Soldiers and Latin clergy vied with each other in their attempts to seize some part of these riches for themselves; even the precious Holy Altar of St. Sophia was polluted, broken in pieces and sold. Most of it was, however, simply lost or destroyed and only meagre remnants reached Europe.
Greek writers could not find words adequate to express their disgust and exasperation at the sight of such plundering, and their descriptions found confirmation in the epistle of Pope Innocent III, addressed to his Cardinal in Constantinople. The Pope's denunciation of the sacrileges committed by the Crusaders bear out the statements of Greek writings. This day, April 13, 1204 marks the end of the fellowship between Eastern and Western Christians. The split was brought about, not by quarrelsome theologians or ambitious prelates, as is usually suggested, but by the greed and lust of those men who, in the name of the Prince of Peace, had embarked upon a war of aggression and conquest.
The horrors of the sack of the great Byzantine cities brought about a radical change of attitude among the ordinary members of the Church. Up to this time the feeling of competition between the Christian East and the West had been confined to a few prelates and to the narrow circle of the Court. The mass of Christians has the oneness of the Church and therefore all ecclesiastical disputes had sooner or later been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. But after the aggression of the Crusaders a deep sense of indignation spread all over the Christian East. The bulk of Church members refused to recognise the Westerners any longer as their brothers and sisters in Christ. During the course of the next two centuries the secular and ecclesiastical rulers of the Byzantine Empire, under the rapidly growing threat of the Moslem domination, tried hard to come to some understanding the Christian West. At Lyons in 1274 and at Florence in 1439 reconciliation between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople was achieved; but it came to nothing, for the Eastern Christians stubbornly refused to enter into communion with the offenders. After the outrages of Knights it was the Eastern laity which became the stronghold of opposition to reunion, and all efforts on the part of prelates to bridge the gulf proved a complete failure.
Whatever had been the mistakes of the past, undoubtedly in the last and fatal stage of the disruption of Christian unity the East was the victim and the West the aggressor. The conduct of the latter during the succeeding centuries was the logical result of their particular role in the quarrel. Somewhere in the depths of its conscience the Christian West has retained a memory of the crime it once committed. Ever since that time it has been troubled by the very existence of the Christian East; it has frequently been tempted to resume negotiations with the Orthodox Christians; it has tried hard to force them to accept its leadership and to exchange their traditions for Latin or Protestant forms of Christianity. It has employed cajolery, promises and threats; it has calumniated the Orthodox faith and practice and attacked the Eastern Church whenever possible; it has never been able to leave the East alone, and both the Roman and Protestant Churches have displayed a striking similarity in their conduct.
The line taken by the Eastern Christians was the very opposite: they refused to pardon the offenders; they were unable to swallow the insult and take part in a reconciliation. Resentful and embittered, they displayed a complete indifference to the fate of Western Christians, and had but one wish: to be left alone. They ceased to recognise any moral link between themselves and the Christian West, and considered the Latins as idolaters who worshipped the Pope, and Protestants as still worse, since they had elevated the Book to the position which should be occupied by God alone.
A study of the relations between East and West during the last 800 years is a sordid and melancholy business. Both parties wilfully persisted in their errors; one side was arrogant, the other unforgiving: the West tried hard to induce the East to submit; the latter remained firm in its refusal to open its heart and mind to those who had formerly been allies and who had violated the bond of peace and love. There is little hope of any improvement in the relations between Eastern and Western Christians until the true cause of the schism is fully recognised. It is a fact of paramount importance that the split was occasioned not by any doctrinal disagreement, but by political and cultural differences which flared up into open warfare at the time of Crusades.
Innocent III considered a crusade to regain the Holy Land to be an urgent task of his pontificate. What he did not count on was the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, who never did reach Jerusalem. The triumphalism with which Innocent greeted the establishment of primacial authority in Constantinople demonstrated his global view of the Church as an institutional force.
If the Fourth Crusade represented the low point of Innocent's pontificate, then the Fourth Lateran Council called by him in 1215 was the high point of his pontificate (Brooke, 1971; Granfield, 1981; Powell, 1965). It was the first genuinely universal Council in the Medieval West; not only Bishops but Abbots and Provosts as well as the secular powers were invited. Representation was accorded to all the various Orders within the Church and all "Doctors" received the power to vote. In one sense, the thirteenth century Church thus believed that the supreme magisterium of the Church belonged to the Church as a whole and not exclusively to the Bishops. The Council dealt mainly with the preservation of faith, particularly against heretics. Decrees were enacted on preaching, education of the clergy, elections, marriage and tithes. "The assembly was an impressive testimony of the standing and function of the papacy as the monarchic instrument of governing Christendom" (Ullman, 1972: 232).
Theology within the Church of the 12th and thirteenth centuries was still very much influenced by the writings of Augustine:
Yet, these four centuries also saw the extra-ordinary contribution of great saints and great intellectuals such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, Thomas of Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Catherine of Sienna to the philosophy, theology and spirituality of the Western Church. These, and other scholars of the time influenced Church teaching in a way not experienced since St. Augustine. Table six, at the end of this module, presents a time-line which indicates the richness of these centuries for the development of Christian learning and spirituality.
