Fluent Essays

Draft From the Syllabus: Your Final Examination will be composed of 2 synthesis essays. You will have several days to write and submit your examination essays. Please send your examination essays through Safe Assign on Blackboard. It is your responsibility to ensure that I receive a good copy of your essays by the due date. Be sure to put the class number (RST 1330) and your full name on your essays. Your attached files should be Word files (.doc) or (.docx). Because grades are due the Tuesday following the due date, late Final Exams will not be accepted. Please retain a copy of your submissions. I will post your grades and an assessment commentary on Blackboard. You are welcome to discuss my evaluations of your work directly with me via e-mail. Please Note Under assignments I have set up a Final Examination first draft originality option. You can submit the first two drafts of your Final Examination and receive originality reports. I will not read over this draft; it is your responsibility to check and correct it. There will not be revision opportunities for the actual Final Exam, so please exercise great care before you submit it. Final Exam Instructions: Keep the principles outlined in the Plagiarism Spectrum and Source Evaluation documents found under course documents in mind as you write your essays. The Final Examination consists of two integrating essays. You may use your textbook, articles, course links and the Discussion Board to formulate your answers. Because it is understood that you will use the textbook, material from the textbook does not require citations. Please paraphrase material from the textbook. The essays require analysis so please comment on the significance of the facts that you discuss; do not just paraphrase whole passages from the text. If you use information from the course links and articles please cite your sources. These links and articles may provide you with specific examples to illustrate themes found in the textbook. If you use information from the Discussion Board, you must cite the source from which the poster obtained the information. The Discussion Board will be open for reading during exam week. Each essay must be written in formal, standard English. Please proofread your essays before submitting them to Safe Assign. In a discussion board, language can be more informal because participants are formulating their thoughts. The final exam essays require careful, planned out responses. Please be careful to cite any outside sources to avoid plagiarism. Cite web-based sources by inserting live links in your essays. Each essay should be written in five paragraphs with an introduction, three main body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Illustrate general statements with specific historical examples. Each essay must range from 700 to 750 words in length. Please do not exceed the word limit. SUBMIT Both the required ESSAYS IN ONE DOCUMENT TO SAFEASSIGN. EACH OF THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS NEEDS A THESIS IN THE INTRODUCTION WHICH STATES WHICH ASPECT OF THE QUESTION YOU THINK IS MOST IMPORTANT. EXPLAIN YOUR CHOICE THROUGHOUT EACH ESSAY. Essay One: (60 points) Choose EITHER Saint Ignatius of Loyola OR Saint Theresa of Avila. Write an essay that analyzes three of the saint’s major achievements and explain which achievement you think is the most important for helping promote Christianity. The thesis of this essay is why you think the achievement you chose is the most important of the three. The explanation of importance is how you can express your interpretation of the facts from the life of the saint. Use the textbook and other sources. Be sure to cite any sources beyond the textbook. Essay Two: (60 points): Analyze three forms of Protestant Christianity and their influences in the British colonies in North America. Your thesis needs to state which form of the three was most influential and your essay needs to explain your choice while describing the main ideas of each form of Christianity. Editor Dr Tim Dowley Consulting Editors John H. Y. Briggs Director of the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage and Senior Research Fellow in Church History, Oxford University, formerly Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Birmingham, England Dr Robert D. Linder University Distinguished Professor of History, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, USA The late David F. Wright Formerly Professor in Patristic and Reformed Christianity, University of Edinburgh, Scotland INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY Second Edition Fortress Press Edition © 2013 Copyright © 2013 Lion Hudson plc/Tim Dowley Associates All rights reserved. Worldwide co-edition organized and produced by Lion Hudson plc, Wilkinson House, Oxford OX2 8HL, England This book is published in cooperation with Lion Hudson Publishing, Oxford, England. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/contact.asp or write to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440. Original edition published as A Lion Handbook: The History of Christianity, 1977 Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. The ‘NIV’ and ‘New International Version’ trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790. Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version published by HarperCollins Publishers, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version. Cover image: Abraham with the angels (mosaic), Byzantine School, (6th century) / San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy / The Bridgeman Art Library; The Holy Family (Barcelona, Spain) ©iStockphoto / stan tiberiu loredan; Christ Pantocrator, 1607 (oil on panel), Bulgarian School, (17th century) / National Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library Cover design: Laurie Ingram Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available ISBN 978-0-8006-9969-7 ContentS Contents Contributors List of maps List of Time Charts List of illustrations/photographs Preface Preface to the Revised Edition PART 1: Beginnings AD 1–325 1. Jesus: His life, ministry, death and its consequences The Thought-world of Early Christianity 2. The Church Begins: From Jerusalem to Rome Peter Paul 3. Establishing Christianity: Challenges to the New Faith The Religions of the Romans Marcion Tertullian Origen 4. Spreading the Good News: How and why Christianity Exapnded 5. Archaeology and Earliest Christianity: What archaeologists can - and cannot - illuminate 6. What the First Christians Believed The Gnostics Eusebius: ‘Father of Church History’ Clement of Rome Justin Martyr: Christian apologist Ignatius of Antioch Irenaeus Baptism Cyprian of Carthage The Manichaeans 7. How the First Christians Worshipped How the New Testament Came Down to Us The Early Church Recognizes the New Testament Study questions PART 2: Acceptance and Conquest: AD 325-600 8. Constantine and the Christian Empire: Christianity recognized Ambrose of Milan 9. Councils and Creeds: Defining and defending the faith Athanasius Basil the Great Nestorius Cyril of Alexandria Leo the Great 10. Buildings and Belief: Early church structures 11. Worship and the Christian Year: The making of the Christian Calendar 12. Clergy, Bishops, and Pope: The church builds an organisation 13. The Church in North Africa: The making of a distinctive tradition Augustine of Hippo 14. The Fall of the Roman Empire: How and why it came to an end Jerome Boethius 15. Ascetics and Monks: The rise of Christian monasticism Cassiodorus Patrick: Missionary to the Irish Columba: Celtic missionary Study questions PART 3: A Christian Society 16. The West in Crisis Gregory the Great Alcuin 17. The Eastern Church John Chrysostom: master preacher Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite The Paulicians and the Bogomils 18. Flowering: the Western Church: Reform and resurgence Thomas Becket Pope Innocent III Bernard of Clairvaux Francis of Assisi The Waldensians The Sacraments in Medieval Europe Anselm Peter Abelard Thomas Aquinas Popular Religion 19. Monasticism in the West Interpreting the Bible in the Middle Ages 20. The Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe and Russia The Slavic Bible 21. An Age of Unrest: The Western Church in the Late Middle Ages Jan Hus Savonarola John Wyclif William of Ockham Study Questions PART 4: Reform and Renewal: 1500-1650 22. Seeds of Renewal: The origins of the Reformation 23: Reformation Martin Luther John Calvin The Faith of the Protestants Philipp Melanchthon Huldrych Zwingli Theodore Beza Martin Bucer Thomas Cranmer Puritans and Separatists Post-Reformation Church Architecture The Unitarians 24. A Flood of Bibles: Scripture in the vernacular William Tyndale and the English Bible 25. The Radical Reformation: the Anabaptists The First English Baptists John Bunyan 26. The Catholic Reformation Gasparo Contarini Ignatius of Loyola The Jesuits Teresa of Avila John of the Cross George Fox and the Quakers 27. Art and the Spirit: Christianity and its cultural expression Study questions PART 5: Reason, Revival, and Revolution 1650-1789 28. Expansion Worldwide: European missions The First English Missions 29. Awakening: The Evangelical Revival and the Great Awakening Jonathan Edwards George Whitefield Philipp Spener Nikolaus von Zinzendorf John and Charles Wesley Hymns and Church Music Christianity and the Rise of Modern Science 30. Reason and Unreason: The rise of rationalism Blaise Pascal The Reasonableness of Christianity 31. The Russian Church: 1500–1900 Study questions PART 6: Cities and Empires 1789-1914 32. Europe in Revolt: Church and State in teh Nineteenth Century Pope Pius IX 33. The First Industrial Nation: The Industrial Revolution and the British Churches William Wilberforce The Oxford Movement The Brethren C. H. Spurgeon: ‘Prince of Preachers’ John Henry Newman The Evangelicals 34. A Crusade Among Equals: REvivalism, Abolition, and Evangelism in the USA D. L. Moody: Mass evangelist Hymns and Church Music after 1800 35. A World Come of Age: Science and Philosophy challenge Christianity Friedrich Schleiermacher 36. Outposts of Empire: The nineteenth-century missionary explosion William Carey The Bible Societies David Livingstone Hudson Taylor Samuel Ajayi Crowther Study questions PART 7: A Century of Conflict 1914-2001 37. An Age of Ideology: nationalism, Communism, and individualism take on Christianity Karl Barth The Christian Church and the Jews Billy Graham Martin Luther King Christians, War, and Peace 38. An Age of Anxiety: Theological thinking in troubled era Albert Schweitzer Dietrich Bonhoeffer 39. Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement African Independent Churches 40. The Arts in the Christian West C. S. Lewis 41. Organizing for Unity Pope John XXIII 42. An Age of Liberation Hélder Câmara Study questions Part 8: Epilogue: A New Millennium 43. Present and Future: The church in an ever-changing world Further Resources on the History of Christianity Glossary Contributors Dr John S. Andrews, formerly Sub-Librarian, University of Lancaster, England. Hymns and Church Music; Hymns and Church Music after 1800. The late Canon James Atkinson, formerly Director of the Centre for Reformation Studies, University of Sheffield, England. Reformation; Thomas Cranmer. Dr David W. Bebbington, Professor of History, University of Stirling, Scotland. C. H. Spurgeon; William Carey; William Wilberforce. The late Dr Paul M. Bechtel, formerly Professor Emeritus of English, Wheaton College, Illinois, USA. Blaise Pascal. Dr Janette Bohi, formerly Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, Wisconsin, USA. A Crusade among Equals. John H. Y. Briggs, Director of the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage and Senior Research Fellow in Church History, Oxford University, formerly Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Birmingham, England. The First English Baptists; The First Industrial Nation; Present and Future. Dr Colin Brown, Senior Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, USA. Anselm; Reason and Unreason; A World Come of Age; Friedrich Schleiermacher. Revd Colin O. Buchanan, formerly Bishop of Woolwich, England. The Sacraments in Medieval Europe; Organizing for Unity. Revd Dr Richard A. Burridge, Dean, Kings College, London. Jesus Dr Robert G. Clouse, Senior Research Scholar in Liberal Arts and Professor Emeritus of History, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA. Columba; Patrick; Boethius; Flowering: the Western Church; Francis of Assisi; Thomas Aquinas; Savonarola; John of the Cross. The late Revd Dr Leonard W. Cowie, formerly Senior Lecturer in History, Whitelands College, London. The First English Missions. Dr James A. DeJong, President and Professor of Historical Theology, Emeritus, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Expansion Worldwide. Dr Walter Delius, formerly Professor of Church History, Theological Faculty, Berlin, Germany. Alcuin. Dr Bruce A. Demarest, formerly Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation, Denver Seminary, Denver, Colorado, USA. Jerome; Interpreting the Bible in the Middle Ages. Dr Wayne A. Detzler, Academic Dean and Professor of Biblical Studies and Missions, Southern Evangelical Seminary, North Carolina, USA. Europe in Revolt; Pope Pius IX; The Bible Societies. Revd Dr John P. Donnelly, Professor Emeritus of History, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Gasparo Contarini; The Jesuits; Pope John XXIII. Dr Tim Dowley, London. John Wyclif, John Bunyan, Karl Barth. Dr James D. G. Dunn, Emeritus Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, University of Durham, England. Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement. The late H. L. Ellison, Bible teacher and lecturer, England. The Christian Church and the Jews. Dr Everett Ferguson, Distinguished Scholar in Residence, Abilene Christian University, Texas, USA. Irenaeus; Origen; Tertullian; Athanasius; John Chrysostom. The late Dr Ronald C. Finucane, Distinguished Professor of History, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA. Monasticism in the West; The Waldensians; An Age of Unrest. Dr Harlie Kay Gallatin, Senior Professor Emeritus of History, Southwest Baptist University, Bolivar, Missouri, USA. The Eastern Church. Dr W. Ward Gasque, President of Pacific Association for Biblical Studies, Seattle, USA. The Church Begins; Establishing Christianity Daniel Guy, MA, Marlborough, England: Europe in Revolt The late Dr Colin Hemer, formerly Research Fellow, Tyndale House, Cambridge, England. Archaeological and Earliest Christianity; Justin Martyr. The late Canon Michael M. Hennell, Manchester Cathedral, Manchester, England. The Evangelicals; The Oxford Movement; John Henry Newman. Walter G. Hooper, Trustee and Literary Advisor to the Estate of C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis. Dr Thomas Howard, Emeritus Professor of English, St John’s Seminary, Brighton, Massachusetts, USA. The Arts in the Christian West. Dr Larry W. Hurtado, Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. How the New Testament Came Down to Us. Dr F. W. Kantzenbach, formerly Professor of History of the Church and Christian Doctrine, University of Saarland, Germany. Albert Schweitzer. Dr Alan Kreider, formerly Professor of Church History and Mission, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana, USA. Christians, War, and Peace; The Radical Reformation. A. N. S. Lane, Professor of Historical Theology, London Bible College, England. A Flood of Bibles; William Tyndale and the English Bible. Dr Robert D. Linder, University Distinguished Professor of History, Kansas State University, Manhattan, USA. Peter Abelard; The Catholic Reformation. The late Dr Andreas Lindt, formerly Professor of Modern Church History, University of Berne, Switzerland. John Calvin. The late Dr H. Dermot McDonald, formerly Vice-Principal and Senior Lecturer, History of Doctrine and Philosophy of Religion, London School of Theology. Marcion; Basil the Great; Nestorius; Cyril of Alexandria; William of Ockham. Dr Philip M. J. McNair, formerly Serena Professor of Italian, University of Birmingham, England. Seeds of Renewal. Dr Caroline T. Marshall, formerly Professor of History, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA. Bernard of Clairvaux; Thomas Becket; Popular Religion; Jan Hus; Teresa of Avila. Dr Ralph P. Martin, formerly Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, USA. How the first Christians Worshipped. Dr James R. Moore, Professor of the History of Science, The Open University, Milton Keynes, England. Christianity and the Rise of Modern Science; The Reasonableness of Christianity. Dr James I. Packer, Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. The Faith of the Protestants; Ignatius of Loyola. Dr C. René Padilla, President, Micah Network; Executive Director, Ediciones Kairos, Buenos Aires, Argentina. An Age of Liberation, Hélder Câmara. Dr Pheme Perkins, Professor, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The Thought-world of Early Christianity Dr Richard Pierard, formerly Scholar-in-Residence and Stephen Philips Professor of History, Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts, USA. An Age of Ideology; Billy Graham. Arthur O. Roberts, Professor-at-large, George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon, USA. George Fox and the Quakers. Revd Dr Wesley A. Roberts, Pastor, Peoples Baptist Church of Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Martin Luther King, Jr. The late Dr Henderik ‘Hans’ R. Rookmaaker, first Professor of Art History, Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Art and the Spirit. The late Dr Harry Rosenberg, formerly Professor of History, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. The West in Crisis; Gregory the Great; Pope Innocent III. Dr Harold Rowdon, formerly Lecturer in Church History, London Bible College. The Brethren; Hudson Taylor. Howard Sainsbury, formerly Senior Lecturer in Education, Edge Hill College of Higher Education, Ormskirk, England. Jonathan Edwards. Dr Robert V. Schnucker, formerly Professor of History and Religion, Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri, USA. Theodore Beza; Martin Bucer. Dr Henry R. Sefton, Professor Emeritus of Church History, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Buildings and Belief; Post-Reformation Church Architecture. Dr Ian Sellers, formerly Honorary Lecturer in Church History, University of Manchester, England. George Whitefield; Philipp Spener; The Unitarians. Revd Michael A. Smith, formerly Minister of Golcar Baptist Church, Huddersfield, England. Worship and the Christian Year; Baptism; Eusebius; Peter; Paul; Ignatius of Antioch; Spreading the Good News; Clement of Rome; Ambrose of Milan; Leo the Great; Ascetics and Monks. Dr Keith L. Sprunger, Oswald H. Wedel Professor of History Emeritus at Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, USA. Puritans and Separatists. Dr Paul D. Steeves, Professor of History and Director of Russian Studies, Stetson University, DeLand, Florida, USA. The Paulicians and the Bogomils; The Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe and Russia; The Russian Church: 1500–1900. The late Dr Robert Stupperich, Professor of Church History, University of Münster, Germany. Martin Luther; Philip Melanchthon, Huldrych Zwingli Canon Dr Anthony C. Thiselton, Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology, University of Nottingham, England. An Age of Anxiety. Revd Dr Derek Tidball, Visiting Scholar, Spurgeon’s College, London. D. L. Moody. Dr Richard A. Todd, Emeritus Associate Professor of History, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA. Constantine and the Christian Empire; The Fall of the Roman Empire; Clergy, Bishops, and Pope. Dr Andrew F. Walls, Professor of the History of Mission, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, England. Outposts of Empire; David Livingstone; Samuel Ajayi Crowther; African Independent Churches. The late Revd Dr A. Skevington Wood, formerly Principal, Cliff College, Calver, England. Awakening; John and Charles Wesley; Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. The late David E. Wright, formerly Professor in Patristic and Reformed Christianity, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Cyprian of Carthage; What the First Christians Believed; Councils and Creeds; The Church in North Africa; Augustine of Hippo; Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; Cassiodorus. Dr Edwin Yamauchi, Professor Emeritus of History, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA. The religion of the Romans; The Manichaeans; The Gnostics. The late Dr John Howard Yoder, formerly Professor of Christian Ethics, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, USA. Christians, War, and Peace; The Radical Reformation. Dr Ruth Zerner, Associate Professor Emerita of History, Lehman College, City University of New York, USA. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. List of maps The Roman Empire in ad 14 24–25 Judaism in the time of Christ Israel/Palestine in the Time of Jesus The Church in Asia Minor, c. ad 50 The Conversion of Paul The Extent of Christianity by ad 100 The Extent of Christianity in ad 300 Councils and Creeds: The Church in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries The Barbarian Invasions The Church in the West in the Sixth Century The First Monks The Extent of Islam by 661 The Empire of Charlemagne Justinian’s Empire, c. 560 The Final Rift: The 1054 Schism The Spread of Franciscan Monasteries by 1300 The First Crusade 1096–99 Heresy in Medieval Europe The Church and Learning: 1100–1700 Pilgrim Routes of Medieval Europe Celtic and British Missions to Europe The Spread of Cluniac Reform The Spread of Cistercian Monasteries Orthodox Missions 860–1050 Christianity in Russia c. 1050 German Protestantism in 1618 French Protestantism 1560–1685 Religious Affiliation in Europe in 1560 Catholic Missions in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Catholicism in Europe in 1650 The Church in Europe in 1700 Christianity in North America in 1650 Pietism in Europe Nineteenth Century Protestant Missions to Asia Nineteenth Century Missions to Africa List of Time Charts The Christian Centuries Beginnings: ad 1–325 Acceptance and Conquest: ad 325–600 A Christian Society: ad 600–1500 Reform and Renewal: 1500–1650 Reason, Revival, and Revolution: 1650–1789 Cities and Empires: 1789–1914 A Century of Conflict: 1914–2001 List of illustrations/photographs Limestone cliffs, Qumran, where many of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. View across the Sea of Galilee. Family tomb of Herod the Great, Jerusalem. Scale model of Second Temple, Jerusalem. Statue of St Peter, Cathedral of Syracuse, Sicily. Statue of the Apostle Paul by Adamo Tadolini, Rome. Reconstructed Stoa of Attalos, Athens. Ruins of ancient Laodicea, Turkey. Third-century fresco of the Good Shepherd, in the Catacombs of San Callisto, Rome. Baptistery of the Basilica of St Vitalis, Sbeïtla, Tunisia. St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai Peninsula. Giant sculpted head of Constantine the Great, Rome. Statue of Ambrose of Milan, Rome. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. Mosaic of Justinian I, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy. Statue of Augustine of Hippo, Prague. Coptic Christian monastery of St Antony, Egypt. Greek monastery of Mar Saba, near Bethlehem, West Bank. Celtic high cross of St Martin, Iona Abbey, Scotland. Pope Gregory I dictating. Mosaic of the Virgin Mary between Justinian I and Constantine I, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. Emperor Charlemagne window, Chartres Cathedral, France. Virgin Mary and Child mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. Romanesque abbey church of Cluny, Burgundy, France. King Henry II and Thomas Becket in stained glass, Canterbury Cathedral. Fresco of Francis of Assisi, by Simone Martini, Assisi, Italy. Pope Urban II preaches the First Crusade at Clermont. Crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers, Syria. Crusader Church of St Anne, Jerusalem. The fortress-like Cathedral of Albi, France. Statues on the West façade, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Chartres. West façade of Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, France. Pope Urban II consecrates the new church of the Abbey of Cluny, France. Artist’s impression of a medieval monastery. Cloister, Cadouin Abbey, Dordogne, France. Page from the fifteenth-century ‘Book of Hours for Parisians’ showing the monastic orders. Statue of Cyril and Methodius, Kiev. Baptistery of St John, Pisa, Italy. Jan Hus, priest, philosopher, and reformer, Prague. Relief of Catherine of Siena, Rome, Italy. John Wyclif, English scholar, translator, and reformer. Erasmus monument in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Sculpted head of Martin Luther, Frederikskirken, Copenhagen, Denmark. John Calvin, French humanist scholar and reformer. Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli differ over the meaning of the eucharist at Marburg. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. Woodcut of translator William Tyndale being burnt at the stake. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus. Interior of St Peter’s Basilica, Rome. Ceiling of the pilgrimage church, Wies, Bavaria. Sixteenth-century manuscript of Suleiman the Magnificent besieging Vienna. Baroque façade of St Paul’s Roman Catholic church, Macau, China. Cathedral of The Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Havana, Cuba. Ruins of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Michael of the Missions,
 Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Spanish Catholic Mission of San Xavier del Bac, Tucson, Arizona. Statue of John Wesley, St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Statue of Johann Sebastian Bach, Thomaskirche, Leipzig, Germany. George Frideric Handel, composer of Messiah. Johannes Kepler, German mathematician and astronomer. French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes. Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and philosopher. Bust of Jean-Jacques Rousseau by James Pradier, 1835, Rousseau Island, Geneva, Switzerland. St Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow. Bishop celebrates the Russian Orthodox liturgy, Vysokopetrovsky Monastery, Moscow. Equestrian statue of Napoleon Bonaparte. Barricade thrown up during the Paris rising of 1848. Engraving of Pope Pius IX. Otto von Bismarck, German statesman and author of the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf. Bustling city of London in the nineteenth century. Children in a London slum, photographed by Thomas Barnardo. William Booth, founder and first General of the Salvation Army. William Wilberforce, leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. Victorian Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Statue of Cardinal John Henry Newman, London. American evangelist Dwight L. Moody preaching in London. Charles Grandison Finney, ‘Father of Modern Revivalism’. Statue of Charles Darwin, author of On the Origin of Species. Karl Marx, author of Das Kapital. Porch of the slave house, Goree Island, Dakar, Senegal. Explorer David Livingstone. Party of British missionaries who sailed to China in 1866. Ludwig Nommensen, German Lutheran missionary to Sumatra. Orthodox Ethiopian rock-cut Church of St George, Lalibela. Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler. Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth. Billy Graham evangelistic crusade, New Jersey, USA. Mao Zedong, founding father of the People’s Republic of China. Christian church in a village near Beijing, China. Desmond Tutu, first black Archbishop of Cape Town. Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, Washington DC, USA. Sigmund Freud, founding father of psychoanalysis. Main entrance to Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp, Poland. Storefront Hispanic Pentecostal church, New York, USA. Orthodox priest, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Statue of Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Crystal Cathedral, Garden Grove, California, USA. Engraving of a self-portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn. Image of Pope John Paul II, Rome. Women worship at a Catholic church in China. Preface Nearly two thousand years ago Jesus of Nazareth was put to death on a cross in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. Today, worldwide faith in the risen Christ has grown as never before, not just in the so-called Christian West but in the new centres of Christianity in Africa, South-East Asia, and South America. How has the belief of a handful of persecuted and frightened people in Jerusalem expanded so extensively? How did it outlive the mighty Roman Empire and outlast the more recent empires? How did the Christian churches, denominations, movements, doctrines, and beliefs we know today come into being? How has the faith passed from generation to generation, and from country to country? These are a few of the questions we attempt to answer in this book. To write the full story of the rise of the Christian faith in one volume is an almost impossible task. In trying to tackle it, we have called upon the expertise of many contributors. We have involved writers from many countries throughout the world, and drawn on wide resources for photographs, illustrations, and maps. The aim has been to draw a rounded picture of the worldwide development of Christianity, focussing on key movements, outstanding Christian leaders, crucial turning-points, and revolutionary breakthroughs. This cannot claim to be a comprehensive history of the church; however, the compression necessary to a book of this length offers the prospect of exciting new perspectives across the centuries, a bird’s-eye view of 2000 years of Christianity. Is it objective history? Yes – if we mean that it is written by experts, well informed on their subjects, and abreast of modern views. Yes – if we mean that it claims to be accurate, scholarly, and balanced. But no history can be detached. It is written largely by scholars who are Christians, and who write with a sympathetic understanding that breathes life into their accounts. They are committed both to Christianity and to the unhindered pursuit of truth; they haven’t disguised or avoided the darker, depressing, or disgraceful aspects of the varied story of Christianity. The story is an exciting one, yet also complex; we have tried not to over-simplify difficult questions. Wherever possible, we have presented material visually and graphically, to give a ‘feel’ for the period concerned, to see the wood as well as the trees. We have principally in mind those who come new to the subject, excited by the discoveries, gripped by the unfolding story, and wanting an account which is not so superficial as to be unsatisfying but which wears its learning lightly. We have tried to let the facts speak for themselves. Preface to the Revised Edition This new revised edition adheres to the aims of the original book. However, we have redesigned and re-arranged material to make things clearer and easier to follow, and also taken the opportunity to update, and to bring the story down to the twenty-first century. In summary, for this edition we have: • Removed some introductory material on historiography to allow more space for the narrative history • Completely revised, re-styled, checked, and re-edited the text throughout • Added important new text – for example on Jesus, the Thought World of Early Christianity, and the Future • Added dates for all significant named persons • Added scripture references and texts • Added a useful glossary of ecclesiastical and theological terms • Created around 40 new full-colour maps • Revised and re-designed all Timelines • Created a single, comprehensive index • Completely re-illustrated the book in full colour throughout • Added section summaries, study questions, and suggested further reading for students • Completely re-designed the entire book, with a larger format, more readable typeface, and clearer layout It is the hope of editors and contributors alike that this book in its new form will open up the story of the Christian faith to a new generation of readers and students. Tim Dowley Dulwich, London 2013 1 Beginnings ad 1–325 Summary Christianity rapidly spread beyond its original geographical region of Roman-occupied Palestine into the entire Mediterranean area. Something of this process of expansion is described in the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. It is clear that a Christian presence was already established in Rome itself within fifteen years of the resurrection of Christ. The imperial trade routes made possible the rapid traffic of ideas, as much as merchandise. Three centres of the Christian church rapidly emerged in the eastern Mediterranean region. The church became a significant presence in its own original heartlands, with Jerusalem emerging as a leading centre of thought and activity. Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) was already an important area of Christian expansion, as can be seen from the destinations of some of the apostle Paul’s letters, and the references to the ‘seven churches of Asia’ in the book of Revelation. The process of expansion in this region continued, with the great imperial city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) becoming a particularly influential centre of mission and political consolidation. Yet further growth took place to the south, with the important Egyptian city of Alexandria emerging as a stronghold of Christian faith. With this expansion, new debates opened up. While the New Testament deals with the issue of the relationship of Christianity and Judaism, the expansion of Christianity into Greek-speaking regions led to the exploration of the way in which Christianity related to Greek philosophy. Many Christian writers sought to demonstrate, for example, that Christianity brought to fulfilment the great themes of the philosophy of Plato. Yet this early Christian expansion was far from unproblematic. The ‘imperial cult’, which regarded worship of the Roman emperor as a test of loyalty to the empire, was prominent in the eastern Mediterranean region. Many Christians found themselves penalized as a result of their insistence on worshipping only Christ. The expansion of Christianity regularly triggered persecutions. These were often local – for example, the Decian persecution of 249–51, which was particularly vicious in North Africa. Chapter 1 Jesus His life, ministry, death, and its consequences ‘Christianity’ without ‘Christ’ is a meaningless word; and without Jesus Christ, there would be no Christianity about which we could write a history. ‘Christ’ is a Greek word, translating the Hebrew participle, ‘Messiah’, both of which simply mean ‘someone who has been anointed’. The very first Christians applied this title to Jesus of Nazareth so quickly that, by the time of the letters of the apostle Paul a generation later, it functioned almost like a surname, Jesus Christ; thus it is hardly surprising that the early disciples were soon given the nickname, ‘Christians’, for those who belong to Christ (see Acts 11:27). It is a curious quirk of history that, while Jesus himself seems never to have had a proper education, was not formally trained or ordained, never held any rank or high office or earned much money, probably never walked further than a hundred miles from his home, during a brief period of wandering and preaching, and finally suffered a humiliating execution at a relatively young age, yet arguably his brief life, ministry, death, and its consequences have had a greater effect on human history than anyone else. The Roman Empire in ad 14 Did Jesus of Nazareth exist? No serious historian really doubts that Jesus actually lived and died in the first-century Roman Empire, as evidenced by the major ancient historians. Tacitus (Annals 15.44.3) tells us that the early Christians, who were wrongly blamed by Nero for the fire in Rome in ad 64, took their name from Christ who was executed under Pontius Pilate in Judaea, while Suetonius says that debates about Christ led to such unrest that the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in ad 49 (Claudius, 25.4). Pliny writes to the Emperor Trajan around ad 111 for advice about what to do with people in his province in Asia Minor who worship ‘Christ as a god’ (Letters, 10.96). In addition, later Rabbinic traditions say that ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ was executed ‘because he practised sorcery and led Israel astray’ (bSanhedrin 43.a). Such historical evidence from Romans and Jewish opponents alike is very significant and provides the core for research in what is often called the ‘Quest for the Historical Jesus’: the first phase of which started with German scholars such as Albert Schweitzer around the turn of the nineteenth and early twentieth century; the ‘new Quest’ began with Ernst Käsemann in 1953; while recent work by scholars such as E. P. Sanders and N. T. Wright is usually seen as the ‘Third Quest’, in which biblical and other sources are scrutinized to see what can be determined about the historical life and death of Jesus. What are the main sources? Beyond these historical mentions of Jesus in Roman and Jewish writers, the main sources about Jesus are the four Gospels ‘according to’ (rather than ‘by’) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John found in the Bible. There are other texts also called ‘gospels’ not found in the canon of the Christian scriptures; these ‘non-canonical’ works are mostly less narrative or historical in form, being sayings, discourses, revelations of Jesus, and are probably written a couple of generations later than the canonical Gospels. These four have a similar structure, describing the life and ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist, with an extended concentration on his final week in Jerusalem, his arrest, trial, and execution – and what happened afterwards. This means that their form and literary genre is very similar to ancient biographies of famous people, which concentrated on their public lives, exemplified in their deeds and words, culminating in their death. It is important to recognize that even ancient history writing is not like what we call history today, and nor are the Gospels like video-diaries, simply recording what was done or said. Like other ancient ‘lives’, they seek to interpret eyewitness and other material to explain the importance of their subject – Jesus – after years of prayer and meditation through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – to bring out the truth about Jesus’ deeds and words, life and ministry, death, and resurrection. Most New Testament scholars think that Mark was written first, and his account is followed by Matthew and Luke, who also have access to collections of Jesus’ teachings; these three Gospels are often called the ‘Synoptics’, because they can be ‘looked at’ together, while John is probably composed independently of them, although he too includes some very early traditions. Judaism in the time of Christ The Thought-world of Early Christianity Twenty-first century students are familiar with terms such as cultural diversity and globalization. Christianity was born in a cultural setting that experienced its own forms of intellectual and religious diversity, brought into conversation with each other thanks to the global expansion of the Roman Empire. The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles display the three distinctive threads in this tapestry: Jewish, Greek, and Roman. Jesus was born into a world of pious Jews, devoted to their traditions and to the Jerusalem Temple. At the same time, many first-century Jews imagined a day when God would raise up a new anointed one (messiah) to right the wrongs of injustice and liberate Israel from foreign rule. They found the religious vocabulary for these hopes in passages from the Hebrew prophets, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. So Luke’s Gospel has the adult Jesus begin his public career by announcing that God’s Spirit now rests on him. The time of fulfilment is at hand (Luke 4:14–21). Though Jesus, himself, would have known those scriptures in Hebrew, and their translations into the Aramaic spoken in Palestine, Luke and the other New Testament authors employ the Greek translations used by diaspora Jews since the third century bc. Called ‘the Septuagint’ (lxx), these Greek versions sometimes create new meanings for Greek words to translate Hebrew concepts, or substitute a familiar Greek concept for the Hebrew. For example, the Greek word diath e - k e - ordinarily means a will or testament, but in the lxx it translates the Hebrew berîth, ‘covenant’. Alexander the Great’s Eastern conquests in the fourth century bc had spread Greek language, civic organization, and culture throughout the region. Attempts by his successors to create a thoroughly ‘Greek city-state’ and religious culture in Jerusalem resulted in persecution and rebellion in the mid-first century bc (1 Maccabees 1:1–15). The limestone cliffs, above the Qumran archaelogical site, in which many of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Around three-quarters of the scrolls from the immediate area were found in 1952 in Cave 4Q, in the middle of the photograph. Tim Dowley Associates Important religious concepts emerge among Jews opposed to the world being created by Alexander’s successors, illustrated in Daniel 7–12. The present world belongs to a predestined series of ‘evil empires’, hostile to God’s righteous ones. A series of symbolic visions reveals the truth about history to the seer, including its eventual termination (7:15–18). Instead of the human series of flawed or pious leaders, cosmic powers, demonic or angelic, determine the apocalyptic story of empires, each more evil than its predecessor. God’s righteous people felt themselves to be living in the last days, (Daniel 10:18–11:45). Finally, the angelic powers, represented by Michael, will end the situation. Divine judgment will be enacted punishing the wicked and rewarding the faithful (Daniel 12:1-12). The Lord’s prayer asks God to protect believers from the perils of living in the evil days at the end of the world: ‘do not lead us into [the time of] testing, and deliver us from the evil one’ (Matthew 6:13). Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls Evidence for the importance of this apocalyptic view of the world was provided by discovery of a major collection of biblical manuscripts, liturgical books, community rule books, and other writings belonging to a sect of Jews claiming to be the righteous remnant, a community of the new covenant (Dead Sea Scrolls). A sharp dualism divided its members, ‘children of light’, from other Jews, ‘sons of darkness’. The former were sustained in their strict adherence to the Mosaic Torah as interpreted by the sect by a Spirit of Holiness, or angel of light. The rest of humanity was deceived by the Prince of Darkness. As Christians would do later (Luke 24:25–27), the ‘new covenanters’ (Essenes) discovered predictions of their founder, the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’, of his opponent, the ‘Wicked Priest’, and of the eventual coming of priestly and royal messiah figures in words of the Hebrew prophets. These messianic agents are frequently depicted as heavenly figures. For example, a priestly figure claims, ‘who shall be like (me) in my judgment […] for my position is with the gods’ (4Q491) and an exalted royal figure ‘will be called son of God, and they will call him son of the Most High’ (4Q246). With the advent of Roman power in the region, the final evil empire shifts from Alexander’s successors, as in Daniel, to Rome. A work from the first century bc, the ‘War Scroll,’ provides elaborate descriptions of the final battles between the Sons of Light and the forces of evil, the ‘Kittim’, whose tactics reflect Roman military practice. The earthly struggle which engulfs the nations of the world mirrors a heavenly conflict that ends with the defeat of Evil. The New Testament concludes with a comparable apocalyptic overthrow of Rome, the nations under her sway, and the Satanic forces, but leaves ‘the saints’ out of the battle. It calls upon the righteous to endure suffering and reject any collusion or cultural accommodation with ‘the beast’ (Revelation 13:5–9). Pax Romana As Rome emerged from the civil wars that marked the end of the Republic into its own position as a global power, its divine right to rule nations was embodied in mythic tales and monuments. Virgil’s Aeneid transformed the minor character who survived the Greek destruction of Troy into ‘pious Aeneas’, semi-divine founder of the Julio-Claudian line and of Roman military glory. Roman conquests made her the heir of Alexander’s empire. Roman authors make extensive use of legends about Alexander, the Great. He can illustrate the moralist’s cautionary tale against abandoning the simplicity of traditional Roman values for corruption by the wealth and luxury of the east. Or he can celebrate the overthrow of capricious, tyrannical regimes by a ruler who establishes a new order of peace based on justice. Monuments such as temples, statues, and altars, represented imperial power as the source of justice and world peace. For example, Augustus’ temple to Mars Ultor (the Avenger), meeting place for the senate when considering military affairs, included a monumental statue of the divinized Julius Caesar, as well as panels by Alexander the Great’s court painter. Claudius even had its Alexander repainted as Augustus. An inscription from Ephesus (c. 49 bc) acclaims the living Julius Caesar, ‘the god who has appeared visibly and universal saviour of human life’. Acclaiming Roman emperors as though their benefits to humanity entitled them to divine honours could spark conflict between Jews and Romans, as it did when Caligula ordered a monumental statue of himself erected in the Jerusalem temple (Philo, Leg. 203). Though Luke–Acts depicts Roman governors as more just than enraged local authorities who drag Christians before them, Luke cannot accept Augustus as the ‘saviour’ who brought peace to the world (Luke 2:1–14). Alexander’s conquests established Greek as the lingua franca of the region and the Greek style city-state as the dominant political organization. Alexandria in Egypt, with its great library, emerged as the centre of textual, literary, and scientific learning. Greek medicine, rhetoric, and philosophy also spread throughout the region providing a common cultural language for the educated elite. Even the isolationist ‘new covenanters’ employed common patterns of civic associations in their community rules and of Greco-Roman military manuals in the War Scroll. Greek philosophy Religious activities might assure the safety of one’s household, the prosperity of a local community, or the continued peace of the empire, but it was philosophy which taught individuals to take rational control of their lives. Schools founded in fourth century bc Athens by Plato, Aristotle, Zeno (Stoics), and Epicurus pursued technical debates and developed further teaching. For larger audiences, the interest of the Greek philosophical schools lay in their therapies for disordered souls. What is the best way for human beings to attain happiness? How can passions such as anger, greed, and self-centredness be checked or overcome? What responsibilities do human beings have to the larger community? Stoics understood human reason as part of a rational spirit which pervaded the entire universe and was responsible for its complex order. At the end of each cosmological cycle everything collapsed into the primordial fire from which it had devolved. Therefore bringing one’s passions under control by self-control and self-examination could be described as living according to nature’s law. Much unhappiness, the Stoic argued, flows from attachments to things not under our control. Hence Stoics were celebrated for a calculated indifference, and willingness to commit suicide, rather than suffer dishonour or public torture. Epicureans countered that everything has emerged from the interactions of various types of atoms in an infinite universe. Death is nothing more than the atoms untangling. Gods have no interest in human affairs. They agree that many human passions are irrational sources of misery. But the solution is to live life as pleasantly as possible, without fear among like-minded friends. Unlike the Stoics, Epicureans advocated withdrawal from public affairs. Hence opponents accused Epicureans with atheism and hatred of humanity. The ‘wicked’ who think there is no afterlife in Wisdom 2:1–11 seem to be Epicureans. God’s wisdom is vindicated when they are shown the immortal happiness of the righteous (Wisdom 3:1–4; 5:1–8). Itinerant Christian missionaries might be confused with another philosophical type, the Cynic with rough cloak, leather bag, and staff. Cynics appealed to the figure of Socrates. They eschewed all social conventions, castigating audiences for their preoccupations with family, property, honour, and other things unnecessary to sustain life. Cynics also mocked other philosophers, who depended upon wealthy patrons for support. Paul’s insistence on his own independence of external support would have sounded comparable (1 Corinthians 9:1–18). But as Paul insists, the Christian gospel of salvation through faith in a crucified messiah shatters the conceptual world of both Jew and Greek (1 Corinthians 1:18–25). Pheme Perkins Where did Jesus come from? Ancient biographies usually begin with the person’s public debut, with perhaps a brief story about their birth or childhood, and sometimes a note about the family history, genealogy, or ancestral city. Mark begins with the adult Jesus arriving to be baptized by John (Mark 1:2–11). Matthew takes it back to the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, told from Joseph’s viewpoint, with wise men coming to pay homage, and a genealogy that goes back to David and Abraham (Matthew 1–2). Luke begins with the birth of the fore-runner, John the Baptist, the journey of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and Jesus’ birth in an inn, narrated from perspective of Mary and the women, with humble poor shepherds coming to the manger; there is a brief story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple, and his baptism concludes with a more universal genealogy going right back to Adam (Luke 1–3). On the other hand, rather than human stories, John is clear that Jesus’ origin is truly cosmic: ‘in the beginning was the Word’, who not only was ‘with God’, but who is also God, yet who took on human flesh and dwelt among us to reveal what God is like (John 1:1–18). Where did it all take place? Like other ancient biographies, all four Gospels begin their main narrative with the subject’s public debut, as Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist; he then undertakes an itinerant ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing. This was not at all uncommon in first-century Israel-Palestine, where such wandering prophets would gather groups of followers. So Jesus calls his first disciples, who were fishermen and workers in Galilee. Most of his ministry takes place in the towns and ports around this large inland lake. Mark devotes the first half of his Gospel to this period, which could all happen in the space of only a few months; after discussing his identity with his disciples, Jesus decides to go down to Jerusalem (Mark 8.27–38), where he is then arrested and dies. Following Mark, Matthew organizes his Gospel similarly, although he structures it around five major discourses of Jesus’ sayings and teachings. Luke prefers to arrange it geographically, as the Galilean ministry leads into a long journey section from Galilee to Jerusalem (9:51–19:26), before Jesus’ final week and Passion. Once again, John is different, as he describes various visits of Jesus up and down to Jerusalem over two to three years before his final Passover there. Again, like ancient lives, the bulk of the Gospels’ narrative is taken up with their accounts of the subject’s deeds and words, his teaching and his mighty acts, culminating in his final days and death. Sunset view across the Sea of Galilee – also known as Lake Tiberias, Gennesaret, and Kinneret – the setting of much of Jesus’ ministry: see, for example, Matthew 4:18–22, 15:29; Mark 1:14–20, 7:31; Luke 5:1–11; John 6:1. dreamstime What did Jesus do? Jesus’ primary activity was to proclaim the ‘kingdom of God’ breaking into our world, which was accompanied by various healings and miracles. Once again, such preaching would be expected of such wandering prophet teachers and healers. Most of Jesus’ miracles are healings, performed to help those crippled by sickness or disease, at their own request or that of their loved ones (for example, Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the flow of blood, Mark 5:21–43); like some Old Testament prophets, Jesus sometimes even raised people from the dead (see for example Luke 7:11–17; John 11:1–44). Jesus’ other miracles demonstrated his control over nature, such as the feeding of the 5,000 or the storm on the lake (Mark 6:30–52). Some people say we cannot be expected to believe this in our rational world; actually, such stories are very common in all forms of ancient literature, including their history books, as well as in other cultures. It really depends on our prior assumptions: if we rule such things out as impossible in advance, then they have no place in an historical account today. On the other hand, if we accept and believe in Jesus as the Son of God who was raised from the dead, then it should not be surprising that he could do extraordinary things. For the evangelists, the much more important question is what the purpose of these miracles was: often they remind us of, or even fulfil, Old Testament stories, and they point to who Jesus is, and what he is doing. Thus John calls miracles ‘signs’, as he links them to discourses and teachings which explain the significance of Jesus; see, for example, how his account of the feeding of the 5,000 leads into the debate about Jesus as the ‘bread of life’ (John 6:1–59). What did Jesus say? After his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, Jesus comes back into Galilee preaching that ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’ (Mark 1:15). The English word ‘kingdom’ sounds very masculine, concrete, and powerful, while both the Hebrew, malkuth, and Greek, basileia, are feminine abstract nouns, meaning ‘rule’ or ‘sovereignty’. Jesus never defines the ‘kingdom’, preferring to tell short stories, or parables, about what it is ‘like’ – and they are very strange, full of seeds growing secretly, good and bad fish caught in the same net, wheat and weeds growing together until the harvest, managers rendering accounts to their superiors, lost coins, lost sheep, and lost children (see the collections of parables in Mark 4, Matthew 13, and Luke 15). It is all about what happens in the topsy-turvy world when we let God actually be God, rather than doing it our way. Interestingly, although Mark regularly calls Jesus ‘rabbi’, or describes him teaching (see Mark 1:21–22; 4:1–2; 4:38; 5:35, etc.), he records surprisingly little actual teaching. On the other hand, both Matthew and Luke include a lot of Jesus’ teaching, which they probably derive from a shared source of his sayings, though scholars are divided about whether it was oral or written down. Matthew collects this teaching material together into five great sermons or ‘discourses’ (chapters 7–9, 10, 13, 18, 22–23), while Luke prefers to give it a narrative setting, often on the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem (9:51–19:26). Jesus is regularly described, especially by those who do not consider themselves to be Christians, as one of the great moral teachers of the human race. However, his direct ethical teaching, often in pithy phrases with teasing word-play, is extraordinarily demanding, while appearing to be impractical or impossible to put into practice in the ‘real world’. Money and possessions are to be given away (Mark 10:23–27; Matthew 6:19–33; Luke 12:22–34); marriage is enhanced, with no divorce permitted and celibacy commended (Mark 10:2–12; Matthew 19:12); non-violence is advocated to the point of ‘turning the other cheek’, praying for enemies, and putting away the sword (Matthew 5:38–44; 26:52; Luke 6:27–30). The Christian church has struggled to follow or obey this teaching in both personal and public affairs over two thousand years; not everyone can become a monk or nun with their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience! How did he die? Like other ancient biographies, all four Gospels devote the largest amount of space – about a quarter to a third of their narrative – to the events of Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem, leading to his death. The three Synoptic Gospels begin their accounts with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his protest about the commercialization in the Temple (although John places this at the very start of his ministry, John 2:13–22). Over the next few days, Jesus continues his ministry as a teacher and healer in and around the Temple courts, which produces challenges to the religious authorities, who respond in turn and question Jesus about his authority (Mark 11:27–33). On the Thursday evening, he gathers his disciples together for a ‘last supper’, in what seems to be a Passover meal in the Synoptics, in which he institutes the holy communion for his followers, although John describes Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, rather than the eucharist (John 13:1–11). After this meal, he goes to a garden, called Gethsemane by Mark and Matthew, to pray; although it is on the way back to safety in Bethany, the delay to struggle in prayer to accept the will of God means he is still there when Judas arrives with soldiers to arrest him. Jesus is then subjected to hearings before the Sanhedrin, the assembly of the Jewish religious leaders, and before Pilate as the Roman authority. After being flogged, he is crucified: the most humiliating and painful execution in the ancient world. Yet, the extraordinary thing is how each Gospel depicts the crucifixion as the climax of its story: Mark has shown how Jesus was misunderstood throughout his ministry, so now he feels abandoned even by God, while Matthew describes God’s answer in the earthquake which ensues (Mark 15:34–39; Matthew 27:46–54). In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has been particularly concerned for women, and for bringing ordinary people into the kingdom in prayerful trust in his father, and now he dies as he lived, caring for women, his executioners, and the penitent thief (Luke 23:27–30, 34, 39–43, 46). Meanwhile, John brings to a climax his account of Jesus being divinely in control since ‘in the beginning’, showing how he is concerned for his mother even on the cross, where he fulfils scripture and finally accomplishes everything (John 19:25–26, 28, 30). Israel/Palestine in the time of Jesus Beside the family tomb of Herod the Great, Jerusalem, is a huge disc-like stone that would have sealed the entrance. The tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was buried, had a similar stone blocking entry; see Matthew 28:57–60. Tim Dowley Associates What happened next? The Romans had long discovered that executing the ringleader was usually the best way to stop such enthusiastic religious renewal movements, and there are plenty of examples of their use of this tactic around the first century. The Christian movement is the only one which is different – in that the leader’s humiliating death on a cross was not the end – and this demands an historical explanation. According to Luke’s second volume, the book of Acts, the same disciples who betrayed and denied Jesus at his arrest and simply fled away, started to turn Jerusalem upside down a couple of days later with the extraordinary claim that God had raised him from the dead. The earliest witness is Paul’s account of Jesus’ appearances, which he had ‘handed on’ to the Corinthians in the early days; the list in 1 Corinthians 15 reads like a very early tradition that goes back before Paul himself to shortly after Jesus’ death. The Gospels, which were written down some years after Paul, all contain descriptions of the empty tomb, with some accounts of Jesus’ appearances to Mary, Peter, and others. Modern historical enquiry can be uncomfortable about claims of people rising from the dead, and yet history has to provide some explanation of the change in the disciples, and why the Jesus movement did not die out like the others. If the authorities had the body of Jesus in safekeeping, it would have been easy to produce it to stop the early church in its tracks. However one assesses the historical arguments for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it remains a fact that this is the constant thread throughout the rest of the New Testament, and in the experience of Christians for the next two thousand years, without which there would be no history of Christianity – and no need for this book! Richard A. Burridge Chapter 2 The Church Begins From Jerusalem to Rome Overview of the 1:50 scale model of Jerusalem, based on research by the Jewish archaeologist Michael Avi-Yonah, now housed at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Top left, dominating the city, is Herod’s Temple, with the four defensive towers of the Roman Antonia Fortress adjoining. Tim Dowley Associates Jesus was executed by the Roman authorities in the city of Jerusalem around ad 30 on a trumped-up charge of sedition. Not a promising start for a new religion! But within three days the rumour was spreading around the city that he was alive, that he had been raised from the dead. Some of his closest followers claimed that they had actually seen him, and seven weeks later his resurrection was being boldly proclaimed in public in the city where he had been executed. The effects were startling; thousands of Jews and Jewish converts, who had returned from other parts of the Roman Empire to live in or visit Jerusalem, came to believe that Jesus was alive, and that his death on a cross was, in fact, part of God’s plan to save humanity. During the following weeks and months many others joined them. This marked the birth of the Christian church, as recorded in the book of Acts. The birth of the church During the days immediately following the resurrection, Jesus’ followers claimed to have met him. After these encounters with the risen Jesus, no one could convince them that they were following mere pious hopes. They were not deluded: they had really seen their master and he was alive for ever! They said Jesus explained to them things they had never understood before; for example, that it had been necessary for him to suffer and die before entering into his rightful glory. Now – in the light of his resurrection and the explanations he gave – the cross of Jesus took on an eternal dimension of significance for them, despite the wickedness of the people responsible for his death. But belief in Jesus’ resurrection did more than simply rebuild the faith of his disciples and cast new light on the meaning of his death. The apostles also said that he commissioned them to take into all parts of the world the good news of what God had done by sending him to rescue the human race. But they would not be alone in this task: Jesus promised them God’s Holy Spirit to empower them (Matthew 28, Luke 24, and Acts 1). Peter Peter came from Bethsaida, on Lake Galilee, and his fisherman father John originally named him Simon. He was living in Capernaum, with his wife, brother, and mother-in-law, when first introduced to Jesus by his brother Andrew. He quickly became the leader of Jesus’ twelve close followers, was often their spokesman, and was the first to declare publicly that Jesus was the Messiah, at Caesarea Philippi. Jesus gave him the nickname ‘Peter’ (Cephas in Aramaic) meaning ‘rock’. Rash and hot-blooded, Peter said that he was ready to die with Jesus, then three times denied knowing him on the night of Jesus’ arrest. But Peter was one of the first to meet the risen Jesus, who specifically restored him to his position as leader. After Jesus ascended, Peter took the initiative in the appointment of a successor to Judas among the Twelve, and was the chief preacher when the Holy Spirit came, on the Day of Pentecost. Peter and John took the lead in the early days of the church, disciplining Ananias and Sapphira after they deceived the believers, healing and preaching, and taking a special interest in the mission to Samaria. Peter’s mission Later, Peter had a vision which launched the mission to take the gospel to the Gentiles. Although he was wary of this new venture, and later wavered under the criticism of strict Jewish Christians at Antioch, Peter welcomed Paul’s work among the Gentiles, and gave it his full support at the Council of Jerusalem, which welcomed Gentile converts without imposing on them all the rigours of the Jewish law. Peter was imprisoned by King Herod Agrippa I (r. ad 41–44), but miraculously escaped the night before he was due to be executed. Peter’s later career is obscure. He may have worked in Asia Minor, perhaps visited Corinth, but ultimately settled in Rome, where he described himself as a ‘fellow elder’, which may mean that he was one of the church leaders, but not the sole leader. Two New Testament letters bear his name, and he was probably the main source for Mark’s Gospel. Peter is believed to have been martyred at Rome during Nero’s persecution of Christians, around ad 64. Although he did not found the church at Rome, Peter’s martyrdom in Rome gave it great prestige. Paul’s association with the church added to this, and the Church of Rome later claimed to be the chief church in the West of the Empire, and the only one with assured apostolic roots. A considerable cult began to surround Peter and Paul from about ad 200. By the time of the Emperor Constantine, the site of Peter’s martyrdom was held to be that now occupied by the Vatican basilica of St Peter’s. In the time of Pope Leo I (c. 391/400–461), Peter was given greater prominence. The popes of Rome now claimed direct spiritual descent from Peter, the leader of the Twelve. Several apocryphal works are attributed to Peter. A Gospel of Peter was banned from use at Rhossos (near Antioch) in ad 190 because of its heretical tendencies. The Apocalypse of Peter, which includes a graphic description of hell, and the Acts of Peter, which tells the famous ‘Quo vadis?’ story of Peter returning to Rome to be crucified, also date from the later part of the second century. Michael A. Smith Statue of Peter, holding the traditional keys of heaven and hell, outside the Cathedral of Syracuse, Sicily, Italy. Tim Dowley Associates Some writers have suggested that a better name for the ‘Acts of the Apostles’ would be ‘Acts of the Holy Spirit’. The book tells of the coming of the promised Holy Spirit, and how the earliest Christians witnessed to their Lord in various parts of the Roman Empire. The account in Acts gives just part of the picture. It tells of only a few important churches and individuals – particularly Peter (the key figure in chapters 1–12) and Paul (who comes to the fore in chapters 13–28). But Acts gives a clear insight into the patterns of growth of early Christianity and – together with the New Testament letters – provides most of what is known about the spread of the gospel in the first century. Above all, Acts stresses that the Holy Spirit’s power enabled the disciples to witness effectively in their world. A tiny band of discouraged and disillusioned men and women was suddenly transformed into a bold company of enthusiastic evangelists. Their work began in Jerusalem, but quickly spread to other centres. Thirty years later, the new faith had reached most parts of the eastern section of the Roman Empire, and probably even beyond, as well as westwards to Rome itself. The Jerusalem Christians In spite of Jesus’ commission to preach the good news in all the world, most of his followers in Jerusalem at first restricted themselves to evangelizing fellow Jews. This was not quite so limited as might appear, since thousands of Jews regularly flocked to Jerusalem for their most important religious festivals, and many actually settled permanently in Jerusalem – though doubtless maintaining links with their home countries. Paul’s travelling companion, Barnabas, provides one example (see Acts 11). It was probably largely through the witness of these unknown Jewish converts from the earliest days that the Christian faith spread throughout the Empire and beyond in the first few decades, though Acts reveals little about this. But among the Jerusalem Christians there were a few who were more forward-looking. They grasped the full meaning of Jesus’ final command to his disciples and tried to reach beyond the orthodox Jews. One disciple, named Stephen, saw more clearly than others that the faith was for all people, and that a break with Judaism was inevitable. He belonged to a group of Jews called ‘Hellenists’, who spoke Greek and adopted a freer life-style than the more conservative Jews. Stephen came into conflict with some of the Jewish leaders as a result of his bold preaching. This led to his quick trial and summary execution, and a general outburst of persecution against the Jerusalem Christians, and particularly the Hellenists (Acts 6, 7). Persecution and expansion Many Christians were forced to flee from Jerusalem because of this persecution, but they spread the good news about Jesus wherever they went – throughout the province of Judea and into Samaria. Philip, another Hellenist, led the way by evangelizing extensively among the despised Samaritans, who were half-caste and unorthodox Jews (Acts 8). This resulted in mass conversions. Other Christians travelled to the coast of Palestine, to the island of Cyprus, and to Antioch in Syria, the third city of the Empire, preaching the message of Jesus with great success. It was in the metropolis of Antioch that the revolutionary step of evangelizing non-Jews was first taken by some of these nameless refugees from Jerusalem. This move was only reluctantly accepted by the Christians back in Jerusalem. It was in Antioch, too, that the followers of Jesus were first called ‘Christians’ (Acts 11:19–30). During these early years, Peter evangelized among his fellow-Jews, but only within his own country. On one occasion he was rather reluctantly forced to preach the good news directly to Gentiles (Acts 10); but it took him at least ten years to decide that the gospel was for all people. It was left to a one-time opponent of Christianity to become the champion of Gentile evangelism and to pave the way for the integration of Jews and Gentiles into a common community. The Church in Asia Minor, C. AD 50 The Conversion of Paul Paul: the model missionary Saul of Tarsus is better known to us as Paul. Saul was his Jewish name; Paul his Roman name – or cognomen. He is mentioned in Acts as leading the persecution of Christians which followed the death of Stephen (Acts 7:54–8:3). For a time he violently opposed the Christian movement; but suddenly the chief persecutor became a leading witness to the risen Christ, as a result of his personal encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. After a period in Arabia (Nabatea), Paul returned home to Tarsus (near the south-east coast of modern Turkey), where he may have spent the next ten years or so, spreading the gospel (Acts 9:1–30). When the Jerusalem believers sent a man called Barnabas to visit the Christians in Antioch, he fetched Paul from Tarsus to assist him. This marked the beginning of the well-documented part of Paul’s life, which was to be so important for the expansion of Christianity. Paul quickly emerged as leader of the dynamic group of Christians in Antioch who now became the leaders in a concerted campaign to evangelize the Gentiles. Jerusalem was to remain important in the worldwide Christian community until the Roman army destroyed the city in ad 70 – and Paul reported back to the believers there after each of his missionary journeys abroad. But it was the church at Antioch which actually set the pattern for the future. Paul A man small in size, with meeting eyebrows and a rather large nose, bald-headed, bow-legged, strongly built, full of grace; for at times he looked like a man, and at times he had the face of an angel. Second-century description of Paul Paul was ideally equipped to be the greatest of all missionaries. He belonged to three worlds: Jewish, Greek, and Roman. His parents were strictly orthodox Jews who used the Hebrew language and observed Jewish customs at home. They were sufficiently concerned about a correct religious upbringing to send Paul to Jerusalem at an early age – possibly to live with an older, married sister (Acts 23:16-22). In Jerusalem Paul learned the traditions of his people and was ultimately taught by Gamaliel the Elder, one of the most famous rabbis of the day (Acts 22:2–5). But Paul also inherited Greek culture, which had permeated the eastern Mediterranean following the conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 bc). Paul later showed his mastery of Greek in his pastoral letters, which can be counted among the classics of Greek literature. In addition, Paul was a Roman citizen, which gave him special freedom of movement, protection in his travels, and access to the higher strata of society. Ultimately it meant that he probably died by the sword, a Roman prerogative, rather than on a cross. Paul Paul was born into a Jewish family in Tarsus, where his parents were Roman citizens. He was a strict Pharisee, and even as a young man was outstanding in his orthodox beliefs and in his hatred of followers of Christ. He was present at the stoning of Stephen, and was commissioned by the High Priest to arrest Christians in Damascus. Paul was converted through a vision of the risen Christ on his way to Damascus. Temporarily blinded, he was befriended by a Christian called Ananias, and when cured began to preach Christ in Damascus. However, attempts were made against his life, and he escaped by being lowered down the city wall in a basket. After a spell in Arabia, Paul may have returned to Damascus, but later went to Jerusalem, where he was befriended by Barnabas and introduced to Peter. Further Jewish threats against his life forced him to flee again, and he returned to Tarsus. There followed a period of roughly ten years about which little is known; but Paul must have been active in Christian work, for when the Gentile mission began to flourish at Antioch, Barnabas summoned him from Tarsus to join in the work. Paul’s mission Paul visited Jerusalem again, taking famine-relief funds, and discussed the Gentile mission with Peter. Then Paul began the evangelistic work which made him the outstanding Christian missionary of the first century. He journeyed with Barnabas and John Mark to Cyprus and central Asia Minor (modern Turkey), founding a number of churches. On his return, he had a violent disagreement with Peter at Antioch about how far Gentiles had to accept Jewish customs when they became Christians. This question was settled soon after at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15). Paul now set out again, this time with Silas (Silvanus), travelling through Asia Minor and crossing into Macedonia. Further successful missionary work followed, especially in Macedonia, Corinth, and Ephesus. After another visit to Jerusalem, Paul left with the youthful Timothy for further evangelism, finally returning to Jerusalem with money collected for the poor Christians there. On his arrival, Paul was seized by a Jewish mob and would have been lynched, but for the prompt intervention of the Roman garrison. He was kept in protective custody at Caesarea Maritima for two years by the Roman governor Felix, whose successor, Festus, suggested that Paul be tried at Jerusalem. But Paul refused to face such a biased court and appealed to the Roman Emperor for justice. Nineteenth-century statue of the apostle Paul by Adamo Tadolini, outside St Peter’s Basilica, Rome. The great missionary is shown brandishing a sword, possibly the ‘sword of the spirit’ (Ephesians 6:21). © Amy Nicolai/Dreamstime.com Paul was taken to Rome, surviving a shipwreck at Malta on the way. After two years in Rome (at which point the account in Acts ends), Paul was probably released and spent further time in missionary work, before being martyred on a second visit to Rome during Nero’s persecution of ad 64. Paul’s letters Paul’s surviving letters are found in the New Testament. Galatians was probably written before the Council of Jerusalem; 1 and 2 Thessalonians date from Paul’s first journey into Greece; and Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians come from his last spell in Greece, before his arrest in Jerusalem. Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon were probably written from Rome during Paul’s first imprisonment (though some scholars date them from an earlier imprisonment in Ephesus). 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus were probably written after Paul’s first stay in Rome. Paul’s letters were highly valued during his lifetime, and were probably collected together soon after his death. In 1 Clement (written about ad 95) they are already accepted on an equal basis with other Scripture. The letters were certainly in their present, collected form by the time of Marcion (about ad 140). Paul’s theology was not well understood in the period immediately after his death. This was partly because the heretic Marcion rejected the Old Testament and much that was Jewish in the New Testament, and made great use of Paul’s writings to support his ideas. As long as Marcion’s heresy was a threat, mainstream Christian teachers did not stress many of Paul’s distinctive doctrines, such as law and grace. Augustine was the first to give full weight to Paul’s theology. Michael A. Smith Paul’s achievement Paul’s missionary achievements were immense. The years ad 35–45 remain obscure, but during the next ten or twelve years his activity was astounding. Between ad 47/48 (when he set sail with Barnabas on his first missionary journey) and ad 57 (when he returned to Jerusalem for the last time) he established flourishing churches in major cities in the Roman provinces of Galatia, Asia, Macedonia, and Achaia (Acts 13–23). When he wrote to the church in Rome, towards the end of this period, he spoke of his work in the eastern provinces as being essentially finished, and indicated that he was now thinking about visiting Spain (Romans 15:23-24). How was it that Paul played such a decisive role in the early Christian mission? First, it was he who championed the mission to the Gentiles and won its acceptance by the rest of the church. Second, it was Paul who developed the theological defence of the Gentile mission that is clearly set out in Romans 1–11. He worked very hard to keep Jewish and Gentile Christians united. With this purpose in view, he kept in constant touch with the mother church in Jerusalem, collected a considerable sum of money among Gentile converts for the needs of the Christians in Judea, and regularly underlined the importance of Christian unity in his letters. The reconstructed Stoa of Attalos, Athens, built by King Attalos II of Pergamon between 159 and 138  bc . The Stoic school of philosophers derive their name from the word ‘stoa’, where they met. The apostle Paul may have debated in the nearby Stoa Basilicos. Tim Dowley Associates Finally Paul’s principle of being ‘all things to all people’ helped him move with relative ease between the synagogues, his base of operations, and Greco-Roman society, where ultimately the gospel received its greatest response. Paul’s personal example as a self-supporting travelling missionary, and his concentration on important cities rather than rural areas, provided a pattern for others to follow. The church extends Paul was not the only pioneer missionary among the early generation of Christians. In spite of the earlier hesitancy of Peter and the other apostles, they too probably travelled far and wide in the cause of Christ. Almost certainly Peter preached the gospel in Rome and the apostle John evangelized long and successfully in the province of Asia. According to more disputed traditions, Mark helped found the church in the city of Alexandria, and Thaddeus (possibly also known as Lebbaeus or Jude, Acts 1:13) the church in Edessa (about 180 miles north-west of Syrian Antioch). Thomas is traditionally believed to have taken Christianity to India. Hundreds of unknown believers simply talked about their new-found faith as they travelled to and fro throughout the Empire and beyond in the course of business or other responsibilities. The Extent of Christianity by ad 100 By the middle of the second century, little more than a hundred years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, flourishing churches existed in nearly all the provinces between Syria and Rome. Though their origins are shrouded in obscurity, there were probably also churches in the great cities of Alexandria and Carthage, as well as beyond the eastern fringes of the Empire and in Gaul (modern France). A century later, a significant Christian minority existed in almost every province of the Empire and also in several countries to the east. After another fifty years, around ad 300, Christians formed a majority in parts of the provinces of Africa and Asia Minor. In addition, Osrhoene, with its capital of Edessa, adopted Christianity nationally, as did Armenia later. Finally, the Emperor himself began to support Christianity in ad 312. Why Christianity expanded Several factors encouraged the rapid spread of Christianity in this short period. One was the existence of a unifying language and culture – at least in the cities – from Italy to India. In the East, Alexander the Great and his successors established Greek as the common language – often referred to as koine, the Greek word for ‘common’. Paul and the other early Christians were able to use this language to spread their message. Jews were scattered throughout the Empire and beyond, and provided Christian missionaries with an entry into the pagan world. Since the first Christians were Jews, they used the synagogues – both inside and outside Judea – as centres for evangelism. Although most of their fellow-Jews remained unconverted, many God-fearing Gentiles, who were attracted to Judaism but had not gone through the ritual of total integration into the Jewish community, became Christian converts. In fact, in spite of the growing divergence between the church and the synagogue, the Christian communities worshipped and operated essentially as Jewish synagogues for more than a generation. With a few notable exceptions, three hundred years of peace and general prosperity prevailed throughout the Roman Empire from the time of Augustus. This period has become known as the pax Romana (Roman peace), and allowed great freedom of travel throughout the Mediterranean world. For example, Paul could travel along superbly engineered roads, and until the final years of his life also expect the protection of the Roman government. The pagan world was experiencing a certain insecurity. Local political independence had disappeared, old loyalties and traditions were losing their hold, and sensitive people felt that their age was morally and religiously bankrupt. Many sought security in the intimate fellowship provided by the newly-popular Eastern religious cults, while others found escape in the excitement of the ever more brutal public games and entertainments. Such an atmosphere of dissatisfaction and unease prepared people to listen to the Christian gospel. Early Christianity in no way depended solely upon professional leaders for its practice and growth. Each Christian was both ‘priest’ and ‘missionary’. The churches have been described as the most inclusive and the strongest of all the various associations in the Roman world. The distinctions between Jew and Gentile, slave and freeman, male and female were in theory, and usually also in practice, abolished in the Christian community. All were active in sharing the message of Christ with others. W. Ward Gasque Chapter 3 Establishing Christianity Challenges to the New Faith The early followers of Jesus were marked out by their clear convictions about doctrine and ethics. They recognized only one message of salvation, only one God, and only one Saviour. Once a person became a follower of ‘the Way’, a new life-style was demanded of him or her. This exclusiveness of early Christian belief and behaviour attracted many people. But it was also a cause of offence; enemies accused Christians of aloofness and of hating the present world. Strong forces were acting against the spread of Christianity. Paganism still maintained a strong grip on people, the world was as morally corrupt as it has ever been, and the young church soon attracted the unyielding opposition of the ruling authorities. Jesus, Paul, and Peter had all been executed by the state, and other leaders were similarly dealt with. Caesar versus Christ As long as the church was regarded as simply a Jewish sect, it was tolerated by the Roman authorities. For its first thirty years Christianity – like Judaism – enjoyed protection by Roman law. Partly for this reason, Paul emphasized the benefits of good government. But once Judaism and Christianity began to diverge, Christians lost the special privileges given to Jews. Jews were specially exempted from taking part in the Roman cult of emperor-worship. Christians too sought this exemption, since they recognized only one God and served one Lord, Jesus Christ. But when the church became largely composed of Gentiles, it was no longer possible to shelter under the wing of Judaism. Christians refused to offer a pinch of incense on an altar to the divine Emperor – an act which most intelligent people considered to be merely symbolic – and this was interpreted as unpatriotic. As a result, the official Roman attitude towards Christianity became less and less favourable. Persecution Adherents of the new religion were subjected to a series of persecutions. These began with brief, and apparently localized, persecution in Rome under Nero in July 64. According to Tacitus, a Roman historian writing 50 years later, Nero tried to shift the blame on to the Christians after a rumour arose that he had started a fire which destroyed much of the city of Rome. The scale and length of these persecutions seem to have become exaggerated. But Revelation, the final book of the Bible, gives evidence of the persecution of Christians in the province of Asia under the Emperor Domitian (ad 81–96). Letters have survived between the Emperor Trajan (ad 98–117) and Pliny the Younger, Governor of Bithynia (ad 111–113), which make it clear that by their time profession of Christianity could be a capital offence. The policy which Pliny followed, and which was commended by the Emperor, did not involve seeking out Christians for special punishment. But if a person was discovered to be a Christian, he or she was given an opportunity to renounce the faith. Refusal to do so meant execution. This was probably normal policy at this period. Nero’s massacre . . . Nero charged and tortured some people hated for their evil practices – the group popularly known as ‘Christians’. The founder of this sect, Christ, had been put to death by the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, when Tiberius was Emperor. Their deadly superstition had been suppressed temporarily, but was beginning to spring up again – now not just in Judea but even in Rome itself, where all kinds of sordid and shameful activities are attracted and catch on. First those who confessed to being Christians were arrested. Then, based on information obtained from them, hundreds were convicted, more for their anti-social beliefs than for fire-raising. In their deaths they were made a mockery. They were covered in the skins of wild animals, torn to death by dogs, crucified or set on fire – so that when darkness fell, they burned like torches in the night. Nero opened up his own gardens for this spectacle, and also gave a show in the arena, where he mixed with the crowd or stood dressed as a charioteer on a chariot. As a result people began to feel sorry for the victims, although they were guilty of being Christians and deserved death. They realized that they were being massacred, not for the public good, but to satisfy one man’s mania. Ta citus, Annals 15.44 Seven letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, written when on his way to Rome to be executed for being a Christian, survive from the beginning of the second century. In his letters he mentions others who ‘preceded me from Syria to Rome for the glory of God’. One of his letters is addressed to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna (Izmir in modern Turkey), who in turn became a martyr at the age of around eighty-six, about ad 156–160. Around the middle of the second century, Bishop Telesphorus of Rome was executed. During the reign of the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180), who thoroughly disliked Christians, believers were executed in Rome itself, and in the provinces of Gaul and Africa. The legal grounds for the persecution of Christians are often obscure. Popular rumour suggested that Christians were cannibals (based perhaps on a misunderstanding of the Lord’s Supper), atheists (like the Jews, Christians had no images in their shrines), and incestuous (their ‘love’ for one another was well known). These accusations were easily answered by Christian writers, but little notice seems to have been taken of their arguments. Apparently, simply to bear the name ‘Christian’ was a crime, probably because rejection of the gods of the Romans was felt to threaten the peace and prosperity that the gods were believed to bring. Refusal to worship the Emperor could also be taken as a sign of treason. Despite periods of persecution, the church continued to grow. Tertullian famously wrote: ‘The blood of the martyrs is seed.’ The later full-scale, systematic persecutions under the Emperors Decius (249–251) and Diocletian (284–305), the fiercest of all the early opponents of the Christian faith, helped to purge the church of some of its lukewarm members. Very little is known about the details of church expansion during the second and third centuries. We have just glimpses of a lively church, steadily expanding in size and in its influence on society. The faith of a persecuted minority was quietly and gradually becoming a major force in the Empire. The Religions of the Romans The Romans originally practised an agricultural religion, in which they worshipped a mysterious, impersonal force that pervaded nature. They placed strong emphasis upon correct ritual. For them religion was a contract, summarized in the Latin saying, ‘I give that you may give.’ The Romans believed that they had to strive to preserve ‘the peace of the gods’ by such means as sacrifices, and by a special banquet where images of the gods were featured. Every Roman made offerings at each meal to the spirits of the farm, and the spirits of the larder. The Roman gods During the period of the Roman Republic (509–27 bc) the Romans adopted Greek myths and identified the Greek gods with their own native gods. • Jupiter (the Greek god Zeus) was ‘the best and the greatest’, who made known his will by lightning and thunder. The Temple of Jupiter, built on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, was the most important of all, to which a victorious general or emperor made his way in the ‘triumph’, a ceremonial procession in which prisoners and plunder were paraded. • Juno (Greek, Hera) was responsible for women and marriage. Her month of June – or more precisely the second half – was considered particularly favourable for marriages. • Mars (Greek, Ares), the god of war, was second in importance only to Jupiter. • Neptune (Greek, Poseidon) was the god not only of the sea, but also of rivers. His priests were known as ‘bridge-builders’ (in Latin, pontifex). The pontifex maximus (high priest) was an elected official, who supervised the religious calendar and sacrifices. This title has survived, and is today applied to the pope. • Mercury (Greek, Hermes) was the god of both merchants and thieves – a suggestive combination. • Venus (Greek, Aphrodite) was the goddess of love and beauty. In Corinth 1,000 sacred prostitutes plied their trade at her temple as part of her cult. Many of the months of our year are named after terms in Roman religion. For example, January is named after the two-faced god Janus, whose gate was kept open during times of war and shut in times of peace. It was usually open. Reading the signs The prediction of future events and the interpretation of past occurrences played a major role in Roman religion, politics, and warfare. The Romans regarded unusual occurrences as signs that the ‘peace of the gods’ had been broken. Signs or ‘prodigies’ included such freaks as a foal with five feet, hot stones falling from heaven, and shields sweating blood. The Romans were especially concerned to discover the will of the gods from auguries, by observing the ‘signs’ given by birds. From the temple precinct they would observe the flight of birds, their numbers, and their calls. During military campaigns, the Romans also carefully observed the feeding of chickens. When some of his sacred chickens did not eat, one impatient naval commander threw the fowls into the sea with the comment, ‘Let them drink since they will not eat!’ But this impious act was said to have cost him the battle. No military campaign or official act was supposed to be conducted without discovering the will of the gods by some act of divination. To disregard the signs was an act of ill omen, and to ignore the stars promised ‘disaster’. In 44 bc Julius Caesar was forewarned of his assassination by dreams and other omens, which he ignored. Edwin Yamauchi Challenges from within When we read Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians), it becomes clear that many problems faced the church within its own membership. There was a tendency to divide into parties centred on the personalities of human leaders, and possibly also differences in emphasis over doctrines. A prominent member of the church was living in immorality, individual Christians were taking each other to the law-courts over minor disputes, there were misunderstandings about the meaning of Christian liberty, disorders during the weekly worship service, and even false teaching about the resurrection. Paul’s other letters also reveal controversies and power-struggles in the midst of encouragement and growth. Some people opposed the mission to the Gentiles, some questioned Paul’s role in the church, and others tried to mix Christian and non-Christian religious beliefs. The first letter of John (1 John) speaks of those who once belonged to the Christian community but had now departed, denying the true humanity of Jesus Christ. Rival movements Early in the second century, Gnostic ideas began to be strongly promoted within the churches. Church leaders recognized that such views would lead to the destruction of the Christian faith and had to be vigorously opposed. Another challenge came from Marcion, a wealthy ship-owner, who came to Rome shortly before ad 140 and began to teach his own brand of anti-Jewish Christianity. Marcion organized his followers into a movement rivalling mainstream Christianity, establishing its own communities throughout the Empire, and presenting a real threat to the young faith. A few decades later a movement arose in Phrygia, central Asia Minor, strongly emphasizing the imminent return of Christ and the end of the age. It became known as Montanism, and combined prophetic enthusiasm with strict asceticism, leading to a split in the church which lasted for more than a century. Later, theological controversies concerning the nature of Christ occupied much attention, disrupting Christian unity and weakening the church’s witness. The church brought together ideas and people from many backgrounds. It had to cope with people who had become Christians in disreputable seaports such as Corinth, notorious for its immorality. It had to resolve the pressures to revert to pagan practices or to Judaism, sort out its attitudes towards contemporary customs and cultures, and thrash out beliefs and opinions about issues on which there were no precedents to guide its thinking. Leading thinkers By the end of the second century, the new faith was on its way to becoming the most forceful and compelling movement within the Roman Empire. Many of the keenest minds of the day were emerging as followers of ‘the Way’. A series of writers defended the Christian faith against both popular accusations and more sophisticated attacks. Although most of the writings of these ‘apologists’ were dedicated to the emperors, their real audience was the educated public of the day. If such writers could answer the accusations of the enemies of Christianity and point out the inherent weakness of paganism, they hoped this would help to change public opinion concerning the good news and lead to conversions. Men such as Aristides the Athenian, Justin Martyr, his disciple Tatian, Athenagoras (c. 133–190), Theophilus of Antioch (d. c. 185), the unknown author of the Letter to Diognetus, and Melito, bishop of Sardis, all directed their intellectual and spiritual gifts to this cause. Towards the end of the second century Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, Gaul, wrote five monumental books against the Gnostic heresies of his area, together with a book entitled Proof (or Demonstration) of the Apostolic Preaching. Several of his other books have been lost. His theology was grounded in the Bible and the church’s doctrines and helped provide a steadying, positive influence in the church. Irenaeus wrote of the cosmic implications of the work of Christ and God’s plan in history, and paved the way for the later Christian interpretations of history by writers such as Augustine. Marcion Marcion was born in Sinope, Pontus, on the Black Sea, the son of the bishop. He arrived in Rome about ad 140 and immediately fell under the spell of the Gnostic teacher Cerdo, who believed that the God of the Old Testament was different from the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The God of the Old Testament was unknowable; the latter had been revealed. The former was sheer justice; whereas the God of the New Testament is loving and gracious. Marcion became the chief spokesman of this message and introduced his own distinctive ideas. Was Marcion a Gnostic? He was certainly gnostic in his belief that the physical body was inherently evil, and so arguing for asceticism and a docetic understanding of Christ. But he never supported the fanciful and mythological views of redemption held by other Gnostics. His garbled Christian views were firmly repudiated by the church in Rome, and Marcion was excommunicated in ad 144. Justin Martyr asserted that Marcion was aided by the devil to blaspheme and to deny that God was the creator of the universe. Tertullian wrote Against Marcion about ad 207, regarding Marcion as a formidable foe of true Christian doctrine. Marcion developed Cerdo’s division between the God of the Old Testament and the New. He held that the Old Testament God was basically vengeful and the author of evil. God was solely concerned for the Jewish people, for whom he was prepared to destroy all others. In contrast, the New Testament God is a God of grace and love for all, who disclosed himself in Jesus Christ, his Son. Marcion stated that Jesus Christ was not born of a woman; he suddenly appeared in the synagogue at Capernaum in ad 29 as a grown man. For Jesus was not like any other man, except in his appearance: he was a new being on the earth. Marcion’s view of Christ was similar to that of the Docetists: although he stated that Christ’s life and crucifixion were necessary for salvation, he also believed that Christ’s human experiences and sufferings were merely apparent, not real. Since creation was not an act of the good God of the New Testament, the Christian must reject the world. The body must be denied and discarded, since the soul and spirit alone are redeemed. As a result, Marcion rejected the idea of the resurrection of the body. Marcion’s scriptures Believing that the God of the Old Testament favoured the Jews exclusively, Marcion rejected the entire Old Testament, and also those New Testament writings which he considered favoured Jewish readers – for example Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Hebrews. He removed from the rest of the New Testament what appeared to him to compromise his own views, including the Pastoral letters (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus). So he was left with only a mutilated version of Luke’s Gospel (omitting the nativity stories) and ten letters of Paul, who he believed was the only apostle who did not corrupt the gospel of Jesus. The Marcionites set up their own churches, modelled on orthodox congregations. They did not use wine at communion, because of the ascetic emphasis of their teaching. Some of the Marcionite ideas spilled over into the various Gnostic sects, and Marcionites were themselves affected by Gnostic views. Marcionite concepts spread throughout Italy and as far afield as Arabia, Armenia, and Egypt. In the East they exercised a considerable influence for many decades. A number of Marcionite villages are known to have existed near Damascus as late as the fourth century. In the West their influence declined, mainly as a result of their becoming linked with the Manichaeans. H. Dermot McDonald Tertullian Tertullian, the ‘father of Latin theology’, was born in Carthage, in the province of Africa, around ad 150. He was converted to Christianity as a man of about forty, and soon began writing books to promote the Christian faith. The large number he wrote in Greek are now lost, but thirty-one in Latin survive. Tertullian Tertullian (c. 160–c. 225) was the first major Christian author to write in Latin, and therefore the first to use many of the technical words common in later Christian theological debates. He lived most of, if not all, his life in Carthage, capital of the Roman province of Africa, receiving an education typical of the late second century. Tertullian’s surviving works date from between ad 196 and 212, and reflect three main concerns: Christianity’s attitude to the Roman state and society; the defence of orthodox beliefs against heresy; and the moral behaviour of Christians. His own strict moral views led him to join the Montanists around ad 207. Tertullian wrote in a witty and vigorous style, marked by startling turns of phrase. It was he who claimed that ‘the blood of the martyrs is seed’. But his well-known questions, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ expressed a rejection of philosophy that was not true of his own work, where he demonstrated how pagan intellectual achievements could be made to serve Christianity. Tertullian’s masterpiece was his Apology, which argued effectively that Christianity should be tolerated. His longest work, the five books Against Marcion, defended the use of the Old Testament by the Christian church, and the oneness of God, both Creator and Saviour. In Against Praxeas, Tertullian developed the doctrine of the Trinity. Tertullian had two things against Praxeas: his opposition to the Montanist ‘New Prophecy’, and his view of God. Tertullian said that Praxeas ‘did two works for the devil in Rome: he put to flight the Paraclete and crucified the Father’. Tertullian also covered a number of other subjects. In the Exclusion of Heretics Tertullian used an argument from Roman law to claim the Scriptures as the exclusive property of the church, against Gnostic heretics. Tertullian’s On the Soul is the first Christian writing on psychology. On Baptism is the earliest surviving work about baptism; in it Tertullian criticized the baptism of children. In other books, Tertullian argued for rigour in church discipline, remarriage, and fasting; and opposed flight to avoid persecution. Everett Ferguson Tertullian’s Apology underlined the legal and moral absurdity of the persecution directed against Christians, while other books offered encouragement to those facing martyrdom. He attacked the heretics, explained the Lord’s Prayer and the meaning of baptism, and helped develop the orthodox understanding of the Trinity, being the first to use the Latin word trinitas (trinity). Tertullian later joined the Montanist movement. His intellectual brilliance and literary versatility made him one of the most powerful writers of the time, almost as influential as Augustine in the development of theology in the West. If the River Tiber reaches the walls, if the River Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky does not move or the earth does, if there is famine, if there is plague, the cry is at once: ‘The Christians to the lion!’ What, all of them to one lion? Tertullian, Apology While Tertullian was at work in Carthage, Alexandria, to the east, was becoming another key intellectual centre for the Christian faith. Alexandria had been an important cultural capital since its foundation by Alexander the Great in the fourth century bc, and possessed one of the great libraries of the ancient world. It was probably in Alexandria that the Old Testament was first translated from Hebrew into Greek. The famous Jewish philosopher, Philo, lived in Alexandria at about the time of Jesus: he attempted to re-interpret Judaism in terms of Greek philosophy. The school of Alexandria By about ad 185 a converted Stoic philosopher named Pantaenus was teaching Christians in Alexandria. He probably also travelled to India, and was a very able thinker. Pantaenus was succeeded as leader of the school for those preparing for Christian baptism (‘catechumens’) first by Clement, then by Origen. In spite of periods of intense persecution, the school at Alexandria gained great importance, strengthening the faith of Christians and attracting new converts to the faith. The crucial achievement of Clement and Origen was to communicate the gospel in terms which could be understood by people familiar with the highest forms of Greek culture. They established once for all the intellectual respectability of the new faith. In addition to being a creative theologian, Origen also made an immense contribution to biblical scholarship. He was one of the few Christian scholars before the Reformation to learn Hebrew, so that he could read the Old Testament in its original language. He was later forced to leave Alexandria for Caesarea Maritima, where he continued writing and teaching. During the third century the church extended its frontiers, both geographically and socially, at an unparalleled rate. It was beginning to assume the proportions of an empire within the Empire. The constant travel between different churches, the synods of bishops, the letters carried by messengers back and forth across the Empire, and the loyalty which Christians showed to their leaders and to one another impressed even the emperors. Yet such things could also easily be interpreted as a threat to the government. Violent persecution In ad 250 the most violent persecution the church had yet faced was instigated by the Emperor Decius (249–251). Imperial edicts commanded all citizens of the Empire to sacrifice to the traditional Roman gods. Those who did so were given certificates (libelli in Latin) as evidence that they had obeyed the order. Those who refused to obey, and were unable (or unwilling) to obtain false libelli from sympathetic or corrupt officials, were executed. Many Christians complied to save their lives. Others were able to obtain certificates without having actually sacrificed. But an unknown number of Christians were imprisoned or executed – among them the bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Origen Origen (c. 185–c. 254) was the greatest scholar and most prolific author of the early church. He was not only a profound thinker, but also deeply spiritual and a loyal churchman. Origen was born into a Christian family in Alexandria, and became a teacher, first of new converts, and later of more advanced students. Origen, who led a very ascetic life, was forced to move to Caesarea, in Palestine, because of the antagonism of Bishop Demetrius of Alexandria. Origen travelled widely in response to invitations to mediate in church disputes, and to speak before prominent people. He died as the result of injuries inflicted during the persecution under the Emperor Decius. Origen produced the Hexapla, the greatest piece of biblical scholarship in the early church. It put in parallel columns the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, a Greek transliteration, the Greek translations by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and the Septuagint. The Hexapla was the basis for Origen’s interpretations of the Old Testament. His church sermons and massive biblical commentaries illustrated his theory that three levels of meaning can be found in any biblical text: the literal sense, the moral application to the soul, and the allegorical or spiritual sense, referring to the mysteries of the Christian faith. Origen’s major theological work, First Principles, attempted to present systematically the fundamental Christian doctrines: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, creation, the soul, free will, salvation, and the Scriptures. He tried first to set out clearly the faith expressed in the church, and then to clarify and draw out what was only implicit in the faith. Exhortation to Martyrdom and Prayer are examples of Origen’s writing on the Christian life. Against Celsus was his sole major writing against pagan criticisms of Christianity. Origen tried to express the Christian faith in terms of the prevailing Platonic philosophical ideas of his time. Some of his speculations, for example about the pre-existence of souls and universal salvation, were repudiated by the church, and helped bring about his later condemnation. But Greek Christian theology continued to be concerned with the problem which Origen tackled: the relationship between philosophy and the Christian tradition. Everett Ferguson Fortunately for the church, this period of testing did not last very long. Within two years, Decius died in battle against Gothic invaders from the north. Although his successor, the Emperor Gallus (251–253), kept the anti-Christian measures alive, persecution was not so widespread as under Decius. A few years later, persecution was renewed with fresh ferocity, towards the end of the reign of the Emperor Valerian (253–260). On this occasion, church leaders were singled out and ordered to worship the old gods, under the threat of exile or imprisonment. Christians were forbidden to hold church meetings, or visit Christian cemeteries, on pain of death. Finally, a particularly severe edict prescribed death for church leaders, and the confiscation of property, slavery, and even death for other Christians who would not desert the faith. Again, only a war against foreign invaders – this time the Persians – put an end to the Christians’ ordeal. Diocletian’s persecution A few decades of relative peace and prosperity followed, only to be interrupted in 303 by the most severe persecution the church had yet faced, often known as the ‘Great Persecution’. By this time Christianity had reached as far as the immediate family of the Emperor Diocletian (284–305). Many of his slaves and servants, as well as his wife and daughter, were believers, together with many others in high places – either Christian or favourably disposed to Christianity. Diocletian issued four edicts against Christianity, which were enforced with varying degrees of severity. His actions may have been intended to gain more enthusiastic support from the army, which tended to be strongly anti-Christian. The decrees of 303 ordered the destruction of all church buildings, the confiscation of Christian books, the dismissal of Christians from the government and army, and the imprisonment of the clergy. A further edict, in 304, ordered all Christians to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods. In Asia Minor, an entire town (probably Eumenia, Phrygia) and its inhabitants, who were predominantly Christian, was destroyed by soldiers. In Rome, church property was confiscated and many Christians were martyred. Christians in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt seem to have suffered particular violence. Lapsed Christians Many Christians were willing to suffer as martyrs, rather than betray their Lord by acknowledging false gods. Some, however, renounced their faith under pressure of torture and imprisonment. Others persuaded pagan neighbours to sacrifice on their behalf, or obtained false certificates from sympathetic officials. At the opposite extreme, some Christians eagerly sought out martyrdom, even when it was not forced upon them, though this was strongly discouraged by Christian leaders. Following each wave of persecution, the church was faced with the problem of what to do about those who repented after lapsing under the pressure of persecution. Baptism was generally held to cover only sins previously committed; serious post-baptismal lapses required special treatment. Some Christian leaders claimed that offences such as idolatry after baptism were unpardonable on earth; but others allowed one such occasion of forgiveness subsequent to baptism. The lapsed Christian who showed genuine penitence could be received back into church communion. Novatian Callistus, bishop of Rome (217–22), was among the more moderate and appealed to Paul’s letters and the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son (Luke 15) for proof that no sin is unforgivable if the sinner truly turns from his sins. His views enjoyed wide acceptance in the church, but were strongly opposed by Novatian (c. 200–258), a presbyter in the church of Rome during the persecution under Decius. Cornelius, a more liberal man, was elected bishop of Rome; but a minority voted for Novatian, and demanded that those who had given up faith under oppression should not be welcomed back into fellowship. Novatian, a gifted theologian, and one of the earliest Latin authors among the Christians, is believed to have been martyred during the persecution of the Emperor Valerian. Novatian split the church over this issue. Novatianists were theologically orthodox and spread quickly in the 250s. They set up a rival bishop at Carthage, gained the support of Marcian, Bishop of Arles, and also made headway in the East. They soon built up a network of small congregations, calling themselves ‘Cathari’ (pure ones), to distinguish themselves from all other churches, which they considered to be polluted as a result of their lenient attitude towards sinners. Those who joined the Novatianists had to be baptized afresh, as if they were joining the only true church. Novatianists later took their rigid stand further, refusing to have communion with people who had been married more than once, and rejecting the possibility of penance for any major sin after baptism. Novatianists were treated as heretics until the time of Constantine, when an edict in 326 granted them toleration and the right to own church buildings and burial-places. A Novatianist bishop, Acesius, was present at the Council of Nicaea in 325. In the fourth century, Novatianists spread into Spain and Egypt. Despite official toleration, Novatianists continued to be harassed by official churchmen. Nestorius attacked them at Constantinople in 428, but was restrained by the Emperor. In 429 Celestine, Bishop of Rome, deprived them of their buildings. The Novatianists were strong in Constantinople, but were probably reabsorbed into the mainstream churches with the passage of time. As early as the Council of Nicaea, Novatianist clergy were allowed to retain their rank if they returned to the ‘catholic church’. Donatus A similar division took place in North Africa, following the persecution under Diocletian. Here the arguments were clouded by personalities and questionable motives. A bishop of the church in Carthage was consecrated by a bishop who was believed to have surrendered the Scriptures to the police, and was therefore regarded as fatally tainted by stricter members of the church. A rival bishop was elected by the stricter group, and was in turn succeeded by Donatus, from whom the Donatist movement derives its name. This controversy ultimately led to the principle that the reality of baptism and of ordination does not depend on the moral character of the person who performs it, but on Christ and the Spirit. It now became general practice to accept people back into the church following a temporary lapse from the faith, provided that they gave evidence of repentance. But the Donatists rejected this position – and even re-baptized orthodox Christians who joined their ranks. Miracles and martyrs From the beginning, those Christians who gave their lives rather than betray their Lord were held in high honour by the church. The book of Acts gives considerable space to the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 6, 7). The book of Revelation honours an otherwise unknown disciple named Antipas, acknowledged by Jesus as ‘My witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you’ (Revelation 2:13), and elsewhere promises a special reward for those who have sealed with their blood their witness for Christ. During the later persecutions, the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul were given special significance. Ignatius thought of his own journey to Rome for execution as a conscious imitation of his Lord’s last journey to Jerusalem and the cross. Martyrdom became regarded by many as the ultimate sign of Christian discipleship. As a boy in Alexandria, Origen had to be forcibly restrained by his mother from leaving home voluntarily to join the martyrs in their sufferings. Origen lived a strictly ascetic life; he may even have taken the instruction of Matthew 19:12 literally, and had himself castrated. The martyrdom of Polycarp, whose execution was recorded so lovingly by a disciple, was celebrated annually by his church at Smyrna. This celebration became the pattern for the practice of venerating martyrs’ remains and commemorating their death. Later the belief developed that prayers addressed to God through the martyrs were especially effective. In the late third and early fourth centuries, the practice of the veneration of the martyrs grew rapidly. The events of the last, violent persecutions led to an exaggeration of the scale and extent of earlier persecutions. The number of martyrs and their sufferings were greatly magnified; the stories of their deaths were embroidered with all sorts of fantastic miraculous happenings and superstitions. Some converts from paganism brought with them pre-Christian ideas, so that in the church the martyrs began to take on the role that the gods had earlier played in the old religions. Relics of the martyrs were superstitiously cherished, their graves became sites of pilgrimages and prayer, and they were believed to work miracles and guarantee special blessings to believers. Although not all church leaders approved of such things, the veneration of martyrs and other saints took an increasingly important place in popular religion. North African Christians North African Christianity tended to be extremely rigorous, with martyrs seen as ideal Christians. Churchmen in North Africa tended towards a view of the church which regarded it as so pure as to forget that it consisted of a community of redeemed sinners, leading to repeated controversies and divisions. Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (c. 248–258) provides an example of rigorous North African faith, although he advised moderation towards the back-sliders during the persecution under Decius, and in certain circles gained a reputation for compromise. Cyprian was under vows to remain single, and lived a life of poverty, though he was born into wealth. He rejected the reading of all literature other than the Bible and distinctively Christian books, despite being educated in some of the best schools of his day. The first monks In Syria and Egypt the earliest Christian monks appeared, in the late third century. Christian hermits or anchorites (from a Greek word meaning ‘one who withdraws’) forsook ordinary society for a life of prayer and solitude in the desert. One of the most famous of these early hermits was Antony of Egypt (c. 251–356), who gave away all his possessions at the age of twenty, in order to serve Christ free of distraction. In spite of his desire to be alone, he was constantly beset by curious visitors, and finally organized a cluster of hermit cells around him. Although physically withdrawn from the world, Antony strongly influenced Christians of his day and inspired many conversions to Christ. Constantine becomes Emperor At the height of the most severe of the persecutions directed against the Christians, the Emperor Diocletian voluntarily retired in 305 to live as a gentleman-farmer on his estate on the coast of Dalmatia (modern Croatia). He aimed to stabilize the government and avert civil war, by setting a precedent for orderly, peaceful succession to the office of Emperor. Earlier Diocletian had divided the Empire into two parts, the East and the West, each with its own capital and senior and junior emperors. Diocletian succeeded in setting the administrative pattern for a divided Empire (and, later, a divided church) for many centuries to come. But he did not avert civil war. Upon the death of Constantius, the chief ruler of the Western Empire, his son Constantine took command of the army in Britain and Gaul, and demanded recognition as his successor. Galerius, the pre-eminent Emperor in the East, granted Constantine only junior status. Soon Maxentius, son of Constantius’s predecessor in the West, murdered the senior Western Emperor and usurped his position. Constantine returned to Italy and marched upon Rome. His rival, Maxentius, foolishly sallied forth to meet him, and was defeated at the crucial battle at the Milvian Bridge in 312. In this way Constantine, later called the Great, became the sole master of the West. After a further struggle with Licinius, successor to Galerius in the East, Constantine emerged as supreme victor in the entire Empire. W. Ward Gasque Chapter 4 Spreading the Good News How and why Christianity expanded Christians took two main approaches to spreading their faith. They used a variety of direct methods to communicate the good news, but they also explained the faith intelligently and countered the attacks of critics, an activity often known as ‘apologetics’. Public preaching Public open-air preaching is often mentioned in the book of Acts. The Christian speaker would choose a place where a crowd gathered, attempt to catch their attention, and then proclaim the Christian message. This method must have become very hazardous after Nero’s persecution, and it is rarely mentioned during the second and third centuries, though it was possibly practised in some places, because apocryphal stories about apostles dating from this time still mention it. Preaching in the Jewish synagogues was a common tactic in the age of the apostles. Paul almost always started by preaching at the synagogue when he first arrived at a town. However, after the destruction of Jerusalem in ad 70, Jews took strong action against Christians in their midst, and certain anti-Christian additions were made to the synagogue prayers. Although there were Jewish Christians throughout the second century, the synagogues were now closed to Christian evangelism. Preaching in the Christians’ own places of worship offered another method of evangelism. The regular Sunday service gradually began to split into two parts. The first part was open to all, but the communion which followed was restricted to baptized believers. Although during the second century most church-attenders were people already sympathetic to Christianity, later the audience widened. During the long periods in the third century when Christians were not actively persecuted, many interested outsiders attended the first part of Sunday worship, and from them came a considerable number of candidates for baptism. Argument and instruction Philosophic argument in public can be traced at least as far back as the time of Socrates and the Sophists of the fifth century bc and Christians entered such debates very early. For a period, Paul argued daily with the philosophers in the market-place at Athens (Acts 17:16–34). This method continued, and often these public arguments were recorded. For example, Justin Martyr’s famous dialogue with the rabbi Trypho at Ephesus, and the discussion recorded by Minucius Felix (O ctavius), are both preserved in written form. When public preaching became dangerous, semi-private instruction took over. This practice had already been utilized to supplement public preaching. At Ephesus, Paul hired the lecture-hall of Tyrannus for Christian teaching (Acts 19:9–10). In mid-second century Rome, Justin Martyr held classes for enquirers in a room over public baths; and in early third-century Alexandria, Pantaenus (d. c. 200), Clement of Alexandria, and Origen in succession headed a well-known ‘school of instruction’ for those wishing to become Christians. Later such teaching became formalized into a new converts’ instruction-class for baptism (or ‘catechetical school’), held each year during the period before Easter, which developed into Lent. Such instruction was also the method most frequently used by Christian splinter-groups for propagating their different doctrines. Those Christians Christians are not differentiated from other people by country, language, or customs. They do not live in cities of their own, or speak some strange dialect, or have some peculiar lifestyle. This teaching of theirs has not been contrived by the invention and speculation of inquisitive men; nor are they propagating mere human teaching as some people do. They live in both Greek and barbarian cities, wherever chance has put them. They follow local customs in clothing, food, and the other aspects of life. But at the same time, they display to us their wonderful, and certainly unusual, style of citizenship. They live in their own countries, but as aliens. As citizens, they participate in everything with the rest; but endure everything as if they are aliens. Every foreign country is to them as their native country, and every homeland as a foreign country. They marry and have children, just like every one else; but they do not kill unwanted babies. They offer a shared table, but not a shared bed. …They pass their days on earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, but go beyond the laws in their own lives. They love everyone, yet are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death and gain life. They are poor, and yet make many rich. They lack everything, and yet have plenty of all things. They are dishonoured, and yet gain glory through dishonour. Their names are blackened, and yet they are cleared. They are mocked and bless in return. They are treated outrageously, and behave respectfully to others. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if being given new life. They are attacked by Jews as barbarians, and are persecuted by Greeks; yet those who hate them can give no reason for their hatred. To put it simply: the soul is to the body as Christians are to the world. The soul is dispersed through all parts of the body – and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul lives in the body, but is not of the body; Christians are in the world, but not of the world… From an anonymous Letter to Diognetus, possibly dating to the second century Personal witness Personal witness was by far the most common method of evangelism used by Christians, because it was the easiest to organize. Personal friendship formed the basis for bringing many people to Christ, but more casual encounters were used too. Justin Martyr became a Christian after talking with an old man at Ephesus, while Cyprian was converted through talking to a church elder. Later, family influence became a strong factor: Origen came from a Christian family and owed much to his parents for his Christian faith. Some idea of the effectiveness of Christian witness is given by Celsus, a powerful opponent of the faith in the second century. Celsus mentions how Christians with little or no education seized every opportunity to witness to people, and even when confronted by educated pagans would not stop pushing their opinions. Personal evangelism was often backed up by conspicuous acts of kindness. Another opponent of Christianity, Lucian of Samosata (125–180), told how a charlatan, Proteus Peregrinus, was befriended by Christians. During outbreaks of plague at Alexandria, Christians tended the sick and buried the dead when almost everyone else had fled. In fact, the Christian life-style itself was a powerful influence in evangelism. In a society where kindness, honesty, and personal purity were rare, Christians who lived out these virtues were sure to attract comment – and often serious enquiry. The personal witness of Christian martyrs also had some effect. Even hostile observers, such as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, admitted that Christian bravery in the face of death was praiseworthy. As a result of the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas at Carthage in 203, it was reported that the local prison governor was converted. The sufferings of Christian martyrs at Lyons and Vienne in Gaul in ad 177 encouraged several bystanders to declare themselves believers, even though it meant almost certain death for them, too. Perpetua on trial for her Christian faith While we were under arrest, my father, out of his love for me, tried to persuade me to shake my resolve. ‘Father,’ I said. ‘Do you see this vase here, for example, or this water pot or whatever?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Could it be called anything other than what it is?’ I asked. ‘No.’ ‘Well, in the same way, I can’t be called anything except what I am – a Christian.’ My father was so angry at the word ‘Christian’ that he made as if he would tear my eyes out. But he left it at that and departed, defeated along with his devilish arguments. During those few days I was baptized, and I was inspired by the Spirit not to ask for any other favour after the water, except physical perseverance. A few days later we were lodged in the prison. I was terrified, as I had never been in such a dark hole. What a terrible time it was! With the overcrowding, the heat was stifling. There was also the extortion of the soldiers – and on top of everything else, I was tormented with worry about my baby. I had to endure these trials for days. Then I obtained permission for my baby to be with me in prison. Immediately I regained my health, relieved of worry and anxiety about the child. Prison suddenly became a palace; I wanted to be there more than anywhere else. Then one day, while we were having breakfast, we were suddenly rushed off to court. We arrived at the forum, and immediately the news flew around the neighbourhood and a huge crowd gathered. We entered the prisoners’ dock. When they were questioned, the others all admitted their guilt. When my turn came, my father appeared with my son, dragged me from the bench, saying, ‘Make the sacrifice – have pity on your baby!’ Hilarianus, the governor who succeeded the late proconsul Minucius Timinianus as judge, said, ‘Have pity on your father’s grey head; have pity on your infant son! Offer the sacrifice for the well-being of the emperors!’ ‘I will not,’ I replied. ‘Are you a Christian?’ said Hilarianus. ‘I am!’ I confessed. Then Hilarianus passed sentence on all of us: we were condemned to the beasts. We returned to prison in high spirits. Extract from Perpetua’s diary of her imprisonment Literature Throughout this period, Christians were writing to explain the faith and refute unfounded attacks. Luke and Acts may be the first examples; they were certainly written to instruct. By the second century, such writing was well under way, aiming to commend the faith to pagans and Jews, and to counter slanders made against Christians. Quadratus, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133–190), and Theophilus of Antioch all composed such works in the second century. From the third century come the great writings of Origen, refuting the extended attack on Christianity made by the pagan philosopher Celsus. As Christians became more competent, their writings tended to specialize. Some authors concentrated on a particular audience (for example, the Jews), while others took a particular theme (for example, Lactantius’s The Deaths of the Persecutors, which claimed that all emperors who persecuted Christians came to a bad end). Orthodox Christians also devoted much time to combating unorthodox groups and thinkers, an example being Tertullian’s monumental work Against Marcion. Translation of the Scriptures from Greek into other languages also aided evangelism. By ad 300 there were versions of the New Testament in Latin, Syriac, and Sahidic (a Coptic dialect), as well as collections of biblical texts. Finally, some apocryphal fiction of this period may have had an evangelistic aim. It is possible that stories such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla (written in the second century) were produced to compete in the market of light, romantic fiction, and to commend Christian life-styles. Ruins of ancient Laodicea, Turkey. Tim Dowley Associates Christians were sometimes expatriates who could interest people from similar backgrounds. For example, the Christians of Vienne and Lyons, Gaul, came from Asia Minor. At this time Christianity was largely an urban movement; Paul tended to preach in big cities, and small Christian groups could more easily spring up in the anonymity of large towns. Deep penetration of the countryside only began in the third century, though the methods employed are unclear. Meetings and miracles Nearly every known Christian congregation started by meeting in someone’s house, such as Philemon’s house-church, possibly at Laodicea (Philemon v. 2). The home formed an important starting-point, though by the mid-third century congregations were beginning to have their own special buildings, because congregations had become too large to meet even in the courtyard of a large Roman house. Although the apostles performed many miracles during their evangelistic work (see for example Acts 5:12–16, 14:8–10), miracles did not form a significant part of evangelism during the years that followed. Eusebius mentions only a very few miracles in his history of the church during this period – and in only one incident (the exorcizing of the Paneas spring) was any evangelistic use made of them. In fact, most Christian writers were surprisingly rationalistic, and tried to discredit contemporary pagan superstition, focussing on good living rather than supernatural ‘signs’. In the late third century came the first deliberate attempts by Christian missionaries to ‘baptize’ features of pagan religions, and so overcome them by absorbing them into Christianity. Churches took over from temples, martyrs replaced the old gods in popular devotion, and the festivals of the Christian year took the place of the high-days and holy days of paganism. Reports of the work of people such as Gregory the Wonderworker (or ‘Gregory Thaumaturgus’, c. 213–c. 270) in Pontus, northern Asia Minor, and Gregory the Illuminator (or ‘Enlightener’ c. 257–c. 331) in Armenia tend to exaggerate the success brought about by miracles. In Armenia, the conversion of the royal family was followed by a national acceptance of Christianity. Such methods of ‘Christianization’ became common in later centuries throughout Europe. Michael A. Smith Chapter 5 Archaeology and Earliest Christianity What archaeologists can – and cannot – illuminate Archaeology is properly the study of ancient times. In a narrow sense, it refers to the techniques of excavating ancient sites and interpreting the objects found there, but it may also be used in a wider sense to mean the study of many areas of ancient evidence that go beyond the province of the traditional historian using literary sources. There is no rigid boundary between history and archaeology in this sense. Where the early church is concerned, the archaeologist’s interest may lie, for instance, in the study of papyri, of stone inscriptions (epigraphy), or of the development of church architecture. The special value of archaeology is not usually to prove anything; rather, it helps build up a complete picture. Its data must be assessed and compared with literary sources. Archaeology cannot prove the Bible true. If a historical text is accurate in the kinds of detail which archaeology can confirm, there will be links between the two. Such details are valuable illustrations and may help to rule out mistaken theories, but they must not be given more weight as ‘proof’ than they deserve. The book of Acts is a case in point. Many details of the names of people and officials, places and customs can be exactly illustrated from inscriptions. This does not prove the account to be historically true – but it rules out any view which holds that the writer was careless about such details. It also makes it more difficult to believe that the book was written long after the events. Biblical archaeology has caught the popular imagination through spectacular discoveries, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the dramatic story of Masada. These great finds shed important light on the contemporary Jewish world, and this in turn helps us to understand the background to Christian beginnings. But these matters need cautious and rigorous assessment: instant sensations often turn out to have been ill-founded. Traditional sites The Romans destroyed Jerusalem so thoroughly in ad 70 that today little remains visible of the city that Jesus knew. The many traditional sites are covered by churches, and the evidence for the original state of the localities has been destroyed or made inaccessible. We cannot visualize the tomb of Jesus by standing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – which is probably at or near its actual site. But we can illustrate what it was probably like from other tombs, such as the so-called ‘Tombs of the Kings’, where a disc-shaped rolling stone fits into a slot in the rock. The first missions to the Gentiles, as presented in Acts, offer a fruitful field for archaeological study. Different kinds of detail interlock. For example, Paul met a Jewish couple in Corinth, after the Emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome (Acts 18:2). This expulsion is mentioned in pagan literature and dated to ad 49 by a later writer. During Paul’s long stay in Corinth, Gallio became governor (Acts 18:12). Gallio is known elsewhere from the writings of his famous brother Seneca, and his governorship can be dated to ad 51–2 by an inscription found in Delphi. This evidence helps build a consistent and fairly precise timeline for this part of Paul’s life, and helps relate Acts and Paul’s letters. A test case is Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The famous British investigator Sir William Ramsay (1851–1939) used the evidence of inscriptions to establish clearly the extent of Galatia, and then argued that Paul’s letter was sent to southern cities such as Pisidian Antioch, in Phrygia, which Paul had visited on his first journey (Acts 13–14). This in turn suits a very early date for the letter. Thus the details of Paul’s life contained in the letter may be straightforwardly related to those in Acts. City life The city was a vital force in the ancient world, and it is crucial to see Christianity in its city setting. The faith first spread in those areas of the eastern Roman Empire where the cultures had become very mixed. Roman rule and institutions were imposed on Greek-speaking peoples, who were often deeply influenced by Eastern religions. There were also many Jews. It must have been very different from the picture given in surviving contemporary literature; Roman literature was only for the educated few, who despised such popular movements as Christianity. The everyday life of a Roman city has been remarkably preserved at Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy, which were both overwhelmed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ad 79. Paul had found Christians at nearby Puteoli twenty years earlier, and there were probably Christians here, too, though the traces are tantalizingly uncertain. In Herculaneum a tiny room, perhaps belonging to a family slave, was found to have had a wooden cross nailed to the wall and later wrenched off. In Pompeii two examples of the ROTAS-SATOR word-square, which may have been of Christian origin, were found scratched on walls. The book of Revelation was probably written around ad 95, at a time of conflict and persecution, and study of the cities of Asia to which the book was addressed reveals more about that period. The imagery used in the book was often much to the point. For instance, the people of Laodicea had constructed an aqueduct to supply their city, but the water was lukewarm and impure. The remains can still be seen, and thick deposits of calcium carbonate inside the pipes witness to the warmth of the water which once flowed through them. The words of Revelation 3:14–15 must have hit home powerfully in Laodicea; the writer said that this church was as useless and distasteful as that bad water. The written word The written word is the most important source of evidence about the earliest Christians. Books in the ancient world had usually been written on rolls made of papyrus or parchment, but this form of book was awkward to use, and the early Christians wanted to make their good news available as widely as possible. They may have been the first people to make wide use of the ‘codex’, the bound book with pages, such as we have today. Tens of thousands of papyri have been preserved in the dry climate of Egypt. Those discovered include the oldest known fragment of the New Testament, a scrap of a papyrus codex of John’s Gospel, copied about ad 130, known as the John Rylands Fragment P52, and now in Manchester, England. These papyri are important in other ways. They include hundreds of letters, accounts, certificates, receipts, and other private documents, and offer a vivid picture of everyday life and society, and of the kind of Greek which was spoken and written by ordinary people. This is important because the New Testament was not written in very literary or religious language, and is often illustrated and clarified by these examples of more popular language. Graves and epitaphs Epitaphs differ from most of the papyri in being phrased with a view to public display and posterity. The tombs of Christians are not at first easily recognized, for they use almost the same names and styles as their pagan neighbours. A famous and distinctive Christian epitaph is that of Abercius of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, dating from the late second century. Here poetic language about symbols, such as the shepherd and the fish, carried a hidden meaning for the Christian reader. Open confessions of faith are rare on tombstones, but there are some remarkable third-century examples from Phrygia which read ‘Christian to Christian’. These appear to belong to the Montanists, who insisted that Christians publicly proclaim their faith in the face of persecution. Fill me with the Fish, I pray thee, Lord Saviour. May my mother sleep well, I pray thee, Light of the dead. Aschandius, my father, dearly beloved of my heart, with my sweet mother and my brothers, remember thy Pectorius in the peace of the Fish. Part of a third-century Christian epitaph from Autun, Gaul The most important evidence comes from the catacombs in Rome. These were huge complexes of underground burial-galleries, excavated by the Christians in the soft tufa-stone near roads outside the city. The total length of their corridors is said to be more than 500 miles (800 kilometres). Some 35 catacombs are known, the oldest of which, bearing the names of Lucina, Callistus, Domitilla, and Priscilla, date from later in the second century. Third-century fresco of the Good Shepherd from the crypt of Lucina, in the Catacombs of San Callisto (St Callixtus), Rome. Sonia Halliday Photographs Inscriptions and paintings from the catacombs help clarify the development of Christian art and symbolism, and thereby of Christian beliefs and devotion. The cross and the fish are common Christian emblems, although the history of their usage remains a puzzle. The fish probably came from an acrostic; the first letters of the Greek words Iesous CHristos THeou Uios Soter (Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour) make up the word ICHTHUS (Greek for fish). Here was a secret sign which also summed up the heart of Christian belief and served as a simple aid to help explain it. However, there are huge gaps in the records. About many important subjects archaeology reveals little. Most of the information concerning the growth of the church comes from literature, and particularly from the Christian historian Eusebius. Christianity had become a powerful force when in the third century Rome tried to suppress it. There are traces in the inscriptions of the renewed strength of pagan cults. Yet material remains of the life and witness of the Christians are rarely found. Eusebius tells of an entire Christian town exterminated in the persecution of Diocletian: this may have been Eumenia in Phrygia, where there are many Christian epitaphs. There is just the occasional glimpse of personal faithfulness to Christ. A crude third-century drawing in Rome depicts a boy with one hand raised in an attitude of worship before a crucified figure with an ass’s head. Beneath are scribbled the mocking words, ‘Alexamenos worships his god’. The first church buildings The earliest Christians had no special buildings, but often met in private houses, as mentioned in several places in the New Testament. Recent discoveries at Capernaum in Galilee have led some to believe that a very early house-church met there, in what may once have been the house of the apostle Peter. The earliest known church building is usually thought to be at Dura-Europos on the River Euphrates, where a house dating from ad 232–3 was adapted soon after its construction to make a larger hall suitable for about 100 people to assemble for worship. The walls feature painted scenes from both the Old Testament and the Gospels. In Rome, about eighteen churches still bear the name of an early owner or patron, and their origins as house-churches go back before the time of Constantine. They are now almost wholly replaced by, or incorporated in, later buildings. After Constantine the picture changed completely; Christianity was officially recognized, and large, impressive churches were built in many places. Colin J. Hemer Chapter 6 What the First Christians Believed The faith is defined As the ‘Jesus movement’ grew and spread throughout the Mediterranean world, pressures from both inside and outside presented it with a series of important challenges. Internally, it had to spell out its foundation charter and terms of membership, and develop its structure and leadership. Externally, it had to work out its relations with Judaism, with other religions and philosophies, and with the Roman Empire itself. As it came to terms with these challenges during the first three centuries, Christianity began to acquire a recognizable shape and sense of identity through various features: the New Testament Scriptures, the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy, the ‘Rule of Faith’ and the earliest creeds, the offices of bishop, presbyter, and deacon, the rise of Rome as a centre of reference and arbitration, patterns of argument against Jewish and pagan critics, schemes for the instruction of new converts (‘catechumens’) before baptism, elaborate orders of worship, and the basic outline of the Christian year. Christianity attempted to take over from the cults and philosophies of the Roman world, and to satisfy both religious and intellectual needs. Its success was due partly to the rich variety of thought and life that developed within the one ‘Jesus movement’. Jews and Christians separate The first Christians were all Jews. They had come to believe the apostles’ message that Jesus was the promised Saviour of God’s people. ‘Jesus the Messiah (Christ)’ summed up all that the Jews were called upon to accept. In the earliest preaching to Jews, the resurrection of Jesus was emphasized more than his death, because it demonstrated that the person executed as a criminal was nevertheless God’s Messiah. Following guidelines laid down by Jesus himself, the apostles pointed to Old Testament passages which had been fulfilled in his career and in the beginnings of the church. ‘This is what was prophesied’ was a phrase frequently on their lips. They used Old Testament images to describe Jesus. He was the Passover lamb (John 1:29, 1 Corinthians 5:7); the second, or last, Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45); the kinsman-redeemer (Galatians 4:4–7; Hebrews 2:11–18); and the stone rejected by the builders, but chosen by God to be the ‘cornerstone’ in the construction of his church (1 Peter 2:4–8). This central concern of the earliest Christian preaching and teaching is especially emphasized in Matthew’s Gospel and, from a different angle, in the letter to the Hebrews. But all early Christian theology was Jewish, since the language and concepts it used were quarried chiefly from the Old Testament. Some Jewish Christians were so conservative that they demanded, in effect, that Gentiles had to become Jews in order to be true Christians. They insisted on circumcision and other Jewish legal requirements, and frowned on social contact with ‘unclean’ Gentiles (Acts 11:2). These ‘Judaizers’ appealed to the Jerusalem church, where James ‘the Just’, the brother of Jesus, led a community of thousands of ‘staunch upholders of the Law’ (Acts 15:1, 21:17–25). But Paul refused to tolerate any demands imposed on Gentile converts which threatened the good news of ‘grace alone through faith alone’ (Galatians 2:11–21). In Jerusalem the harmony maintained between James and the Jewish authorities failed to survive Paul’s martyrdom in ad 62 and the Jewish war with Rome (the First Jewish Revolt) which began four years later. Jewish–Christian relations continued to deteriorate later in the first century. Judaism entrenched itself within the tight limits set by the rabbinic Pharisees, excluding non-conformist Jews like the followers of Jesus. The Gnostics The Gnostics were followers of a variety of religious movements in the early Christian centuries which held that people could be saved through a secret knowledge (gn o ¯ sis in Greek). The clearest evidence for these movements, collectively known as Gnosticism, comes in Christian writings of the second century which viewed the various Gnostic groups as heretical perversions of Christianity. Gnosticism may also have been more independent of Christianity. Some scholars find Gnostic traces wherever there is an emphasis on ‘knowledge’ for salvation, as for example in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Others emphasize the stress in Gnosticism on an opposition between the spiritual world and the evil, material world. Gnostic teachings In Gnostic beliefs there is a sharp dualism: they set a transcendent God over against an ignorant creator (often a caricature of the God of the Old Testament). Some Gnostics taught that the creation of the world resulted from the fall of Sophia, ‘wisdom’, whilst all Gnostics viewed the material creation as evil. Sparks of divinity, however, have been encapsulated in the bodies of certain ‘spiritual’ individuals destined for salvation, but are ignorant of their heavenly origins. God sends down to them a redeemer, who brings them salvation in the form of secret knowledge (gn o ¯ sis) of themselves, their origin, and their destiny. Thus awakened, the ‘spirituals’ escape from the prison of their bodies at death, and pass safely through the planetary regions controlled by hostile demons, to be reunited with God. Since they believed that salvation depended solely upon the knowledge of one’s ‘spiritual’ nature, some Gnostics indulged in very licentious behaviour, claiming they were ‘pearls’ who could not be stained by any external mud. In the second century ad Carpocrates of Alexandria, for example, urged his followers to sin. The Cainites perversely honoured Cain and other villains of the Old Testament, while the Ophites venerated the serpent for bringing ‘knowledge’ to Adam and Eve. Most Gnostics, by contrast, had a radically ascetic attitude towards sex and marriage. Humans were originally unisex. The creation of woman was the source of evil; the procreation of children simply multiplied the souls in bondage to the powers of darkness. Gnosticism enjoyed great success in the ancient world, especially on the fringes of Christianity. It offered explanations of the evil and confusion of the world and the human race, and a way of escape which led back to humanity’s spiritual home. Until the nineteenth century, our knowledge of the Gnostics rested entirely on the writings of such Christians as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Origen, Tertullian, and Epiphanius. Some of these preserved extracts from original Gnostic documents, but for the most part their accounts are in the form of counter-arguments. Scholars were not sure how accurate these accounts were; however twentieth-century discoveries, such as the Nag Hammadi texts, have confirmed some of them. New evidence In the nineteenth century two original Gnostic manuscripts were published: the Askew Codex (also known as Codex Askewianus, now in the British Library), containing the Pistis Sophia, and the Bruce Codex (Codex Brucianus, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) containing the Books of Jeu. All of these are relatively late Gnostic documents. A third manuscript, the Berlin Codex (Akhmim Codex, or Papyrus Berolinensis), though acquired in the nineteenth century, was not fully published until 1955. It contains a Gospel of Mary (of Magdala), a Wisdom (Sophia) of Jesus, Acts of Peter, and an Apocryphon of John (a work mentioned by Irenaeus in ad 180). These three manuscripts are in Coptic, a late version of the Egyptian language. In 1946 a priceless cache of twelve Coptic codices and fragments was discovered near Nag Hammadi, in Upper Egypt, by a peasant searching for fertilizer. This collection, which was deposited about ad 400, contains about fifty works – texts which have already thrown much new light on Gnostic beliefs and practices. Among those which have been published are: The Gospel of Truth, which some have ascribed to the famous Gnostic leader Valentinus, and which deals with ignorance as the cause of humanity’s lost state. The Treatise on the Resurrection (sometimes called The Letter to Rheginos), also possibly by Valentinus, claims that Christians should consider themselves already spiritually resurrected. The Gospel of Thomas, an important collection of 114 logia, or sayings attributed to Jesus. (This is distinct from another apocryphal Gospel of Thomas which describes the miracles supposed to have been done by the child Jesus.) The Gospel of Philip, by Valentinus, which discusses several sacraments, including baptism, anointing with oil, and the ‘wedding chamber’. The Apocryphon of John, which gives a detailed account of the origins of the universe, similar to that of the Sethians and Ophites, Gnostic groups mentioned by early Christian writers. The Revelation (Apocalypse) of Adam, in which Adam reveals to Seth how Noah was saved from the flood and Seth’s seed is saved from destruction by fire. Although some allusions – for example to a virgin birth and physical suffering – may be explained as references to Christ, Christianity is not explicitly mentioned in the text. Some have therefore argued that this document represents pre-Christian Gnosticism. Gnostic survivors The small Mandaean communities living today in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Jordan are the sole surviving remnants of ancient Gnosticism. Three major texts from the Mandaeans were translated early in the twentieth century: The Ginza, a detailed account of the beginnings of the universe. The Drasa, containing some late traditions about John the Baptist. The Qolasta, a collection of prayers and liturgies. The manuscripts of these texts date from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries; there are also earlier magic bowl texts (ad 600), and some magical lead amulets which may possibly date from as early as the third century ad. Though a number of scholars have assumed a pre-Christian date for the origin of the Mandaeans, the firm evidence suggests a date no earlier than the second century ad. Hence it is anachronistic to interpret the New Testament on the basis of Mandaean texts. Gnostic leaders Although the New Testament itself (Acts 8) does not describe Simon Magus as a Gnostic (he is called a magos, ‘magician’), early Christian writers unanimously regarded Simon as the fount of all heresies. Unlike the later Gnostics, Simon appears to have claimed to be divine, and taught that salvation involved knowledge of himself rather than any knowledge of one’s self. Simon was followed by a fellow Samaritan, Menander, who taught at Antioch in Syria towards the end of the first century. He told his followers that those who believed in him would not die. Needless to say, his own death demonstrated that he was a false prophet. Also teaching in Antioch, at the beginning of the second century, was Saturninus, who believed that Christ was the redeemer. But like other Gnostics he maintained that Christ was not a material being and only appeared to be a human (the Docetic view). Cerinthus taught in Asia Minor. (Irenaeus tells the story that the apostle John fled from a bath-house in Ephesus when he learned that Cerinthus was there!) He taught that Jesus was merely a man upon whom ‘the Christ’ descended as a dove. As Christ could not suffer, he departed from Jesus before the crucifixion. (This tradition is also found in the Qur’an: ‘They slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so unto them.’) Marcion of Pontus was an important, though not typical, Gnostic. He insisted upon faith in Christ, but rejected the humanity of Jesus and the resurrection of the body. Other Gnostic teachers included Basilides and his son Isidore, and Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes – all of whom taught at Alexandria, in Egypt. The most famous Gnostic teacher was Valentinus, who taught at Alexandria and came to Rome in ad 140. He had a number of able followers, among them Theodotus in the East, and Ptolemy and Heracleon in the West. Heracleon’s commentary on the Gospel of John is the earliest known commentary on a New Testament book. Edwin M. Yamauchi The Ebionites Conservative Jewish-Christianity disappeared into obscurity. Its strength filtered off into side-channels, such as the heretical Ebionite groups, who placed special value on voluntary poverty. It may also have merged with currents from other brands of Judaism, which similarly lost out after the disastrous revolt against Rome. The Qumran community, whose library – known as the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ – was discovered in 1947, helped to produce strongly ascetic forms of Christianity east of the River Jordan and to the north in Syria. Fringe Judaism of one kind or another also fertilized the emerging Gnostic sects which loomed so large in the second century. The martyr Stephen’s boldness in declaring the old covenant obsolete (Acts 7:1–53) reflects the ideas of more liberal, Greek-speaking Jewish Christians scattered throughout the Empire. They had been won to the new faith from the Jewish communities of the Dispersion (or ‘Diaspora’) found throughout the Mediterranean world. They preached the new faith in Alexandria, where the thoroughly Hellenized Judaism of Philo (20 bc–ad 50) also contributed to distinctive Alexandrian varieties of Christianity. A Gentile church? Towards the middle of the second century Justin Martyr was asked by a Jewish teacher whether Jewish converts to Christianity would be saved if they continued to keep the law of Moses. Justin replied that they would, provided they did not insist on other Christians doing likewise; but he also warned that not all Christians shared his tolerant attitude. The incident reveals that the church was by this time a predominantly Gentile body. According to Christian writers in the second and third centuries, relations between Christians and Jews apparently became increasingly hostile. These writers tried to support believers who were faltering under the force of the Jewish objection, ‘How can Jesus be the Messiah if so few Jews have accepted him?’ They responded by portraying Israel as an unbelieving and apostate people from first to last, helping to create a tradition of anti-Semitism. But Jews and Christians were often on friendlier terms as neighbours in the local community than official hostility and irregular persecution would indicate. Church leaders repeatedly denounced Christians who joined in Jewish practices, sometimes following the ‘rediscovery’ of Old Testament commands. Such denunciations would have been unnecessary were not Christians in practice frequently ignoring them. Jewish festivals could be enjoyable occasions, as Christmas is for post-Christian pagans in the West today. The second-century churches of the Roman province of Asia held the Christian Pascha to celebrate the passion, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ on the same day as the Jewish Passover. (This was probably the general custom of the earliest Christians.) Some of their opponents believed that Sunday was the only appropriate day to end the fast that preceded Pascha, and accused them of Judaizing, labelling them ‘Quartodecimans’ – ‘fourteenthers’. (Passover fell on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan.) In time, the Sunday Pascha became standard practice, and formed the basis of Easter today. Christian use of the Old Testament Jews keenly resented the Christians’ claim that the Old Testament belonged to them exclusively since they alone understood it aright. Christians followed the example of Jesus and the apostles, and accepted the Old Testament as inspired and authoritative Scripture. They normally used the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament (often abbreviated lxx). Latin translations of the Septuagint first became available in the West late in the second century. At some periods sections of the early church also used a number of other Jewish writings. Most of these, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, were first written in Greek and were included in the Septuagint. They are now known as the Apocrypha. There is much argument about how far they were given a status equal to the books of the Hebrew Bible. In the West, largely through Augustine’s influence (but against Jerome’s arguments), they later became widely accepted as part of the ‘canon’ of Scripture, whereas Eastern churches usually recognized only the Hebrew books. Melito of Sardis (d. c. ad 180) travelled to Palestine in about ad 170 to investigate the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures, and compiled the earliest known Christian canon of the Old Testament. Early Christians went to exaggerated lengths to make the Old Testament into a Christian book speaking everywhere about Christ and his church. Their interpretations of Scripture often kept to the historical pattern of promise and fulfilment, shadow and substance, which the New Testament writers largely used, but they soon became much freer and looser. Most of the Gnostics rejected the entire Old Testament, at least in any straightforward meaning. They blamed the ‘inferior’ God of the Old Testament for creating the evil material world. Marcion himself posed sharper problems by listing the contradictions between Old and New. He claimed that the Old Testament God who ordered battles and slaughter, and was driven by anger rather than love, was incompatible with the merciful Father of Jesus Christ. Other critics pointed the finger at the polygamy and other misbehaviour of the Jewish patriarchs, the psalms which lusted for the destruction of enemies, and the crude descriptions of God’s ‘back parts’ and the like. The Old Testament also seemed to concentrate on earthly prosperity as the reward of piety; this was embarrassing in an age of martyrs and widespread asceticism. Christianity inherited many of the objections that Greek and Roman intellectuals levelled against the Jewish Bible, and therefore could take over traditional Jewish arguments to refute them. But Marcion’s charge that the Old Testament was sub-Christian was not so easily answered. Tertullian’s defiant response was to ‘mingle the law and the prophets with the Gospels and apostolic writings’. As a result, his own Christianity has been called ‘baptized Judaism’; and his follower Cyprian ‘mingled’ Christian ministers with Old Testament priests, and Christian ordinances with Old Testament sacrifices. Most churchmen found peace on this front only by allegorizing or spiritualizing the Old Testament. They followed the example set by Philo and some of the Gnostics, as well as Platonic interpreters of Homer and Hesiod, the revered poets of Greece. The Letter of Barnabas, possibly from Alexandria, claimed that the law of Moses had never been meant to be taken literally; even the number of Abraham’s 318 servants pointed to the cross of Jesus! Origen was the most influential allegorizer of Scripture. He developed a sophisticated theory of the different levels of Scripture: The Scriptures were composed through the Spirit of God, and have both a meaning which is obvious, and another which is hidden from most readers. For the contents of Scripture are the outward forms of certain mysteries, and the reflection of divine things … The whole law is spiritual, but the inspired meaning is not recognized by all – only by those who are gifted with the grace of the Holy Spirit in the word of wisdom and knowledge. The use of allegorical interpretations infuriated pagan objectors, whose criticisms depended on taking the Old Testament at face value. It also enabled Origen to discover secret teaching concealed beneath the surface of the Scriptures, like a Christian Platonist or true Gnostic. After Origen, Christians found it easier to live with their conviction that the Bible was inspired and therefore both consistent and significant in every detail, when spiritually understood. Christians recognize the New Testament The earliest Christian congregations quickly appreciated the value of letters written by apostles such as Paul. Some of them were obviously intended for public reading, perhaps in place of, or alongside, a sermon on the Old Testament, and for circulating among the churches. Christians also treasured what they learned about the life and teaching of Jesus. The first Gospels were not produced until the 60s, but their contents were partly available in written form before this time. It is uncertain how long reliable, spoken traditions about Jesus lived on. Papias, a Phrygian bishop early in the second century, confidently believed that he had discovered fresh information from the ‘living and abiding voice’ of the elders or followers of the apostles. The little that remains of his writings suggests he was mistaken! The example of the Old Testament ‘canon’ encouraged the gradual collection of a list of Christian writings which would constitute the standard, or rule, of the churches. (The Greek word kan o ¯ n meant ‘measuring rod’.) These were the books read publicly in the congregations and regarded as having special authority. Paul’s letters were brought together the earliest, probably around the end of the first century. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were formed into a group by the middle of the second century. John’s Gospel, which appealed particularly to the Gnostics, and later the Montanists, was treated with some reserve and took longer to be generally accepted. Marcion is generally believed to have published the first formal canon-list about ad 140. It consisted of the expurgated Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul’s letters (but not the Pastoral letters). This restricted collection, together with the Gnostics’ use of their own gospels and apocalypses bearing apostolic names, challenged the church. It was also feared that the Montanists would claim the status of scripture for the utterances of their New Prophecy. Possibly the earliest appearance of the words ‘New Covenant (Testament) of the Gospel’ to mean a body of writings is found in an anti-Montanist writer late in the second century. The late second century also saw the production of several ‘acts’ of apostles whose missionary labours are not recorded in Luke’s Acts. In addition there appeared the first of a number of gospels written to satisfy curiosity about, for example, the childhood of Jesus and the life of Pilate. These mainly imaginative books served as the novels and romances of popular Christianity. Most of them popularized the ideas of fringe Christian groups, particularly Docetism, and the rejection of sex and marriage. The Montanists Around ad 172, an enthusiastic young Christian named Montanus began to attract attention as a prophet in Phrygia, a region of western Asia Minor. Two prophetesses, Prisca (sometimes called Priscilla) and Maximilla, soon joined him, claiming to be mouthpieces of the Paraclete, the Greek title used in John’s Gospel for the Holy Spirit. At times God spoke through them in the first person, as with the Old Testament prophets. They were the ‘New Prophecy’, whose main message was the nearness of the end and the return of Christ, for which Christians needed to be fully prepared. Montanists called all Christians to a demanding asceticism. Marital relations were to be abandoned in favour of chastity, fasts multiplied, and food eaten dry. The Montanists’ holy, Spirit-led communities at Pepuza and Tymion in Phrygia were named ‘Jerusalem’. Maximilla predicted: ‘After me there will be no prophecy, but the End.’ Through their oracles, the Montanists urged Christians to relish persecution: ‘Do not hope to die in bed . . . but as martyrs.’ Montanists were ‘gloriously martyred’ in Gaul and Africa. The most distinguished Montanist was Tertullian of Carthage in his later life. He too believed that the prophecies given by the Paraclete perfected the church’s discipline – by refusing forgiveness for serious sins after baptism, and banning remarriage and flight from persecution. The Montanists soon ran into trouble. In Asia they were excommunicated by the first synods of bishops we know of in the history of the church. Why they were condemned is uncertain: they were fanatics, but not heretics. (One bishop of Rome apparently recognized their gifts as of the Spirit, but later changed his mind.) Their visions, speaking in tongues, and intense religious excitement attracted suspicion. The claims made for their prophecies seemed to question the emerging canon of New Testament Scriptures. Maximilla’s predictions were not fulfilled. The Montanists scolded the ‘unspiritual’ church for rejecting their Paraclete. In short, allegiance to the New Prophecy created discord at a time when the bishops were working towards a united, stable church which conformed with the tradition of the apostles. Montanist groups survived into the fifth century in Africa, and longer still in Phrygia, and the church lost something by excluding them. Despite their excesses, the Montanists stood for the conviction that the Spirit was as active in the contemporary church as at the beginning; greater manifestations, not lesser, were promised for ‘the last days’. Their similarity to today’s Pentecostal and charismatic movements has often been exaggerated. Defining the canon By the late second century, Christian writers felt it vital to spell out which books were accepted by the church. Irenaeus had no doubt that there could be only four Gospels, neither more nor less. A document known as the Muratorian Canon (discovered in eighteenth-century Milan by Ludovico Muratori) lists the four Gospels, thirteen letters of Paul, Acts, two letters of John, Jude, and the Revelation of John, together with the Wisdom of Solomon, and, with reservations, the Revelation of Peter. Hebrews is, surprisingly, missing; it had been much used by Clement of Rome a century earlier. This list has traditionally been dated around ad 170, but several scholars place it much later. By the early third century, a consensus had been reached throughout the church concerning the main contents of the canon, and only a handful of books continued to be debated. Hebrews was not accepted in the West, possibly because doubts about who wrote it were stiffened by the Montanist use of chapter 6. Revelation was unpopular in the East because it was used to support millenarian ideas. Eusebius summed up the situation at the outset of the fourth century. The only books still disputed at that stage were James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. These were ‘spoken against’ by some but ‘recognized by most churchmen’. Eusebius was clearly bewildered by the Revelation of John. He placed it with the undisputed books, but knew that its authorship was uncertain and its contents unwelcome to some. Dionysius of Alexandria (d. ad 265) had earlier worked out, with remarkable skill, that Revelation was not by the author of the Fourth Gospel: but he did not for that reason deny its authority. The Eastern Church finally arrived at a consensus by 367, in which year Athanasius’ Easter Letter from Alexandria listed solely the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. It also allowed new converts to read the Didache and The Shepherd of Hermas. Other orthodox books which had until then been accepted for a time in some churches were 1 Clement and the Letter of Barnabas. For centuries the Syriac Church used Tatian’s Diatessaron (c. ad 160–175), a harmony of the Gospels, instead of the four separate ones. Later, it also rejected Revelation and demoted the general letters. They were all restored by the mid-sixth century. Eusebius: ‘Father of Church History’ Eusebius (c. 263–c. 339) was the first to attempt to write a history of the church on a grand scale. Born in Palestine, he was on the run during the Great Persecution of the church (303–305), seeing many martyrdoms in Egypt, and was himself imprisoned for his faith. In 313/14 Eusebius was made bishop of Caesarea, Palestine, and later became a close friend of the Emperor Constantine, for whom he composed many flattering speeches. His political ideas helped create the Christian Empire of Byzantium, and he became a typical court-bishop of the period. During the Arian dispute, Eusebius’ own theology came under suspicion. He supported the banishment of Athanasius at the Council of Tyre (335). A voluminous writer, Eusebius’ works include works to justify Christianity directed against pagans, biblical and theological works and letters, and above all his Church History. He was a keen follower of Origen. Eusebius’s Church History was completed initially in either 303 or 311, but several supplements were added by him to bring the story up to 324 and the final triumph of his admired friend, the Emperor Constantine. Eusebius dealt mainly with the succession of Christian bishops and teachers from apostolic times, heresies, the sufferings of the Jews, and the persecution and martyrdom of Christians. He also recounted traditions about the New Testament writers, and details about the canon of Scripture. Eusebius wrote in a heavy, verbose, and difficult style; however, his book is invaluable since it preserves extracts from otherwise lost works. Much of his history is told by means of long quotations from previous writers. As a writer, Eusebius was neither utterly credulous nor very critical; he does not stuff his work with improbable miracles, but accepts most of his sources at face value. Although he was not the first church historian – Hegesippus (c. 110–c. 180) and Julius Africanus (c. 160–c. 240) wrote before him, though only fragments of their works survive – Eusebius was the first to attempt a history on a comprehensive scale. He set the pattern for future church historians, and was used extensively by later Christian writers, such as Jerome (c. 347–420) and Bede (672/73–735). Michael A. Smith In the West, complete canon lists were approved by the African Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). In time the Western Church followed the East in accepting Hebrews within the canon, its contents proving so attractive that they overcame doubts about its writer. Christians at Alexandria claimed at an early stage it was by Paul, a view that was eventually accepted everywhere. Although church leaders in a literal sense created the canon, they were only recognizing the books that had already stamped their own authority on the churches. The criteria for accepting a book as canonical were sometimes complex. Above all, it had to be written – or sponsored – by an apostle, and also be recognizably orthodox in content, and publicly used by a prominent church or majority of churches. Known forgeries, such as the Acts of Paul, were rejected; as were other books which contained heretical teaching. Some books suffered because of the unacceptable use other Christians made of them. The Montanists’ love of Revelation was made the excuse for discrediting the book for a time. Some people were embarrassed about the differences between the Gospel of John and the other Gospels, and also at the variations and massive overlap between the Synoptic Gospels. Clement of Rome Little is known of the life of Clement, one of the early bishops or presbyters of Rome, whose name was linked to a general letter usually known as 1 Clement, and who died about ad 100. 1 Clement is an open letter from the Church at Rome to the Church at Corinth, probably written at the end of the first century, shortly after the persecution by the Emperor Domitian. It is likely the earliest surviving Christian writing apart from the New Testament, and was written to counter the disruption and disturbance in the Church at Corinth, where some of the older leaders had been deposed by a younger clique. The letter sheds interesting light on church life soon after the age of the apostles. There is no trace of a single ruling bishop; instead the leaders of the church are called either bishops and deacons or elders (presbyters). The martyrdoms of Peter and Paul are referred to, but only in very vague terms. The letter appeals to a simple form of apostolic succession. 1 Clement puts great stress on good order within the church, and on Christian faith being accompanied by good works, claiming that Abraham was saved ‘by faith and hospitality’. The book quotes extensively from the Old Testament, Jewish books outside the canon, and writings of the apostles. It became widely known and popular because it was believed that its author knew Peter and Paul, and because it contained earnest exhortations to Christian humility and love. It was known to Hermas of Rome and Dionysius of Corinth in the later second century, and was occasionally even read in church. 2 Clement, another early work, was claimed to be written by Clement of Rome, but is an anonymous sermon, perhaps dating from ad 150. Several additional writings dating to the fourth century were falsely claimed to be by Clement. Michael A. Smith But the eventual shape of the New Testament shows that the early church wanted to submit fully to the teachings of the apostles. It had been created by their preaching and now grounded itself upon their writings. The roots of the faith The ancient world had a great respect for tradition and precedent, especially in religion; but Christianity seemed to be quite new, which presented a serious stumbling-block. Christian writers tried to overcome this problem by demonstrating that their faith had centuries-old roots in Israel and in the wisdom of the Greek philosophers. Justin Martyr wrote: ‘Christ is the Logos in whom every race of men shared. Those who lived in accordance with Logos – true reason – are Christians, even though they were regarded as atheists; for example, Socrates and Heraclitus among the Greeks.’ Tertullian and most early Christian writers believed that truth was older than error. Heresy came later than orthodoxy, like some corrupting parasite. Origen wrote: ‘All heretics are at first believers; then later they deviate from the rule of faith.’ The early Christian writers believed that the orthodox faith was transmitted full-grown to the churches by the apostles. A delightful legend described how the Twelve composed the Apostles’ Creed jointly, each contributing a clause. Justin Martyr: Christian apologist Justin (c. 100–c. 165) was a convert from paganism who became the most notable of the second century ‘apologists’ (writers defending the Christian faith). Details of his life come chiefly from his own writings. Justin was born at Flavia Neapolis (now Nablus) in Palestine. As a young man, he searched energetically for truth in a variety of philosophical schools. One day, while meditating alone by the seashore – perhaps at Ephesus – he met an old man who exposed the weakness of his confident thinking. This stranger then pointed him to the Jewish prophets who bore witness to Christ. Justin had already been impressed by the remarkable moral constancy of Christians in the face of death. These themes were later to recur in his writings. Justin responded wholeheartedly by becoming a Christian and taking his new faith into the philosophical schools. He believed he now possessed in Christ a more perfect philosophy, revealed fully by the God who had been known only in part through the wisdom of the ancient world. He taught in Ephesus and Rome, where Tatian was one of his pupils. Justin’s writings Justin’s writings are vigorous and earnest, but discursive – urgent appeals to reason, thrashed out under the threat of persecution. His First Apology was addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius (ad 138–161), and aimed to clear away prejudice and misunderstandings about Christianity. He claimed that popular charges that Christians were atheists and immoral were unfounded, arguing that Christian beliefs and practices actually reflect a higher reason and morality. His Second Apology is brief and passionate, protesting against injustice, provoked by the summary execution of people innocent of any crime, except confessing the name of Christ. The longest of Justin’s three surviving works is the Dialogue with Trypho, which apparently recounts an actual encounter at Ephesus years earlier. Trypho was a cultured Jew who objected that Christians broke the Jewish law and worshipped a human being. The debate was conducted with respect and courtesy on both sides, despite deep disagreement. Justin argued from the Scriptures they shared: the Scriptures spoke of Christ, in whom the law is set aside. Justin’s words are valuable examples of the way that early Christians interpreted the Bible. Justin was martyred in Rome about ad 165. He had presented his faith as both scriptural and reasonable in the face of objections by both Jews and pagans. Colin J. Hemer But the preaching and teaching of the apostles was not the same as the orthodoxy about which the theologians wrote; historical development had been at work in the interim. Nevertheless, from a very early stage sharp lines were drawn between true and false versions of the Christian message. Rival gospels were condemned outright. In Galatians, Paul curses those who add Jewish legal requirements to the gospel. 1 John established that Christians must believe that Christ came ‘in the flesh’. 1 Corinthians stipulated that belief in the historical resurrection of Jesus is another indispensable basis of salvation. Orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and heresy False accounts of Christ and his achievement were in circulation from the very beginning. Many scholars believe that in some regions views later condemned as heresy predominated at first. It appears that in Alexandria Christian teaching was quickly combined with Jewish and Greek beliefs. Then prominent Christian Gnostic groups arose there, before orthodox Christianity became dominant towards the end of the second century. It was not until this period too that orthodox teaching prevailed in Syriac-speaking Christianity. Here however the extreme asceticism, known as ‘encratism’, deriving from unorthodox Jewish Christianity, continued to dominate. God made this universe by his word, reason, and power. Your philosophers also agree that the maker of the universe seems to be Logos – that is, word and reason … (for example, Zeno and Cleanthes) … We also claim that the word, reason, and virtue, by which we have said that God made all things, have spirit as their substance … This Word, we have learned, was produced from God, and was generated by being produced, and therefore is called the Son of God, and God, from unity of substance with God. For God too is spirit. When a ray is projected from the sun, it is a portion of the whole sun; but the sun will be in the ray because it is a ray of the sun; the substance is not separated but extended. So from spirit comes spirit, and God from God, as light is kindled from light … This ray of God … glided down into a virgin, in her womb was fashioned as flesh, was born as man mixed with God. The flesh was built up by the spirit, was nourished, grew up, spoke, taught, worked, and was Christ. Tertullian, Apology XXI The churches were hardly ever free from disputes over vital aspects of the faith. In the early centuries, Christian leaders did not distinguish clearly between heretical movements and schisms which split the mainstream church. It was difficult to believe that separatists could be really orthodox; while heretics who denied the faith of the church logically belonged outside the church. But paradoxically, heretics contributed to the way in which Christianity developed. The pioneering challenge of heresy did much to shape Christian orthodoxy – a rounded, systematic exposition of the implications of basic Christian convictions. The core of earliest Christianity centred on the Scriptures, the Lord’s Supper, and fellowship (koin o ¯ nia) in the Spirit, as well as faith in Christ and the Father. Out of this core, provoked by the challenge of heretics, patterns of orthodoxy were developed. They were not identical in every region, but they were sufficiently similar for each region’s church to be in communion with the others. Prior to the Council of Nicaea (325), no universal touchstone of orthodox faith existed – except perhaps in the New Testament. The differences between the orthodoxy in, for instance, Alexandria and Carthage, arose out of the different ways of thinking of their theologians. Each reflected his own culture. Tertullian used the language and thought-forms of law, rhetoric, and Stoicism – and Montanism; Clement and Origen used the concepts of Platonism and Pythagoreanism – and Christian Gnosticism. Origen, and even Tertullian, may at times have been so heavily influenced by these thought-forms as to cross the narrow frontier that separates orthodoxy from heresy. Incarnation? Christians inherited from the Jews the belief that the world was created by God. But the Creator also entered fully into human life in the incarnation. The Word who ‘became flesh’ was the same Word through whom ‘all things came to be’ (John 1:1–3, 14). The philosophers rejected these Christian fundamentals. They held that a transcendent god could not be directly involved in the physical world; nor change, as the doctrines of creation and incarnation implied. Gnostics denied them too, since they believed that spirit alone belonged to God; the material world was corrupt and corrupting. Many Gnostics held that Christ only appeared to be human, like a phantom. Ignatius of Antioch Ignatius was bishop of the Church at Antioch early in the second century. What little is known of him comes almost entirely from seven letters written during his journey to Rome to be executed, about ad 98–117. His seven letters (others attributed to him were added in the fourth century) were addressed to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, and to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. He argued strongly that there should be one ‘bishop’ in charge of each congregation, in order to prevent splits in the church and to ensure that correct beliefs were preserved. He strongly condemned Docetist ideas current in churches in Asia Minor, where it was held that Jesus only seemed to be a man, and was in fact a pure spirit-being, uncontaminated by this material world. Ignatius put high value on the eucharist (communion) as a means of ensuring unity, and of stressing the reality of Jesus’ becoming man. Ignatius believed that he possessed the Holy Spirit’s gift of ‘prophecy’, though he considered himself inferior to the apostles. He was rather neurotic, given to strong ideas and forceful language. Ignatius was so keen to become a martyr that he begged the Christians in Rome not to prevent his expected execution. Michael A. Smith Others who took this view of Christ were known as ‘Docetist’, from the Greek verb ‘to seem’ or ‘appear’; their views were attacked in 1 and 2 John. Jews too objected to the idea of divine incarnation, and some Jewish Christians described Christ’s coming as a ‘theophany’, a temporary visitation by God, more angelic than human. For all these reasons, second-century Christian writers stressed that God’s world was good; that the body as well as the soul was destined for salvation; and, consistent with both these doctrines, that Jesus was a man of flesh and blood. Ignatius wrote: ‘Jesus Christ was of the race of David, the child of Mary, who was truly born and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died.’ The most important anti-Gnostic author was Irenaeus of Lyons. He taught that, if the body could not be saved, ‘the Lord did not redeem us with his blood, nor is the cup of the eucharist the communion of his blood, nor is the bread which we break the communion of his body’. Theology, worship, and salvation were all connected. Ignatius believed that martyrdom was meaningless if Christ had not truly shed his blood. Theology of the Logos Christian writers developed a theology of the Logos in order to justify their belief in divine creation and incarnation. Logos, translated ‘Word’ in John 1, also meant ‘reason, purpose, wisdom’. This term was used in Stoicism, Middle Platonism, and the writings of Philo to mean a cosmic principle of order and harmony, or the pattern or power by which God impinged upon the world. Justin Martyr and others developed these two meanings, and taught that the Logos was eternally with God, as his mind or wisdom. But in creation, revelation, and finally incarnation, the Logos went forth, acting upon and within the world. God the Father was therefore not directly in contact with the physical world, nor subject to change; for the Logos never ceased to be his eternal wisdom. Some Christian writers were strongly influenced by philosophical ideas of divine unchangeability, quite different from the consistent steadfastness of the living God of the Bible. The Logos who issued from God was certainly seen as divine. But the Logos easily appeared to be some impersonal power of God. It was often argued that the Logos was generated as Son (so that God became Father of the Son) only prior to creation (Tertullian), or even the incarnation (Hippolytus). Some of the difficulties arose from language. If God was Father, this seemed to imply that he once existed without his Son. Origen established that such language referred to an eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. His doctrine that the Son was eternally being generated was an important step forward. The theologians of Alexandria did not assert divine creation and incarnation as unambiguously as, say, Irenaeus. Origen lived in an age of persecution and was a Christian Platonist; therefore he instinctively looked through and beyond the visible, historical world to the transcendent and spiritual. For him, the material world was only a passing phase, where spirits who had fallen in an earlier existence were purified as punishment. Was Christ really God? The Christians took over the Jews’ uncompromising belief that: ‘The Lord our God is one God’ (Deuteronomy 6:4). But they also soon came to the belief that ‘Jesus is Lord’ (Romans 10:9). They applied to Christ Old Testament passages referring to Yahweh, the Lord; they worshipped Christ as God. Irenaeus Irenaeus (c. 115–c. 202) was born in Asia Minor and studied under Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. He then went to Gaul, where he became Bishop of Lyons (Lugdunum), Gaul, in ad 177. His books aimed to counteract the Gnostic ideas common in this region. Two major writings by Irenaeus survive: Against Heresies (‘Five Books Exposing and Overthrowing the so-called ‘Knowledge”’) and Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, an instructional book demonstrating that the basic Christian faith fulfils the Old Testament. Irenaeus stressed the fundamental Christian doctrines that were being challenged by Gnosticism: that the world was created by one God; that Jesus Christ, son of the Creator, died to save humanity; and that there will be a resurrection of the body. He appealed to the historical roots of the Christian faith, and argued that Scripture contained a succession of covenants through which ‘one and the same God’ progressively revealed his will to men and women, as they were ready to receive it. Irenaeus developed the idea that Christ – fully man as well as fully God – retraced the steps of Adam, with a different result. Because Christ passed through every age of life, all humanity shares in his sanctifying work. The Gnostics claimed to possess secret traditions passed down from the apostles. To counter this, Irenaeus developed an argument involving another form of apostolic succession. He claimed that the churches preserved public, standard beliefs handed down from apostolic times by the teachers in the churches. Irenaeus developed Christian theology in several ways: for example, the ‘canon (or rule) of truth’ preserved in the church as the key to interpreting Scripture; the view that the eucharist contains ‘an earthly and divine reality’; and the place of the virgin Mary (the ‘new Eve’) in theology. At the same time he tried to base his teachings and arguments on Scripture. Everett Ferguson In worship and other activities, the Christians did not necessarily feel any tension between these two basic beliefs. But both Jews and pagans such as Celsus accused Christians of having two gods. Some Christians were also making unacceptable statements about Christ. The issue of the Trinity (a later term) became an unavoidable problem. It was particularly difficult to resolve because of the influence of the Greek concept of unity, as perfect oneness, excluding any internal distinctions. Docetists and Jewish Christians, such as the Ebionites, saw no problem. The Docetists regarded Christ as merely a temporary appearance of God disguised as a human. The Ebionites saw Jesus as an ordinary person indwelt by God’s power at his baptism. Neither believed that Jesus Christ was truly God. Some writers tried to safeguard both monotheism and the deity of Christ with the Logos theology – which tended to be rather academic. It failed to give an adequate picture of the personal divinity of the Logos, especially prior to creation. Writers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian developed this into an ‘economic’ doctrine of the Trinity – so called because it spoke of the relations between Father, Son, and Spirit chiefly in terms of the divine ‘economy’, or plan for the world, rather than in terms of the internal life of God in eternity. It emphasized the successive activities of Father, Son, and Spirit as God dealt with creation, and stressed that the one God was responsible for both creation and redemption, thus countering Gnostic views. The Monarchians In the late second and early third centuries a backward-looking theology known as Monarchianism emerged in Asia Minor and flourished in the West. It was anxious to emphasize the divine unity, or ‘monarchy’. (The Monarchians are also known as ‘Sabellians’ after one of their leaders, Sabellius.) They claimed that God existed in different ‘modes’ (so were sometimes also called ‘Modalists’), but only in one mode at any one time. God’s different names – Father, Son, and Spirit – described the different roles he played at different times. The Monarchians were also called ‘Patripassians’ by their opponents, because they taught in effect that the Father (Latin, pater) suffered (Latin, passus) as the Son. They felt they could not believe that God was one, and that Christ was fully God, without rejecting the belief that God was always three. The Monarchians were assailed on all sides – in Rome by Hippolytus and Novatian, in Africa by Tertullian, and in Alexandria by Origen. In writing a book to refute Praxeas – possibly a nickname for a Roman bishop – Tertullian gave the Latin West a theological vocabulary that has hardly yet been bettered. He drew upon Stoicism and Roman law for his language, and taught that God was one being (Latin, substantia) but three concrete individuals (Latin, personae). The Son and the Spirit did not issue from the Father by a division of his being, but as extensions from his being, like rays from the sun. Tertullian’s theology was backed up by the Roman theologians, and ensured that the Western Church was scarcely disturbed by the problems raised by Arius in the fourth century. Origen’s teaching dominated the East in the third and fourth centuries. Against the Monarchians, he insisted that Father, Son, and Spirit were three eternally distinct persons (Greek hypostaseis – roughly the same as personae). The Son owed his being eternally to the Father (the eternal generation of the Son), and was inferior to him. As genuine Son of the Father he was truly divine, but subordinate; the Spirit was even lower. Origen’s ideas were deeply coloured by Middle Platonism, which graded existence into different levels. His teaching pointed in various directions, and for this reason could be appealed to later by most parties in the Arian controversy. Before the Council of Nicaea (ad 325) all theologians viewed the Son as in one way or another subordinate to the Father. Around ad 250, a dispute between Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, and Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, illustrated the different approaches of the churches in the West and East. The West was stronger on the unity of God and weaker on the permanent distinctness of the three; in the East, the position was reversed. Christians summarize their beliefs The early Christians often summarized what they believed. These summaries varied according to the contexts in which they were used, the writers or churches which produced them, and the errors or attacks which they had to resist. In addition to statements made at baptism (for example, Acts 8:37), and solemn commands (for example, Acts 3:6 and 2 Timothy 4:1), scholars have discovered summaries of the teaching of the apostles (for example, 1 Corinthians 15:3, 4), as well as statements of belief in hymn form: (Christ) appeared in human form, Was shown to be right by the Spirit, And was seen by angels. He was preached among the nations, Was believed in the world, And was taken up to heaven. (1 Timothy 3:16) Some formulas mention Christ alone, for example: ‘Jesus is the Christ’ (for a Jewish setting) or, more widely: ‘Jesus is Lord’ (1 Corinthians 12:3). Persecutors often demanded that Christians should curse Christ and say: ‘Caesar is Lord.’ Other formulas include God the Father too (1 Corinthians 8:6; 1 Timothy 2:5), while forms naming Father, Son, and Spirit appear in baptism (Matthew 28:19), worship (2 Corinthians 13:14), and summaries of doctrine (Ephesians 4:4–6). Later writers recorded more elaborate declarations of faith. Ignatius’ declaration against Docetism was quoted earlier (p. 79). Some hostile or inquisitive outsiders called for statements of what Christians believed. Here is the account of Aristides, one of the earliest writers to defend Christianity: As for the Christians, they trace their origins to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is confessed to be the Son of the most high God, who came down from heaven by the Holy Spirit and was born of a virgin and took flesh, and in a daughter of man there lived the Son of God … This Jesus … was pierced by the Jews, and he died, and was buried; and they say that after three days he rose and ascended into heaven … They believe God to be the Creator and Maker of all things, in whom are all things, and from whom are all things. Similar summaries were made by Justin Martyr. One important outline of basic Christian beliefs in the late second and early third centuries was the ‘Rule of Faith’. Origen described it as: ‘the teaching of the church preserved unaltered and handed down in unbroken succession from the apostles’. In reality it indicated what particular writers or churches taught, especially against heretics, but also to new converts, as the central message of the Bible. The Rule was also known by several other names: ‘the faith’, ‘the tradition’, ‘the preaching’, and the ‘Rule of Truth’. It claimed to represent an apostolic tradition of teaching, and was even appealed to in the dispute over the Christian Pascha. Irenaeus is the first writer to record a clearly identifiable Rule. Its main content was as follows: … this faith: in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who made known through the prophets the plan of salvation, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his future appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race … This is clearly anti-Gnostic: it emphasizes the ‘bodily ascension’ and alludes to Irenaeus’s distinctive idea of the ‘summing up’ in Christ of all God’s dealings with humanity. Other versions of the Rule reflect not only the battle with Gnostics and other heretics, but also the writers’ personal concerns. The Montanist Tertullian described lengthily ‘the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’. The speculative Origen not only includes paragraphs on the soul, free will, devils, and angels, but also claims that the apostles left much else ‘to be investigated by those who were fit for the higher gifts of the Spirit’. Baptismal creeds But the Rule of Faith was not a creed with fixed wording. Fixed creeds of this kind developed chiefly in the context of baptism, and originally consisted of question-and-answer. Although at first people were often baptized in the name of Christ alone, it soon became standard to be baptized in the name of the Trinity. By Justin’s time at Rome, those being baptized answered questions about their belief in ‘God, the Father and Lord of the universe’, ‘Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate’, and ‘the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus’. Hippolytus’s account of baptism at Rome at the outset of the third century is very important: When the person being baptized goes down into the water, he who baptizes him, putting his hand on him, shall say: ‘Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty?’ And the person being baptized shall say: ‘I believe.’ Then holding his hand on his head, he shall baptize him once. And then he shall say: ‘Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was dead and buried, and rose again the third day, alive from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?’ And when he says: ‘I believe,’ he is baptized again. And again he shall say: ‘Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy church, and the resurrection of the body?’ The person being baptized shall say: ‘I believe,’ and then he is baptized a third time. Baptism Baptism was usually by immersion, either in a river or in the bath-house of a large house. The person was normally immersed three times, in response to three questions about belief in the three persons of the Trinity. From the early second century, baptism by pouring of water was allowed in cases of emergency or sickness. From the third century, the baptismal service also included the laying-on-of-hands by the chief minister of the church (the bishop), with a prayer that the candidate would receive the Holy Spirit. Baptism seems normally to have taken place on Sundays. At first, baptism was probably administered only to adults. The first definite mention of child baptism comes early in the third century, and infant baptism was beginning to be widespread by the mid-third century. Both adult and infant baptism were practised until the sixth century, after which, usually, only infant baptism was practised. As early as the end of the second century, some people had come to believe that baptism had a magical effect. Tertullian mentions prayer to ‘sanctify’ the water, and from then on it was widely believed that baptism automatically washed away sins. From this period, too, there arose the practice of exorcizing the candidate before baptism, often accompanied with ceremonial anointing with oil. Michael A. Smith By this time other items of belief had been attached to the third question, which sometimes mentions ‘the forgiveness of sins’. In addition, the question about Christ had been considerably expanded, probably influenced by the Rule of Faith, to uncover and exclude Gnostics and heretics. Although it is in question-and-answer form, Hippolytus’s ‘Old Roman’ creed is the earliest close parallel to the Apostles’ Creed – which has no direct link with the apostles, and of which the earliest exact text dates from about ad 400. Creeds in statement form (I believe …) developed from the mid-third century by adaptation of the questions-and-answers. Such creeds were originally used in the closing stages of the instruction of converts prior to baptism. The earliest clear example is the creed of the Church of Caesarea in Palestine. The Creed of Nicaea inaugurated a new era. The old creeds were creeds for converts, the new creed was for bishops; the old creeds had been local, the new one was to be universally binding. It took over from the old Rule of Faith as a test of orthodoxy. Instruction before baptism At the birth of the church, converts were baptized with little or no delay (see for example Acts 8:36, 16:33). But soon a course of instruction prior to baptism became customary, especially for non-Jewish converts. Justin explained that before baptism: ‘All those who are convinced and believe the things which are taught by us and said to be true, and promise to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to call on God with fasting.’ Hippolytus of Rome again provides valuable evidence. A convert’s occupation and personal relations were scrutinized, and then followed pre-baptismal instruction, which took three years (even longer in Syria!). Good progress, or the imminence of persecution, could shorten the period. A convert who was martyred before baptism was regarded as experiencing a better ‘baptism in blood’. More intensive preparations, including fasting, exorcism, and blessing, immediately preceded baptism. The converts were often taught by laymen, such as Justin in Rome and Origen in Alexandria, in independent Christian ‘schools’, which were also open to enquiring pagans. Baptistery of the Basilica of St Vitalis, Sufetula, modern Sbeïtla, Tunisia. © Marcin Ciesielski/Sylwia Cisek / Dreamstime.com By the fourth century, the clergy had taken over the instruction of converts (‘catechumens’), and the bishop had become personally responsible for the concentrated teaching and discipline immediately before baptism. (Here lay the origins of Lent; from the second century baptisms normally took place at Easter.) By now this period of preparation included the ceremonial ‘handing over’ of the creed, which the candidates would affirm in the baptismal questions-and-answers. After the bishop had explained it and the candidates had memorized it, they would ‘give it back’ in a later ceremony. The same was often done with the Lord’s Prayer. These formulas were not presented in written form; they were treasured secrets to be concealed from the uninitiated, in the same way as what happened at the Lord’s Supper. From this era survive several notable series of addresses delivered before, and immediately after, baptism. Careful preparation for baptism was seen as essential, because baptism was commonly thought of as dealing with a person’s past corruption, but not his or her future faults. This explains the practice of delaying baptism, the development of a system of penitence to cover sins after baptism, and even Tertullian’s insistence on purity before baptism, with the result that baptism became almost a prize. The systematic teaching of new converts along these lines flourished particularly in the great era of Christian expansion in the third and fourth centuries. As infant baptism became increasingly common, the practice faded. Little is known about the instruction of children within the early Christian community. Who led the church? The first leaders of the church were the apostles, assisted in Jerusalem by ‘the elders’ (Acts 11:30, 14:23), and the practical help of the Seven (Acts 6:1–6). Other gifted and Spirit-filled individuals were prominent in the early decades: missionary preachers, evangelists (including some of the Seven), teachers, and prophets (see, for example, Acts 8:26, 11:27, 28, 12:25, 13:1). They were not normally officially appointed, but undertook a widely-recognized travelling ministry. By the early second century, the Spirit-gifted leadership had largely disappeared. The Didache shows that, in one region, some prophetic teachers were settling down, others had become self-seeking, and ‘bishops and deacons’ were gaining new prominence. Nevertheless, the prophetic tradition continued with people such as Ignatius of Antioch, Hermas of Rome, Melito of Sardis, and the Montanists; and freelance teachers or philosophers still existed – such as Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and even Tertullian. At an early stage local leaders emerged. Congregational life was directed by a team or group, commonly known as ‘presbyters’ – that is, elders or fathers in the faith (possibly based on Jewish or Old Testament models) – or ‘bishops’ (that is, guardians or overseers, probably derived from Hellenistic patterns, although there were interesting parallels in the ascetic community at Qumran). Other titles were also used: pastor or shepherd, teacher, deacon or servant, ruler, and president. The status and function of the different posts were still flexible; in earliest Christianity there was no counterpart to ‘the minister’ of today. Until at least the third century, churches met in small, house-based gatherings. By the time of Ignatius (d. about 98–17) churches in Asia Minor were ruled by the ‘three-fold ministry’, consisting of a single bishop (Ignatius links his authority to that of the single God), a body of presbyters (patterned on the band of apostles), and several deacons (who ‘served’ as Christ did). This structure became universal before the third century, though the churches of Rome and Greece had no single bishop in Ignatius’ day, nor did Alexandria until about ad 180. The number of bishoprics varied considerably from region to region. Numerous small communities in Asia Minor and Africa acquired their own bishops; elsewhere, for example in Gaul, the bishop of a large town would supervise congregations in the surrounding area. About ad 250 the church at Rome still had only one bishop, together with forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, and seven sub-deacons, as well as forty-two ‘acolytes’ or attendants, and fifty-two exorcists, readers, and door-keepers. The bishop gradually emerged as undisputed leader of the Christian community, which was brought about by a number of factors. Congregations often needed one from the group of presbyters or bishops to take the initiative, or represent them – for example, by presiding at the Lord’s Supper, contacting other churches, teaching, or guarding church property and offerings. Also, one-person leadership was suggested by the roles played by the founding apostle or missionary, especially if he had settled in one place for an extended period; and by the single agents of the apostles, such as Timothy in Ephesus and Titus in Crete; and by James, who was apostle-cum-bishop-cum-high-priest of the Jerusalem Church. Some of their functions had to be continued in the churches. Heirs to the apostles? Clement of Rome urged the Christians at Corinth to preserve the arrangements made by the apostles for controlling the congregation’s affairs. But this was simply the kind of provision any pioneer missionary organizes for the leadership of a new church. The Gnostics soon began to appeal to a succession of teachers traced back to the apostles (normally Philip, Thomas, and Matthias) to whom, they claimed, Jesus entrusted secret wisdom before he ascended. Their views were countered by stressing the continuity of the open teaching (for instance, the Rule of Faith) and of teachers (bishops or presbyters) from the time when the apostles founded the churches. This argument was first outlined by Hegesippus (c. 110–c. 180), who travelled from Palestine to Rome in the mid-second century, associated with numerous bishops, and heard (so he says) the same teaching from all. ‘In every succession and city, what the law and the prophets and the Lord preached is faithfully followed.’ He drew up succession-lists of bishops, at least for Corinth and Rome. He may also have taken note of the Jerusalem Church’s attempt to maintain a hereditary leadership from among the ‘relatives of the Lord’, similar to the succession of Jewish high priests. Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others in the West followed in the anti-Gnostic path mapped out by Hegesippus. They held that the succession of bishops stemming from the apostles guaranteed the unbroken handing-on of the apostles’ doctrine. Irenaeus still felt close to living tradition; only the generations of Polycarp and John separated him from Jesus. But in fact the apostles had not appointed bishops in every church, and succession-lists of bishops were seriously unreliable. Later the threat from the Gnostics receded, and lapse of time eroded the appeal to tradition. But apostolic succession was given a new lease of life, chiefly by Cyprian. Now the bishop became the basis and criterion of the church’s life; being in the church was made dependent upon communion with the bishop. The apostles were now seen as the first bishops, and bishops were called apostles. Succession assumed a more mechanical character. Cyprian’s theory prevailed in the medieval West; but the East was never sold on the idea. For Cyprian, the ‘one and undivided episcopate’ was embodied in the provincial or pan-African councils he frequently called and presided over. In Africa and elsewhere, the provinces of the Roman Empire supplied the basis for the regions of the church. The provincial capital normally became the ecclesiastical centre, and its bishop enjoyed special status as metropolitan bishop. Cyprian of Carthage Cyprian became a Christian about ad 246, when he was already a rich and cultured man of Carthage, the chief city of Roman Africa, and probably destined for high government office. He now dedicated himself to celibacy, poverty, and the Bible with such distinction that within two years he was made Bishop of Carthage. When the persecution of the Emperor Decius began in ad 250, Cyprian left the city. Many church leaders scorned flight from persecution, and Cyprian lost face. From his hiding-place he had difficulty restraining the ‘confessors’, Christians whose sufferings earned them great spiritual prestige. They were urging lenient treatment for ‘lapsed’ Christians who denied the faith under pressure. After Cyprian returned in ad 251, a council of bishops fixed stricter terms for readmitting them to the church, whereupon the dissidents split off. To oppose their action, Cyprian wrote his most important work, The Unity of the Catholic Church. From ad 255 Cyprian defiantly opposed Stephen, Bishop of Rome, over the question whether Christian baptism could be received outside the catholic (mainstream) church. Cyprian believed that the Spirit’s gifts of life and salvation were restricted to the Catholic Church. Unlike Stephen, he demanded that people baptized in separatist groups who entered the church should be rebaptized. The dispute faded after Stephen’s death and Cyprian’s exile and courageous martyrdom in ad 258. Cyprian was above all a churchman; a clear-headed administrator but a simple theologian, whose writings deal with practical church matters. By calling regular councils of bishops, he put into practice his conviction that the church depended for its unity on their harmony and equality. Cyprian believed that all bishops were in theory equal – just as the apostles had been. He regarded ministers as priests, and the Lord’s Supper as the sacrifice of the cross, and tried to integrate the Spirit-dominated puritanism of Tertullian with the church of the bishops. Cyprian’s pastoral zeal was best shown when he helped people during a terrible plague in ad 252–4. David F. Wright Rome takes the lead When Irenaeus presented his succession-list for the Church of Rome, he described it as: ‘the very great, very ancient, and universally known church, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.’ Because Christians from all parts were found there, it was a microcosm of the whole Christian world. Irenaeus’ statement hints at some of the reasons why Rome acquired a leading position among the churches. All roads led to Rome, the capital of the Empire, not least the roads that Christians travelled. A remarkable number of prominent Christians made their way to Rome: Ignatius, Polycarp, Marcion, Valentinus, Tatian, Justin, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Praxeas and other Monarchians, and Origen – as well as Peter and Paul in the sixties. Rome was the only Western Church to receive a letter from an apostle (and what a letter!). Luke’s long, miraculous account of Paul’s journey to Rome reflects the importance attached to his reaching the capital (Acts 27, 28). Nothing boosted the prestige of Christian Rome so much as the fact that the two chief apostles were martyred there under Nero. By the mid-second century, memorial shrines to Paul and Peter had been erected in Rome, on the Appian Way and the Vatican Hill respectively. Remains of the latter were uncovered in excavations during the 1950s and 1960s. The Fall of Jerusalem in ad 70 enhanced the standing of the Roman Church in the long term. It now became almost impossible to evangelize the Jewish settlements in Parthia to the east, and Christianity’s centre of gravity shifted west – where Rome was well suited to play a central role. However, the letter to the Church at Corinth known as 1 Clement (c. ad 95–97) did not imply any Roman claim to superior authority. Second-century Christianity in Rome appears very varied. It included independent schools like Justin’s, and immigrant groups such as the Asians, who followed their traditional observance of the Pascha. Not until the 190s did a strong bishop emerge – Victor (r. ad 189-199), an African and the first Latin speaker. He threatened to excommunicate the Asian churches over the Quartodeciman dispute. Meanwhile the new succession-lists and the shrines of Peter and Paul bolstered a growing self-confidence, and the Roman bishop’s attitude towards Montanism was widely noted. In his dispute with Cyprian, Stephen (r. 254–257) was the first Bishop of Rome to claim a special authority derived from Peter by appealing to Matthew 16:18–19: ‘And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ (niv). Paul’s position alongside Peter in the earliest Roman church now began to be lost sight of. Cyprian regarded every bishop’s seat as ‘the see of Peter’, although he admitted that the Roman Church had a special importance because it had been founded so early. The Roman Church soon possessed considerable wealth, including the first of its underground burial-chambers (catacombs) outside the city, and several large houses whose upper floors were adapted for use as churches (tituli). Constantine’s family enriched it by giving the Lateran Palace, and by erecting basilicas, including two as memorials to Peter and Paul. In the 270s, when the Emperor Aurelian was petitioned to settle a dispute about church property in Antioch, he allocated it ‘to those with whom the bishops of the doctrine in Italy and Rome should communicate in writing’, thus indicating their special authority. During the fourth century, the Church of Rome and its bishop considerably enlarged their claims to first place in honour and jurisdiction. They benefited from reaction against excessive interference by the Emperor in Eastern Church affairs, and because Rome was consistently orthodox throughout the upheavals over doctrine in the East. Christians and the Roman state Different attitudes towards the Roman Empire are evident in the earliest Christian writings, and a variety of views persisted into the second and third centuries. Following Romans 13 and Acts, apologists writing in defence of their faith stressed that the Christians were law-abiding citizens, who paid their taxes and prayed for the emperors. They did not serve in the armies, but engaged in a more effective spiritual warfare, and by prayer contributed to Rome’s victory in just wars. These writers attempted to demonstrate that those who did not worship the Roman gods could nevertheless be good Romans. They argued that the special connection between Roman religion and the Roman state should be broken, and that emperors should allow the practice of other religions, such as Christianity. Some Christian writers falsely claimed that only corrupt emperors had persecuted the church. Some suggested that the church and Empire might have a common destiny; they began together (Jesus was born in the reign of the first Emperor, Augustus) and prospered together. They claimed that the peace won by the Emperor – the Pax Romana – was God-given to facilitate the spread of Christianity, ‘the philosophy which goes with the Empire’ (Melito). Tertullian was less optimistic, and followed the apocalyptic tradition of the Revelation of John. He believed that the whole fabric of social and public life was fouled by idolatry, and that it was unthinkable that a Christian should enter the imperial service, let alone be an emperor. North African Christians generally displayed a more scornful and defiant attitude to Roman power. In ad 180 one of the six martyrs from Scillium declared, ‘I do not recognize the empire of this world.’ During the first half of the third century, it became fashionable to combine the worship of different gods in one religion. Some of the emperors showed a particular interest in Christianity. The Emperor Alexander Severus (r. 222–235) reputedly included a representation of Jesus among the statues in his chapel. His mother had contact with Hippolytus and Origen, who also corresponded with the Emperor Philip the Arabian (r. 244–249) and his wife. But Christianity first became the religion of kings and princes outside the Roman Empire. Royal families adopted the faith in Edessa, one of the chief centres of Syriac-speaking Christianity, in the early third century, and in Armenia and Georgia a century later. David F. Wright The Manichaeans Mani (ad 216–76), a Persian born in Mesopotamia, established a religion which claimed to be the final, universal revelation. This was a dualistic religion which maintained the sharp opposition between the principles of light and of darkness, like other Gnostic movements. Mani’s followers, the Manichaeans, were zealous missionaries who carried their gospel to Africa, Europe, and even China. The Manichaeans posed a threat to the church in the fourth century, and numbered Augustine among their adherents prior to his conversion. The Manichaeans probably bequeathed some of their beliefs to heretical groups that flourished in Asia Minor and Europe in the Middle Ages. Mani Mani was brought up among a sect of Jewish Christians, but left them when he received ‘revelations’, calling himself ‘the apostle of Jesus Christ’. Mani converted members of his family and commenced his far-flung ministry of more than thirty years. An early source describes Mani’s appearance, with a book in one hand and a staff in the other (he may have been lame), and wearing flamboyant clothing – a blue cloak and red and green trousers. Mani preached in Mesopotamia and throughout Persia, and even reached India, allegedly delivering many from demons and diseases. Mani died in prison in ad 276, after which he was decapitated, and his corpse buried by his followers at Gundishapur, in south-west Persia. Mani, a gifted painter, composed the Ardahang, a picture book, to propagate his faith among the illiterate. He also wrote seven works. Mani taught that there were two independent eternal principles: light and darkness, God and matter. In the first epoch, light and darkness were separate; in the second epoch they were intermingled; and in the final epoch they were to be separated once more. Jesus and other religious leaders came in order to release souls of light from the prison of their bodies. The Manichaeans were sharply divided between an elite circle known as the ‘elect’ and the mass of lay people known as ‘hearers’. The hearers lived the lives of ordinary citizens. They offered daily gifts of fruit, cucumbers, and melons – which were believed to possess a great deal of light – to the elect, who were ascetics and vegetarians. At death, the souls of the hearers were reborn as other people. Only the elect, who were distinguished by white robes, were eligible for offices and for the most sacred rites. Manichaeism in the West Manichaeism spread at an early date to Syria and Palestine, an army veteran bringing the new religion from Mesopotamia in ad 274. Their arrival in North Africa elicited Diocletian’s harsh edict of ad 297, which condemned the Manichaeans as hostile Persian agents who were to be executed. After the spread of Manichaeism in many areas in the fourth century, the forceful refutations of Augustine of Hippo, his disciple Evodius, and other church leaders stemmed the tide. By the sixth century Manichaeism was in decline in the West. The Paulician movement, which spread in Armenia from the seventh to the twelfth century, though it repudiated Manichaeism, resembled it in its dualist views. The Paulicians came to Bulgaria in the tenth century and helped to develop the Bogomils, who flourished in the Balkans in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The latter movement in turn stimulated the Manichaean-like heresy of the Cathars, or Albigensians, who were widespread in southern France and northern Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A crusade was proclaimed against them by Pope Innocent III in 1208, and by the fourteenth century, the last heirs of Manichaeism had finally been suppressed by the Inquisition. Edwin Yamauchi Chapter 7 How the First Christians Worshipped Since the first Christians came to faith in Jesus as Messiah and Lord out of a Jewish background, it is not surprising that Jewish influences are seen in the patterns of early Christian worship. The two great centres of Jewish worship, the Jerusalem Temple and the network of local synagogues throughout Palestine and the ancient world wherever Jews had scattered, handed on a recognizable legacy to the Christian church. The synagogue played the more dominant role in both Judaism and early Christianity. Its pattern of Scripture readings and sermon within a framework of praise and congregational prayers was taken over by the Jewish Christians. Luke 4:16–21 gives a valuable description of Jewish worship: …on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me…’ [Isaiah 61:1, 2] Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’ Later, the apostles used the synagogue as a springboard for their evangelism and teaching. Scripture reading is referred to occasionally in the New Testament, and the sermons reported in the book of Acts give models of early Christian preaching, sometimes in synagogues. Paul on worship In 1 Corinthians, which gives probably the earliest description of worship in the Christian church, Paul constantly draws on the Old Testament. This letter, written about ad 55, pictures the church as the new Israel, living a pattern of the Christian life that is based on the new exodus. Paul uses ideas drawn from the Jewish Passover, which celebrated God’s saving favour and strength in calling Israel to be his people, and rescuing them from tyranny in Egypt. According to Paul, the church succeeded the old Jewish community, and combined both Jews and Greeks within God’s one family of converted men and women. This fellowship of believers in Jesus stood at the dawn of a new age in God’s dealings with the old Israel. They were the first generation of a new people in world history, marked out by their joyful awareness of living in a new relationship to God, and sharing in a new age of grace and power. All this was made possible through the gift of the Holy Spirit, which followed the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. This one fact of experience stamps New Testament worship as unique, however much the church owed to its Jewish inheritance. That inheritance was, of course, considerable. Paul used the framework of the Passover meal to interpret the Lord’s Supper. But other elements were also intertwined, such as the fellowship meal, called the agape, or ‘love feast’, which had its counterpart in Jewish table-customs. At public prayer, the response of amen (a Hebrew word meaning a confirming of what was being expressed in prayer) was the natural way to show agreement. The setting of worship was ‘the first day of the week’. This referred to the day of Christ’s resurrection, as in the Gospels, and is distinct from the Jewish Sabbath. The Christian Sunday was not made a ‘day of rest’ until Constantine decreed it in ad 321. Paul also speaks about baptism, a rite of initiation with roots in Jewish washings for ceremonial purpose, and especially in the service of tevilah, the ritual ‘bath’ necessary for all converts to Judaism from paganism. Several of these practices were being misused at Corinth, and Paul objected to their abuse and misunderstanding. Baptism should be in the name of Jesus, not in the name of Christian leaders, as if they were in charge of some cult. ‘In the name of Jesus’ meant that the new converts passed under his authority, and confessed him as Lord. Two special meals For I received from the Lord [the teaching] I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ 1 Corinthians 11:23–25, nrsv The love feast, or agape meal, had become an occasion for selfishness and drunkenness; Paul pointed to the breakdown of fellowship – which it was the purpose of both the agape and the Lord’s Supper to promote. Paul believed the Lord’s Supper served both to unite Christians with the Lord in his death and risen life, and to join believers in a bond of union as ‘one body’ in Christ. The excesses at Corinth destroyed both aims. By their greed and drunkenness, they were turning the meal into an orgy; by their superstitious attitude to the bread and wine, they were undermining Paul’s teaching on the need for a personal receiving of Christ by faith and in love (1 Corinthians 11). In addition, the enthusiasm of the Corinthian Christians led them to misuse ‘ecstatic tongues’ and other gifts of the Spirit. Paul tried to curb this, by insisting that worship must promote the healthy growth of the entire community of Christians. Personal whims and the private enjoyment of the gifts of the Spirit were to be brought firmly under control (1 Corinthians 12). Not all the features of early Christian worship at Corinth are clear. It is not known what ‘baptism for the dead’ implied (1 Corinthians 15:29). Paul did not attach great importance to it, but used it simply to illustrate another matter. He also mentioned the ‘holy kiss’ (1 Corinthians 16:20) without explanation. Singing and prayers ‘Singing’ with the mind and with the spirit indicates a musical side to the meeting, but references to musical instruments do not make it clear whether they were used in worship (1 Corinthians 14:15). Exactly what these hymns were, and whether snatches of them have survived, is unclear. Passages such as Philippians 2:6–11, Colossians 1:15–20, and 1 Timothy 3:16 contain what may be early hymns, offered, as later among Christians in Bithynia about ad 112, to Christ as to God. Ephesians 5:14 is the most likely example of a hymn from the churches instructed by Paul. The setting of that three-line invocation is clearly a service of baptism: Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. ( nrsv ) Prayers, whether very short like Maranatha, meaning ‘Our Lord, come’ (1 Corinthians 16:22), or longer, played an important part in worship at Corinth. Problems arose concerning women who attempted to pray with uncovered heads. Paul resisted this practice, though he freely granted the right of women believers to act as prophets and leaders of prayer in the assembled church (1 Corinthians 11:2–16). Both prophesying and praying are gifts of the Spirit. The freedom that the Corinthians were exercising to the full was to be held in check. Paul crisply summed up: ‘Let all things be done decently and in order’ (1 Corinthians 14:40). Evidence about Christian worship from writers who lived between the time of Paul and the middle of the second century is scarce and difficult to piece together. Worship gradually became more formal and stereotyped in the period following Paul’s death. Bishops and deacons possibly helped in this trend. New converts (catechumens) were given instruction in preparation for baptism. Worship forms connected with this have been seen in such writings as 1 Peter and 1 John. Short snatches of an elementary creed are found in such verses as Romans 10:9 (‘Jesus is Lord’); later examples are lengthened and developed, as in 1 Timothy 3:16 and 1 Peter 3:18–22: For Christ died for our sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also – not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience towards God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand – with angels, authorities, and powers in submission to him. Statements of faith The rise of false teaching, against which the letters of John were written, required Christians to state their faith in Jesus Christ as true man and true God. This was to counteract the Docetists, who denied Christ’s humanity, and the Ebionites, who threw doubt on Jesus’ unique status as Son of God. At first, when a person was baptized he or she affirmed a creed which was concerned mainly with statements about Christ’s person, as in the addition to the text at Acts 8:37: ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God’. Examples of more formal creeds, stating belief in the three persons of the Godhead, which goes back to the baptismal commission recorded in Matthew 28:19 (‘…make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…’), occur in descriptions of baptismal services reported by Irenaeus and Hippolytus of Rome. The Apostles’ Creed derives from the late second-century baptismal creed used in Rome. Instructions for worship and leadership On Sunday, the Lord’s own day, come together, break bread, and carry out the eucharist, first confessing your sins so that your offering may be pure. Let no one who has a quarrel with his friend join the meeting until they have been reconciled, so that your offering is not polluted. For this is the offering spoken of by the Lord: ‘Everywhere and at all times offer me a pure sacrifice. For my kingdom is great, says the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations.’ Appoint for yourselves therefore bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord; men who are meek and not money-lovers, true and approved, for they also perform for you the ministry of prophets and teachers. So do not despise them; they are the honourable men among you, together with the prophets and teachers. Didache 14:1–15:1 The puzzling document known as the Didache probably originated in the Syrian churches in the late first or early second century. It consists of a moral tract concerning the ‘Two Ways’ – of life and of death – followed by sections about early procedures for baptism, the agape, and the Lord’s Supper. It is clear that the agape and Lord’s Supper included set prayers and were celebrated during a public gathering on the Lord’s day, when Christians assembled ‘to break bread and give thanks’. This was preceded by the confession of sins and offering of gifts. Clement of Rome also provides evidence that Sunday worship was becoming formalized. Clement included a great prayer of intercession, drawn from the church’s liturgy (a word used for the form of service, normally the Lord’s Supper), in his letter 1 Clement (late first/early second century). He also insisted that worthy celebration of the Lord’s Supper is possible only when conducted by church leaders, called bishops or presbyters. An outsider’s view of Christian worship They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang an anthem to Christ as God, and bound themselves by a solemn oath (sacramentum) not to commit any wicked deed, but to abstain from all fraud, theft, and adultery, never to break their word, or deny a trust when called upon to honour it; after which it was their custom to separate, and then meet again to partake of food, but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. Pliny, Letters x.96; ad 112 Ignatius also emphasized that the eucharist is the focal point of the church’s unity, and so must be celebrated only under the authorized church leader, the bishop or his delegate. Ignatius’ letters shed much light on early Christian worship, and include an early hymn to Christ and an explanation of the meaning of the Lord’s day. The correspondence between the Emperor Trajan and Pliny, the governor of Bithynia (ad 111–113), reveals that Christians used to meet for public worship on a ‘fixed day’ (Sunday) before sunrise. They would join in a hymn sung responsively, offered to Christ ‘as God’, and vowed to renounce all practices inconsistent with their Christian faith. They shared ‘holy meals’, and it seems that by now the agape had been separated from the Lord’s Supper. In fact, continuing abuse of the love feast led to its gradual disappearance in its original form, while the solemn meal of ‘holy communion’ was given more and more significance as a sacrament. Ignatius described it as ‘a medicine of immortality, the antidote that we should not die, but live for ever in Jesus Christ’. A service in second-century Rome At the end of the prayers, we greet one another with a kiss. Then the president of the brethren is brought bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he takes them, and offers up praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and gives thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at his hands. When he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their joyful assent by saying Amen. (‘Amen’ means ‘so be it’ in Hebrew) … Then those whom we call deacons give to each of those present the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and carry away a portion to those who are absent. We call this food ‘eucharist’, which no one is allowed to share unless he or she believes the things which we teach are true, and has been washed with the washing that is for remission of sins and into a second birth, and is living as Christ has commanded. For we do not receive them as ordinary bread and ordinary drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation; similarly we have been taught that the food which is blessed by the word of prayer transmitted from him, and by which our blood and flesh are changed and nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs called Gospels composed by them, have delivered to us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, said, ‘This do in remembrance of me, this is my body’; and that, in a similar way, having taken the cup and given thanks, he said, ‘This is my blood’; and gave it to them alone. Justin, Apology I:65–66; ad 150 Later patterns of worship The Christians gradually standardized their worship and gave increasing prominence to the Lord’s Supper as the focal point of the liturgy. From the time of Justin Martyr to Athanasius, three major descriptions offer new evidence. Justin’s First Apology, written about ad 150, contains what has been called ‘the oldest systematic description of Sunday worship’, based on practices in the Church in Rome at that time. In Justin’s day, Christian worship was becoming distinctively ecclesiastical, by shedding its Jewish elements, though the framework was still modelled on that of the synagogue. The domestic atmosphere of the Passover meal was giving way to formality, and a new vocabulary was introduced to give a more other-worldly, even transcendental, character to worship. For Justin, the act of communion was a ‘memorial of the passion’ of Christ. The elements of bread and wine over which thanks had been given nourished the lives of Christians by assimilation – a thought derived from Jesus’ teaching in John 6:25–58. This idea played a growing role in explanations of the eucharist as a sacramental sharing in the divine life. Justin and Irenaeus possibly allude to a special prayer, later known as the epiclesis, which ‘called upon’ the divine Word to come upon the bread and wine. It is not surprising that, especially among Gnostics, magical ideas about the nature of the consecrated elements began to emerge. Irenaeus also wrote of the ‘altar in heaven’ to which prayer and offerings were directed. Justin’s evidence is important for other reasons. He described the framework of Scripture readings as including ‘the memoirs of the apostles’ (that is, the Gospels of the New Testament), the exposition delivered by the presiding leader, prayers for all people, offered standing, and the kiss of peace. This ‘service of the word’ (as it was later called) led into the eucharist itself, when bread and wine were presented to the leader, who offered a thanksgiving prayer extempore, to which the congregation assented with ‘Amen’. The deacons handed the bread and wine to all present, and arranged to have them distributed to those believers who were absent. A collection was taken, looked after by the leader and then distributed to those in need. Evidently, what has come to be regarded as a service of worship was already more or less fixed in Justin’s time. It soon became clear, as Origen implies, that the first part of the service was open to converts under instruction, and probably enquirers too, but the second part restricted to baptized communicants. This distinction became standard, with a clear dividing-line between the two parts – particularly in the Syrian Apostolic Constitutions and later in Chrysostom’s writings. The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, usually dated about ad 215, contains a full account of the ordaining and ordering of ministers, and also includes much interesting information about baptism. However, its chief value lies in its teaching about the eucharist. The Holy Spirit was invoked on ‘the offering of the church’, but this was more a prayer for the Christians in their act of offering than for the elements themselves. The bishop who laid his hand on the offering was to do so ‘with all the presbyters’ sharing with him: the act clearly involved both the bishop and the presbyters. The Sacramentary of Serapion (who was an Egyptian bishop at the time of Athanasius) was written primarily for bishops, but gives interesting general descriptions of worship and particularly prayer. The Word (Logos) is asked to come upon the offerings to make them ‘the body of the Word’, ‘the blood of the Truth’. The bread on the church’s altar is believed to become ‘the likeness of the holy body’ of the Lord. Ralph P. Martin How the New Testament Came Down to Us An overwhelming number of handwritten texts are available for studying the New Testament in the original Greek. A recent count lists more than 120 papyri (manuscripts made of papyrus, and generally the earliest), around 300 uncial manuscripts (written in Greek capital letters, generally on leather), and more than 2,900 minuscule manuscripts (written in cursive Greek script, and usually later in date than uncials). In addition, there are more than 2,450 lectionary manuscripts – church reading books which contain the parts of the Gospels and letters to be read on fixed days of the church year. But most of these manuscripts date from the eighth century or later, and few have been studied in detail. The earliest complete New Testament manuscript still available is the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from the fourth century, and is now in the British Library, London. ‘Codex’ is the name for an early form of book, made by sewing leaves of writing material together. Codex Vaticanus, from which a few leaves are missing at the end of the New Testament, dates from the same period and has been housed in the Vatican Library, Rome, since at least the fifteenth century. Less complete New Testament manuscripts date back as early as the late second or early third century, and one fragment of the Gospel of John (the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, now at the John Rylands University Library, Manchester) dates from approximately ad 130. The Chester Beatty Papyri contain parts of the Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews, and Revelation, and date from the first half of the third century. Bodmer Papyrus II (P66), dating from about ad 200, has significant fragments of John’s Gospel; other papyri in this collection, from about ad 175–225, contain parts of Luke and John, as well as the letters of Peter and Jude. Codex Alexandrinus, from about the fifth century, another important early manuscript containing most of the New Testament, is also now in the British Library. Codex Bezae, from the fifth century, contains most of the Gospels and Acts, in Greek and Latin on facing pages, and is now in Cambridge, England; Codex Washingtonianus, dating from the fourth or fifth century, includes nearly all of the four Gospels, and is now in Washington DC. St Catherine’s Monastery, in the Sinai Peninsula, one of the oldest monasteries in the world. The German archaeologist Constantin von Tischendorf retrieved part of the Codex Sinaiticus manuscript of the New Testament here in the mid-nineteenth century. Tim Dowley Associates Scholars examine these Greek manuscripts in the following ways: • By attempting to date and place a manuscript by its style of writing and other clues. • By looking for any divergences from other manuscripts in its text. • By discovering relationships between manuscripts, they work out how far they agree with each other. More exact methods for measuring the amount of agreement between manuscripts have been developed. Manuscripts with significant amounts of agreement are grouped into ‘text-types’. So far, four possible main text-types have been found: The Alexandrian, Neutral, or Egyptian text-type, which underlies most modern New Testament translations The Western text-type, found particularly in Old Latin translations from the Greek The Byzantine, Syrian, Ecclesiastical, Traditional, Constantinopolitan, Majority, or Antiochian text-type, the standard text in the Greek Orthodox Church, and underlying most Protestant translations of the Reformation era. The Caesarean text-type suggested by some scholars to be found in certain Greek manuscripts of the Gospel Getting back to the original text The main aim of all this detailed work is to establish a Greek text which is as close as possible to the wording of the New Testament documents as they first came from the hands of the authors. For those Christians for whom the Bible’s teaching is the starting-point, exact theological thinking depends upon an accurate Greek New Testament. In addition, scholars are trying to discover how the history of the church may have affected the copying of the New Testament text. The overwhelming mass of variations in the many manuscripts studied consist of accidental spelling differences or omissions. But some variations are clearly deliberate, most of them seemingly attempts to ‘improve’ the style, to remove ambiguity, or sometimes to harmonize parallel accounts in different books. A few of the variations appear to be caused by a copyist’s concern about doctrine. For example, in Mark 3:21, the original text seems to suggest that Jesus’ friends or relatives were worried about his sanity (‘…people were saying ‘He has gone out of his mind”’ nrsv). This appears to have embarrassed some scribes; in some early manuscripts they have changed the wording so it is the crowd – not his family – who try to seize Jesus, and the worry is about the excitement of the crowd rather than Jesus’ sanity. Because of its rather non-literary Greek, Mark’s Gospel appears to have suffered most often from these kinds of deliberate alterations during copying. Copying the New Testament Clearly the New Testament writings were considered important in the early church, since many copies were made – for private reading as well as church use. However, though the writings were considered important, this did not always guarantee scrupulous, exact copying of them. While no manuscript is free of either accidental or deliberate variations, some manuscripts seem to reflect a more careful tradition of copying, while others reveal a much freer attitude towards the actual words of the New Testament. Several translations of the New Testament were made at an early date, the most important of which are the Syriac, Latin, and Coptic. There was an intense interest in making the New Testament available to different language-groups in the Roman world. These translated versions can often show how the New Testament was interpreted during the second and third centuries and later, when they were first produced. But these translations were not always prepared by people with a good command of Greek, and are often very imperfect. Can the New Testament text be trusted? Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other ancient historical works. For Caesar’s Gallic War (composed between 58 and 50 bc) there are several extant manuscripts, but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some 900 years later than Caesar’s day. Of the 142 books of the Roman History of Livy (59 bc–ad 17) only thirty-five survive; these are known to us from not more than twenty manuscripts of any consequence, only one of which, and that containing fragments of Books iii–vi, is as old as the fourth century. Of the fourteen books of the Histories of Tacitus (about ad 100) only four and a half survive; of the sixteen books of his Annals, ten survive in full and two in part. The text of these extant portions of his two great historical works depends entirely on two manuscripts, one of the ninth century and one of the eleventh. The extant manuscripts of his minor works (Dialogus de Oratoribus, Agricola, Germania) all descend from a codex of the tenth century. The History of Thucydides (about 460–400  bc) is known to us from eight manuscripts, the earliest belonging to around ad 900, and a few papyrus scraps, belonging to about the beginning of the Christian era. The same is true of the History of Herodotus (about 488–428 bc). Yet no classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest manuscripts of their works which are of any use to us are over 1,300 years later than the originals. But how different is the situation of the New Testament in this respect! In addition to the two excellent manuscripts of the fourth century … which are the earliest of some thousands known to us, considerable fragments remain of papyrus copies of books of the New Testament dated from 100 or 200 years earlier still. The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, the existence of which was made public in 1931, consist of portions of eleven papyrus codices, three of which contained most of the New Testament writings. One of these, containing the four Gospels with Acts, belongs to the first half of the third century; another, containing Paul’s letters to churches and the Epistle to the Hebrews, was copied at the beginning of the third century; the third, containing Revelation, belongs to the second half of the same century. Earlier still is a fragment of a papyrus codex containing John 28:31–33, 37ff., now in the John Rylands University Library, Manchester dated on palaeographical grounds around ad 130. F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents Quotations from the New Testament in the works of some of the early Christian writers can also help in studying the New Testament text. But these early writers were often very free in their use of the New Testament, and quoted from memory, or merely paraphrased the passage, which makes it difficult to decide what type of New Testament text they used. The early Christians revered and used the New Testament greatly, but did not treat the exact wording with care. From the time they were first produced, the New Testament writings were always closely linked with the church and its worship, evangelism, beliefs, and institutions. The information available concerning the New Testament in the early period shows how New Testament Scripture and the church interacted and affected each other at that time. The church was concerned to make Scripture widely available; some of the variations in early New Testament manuscripts reveal a concern over misunderstanding of Scripture, or perhaps misuse by heretics. Larry W. Hurtado Further reading Jesus Richard A. Burridge, Four Gospels, One Jesus? A Symbolic Reading, 2nd ed., London/Grand Rapids 2004. Richard A. Burridge, What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 2nd ed., Grand Rapids, 2005. Richard A. Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics, Grand Rapids, 2007. Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, 2nd ed., Oxford, 2002. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, London, 1993. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, London, 1996. The Early Church Ivor J. Davidson, The Birth of the Church: From Jesus to Constantine ad 30–312, Oxford, 2004. W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, London, 1984 J. Stevenson ed., rev. W. H. C. Frend, A New Eusebius, Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to ad 337, London, 1987. Frances Young, The Making of the Creeds, London, 1991. Study questions Why was the destruction of Jerusalem in ad 70 significant for Christianity? What factors influenced the recognition of the New Testament canon? What was the Pax Romana and did it impact the growth of Christianity? Why and how did Judaism and Christianity divide? When and why did the Roman state oppress Christians? How does archaeology inform our knowledge of the early church? Who were the Gnostics and how did they threaten the early church? Describe the main elements of Christian worship in the first three centuries. To which regions had the Christian faith spread by ad 300? What was the impact of Hellenistic philosophy on Christian theology? 2 Acceptance and Conquest ad 325–600 Summary Christianity was given official recognition as a ‘legitimate religion’ by the Roman state in 313, when Constantine, a recent convert, was joint emperor. From that point onwards, Christianity became not merely a recognized faith, but the official religion of the Roman Empire. This period of Christian history was marked by a number of controversies over the identity of Jesus Christ and the Christian doctrine of God. A series of councils was convened to resolve these differences, and to ensure the unity of the Christian church throughout the Empire. The most important of these was the Council of Chalcedon (451), which set out the definitive Christian interpretation of the biblical witness to the identity of Jesus Christ as ‘true God and true man’. The fall of the Roman Empire – traditionally dated to 476 – led to widespread insecurity within the Western Church. In the East, the church continued to flourish, as the Eastern Empire, based at Constantinople, was largely unaffected by the attacks from northern European invaders which eventually terminated Roman power in the West. The removal of Rome as a stabilizing influence, however, gave a new role to the church in the West, and particularly to its monasteries. The founding of the first Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino around 525 is widely seen as a landmark in this process. The increasingly important role of the pope as a political force also began to emerge during this period. Chapter 8 Constantine and the Christian Empire Christianity recognized Momentous changes occurred in both the church and the political structure of the West during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. The Western Roman Empire disappeared under the repeated assaults of the German barbarian tribes on its northern frontier. Christianity, a persecuted minority faith at Constantine’s conversion in ad 312, had become the religion of the Empire by the end of the fourth century. The Bishop of Rome, whose leadership in the church had been largely a primacy of honour, now claimed supreme and universal authority in Christian lands and began to make good this claim in the West, at least over the church. By the time of Pope Gregory I (‘Gregory the Great’, r. 590–604) the collapse of the Western Empire left the Roman bishop the real ruler of much of central Italy. A giant sculpted white marble head of Constantine the Great (c. 280–337), Rome, Italy, from a colossal statue that once stood in the Roman Forum. © Ron Chapple/Dreamstime.Com The conversion of Constantine Throughout the fourth century, relations between the church, the emperor, and pagan religion were changing continually. Constantine’s defeat of Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the autumn of 312, and his interpretation of that victory as the response of the Christian God to his prayer for help, propelled church and state into a new age for which neither was prepared. Out of this new relationship between Christian church and Christian emperor stemmed the turbulent history of church/state relations in the later Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages. Constantine’s account of his conversion, told by the emperor himself to the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea towards the end of his life, is well known. Constantine, alarmed by reports of Maxentius’ mastery of magical arts, prayed to the ‘Supreme God’ for help. The response was a sign, a cross in the noonday sky ‘above the sun’, and with it the words, ‘Conquer by this.’ That night Christ appeared to Constantine in a dream and commanded him to use the sign – apparently Chi-Rho, the initial letters of the name of Christ – ‘as a safeguard in all engagements with his enemies’. According to the historian Lactantius, Constantine put this sign on the shields of his solders, and then marched on Rome, confronted Maxentius – who was miraculously induced to fight outside the city fortifications – and conquered. This story has been doubted. But Constantine’s attitude towards the Christian church after he became emperor, and his new laws, demonstrate that his allegiance to Christianity was genuine, though his understanding of the Christian faith was at first no doubt imperfect. Indeed, Constantine did retain the pagan high priest’s title of Pontifex Maximus; for a decade his coins continued to feature some of the pagan gods, notably his own favourite deity, the Unconquered Sun; and he delayed Christian baptism until the end of his life. However, delayed baptism was the custom of the age, a device for avoiding mortal sin; and retaining the pagan symbols was a necessary compromise with his pagan subjects, still very much in the majority. Constantine treated Christianity as the favoured, though not yet the official, religion of the Empire. He granted immunities to the clergy and lavished gifts on the church; in his letters and edicts he spoke as if the Christian God were his own. The Extent of Christianity in ad 300 It is important to understand Constantine’s previous religion, the worship of the Unconquered Sun. If the story of the cross in the sky is true, he may have interpreted the sign as his own special deity commending the worship of the Christian God. Perhaps Constantine continued to identify the sun with the Christian God in some way – a belief made easier by the tendency of Christian writers and artists to use sun imagery in portraying Christ. For them, Christ is the source of light and salvation; a mosaic from a third-century tomb found under St Peter’s, Rome, even shows him as the sun god in his chariot. When in 321 Constantine made the first day of the week a holiday, he called it ‘the venerable day of the Sun’ (Sunday). Another result of Constantine’s conversion was renewed interest in the Holy Land by people in the West. Since the failure of the Second Jewish Revolt of Bar Kokhba (132–35), Jerusalem had been a pagan city; Constantine and his mother Helena now made it into a Christian city. The traditional place of Jesus’ burial was found beneath the Emperor Hadrian’s Temple of Venus, and Helena discovered what was believed to be the ‘True Cross’ on which Jesus had been crucified. Here – with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – and elsewhere, Constantine and Helena built churches, and pilgrims came in increasing numbers to the holy places. Christianity and pagan customs The Christian church began to take over many pagan ideas and images. From sun-worship, for example, came the celebration of Christ’s birth on 25 December, the birthday of the Sun. Saturnalia, the Roman winter festival of 17–21 December, provided the merriment, gift-giving, and candles typical of later Christmas holidays. Sun-worship hung on in Roman Christianity, and Pope Leo I, in the mid-fifth century, rebuked worshippers who turned round to bow to the sun before entering St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Some pagan customs which were later Christianized, for example the use of candles, incense, and garlands, were initially avoided by the church because they symbolized paganism. The Virgin Mary The veneration of the Virgin Mary was probably stimulated by parallels in pagan religion. Some scholars believe the worship of Artemis (Diana) was transferred to Mary. Ephesus, a city which belonged to Artemis until the end of the pagan era, was also associated with Mary from an early date. Many people connected Mary with Isis, the Egyptian goddess, whose worship had spread throughout the Empire in the Christian era. In her travels, Isis became identified with many other goddesses, including Artemis, and was the ‘universal mother’ of later pagan religion. The devotees of Isis, herself called ‘the Great Virgin’, ‘Mother of the God’, and ‘Queen of Heaven’, naturally tended to look to Mary for comfort when paganism was outlawed and their temples were destroyed at the end of the fourth century. Some surviving images of Isis holding the child Horus are in a pose remarkably similar to that of some early Christian madonnas. However, the original aim of such titles for Mary as ‘bearer of God’ (Greek, Theotokos) was to honour the divine Son. Saints and martyrs The cult of saints and martyrs grew rapidly in the fourth century, another example of the blending of the old paganism with Christianity. Chapels and even churches began to be built over the tombs of martyrs, a practice which influenced church architecture. Competition for saintly corpses soon degenerated into a superstitious search for relics, and in parts of the East it sometimes became a fight for the bodies of saintly hermits, still alive but expected to expire shortly. Although the cult arose among the people, it was approved and encouraged by the great Christian leaders of the age – Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine. Ambrose, for instance, discovered the bodies of several forgotten saints. The Christian historian Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Syria (c. 393–c. 457) boasted that in many places saints and martyrs took the place of pagan gods, and their shrines the place of pagan temples. Saints were claimed variously to cure barrenness, protect travellers, detect perjury, foretell the future, and heal the sick. Particularly popular was the shrine near Alexandria of St Cyrus and St John, physicians who in their earthly practice charged no fees. To the shrine of St Felix of Nola, who was believed to detect perjury, Augustine sent two clergymen who had accused each other, to discover which was lying. The church never went as far as to teach that saints were to be worshipped, but it was suggested that they were in a special position to hear petitions and present them directly to God. The saint’s position in heaven was compared to that of the great man at court, who might be expected to get results for a lowly petitioner, by presenting his request directly to the emperor. Augustine and others protested against abuses of the traffic in relics. In 401, an African church council insisted that, before a chapel was consecrated, the saint or martyr celebrated must be proved genuine. We have only one surviving suggestion by an orthodox Christian that attachment to shrines or relics marked a return to pagan superstition. Vigilantius, an obscure priest from Aquitaine, wrote: We almost see the rites of the pagans introduced into the churches under the pretext of religion; ranks of candles are lit in full daylight; and everywhere people kiss and adore some bit of dust in a little pot, wrapped in a precious fabric. Vigilantius’ protest survived only because some outraged priests sent a copy to Jerome, who refuted it in a typically scathing reply. Constantine and the church ‘What has the Emperor to do with the church?’ retorted Bishop Donatus famously, when presented with an unfavourable decree from the Emperor Constans (r. 337–350). Most of the conflict between church and state during the fourth century relates to this question. From the very beginning of Constantine’s reign, most Christians agreed with the Emperor that he had a great deal to do with the church. The Donatist division Although they later complained about the Emperor’s interference, it was the Donatists who first asked Constantine to intervene, less than six months after his victory over Maxentius. The Donatists were a strict party in North Africa, who refused to recognize Caecilian as bishop of Carthage because, they alleged, he had been ordained by a traditor, one who had ‘handed over’ or ‘betrayed’ Scriptures to the authorities in the recent persecution. Constantine did not hesitate to accept jurisdiction, although he referred the matter to a council of bishops. When the Donatists refused to accept the authority of this and a subsequent council, the Emperor lost patience and threatened to go to Africa to set things right himself: I am going to make plain to them what kind of worship is to be offered to God … What higher duty have I as emperor than to destroy error and repress rash indiscretions, and so cause all to offer to Almighty God true religion, honest concord, and due worship? Though the visit to Africa did not materialize, Constantine ordered the Donatist churches to be confiscated and their leaders banished. The Donatists resisted tenaciously – over the years producing a host of martyrs – and Constantine soon realized that his policy of repression was futile and revoked it. Despite intermittent attempts to root them out, the Donatists survived for three centuries; they only disappeared with the obliteration of Christianity in North Africa after the Muslim conquest. The Roman Emperor, as head of the state religion, had always been responsible for maintaining good relations between the people and their gods, and Constantine naturally saw himself in a similar role as Christian Emperor. He believed strife in the church, such as the Donatist and Arian controversies, was likely to bring down the wrath of the Christian God on him and the people entrusted to his care. The willingness of the church to accept, indeed to ask for, the intervention of the Emperor in matters so clearly outside his expert knowledge is surprising. The explanation is in part the self-interested desire of one faction or another to gain advantage in the various desperate struggles of the fourth century. Another problem for the church was that the only precedent for the role of a Christian emperor was that of the Old Testament kings of Israel, who had a great deal to do with maintaining peace and purity of religion in their kingdoms. In the Byzantine East, once the doctrine that the Emperor was above the church had been established, it was never effectively challenged. The Arian controversy Constantine’s handling of the Arian controversy was more astute, and at first more successful, than his approach to the Donatist split. The council of Nicaea, where the controversy should have ended, was his great triumph. When Constantine became master of the East in 324, he found a dispute already raging between Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and his presbyter, Arius, who was attempting to solve the difficult problem of the relation of the Son to God the Father. He suggested that the Son, though Creator, was himself created, and therefore could not be truly divine like the Father. Alexander and his bishops judged this heretical and excommunicated Arius, who found support elsewhere in the East. Constantine hoped to settle the matter ‘out of court’, and sent a letter to the contending parties describing the dispute as ‘very trifling and indeed unworthy to be the cause of such a conflict’. When he saw that this dispute was not to be settled so easily, Constantine called a council of the whole church, the first ‘ecumenical’ (general) council, at Nicaea in 325. The Emperor himself presided over the critical session, and it was he who proposed the reconciling word, homoousios (Greek for ‘of one essence’), to describe Christ’s relationship to the Father (though it was probably one of his ecclesiastical advisers, Ossius of Cordova – also known as Osius or Hosius – who suggested it to him). Nicaea was a triumph both for orthodoxy, since Arius could not accept the word, and apparently for Constantine’s goal of church unity, since only two bishops finally stood with Arius. The orthodox statement of doctrine produced at Nicaea, with some later modifications, became one of the great creeds of Western Christianity. But Constantine’s achievement of unity proved a hollow victory. Conflict flared up again when the anti-Arian party, led by Athanasius – who succeeded Alexander as bishop of Alexandria – refused to receive back repentant Arians into the church. Constantine’s continued attempts to attain unity were frustrated, as he saw it, by the obstinate refusal of first one faction and then the other to make any compromise. Constantine died in 337, tolerant towards Arian sympathizers, and with Athanasius defiant in exile – thus failing to achieve his goal of unity in the church. Against this must be balanced his successes. He had begun to Christianize the Empire. He founded Constantinople (in 330) and so shifted the focus of the Empire eastward, contributing both to the decline of the West and to the independence of the Western Church. The effect of Nicaea and its creed far outlived his own failure to solve the Arian controversy. Finally, Constantine established, permanently in the East, and for a time in the West, his own answer to the question: ‘What has the Emperor to do with the church?’ Church, state, and paganism The division of the Empire between Constantine’s three sons, after his death in 337, soon resulted in a civil war with theological overtones. From this struggle Constantius, who was inclined towards Arianism, emerged victorious in 353. Constantius’ efforts to unite the church under an anti-Nicene banner are seen in the series of councils held in various parts of the Empire between 354 and 360. Through these, he finally succeeded in forcing an anti-Nicene creed on reluctant bishops, and secured the condemnation of Athanasius, leader of the Nicene party. The climax of imperial intervention came at Milan in 355, if Athanasius’ account is accepted. Certain bishops were summoned before Constantius at his palace and ordered to condemn Athanasius. When they dared to appeal to the canons of the church, the Emperor replied, ‘Whatever I will, shall be regarded as a canon … Either obey or go into exile.’ In spite of all this, neither Athanasius nor the other Nicene bishops at first questioned the Emperor’s authority to intervene in church disputes. They simply held that he was wrong, deceived by his advisers. By 358, however, Athanasius’ views had changed: When did a judgment of the church receive its validity from the Emperor? … There have been many councils held until the present, and many judgments passed by the church; but the church leaders never sought the consent of the Emperor for them, nor did the Emperor busy himself with the affairs of the church … This was not quite true – but well might Athanasius forget the events of Constantine’s reign when confronted with the audacity of Constantius. Even old Ossius of Cordova, who had helped shape Constantine’s policy towards the church, now quoted Jesus against imperial interference: Do not intrude yourself into church matters, nor give commands to us concerning them … God has put into your hands the kingdom; to us he has entrusted the affairs of his church … It is written, ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s’ [Matthew 22:21, kjv]. Paganism suppressed The sons of Constantine were bolder than their father in the attack on paganism. Constantine had to proceed slowly, since most of his subjects were still pagan – particularly the army and the nobility, from whom he drew his officials. His ‘Edict’ of Milan (313) proclaimed toleration for both pagan and Christian subjects. He did close a few temples particularly offensive to Christians for such things as ritual prostitution, and stripped many others of their treasures to deck his new capital city, Constantinople. He also banned private sacrifices and divining, and probably prohibited public sacrifice too, near the end of his reign. Constantine’s sons proceeded more vigorously. A law of 341 apparently suppressed pagan cults, while a stronger decree by Constantius, in 356, closed the temples and prohibited sacrifice on pain of death. Some temples were actually shut down, but the law seems not to have been rigidly enforced, for pagan priesthoods and rituals continued in Rome, and probably elsewhere. In 357, Constantius, on a visit to Rome, removed from the Senate House the Altar of Victory, on which senators had offered incense since the age of the Emperor Augustus (27 bc–ad 14). Athanasius came to regard Constantius as worse than the biblical villains Saul, Ahab, or Pilate, and as a herald of the Antichrist, but such a view is too harsh. Constantius was, after all, acting in the same spirit as Constantine, to bring about unity in the Empire. Furthermore, he thought the church was on his side, since he had the support of a large part of the Eastern church, and Christianity was stronger in the East. But Constantius’ reign does show that truth and liberty can suffer when unity is the ultimate goal. Julian the ‘Apostate’ (r. 361–63) Some of the Nicene leaders thought better of Constantius when confronted with Julian, who became emperor in 361. Julian was a nephew of Constantine, and barely escaped the general massacre that followed his death in 337. As emperor, he could at last reveal that he had for some years been a secret pagan. His conversion was due to many factors, including the massacre of his family, and a lonely childhood filled with fears – imagined and real – of enemies at the Christian court of Constantius. In his education, Julian had felt closest to Plato and other great writers of ancient Greece, whom he studied under sympathetic tutors. He was also influenced by the skill of the Neoplatonic magician and medium, Maximus. Julian, sometimes also known as ‘the Philosopher’, now attempted to convert the Empire to a religion that he called ‘Hellenism’, which was more than a mere revival of the old, uncoordinated paganism. Julian made a unique attempt to combine many old elements in an organized, pagan ‘church’, in which the principal deity was Plato’s ‘Supreme Being’, whose chief visible representative was the life-giving Sun, identified with Helios and Mithras in the mythologies of the day. Syncretism prevailed, making it possible to regard all the old and new gods, with their cults and rituals, as originating from the Sun. Thus the world of Greek culture, mythology, and ritual could be retained without sacrificing the lofty monotheism of the Sun. Julian paid tribute to the Christian church, by attempting to incorporate in his ‘Hellenism’ some of the more successful features of Christianity. He tried to set up a hierarchy like that of the church, with metropolitans of provinces set over the local priesthoods and answerable to the Emperor as Pontifex Maximus. Julian was concerned that the ‘Hellenists’ should not be outdone in holiness and charity by the ‘Galileans’ – as he called the Christians – and that the lives of his priests should be worthy of their high calling. A letter to Arsacius, High Priest of Galatia, is in this spirit: Why do we not notice that it is their kindness to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead, and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism [i.e. Christianity]? I believe that we ought really and truly to practise every one of these virtues. And it is not enough for you alone to practise them, but so must all the priests in Galatia, without exception … In the second place admonish them that no priest may enter a theatre, or drink in a tavern, or control any craft or trade that is base and not respectable … Although Julian restored pagan worship all over the Empire, and the special privileges enjoyed by Christian clergy were removed, there was no open persecution of Christians. In fact, toleration was decreed for all religions, though pagans were particularly favoured in the civil service, and imperial justice was not always even-handed when settling the violent disputes that arose in some cities over the religious changes. But Julian raised the strongest protest when he prohibited Christians from teaching literature in the schools. He knew that upper-class Christians would continue to send their children to the ordinary schools, which prepared them for public life, even if their teachers were pagan, thus exposing the young to pagan propaganda. A curious solution to the dilemma was found by two Christian professors, who attempted to make the Scriptures a suitable vehicle for the preferred classical education, by translating the Old Testament into epic and tragedy, and the New Testament into Platonic dialogue. However Julian died in 363 before this stratagem could be tested. ‘Be of good courage; it is but a cloud which will quickly pass away’, Athanasius told his weeping congregation on hearing that Julian had ordered him into exile. Athanasius was right, for the zeal had gone out of paganism – at least Julian’s kind of paganism. Its failure was apparent even before Julian’s death. Ambrose of Milan In 374, following the death of the Arian Bishop of Milan, Ambrose was elected bishop by popular acclaim, although at that time he was not even baptized. Ambrose (339–97) came from a noble Roman family, received a classical education, and became a provincial governor in northern Italy, residing at Milan. He read widely, especially the Greek theologians, and following his election as bishop became famous both as a preacher and as a church administrator and politician. Ambrose was the leading spokesman against the petition of the pagan Symmachus in 384 to have the Altar of Victory restored to the Senate House in Rome; it was his influence that ensured the altar was not reinstated. Ambrose took a strong stand against Arianism, and completed its overthrow in the West. He clashed with the Empress-mother Justina, mother of Valentinian II, and in 385 organized a sit-in when she tried to take over one of the churches of Milan for Arian worship, making her give up the idea. Later, Ambrose became a close adviser of the Emperor Theodosius, when he had his court in Milan. He used his position to prevent the Emperor from punishing rioting monks who had burned down a synagogue at Callinicum, but also forced the Emperor to make a public confession after he had sanctioned a massacre of civilians at Thessalonica. Ambrose was the first church leader successfully to use his office to coerce civil rulers. Ambrose did much to encourage early monasticism in the West; and had considerable influence on Augustine, baptizing him in Milan in 387. He introduced community hymn-singing in the church, during the sit-in against Justina, and at least four Latin hymns are correctly credited to him. Ambrose’s writings mainly concern matters of Christian practice. Michael A. Smith Christian emperors Jovian, the emperor who followed Julian in 363, was a Christian, and proclaimed toleration, as did Valentinian I (364–75), who shortly succeeded him. Ammianus, a pagan historian, praised Valentinian because: ‘he kept a middle course between the different sects of religion; and never troubled anyone, nor issued any orders in favour of one kind of worship or another …’ Valentinian extended toleration to Arians and most other heretics, though he himself was of the Nicene faith. Valens (364–78), the younger brother of Valentinian, chosen by him to rule the East, was less tolerant. He did not attack paganism, but felt obliged to proceed against the Nicene party, and exiled some of its bishops. Valens, however, was killed at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, and subsequent emperors – in the East as in the West – were orthodox. A dispute over the election of the Bishop of Rome in the reign of Valentinian scandalized the pagan Ammianus. The resulting bloody battle between the followers of Damasus (r. 366–84) and Ursinus (also known as Ursicinus) left 137 dead in the Basilica of Sicininus, which, Ammianus noted, ‘is a Christian church’. The historian concluded that the Roman bishopric had become a prize worth fighting for, and described the luxury of the Roman clergy, ‘enriched by offerings from women, riding in carriages, dressing splendidly, and feasting luxuriously, so that their entertainments surpass even royal banquets’. Not all lived luxuriously however: many lived frugal, even austere lives, as did bishops Ambrose and Augustine, and recommended the same simple life to their congregations. Gratian (375–83) succeeded his father, Valentinian, in the West, and became ruler of the East too upon the death of Valens. Wisely recognizing that he could not govern the whole Empire alone, he chose an experienced soldier, Theodosius, to rule the East. Gratian was a talented, pious, and cultured young man who received a classical, but Christian, education from the poet Ausonius. He was also an accomplished sportsman, and could have ‘excelled in every sphere if he had put his mind to the art of government, for which he was unsuited by temperament and training’. Gratian’s inability to win the loyalty of the armies led to his death during the rebellion of a Spanish officer, Magnus Maximus (383). Statue of Ambrose (c. 330–97), Archbishop of Milan, by Arturo Dazzi, in San Carlo al Corso, Rome, Italy. © Fabrizio Troiani / Dreamstime.com The end of pagan religions The reigns of Gratian and of Theodosius I (379–95) finally decided the fate of paganism. Both Gratian and Theodosius strongly supported the orthodox faith, while the imperial policy of outlawing heresy and pagan religion during these years was in part the work of the great bishop Ambrose, elected to the see of Milan, Italy, in 374. When Auxentius, the Arian Bishop of Milan, died in 373, the new governor, Ambrose, was afraid the Catholic/Arian controversy would break into violence. When the people of Milan poured into the cathedral to elect their bishop, Ambrose spoke a few words to calm the crowd. Suddenly a voice was heard (a child’s voice, it is said), ‘Ambrose, bishop!’ The congregation took up the cry, and Ambrose found himself elected bishop, much to his surprise and against his will, for he was unbaptized and had received no church training. He tried to flee and hide, but eventually was persuaded that this election was the will of God. Ambrose became bishop at the age of thirty-four and held the position for twenty-three years. He was particularly influential because Milan, rather than Rome, was at this time the Emperor’s residence in the West. The Western Emperors Gratian and Valentinian II (375–92), came under his direct influence, as did Theodosius when in the West during some of the most critical years of his reign. Gratian at first tolerated other religions as well as orthodox Christianity, but soon changed his mind under Ambrose’s influence, and began to suppress pagans and heretics. He once again removed the Altar of Victory from the Senate House in Rome (Julian had restored it), confiscated the revenues of the Vestal Virgins and other Roman priesthoods, and refused the title of Pontifex Maximus (High Priest), which previous Christian emperors had taken. In 381 and 385, Theodosius prohibited sacrifices for divination, which seems to have stopped all sacrifice. Petitions to destroy individual temples, or convert them into Christian churches, were received and many were destroyed. Theodosius ordered all the temples in Alexandria to be demolished, following pagan-Christian unrest. It is reported that when the first blow at the great bronze statue of the god Serapis in the famous Serapeum produced only a swarm of rats, and divine retribution failed to follow the destruction of the temple, many pagans became Christian believers. Finally, in 391, Theodosius prohibited all sacrifices and closed all temples, and the following year banned private pagan worship too. Paganism had one last chance in the West, during the brief reign of the usurper Eugenius (392–94), whose chief supporters were zealous pagans who restored the ancient worship in Rome. However Theodosius’ final triumph in 394 put an end to that. Nevertheless, the laws against paganism were not rigidly enforced, and pagan worship continued openly in some places for several generations – and secretly for a great deal longer. In much of the Empire, the countryside remained pagan for several centuries. Pagan belief was not prohibited, and pagans still managed for some time to attain high positions in the Empire. Early in his reign, Theodosius began to act against heretics. In 380 he ordered all his subjects to subscribe to the faith brought by Peter to Rome and now held by Pope Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria. The following year he summoned the Council of Constantinople, which drew up a definition of faith on the Nicene model. But Arianism had by now lost its vitality, except among the Gothic tribes – still mostly outside the Empire – and Theodosius met little opposition. Priscillian executed In Gratian’s reign began the strange and sad case of Priscillian, in which the usurper, Magnus Maximus (383–88), became the first Christian emperor to inflict the death penalty on a heretic. These events foreshadow the later medieval practice of handing over heretics condemned by the church for execution by the state. Priscillian was the Spanish leader of a strict Christian ascetic movement, first accused by prominent Spanish church leaders of heretical beliefs and immoral practices, but escaping outright condemnation. Later the case was referred to Maximus, who was biased against Priscillian and his followers. Finally, Priscillian and six of his associates were condemned and executed at Trier in 385, despite the personal appeal of the saintly Bishop Martin of Tours, who also objected to the case being tried before secular rulers. Although Priscillian and his followers were ultimately condemned for the civil crime of sorcery, no one doubted that their real offence was Priscillian’s unusual beliefs and religious practices. He was perhaps more an eccentric than a heretic, although he was involved in magic and the occult. To the credit of the church, the executions brought a strong reaction. Martin reappeared at Trier to denounce the Emperor Maximus; and Ambrose and Pope Siricius refused to have fellowship with Priscillian’s accusers. Finally, in 388, the anti-Priscillian bishops were deposed and their party destroyed. Though a few fanatical church leaders were willing to execute people for heresy and use the state as the church’s executioner, most drew back from that severe view. What has the Emperor to do with the church? Nothing can be found in this world more exalted than priests or more sublime than bishops. Ambrose Two encounters between Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius show a dramatic increase in the power of the church since the time of Constantius. The first occurred in 388, after rioting in the town of Callinicum on the River Euphrates. The Christians had been led on by the bishop to rob and burn a Jewish synagogue. Theodosius ordered the stolen property to be restored, and the synagogue rebuilt, at the bishop’s own expense; just compensation, it appears. But Ambrose sent Theodosius a letter insisting that to make a Christian bishop rebuild a place of worship for the Jews, the ‘enemies of Christ’, amounted to apostasy. ‘The maintenance of civil law is secondary to religious interests,’ wrote Ambrose. When Theodosius ignored Ambrose’s letter, the bishop felt obliged to preach on the subject in the presence of the Emperor, who, partly because he was weak in the West, finally had to give in and withdraw his order. The second encounter, in the summer of 390, shows Ambrose in a better light. The people of Thessalonica had murdered the military commander of the city because he had refused to release a favourite charioteer. Theodosius avenged his death by a massacre of the inhabitants, despite Ambrose’s protest. The Emperor repented, but too late; 7,000 or more citizens, both guilty and innocent, had been slaughtered in the theatre. Ambrose sent a secret letter, excommunicating the Emperor until he did public penance; Theodosius was again obliged to give way, and asked forgiveness for his sin publicly in the church. Ambrose’s answer to the question, ‘What has the Emperor to do with the church?’ was that the Emperor was within the church, not above it. However, this did not mark the end of imperial interference in the church’s affairs. The Emperor in Constantinople kept control of the Eastern church, and occasionally interfered in the West, particularly during the sixth century, after Justinian reconquered Italy. By the late fifth century, the Bishop of Rome, Gelasius I (r. 492–96), had developed the view that the Emperor was directly subject to the head of the church, the Bishop of Rome (or pope), and should rule the Empire for the good of God’s people. This exalted idea could not be applied in the late Empire because of the church’s political weakness, but was picked up in the Middle Ages. Ambrose demonstrated how it might work in practice. Richard A. Todd Chapter 9 Councils and Creeds Defining and defending the faith From the outset, Christians were people who believed certain things. The beliefs they expressed in worship and witness, especially about Jesus Christ, were fundamental to the very existence of the church. The fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries were marked by prolonged controversies, chiefly in the Eastern Church, about how Christ, the Son of God, was himself God (the doctrine of the Trinity), and how he was both man and God (the doctrine of the person of Christ, or Christology). Numerous councils of bishops were held, four of which – Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451) – came to be accepted as general, or ecumenical (universal), councils, binding upon the whole church. (Some areas of Eastern Christianity rejected the decisions made at Ephesus or Chalcedon.) Two later general councils – at Constantinople in 553 and 680–81 – dealt with similar questions, but have influenced Western Christianity much less. Many creeds and statements of doctrine were produced, including the famous Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition, which became touchstones of orthodoxy throughout most of the Christian world. This was an era of unparalleled importance in the formation of Christian theology. The Nicene Creed We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father, Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen At the same time it was an age of interference, and even domination, by the emperors, of colourful and abrasive personalities, and of bitter antagonism between leading bishoprics. Technical terms without biblical origins were made key-words in authoritative statements of belief; their use contributed to the Latin-speaking West and the Greek-speaking East misunderstanding and misrepresenting one another. Even between different segments of the Greek Church misunderstandings arose; these disputes contributed to major divisions in the Christian world. In theory the first appeal was to Scripture, but the Bible was often used in curious or questionable ways. People frequently appealed to Scripture to confirm their theology, rather than to decide it. Above all, the disputes were shot through with the feeling that, unless God and Christ were truly what Christian devotion and worship claimed, salvation itself was endangered. Passions ran high because the fundamentals of the Christian religion were felt to be at stake. Is the Son really God? Arius was a senior presbyter in charge of Baucalis, one of the twelve ‘parishes’ of Alexandria. He was a persuasive preacher, with a following of clergy and ascetics, and even circulated his teaching in popular verse and songs. Around 318 Arius clashed with Bishop Alexander. Arius claimed that the Father alone was really God; the Son was essentially different from his Father. The Son did not possess by nature or right any of the divine qualities of immortality, sovereignty, perfect wisdom, goodness, and purity. He did not exist before he was begotten by the Father, who produced him as a creature. Yet as the creator of the rest of creation, the Son existed ‘apart from time before all things’. Nevertheless, he did not share in the being of God the Father, and did not know him perfectly. As if to salvage something from the wreckage, Arius allowed that the Son was called ‘God’ by grace and favour, and was sinless and unchangeable in practice, if not by nature. Moreover, the Son received enough wisdom and light from the Father to enable him to reveal the Father to mankind. Nevertheless, by dividing off the Son from God the Father, Arius undermined Christ’s standing as God’s revelation, and the redeemer of mankind. We are not certain of Arius’ precise teaching and motives. It may be that he wanted chiefly to explain the incarnation without difficulties. He undoubtedly believed that the Logos, or Son, took the place of the human soul in the earthly Christ. The Logos was united only with a human body, not with a full human nature. It was much easier to understand how the Logos could be united with human flesh when he was lowered to the status of a perfect creature or honorary god. Arius’ ideas parallel and contrast with Origen’s teaching; they owe much to secular Greek concepts of God. He had a sharply logical mind and appealed to biblical texts which apparently backed up his arguments – for example, John 17:3 (‘the only true God’), 1 Timothy 6:16 (‘alone possesses immortality’), Colossians 1:15 (‘first-born of all creation’) and Proverbs 8:22 (in the Septuagint, ‘the Lord created me at the beginning of his work’). A council at Alexandria of Egyptian and Libyan bishops soon excommunicated Arius and a dozen other clergy, including two bishops, but the affair was not so easily settled. Arius sought the backing of former fellow-pupils of Lucian of Antioch, an influential teacher martyred a few years earlier, including Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, the imperial headquarters on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Eusebius skilfully used his closeness to the court to benefit ‘the Eusebians’, as sympathizers of Arius came to be known, and later moved across the Bosphorus to the see of Constantinople, the new capital. The Council of Nicaea Eusebius of Caesarea, the church historian, also rallied support for the Arians in his region, but soon found himself in deep water as a consequence. Constantine, now Emperor of East as well as West, was dismayed to discover in 324 that his new territories were split over a ‘theological trifle’. His religious adviser, the Spanish Bishop Ossius, was sent to Alexandria, but failed to reconcile the parties, so Constantine summoned a general assembly of bishops to meet at Ancyra (modern Ankara) the following year. Hoping to avoid a divisive result, the Emperor subsequently changed the venue to Nicaea, near Nicomedia, where the Council met in the imperial palace under imperial auspices. Constantine presided at the opening session, surrounded by survivors of the Great Persecution, and he, or Ossius, may also have taken the chair when the Arian question arose. All this underlined the change in relations between church and state. However, Constantine’s ambitions for a fully church-wide attendance were disappointed. Of some 220 bishops present, only a handful, including Ossius, were from the West, with Bishop Sylvester of Rome represented by two presbyters. The Council’s ‘universal’ status depended largely on its subsequent universal acceptance. The Creed of Nicaea Much more is known about the outcome of the council than of its proceedings. Arius was quickly condemned by his own words. Three bishops previously banned or suspended, including Eusebius of Caesarea, were cleared. To exclude Arian error, the council produced its own creed, which we call the Creed of Nicaea to distinguish it from the Nicene Creed: We believe in one God, the Father, Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance (ousia) of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God, begotten not made, of one substance (h omoousios, consubstantial) with the Father, through whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate, was made man, suffered, and rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, and is coming to judge the living and the dead; And in the Holy Spirit. And those who say: ‘There was a time when he was not’, and: ‘Before he was begotten he was not’, and: ‘He came into being from nothing’, or those who pretend that the Son of God is ‘Of another substance (h ypostasis), or essence (ousia)’ [than the Father] or ‘created’ or ‘alterable’ or ‘mutable’, the catholic and apostolic church places under a curse. Based on a traditional Syrian or Palestinian creed, the Creed of Nicaea became entirely distinctive because of its technical language and solemn curses (anathemas). (Apparently Arius could agree to any statement using solely biblical language.) Constantine supported the introduction of the word ‘consubstantial’ – probably suggested by a Western bishop. ‘Consubstantial’ (homoousios) had been introduced to Christian theology by Gnostics, who believed that the heavenly powers shared in the divine fullness. Origen probably applied it similarly to the Son, as a true offspring of the Father, but later bishops had been unhappy about its implications. For many at Nicaea, it probably implied that the Son was no less divine than the Father; that the two were equally divine, as an earthly father and son are equally human. For the Westerners and a few Easterners – Alexander and Athanasius, his personal assistant, Eustathius of Antioch, and Marcellus of Ancyra – it meant that Father and Son were one in a single Godhead. Both these senses ruled out Arian misconceptions. But some bishops hesitated at the Council, and many more reacted in alarm afterwards, fearing that the Greek word homoousios split the Godhead into two, as if it were a material substance. The word was used, for example, to describe two coins made from the same metal; its use in the Creed of Nicaea must have resulted largely from intimidation, or overawing persuasion, by Constantine. Only two bishops actually refused to subscribe to the Creed, and Constantine rejoiced in the God-given concord, which later events showed to be so deceptive. Eusebius of Caesarea signed only by making tortuous evasions; Eusebius of Nicomedia also signed, but was later exiled for entertaining the Arians en route for Illyria, on the Danube frontier, where Constantine had banished them. Genuine Arians were very few in number. The church’s organization The Council of Nicaea also issued twenty ‘canons’ regulating various aspects of the church’s life, which – because of the prestige surrounding the Council – formed the core of later collections of canon law. These dealt with the admission of members of splinter groups, restrictions on the functions of deacons and on business activities by the clergy, the giving of the eucharist to those about to die out of communion, probation before ordination after baptism, and a ban on clergy transferring from one city to another. Other canons strengthened the organization of the church into provinces, and recognized that the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, and Jerusalem had superior authority. While Rome alone is mentioned in the West, the four in the East were soon joined by Constantinople. The pretensions of this ‘upstart’, as well as the rivalry between ancient Antioch and Alexandria, rapidly aggravated the continuing conflicts over doctrine. The Council of Nicaea set many precedents. The Emperor called it, influenced its decision-making, and used his civil power to give its decrees virtually the status of imperial law. The Council introduced a new kind of orthodoxy, which for the first time gave non-biblical terms critical importance. The Creed’s own form of expression was influenced by the heresy it outlawed. Only in the long term did the whole church recognize that Nicaea had decisively developed its understanding of the divinity of Christ. The reaction to Nicaea Nicaea was followed by more than half a century of discord and disorder in the Eastern Church, which at times spilled over into the West. The ‘faith of Nicaea’, as the Creed was commonly called, was for most of this period out of favour with most churchmen. Numerous other statements of belief were drawn up, some quite near to it, others a great distance from it, but none containing the word homoousios. The Eastern emperors between Constantine and Theodosius I were at best unsympathetic to Nicaea, at worst openly friendly towards Arianism. Throughout this half-century the basic dispute about doctrine was intertwined with other complications – local factions, rivalries between the leading bishoprics, the personal failings or follies of Christian leaders, the emperors’ intervention, and confusion arising from differences in language – especially as rifts opened up between the Latin and Greek churches. Athanasius Athanasius (c. 293/8–373) is one of the giants of Christian history, because of his part in defining the doctrine of the Trinity in the Arian struggles. As a deacon of the Church at Alexandria, Athanasius accompanied his bishop, Alexander, to the Council of Nicaea in 325; and he succeeded Alexander as bishop in 328. Changing political fortunes, due to the involvement of the Emperor in the affairs of the church, resulted in Athanasius being exiled five times (335–37, to Trier in Gaul; 339–46, to Rome; 356–61, when he lived among the monks in the Egyptian desert; 362–63 and 365–66, in concealment in Egypt). Athanasius’ flock stayed loyal to him, and each time he was welcomed back from exile. On the Incarnation (335–37, but dated by some as early as 318) sets out Athanasius’ basic theological viewpoint: Christ ‘was made human that we might be made divine’. This concern with salvation motivated Athanasius as he argued against Arius and his followers. The Arians said that Christ was a created being, made by God before time; Athanasius argued that if Christ was less than God then he could not be our saviour. Only God could restore the human race to communion with himself. For this reason, Athanasius defended Nicaea’s definition of Christ as of the same substance with God, and Nicaea’s rejection of Arianism. Most of Athanasius’ writings aim at opposing Arianism, dealing with it historically, doctrinally, or from Scripture. Athanasius stood like a rock in defence of the creed adopted at Nicaea: his personality, preaching, and writings did more than anything else to achieve victory for the Nicene position. His zeal made him uncompromising – even harsh – in dealing with opponents, and slow to recognize good in those he disagreed with. The counterpart of his harshness towards opponents was blindness – or excessive indulgence – to the faults of friends and supporters. Athanasius was not a speculative theologian; what mattered for him was not so much the terms used in the Creed of Nicaea as its message. He used Scripture as inadequately as his contemporaries. Athanasius’ Life of Antony did much to promote monasticism by praising the life of the desert ascetics. Athanasius found echoes of his own experiences and emotions in the psalms (Letter to Marcellinus), and helped to introduce the personal devotional use of the psalms which Christians have adopted ever since. His Easter Letter 39 (367) is the earliest witness to the 27-book New Testament canon. Everett Ferguson Athanasius, backed by the solid ranks of Egyptian churchmen and monks, remained the one unyielding champion of Nicaea in the East. Five times exiled from Alexandria, he lived long enough to welcome the ‘new Nicene’ theology of the 360s and the Cappadocian Fathers. The Western Church had able theologians such as Hilary of Poitiers (‘Hammer of the Arians’, c. 300–c. 368) and Ambrose of Milan, but they contributed little to solving the troubles of the East. The Western Church consistently supported Nicaea and Alexandria (whose isolation in the fourth century arose partly because it had expelled Origen in the third); this did their cause little good, and much harm, in the East. While Constantine remained alive, no one openly dared to attack his beloved Council. Instead the reaction against Nicaea had to proceed indirectly, seizing the opportunities offered by the Emperor’s restless quest for harmony. The Eusebians, and even Arius, were brought back into favour, while the leading enthusiasts for Nicaea were sent packing. A Christian emperor After he had been cleared at Nicaea, Eusebius of Caesarea went on to develop a theology of the Christian empire and emperor. He claimed that both empire and church were images of the kingdom of heaven; through both God was saving humanity. The empire replaced anarchy with monarchy, which represents on earth the God who alone rules in heaven; the church replaced polytheism with the worship of the one God. In the Christian emperor, the two images began to merge. Constantine is seen as the earthly image of the Logos, who had fully revealed the heavenly monarchy and kingdom, and he was specially inspired to rule by the Logos. Councils and Creeds: The Church in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries Eusebius drew his ideas from Hellenistic writers on divine kingship – although the Old Testament offered similar patterns – and his thinking was adopted by Eastern Christians. Since Alexander the Great, the East had been used to regarding rulers as divine. Inevitably the emperors became supreme in church as well as state. Arians restored Eusebius of Nicomedia was recalled from exile after a couple of years, and threw himself into organizing opposition to Nicaea. Arius was likewise recalled after confusing Constantine with a statement of faith that dodged all the crucial issues, but he no longer had any influence. Among the supporters of Nicaea, Eustathius of Antioch was the first to be dislodged. The reasons given ranged from insulting Constantine’s mother Helena to exaggerated criticism of Origen. Marcellus of Ancyra was condemned directly for heresy. He was another critic of Origen’s ideas, and presented a single God who expanded into three in creation and redemption and then contracted to one again. This seemed like a form of Sabellianism, which Origen had taught Eastern churchmen to resist with unparalleled intensity. Marcellus’ appeal to 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 (the Son at the end hands the kingdom over to the Father, and is made subordinate to him, so that God is all in all) led eventually to the inclusion in the Nicene Creed of the words ‘whose kingdom shall have no end’. Athanasius annoyed Constantine by refusing to rejoice when the Arians were reconciled. The Eusebians plotted to depose him in 335 at Tyre, where the bishops assembled before celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Constantine’s reign with the dedication of his Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Athanasius was charged with conduct unbecoming a bishop, including violent treatment of dissident clergy, charges with some substance. When Athanasius fled to Constantine himself, his enemies accused him of threatening to cut off vital grain supplies for Constantinople, by calling a dock strike in Alexandria. Constantine banished him to Trier in Gaul – banishment had become customary for those the church condemned. When Constantine died, baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, and praised by Eusebius of Caesarea, the Creed of Nicaea remained officially in force. Until the end, Constantine had worked for peace in the church. His son Constantius, Emperor of the East until 361, and of the West too after Constans’ death in 350, pursued the same policy. The only difference was that his quest for unity did without the settlement of Nicaea. Confusion under Constantius A breathing-space after Constantine’s death saw the return of the exiles: Athanasius, Marcellus, and Paul, bishop of the strategic see of Constantinople, who was expelled as often as Athanasius. But the slide towards total rupture between East and West soon resumed. Although efforts to heal the divisions had some success, when Constantius died Arianism was practically dominant in the East, while the Emperor’s theology of compromise ruled the West. Yet there were hints of a brighter future for the ‘faith of Nicaea’. The ancient Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, probably covers the site of the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. Tim Dowley Associates Constantius was not long in power before Athanasius and Marcellus were banished again. Eusebius had now moved from Nicomedia to Constantinople. The two exiles went to Rome, where in 340 a council under Bishop Julius undid their excommunication and declared Marcellus orthodox. The Eastern Church saw these acts as arrogant and simple-minded, feeling Rome had been hoodwinked by Marcellus, who managed to avoid being pressed on the weak points of his beliefs. Moreover, Rome did not actually have the power to overrule councils of Eastern bishops. At a council at Antioch in 341, the Greek bishops were free to express their own views. They repudiated both Arius and Marcellus (their chief target), and refused to reconsider the case of Athanasius. They drew up creeds, not intending to supplant Nicaea’s, but implying that it was inadequate. The second creed of Antioch was repeatedly referred to in the years following as a true mirror of Eastern theology. It was inadequate in teaching that Father, Son, and Spirit are ‘three as persons’ but one only ‘in agreement’, or harmony of will. It clearly excluded Arianism, but went out of its way to condemn Marcellus and his supposedly Sabellian ideas. Constans persuaded Constantius to call a general council at Sardica (modern Sofia, Bulgaria) in 342/3, but this council split into opposing camps, which bombarded each other with anathemas. A theological statement from the Western side innocently exposed the problems of mutual understanding. By refusing to describe Father, Son, and Spirit as ‘three hypostaseis’ (which it understood as implying ‘three Gods’), and by arguing for a single hypostasis of Father and Son, it confirmed Eastern fears that the West sincerely backed Marcellus’ Sabellian viewpoint. Adding offence to the Eastern Church, the Western council gave the Bishop of Rome the right to hear appeals from bishops condemned in their own provinces. Virtual schism For the first time East and West were in a state of virtual schism, from which they never fully recovered. The situation improved for a time as Constans pressed, and Constantius was distracted by the Persians. The West and Athanasius quietly abandoned Marcellus, and Athanasius was even allowed to return to Alexandria, where in 346 he embarked upon his ‘golden decade’. But after taking over control of the Western Empire in 350, Constantius allowed the Arians to advance to fresh triumphs. He pursued his goal of harmony in the church, at the expense of Nicene theology and theologians. At councils he forced the Western bishops to condemn Athanasius, and banished those who resisted to the end, such as Ossius and Hilary. Constantius could then confidently exile Athanasius again in 356, though his replacement was inducted to his office only by force against massive popular opposition. Arianism moderated The provinces of Illyria had become a stronghold of Arianism as a result of Arius’ banishment to this region. (It was from here that the Visigoths adopted Arian Christianity, launching it on its second career as the new religion of the migrant peoples who overwhelmed the Western Empire.) A local anti-Nicene bishop, Valens of Mursa, influenced Constantius strongly during the 350s. A creed published at nearby Sirmium in 357, which Hilary labelled ‘the Blasphemy of Sirmium’, banned the use of philosophical words such as ousia, and implied clearly Arian beliefs. It was welcomed by the Anomoians, extreme Arians who claimed that the Son was unlike (anomoios) the Father. These excesses provoked a reaction, spearheaded by Marcellus’ successor, Basil of Ancyra, whose supporters – sometimes misleadingly called ‘semi-Arians’ – taught that the Son was like the Father in all respects, including his essential being (ousia). They described the Son as ‘of like substance to’ (homoiousios) the Father, rather than ‘of one substance with’ (homoousios), thus unmistakably distinguishing between Father and Son. Hilary and Athanasius viewed this movement as the most promising development since Nicaea itself. Constantius’ reign ended with a moderated Arianism dominant. In the West all dissent had ceased, except for Hilary, in exile. Constantius extorted from joint councils at Rimini in Italy, and Seleucia (on the coast of Asia Minor), a universal creed which feebly confessed the Son to be like (homoios) the Father. Jerome wrote, ‘The whole world groaned in astonishment at finding itself Arian.’ This shock was similar to the dismay which had followed Nicaea in the Eastern Empire. Churchmen would not acquiesce in an imperial settlement which had not won their own agreement. But Basil’s constructive contribution was still to bear fruit, focusing attention in a new way on the central theological issue. Surprising agreement Emperor Julian the ‘Apostate’ permitted all those exiled by Constantius to return. But instead of the destructive inter-church warfare which he expected, there came major advances in mutual understanding. Athanasius, now somewhat mellowed, called a ‘statesmanlike little council’ in Alexandria in 362, where the bishops agreed that the Creed of Nicaea should be confessed by all without any additions, and discovered that, in spite of differences in technical terms, they were in agreement. ‘Three hypostaseis’ did not mean three Gods, or three beings with different natures, or as separate from each other as three men. Nor did the phrase ‘one hypostasis’ involve its users in Sabellianism; it spoke of the oneness of the Godhead as a single essence. Other problems that concerned this council were the God–man union in the incarnate Christ, and the teaching of Egyptian supporters of Nicaea that the Holy Spirit was a superior angel, not of one substance with the Father and the Son. Athanasius had written against them, and the council backed him up. Although Scripture was less explicit on this matter, and Nicaea itself had said little, the acceptance that the Son was fully God cleared the way for the same acceptance concerning the Spirit. For Athanasius, only a divine Spirit could make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’. This issue arose more threateningly outside Egypt. Divisions in Antioch Elsewhere in the East, many people rallied to the faith of Nicaea, or to the second creed of Antioch of 341. But divisions continued among the Antioch Christians and threatened further progress. Ever since Bishop Eustathius had been deposed in 330, the Nicene Christians had met in a separate congregation, now led by Paulinus. The official bishops of Antioch were Arians of one variety or another until Bishop Meletius, who was deposed when he showed his colours. Meletius’ supporters formed a second anti-Arian congregation in Antioch, with wide backing in the East. Athanasius, followed by Rome and the West, continued in communion with the old Nicenes under Paulinus. Church order and theology could not have been more tightly interwoven. Antioch was an important church; by refusing to recognize Meletius and the new Nicenes, Alexandria and Rome offended Eastern churchmen. Valens, the Eastern Emperor (364–78), reminded the world that the ‘Homoian’ creed of Constantius was still official orthodoxy. During the ‘second Arian persecution’ by Valens, old and new Nicenes suffered alike, although Athanasius’ fifth exile did not last long. The Emperor devastated congregational life, and heretical groups proliferated; the confusion was ‘like a sea-fight in the fog’. Apollinarius’ teaching (see below) was popular, and around Constantinople the Pneumatomachians, ‘fighters against the Spirit’, denied that the Spirit was fully God in the same sense as the Son. (They were later improperly called ‘Macedonians’, after a former bishop of Constantinople.) They claimed that the Bible says nothing to deny that the Spirit is a lower being. The Cappadocians’ theology Athanasius’ greatest contribution was in routing mainstream Arianism; he had less success in re-establishing the faith of Nicaea. However, as his attitude softened with the years, he happily accepted the new approaches of Basil of Ancyra, Meletius of Antioch, and Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia (eastern Asia Minor), r. 370–79. Basil the Great was an extremely able administrator, who set about repairing ‘the tattered old coat of the church’ by letters, and by influencing the appointment of bishops in the provinces of Asia. But in relations with the West, he had little success. Basil sent four delegations to Pope Damasus, which produced no tangible aid. The two sides disagreed strongly about the division in Antioch: Western churches still suspected the theology of the so-called ‘new Nicenes’ such as Meletius and Basil himself. Damasus’ insensitive and ill-informed detachment further endangered the recovery of harmony between East and West. Basil worked closely with his brother Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 395) and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329–90). These three Cappadocians finally convinced the East that it was quite possible to accept both Nicaea (homoousios) and the distinct persons (hypostaseis) of Father, Son, and Spirit simultaneously. It was not enough to show that the Son was equal with the Father, for this might suggest there were two Gods; Father and Son must also be recognized as one God. The Cappadocians established ousia as the Greek equivalent to the Latin substantia. Meanwhile, further linguistic confusion reared its head. The closest Greek parallel to the Latin ‘three personae’ was ‘three pros o ¯ pa’, but the latter term, meaning ‘face, mask, or role’, was popular with the Sabellians, and the Cappadocians insisted on the stronger ‘three hypostaseis’ (beings). Basil the great Basil displayed immense gifts in public speaking, church statesmanship, and theological insight, and was outstanding in social concern and the monastic way of life. The trio of Basil, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and friend Gregory of Nazianzus, are often known as the ‘Cappadocian Fathers’. Basil was born into a distinguished and wealthy Christian family in Caesarea in Cappadocia about 330. Despite a first-class education, he turned aside from a career in rhetoric, was baptized, and lived as an ascetic on his family estate in Pontus (357). From the outset he was completely dedicated, especially to biblical study. With Gregory of Nazianzus, he compiled an anthology of Origen’s works; his sure theological touch helped strengthen Origen’s place within orthodoxy. In 364 Basil was ordained presbyter, and in 370 he succeeded Eusebius as Bishop of Caesarea. His new monastery was at the heart of a complex of hospitals and hostels he founded, largely from his own pocket, out of concern for the sick and needy. He took a firm stand against the state-supported Arian party, and wrote several works to oppose their errors. He backed Meletius (Bishop of Antioch, 360-81), which damaged his attempts to win practical help from Damasus, Bishop of Rome, and cooled his relationship with Athanasius. Basil refused to accept the Roman bishop as supreme judge of the universal church, although he recognized his authority in the area of doctrine. Basil’s writings on the monastic life had enormous influence in Eastern Christianity: no one before had laid so much stress on community and love in the monastic life. In On the Holy Spirit Basil opposed the Pneumatomachians (‘fighters against the Spirit’), who denied that the Holy Spirit was truly divine. He also wrote homilies on a number of the psalms, a long commentary on Isaiah chapters 1–6, and many sermons and letters. By giving precise meanings to the terms used in talking about the Trinity, Basil paved the way for the work of the Council of Constantinople (381). Suspected in turn of the opposite errors of Sabellianism and tritheism, Basil could be convicted of neither. He died in Caesarea on the first day of 379. H. Dermot McDonald The Cappadocians’ doctrine of the Trinity is complex, and at points controversial. They were accused of suggesting that there are three Gods, and also of the opposite error, Sabellianism. They used analogies that they knew were inexact – but one in particular, of the single humanity shared by father, mother, and child, easily misled. Basil argued that the Trinitarian baptismal formula and doxology (whether ‘Glory be to the Father together with the Son, with the Holy Spirit’ or ‘Glory be to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit’) demanded that Father, Son, and Spirit are equal, but distinct. According to the Cappadocians, the three operated inseparably, none ever acting independently of the others. ‘Every divine action begins from the Father, proceeds through the Son, and is completed in the Holy Spirit.’ They ‘coinhere’, inter-penetrate each other; ‘everything that the Father is is seen in the Son, and everything that the Son is belongs to the Father’. All Constantinople talks theology If you ask anyone in Constantinople for change, he will start discussing with you whether the Son is begotten or unbegotten. If you ask about the quality of bread, you will get the answer: ‘The Father is greater, the Son is less.’ If you suggest taking a bath you will be told: ‘There was nothing before the Son was created.’ Gregory of Nyssa On the basis of John 15:26 (‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.’ nrsv) they taught that the Spirit ‘proceeds’ from the Father through the Son, as the counterpart of the Son’s generation. Basil remained diffident about calling the Holy Spirit ‘God’. The end of Arianism The Cappadocians’ theology made little formal headway until Theodosius (347–95), a Westerner and keen supporter of Nicaea, became Eastern Emperor in 379. It was he who conclusively established Christianity as the official religion of the Empire: a famous decree of 380 required all peoples to adhere to ‘the religion that is followed by Pope Damasus and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria’. In 381 Theodosius summoned the Council of Constantinople, to reaffirm the faith of Nicaea. No doctrinal statement put out by this council has survived, but at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 the Nicene Creed – regarded as the Creed of Nicaea appropriately modified after later controversy – was attributed to the Council of Constantinople. The Nicene Creed was probably independently produced by the council, republishing the teaching of Nicaea rather than repeating its wording. The Council of Constantinople The Council of Constantinople marked the end of Arianism within the Empire. Unlike the other three early ecumenical councils, it was not followed by decades of doctrinal strife. Theodosius had proved the man for the moment, but in matters of church order, peace was more elusive. The council confirmed Gregory of Nazianzus’ appointment as Bishop of Constantinople, rejecting the rival claimant backed by Alexandria. When Meletius died, Gregory succeeded him as president of the council, but in this exposed seat he was buffeted from all sides, and he retired sadly into private life. In his place, the council chose as Bishop of Constantinople and its own president a prominent layman, who belonged to no party, and was unbaptized. Anti-Western feelings were strong, and the schism at Antioch went on. Alexandria’s interference in Constantinople and Antioch was clearly in mind when the council drew up its canons. The second of these adopted the dioceses (groupings of provinces) in the Eastern Empire as regions for church purposes, and forbade intervention in the affairs of another diocese. The third canon read: ‘The Bishop of Constantinople shall have the primacy of honour after the Bishop of Rome because Constantinople is new Rome.’ The elevation of this upstart see greatly offended the ancient church of Alexandria, for centuries the leading city in the Greek world, and provoked bitter conflict between the two. Rome, too, was dismayed because the canon assumed that political importance determined status in the church. Rome based her supremacy on religious grounds, claiming to be founded by Peter, the apostle. The new ruling would leave Rome’s future position uncertain instead of unassailably supreme, on the basis of history and tradition. The Roman Church repudiated it – delaying until the sixth century Western recognition of the Council of Constantinople (which was attended only by Eastern bishops) as ecumenical. The canon itself was accepted at the Lateran Council in 1215. The new settlement of orthodoxy concerning the Trinity was enforced by imperial edict in both East and West, where Ambrose spurred the emperors into clearing up the last pockets of Arianism. But in government and discipline, East and West went separate ways, still divided over Antioch. Doctrinal order had been restored, but in the process the seeds of irreparable disruption had been sown between East and West, and in Alexandria’s isolation in the East. Theology of the Trinity The Cappadocians’ theology of the Trinity remained fundamental to all subsequent Greek and Byzantine statements, such as John of Damascus’ eighth-century The Orthodox Faith. John developed their doctrine of the mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Trinity. Latin expositions reached their peak in Augustine’s writings, especially his principal work on The Trinity, an intensive and profound discussion, from the traditional Western starting-point that God is one single substance. His distinctive contribution was elaborate analogies: of the lover, the loved, and the love which binds them, as a picture of relationships within the Trinity; and of the inner man reflecting the image of God in a trinity of mind or memory, knowledge or understanding, and will or love. Marius Victorinus, a converted Neo-platonist, had speculated along somewhat similar lines in refuting Arianism, shortly before Augustine wrote. Augustine, like Ambrose and Jerome, taught that the Spirit proceeded not from the Father alone, but also from the Son. (The Greek theologians for the most part thought of the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son.) This so-called ‘double procession’ of the Spirit was incorporated into the ‘Athanasian’ Creed, which in reality was written in Latin, probably in southern Gaul in the late fifth century. This creed, Augustinian in inspiration, is directed against the ‘modalism’ (similar to Sabellianism) which Priscillianism had revived in Gaul and Spain in the fourth and following centuries, and against the Arianism of the Goths and Vandals, which made the Son and the Spirit into second- and third-rank divinities. The ‘double procession’ of the Spirit found its way into the Nicene Creed by the addition of the word Filioque (Latin, ‘and the Son’), the first evidence of which comes from the Third Council of Toledo, Spain (589). The Roman Church refused for centuries to accept this addition, which later became a major bone of contention between the Latin and Greek Churches. Was the Lord of glory crucified? The relationship between the divine and human natures in the incarnate Christ was inevitably interwoven with the questions about the Trinity in the Arian controversy. However, it remained a minor theme until the divinity of the Son had been firmly established. So long as the Son was viewed as inferior to the Father in his deity, its union with humanity in Christ was not an urgent problem. The issue was discussed at Athanasius’ little council or synod at Alexandria in 362, probably in connection with the teaching of Apollinarius (or Apollinaris, c. 310–90), Bishop of Laodicea in Syria. What was decided is not clear, except that it was agreed that the incarnation was not ‘the Word indwelling a holy man, as he did the prophets’, but ‘the Word himself becoming man for us from Mary after the flesh’. Athanasius’ account of the agreement reflects the approach to the subject favoured in Alexandria; Apollinarius’ bold exposition of this approach was universally condemned. Origen regarded Christ’s rational soul as the ideal meeting-point with the Logos, because they shared a perfect natural affinity. (Platonists viewed the soul as the essential person and, like Stoics, held that the Logos directing the universe and the logos in human individuals were homogeneous.) It was a short step to conceive of the Logos not merely swallowing up the soul, but replacing it. The Word, therefore, was the sole agent in the life of Christ. This framework of understanding was followed by both Arius and Athanasius, although they differed totally in their estimates of the Word. Whether or not Athanasius disbelieved in, or changed his mind about, the existence of a human soul in Christ (the debate still rages), he certainly attached no theological significance to it. For him, Christ is always the divine Word active in human flesh. It was the Word-as-incarnate who was tired, or ignorant, or suffered; from start to finish, the incarnation was a divine work of salvation. The Alexandrians’ use of allegory in understanding Scripture enabled them to be less bothered by the human experiences of Jesus in the gospel story. As a consequence, this doctrine of Christ grasped strongly the unity of his person, and was at times inclined to mix divine and human. The incarnate union brought about a real interchange of attributes between the two: the Lord of glory actually suffered crucifixion. Apollinarius Apollinarius was a staunch theologian in the Nicene tradition. Reacting against teaching from Antioch, he denied that Christ possessed a human soul: the soul was intrinsically corrupt, and could not be responsible for motivating a Saviour of sinful people. He asserted that the virgin birth marked the divide between the human race and Christ, and that humanity was the sphere – not the instrument – of salvation. Christ was ‘one nature composed of impassible divinity and passible flesh’, ‘one enfleshed nature of the divine Word’. In the union, Christ’s flesh took on a divine character. In the eucharist, a communicant could be confident of receiving Christ’s life-giving flesh. Apollinarius’ teaching first attracted notice in the 350s, but was not prominent until the 370s, when the supreme heresy-hunter, Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, Cyprus, denounced it. It was condemned in East and West, and conclusively at the Council of Constantinople in 381. If God in Christ did not lay hold of our full humanity, then it is not saved. ‘What is not assumed [by the Word] is not healed’ (Gregory of Nazianzus). Apollinarius made the incarnation seem like a mere appearance of God, and Christ’s humanity monstrous or mutilated. After the condemnation of Apollinarius, Alexandrian theologians no longer denied that Christ had a human soul. Yet little significance was attached to human agency or experience in the incarnation. Apollinarius’ writings continued to circulate, often masquerading under orthodox names such as Athanasius. Two natures? The Antioch school of theologians normally interpreted Scripture in a straightforward historical manner. Serious consideration was given to the human figure of the Gospels, whose example and achievement were regarded as possessing saving virtue. In Christ the human will, which in other people turns freely to sin, proved obedient and victorious. Antiochene theologians consequently stressed the complete humanity of Christ, regarding human nature as a unity of body and soul, following Aristotle. This union did not in any way affect the completeness and normality of the human nature. Antiochenes feared that if the human soul were excluded, the Word would be demoted in Arian fashion in order to accommodate the evidence of the Gospels. It might be possible to ascribe Christ’s physical experiences, such as growth, hunger, and pain, to flesh alone; but not his mental and emotional life of sorrow, ignorance, and exasperation. After the Word became flesh, the two natures remained distinct. In Antiochene teaching, they could easily seem like two beings, God and the man Jesus, Son of God and son of Mary, joined, associated, even juxtaposed, rather than personally united. This seemed to open up the possibility of separating ‘the man who was assumed’ from ‘the Word who assumed’. As a vessel indwelt by the Word, he was not unlike prophets and apostles, except that he enjoyed perfect fullness of grace and power. This dualistic approach allotted what Christ did or underwent either to his divine, or to his human, nature. Undeniably the New Testament spoke of the Son of God suffering, or the human Jesus working miracles, but this was seen as merely a literary convention, acceptable to the ordinary believer, but not to the theologian. These characteristic emphases were developed by Eustathius, by Diodore, Bishop of Tarsus (r. 378 – c. 390), and supremely by Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia (east of Tarsus) (r. 392–428), in direct opposition to Apollinarius. Diodore and Theodore had been presbyters at Antioch. Nestorius deposed Nestorius was a famous preacher at Antioch, before being appointed Bishop of Constantinople by Theodosius II in 428. It is difficult to prove that Nestorius’ teaching went beyond that of his master, Theodore. Like the latter, he doubted whether it was right to describe Mary as theotokos, ‘God-bearer’, the title used by Apollinarius, but also well established in Christian devotion, especially in monastic circles. Nestorius (c. 386–c. 451) was undoubtedly rather outspoken in expounding his Christology. The incarnate Christ he weakly described as ‘one pros o ¯pon’, the single historical figure of the Gospels. In his own words, ‘I hold the natures apart, but unite the worship.’ Nestorius was condemned more for ecclesiastical than doctrinal reasons: as the Emperor’s nominee in the hot seat of Constantinople, he was soon widely hated for his assaults on Jews and heretics. He also rapidly incurred the implacable hostility of Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria (r. 412–44), a distinguished expositor and theologian, but an unscrupulous and violent controversialist. Cyril, sufficiently alarmed by Nestorius’ teaching and ‘new Nicene’ background, was outraged when Nestorius listened to the complaints of some Alexandrian clergy deposed by Cyril. Western disapproval of Nestorius was ensured when he gave refuge to some Pelagian exiles who had been excommunicated in the West, though his action probably had nothing to do with the fact that some Pelagian emphases were similar to Antiochene theology. There was also confusion over language: physis was used by Alexandrians of the single ‘person’ of Christ, but by Antiochenes of his two ‘natures’. Cyril opened his attack on Nestorius late in 428. His forceful arguments for Alexandrian Christology were bedevilled by his own unwitting use of works by Apollinarius. He stirred up accusations that Nestorius was an adoptionist, and slandered him to Rome, where Pope Celestine was upset about his having received the Pelagians. Celestine commissioned Cyril to carry out a Roman synod’s judgment against Nestorius, and Cyril demanded that Nestorius should agree to twelve ‘anathemas’ which condemned the Antiochene doctrine in the harshest terms. Nestorius Condemned for heresy at Ephesus, Nestorius was a native of Germanicia, in Euphratesian Syria. Born around 381, he was taught the theology of Antioch by Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose views he echoed. He was instituted Bishop of Constantinople in 428, and immediately began an offensive against Arian heretics and the Novatians. His support of his chaplain Anastasius made him declare his own views, which brought about his condemnation for heresy at the Council of Ephesus (431). Nestorius, in his defence of Anastasius, and his repeated rejection of the word theotokos (the popular designation of Mary as ‘bearer of God’), made it appear that he held Christ to be constituted of two persons. He did not deny the deity of Christ; but in emphasizing the reality and integrity of his humanity, he pictured the relation between the two natures in terms of a moral ‘conjunction’, or merging of wills, rather than as an essential ‘union’. Although he never divided Christ into ‘two sons’, Son of God, and son of Mary, he refused to attribute to the divine nature the human acts and sufferings of the man Jesus. He objected that to assert that Mary was mother of God was tantamount to declaring that the divine nature could be born of a woman, or that God could be three days old. Nestorius distinguished the two natures in Christ with admirable realism, but was unable to reduce the two to the unique, and clearly undifferentiated, one Jesus Christ of the Gospels. The twelve anathemas hurled against him by his chief opponent, Cyril of Alexandria, were countered by twelve from Nestorius. After exile in 431, he wrote his apology, which survived in Syriac, under the pseudonym The Bazaar of Heracleides, in which Nestorius attempts to justify his position and answer Cyril’s criticisms. Nestorius died in Upper Egypt around 451. H. Dermot McDonald At the Council of Ephesus in 431, called by Theodosius II – who had until then supported Nestorius – Cyril got Nestorius deposed before the late arrival of his Syrian supporters. They in turn, led by John of Antioch, condemned Cyril and Bishop Memnon of Ephesus. Finally the Roman legates arrived and approved the action of Cyril, whose synod reassembled to excommunicate the Syrian bishops and distribute favours to his allies. Cyril was able to count on the backing of metropolitan bishops such as Ephesus, who resented Constantinople’s superior authority, and Jerusalem, who wanted independence from Antioch. Cyril’s campaign also rallied ordinary Christians, who only too easily pictured Christ as God in human guise, and worshipped his incorruptible flesh in the eucharist. After further machinations, Theodosius II eventually acquiesced in the decisions of Cyril’s first assembly at Ephesus, which became the third Ecumenical Council. Nestorius was sent off to Antioch, and died around 450 in exile in Egypt. Few of his supporters accepted his excommunication. Under pressure from the Emperor, Cyril and the Syrians began to understand each other, and in 433 they signed a Formula of Union drawn up by Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus (north of Antioch). Largely Antiochene, it included the description theotokos (bearer of God), and showed that some mutual understanding had existed at Ephesus in 431, when most of it was drafted. Both sides agreed to drop demands – the Syrians for Nestorius’ reinstatement, Cyril for recognition of his twelve anathemas. Extremists on both wings were dissatisfied, but the compromise held while Cyril and John of Antioch were alive. Cyril of Alexandria Although he was an important figure who became a brilliant representative of the Alexandrian theology, the early life of Cyril is obscure. He was accepted into the ranks of the clergy by his nephew, Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, and in 403 accompanied Theophilus to Constantinople. Despite opposition, Cyril was elected in 412 to succeed Theophilus as Patriarch of Alexandria. His main concern was to combat Nestorianism. Acting on behalf of Celestine of Rome, Cyril convened the Council of Alexandria in 430, which demanded that Nestorius recant. Cyril’s twelve anathemas against Nestorius were countered with twelve from Nestorius. Cyril headed the Council of Ephesus (431), which deposed Nestorius. Cyril’s theological talent was devoted to preserving Christ’s person as a living unity, against Nestorian dualism. While acknowledging the completeness of Christ’s human nature, he held that the human nature which the Word assumed was not really ‘personal’. In his resulting definition, however, the two natures were virtually resolved into one, and by using the phrase ‘one nature’ he was blamed for reviving Apollinarianism, and giving rise to Eutychianism, with its resulting Monophysitism. Against Nestorius, as well as heretics, Jews, and pagans, Cyril showed himself a ruthless antagonist. The conflict with Nestorius was in part a clash between the rival sees of Alexandria and Constantinople. Cyril died in 444. H. Dermot McDonald The ‘Monophysite’ Council of Ephesus In the early 440s a new generation took over. John died in 441/2; Leo I became Bishop of Rome in 440; the ruthless Dioscorus succeeded Cyril in 444; Flavian was made Patriarch of Constantinople in 446. Of the earlier protagonists, only Theodoret survived. Dispute soon raged around Eutyches, an aged monastic superior in Constantinople, who provocatively attacked the doctrine of ‘two natures after the union’. In almost ‘single-nature’ (Monophysite) terms, he suggested that Christ’s humanity was absorbed by his divinity, like a drop of wine in the sea. Although attacked by Theodoret, and condemned under Flavian in 448, Eutyches had influence at court and was supported by the unprincipled Dioscorus. Amid counter-charges, intrigues, and disorder, Theodosius II summoned another council for Ephesus in 449. Leo sent a statement of doctrine for the bishops to approve: this was the first major Western contribution – unoriginal, but a useful mediating statement. It rejected Eutyches and supported ‘two natures after the union’, yet incorporated some Alexandrian positions. (Tertullian had long ago provided the structure and language – two substantiae in one persona – of a Latin Christology, which to a remarkable extent anticipated the outcome of these Eastern disputes.) Dioscorus dominated this second Council of Ephesus. Leo’s Tome (his statement of doctrine) was refused a hearing, Flavian was deposed, and Eutyches rehabilitated. The Formula of Union and its two-nature doctrine was banned, and its supporters, including Theodoret, excommunicated. Leo labelled the synod a ‘den of robbers’; it amounted to a shameless attack on Constantinople by Dioscorus. Leo the Great Leo (c. 391–461) was born in Tuscany, Italy, and rose through the bureaucracy of the church to become Bishop of Rome in 440. He advanced the primacy of the Roman Church in the West, and was the first Bishop of Rome to make extensive use of the text ‘You are Peter…’ (Matthew 16:19) as speaking of the pope himself. He also received legal backing for the status of the Bishop of Rome from the Emperor Valentinian III, although by this time edicts from the Western Emperor were mostly unenforceable. Leo was one of the church’s earliest great administrators, his style strongly influenced by Roman law. He was also a notable preacher. Leo took a leading part in the controversies of the fifth century about the nature of Christ, fighting energetically against ideas that stressed the deity of Christ at the expense of his humanity. The Tome of Leo – his statement about the person of Christ – was disregarded at the ‘robber synod’ of Ephesus (449), but two years later, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), it was one of the main sources used to draw up the Chalcedonian Definition on the person of Christ. In line with mainstream beliefs, Leo stated that Christ has both a fully human nature and a fully divine nature, and yet was not a split personality. Leo increased his personal prestige, as well as that of his office as Roman bishop, when he persuaded Attila the Hun to turn back from Rome (452), and later managed to minimize the damage done to the city when it was captured by the Vandal leader Gaiseric (455). The Roman bishop was beginning to act as a civil ruler. Michael A. Smith The Council of Chalcedon No redress was possible until Theodosius II died the next year, in a fall from his horse. His sister, Pulcheria, succeeded him, reigning jointly with her new husband, Marcian. Pulcheria had been sympathetic to the cause of Leo and Flavian, and the great Council of Chalcedon (across the Bosphorus from Constantinople) was summoned for late 451. More than 400 Greek bishops attended, with legates (representatives) from Rome, and Pulcheria’s own commissioners controlled the proceedings. The acts of the ‘robber synod’ (Second Council of Ephesus) were undone, and Dioscorus deposed. Theodoret at last disowned Nestorius. The Council put out a composite Definition, which consisted of the Creeds of 325 and 381, two letters of Cyril refuting Nestorius, Leo’s Tome, and, despite some reluctance, a new confession, compiled largely from Cyril, Leo, and the Formula of 433: We all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ one and the same Son, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, of one substance with us as regards his manhood, like us in all things, apart from sin; begotten of the Father before the ages as regards his Godhead, the same in the last days, for us and for our salvation, born from the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer (theotokos), as regards his manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, or without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the characteristic property of each nature being preserved, and coming together to form one person (pros o ¯ pon), and one entity (hypostasis) not as if Christ were parted or divided into two persons … This distinguished statement undoubtedly reflects the fact that the Antiochene standpoint had the stronger influence. Rome was disturbed by some of this council’s canons, which included important regulations concerning monks and monasteries. Canons 9 and 17 allowed appeals from Eastern provinces to be addressed to Constantinople, instead of to the chief bishop (exarch) of the diocese. Canon 28 reaffirmed the third canon of 381, explicitly stating that the earlier council gave Rome the primacy because she was the imperial city. The Roman legates appealed in vain to Nicaea’s canons, before Constantinople even existed! Leo even delayed recognizing the Council of Chalcedon’s doctrinal settlement for a couple of years. The Acacian schism Chalcedon’s decrees became imperial law, which was now normal practice. They offended Eastern Churches who cherished Cyril’s one-nature portrayal of the incarnate Christ; these dissidents were henceforth known as ‘Monophysites’. For the most part they could no more be called heretics than Cyril himself. Anti-Chalcedonianism soon dominated Egypt, where the Coptic language served to express dissent, especially among the monks, and where the Greek-speaking Chalcedonian minority was dubbed ‘the Emperor’s men’. In Syria, where the Syriac language played a similar role, the Monophysites had to struggle for ascendancy; but here too their leadership far excelled that of the Chalcedonians. The division threatened the imperial throne itself during the Emperor Zeno’s reign. He subsequently issued the Henoticon – a peace formula which condemned Nestorius and Eutyches, sanctioned Cyril’s anathemas in addition to the Creeds of 325 and 381, and put a curse on any contrary doctrine ‘whether taught at Chalcedon or elsewhere’. From 484 to 518, under the Emperors Zeno and Anastasius, the Henoticon was official orthodoxy. The pope’s excommunication of Zeno and Acacius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, created the ‘Acacian schism’ between the Greek and Latin churches, the longest formal breach thus far. The growth of Nestorianism The Empire’s adoption of this compromise Monophysitism encouraged the Persian Church to accept Nestorianism, in order to widen its divorce from the imperial church, and so appear less obnoxious to Persia’s rulers. After Nestorius’ condemnation in 431, Nestorian strength had concentrated at Edessa, east of the River Euphrates. The Monophysite reaction after Chalcedon prompted the Nestorians to migrate across the frontier into Persia, and make Nisibis their centre. In 486 the Persian Church became officially Nestorian. The works of Diodore and Theodore were preserved in Persian as well as Syriac. Sixth-century mosaic of the Emperor Justinian I, surrounded by his retinue, including Bishop Maximian; from the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy. Sonia Halliday Photographs After the Henoticon was abandoned, efforts to meet the Monophysites half-way continued, especially under the Emperor Justinian I (Justinian the Great, 527–65), who set his sights on the political and religious reunification of East and West. In 543/4 he condemned three propositions, or ‘chapters’, which listed Theodore of Mopsuestia and his works, and specified writings of Theodoret and Ibas (Bishop of Edessa, 435–57) – all three alleged Nestorians left uncondemned by Chalcedon. Pope Vigilius (r. 537–55) hesitated under extended pressure, but finally consented to the anathematizing of these propositions at the fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553. The West was divided over the affair. The same council condemned Origen as a heretic, and approved the development of Chalcedon’s doctrine worked out by Leontius of Byzantium. Monophysite churches form The emperors persecuted, as well as wooed, the Monophysites, which stimulated the formation of separate ecclesiastical organizations. Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (512–38), gave Monophysite theology its definitive Cyril-derived shape, while Jacob Baradeus, Bishop of Edessa from 543 until his death in 578, vigorously created Monophysite bishoprics throughout the East in the mid-sixth century. As a result, the Syrian Jacobites, and the Copts of Egypt and Ethiopia – which was always closely dependent on Alexandria – formed themselves into autonomous Monophysite churches. Armenia, too, became Monophysite in the same period, largely in order to gain her independence of the Empire and of Constantinople. Georgia took up Chalcedonianism partly to gain imperial aid in resisting Armenian control. In the seventh century, Persian and, later, Arab invasions made reconciliation with the Monophysites even more imperative; but two further attempts at achieving harmony of doctrine came to nothing. The beliefs that Christ possessed a single principle of activity or ‘energy’ (Monergism) and a single will (Monotheletism) were both condemned at the sixth General Council at Constantinople in 680–81. This Council decreed that in Christ ‘there are two natural wills and modes of operation without division, change, separation, or confusion … His human will follows, without any resistance or reluctance but in subjection, his divine and omnipotent will.’ Once again the failure to resolve doctrinal conflict was a major factor in the creation of ecclesiastical divisions, which in the eastern Mediterranean area weakened the Empire’s defences against the Muslim invaders. Issues of faith and order had proved to be disastrously interwoven. The creeds and confessions of the ecumenical councils were bought at considerable cost to peace. David F. Wright Chapter 10 Buildings and Belief Early church structures The first Christians gathered in existing buildings, usually the homes of individual believers. The earliest known church of which traces remain is at Dura-Europos, Syria, where a normal courtyard house was adapted for the purpose. Two rooms were put together for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, another room – decorated with frescoes – served as the place for baptisms, and yet another may have been used for the instruction of applicants for church membership. Wealthy Christians in Rome likewise adapted parts of their houses for worship. The catacombs, or underground burial chambers, were not used for regular meetings, as is sometimes supposed, but for the annual celebration of the deaths of the martyrs. This began the link with the remains of the faithful departed which has been a feature of much Christian worship and which has influenced the design and arrangement of churches. Most obviously, it has meant the use of the church as a burial-place, and its setting within a cemetery or churchyard. Basilica churches Constantine’s pronouncement of freedom of worship for all in the ‘Edict’ of Milan (313) soon brought a great change in the circumstances of the church, which is reflected in the buildings for Christian worship. Gone was the need for secrecy and the need to adapt existing buildings. Shortly afterwards recognized as the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity found an appropriate pattern for its impressive new buildings in the Roman basilica, built to accommodate crowds attending a law court, market, or other kind of assembly. The Emperor himself built a new church in Rome that symbolized the dawn of a new era: this Church of St John Lateran was a basilica, and in all the main centres of the Empire this style of church seems rapidly to have replaced the house-church. The main architectural features of the basilica were a rectangular hall, divided into three sections by two (sometimes four) rows of columns parallel with the longer sides, and an ‘apse’, or semi-circular niche, opening off one of the shorter sides. The roof covering the wider central space was higher than the roofs over the side sections. The outer walls, including that of the apse, were blank, with the only daylight coming through the doorways or windows pierced in the walls of the central space, above the columns. These are the ancestors of the ‘clear-storey’ (or clerestory) nave and side-aisles long associated with churches. Here was a direct ancestor of the familiar nave and side aisles of a church. The appearance of this new, and fully-developed, plan for church buildings has led to the suggestion that Constantine imposed it on the church, and commanded that it be followed everywhere. It seems more likely that the plan was gradually adopted by the builders of churches simply because it was the most suitable available, and that these developments began before the time of Constantine. The basilica plan was followed because it provided what the church needed in its altered circumstances – most obviously, space for the much larger congregations which now gathered for worship. The house-church had usually provided enough room for the persecuted Christians; now that Christianity was respectable and officially recognized, the numbers of worshippers increased rapidly. Pagan temples were not designed to house a worshipping assembly, although occasionally they were taken over and adapted by the Christians for their own worship in smaller, or less wealthy, communities. Such adaptation has been described as ‘turning the temple inside out’. The space between the outer pillars was filled in with walls, the original inner walls of the temple were pierced, and an apse was added. In other words, the temple was made as similar to a basilica as possible. Clergy and laity separate Worship in the house-church had been of an intimate kind, in which all present had taken an active part. But by the beginning of the fourth century, the distinction between clergy and lay people was becoming more pronounced. About this time, the liturgy changed from being ‘a corporate action of the whole church’ into ‘a service said by the clergy to which the laity listened’. This may have influenced the choice of the basilica plan for the new churches. Certainly the basilica pattern made it easier for the distinction between clergy and lay people to harden. The apse was reserved for the clergy, where a throne was set up in the centre for the bishop, with benches for the presbyters ranged on either side. This stately chair reflected the bishop’s position as a trusted, imperial servant as much as a pastor of the flock. The table for the Lord’s Supper became a permanent altar at the front of the apse, and under it were often placed the remains of a saint or martyr. The central space, or ‘nave’, was occupied by the choir, who sang the service, and by the lower ranks of clergy. The ordinary worshippers tended to be confined to the side aisles – men on one side, and women on the other. Those under instruction (the catechumens) or under discipline (the penitents) were restricted to the porch, at the rear of the nave. The basilica had no direct lighting, as the windows were immediately under the roof of the nave in the ‘clear-storey’. This was not regarded as a disadvantage, for it enhanced the light of the candles and lamps near the altar, and heightened the sense of mystery. Churches were normally orientated towards the west, so that the rays of the rising sun fell on the face of the clergyman celebrating the eucharist as he stood behind the altar, facing the congregation. Siting the churches St John Lateran in Rome was built on a site without any special associations, but the Churches of St Peter and of St Paul were built by Constantine on the traditional sites of the apostles’ martyrdom or burial. In the Holy Land, churches were built on sites associated with particular events in the life of Christ. This affected the plan of the church, for attention had to be drawn to the sacred spot which was the reason for the church being built there. Thus in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace is covered by an octagonal building which is linked to a rectangular basilica. In St Peter’s, Rome, the place of martyrdom was marked by a structure at the front of the apse, and given further prominence by the addition of transepts (cross-aisles) on either side of the basilica.. Baptisteries and Martyria Besides the basilica, two other types of Christian building developed. These were the baptistery, where baptisms took place, and the martyrion, a chapel built over the tomb or relics of a martyr or saint. In the East, it was thought important to keep the altar distinct from the relics of the saint, which were often housed in a separate building. Both of these types of building were constructed with a central focal point, and a dome was a frequent feature. When these buildings were designed for congregational use, the altar was not placed in the centre over the tomb, but in an apse added to the original plan. The tradition of the buildings built for martyrs (martyria) was strong enough for their centralized plan to influence church architecture. In the Holy Land, Syria, and Mesopotamia, centralized churches became the rule; and since such churches required a dome, architects developed their skills until they succeeded in constructing a cupola over a square. In this way, the basilica and centralized styles of construction could be combined, making possible the architectural miracle of St Sophia, Constantinople, the supreme example of the domed basilica. St Sophia (Hagia Sophia) was built by the command of the Emperor Justinian, and completed in 537. Its great central dome was damaged by an earthquake twenty-one years later, but was repaired by 563, since when it has remained. Buildings of a similar style do occur in the West, but there the basilica-plan was the basis of most church architecture. In time, the rounded Romanesque arches were replaced by pointed Gothic ones, and the ground-plan was often elaborated into the form of a cross. With the development of trade and the expansion of towns, churches became more and more magnificent, an expression of civic pride. The altar Despite their apparent differences, Eastern and Western Churches have one important development in common: both separate the altar from the ordinary worshipper. This is partly the result, partly the cause, of an emphasis on the ‘mystery’ of the liturgy in the East and of the mass (eucharist) in the West. In the East the separation is made by means of the iconostasis, a massive solid screen adorned with icons, or pictorial representations of the saints. When the doors on this screen are closed, the altar is invisible to the ordinary worshippers, who are in this way sharply distinguished from the priests, who pass inside the iconostasis. In the West the means of separation is different, but the effect is similar. Churches in the West are divided into a chancel (or room for the clergy) and a nave (or room for the laity). The two are usually divided by an open-work screen with a large crucifix on top, known as a rood-screen, or, less commonly, by a solid screen known as a pulpitum. The chancel contains the high altar and seats for the clergy – often intricately-carved stalls – while the nave contains the pulpit for the preaching of sermons and often a second altar. For worship the people would either stand or bring their own seats. The baptismal font is usually at the back of the nave, near the entrance to the church. These arrangements prevailed throughout the Middle Ages, but were complicated by the erection of numerous side altars in the aisles of the nave, and the addition of chapels, each with its own altar. These often contained relics, and were primarily for the saying of masses for the souls of the founders and their friends. Henry Sefton Chapter 11 Worship and the Christian Year The making of the Christian Calendar When Christianity became a tolerated religion, in the time of Constantine, worship and festivals had not yet been rigidly formalized. The main festivals of the Christian year were Easter (the Pascha) and Pentecost. Easter was still at this time only a one-day festival, celebrating together the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ, on the Sunday following 14 Nisan in the Jewish calendar. It ushered in a period of rejoicing over the resurrection of Christ, which lasted for the seven weeks, until Pentecost. (The whole period was often known as Pentecost.) The weeks immediately before Easter Sunday were used for preparing candidates for baptism. In addition, a number of days were probably kept as the anniversaries of local martyrdoms. Christian worship in this period was almost entirely in Greek, although in a few places local languages such as Syriac, Coptic, or Latin were probably beginning to be used. In general, services in this period were extempore, the local bishop being free to pray or preach as the Spirit led, within certain fairly broad guidelines. There were a few fixed formulas in use, including the dialogue beginning ‘Lift up your hearts’ (Sursum corda), the hymn beginning ‘Holy, holy, holy’ (Sanctus) based on Isaiah 6, and the ‘Words of Institution’, commemorating the Last Supper, at the communion service. The doxologies at the end of prayers, the creed, and the form of words at baptism were also of a set pattern, although the words of the creed could vary slightly from one church to another. The Apostles’ Creed I believe in God the Father almighty; and in Christ Jesus, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried, on the third day rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits on the right hand of the Father whence he will come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the flesh (the life everlasting). The Old Roman Creed Sunday a holiday The toleration of Christianity under Constantine produced a few immediate changes. Constantine ordered that Sunday was to become a public holiday – similar to other Roman holidays – which made possible wider developments in worship, and larger congregations in the churches. Sunday services became bigger occasions, and worship imported some practices from court ceremonial, such as the use of incense, the carrying of candles as a mark of honour, and curtaining around the altar used at the eucharist. But Constantine’s act of toleration also started trends which only became really noticeable later: the gradual growth of formality, ceremonial, and superstition. Churches still had to draw people in: during the fourth century this was often done by great pulpit-orators, who were cheered (or occasionally booed) by intensely-involved congregations. Egeria’s Pilgrimage to the Holy Places Next we came, in the name of Christ our God, to Edessa [in northern Mesopotamia]. When we arrived there, we immediately went to the church and memorial chapel of the holy Thomas. And when we had offered up our prayers there in the customary way, and had done all the usual things at the holy places, we read something there about the saintly Thomas. Now the church there is very large, very beautiful, and built in a new style; it is a worthy home of God. And since there were many things I wished to see, I had to stay there for three days. I saw in the city several commemorative chapels, and also holy monks, some of whom live near the chapels, and others in hermitages further from the city, in more isolated places. The bishop of the city – a truly pious man, a monk, and confessor – received me warmly and said: ‘Since I see, my daughter, that from a spirit of religion you have gone to such great efforts to journey here from distant places, we shall, if you desire it, show you all the places here which Christians like to see.’ Then I thanked God first of all and afterwards him, and eagerly urged him to carry out his promise. He brought me first to the palace of King Agbar … Travels of Egeria 19 Greater leisure meant that Christian festivals tended to multiply. Constantine’s mother Helena went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (326–27), which made a great impression, and such visits to Bible lands now became quite common. A short pamphlet appeared in 333 describing a pilgrimage route from Bordeaux to Jerusalem. Considerable effort was devoted to finding various biblical sites, erecting churches on them (for example, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre), and celebrating there the events linked to them. The Church at Jerusalem took the lead in this, and was rapidly followed by others. In this way, the idea of the Christian year as a re-enactment of the life of Jesus became increasingly central. Easter It was probably early in the fourth century that Easter expanded into a week-long festival, and the marking of Christ’s death was made distinct from the Easter Sunday resurrection festivities. Good Friday, Maundy Thursday, and Palm Sunday were now all separately celebrated. Easter had often been spent by baptismal candidates fasting on a vigil, a practice now generally adopted by the church. At the same time, the week after Easter became the special period when newly-baptized Christians received teaching about baptism and the eucharist. The period before Easter for preparing candidates for baptism became formalized into the forty days of Lent. Several sets of baptismal instruction addresses have survived, usually consisting of an extended explanation of the creed that the candidates had to memorize. At the beginning of Lent, people who wanted to be baptized gave in their names at church, and their moral fitness for baptism was examined. Lent as a period of austerity and fasting only developed in the Middle Ages. Christmas The first mention of Christmas as a festival of the church on 25 December refers to ad 336, and comes in the Philocalian Catalogue (354), a civil and religious calendar compiled in Rome. But in the East, 6 January, known as Epiphany, was favoured as the anniversary of Christ’s birth and baptism. The Western date was introduced to the East by John Chrysostom, near the end of the fourth century, and subsequently the birth of Christ was celebrated by both East and West on 25 December. Meanwhile Epiphany had come from the East to the West, where it commemorated the revealing of Jesus to the Gentiles – originally to the Wise Men. Advent As Christmas began to rival Easter in importance, it also acquired a preparatory period similar to Lent that was called Advent. Because Advent came at the point where the liturgical year ended, it was viewed both as preparation for the celebration of Jesus’ birth, and as a period of looking forward to his second coming. Saints’ days During the period of persecution under the Roman Empire, martyrs were regarded with the highest esteem. The date of a martyr’s death – the saint’s day – was often celebrated annually by his or her local congregation. Such celebrations tended to be local festivals only, although in the case of some apostles, such as Peter, Paul, and John, these anniversaries – often referred to as ‘birthdays’ – were widely celebrated. However, even by the fourth century an average church observed only about six such days per year. When, after the persecution of Diocletian, martyrdom became almost unknown for Christians, other notable Christians, such as hermits, ascetics, or great missionaries, became venerated. Possibly the first of these was Martin of Tours (316-397). A special service of communion was held to celebrate the martyr’s anniversary, sometimes at his or her tomb. Although there was no great increase in the number of festivals of martyrs in the fourth century, martyrs did receive greater attention. Private ceremonies were held in the cemeteries, although these were often condemned because of disreputable behaviour. Also, many of the martyrs’ tombs were decorated: for example, Bishop Damasus’ many fine inscriptions in the catacombs in Rome. New discoveries of supposed relics of martyrs were celebrated with great joy, as at the finding of the relics of saints Gervasius and Protasius at Milan, in 386. A few churches were formally dedicated at this time, such as the great new church at Antioch in 341. The Roman festival of the throne of Peter (Cathedra Petri), first mentioned in the Philocalian Catalogue, is probably the earliest celebration of the patron saint of a particular church. Those imprisoned for the faith had been permitted the privilege of forgiving penitent sinners. From this arose the belief that a martyr might still be able to obtain blessings for his or her local church. Some churches were built around the tomb of a martyr, and on the anniversary of the martyrdom it became customary to call on the martyr’s prayers. In time, a similar practice extended to include the saints and the Virgin Mary, and was often connected with the idea that the communion was an offering on behalf of the living and the dead. Written liturgies With Christian worship evolving into public ceremonial, there came a move towards fixed, written forms of service, though during the fourth century this change was fairly slow. The catecheses given at Jerusalem by Bishop Cyril (348–86) and Bishop John (386–417) include fixed wording, but also opportunity for extempore prayer. Ambrose of Milan quotes several long passages from the great eucharistic prayer in his work on the sacraments written 390–91. At the same time, languages other than Greek were being used in worship. Egeria, a Gallic pilgrim to Jerusalem in the late fourth or early fifth century, mentions services there being conducted in Greek, Latin, and Syriac, and preaching to baptismal candidates in all three languages. In Egypt, both Coptic and Greek were used for worship. Although there was a gradual move towards fixed forms in worship, language and regional differences ensured considerable variations from one church to another, and such differences could even involve additional ceremonies. The Church at Milan, for example, practised ceremonial foot-washing at baptism (based on John 13:1–19), though this was unknown in Rome. Prominent churches such as Rome used their power to try to enforce some kind of uniformity, but local variations continued for a long time. During the fifth and sixth centuries the trends begun in the fourth century continued; however, East and West now diverged more sharply. In the East, the ritual tended to become uniform, leaving no room for variation. This was perhaps due to the greater political stability there, which allowed uniformity to be more easily enforced. But fixed forms of worship were also the rule in churches disowned by the state-church, such as the Nestorians and the Monophysite Coptic Church. Only in the Syrian Jacobite Church did the practice of composing eucharistic prayers, attempted by almost every great churchman, live on; yet even here the liturgy of James was pre-eminent. At least eight local rites are known from the sixth century, but these gradually gave way to the liturgies of Chrysostom and Basil. The Christian calendar In the West, the liturgy varied according to the calendar. Probably by the mid-fifth century, the Roman rite included a fixed eucharistic prayer, to which Leo the Great is traditionally credited with making a minor alteration. A wide selection of prayers was available in a sixth-century compilation from Verona, Italy, known as the Leonine Sacramentary; however, the central prayer is fixed in form. A similar arrangement was to be found in other rites in the West; for example, the Mozarabic in Spain, the Gallican rites of France, the Celtic rites, and some early rites in northern Italy. It was possible to vary all but their basic form (for instance, in the mass only the opening preface, the Sanctus, and the Words of Institution could not be varied), but written forms were provided for different festivals. No two mass-books were identical, but all provided fixed written prayers – although in an emergency an eloquent bishop, such as Sidonius Apollinaris, might still extemporize a whole service. The Roman rite gradually spread throughout the West, and was already beginning to displace various local rites when it was made official by Charlemagne in the late eighth century. By the year 600, many other festivals had been added to the Christian calendar, several going back to the fourth century, and what was to become the classic pattern of the Christian year had been established in all but a few details. The Christmas period acquired a number of saints’ days: St Stephen (26 December), St John (27 December), Holy Innocents’ Day (28 December), to commemorate the infants massacred at Bethlehem, and the Circumcision of Jesus (1 January). The entire week after Easter was especially observed, and the Ascension of Jesus was celebrated in addition to Pentecost. In the week before Easter, Maundy Thursday was celebrated as the day when the eucharist was instituted. Saints’ days became more common, and included not only apostles, but also the Virgin Mary, and various local saints, such as Martin of Tours, Germanus of Auxerre, and Cyprian of Carthage. Celtic churches now began to celebrate All Saints’ Day (1 November), and to make long prayers to the saints. Liturgical books In the West, by the mid-fourth century Latin had replaced Greek as the language of worship. Greek and Latin prayers were both used in Rome until about 350. Latin remained alive after the fall of the Western Empire, because most of the barbarian languages had not yet been reduced to written form. As the Christian year evolved, service books were compiled for use by the clergy in the West. These included ‘sacramentaries’, containing all the forms of services needed in a church during the year; ‘lectionaries’, with the set Bible readings for the various days of the year; and ‘homiliaries’, books of sermons for the use of clergy who were not well enough educated to write their own. New ceremonies were gradually added to church services from the fifth century onwards, while some older ceremonies fell out of use. Believer’s baptism declined, and the baptism of infants became the norm. Because infant mortality rates were high, baptism usually took place early in life, becoming a private ceremony, often not even performed in a church building. At the same time, the examples of Jerusalem and the growing monastic communities encouraged daily services of prayers and Bible readings. Ordination, at one time a ritual merely tacked on to the eucharist, had grown into an important, distinct ceremony. Laying-on-of-hands was accompanied by the giving of articles to symbolize the job – a Gospel-book for the deacon, a chalice for the priest. Michael A. Smith Chapter 12 Clergy, Bishops, and Pope The church builds an organisation The growth of the church in the third century so increased the responsibilities of the bishop, at least in the cities and larger towns, that it was no longer possible for him to know all his flock. Theoretically, a bishop could have been appointed for each small congregation, but the idea of dividing the church by having more than one bishop in a city seems never to have been considered in the West. Instead, the number of presbyters (priests) assisting the bishop was increased, and more minor clergy were appointed. By the mid-third century in Rome, exorcists had joined readers on the bishop’s liturgical staff, and sub-deacons and acolytes had become his personal and secretarial assistants. The bishop closely controlled this developing organization. In the fourth century, these clerical offices became a formal hierarchy, similar to the succession of posts held by the ambitious Roman aristocrat. The aspiring church leader began as a reader – often in childhood – proceeding to acolyte (assistant), and sub-deacon, up to the age of thirty. Then followed five years as deacon, and ten as priest, so that the minimum age for a bishop was set at forty-five. Although this was the norm in the Western Church, exceptions were made, as the career of Ambrose illustrates: he passed from baptism to Bishop of Milan in a single week! All the churches of a city were under the direct pastoral care of its bishop. In Rome, for example, the bishop himself took all baptisms, and each Sunday the elements consecrated for the eucharist were carried from the bishop to the various churches of the city by acolytes. Although several priests were attached to each church, there was no parish priest, at least until the end of the fifth century. Financing the churches The bishop also controlled the finances of all the churches and clergy of the city. By the third century, churches had begun to acquire property; but it was the extraordinary growth of church wealth in the fourth century that changed the pattern of church support. After Constantine, endowments, supplemented by government subsidies, provided the major income, though voluntary offerings always remained an important part of church revenue. Earlier on, the bishop alone allocated these revenues, which resulted in abuses. By the end of the fifth century, the Church at Rome had devised a system by which all income from rents and offerings was divided into four parts – for the bishop, the clergy, the poor, and for the repair and lighting of the churches. Elsewhere the distribution varied. Under this system, the bishop received an income much greater than that of priests and deacons – though he had to spend a considerable amount on hospitality. Another contrast was between rich and poor churches. The wealth of the Roman bishop was enough to make the great pagan senator Praetextatus say, ‘Make me Bishop of Rome – and I will become a Christian tomorrow!’ On the other hand, the regular income of some country clergy was so small that they had to rely primarily on the generosity of the Christians of their congregation. Country churches The Christian church was primarily a church of the cities for the first centuries of its existence. However, by the beginning of the fourth century it had begun to move into the countryside in the West (earlier in the East), usually as a result of preaching tours by bishops, who set up churches in the larger villages to care for their new converts. At first these churches were under the care of clergy sent out from the city. Only in the sixth century, and primarily in Gaul, did each country church come to have its own clergy. Priests in these country parishes were still consecrated and controlled by the city bishop, but could administer the sacraments. The church was beginning to take on the form of local parish ministry familiar in the Middle Ages and modern times. At the same time, another kind of country church developed: the church building given by a landowner to benefit those on his private estate. The landowner would normally provide an endowment for the upkeep of the church, and have the right to appoint its clergy. Such clergy, though subject to the bishop, were not under his control to the same extent. Authority Church organization grew in two ways: by the development of the authority of church councils, and by the increase in the authority of certain bishops over other bishops. Councils developed out of irregular meetings of bishops of neighbouring communities to discuss common problems, meetings which became more frequent during the third century, when some local and provincial councils began to meet annually. Constantine called larger councils to settle matters that could not be resolved by local or provincial synods. Arles, in 314, was a General Council of the Western Church, and Nicaea, in 325, the first General Council of the whole church. The decrees of these and subsequent councils became the canon law of the church. The Bishop of Rome pre-eminent Meanwhile, the growth in the authority of the Bishop of Rome was of vital significance. In theory, all bishops were equal, but from earliest times some were more prominent than others, because of the importance of their cities. The most important were Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and Carthage. The Council of Nicaea recognized the first three of these as pre-eminent in their own regions. Constantinople was added in 381, when the church council meeting in that city declared it second only to Rome. The bishop of Rome objected to this, because it implied that the position of church and bishop depended on the status of their city in the Empire. The pre-eminence of Rome did not depend on any such historical accident, nor on the decrees of any synod, declared a Council of Rome, probably in 382, under Pope Damasus’ leadership. On the contrary, Rome’s status was due to the pope’s position as successor to Peter, the founder of the Roman Church, on whom Christ had promised he would build his church. This exalted view, though not for some time accepted even in the West, was the foundation for the eventual supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the church of the Middle Ages. Constantine and the Bishop of Rome Constantine’s reign as the first Christian Emperor was immensely significant for the Bishop of Rome. The Roman Church suddenly found itself not only free of persecution, but also gifted with churches and estates. Constantine ordered a basilica to be begun over the shrine of Peter on the Vatican Hill, and another over the shrine of Paul on the Ostian Way; in addition, the Lateran Palace of the Empress Fausta was given to the Bishop of Rome as his official residence. But Constantine was certainly not the emperor of later legend, prostrate before Pope Sylvester, stripped of his imperial regalia, begging forgiveness for his sins – or handing over to the pope the rule of Rome, Italy, and the West, as the forged Donation of Constantine has it (see p. 197). Damasus’ papal theory Until Damasus (r. 366–84) the popes of this period were at best undistinguished men, who were unable – and sometimes unwilling – to stop the Emperor from dominating the church. The dramatic change at the end of the fourth century, when the church came to dominate the Emperor, was due to Ambrose, the great Bishop of Milan. But it was Ambrose’s contemporary, Damasus, who made the theory about Peter an essential part of papal doctrine: he was the first pope consistently to refer to the Church of Rome as the ‘apostolic see’, and to address bishops of other churches as ‘sons’ rather than ‘brothers’. Damasus’ successor, Siricius (r. 384–99) was the first to use the ‘decretal’, a letter of instruction modelled on the Emperor’s decree sent to provincial governors. In using this type of letter, the pope was claiming the same kind of binding authority for himself in the church as the Emperor had in secular affairs. The successors of Siricius – Innocent I (r. 401–17), Zosinus (r. 417–18), and Boniface I (r. 418–22) – continued and built on the claim to Peter’s authority, although theory often ran ahead of practice. Innocent claimed universal authority for the Bishop of Rome, declaring that nothing done in the provinces could be regarded as finished until it had come to his knowledge, and that the pope’s decisions affected ‘all the churches of the world’. The ineffective Zosimus made just as exalted claims, but his success was meagre, for he managed to fall foul of the Emperor, the fiercely independent North African Church, and some strong-minded bishops in Gaul. Zosimus reversed Innocent’s condemnation of Pelagius, but was forced to change his decision by pressure from the Emperor and the North African Church. Leo I and Gelasius I Popes Leo I (440–61) and Gelasius I (492–96) were undoubtedly the most significant of the fifth century. The climax of barbarian attacks on the Empire made the imperial court at Ravenna desperate for the support of any authority that might help to hold together the Empire. This is the background to the decree of the Emperor Valentinian III in 445, instructing Aëtius, the Roman commander in Gaul, to compel the attendance at the papal court of any bishop who refused to come voluntarily. An emperor’s edict had turned into law the pope’s claim to authority over other bishops. The accounts of Leo’s intercession with Attila the Hun, and Gaiseric the Vandal king, suggest that the pope could now perform imperial services, at a time when the civil government was disintegrating. Leo also had a moment of triumph in the East when his skilful Tome (on the divine and human natures of Christ) was read before the fourth General Council of Chalcedon (451), and was received with the cry, ‘St Peter has spoken through Leo!’ But the Council of Chalcedon rejected the Petrine basis for the pope’s supremacy, declaring that a city’s ecclesiastical status was determined by its civil status, and that the church of ‘New Rome’ (Constantinople) had a legal position similar to the church of Old Rome. The Roman delegates refused to sign – and departed in protest. Leo set out more clearly than any before him the concept that the papacy was Peter’s own office, not only as founder, but also as the present ruler of the church, through his servant, the pope. Leo claimed it did not matter how unworthy any particular pope might be, as long as he was the successor of Peter, and was acting according to canon law. Gelasius I completed the papal theory of the Middle Ages. He insisted that the Emperor must guard the church, but also submit himself to the guidance of the pope, who was himself guided by God and St Peter. It followed that clergy should not be judged in secular courts, and that the pope himself could not be judged by any man. As Gelasius put it, ‘Nobody at any time, and for whatever human pretext, may haughtily set himself above the office of the pope, who by Christ’s order was set above all and everyone, and whom the universal church has always recognized as its head.’ For more than half a century after Gelasius, the real position of the pope was very much less than these exalted claims. Popes were used, and sometimes abused, first by the Gothic kings in Italy, and then, after Justinian reconquered the West, by the Eastern emperors. There were scenes of humiliation, as when Pope John I, on the orders of Theodoric the Ostrogothic King of Italy, travelled to Constantinople in 525 to plead with the Emperor on behalf of Arian Christians. When he returned in failure, he was thrown into prison, where he died. The papacy remained subservient to Constantinople long after the death of Justinian and the failure of Roman rule in Italy. Until 741, papal elections had to be confirmed by Constantinople, or by the imperial exarch of Ravenna. Gregory I and the Lombards The Lombard invasions ended Roman imperial domination of Italy, and gave the pope a new independence, though they threatened to overwhelm the city of Rome in a barbarian flood. Fortunately for Rome, and the Roman Church, Gregory the Great (540–604), pope during the critical last decade of the sixth century, was equal to the challenge. Gregory was a Roman of noble birth who was made prefect of the city about 573, but soon after gave up his wealth and estates to become a monk. A few years later, he was recalled to Rome by the pope for administrative work, and then to serve as ambassador to Constantinople. When Gregory became pope, in 590, Rome’s situation was desperate. The Romans faced the Lombard threat, with no hope of help from the imperial exarch at Ravenna, while famine and plague were also ravaging the land. Without hesitation, Pope Gregory I took command, provisioned the city, provided for its defence, sent orders to generals in the field, negotiated with the Lombards, and finally concluded peace without the Emperor’s authorization. No pope before Gregory had dared do half as much. In the midst of all this, Gregory was administering the estates of the church, caring for the spiritual needs of his flock, strengthening the churches in Gaul and Spain, defending the rights of the Church of Rome against the claims of Constantinople, and sending missionaries to England. Gregory’s period as pope, by its extension of the pope’s authority, marks the transition from the ancient world of imperial Rome to medieval Christendom, united by the Roman Catholic Church. Into the Middle Ages The Roman Church played a central role in the transition to the medieval world, since it was primarily the church – the principal surviving institution from the ancient world – that transmitted Roman culture to the Middle Ages. In many ways, the Roman Church had taken on the shape of the Roman world in which it had grown to maturity. The most obvious example of this is the way in which the church’s organization followed the pattern of the imperial administration. Each city was entitled to a bishop, and each province to an archbishop. Within the bishop’s diocese, the hierarchy of officers was virtually the same as that of the Roman civil administration. Church canon law was modelled on Roman law. At first it contained only decrees of church councils, but eventually it also included papal decretals, which paralleled imperial edicts. The Latin language also contributed a unity to the Christian world. Though little ancient literature joined the mainstream of medieval culture, Christian literature and learning were patterned on Latin models. Christian architecture too was naturally Roman in origin, the obvious example being the development of the basilica-church, and later the medieval cathedral, from the Roman meeting-hall known as the basilica (see pp. 140–1). Richard A. Todd Chapter 13 The Church in North Africa The making of a distinctive tradition The Great Persecution initiated by Diocletian affected Africa, directly and indirectly, more severely than anywhere else in the West. For example, during the persecution all forty-seven Christians from Abitina were martyred at Carthage. The African Church had massively expanded during the third century. Moreover, response to the imperial decrees, and esteem for confessors and martyrs, caused conflict, resulting in the division between the Donatists and the Catholics. The Donatists The Donatists were a protest movement, standing for a holy church, purity of discipline and unflinching defiance of godless rulers. They were named after Donatus, their bishop in Carthage from 313 to about 355. They elected their own first bishop of Carthage in 312 after rejecting Caecilian, the catholic bishop, because one man who consecrated him, Felix of Apthungi, had allegedly been guilty of traditio, the ‘handing over’ or ‘betrayal’ of the Scriptures during the Great Persecution. African Christianity, like Judaism, was a religion of the holy book, and the surrender of precious biblical manuscripts to persecutors was naturally viewed by many as apostasy. The dissidents were motivated by a number of other grievances. The bishops of Numidia (some whom were themselves guilty of traditio and similar compromises) felt slighted. Caecilian’s hasty consecration had precluded their own archbishop from taking his traditional place in consecrating the bishop of Carthage. The ambitions of disappointed clerics, the greed of frustrated presbyters and the pique of a formidable lady rebuked by Caecilian for her superstitious devotion to a martyr’s relic all played their part. Caecilian had been rather cool towards the confessors awaiting martyrdom, and his predecessor Mensurius had almost gone alone with the authorities. What Donatists believed The Donatists believed that they constituted the true church, and that the Catholics were apostate. When Constantine restricted his grants and immunities to Caecilian’s party, the Donatists demanded adjudication of their cause. Repeated enquiries cleared Felix and Caecilian, and an impatient Constantine attempted, with catholic backing, to coerce the Donatists (317–21). The Donatists flourished despite – and because of – persecution by emperors. A protracted assembly in the latter years of Constantine gathered 270 Donatist bishops. Constantine had to acquiesce when they took over a basilica he had built in the Numidian city of Cirta (renamed Constantine), and granted the Catholics another building. Persecution and martyrdom, the fate of all the righteous, confirmed them in their convictions. Further oppression under the Emperor Constans in 347–48 left them depleted until Julian’s tolerant reign in the 360s, and provoked Donatus’ famous question ‘What has the Emperor to do with the church?’ The Circumcellions’ violence provided one answer. They were wandering ‘warriors of Christ’ on the fringe of the Donatists, righting wrongs and intimidating Donatist waverers and catholic clergy. They were devoted to martyrdom. The decline of the Donatists After Julian’s reign, the Donatists dominated the fourth-century church in North Africa. Social protest was expressed in religious dissent. In Donatus and Parmenian they had gifted leaders, and could even afford to expel the ablest African theologian of the years between Tertullian and Augustine – Tyconius, who lost an internal Donatist debate about the nature of the church. What is man? Can any praise be worthy of the Lord’s majesty? How magnificent is his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom! Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since he is part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you. From Augustine’s Confessions After Parmenian (who succeeded Donatus) Donatism declined. In the 370s and 390s some Donatists supported local revolts against Roman rule and suffered when they were put down. Above all, in Aurelius of Carthage and in Augustine the Catholics at last had leaders who were a match for the Donatists. Augustine issued exhaustive historical and theological counter-arguments and a justification of coercion, while Aurelius’ organizing ability produced effective action. Yet it took legal sanctions to check Donatism – especially the Edict of Unity (405) and the proscription which followed the convention in Carthage in 411. Donatism was inspired by the traditions of African Christianity, as represented by Tertullian and Cyprian. It inevitably gathered up currents of popular social and economic discontent without being itself a nationalist or revolutionary movement. Under Vandal rule (429–533) the Catholics and Donatists suffered together – which probably encouraged mutual acceptance. Subsequently Donatism flourished again, apparently diverging less and less from the catholic body. It survived until North African Christianity was submerged by the invading Moors in the seventh century. Its repression in Augustine’s time may have permanently weakened the African church’s ability to withstand such a challenge. In the early fourth century lived two African orators and apologists who were noted writers. Arnobius the Elder from Numidia was the teacher of Lactantius, who died around 320. Lactantius served as a tutor in Diocletian’s court at Nicomedia, and again later, after becoming a Christian, in Constantine’s. His elegant Latin earned him the title ‘The Christian Cicero’. His book The Deaths of the Persecutors luridly demonstrates that persecutors come to bad ends, and three other apologetic works, including The Divine Institutes, commend Christianity to educated readers. His theology was defective, being often rationalistic and moralistic in tone. Manicheism Manicheism was also successful in Africa, despite being banned in around 302. It gathered up remnants of the Gnostic tradition, and its austerity and radicalism also appealed to minds as distinguished as Augustine’s, who recruited other converts. Augustine’s appointment as presbyter and bishop of Hippo marked the beginning of a catholic resurgence, and hastened the downfall of the Donatists, who at their peak around 394 assembled 310 bishops. The Donatist Circumcellions, who had easily been confused with the aggressively orthodox roving monks of the East, had discredited asceticism. Augustine stimulated the monastic movement within the catholic church. From his cathedral chapter-cum-seminary emerged several bishops for African churches. Above all, Augustine raised the self-confidence and intellectual level of African Catholicism. (He had himself encountered enlightened catholic Christianity only outside Africa.) Under Aurelius, bishop of Carthage 391/2 to about 430, councils of bishops again became influential in the church’s life. The Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) published the first complete canons of the New Testament in the West. Councils were important in uniting the bishops on issues such as Donatism. The Donatists resisted reasoned argument, and managed to avoid the public debates in which Augustine routed leading Manicheans. But they felt the force of anti-heretical legislation in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. After the imperial enquiry under the commissioner Marcellinus at Carthage in 411, when 286 catholic bishops confronted 284 Donatists, they suffered harsh repression, especially in the better-policed cities nearer the coast. Donatist strength came to be concentrated in Numidia. In the process of defeating Donatism, African churchmen found themselves on the side of the Empire with untypical enthusiasm. The African church had known close, but rarely subservient, relations with the church of Rome at least since Tertullian’s time. The Donatists found it expedient to maintain a Roman congregation for a period. In their anti-Donatist campaign the African bishops sought Roman support, and the Pelagian controversy meant that they uncharacteristically became more dependent on Roman bishops. Africa had taken the initiative in condemning Celestius in 411 – the same year as the catholic–Donatist confrontation at Carthage. Issues of baptism and the doctrine of the church were involved in both cases. After acquittals in Palestine, Pelagius too was first condemned at councils of Carthage and Milevis, in 416. When Pope Zosimus lifted his predecessor’s ban on the pair, another Council of Carthage in 418 weightily repeated earlier African verdicts. Zosimus bowed to the Africans, and the Pelagians’ fate in the West was finally decided. Not all African church leaders shared Augustine’s keen opposition to Pelagian teachings. In the late 420s monks at Hadrumetum, in Byzacena (Tunisia), and Carthage suggested modifications to his anti-Pelagian doctrines that amounted to what was misleadingly called ‘semi-Pelagianism’. The case of Apiarius is an example of the African bishops asserting their traditional independence of Rome. Apiarius, a Numidian presbyter, had appealed to Zosimus against deposition by his bishop. Zosimus attempted to reinstate him – but this led to a decree by the Council of Carthage in 418 banning such appeals to authorities outside Africa. The Roman bishop rested his authority on the canons of Sardica which his collection of canons attributed to Nicaea. Africa knew better. When the situation was repeated a few years later, the Africans insisted on African independence, while recognizing that Rome had a primacy of honour. Recently discovered letters of Augustine reveal similar attitudes over the case of Anthony of Fussala. Augustine nearly resigned. Augustine of Hippo Augustine, whose influence was to dominate the medieval church in the West, was born to African parents of Romanized Berber origins in Tagaste in Numidia (modern Algeria) in 354. From childhood he was a catechumen, learning the Christian faith from his earnest mother Monnica, but his baptism was delayed until 387 by a lengthy religious and philosophical pilgrimage, described in his Confessions. He excelled in the literary education of his time, except in Greek, and lectured in rhetoric at Carthage. In 373 a work by Cicero converted him to love the divine wisdom; but he was repelled by the Bible’s apparent barbarity. He became a follower of Manicheism, a Gnostic religion with a dualistic mythology which encouraged asceticism and intense devotion to Christ. He persisted with Manicheism for nine years, although he soon began to distrust its claims to demonstrate the truth by rational means. Weathered statue of Augustine of Hippo by Jan Bedrich Kohl, from the Charles Bridge, Prague, Czech Republic. © Alessandro0770 / Dreamstime.com Disillusioned, he went to Rome, where for a time he shared the ‘Academics’’ despair of reaching any certainty. He was even tempted to taste the pleasures of Epicureanism. But in 384 he was appointed imperial rhetorician at Milan and exposed to the influence of Bishop Ambrose and the ideas of Neoplatonism. Together they undermined the obstacles which had alienated him from the orthodox faith. From Ambrose he discovered that Christianity could be eloquent and intelligent and learnt that the difficult stories of the Old Testament could be treated as allegories. The Neoplatonists revealed the spiritual perfection of God and sought insight and vision through inward contemplation. Augustine came to believe that the cause of evil, which preoccupied him all his days, lay in the absence of good, rather than being a power in itself as the Manichees believed. He was now challenged to abandon ‘the flesh and the world’. He had lived with a common-law wife for over ten years, and seemed destined for high office (which would gratify Monnica). The challenge to ‘conversion from the world’ came through repeated stories of heroic renunciations such as Antony’s and Victorinus’. The chain finally snapped as he read Romans 13:13–14 in a garden in Milan. Orthodox champion Prior to baptism Augustine retired to Cassiciacum, where a few companions spent their disciplined leisure as Christian philosophers. On returning to Africa in 388 after Monnica’s death, he formed a monastic community for study and contemplation at Tagaste. However, in 391 he was press-ganged into the priesthood at Hippo on the coast (modern Annata), and by 396 he was the catholic bishop. For the rest of his life he was preacher and pastor, minister of the sacraments, judge and intercessor, trustee and organizer of charity, as well as a tireless defender of catholic orthodoxy and a voluminous writer. Hippo’s half-pagan Catholics and stubborn Donatists rapidly turned him from the confident humanism of a Christian Neoplatonist to a more biblical and pessimistic view of human nature, society and history. The Confessions were an early fruit of this new outlook. The City of God a more mature one. Augustine developed his influential principle, ‘Believe in order to understand’, as he opposed the rationalism of the Manicheans. He used the principle himself in numerous writings, above all in The Trinity. Against the Donatists he insisted that the church was a mixed field of wheat and tares, believers and unbelievers, growing together until the harvest. He undercut Donatist rebaptism by claiming that Christ is the chief minister of the sacraments, so that they remained true sacraments even if administered by unworthy people. Yet the sacraments brought no benefit as long as those receiving them remained outside the fold of the Spirit’s unity and love. Augustine also justified the coercion of dissident Christians as being an act of loving correction. augustine describes his conversion I probed the hidden depths of my soul and wrung its pitiful secrets from it, and when i gathered them all before the eyes of my heart, a great storm broke within me, bringing with it a great deluge of tears … for i felt that i was still enslaved by my sins, and in my misery i kept crying, ‘how long shall i go on saying “tomorrow, tomorrow”? Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?’ I was asking myself these questions, weeping all the while with the most bitter sorrow in my heart, when all at once i heard the sing-song voice of a child in a nearby house. Whether it was the voice of a boy or a girl i cannot say, but again and again it repeated the chorus, ‘take it and read, take it and read.’ at this i looked up, thinking hard whether there was any kind of game in which children used to chant words like these, but i could not remember ever hearing them before. i stemmed my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be god’s command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall. for i had heard the story of antony, and i remembered how he had happened to go into a church while the gospel was being read and had taken it as an instruction addressed to himself when he heard the words, ‘go home and sell all that belongs to you. give it to the poor, and so the treasure you have shall be in heaven; then come back and follow me.’ By this message from god he had at once been converted. So i hurried back to the place where alypius was sitting, for when i stood up to move away i had put down the book containing paul’s letters. i seized it and opened it, and in silence i read the f irst passage on which my eyes fell: ‘no orgies or drunkenness, no immorality or indecency, no f ighting or jealousy. take up the weapons of the lord Jesus christ; and stop giving attention to your sinful nature, to satisfy its desires.’ i had no wish to read more and no need to do so. for in an instant, as i came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of faith flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled. auguStine’S confessions Viii.12 Pelagian refugees from sacked Rome occupied Augustine’s attention from 411. He attacked them only after Celestius questioned the grounds for infant baptism (which Augustine helped to make normal practice). The eventual condemnation of the Pelagians in the West came largely as the result of African pressure spearheaded by Augustine. They provoked him to develop further his doctrines of the fall and original sin, as both corruption and guilt; the necessity of grace to free the will in turning to God; and the predestination and perseverance of the ‘fixed number of the elect’. The Arian Vandal invaders were besieging Hippo when Augustine died in 430. Living amid the shocks and disruptions of the disintegrating Roman Empire, Augustine taught Christians to endure the world, where evil reigns invincibly, and to seek the peace of the heavenly city. He stood at the close of the creative era of Latin Christianity and was to dominate the minds of medieval and Reformation church leaders. David F. Wright Vandals invade The Vandals crossed to Africa from Spain in 429, captured Carthage in 439, and ruled until 533. As a result, Catholics and Donatists alike were persecuted for a long period. The Vandals, who were Arian Christians, sought church unity in time-honoured Roman fashion, and imposed rebaptism, exiled bishops and prevented their replacement, and dissolved monasteries. There were peaceful interludes, especially under Gunthamund (484–96), when Dracontius, Africa’s only Christian poet of distinction, flourished at Carthage, and under Hilderic (523–30), during whose reign an all-African council met in the capital (525). Arianism became an inevitable concern of catholic writers. They included Quodvultdeus, Bishop of Carthage, whose exile in 456/7 was followed by a vacancy in the see for a quarter of a century. Another exile, Victor, Bishop of Vita, compiled an invaluable history of the Arian persecution in about 485. Vigilius, bishop of Thapsus, fled to Constantinople around 484, where he wrote extensively against the Eastern heresies, especially Monophysitism. Fulgentius was a monk and founder of monasteries before becoming bishop of Ruspe. He spent fifteen years in exile in Sardinia with numerous other bishops, and as a keen Augustinian wrote against both Arians and Pelagians. Exiled African clergy and monks contributed helpfully to church life in Spain, Italy and Gaul. After Justinian’s general Belisarius reconquered Africa in 533, catholic Christianity recovered much of its vigour. It was now directed more against the Eastern emperors’ compromises with the Monophysites than against the Donatists, who were buoyant, especially in Numidia. Mutual toleration between Catholics and Donatists under Arian persecution seems to have resulted in practice in each ‘denomination’ recognizing the other. Pope Gregory I repeatedly rebuked the African bishops for their slackness in opposing the Donatists. In the seventh century African church leaders, reinforced by the great Eastern Theologian Maximus the Confessor, again resisted the imperial theology of Monotheletism (646). But time was running out for African Christianity. The Muslim Saracens began their invasion in 642/3, took Carthage in 698, and completed the conquest by 709. The decline of the church is not easy to trace. By 1100 only a handful of bishoprics survived, but a Christian community of some sort lived on in Tunis until the sixteenth century. Only literary remains and impressive archaeological monuments today bear witness to the life and independence of early African Christianity. David F. Wright Chapter 14 The Fall of the Roman Empire How and why it came to an end Since the time of Augustine, many have tried to explain the fall of the Roman Empire, by which is meant the end of the Roman Empire in the West. The Eastern Empire, based on Constantinople – ‘East Rome’ – survived for another 1000 years. Although the underlying reasons for the fall of the Western Empire are still disputed, the immediate cause was the Germanic invasions of the fifth century. The Visigoths become Arian Christians Germanic tribes had threatened the Roman frontier for several centuries. But the tribes who finally destroyed the Western Empire were new to the Romans: Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, and others. Most important of these were the Goths, who began to attack the Empire around the middle of the third century. The Visigoths, the western branch of the Goths, occupied the Roman province of Dacia (roughly modern Romania and Moldova) and forced the Emperor Aurelian to abandon it in 271. The Visigoths were introduced to Christianity during their occupation of Dacia, by Roman prisoners captured during raids into the Empire. About the end of Constantine’s reign, Ulfilas (c. 310–83), a descendant of one of these Christian Roman prisoners, was consecrated head of the Christian community there by an Arian bishop. Therefore the Visigoths became Arian Christians, and eventually spread their particular kind of Christianity to most of the other German tribes on the border of the Empire. Ulfilas’ most important achievement was the translation of the Bible into the Gothic language, for which task he had to invent a Gothic alphabet. After its recovery from the chaos of the third century, the Empire enjoyed almost a century of relative security. The first hint of ultimate disaster was the Battle of Adrianople, in 378. The Visigoths had secured refuge from the Huns within the Empire, but when mistreated by the Romans, they rebelled and destroyed the Emperor Valens and his army at Adrianople. Theodosius, chosen to settle the East by the Western Emperor Gratian, managed to subdue the Visigoths; but they were allowed to remain within the Empire as Roman allies, under their own rulers, and with a regular subsidy. Alaric sacks Rome In 395, the Empire was divided between Arcadius and Honorius, the two young sons of Theodosius. Alaric, the new King of the Visigoths, began to exploit the differences that now developed between East and West. Encouraged, apparently, by Constantinople, he invaded Italy in 401. On the night of 24 August 410, Alaric stormed the walls of Rome in a surprise attack, and pillaged the city for three days. The event had little permanent effect on the Empire, since Alaric soon abandoned the city; but the psychological blow was enormous. For the first time in 800 years, Rome had been captured by a foreign enemy. Jerome – far away in his monastery at Bethlehem – wept: ‘The city which has taken the whole world is itself taken!’ The Barbarian Invasions Divine punishment? Some pagans claimed that the catastrophe was due to the recent rejection by the Romans of their ancestral gods. Augustine of Hippo, the great North African bishop and theologian, countered this accusation in his book The City of God. Augustine wrote that, within the Roman Empire, two ‘cities’ were intertwined: the City of God, the community of true Christians living according to God’s law, and the City of Man, pagan society following its own desires and seeking material gain. Such a community could only come to a disastrous end. But to Christians, citizens of the City of God, the sack of Rome was not a catastrophe, despite their suffering. The loss of goods can deprive Christians of nothing, since their hearts are set on heavenly things; suffering and deprivation are part of their Christian instruction. The City of God alone is eternal, yet the two cities will coexist inseparably until the end of the world. Jerome Jerome (c. 345–420), the leading biblical scholar of his time in the Western Church, was born in a small town in north-east Italy. He studied the classical disciplines and was baptized at Rome, and then journeyed through Gaul, where he was converted to ascetic Christianity, joining an ascetic community near his home at Aquileia. Later at Antioch in 374, Jerome had a vision criticizing his preoccupation with secular learning, and accusing him of being a ‘follower of Cicero and not of Christ’. This led the learned scholar to withdraw to an ascetic life in the Syrian desert, south-east of Antioch, where he mastered Hebrew and transcribed biblical manuscripts. After ordination at Antioch, Jerome travelled to Constantinople, where he studied with the Eastern theologian Gregory of Nazianzus in 380. He then acted as secretary to Pope Damasus in Rome in 382, where he also became involved in experiments in monastic living by aristocrats. While in Rome, Jerome was commissioned by the pope to make an improved Latin translation of the Bible. Following the death of Pope Damasus, Jerome visited Antioch, Egypt, and the Holy Land, but in 386 finally settled to monastic life in Bethlehem, where he spent the rest of his days in seclusion, completing his translation of the Scriptures into Latin and writing commentaries on the books of the Bible. The Vulgate Jerome achieved distinction in his studies of the text of the Bible and his biblical exegesis, based on his unsurpassed skills with languages. Pope Damasus wanted a Latin version of the Scriptures to replace the confusion of corrupted ‘Old Latin’ manuscripts then in circulation. Jerome went back to the Greek version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) and the Greek New Testament to prepare fresh Latin translations of the Psalms, other Old Testament books, and the Gospels. Later, convinced of the need to base his Old Testament translation on the Hebrew original, rather than on the Greek of the Septuagint, Jerome reworked his Latin translation of the Old Testament to conform more closely to the Hebrew Bible. After twenty-three years, Jerome completed his revision of the Latin Scriptures (382–405). Known as the ‘Vulgate Bible’, it was eventually accepted as the authorized Latin version of the Western Church, and, although the text became corrupted during the Middle Ages, its supremacy was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent (1546). Jerome, who was a biblical scholar rather than a theologian, wrote commentaries on most of the Bible. As a result of his use of Hebrew and Greek, his profound knowledge of early church writings, and his familiarity with Bible lands gained by much travel, Jerome’s comments on Scripture are of considerable significance. He sought to steer a course between an allegorical and a woodenly literal interpretation of Scripture. Although he avoided the unrestrained use of allegory of many contemporaries, he commended a threefold interpretation (finding historical, symbolic, and spiritual senses) which resulted in numerous arbitrary and mystical explanations. Jerome’s commentaries on Scripture were prepared at great speed. His exposition of Galatians was written at the rate of 1,000 lines per day, while his Matthew commentary was completed within a fortnight. His exposition of Scripture leans heavily on Jewish tradition, and also involves extensive quotations of numerous authorities of the early church. Quite often Jerome’s comments are indistinguishable from those of other interpreters. Nevertheless, Jerome ranks with Origen and Augustine as an early biblical interpreter of the first order. He also translated into Latin several works by Greek theologians, and with merciless passion engaged in one controversy after another. One of the most cultured and learned of the Fathers, Jerome’s reputation as a keen biblical scholar endures. ‘The great hermit of Bethlehem had less genius than Augustine, less purity and loftiness of character than Ambrose, less sovereign good sense and steadfastness than Chrysostom, less keenness of insight and consistency of courage than Theodore of Mopsuestia; but in learning and versatile talent he was superior to them all’ (Farrar). Bruce A. Demarest Augustine did appreciate the achievement of Rome, though it stood under judgment: Rome provided the just government needed for an ordered society, and for the control of evil. God gave Rome this authority, and the Christian must obey such government, unless commanded to do evil. The end of the Empire in the West Jerome’s Latin Bible I am not so stupid as to think that any of the Lord’s words either need correcting, or are not divinely inspired; but the Latin manuscripts of the Scriptures are proved faulty by the variations which are found in all of them. My aim has been to restore them to the form of the Greek original, from which my critics do not deny that they have been translated. Jerome, Letters XXVII The sack of Rome was not a serious blow to the Empire as a whole, since the Visigoths returned to Gaul after Alaric’s death, and Rome had ceased to be the administrative centre of the West. The Emperor and his court were safe behind the marshes at the Italian coastal city of Ravenna. Gaul, however, was in desperate straits, attacked by a new group of barbarian tribes – Vandals, Alans, Suevi, Franks, and Burgundians. Meanwhile Britain was occupied by Anglo-Saxons from northern Europe. The legendary Arthur, though certainly not the royal hero of the Round Table, may have been the last successful military leader of Christian Britain against the pagan invaders (490–510). Attila the Hun is possibly the most famous of barbarian kings, although the Huns made a less permanent impact than the Visigoths, Vandals, and some other barbarians. In 452 Attila invaded Italy, but was persuaded to withdraw – according to tradition, by a Roman delegation led by Pope Leo I. Attila died the following year, his army dissolved, and the Huns were absorbed into the surrounding population. Meanwhile another Germanic people – the Vandals led by Gaiseric – had crossed from Spain into North Africa in 429, and by 435 controlled much of the coast. They next mastered the sea, and in 455 dared to attack Rome itself, which was unprepared and leaderless. It is reported that Leo again saved Rome, by pleading with Gaiseric for restraint in his fourteen-day sack of the city. The final act of the drama is quickly told. The next two decades were filled with wars against the Vandals and complex intrigues, whereby puppet emperors were set up and deposed at will by barbarian generals. Eventually, the barbarian Roman army in Italy revolted – the army of true Romans had by this time completely disappeared – and elected as their king Odoacer, one of the barbarian officers of the imperial guard. In 476, Odoacer deposed the last Roman Emperor in the West, little Romulus Augustulus, and sent his imperial regalia to the Eastern Emperor Zeno, affirming his allegiance to the government at Constantinople, and seeking to be recognized as ruler of the West. The church and the poor Salvian, a presbyter of Marseilles, reveals something of life in Roman Gaul in the mid-fifth century. His book, The Government of God (De gubernatione Dei), tries to answer a question similar to that addressed by Augustine: why God would bring suffering on a Christian people. He shows that the terrible experience of Christian Gaul does reflect God’s just rule; it is his righteous judgment on a wicked people, particularly on wealthy aristocrats and greedy public officials who mercilessly oppress the poor. This sympathy for the common man sets off Salvian from most writers of the ancient world. Landowners, governors, municipal officials, and tax collectors, says Salvian have all conspired to rob the poor, who can least afford to pay. No wonder the poor prefer life among the barbarians or in the monasteries. Salvian’s picture is certainly overdrawn, for there were many prosperous peasants, merciful landlords, and honest officials in the mid-fifth century. Nevertheless, the peasant’s life was usually hard, and sometimes desperate; peasants were at the bottom of the pile when the crunch came, as in times of famine. Taxes were collected from the poor, even when they were starving, while rich landowners were often able to arrange remission of their taxes. Sometimes the church was part of the oppressive system, for example when its lands were managed by harsh, or corrupt, administrators. Such cases occurred on the estates of the Roman Church in Sicily in the time of Pope Gregory the Great, but were quickly rectified when they came to Gregory’s attention. But the church was generally on the side of the poor and oppressed. Ambrose protested about the expulsion of non-residents from the city of Rome in time of famine, and eventually money was raised to buy grain for distribution. The same thing happened at Edessa, at the urging of Ephrem the Syrian (Ephraem Syrus, c. 306–73). In this case not only was bread distributed, but an open-air hospital of 300 beds was set up. Sometimes church officials shared in the relief effort; the bishop was usually a conscientious shepherd of his flock. It was the church’s care for its own poor, and for outsiders, that so impressed the pagan Emperor, Julian the Apostate. Christians and morality The success of the church in dealing with other social evils of the day is more debatable. It succeeded in ending gladiatorial combats, but chariot-races, wild beast hunts, and an extremely immoral theatre continued, despite Christian condemnations and, in some cases, imperial prohibition. The rigid sexual standards of the church were not observed by the majority of Christians, apart from the large numbers who fled to monasteries or desert hermitages, or the few who, like the women friends of Jerome and Ambrose, could afford to live privately as virgins in their own homes. For many it was thought difficult to live a Christian life in the secular world. The Christian magistrate, for example, might have to order torture or execution. Thus Christians were often advised, for the sake of their souls, to leave public office, an attitude that probably contributed to the decline of public morality in the late Empire, as posts were often filled with people of lower ideals. It is surprising that the harsh treatment of the lower classes in the late Empire did not produce more uprisings, like that of the Bagaudae in Gaul; most of the peasants seemed not to care who ruled them. The Circumcellions of North Africa, a militant fringe of the Donatists, are a special case, since they were inspired by both religious and social grievances. The Circumcellions were peasants who lived around the shrines of their martyrs, where they stored their food. They raided the country villas of catholic landlords, combining economic and religious protest. Why Rome fell Ever since the eighteenth-century English historian Edward Gibbon concluded that his account of the fall of the Roman Empire traced ‘the triumph of Barbarism and Religion’, there has been a special interest in trying to explain why it fell. The immediate cause is, of course, the barbarian attacks on the Western Empire in the fifth century, which resulted in the replacement of Roman government by Germanic kingdoms in the Western provinces. But it is surprising that the barbarian attacks, which had harassed the Empire since before the Christian era, should suddenly prove fatal in the fifth century. Numerous unsatisfactory explanations have been offered: change in climate, soil exhaustion, and race mixture, for example. One popular idea is that the Empire fell because of a decline in morality. Immorality there certainly was in plenty in the Roman Empire – but throughout its history. The late Empire was probably no more immoral than any other period, except possibly in the area of public administration, where corruption and brutality seem to have increased. The church, while it preached against such abuses, contributed to the decline by discouraging good Christians from holding public office, as noted above. A much more important cause for the end of the Western Empire was a failure of human and material resources. The West had always been poorer than the East, and conditions had become worse in the two or three hundred years before the disastrous fifth century. The problem was that too many non-productive members of the society had to be fed by too few productive labourers. The army had doubled in size since the third century, and the bureaucracy had expanded considerably, while the number of producers had shrunk. In addition, the great senatorial landowners, who possessed a vastly disproportionate share of the wealth of the Empire, frustrated imperial attempts to make them pay a fair share of taxes, or to conscript their agricultural labourers into the army. But whatever the causes that made the West weaker than the East, the most important reason for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West was the unprecedented severity of barbarian attacks in the fifth century. Was Christianity to blame? Gibbon himself complained that ‘a large part of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers’ pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes, who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.’ Though Gibbon’s anti-religious bias is evident, the numerous monks and clergy were certainly among those non-producers who had to be fed from the diminishing resources of the Empire. Furthermore, the church, in focusing attention on the heavenly ‘City of God’, encouraged neglect of the earthly ‘City of Man’ – the Empire. The church attracted the most creative minds, and the most capable leaders, of the day. Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory the Great are only the most famous of hundreds of capable bishops who might have staffed the imperial civil service, which was so desperately in need of leadership. Ambrose, Gregory, and Sidonius Apollinaris were all magistrates before they responded to the call of God. Christians in the West tended, if not to welcome the barbarians, at least to accept them as God’s judgment, and to reach an understanding with them. For example, Pope Gregory the Great despaired about the decaying city of Rome, and negotiated with the invading Lombards (without imperial authorization). But while submitting to barbarian political rule, the church converted the barbarians to orthodox Christianity. Christians thus shared responsibility for the fall of the Western Empire. But by the fifth century was the Empire worth saving? It had proved itself unable to deal not only with the barbarian problem, but with political, social, and economic problems too. We may well regret the passing of ‘the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome’; but the fall of the Western Empire was offset in the long run by the conversion of the barbarians of Western Europe to Christianity. Italy under Theodoric and Justinian Odoacer, the Gothic chief who deposed the last Roman Emperor in the West, was himself overthrown in 493 by Theodoric, chief of a group of Ostrogoths, who had served previously in the Eastern Empire. Theodoric now ruled a Gothic kingdom in Italy, taking over all the old Roman administration, including the Senate. His government of both Romans and barbarians worked surprisingly well, at least until near the end of his reign, when harmony was destroyed in intrigues that accompanied the death of the statesman Boethius. The Ostrogoths were Arian Christians, but tolerant, like the Visigoths and Burgundians. Although Theodoric made sure that the popes did as he wanted, he tried to maintain friendly relations with his Catholic (mainstream Christian) subjects. In North Africa, the church suffered more from the barbarians. Augustine’s death in 430, during the siege of the Vandals, marked the end of the brilliant period in its history. The Vandals were intolerant Arians, who sent nearly 5,000 Catholics to the southern desert, and shipped Catholic bishops to the island of Corsica to cut timber for their fleet. The Church in the West in the Sixth Century Boethius: the consolation of PhilosoPhy Boethius is ranked among the founders of the Middle Ages because of his great influence on medieval education and thought. A statesman and philosopher, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius (c. 480–524) was educated in Athens and Alexandria, and served the Arian king of the Ostrogoths in Italy, Theodoric the Great. Living in the twilight of the Roman Empire, he was the last Western scholar before the twelfth century to be thoroughly familiar with the Greek texts of Aristotle’s philosophical works. He planned to translate the works of both Plato and Aristotle into Latin, but was able to complete only Aristotle’s works on logic, together with some commentaries on them. He also wrote five Tractates (Opuscula Sacra) in defence of orthodox theology. One of these books, which systematically applied Aristotle’s logic to Christian theology, earned him the title of the ‘first scholastic’ – one who was attempting to harmonize faith and reason. Towards the close of his life Boethius was accused of treason against Theodoric, and was imprisoned and executed. While in prison he wrote his bestknown work The Consolation of Philosophy, a dialogue between Boethius and ‘Philosophy’, who leads him from despair over his situation to ‘that true contentment which reason united with virtue can give’. Robert G. Clouse After the death of Theodoric in 526, the generals of the Eastern Emperor, Justinian (527–65), temporarily reconquered Italy. But the imperial army was unable to defend Italy against the Lombard invasions after Justinian’s death, and Italy was once more dominated by barbarians. Although the imperial army managed to hold Ravenna and some other parts of Italy, Rome itself was now governed by her bishop. Clovis and the church in Gaul In Gaul, Clovis, pagan king of the Franks, married a Catholic Christian princess and was converted to orthodox Christianity in 496. This proved extremely significant for Christianity in the West. Legend makes Clovis a second Constantine, praying in battle to the Christian God, and receiving baptism after his victory. Gregory of Tours reported that Clovis’ reign was attended by miraculous signs of divine approval; the pious bishop had to see the hand of God in a victory which meant the triumph of Catholic Christianity in Gaul. But though Clovis’ conversion brought the Gallo-Roman Church to his side, it changed neither his character nor his reign, which continued to prosper on treachery, brutality, and murder. Richard A. Todd Chapter 15 Ascetics and Monks The rise of Christian monasticism Ascetic Christianity may be defined as a more rigorous practice of the faith than normal for the average Christian. It can involve a variety of practices: abstaining from certain things normally considered good (for example, marriage) and adding further requirements or routines (for example, extra set periods of prayer). Asceticism encourages the idea of a double standard, with a spiritual elite set above the general level of Christians. There can also be, in monasticism, the additional step of withdrawing from society and seeking solitude. Asceticism and the Bible Parts of the New Testament have been held to encourage asceticism; but there it is advocated for practical reasons, with no suggestion that it is especially praiseworthy. Jesus said that ‘there are some who are eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of God’, but this was specifically ‘for those who can receive it’. Similarly, Paul’s preference for the single life was based on his feeling that Christ’s return might come very soon and that marriage ties might impede evangelism. On the other hand, the New Testament strongly condemns some types of asceticism. Jesus rejected the Pharisees’ scruples over clean and unclean food, and Paul attacked the teaching that it was wrong to marry or to eat certain foods. The Jews had traditions of asceticism, both individual and communal, reaching back into the Old Testament. The Nazirite vow involved temporary abstinence from wine and other restrictions. Later in Israelite history, prophets gathered into special groups for teaching and prayer, under the leadership of notable holy men such as Elisha. Regular puritanical groups, such as the Rechabites, came into being later; they kept apart from normal Israelite life and aimed at a purer and more faithful devotion to God. In New Testament times there were both individual and communal ascetics in Palestine. Josephus, the Jewish historian, mentions that he received some of his teaching from a hermit called Banus. John the Baptist, living a solitary ascetic life in the Judean desert, also represents this tradition. On the communal side, the best-known are the Essenes, of whom the group at Qumran who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls were the most prominent. But some Essenes lived ascetic lives in their community, as did some of the Pharisees. None of the earliest Christians appears to have lived as a hermit or in an ascetic community. Individuals, however, were noted for their rigour of life and devotion to God. James, the Lord’s brother, for example, was admired by many non-Christian Jews for his constant fasting and prayer. Also, in the early period, any consistent Christian life was likely to be viewed as extremely ascetic by a morally lax society. Some noble Roman ladies, who may have been Christians, are reported by pagan sources to have lived in mourning and seclusion for years, presumably because they had no time for the pagan social life surrounding them. While Christianity was under threat of persecution, congregations tended to be small, and to keep very high moral standards (even if there were some lapses, which were severely punished). Martyrdom was valued as the supreme example of devotion to God. Although some churches may have had church membership requirements that were ascetic (for instance, some Syriac-speaking churches appear to have accepted as baptized members only those who were celibate), there was no sign of an organized ‘spiritual elite’ inside the church apart from groups of widows and virgins. On the fringes of mainstream Christianity, for example among Jewish-Christian groups, Marcionites, and Montanists, asceticism was very popular, often in the form of ‘encratism’ (Greek for ‘self-control’). Encratites rejected marriage, wine, and meat. Clement of Alexandria and Origen laid the foundations for an orthodox theology of asceticism. The first monks The late third and early fourth centuries saw the beginnings of monastic asceticism in Christianity. General toleration of Christianity even before Constantine produced an influx of new members into the churches, and growth in numbers was accompanied by a lowering of standards. At the same time martyrdom became less and less frequent, and the martyrs and confessors were replaced as the spiritual elite by the first monks. The monks aimed to live the Christian life to the full, and felt that continued residence in the ‘world’ hindered this. They tried to achieve a pure Christianity and a deep communion with God which they considered unattainable in the existing churches. Antony would eat only once a day after sunset, and sometimes he did not taste food for two or frequently for four days. His food was bread and salt; he drank only water. Athanasius There is considerable debate as to where monasticism began. The first monks were individuals who retreated to the desert in Egypt or Syria. Sometimes these retreats were only temporary, and may have been prompted by the need to flee persecution; often they became permanent. Although he may not have been the earliest, Antony (about 256–356), a Coptic peasant from Egypt, was the first famous hermit. His example was followed by others, and soon there were many hermits, living either singly or in loosely-associated groups on the edge of the desert. The main routine of the hermit was prayer and meditation, supplemented by reading of the Bible. Fasting was also important, and they attempted many other rigorous feats such as standing for hours while praying. Some of the prayers were rather mechanical, involving the repetition of short set formulas. The prolonged loneliness and the shortage of food and sleep fostered hallucinations as well as growth in spiritual awareness of God. Conflicts with demons were frequent. Many of the visions, trances, and strange experiences of the desert hermits have obvious psychological explanations (for example, the appearance of the devil as a seductive woman could be the result of repressed sexual feelings). Those who retreated to the desert inevitably abandoned family life, and celibacy was the rule, although some married couples retreated together into the desert, but lived without sexual intercourse. Most hermits remained fairly stationary, but there were some wanderers, especially in the regions of Syria, including more extreme groups such as the unruly Messalians who wandered about, sleeping rough and keeping up a continual chanting. Some hermits went to unnatural extremes, such as living at the top of pillars, or walling themselves up in caves. Early hermits were largely lay people. Occasionally they might meet to receive the eucharist, or a priest who was a hermit would minister to a group throughout an area. But the eucharist had little place in the routines of the early hermits. Pachomius starts a community The Coptic Christian monastery of St Antony, in the Eastern Desert, Egypt, one of the oldest monasteries in the world, founded by followers of Antony (c. 251–356), the pioneer monk. © Alexey Bykov/Dreamstime.com Communal monasticism was begun about 320 by Pachomius. He was a converted soldier, and after discharge he spent some time as a hermit before setting up his first ascetic community at Tabennisi, by the River Nile in Egypt. The rule for his community survives in a Latin translation made by Jerome. Pachomius set his face against extremism. He insisted on regular meals and worship, and aimed to make his communities self-supporting through such industries as the weaving of palm-mats or growing fruit and vegetables for sale. Entrants to his community had to hand over their personal wealth to a common fund, and were only admitted as full members after a period of probation. To prove their initial earnestness they were required to stand outside the monastery door for several days. Part of the qualification for full membership was to memorize parts of the Bible; and if the candidates were illiterate they were taught how to read and write. Although Pachomius’ first communities were for men, before his death he supervised the establishment of the earliest communities for women as well. Pachomius created the basic framework which was followed by all later monastic communities. Monasticism appeared first out of Eastern Christianity. It was first brought to the notice of the Western Churches by Athanasius. While he was in exile in the West between 340 and 346, he was accompanied by two Egyptian monks. Athanasius spent parts of his later exiles hiding among the hermits of the Egyptian desert, and subsequently wrote the life of Antony. This biography provides almost all our knowledge about Antony, and largely helped to spread the ideals of the ascetic movement. It was soon translated into Latin, and among those influenced by it was Augustine of Hippo. In the West monasticism had the backing of church leaders such as Ambrose from the very beginning. Bishops and monks After Pachomius, Basil the Great (330–79) made the most important contribution to Eastern monasticism. After being educated at Constantinople and Athens, in 356 Basil returned to his home in Cappadocia, determined to renounce the world and live as a hermit. He visited many of the ascetics before setting up his own community with the help of Gregory of Nazianzus. His monastic planning comes from this period, but was influenced by the fact that he was ordained in 364 and became bishop of Caesarea (in Cappadocia) in 370. Basil was both a bishop and an ascetic. The First Monks Basil integrated the monastic communities more closely with the church, believing the bishop should have ultimate authority over a monastery. At the same time, monasteries started to become more outward-looking. Basil’s monastery provided medical treatment for the sick and relief for the poor, and also did some work in education. He disapproved strongly of individualistic piety which ran to extremes, and laid down set times of prayer, eight times daily. Basil’s ascetic theory was summed up in two monastic ‘rules’. While these owe something to an older friend of his, Eustathius of Sebaste (c 300–80), and have also been modified later, they remain basically the work of Basil. The rule of Basil is still observed in Eastern monasteries today. Basil saw the monastic life as the climax of Christian achievement, with its aim of freeing the soul from the entanglements of the body through discipline. Basil stressed the need for self-examination, but believed that people could in fact fulfil the commandments of God. Monasticism in the West In the West, monasticism was stimulated by Martin of Tours, who died in 397. Martin took up the hermit’s life after military service and lived in a solitary cell near Ligugé, in France. His sanctity resulted in many others coming to join him, and a form of community was set up. Rather against his will, he was persuaded to become bishop of Tours in 372, and for some time lived as a hermit in a cell next to the church. The continued distraction of his curious visitors compelled Martin to retreat to Marmoutier, where he set up a monastery as a springboard for evangelizing much of the still-pagan rural France. His monastery was also a nursery for bishops, as a result of its rigour and sanctity. Most of our knowledge of Martin of Tours comes from an extremely popular biography of him written by Sulpicius Severus which helped spread Martin’s example throughout the West. Many early churches were dedicated to him, and he is probably the first non-martyr to be venerated as a saint. Martin of Tours set the pattern for the ‘holy man’ for the succeeding centuries. Augustine of Hippo introduced a new aspect to monasticism; the arrangement whereby a group of celibate clergy lived together and served a local church. Jerome and Rufinus had belonged to a similar group in north-east Italy. After his conversion and return to North Africa in 388, Augustine gathered a group of his friends to live together in an ascetic community, devoting themselves mainly to study. They continued after Augustine was made bishop of Hippo in 395. Here were the roots of the later cathedral ‘chapters’ and the medieval practice of the bishop of a town surrounding himself with a ‘family’, comprising his subordinate clergy and often young men under training for ordination. The monastic rules circulating under his name in the Middle Ages originated in part with Augustine, but had been worked over extensively by later writers. Militant monks In Egypt, and to a lesser extent in Syria, monastic communities took part in political warfare. Organized and armed crowds of monks took sides in theological disputes and overawed church councils by their presence. Foremost in this activity was Schnoudi, the fierce abbot of the White Monastery in Egypt, who supported Cyril of Alexandria violently and effectively when he got Nestorius condemned for heresy at the council of Ephesus in 431. With the connivance of cynical bishops, such as Theophilus of Alexandria, monks were also responsible for destroying pagan temples, and for harassing and even murdering pagans and heretics. In this they were no better than the pagan mobs of earlier periods who had often persecuted Christians savagely at Alexandria and elsewhere. Cassiodorus This long-lived Roman aristocrat, who died around 583, forged lasting links between classical and early Christian civilization and the medieval world of monks and barbarians. Cassiodorus attained high office as a minister of Theodoric and other Ostrogothic rulers. In drafting official documents, collected and known as his Variae, he drew upon traditional Latin rhetoric to serve a barbarian court, and influenced later practice. He encouraged Theodoric’s regard for the cultural legacy of Rome. The History of the Goths, his most original work, is now lost. Cassiodorus wanted to create a Christian academy at Rome, but was frustrated by the Gothic wars – although a library was collected about 535 under Pope Agapetus. Cassiodorus fulfilled his ideals in the monastery he established on his estate at Vivarium (‘fish-pond’, from the landscaped gardens) near the southern Italian coast, where he settled after 540. His Introduction to Theological and Secular Studies advocated a marriage of biblical study and the liberal arts. His enthusiasm for secular learning, which was not shared by Benedict or Gregory the Great, strongly influenced later Benedictine practice. Vivarium’s library and scriptorium (room set apart for writing) preserved and passed on manuscripts of the early Christian writers and the classics alike. Cassiodorus supervised the translation from Greek into Latin of works by such Christian writers as Clement of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind, and the church historians, as well as Josephus. He also made earlier Latin theology more readily available, especially Augustine’s commentary on the Psalms and Pelagius on Paul’s letters. Cassiodorus’ ideal was civilitas, ‘humane values and order’. For the privileged it meant monastic culture, civilized study in a refined setting, welding together Roman and Christian, just as earlier he had reconciled the Gothic and the Roman. David F. Wright In the West in the fifth century, monasticism flourished in southern Gaul. Honoratus founded a monastery on the island of Lérins, which became the training ground for many monk-bishops. John Cassian began work at Marseilles at the same period. He had trained as a monk in Bethlehem and Egypt. After a period in Constantinople, he came west and in 415 founded a monastery and a convent at Marseilles. Monks and learning Cassian is the West’s great writer on monasticism, and his detailed instructions for monasteries served to promote the monastic movement widely. He went into great detail, covering not only subjects such as clothing and the form of monastery services, but also examining the temptations against which a monk had to fight. He was a keen observer and painstaking administrator. Cassian reacted against what he felt to be an over-emphasis on human weakness in the theology of Augustine. He held that people are able to make some response to God in their own strength, even though they cannot totally fulfil God’s commands. Cassian’s viewpoint, probably brought from the East, was especially common in the monastic communities of southern France, and is often called semi-Pelagianism. In addition to Cassian, its most notable teacher was Vincent of Lérins. Semi-Pelagianism became quite popular in southern France until it was condemned by the Synod of Orange in 529. The Greek monastery of Mar Saba, or Sabas the Sanctified, is among the oldest inhabited monasteries in the world. Situated near Bethlehem, in the West Bank, the monastery was begun in 483 by Sabas, but today houses only a handful of monks. John of Damascus (676–749) lived here as a monastic priest. Tim Dowley Associates The next great name in Western monasticism is Cassiodorus (490–583), who came from a distinguished Roman senatorial family and held high office under Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic king of Italy. In 540 he retired to the monastery he had founded at Vivarium, in Calabria (southern Italy). He placed great emphasis on the copying of manuscripts and the study of ancient writings, and some scholars believe Benedict of Nursia derived his stress on study from Cassiodorus. The emphasis on monastic learning ensured that Greco-Roman culture survived into the Middle Ages. Patrick: Missionary to the Irish Patrick (c 389–461), the great missionary to the Irish, was probably born in Roman Britain. He was the son of a deacon and magistrate named Calpurnius. The details of his life are disputed and have been overlaid with many pious legends. The small amount of definite information about him is found in his two writings: The Confession and A Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, a chief in north Britain. At the age of sixteen, while at his father’s farm, Patrick was seized by raiders and sold as a slave in Ireland. After six years of service as a shepherd, he escaped and eventually reached home again. He also spent some time in Gaul. During his captivity, his Christian faith had been decisively deepened and he became convinced he should return and evangelize Ireland. Once in a dream he heard the voice of the Irish calling, ‘We beseech you to come and walk among us once more.’ Patrick returned to Ireland as a bishop in 432 and spent the next thirty years ministering there. He had a great influence on several chieftains and special ties in the areas of Tara, Croagh Patrick, and Armagh. Although he was not well educated, he encouraged learning and, possibly through contact with strict monasteries in Gaul, he began to emphasize the ascetic life and monasticism. In the later Irish Church the basic unit became the monastery led by the abbot, rather than the bishop’s diocese. Patrick also communicated the priority of mission to Celtic Christianity, which produced great numbers of monks who evangelized Western Europe during the sixth and seventh centuries. Robert G. Clouse Celtic monasticism Monasticism seems to have begun among the Celts in the late fifth or early sixth century, but its origins are obscure. Although its establishment was later attributed to Patrick, there is no certain evidence from his writings that he founded monasteries or that he was a monk himself. Patrick himself seems to have encouraged the private type of asceticism favoured before 325. However, in the late fifth century, monasticism seems to have taken root in Ireland in a form which owed much to the Egyptian pattern. Martin of Tours’ monastic ideals may have reached Ireland via Ninian’s monastery at Whithorn in Scotland. The extreme rigour of Irish hermits, and the arrangement of cells within an outer boundary wall, both reflect Egyptian influences. Irish monks also acquired a great enthusiasm for scholarship, which may have been encouraged by continental scholars who fled to Ireland from the barbarian invasions of the fifth century. Contemporary Ireland was a tribal society without large towns, and the monasteries exerted a great influence on church life. Unlike Western monasticism in mainland Europe, Irish monks put little value on staying in one place, and from the sixth century onwards the wandering Celtic monk became a common figure on the European continent. Such wandering monks founded some of the most famous of the early continental monasteries – including Luxeuil in Burgundy, St Gall in Switzerland, and Bobbio in Italy; they also promoted the evangelization of much of central Europe. Columba: Celtic Missionary Columba (521–97), who became a famous abbot and missionary, was born of noble parents in Donegal, Ireland, the land of the ‘Scots’. He was educated at the schools of Finbar at Moville and Finnian at Clonard, and after ordination preached widely and helped to establish churches and monasteries, such as those at Derry and Durrow. In 563 Columba left Ireland, determined to ‘go on pilgrimage for Christ’. There is some disagreement over why he left his homeland. He had been involved in a dispute over the possession of a manuscript he had copied out, and he fell into disfavour for his part in causing the civil war which followed between his clan and the High King Diarmid. His departure may have been partly a self-imposed penance. With twelve companions Columba sailed to the island of Iona, on the west coast of Scotland, where he established a monastery which served as a base for evangelism among his fellow Scots and among the Picts. A courageous man, almost warlike at times, Columba preached to people who were under the influence of Druid opponents of Christianity. His faithfulness was rewarded when rulers such as Brude, king of the Picts, were converted. Many churches were founded, and much of the religious, political, and social life of Scotland Christianized. The extent of Columba’s influence beyond the west of Scotland is uncertain. Columba combined deep visionary piety and a forceful involvement in the affairs of kings and chiefs with a concern for scholarship and a love of nature, and is a figure typical of the Celtic Church. His achievements illustrate the importance of the Celtic Church in reviving Christianity in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. An important early Life of Columba was written about 688–92 by Adamnan, the ninth abbot of Iona. Robert G. Clouse The Rule of Benedict Benedict of Nursia provided the definitive rule for monasteries in the West; from the late sixth century his system gradually superseded other Western monastic rules. Very little is known of the life of Benedict apart from the details given in a biography attributed to Gregory the Great. Only in the time of Charlemagne, and through the efforts of Witiza, who called himself Benedict of Aniane (c. 747––821), was the Benedictine rule widely published and imposed on monasteries. Benedict was born at Nursia, in Umbria (north-central Italy), and studied at Rome before withdrawing to live as a hermit. He founded several small monasteries, but had little success until he moved to the monastery at Monte Cassino. He wrote his rule during his early years as a monk, and died at Monte Cassino about 547. When the monastery there was destroyed by the Lombards, some of the monks fled to Rome where they brought his rule to the notice of Gregory the Great. The Rule of Benedict is based on two activities: prayer and work. The individual monk had to show high moral character, and Benedict insisted a monk should remain in the same monastery where he had taken his vows. The abbot was the spiritual head of the monastery and exercised all the normal discipline. The monasteries’ stable, well-ordered communities, with their emphasis on worship, greatly helped to keep up spiritual standards during these centuries. Perhaps thanks to the influence of Cassiodorus, the Benedictine monasteries also became centres of learning. The Celtic high cross of St Martin, sculpted from a single stone, stands outside the west door of Iona Abbey, on the island of Iona, Scotland. Its west face depicts scenes from the Bible; the east face is decorated with bosses and serpents. The abbey was founded by Columba and his Irish missionaries in 563. Tim Dowley Associates The Rule of Benedict observed in monasteries today is still largely that of the founder, although copies of the rule have been enlarged and altered to fit later developments. Some historians believe Benedict’s rule owes a great deal to another monastic rule of similar date, known as the Regula Magistri, the ‘Rule of the Master’, and that Benedict’s genius lay in making the harsher requirements of this older rule more human. Life in Benedict’s monastery In every aspect all shall follow the Rule as their guide: and let no one depart from it without good reason. Let no one in the monastery follow his own inclinations, or brazenly argue with his abbot . . . The abbot, for his part, should do everything in the fear of the Lord and in obedience to the Rule, knowing that he will have to account to God for all his decisions. If a brother is insubordinate, or disobedient, proud or a grumbler, or in any way acting contrary to the holy Rule and despising the orders of his seniors, let him, according to the Lord’s commandment, be privately warned twice by his seniors. If he does not improve, let him be publicly rebuked before them all. But if even then he does not correct himself, he should be excommunicated, if he understands how severe this penalty is. If, however, he is beyond conviction, he should be physically punished. The brothers shall take turns to wait on each other so that no one is excused from kitchen work, unless prevented by sickness or taken up with some vital business  . . . An hour before each meal the week’s servers are to receive a cup of drink and a piece of bread over and above their ration, so they can wait on their brothers without grumbling or undue fatigue. At the brothers’ meal times there should always be a reading  . . . There shall be complete silence at table, and no whispering or any voice except the reader’s should be heard. The brethren should pass to each other in turn whatever food is needed so that no one needs to ask for anything. If anything should be wanted, ask for it by sign-language rather than by speech. Above all, care must be taken of the sick . . . Baths should be available to the sick as often as necessary: to the healthy, and especially the young, less often. The eating of meat shall also be allowed to the sick and the delicate to aid recovery. But when they have got better, they shall all abstain from flesh, as is normal. In winter, that is from 1 November until Easter, as far as possible they must get up at the eighth hour of the night, so that they rest for a little over half the night, and rise when they have had a good sleep. But the time that remains after ‘vigils’ shall be spent in study . . . As the prophet says, ‘Seven times in the day do I praise thee.’ We will complete this sacred number seven if, at lauds, at the first, third, sixth, ninth hours, at vesper time and at compline we carry out the duties of our service. Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, at fixed times, the brothers should be busy with manual work; and at other times in holy reading. We believe these ought to be arranged in this way: from Easter until 1 October, on coming out of Prime they shall do the work needing attention until the fourth hour. From the fourth hour until about the sixth, they should concentrate on reading. After the meal on the sixth hour, they shall rest on their beds in complete silence; anyone who wishes may read to himself as long as he does not disturb anyone else. None shall be said a little early, about the middle of the eighth hour; after that they shall work at their tasks until evening. A mattress, woollen blanket, woollen under-blanket, and a pillow shall be enough bedding. Beds are to be searched frequently by the abbot for private belongings. And, if anyone is found to possess anything he did not receive from the abbot, he shall be very severely disciplined. To abolish private property, everything necessary shall be given by the abbot: a hood, tunic, shoes, long socks, belt, knife, pen, needle, handkerchief, tablets, so that they can have no excuses about needing things. A monastery should, if possible, be built so that everything needed – water, mill, garden, bakery – is available, so that the monks do not need to wander about outside. For this is not at all good for their souls. We intend to found a school to train men in the service of the Lord, but where we shall not make the rules too strict and heavy . . . If we seem to be severe, do not get frightened and run away. The entrance to the path of salvation must be narrow, but as you progress along the life of the faith, the heart expands and speeds with love’s sweetness along the pathway of God’s commandments. Selections from Benedict’s Rule Celibate clergy The idea that the clergy should remain unmarried developed only slowly. From the New Testament, it is reasonable to suppose that most of the apostles were married. Certainly this is true of Peter (his mother-in-law is mentioned) and the brothers of Jesus; and it was regarded as normal that an apostle could take his wife with him on church work. At the same time, Paul recognized the practical advantages of remaining unmarried. Also, with sexual excesses all around them, it is likely that some Christians reacted against sex from a fairly early period. However, this was not formally set out or made a matter of special praise. In fact, special vows by younger women to abstain from marriage were discouraged by Paul. During the period which followed, abstinence from marriage was left a matter of personal choice, although in most Gnostic sects marriage was actively discouraged on the grounds that it entangled the spiritual soul with the evil physical world. Some Jewish and Christian traditions blamed sexual differences on the fall, and believed salvation included a return to ‘unisex’ life. In the mainstream churches, leaders such as Melito of Sardis became known for their austere personal lives, with abstinence from marriage part of this. In many churches, too, Christian women may have had difficulty in finding suitable husbands. Tertullian spells out the problem of a Christian woman with a pagan husband in a tract dedicated to his own wife! For such reasons some women remained unmarried, which could give them more time for prayer and devotion. In the same way, men who were free from family ties had more time to devote to church affairs, and were often obvious choices as leaders. By the third century, celibacy was beginning to be valued as a mark of holiness. Even so, extremes were frowned upon, and Origen earned considerable disapproval because he made himself a eunuch, believing this was commended in the Gospels. As martyrdom declined, asceticism began to become the measure of spirituality; the leaders regarded as more spiritual in the churches tended to be those who practised an ascetic way of life. However, the clergy were not generally obliged to be celibate and some important church leaders, such as Hilary of Poitiers (c. 300– c. 368), were married. In the fourth century also some men in public life were ordained later on in life, after they had married. In some cases they continued to live with their wives, but abstained from sexual intercourse. In the fourth century, moves were made to restrict marriage after ordination. The Council of Ancyra, about 315, declared that deacons had to choose between marriage and celibacy before ordination, and could not marry afterwards; the Council of Neocaesarea, about 320, ruled that presbyters who married after ordination were to be deposed. However, it is uncertain how far these rules were enforced. As the fourth century proceeded, the pressure for Christians to be celibate became very great. Jerome was the most enthusiastic supporter of celibacy, and was criticized because many of his pronouncements seemed to denigrate marriage. Some Western theologians believed original guilt entered into the soul of the infant through the act of conception and thus cast doubt on sexual intercourse. In spite of protests that celibacy was Manichean (the Manichees held that all aspects of the physical world were evil), supporters of celibacy persuaded the churches that celibacy and holiness were closely connected. Celibacy of the clergy introduced two great abuses. Many so-called celibate clergy in fact lived with women who were not their wives (called subintroductae), a practice repeatedly condemned by church councils and writers. Jerome was particularly biting about such disgraceful behaviour. Also, enthusiastic men were tempted to desert their wives in order to follow the celibate life. A Roman law of 420 expressly forbade this. In the fifth century and after, two codes of practice evolved. In the Eastern Churches, presbyters and deacons were allowed to marry before ordination, but bishops were always chosen from among the celibate clergy (very often they were monks). This practice was accepted as the norm by Justinian and remains in force in Eastern Christianity today. In the West there was strong pressure for complete clerical celibacy. Leo the Great wanted to forbid marriage even for subdeacons, but it is uncertain whether this was ever enforced during his time. Certainly, during the fifth and sixth centuries married men such as Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430–489) became bishops. However, during these centuries the monasteries came to be regarded as the main centres of spirituality, which meant that increasingly the best bishops tended to be celibate. Celibacy of the clergy continued to be praised as an ideal, although it was not enforced legally and effectively until the time of Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VI, r. 1073–85). Daily prayer Ascetic communities influenced the liturgy considerably, especially in the matter of daily services. Early in the second century the Didache had encouraged Christians to pray three times a day. Another early practice was for Christians to rise and pray at midnight – common by the time of Tertullian. Morning and evening prayer in church became customary during the fourth century, especially at centres of pilgrimage such as Jerusalem. Egeria (sometimes known as Aetheria or Silvia), a lady pilgrim to the Holy Land in the late fourth century, mentions four daily services attended by clergy and monks in Jerusalem. The seven-times-daily order of prayer evolved in the monasteries soon after, and was claimed to be sanctioned by the text from Psalm 119, ‘Seven times a day will I praise thee.’ The routine was made up from the three hours of prayer (9 a.m., 12 noon, 3 p.m.), the morning and evening prayers, and two additional services. The complete cycle was: Lauds (the old morning prayer) Prime (to fill the gap between Lauds in the small hours and Terce) Terce (at 9 a.m.) Sext (12 noon) None (3 p.m.) Vespers (old evening prayer) Compline (prayer just before bedtime). These services varied in content, but included prayers and intercessions, reciting of psalms, the reading of the Bible, and a certain amount of singing, mainly by a solo singer, with the congregation repeating a refrain at intervals. On occasions there was also antiphonal singing, where the congregation divided into two choirs and sang alternate halves of the verses of a psalm; but this only happened where the training of singers could be relied on. On the anniversaries of martyrs or saints, the Bible reading might be replaced by a reading from the account of the martyrdom or from the ‘Life’ of the particular saint. Michael A. Smith Further reading A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, London, 1948. Ivor J. Davidson, A Public Faith: From Constantine to the Medieval World ad 312–600, Oxford, 2005. Frances Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon, London, 1983. J. Stevenson ed., rev. W. H. C. Frend, Creeds, Councils and Controversies: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church ad 337–461, London, 1989 Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, New York, 2008. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, London, 1969. Study questions Why did Constantine recognize Christianity? What attracted Christians to the monastic life in this period? Why did Christians argue so much about the doctrine of the Trinity? What were the main immediate effects of the official recognition of Christianity? Why is Augustine of Hippo regarded as such an important figure? Why did the Roman Empire decline and fall? What differences appeared during this period between the church in the West and the church in the East? Patrick or Jerome: which do you think is of greater importance in the history of the church – and why? How did the church in North Africa differ from the church in Western Europe? Describe life in a Christian monastery of this period. 3 A Christian Society ad 600–1500 Summary The major disruptions within the Roman Empire in the fifth century led to a growing rift between the Western and Eastern Churches. Increasing tension over political as much as theological issues led to the Great Schism of 1054. By this point, the influence of the Eastern Church had extended as far north as Moscow. In Western Europe, Christianity underwent a major renaissance during the period 1000–1500. This era – the Middle Ages – saw the renewal of church life at every level. The political and social influence of the church was consolidated, and the personal authority of the pope to intervene in political disputes of the region reached new levels. The form of theological thinking known as ‘scholasticism’ developed, with thirteenth-century writers such as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus achieving great theological sophistication. Scholasticism was increasingly questioned. The European Renaissance, which began to become a major cultural force in Western Europe in the fourteenth century, pointed to the importance rather of returning to the roots of Christendom. The humanist movement – linked with the Renaissance – believed it essential to study Scripture in its original languages, creating pressure for new Bible translations. The rise of Islam in the seventh century had a significant negative impact on Christianity in North Africa and the Middle East. It seemed poised to extend yet further in 1453, when Islamic armies captured Constantinople, ‘the gate to Europe’. By the early sixteenth century, Islam was poised to enter Austria, though military defeats in fact limited its influence to the Balkans. By this stage, however, Western Europe was convulsed by new controversies, as the movement we know as the Reformation gained momentum. Chapter 16 The West in Crisis Pope Gregory I, Gregory the Great (r. 590–604) stands at a crossroads in the development of the Christian church. The division between its Eastern (Greek and Orthodox) and its Western (Latin and Catholic) halves had been in existence from at least the fourth century; any semblance of political unity between East and West under the eastern Roman Empire was mere pretence. From 400 to 600 the emperors in the West increasingly relied on bishops to assist in secular matters. The fall in population and the penetration of the German peoples into the interior of the Roman Empire helped create a need for new leaders, and it was the Christian bishop who increasingly filled this role. By the year 600 the effective legislation and leadership of Western Europe was provided by the Christian clergy, particularly the bishops meeting in local councils. Intense competition had arisen earlier among the bishops of the great imperial cities – Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople. Long before 600 Rome and Constantinople had emerged as the two chief rivals for pre-eminence. Constantinople was, of course, the junior of the two, but since it was associated with the imperial capital, the Church of Constantinople inevitably rose in prestige and influence. The pope and the invaders As pope, Gregory the Great reflected the new status of the papacy. He criticized the Patriarch of Constantinople for using the term ‘Ecumenical Patriarch’, asserting that such a title belonged only to the bishop of Rome. When his Eastern counterpart refused to agree, Gregory dropped the disputed title rather than share it, and called himself instead ‘servant of the servants of God’. Gregory sought to develop ties with the pagan and Arian Christian Germanic kingdoms. When the Germanic tribal groups pushed into the Roman Empire in the late fourth century, they came as Arian Christians. Although the Germanic kings tried to integrate their tribes with the local orthodox Catholic populations, the religious difference was too great an obstacle. Catholic antagonism towards the heretical rulers resulted in constant tension between the ruling elite and the rest of the population. The bishops of Rome had come to enjoy great power in Rome and in Italy as a result of the decline and eventual disappearance of effective imperial authority in the West and throughout their extensive landholdings. While the legal basis for the Papal States (‘the Patrimony of St Peter’) was probably not established until the eighth century, its origins clearly go back to the fourth century. The title ‘Republic of St Peter’ appears in papal documents as early as the late seventh century. The last of the Germanic tribes to enter the Roman Empire, the Arian Lombards, arrived in Italy in 568. The ineffectiveness of the imperial governor at Ravenna in combating them brought home to the papacy the need to find another protector. Conversion of the invaders to Catholic Christianity was one possible solution – which Gregory did in fact try. He supported the Lombard Queen Theodelinda, who was a Catholic Christian. Eventually the Lombards were weaned away from Arian to Catholic Christianity, though this did not solve the political problems of the papacy. But Gregory pointed the way to the future solution, namely looking west and not east for protection. Gregory the Great Of all the bishops of Rome between Constantine the Great and the Reformation, none was more influential than Gregory I, ‘the Great’ (540–604). Indeed, the medieval papacy clearly makes its appearance with the career of this remarkably able churchman. Gregory, who came from a distinguished Roman aristocratic family with a long tradition of imperial service and, later, service to the church, also began his career in public administration. But Gregory turned away from public life and became a monk. He was the first pope who had been a monk and he introduced monasticism to the papacy. Gregory stressed ascetic ideals – ideals associated with the rule of Benedict which became the prevailing style of monasticism by the ninth century. Gregory marked his period as pope by his claim to ‘universal’ jurisdiction over Christendom, notably in a controversy with the Patriarch of Constantinople over the latter’s right to use the title of ‘Ecumenical Patriarch’, and in Gregory’s efforts to cultivate the rulers of Germanic kingdoms in Western Europe. One matter of outstanding importance was Gregory’s decision to send a team of monks to the kingdom of Kent in Britain. The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the victory of Roman Christianity over the Celtic Church were the long-term result of Gregory’s missionary policy. Gregory’s prolific writing resulted in the production of a basic textbook for training the medieval clergy and increased popularity for allegorical interpretations of the Bible and interest in saints’ lives – the truly popular Christian literature of the Middle Ages. He gave to early medieval Catholicism its distinctive character, stressing the cult of saints and relics, demonology, and ascetic virtues. Finally, Gregory confirmed the authority and hierarchy of the papacy and the church; he proclaimed the ‘Christian Commonwealth’ in which the pope and the clergy were to be responsible for ordering society. Harry Rosenberg Gregory wrote a series of important letters to Germanic rulers elsewhere in the West. By this time, the Arian Visigoths in Spain had accepted Catholic Christianity, and Gregory’s letters to Reccared I (559–601), the first catholic Visigoth king of Spain, demonstrate the pope’s desire to make his influence felt there. Clovis is converted The Frankish kings in Gaul were the only Germanic tribes to enter the Roman Empire as pagans and not as Arian Christians. About 500, Clovis – the first great ruler among the Franks – decided to accept Catholic baptism, following his marriage to Clotild, a catholic Burgundian princess. According to a Frankish history, Clovis agreed to accept Christ if the Christian God gave him victory over another tribe with whom he was at war. Clovis won his battle against the Alemanni; then, with 3,000 of his warriors, he was baptized. This event points up the general pattern of early medieval conversions: the change to Christianity was essentially a matter of royal policy. The ruler’s conversion decided the religion of his subjects. Catholic queens and princesses did much to bring about the conversion of their husbands – and their kingdoms. Clovis’ conversion laid the foundations for an important alliance between the papacy and the Franks. Although the Franks showed great devotion to Peter and the Roman Church from a very early stage, this did not mean the pope immediately had great influence on royal policy. The harsh, even barbaric, conditions of Gaul under the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish rulers proved very detrimental to the church during the sixth and seventh centuries. Pope Gregory, determined to revive the Church in the West, attempted to launch reform in Gaul. He was thwarted by the Merovingian rulers, who indulged in such practices as appointing laymen as bishops and selling church appointments, simply assuming the church was freely at their own disposal. Gregory’s efforts pointed the way to the reform of the eighth century. Angels – not Angles! Gregory’s relations with the Merovingian kings did have one positive result: the mission to England and the conversion of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. This enterprise best demonstrates Gregory’s vision to convert the ‘barbarians’ and make them members of a ‘Christian commonwealth’ led by the pope. Gregory’s vision became reality in medieval Europe. The mission to England is described in a simple, perhaps apocryphal, story by a pious papal biographer. Gregory, while still a monk in Rome, one day saw some attractive young children in the slave market. On inquiring who they were, Gregory learned they were Angli from England, and that they were pagans. He replied that these young boys were not ‘Angles’ but ‘Angels’! It is certain that Gregory had such contacts, for in 595 he ordered his representative in Arles, in southern France, to purchase Anglo-Saxon slaves to be brought to Rome for training as clerics. Gregory also had good information about the political and religious situation in England. In 596 he assembled a team of forty monks under Augustine, the prior of the pope’s own monastery in Rome. With Frankish priests as interpreters, the team arrived in England just before Easter 597. Gregory’s intelligence indicated that the Jutish kingdom of Kent should be the target of the mission, as its king, Ethelbert, was married to a Catholic Frankish princess, Bertha. Ethelbert accepted Catholicism, and, since he was nominal overlord of the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Essex and East Anglia, Catholic Christianity came to three of the twelve Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. By late 597, the pope appointed Augustine archbishop of the Church in England. King Ethelbert gave the new archbishop his own palace in Canterbury, which became the first episcopal centre in England. Pope Gregory instructed the rather unimaginative Augustine how to convert the pagans – they were to be weaned slowly away from their current religion. Evangelistic efforts among the Angles and Saxons proceeded gradually, and were directly affected by intense political and religious competition among the kings. Archbishop Augustine was also concerned about the Celtic Church – its attitude towards the Anglo-Saxon mission, and its practices, which differed from those of Rome. Bede, the historian, wrote that Augustine’s attempts to unite the Celtic Church and Rome failed on three basic issues: namely his requirements that the Celtic Church adopt the Roman method of arriving at the date of Easter, adopt the Roman tradition of baptism, and join his mission to convert the Anglo-Saxons. A ninth-century manuscript of Pope Gregory i, ‘the Great’, dictating, inspired by the Holy Spirit (represented by the dove); from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. SONIA HALLIDAY PHOTOGRAPHS Celtic Christians object Relations between Augustine and the Celtic churchmen turned sour. The Celtic bishops took offence when the archbishop refused to stand to greet them and they refused to accept him as their archbishop. The Celtic Church already had a long history when Augustine arrived. British bishops were present at the Council of Arles, convened by Constantine in 314. In the late fourth and early fifth centuries Christianity thrived in Britain. But in the face of the invasions of Britain by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, from the mid-fifth century on, much of the Celtic-Roman British population, as well as the Celtic Church, retreated to the south-west. British conservatism, caused by the long period of isolation from continental Christianity, together with hatred of the foreign invaders, were the major barriers to unity between Augustine and the British Church. The British Church finally fused with Roman Christianity during the course of the following century. This occurred when the mission among the Anglo-Saxons succeeded, with both Celtic-British and Roman Christians participating. By the third quarter of the seventh century a generation of church leaders emerged who combined the order and authority of Rome with the emotional and imaginative vigour of Celtic Christianity. Aidan of Lindisfarne (d. 651), the first Celtic churchman to take an active part in the mission to the Anglo-Saxons, with a number of other Anglo-Saxon churchmen, such as Wilfrid of York (634–709), took the lead in overcoming paganism and racism. Again with royal support, this time that of Oswy, King of Northumbria, this mission achieved success. The Synod of Whitby, in 664, confirmed the Romanization of British Christianity. Five years later two church leaders were sent to England by the pope to complete the reordering of the Church in England. Theodore of Tarsus (602–90), a Greek who served the pope as Archbishop of Canterbury, and Hadrian, from North Africa, stand out as the real founders of the Catholic Church in England. They built on the foundations laid by Pope Gregory and Archbishop Augustine, and drew on the spiritual and intellectual vigour of Celtic Christianity. The new leaders carried out effective administrative and educational work. Theodore wisely followed a policy of reconciliation with Celtic Christianity. He and Hadrian brought Mediterranean Christian culture to Canterbury, contributing a permanent framework to the Anglo-Saxon Church. By establishing a ‘national’ body which transcended local boundaries and local patriotism, Theodore’s reorganization of the church helped develop secular government as well as bringing order out of chaos. The church conveyed the concepts of unity and centralization to the secular leaders. Archbishop Theodore, who had previously studied in Athens, also contributed to the development of Anglo-Saxon culture. Assisted by Hadrian and Benedict Biscop (c. 628–90), an Anglo-Saxon deeply interested in Christian learning, the archbishop founded at Canterbury a school where the cultures of British and Mediterranean Christianity fused, resulting in a remarkable intellectual flowering in the arts and humanities. The Venerable Bede (c. 673–735) is an outstanding example of the literary achievement of this rebirth of biblical and historical studies. The superb artistic skills of the Celts in illustrating manuscripts are seen in remarkable Bibles such as the Lindisfarne Gospels (now in the British Library) and The Book of Kells (in Trinity College Library, Dublin). The culture and learning of the Anglo-Saxon Church, as well as its fervour for the gospel, contributed directly to the revival of religious and intellectual life in Europe during the century after Theodore. The rise of Islam Meanwhile another development with far-reaching consequences for the history of Christianity and the medieval and modern world was taking place. At the very time when Gregory the Great was turning away from the eastern Mediterranean and seeking to extend papal influence throughout the West, there began in Arabia the career of a remarkable religious leader, Muhammad of Mecca (c. 570–632), whose teachings had an almost immediate impact. The movement of Islam was born and spread outside Arabia with dramatic speed after the prophet’s death. The course of history in both the Orthodox East and the Catholic West was drastically affected. The rise of Islam directly influenced the political and economic development of both halves of Christendom, and Islam became medieval Christianity’s greatest opponent. By the tenth century the Islamic community, stretching from Baghdad to Cordova, had become the most prosperous of the early Middle Ages. Although cradled in Arabia, with Arab cults and social habits somewhat defining its outlook and influencing its ritual, the new religion was in many ways an offshoot of Judaism and Christianity, though it was also influenced by Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persia. Islamic culture shared the same background as early Christian thought – the Jewish and Hellenistic cultures which prevailed in western Asia. Thus, medieval Islamic civilization shared a common basis with medieval Christian civilization, which made contacts between the two easier. The prophet’s call Following his religious call in 610, Muhammad proclaimed the message of Islam (Arabic for ‘submission to the will of God’). His teachings included: the impending judgment of the world, with reward and punishment for each individual’s actions, and the teachings of Allah, the creator and judge. The message of Muhammad imposed five main obligations upon Muslim believers: the confession of faith (‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet’), prayer five times a day, charitable gifts, fasting in the holy month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. The basic source of the divine revelation was the Qur’an (which was collected and committed to writing by Uthman ibn Affan, c. 579–656), the third caliph and second leader after Muhammad). In addition there was the Hadith, which recorded the traditions of the habits and sayings of the prophet. Finally the Ijma, consisting of the ‘accord of the faithful’, formed the body of law followed by devout Muslims. Taken together these three religious sources constitute the Sunna or ‘The Path’. A subsequent division within Islam between the Sunnites and the Shiites left the Sunna in dispute. This schism, caused by the problem of choosing a successor to Muhammad, still persists. When Muhammad’s proclamation was ill-received in Mecca, he made the fateful decision to leave for Medina in June 622. This emigration to Medina, the city of the prophet, is known as the Hegira. It marked the beginning of a new era, a change in fortune for Muhammad, and the beginning of the Islamic calendar. With Medina as his base of operations, Muhammad developed the rudiments of what became the major characteristics of Islam worldwide. Idol-worshippers had to accept Islam or the sword, but monotheists – Jews and Christians – enjoyed a special status; they were tolerated on condition they paid a special tax. Eight years after leaving Mecca, Muhammad returned there in triumph and purified the city by removing the various idols in the ancient Arab shrine, the Kaaba. By the time of his death two years later, the whole of Arabia was committed to Islam. A new world-religion The Islamic community was now led by the caliphs, literally ‘successors’. Although other factors contributed to the expansion of Islam outside Arabia, the chief force was the extraordinary religious enthusiasm generated by Muhammad and his immediate converts, the ‘Companions’. Within a century of the prophet’s death, Islam had reached the Atlantic Ocean (Morocco) and the River Indus (Pakistan). Within this vast area, there was created a theocratic empire led by the caliphs, who combined religious and political functions. Arab military commanders became the civil governors of the occupied areas, as representatives of the caliphs. The Extent of Islam by 661 This new world empire soon divided into a series of caliphates, based primarily upon Mecca, Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo, together with a number of separate states. But the Islamic states had a coherent and homogeneous civilization, thanks to their basic Arab core. This was due, in the first instance, to the fact that no translation of the Qur’an was allowed, and thus the Arabic language dominated not only the religion of Islam, but also the closely allied areas of law, language, and education. Islam influenced a vast array of ethnic groups, cultures, and religions. Contrary to the generally accepted view in the West, forced conversions were the exception. By the beginning of the eighth century, Islam reached its northernmost limits of growth. Following a series of sieges of the great imperial stronghold of Constantinople, a Muslim-Byzantine frontier was established. In the West, the Muslims rapidly occupied Visigothic Spain. Raiding parties probed into Frankish Gaul, but were defeated by the Carolingian leader, Charles Martel, at the Battle of Poitiers (or Tours) in 732. Although the Muslims were prevented from penetrating into the heart of Europe, they did succeed in gaining control over the Western Mediterranean. In Spain, the mutual exchange of ideas among Arabs, Berbers, Jews, and Christians produced a unique culture in the Middle Ages. But Catholic Europe was concerned above all about its religious differences with the Muslim community, a concern expressed in unrelieved hostility. Islam, and its prophet, Muhammad, were identified with the beast in the book of Revelation, or with the Antichrist. Medieval Christian authors portrayed Muhammad as an imposter and Islam as a religion of violence and idolatry. Meanwhile, the Muslim community believed their civilization was superior to all others, since the revelation to Muhammad was the final one, supplanting all previous ones, such as the Old and New Testaments. England and Ireland evangelize Europe After Gregory the Great, European Catholicism went through a difficult period. The papacy suffered at the hands of both the Lombards in Italy and the Byzantine rulers. In Frankish Gaul the Merovingian kings became increasingly ineffective, and the moral, spiritual, and intellectual quality of the clergy steadily declined. Effective church government was weakened as a result of constant interference by secular rulers. In his writings, Gregory, bishop of Tours (c. 538–94), reveals a sordid picture of society, also revealing that women were particularly important in sustaining sincere religious endeavour, especially by supporting monasteries. The revival of religious life in Gaul and, indeed, throughout Latin Christendom, came about in the eighth century, led by the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, who came in great numbers, by a revitalized papacy, and by a new royal house in Frankish Gaul. Missionaries from the Irish-Celtic Church had engaged in missions to Europe from the late sixth century. Outstanding among them was Columban (Columbanus, 540–615), who was active in Gaul and Italy. Gallus, a member of his group, founded the monastery of St Gallen, Switzerland, at an important junction along the road linking Italy and Germany, and it remained a vital centre of monastic life and culture throughout the early Middle Ages. Celtic missionaries also found their way into Bavaria and central Germany. Although vigorous and venturesome, these missionaries paid little attention to consolidating their work; constant movement characterized Celtic Christianity. For this reason much of their work had to be done over again by the late seventh century. The Anglo-Saxons, themselves objects of a mission from Europe at the beginning of the century, were in turn impelled to carry the gospel back into Europe. Unlike their Celtic predecessors, however, these new missionaries brought with them Roman church organization and sense of order. In addition, they had close ties with the papacy. Outstanding among these hardy and courageous missionaries was Wynfrith of Crediton (680–754), better known as Boniface. Boniface had consultations in Rome and received papal consecration as ‘Bishop of the German Church’. He then evangelized among the Hessians of Bavaria and Thuringia, established the famous monastery of Fulda, and finally became Archbishop of Mainz. He is justly known as the ‘Apostle to the Germans’, bringing Germany into Christian Europe, under papal leadership. A new royal house In addition, Boniface played a critical role in the revival of the Church in Gaul. Earlier Anglo-Saxon missionaries to Germany had received the support of Charles Martel, a member of the Carolingian family, the rising power in Frankish politics. He backed their missions because of his desire to expand his rule eastwards into Bavaria. The church and the papacy were grateful for his support, and for Charles’ victory over the Muslims when they crossed the Pyrenees to invade Gaul. But Charles Martel incurred the wrath of the church because he took away church lands. Initially, the church had agreed to the use of its lands and incomes to help fight off the Muslim invaders, but Charles did not return the lands. In addition, he refused a papal request for an attack on the Lombards in Italy, because the Lombards had been his allies against the Muslims. A new era began with the accession of Martel’s heirs, Carloman and Pepin, who had been raised in the monastery of St Denis, near Paris. These two Frankish rulers were helped by Boniface to carry out a major reform of the Frankish Church. These reforms of the clergy and church organization brought about a renewal of religious and intellectual life, and made possible the educational revival associated with the greatest of the Carolingian rulers, Charlemagne. After his brother entered a monastery, Pepin was in a position to complete the Carolingian quest for legitimate authority. Negotiations between Pepin and Pope Zachary in 751 resulted in Boniface, the Pope’s legate, anointing the new King Pepin at Soissons. Another milestone in church–state relations was passed when Pope Stephen II (r. 752–57) appealed to Pepin for aid against the Lombards. The pope placed Rome under the protection of Pepin and recognized him and his sons as ‘protectors of the Romans’. Loosening ties with the East Mosaic of the Virgin Mary between the emperors Justinian I and Constantine I, over the south portal of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, built as the Orthodox patriarchal basilica in 360. Sonia Halliday Photographs This sequence of events, together with the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor, gave the pope the opportunity he wanted to loosen ties with the Eastern Empire and Constantinople. Religious developments in the East provided the papacy with an opportunity finally to break free. The ‘Iconoclastic controversy’ engulfed the East after Emperor Leo III banned the use of icons (images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint) in 726. The supporters of icons ultimately prevailed after a century and a quarter of bitter, disruptive dispute. Meanwhile Pope Gregory II not only rejected the edict banning the use of icons, but went on bluntly to flaunt his disrespect for the Emperor’s authority in the West. Gregory’s bombastic letter included much bluffing, but also a dramatic statement that clearly reveals the differences between the state Church of the Orthodox East, where the secular ruler always played a leading role in church affairs, and the papal church of the West, where the papacy was attempting to eliminate secular influence. Gregory wrote: ‘Listen! Dogmas are not the business of emperors but of pontiffs.’ The presence of what was regarded as a heretical dynasty in the East gave the pope the excuse he needed to separate from the East and to find a new, devoted, and orthodox protector in the West. The alliance between the papacy and the Carolingians represents the culmination of the papal quest, and opened a new and momentous chapter in the history of medieval Christianity. Charlemagne: God’s deputy Always remember, my king, that you are the deputy of God, your king. You are set to guard and rule all his members, and you must render an account for them on the day of judgment. The bishop is on a secondary plane. Our Lord Jesus Christ has set you up as the ruler of the Christian people, in power more excellent than the pope or the Emperor of Constantinople, in wisdom more distinguished, in the dignity of your rule more sublime. On you alone depends the whole safety of the churches of Christ. Epistolae Karolini Aevi, ii, 503; 288 In response to Pope Stephen’s appeal for help, Pepin recovered territories in north-east and central Italy from the Lombards and gave them to the pope, an action known as the ‘Donation of Pepin’, thus confirming the legal foundation of the Papal States. At about the same time, the pope’s claim to sovereign rule in Italy and independence from the Eastern Roman Empire was reinforced by the appearance of one of the great forgeries of the Middle Ages, the Donation of Constantine. This document alleged that Constantine had bequeathed Rome and the Western part of the Empire to the bishop of Rome when he relocated the capital of the empire in the East, and was not exposed as a forgery until the fifteenth century. Charlemagne crowned Emperor Alcuin Alcuin (d. 804), an Anglo-Saxon scholar, became head tutor at the court of Charlemagne at Aachen, and in 796 Abbot of Tours. Previously he had for a time been master of the cathedral school in York. He profoundly influenced the intellectual, cultural, and religious direction of the Carolingian Empire, as revealed by his more than 300 surviving letters. Alcuin’s importance is best shown in the manuscripts of the school at Tours, in his educational writings, revision of the text of the Bible, biblical commentaries, and in the completion of the Gregorian Sacramentary version of the Roman liturgy. He standardized spelling and the style of writing, reformed missionary practice, and contributed to the drawing up of collections of church regulations. Alcuin was also the leading theologian in the struggle against Adoptionists in Spain, who believed that the man Christ was God’s ‘adopted son’. Alcuin upheld orthodox belief and the authority of the church, the eminence of the Holy Roman see, and Charlemagne’s sacred position as Emperor. Walter Delius The concluding act in the papal attempt to free itself from Constantinople came on Christmas Day 800, when Pope Leo III revived the Empire in the West by crowning Charlemagne as emperor. However, Charlemagne did not relish the thought of owing his crown to the pope, and in the last fourteen years of his reign he made the papacy subordinate in his empire. He continued the largely educational reform of the church begun by his father Pepin and Boniface. His chief educational adviser was the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin of York; it was an age that needed to go to school and in Alcuin it found a masterful teacher. From the palace school at the royal court, a generation of Alcuin’s students went out to head monastic and cathedral schools throughout the empire that Charlemagne created. Even though this empire barely outlived its founder, the revival of education and religion associated with Alcuin and Charlemagne brightened European culture throughout the bleak and chaotic period that followed. This ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ turned to classical antiquity and to early Christianity for its models, with the emphasis on Latin literature; efforts at Greek were tentative and quite artificial. The Irishman Johannes Scotus Eri(u)gena (c. 815–c. 877) was the only accomplished Greek scholar in the Carolingian world. The activity in the copying rooms of Carolingian monasteries was of major importance for Western culture, as the works of both pagan and Christian classical authors were copied. Many original texts have not survived: these manuscripts give us our only access to the original writings. The Emperor Charlemagne kneels before the altar: from a thirteenth-century window at Chartres Cathedral, France. Sonia Halliday Photographs The Empire of Charlemagne East–West differences The intellectual vigour of the Carolingian Renaissance and the political dynamism of the revived Empire stimulated new theological activity. There was some discussion and writing about the continuing iconoclastic problem in the Orthodox East. Political antagonism between the Eastern and the Carolingian emperors also led to an attack by theologians in the West on the practices and beliefs of the Orthodox Church. These controversial works on the ‘Errors of the Greeks’ proliferated during the ninth century as a result of the ‘Photian Schism’, when the Patriarch of Constantinople was deposed by the Eastern Emperor. The deposed patriarch appealed to Pope Nicholas I (858–67), as did his replacement, Photius. But when Nicholas ordered the restoration of Ignatius as Patriarch, relations between Constantinople and Rome worsened. By this time the icon supporters had triumphed at Constantinople. Latin theologians also criticized the Eastern Church for its different method for deciding the date of Easter, the difference in clergymen’s tonsure-style, and over the celibacy of the clergy. (The Eastern Church allowed clergy to marry, but required monks to be celibate.) The major theological controversy involved the filioque question. Did the Holy Spirit descend ‘from the Father through the Son’ or ‘from the Father and the Son’? From the time of Photius, Orthodox theologians bitterly attacked the Western Church on this issue, declaring that the Western position of ‘and the Son’ (filioque) was a late addition to the Nicene Creed (as indeed it was), this issue further alienating the Eastern and Western Churches. The Greek-speaking East and the Latin West were also divided in language: ‘East and West could not understand each other because they could not understand each other!’ New questions of belief Carolingian theologians often anticipated later medieval theological issues. The Adoptionist heresy, alleging that Christ in his humanity was only the ‘adopted’ Son of God, arose in Spain in the late eighth century and appeared again later in the Carolingian Empire. Alcuin combated it vigorously in his work, Against Felix. Several Carolingian monks disputed the question of the perpetual virginity of Mary, a view widely accepted from the fifth century. Carolingian concern to protect the holiness and sinlessness of Mary points toward the later medieval emphasis on the Virgin Mary. A significant discussion arose over the question of predestination. A Carolingian monk named Gottschalk, who studied Augustine’s theology carefully, appears to have been the first to teach ‘double predestination’, the belief that some people are predestined to salvation, while others are justly predestined to eternal judgment. He was tried and condemned for his views by two synods and finally imprisoned by the Archbishop of Rheims, dying twenty years later still holding to his views. The other major theological issue of the Carolingian era concerned the Lord’s Supper. The influential Abbot of Corbie, Paschasius Radbertus (785–865), wrote a treatise On the Body and Blood of the Lord. This was the first clear statement of a doctrine of the ‘real presence’ of Christ’s body and blood in the eucharist, suggesting what was later called transubstantiation. Ordinary Christians readily accepted the idea that the actual body and blood of Christ were present in the sacrament of the mass. Reforming the clergy The reform synods of King Pepin and Boniface focussed attention on the behaviour of non-monastic clergy, insisting that priests should lead lives beyond reproach. The repetition of this requirement at synod after synod during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries clearly witnessed to the need for reform among the clergy. Among the violations criticized were the rejection of celibacy, over-eating and drunkenness, unnecessary and unwise relationships with women, hunting (and keeping hunting animals – dogs and hawks), carrying arms, and frequenting taverns. Chrodegang, bishop of Metz (d. 766), did most to reform the clergy, by preparing a rule for his cathedral clergy, a rule which eventually spread throughout the Carolingian Empire. The spirit of reform was strongly supported by Pepin and Charlemagne themselves. Monastic developments at this time were particularly significant, with the emphasis on standardization and centralization. Between 813 and 817 a revised Benedictine rule was adopted for the whole of the Carolingian Empire. Another Benedict, a monk from Aniane in Burgundy, was responsible for an exceedingly strict regime based on the Benedictine rule, a model that was soon copied in all the monasteries of Burgundy. Charlemagne’s successor, Louis the Pious (778–840), appointed Benedict the overseer of all monasteries in the realm, and a few years later his revised Benedictine rule was made obligatory for all monasteries, though with little long-term effect. When Louis the Pious succeeded Charlemagne, the pope was able to reassert his independence, following the long period of domination by Charlemagne. The new trend towards an imperial theocracy during Charlemagne’s era would have yielded a ‘state church’, as in the Eastern Orthodox Empire. But the papacy stressed the superiority of the spiritual power over the secular, reinforced by the forged Donation of Constantine, with its emphasis on papal pre-eminence in the governing of the western half of the Roman Empire. The pope’s crowning of Charlemagne was a further demonstration of the pope’s claim to decide who should wear the imperial crown. After Charlemagne, the Carolingian Empire was torn by civil wars. The political chaos, as well as the prevailing system of church control, threatened the independence of the bishops. Laymen controlled churches by means of the ‘proprietary’ system, providing the land and erecting the church building. Increasingly the lay patrons felt free to choose the clergymen to serve in these churches. Associated with this system there arose the abuse of simony, the sale of church posts, often with little or no regard to the clerical qualifications of the purchaser. These arrangements persisted throughout succeeding centuries, the age of classic feudalism, and as a result the church was seriously compromised. The Carolingian era did see a major effort to deal with this problem. In the diocese of Rheims between 845 and 853, clergymen produced another remarkable forgery, the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals or False Decretals. This fabrication, done with great inventiveness, was designed to provide ‘law’ to protect the rights of the bishops. To strengthen the argument, the authors invoked the principle of the supremacy of the pope. Their intent was not to aid the papacy, but in fact it was the papacy which ultimately benefited most from the False Decretals. This compendium of church law, which incorporated the Donation of Constantine, became a vital part of medieval canon law, and buttressed the papal claims to supremacy in the church and over secular authority. The first pope to make use of this collection was Nicholas I (r. 858–67), the most important pope in the period between Gregory the Great and Gregory VII. Nicholas saw clearly the danger of a church dominated by civil rulers, and was determined to avert this possibility by stressing that the church’s government was centred on Rome. Despair and darkness From the late ninth century until the mid-eleventh century, internal and external problems steadily weakened Western Christendom. The Carolingian Empire fragmented and no major military power existed in the West. The continued attacks of the Muslims in the south, a new wave of attackers from central Asia – the Magyars (Hungarians) – and the almost overwhelming movement of Norsemen from Scandinavia, brought yet more fragmentation and chaos. A contemporary chronicler lamented, ‘Once we had a king, now we have kinglets!’ The end of the world seemed at hand – and was seriously expected by many as the year 1000 approached. For the papacy this was an era of despair; the pope no longer had Carolingian ‘protectors’ to come to his assistance. The papacy was increasingly involved in the power struggle among the nobility for the rule of Italy, with popes becoming captive partisans of one political faction or another, resulting in spiritual and moral decline. Pope Stephen VI, for example, took revenge by having his predecessor’s body disinterred and brought before a synod, where it was propped up in a chair for a trial. Following conviction, the body was thrown into the River Tiber. Within a year Stephen was overthrown, and subsequently strangled in prison. There was an almost total collapse of civil order and culture in Europe during the tenth century. Everywhere church property was either devastated and ransacked by foreign invaders, or fell into the hands of catholic nobility. Noblemen treated bishoprics and monasteries as their private property to dispose of as they wished. The clergy became indifferent to duty, and their ignorance and immorality increased. For the papacy the tenth century was indeed a dark age. Without imperial protection, the popes became the helpless plaything of the Roman nobility, who strove to gain control by appointing relatives or political favourites. The fascinating chronicle by Liutprand, the German bishop of Cremona, presents a picture of sexual debauchery at the papal court, but must be read with caution since the author was very anti-Roman. Although there were incompetent and immoral popes during the tenth and the first half of the eleventh century, the papal institution continued to operate and to be respected throughout the West. The papal administration still functioned, even though at a reduced level. The nerve centre of papal government, the chancery, continued to issue letters to all parts of Europe, dealing with a variety of issues. Bishoprics and abbeys were founded by laymen after they had obtained the approval of the papal court. Pilgrimages to Rome hardly slackened during this age, as Christians visited the most important shrines in the West – the tombs of Peter and Paul – as well as a host of other relics that were venerated in the papal city. Otto rescues the papacy At the lowest ebb of the tenth-century papacy, during the reign of Pope John XII (955–64), a major change in Italian politics directly affected the position of the popes. A strong, independent German monarchy emerged. The Saxon dynasty began with the election of Henry I (876–936) and was vigorously continued in his son, Otto I (r. 936–73). Otto the Great developed a very close relationship with the church in Germany. Bishops and abbots were given the rights and dignity of princes of the realm and the church was given generous grants of land. By means of his alliance with the church, Otto sought to offset the power of the rebellious hereditary nobles of his kingdom. The ‘spiritual aristocracy’ created by the Saxon kings was not hereditary. The loyalty of these men could therefore be counted on much more readily, and in fact the German bishops contributed money and arms to help the German kings expand into Italy, eastern Germany, and Poland. Otto the Great provided the desperately needed assistance to raise the papacy out of the mire of Roman and Italian politics. His entrance into papal and Italian affairs was indeed a fateful decision. Otto marched south into Italy to help Adelaide of Burgundy, to marry her, and to declare himself king of the Lombards. A decade later, he was again in Italy, this time invited by Pope John XII. In February 962, the papacy revived the empire in the West when John XII crowned Otto and Adelaide in St Peter’s, Rome. The price paid by the papacy for the support of the secular state was interference in the internal affairs of the church. The events of 962–63 initiated another decisive phase in church–state relations. Until 1250 each German ruler was to follow up his election as king by making the journey to Rome to be crowned Emperor. German involvement in papal affairs meant emperors deciding who should be pope, or recognizing ‘anti-popes’. In 963 Otto returned to Rome and made the Romans promise not to elect a pope thereafter without his or his son’s consent. Then he convened a synod, which tried Pope John, found him guilty of a list of sordid crimes, and finally deposed him. In his place they chose a layman, who received all his ecclesiastical orders in one day to become Pope Leo VIII. Harry Rosenberg Chapter 17 The Eastern Church Many of the characteristics that today distinguish Eastern Christianity developed very early in Christian history. As soon as the fifth century, the legacy of unresolved differences separating East and West began gradually to mount up. By the end of the twelfth century, the Eastern and Western parts of the church had come to the point of thinking of each other as separated bodies. Unfortunately, but predictably, each area held the other responsible for having abandoned the true Christian tradition. Creating a tradition The Christian message was, of course, first proclaimed in the context of the predominantly Jewish culture of Palestine. But long before ad 100, through contacts with the dispersed Jews who were part of the ‘hellenized’ population influenced by Greek culture, Christianity made its way to regions far from Jerusalem. Christianity next moved to various hellenized Gentile cultures – in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Hellenistic outposts in the cities of the West. By the mid-second century ad, Christianity had begun to spread from the hellenized people of Egypt and Syria into the Coptic and Syriac sub-cultures. Similar developments in other regions of the Roman Empire brought Christianity into contact with a still wider range of cultures by the end of the second century. The word ‘catholic’, meaning general or universal, as opposed to particular or local, began to be used regularly during the second century to refer to Christianity’s common body of beliefs and practices. Although a large part of this Catholic Christian tradition was shared by all Christians, no matter what their language or culture, many differences of interpretation, emphasis, and practice emerged from the diverse cultural circumstances. Indeed, during the following centuries further differences developed, which caused new tensions and problems within the Christian community. ‘New Rome’ By 324 Constantine the Great had made himself master of the Roman world, ushering in an epoch of general peace and prosperity. He established a new capital on the Bosphorus. A symbol of the new era, the city was originally designed as a Christian counterpart of Rome, and was called ‘New Rome’. However, during its long and illustrious history, as the centre of a thriving civilization and seat of economic and political power, it has more often been known as Constantinople – the city of Constantine. It was to become – and to remain for many centuries – the greatest city in the Christian world, the cultural and political hub of the Byzantine or East Roman state. This was the focus around which the Eastern Church took form. By bringing about reconciliation between the Roman Empire and the Christian church, Constantine greatly influenced Christianity as a whole, and the traditions of the Eastern Church in particular. His achievement was of pivotal importance for the cultural and political future of Western civilization. Constantine found Christianity divided and torn over differences in doctrine and practice, and was superstitiously anxious that God would hold him personally responsible for these divisions and quarrels among the Christians. If Christianity lacked cohesion and unity, how could it be a proper religion for the Emperor? Constantine, and many later emperors, made every effort to lessen the divisions and increase agreement about the faith. Constantine adopted a procedure already developed by the Christians to settle differences of opinion at a local or regional level: he called the leaders of the entire church to assemble in his presence in order to define and agree upon the correct tradition. This procedure itself became a part of the Christian tradition. From the first ecumenical council at Nicaea (325), to the seventh, also held at Nicaea (787), it was always the Emperor who called the council and presided over it – either personally or by deputy. Eastern Christians today still place great emphasis on these seven ecumenical councils, sometimes referring to themselves as ‘The Church of the Seven Councils’. The Emperor believed it was just as important to achieve and maintain a uniform tradition as it was to decide what the correct tradition was. Uniformity in the whole church could be most easily secured by controlling its leaders. Whatever the Christian leaders agreed upon in an ecumenical council was immediately pronounced as law by the Emperor. Church leaders who dissented from the beliefs and practices judged by the council to be orthodox were labelled ‘heretics’ or ‘schismatics’, and deposed from office. The government then frequently deported the deposed leader to some distant corner of the Empire, where his influence could have little effect. But this procedure was of little help in dealing effectively with the widespread and deep-seated doctrinal controversies which the church endured from the fourth to the seventh centuries – Arianism and Monophysitism in particular. Even the most energetic emperors, such as Justinian I and Heraclius, were unable to avoid or to moderate such controversies. Statesmanlike emperors such as Zeno or Constans II, who demanded that all debate on controversial issues should cease, only stirred up the wrath of both parties against themselves. A pattern of government One reason why the emperors did not achieve unity and uniformity lay in the pattern of organization used from very early times, a polity still carefully maintained by the Orthodox Church today. Every bishop is bound to uphold Scripture and the apostolic tradition. But the actual government of the local church rests in the local synod or council, consisting of the bishop together with the local clergy (priests and deacons) and influential laymen, who may be monks or scholars. Each bishop was elected by the local synod and congregation, although he was often nominated by a neighbouring bishop. After his election, neighbouring bishops (at least two) gathered to ordain their new colleague. Once consecrated, he normally served for life, and could be deposed only if charges against him were accepted by a synod of his fellow bishops in the same province. All bishops were in theory equal, but those in the larger cities easily came to exercise more influence than the bishops from smaller places in the province. As a result, the synod of bishops in the province recognized the bishop of the capital city, the ‘metropolitan bishop’, as their presiding officer. Normally the metropolitan bishop had the right to approve all candidates for episcopal ordination before they were consecrated, and the right to carry out any disciplinary actions voted by the provincial synod. By Constantine’s day, the bishops of the cities of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were recognized as ‘chief metropolitans’, reflecting the fact that they were customarily called upon to approve the candidates for metropolitan bishop in adjoining provinces, and to preside at any synod which involved those metropolitans and their bishops. Eventually the chief metropolitans became known as ‘patriarchs’. The bishops of Constantinople and Jerusalem were later also recognized, making a total of five patriarchs, each representing a section of the total church called a patriarchate. Representatives of all five patriarchs had to be present in order for a council to be recognized as truly ecumenical, and any change in Christian teaching or practice required the approval of such an ecumenical council. Justinian’s Empire, c . 560 In theory, each patriarch’s authority as a bishop was equal, as was his importance in relation to the clergy of his patriarchate. Each patriarch was also seen as equally responsible to the Emperor and to the decrees of the ecumenical councils. However, the patriarch bishop of Rome was regarded as first among equals at the first ecumenical council, because of the status of the ancient capital. At the next ecumenical council (381) it was agreed that the Patriarch of Constantinople was to rank second, because Constantinople was the ‘New Rome’. The Patriarch of Constantinople, sometimes known as the ‘Ecumenical Patriarch’, became the spokesman for Eastern Christianity. Though the Emperor’s immediate presence was a powerful influence with which other patriarchs did not have to deal, the Patriarch of Constantinople never became simply an imperial agent in charge of religious affairs, nor did his authority exceed that of the other patriarchs. God’s chosen deputy The emperor, ‘the living image of Christ’, stood at the head of the church. The notion that his office was sacred, a mixture of priest and king, was not originally a Christian idea. Pagan emperors of Rome had carried the title of chief priest (‘pontifex’), and performed official religious duties as part of their office. Leading Christians saw Constantine as God’s chosen deputy, whose imperial power was an earthly reflection of God’s heavenly sovereignty. The emperor, as head of the church, presided over certain local synods at Constantinople, and over all general councils. He had the right to approve all candidates for the post of patriarch. Hence, in the Eastern Church, the ecclesiastical role of the imperial head of state became traditional, so that after Roman emperors ceased to exist in the fifteenth century, the church conferred its attention on Russian emperors as a substitute. This helps to explain the strong national identity of modern orthodox churches. During the pagan centuries the emperor had set out official religious policy. This principle remained basically unchanged. Certain forms of religious behaviour were limited or prohibited, and selected cults were favoured and patronized. Constantine began by granting Christian priests and bishops the same sort of privileges as the pagan priesthoods had enjoyed. He also prohibited the most immoral of pagan rites. It was Theodosius I (379–95) who took the final step of totally outlawing paganism and establishing orthodox Christianity as the only official religion of the Roman Empire. In imitation of the gifts of earlier emperors to pagan cults, Constantine granted funds for new furnishings and new church buildings to many Christian congregations. Later emperors did the same. But the most famous of all was Justinian I (527–63), whose extensive construction programme of church buildings across the Empire included the huge and impressive Church of Hagia Sophia. It was the largest and most elaborate of about twenty new churches he erected in or near Constantinople, and it still stands in modern Istanbul as a museum. Combating decline In time the church began to regard correct belief as much more important than correct behaviour, even for the clergy. Correct behaviour for the clergy was gradually narrowed down to a ritualistic life-style, involving only the traditional duties of the priest and such superficial things as distinctive dress and special haircut. John chrysostom: Master Preacher John, who became known as the greatest of Christian preachers, was born about 350 at Antioch. He was brought up by his devoted mother Anthusa, who at twenty was left a widow with an infant son. John’s teacher, the pagan orator Libanius, paid Anthusa the tribute, ‘God, what women these Christians have!’ John was baptized at the age of eighteen, and became a reader in the church. His devotion to ascetic practices, including two years living alone in a mountain cave, ruined his health. Returning to the city, he was ordained a deacon in 381 and presbyter in 386. From the latter date he was appointed to preach in the principal Church in Antioch, where he built up his reputation as a preacher. In 397 John was chosen bishop of Constantinople against his will, and consecrated to that position in 398. Unsuited for the intrigues and pressures of Constantinople, his efforts to raise the moral climate of the capital met strong opposition. His enemies joined forces: the Empress Eudoxia, stung by his attacks on sin in high places; local clergy who found John too strict; and Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, jealous of a churchman from Antioch in the capital. They 206 had John deposed at the ‘synod of the Oak’ in 403, a decision that the Emperor accepted and exiled him. The people of Constantinople rioted in support of their bishop; frightened by this response, the Emperor recalled John the following day. John’s brave, if tactless, preaching angered Eudoxia again, and his enemies tried to banish him once more. The Emperor ordered him to cease his official church duties, which he refused to do. While gathering catechumens for baptism, John was driven out of the church by soldiers, and blood stained the baptismal waters. This exile (404) ended in his death in 407. His remains were brought back to Constantinople in 438 and buried in the Church of the Apostles. John Chrysostom has been honoured for his courage and piety. From the sixth century he has been known as the ‘Golden mouth’ (‘Chrysostom’), for he was a master of preaching. His insights into the meaning of the Greek Bible, and skill in applying it practically to his hearers, are the enduring contribution of his hundreds of surviving sermons. Everett Ferguson Pseudo-dionysius the areoPagite The name of Dionysius, Paul’s convert in Athens, was borrowed by the unidentified early sixth-century Syrian who wrote The Divine Names, Mystical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and some letters. Although Monophysite Christians were the first to refer to them, they were soon accepted as authentic by Chalcedonians such as Leontius of Byzantium. Maximus the Confessor’s paraphrases finally established their authority in the East, while in the West Gregory the Great and the Lateran Council of 649 accepted them as first-century writings. Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings depend closely on the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Proclus (d. 485). He views the universe as a hierarchy, with the heavenly pattern reflected in the church. The ‘triads’ of angel choirs which mediate between God and humanity correspond to the ‘triads’ of sacraments, of orders of clergy, and of classes of ‘inferior Christians’. Moreover, three stages of spiritual life – purification, illumination, and union – lead to the goal of becoming like God himself. The ascent through these stages consists of advances in ‘unknowing’ – by shedding sensible and rational perceptions; illumination is by a ‘ray of divine darkness’. This ‘mysticism of darkness’ has secular Greek roots, identifying spirit with pure intelligence, rather than using biblical concepts. This synthesis of Christian and Neoplatonist concepts enormously influenced Byzantine theologies of mysticism and liturgy, and Western mystics, scholastics, and Renaissance Platonist thinkers. Dionysius’ works were translated into Latin by Eriugena about 850. Lorenzo Valla first questioned their authenticity in the fifteenth century; this was widely doubted in the Reformation era, although not disproved until the end of the nineteenth century. David F. Wright Preaching was given great importance, especially in the fourth and fifth centuries. Through long, eloquent, but heavily theological sermons, Gregory of Nazianzus in Asia Minor and John Chrysostom (‘golden mouth’) at Antioch and Constantinople, with a host of less celebrated preachers, instructed throngs of converts in Christian belief and behaviour. Christian ideas were so popularized that they often became items of everyday conversation. Yet there was no immediate transformation of society. The rich liturgical tradition which forms part of the Eastern Orthodox Church’s uniqueness developed at Constantinople from the fourth century. The elaborate liturgy of Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia (370–79), was brought to the capital shortly after it had been written and is still used for ten special services during the Orthodox Church year. During the rest of the year Orthodox worshippers use the shorter liturgy, introduced at Constantinople by John Chrysostom, patriarch 398–404. Some additions were made to Chrysostom’s liturgy in the ninth century, on the basis of the liturgy then in use at Jerusalem. Also, most of the hymns that have survived with this liturgical tradition originated in Constantinople. Those written there in the sixth century by the Syrian, Romanus the Melodist, are particularly important. Eastern monasticism Monasticism from its earliest stages made many important contributions to Eastern Christianity. It began in the eastern regions of the Empire in the fourth century and spread rapidly. Many pious people, both laypersons and clergy, were troubled by the apparent failure of the church to escape worldly entanglements, and turned to asceticism and monasticism. Basil, the Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, provided a set of rules for those in his area who had chosen monastic life. This ‘Basilian Rule’ has remained the basic constitution for all monasteries connected with the Orthodox Churches. In the Eastern Church the great majority of monks were laymen. After the middle of the sixth century, it became customary to select and ordain monks to fill the highest posts in the church. Eastern monks were better known for their piety and contemplative prayer than for their scholarship. After the tenth century a group of monasteries on Mount Athos, near Thessalonica, today known as ‘Holy Mountain’, became increasingly important. In the fourteenth century a movement of radical mysticism, based on the tradition of contemplative prayer, began. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) was the leader and theologian of this new movement, which the Orthodox Church accepted. Byzantium besieged Since the Christian and political institutions of Byzantine society were closely related, secular events often directly influenced the development of Christianity. In the two hundred years following Justinian I’s death (565), the Empire fell on evil times and was nearly obliterated. In the early seventh century Sassanid Persia in the east and the Avar kingdom of central Europe co-operated in a war effort. This culminated in a joint attack on Constantinople (626) that came very close to success. Emperor Heraclius (610–41), with the aid of wealth generously offered by the church, led the imperial forces to victory over both Avars and Persians. However he was unable to check the advance of the Arabs into the imperial territories of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt during his last years. Inspired by their new religion, Islam, the Arabs pushed on relentlessly to conquer all North Africa and a great part of Asia Minor. Twice their forces advanced to the bulwarks of Constantinople, but without success. The emperors also had to contend with the expanding power of the Lombards in Italy, the various Slavic peoples in Greece, and the Bulgarians in the valley of the River Danube. The Empire survived with only a fraction of its former territory, but Constantinople remained the cultural, political, and economic focus of its existence. Large numbers of Orthodox Christians left the regions that had been devastated by the Persians and then the Arabs. These refugees included many monks and clergy who settled in the central and western parts of the Empire, especially around Constantinople, in southern Italy, and near Rome. By 800, four of the five patriarchates of the church were in new hands. Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were under Muslim rule, and their patriarchs, unable to maintain their positions or exercise their powers, frequently chose to live in exile at Constantinople. The pope, the new contemporary title for the patriarchal bishop of Rome, felt abandoned by Constantinople in the face of the Lombard menace and after 750 forged a political alliance with the Frankish kings. In 800 he crowned the Frankish king, Charlemagne, as ‘Emperor of the Romans’. Thus, for all practical purposes, a separate Roman Empire was created in the West. Virgin Mary (Theotokos) and child mosaic from the apse, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey. © Mykola Ivashchenko / Dreamstime.com The increasing political, economic, and cultural fragmentation of the Empire after 800 challenged the unity of Christianity as never before. Paying lip-service to the ideal of unity, each isolated region of the church became more and more independent of, and divergent from, the others. Eastern Christianity was now concentrated more than ever at Constantinople, and its own tradition was still developing. At the sixth ecumenical council held in Constantinople in 681, the long struggle with Monophysitism was laid to rest and the doctrine for which orthodox leaders had contended since the middle of the fifth century was affirmed. Monophysitism arose out of dissatisfaction with the doctrinal definitions of the Council of Chalcedon (451), and its greatest popular support had been in the very regions of the East that were now conquered by the Arabs. In those areas, the Monophysites continued to enjoy freedom to create independent churches, some of which have endured to the present. What is ‘holy’? Soon yet another religious controversy began to rage across the Byzantine world. On the surface it was a disagreement over the use of icons, that is, images. But at a deeper level it was a disagreement over which things were sufficiently sacred or holy to deserve worship. Christian clergy are set apart by ordination; hence, they are holy. Church buildings are set apart by dedication; they are holy. The martyrs and heroes of the faith are set apart by their deeds, and they are normally called ‘saints’ (which means ‘holy ones’). Do they not deserve the same reverence as the clergy? And as the martyrs became holy by their self-sacrifice, so monks sacrificed the normal routines of everyday life. Do they, too, deserve worship? The holiness of the saints was supported by the miracles reported as taking place in connection with the saint’s tomb, relics, or even icon. By the beginning of the seventh century many of the cities of the Empire had one or more local saints whose icons were revered as having special powers of intercession and protection. Examples include Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica, the miraculous Christ-icon of Edessa, and the miracle-working icon of Mary, the Virgin Hodegetria, of Constantinople. From the sixth century, both the church and the imperial government encouraged the recognition given both to monastic holy men and Christian icons, failing to realize that the uncontrolled multiplying of icons and holy men would encourage people to confine their Christian devotion to unique local shrines and figures. Most ordinary Christians failed to distinguish between the holy object or holy person and the spiritual reality it stood for and thus fell into idolatry. Such idolatry had its precedents. In pagan Rome the icon of the emperor was revered as if the emperor himself were present, and special agents of the emperor were also given royal treatment. Even after the emperors became Christian, the imperial image on coins, in court-houses, and in the most prominent places in the major cities continued to be an object of devotion. Constantine and his successors had the habit of erecting huge statues of themselves at Constantinople. Justinian first broke with this tradition and erected instead a huge statue of Christ over the main gate, the Chalke Gate or ‘Bronze Gate’, of the imperial palace at Constantinople. During the following century icons of Christ or Mary came to replace the imperial icon in many settings. Eventually, in the reign of Justinian II (685–95, 705–11), the icon of Christ began to appear on the reverse side of the coinage. Leo the iconoclast Emperor Leo III (717–41) launched an attack on the use of icons, perhaps motivated by a sense of the nation’s guilt. Christianity taught that God punished the children of Israel because of their idolatry; possibly the humiliating defeats and losses of the previous century, as well as the calamitous earthquake early in Leo’s reign, were intended to bring ‘God’s new chosen people’ to their senses. Christian antagonism to the use of icons developed during the seventh century in the eastern regions adjacent to the Arab frontier where Leo grew up. Before becoming emperor, Leo served as governor-general of western Asia Minor, where several bishops were beginning to speak out against icons. After successfully repulsing the Muslim armies in their second major attack on Constantinople (717–718), in 726 Leo openly declared his opposition to icons for the first time and ordered the icon of Christ over the Chalke Gate to be replaced with a cross. In spite of angry rioting which spread to many cities, Leo called in 730 for the removal and destruction of all religious icons in public places and churches. Under Leo III and his son Constantine V (741–75), those supporting icons were vigorously persecuted. The pope at Rome dared officially to condemn iconoclasm, that is, the destruction of icons. The Emperor retaliated by removing Sicily, southern Italy, and the entire western part of the Balkans and Greece from the patriarchate of Rome and claiming these areas for the patriarchate of Constantinople. This, as much as anything else, forced the bishop of Rome to seek the support and protection of the Franks. A synod of bishops met at Hieria in 1753 and described all use of icons as idolatry. All remaining icons were destroyed, and supporters of icons in the area around Constantinople were excommunicated, mutilated, and sent into exile. Constantine V deliberately destroyed the reputation and influence of monks in general and the popular, highly venerated ascetics in particular. An estimated 50,000 of these holy men fled from the region immediately around Constantinople to escape persecution and humiliation. The Emperor also attempted to limit the practice of saint-worship by destroying relics and condemning prayers made to saints. The iconoclasts wanted to replace the religious icons with the traditional Christian symbols of the cross, the Book (Bible), and the elements of the Lord’s Supper. These objects alone were to be considered holy. Beyond this, only ordained clergy and dedicated buildings possessed a kind of holiness. Constantine V argued that, when consecrated, the elements of the Lord’s Supper were the true icon of Christ, apparently believing that the consecrated bread and wine were identical in substance with the flesh and blood of the divine and human Christ. A proper icon must consist of the same substance as what it stands for. A defence of icons The icon supporters consisted largely of monks and other ascetics, together with their uneducated and superstitious followers from the general population. Although not all monks were in favour of icon usage, some monasteries were in the lucrative business of making and selling them. Reasoned defence of their position came from a distant source. John Mansour (c. 655–749), in a monastery in Arab-controlled Palestine, formulated the ideas that were eventually used to justify religious icons. Mansour, better known as John of Damascus (his birthplace) or Damascene, was the greatest theologian of the eighth century, and is recognized today by the Orthodox Churches as the last of the great teachers of the early church, the so-called ‘Fathers’. John explained that an image was never of the same substance as its original, but merely imitated it. An icon’s only significance is as a copy and reminder of the original. To deny, as the iconoclasts did, that any true icon could depict Christ, was, in effect, to deny the possibility of the incarnation. Although it was wrong to worship an icon, the presence of an icon of Christ could instruct and assist the believer in the worship of the true Christ. Icons should be honoured and venerated in much the same way as the Bible or the cross. It also came to be accepted that icons of Mary, the apostles, the saints, and even the angels could be used; but the pictures themselves were no more than reminders to help the faithful give proper respect and reverence. Constantine V’s son and successor, Leo IV (775–80), was not an energetic iconoclast, and his widow Irene, regent for their son Constantine VI (780–97), overturned the dynasty’s iconoclastic policy. Under her instigation the seventh ecumenical council assembled at Nicaea in 787 and condemned the whole iconoclastic movement, affirming the position taken by John of Damascus. The Paulicians and the Bogomils The Paulicians were a Christian group who appeared in the eastern parts of the Byzantine Empire after 650. Their founder, Constantine, rejected the formalism of the Orthodox state church which dominated the religious life of the Empire, basing his teaching on the written word of God alone, but held that only the Gospels and letters of Paul were divinely inspired. An evil deity, he declared, had inspired the rest of the New Testament and the Old Testament. The Paulicians claimed this evil deity was the creator and god of this world; the true God of heaven, they said, was opposed to all material things. In order to save people’s spirits from the evil of the physical world, the true God sent an angel who appeared to be a man, Jesus. From this dualistic view came the Paulicians’ ideas about the Scriptures and church. Since the Old Testament both declared that God created the world and provided the basis for the theocratic principles of the Byzantine union of church and state, they believed that it must have been produced by the evil spirit. Since the Orthodox Church involved so much that was physical and material – such as the sacraments, priesthood, images, liturgy, and secular influence – it, too, must come from the same evil spirit. The origin of the Paulicians’ ideas is unclear. They are similar to some of the earlier ideas of Marcion, and especially the Manichaeans, but not identical with either. Constantine changed his name to Silvanus (Silas), the name of one of the associates of Paul. After Silvanus was stoned to death, the next leader took the name of Titus and was subsequently burned alive. Other leaders adopted the names of Timothy and Tychicus. This attempt to associate themselves with the apostle Paul probably led to their name of ‘Paulicians’. During the ‘Iconoclastic Controversy’ of the eighth century, the persecution of the Paulicians eased. But in the ninth century, the Empress Theodora ordered the massacre of tens of thousands of Paulicians, who were most numerous in the area of Armenia. In response, the Paulicians organized armies which proved skilful in battle. Therefore, the emperors moved many Paulicians from their Armenian homeland to the Balkans (present-day Bulgaria) to help defend the Empire against threats from Slavs and Bulgars. However, the Paulicians had a greater impact on the Bulgars in the religious than the military field, preaching their beliefs to these recent converts to Christianity. Some Bulgars adopted Paulician ideas into a new religious system that acquired the name ‘Bogomilism’. The Bogomils The organizer of the new movement, it appears, was a priest named Bogomil, whose name means ‘beloved of God’. Around the middle of the tenth century, Bogomil began to teach that the first-born son of God was Satanael. Because of his pride, this deity was expelled from heaven, so he made a new heaven and earth, in which he placed Adam and Eve. Satanael and Eve became the parents of Cain, who was the source of all evil among humans. But God sent the Logos, his second son, to save humanity from the control of Satanael. Although Satanael killed the incarnate Logos, Jesus, his spiritual body was resurrected and returned to the right hand of God. Satanael was in this way defeated. In contrast to the Paulicians, the Bogomils adopted a rigidly ascetic life-style. They despised marriage, although they permitted it in the case of less-than-perfect believers, and condemned the eating of meat and drinking of wine. They rejected baptism and communion as Satanic rites, since both used material things. Bogomilism flourished in Bulgaria while it was an independent country in the tenth, and again in the thirteenth centuries, and Bogomil ideas probably spread to western Europe, where they influenced the Cathars and Albigensians. When the Turks destroyed the Bulgarian Empire in 1393, the Bogomil sect disappeared, although Paulicians continued to exist in Armenia into the nineteenth century. Paul D. Steeves But this was not the end of iconoclasm. An influential block of support developed in the professional military class, partly as a reaction to the series of military disasters, diplomatic humiliations, and economic problems the state experienced in the quarter century after Nicaea. Finally, Emperor Leo V, the Armenian (813–20), decided that iconoclasm should again become the official policy of his government. A synod of church leaders in 815 reaffirmed the position taken by the anti-icon synod of 754 – except that they no longer regarded the icons as idols. Key leaders of the opposition, such as the deposed Patriarch Nicephorus and Theodore the abbot of the Studios monastery in Constantinople, were imprisoned. A few other unbending church leaders were deposed, and several monks gained notoriety by openly and violently confessing pro-icon views. The end of the controversy With Leo V’s death, active persecution of the pro-icon party waned for seventeen years, before bursting out again in 837 under the leadership of John Grammaticus, patriarch of Constantinople. Under John’s influence Emperor Theophilus (829–42) decreed exile or capital punishment for all who openly supported the use of icons. Theodora, widow of Theophilus and regent for their son Michael III (842–67), determined that her son must abandon the iconoclastic policy to retain the widest support for his rule. A synod early in 843 condemned all iconoclasts (except Theophilus), deposed patriarch John Grammaticus, and confirmed the decrees of the seventh council. Thereafter the relationship of the Orthodox Church and the Byzantine government became more one of harmony and cooperation. Each year Orthodox Churches still celebrate the first Sunday in Lent as the ‘Feast of Orthodoxy’, to commemorate the end of the iconoclastic controversy. In today’s Orthodox Church buildings, paintings and mosaics frequently fill spaces on ceilings and walls. A screen or low partition called the iconostasis stretches across the front of the church, between the congregation and the altar area, for the purpose of displaying all the special icons pertaining to the liturgy, the holy days, and seasons. In the period from the sixth to the eleventh centuries the widening cultural divide between the Eastern and Western regions did not prevent the faithful from continuing to think of the church as a single, universal body. Episodes of intense disagreement were relatively infrequent, and a harmony more apparent than real, based perhaps on frail human assumptions and the enormous difficulty of maintaining regular communication, masked the fact that a growing number of controversial issues stood unresolved. The Western Church’s inclusion, and the Eastern Church’s alleged exclusion, of a phrase in the Nicene Creed was the basis of charge and counter-charge on more than one occasion. The controversial insertion, the Latin word filioque meaning ‘and the Son’, remains today one of the significant points of disagreement between Eastern and Western Churches. The Final Rift: The 1054 Schism In 1054, an angry rift between the agents of the Roman pope, Leo IX (1049–1054), and the patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius (1043–58), proved to be the final one. Repeated initiatives to heal the schism and reunite the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox parts of the church have so far failed. Harlie Kay Gallatin Chapter 18 Flowering: the Western Church Reform and resurgence The Romanesque abbey church of Cluny, Burgundy, France still stands. © Beatrice Preve / Dreamstime.com In the West, a great struggle developed in this period between lay people and clergy over the control of the church. During the ninth and tenth centuries, when the Carolingian Empire was declining, feudal nobles had gone far beyond their historic rights in selecting candidates for church posts and controlling church affairs. This was one symptom of a general crisis through which Europe passed due to the invasion of the Magyars, Saracens, and Vikings, which destroyed both morale and property. Examples of the sorry state of the church included untrained clergy, simony (purchase of church posts), general sexual laxity, and lay investiture (control of the appointment and allegiance of abbots, bishops, and popes). Sometimes it is darkest before the dawn, and in the case of the medieval church this proved to be the case. Growing out of the reform movement of the monastery at Cluny, a great renewal came to eleventh-century Christianity which helped the church gain control over medieval Europe. The Cluniac order, founded in 910 in France, reinvigorated monasticism. A new method of organization developed to promote the reform movement; each new monastery founded was tied to the mother house. They were exempt from any local control, and responsible only to the pope. Eventually the Cluniac order came to include 300 priories, which produced a host of prominent church leaders, and inspired many institutions and individuals who were not members of the order. Reform One of these men, Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII), has given his name to the papal reform of the eleventh century, called the ‘Hildebrandine’ or ‘Gregorian’ reform, although several individuals in the court of Pope Leo IX (1048–54) were responsible for reforming the church. Eventually they were to engage in a bitter struggle with the Holy Roman emperors, though at first this was not apparent. In fact it was the Emperor Henry III (1039–56) who aided the reformers to gain control of the papacy. In addition to Hildebrand, prominent leaders of this movement included Humbert of Moyenmoutier, Peter Damian, Frederick of Lorraine, and Otho of Lagery (Pope Urban II, r. 1088–99), all of whom desired the freedom of the church – that the church should be subject only to the commands of God as revealed through canon law and the Scriptures. The church, which meant in effect the whole of society, viewed as Christian people, was to be governed by the hierarchy of clergy. The pope was superior to secular rulers, and everyone was to obey him. Although this programme seemed revolutionary in its day, the reformers claimed they were restoring the ancient and true law of the church that had been neglected and perverted by their time. As they examined canon law, they learned that the initiative for choosing a pope should lie with the clergy and the people rather than with a king or emperor. The canons also stated that buying and selling of church offices (simony) was wrong, and so must stop. In a similar manner, church law taught that clerics should not be married, so that celibacy should be enforced for clergy. Lay investiture The main controversy between the reformers and the emperors came to be lay investiture – the choice of important clergymen. In 1059 the reform position was laid out in a decree of Pope Nicholas II (r. 1059–61), which included the statement that the election of future popes was to be by the vote of the College of Cardinals. In addition, the papal legate’s job was made more important, and through his office the power of Rome could be felt throughout western Europe. Under Pope Gregory VII the conflict with the secular forces came to open warfare. In 1075, he drew up a considered statement of clerical power, the Dictatus Papae. Simony, clerical marriage, lay investiture were all forbidden and papal power was declared absolute. All secular forces owed him submission, and he could depose emperors and kings. The struggle which followed between the Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII was marked by a dramatic incident at Canossa. Because of rebellion in his Empire and his own excommunication, Henry went to Italy in 1077 and stood in the snow for three days in front of the fortress at Canossa where Gregory was staying, thus prevailing on the pope to forgive him. Although regarded as a humiliation for Henry, it actually enabled him to continue his fight against the reformers. The popes allied themselves variously with German rivals to the Emperor, the Normans of south Italy, and the cities of north Italy and gradually wore down imperial power. King versus pope Eventually the papacy came to stand for the reform programme in the minds of Christians. Each of the major areas of Western Europe – England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire – accepted the pope as supreme in the church. When Duke William of Normandy decided to conquer England, the reformers had an opportunity to control the church there more effectively. The pope sanctioned this invasion; William was not a disappointment and Lanfranc, one of the reformers, was made Archbishop of Canterbury. William the Conqueror King William … was a man of great wisdom and power … Though stern beyond measure to those who opposed his will, he was kind to those good men who loved God. On the very spot where God granted him the conquest of England he caused a great abbey to be built; and settled monks in it and richly endowed it. During his reign was built the great cathedral at Canterbury, and many others throughout England. Anglo Saxon Chronicle, 1086 Although he retained the right to lay investiture, William the Conqueror never questioned the spiritual superiority of the pope, and the need for obedience. The king worked to separate church courts from secular courts, but ordered that the pope could exercise authority in England only with royal approval. The reformers thus made significant gains under William I. William II, who became king on the death of the Conqueror in 1093, appointed Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury. A dedicated reformer, the new archbishop struggled with the king and it was not until the reign of King Henry I (1110–35) that an agreement was reached. Bishops were to be elected by the cathedral chapter in the king’s presence and, after election, the bishop was to do homage for his temporal possessions to the king and then be invested with his spiritual dignity by the archbishop. Other lands of Western Europe reached a similar settlement on this question. In France, King Philip I (r. 1060–1108) approved a settlement by which the king would invest the bishop with the temporal powers of the office and the church would give the spiritual authority. In the Empire, the agreement reached between Emperor Henry V and the church was called the Concordat of Worms (1122). The emperor agreed to cease the traditional investiture with the ring and staff (which symbolized the conferring of ecclesiastical power) and in exchange the pope recognized the Emperor’s right to confer the regalia (temporal rights) by investiture with the sceptre. Thomas Becket Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 1162–70, struggled with King Henry II (1154–89) over the conflicting claims of church and stage in England. Becket had been nominated by Henry, who hoped to make good the crown’s superior rights over those of the church. From being the king’s dutiful minister, Becket became the uncompromising champion of the church. The issues involved were the independence of the church courts, which claimed exclusive authority over anyone in holy orders, the right of appeals to Rome, and the alienation of church lands. Henry II attempted to establish his jurisdiction over clergy guilty of criminal offences and to forbid appeals to Rome in the Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164. The resulting conflict drove Becket into exile in France. A truce was arranged in 1170, and Becket returned to Canterbury for Christmas. Immediately upon his return, he excommunicated several English bishops who had supported the king, who in turn violently criticized Becket. Four knights, impelled by the king’s anger, appeared at Canterbury on 29 December, and murdered the archbishop before his own high altar. Christian society throughout Europe was shocked, and at once a cult developed around the martyred Becket. In 1173 he was canonized by Pope Alexander III, and Canterbury became one of the three great Western shrines for pilgrims. The king did public penance. Becket’s courage and defiance in the face of armed knights, and his commitment to ‘the liberty of the church’, which he felt he had been called upon to defend in the face of a weak pope and a rapacious king, were remarkable. Caroline T. Marshall King Henry II and Thomas Becket depicted in a thirteenth-century stained-glass window in the Trinity Chapel, Canterbury Cathedral. Sonia Halliday Photographs Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? Henry II The pope and the emperor The struggle between the Empire and the papacy was not finally settled by the agreement reached in the twelfth century. This was only a compromise, which left each side feeling an opportunity would come to gain the upper hand. By the second half of the century the German electors had chosen a new emperor, Frederick I of Hohenstaufen (Barbarossa, r. 1152–90), who turned out to be a man of great ability, aiming to establish peace in Germany and lead an army into Italy to make imperial control effective there. After several warlike campaigns Frederick I realized that force would not resolve the situation, and he resorted to diplomacy. Once the north Italian towns had acknowledged his control, he agreed to allow them to govern themselves. He also made peace with the southern Italians and his heir married the aunt of the king of Sicily. When Frederick died, his son, Emperor Henry VI, became ruler of Germany, northern Italy, Sicily, and southern Italy. If the Hohenstaufen emperors could control these lands effectively, the pope would be caught in a pincer. As events unfolded, this proved impossible, because Henry died in 1197 while in his early thirties, leaving his possessions to a three-year-old son, Frederick (1194–1250). Anarchy resulted in both Germany and Italy. The imperial weakness worked to the advantage of the papacy, since a very competent pope acceded – Innocent III (r. 1198–1216). The son of a noble Roman family, he was trained in both theology and law. Innocent was determined to build a strong papal state in Italy, so that secular rulers could not so easily use material means to force the papacy to do their bidding. Frederick became Innocent’s ward, and was established as Emperor Frederick II with the pope’s help. Pope Innocent III The medieval papacy attained the peak of its authority and influence under Innocent, who was pope 1198–1216. He had a unique ability to apply abstract concepts to concrete situations. His aristocratic background, together with his outstanding personal abilities, sharpened by a precise training in canon and civil law as well as theology, fitted him to become a cardinal. In papal service he demonstrated unusual skill in dealing with the enormous variety of religious and secular problems which arose. Innocent’s diplomatic skills enabled him to wield papal authority to a remarkable degree throughout Christendom, although not always with the success he desired. He successfully upheld papal political power in Italy when it was threatened by the union of the kingdom of Sicily with the German Empire, but was unable to rescue King John from his rebellious English barons. Because he believed the pope had unique authority as the ‘Vicar of Christ’, and as the successor of Peter, Innocent claimed the right to set aside any human actions, since these were contaminated by sin and therefore came within his competence. Consequently he decreed an election for the German kingship null and void because, while one candidate had the majority of the votes, Innocent’s candidate had the ‘saner’ votes. The Fourth Lateran Council, called by Innocent in 1215, was the fitting climax to his career. This general council symbolized the mastery of the papacy over every feature of Latin Christendom (and seemingly over Greek Christendom, since the Fourth Crusade had led to a short-lived Latin Empire of Constantinople between 1204 and 1261). Innocent’s council confirmed the shameful isolation of Jews from society at large, requiring among other things that they wear a special badge, and increasingly confining Jews to living in ghettos. Harry Rosenberg However, after Innocent’s death, Frederick turned out to be a disappointment to the pope’s cause. He attempted to control both northern and southern Italy, resulting in a life-and-death struggle with the pope, who tried to crush his power. Frederick’s own character complicated this struggle, for he combined a Western outlook with the style of an oriental sultan. Himself a linguist, physician, hunter and poet, he organized southern Italy into a kingdom that set an example for later Renaissance states. Although a persecutor of heretics, Frederick shared many of the ideas of his Muslim subjects, including a fatalist outlook and a belief in astrology. Insatiably curious, he kept a zoo of exotic animals as well as a harem. While on a crusade, Frederick II (r. 1220–50) made a treaty with the Muslims, and visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Islamic Shrine of Omar in Jerusalem with equal zeal. Though successful in Italy, he gained for his heirs the hatred of the papacy, causing the extinction of his line. The peak of papal power The Moon and the Sun The Creator of the universe set up two great luminaries in the firmament of heaven; the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night. In the same way for the firmament of the universal church, which is spoken of as heaven, he appointed two great dignities; the greater to bear rule over souls (these being, as it were, days), the lesser to bear rule over bodies (these being, as it were, nights). These dignities are the pontifical authority and the royal power. Furthermore, the moon derives her light from the sun, and is in truth inferior to the sun in both size and quality, in position as well as effect. In the same way the royal power derives its dignity from the pontifical authority: and the more closely it cleaves to the sphere of that authority, the less is the light with which it is adorned; the further it is removed, the more it increases in splendour. Innocent III on the Emperor and the papacy in Sicut universitatis conditor 1198 Innocent III also led the papacy to victory over the kings of France and England. In 1205 King John argued with the pope over the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Innocent arranged the election of Stephen Langton to the post. John refused to accept him, so England was placed under an interdict in 1208, with the result that the church refused to marry, baptize, or bury people. John retaliated by seizing church lands and forcing most of the bishops out of England. In 1209 Innocent excommunicated the English king and in 1212 declared the throne of England vacant, inviting the French to invade the country. This proved effective, and John agreed to accept Langton and return church property. He resigned the crown of England, receiving it back as a feudal retainer of the pope. Although the indignity inflicted on the king was not realized at first by the English, taxes exacted by the pope in the thirteenth century resulted in a bitter hatred of the papacy in England. Innocent was just as successful against the king of France, with whom he quarrelled over a moral issue. With the permission of a synod of French bishops, King Philip Augustus left his wife for another woman, on the grounds that the queen was a distant relative. She appealed to Rome, and Innocent ordered Philip to take her back. France was placed under an interdict and after a long struggle the queen was restored. The leadership of the clergy and pope over society was affirmed under Innocent’s direction at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The power of the church was demonstrated by the wide range of participants in this convocation, including archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, the heads of the religious orders, and representatives of the secular rulers. The Council demanded that each archbishop hold a council every year to make certain that bishops were doing their duty. Provincial meetings of monks were to be held annually to see that each community adhered to its rule. Ignorance and heresy were to be crushed by the setting up of an efficient educational system. The bishops were to inspect the churches of the diocese to make certain that they supported schools where the children of the rich could be taught for a fee and where the sons of the poor could receive a free education. Lay people were commanded to respect church property, obey church courts, and observe the Christian rules of marriage. The clergy were warned to abstain from sexual disorder, fighting, and drunkenness, and procedures were established for the trial of erring clerics. Although the church reached the height of its power in the early thirteenth century the seeds of its subsequent decline had already been sown. To defeat the emperors, the church strengthened other European royal houses. It was one of these, the Capetians in France, who would defeat the papacy and bring about its removal from Rome to Avignon in the fourteenth century. New monastic orders The spirit of revival or renewal in the church expressed itself not only in organizational change by the papacy, but also in the formation of new monastic orders. The success of the reformed papacy and the growth of culture led to a crisis in Benedictine monasticism in the later eleventh century. The monastic tradition of handing on order and culture was superseded by the rise in the power of popes, bishops, and kings. Education now became centred in the bishops’ schools rather than in the monasteries. Non-monastic clergy and stable civil government guaranteed an order in society that made obsolete the monasteries’ previous function as oases of culture. New monastic movements emphasized the spirit of prophecy rather than the spirit of power. The most influential of the new groups was the Cistercians, founded in 1097 at Cîteaux, as an offshoot from a Benedictine house at Molesme. Stephen Harding (d. 1134), third abbot of the new group, drew up a rule for the order which emphasized manual labour instead of scholarship, and private rather than corporate prayer. They were to construct their own community houses in the most desolate places, while accepting no titles, gifts, or lay patrons. Hiring no servants and believing that ‘to work is to pray’ (Latin, laborare est orare), they took upon themselves the tasks of farming, cooking, weaving, carpentry, and the many other duties of life. Their churches were plain, with no ornaments or treasures, they owned no personal possessions, and they were allowed seven hours of sleep in the winter and six in the summer. Gathering for communal prayer periodically, the brothers spent the rest of the day in manual work, meditation, reading, and divine service. Cistercians ate sparingly of vegetables, fish, and cheese – this only once a day in summer, and twice a day in winter. Even in the coldest regions, a fire was allowed only on Christmas Day. This strict rule met with phenomenal success, and by the end of the twelfth century there were hundreds of Cistercian monastic houses. The ethos of this movement appealed to medieval people, and the group was doubly fortunate in having a remarkable leader in the person of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), who arrived at Cîteaux in 1112. Later, at Clairvaux, he founded the first of more than sixty-five new monasteries, and as an abbot was able to wield a Europe-wide influence. He was so persuasive in persuading men to enter the monastery that it is said that mothers hid their sons, and wives their husbands, when he came fishing for men. Bernard described the Christian life as an experience of progress in love, and it is easy to understand how an age that was moved by the adventures of knights searching for the Holy Grail would respond to his teachings. Despite Bernard’s success, by the end of the twelfth century the Cistercians had already become lax and ineffective. They had rapidly grown wealthy and had become as famous for their agricultural skills as for their spiritual life. Preaching monks Bernard of Clairvaux Bernard (1090–1153), the Abbot of Clairvaux, was the most influential Christian of his age. He bridged two worlds: the ages of feudal values and of the rise of towns and universities. He was the first of the great medieval mystics, and a leader of a new spirit of ascetic simplicity and personal devotion. Born near Dijon to a noble family, Bernard took on the ideals of feudalism and chivalry characteristic of his class. However, he was also moulded by the Gregorian and Cluniac reforms, and was educated in the studies of the trivium (rhetoric, grammar, and logic). At the age of twenty-one he entered the monastery of Cîteaux, the centre of the Cistercian order, in the wild valley of the River Saône, France. In 1115 he led a dozen Cistercians to found the new house of Clairvaux, in the Champagne region. Bernard wished to turn his back on the world and its comforts, and lead a life of prayer and self-denial. He emphasized God’s love and believed that Christians come to know God by loving him. Bernard preached that physical love, which was natural to man, could be transformed by prayer and discipline into a redeeming spiritual love, the passion for Christ. Aggressively self-righteous, he did not hesitate to criticize and correct the powerful leaders of his age, and in 1130 intervened in a controversy over the selection of a new pope. Bernard unhesitatingly backed the claimant he considered morally more worthy, and scolded the rest of Europe into doing likewise. He made peace between King Louis VII and his feudal subjects, wrote a rule for the order of Knights Templar, condemned the scholastic rationalism of Peter Abelard, and preached the Second Crusade. Privately Bernard practised the most rigorous self-denial until, worn out by strenuous asceticism, he died. Caroline T. Marshall The decline of the Cistercian order coincided with the passing of the importance of cloistered monasteries. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Europe became more settled and the security of the monastery was less necessary. Towns and cities were developing and offered a new challenge to the church as traditional expressions of faith failed to cope with worldliness and the growth of population. Many clergymen recognized the need to bring a new form of spirituality to the people and found a method that would enable them to work in the world while at the same time living under a spiritual rule. A group of clergy would live together under a strict rule but go out to work among the ordinary population. Among the orders that operated in this fashion were the Premonstratensians, who had a rule resembling the Cistercians’, and the Augustinians or Austin monks, who used the Rule of Augustine. Both orders followed as much of the monastic life as was possible, while carrying out their duties of preaching and teaching in the world. At the beginning of the thirteenth century new groups of preaching monks, the friars, arose. Extremely ascetic, and working in towns and cities, they gained the respect of society. The friars preached in the parishes and town squares, taught in the schools, and eventually dominated many of the universities. One group, the Franciscans, developed from the teachings of Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), who gave up his wealth, renounced his inheritance, and settled outside his native town to live a life of prayer and poverty. Gathering a band of followers, he wandered the hills of Umbria, worked at part-time jobs, and served others by preaching and nursing the sick. Francis taught that complete poverty relieved the brothers from cares and made them joyful before God. Approved by the pope in 1209, the brothers were known as the Minor Friars (fratres minores), wore dark grey (and so were called the Grey Friars) and went barefoot. As the organization grew it became difficult to continue a life of poverty and in time the order was permitted to own property. However, some wanted to continue to live according to the strict teachings of Francis, insisting upon a life of poverty and a renunciation of endowments. They became known as the spiritual Franciscans (or Fraticelli). Because they refused to obey the pope’s order to alter their rule, this group was persecuted, and became associated with other suppressed movements. Those brothers who accepted the changes to the order were known as ‘Conventuals’. Francis of Assisi Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), a popular youth who led a carefree life, was destined for a career as a knight, until converted through illness, a pilgrimage to Rome, a vision and the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:7–10. He was the son of a wealthy Italian cloth merchant, and his father was angry because Francis interpreted the gospel to mean that goods should be freely given to the poor. Leaving home in a ragged cloak, he wandered the countryside with a few followers, begging from the rich, giving to the poor, and preaching. His charm, humility, and kind manner attracted many followers. In 1210 Francis obtained approval from Pope Innocent III for his simple rule devoted to apostolic poverty and began to call his associates the Friars Minor (‘Lesser Brothers’). The new group, which followed its founder in preaching and caring for the poor and sick, met yearly at Portiuncula, near Assisi. A society for women, the Poor Clares, or Order of St Clare, began in 1212 when Clare, an heiress of Assisi, was converted and commissioned. To encourage missionary activities, Francis tried to go to Syria (1212) and to Morocco (1213–14) but was thwarted by misfortune. In 1219 he travelled to the Middle East, where he tried unsuccessfully to convert the Sultan of Egypt. While Francis was away, problems arose among the members of his order in Italy; upon his return he was forced to deal with them. Cardinal Ugolino was asked to be the protector of the order, and the appointment of a politically-minded brother, Elias of Cortona, as vicar-general led to a change in the character of the movement. In 1223, Pope Honorius III confirmed a new rule, which allowed for an elaborate organization. Holding to his original ideals, Francis laid down his leadership and retired to a chapel at La Verna, Tuscany, where he allegedly received the stigmata (bodily representations of the wounds of Christ). In spite of illness, pain, and blindness he composed his ‘Canticle to the Sun’, his Admonitions, and his Testament before submitting gladly to ‘Brother Death’ in 1226. Francis did not turn to nature as a refuge from the world, as many monks did, but rather saw in created things objects of love that pointed to their Creator. For this reason he enjoyed the solitary life, and it is reported that even birds and animals enjoyed his sermons. However, his major concern was the growing cities, where he spent most of his time preaching the gospel while living in utter poverty among ordinary people. Robert G. Clouse Fresco of Francis of Assisi, displaying the stigmata – marks resembling Christ’s wounds – by Simone Martini (1285–1344), in the lower church at the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi, Italy. Sonia Halliday Photographs The Rule of Francis 1. This is the rule and way of life of the Brothers Minor: to observe the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience, without personal belongings and in chastity … 2. If any wish to take up this way of life and join our brothers, they shall send them to the provincial ministers; to them alone, and to no others, permission is given to receive brothers. And the ministry shall carefully examine them in the Catholic faith and the sacraments of the church. And if they believe all these, and will confess them faithfully and observe them steadfastly to the end; and if they have no wives, or if they have them and the wives have already entered a convent … the ministers shall tell them, in the words of the gospel, to go and sell all they have and give it carefully to the poor. But if they are not able to do this, their good intention is enough … After that they shall be given the garments of the probationers: two gowns without hoods and a belt, and stockings and a cape reaching the belt … And, when the probationary year is over, they shall be received into obedience, promising always to observe this way of life and the rule … And those who have now promised obedience shall have one gown with a hood and another, if they wish it, without a hood. And those who really need them may wear shoes. And all the brothers shall wear humble garments, and may repair them with sackcloth and other remnants, with God’s blessing … 3. The clerical brothers shall perform the divine service according to the order of the holy Roman Church … And they shall fast from the feast of All Saints to the Nativity of the Lord; but as to the holy season of Lent … those who fast during this time shall be blessed of the Lord, and those who do not wish to fast shall not be bound to do so. At other times the brothers shall not be bound to fast except on Friday; but when there is a compelling reason the brothers shall not be bound to observe a physical fast. But I advise, warn and exhort my brothers in the Lord Jesus Christ that, when they go into the world, they shall not quarrel, nor contend with words, nor judge each other. But let them be gentle, peaceable, modest, merciful, and humble, as is fitting. They ought not to ride, except when infirmity or necessity clearly compels them to do so … 4. I strictly command all the brothers never to receive coins or money either directly or through an intermediary. The ministers and guardians alone shall make provision, through spiritual friends, for the needs of the infirm and for other brothers who need clothing. 6. The brothers shall possess nothing, neither a house, nor a place, nor anything. But, as pilgrims and strangers in this world, serving God in poverty and humility, they shall continually seek alms, and not be ashamed, for the Lord made himself poor in this world for us … 11. I strictly charge all the brethren not to hold conversation with women so as to arouse suspicion, nor to take counsel with them … 12. Whoever of the brothers by divine inspiration may wish to go among the Saracens and other infidels shall seek permission from their provincial ministers. But the ministers shall give permission to go to none but those whom they see to be fit for the mission. Furthermore I charge the ministers on their obedience that they demand from the lord pope one of the cardinals of the holy Roman Church, who shall be the governor, corrector and protector of the fraternity, so that, always submissive and lying at the feet of that same holy church, steadfast in the Catholic faith, we may observe poverty and humility, and the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we have firmly promised. The original Rule of Francis consisted of a few instructions from the Gospels. When the order expanded, a new rule was produced, but this was felt too strict and was never used. The final version of the rule, quoted above, was approved by Pope Honorius III in 1223, three years before Francis’ death. Watchdogs of the Lord The second great order of medieval friars, the Dominicans, was founded by Dominic de Guzman (1170–1221), a studious cleric from Castile who was sent to Provence to preach against the Albigensians. Realizing the need for an educated clergy able to communicate with the people through sermons, he founded the new order, recognized in 1220, which emphasized the friar’s calling to teach and preach. Hence the Dominicans’ official title was the Order of Preachers and, wearing a white habit and black cloak (scapular), and so known as the Black Friars, they spread throughout Europe as ‘the watchdogs of the Lord’ (a pun on the Latin name Dominicanus = domini canis) to hunt down heresy and ignorance. The academic emphasis of the Dominicans contrasted with Franciscan anti-intellectualism. The friar preachers established colleges and seminaries not only for their own members but also for other clergy who might wish to attend, and produced leading medieval theologians such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. However, the two orders gradually became more alike, as the Franciscans found it necessary to train young friars, and thus also set up educational foundations. The friars accomplished social, pastoral, educational, and missionary work. As Francis and the early brothers had done, they continued to serve lepers and other sick people, a practice which encouraged the study of medicine. They showed courage and loving care while working with the sick during the frequent medieval plagues. Friars were also effective preachers, although they frequently met difficulties with the local clergy. More thoroughly trained than the parish ministers, encouraged by their wider contact with brothers of their order, and burning with the zeal of first love, the friars made a notable impression on their audiences. Their sermons were marked by humour, and effectively used rhyme and stories from everyday life. The friars were also busy in education, establishing a school at each house for young men entering their orders. Houses were also founded at the newly-formed universities of Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and Bologna. The Franciscans could boast of such famous scholars as Bonaventura (1221–74), Alexander of Hales (1170–1245), William of Ockham, and Roger Bacon (c. 1214–92). The missionary activity of the friars added a challenging facet to their work. Francis himself preached the gospel abroad, and sent friars to Spain, Hungary, and the East. The orders encouraged the study of Eastern languages so that missionaries could communicate with the Muslims. During the thirteenth century they preached and founded houses in North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. East and West divide The preaching of friars in the East might have resulted in a more peaceful penetration of the area by Latin Christianity, had it not been for a breakdown of relations between Byzantium and the West. At the beginning of the eleventh century the Greek Church was not obviously separated from the Western Church, but the position was to change during the next two centuries. After the Crusaders’ conquests in the Middle East there came to be two rival claimants for each of the major Eastern Sees – one Latin and the other Greek. The Eastern Orthodox Church had been drifting apart from the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. Distinctive features of the two churches can be listed – such as a different ritual, the use of a different type of communion bread, a different version of the Nicene Creed, and different attitudes towards the use of statues (icons) in the church – but none of these problems marked a decisive break between the two communions. For centuries contact between western Europe and the East had been limited. However, with the Crusades, commerce and communication between the two were reawakened. Paradoxically, the final break came at the time of this new closeness – because of the new attitude of the reformed papacy and the behaviour of the Crusaders. The eleventh-century popes, as described, wanted effectively to control Christianity, but the Patriarch of Constantinople was not willing to accept the pope’s mandates and legates. When Humbert of Moyenmoutier arrived in Constantinople in 1054 as a representative of the pope, the patriarch refused to submit to him. Humbert thereupon published a document excommunicating the patriarch. As the pope’s control of the Western Church tightened, the split with the East widened. Eastern theory emphasized control of the church by a council of the five important leaders of the Christian world (the patriarchs), while the papal reformers believed the church should be ruled by the pope alone. The Spread of Franciscan Monasteries by 1300 A new enemy The Crusades also contributed greatly to the schism between East and West. These were religious wars fought by western Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims. The remarkable growth of Islam threatened to engulf Byzantium (Constantinople). Threatened on all sides by enemies, the Eastern emperors of the tenth century fought a series of wars, defeating in turn the Muslims, the Bulgars, and the Armenians. A new foe appeared, however, in the form of the fierce Seljuk Turks, who defeated the forces of Byzantium at the Battle of Manzikert (1071) and invaded Asia Minor, depriving the Eastern Empire of more than half its territory. After repeated appeals to the West for aid, it was a message from the Eastern Emperor Alexius Comnenus to pope Urban II in 1095 that finally attracted the attention of Latin ears. The pope responded with a sermon to a convocation at Clermont, southern France, where church dignitaries as well as the common people heard Urban explain: From the confines of Jerusalem and from the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth … an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God … has invaded the lands of those Christians and depopulated them by the sword, plundering and fire. The pope proceeded to list Turkish atrocities, including the desecration of churches, the rape of Christian women, and the torture and murder of men. He also appealed to French honour: Recall the greatness of Charlemagne. O most valiant soldiers, descendants of invincible ancestors, be not degenerate. Let all hatred between you depart, all quarrels end, all wars cease. Start upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre, to tear that land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves. At the conclusion of his address a shout rose from the crowd, ‘Deus Vult! Deus Vult!’ (God wills it). Pleased with this response, Urban made Deus Vult the battle-cry of the Crusades, and suggested each warrior wear the sign of the cross on his clothing. The Crusade joined together two themes which were developing strongly in eleventh-century Europe: the holy war, or military expedition blessed by the church, and the pilgrimage to a holy place. In the months that followed, the pope’s representatives travelled throughout Europe, enlisting recruits to go to the Holy Land to fight the Turks. The pope issued incentives to go on crusade, such as immunity from taxes and debt payment, protection of crusaders’ property and families, and especially the indulgence, which guaranteed the Crusader’s entry into heaven and reduced or abolished his time in purgatory. The papacy also organized financial support and sought to provide transport, usually by sea. The leaders of this first Crusade represent a medieval Europe’s Who’s Who and included Robert of Normandy, Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto, Robert of Flanders, Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin of Boulogne, and Stephen of Blois. The imagination of many who romanticize medieval Europe has conjured a picture of the Crusaders as great, armour-clad warriors who rode out on huge steeds. In reality, the average knight stood about five feet three inches (1.6 metres) tall, and wore a hauberk and a leather coat protected by chain mail. Pope Urban II preaches the First Crusade to cardinals and Crusaders at the Council of Clermont, from Livres des passages d’Outremer , 15th century, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Sonia Halliday Photographs The Crusaders fail When they arrived in Constantinople the Crusaders misbehaved and the Emperor Alexius became frightened. He had imagined Urban would help him recruit mercenaries for his own armies; now a horde of 50,000 Western Christians had descended on his city. He provisioned them well, surrounded them with guards, extracted an oath of allegiance from their commanders, and got them safely across the Bosphorus into Asia Minor. The First Crusade 1096–99 The Emperor now displeased his new Western allies by making treaties with the Turks while they were fighting. This seeming treachery on the part of the Eastern Empire enabled the Crusaders to defend the carving out of their own states in the Middle East. They had invaded at a fortunate time, because Islam was divided between the caliphates of Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordova into rival factions and sects. Driving south through Syria and Palestine, the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099. The conquests of the Crusaders extended along a strip of eastern Mediterranean coastline and were divided into the ‘Latin Kingdom’ of Jerusalem, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, and the County of Tripoli. For almost 200 years they represented a toehold of Western Christianity in the East; but these territories were also where the clash between Greek Orthodox and Catholic had resulted in total alienation. For example, Antioch in Syria, captured by the Crusaders, had a Greek bishop (John of Antioch) who was in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople. When Alexius wanted the city restored to the Eastern Empire and the Crusaders refused, the bishop’s position became untenable; he left the city and moved to Constantinople. The Westerners chose another church leader, a Latin, but John refused to resign, leaving two claimants to the Patriarchate of Antioch. A similar situation arose when Jerusalem was conquered, and also in Constantinople, when it fell to the Fourth Crusade. The Crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers was built by the Knights Hospitaller in Syria between 1140 and 1170, and at its peak housed around 2,000 soldiers. It was captured by the Muslim Mamelukes in 1271. Sonia Halliday Photographs The first Crusade was far more successful than later expeditions, even though the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw a great development in the theology and organization of crusades. The Europeans’ hold on the Middle East was always fragile. The Italian maritime cities such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa provided a lifeline – not only helping streams of pilgrims get to the Holy Land, but also sending supplies and recruits to fight the Muslims. Two new religious orders were formed for the purpose of defending the Holy Land: the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller. The young men who formed these orders served as soldier-monks but, despite their efforts, the County of Edessa fell to the Muslims. Further Crusades A Second Crusade (1147) was encouraged by the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux, and led by King Louis VII of France and Conrad III, the Holy Roman Emperor. This expedition was marked by a series of disasters, culminating in Damascus, where the Crusaders were ambushed and prevented from taking the city. After two years their forces melted away: the crusade preached by the man with the greatest name for sanctity in Europe and led by royalty had failed. The Christian hold on the Holy Land depended on Muslim disunity, but after 1150 the Muslim leaders Nureddin (1118–74) and Saladin (1137/8–93) united the Near East and Egypt under one dynasty. In 1187 Saladin defeated the crusaders at Hattin, captured Jerusalem, and overran the Crusaders’ lands. The Church of St Anne, Jerusalem, built by the Crusaders over the site of a grotto believed to be the birthplace of Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary. Completed in 1138, after Saladin retook the Holy Land, he converted the building into an Islamic seminary. Today it is administered by the Roman Catholic White Fathers. Tim Dowley Associates Defeat astounded and angered medieval Christians and, as they tried to understand the situation, the treachery of the Greeks began to appear to them the main reason. As a result, Bernard started to suggest that a campaign be mounted against Constantinople. He achieved his wish in 1204, when the Doge of Venice persuaded an expedition of knights (the Fourth Crusade) to besiege and conquer the great Eastern city. The rape of Constantinople made an indelible impression on the Orthodox, and whatever ties still existed between them and Rome were severed. A Latin Empire set up in Byzantium lasted from 1204 till 1261, with the lands of the Empire divided into feudal holdings and presented to the Crusaders. A Latin patriarch was appointed, but the Western Church made little impression on the Greek population. The Crusades may be seen as part of the expansion of Christian Europe after centuries of being on the defensive against Islam and paganism, and Crusading enthusiasm remained strong until at least 1250. The number of Crusades is normally given as seven or eight, but this gives the misleading impression of a few expeditions with long gaps in between. It is better to see the Crusades as a continuous movement, featuring many smaller expeditions in addition to the larger ones; after about 1150 there was a regular stream of soldiers, pilgrims, and merchants from Europe to Syria. Some Crusades were pathetic, like the Children’s Crusade, others militarily effective, such as the one Frederick II embarked upon when he was excommunicated. But with the fall of the Crusader states in 1291 the movement lost its impetus. The Crusades failed in their aims. The Crusaders were a small minority in the East, and those who had settled there for two or three generations tended to adopt Eastern customs, to the disgust of new arrivals from Europe. As well as alienating Eastern Christians, two centuries of contact with the East caused cultural changes which in turn had a lasting effect on life in the West. As time went on the Crusading movement was increasingly diverted from the Holy Land, and in the thirteenth century the popes launched crusades not only against European heretics such as the Cathars and Albigensians, but also against Catholic rulers such as Frederick II. In the thirteenth century, too, there arose criticism of the crusading principle; people such as Raymond Lull argued for peaceful missions to convert the Muslims, rather than armed expeditions to subdue them. Nevertheless the Crusades, attracting people from all the countries of Europe, were a striking example of both the unity and the religious zeal of medieval Europe. Most arguments that were used to suppress heresy and encourage crusades were also applied to Jews. Religious regulations forced Jews into cities and limited their employment to banking and money lending, activities believed to be unfit for Christians. Consequently, to religious reasons for persecution were added socio-economic motives. The same ideas that sent thousands of Western Europeans on crusades led them to loot and burn Jewish ghettos: thus the pogrom was invented, and Jews were given the choice of baptism or death. Wild stories were widely circulated, such as that Jews kidnapped Christian children for ritual sacrifice, practised cannibalism and magic, poisoned wells, and profaned the sacrament of Holy Communion. The Cathars and Albigensians The church and the papacy were naturally alarmed by the rapid growth of the Cathars, a heretical sect. In 1208 Pope Innocent III launched a crusade against them in southern France. The crusade was successful, destroying Cathar political power by 1250, and ruining the civilization of the area in the process. After the crusade, the Inquisition was established in 1231–33, to root out heresy by relentless persecution. However, the preaching of the newly-established friars was also effective in winning people from Catharism, and in Italy this was probably the chief cause of its disappearance in the late fourteenth century. The Cathars should in no sense be regarded as medieval Protestants, as writers have sometimes mistakenly suggested. The fortress-like Cathedral of Saint Cecilia, Albi, France, built following the brutal crusade to put down the Cathars of this region. © Pakmor / Dreamstime.com The Cathars (Greek Katharoi, ‘Puritans’) flourished in western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and, like the earlier Manicheans, believed in two gods, a good god who created the invisible spiritual world, and an evil god who created the visible material world. Matter, including the human body, was evil and was ruled by the evil god, whom the Cathars identified with the God of the Old Testament. He had, they claimed, imprisoned the human soul in its earthly body, and death merely caused the soul to migrate to another body, human or animal. Salvation could be attained only by breaking free from this miserable cycle, and Christ, the Son of the good God, had been sent by him to reveal to the human race the way of this salvation. Christ was a life-giving Spirit, whose earthly body was only an appearance. The Cathars accepted the New Testament and various Christian teachings, but of course rejected the incarnation and the sacraments, since they completely separated spirit and matter. The one Cathar sacrament, which they believed enabled the soul to escape from the evil material world, was the consolamentum, or spiritual baptism, administered by the laying-on-of-hands. This they held was the baptism instituted by Christ, which gave to recipients the Holy Spirit, removed their original sin, and enabled them on death to enter the pure world of spirit and be united with the good God. The consolamentum had been handed down from the apostles by a succession of ‘good men’, but the church had perverted Christ’s teachings and ordinances, and was enslaved by the evil god of matter. The Cathars were divided into two classes, the Perfect, who had received the consolamentum, and the Believers, who had not. The former lived in strict poverty as ascetics, involving chastity, frequent fasts, vegetarianism, and the renunciation of marriage and oaths. They received unquestioning obedience and great veneration from the Believers, as the Perfect alone could pray directly to God. Most Believers delayed receiving the consolamentum until they were in danger of death, as the rigour necessary among the Perfect was too much for them. After 1100, and especially after 1140, Catharism spread through western Europe, gaining its greatest strength in northern Italy and southern France, where it developed an advanced organization. The French Cathars were called ‘Albigensians’, being most numerous in the district of Albi. The holiness and simplicity of the Perfect undoubtedly contrasted with the riches of the Catholic Church and the corruptions of many of its clergy, and large numbers must have found that Catharism answered their spiritual needs in a way that Catholicism did not. By 1200 it seemed possible that southern France might become entirely Cathar, as the Cathars were protected by the sophisticated and anti-clerical merchants and nobles, notably the Count of Toulouse. It was this threat that provoked Innocent’s crusade. Heresy and dissidence The exercise of choice (Latin, haeresis) in religious doctrine has posed a problem in Christianity since the days of the apostles; by the fifth century Augustine could list no fewer than 88 different heresies. Yet throughout the early Middle Ages, heretics were mainly individual intellectuals or idiosyncratic rabble-rousers, and the response of the church was localized and sporadic. From the twelfth century, however, the problem of heresy became far more marked, and the reaction of the church correspondingly more rigorous. During the thirteenth century a strong papacy directed this response. The Waldensians A wealthy merchant of Lyons, who came to be known as Peter Waldo or Valdes (c. 1140– c. 1218), experienced conversion in about 1175. He gave away his worldly goods and decided to follow the example of Christ by leading a simple life of poverty and preaching. He had translations made from the Latin New Testament into the vernacular, which formed the basis of his evangelism. Similarly dedicated men and women rallied to him, and this ideal of illiterate lay folk living in simple poverty was given the approval of Pope Alexander III at the Third Lateran Council (1179). The pope added a condition, however, that they must obtain the permission and supervision of local church authorities before engaging in preaching. The Waldensians spread the message of the Bible and exalted the virtues of poverty, and by so doing were a living condemnation of the wealth and laxity of the established church. When the Archbishop of Lyons prohibited their scriptural preaching around 1181, the Waldensians responded by preaching even more zealously. The 1181 condemnation was echoed in an excommunication of 1184 at Verona, this time by Pope Lucius III, who also directed that the Waldensians and other similar groups should be eliminated by episcopal inquisition and secular punishment. In not much more than a decade, what had begun as an enthusiastic popular movement had been branded as heresy, though before long Waldo himself faded from the picture. The Waldensians fled from Lyons rather than submit, and started to organize as a church with bishops, priests, and deacons, eventually claiming to be the ‘true’ church. They spread throughout two regions of Europe notorious for unorthodox beliefs – Lombardy and Provence – also regions of Cathar strength. Their growth was something the reigning pope, Innocent III, would not allow. Heresy in Medieval Europe Although some Waldensians re-converted to the established church following a debate in 1207, and Innocent received them back and gave them his special protection, this success was not to be repeated. In 1214 he described the Waldensians as heretics and schismatics, and in 1215, at the great Fourth Lateran Council, Innocent III repeated the general denunciation of heretics, including Waldensians. Such outbursts by the pope only tended to convince the Waldensians themselves that the Catholic church was the ‘Whore of Babylon’, and need not be acknowledged. The Waldensians had expanded so far geographically and doctrinally that in 1218 they called a general council at Bergamo, Italy, where certain doctrinal differences between the Waldensians of Lombardy and France were discussed. By the end of the thirteenth century, although hounded by the newly-strengthened Inquisition, the Waldensians had infiltrated practically the whole of Europe except for Britain, and had become one of the most common and widespread persecuted movements. Waldensian beliefs The doctrines which distinguished the Waldensians, and which the church considered heretical, were many and varied, and some altered during the later Middle Ages. The greatest objection to the Waldensians – who began within the church – was that they ended by rejecting that church altogether. The unauthorized preaching of the Bible and rejection of the intermediary role of the clergy were the two issues which gained the Waldensians the description of heretics. One of the sources of their doctrines is a treatise written about 1320 by Bernard Gui, inquisitor in southern France at a time when the Waldensians were still among the strongest dissident movements. Writing as a critical outsider, Gui emphasized that the Waldensians rejected ecclesiastical authority, especially by their conviction that they were not subject to the pope or his decrees of excommunication. They rejected or re-interpreted all the Catholic sacraments except confession, absolution, and the eucharist. In theory, all Waldensian men or women could administer these sacraments, and the eucharist was usually held only once a year. There seems also to have been some kind of Waldensian baptism. All Catholic feast days, festivals, and prayers were rejected as human creations, not based upon the New Testament, excepting Sundays, the feast-day of Mary, and the Lord’s Prayer. Gui accused them of setting themselves up as an alternative church in which the ‘priest’ was simply the good individual, rather than someone in clerical orders, which seemed to him more serious than the other Waldensian hallmark, and of missionary preaching in the local language. Gui also noted the refusal of Waldensians to take oaths, except under special circumstances, since they said the Bible prohibited this. The Waldensians also denied purgatory, for which they could find no basis in the New Testament, leading them also to reject the Catholic belief in the value of prayers for the dead. For the Waldensians, if the dead were in hell they were beyond hope and, if in heaven, they had no need of prayer. Similar reasoning led them to reject prayers to images of the saints. As to organization, Gui found the Waldensians to be divided into superiors and ordinary believers, a distinction similar to that among the Cathars. The superiors were expected to lead more austere lives, depend on the alms of their followers, and evangelize as wandering preachers in the tradition of the apostles. The points noted by Inquisitor Gui in the fourteenth century were repeatedly brought out by other later inquisitors well into the fifteenth century, with certain features apparently becoming more radical. For example, by 1398 the Waldensians were accused of rejecting all the physical trappings traditionally associated with the church: buildings, cemeteries, altars, holy water, liturgies, pilgrimages, and indulgences. The trend towards radicalism also appears in their rejection of all ‘saints’ not named in the New Testament. Where Waldensians prospered Although the Waldensians spread throughout Europe, they were strongest in central and eastern Europe. Waldensian beliefs themselves were sometimes influenced by contact with other dissident movements. In southern France, for example, the inquisitors often discovered that Cathar rejection of the created world was combined with the traditional Waldensian rejection of the established church. French Waldensians continued to be harassed to the end of the Middle Ages, culminating in a crusade against them in 1488 in the Dauphiné. In Italy they likewise continued to hold out against the Inquisition, taking refuge especially in Piedmont, where they were also attacked in 1488. They go about in twos, barefoot, in woollen garments, owning nothing, holding all things in common like the apostles. the WaldenSianS appear in rome in 1179 In their main region – central and eastern Europe – their work was later to influence the course of the Reformation. The inquisitors were active and – at least when papal-imperial politics allowed it – successful in seeking out Waldensians throughout these areas in the later Middle Ages. Peter Zwicker and Martin of Prague, for example, were the leading persecutors in Bohemia, Moravia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Austria in the decades round about 1400. Other regions of central and eastern Europe, including northern Germany, Poland and Hungary, were similarly scoured by inquisitors in the later fourteenth century. During the fifteenth century, despite repeated campaigns against them, there was considerable coming and going of Waldensians in central Europe, and some interchange of ideas between the Bohemian Hussites, English Wyclifites who were also to be found in this area, and the Waldensians. Though there were sporadic attempts to unite Hussites and Waldensians, these failed because of fundamental differences in doctrine. Nevertheless, such activity provided the charged atmosphere in which the great religious changes of the sixteenth century would occur, when many Waldensian beliefs entered the mainstream of the Protestant movement. Ronald Finucane During the twelfth century, whole areas of Europe began to show tendencies either to purify (for example, the Waldensians), or to provide alternatives to (for example, the Cathars), the established church. Both these movements were persecuted by lay rulers as well as diocesan authorities; by the end of the twelfth century, the papacy had entered the battle against such disruptive groups. Pope Alexander III in 1162–63 suggested that lay and clerical informers who brought reports of heretics should be supplemented by officials who went out to discover evidence of heresy. He called upon lay rulers to combat heresy, and in the Third Lateran Council of 1179 announced a crusade against the Cathars of France. These efforts were not particularly effective. Alexander’s successor, Lucius III, decreed in 1184 that bishops should take action against heretics such as the Cathars, Patari, Humiliati, Waldensians, and Arnoldists. A particular characteristic of this decree, establishing the bishops’ inquisition, which was echoed in a contemporary imperial edict, was that a suspect, once convicted of being a heretic, was to be handed over to the secular arm for punishment. The death penalty was not yet official, although medieval heretics had been burned at the stake – often by mobs of lay people – at least from the early eleventh century. Innocent III further defined and extended the attitude of the papacy towards heresy. For example, Innocent was the first pope to talk about heresy in terms of ‘treason’ (1199). By his time the Cathars had spread widely in France and Italy, and he found it difficult to rouse local bishops to stamp out their dualistic doctrines. He sent Cistercians into the Midi region of France, with little success. He then sent others, more devoted to preaching and exemplary living, including Dominic Guzman, whose followers – the Dominicans – were to become the foremost order of the Inquisition. Innocent’s successor, Pope Honorius III (1216–27), allowed the Albigensian Crusade to intensify, assisted by the French King Louis VIII, who in 1226 issued an ordinance under which bishops would judge, and French law punish, heretics. Emperor Frederick II had issued a similar decree in 1220, and in 1224 he ordered the burning of heretics. When in 1231 another great pope, Gregory IX (1227–41), in Excommunicamus, issued further decrees against heretics, and repeated this law of 1224. Execution by the secular authorities had finally and officially become papal policy. Under Gregory the Inquisition as a church institution was practically completed, and the new orders of friars, especially Dominicans, had become its favoured papal agents. The finishing touches were supplied by Pope Innocent IV (1243–54) who, in the bull Ad extirpanda (1252), incorporated all earlier papal statements about the organization of the Inquisition, as well as condoning the use of torture. What was the Inquisition? The Inquisition was a special court with a peculiar power to judge intentions as well as actions. It was made up of several officials, who assisted inquisitors in various ways: delegates – examiners who handled preliminary investigations and formalities; the socius – a personal adviser and companion to the inquisitor; familiars – guards, prison visitors, and secret agents; and notaries, who carefully collected evidence and filed it efficiently for present and future instances of suspected heresy. Usually a few dozen councillors were present, but since the inquisitor was not bound to follow their advice, their role was often merely formal. The bishop, too, would be represented, even though there was not always co-operation between bishops and inquisitors. As to classifying suspected heretics, the widest and most vague description would be applied in the first instance, and eventually specialized phrases came to be used. Distinctions were made between heretics who had additional beliefs and those who denied orthodox beliefs, and between perfected and imperfect heretics; or again, since mere suspicion was sufficient cause to be summoned, individuals were classified as lightly suspect, vehemently suspect, or violently suspect. The web was carefully woven, and it was often simpler to confess than to try to defend oneself. The inquisitor or his vicar would arrive suddenly, deliver a sermon to the townspeople calling for reports of anyone suspected of heresy, and for all who felt heresy within themselves to come forth and confess, within a period of grace. This was the ‘general inquisition’. When the period of grace expired, the ‘special inquisition’ began, with a summons to suspected heretics who were detained until trial. At this trial the inquisitor had complete control as judge, prosecutor, and jury. The proceedings were not public, evidence from two witnesses was sufficient, and it was usually possible to learn only the general nature of the charges. The names of witnesses, who might be of most questionable character, were equally difficult to discover. The suspect was not allowed a defence lawyer or, rather, lawyers quickly discovered that defence of a suspected heretic might result in their own summons to the holy tribunal. Certain pleas might be accepted as an alternative to admitting the charges; for example, ignorance, or that the charge was brought by malice – but since the suspect did not know the names of his accusers, he could at best merely provide the court with a list of individuals whom he suspected of such hatred towards him. Trials might continue for years, during which the suspect could languish in prison. Torture was a most effective means to secure repentance. Though it could not be repeated, torture could be continued, and though torture of children and old people had to be relatively light, only pregnant women were exempt – until after delivery. ‘Penance’ following confession might be light, such as the hearing of a number of masses, or, more commonly, pilgrimage to specific local or distant shrines, where scourging might be prescribed. Confessed heretics were sometimes forced to wear symbols denoting their fallen state, such as crosses of special design and colour. Penitents might instead (or in addition) be fined or have their property confiscated. In some countries, heirs who were not heretics might subsequently recover these lands. A sentence to the inquisitorial prison was among the heaviest of penances, and degrees of detention were specified as open or strict. Besides loss of liberty, heretics suffered civil ‘death’, and were disqualified from holding office or making legal contracts. In many cases sentences could be cut for a price. But the papacy found this and many of the other penances too harsh or extortionate, and at times particular inquisitors were directed to cool their ardour. For a final group of heretics, the ‘unreconciled’ – classified as insubordinate, impenitent, or relapsed – a much more terrible fate was in store. The first two categories could still save themselves from the flames, to suffer less severe punishment. But for the last, especially after the middle of the thirteenth century, the only possibility was death at the stake. This the Inquisition entrusted to the secular authorities, which pronounced and carried out the sentence, since the church could not shed blood. Where did the Inquisition succeed? The success of the Inquisition varied from one region to another, depending upon political relations with the papacy and the amount of co-operation given by local church dignitaries. Its influence was affected by events such as the Avignon ‘Captivity’ of the papacy and the papal Schism. In Spain the Inquisition had come under secular control as early as 1230, but it was not until 1480 that the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella made the Spanish Inquisition a royal instrument with its centre at Madrid. This near-independence in Spain produced a unique institution, which remained very influential until the nineteenth century. In Germany, papal and imperial feuds meant that the course of the Inquisition never ran smoothly. Conrad of Marburg (1195–1233) is perhaps the best-known of thirteenth-century inquisitors; his reign of terror resulted in his murder. In the middle of the fourteenth century further attempts to enforce inquisitorial procedure in Germany met with little success, and by the end of the fifteenth century the papacy allowed Germany church dignitaries to oversee the Inquisition. France was the scene of extensive activity by the Inquisition. Though the Cathars were of little importance after the mid-fourteenth century, constant demands were made upon the Inquisition. For example, after the condemnation of the Franciscan Spirituals in 1317, the Inquisition in Languedoc directed its energies against them and in 1318 four Spirituals were executed at Marseilles. The Beguines, too, came under attack, and some were executed about 1320; but the Waldensians proved more elusive. Northern France, too, saw some inquisitorial activity. The Inquisitor Robert le Bougre, ‘Hammer of the Heretics’, active during the 1230s, was himself imprisoned by the pope for an excess of zeal, after rampaging through northern France in search of heretics. In the fourteenth century the north European Brethren of the Free Spirit suffered some executions, but after the mid-fourteenth century the French Parlement and the University of Paris tended to manipulate the Inquisition for political ends. During the fifteenth century, pressure from the Inquisition declined generally except for sporadic condemnations of those with Hussite views. Italy, too, had much business for the Inquisition, particularly against the Cathars, who were strong in the north. After the assassination of the Inquisitor Peter of Verona (1206–52) in 1252, the Dominican inquisitors in Lombardy were increased from four to eight. There was much local resistance to this papal institution in those states which had a tradition of political independence. Venice especially resented the intrusion of the Inquisition, and heresy remained a matter for the civil government of that powerful city-state. In the Papal States themselves, inquisitors found that any enemy of the pope was automatically suspected of heresy, but, on the other hand, in the Alps the Waldensians managed to survive through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries despite harassment. In two countries, England and Bohemia, the Inquisition made little impact. Heresy became a problem in England with Wyclif’s doctrinal and the Lollards’ political-social movements of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. But the fact that Parliament passed a statute in 1401 for the burning of heretics indicates how little reference there was to the Inquisition, since according to church law, such a statute was superfluous. Although inquisitors entered Bohemia in 1318, little headway was made during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the independent atmosphere before the Hussites. In both England and Bohemia the political situation clearly restricted the effectiveness of the Inquisition. Inquisitors were not all agitated zealots like Conrad of Marburg; many were well-educated and devoted to what they considered their duty. But some have earned the reputation of being sadists or thieves, depending on whether you are appalled by torture or disgusted by the unjust seizure of heretics’ property. It is well to remember that ‘the same widespread and fervent breath of reform that made people long to go on pilgrimages, to enter ascetic monasteries, and to become mystics also impelled them to attack and murder heretics and Jews and to undertake holy wars against the Moslems.’ 1 Weathered stone statues on the West façade of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Chartres, mainly built between 1194 and 1250, and one of the finest examples of the French High Gothic architectural style. Tim Dowley Associates The growth of learning The stability and optimism reflected in the papal reform movement also resulted in the growth of learning and of the universities. Education during the age of Charlemagne and the tenth and eleventh centuries was carried on mainly by the monasteries and cathedral schools, the former being more prominent until the eleventh century. A learned monk was appointed to teach novices (new monks) and when he was a famous scholar, adult monks from other houses would come to study under him. Other young men from well-to-do families would also be sent to study under the monastic tutor, and many of these would join the clergy or take up secular work. The Sacraments in Medieval Europe During the second five hundred years of the Christian era in the West, the doctrines of baptism and communion developed considerably – both in a slightly ‘magical’ direction. Baptism was greatly affected by Augustine’s controversy with Pelagius and his followers, as the doctrine of original sin, which Augustine set out, made it vital for the church to believe in the necessity of baptism for salvation. People took this to imply that unbaptized infants who died went to hell, or at least to ‘limbo’, on the borders of hell. The high rate of infant mortality at this period led to baptism being carried out within minutes of birth, often by midwives. (A carry-over survives to this day, when newborn infants are in danger of death.) During this same period Western Europe came to be regarded as ‘Christendom’ – a Christian society. As a result virtually all baptisms were of infants, with this new and enormous pressure to baptize quickly. The older tradition of Easter baptisms ceased, and it also became impossible for the bishop to lay on hands (or anoint) at baptism. Indeed, in the larger dioceses of France and Britain, this practice was often neglected entirely, so that many people were never ‘confirmed’ at all. Aquinas even argued that confirmation was not necessary for ordination. By 1000, more and more people believed that, at communion, the sign is itself that which it signifies (the ‘realist’ position). A controversy concerning the use of unleavened bread (azymes) in the eighth century standardized the use of wafers at communion in the Western Church. Ratramnus in the ninth century was one of the last writers to describe the elements at the eucharist as ‘symbols’, but his book was condemned in 1050. He opposed Paschasius, who took the ‘realist’ doctrine a long step further towards transubstantiation. The last opponent of this trend was Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century, whose denials of ‘realism’ provoked further definitions (for example, by Lanfranc who opposed him). Transubstantiation was finally adopted as orthodox at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, teaching that the underlying, permanent reality of the bread and wine are changed at consecration into Christ’s body and blood. The sacraments systematized Meanwhile the sacraments were increasingly organized as a system. Hugh of St Victor in the early twelfth century still listed thirty sacraments, following Augustine’s pattern. But his contemporary, Peter Lombard, in The Sentences, produced a tightly organized scheme of seven sacraments (which he divided off from the lesser ‘sacramentals’). Lombard’s views were pronounced orthodox by the Fourth Lateran Council, and his system finally entrenched by Aquinas, who expounded it in his Summa Theologiae. Lombard’s seven sacraments are baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, ordination, and matrimony. Their distinctive mark is that they are outward signs of inward grace, and were instituted by Christ. Lombard and Aquinas taught that the sacraments confer grace simply by being performed (ex opere operato). People receiving them can, through unbelief, create a barrier to grace – though this is of course impossible for an unconscious infant or a dying person. The new system left many problems unsolved. The question as to where and how Christ had instituted these seven sacraments was left to the Reformers to discuss. Meanwhile the nature of the outward sign of the sacraments came under discussion. The Council of Florence (1438–45) defined the outward sign at ordination as the handing on of the paten and chalice to candidates for priest’s orders. During this period, too, came the idea that a ‘seal’ was made indelibly on the soul by the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and ordination; this was held to make them unrepeatable. This was a logical conclusion from Augustine’s claim that Donatist baptism was valid, and thus did not need repeating when Donatists were reconciled to the Catholic Church. The doctrine of the eucharist was developed after the Fourth Lateran Council. Aquinas discussed it in terms of Aristotelian categories, and the doctrine of transubstantiation itself gave rise to new emphases: the building up to a climax of adoration in the rite; an increase in devotions outside the liturgy; the new feast of Corpus Christi (‘the body of Christ’); and the barring of lay people from receiving the wine (lest the spilling of transubstantiated wine should occur and cause scandal). Theories were developed that, through the offering of Christ himself under the forms of bread and wine in the sacrifice of the mass, atonement was made for both the living and the dead, which in turn led to the later medieval proliferation of masses for the dead. Colin Buchanan By the twelfth century, the cathedral schools had surpassed the monastic establishments, and the chief cathedral dignitary after the bishop and dean was the chancellor, who taught the seven liberal arts and theology to the advanced students. Other teachers would instruct the younger scholars in Latin grammar. Students in these schools were generally destined for service as clerics. A licence to teach, given by the chancellor, was the predecessor of a university degree. During the eleventh century the leading cathedral schools in northern Europe were at Laon, Paris, Chartres, and Cologne. Debates were carried on that reawakened intellectual life in Europe and helped expand the vocabulary and depth of Christian thought. Their thinking was carried on against the background of what had gone before – the classical philosophy of ancient Greece, the Bible, and the teaching of the early Christian writers. One of the significant controversies involved Berengar (c. 999–1088), a pupil of Fulbert of Chartres, who became the teacher in the cathedral school of Tours. Discussion revolved around the meaning of the words of consecration in the mass, ‘This is my body, this is my blood.’ Berengar held that a real and true change takes place in these elements, but that the change is spiritual, and that the bread and wine remain of the same substance. Lanfranc and other theologians debated with him, believing that the underlying substance of the bread and wine was changed to Christ’s blood and body, while the ‘accidents’ (touch, taste, sight, and smell) of the bread and wine remained the same. During a long and bitter controversy (1045–80) the term ‘transubstantiation’ emerged and took on Lanfranc’s definition. Berengar was condemned and forced to disown his views. Atonement Another controversy concerned Christ’s work on the cross. How was it that the death of Christ could work a reconciliation between God and man? Before the eleventh century the dominant teaching on this subject was as old as Origen, who believed that through sin mankind had made itself subject to the devil, and that the mark of this subjection was death. God in his grace wished to free men, but he was unable to because the devil’s claim was just. To neutralize Satan’s claim, a ransom had to be paid in the form of a valuable person over whom Satan had no right – a sinless person. Thus the devil was tricked when Christ was crucified, because the Son of God was sinless; now God can with justice save whomsoever he pleases. Anselm Anselm (1033–1109), one of the great archbishops of Canterbury, is today remembered chiefly as a philosopher and a theologian. Anselm was part of the Norman conquest of England. Taking monastic vows in 1060, he succeeded Lanfranc as prior of Bec, in Normandy, in 1063. Thirty years later he succeeded Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury. His time as archbishop was marked by conflict with King William II (Rufus, r. 1087–1100) and his successor Henry I (1100–35), and he was exiled more than once. As archbishop, he was known as a reformer, encouraging regular church synods, enforcing clerical celibacy, and suppressing the slave trade. Anselm was one of the early scholastic theologians. He taught that faith must lead to the right use of reason: ‘I believe, in order that I may understand.’ It was Anselm who first put forward the ‘ontological argument’ for the existence of God, an attempt to prove God’s existence by reason alone, starting with the idea of the most perfect being … God is ‘that than which no greater can be conceived’. But if ‘that than which no greater can be conceived’ is greatest in every respect except for existence, then clearly it would be inferior to the greatest being which did actually exist. Anselm himself expressed the argument in several different forms. Even today it is the subject of intense debate among the philosophers. But most thinkers agree that it contains something of a conjuring trick, for it treats existence as if it were a quality which a thing may or may not have. The thing is either there or not there. And the only way of knowing is to ask for some tangible evidence. Anselm’s greatest work of theology was his Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man). Anselm replied that sin runs up a debt with God which humans can never themselves repay, but Christ’s death was of such worth that it ‘satisfied’ God’s offended majesty and earned a reward. Hence the Father gives humanity salvation on account of the merits of Christ. Anselm’s work showed deep insight into humanity’s need of atonement, but expressed it in terms of the thinking of his day. The New Testament speaks of Christ dying for humanity; Anselm tried to explain it by means of medieval ideas of merit and rewards. Colin Brown I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand: for this I also believe, that unless I believe I will not understand. Anselm of Canterbury This theory was challenged by Anselm of Canterbury in Cur Deus Homo (Why God became Man). He argued that when a person sins, he or she breaks the order of the universe and is alienated from God. Because he is just, God must be given satisfaction for sin before he can forgive the sinner. Christ was sinless, sent by the mercy of God; thus he was able to offer to God the satisfaction owed by the human race. This explanation was widely accepted in Europe, and changed the entire understanding of the incarnation and atonement. Peter Abelard A dynamic, popular teacher, Peter Abelard’s life was one of constant personal turmoil and confrontation with authority. Born in Brittany in 1079, Abelard studied as a young man with some of the most respected theologians of his day. However, he soon became convinced he knew more than his teachers, arrogantly challenging and quarrelling with them on a variety of subjects. He finally withdrew to set up his own lectures, to which enthusiastic students flocked. A brilliant lecturer and slashing debater, Abelard’s reputation grew until he became known as Paris’s brightest intellectual star. However, his celebrated love affair with the beautiful and talented Héloise almost shattered his academic career and cut short his intellectual influence. In 1115, at the age of thirty-six, Abelard agreed to tutor the teenage niece of Fulbert, a canon of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. A relationship developed, which resulted in a son called Astrolabe. When the scandal broke, Héloise retired to a local convent and Fulbert hired some thugs to castrate Abelard. Following this humiliation, Abelard became a Benedictine monk, but soon resumed teaching and once again became involved in controversy. In 1121, the Council of Soissons condemned his views on the Trinity without a hearing. For the next twenty years Peter Abelard lived a harassed existence, constantly on the move, and followed by large numbers of students. Finally, around 1136, he returned to Paris, where he enjoyed renewed popularity and wrote several important works. In 1141, several statements selected from his writings were condemned at the Council of Sens. Abelard decided to appeal to the pope, but died near Cluny on his way to Rome in 1142. Abelard was the major Christian thinker of his period. Particularly after becoming a monk, he struggled with many of the problems that were to emerge as major theological issues in the next centuries. Abelard’s book Sic et Non (Yes and No) (1122) set the stage for discussing the relationship between faith and reason in Christian theology. Also, by pointing out that established authorities often conflicted, Abelard called attention to the fact that they needed to be systematized, clarified, and reconciled. He believed genuine Christianity was both reasonable and consistent, and his desire to reconcile faith and reason in the context of Christian theology set the stage for the work of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. One of the pioneers of scholasticism, Abelard also wrote poems, hymns, and an autobiography. Robert D. Linder Peter Abelard Possibly the leading figure of the schools of Europe in the period just before the founding of the universities was Peter Abelard, who studied in Paris with two teachers of logic: Roscelin, the leading Nominalist, and William of Champeaux, a Realist philosopher. Later Abelard left Paris temporarily for Laon, where he studied theology with Anselm. It was probably Abelard’s methods more than his conclusions that upset many important medieval church leaders. He stated: ‘The first key to wisdom is this constant and frequent questioning … For by doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.’ Using this approach, Abelard wrote Sic et Non (Yes and No) in which he demonstrated that tradition and authority alone were not sufficient to answer such questions as: ‘Is God omnipotent?’, ‘Do we sin without willing it?’ and, ‘Is faith based upon reason?’ He quoted authorities on both sides and left the contradictions unresolved. Faith has no merit with God when it is not the testimony of divine authority that leads us to it, but the evidence of human reason. Peter Abelard A pupil of Abelard, Peter Lombard (1100–60), used reason to answer many of the same questions in his book, The Sentences, a popular theological textbook of the Middle Ages. This scholastic technique of setting up contradictory statements about a problem, and then resolving them by reason, was also used by Thomas Aquinas. The scholastic method was also popularized in the twelfth century by Gratian in his systematizing of canon law in the Decretum. In this great work, he would state a law and, if it was not contradicted, it was allowed to stand. But if there were opposing statements, he tried to reconcile them through logic. This law code, as applied by church courts, was to guide the Christian on earth. Certain cases involving personal offences were to be tried in church courts, and any crime committed by a clergyman was to be punished by canon law courts. There was a large area of overlap between secular and church courts, which led to tension between monarchs and the church during the Middle Ages. The universities arise The cathedral schools culminated in the foundation of the first universities. The term universitas was used to describe a guild or corporation of teachers or scholars who might band together in self-defence against the town in which they were located, or to discipline lazy or profligate students (or professors). A city with a well-known cathedral might become the centre for a great number of schools. At first scholars would rent rooms and students would pay to come and listen to their lectures. Guilds of professors organized the universities of northern Europe, while in Italy it was the students who formed the guilds. The first universities obtained a charter from the pope; those established later applied to the secular ruler. The gradual development of universities makes it difficult to date them, but a list of the first universities would include Bologna, Paris, Salerno, Oxford, Cambridge, Montpellier, Padua, Salamanca, and Toulouse. The universities taught the seven liberal arts – a late Roman system of knowledge thought necessary to make an educated person. Although these included grammar, logic, and rhetoric (together the ‘three ways’, trivium) as well as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the ‘four ways’, quadrivium), the teaching of logic or philosophy tended to dominate the undergraduate curriculum. Graduate faculties taught medicine, law, and theology. The curriculum Medieval universities were relatively small by modern standards, the largest having between 3,000 and 4,000 students. At Paris, the most famous, a boy could begin his studies at the age of twelve, but the privilege of lecturing in theology was not granted until a man (there were, of course, no female students) was thirty-five. The only entrance requirement was a knowledge of Latin; the first four years’ studies consisted of the liberal arts. The next two years’ work consisted of study, a teaching assistantship, thesis defence and culminated in the MA degree. This enabled a student to go on to study law, medicine, or theology. At Paris, if he decided to earn the DD (Doctor of Divinity) degree in theology, he would spend six years studying the Bible and Peter Lombard’s systematic theology (The Sentences). Finally, three years’ study of the writings of the early church theologians and the Bible led to the STD (Doctor of Sacred Theology), which qualified the scholar to teach theology in the same way as the MA entitled him to teach the arts. The Church and Learning: 1100–1700 Students paid their fees to each professor as they left his class; in return they received the reading of a text and the teacher’s comments upon the book. This method was necessary because hand-copied books were rare and expensive; it could take over a year to copy the Bible. Most students could own only one or two books, and the lecturer had to dictate their textbooks to them. Later, comments of the outstanding lecturers were incorporated into the dictated materials. Since parchment was expensive, the student often had to remember the lesson. Students at first settled in rented rooms but, beginning in the thirteenth century, colleges were founded, where they could live cheaply, with some regulation by the older students and professors. At Paris the most famous college was the Sorbonne, founded in 1256. England modelled its universities, Oxford and Cambridge, on Paris. The colleges at these two universities resembled the groups of canons of a cathedral, where clerics lived together under a rule. The religious origins of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge are evident in the way that their chapels are arranged in a similar manner to a monastic chapel, with facing choir stalls. Although the professors and students at medieval universities were supposed to be clerics, their conduct suggests their minds were often on other matters. Aristotle rediscovered Scholastics tried by means of reason to reconcile the Christian revelation with Aristotle’s philosophy, which was transmitted to western Europe through the Muslims and Jews of Spain and southern Italy. One of the earlier controversies resulting from the rediscovery of Aristotle concerned the problem of universals. In the early Middle Ages Platonic idealism prevailed: the view that in God’s mind there are ‘ideas’, perfect forms or essences, such as chair, man, honour, and tree, and that the individual things which people actually perceive correspond to these ‘ideas’. Defenders of the Platonic position were called ‘realists’ because they believed in the reality of these ‘ideas’ or ‘universals’; they were challenged by ‘nominalists’, who maintained that ‘universals’ were only useful ‘names’ for talking about the world. Abelard suggested a middle position between these two, stating that universals are ideas formed in the mind by abstracting characteristics which really do apply to the objects sensed. This view enabled Western minds to appreciate the more advanced work of Aristotle (On the Soul, Physics, and Metaphysics), which became available by 1200. The shock of these new ideas is difficult to exaggerate, and is comparable with the impact of Darwin’s theories in the nineteenth century. Aristotle presented a complete explanation of reality, without any reference to a personal God. He challenged Christian and Muslim theology, and strained Jewish faith too. All these beliefs were confronted by a system which taught that matter and form were eternal, that there was no individual immortality apart from the body, and that no cosmic progress was possible – rather, history was an endless cycle of existence, striving to be like the ‘Unmoved Mover’, but never reaching its goal. Muslims had to come to terms with Aristotle earlier than the West. Since the work of Islamic scholars such as Averroes (Ibn-Rusd, 1126–98) accompanied Aristotle to Western Europe, it is important to notice the intellectual turmoil caused by his thought in Islam. Among Muslim scholars one of those who tried to come to terms with Aristotle was Al-Ghazali (1058–1111). Although at first he tried to reconcile faith and reason, he later interpreted philosophical concerns as antagonistic to religious belief and wrote a book entitled The Incoherence of the Philosophers, condemning Aristotle’s theory of knowledge. Averroes replied proposing a ‘double-truth’ outlook – that philosophy is one category of truth, and theology deals in quite another kind of reality. Some Christian scholars, among them Siger of Brabant (c. 1240–84), followed Averroes, while others felt that Aristotle should be banned. Albert, Aquinas, and Aristotle Most Christian schoolmen, or ‘scholastics’, tried to come to terms with the new knowledge. Two of the most famous of these were Albert the Great and his pupil Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Impressed by Aristotle’s philosophy, yet a profound Christian, Thomas harmonized, at least to his own satisfaction, faith and reason. Accepting Aristotle as a guide in reason, and Scripture as the rule of faith, Aquinas believed there was a meaningful relationship between the two. Revelation, he felt, supplements but never contradicts reason. A sample of Aquinas’ application of this method to the problem suggested by Aristotelian logic is his discussion concerning the providence of God. Aristotle had stated that God (or the ‘Unmoved Mover’) neither knows nor cares about the world; yet the Bible states frequently that God is intimately concerned with his creation. Thomas explained this was not a real contradiction because God, as the Maker of the world, is its ultimate cause, and knows of the effects of this creation. Since he knows everything in himself, he knows of the whole creation. Also, because he created time, his knowledge of his work is eternal. Proceeding in this fashion, Thomas explained in as logical a way as possible the doctrines of immortality, creation, and judgment. He made a clear distinction between the way knowledge is gained in the present world, and what an individual learns after death. In this world, knowledge is gained through experience, either directly or indirectly; but in heaven an individual will learn through mystic knowledge. He stated that the apostles and prophets were privileged individuals, who could experience God in a mystic fashion before their death, but that this knowledge was limited to them. By distinguishing in this way between sense experience and heavenly knowledge, Thomas differentiated clearly between science and the Christian hope. Not all medieval scholastics followed the method of Aquinas. Bonaventura (1221–74), governor-general of the Franciscans and professor of theology at Paris, taught that rational knowledge of God is impossible, because God is different from a human being in quality as well as quantity. Thus, knowledge of God can only be equivocal, hazy, and by analogy. God is experienced by an individual when he or she withdraws from the world and seeks reflections or shadows of God in material things. Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), the greatest scholastic theologian of the Middle Ages, was born into a wealthy noble family in Aquino, Italy. Thomas was a fat, slow, pious boy who at the age of five was sent to the abbey of Monte Cassino. At the age of fourteen he went to study at the University of Naples. Impressed by his Dominican teacher, he decided to enter that order. His family was angered by his decision, and tried to dissuade him by tempting him with a prostitute, kidnapping him, and offering to buy him the post of Archbishop of Naples. All of these attempts were unsuccessful and he went to study at Paris. Although nicknamed the ‘Dumb Ox’ because of his bulk, seriousness, and slowness, Thomas demonstrated his brilliance in public disputation. He studied under Albert the Great in Paris and Cologne, returning to Paris in 1252, and spent the rest of his life teaching there and in Italy. A prolific writer, Thomas’s works fill eighteen large volumes. They include commentaries on most of the books of the Bible and on Peter Lombard’s The Sentences, discussions of thirteen works of Aristotle, and a variety of disputations and sermons. His two most important works are the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles. Together they represent an encyclopedic summary of Christian thought, the first based on revelation, and the second designed to support Christian belief with human reason. Both works use Aristotelian logic in unfolding the connections and implications of revealed truth. Thomas was challenged by secular Aristotelian thought, which came to Western Europe through the Muslims in Spain. Although an enthusiastic student of the new knowledge, he insisted on separating what was acceptable to Christianity from what was not. Following Aristotle, Thomas emphasized that all human knowledge originates in the senses. Aquinas stressed that philosophy is based on data accessible to all; theology only on revelation and logical deduction from revelation. His famous ‘Five Ways’ were attempts to prove God’s existence by reasoning based on what can be known from the world. But this ‘natural theology’ teaches very little about God, and nothing that is not also clear in Scripture. He developed one of the most internally-consistent systems of thought ever devised, but it did not receive universal acceptance even in his own day. Some of his statements were condemned by the University of Paris in 1277, and a group of scholars, including Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, criticized him for not recognizing that reason and revelation often contradict one another. Years later, however, Thomas’s work gained a prominence in Roman Catholic thought which it has retained. At the Council of Trent (1543–63) the Roman Catholic reformers used the works of Aquinas in drafting their decrees; and in 1879 the pope declared Thomism (Aquinas’s theology) eternally valid. Robert G. Clouse Another group of Franciscans, led by Roger Bacon (c. 1214–92) and Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168–1253), resisted Aquinas’ method and laid the groundwork for modern science in their experimental studies of the behaviour of light, prisms, rainbows, and mirrors. These scholars emphasized observation, experiment, and the use of measurement for understanding the world. Bacon came to recognize the practical possibilities of his studies, dreaming of a world in which the pope would have an army equipped with new types of weapon that could destroy with one blow the Islamic armies and bring peace to the world. Church-building boom The most important area of artistic achievement during the Middle Ages was the churches – and the sculpture and painting associated with them. Two building styles predominated during this period, the Romanesque and the Gothic. The Romanesque style, named after the Romans, appeared in a great burst of church construction during the eleventh century, which produced an estimated 1,587 new buildings in France alone. These massive churches were richly decorated. The wooden roof (a fire hazard) was replaced by a thick half-cylinder of stone called a barrel vault, whose weight forced the builders to construct uniform, heavy walls. Because of the need to support the roof, windows had to be few and small, and the structures tended to be dark inside. In an attempt to brighten the interior, churches were hung with tapestries or painted in bright colours, with gilding or jewels used on statues, chalices, and reliquaries. Free-standing stone sculpture, which had not been used in the West since the fifth century, was re-introduced to lighten the heavy effect of Romanesque construction. The desire to develop a free and less monotonous appearance led architects to use cross-vaulting down the nave, which transferred the weight of the roof to a series of posts or pilasters. The Romanesque style emphasized horizontal lines, and tended to give the worshipper a feeling of repose and solidity. The shift to Gothic The shift in style from Romanesque to Gothic is not essentially a matter of dates, as the forms overlap. Romanesque reached its peak in 1150 and continued into the thirteenth century; while Gothic originated in 1137 and reached its climax about 1250. Gothic first appeared in the construction of the Church of St Denis in Paris (1137–44), under the direction of Suger, adviser to kings Louis VI and Louis VII of France. Wishing to build a fitting tribute both to the Franks and to Dionysius (Denis), the supposed founder of the monastery, Suger created a building of great beauty and originality. Characterized by delicacy, detail, and light, the Gothic style places the support needed for the structure outside the walls, in the form of flying-buttresses. The pointed arch, another innovation of Gothic construction, made it possible to build a very tall structure which emphasized vertical lines, and caused people who entered to share a feeling of striving upwards towards heaven. The builders of Gothic churches, like the medieval theologians who set up their arguments in a straight-forward manner, aimed for a structural explicitness; that is, they wanted all to see how their buildings were constructed. In the following century, rivalry arose to see which city could build the highest cathedral structure. Notre Dame de Paris soared to 114ft/34.8m; Chartres to 123ft/37.5m; and Amiens to 138ft/42.1m. Beauvais tried to reach 157ft/47.9m, but the vault collapsed and the city ran out of money trying to rebuild it. These churches were light in two ways; because of the design, the stone-work seemed to lose its massive weightiness, and the stained-glass windows constituted a vast wall of colour, dispelling darkness. Not only the windows were works of art; the pillars, doors, and every possible part of the cathedral were sculpted. The bishop acted as the patron or sponsor of a new cathedral, but practical oversight of the building was the task of the chapter. They had to arrange for adequate supplies of stone and timber and engage the services of a ‘master’, who acted as both architect and clerk of works. The master was generally a stone-mason with a practical knowledge of his craft, who had also learnt some geometry and how to draw up plans. He supervised not only the masons but also the work of the master-carpenter, the master-smith and the other skilled workers. Capable masters were much in demand and therefore in a position to bargain. The west façade of Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, France, a fine example of French gothic architecture, where building commenced in 1163 and was completed in 1345. Severely damaged during the French Revolution, the church was subsequently extensively renovated. Tim Dowley Associates The medieval cathedral Medieval artistic achievement reached its height in the Gothic cathedral, which combined the medieval version of a place of worship, theatre, art gallery, school, and library. The original purpose of a cathedral was to provide a church in which the bishop and his household of priests could celebrate the mass and sing the daily services. Gradually the bishop became taken up with the administration of his diocese – and often he was also employed on the king’s business. He visited his cathedral only on special occasions. The household of priests became the ‘chapter’ of the cathedral, and took over its administration and services. The cathedral itself was developed in size and magnificence far beyond what was needed for its original purpose. The bishop’s church became a screened enclosure within a very much larger structure, which came to be a house of many rooms. There was the room known as the chancel or choir, containing the high altar, the bishop’s cathedra, and stalls for the clergy, who sang the daily services. The other main room, known as the nave, provided for the religious needs of the people: a nave altar for mass, a font for baptisms, and a pulpit for sermons. But there were many smaller rooms, in which side-altars were set up and at which masses were said for the dead. These were endowed either by wealthy individuals or by guilds of merchants and craftsmen. Since it was the house of people as well as the house of God, and because medieval art emphasized the unity of all knowledge, the cathedral was intended to be a mirror of the world. The carvings were naturalistic and detailed representations of beasts, Bible stories, and allegories of vices and virtues. The structure of society was represented in carvings of the hierarchies of both church and state, and portrayed ministers, knights, craftsmen, peasants, and tradesmen in various activities. In the windows of Chartres cathedral, no less than forty-three trades of the city are represented, while at Wells there is a vivid carving of a person with toothache! Theology was reflected in the structure of the building; the upward striving towards God; the cross-shape; and the altar situated in the east, facing Jerusalem. Every detail of the creed – from the Trinity to creation, and from the passion of Christ to the Last Judgment – appeared in sculpture and stained glass. The harmony represented by such a structure signified the ideals of medieval art and thought. Suger of St Denis kept an account of the work on his cathedral and when it was finished he described his reaction to it: I seemed to find myself, as it were, in some strange part of the universe which was neither wholly of the baseness of the earth, nor wholly of the serenity of heaven, but by the grace of God I seemed lifted in a mystic manner from this lower towards that upper sphere. But the cathedral was not used solely for religious purposes; as the largest building in the town it was a natural meeting-place for social activity and even trade. At Chartres the transepts of the cathedral served as a kind of labour exchange, and the crypt beneath the church was always open for the shelter of pilgrims and the sick. The sounds of services often mingled with the greetings of friends and the haggling of traders. A market would be established in the area of the cathedral, plays were staged on its steps, strangers slept there, and townsfolk would meet in the side-aisles. Mirror of Christian society Medieval artistic expression was essentially different from modern art. Today there is no generally accepted coherent system of goals and values, and the language of art is largely personal. Medieval art expressed a coherent system of values and a view of the universe based on an understanding of Christianity. Its purpose was to point to the spiritual reality that underlay the material world, and medieval artists used symbolism and allegory to present their ideas. Pictures, statues, architecture, poetry, hymns, legends, and the theatre were all used to teach those who could not read. The artists created a highly-developed system of symbols, whereby most things had a spiritual as well as a literal meaning. For example, fire represented martyrdom and/or religious fervour; a lily stood for chastity; an owl, the bird of darkness, often represented Satan; and a lamb stood for Christ, the sacrifice for sin. Expansion south and north The Crusades were only one of the ways in which Europeans responded to the non-Christian peoples who surrounded them. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Muslims lost much of their territory in the Iberian peninsula, most of the pagan peoples in the remainder of Europe were Christianized, and Christian missionaries went on preaching tours which took them as far as East Asia. In Spain, at the beginning of the eleventh century, Christian rule was confined to a narrow strip of states in the north, while the rest of the area was held by the Muslims. With the collapse of the Caliphate of Cordova (1034), Islamic power there came to an end. The tide of the Christian reconquest ebbed and flowed, but by the middle of the thirteenth century Muslims controlled only the small state of Granada in the far south. In the reconquered territories, Muslims were treated in a similar way to Christians under Islamic control. They were free to practise their own religion and culture, but suffered from civil disabilities, including the payment of special tithes and taxes. Under these circumstances, Islam declined and many of its adherents migrated to Africa, while others became Christians. The Franciscans and Dominicans were especially successful in winning Muslims to the church. Scandinavia Even before the flowering of medieval Christianity, attempts had been made to reach the Scandinavians for Christ. In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden conversion occurred as a community affair, following the royal lead, and resulted in greater control over the nobles by the kings. The impetus for missionary work in northern Europe came chiefly from England; the Viking conquests brought closer contact with the English, and the Scandinavians feared German political power. King Cnut (Canute) of Denmark (r. 1018–35), King Olaf I Tryggvason of Norway (r. 995–1000), and Olaf Skötkonung (r. 995–1021) of Sweden were responsible for introducing Christianity into their respective lands. Although these peoples were officially Christianized by their rulers’ actions, the church took several generations to instruct them in the faith and develop an organization. Monks and secular priests from abroad, the skalds (bards), and respected lay converts all helped spread the gospel. Diocesan boundaries usually paralleled political divisions, and by the close of the twelfth century each country had its own archbishop. Christianity revolutionized the Scandinavians’ way of life. Many resisted the new faith because marriage customs had to change, horsemeat (a Viking delicacy) could no longer be eaten, and church duties such as fasting, penance, and tithing were considered too burdensome. Despite pagan-inspired civil wars fought in opposition to both the monarchy and clergy, old customs gradually disappeared. The Viking fleets ceased to terrorize Europe, and more humane attitudes became characteristic of the descendants of the Norsemen. Into eastern Europe Another area that challenged Christian missionary enthusiasm was eastern Europe. The Russians were converted through their contact with Constantinople and the Orthodox Church. The Poles, Hungarians, and Bohemians were won to Latin Christianity. As in Scandinavia, it was the action of rulers that gave the gospel its opportunity. Wenceslaus of Bohemia (Czech, Václav, r. 921–35), Bolesław I Chrobry of Poland (r. 992–1025), and Stephen I of Hungary (r. 1001–38), encouraged by the German Church, based their rule on Christianity. As a result, a band of states depending on Germany for their culture arose along her eastern frontier. Many of the native people were oppressed farmers, who resented Christianity and the immigrant Germans who settled in the cities. These rural folk only gradually adopted Christianity, following decades of instruction, recruiting, and training of clergy, the development of dioceses and parishes, and the administration of the sacraments. By the early fourteenth century not only the Bohemians, Poles, and Hungarians but also the Wends (Slavs east of the River Elbe), Pomeranians, Lithuanians, Prussians, and Baltic peoples had adopted the Christian faith. The German-inspired push to the east might even have included the Russians, if the Teutonic knights, one of the agents of the conversion process, had not been defeated at the Battle of the Ice (or Battle of Lake Peipus, 1242) by the forces of the Republic of Novgorod. Missions to the East By this time Russia had been invaded by the Mongols and was cut off from the West and the creative ferment of early modern Europe. However the vast Mongol Empire, which extended from China to the Caucasus and from the frozen north to the Himalayas, provided the opportunity for many Franciscan friars to spread Christianity. Two Franciscans, John of Planocarpini and William of Rubriquis, travelled to the court of the Mongol Khan in China in about 1250. Others followed them to the east, preaching in Persia and India, as well as China. Their journeys met with such success that early in the fourteenth century a chain of Christian missions extended from Constantinople to Beijing, and it seemed at one time as if even the Mongol rulers might accept the Christian faith. This promising beginning did not lead to permanent results, however, since the western Mongols became Muslims and prevented the missionaries from travelling through their territories. Travel was made even more dangerous when the Mongol Empire broke up into many quarrelling states, while Western Europe itself lost its enthusiasm for mission during the fourteenth century as a result of wars, plague, and renewed arguments between secular and church power. Robert G. Clouse Popular Religion In the Middle Ages, popular religion concentrated on the less abstract expressions of faith. Particularly popular were veneration of the saints, especially the Virgin Mary, emphasis on relics and their shrines, pilgrimages, and heroic efforts to recapture the Holy Land. The ordinary Christian retained much of his or her pagan heritage, translated into Christian terms. The old spirit-shrines and pagan festivals became the new holy relics and holy days. Sophisticated theologians understood the absolute difference between the saints and the Trinity, but it is doubtful whether most lay people did. In the effort to achieve mass conversions during the Christianizing of Europe the church made ready use of festivals of pagan religion. It was easy to transfer the powerful character of pagan gods to Christian saints. Often pagan temples became Christian churches. The Virgin Mary The growth of popular devotion in the twelfth century greatly advanced the role of the Virgin Mary. She became the ‘universal mother’, the great intercessor with her divine Son, almost his rival. The universal authority of the Virgin was heightened by the belief that she was taken up body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life. This belief made it impossible to confine her cult in time and space in the same way as that of other saints. The introduction from the East of the rosary, with its prayers to the Virgin, gave additional support to her cult in the West. During the central Middle Ages emphasis was given to the humanity of Christ. The waves of devotion and emotion which swept Europe from the twelfth century onwards were fed by an increased interest in the life and death of the human Jesus. In this drama his mother became the central figure; the story of mother and son had great human appeal. Mary’s appeal was as the beloved mother and protectress of all men. No sin was too dreadful, no transgression too vile, to escape her compassionate pleading with her son on behalf of the sinner. Peasants, knights, and kings begged her help, and she became a romantic obsession. With the rise of the tradition of chivalry, the Virgin Mary became the focus of a romantic cult that it is difficult for the modern mind to appreciate. The great Gothic cathedrals cannot be fully understood until it is recalled that they were built partly as trophies for a beautiful woman, forever young, forever kind. Relics With the growth of popular devotion, the traffic in holy relics swelled. The desire to own a memento of a revered and powerful religious figure was universal. Every new church building needed a relic for its altar, and the official church kept a vast stock of them. Merchants carried splinters of the true cross to protect them from thieves. Knights concealed saints’ teeth, bones, or hair in their sword-hilts, while peasants bought drops of the Saviour’s bloody sweat and the Virgin’s milk at local fairs. Cities cherished – and stole from one another – the bodies of famous saints. Martin Luther’s patron, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, possessed a huge and valuable collection of relics. The Reformation saw the destruction of millions of such relics. Pilgrim Routes of Medieval Europe Pilgrimage Closely related to the adoration of relics and the cult of the saints was the passion for pilgrimage. The impulse to travel was fed partly by a belief that a visit to a great shrine could bring physical and spiritual healing. But there was also a new and restless desire to explore the mystical holy places and to experience the sights and smells of foreign places. When in april the sweet showers falland pierce the drought of march to the root, and all …then people long to go on pilgrimagesAnd palmers long to see the stranger strandsof far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,and specially, from every shire’s endin england, down to canterbury they wendto seek the holy blissful martyr, quickto give his help to them when they were sick…. chaucer, The Canterbury Tales Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were hard and dangerous, and consequently restricted to the very devout and those obliged to do particularly serious penances. The most popular Western shrines included Rome, Canterbury (Thomas Becket), and St James (Santiago) of Compostela in north-west Spain. Most pilgrimage routes were carefully arranged, with hostels spaced along the way, and a pilgrimage could be a light-hearted affair (witness Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales). Like modern tourists, pilgrims tended to travel in groups, gossiping, singing, and stopping at minor shrines along the way. The pilgrimage gave the faithful a combination of religious duty and holiday relaxation. Caroline T. Marshall Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity, Prophecy and Order NY, Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 1968 Chapter 19 Monasticism in the West In the centuries after 600, the monastic rule established by Benedict was gradually accepted throughout western Europe. In the earlier centuries, however, it always existed alongside other types of monastic life. The most important of these was Celtic monasticism, which, from its centres in Ireland, sent out missions to Britain and Europe. Irish monasticism was distinguished by an ascetic rigour, a high level of cultural attainment and, in organization, by the very subordinate position of the bishop. The great Irish missionary figures were Columba in Scotland and Columbanus (540–615), whose missionary work took place in the Rhineland and the Alps. Columbanus founded the abbeys of Luxeuil in Gaul (c. 590) and Bobbio in north Italy (612), both cultural centres of great importance, and was responsible for the introduction of much Celtic influence into continental monasticism. English missions to Europe However, it was monasticism based on the Benedictine rule that was to become the normal and, indeed, official form. In 600 this rule was simply one of many. The monasteries of Gaul, for example, were influenced by Eastern, Celtic, and Italian models. By the reign of Charlemagne (768–814), however, the Benedictine rule was universal within his domains. The rule had been taken to England by Wilfrid (634–709) and ultimately replaced the earlier influence of Celtic monasticism. From England missionary monks such as Boniface (Wynfrith) evangelized the pagan Germans, using the Benedictine monastery as the base for his work. The abbey of Fulda, founded under Boniface’s influence in 744, became a great cultural and religious centre in the following centuries. Later missionary work among the Slavs and Scandinavians made use of the monastery as a centre in a similar way. Monastic manuscripts The form of Benedictine monasticism widespread in Europe by the eighth century showed many differences from its early days. Increasingly monks were drawn from the nobility. It was common practice for nobles to ‘devote’ their sons and daughters to a monastery while still children. As a result of such changes, the monks’ share of manual work had been gradually reduced and replaced by liturgical and cultural activities. This concentration on scholarly and artistic work made the great monasteries of the eighth to the tenth centuries – such as Reichenau, St Gallen and Corbie – the cultural and educational centres of Europe. They possessed large libraries and their monks copied the manuscripts which were to transmit ancient literature and learning to later centuries. In fact, the great majority of ancient Latin prose and poetry comes down to us only via early medieval monastic manuscripts. The monks’ creative achievements were in the development of script and the illumination of manuscripts. In Ireland and Britain these beautiful works are best represented by the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels respectively. Celtic and British Missions to Europe Links with society Between the sixth and eighth centuries, too, the monasteries became far more closely linked with the society within which they existed. Their abbots and monks were related to local noble families; lands were granted to them by kings and magnates; they achieved both economic and political importance. Instead of a group of individuals fleeing from the world to live a life of perfection, the monastic community was becoming a religious corporation which served a definite function in society. Its duty consisted of maintaining a continual sequence of praise and prayer. In a sense, the monks prayed on behalf of the rest of humankind. In the never-ending battle with the forces of evil, the monks undertook penance and intercession for others, and thereby increased their chances of salvation. They were seen as spiritual counterparts of the feudal knights. This close connection with society aroused some criticism. Much of the history of monasticism from the ninth century onwards revolves around repeated attempts at reform, with varying goals. Already in 817 Benedict of Aniane had attempted to reform the monasteries in the direction of greater severity, more manual labour, and less study, greater central control, and a curtailment of the outside activities of monks. This attempt was stillborn and, in the next century and a half, the monasteries fared badly. Renewed barbarian attacks from Vikings, Saracens, and Magyars destroyed many of the great abbeys and dispersed the monks and their cultural treasures. By 950 the destruction or decay of many monasteries, and the confusion caused by their relative independence, led to a determined attempt at reform. Cluny restores dignity The tenth-century reform is closely associated with the abbey of Cluny in central France, founded about 909. Cluny’s long-ruling abbots (Odo, 927–42; Odilo, 994–1049; Hugh the Great, 1049–1109), spiritual and political figures of European importance, led the movement. The ‘Cluniac’ reform had both a religious and an organizational aspect. The religious task of the monks was seen as, above all, the performance of the daily cycle of worship. In Cluny this was carried to its extreme: almost the whole of the monks’ day was taken up with church services. The Cluniac churches were highly decorated and adorned to create a service as magnificent and solemn as possible. The widespread admiration that Cluny inspired shows this aim was generally respected, in both church and lay society. Pope Urban II (r. 1088–99) consecrates the new church of the Abbey of Cluny, France. Sonia Halliday Photographs The institutional reforms made by Cluny led to the creation, by the eleventh century, of a complex and strongly centralized organization. Earlier monasteries had been quite independent, linked only by shared emphases, such as the form of their observance, or by historical association, such as that between a founding abbey and its ‘daughter’ houses. The abbots of Cluny, especially Odilo, created a large chain of dependent houses. Instead of an abbot, these houses had a prior appointed by the abbot of Cluny. The obedience of a monk to his abbot, a central feature of Benedict’s rule, was extended to all the monks of the dependent houses, who were regarded as ‘monks of Cluny’ too. A contented monk Our food is scanty, our garments rough; our drink is from the stream and our sleep often upon our book. Under our tired limbs there is but a hard mat; when sleep is sweetest we must rise at a bell’s bidding … Self-will has no scope; there is no moment for idleness or dissipation … Everywhere peace, everywhere serenity, and a marvellous freedom from the tumult of the world. Such unity and concord is there among the brethren, that each thing seems to belong to all, and all to each … To put all in brief, no perfection expressed in the words of the gospel or of the apostles, or in the writings of the Fathers, or in the sayings of the monks of old, is lacking to our order and our way of life. Ailred, Speculum Caritatis, 1.17 One of the advantages of being a Cluniac monk was that Cluniac monasteries were independent both of the local bishop and the local lay nobility, since Cluny had been founded in direct dependence on the pope. This became important during the eleventh century, as the popes sought to free the church from the control of secular powers. The Cluniacs tended to support this movement. The Spread of Cluniac Reform Cluny’s influence was also through example. The tenth-century monastic reform movement in England, led by Archbishop Dunstan (909–88) and assisted by King Edgar (959–75), was indirectly influenced by Cluny via the monastery of Fleury. More than fifty monasteries were established or re-established in England after the ravages of the Viking invasions. These rich and cultured foundations formed the nucleus of future English monasticism. Cluniac houses were directly introduced into England after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Monastic renewal Other movements of monastic renewal were taking place in the tenth century. In Lorraine and western Germany, the influence of the abbey of Gorze was similar to that of Cluny, although the Gorze reformers were less rigorous about excluding lay authority. In Italy the hermit form of monasticism was renewed, whereby monks lived together inside an enclosure, and might meet for common meals and services, but otherwise lived solitary lives. This was an attempt to return to the type of organization of the first monastics in the deserts of Egypt. The eleventh century foundation of Camaldoli by Romuald, and of Vallombrosa by John Gualbert both aimed at solitariness and severity. Artist’s impression of a typical medieval monastery, dominated by the great abbey church, with the cloister built against its southern side. On the left-hand side are the outbuildings where lay brothers raised livestock. Other important buildings include the monks’ dormitory and dining room, and the chapter-house from which the Dean ran the house. Tim Dowley Associates A discontented monk Everything here and in my nature are opposed to each other. I cannot endure the daily tasks. The sight of it all revolts me. I am tormented and crushed down by the length of the vigils, I often succumb to the manual labour. The food cleaves to my mouth, more bitter than wormwood. The rough clothing cuts through my skin and flesh down to my very bones. More than this, my will is always hankering after other things, it longs for the delights of the world, and sighs unceasingly for its loves and affections and pleasures. Walter Daniel’s Life of Ailred The activities of the monastic reformers of the tenth century and their alliance with the new expansionist papacy of the eleventh century made these the classic centuries of Benedictine monasticism. But already a new wave of reform was imminent. The wealth of the Cluniac monasteries, their easy relations with the world at large and their emphasis on the church service led some reformers to seek a more austere and primitive path. Some, for example, Bruno of Cologne, who founded La Grande Chartreuse in southern France in 1084, turned to the hermit type of monastery. The Carthusian order, which arose from this, remained one of the most rigorous throughout the Middle Ages. Their proud claim was that they were never reformed because their original ideals were never lost. The alleged laxity of some of the great Cluniac houses led to the foundation of several strict Benedictine orders around 1100: those of Grandmont, Fontevrault (a distinctive ‘double order’ of monks and nuns), and Savigny. The cloister – which became a synonym for the monastic life – formed a barrier between the enclosed world of the monks and the outside world of the others who served in a monastic cathedral or church. Cadouin Abbey, in the Dordogne, France, which boasts a fine gothic cloister, was founded in 1115, and taken over by the Cistercian order shortly afterwards. It became a pilgrimage centre due to its possession of a cloth alleged to be part of Christ’s shroud. Tim Dowley Associates The Cistercians But the most important and successful of the orders seeking to revive the primitive Benedictine life was that of the Cistercians or ‘White Monks’. Their mother house was Cîteaux in Burgundy, founded in 1098 by Robert of Molesme, with Stephen Harding and other reforming monks. While Englishman Stephen Harding (d. 1134) was abbot, Cistercian houses spread throughout western Europe. They aimed at a complete break with the Cluniac past. Their churches and services were to be simple and unadorned, and their abbeys were founded in remote and desolate regions, again recalling the ideal of the earlier Christian monastics, who fled to the ‘wilderness’. Silence and austerity were stressed, and a renewed emphasis was placed on manual work. The constitution of the order was set out in the Carta Caritatis of 1119. Each house had to be visited annually by the abbot of its mother house, while every year a general assembly (chapter) of all the abbots was to be held at Cîteaux, to lay down ordinances for the whole order. The severity and organization of the Cistercians proved remarkably successful, and by 1300 more than 600 monasteries and nunneries were in existence. The Spread of Cistercian Monasteries The Cistercians soon came under attack, however, on unexpected grounds. As their houses had to be founded in remote wastes, because of their flight from the world, they were gradually forced to develop techniques of survival in such regions. They learned how to turn these wastes into productive agricultural land, and in due course their economic activities, especially sheep-farming, made them a wealthy order. The monks withdrew from manual work, leaving this to the ‘lay brothers’, normally illiterate folk who joined the order but were not offered full membership, and lived in separate buildings on monastic lands. As a result of the wealth derived from their wide estates and the labour of the lay brothers (known as the conversi), the Cistercians were soon accused of the sin of greed. Spoiled by worldly success, their initial aim of austerity was ironically reversed. Page from the fifteenth-century Latin ‘Book of Hours for Parisians’ showing the various monastic orders; from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Sonia Halliday Photographs Yet more orders Before this stage was reached, however, the Cistercian ideal was generally admired, and had been imitated by other strict orders. The Premonstratensians, founded by Norbert of Xanten (c. 1080–1134) in northern France around 1120, and the Gilbertines, founded by Gilbert of Sempringham (c. 1083–1190) in Lincolnshire were deeply influenced by the Cistercian ideal. The Gilbertines, a double order of monks and nuns, was the only new order established by an English person within England in the monastic movement of the later medieval period. These two orders took as their rule not that of Benedict, but the more flexible Augustinian rule which, although based on advice given by Augustine, only came into practical use in the eleventh century. They were canons – clergy living in community – rather than monks. The adaptability of their rule meant that the Augustinian canons included not only more cloistered orders, such as the Premonstratensian and Gilbertine, but also many houses where canons took up teaching or hospital work in the towns. The founding of a house of Augustinian canons was generally less expensive than a Benedictine abbey, and so benefactors found a new outlet in endowing such houses rather than Benedictine abbeys – by this time largely declining in public favour. The military orders were also influenced by monastic ideals. These orders consisted of monk-knights, who originally intended to fight in the Holy Land, and were a logical extension of monastic involvement in the Crusades. The chief crusading orders adopted forms of the Cistercian regulations. The Knights Templar (founded about 1118, and suppressed in the early fourteenth century), the Hospitallers (late eleventh century), and the Teutonic Knights (late twelfth century) came to wield great political and economic power for several centuries. Monasticism in decline By 1200, however, monasticism had passed the peak of its appeal and influence. The initiative was now taken by the new begging orders of friars, especially the Dominicans and Franciscans, and by the universities. Although new monasteries were founded, the total number of monks began to decline, and standards of monastic life fell as strictness was relaxed. Ingenious means were sometimes found to keep to the letter of monastic constitutions, while deviating greatly from the spirit of those early rules. Community life was gradually modified, and divisions appeared within abbeys between the abbot, the monastic officials, and the monks. Increasingly, abbots and priors came to live and eat apart from the monks. Religious houses became more and more involved in the running of their estates and in legal squabbles. Many monks spent much of their time in supervising estates, collecting revenues, and battling for property rights. In Europe the ‘commendatory’ system brought in lay people to take over the income and administration of monasteries. Everywhere the system of allowing ‘corrodies’ – virtually supporting lay people out of monastic income in exchange for a lay grant – took the monk farther and farther from the life of prayer and into the world. Nevertheless, attempts at reform continued throughout the later centuries of the Middle Ages. Some were initiated by popes, such as Innocent III in 1215, or Benedict XII in 1336. Others took the familiar form of a return to strict observance of the Benedictine rule. The Sylvestrines (1231), Celestinians (later thirteenth century), and Olivetans (1319) adopted this approach. The general attempt at church reform in the fifteenth century, associated with the great Councils, also saw further attempts at monastic reform. In the German lands the monasteries of Kastl, Melk, and Bursfeld were centres of reform, while St Justina in Padua provided an example for Italy and Spain. Other new movements include the Brethren of the Common Life, the Brigittines, a Swedish order of the fourteenth century, and the Minims, a fifteenth-century order which combined aspects of monasticism with the Franciscan rule. The overall picture of late medieval monasticism, however, is one in which the monks have become an established and integrated part of society, but are no longer respected and attractive as their predecessors had been before 1200. It is significant that many monastic-type movements in the last two medieval centuries were based rather upon lay participation, and were in effect a result of lay devotion. Growing criticism of monastic abuses, and even of the very principle of monasticism itself, foreshadowed the great attack the institution was to experience in the Protestant Reformation. Ronald Finucane Interpreting the Bible in the Middle Ages The fall of the Roman Empire led to widespread illiteracy and ignorance. For centuries, in the absence of public education, all learning and study of the Scriptures was restricted to the monasteries. Medieval theologians held that Scripture could be interpreted only by the learned few, under the direction of the church. The medieval church believed it should uphold the traditions and dogmas of the early Christian writers, so, in general, biblical scholars were content to collect and synthesize the traditional explanations of theologians as far back as Origen. One scholar of the period wrote: ‘It is better not to be taken up with supposedly new ideas, but to be filled from the fountain of the ancients.’ As a result medieval scholars produced massive volumes of dogma and morality which claim to explain Scripture, but which in reality have little connection with the biblical text. Following the methods of many early Greek and Latin Christian writers, medieval interpreters for nearly a thousand years used a fourfold scheme of biblical interpretations: ‘The literal teaches the events, allegory what you are to believe, the moral sense what you are to do, the anagogical (spiritual) where you are to aim.’ The literal, historical sense of the biblical text was smothered by a swarm of mystical interpretations. Thus, for example, the word ‘water’ in Scripture was often interpreted in the following fourfold way: literally, water, the physical element; allegorically, baptism, the nations, or grace; morally, sorrow, wisdom, heresy, or prosperity; spiritually, eternal happiness. An unbridled imagination was a prime requisite for interpreting Scripture! Obscure Never has biblical interpretation been made so obscure as during the early Middle Ages. Few interpreters paid attention to the historical and literal sense of the biblical text; still fewer had more than an elementary knowledge of Hebrew and Greek. For about four hundred years priests and monks tediously compiled early Christian writings, characterized by rigid dogmatic sentences, moral platitudes, mystical play on numbers, and false word-meanings. Bede, the Anglo-Saxon historian and theologian, devoted his entire life to the study of Scripture in a monastery. Following Philo and Origen, he tried to extract the spiritual kernel of truth from the Bible, using an allegorical interpretation. Bede’s comments on Scripture are little more than a patchwork fashioned from Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory. Alcuin and Walafrid Strabo (808–49) similarly produced highly allegorical commentaries on Scripture, compiled largely from excerpts from earlier writers. Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c. 815–c. 877) summed up the medieval attitude towards the Word of God: ‘The sense of God’s work is infinitely varied, and like a peacock’s feather glows with many colours.’ Scholastic interpretation Scholastic theologians continued to bypass the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew and perpetuated the multi-sense interpretation of the Bible, while striving to reinforce the traditions of the church. Peter Lombard, a pupil of Abelard, and later bishop of Paris, produced a theological textbook of scholasticism entitled The Sentences (1158). This well-organized one-volume system of medieval dogma was primarily a collection of the opinions of previous writers – for example, Hilary, Ambrose, and Augustine. Lombard’s numerous commentaries on Scripture were similarly an unimaginative collection of the moral and spiritual opinions of earlier writers. Mystical interpretation Reacting to the sterile formalism and traditionalism of the scholastics, there arose mystical interpreters and theologians, who stressed the devotional study of the Bible aided by the free use of allegory. They replaced dialectical reasoning with ecstasy and intuition as the accepted yardstick for interpreting. Bernard of Clairvaux, regarded as the father of medieval mysticism, wrote 86 sermons on the Song of Solomon, which are characterized not by the logical subtleties of scholasticism, but by highly esoteric mystical explanations. Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096–1141), head of a theological academy at the monastery of St Victor, Paris (the principal centre of medieval mysticism), while allowing certain mystical meanings, emphasized the literal sense of Scripture. But Hugh adhered to the dogmatism of his time by affirming that the scholar first decides what he ought to believe and then goes to Scripture to confirm his judgment. The Franciscan mystic Bonaventura (1221–74) was influenced by the scholasticism of his day. The book of seven seals in Revelation allows the sevenfold sense of Scripture: the historical, anagogical, allegorical, tropological, symbolical, synechdochical, and hyperbolical. Only a learned monk could fathom the depths of wisdom contained in such a book! Thomas Aquinas, the master of scholastic theology, has a much less distinguished reputation as an interpreter of Scripture. His catena (a stringing together of observations from the ancient authorities) on the Gospels quotes no less than twenty-two Greek and twenty Latin writers. Furthermore, Thomas allegorizes even the most simple texts. For example, he interprets Genesis 1:3, ‘Let there be light’, thus: historically, it refers to the act of creation; allegorically, ‘let Christ be love’; morally, ‘may we be mentally illuminated by Christ’; anagogically, ‘may we be led to glory by Christ’. The simple sense Meanwhile the plain sense of the Bible was being revived by certain Jewish commentators. Writing on the Pentateuch, Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, from Troyes, Frances, 1040–1105) concentrates on ‘the simple sense of the Bible’. His Old Testament commentaries devote unusual attention to philology, grammar, and sentence construction. The Spanish scholar, Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1167), wrote commentaries on most of the Old Testament, and strengthened the Jewish shift towards a modern historical and grammatical interpretation. He identified five traditional methods of biblical interpretation, but preferred the plain approach, which explains the meaning intended by the biblical writer. Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270–1349), a Franciscan at the University of Paris, was primarily responsible for bringing the approach of Rashi and his followers to Christian scholarship. Lyra wrote about 85 volumes covering the whole of the Bible. A master of Old Testament Hebrew, he prepared the first Bible commentary to be printed. It was published in Rome in 1471–2 and was widely consulted. While repeating the common medieval definition of the fourfold sense of Scripture, Lyra claimed that the plain sense of the text had priority: ‘I intend to insist upon the literal sense and sometimes to insert brief mystical expositions, though rarely.’ Lyra’s contribution towards a responsible method of interpretation, and the dissolution of the iron grip of church tradition, led to the proverb, ‘Had Lyra not played his lyre, Luther would not have danced.’ The Reformer did in reality lean heavily upon the biblical interpretation of the French scholar. The early English reformer Wyclif claimed that ‘the whole error in the knowledge of Scripture, and the source of its debasement and falsification by incompetent persons, was the ignorance of grammar and logic’. For such reasons the Bible lay buried and obscured for centuries. With the Renaissance revival of the study of the languages and literature of Greece and Rome, scholasticism finally toppled. Bruce A. Demarest Chapter 20 The Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe and Russia About the year 860, Rastislav, Prince of Moravia, requested the Byzantine Emperor Michael III to send missionaries to instruct his people in the ways of Christ. The Moravians, ancestors of the modern Czechs, belonged to the Slavic race, which had come from Asia and spread throughout the eastern plains of Europe. In response, Patriarch Photius provided two Greek brothers who were to be among the most influential of Christian missionaries. Statue in Kiev, Ukraine, of the Byzantine Greek brothers Cyril and Methodius, who became pioneering Christian missionaries among the Slavic peoples in the ninth century. © Tupungato / Dreamstime.com Mission to Moravia The two brothers, Cyril and Methodius, had grown up near Slavs who had settled in Macedonia and therefore they knew the Slavic language. Before embarking upon their mission, the evangelists began to prepare an alphabet for the hitherto unwritten language, so that the converts could have the Scriptures and liturgy in their native tongue. This script, known as Glagolitic, was the forerunner of the form of writing now used in south-eastern Europe and Russia, which is called Cyrillic, after the younger brother. By this means, Orthodox Christianity, and with it the culture of Byzantium, spread among the Slavic tribes. This Byzantine culture determined the main lines of development for these peoples, especially the Russians, for centuries. Thus Cyril and Methodius rightly earned the title of ‘The Apostles of the Slavs’. The Slavic Bible In 862, Prince Rastislav (or Rostislav) of Great Moravia requested the Emperor Michael III and the Patriarch Photius to send missionaries from Constantinople to translate the Bible into the Slavic language. Two brothers from Thessalonica, Cyril (born Constantine, 827–69) – who had theological training and knew both Arabic and Latin – and Methodius (815–85), were chosen for this mission. The brothers devised the ‘Glagolitic’ alphabet for the Slavic language – not previously reduced to written form – and also created a new vocabulary to convey concepts specific to the Christian faith. They then translated into ‘Old Church Slavonic’ the New Testament, the Psalms, and parts of the Old Testament, together with some of the church’s liturgy. Although Rome generally objected to worship in any language other than Latin, the brothers were granted permission to use Slavic in the Moravian church’s liturgy. After the death of Methodius, his followers were exiled from Moravia and found refuge in Bulgaria, which had accepted Christianity in 865. Until this time, worship there was conducted only in Greek, but the Slavic translation of Cyril and Methodius was now accepted, and under czar Simeon I (‘the Great’, r. 893–927), Slavic literacy and liturgy blossomed. Use of the Glagolitic alphabet soon declined in favour of the new and simpler ‘Cyrillic’ alphabet, modelled on the uncials of the Greek alphabet. By the end of the tenth century, Bibles and liturgical books were being exported from Bulgaria as far as Kiev in the east and Serbia in the west. The Moravian mission of Cyril and Methodius met with success in its first three years, but any long-term results were lost when the invading Magyars destroyed the state of Moravia. The church of this area eventually developed along Western Catholic lines. The brothers’ work did not disappear, however, because their followers carried their message and Slavonic books southward to the Bulgarians, who became fervently attached to Byzantine Orthodoxy. Bulgarian Orthodoxy The Bulgarian czar Boris, who accepted Christianity for his people, prevailed upon the Emperor and Patriarch of Constantinople to recognize, in 870, the Bulgarians’ right to have an independent church organization, under the Ecumenical Patriarch. The Bulgarians also won approval for their liturgy to be conducted in the Slavonic language. In this way a distinctive form of Orthodoxy was established in Eastern Europe, with state churches employing local languages. In 927, the chief bishop of the Bulgarian Church was raised to the rank of patriarch. From Bulgaria, the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language and Byzantine Christianity were transplanted to Serbia, the third Slavic nation to be Christianized in the second half of the ninth century. The Serbian Church remained in the shadow of the Bulgarians until the time of the most celebrated Serbian Christian, Sava (1174–1236), who in 1219 was consecrated Archbishop of Serbia. The Serbian archbishopric was promoted to a patriarchate in 1346, at the height of the Serbian Empire under King Stefan Dushan. Bulgarian influence also drew the Church of Romania into the Orthodox fold. Orthodox Missions 860–1050 Vladimir’s choice The most illustrious fruit of the brothers’ Slavonic influence appeared when the pagan prince of Kiev, Vladimir, officially adopted Orthodoxy as the religion of his state. The magnificent legend of the conversion of the Russians narrates how Vladimir, around 988, decided that the interests of his realm required that he take up one of the major religions. According to the Russian Chronicle, Vladimir sent envoys to investigate Islam, Judaism, Latin, and Byzantine Christianity. The first three failed to suit, but he was won over by the report of those who returned from Constantinople, declaring that when they attended the mass in the great Church of St Sophia they could not tell whether they were on earth or in heaven. Vladimir ordered the mass baptism of the Russians according to the Orthodox form, and Orthodoxy became the state religion of Russia. Although the details of the legend probably do not record actual history, they do reflect one of the most significant features of Russian Christianity. The forms of worship have always been more important than other aspects, such as theology or ethics. The primary appeal of Orthodoxy was aesthetic, rather than intellectual or moral. Indeed, the name of the religion in Slavonic, Pravoslavie, means ‘true worship’, reflecting the pre-eminence of the liturgy to the Russian mind. Christianity in Russia c. 1050 After Vladimir’s conversion, the Slavonic books of Cyril and Methodius were brought to Kiev, so that the Russians received a benefit which Christians of the Latin-using Western Church did not enjoy. Their religious liturgy and writings existed in a language that was intelligible to all of them. Thus the church both civilized the Russian tribes and stimulated the growth of their native culture. Vladimir’s son and successor, Yaroslav I, the Wise, (r. 1019–54), cemented the bonds between the Russian Church and Byzantine Orthodoxy by accepting for his realm a bishop appointed by the Ecumenical Patriarch. In this way he acknowledged Constantinople as the overseer of the Russian Church. Yaroslav provided the bishop, consecrated as the Metropolitan of Kiev, with a cathedral which he dedicated as St Sophia’s, in imitation of the mother church in Constantinople. For most of the next four hundred years, the head of the Russian Church was a Greek appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. Yaroslav’s death coincided with the year traditionally regarded as marking the final rupture between the Latin and Greek Churches (1054). The newly-converted Russians quickly learned to despise the Catholics as ‘heretics’. Their hatred of the Latin Christians was greatly reinforced when German knights tried to take advantage of the chaos caused by the invasion of Russia by Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes in the thirteenth century and launched a Catholic crusade against the northern Russians. The Western invaders were repulsed by the heroic leadership of Alexander Nevsky in 1242. He was later recognized as a saint for his achievements. Nevsky established an important precedent for the Russians by submitting voluntarily to the rule of the Khan. For over two hundred years the Russians lived under the ‘Mongol Yoke’. During this period, the Russian Church continued to be led by the Metropolitan of Kiev and Vladimir, who was usually appointed and consecrated by Constantinople, but approved by the Khan. This situation goes a long way towards explaining why Russia never experienced a Renaissance and Reformation as Western Europe did. The Russian tradition The period under the Mongol yoke included the life of one of the greatest of Russian Christians, Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1314–92). In search of solitude, Sergius withdrew around 1350 into the forest about twenty-five miles north of Moscow where he soon became the elder of the monastic community of the Holy Trinity, which is now the headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church (Zagorsk). From the monastic tradition begun by Sergius, Russian spirituality began to penetrate in an unprecedented manner to the lower levels of Russian society. Sergius’ monastery inspired the emergence of the Russian artistic genius expressed in the creation of magnificent icons. The greatest icon painters, Andrei Rublev and Daniel Chornei, flourished in the years around 1400, decorating the churches in Sergius’ Holy Trinity monastery, and in Moscow and the surrounding principalities. In their works distinctively Russian art forms appeared. Sergius influenced Russian society in a third important way, by kindling the spirit of Russian national resistance to Mongol overlordship. In 1380 he inspired Dmitry, Prince of Moscow, to lead a Russian allied army against the Khan’s forces. Dmitry’s troops won a significant battle on Kulikovo Field. Although the Mongol yoke was not immediately cast off, the Prince of Moscow had demonstrated that the Mongols were not invincible, and the hope of final liberation smouldered in the Russian breast. It was amidst these events that Moscow rose to the leading position among Russian cities, its prestige heightened by Dmitry’s achievements, Sergius’ reputation, and the transfer of the Russian Metropolitan to the city. Third Rome By the second half of the fifteenth century, conditions were right for Moscow to emerge as the world’s leading Orthodox city. Late in the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks occupied Bulgaria and Serbia, placing these Orthodox states under Islamic authority. In 1453, they captured Constantinople itself, killing the Byzantine Emperor and making the Ecumenical Patriarch a virtual prisoner of the Muslim conquerors. Shortly after, Ivan III of Moscow married Sophia Palaiologina, niece of the last emperor, and subsequently repudiated Mongol domination. Ivan adopted the Byzantine double-headed eagle as the symbol of his power. Russian Church theorists saw profound theological significance in these events. Moscow, they declared, had become ‘The Third Rome’. They claimed that the Church of Rome fell because of its heresy and was succeeded by Constantinople, the Second Rome. But this city, too, was punished by God by means of the infidel Turks. The monk Philotheus wrote to Ivan’s son: The Church of Moscow, the new ‘third Rome’, shines throughout the entire world more brightly than the sun … Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands and a fourth can never be. The now thoroughly national Russian Church thus claimed to be chief protector of Eastern Christianity. Paul D. Steeves Chapter 21 An Age of Unrest The Western Church in the Late Middle Ages Many important changes affected European society in the later Middle Ages. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, new economic and political conditions altered the outlines of medieval society. There was a decline in the importance of landed wealth; agriculture became less profitable for many reasons. The fourteenth-century decline in population was made far worse by the Black Death of 1348–49 and by later epidemics. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, growth in commerce tended to draw more workers into towns and ports, where a new set of economic principles guided human relationships. The older, traditional medieval social patterns were beginning to dissolve. Politically, this was an age of growing community self-consciousness. It is too early to speak of ‘nations’; but increasingly people were getting used to considering themselves ‘English’ or ‘French’ whenever their thoughts went beyond their own town or region. Monarchs were growing efficient in the business of governing, which in itself helped their subjects to see themselves as belonging to a wider political ‘state’. In every century of the Middle Ages, from about 400 to about 1500, the church was a dominant element in society. Just as there were changes in later medieval society, so too there were many important changes in the church in the years between 1300 and 1500, changes which tended to bring disunity and unrest, pointing to the Reformation. Such changes involved the papacy itself, monasticism, lay people’s faith and heresy, and missions. The thirteenth century closed with the election and unheard-of abdication of Pope Celestine V in 1294. His resignation posed problems for his successors, since it could always be argued that no pope had the right to give up his office. This threw the first pope of the fourteenth century, Boniface VIII (1294–1303), under a cloud of uncertainty and foreboding. Boniface versus France Boniface was quite different from Celestine, who was a feeble ascetic. Boniface, a canon-lawyer with wide experience, set to work immediately, reforming papal finances and bringing peace to the Papal States and Rome, a programme which brought him into conflict with the crowned heads of Europe. For example, his bull Clericis laicos (1296) limited the power of kings to tax their clergy. In retaliation France prohibited the export of bullion, and in England King Edward I threatened to remove royal protection from the clergy. At the very beginning of the period, papal and royal policies came into conflict. These unseemly squabbles recurred again and again until the end of the Middle Ages. Boniface later modified his views, though the French found his leniency too grudging, putting pressure on him by supporting an Italian family, the Colonna, who were his greatest rivals. This escalated until Boniface agreed to disregard Clericis laicos and give in to other French demands, including the canonization of King Louis IX, in 1297. The pope won a victory of sorts by announcing a plenary indulgence (ensuring immediate entry into heaven after death) for pilgrims to Rome in the Jubilee Year of 1300, which enhanced his prestige at least for the moment. By 1301 he was again in difficulties with the French. A bishop had been arrested in France and charged with treason. The pope demanded his release, which was refused. Boniface reactivated Clericis laicos, and issued another bull – Ausculta fili – emphasizing the pope’s superiority over secular rulers. In reply, Philip IV stirred up French public opinion against the pope. Boniface answered with yet another bull, Unam sanctam, in 1302, summing up extreme papal claims. Finally, the French took direct action. Nogaret, the king’s agent, went to Italy to bring back the pope: the issues were to be heard in France, and the pope’s fate decided. Meanwhile Boniface excommunicated the French king. Finally, in September 1303, Nogaret, with help from the Colonna family, attacked the pope at Anagni. With the aid of the townsfolk Boniface escaped to Rome. He died at the Vatican a month later. The problems arising between Boniface and the French have tended to overshadow all other aspects of this pope’s reign. Though he was arrogant and guilty of nepotism, he had less unfortunate traits. He added to canon law in the Liber Sextus, arranged more efficient papal administration, helped establish a university in Rome, and laid the foundations for an effective archives department. He even took an interest in the current battle between the friars and non-monastic clergy. In the end, however, his pontificate was ominous for the future, a future very much involved in secular politics. When Boniface died, the French were still determined to exert pressure on the papacy to bring it into line. The new French monarchical state was prospering under the astute control of Philip the Fair (Philip IV, r. 1285–1314). Much pressure was exerted on the College of Cardinals to elect a docile pope. In 1303 Benedict XI was elected, but his rather weak policy of conciliation had no time to develop before he died in 1304. By the time of the next election, the cardinals were split into a pro- and an anti-French faction. The pope moves to Avignon Eventually, by 1305, the Archbishop of Bordeaux was elected pope, as a result of French pressure. He took the name of Clement VI (1305–14), but never went to Rome – partly because of his own unwillingness to leave his native country, partly because of pressure from the French king. Clement created French cardinals to balance the earlier predominantly Italian element in the College of Cardinals and fixed on Avignon in southern France as his residence, though he continued to travel widely throughout Philip the Fair’s kingdom. Hence, Clement V became the first Avignon pope, the first to live under what was known as the ‘Avignon Captivity’. There were protests against this from all sides, among the loudest that of Petrarch (d. 1374), one of the greatest figures of the Italian Renaissance. For most of the fourteenth century no pope lived in Rome. This divorce between the head of the Western Christian world and Rome itself caused great scandal and unrest. Clement approved the French plan to destroy the Order of the Knights of the Temple, or ‘Templars’, the military crusading order which came to an end while he was pope. Various charges – such as sacrilege, sodomy, and idolatry – were hurled at the Templars, especially in France, and torture was used to obtain ‘confessions’. Those working to destroy them were aiming partly to disendow this wealthy and influential order which by the fourteenth century had become practically a European banking corporation. England and other kingdoms, as well as France, went along with papal directives, though to a lesser degree. The property of the order passed to the Hospitallers, or occasionally to other organizations, though in France the greatest beneficiary was the king. The destruction of the Templars included the execution of the Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and others, in 1314 and was yet another incident gradually bringing the papacy into disrepute. The popes favour France For the moment, however, the papacy at Avignon received a vigorous infusion of new blood in Pope John XXII (1316–34). He was one of the most efficient – and ruthless – of fourteenth-century popes. He was a decidedly French pope, but also independent to an unusual degree. John was well versed in papal and secular politics, and took a great interest in the affairs of Europe from his papal headquarters at Avignon. Among his many schemes was a reform in papal administration. His other interests included a controversy with the Franciscan Spirituals, aspects of speculative theology, compiling sermons, and tireless devotion to reading and making summaries of what he had read. John was among the greatest of papal financiers, much interested in discovering better ways to increase papal income. At the same time he wished to make his power felt throughout the Christian West. In a sense he was president of a giant corporation with varied financial and political interests, seeing the papacy in administrative far more than spiritual terms. Pope Benedict XII (1334–42) – who followed him – was a theologian, a Cistercian, and another Frenchman. He was greatly interested in the ever-increasing problems of heresy. Benedict began the construction of the papal palace archives at Avignon, and saw to it that the papal archives still in Rome were sent to him in France. He worked in co-operation with the French king, doing what he could for France during the Hundred Years’ War, which began while he was pope. The pope wished to make his influence felt among the religious orders of the church – but they were not particularly enthusiastic. He also saw to it that recognition of the pope’s supreme power percolated more effectively through all other levels of church government. His successor, Pope Clement VI (1342–52), also supported France against the English during the Hundred Years’ War. He had been a French cardinal, once Archbishop of Rouen, and was experienced in affairs at the papal court. He now used his expertise to the utmost to provide revenue for the French. While he was pope, in 1348, the city of Avignon was officially purchased by the papacy. Clement was a forerunner of the great Renaissance popes, lavish in expenditure on pomp and ceremony, and open in his support of members of his own family. His personal life left much to be desired from the moral standpoint. Observers, though impressed by his magnificent court, were well aware of the vast amounts of money spent on such display. This waste of money was discontinued by the next Avignon pope, Innocent VI (1352–62), who paid more attention to the reformation of abuses within the church, and to regaining papal control in Italy. Ever since the popes had departed – and indeed before this – local Italian families and princes had created difficulties. With the pope far away in Avignon, these inter-family quarrels and battles for control of parts of Italy grew worse, and among the areas to suffer were the Papal States. In addition to the pope’s wish to resume power over these areas, there was by now growing pressure on the popes to return to Rome. It seems Innocent VI seriously attempted to do what he could to bring this about. By now, too, the situation around Avignon was dangerous. Roving bands of mercenaries, a by-product of the Hundred Years’ War, brought trouble to the very gates of the pope’s residence. Great walls were built around Avignon in 1357, and still impress today. As part of his programme to protect the Papal States and Rome, the pope sent Cardinal Albornoz to Italy. This very capable papal agent remained there for thirteen years (1353–66), during which time he succeeded, at least temporarily, in regaining control. Albornoz succeeded in carrying out many of the pope’s plans in preparation for a return to Rome, before he could move from Avignon, the pope died. The move back to the Holy City would be left to his successor, Urban V (1362–70). Return to Rome Pope Urban V was a canon-lawyer who led a simple life and wanted to see reform in the church. He reduced expenditure on non-essentials. He wished for peace in Italy and hoped to be able to dismiss his mercenaries. He also planned to call a Crusade, and to achieve union with the Greek Church. In 1367 Urban at last returned to Rome, where he successfully imposed his authority on the various factions. Much of the ancient city was restored. In spite of this encouraging beginning, the pope failed to achieve many of his political aims. In 1368 he fell back into the tradition of the Avignon popes by appointing several French cardinals. Finally, in 1370, he gave up and returned to Avignon, where he died in the same year. Urban’s successor, Gregory XI (1370–78), realized it was necessary to return to Rome. After gaining the upper hand against Italian city-state factions, he left Avignon in 1376, perhaps influenced by the mystic Catherine of Siena, who urged a return to Rome. He was in Italy by late 1376, and entered Rome itself early in 1377. Peace moves were made towards Florence and Milan, but before anything could come of these, Gregory died. But the papacy had at last returned to the Eternal City. In one sense the Avignon papacy marked an advance in papal affairs. It was during the fourteenth century that the papal court became more bureaucratic, and a more centralized, effective – but more complicated – papacy developed. A more expensive papacy, too. The papacy of the fourteenth century, a kind of international corporation, employed about 500 people in the papal palace alone. On average, about 100 honorary papal chaplains were created each year of the Avignon papacy. The French continued to dominate papal government. About 82 per cent of all cardinals created in the Avignon period were French, 13 per cent Italian, and 5 per cent other nationalities. The papal machine Papal government became more efficient, especially in financial matters. The Camera Apostolica, or financial and political office, was one of the most highly bureaucratic. Other offices, such as the Apostolic Chancery and Rota, also had numerous officials assigned to them. The archives increased with this growth of ‘red tape’. For the popes from John XXII to Gregory XI, more than a quarter of a million ‘business’ documents remain in the archives, many still unexamined. New sources of income were developed to support this gigantic machine, such as special taxes (‘annates’) from the clergy. The average annual income under John XXII, a pope much concerned with financial matters, was about a quarter of a million gold florins. For Pope Gregory XI, it amounted to half a million. John’s average running costs, however, were about the same as his income. Even so, he was able to leave a surplus of one million florins at his death. The financial activities of the papacy were attacked more often than anything else by those wanting reform. But in the fourteenth century the growing costs of the papal courts, and of Italian wars, aroused more and more clamour for reform. The spiritual role of the papacy seemed forgotten in the rush to collect income in exchange for some privilege or favour. This increased papal interference was sometimes objected to by other European powers. In 1351, for example, England made it illegal for the pope to give foreign clergy positions in the English Church. In 1353, England limited appeals from her clergy to the papal court. Even with the best organization in the world, however, the papacy could not mend its own inner divisions. These were evident following the death of Pope Gregory XI in 1387. Now the papacy was back in Rome. Angry crowds gathered demanding a Roman – or at least an Italian – pope. Eventually the cardinals went along with them by electing Urban VI (1378–89), who soon proved to be too much of a dictator for the cardinals. Using the disorderly behaviour at his election as an excuse, some of the cardinals gathered and elected another pope, Clement VII. The cardinals had become very independent-minded. The papacy splits After armed battles for control of Rome between the forces of the rival popes, Clement VII retired to Avignon in 1381. This marked the beginning of the Great Schism, a split at the very top of the government of the church which had political as well as religious repercussions. Some countries, such as Italy, the Empire, the eastern and Scandinavian areas, Hungary, and England, supported Urban VI of Rome. France and its territories, Spain, and Scotland supported Clement VII in Avignon. In the earlier medieval period two and even three popes had occasionally co-existed, but this Schism was far more serious. Unlike earlier schisms, the problem originated within the papal court itself, among the cardinals. This division affected all levels of the clergy, although changes of allegiance from one pope to the other were not unheard of. Non-monastic clergy, cathedral, and college chapters, and even religious orders sometimes found their allegiance split. Urban’s extreme stubbornness made an easy solution impossible: he even had some of his unbending cardinals tortured to death. Even after Urban’s death in 1389, the problem continued, with parallel elections continuing into the next century. By now, the embarrassment of the situation was clear even to the king of France. He attempted to heal the Schism, even at the cost of abandoning the Avignon pope. Various solutions were suggested, of which the three most important were for one pope to give way to the other, for one to conquer the other, or for both to compromise. The farcical situation continued in Rome when Innocent VII became pope from 1404 to 1406 and was succeeded by Gregory XII (1406–15), in spite of general protests from church leaders and theologians. Meanwhile the rival colleges of cardinals – one at Rome, the other at Avignon – began to compromise and discuss ways of ending the Schism. Finally, since neither pope would agree to give way, some of their cardinals called a council to meet in Pisa in 1409 where, it was hoped, the Schism would be ended. The magnificent Baptistery of St John, Pisa, the largest in Italy, built between 1152 and 1363, adjacent to the cathedral and the celebrated leaning tower. Tim Dowley Associates The popes refused to attend, so the cardinals deposed both of them and elected in their place Alexander V (1409–10). Neither the Avignon nor the Roman pope recognized this new choice, so the result of the council was three popes, where there had been two. More significantly, the Council of Pisa raised an important principle by its actions: a council may be superior in power to a pope, in effect calling papal supremacy into question. Council of Constance The issues were not settled at Pisa. At the greatest council of the period, the Council of Constance (1414–18), it was hoped that they would be. Another pope now reigned – John XXIII, who in 1410 had succeeded Alexander V. The Council attracted wide interest, and by 1415 scholars, church dignitaries, and various secular officials had arrived. Even the Greek Orthodox sent representatives. Over the next three years some forty-five main sessions were held, with scores of lesser committee meetings. Eventually, after a trial in 1415, John XXIII was forced to give up his claim to the papacy. In the same year Gregory XII resigned, leaving but one pope, the Spanish Benedict XIII. He too was tried and deposed in 1417, though he went on living in Spain under the delusion that he was the only true pope, until his death in 1422. No council had accomplished so much in healing breaches within the church since the very early general councils. The way was clear to elect one pope who would once more represent all Western Christians. This was done in 1417; the new pope was Martin V. The problem was raised, however, as to whether the council which had created him was superior to the pope who claimed supremacy. For the moment the claim of the council lapsed. Other problems considered at Constance included the administration of the eucharist. The Hussites, especially after the execution of Jan Hus at the Council in 1415, held that all Christians should receive both bread and wine, which the Council prohibited. John Wyclif was condemned for heresy by the Council in 1415, and his body disinterred from holy ground in 1427. Jan Hus Jan Hus (c. 1369–1415) achieved fame as a martyr to the cause of church reform and of Czech nationalism. Jan was ordained a priest in 1401, and spent much of his career teaching at the Charles University in Prague, and as preacher in the Bethlehem Chapel, close to the university. In his writing and public preaching, Hus emphasized personal piety and purity of life. He was heavily indebted to the works of Wyclif. Stressing the role of Scripture as an authority in the church he consequently lifted preaching to an important status in church services. In the process he became a national hero. In his chief work, On the Church, he defined the church as the body of Christ, with Christ as its only head. Although he defended the traditional authority of the clergy, he taught that only God can forgive sin. Engraving of Jan Hus (1369–1415) priest, philosopher, and reformer from Charles University, Prague. © Georgios Kollidas / Dreamstime.com Hus believed that neither popes nor cardinals could establish doctrine that was contrary to Scripture, nor should any Christian obey an order from them that was plainly wrong. He condemned the corruptness of the clergy and criticized his people for worshipping images, belief in false miracles, and undertaking ‘superstitious pilgrimages’. He criticized the church for withholding the cup of wine from the people during communion, and condemned the sale of indulgences. Hus was at the centre of lengthy struggles in Prague, and his case was referred to Rome. In 1415 Hus attended the Council of Constance in order to defend his beliefs. Although travelling under the Emperor’s safe-conduct, he was tried and condemned to be burnt at the stake, with no real opportunity to explain his views. However, his heroic death aroused the national feelings of the Czech people, who established the Hussite Church in Bohemia, until the Hapsburgs conquered in 1620 and restored the Roman Catholic Church. The Hussite reform was closely associated with the resistance of the Czechs to German domination. Caroline T. Marshall Besides a few other issues, mainly political, the Council initiated reforms, and decreed in 1417 and 1418 that further councils should be held. In addition, changes were to be made in the College of Cardinals, in the bureaucracy of the papacy, and in abuses of tithes and indulgences. The real issue, however, was papal power. Martin V showed himself to be a pope of the ‘old school’, after his return to Rome in 1420, which he finally subdued in 1424. He started a renovation scheme in Rome, reorganized the Papal States, and made good use of his extensive blood-ties with the Colonna family. But he was interested only in administrative reform; he let religious reform take second place. Martin V died in 1431, having brought peace to the Papal States. He was succeeded by Eugene IV (1431–39), whose tactlessness provoked discontent among the cardinals, who wished to regain control of papal government. As a result of a decree issued by Martin V before his death, a council met at Basle in 1431. The new pope was not interested in attending and ordered the Council to dissolve. This was disregarded by the assembled members. Most of the College of Cardinals favoured the Council, as a continuation of the spirit of Constance. One of the major issues at Basle was the question of union with the Greek Church, officially separated from Rome since the eleventh century. From 1433 envoys were exchanged between the Council and Constantinople, but the pope too sent his own representatives to the East and the question of union was lost in the competition between pope and council for ‘credit’ in achieving the reunion. The pope had the Council transferred to Ferrara. At Basle, reforms were difficult to carry through in the face of papal hostility. In Ferrara from 1438 the reassembled Council again dealt with the union of East and West. But little interest was shown by the Western powers, and the Council was again moved – to Florence – in 1439. Ever since 1438, when the pope transferred the Council, a Basle contingent continued to sit. In effect, there were two rival councils, one at Basle, and another, first at Ferrara, and then at Florence. Schism seemed about to return. The Basle Council deposed Eugene IV and elected Felix V (1439–49); once again there were two popes. Eugene IV’s death in 1447 was followed by the election of Nicholas V (1447–55). The crisis ended only when, in 1449, largely because of political pressures, Felix V resigned. The Basle Council broke up and dispersed. Its end marks the end of conciliarism, the reform movement within a framework of church councils. Reform would have to come from some other source. Meanwhile the papacy withdrew into itself, becoming an Italian power with Italian interests. The age of the Renaissance popes now began. Humanist pope Pope Nicholas V set the tone for his successors: he was concerned with the architectural adornment of Rome, and with promoting humanism, especially the study of Greek. This aspect of scholarship was prominent following the sack of Constantinople in 1453 and the flight of Byzantine refugees to the West. The Vatican Library was reorganized and many manuscripts added. The ideal, but not the reality, of a crusade also attracted his attention. The next pope, Alfonso Borgia (Calixtus III), who died in 1458, actually engineered schemes leading to a Crusade, and spent a great deal of money towards it. The results were hardly worth the effort. His successor, Pius II (1438–64), was one of the more interesting Renaissance figures in his own right. One of the greatest of humanist church leaders, he was widely travelled and fully experienced in affairs of the Empire, papal court, and councils. He too worked conscientiously for a Crusade against the Turks, but again this came to nothing. Pius left many writings, including an extensive collection of memoirs, from which the lifestyle of a Renaissance pope can be reconstructed. His successor, Paul II (1464–71), was not on friendly terms with the humanists, but more interested in lavish processions, pompous display, and his own reputation, rather than that of the office and dignity of the pope. With Sixtus IV (1471–84) the papacy is sometimes said to have reached a new low. Although he was the general of the Franciscans, Sixtus, when elected, acted in a most un-Franciscan manner. Guilty of the most flagrant nepotism, of the thirty-four cardinals he elevated, six were his own nephews. He was involved in political intrigues, interfering in the affairs of Florence, and even being implicated in the assassination of two de Medicis in 1478. As to the Crusade, Sixtus at first expressed interest in the venture, but was unable to draw together enough material support. This was true even after the Turks landed on Italian soul, in Apulia. The infamous Borgias The need for greater amounts of money, in the form of ‘gifts’, led to further bureaucratization of the papal court. Sixtus exploited the sale of offices and peddling of indulgences, requiring more money partly for his patronage of humanistic studies, art, and architecture. He was a man of complex motives and interests; this was the pope who built the Sistine Chapel in Rome. He also established a hospital for deserted children, cancelled the decrees of the Council of Constance, reorganized the Vatican Library, and condemned the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. Such was the anxiety aroused by this High Renaissance pope that there was even talk of another general council to bring him under control – but this came to nothing. Relief of Catherine of Siena, Rome, Italy. ©Zatletic/Dreamstime.com Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) was one of the most controversial of all the popes. He was Rodrigo Borgia, a wily politician, rich, well-connected, and careless of morals. Born in Spain about 1430, Rodrigo studied at Bologna, moving on to become a cardinal and then vice-chancellor in the papal court of his uncle, Calixtus III. The many children of Rodrigo, born before his election as pope (for example, Isabella, Jeronima, John, Peter, Geoffrey, Caesar, and perhaps the best-remembered, Lucretia – born in 1480), were all well provided for from church revenues, both before and after their father became pope. Savonarola Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98) was an Italian preacher of reform who was executed for his activities. Born in Ferrara, Italy, he studied humanism and medicine, but renounced these pursuits to become a Dominican in 1474. He served in several north Italian cities and by 1491 was Prior of San Marco and a popular preacher in Florence. His sermons warned of a great judgment coming on the city, after which a golden age would arrive, when Florence would unite all Italy in a just commonwealth. These predictions seemed to be fulfilled when Charles VIII, King of France, invaded Italy and the Medici rulers of Florence fled. Under the new government, Savonarola rose to a position of power through his preaching. He initiated tax reforms, aided the poor, reformed the courts, and changed the city from a lax, corrupt, pleasure-loving place into a virtual monastery. Having reformed Florence, he next denounced Pope Alexander VI and the corrupt papal court. The quarrel which followed resulted in his excommunication and the threat of an interdict against Florence. This frightened the people and led to his execution. Savonarola became a hero to many of the early Protestants, even though he retained a Catholic theology. They saw in his opposition to the papacy a useful example for them to follow. His success came at the height of the Italian Renaissance and demonstrates a deeply religious attitude among the people of that era which is often overlooked. Robert G. Clouse Alexander was a careful and efficient manager of the Papal States. Wising to avoid foreign intrigues and entanglements in Italy, he was not above using even Turkish help, for example against the French. In the midst of these political skirmishes, the preacher Savonarola was executed at Florence because of his opposition to Borgia, and his friendship with the French, whom he saw as the hope of Italy. The pope was called upon to act as mediator between Spain and Portugal, dividing the ‘new world’ between them. His reign, which closed the fifteenth century, witnessed the discoveries which opened up a new chapter in world history, and in the history of the church. The character of the papacy was changing during the later Middle Ages, as was the attitude of many Christians towards it. The Avignon episode, and especially the Schism, brought about popular estrangement from the popes. Eventually the idea of ‘national churches’ would emerge, opposed to a universal papal church. The papacy grew in wealth and complexity, and the prestige of the office was lowered by its political involvement and increased bureaucracy. In addition, the important church councils challenged papal superiority. The tastes and morals of some fifteenth-century popes left much to be desired. In the midst of all these cross-currents, certain problems continued to intrude. One of these was the split between the Western Church and the Byzantine or Orthodox Church, centred on Constantinople. The West looks East A special relationship had grown up in Constantinople between the Eastern Emperor and the Patriarch. Secular influence over the spiritual power was far more acceptable in the East than in the West. This meant, among other things, that political considerations more directly affected the attitudes of the Eastern Church. This relationship, or ‘Caesaro-papism’, as it was called in the West, was not acceptable to the Western papacy. There were also complex theological differences between the two churches. In addition, the entire cultural background in which each church followed Christian traditions was different. The Latin-speaking Western Church had its own customs and history, and the Greek-speaking Eastern Church similarly had a tradition of which it was proud. The rift between the two was not helped by the Fourth Crusade, when the Western Crusaders, transported by Venice and at the mercy of her sea-power, were diverted to Constantinople itself, which they captured in 1204. For much of the thirteenth century the power of the Greek Emperor was replaced by the so-called Latin Kingdom of Constantinople, under Western leadership. By 1261 the Greeks had retaken their capital city and ousted the uncouth Westerners. The thirteenth century, then, was hardly a promising era in which to improve relationships between the Churches of East and West. Clement V, the first Avignonese pope, renewed the call to Crusaders to recapture Constantinople, but with little response. The French King Charles IV (1322–28) expressed some interest in the scheme, but nothing lasting came of this. Meanwhile a new development in the East was eventually to alter papal as well as Byzantine policy: the rise of the Ottoman Turks. By the middle of the fourteenth century these ‘savage hordes’ seemed to pose a real threat not only to the East but to the West too. United in fear, East and West began to grow closer together, for mutual protection. As early as 1339, faced by the Ottoman Turks, the Greeks expressed an interest in a union with the West. Under Emperor John VI (1347–54), several missions were sent to Avignon to test the attitude of the papacy. Eventually it was accepted that an ecumenical council would be the best way to go about considering the union of Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christianity. Unfortunately the outbreak of the Western Schism after 1378, and subsequent rivalry between popes and councils, ruined these prospects. Competing popes and councils appealed to the Eastern Emperor for recognition. These were political moves, and in the process the real issues were brushed aside. The East’s response varied. On the one hand the Byzantines had no wish to get disagreeably involved in Western religious politics; on the other hand the Ottomans were menacing them. Finally, Emperor Manuel II Palaiologus (1391–1425) journeyed to the West to try to resolve the issues. His reception was mixed – even lukewarm – and promises of armed assistance were not encouraging. His efforts were, in the event, unnecessary since immediate disaster was averted in the East. The Ottoman threat was quelled by the rise of a new intervening force, Tamburlaine, in 1402. For the moment, the Ottoman scourge seemed tamed. It was still discussed in the West, but with little real concern. For example, though the Turkish threat was raised at the Council of Constance in 1415, it was quickly pushed aside as a secondary issue. The papacy was once again battling for independence, at the councils of Basle and Ferrara-Florence. This led each side, council and pope, to appeal to the Eastern Emperor for political support, and each side worked towards union with the Greeks. Whichever side achieved this could thereby claim the greater glory and prestige. In 1439 the papacy scored the victory, and a decree of union was agreed upon, though this news was not well received back in Constantinople itself, where there was much popular resistance to a religious union with the West, whatever the political advantages might be. It was not until 1452 that the decree of union was officially published in Constantinople. But this was too little, too late. The very next year, 1453, Constantinople, the ancient capital of Byzantium and stronghold of Orthodox Christianity, was captured by the Muslim Turks. The conflict between Roman and Greek Christianity was thus resolved. Poor Franciscans? The dispute with the Greek Orthodox Church was only one among many problems of the later medieval papacy. Other conflicts were internal. One concerned the Franciscan Order, founded in the early thirteenth century with papal approval. The father of the order, Francis of Assisi, died in 1226. As early as 1245 difficulties which also involved the papacy had arisen within his organization of friars. The question was, should the Franciscans be allowed to own property, or should they keep to the original ideal of poverty, as Francis had directed? Franciscans who favoured poverty discovered a justification in the writings of the mystic Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135–1202). The other camp found a champion in Pope Innocent IV (1243–54), who declared that Franciscan property belonged to the church, and then allowed it to be re-allocated to the order – a mere technical avoidance of the rule of poverty. The split within the Franciscans widened. Another papal decree of 1279, along much the same lines, also failed to unite the order. By the end of the thirteenth century the Franciscans had divided into a group of ‘Spirituals’, who supported the ideal of poverty, and one of ‘Conventuals’, who tried to find a compromise solution. They wished in theory to maintain the spirit of their order, but in practice avoid the burdens of poverty. Although an agreement of sorts was reached under the early Avignon popes, for example at the Council of Vienne (1311–12), the Spirituals began to move to a radical position, ultimately wishing to cut all links with the order. In 1317 John XXII ordered them to rejoin the other Franciscans. Some Spirituals who continued to refuse fell under the judgment of the Inquisition, and four ‘Fraticelli’ were executed in 1318. This controversy involved basic problems for the papacy. In general, the Franciscans accepted that poverty was an ideal practised by Christ and the apostles. From this arose the idea that the church hierarchy should remain aloof from entanglements in the world. If extended to the papacy, this put in question the position of the pope as ruler of the princes of Christendom, and the massive wealth of the church as a whole came under scrutiny. John Wyclif John Wyclif (c. 1320–84) was a prominent English reformer of the later Middle Ages. He came from the north of England, became a leading philosopher at Oxford University and was invited to serve at court by John of Gaunt, who was acting as ruler at this time. Wyclif offended the church by backing the right of the government to seize the property of corrupt clergymen. His views were condemned by the pope in 1377, but Wyclif’s influential friends protected him. Wyclif pushed his anti-clerical views further, and began to attack some of the central doctrines of the medieval church. He opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation, claiming rather that Christ was spiritually present in the eucharist. Wyclif held that the church consisted of God’s chosen people, who did not need a priest to mediate with God for them. John Wyclif, c. 1320–84), English scholar, translator, and reformer, sometimes known as ‘Morning Star of the Reformation’. Tim Dowley Associates The reformer was gradually deserted by his friends in high places, and the church authorities forced him and his followers out of Oxford. In 1382 Wyclif, a sick man, went to live at Lutterworth, in the Midlands, where he died in 1384. He wrote many books, including a Summa Theologica and initiated a new translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible into English: The Wyclif Bible. A group of followers arose around Wyclif at Oxford. He attracted support by his energetic preaching and lecturing. His followers spread to Leicestershire, and became known as ‘Lollards’, which may mean ‘mutterer’ or ‘mumbler’. By 1395 the Lollards had developed into an organized group, with their own ministers and popular support. The Lollards stood for many of the ideas set out by Wyclif, believing particularly that the main task of a priest was to preach, and that the Bible should be available to all in their own language. From the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Lollards were suppressed, particularly when their protest became linked with political unrest. But Lollardy continued to thrive in some parts of England, and prepared the way for the coming of Lutheranism in the next century. Tim Dowley Eventually Pope John XXII condemned the Franciscan doctrine of poverty in 1323 and some Franciscan leaders were excommunicated. This problem continued to trouble fifteenth-century popes, by which time the Spirituals were known as ‘Observants’. In effect they had become a separate order from the Conventuals, though in theory still under a single rule. In 1517 this division was formally recognized. The Observants then constituted the larger party, the Conventuals the minor. It cannot be said that the conflict among the Franciscans, which began in the thirteenth century, was successfully resolved by the medieval papacy. Critics of the papacy This period witnessed a decline in prestige of the papacy. Simultaneously, there was a rise in various dissident religious movements. Some Spirituals were burnt by the Inquisition, declaring clearly their discontent with the church. During the fourteenth century, one particularly bizarre movement was the Flagellants, with their practice of whipping themselves. Other lesser groups also fell outside the lines of orthodoxy, for example the Brothers of the Free Spirit. The Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century brought hysteria as well as havoc and death to most of Europe. The two most troublesome movements were those initiated by Hus and by Wyclif, whose followers came to be called Lollards. By the end of the Middle Ages they had come to attack the very foundations of the medieval hierarchy, including the papacy itself. The attack came not only in the sophisticated Latin writings of professional theologians. Much of the vernacular literature of the later medieval centuries reveals discontent with the condition of the church and papacy. Examples occur in anti-clerical asides of the writer Boccaccio (1313–75), and the condemnation of church wealth by the English writer William Langland (c. 1332–c. 1386). Certainly Geoffrey Chaucer shows no love for the materialism of the church in fourteenth-century England. Everywhere more and more people began to question the basic tenets of the church. Society was changing, and the church was not changing with it. The critics attacked the hierarchy and its wealth, and the doctrine and dogma of the sacramental system. In the universities, the Aristotelian philosophical basis for Christian theology – scholasticism – developed by Aquinas in the thirteenth century was being questioned by such men as William of Ockham (sometimes ‘Occam’, c. 1288–c. 1348) and Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) in England, and the Frenchmen Jean Buridan (c. 1300–after 1358) and Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382). The later Middle Ages show an obvious change in yet another sphere of Christian activity. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the founding of monasteries was one of the more praiseworthy acts of piety among wealthy lords and ladies. But in the later medieval period this enthusiasm for foundation, reform and growth had died out. New houses of monks and nuns were seldom built and endowments were less easy to obtain. Monasteries had fallen on evil times. For example, some were forced to sell room and board to private individuals and families, meaning in effect that some monasteries became a form of retirement home for those who could afford the fees. This was not the case everywhere. Some larger houses managed to carry on, so extensive were their lands. The smaller ones had the worst time of it, as changes in the agrarian economy and inflation lowered the value of their landed properties. Even before the end of the Middle Ages, smaller monasteries occasionally had to be closed down. We ask God then of his supreme goodness to reform our church, as being entirely out of joint, to the perfectness of its first beginning. The Lollard Conclusions, 1394 But people still wished to give towards establishing havens for holy men. Now, however, they would more often endow smaller places run by Augustinian canons, rather than Benedictine monks. The canons required a smaller endowment of land, worked in smaller groups, and seemed to contribute to the new town-dwelling society in which they settled. Canons worked in and with society; monks turned their backs on it – or so it appeared. Society was no longer tolerant of the exclusiveness of monks. William of Ockham William of Ockham was a thinker of first-rate importance. He was born around 1288, probably in the village of Ockham in Surrey, England, and died in Munich around 1348. After entering the Franciscan order, he began theological study at Oxford around 1309, and completed the requirements for the status of Master with his lectures on Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences (c. 1318–20). Apparently denounced as heretic to Pope John XXII by the university’s former chancellor, William was summoned to Avignon in 1324. While there, he was embroiled in a controversy about apostolic poverty which made him more critical of the papacy. He called for a college of popes to rule the church, and claimed Christ was the church’s only head – teachings which looked forward to the conciliar movement. Ockham entirely rejected papal authority in secular matters. In 1328 he fled to the service of the Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, supporting him in his struggles with the papacy. In philosophy, William elaborated a new form of Nominalist theory. He rejected the prevailing view that ‘universals’ really exist, arguing that they are simply artificial products of the human mind, necessary for communicating by means of language. Only individual or ‘particular’ things have real existence. William’s Nominalism became known as ‘the modern way’ (via moderna) over against ‘the old way’ (via antiqua) of Aquinas. Since knowledge was based on experience of individual things, natural science took a new significance. In his many writings, William discussed with masterly logical skill the great themes of philosophy and theology. By the principle known as ‘Ockham’s razor’ he insisted that ‘What can be done with fewer [assumptions] is done in vain with more’; the mind should not multiply things without necessity. William made an elaborate criticism of philosophical proofs for the existence of God, although he himself had a strong, positive theology. He stressed that God was known by faith alone, not by reason or illumination, and that God’s will was absolutely supreme. In these and other respects William of Ockham paved the way for Reformation theology. H. Dermot McDonald Another way pious lay people tried to reassure themselves of their chances of salvation was by establishing private chantries. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries more and more of these chantries were endowed. The idea was simple enough: a wealthy individual or family, even a guild, provided a sum of money for a priest to sing a mass periodically and, in ‘perpetual chantries’, for ever, for the soul of the benefactor. Sometimes special chantry-altars were built – private chapels licensed by the local church authority. This was an easy way for poor priests to make a bit of money, and was one of the things the more conscientious reformers disliked. Religion becomes more personal Private chantries represent a break with the institutional, official, and distant mediation on the part of the church. They satisfied the need for direct contact with one’s own priest, who said one’s own mass for one’s own soul. Religion had become more personal, more individual. Church art and the liturgy also suggested this. The suffering Christ replaced God, the stern judge. The pitiful Virgin Mary was made more human. The cult of the Virgin became particularly popular in later medieval Christianity, with shrine after shrine dedicated to her throughout Europe. The use of the rosary, the ‘Hail, Mary’, and feasts of the Virgin became increasingly common. In art, the pierced and bleeding heart of Christ began to take its place more often among the other motifs. ‘Miracles of the eucharist’ became more frequent after the thirteenth century. Christ was worshipped in a way that replaced older saint-veneration: the ‘monstrance’ in which the elements were put on display was merely a newer-style saint’s reliquary. The standard of saintliness seems to have been changing. Joan of Arc was an ignorant peasant, unlike most of the saints revered earlier in the Middle Ages. Obviously, in her case, political considerations were important. The older approaches to popular religion still survived; for example, the credulous belief in relics and in astounding miracles. Behind all this was a profound swing away from an institutional, towards a personal, religion. Mystics flourish This change is even more clearly documented in another area: the last two medieval centuries were noted for mysticism, perhaps the most personal form of expressed relationship between an individual and God to be found in medieval Christianity. Mysticism continued to flourish. This tradition was strong in the Dominican order. Meister Eckhart (c. 1260– c. 1327) and Henry Suso (c. 1300–66), for example, stimulated the mystical outpourings of Johannes Nider (1380–1438). In his entertaining book Formicarius, though, Nider proved himself to be as aware of the real world as of the mystical. Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) was another well-known mystic; his empirical studies in science and languages produced a unique mystical vocabulary. Using Neoplatonic ideas to approach the Unknowable God, Cusa created similes based upon optics and mathematics. Germany was the foremost land of mysticism. Other regions also produced fine examples. Catherine of Siena (1347–80) was a well-known mystic from Italy. In England, an anonymous author contributed The Cloud of Unknowing to mystical literature, while Richard Rolle (1290–1349), Walter Hilton (d. 1396) and the late fourteenth-century anchoress Julian of Norwich (c. 1342–c. 1416) also wrote significant English mystical works. Missions to Mongols and Muslims Our Lord shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazelnut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It lasteth and ever shall last for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath Being by the love of God.’ In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second that God loveth it, the third that God keepeth it. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, V, late fourteenth century Christianity was expanding to hitherto non-Christian parts of the world. The periods of greatest missionary activity in the Middle and Far East were the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the Franciscans and Dominicans particularly concerned in these ventures. Francis himself went to Egypt in a fruitless effort to convert the Muslims. Further missions to North Africa followed, occasionally ending in martyrdom. Two sees, Fez and Morocco, were established, at least temporarily. In addition, missionaries were also sent to central Asia. One of the motives behind this was to convert the Mongols and bring them into alliance with the Christians against the Muslims. An incidental effect of the movement was a new interest in oriental languages, which began to be studied in the West. Among the most important Franciscan and Dominican missionaries were Raymond Lull, Lawrence of Portugal, John of Plano Carpini, and William of Ruysbroeck. Missionaries will convert the world by preaching, but also through the shedding of tears and blood and with great labour, and through a bitter death. Raymond Lull Eventually the Franciscans established six mission fields or ‘vicariates’, three for the Mongols, one for North Africa, and two for Russia and south-east Europe. Pope John XXII also sent Dominicans to govern other Eastern sees, for example, in southern India and Samarkand. Ultimately the attempt to convert the Mongols to Christianity failed and Muslim missionaries succeeded before the Christians. The Mongol Khan Uzbek (d. 1340) was converted to Islam, and his ‘Golden Horde’ followed his example. In the Far East, the thirteenth-century Venetian merchant family of the Polos was among the earliest messengers of the pope. The Franciscans followed up these preliminary steps. From 1289 John of Montecorvino (1247–1328) worked in China, founding a see at Peking after he was created archbishop in 1307. Six suffragan or junior bishops were established in the area under his control. Ultimately these missionary activities in the Middle and Far East, among the Mongols and the Chinese, declined and died out after the middle of the fourteenth century. This was probably partly because of the Black Death, which came into western Europe at this time, disrupting both church and secular life. The failure was also due to the growth of Islamic influence among the Mongol people, and the confusion following Tamburlaine’s rise to power. In China itself, a change to the new Ming dynasty in 1368 brought anti-Christian powers to the fore. These spelled the virtual end of eastward expansion for Christianity – and of Christian missionary activities – for some centuries. During the fifteenth century in Portugal, at the other extremity of Europe, a strong royal house came to power with an interest in overseas exploration. Under Prince Henry ‘The Navigator’ (1394–1460), Portuguese ships nosed south along the west coast of Africa in search of commerce and converts. At the end of the Middle Ages, Catholic Christianity had retreated in the Orient; now a new field of mission was about to open up. It was to be the Portuguese and the Spaniards who would take their religion and their missionaries to the newly found lands of the west, to South and Central America, to Mexico. Ronald Finucane Further reading Richard Fletcher, The Cross and the Crescent: Christianity and Islam from Muhammad to the Reformation, London, 2003. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity ad 200–1000, Oxford, 1997. G. R. Evans, The Church in the Early Middle Ages, London 2007. Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, London 2006. Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, London, 1963. Tibor Szamuely, The Russian Tradition, London, 1974. Study questions What were the main threats to the church in the West between ad 600 and 1000? How did the rise of Islam impact the church before ad 1000? In what ways was Pope Gregory I ‘Great’? Why did the Great Schism occur? How did the church begin in Russia and Eastern Europe? Was it distinctive? Why was monasticism so popular for much of this period? Why did it decline? What issues divided the church and state in the West? Are the Crusades defensible? Who criticized the Roman Catholic Church? Why? What was the legacy of the medieval church? 4 Reform and Renewal 1500–1650 Summary The sixteenth century gave rise to a major upheaval within Western Christianity, usually referred to as the ‘Reformation’. Alarmed at what they perceived to be a growing disparity between apostolic and medieval visions of Christianity, men such as Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli pressed for reform. Luther believed that the teachings of the church had been distorted during the Middle Ages and needed to be brought back into line with Scripture. For Luther, the question of how we enter into a right relationship with God – the doctrine of justification – needed radical revision in the light of the Bible. Although the need for reform was widely conceded within the church, in the end both Luther and Zwingli found themselves creating reforming communities outside the mainline church. By the time of John Calvin and his reformation of the city of Geneva, Protestantism had emerged as a distinct type of Christianity, posing a major threat to the Catholic Church. In the late 1540s, the Catholic Church itself began a major process of reformation and renewal, often known as the ‘Catholic Reformation’, and formerly the ‘Counter-Reformation’. The religious orders were reformed, and many of the beliefs and practices that reformers such as Luther found objectionable were eliminated. Nevertheless, significant differences remained between Protestantism and Catholicism. The discovery of the Americas led to a new interest in spreading the gospel abroad. The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, took the lead within the Catholic Church and sent missionaries to the Americas, India, China, and Japan. Christianity also expanded by other means, one of the most important being large-scale emigration from Europe to North America, beginning in the late sixteenth century. Chapter 22 Seeds of Renewal The origins of the Reformation The great religious revolution called the Reformation broke out in 1517, but it is necessary to go back at least 100 years to understand what caused it. Although the seeds of renewal had been sown in prepared soil, the roots of abuse were old and deep. Martin Luther reckoned things began to go badly wrong with the Christian church in the eighth century. Today most Catholics and Protestants would say that several generations before Luther’s protest against indulgences it was evident there was something radically wrong with the Roman Catholic church. How corrupt was the church? It is difficult to form an objective picture of the corruption of the clergy in the century before the Reformation. By most accounts, negligence, ignorance, absenteeism, and sexual immorality were widespread among the clergy, and taken for granted by lay people. But not every lurid contemporary description should be taken at its face value: some high-minded Catholics of the time may have painted a blacker portrait of their church than was warranted by the facts. Nor was later mud-slinging always as accurate as it claimed. But corruption is one thing, official sanction of corruption is quite another; the heart of the rotten condition of the Catholic Church lay in papal protection and promotion of abuses. The political writer Machiavelli said that the nearer one got to Rome the more corruption one found; and, in 1510 – seven years before his public protest – Luther was shocked by what he saw when he visited the holy city. But just as today vice hits the headlines while virtue goes unsung, so in the pre-Reformation church the scandals tend to be remembered and the piety forgotten. No doubt there was much hidden devotion in all ranks of society in the fifteenth century, and pockets of piety even in Rome. There were undoubtedly parish priests, like Chaucer’s ‘poor parson of a town’, who lived useful lives of dedicated godliness: but they did not make history. Europe under threat The period of the Reformation was rich in conflicting personalities, institutions, and events, and it featured factors other than church practice and abuse. The lives of ordinary people in the Catholic West were threatened by two major menaces from outside the Christian church: the plague and the Turk. Both suddenly appeared on the scene around the middle of the fourteenth century, and both were regarded by popular preachers as the scourge of God to punish the failings of Catholicism. Bubonic plague first struck Europe in 1347, in an epidemic known as the Black Death, which in three years killed about one third of the inhabitants of the Catholic West. After that, it remained endemic for centuries, causing many deaths from time to time (in London, for example, in 1665). People lived in the shadow of this pestilence, and during the fifteenth century Europe could be described as a death-orientated society. The Muslim Ottoman Turks became a political threat when they captured Gallipoli in 1354 and began their advance into Europe. Throughout the fifteenth century they continued their career of conquest to the north and west. The reign of their Sultan Mehmed II (1451–81), who died two years before Luther was born, saw spectacular territorial gains. Constantinople fell to him in 1453, Negroponte in 1470, and in 1480 his forces even made a landing at Otranto, on the heel of Italy. All through Luther’s lifetime and beyond, the Turks were as real a menace as the plague – indeed more real to coast-dwellers south of Rome, for Turkish raiding-parties would pounce in the night from the sea and carry off pretty girls for the Sultan’s harem. The writer Tasso’s sister was nearly abducted from Sorrento. In Machiavelli’s comedy Mandragola, written within months of Luther’s protest, a woman asks her confessor: ‘Do you think the Turk will come into Italy this year?’ It was a worry never far from the minds of those living near the Mediterranean. New lands, new nations Europe (this title is itself a fifteenth-century concept) was meanwhile finding new outlets for expansion overseas by exploration, for this was the age of navigation and geological discoveries. Martin Luther was five years old when Bartholomew Diaz founded the Cape of Good Hope, nine years old when Columbus discovered America, and fifteen when Vasco da Gama opened up the sea-route to India. In fact, the voyages and exploits of Cabot, Cortés, Magellan, and Pizarro all fell within the lifetime of Luther; practically every year some new horizon was disclosed. Great political developments at home matched great geological discoveries abroad. This was the age of emerging national consciousness in Europe. The three most powerful Western monarchies were all growing in confidence, with greater royal authority in provincial life. In England the new monarchy dates from 1485, in France from 1491, and in Spain from 1492. But it was in the field of church politics that the conflict of the Reformation was joined, and the most powerful and pretentious contestant was the pope. When the fifteenth century began, there were two rival popes in the West, each seeking to undo the work of the other, and from 1409 there were three. This unhappy state in the leadership of the Western Church reflected a blight which affected the quality of Christian life at almost every level. For all its ideals, piety, and art, Catholicism differed from the church of the New Testament in doctrine, morals, and administration. Most men and women of conscience realized this, and called with increasing urgency for ‘reform in head and members’. Some – such as Jan Hus the Bohemian disciple of John Wyclif – would not wait for Rome to reform herself, but separated from the unity of the Roman Catholic church for the honour of Christ and his gospel. The Renaissance The words ‘Renaissance’ and ‘humanist’ have been used in referring to some of the fifteenth-century popes. Renaissance is a term which nineteenth-century historians began to apply to the broad cultural change which came over Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It means re-birth, and is used to describe the reviving of the values of classical Greek and Roman civilization in the arts, politics, and habits of mind, which originated in Italy and spread over most of Western Europe. Meanwhile, many of the attitudes and institutions which are thought of as ‘medieval’ persisted throughout this period even in centres of the new culture. The Renaissance began with the revival of classical learning by scholars who have come to be called ‘humanists’. A humanist was originally someone who taught Latin grammar, but the word later came to mean a student of Latin and Greek who not only read classical writings but moulded his life on what he read. Thus humanists stand in contrast to the scholastics, and humanism in contrast to scholasticism. But although Renaissance humanists read non-Christian authors, such as Cicero and Plato, they were not necessarily opposed to Christianity; in fact most of the early humanists professed faith in Christ. Only later, in the heyday of the classical revival, did many Renaissance thinkers reject or ignore Christianity to admire pagan virtues and practise pagan vices. For example, anyone reading The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) – written four years before Luther’s protest – might be tempted to suppose that Christianity had never existed. Back to the classics The home of humanism was Italy, and the first known humanist was Lovato Lovati (1241–1309), a judge in Padua who introduced a new way of treating the Latin classics by attempting to imitate their spirit as well as their letter. Besides composing Latin verse and cultivating literary friendships, he discovered manuscripts of forgotten classics in the library of the Benedictine abbey of Pomposa, thus launching a search for the hidden treasures of antiquity which became one of the hallmarks of humanism. The Italian with whom humanism came of age was Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch (1304–74), whose writings have had an enormous effect on European literature. Petrarch was a sensitive writer and a Christian by conviction (his favourite reading was Augustine), who reacted against the Aristotelian form in which Christianity was presented by the medieval scholastics. He was not a speculative thinker, and hated the logic-chopping of the schools, the sterility of medieval rhetoric, and the ‘barbarism’ of scholastic Latin. The importance of Petrarch in the history of the church is that he polarized Christian opinion between the old scholasticism and the new humanism, between authoritarian tradition and the cult of original texts. In the next two centuries, both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations occurred in the context of this polarization. Petrarch has been called ‘the first modern man’, and it is true that some of his activities and attitudes (such as climbing a mountain to enjoy the view from the top) are more typical of our own day than of his. But in fact he shared with his contemporaries many medieval prejudices and limitations. His Christian humanism agonized between Augustine and Cicero, yet the inheritance he left for his successors was the ideal of a world of classical values recaptured and displayed within the context of a restored Christianity. Apart from his friend and admirer, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75), a fellow-humanist who wrote voluminously in Latin and Italian – the Decameron is his masterpiece – Petrarch’s immediate heir was Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406). This Tuscan notary was for more than thirty years chancellor of Florence city council, and in that office introduced classical eloquence into city correspondence. He continued the quest to find hidden manuscripts and subject them to critical examination, and was himself the author of Latin works modelled on the classics of antiquity. Two of his most eminent followers, Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444) and Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), left Florence and found jobs in the papal chancery at Rome, which, after the election of Pope Martin V in 1417, became the most important centre of humanism in Italy. The Council of Constance The Conciliar Movement, which looked for the reform of the church by the calling of a general council, was inextricably bound up with the history of the Renaissance and the expansion of humanism. While attending the Council of Constance as a papal secretary, Poggio Bracciolini found time to explore the surrounding German and Swiss monasteries for classical texts, and his searches were richly rewarded. At St Gall and elsewhere he discovered invaluable works by Cicero, Lucretius, Quintilian, Statius, Vitruvius, and other Latin authors. These were the most notable manuscript finds of the century. The council, which was transferred from Ferrara to Florence, gave classical studies another stimulus since it was attended by several learned Greeks. Among them was Cardinal Basilios Bessarion (1403–72), the leading collector of Greek manuscripts in the fifteenth century. For the cult of ancient Rome led to the cult of ancient Greece. One of the foremost aims of Italian humanists was to read classical Greek literature in the original. The knowledge of Greek had never entirely died out in the West, but before the fifteenth century it was confined to a mere handful of scholars in any one generation. Petrarch owned a text of Homer, but could not read it; Boccaccio tried to learn the language but made little headway. It was Salutati who most effectively championed the cause of Greek studies in Italy. Through his efforts, a professorship of Greek was created at Florence in 1396, and the post was filled the following year by Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355–1415), a distinguished Byzantine scholar and a diplomat brought over from Constantinople. A succession of learned Greeks occupied the position until 1480, when an Italian humanist – Angelo Poliziano (1454–94) – was appointed. By that time Greek studies were firmly established in the West. Greek is the language of the New Testament as well as of the classics, and inevitably the humanists extended their attention from texts of profane literature to the texts of sacred literature. The pioneer in this field was Lorenzo Valla (c. 1407–57), a Roman who deserves to be called the father of modern biblical criticism. In 1444 he published a daring comparison between the Latin Vulgate translation and the Greek original in his Annotations on the New Testament. For Valla everything was subject to the same scholarly investigation. Jerome’s Vulgate Bible was a text to be examined on the same principles of criticism as the Annals of Tacitus. Four years earlier he had proved from historical and linguistic evidence that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. In another work he mocked the methods of scholasticism. By meticulous scholarship and comparison of text with text he undermined the medieval tradition that was based on authority. In many ways Valla foreshadowed Erasmus, and his writings deeply influenced the German Reformers of the next century, being specially prized by Luther. Other humanists were meanwhile encouraging new developments in education. For this was the age of the first humanist educators, such as Guarino of Verona (1374–1450), tutor of Leonello d’Este, Marquis of Ferrara, and Vittorino da Feltre (1378–1446), the herald of modern educational practice. In 1423 at Mantua, where he tutored the children of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, Vittorino founded the Casa Gioiosa (the ‘Happy House’), a school dedicated to the ideal of ‘a sound mind in a healthy body’ (mens sana in corpore sano). Its curriculum included music, philosophy, and physical training as well as the Trivium and Quadrivium of traditional medieval education. Like many other innovations of this time – such as the introduction of the clock in the home and the table-fork – the reforms in the schooling of boys initiated by these humanist educators began to be imitated far and wide, and heralded the modern world. Plato revived It has been well said that medieval thought means Aristotle, and Renaissance thought means Plato. The revival of Platonism in the West owes much to Petrarch, Chrysoloras and Bruni, but still more to the Council of Florence. One of the Greeks who attended it was Georgius Gemistus, later called Pletho (c. 1355–1452/4), whose life was devoted to the cult of Plato. He influenced Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), the banker who virtually ruled Florence, and who in turn was able to encourage Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), the Italian philosopher by whose efforts enthusiasm for Plato as a forerunner of Christ caught fire in Italy. Ficino translated all Plato’s known writings into Latin, a daunting enterprise begun in 1463 and completed in 1477. He also founded the Platonic Academy, which became the focus of the cultural life of Florence in the golden age of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–92), called ‘the Magnificent’. The most remarkable member of this Academy was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), who represents Renaissance thinking at its brilliant best. In his writings he sought to harmonize Plato with Aristotle, the Jewish mystic doctrines (Kabbalah) with Christianity, and eloquently proclaimed the dignity of men and women in the universe of God. A new world of learning Neoplatonism (as this revival of Platonic thought in the context of Christianity is known) invaded the art and poetry of Florence. Examples include the paintings of Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) and the Stanze of the poet Poliziano. It also affected some of the Italian reformers of the sixteenth century, such as Bernardino Ochino of Siena (1487–1564), making Calvin and other Protestants suspicious of them. Papal diplomacy and the Conciliar Movement gave many varied opportunities for social and intellectual exchange. It was not long before the Renaissance was exported from its country of origin and humanists began to multiply in France, Germany, Holland, Spain, and England. The two leading French humanists were Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (c. 1455–1536) and Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), whose exact and penetrating scholarship paved the way for the Reformation in their country. Of particular importance in Germany were Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64), the foremost speculative thinker of his age, and Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), whose De Rudimentis Hebraicis (1506) established the study of Hebrew in the West. I wish that the Scriptures might be translated into all languages, so that not only the Scots and the Irish, but also the Turk and the Saracen might read and understand them. I long that the farm-labourer might sing them as he follows his plough, the weaver hum them to the tune of his shuttle, the traveller beguile the weariness of his journey with their stories. Desiderius Erasmus From Holland came Erasmus, the greatest of all humanists. Spain produced the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, a unique humanist project promoted by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), with contributions by scholars such as Elio Antonio de Nebrija (1441–1522). In England the new learning flowered in such Christian humanists as John Colet (1467–1519), Dean of St Paul’s, whose Oxford lectures on Paul’s letters broke new ground. Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), the author of Utopia, was martyred for his Catholic constancy by Henry VIII. Whether by cause or effect, the fifteenth century also saw the foundation of more than two dozen new universities in Europe, among them those of Alcalá, Bordeaux, Louvain, St Andrews, Tübingen, and Uppsala. The University of Wittenberg, in which Luther taught, was opened in 1502. In the wake of humanism came the founding or development of some of the greatest non-monastic libraries in western Europe, such as the Vatican in Rome, the Laurentian in Florence, and the Bodleian in Oxford. Gutenberg’s revolution A completely new dimension in the history of books, scholarship, and education opened up with the invention of printing – sometimes called Germany’s chief contribution to the Renaissance. The art of printing from handcut wooden blocks was invented in Asia in about the fifth century ad, and the first known printed book was produced by this means in China in 868. But Europe had to wait until the middle of the fifteenth century for the art to be rediscovered and developed. About 1445 Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398–68) began to pioneer with movable metal type at Mainz in Germany, and – significantly – the first complete book known to have been printed in the Christian world was the Bible (1456). Erasmus monument in Rotterdam, The Netherlands © Grafzero / Dreamstime.com Until 1462 the new art remained a closely guarded trade secret in Mainz, but in that year the city was plundered and the printers dispersed. Within two decades the invention spread north, south, east, and west: printing-presses were set up in Rome in 1467, Paris in 1470, Cracow in 1474, and Westminster in 1476. By the time Luther was born, in 1483, printing was well established throughout Europe. It was the most momentous invention since the stirrup, and a revolutionary step forward in technology. Like the invention of gunpowder (rediscovered at about the same time), the application of printing to book-production held a tremendous potential for good and evil in subsequent history. The printing-press was very important in the early spread of the Reformation. The writings of the first German reformers – Luther and Melanchthon – reached a comparatively wide public in printed form within weeks, and were soon read in Paris and Rome. At the height of the Reformation, in the last years of Luther’s life, busy printers enabled the anonymous work Beneficio di Christo (which more than any other book spread the doctrine of justification by faith in Italy) to sell 40,000 copies in Venice alone after its publication there in 1543. 1 But even before the Reformation, printing had helped to create a wider and more critical reading-public than had ever been known in the Christian world. It also met the new demand for reading material, with works such as the religious satires of Erasmus, which were a big commercial success. On hearing a rumour that the Sorbonne was about to condemn it, one Paris printer rushed through an edition of 24,000 copies of Erasmus’ Colloquies. Thus printing helped prepare the way for the Reformation. The modern way of serving God Even more important in preparing the way for the Reformation was the rise of a movement called the Devotio Moderna (‘the modern way of serving God’) in northern Europe. This was a spiritual revival that began within the Catholic Church in the late fourteenth century and strongly emphasized both personal devotion and social involvement, especially in education. At the time when humanism was beginning to flower in Italy, seeds of spiritual renewal were germinating north of the Alps. Their most industrious sower was Geert Groote (1340–84), a native of Deventer in Holland who had studied at Paris and taught at Cologne. He lived a life of self-indulgent luxury before being brought to repentance and commitment to Christ in 1374. The change in his life was total: from that time forward he devoted himself to practical piety in the service of God and man. He joined the Carthusians and spent three years in their monastery of Munnikhuizen, near Arnhem. He left the order in 1379 to undertake a strenuous travelling mission in the diocese of Utrecht, preaching with profound effect on the townspeople in Flanders, Guelders, and Holland. He had such an exalted view of Christian priesthood that he never advanced beyond the rank of deacon. At the same time, he wrote tracts against simony and the immorality of the clergy, and condemned prevailing clerical abuses so sharply that his licence to preach was revoked in 1383. In the year of his conversion, Groote gathered a community of devout women in his house at Deventer to live the common life together, without taking the vows of a convent. Religion, he said, is to love God and worship him, not the taking of special vows. Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293–1381), the aged Flemish mystic, and Florens Radewijns (c. 1350–1400), an ordained priest with organizing genius who had studied at Prague, were both associated with him. Brethren of the Common Life Later a community of men, both lay and clergy (mainly like-minded friends and followers of Groote), formed around Radewijns in his Deventer house and became known as the Brethren of the Common Life (Latin, Fratres Vitae Communis). This was a semi-monastic group, observing the threefold rule of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but bound by no formal vow. Thus any member was free to quit the brotherhood and return to secular life if he so pleased. The Brethren did not beg for alms, like the mendicant friars, but studied to be quiet, to do their own business, and work with their own hands, according to the instruction of the apostle Paul. When Groote died of the plague, Radewijns took over the leadership of the Devotio Moderna movement, and in 1387 founded its most influential house at Windesheim, near Zwolle, in Holland. Here the Brethren of the Common Life became Augustinian canons, and their constitutions were approved by Pope Boniface IX in 1395. A few years later they combined with other houses in Holland to form the Congregation of Windesheim. They dedicated themselves not only to spiritual discipline and renouncing the world, but also to the whole process of education. They taught in the local schools and founded schools of their own. In order to support their community, they busied themselves with every aspect of book-production: writing, copying manuscripts, binding, and marketing volumes, and – with the advent of printing – operating their own press. Windesheim and its daughter-houses were soon known as hives of pious industry. In time the movement set on foot by Groote gathered momentum and spread and during the fifteenth century the Windesheim Canons set up communities in Germany and Switzerland. Many of the Brethren of the Common Life and those educated by them left their mark on the Christian world. The foremost of these were Nicholas of Cusa and Erasmus himself. Gabriel Biel (c. 1420–95), the philosopher known as ‘the last German schoolman’, and the humanist Rodolphus Agricola (1444–85) were both members of the community, for the finest elements of scholasticism and humanism co-existed in the Devotio Moderna. the Imitation of Christ Perhaps the individual who best sums up the faith of the Devotio Moderna is Thomas Haemerken (c. 1380–1471), better known as Thomas à Kempis, the author of The Imitation of Christ, the choicest devotional handbook of the Middle Ages. From the age of twelve, when he attended the chapter school at Deventer and came under the spiritual guidance of Radewijns, to the end of his long life, Thomas à Kempis was wholly immersed in the movement begun by Groote. In 1406 he became an Augustinian canon in the daughter-house of St Agnietenberg, near Zwolle, which he had entered in 1399 and where – apart from three years – he remained until he died. He wrote books, copied manuscripts, preached Christ, and counselled others. His life and works reveal the fine flower of the spirituality of the late medieval church. The Imitation of Christ is written in Latin and divided into four parts: the first contains ‘Some thoughts to help with the spiritual life’; the second ‘Some advice on the inner life’; the third and longest provides ‘Spiritual comfort’; and the fourth is ‘A reverent recommendation to holy communion’. As its title suggests, the purpose of the book is to teach the Christian the way of perfection through following Christ’s example. It began to circulate anonymously in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, and within a few decades it was read and loved throughout western Europe. Since it was first printed at Augsburg in 1471, it has appeared in thousands of editions, and is one of the most widely read books in the world. Although it teaches justification by works, the Imitation focuses the mind and heart on Jesus Christ: If a man knows what it is to love Jesus, and to disregard himself for the sake of Jesus, then he is really blessed. We have to abandon all we love for the one we love, for Jesus wants us to love him only above all other things. The love of creatures is fickle and unreliable, but the love of Jesus is trustworthy and enduring. The man who clings to created things will fall with them when they fall, but a man who embraces Jesus will be upheld for ever. It is Jesus whom you must love and keep to be your friend; when all else fades away, he will not leave you, nor let you perish at the end. Whether you will or no, you must one day leave everything behind. Keep yourself close to Jesus in life as well as death; commit yourself to his faithfulness, for he only can help you when everything else will fail. The Devotio Moderna conditioned many hearts and minds in northern Europe to receive the teaching of the Reformers. No great revolution, such as the Protestant Reformation, happens without rumblings and warnings. Luther had his heralds and prophets: before him came many lesser Luthers. Four of them deserve mention because their writings either anticipated the Reformer or helped form his views. Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim, c. 1260–c. 1327) was a German Dominican mystic whose teaching was condemned by the pope after his death. He is now recognized as the most dynamic force in the religious life of Germany before the Reformation. His pupil, Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–61), also a German Dominican mystic, was a powerful preacher who stressed human nothingness in the presence of God: his sermons helped to mould Luther’s thinking at a critical stage in his spiritual experience. John of Wesel (John Rucherat, c. 1420–81) from the Rhineland, foreshadowed the German Reformers in much of his teaching. He rejected many of the distinctive doctrines and practices of the medieval Catholic Church, and declared that the Bible alone is the ultimate authority in matters of faith. He wrote against indulgences in 1475, was tried by the Inquisition in 1479, and condemned to life confinement in the Augustinian prison at Mainz. Wessel Gansfort (1419–89), a Dutch theologian educated by the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer, has been called the first of the biblical humanists. He, too, wrote against indulgences and took up much of the same position as Luther in attacking the pope’s pretensions and denouncing church errors of his day. The journalist of scholarship The last and most effective forerunner of the Reformation lived long enough to be embarrassed by its challenge. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536), the greatest humanist after Petrarch, made the Reformation almost inevitable, for (as the monks complained) he laid the egg which Luther hatched. Educated by the Brethren of the Common Life in Holland, he became an Augustinian canon in 1487, was ordained priest in 1492, but left the monastery because he felt himself unsuited to the life of a monk. In 1495 he went to study in Paris, but found the Nominalist theology of the schools distasteful, preferring the classics of antiquity and the circle of French humanists. During his first visit to England (1499–1500) he enjoyed the friendship of Colet and More, who drew him towards their own form of Christian humanism. Back in Holland and France, Erasmus began to publish a series of best-selling satires, which ridiculed monasticism and scholasticism, contrasted the ‘Old Ignorance’ with the ‘New Learning’, and used enlightened common sense to examine the practice of Christianity. The first of these was the Christian Soldier’s Manual (Latin, Enchiridion militis Christiani) and the most widely read, the Colloquies, which appeared in more than 600 editions. A second visit to England (1505–06) was followed by three years in Italy, which deepened his humanist sympathies and his contempt for the corruption of Rome, expressed devastatingly in his The Praise of Folly, written in seven days while staying with More in London. Erasmus has been called the ‘journalist of scholarship’, and certainly he wrote with easy elegance and biting wit as he spread the ideals of Christian humanism. But he was also a serious editor of Latin and Greek texts. His edition of Jerome’s works was a major piece of patient scholarship, but his most important contribution to the history of the church was his epoch-making edition of the Greek New Testament (the first ever published), printed at Basle in 1516 – the year before the Reformation began. Never had official religion been at a lower ebb, or the public image of Christianity more defaced, than in the second decade of the sixteenth century. It seemed as though all opposition to the unreformed Catholic Church from within and without was dying away. The Fifth Lateran Council met in Rome in 1512 and heard the orator declare: ‘Now nobody contradicts, no one opposes.’ The Medici Pope Leo X ascended the papal throne in 1513 with the quip: ‘Now that we have attained the papacy, let us enjoy it!’ The Lateran Council ended on a note of complacent self-congratulation in March 1517. The peace of the Christian world seemed assured. But the seeds of renewal had been sown; the harvest of Reformation was at hand. In October of that same year, in an obscure province of the Empire, one roused German conscience was stung into protest – and the great revolution began. Philip McNair The book was apparently drafted by Benedetto Fontanini (1495–1556) and completed by Marcantonio Flaminio (c. 1497–1550). Chapter 23 Reformation The Reformation began on the eve of All Saints’ Day, 31 October 1517. On that day Martin Luther (1483–1546), professor of biblical studies at the newly founded University of Wittenberg in Germany, announced a disputation on indulgences. He stated his argument in 95 Theses. Though they were heavily academic, and moderate in tone, news of them spread like wildfire throughout Europe. Within a fortnight every university and religious centre was agog with excitement. All marvelled that one obscure monk from an unknown university had stirred the whole of Europe. Luther protests But the 95 Theses were not by any means intended as a call to reformation. They were simply the proposal of an earnest university professor to discuss the theology of indulgences, in the light of the errors and abuses that had grown up over the centuries. The dealings in indulgences (‘the holy trade’ as it was unblushingly called) had grown into scandal. Luther did not oppose indulgences in their true and original sense – as the merciful release of a penitent sinner from a penance imposed earlier by a priest. What Luther opposed was all the additions and perversions of indulgences, which were harmful to human salvation and infected the everyday practice of the church. Good works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works. Martin Luther Medieval people had a very real dread of the period of punishment in purgatory which was portrayed in detail by the church. They had no great fear of hell, because they believed that, if they died forgiven and blessed by the priest, they were guaranteed access through heaven’s gates, whose key was held by the church. But they feared purgatory’s pains; for the church taught that, before they reached heaven, they had to be cleansed of every sin committed in mortal life. Once penance was made a sacrament, the ordinary person believed (even Dante did) that an indulgence assured the shortening of the punishments to be endured after death in purgatory. The relics of the Castle Church, on whose door Luther nailed his 95 Theses, were reckoned to earn a remission for pilgrims of 1,902,222 years and 270 days! Martin Luther More books have been written about Luther, the great German Reformer, than about any figure in history except Jesus Christ. Martin Luther (1483–1546), born in Eisleben, studied law at the University of Erfurt. In 1505 he joined a closed Augustinian friary in Erfurt, after taking a dramatic vow during a thunderstorm. Luther was ordained in 1507, and after studying theology was sent to the University of Wittenberg to teach moral theology. In 1510–11 he visited Rome on business for his order, and in 1512 became a doctor of theology and professor of biblical studies at Wittenberg. Sculpted head of the German Reformer Martin Luther, from a statue by Theobald Stein at Frederikskirken, Copenhagen, Denmark. © Ian Danbury | Dreamstime.com After a long spiritual crisis, Luther finally came to understand the nature of God’s righteousness. He rejected all theology based solely on tradition, and emphasized the personal understanding and experience of God’s Word. Centrally, he believed justification is not by works, but by faith alone. Luther’s views became widely known when he posted the 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, attacking the teaching behind the sale of indulgences and the church’s material preoccupations. In December 1517 the Archbishop of Mainz complained to Rome about Luther. Faced with opposition, Luther’s stand became firmer; he refused to recant, confronted Cardinal Thomas Cajetan in Augsburg, and fled when summoned to Rome. In July 1519, during a disputation at Leipzig with Johann Eck (1486–1543), his sharpest opponent, Luther denied the supremacy of the pope and the infallibility of church councils. He burned the papal bull which threatened his excommunication. But excommunication finally came in 1521. Luther again refused to recant before the Diet of Worms in April 1521, unless his ideas were refuted from Scripture. For his own safety, he was seized and taken to the Wartburg Castle, under the protection of Frederick of Saxony. There he devoted his energies to translating the New Testament into German, so that the Bible might be read by all. Eight months later, in 1522, Luther returned to Wittenberg to put a brake on the radical reformers. He set about reforming public worship, emphasizing preaching the Word, the eucharist, and congregational singing. During the Peasants’ Revolt (1524–25), Luther opposed what he labelled the ‘murderous hordes of peasants’, and so alienated them. He rejected Zwingli’s understanding of the eucharist as simply a remembrance meal rather than the real presence of Christ. In 1530 Luther approved the Augsburg Confession drawn up by Melanchthon. Although this led him into conflict with the Emperor, he believed the gospel must be defended whenever it was attacked. In 1537 Luther wrote the Schmalkaldic Articles, a doctrinal statement signed by many Lutheran theologians. Luther’s teaching and personal experience are closely linked. He always proceeds in the same way: from Scripture to personal conviction to declaration and preaching. For Luther, God’s only communication with humankind is through his Word. Christ is the essence of Scripture, and in Christ the Word becomes flesh. God speaks only to those who have faith; faith is God’s gift, not our achievement. Luther saw God behind everything in the world. He dismissed the problem of reconciling God’s love and justice with the doctrine of predestination: God is always just. He is beyond human reason, mysterious, and inconceivable. If we could comprehend him, he would not be God. Robert Stupperich Luther saw that the trade in indulgences was wholly unwarranted by Scripture, reason, or tradition. It encouraged people in their sin, and tended to turn their mind away from Christ and from God’s forgiveness. At this point Luther’s theology contrasted sharply with that of the church. The pope claimed authority ‘to shut the gates of hell and open the door to paradise’. An obscure monk challenged that authority – and his contemporaries knew at once that he had touched the exposed nerve of both the hierarchy of the church and the everyday practice of Christianity. Christian Europe was never the same again. Ordered to recant in 1520, Luther was eventually excommunicated on 3 January 1521, and finally outlawed by the Emperor Charles V at Worms in 1521. He had already had disputations with his own Augustinian order in Heidelberg in 1518, and with papal authorities in Augsburg in 1518, and in Leipzig in 1519. Luther’s dramatic stand against both pope and Emperor fired the imagination of Europe. … the maist perfyt schoole of Chryst that ever was in the erth since the dayis of the Apostillis. John Knox, on Calvin’s Geneva Luther published book after book over the next twenty-five years. Those written for ordinary Christians were in powerful and vivid German. He also translated the Bible into German, which enabled people to see for themselves the truth of his arguments. He published an account of each of his disputes with Rome, so that people could judge for themselves. He put the ordinary Christian on his theological feet, and his followers multiplied. Luther at the Diet of Worms Your Imperial Majesty and your lordships demand a simple answer. Here it is, plain and unvarnished. Unless I am convicted of error by the testimony of Scripture or (since I put no trust in the unsupported authority of pope or of councils, since it is plain that they have often erred and often contradicted themselves) by manifest reasoning, I stand convicted by the Scriptures to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God’s word, I cannot and will not recant anything. For to act against our conscience is neither safe for us nor open to us. On this I take my stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen … Martin Luther In 1529, at the Diet of Speyer, the Emperor Charles V attempted to curb Luther’s movement by force. But some of the princes of the German states stood up in ‘protest’; thus the movement found itself with the title ‘Protestant’. From this moment the movement – which had all along been intended to reform Catholicism from within – separated off, to become known as ‘the Reformation’. John Calvin John Calvin (1509–64), the Genevan Reformer, created and systematized the Reformed tradition in Protestantism. A Frenchman, he was born at Noyon, Picardy. In contrast to Luther, Calvin was a quiet, sensitive man. He said little about his inner life; he was content to trace God’s hand controlling him. He inherited from his father an immovable will, which stood him in good stead in turbulent Geneva. Calvin was always a conscientious student – at Orléans, Bourges, and the University of Paris. He soon took up the methods of humanism, which he later used ‘to combat humanism’. In Paris, the young Calvin encountered the teachings of Luther. Around 1533 he experienced a sudden conversion: ‘God subdued and brought my heart to docility. It was more hardened against such matters than was to be expected in such a young man.’ He next broke with Roman Catholicism, left France, and lived as an exile in Basle. He began to formulate his theology, and in 1536 published the first edition of The Institution of the Christian Religion (better known as the Institutes), a brief, clear defence of Reformation beliefs. John Calvin (1509–64), French humanist scholar and reformer, whose leadership of the church in Geneva, Switzerland was emulated by many Protestants in Europe. Tim Dowley Associates William Farel (1489–1565), the Reformer of Geneva, persuaded Calvin to help consolidate the Reformation there. But Genevans opposed Calvin’s efforts, and disputes in the town, together with a quarrel with the city of Berne, resulted in the expulsion of both Calvin and Farel. Calvin went to Strasbourg, where he made contact with Martin Bucer, who encouraged and influenced him. In 1539 Calvin published his commentary on the book of Romans, followed by many other commentaries. Calvin also produced a new, enlarged version of the Institutes. The French Reformer also led the congregation of French refugees in Strasbourg, an experience which matured him for his task on returning to Geneva. Calvin’s Geneva Calvin was invited back to Geneva in September 1541. The town council accepted his revision of the city laws, but many bitter disputes followed. Calvin tried to bring every citizen under the moral discipline of the church, and many resented such restrictions – especially when imposed by a foreigner. He now set about attaining his aim of a mature church, by preaching daily to the people. Calvin devoted much energy to settling differences within Protestantism. The Consensus Tigurinus, on the Lord’s Supper (1549), resulted in the German- and French-speaking churches of Switzerland moving closer together. In 1553 Michael Servetus (1509/11–53), a notorious critic of Calvin and of the doctrine of the Trinity, was arrested and burnt in Geneva. Servetus was already on the run from the Inquisition, and was regarded by all as a heretic. The Protestant reformers felt they could not afford to be seen as soft on heresy. Wherever we find the Word of God surely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there, it is not to be doubted, is a church of God. John Calvin, in The Institutes Calvin was in a sense trying to build a more visible ‘City of God’ in Europe – with Geneva as a starting-point. In his later years, Calvin’s authority in Geneva was less disputed. He founded the Geneva Academy, to which students of theology came from all parts of western and central Europe, and particularly France. Calvin was the great systematizer, taking up and reapplying the ideas of the first generation of Reformers. His work was characterized by intellectual discipline and practical application. His Institutes have been a classic statement of Reformation theology for centuries, and he was also a careful interpreter of the Bible. Lutheranism strongly influenced Calvin’s doctrine. For Calvin, all knowledge of God is to be found solely in the Word of God. We can know God only if he chooses to be known. Pardon and salvation are possible only through the free working of the grace of God. Calvin claimed that, even before creation, God chose some of his creatures for salvation and others for destruction. For Calvin, the church was supreme: it should not be restricted in any way by the state. He gave greater importance than Luther to the organization of the church, and regarded only baptism and the eucharist as sacraments. Baptism was the individual’s initiation into the new community of Christ. Calvin rejected Zwingli’s idea that the sacrament of communion was merely a symbol – but also warned against a magical belief in the real presence of Christ in the sacrament. Andreas Lindt In 1530, Luther put forward the beliefs of the new movement at the Diet of Augsburg. It was a cool and non-controversial explanation, peace-seeking, comprehensive, Catholic, and conservative. But Luther’s movement split Christian Europe in two, and gave rise to the churches known as evangelical or Protestant. Three main traditions emerged: the Lutheran (in Germany and Scandinavia); the Zwinglian and Calvinist (in Switzerland, France, Holland, and Scotland); and the Church of England. Lasting social, political, and economic changes followed the Reformation, and to some extent shaped it. But the Reformation was primarily a rediscovery of the gospel of God’s saving work in Christ. Luther’s diagnosis In his monastery Luther had been searching for God’s pardon and his peace. He faithfully obeyed his order, and observed punctiliously the spiritual techniques, yet he found himself no nearer to God. He began to see the way of the monk as merely a long discipline of religious duty and effort. Mysticism was an attempt to climb up to heaven and academic theology little more than speculation about God, his nature, and his character. Luther found one basic error in all these techniques of finding God. Ultimately they trusted in human ability to get to God, or at least take us near enough for God to accept us. Luther now believed it was not a matter of God being far from everyone, and people having to strive to reach him, but the reverse. Humanity, created and sinful, was distant from God; God in Christ had come all the way to find us. Luther’s discovery did not represent a break with traditional doctrines. The Reformers held – as did the Roman Church – all the orthodox doctrines stated in the general creeds of the early church. But the Reformers understood these doctrines in the particular context of salvation in Christ alone. The Reformers held that the believer came into direct relation and union with Christ, as the one, only, and all-sufficient source of grace. His grace is available to the penitent believer by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the Word of God. This did away with the need for the Virgin Mary as mediator, the clergy as priests, and the departed saints as intercessors. From Luther’s rediscovery of the direct and personal relationship between Christ and the believer came three great principles of the Reformation. Authority Luther, and all the Reformers, believed that God had spoken to humanity, and acted on behalf of humanity, throughout history. The account of how God had dealt with people was given in Scripture. They believed God continued to speak through the words spoken to prophets and apostles. In this personal revelation, God himself spoke in love to created humanity, and renewed people heard and answered in faith. The Reformers did not feel that they were handling and interpreting Scripture; but that God was handling them through Scripture. This is what the Reformers meant by the Word of God: the living Word speaking to them in their own situation. Beliefs and church practice could not be justified if they were other than, outside of, or apart from the Word of God. These truths could be expressed in non-biblical words, or non-biblical form, as they were in later creeds and statements of belief. But what is being expressed must be biblical truth. The Roman Church, too, accepted the authority of Scripture, but in practice claimed that both the Bible and tradition were sources and rules of faith. The Roman Church also made tradition, as expressed in the decrees of popes and councils, the only permissible, legitimate, and infallible interpreter of the Bible. The Bible was rarely read. When it was, it was interpreted at four levels – the literal, spiritual, allegorical, and anagogical (that is, its heavenly meaning). Few knew what the Bible really said or meant. Faith was regarded largely as a matter of agreeing to statements about God, the soul, grace, and other subjects. Medieval theologians had tended to place the church – in the shape of opinions of the early Fathers confirmed by popes and councils – between the believer and his Bible. Luther reads Romans I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, ‘the righteousness of God’, because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous … Night and day I pondered until … I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before ‘the righteousness of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway to heaven. Martin Luther Many of the Reformers were linguists and scholars. Protestants began to produce biblical criticism, believing the Bible spoke to intellectuals of their age as well as to common people of every period. The Reformers reasserted the ancient creeds as well as formulating their own statements, and rejected only those doctrines and ceremonies for which there was no clear basis in Scripture. The Calvinists went further than the Lutherans in their opposition to traditions which had been handed down. They rejected a good deal of church music, art, architecture, and many more superficial matters, such as the use of the ring in marriage, and signs of devotional practice. But the Reformers rejected the authority of the pope, the merit of good works, indulgences, the mediation of the Virgin Mary and the saints, and all sacraments which had not been instituted by Christ. They rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation (the teaching that the bread and wine of communion became the body and blood of Christ when the priest consecrated them), the view of the mass as a sacrifice, purgatory and prayers for the dead, private confession of sin to a priest, celibacy of the clergy, and the use of Latin the services. They also rejected all the equipment that expressed these ideas – such as holy water, shrines, chantries, wonder-working images, rosaries, paternoster stones, images, and candles. By grace alone The second major principle of the Reformation was salvation by the free and undeserved grace of Christ. This came to be known as ‘justification by faith only’. Protestants believed that by the action of God alone, in the death and resurrection of Christ, they were called from their sin to a new life in Christ. From this proceeded the fruits of the Spirit in loving acts. The Faith of the Protestants Careful Calvin orchestrated Protestant theology most skilfully, but fertile Martin Luther wrote nearly all the tunes. Taught by humanists to study the Bible writers’ own message, Luther learned from the apostles Paul and John that God saves sinners by imparting through his Word a transforming knowledge of Jesus Christ. Believers know Christ as the divine Lover who died for their sins, who rose again to conquer ‘principalities and powers’, and now as mediator secures to them the gift of righteousness – pardon of guilt, acceptance as God’s children, and sure hope of reward. From this faith-knowledge of Christ and his benefits flows the whole of Christian living: repentance, communion with God, and good works, all in conscious freedom from the soul-destroying necessity of earning God’s continued favour by self-effort. Such was Luther’s gospel of justification by faith alone, the centrepiece of Protestant theology for two centuries. What Luther taught Luther affirmed the final authority of a self-interpreted Bible, and rejected non-scriptural beliefs. He taught a ‘spiritual’ doctrine of the church, depicting it as a serving priesthood of believers, as against the medieval idea of the church as a hierarchical institution under the bishop of Rome, administering salvation through sacraments. Here, too, all Protestants agreed. The Lutheran churches of Germany and Scandinavia developed in isolation from the Reformed churches of Switzerland, Holland, the Rhineland, and Britain, but this was an accident of geography and politics, rather than a sign of major theological differences. Luther taught that infants were regenerated in baptism, through infant faith. He also affirmed the ‘real presence’ of Christ’s body ‘in, with, and under’ the eucharistic bread. To buttress this idea he maintained the ‘ubiquity’, or capacity for ‘multipresence’, of Jesus’ glorified flesh. Lutherans followed him, but Calvin and Reformed theologians generally rejected these ideas, holding that Christ’s body is ‘in Heaven, and not here’, and that Christ encounters his people at the communion table, not by bodily presence in the elements, but by the Spirit’s presence and power in their hearts. Lutherans found this view irreverently ‘low’. Changes to worship For pastoral reasons, Luther retained much medieval ritual in worship, urging that when doctrine was sound ceremonies were ‘things indifferent’ (adiaphora), which the church was free to use or not as it thought best. Reformed leaders, however, wanted worship to be as simple and scriptural as possible, and their liturgies were plainer than those of their Lutheran counterparts. From this standpoint, the English Prayer Book was a half-way house. It came to be argued that features in worship not prescribed in Scripture should be seen as forbidden. This so-called ‘puritan’ or ‘regulative’ principle became the rule in Scotland, and lay behind the further purifying of worship and ministry in England for which Elizabethan Puritans unsuccessfully called. Meantime, in Germany in 1548, two years after Luther’s death, mild Melanchthon, his successor as leader, accepted an agreement (the Leipzig Interim) re-establishing, among other things, the Latin mass, Corpus Christi Day, and extreme unction. He claimed these were ‘things indifferent’. But the fierce Matthias Flacius (1520–75) denounced him, and the Lutheran theological world was convulsed. The doctrine of grace Melanchthon made the doctrine of grace another storm-centre in Lutheranism. Luther had stressed the sinner’s total spiritual impotence, and made God’s sovereign grace the sole source of faith. Now Melanchthon ascribed to fallen humanity free-will in the sense of the ‘power of applying oneself to grace’. This phrase from Erasmus, which Luther had abhorred, Melanchthon explicitly approved. So my faith ceases to be God’s work in me, and becomes my work. Flacius and followers attacked his position. A generation of conflict was ended by the pan-Lutheran Formula of Concord (1577–80), which reaffirmed the sinner’s total spiritual inability and God’s unconditional predestination of the elect to faith – but stated also that an external call to salvation reaches all people and that final falling from grace is possible. Melanchthon’s modification of the doctrine of sovereign grace had its Reformed parallel. Beza, Calvin’s scholastic successor at Geneva, developed belief in sovereign grace into ‘supralapsarianism’; the view that God decreed the fall as a means to the end of saving the elect from sin. Most Reformed theologians at the turn of the seventeenth century agreed, but Jacobus Arminius, a gifted Dutchman, and once Beza’s pupil, did not. In 1610 his disciples produced their manifesto, the Remonstrance, affirming that election to salvation rests on faith foreseen; that Christ died for all, though only believers benefit (Beza said he died only for the elect); that grace is not irresistible; and that perseverance depends on one’s own actions over and above God’s help. Against this the pan-Reformed Synod of Dort (1618) formulated the so-called ‘five points of Calvinism’ – total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement (that is, limited in efficacy to the elect), irresistible grace in effectual calling, and final preservation of the saints (often memorized by the mnemonic t-u-l-i-p). Dutch Arminianism was rationalistic in spirit, and subsequently drifted into querying Jesus’ full deity. Some High Church Anglicans came independently to an essentially Arminian view of grace, not from rationalism, but from deference to the Greek Fathers. Meanwhile, Johann Arndt (1555–1621) in Lutheran Germany, and the English Puritans, following the Cambridge scholar William Perkins (1558–1602), developed an impressive devotional theology of regeneration, sanctification, and the inner life, as being what the times most needed. From this seed the later Pietist movement grew. J. I. Packer The Catholics equally believed they were saved by Christ, but believed good works parallel faith, and laid stress on the merit of good works. Protestants held that they were ‘justified’ – made acceptable to God – solely by Christ. Catholics modified this, placing their own good works alongside. The Protestant did not disapprove of good works, but denied their value as a condition of justification, seeing them as the product and evidence of justification. Every believer a priest The third important Reformation principle was termed the ‘priesthood of believers’. The Reformers argued that there was no precedent in the early church for the priest as mediator, and also argued that nothing in Scripture supports the secular power of the clergy. This doctrine meant there were no longer two levels of Christian, spiritual and lay. There was one gospel, one justification by faith, one status before God common to all men and women, clergy and laity. Protestants opposed the idea that authority rested in an exclusive priesthood. People were freed from their vague fear of priests in this massive liberation movement. Philipp Melanchthon Upon Luther’s death Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), born at Bretten, near Karlsruhe, took over the theological leadership of the movement he had begun. Melanchthon taught Greek, first in Tübingen, then at the University of Wittenberg. There, in 1518, he met Luther – a decisive encounter that changed Melanchthon from a humanist into a theologian and reformer. With his gift for logical consistency and wide knowledge of history, Melanchthon’s influence on Protestantism was in certain ways even greater than Luther’s. Melanchthon publicly supported Luther at the Leipzig Disputation (1519), and when Luther was away from Wittenberg, he represented and defended him. In 1521, he wrote the Commonplaces (Loci communes), the first book to describe clearly the teachings of the Reformation. He also contributed to Luther’s German translation of the Bible. At Marburg (1529) Melanchthon opposed Zwingli, claiming the service of holy communion was more than a memorial. He was also responsible for the Augsburg Confession (1530), which remains the chief statement of faith in the Lutheran churches. Melanchthon, however, often seemed prepared to concede matters of doctrine to the Roman Catholics for the sake of peace, believing reunion was essential. The theological struggles in his own camp, with other Lutherans, deeply troubled him. Robert Stupperich The Reformers held that God called people to different occupations – father or farmer, scholar or pastor, servant or soldier – and in and through his or her calling, the Christian served God. The Reformation demanded much from every Christian. Believers had the right and the duty to read the newly-translated Bible. Every lay person was expected to take a responsible part in the government and public affairs of both church and society. Such thinking eventually helped give rise to the democratic states of Europe and North America. The Reformers sometimes used words such as the ‘invisible’ church, or the ‘latent’ church, to distinguish between the true church known only to God, and the organization visible in the world. They believed the church consisted of all those called by God to salvation. Protestant ministers were recruited from the godly and learned. The Church of England, and large parts of the Lutheran Church, particularly in Sweden, tried to retain the outward structure and ministry of their national church. They were attacked by both conservative Catholics and radical Protestants. Calvinists held an exalted and biblical view of the church as the chosen people of God and broke away from the traditional church structures as well as the Roman ministry. In this the free churches later followed them. Germany The movement initiated by Luther soon spread throughout Germany. Luther provided its chief source of energy and vision, but received powerful academic support, notably from the brilliant and moderate young Philipp Melanchthon. Luther also received support from some of the princes and from the German people, but was opposed by the pope, bishops, and the Emperor. Luther had aimed only at reform within the church. Ordered to recant in 1520, he burnt the papal bull publicly, and as a result was excommunicated by the pope on 3 January 1521. Later that same year, he fearlessly withstood the Emperor at Worms with his famous words, ‘Here I stand’. Almost the whole of north Germany and nearly every German free city was on Luther’s side. Luther created and sustained the German Reformation virtually single-handed. This he achieved by an immense output of books, by fearless preaching and teaching, by putting the Bible in German into the heart and mind of every man, woman and child, and by writing many biblical hymns. The 1526 Diet of Speyer had to allow his movement free course, but another in 1529 tried to prohibit further advance. It was at this Diet that a row of evangelical princes stood their ground and resisted this legislation, giving history the word ‘Protestantism’. German Protestantism in 1618 At the Diet of Augsburg (1530) the Protestants submitted their statement of belief. But the Catholics refused to accept it, so the Emperor ordered a recess. The Protestant princes realized that the Emperor intended to make war on Protestantism, so formed the Schmalkaldic league as a kind of defensive alliance. After several conferences designed to find some form of compromise between Catholic and Protestant, the tragic Schmalkaldic War broke out in 1547, shortly after Luther’s death in 1546. The Emperor defeated the Protestant forces and imprisoned their leaders. But the Protestant Maurice of Saxony fought back successfully and by the Treaty of Passau (1552) Protestantism was legally recognized, a settlement confirmed in the ‘Interim’ of 1555. Once Luther had passed from the scene, a period of bitter theological warfare occurred within Protestantism. There was controversy over such matters as the difference between justification and sanctification; what doctrine was essential or non-essential; faith and works; and the nature of the ‘real presence’ at the eucharist. This is the period when Lutheranism developed – something which Luther foresaw and condemned. The Book of Concord, which sets out what we now understand as Lutheranism, was published in 1580. It included Melanchthon’s Augsburg Confession and Augsburg Apology; Luther’s two catechisms and the Schmalkaldic Articles (drawn up in 1537); and the Formula of Concord. Some of the Lutheran theologians drove large numbers of people over to the Calvinist church through their dogmatism. The Calvinists in Germany adopted the Heidelberg Confession (1563) as their statement of faith. The devastating Thirty Years’ War perpetuated political strife in Germany in the seventeenth century, until by the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) the Lutherans and Calvinists won equal rights with the Catholics. Switzerland The Reformation broke out in Zürich at the same time as in Germany, but independently of it. Its theology was similar to Luther’s, except in the doctrine of the eucharist. But Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), the Swiss Reformer, had patriotic ideals, and determined that the discipline and worship in his church should follow a non-Roman Catholic line. The battle of Kappel (1531), at which Zwingli was killed, brought the Reformation in Switzerland to a halt. But in 1536 John Calvin (1509–64) was unwillingly pressed to lead the cause in French-speaking Geneva. Calvin, was an exiled Frenchman whose theological writings, especially The Institution of the Christian Religion and his numerous commentaries on the Bible, did much to shape the Reformed churches and their confessions of faith. He developed the Presbyterian form of church government, in which all ministers served at the same level, and the people were represented by lay elders. Calvin is often remembered for his severe doctrine of election, particularly that some people are predestined to destruction. But Calvin also set out the way of repentance, faith, and sanctification. He intended that his theology should interpret Scripture faithfully, rather than develop his own ideas. Huldrych Zwingli Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), the Swiss Reformer, died in battle against the Catholics. Educated in Basel, Berne, and Vienna, until 1516 he was vicar at Glarus, where he learned Greek, possibly Hebrew, and studied the Church Fathers. He acted as chaplain to Swiss mercenary forces at the battle of Novara (1513) and at Marignano (1515), an experience that led him to oppose the contemporary use of mercenary soldiers. Zwingli met Erasmus in 1515 and was deeply influenced by him. After his forced transfer to Einsiedeln, he began to develop evangelical beliefs as he reflected on the abuses of the church. In 1518 he was made peoples’ priest at the Grossmünster in Zurich. He lectured on the New Testament and began to reform Zurich, working carefully with the city council. In 1522 he secretly married Anna Reinhard, who bore him four children. The Catholic bishop of Constance attempted to stop Zwingli, who overcame him in two public debates in 1523. When Zwingli won a further disputation at Berne in 1528, Basle, Gall, Schaffhausen, and Constance all joined the reform movement. After Zwingli and Luther reached deadlock in their debate over the eucharist at Marburg (1529), the Swiss reform movement lost the support of the German princes. The five Catholic Forest Cantons of Switzerland sent an army against Zurich, and Zwingli died at the Battle of Kappel. Most of Zwingli’s writings were born out of controversy. His Commentary on True and False Religion (1525), a systematic theology, had considerable impact upon Protestantism. Zwingli was the first Reformed theologian. He held that Christ was spiritually present at the Eucharist, and that the secular ruler had a right to act in church matters. Robert Stupperich Theodore Beza Theodore Beza (1519–1605) succeeded Calvin in Geneva as leader of Reformed Protestantism. He had been trained as a lawyer, and a book of love poetry gained him a reputation as a Latin poet. In 1544 he was secretly engaged to Claudine Desnoes, whom he later married, but they had no children. After a severe illness, in 1548 Beza went to Geneva and announced he had become a Protestant. In 1559 Beza became the first rector of the Genevan Academy. He remained in Geneva, intimately involved in its affairs, and became Calvin’s successor and one of the leading advisors to the Huguenots in France. He participated in their conferences – Poissy, 1561, La Rochelle, 1571 – and defended the purity of the Reformed faith. He produced new versions of the Greek and Latin New Testament, a source for the Geneva and King James Bibles. Theodore Beza also completed the translation of the psalms begun by Marot and wrote a biography of Calvin, De jure magistratuum (‘The Right of Magistrates’), an important Protestant political work, as well as other political, polemical, and theological tracts. Beza was an important figure for the Reformed churches; under his leadership Geneva became the centre of Reformed Protestantism. His political activities aimed to establish the Reformed faith throughout Europe, and particularly in France. Beza’s theological method made the Reformed position more rigid. Robert V. Schnucker Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva were succeeded respectively by Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75) and Theodore Beza (1519–1605), who both kept alive the Reformed tradition. They exercised great influence in France, Holland, Germany, England, and Scotland by their teaching and by their hospitality to the many exiles from persecution in their native lands. France In France the pattern of reform was very different. Whereas in Germany and Switzerland there was solid support for the Reformation from the people, in France people, court, and church provided less support. As a result many of the first Protestants suffered death or exile. But once the Reformed faith had been established in French-speaking Switzerland, Calvinists formed a congregation in Paris in 1555, and more than seventy churches were represented at a national synod in Paris in 1559. Reform took on the nature of a political movement in this hostile environment, and a series of civil wars followed. Protestants were shamelessly massacred in cold blood on St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572, a blow which shattered, but did not destroy, Protestantism in France. When the Protestant Henry IV succeeded to the French throne in 1589 Protestant hopes ran high, but the French Catholics formed an alliance with the king of Spain and threatened to plunge the country in blood if Henry remained a Protestant. Henry yielded for the sake of peace and to preserve his throne (he is alleged to have said, ‘Paris is well worth a Mass’), and gave up his Protestantism. Yet in 1598 he had Protestantism legally recognized, and granted the freedom to practise Reformed Christianity, under the terms of the Edict of Nantes. The French statesman, Cardinal Richelieu, played havoc with Protestantism in the seventeenth century until finally King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, after which French Protestants suffered bitter persecution. French Protestantism 1560–1685 The Low Countries In the Netherlands, reform was inspired by Luther, and people were martyred for Lutheran beliefs as early as 1523. However the reformation later came under Calvin’s influence. At this time the Low Countries were ruled by Spain. The reform movement was strongly opposed by the Emperor Charles V, and by his successor King Philip II of Spain, with the result that the reform movement developed a strong political commitment to independence. It was claimed that the Spanish Duke of Alva was responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Protestants between 1567 and 1573, and in 1584 the northern Netherlands formed a federation under William the Silent. After a long and bitter struggle, they freed themselves from both the Roman Church and the Spanish crown. The first Reformed synod was held at Dort in 1574, and within a year the reformers founded the University of Leiden. The new Reformed Church adopted the Heidelberg Confession and the Belgic Confession as statements of belief, and drew up its own pattern of organization. The Dutch Church now went through a bitter theological struggle concerning the nature of predestination. Jacobus Arminius (Jakob Hermanszoon, 1560–1609), professor of theology at Leiden, rejected the logical conclusions of the doctrine that the elect were determined by the sovereign will of God alone, as Calvin taught. He insisted it was possible to believe in God’s sovereignty while allowing for real free will in an individual. God willed all to be saved – not merely the chosen. Arminius insisted that his views were biblical and not mere speculation, but his doctrines were condemned at the Synod of Dort (1618–19), tolerated later in the seventeenth century, and officially recognized in 1795. Central Europe In Bohemia, the Reformation had still earlier beginnings, under Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague. Hus’s followers, the Hussites, supported Luther when the Reformation broke out, but most later became Calvinists. The cause of reform in Bohemia suffered severely during the Thirty Years’ War and from the Catholic Reformation, and Bohemia was left a wilderness of desolation. In Hungary, students of Luther and Melanchthon from the University of Wittenberg took back to their homeland the message of the Reformation in about 1524, but as in Bohemia, Calvinist theology later took hold. The first Lutheran synod took place in 1545, and the first Calvinist synod in 1557. Religious liberty was suppressed by Rudolph II, but regained by force by Prince Stephen of Transylvania, in the treaties of Nikolsburg (1621) and Linz (1645). The Hussites, encouraged by Luther’s writings, originated the reform movement in Poland. King Sigismund II Augustus (r. 1548–72) was a friend of the Reformation and corresponded with Calvin. The most distinguished Polish theologian was the Calvinist John à Lasco (1499–1560), who later went to England as a professor and helped shape the English Reformation during the reign of King Edward VI. In Poland, general understanding was arrived at between Lutherans and Calvinists by 1570, but reform was marred by dissentions created by Socinianism, the movement founded by Socinus, who denied the Trinity, the deity of Christ, his work on the cross, and that human beings are fallen. Later the reform movement was hindered by the activities of the Jesuits. Scandinavia Two brothers, Olaus and Laurentius Petri (Olof and Lars Persson, 1493–1552, 1499–1573), both disciples of Luther, inaugurated the Reformation in Sweden. Aided by Laurentius Andreae (Lars Andersson, c. 1470–1552) they brought the evangelical theology of Luther to the Swedish Church. The courageous King Gustavus Vasa (1496–1560), who eventually delivered Sweden from the Danes in 1523, favoured Protestantism. The whole country became Lutheran, with bishops of the old church incorporated into the new, and in 1527 the Reformation was established by law. In 1593, at the Synod of Uppsala, reform was completed, when the Lutheran Augsburg Confession was adopted as the sole basis of faith. Sweden retained the traditional church structures and bishops, in a characteristic church-state union, and fought for the Protestant cause during the Thirty Years’ War. The Danish Church, too, went over completely to Protestantism. Danes such as Hans Tausen (1494–1561) and Jørgen Sadolin (c. 1490–1559) studied under Luther at Wittenberg and then started to preach irregularly in Denmark. A Danish version of the New Testament was produced in 1524, and King Frederick I pressed strongly for church reform, appointing reforming bishops and preachers. There was an alarming defection of Catholics and, in some places, no preaching, or a service only two or three times a year. When King Christian III succeeded to the Danish throne in 1536, the transition to Protestantism was completed. He stripped the bishops of their lands and property at the Diet of Copenhagen (1536), transferring the church’s wealth to the state. He then turned for help to Luther, who in 1537 sent Johannes Bugenhagen (1485–1558) – the only Lutheran theologian at Wittenberg who could speak the dialects of Denmark and the German border – who crowned the king and appointed seven superintendents. At the synods which followed, church ordinances were published and the Reformation recognized in Danish law. The University of Copenhagen was enlarged and revitalized, a new liturgy drawn up, a new translation of the Bible completed, and a modified version of the Augsburg Confession eventually adopted. In 1536 the Reformation spread from Denmark to Norway, where the pattern was similar to that of Denmark. Most bishops fled and, as the older clergy died, they were replaced with Reformed ministers. War between Denmark and Norway worsened political and social conditions, and when Danish Lutherans went to instruct the Norwegians, they found many spoke incomprehensible ancient Norse and communications broke down. In Iceland, attempts to impose the new Danish ecclesiastical system brought about a revolt. This was eventually quelled, the Reformation imposed, and an Icelandic New Testament published in 1540. England The struggle between the old and the new lasted longer in England and Scotland than in the rest of Europe. As early as the thirteenth century an anti-papal, anti-clerical movement developed in Britain. Under Wyclif, an evangelical protest movement began, which was strengthened early in the sixteenth century when Luther’s writings and English Bibles were smuggled into England. At first the reform movement was Lutheran and supported by the older Lollard movement. But the Reformation, though religious in origin, became entangled with politics. In 1534 King Henry VIII proclaimed himself the Head of the Church of England, though his quarrel with the pope was not on religious grounds, but merely because the pope would not sanction Henry’s proposed divorce of Queen Catherine. Henry himself remained a Catholic; the pope entitled him ‘Defender of the Faith’ for a book he wrote opposing Luther in 1521, and in 1539 Henry issued the Six Articles, aiming to restore the traditional Catholic faith. Henry destroyed the authority of the pope and ended monasticism in England, but among his people a powerful religious movement towards reform was occurring. Religious Affiliation in Europe in 1560 Under King Edward VI (r. 1547–53), the Reformation was positively and effectively introduced, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who was supported by the scholar, Bishop Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500–55), and the preacher, Bishop Hugh Latimer (c. 1487–1555). Several European Calvinist Reformers also contributed, notably Martin Bucer from Strasbourg (1491–1551), Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) from Italy, and John à Lasco from Poland, all of whom became professors at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Queen Mary (r. 1553–58) attempted to restore Catholicism and the authority of the pope to Britain, with the help of Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–58), an enlightened humanist, sympathetic to evangelical doctrines, particularly justification by faith. Pole had an ecumenical concern for the unity of the church, and was bold enough to censure Henry VIII in his book On the Defence of the Unity of the Church (1534–36). But Mary’s inability to understand Protestantism actually did much to strengthen the movement by creating many martyrs. About 200 bishops, scholars, and other men and women were burnt at the stake, including the Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley. Many fled to the Continent, and Mary died a despised woman. Martin Bucer Martin Bucer (or Butzer, 1491–1551), who was born at Sélestat, Alsace, was the Reformer at Strasbourg. He had been a Dominican friar, but left the order, and in 1522 married a former nun, Elisabeth Silbereisen. He went to Strasbourg in 1523 and took over leadership of the reform. Bucer became one of the chief statesmen among the Reformers, and was present at most of their important conferences. In an effort to unite the German and Swiss Reformed churches, Bucer tried to mediate between Zwingli and Luther. Bucer also took part in unsuccessful conferences with Roman Catholics at Hagenau, Worms, and Ratisbon. Bucer also wrote a large number of commentaries on the Bible. Bucer resisted the Emperor’s religious settlement, the Augsburg Interim. In 1549 he was forced to leave Strasbourg for Cambridge. While in England, he advised Cranmer on the Book of Common Prayer. He had a considerable impact on the Church of England, pointing the way towards Puritanism. He died in 1551, but his body was exhumed and burned during the Catholic reaction under Queen Mary. Robert V. Schnucker Mary’s sister Elizabeth restored and permanently established Protestantism in England during her long reign (r. 1558–1603). She faced considerable difficulties, including the threat of civil war, the theological and political opposition of the Catholic powers, the hostility of France and Spain, and doubts about her claim to the throne. Elizabeth replaced Catholic Church leaders with Protestants, restored the church Articles and the Prayer Book of Edward VI, and took the title of ‘supreme governor’ – rather than head – of the Church of England. As re-established by Elizabeth, the Anglican Church retained episcopal government and a set liturgy, offending many Calvinists, particularly refugees returning from Switzerland. Meanwhile Roman Catholics plotted and intrigued; every Catholic seemed a potential traitor, since the pope had ordered them to overthrow Elizabeth. Bishop John Jewel’s magnificent Apology (1560) and the writings of Richard Hooker (1554–1600), following Cranmer’s position, attempted to demonstrate that Elizabeth’s church was scriptural, catholic, and reasonable. However, the early Stuart monarchs, James I (r. 1603–25) and Charles I (r. 1625–49), claimed the king received his powers directly from God, and so could not be called to account by his subjects, a doctrine known as the divine right of kings. Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) was largely responsible for shaping the Protestant Church of England. Born at Aslockton, Nottinghamshire, and educated at Cambridge University, he remained a quiet scholar until suddenly summoned to Canterbury as archbishop in 1532, following advice he had given earlier about Henry VIII’s divorce. Cranmer remained archbishop throughout Henry’s turbulent reign, retaining the king’s respect to the end. He then piloted the Reformation through the reign of the young King Edward VI, but was deposed by Mary, and burnt as a heretic at Oxford in 1556. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury 1533–55. © Georgios Kollidas/Dreamstime.com Cranmer was Lutheran in his theology, well read in the Church Fathers, a gifted liturgist, and had a superb command of English. He was sensitive and brave, cautious and slow to decide, in a period of transition bedevilled by turbulence and treachery. Cranmer preferred reformation by gentle persuasion rather than by force, and, like Luther, believed firmly in the role of the ‘godly prince’, who had a God-given task to uphold a just society and give free scope to the gospel. Archbishop Cranmer was responsible for the Great Bible (1538) and its prefaces, the Litany of 1545, and the two Prayer Books, of 1549 and 1552, and largely responsible for the Articles of the Church of England and the Homilies. He sought an ecumenical council with the Lutherans and Calvinists of Europe, but Melanchthon proved too timid. Cranmer’s concern was to restore a theology based on the experience of the person and work of Christ. From his doctrine of Christ came Cranmer’s theology of justification by faith and of Christ’s presence in the sacraments. James Atkinson Following the English Civil War (1642–51), Charles I was eventually beheaded and a Commonwealth established. When King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, the bishops, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Anglican system were all re-established. Puritans and Separatists The Church of England, as established by Elizabeth I, was unsatisfactory to Roman Catholics and also to more extreme Protestants. The second group desired a fully Reformed church, more on the lines of Calvin’s at Geneva. Those who worked to purify and reform the church beyond what the government had established were known as ‘Puritans’. The first Puritans The Elizabethan Puritans, working from within the Church of England, mostly wanted to abolish religious ceremonies thought to be remnants from Roman Catholicism – the use of the cross in baptism, the surplice, and kneeling at communion. Many of the Puritans questioned whether there was any biblical authority for bishops, and wanted instead the Reformed pattern of church government, by elders and synods, with stricter discipline. During the first years of Elizabeth’s reign, the Puritan-minded clergy and lay members of the Church of England had strong support in Parliament, and high hopes of achieving their reforms. Their leaders included Thomas Cartwright (c. 1535–1603) and William Perkins (1558–1602). Elizabeth I was unwilling to allow changes along Puritan lines, and King James I was equally adamant against Puritans. ‘I will make them conform themselves,’ he threatened, ‘or I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse.’ The main part of the Puritan movement still survived within the Church of England, though many Puritans only marginally conformed to Anglicanism. The lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy Word. John Robinson, to the pilgrims as they Set Sail for america. Separatists In the face of these discouragements, a small separatist movement grew up alongside the main Puritan group. The Separatist Puritans were led by Robert Browne (1550–1633) and Robert Harrison (d. c. 1585). These Separatists no longer regarded the Church of England as a true church, and in 1581 with their followers (often called Brownists) formed an independent congregation at Norwich, in which Browne acted as pastor and Harrison as teacher. They withdrew completely from the Anglican Church, which they believed to be polluted and false, and set up their own congregation, based on a church covenant. This step marked the beginnings of the English Independent or Congregationalist movement. The English government and bishops lost patience and severely repressed the Brownists by imprisonment, harassment, and by driving them abroad to the Low Countries. The Netherlands played an increasingly important role in the life of English dissent. As the English authorities repressed Puritanism more severely and systematically, the dissenters were often forced to find refuge abroad. The Dutch were tolerant of religious nonconformity, and allowed English refugees to come in freely. Browne and Harrison took their small church to Middelburg, in Zeeland, where it survived for a few years. Browne, however, later returned to England, where he eventually renounced his separation and resumed a ministry in the Church of England. Other leaders took over in the Separatist movement: Henry Barrow(e) (c. 1550–93), John Greenwood (d. 1593), Francis Johnson, Henry Ainsworth, John Robinson, and others. The ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ led by John Robinson (1576–1625), after living in Leiden, eventually emigrated to New England. One of the Separatist groups in Amsterdam, led by John Smyth (c. 1570–1612) and Thomas Helwys (c. 1575–c. 1616), became Anabaptist. Keith L. Sprunger Post-reformation church architecture At the time of the Reformation there evolved a single-room church design, reflecting the very different attitude to the clergy and to worship. Instead of emphasizing the distinctive powers of the priest in relation to the sacraments, the Reformers preached the priesthood of all believers, a view reflected in the way that they adapted the medieval buildings they inherited, and in the plans used for new churches. Side altars were swept away, replaced by a single table, which might not even be a permanent fixture. The screen was either removed, so that the church became a single room again, or else it was made into a solid wall, and either the chancel or the nave used for worship. Sometimes the unused area was left to decay, but sometimes, as the population increased, each part was used by a different congregation. Great importance was given to the positioning of the pulpit, so that all might see and hear the preaching of the word of God. The close relation of word and sacrament was expressed in the proximity of the Lord’s table and the baptismal basin to the pulpit. These arrangements were followed in the new churches, which were built on a square or circular plan, and can be seen in the churches built in London after the Great Fire (1666), and even more clearly in the church ‘meeting-houses’ of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and New England. Henry Sefton Scotland Scotland was awakened to Lutheranism by Patrick Hamilton, a student of Luther, who was burned for his faith in 1528. George Wishart (c. 1513–46) and John Knox (c. 1514–72) continued Hamilton’s reforming work, but Knox was taken prisoner by the French in 1547, and forced to serve as a galley-slave. When freed, he studied under Calvin in Geneva and Bullinger in Zürich. In 1557 Scottish Protestants covenanted to effect reformation, and wrote urging Knox to return home. Arriving in Scotland in 1559, he launched the Reformation, attacking the papacy and the mass in his sermons at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. At the request of Parliament, he drew up a Confession of Faith and Doctrine (1560, replaced in 1647 by the Westminster Confession), emphasizing evangelical doctrine and urging the necessity of discipline. A General Assembly of the church was called in 1560, which settled the Reformation in Scotland. The Book of Discipline (1561), was followed by a new liturgy, in the Book of Common Order (1564), and a translation of Calvin’s Catechism. Knox had now consolidated the Reformation in Scotland. Ireland When Henry VIII rejected the papacy in England he made the Irish do the same. However the low level of education, absence of printed books in Irish, and dearth of Irish reformers made doctrinal change virtually impossible. Under Edward VI a reformed liturgy was introduced; the English Prayer Book, published in Dublin in 1551, was actually the first book printed in Ireland. Mary Tudor re-established Roman Catholicism in Ireland, deposed the reforming bishops, and punished married clergy. Queen Elizabeth subsequently restored the English liturgy, and in 1560 the Irish Parliament again repudiated the authority of the pope, and passed the Act of Uniformity which set up Anglicanism as the national religion. However, because the Reformation was imposed by the English, Protestantism became inseparably linked with foreign rule. Under James I many Scots settled in northern Ireland (Ulster), creating a Presbyterian enclave. The radicals Martin Luther experienced fierce opposition from radical reformers who wanted more wide-ranging changes. While he was held prisoner in the Wartburg (1521–22), Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541) took over leadership of the reform movement in Wittenberg, setting the church in a more extreme direction. Luther believed it was necessary only to preach the Word of God, teach the Bible, and allow the Holy Spirit to create fresh ways through the old forms, for a believing church to emerge. He hoped for a reformation of doctrine and morality within an undivided church. Inevitably he clashed with the radicals, some of whom expressed their theology in terms of the political and revolutionary aspirations of the age. This clash came to a head in the disastrous Peasants’ War of 1525, which Luther bitterly opposed. The uprising was widely supported, led by the able and learned Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525). During its course some 100,000 people perished, and indescribable misery followed the destruction of farms, agricultural implements, and cattle. Luther always attempted to work with a ‘godly prince’, and clearly distinguished between the concerns and responsibilities of church and state. The radicals – sometimes called ‘enthusiasts’ (German, Schwärmerei) – wanted a complete spiritual reformation of the church, a programme more far-reaching than most people would accept. James Atkinson The Unitarians Unitarians reject the idea of the Trinity, questioning belief in the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit in favour of the oneness of God, an idea found in the early church, particularly in the Monarchianist heresy. The modern Unitarian movement dates from the early sixteenth century, when Renaissance ideas combined with some extreme teaching in the Radical Reformation to produce Unitarian ideas in the minds of many individuals. Notable early Unitarians included Martin Borrhaus (Cellarius, 1499–1564), Michael Servetus and Bernardino Ochino (1487–1564). The new teaching alarmed both Catholics and Protestants: Servetus was put to death for his heresies by the Reformer Calvin in 1553. Poland and Hungary Two prominent centres of early Unitarianism were Poland and Hungary. The Italian Giorgio Blandrata (1515–1588) was active in Poland between 1558 and 1563, and was followed by Gregory Paulus. Unitarian congregations sprang up, known as the ‘Polish Brethren’. They were formally organized in 1565, and became known as the Minor Church. After 1574, when Faustus Socinus (1539–1604) became leader, Unitarianism spread quickly. Its intellectual centre was Raców, where a Polish Unitarian declaration of faith, the Racovian Catechism, was published in 1605. During the reign of the Catholic King Sigismund III (1587–1632), a reaction set in, and the Unitarian community at Raców was suppressed in 1638. In 1658 the Unitarians were given the choice of conformity or exile: many chose exile and emigrated to Holland, Hungary, and England. Unitarianism spread rapidly in Transylvania, where Blandrata moved in 1563. He had a strong influence on Férenc (Francis) David (1510–79), who in 1564 became bishop of the Reformed Church in Transylvania. David was also court preacher to King John Sigismund of Hungary (1540–71), who was impressed by his teaching, and in the Edict of Torda (also known as the Patent of Toleration, 1568) ordered Unitarianism to be tolerated. In 1571, along with Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism, Unitarianism was recognized as a ‘received religion’. But when John Sigismund died, severe persecution began. By the later eighteenth century, Unitarianism in Hungary was almost completely suppressed, and only revived in the early nineteenth century, when contacts were resumed with English and American Unitarians. Unitarian theology in Hungary was conservative, as it did not want to invite persecution by appearing aggressively heretical. English Unitarians John Biddle (1615–62) is regarded as the founder of English Unitarianism, which emerged in the turbulent Civil War period, initially remaining confined to individual people. But in the rationalistic atmosphere of the eighteenth century, many English Presbyterian and General Baptist Churches began to be affected, adopting first Arian, and then Sabellian, Socinian, or full-blown Unitarian ideas. Both denominations became largely Unitarian by the second half of the eighteenth century. The liberal Anglican Theophilus Lindsey (1723–1808) left the Church of England in 1773 and opened the first self-styled Unitarian Church, Essex Chapel, in London. Unitarianism now spread rapidly, thanks to active missionaries, the intellectual distinction of the Unitarian-controlled Warrington Academy, and the teachings of the well-known Dr Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). Unitarianism – not legally recognized in the Toleration Act of 1689 – was eventually legalized in 1813. In the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century, Unitarianism gradually took on the trappings and organization of a separate denomination. The British and Foreign Unitarian Society was founded in 1825, and a number of legal disputes with orthodox nonconformists ensued, threatening to deprive the Unitarians of many of their older church buildings, about a third of which claimed a seventeenth-century foundation. An Act of 1844 settled the question – largely in the Unitarians’ favour – but left relations with the other nonconformists very bitter. Meanwhile theological changes occurred in Unitarianism. Priestley and his successor, Thomas Belsham (1750–1829), found their source of authority in Scripture, interpreting the Bible in a rationalistic and optimistic way, to get around those verses which Christians had previously used to support the doctrine of the Trinity and the belief that humanity has a fallen nature. But in the 1830s James Martineau (1805–1900) and some younger Unitarians led a revolt against biblical Unitarianism and its dogmas. They advocated a less argumentative religion, with a more refined, romantic, and devotional spirituality, and located religious authority in reason and conscience rather than in a biased interpretation of Scripture. Henceforth the Unitarians were rather sharply divided into an older, ‘biblical’, and newer, ‘spiritual’, wing, with the new group well on the way to eclipsing the ‘biblical’ wing by 1850. In Ireland, Thomas Emlyn (1663–1741) was prosecuted in Dublin in 1703 for denying the deity of Christ. In 1726 a Unitarian ‘Non-Subscribing Presbytery of Antrim’ arose out of a group of liberal Presbyterian congregations, and in 1830 the ‘Remonstrant Synod of Ulster’ was formed. These two Unitarian groups merged in 1835 and were – and are today – more conservative in their beliefs than English Unitarians. North America In North America, Unitarian teaching initially arose in the later eighteenth century among New England Congregationalists. However the first to take the title ‘Unitarian’ was an Episcopalian, James Freeman, whose King’s Chapel, Boston, became in 1785 the first Unitarian Church in the New World. After the Revolution, Unitarianism spread rapidly, encouraged by Priestley, who fled from England to North America in 1794. Dr William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), from 1803 minister of Federal Street Congregational Church, Boston, also promoted Unitarianism. In 1816 the famous divinity school of Harvard University was founded, soon becoming the centre of Unitarian thought. In 1825 the scattered Unitarian congregations – like their counterparts in England – organized themselves into a denomination known as the American Unitarian Association, with its headquarters in Boston. A theological revolution similar to Martineau’s was brought about in America by Theodore Parker (1810–60) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), with the radicals using terms such as ‘transcendentalism’ and ‘anti-supernaturalism’ to describe their position. In England such labels tended to cause some alarm. The Bostonian Dr Joseph Tuckerman (1778–1840) and his Domestic Mission movement took a new direction in charitable work that was widely admired, and similar missions were promoted in several English cities. Ian Sellers Chapter 24 A Flood of Bibles Scripture in the vernacular Throughout the Middle Ages the Bible was known almost exclusively in the Latin translation known as the Vulgate. But the humanist scholars of the Renaissance period had a new concern to recover the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. The Hebrew text The Jews were the first to print a complete Hebrew Old Testament, at Soncino, northern Italy, in 1488. In the next few years two further editions appeared, probably from the same group of Jews. The first Christian contribution came some years later. Early in the sixteenth century the Catholic university at Alcalá in Spain produced a massive work known as the Complutensian Polyglot, consisting of the Hebrew and Greek (Septuagint) Old Testament, the Greek New Testament, and the Latin Vulgate. It was printed between 1514 and 1517, but the pope delayed authorization and it was not issued until about 1522. Meanwhile in 1517/18, a Christian, Daniel Bomberg (d. 1549), printed the Biblica Rabbinica – the Hebrew Old Testament together with the Targums (paraphrases) and the rabbinical commentaries – in collaboration with a Christian Jew, Felix Pratensis (d. 1539). In 1524–25 Bomberg printed a second edition, with the aid of another Jewish scholar, Jacob ben Hayyim (c. 1470–before 1538). This edition is important, since ben Hayyim went to great pains to consult as many different Hebrew manuscripts as possible. Further editions of the Hebrew Old Testament appeared, notably from Sebastian Münster (1534/5), Robert Estienne (1539–44), and Christopher Plantin (1569–72), but these did nothing to help recover the original text. The Greek text Volume 5 of the Complutensian Polyglot, which contains the Greek text of the New Testament, though printed in 1514, was not issued for some years, giving the Basel printer, Johann Froben (c. 1460–1527), the opportunity to be the first to publish. He persuaded Erasmus to complete his own edition of the Greek text in great haste, which resulted in many errors appearing when it was rushed through the press in 1516. Conservatives reacted with hostility, particularly since Erasmus had the effrontery to include his own Latin translation, rather than the traditional Vulgate. He also omitted the famous ‘Johannine comma’ of 1 John 5:7, 8 (a reference to the Trinity found in the King James Version, but in neither the original Greek nor modern translations). Erasmus’ New Testament went through many editions and was improved, though under pressure he restored the Johannine comma. The first serious attempt to produce a critical edition of the Greek New Testament, attempting to get back to the original text by comparing surviving manuscripts, was that of Simon de Colines (1480–1546), a Parisian printer, in 1534. This work was continued by his stepson Robert Estienne (1503–59), who produced several editions from 1546, first at Paris and later at Geneva, where he fled because of his Protestant beliefs. Estienne’s work was continued by Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor at Geneva, who produced a series of editions of the Greek New Testament, beginning in 1565. This text came to be known as the textus receptus, or universally accepted text; the attempt to get back to the original text was abandoned for some time. The Latin Bible The Vulgate was the authentic text of the Bible for the Roman Catholic Church, and this was confirmed by the Council of Trent in 1546. Various attempts were made by individual printers and scholars to produce a more accurate edition of the Vulgate, either by revising it against the Hebrew and Greek, or by consulting early manuscripts of the Vulgate. In 1590 Pope Sixtus V issued an official edition of the Vulgate, together with severe penalties for those who dared to alter it. But, two years later, his successor Clement VIII was forced to revise it and produce a more correct edition, which then became the standard text of the Vulgate. Translations The invention of printing allowed the Bible to be circulated more widely than ever before. With this possibility came the desire of the Reformers to make what they regarded as the Word of God available to all people in their own language. This came at a period when it was unusual to write in the vernacular, and works such as the Luther Bible contributed greatly to the growth of the European languages. The Reformers did not accept the Old Testament Apocrypha (which is not part of the Hebrew Bible, but is accepted by the Roman Catholic Church) as inspired Scripture. But they recognized it as profitable to read, and it was included in the majority of Bibles during this period. German The major German translation of the sixteenth century is that by Martin Luther, upon which all the other German translations depend. Luther translated the New Testament early in 1522, in just two-and-a-half months, and the Old Testament in stages between 1522 and 1532. The first complete Luther Bible (with the Apocrypha) appeared at Wittenberg in 1534. Earlier that year it had also been translated into Low German. The Luther Bible was frequently revised, and the last revision before Luther’s death (1545) later came to be regarded as the definitive version. It has been claimed that ‘Luther’s Bible was a literary event of the first magnitude, for it is the first work of art in German prose.’ French No one French Bible has the exalted status of the Luther Bible. The humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples was the pioneer, with his New Testament (1523), followed by the Old Testament and Apocrypha (1528), produced together as a complete Bible in 1530. Although this translation kept close to both the text and the Latin words of the Vulgate, it was used as a basis for later translations. In 1535 Calvin’s cousin, Pierre Robert Olivétan (c. 1506–38), produced the Neuchâtel Bible, which had been sponsored mainly by the Waldensian Church. This translation drew upon Lefèvre’s, especially for the New Testament and Apocrypha. The pastors of Geneva, including Calvin and Beza, produced many revisions of this translation, and the 1588 revision became the definitive Geneva Bible. Less influential, but no less skilful, was the translation by Sebastian Castellio (1515–63), which appeared at Basle in 1555. In 1550, a Roman Catholic based on the work of Lefèvre and Olivétan was produced at Louvain. This was revised a number of times to become, in 1578, the definitive Louvain Bible. William Tyndale and the English Bible William Tyndale (c. 1492–1536) is celebrated for his English translation of the New Testament. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and possibly later at Cambridge, and then became tutor to the family of Sir John Walsh. While living in his household, Tyndale saw at first hand the ignorance of the local clergy. To one cleric he is reported to have declared: ‘If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.’ This task became his life’s work. The bishops had banned the English Bible since 1408 because they feared the Lollards, who had their own translation, the Wyclif Bible. This translation had been made from the Latin Vulgate and was inaccurate, so Tyndale set out to make a translation from the Hebrew and Greek. He hoped to win the support of the learned bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, but the bishops were more concerned to prevent the spread of Lutheran ideas than promote the study of Scripture. Instead Tyndale obtained financial backing from a number of London merchants, especially Humphrey Monmouth. It was clear that England was no safe place to translate the Bible, so Tyndale left for Europe, never to return. By early 1525 his New Testament was ready for the press. Tyndale narrowly escaped arrest at Cologne, but managed to have the book published later the same year at Worms. Euangelio (that we cal gospel) is a greke word, and signifyth good, mery, glad, and joyful tydings, that maketh a mannes hert glad, and maketh hym synge, daunce, and leepe for joye. William Tyndale Tyndale’s translation had an immense influence, and rightly earned him the title of the ‘father of the English Bible’. It could almost be said that every English New Testament until the twentieth century was simply a revision of Tyndale’s: some 90 per cent of his words passed into the King James Version, and about 75 per cent into the Revised Standard Version. Tyndale also translated parts of the Old Testament, including the first five books. He was unable to complete the Old Testament because he was betrayed and arrested near Brussels in 1535, and in 1536 strangled and burnt. A. N. S. Lane Woodcut from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) depicting the English Bible translator William Tyndale (c. 1492–1536) being burnt at the stake for heresy at Vilvoorde, near Brussels. Allegedly as he was dying he cried, ‘Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!’ Tim Dowley Associates English The pioneer of the English Bible is William Tyndale, who published the New Testament (1525 and later revisions) and part of the Old Testament. Complete Bibles later began to appear: Miles Coverdale’s in 1535, and the Matthew Bible in 1537. With the backing of Thomas Cranmer and Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, the Matthew Bible was revised by Coverdale to become the Great Bible (1539). During the reign of Queen Mary (1553–58) many leading Protestants went into exile. Those at Geneva determined to produce a new translation of the Bible. The New Testament and Psalms appeared in 1557, and the complete Geneva Bible in 1560. The New Testament was revised in later editions. This translation became immensely popular. The bishops attempted to undermine it with their Bishops’ Bible (1568) but this never became popular. The one major Roman Catholic translation at this time is the Rheims-Douai Bible, which was translated from the Vulgate and appeared in 1582 (New Testament, Rheims) and 1609–10 (Old Testament, Douai). King James I sponsored a new translation of the Bible, following a request by the Puritans in 1604. It appeared in 1611, and drew heavily on what was good in previous translations. This translation – the King James Version – often inaccurately called the Authorized Version, only gradually replaced the Geneva Bible, which remained popular for another fifty years. Dutch Translations of parts of the Bible, and one complete Bible, were printed in Dutch in the fifteenth century. The Reformation led to an increase in such printings, but it was some time before widely-accepted versions appeared. The earliest of these was the Mennonite Bible, first printed at Emden in 1558, and later known as the Biestkens Bible, after the man who published it in 1560. Calvinists mainly used a translation which was heavily dependent upon the Luther Bible and which first appeared in 1561–62. This was replaced in 1637 by the Statenvertaling or ‘States’ translation’, produced at the expense of the government. This became the standard version, and was adopted by the Mennonites in the seventeenth century. The Catholics had their own translation, made by Nicolaas van Winghe in 1548 from the Vulgate. This translation, with revisions, remained in use for several centuries. Italian Work on an Italian Bible began in the 1530s, pioneered by Antonio Brucioli (c. 1498–1566). Others followed in his footsteps. But the first Protestant Italian Bible did not appear until 1562 at Geneva, and this was only a revision of earlier translations. The greatest was that of the Italian Giovanni Diodati (1576–1649), Beza’s successor at Geneva, who produced a translation of the Bible in 1603 that was revised in 1641. His translation was unchallenged until the end of the eighteenth century and remained in use much longer. Spanish In Spain the Inquisition was more effective than elsewhere; as a result Bible translation took place mainly outside the country. Two translations of the New Testament appeared in the middle of the sixteenth century: those of Francisco de Enzinas (Antwerp, 1543) and Juan Perez de Pineda (Geneva, 1556). The first complete Spanish Bible was that of Casiodoro de Reina, a former monk, which appeared at Basle in 1569. Swedish Sweden early had a standard translation in the form of the 1541 version, known as the Vasa Bible after King Gustavus Vasa, translated by Laurentius Petri, possibly with the help of his brother, Olaus. Danish In Denmark the standard translation was the Christian III Bible, published in 1550 at Copenhagen. This was revised in 1589 (Frederick II’s Bible) and 1633 (Christian IV’s Bible), both revisions also named after kings, indicating how far the Reformation in Scandinavia was controlled by the state. a. n. s. lane Chapter 25 The Radical Reformation The Anabaptists The Anabaptists made the most radical attempt of the Reformation era to renew the church. They did not consist of a single, coherent organization, but were a loose grouping of movements. All rejected infant baptism and practised the baptism of adults upon confession of faith. They never accepted the label ‘Anabaptist’ (meaning ‘rebaptizer’) – a term of reproach coined by their opponents – but soon discovered the term gave the authorities a legal precedent, harking back to fifth-century Roman laws against the Donatists, to persecute and execute them. A split in Zurich To the Anabaptists, however, the fundamental issue was not baptism but their growing conviction about the role the civil government should play in reforming the church. Late in 1523 intense debate on this issue broke out in Zurich, when it became clear that the city council was unwilling to make the religious changes that the theologians believed were called for by Scripture. The Zurich Reformer, Zwingli, believed they should wait, and attempt to persuade the authorities by preaching. However, his more radical disciples believed the community of Christians should initiate Scripture-backed reforms regardless of the council. Despite continuing discussion of the matters in dispute – the mass, baptism, and tithes – the gap between the two parties widened. Finally, on 21 January 1525, the city council forbade the radicals to assemble or disseminate their views. That evening, in the neighbouring village of Zollikon, they met, baptized each other, and so became the first free church of modern times. Despite the fact that it was illegal, the Anabaptist movement spread rapidly throughout German-speaking Europe. Unlike the other Reformers, the Anabaptists were not committed to the notion that ‘Christendom’ was Christian. From the beginning they saw themselves as missionaries to people who were only partly obedient to the gospel. The Anabaptists systematically divided Europe into sectors for evangelistic outreach and sent missionaries out into them in twos and threes. Many people were bewildered by their message; and others pulled back when the cost of Anabaptist discipleship became clear; but others heard them. Mysticism, late-medieval asceticism, and the disillusionment which followed the peasants’ revolts of 1524–25 had prepared the way for the Anabaptists. Almost simultaneously, Anabaptist-type groups sprang up spontaneously in various parts of Europe. By the late 1520s, Anabaptism was to be found as far afield as Holland and Moravia, the Tyrol and Mecklenburg. Anabaptist beliefs What did these Anabaptists believe? There was a considerable variety of opinion, ensured by their rapid growth, the diverse backgrounds of their leaders, and the absence of any ecclesiastical authority to control them. But they did attempt to agree upon a common basis. In 1527 at Schleitheim, on today’s Swiss-German border, near Schaffhausen, the Anabaptists called the first ‘synod’ of the Protestant Reformation. The leading figure was the former Benedictine prior, Michael Sattler (c. 1490–1527), who, four months later, was burned at the stake in nearby Rottenburg-am-Neckar. The ‘Brotherly Union’ adopted at Schleitheim was to be a highly significant document; during the following decade most Anabaptists in all parts of Europe came to agree with the beliefs which it laid down. By 1540 there was a body of beliefs which broadly characterized the movement. Important among these convictions was what the Anabaptists called ‘discipleship’: the Christian’s relationship with Christ must go beyond inner experience and acceptance of doctrines, and must involve a daily walk with God, in which Christ’s teaching and example shaped a transformed style of life. This meant resolutely obeying the ‘bright and clear words of the Son of God whose word is truth and whose commandment is eternal life.’ The consequences of being a disciple, as the Anabaptists realized, were wide-ranging. To choose only one, the Anabaptists rejected the swearing of oaths, because of Jesus’ clear command in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:33–37). For them there could be no gradation of levels of truth-telling. A powerful Anabaptist belief was the principle of love. In their dealings with non-Anabaptists, they acted as pacifists. They would neither go to war, defend themselves against their persecutors, nor take part in coercion by the state. The love ethic was also expressed within the Anabaptist communities, in mutual aid, and the redistribution of wealth. Among Moravian Anabaptists it even led to Christian communism. Restoring the church Anabaptist beliefs about the church were particularly distinctive. They were not interested in simply reforming the church; they were committed to restoring it to the vigour and faithfulness of its earliest centuries. In the Scriptures they read of a church which was not a wealthy and powerful institution, but a family of brothers and sisters in Christ. It existed, not because it was recognized by some outside ecclesiastical or political organization, but because God was at work among his people. The Anabaptists came to elaborate upon the ‘congregational’ view of church authority, towards which Luther and Zwingli had inclined in their earliest reforming years. In their congregations, all members were to be believers, baptized voluntarily as adults upon confession of faith. Decision-making was to be by the entire membership. In deciding matters of doctrine, the authority of Scripture was to be interpreted, not by dogmatic tradition or by ecclesiastical leaders, but by the consensus of the local gathering – in which all could speak and listen critically. In matters of church discipline, the believers were also to act corporately. They were to assist each other to live out faithfully the meaning of their baptismal commitments. Another major Anabaptist conviction was insistence upon the separation of church and state. Christians, they claimed, were a ‘free, unforced, uncompelled people’. Faith is a free gift of God, and the authorities exceed their competence when they ‘champion the Word of God with a fist.’ The Anabaptists believed the church was distinct from society, even if society claimed to be Christian. Christ’s true followers were a pilgrim people; his church was an association of perpetual aliens. Persecution The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife. They are the children of peace who have beaten their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and know of no war … Since we are to be conformed to the image of Christ, how can we then fight our enemies with the sword? … Spears and swords of iron we leave to whose who, alas, consider human blood and swine’s blood of well-nigh equal value … Menno Simons, 1539 To the established leaders of Protestant and Catholic Europe, these beliefs – and the personalities and movements which gave rise to them – were alarming indeed. The Reformers were understandably dismayed when news spread of Anabaptists interrupting Protestant sermons, or attracting the most earnest of their parishioners. They were also concerned that the Anabaptist emphasis upon life as well as belief seemed to challenge the basic Reformation principle of ‘by faith alone’. In vain did the Anabaptists protest that their ethical teachings were not a means of obtaining salvation, but rather a necessary expression of the new life in Christ which resulted from salvation. In fact, the Anabaptists argued, these teachings stemmed from specific scriptural commandments. The Reformers were not impressed by this reasoning. By 1527 they had determined to use all necessary means to root out Anabaptism, and were joined in this by the Catholic authorities. To Protestants and Catholics alike, the Anabaptists seemed not only to be dangerous heretics; they also appeared to threaten the religious and social stability of Christian Europe. In the next quarter of a century, thousands of Anabaptists were put to death – by fire in the Catholic territories, by drowning and the sword under Protestant regimes. Thousands more saved their skins by recanting. The authorities’ persecution of the Anabaptists seemed justified by the upheaval at Münster in the mid-1530s. In 1534 a group of Anabaptists who expected the millennium came to power in Münster, an episcopal city in Westphalia. When the bishop massed troops to besiege the city, these Anabaptists defended themselves by arms. As the siege progressed, still more extreme leaders gained control. Some of the Münsterite leaders claimed prophetic authority to receive new revelations. They also claimed that Old Testament ethics still applied, and thus felt justified in reintroducing polygamy. They even crowned a ‘King David’. For centuries, churches and governments exploited these excesses to make ‘Anabaptism’ a by-word for fanaticism and disorder. However, many