Thomas Aquinas believed that "the Church essentially consists in a divinising communion with God, whether incompletely in this life or completely in the life of glory" (Dulles, 1978: 47). For Aquinas, the unifying force that bonded the earthly and heavenly together was the Holy Spirit, for through grace and the commitment to Christ human nature could be sublimated and an interior union with God made possible. In this way grace perfected nature (Knowles and Obolensky, 1969: 363). Thomas applied Aristotelian principles of philosophy in his theological arguments. In this way he endeavoured to build a bridge between faith and knowledge. Yet within his own lifetime the intellectual insights of Aquinas were not appreciated:
It is interesting to note that under the Dominicans and the Franciscan Friars (both groups won the patronage of Innocent III) an alternative model of Church began to emerge. During his pontificate, Innocent was increasingly confronted by a slightly better educated population, who were becoming increasingly critical of a legally fixed and judicially enacted brand of Christianity. It is interesting to note, when considering his acceptance of the Franciscans and Dominicans, that he seemed to be sympathetic to such non-conformists and their emphasis on pastoral work and apostolic poverty. His attitude seems quite enlightened as long as their was no sin against "divine majesty" and no compromise with the orthodoxy of faith. The twelth and thirteenth century saw the building of many cathedrals to contain relics and major works of religious art. The wealthy were major contributors, many buying favours and indulgences through their patronage:
In a very real sense, Innocent's reign saw the zenith of the papal monarchy with its centre in the curia. The Church as a community of the faithful had been replaced by a narrower hierarchical church, comprising clerical orders in ascending ranks jealously guarding their rights and privileges. Even the reforming Fourth Lateran Council had its program imposed upon it by Innocent, and in reality it was to the papacy that the people looked to reform the Church. Innocent's pontificate presents for church historians a dramatic dichotomy - the institutionalised church beginning to give birth to the servant Church. Bausch quotes Professor Knowles in a final assessment of this pontificate:
The 12th and 13th centuries were a time of change not only in the ecclesiastical but also secular spheres. It was an age which witnessed the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, the ascendancy of the Hapsburgs to power, and the institution of the Papal Inquisition. The society of the period was hierarchical in structure, being made of established estates or orders, each having its duties, rights and obligations, its privileges, honours, prerogatives and functions. Canon law became a power that produced not only a highly organised, political and central papacy, but also a power that so influenced societal law, that it gave rise to a new secular order and a culture that was almost totally ecclesiastical (Congar, 1969: 29).
The thirteenth century witnessed the foundations of universities in Paris, Padua, Naples, Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg and Cologne, as well as a re-discovery of the writings of Aristotle who greatly influenced the thinking of medieval scholars - Thomas Aquinas in particular. "These universities quickly rose to importance and became famous throughout Europe. They were given special privileges by the Popes, including freedom from interference by the local bishop" (Dwyer, 1985: 178). These universities were to play a vital role in the intellectual life in the centuries to follow. Previously, judgements of orthodoxy had been pronounced by regional bishops' councils, and were sometimes followed by appeals to Rome. However in the thirteenth century universities began to take on a magisterial role. For example, the doctrinal decrees of both the Council of Lyons in 1245 and 1274 were submitted to the universities for approval before being published.
This century witnessed the uprooting of the papacy from Rome and its re- establishment in Avignon for a period for almost seventy years. The fourteenth century ended in witnessing a papacy in turmoil and disarray, forced into a schism which saw three rival popes enthroned simultaneously in confusion and conflict.
At the death of Nicholas IV in 1292 there was a deadlock in the sacred college of Cardinals which was to last for twenty-seven months before his successor could be elected. The two ruling factions in Italian politics were represented by the powerful Orsini and Colonna families who vied for control of the Papacy. At this time there were only nine cardinals left in that college, three giving their allegiance to the Orsinis, three to the Colonna family, and three were seemingly independent. Pope Nicholas had been an Orsini and they would not accept the loss of papal control. The Colonnas were determined to take it away from them, and they put pressure on the three remaining independent cardinals who were unwilling to offend either family, both of whom had a history of murder and assassination throughout the streets of Rome.
The cardinals squabbled over who should be elected Pope until the plague came to Rome in early in 1294, forcing them to withdraw to the mountains of Perugia in central Italy, still deadlocked. One of the non-partisan cardinals was Cardinal Gaetani who was considered to be a great canon lawyer. He was a cold, calculating, corpulent man with the determination of an assassin. To break the deadlock in his own insidious way, Gaetani told the senior cardinal present, Latino Malabranca, the Cardinal of Ostia that he had received a prophetic letter from a holy eccentric hermit, Peter of Morone, which predicted the punishment of God upon all of them if a Pope were not soon elected.
Malabranca, who was intensely superstitious, took the forgery which Gaetani had given to him with devout seriousness. On the 5th July 1294, after prayful contemplation, he called the handful of cardinals together and read them the letter which he believed had come from the holy hermit. He became so carried away by his own eloquence and his own convictions that he proposed that the hermit Peter of Morone be elected the next Pope. The deadlock was broken by the logic of demonstrating to Colonna and Orsini alike that neither of them needed to prevent the other from winning.
Neither the Colonnas nor the Orsinis bothered to journey to Abruzzi to meet the new Pope, to kiss his feet as every tradition of the sacred college required. However Cardinal Gaetani did pay his homage, taking with him the King of Naples and an enormous following of ordinary people:
As a cardinal Gaetani had acquired rich cities and adjoining territories - and as Pontiff Boniface continued to amass wealth and power which was to bring him into direct confrontation with the Colonnas, who ruled their territory from the hilltop city of Palestrina, twenty-two miles east of Rome. The Colonnas tried to instigate a revolt against the Pontiff by claiming that Boniface's election was invalid as he had usurped power that rightly belonged to Celestine. At the same time, Stephen Colonna attacked and plundered the Pope's gold which was being sent to Caserta to buy yet another city for the Gaetani dynasty. Boniface, blind with fury, threw two of the Colonna cardinals into prison.
The Colonna offered to return the gold but Boniface wanted not only revenge on Stephen Colonna but also the Colonnas' destruction by installing garrisons inside the Colonna cities. This option was totally unacceptable to the Colonna and the next day, Colonna messengers posted manifestos attacking the legitimacy of Boniface's election all over Rome, leaving one tacked to the high altar of St. Peter's. In response, Boniface issued a papal bull, In Excelso Throno, which charged the two imprisoned Colonna cardinals with heresy, excommunicated them and every member of the family. Boniface then announced a religious crusade against the Colonna, using money from all over Europe which had been intended to finance the Crusades in the Holy Land to buy the Knights Templar to crush the Colonna strongholds. An order went out that the Colonna women and children were to be killed or sold into slavery. With the help of his mercenary army, by 1299 all the Colonna cities had been captured. Palestrina was completely razed to the ground, and the Colonna family went to France in exile where they were given refuge by French nobility.
Boniface's fury turned against the French monarch and he forbade him to tax the French clergy. The French king reacted vehemently, and he in turn forbade the export of all money to the Pope. The king prohibited foreigners from living in France, which excluded members of the curia:
One of the more important and telling pronouncements of Pope Boniface VIII had been written to Philip IV of France in 1302. It was named Unam Sanctam and is one of the most extreme and arrogant statements of papal superiority over spiritual and temporal matters and gives us an significant insight into the prevalent model of Church at this time of ecclesial history. Read the following and fascinating extract from Unam Sanctam and reflect on the paradigm of Church that existed at the turn of the 14th century :
The Italians were desperate to retain the papacy within Italy, and threatened the lives of the sixteen cardinals gathered in Rome to elect Gregory's successor. Italy had become impoverished since the papacy had moved to Avignon, with monies from about two million tourists going to the French since Clement's election. Feeling under pressure the conclave chose the safest Pope - Archbishop Bartolomeo Prigano of Bari, a Neapolitan who had been vice chancellor at the University of Avignon. Prigano took the name of Urban VI.
His autocratic manner coupled with an unbalanced personality was to lead to his downfall. He proved himself to be highly unpopular and the cardinals, now in safe territory, met and declared the election to be null and void on the ground that they had been coerced into electing him in fear of the violence of the Roman mob:
One of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church states that the Church is always in a state of renewal (Ecclesia semper reformanda est). From the twelfth century onwards, we note the resurgence of various groups calling for radical changes within the practices of Christian worship. Through your own investigations, you may wish to explore the relationships between them and the established church. In what way did the Cathars, the Albigensians, the Waldensians, and others try to correct the ills of the Church? Why did they fail, and end up condemned by the "official" Church?
I have listed below some key personalities that have reshaped the cultural, political, and religious landscape of Pre-Reformation Europe. You may wish to follow up in your own readings on the contribution and impact made in these two centuries by the inventiveness, dynamism and genius of such diverse pioneers as:
In considering the institutional nature (model or paradigms) of "Church" as it had developed by the sixteenth century, what do you think is the element that attracted reaction from the following personalities? Again, via your own readings you may wish to follow up the main "contribution" that the following have made to the reformation process:
The age of Reformation had begun with a promise of new hope and new vision - and this is still reflected in the middle years of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Yet this period of history belongs to three men of diverse personality, religious conviction, and action: Martin Luther (1483-1546), Zwingli (1484-1556) and Calvin (1509-1564). Through their work and efforts, the history of the church was to take a direction which ultimately was to witness the political disintegration of the bilateral duality of church and state.
Although every school child has learnt that: "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and discovered the New World, not too many children have learnt that it was also the same year in which the infamous Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, ascended the papal throne. I have listed the names of the 12 Popes who lived in this period of cataclysmic tension of Reformation and Counter Reformation between 1492 and 1572. You may want to read up on the main theological/cultural tension or contribution that marked the pontificate of each of the following:
Si I think I'v summed it all up, about transubstantiation celibacy for priests, purgatory and indulgences, and theology. This year, Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarchate Bartholomew I of Constantinople went to Rome: Vatican City (AsiaNews) – The ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople has invited Pope Francis to travel with him to the Holy Land next year to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the embrace between Patriarch Athenagoras and Paul VI, the pioneers of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue. During their private meeting, Bartholomew and Francis explored possible paths towards unity, including theological dialogue, environmental defence, and a visit to the Fanar, after going through proper diplomatic channels.
Here is what Pope Francis said in his address today to a gathering of religious leaders in Rome.
In a moving moment, he began by thanking the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who had just spoken. He identifies him as "My Brother Andrew", since the Patriarch traces his line of apostolic succession back to St. Andrew, St. Peter's brother.
I've added emphasis to some of my favorite parts.
Blog By Kaleb Lippert Cantacte: lippertkaleb@gmail.com
These doubts and forebodings developed into open hostility when Eastern Christians came under the rule of the Crusaders. War is always a brutal and destructive affair, and the Crusaders did not differ much from other soldiers. When a city was captured its population naturally suffered, and it would have been too much to expect that a careful discrimination would be made between the local Christians and Moslems. Everybody was helpless before the invaders, and one's life and property were at their mercy. Once the rule of the Crusaders was firmly established it proved of no advantage to the Eastern Christians, even when compared with their bitter experience under the Moslem yoke. In many cases it was even a change for the worse, for their former conquerors had been more tolerant than Christians of the West, and had allowed the Orthodox to continue their Church life unmolested. But the Crusaders tried to convert the Orthodox to Latin Christianity, confiscating their Church buildings, imprisoning their clergy and treating them as though they professed a wholly alien religion.
For the West, the events of the Crusades began in an aura of optimism but ended with disaster and disunity for the Church. After the death of Charlemagne, the military authority of the Franks which had supported the Papacy began to decline. The Norman incursions into Italy posed a real threat to the Church and the Papacy in 1059 acknowledged its inability to face any threat from a Norman invasion. How then could the Church reassert its lessening authority over its feudal monarchs and show that it had the necessary strength to cope with internal dissent? At this time a request arrived from the Eastern emperor Alexius Commenius and Pope Urban II for assistance against encroachments by Moslem forces into the Holy Lands. Urban II, at this time in exile, called together on the faithful to mount a crusade, appealing to the spirit of faith, to regain the Holy Lands from the sacrilegious hands of Islam while drawing attention to the political benefits of such a venture. Hollister states that "the Crusades to the Holy Lands were the most spectacular and self-conscious act of Western Christian expansionism which represented a fusion of three characteristics of medieval man: piety, pugnacity, and greed" (Hollister, 162).
The Church promised instant sanctity to all participants, a promise of full pardon for one's sins, and a guarantee of eternal life. Urban and his successors, by granting indulgences, had sanctified this war as a holy war, and by 1096 the habit of "divinising" these conflicts became so well established that the Pauline metaphor of "fighting for Christ" was well interpreted as military knight service (Heer, 127). Military sacerdotal orders supposedly were based on high ideals of charity, chivalry, and medical care for those wounded in conflict, but too often these qualities were over-ridden by grand and petty political intrigues. By the time of the Fourth Crusade the papal powers had lost control over these monastic knights, leading to the excommunication of the Templars by Innocent III.
The growing animosity between the Greeks and Crusaders flamed up into open conflict at the end of the twelfth century. In 1185, the Knights captured and sacked Salonika, the second largest city of the Byzantine Empire; they conducted themselves with such complete disregard for the sanctity of Christian Churches that horror and indignation overwhelmed the whole of the Christian East. Contemporary Greek historians describe how the drunken soldiers danced on the alters of Orthodox Churches, how the sacred vessels and reserved sacrament, together with the icons, were made the object of the most revolting abuses, and how the corpses of men, women, and children were profaned by the conquerors. The Greeks were staggered by the scenes of deliberate cruelty and sacrilege, for the Moslems, their inveterate enemies, had always showed a genuine respect for places of worship.
The sack of Constantinople on April 13, 1204, dealt the final blow to relations between these two branches of the Christian Communion. It was an occasion of plunder and destruction seldom equalled for horror even in modern history. The great city, which had remained unconquered ever since its foundation in the fourth century, contained unique treasures of Christian art and learning. This was also the place where all the great relics of Christian piety had been stored by the Emperor. The riches of its Churches and especially of its Cathedral of St. Sophia, were unsurpassed in the whole world. Soldiers and Latin clergy vied with each other in their attempts to seize some part of these riches for themselves; even the precious Holy Altar of St. Sophia was polluted, broken in pieces and sold. Most of it was, however, simply lost or destroyed and only meagre remnants reached Europe.
Greek writers could not find words adequate to express their disgust and exasperation at the sight of such plundering, and their descriptions found confirmation in the epistle of Pope Innocent III, addressed to his Cardinal in Constantinople. The Pope's denunciation of the sacrileges committed by the Crusaders bear out the statements of Greek writings. This day, April 13, 1204 marks the end of the fellowship between Eastern and Western Christians. The split was brought about, not by quarrelsome theologians or ambitious prelates, as is usually suggested, but by the greed and lust of those men who, in the name of the Prince of Peace, had embarked upon a war of aggression and conquest.
The horrors of the sack of the great Byzantine cities brought about a radical change of attitude among the ordinary members of the Church. Up to this time the feeling of competition between the Christian East and the West had been confined to a few prelates and to the narrow circle of the Court. The mass of Christians has the oneness of the Church and therefore all ecclesiastical disputes had sooner or later been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. But after the aggression of the Crusaders a deep sense of indignation spread all over the Christian East. The bulk of Church members refused to recognise the Westerners any longer as their brothers and sisters in Christ. During the course of the next two centuries the secular and ecclesiastical rulers of the Byzantine Empire, under the rapidly growing threat of the Moslem domination, tried hard to come to some understanding the Christian West. At Lyons in 1274 and at Florence in 1439 reconciliation between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople was achieved; but it came to nothing, for the Eastern Christians stubbornly refused to enter into communion with the offenders. After the outrages of Knights it was the Eastern laity which became the stronghold of opposition to reunion, and all efforts on the part of prelates to bridge the gulf proved a complete failure.
Whatever had been the mistakes of the past, undoubtedly in the last and fatal stage of the disruption of Christian unity the East was the victim and the West the aggressor. The conduct of the latter during the succeeding centuries was the logical result of their particular role in the quarrel. Somewhere in the depths of its conscience the Christian West has retained a memory of the crime it once committed. Ever since that time it has been troubled by the very existence of the Christian East; it has frequently been tempted to resume negotiations with the Orthodox Christians; it has tried hard to force them to accept its leadership and to exchange their traditions for Latin or Protestant forms of Christianity. It has employed cajolery, promises and threats; it has calumniated the Orthodox faith and practice and attacked the Eastern Church whenever possible; it has never been able to leave the East alone, and both the Roman and Protestant Churches have displayed a striking similarity in their conduct.
The line taken by the Eastern Christians was the very opposite: they refused to pardon the offenders; they were unable to swallow the insult and take part in a reconciliation. Resentful and embittered, they displayed a complete indifference to the fate of Western Christians, and had but one wish: to be left alone. They ceased to recognise any moral link between themselves and the Christian West, and considered the Latins as idolaters who worshipped the Pope, and Protestants as still worse, since they had elevated the Book to the position which should be occupied by God alone.
A study of the relations between East and West during the last 800 years is a sordid and melancholy business. Both parties wilfully persisted in their errors; one side was arrogant, the other unforgiving: the West tried hard to induce the East to submit; the latter remained firm in its refusal to open its heart and mind to those who had formerly been allies and who had violated the bond of peace and love. There is little hope of any improvement in the relations between Eastern and Western Christians until the true cause of the schism is fully recognised. It is a fact of paramount importance that the split was occasioned not by any doctrinal disagreement, but by political and cultural differences which flared up into open warfare at the time of Crusades.
Innocent III considered a crusade to regain the Holy Land to be an urgent task of his pontificate. What he did not count on was the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, who never did reach Jerusalem. The triumphalism with which Innocent greeted the establishment of primacial authority in Constantinople demonstrated his global view of the Church as an institutional force.
If the Fourth Crusade represented the low point of Innocent's pontificate, then the Fourth Lateran Council called by him in 1215 was the high point of his pontificate (Brooke, 1971; Granfield, 1981; Powell, 1965). It was the first genuinely universal Council in the Medieval West; not only Bishops but Abbots and Provosts as well as the secular powers were invited. Representation was accorded to all the various Orders within the Church and all "Doctors" received the power to vote. In one sense, the thirteenth century Church thus believed that the supreme magisterium of the Church belonged to the Church as a whole and not exclusively to the Bishops. The Council dealt mainly with the preservation of faith, particularly against heretics. Decrees were enacted on preaching, education of the clergy, elections, marriage and tithes. "The assembly was an impressive testimony of the standing and function of the papacy as the monarchic instrument of governing Christendom" (Ullman, 1972: 232).
Theology within the Church of the 12th and thirteenth centuries was still very much influenced by the writings of Augustine:
- In theology and philosophy it was not only his teaching that was of paramount influence; his whole outlook on the world of men and things, above all his characteristic blending of the natural and the supernatural, or rather his acceptance of human life as it is in fact lived by the Christian, a human creature and yet a child of God, impressed itself upon the whole fabric of medieval religious thought so as to seem not merely one interpretation, but the only possible outlook (Knowles and Obolensky, 1969: 250).
Yet, these four centuries also saw the extra-ordinary contribution of great saints and great intellectuals such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, Thomas of Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Catherine of Sienna to the philosophy, theology and spirituality of the Western Church. These, and other scholars of the time influenced Church teaching in a way not experienced since St. Augustine. Table six, at the end of this module, presents a time-line which indicates the richness of these centuries for the development of Christian learning and spirituality.
Thomas Aquinas believed that "the Church essentially consists in a divinising communion with God, whether incompletely in this life or completely in the life of glory" (Dulles, 1978: 47). For Aquinas, the unifying force that bonded the earthly and heavenly together was the Holy Spirit, for through grace and the commitment to Christ human nature could be sublimated and an interior union with God made possible. In this way grace perfected nature (Knowles and Obolensky, 1969: 363). Thomas applied Aristotelian principles of philosophy in his theological arguments. In this way he endeavoured to build a bridge between faith and knowledge. Yet within his own lifetime the intellectual insights of Aquinas were not appreciated:
- His conception of the relationship of faith and intelligence was both too profound and too radical, and by the end of the century in which he died, men in the theological faculties of the universities were beginning to lose confidence in the power of human intelligence to understand God and his works. As is always the case, loss of confidence in the power of human intelligence marked the beginning of the decline of a great culture (Dwyer, 1985: 182).
It is interesting to note that under the Dominicans and the Franciscan Friars (both groups won the patronage of Innocent III) an alternative model of Church began to emerge. During his pontificate, Innocent was increasingly confronted by a slightly better educated population, who were becoming increasingly critical of a legally fixed and judicially enacted brand of Christianity. It is interesting to note, when considering his acceptance of the Franciscans and Dominicans, that he seemed to be sympathetic to such non-conformists and their emphasis on pastoral work and apostolic poverty. His attitude seems quite enlightened as long as their was no sin against "divine majesty" and no compromise with the orthodoxy of faith. The twelth and thirteenth century saw the building of many cathedrals to contain relics and major works of religious art. The wealthy were major contributors, many buying favours and indulgences through their patronage:
- In one sense the glorious cathedral was the epitome of everything that was wrong with the late Middle Ages: signs of privilege and wealth, segregation from the masses and vast centers of relic collecting, money-making shrines and vast commercial enterprises inflicted on the common people by nobility and wealthy aristocrats (Bausch, 1981: 213).
In a very real sense, Innocent's reign saw the zenith of the papal monarchy with its centre in the curia. The Church as a community of the faithful had been replaced by a narrower hierarchical church, comprising clerical orders in ascending ranks jealously guarding their rights and privileges. Even the reforming Fourth Lateran Council had its program imposed upon it by Innocent, and in reality it was to the papacy that the people looked to reform the Church. Innocent's pontificate presents for church historians a dramatic dichotomy - the institutionalised church beginning to give birth to the servant Church. Bausch quotes Professor Knowles in a final assessment of this pontificate:
- Innocent III's pontificate is the brief summer of papal world government. Before him the greatest of his predecessors were fighting to attain a position of control; after him, successors used the weapons of power with an increasing lack of spiritual wisdom and political insight. Innocent alone was able to make himself obeyed when acting in the interests of those he commanded. We may think, with the hindsight of centuries, that the conception of the papacy which he inherited and developed was fatal, in that it aimed at what was not attainable and undesirable, the subordination of the secular policy to the control of a spiritual power, but this conception was as acceptable and desirable to his age as has been to our own the conception of a harmonious and peaceful direction of the world by a league or union of nations.
...It is impossible to dismiss the whole of Innocent's government of the Church as an exhibition of power politics to the exercise of an ambitious and egotistical man or even as an achievement of mere clearsighted efficiency. He appears rather as one who was indeed concerned to use and extend all the powers of his office to forward the welfare of something greater, the Church of Christ throughout Europe, and the eternal welfare of her children...The judgement which sees in him no more than a mitred statesman, a papal Richelieu, a loveless hierocrat, does not square with evidence. The man, who in the midst of business, could recognise and bless the unknown and apparently resourceless, radical Francis was not only farsighted but spiritually clearsighted. He died when the world still needed him, when he might have saved the papacy...He died at Perugia; his court left him, and his robes and goods and very body were pillaged by his servants (Bausch, 1981: 225 - 226).
The 12th and 13th centuries were a time of change not only in the ecclesiastical but also secular spheres. It was an age which witnessed the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, the ascendancy of the Hapsburgs to power, and the institution of the Papal Inquisition. The society of the period was hierarchical in structure, being made of established estates or orders, each having its duties, rights and obligations, its privileges, honours, prerogatives and functions. Canon law became a power that produced not only a highly organised, political and central papacy, but also a power that so influenced societal law, that it gave rise to a new secular order and a culture that was almost totally ecclesiastical (Congar, 1969: 29).
The thirteenth century witnessed the foundations of universities in Paris, Padua, Naples, Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg and Cologne, as well as a re-discovery of the writings of Aristotle who greatly influenced the thinking of medieval scholars - Thomas Aquinas in particular. "These universities quickly rose to importance and became famous throughout Europe. They were given special privileges by the Popes, including freedom from interference by the local bishop" (Dwyer, 1985: 178). These universities were to play a vital role in the intellectual life in the centuries to follow. Previously, judgements of orthodoxy had been pronounced by regional bishops' councils, and were sometimes followed by appeals to Rome. However in the thirteenth century universities began to take on a magisterial role. For example, the doctrinal decrees of both the Council of Lyons in 1245 and 1274 were submitted to the universities for approval before being published.
This century witnessed the uprooting of the papacy from Rome and its re- establishment in Avignon for a period for almost seventy years. The fourteenth century ended in witnessing a papacy in turmoil and disarray, forced into a schism which saw three rival popes enthroned simultaneously in confusion and conflict.
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION AND THE CHURCH IN CRISES: Though most students would have some knowledge of the great schism between East and West, few are aware of the historical rifts that occurred within the Roman church between the 13th and 15th centuries. Religious life suffered as a consequence of the schism, for "Christendom looked upon the scandal helpless and depressed, and yet impotent to remove it. With two sections of Christendom each declaring the other lost, each cursing and denouncing the other, men soberly asked who was saved" (Flick, 1930: 293). Doubt and confusion caused many to question the legitimacy and true holiness of the church as an institution. In the West, the excesses that affected the church ultimately called for radical reform through that movement which we now identify with the Protestant Reformation.
This period of moral decline was instrumental in leading to a Western Schism within Christendom, in which three Popes and anti-Popes concurrently contested control over the See of Peter. The popes refused to convene councils to effect reform, and they failed to bring about reform themselves, rather busying themselves with Italian politics and being patrons of the arts. "Thus the papacy emerged as something between an Italian city-state and a European power, without forgetting at the same time the claim to be the vice-regent of Christ. The pope often could not make up his own mind whether he was the successor of Peter or of Caesar. Such vacillation had much to do with the rise and success... of the Reformation" (Bainton, 1952: 15). By the mid-fifteenth century the Church was in urgent need of drastic reform which, when effected, would have lasting impact on the religious and secular history of Europe.At the death of Nicholas IV in 1292 there was a deadlock in the sacred college of Cardinals which was to last for twenty-seven months before his successor could be elected. The two ruling factions in Italian politics were represented by the powerful Orsini and Colonna families who vied for control of the Papacy. At this time there were only nine cardinals left in that college, three giving their allegiance to the Orsinis, three to the Colonna family, and three were seemingly independent. Pope Nicholas had been an Orsini and they would not accept the loss of papal control. The Colonnas were determined to take it away from them, and they put pressure on the three remaining independent cardinals who were unwilling to offend either family, both of whom had a history of murder and assassination throughout the streets of Rome.
The cardinals squabbled over who should be elected Pope until the plague came to Rome in early in 1294, forcing them to withdraw to the mountains of Perugia in central Italy, still deadlocked. One of the non-partisan cardinals was Cardinal Gaetani who was considered to be a great canon lawyer. He was a cold, calculating, corpulent man with the determination of an assassin. To break the deadlock in his own insidious way, Gaetani told the senior cardinal present, Latino Malabranca, the Cardinal of Ostia that he had received a prophetic letter from a holy eccentric hermit, Peter of Morone, which predicted the punishment of God upon all of them if a Pope were not soon elected.
Malabranca, who was intensely superstitious, took the forgery which Gaetani had given to him with devout seriousness. On the 5th July 1294, after prayful contemplation, he called the handful of cardinals together and read them the letter which he believed had come from the holy hermit. He became so carried away by his own eloquence and his own convictions that he proposed that the hermit Peter of Morone be elected the next Pope. The deadlock was broken by the logic of demonstrating to Colonna and Orsini alike that neither of them needed to prevent the other from winning.
Neither the Colonnas nor the Orsinis bothered to journey to Abruzzi to meet the new Pope, to kiss his feet as every tradition of the sacred college required. However Cardinal Gaetani did pay his homage, taking with him the King of Naples and an enormous following of ordinary people:
- In a bleak cave in the Abruzzi mountains, Gaetani told the holy hermit that he had been made Vicar of Christ on earth. The confused frightened old man, who had never seen so many people in his life, nodded to the statement because Gaetani had bellowed at him from that great height, in those rich and beautiful scarlet robes covering the barrel chest and hogshead belly, commanding that Peter now nod his head to signify his acceptance of God's glory. Emaciated, hardly understanding Latin, much less the condition, Peter accepted the rulership of Christendom filled with mortal terror because he would have to leave his cave. He refused to go to Rome. He would rule from Naples. At Gaetani's suggestion, he chose the name Celestine V. From that day forward, Gaetani served the Pope as his lawyer and soothed him by creating a replica of the hermit's mountain cell in the castle Nuovo, which had become the Lateran palace of Naples (Condon, 1984: 24).
As a cardinal Gaetani had acquired rich cities and adjoining territories - and as Pontiff Boniface continued to amass wealth and power which was to bring him into direct confrontation with the Colonnas, who ruled their territory from the hilltop city of Palestrina, twenty-two miles east of Rome. The Colonnas tried to instigate a revolt against the Pontiff by claiming that Boniface's election was invalid as he had usurped power that rightly belonged to Celestine. At the same time, Stephen Colonna attacked and plundered the Pope's gold which was being sent to Caserta to buy yet another city for the Gaetani dynasty. Boniface, blind with fury, threw two of the Colonna cardinals into prison.
The Colonna offered to return the gold but Boniface wanted not only revenge on Stephen Colonna but also the Colonnas' destruction by installing garrisons inside the Colonna cities. This option was totally unacceptable to the Colonna and the next day, Colonna messengers posted manifestos attacking the legitimacy of Boniface's election all over Rome, leaving one tacked to the high altar of St. Peter's. In response, Boniface issued a papal bull, In Excelso Throno, which charged the two imprisoned Colonna cardinals with heresy, excommunicated them and every member of the family. Boniface then announced a religious crusade against the Colonna, using money from all over Europe which had been intended to finance the Crusades in the Holy Land to buy the Knights Templar to crush the Colonna strongholds. An order went out that the Colonna women and children were to be killed or sold into slavery. With the help of his mercenary army, by 1299 all the Colonna cities had been captured. Palestrina was completely razed to the ground, and the Colonna family went to France in exile where they were given refuge by French nobility.
Boniface's fury turned against the French monarch and he forbade him to tax the French clergy. The French king reacted vehemently, and he in turn forbade the export of all money to the Pope. The king prohibited foreigners from living in France, which excluded members of the curia:
- Warming to his task, he called an estates-general to charge the Pope with infidelity, loss of the Holy Land, the murder of Celestine V, heresy, fornication, simony, sodomy, sorcery, and idolatry in a list of twenty-nine charges - all of them the sort employed when some faction wants to rid the Church of a Pope, many of them quite valid. The only weapon Boniface had was the solemn excommunication of the King of France, which would release the French people from their allegiance to the king. The publication of this fatal bull was planned for 8 September, 1303 from Agnani, the Pope's summer palace (Condon, 1984: 26).
One of the more important and telling pronouncements of Pope Boniface VIII had been written to Philip IV of France in 1302. It was named Unam Sanctam and is one of the most extreme and arrogant statements of papal superiority over spiritual and temporal matters and gives us an significant insight into the prevalent model of Church at this time of ecclesial history. Read the following and fascinating extract from Unam Sanctam and reflect on the paradigm of Church that existed at the turn of the 14th century :
- We are compelled, our faith urging us, to believe and to hold - and we do firmly believe and simply confess - that there is one holy catholic and apostolic church, outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins; her Spouse proclaiming it in the canticles: "My dove, my undefiled is but one, she is the choice one of her that bare her;" which represents one mystic body, of which body the head is Christ; but of Christ, God. In this church there is one Lord, one faith and one baptism. There was one ark of Noah, indeed, at the time of the flood, symbolizing one church; and this being finished in one cubit had, namely, one Noah as helmsman and commander. And, with the exception of this ark, all things existing upon the earth were, as we read, destroyed. This church, moreover, we venerate as the only one, the Lord saying through His prophet: "Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog." He prayed at the same time for His soul - that is, for Himself the Head - and for His body - which body, namely, he called the one and only church on account of the unity of the faith promised, of the sacraments, and of the love of the church. She is that seamless garment of the Lord which was not cut but which fell by lot. Therefore of this one and only church there is one body and one head - not two heads as if it were a monster: - Christ, namely, and the vicar of Christ, St. Peter, and the successor of Peter. For the Lord Himself said to Peter, Feed my sheep. My sheep, He said, using a general term, and not designating these or those particular sheep; from which it is plain that He committed to Him all His sheep. If, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ; for the Lord says, in John, that there is one fold, one shepherd and one only. We are told by the word of the gospel that in this His fold there are two swords, - a spiritual, namely, and a temporal. For when the apostles said "Behold here are two swords" - when, namely, the apostles were speaking in the church - the Lord did not reply that this was too much, but enough. Surely he who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter wrongly interprets the word of the Lord when He says: "Put up thy sword in its scabbard." Both swords, the spiritual and the material, therefore, are in the power of the church; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the church, the other by the church; the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual. For when the apostle says "there is no power but God, and the powers that are of God are ordained," they would not be ordained unless sword were under sword and the lesser one, as it were, were led by the other to great deeds. Whoever, therefore, resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordination of God, unless he makes believe, like the Manichean, that there are two beginnings. This we consider false and heretical, since by the testimony of Moses, not "in the beginnings," but "in the beginning" God created the Heavens and the earth. Indeed we declare, announce and define, that it is altogther necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff. The Lateran, Nov. 14, in our 8th year. As a perpetual memorial of this matter. (Ernest F. Henderson, 1912: 435-37).
The Italians were desperate to retain the papacy within Italy, and threatened the lives of the sixteen cardinals gathered in Rome to elect Gregory's successor. Italy had become impoverished since the papacy had moved to Avignon, with monies from about two million tourists going to the French since Clement's election. Feeling under pressure the conclave chose the safest Pope - Archbishop Bartolomeo Prigano of Bari, a Neapolitan who had been vice chancellor at the University of Avignon. Prigano took the name of Urban VI.
His autocratic manner coupled with an unbalanced personality was to lead to his downfall. He proved himself to be highly unpopular and the cardinals, now in safe territory, met and declared the election to be null and void on the ground that they had been coerced into electing him in fear of the violence of the Roman mob:
- It seems hard to believe but they elected in his place a brute named Robert, Cardinal of Geneva - he who was called the Butcher of Cesena because he had ordered his troops to put 3000 women and children to the sword when they objected to the rape of sixty women by his transient soldiers. The Butcher took the name of Clement VII, whereupon Urban VI excommunicated him; then he excommunicated Urban, and the great schism of the Church had begun. There were two Popes who ruled Christendom simultaneously: Urban in Rome, Clement at Avignon. The Cossa family's advocate, Piero Tomacelli, succeeded Urban as Boniface IX (Condon, 1984: 29).
One of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church states that the Church is always in a state of renewal (Ecclesia semper reformanda est). From the twelfth century onwards, we note the resurgence of various groups calling for radical changes within the practices of Christian worship. Through your own investigations, you may wish to explore the relationships between them and the established church. In what way did the Cathars, the Albigensians, the Waldensians, and others try to correct the ills of the Church? Why did they fail, and end up condemned by the "official" Church?
- The Cathars
- The Albigensians
- The Waldensians
I have listed below some key personalities that have reshaped the cultural, political, and religious landscape of Pre-Reformation Europe. You may wish to follow up in your own readings on the contribution and impact made in these two centuries by the inventiveness, dynamism and genius of such diverse pioneers as:
- Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468)
- Savonarola (1439-1498)
- Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
- Niccola Machiavelli (1469-1527)
- Nicholaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
- Money makes the man, Money makes the stupid pass for bright... Money buys the pleasure-giving women, Money keeps the soul in bliss, The world and fortune being ruled by it, Which even opens, if you want, the doors of paradise. So wise he seems to me who piles up What more than any other virtue Conquers gloom and leavens the whole spirit (Lauro Martines, 1979: 83).
In considering the institutional nature (model or paradigms) of "Church" as it had developed by the sixteenth century, what do you think is the element that attracted reaction from the following personalities? Again, via your own readings you may wish to follow up the main "contribution" that the following have made to the reformation process:
- Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)
- Zwingli (1484 - 1556)
- Calvin (1509 - 1564)
- Henry VIII (1509 - 1547)
- Charles V (1519 - 1556)
- Christian III (1536 - 1559)
- Phillip II (1555 - 1598)
- Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603)
The age of Reformation had begun with a promise of new hope and new vision - and this is still reflected in the middle years of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Yet this period of history belongs to three men of diverse personality, religious conviction, and action: Martin Luther (1483-1546), Zwingli (1484-1556) and Calvin (1509-1564). Through their work and efforts, the history of the church was to take a direction which ultimately was to witness the political disintegration of the bilateral duality of church and state.
Although every school child has learnt that: "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and discovered the New World, not too many children have learnt that it was also the same year in which the infamous Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, ascended the papal throne. I have listed the names of the 12 Popes who lived in this period of cataclysmic tension of Reformation and Counter Reformation between 1492 and 1572. You may want to read up on the main theological/cultural tension or contribution that marked the pontificate of each of the following:
- Alexander VI (1492-1503)
- Pius III (1503)
- Julius II (1503-1513)
- Leo X (1513-1521)
- Hadrian VI (1522-1523)
- Clement VIII (1523-1534)
- Paul III (1534-1549)
- Julius III (1550-1555)
- Marcellus II (1555)
- Paul IV (1555-1559)
- Pius IV (1559-1565)
- Pius V (1566-1572)
Si I think I'v summed it all up, about transubstantiation celibacy for priests, purgatory and indulgences, and theology. This year, Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarchate Bartholomew I of Constantinople went to Rome: Vatican City (AsiaNews) – The ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople has invited Pope Francis to travel with him to the Holy Land next year to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the embrace between Patriarch Athenagoras and Paul VI, the pioneers of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue. During their private meeting, Bartholomew and Francis explored possible paths towards unity, including theological dialogue, environmental defence, and a visit to the Fanar, after going through proper diplomatic channels.
Earlier, when the pontiff met Christian and other religious leaders, Bartholomew I was the only one who addressed Pope Francis. For the patriarch, Christians must bear witness in a credible way through “Church unity” in order to cope with the world’s economic crisis and to counter “worldly trends” that limit life to its earthly horizons. Bartholomew’s words reflect the pontiff’s notion of stewardship, which he presented yesterday during his inaugural mass.
All this is evidence of the great unity between the two leaders. When Pope Francis introduced the patriarch, he called him, off the cuffs, “my brother Andrew” underscoring the blood ties between the two apostles patrons of the two Churches, Andrew of Constantinople and Peter of Rome, the “first one to be called” and the “first one among the apostles”.
Like Francis, Bartholomew referred to Benedict XVI “as a mild man who distinguished himself by his theological knowledge and charity.”
When he spoke about the “task and huge responsibilities” that await the pope, he said that “the unity of Christian Churches” was “the first and most important of our concerns” in order to ensure that “our Christian witness is seen to be credible near and far.” Hence, it is necessary to continue “the theological dialogue” between Catholics and Orthodox, based on the experience and tradition of the first undivided thousand years.
Pope Francis to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: "My Brother Andrew"
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| Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I |
In a moving moment, he began by thanking the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who had just spoken. He identifies him as "My Brother Andrew", since the Patriarch traces his line of apostolic succession back to St. Andrew, St. Peter's brother.
I've added emphasis to some of my favorite parts.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
First of all, heartfelt thanks for what my Brother Andrew told us. Thank you so much! Thank you so much!
It is a source of particular joy to meet you today, delegates of the Orthodox Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and Ecclesial Communities of the West. Thank you for wanting to take part in the celebration that marked the beginning of my ministry as Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter.
Yesterday morning, during the Mass, through you , I recognized the communities you represent. In this manifestation of faith, I had the feeling of taking part in an even more urgent fashion the prayer for the unity of all believers in Christ, and together to see somehow prefigured the full realization of full unity which depends on God’s plan and on our own loyal collaboration.
I begin my Apostolic Ministry in this year during which my venerable Predecessor, Benedict XVI, with true inspiration, proclaimed the Year of Faith for the Catholic Church. With this initiative, that I wish to continue and which I hope will be an inspiration for every one’s journey of faith, he wished to mark the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, thus proposing a sort of pilgrimage towards what for every Christian represents the essential: the personal and transforming relationship with Jesus Christ, Son of God, who died and rose for our salvation. This effort to proclaim this eternal treasure of faith to the people of our time, lies at the heart of the Council's message.
Together with you I cannot forget how much the council has meaning for the ecumenical journey. I like to remember the words that Blessed John XXIII, of whom we will soon mark 50 years since his death, when he gave his memorable inauguration speech: "The Catholic Church therefore considers it her duty to work actively so that there may be fulfilled the great mystery of that unity, which Christ Jesus invoked with fervent prayer from His heavenly Father on the eve of His sacrifice. She rejoices in peace, knowing well that she is intimately associated with that prayer ".
Yes, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all be intimately united to our Saviour's prayer at the Last Supper, to his invocation: ut unum sint. We call merciful Father to be able to fully live the faith that we have received as a gift on the day of our Baptism, and to be able to it free, joyful and courageous testimony. The more we are faithful to his will, in thoughts, in words and in deeds, the more we will truly and substantially walk towards unity.
For my part, I wish to assure, in the wake of my predecessors, the firm wish to continue on the path of ecumenical dialogue, and I thank you, the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, for the help it continues to offer in my name, for this noble cause. I ask you, dear brothers and sisters, to bring my cordial greetings to the Churches and Christian communities who are represented here. And I ask you for a special prayer for me so that I can be a pastor according to the heart of Christ. God Bless
Blog By Kaleb Lippert Cantacte: lippertkaleb@gmail.com
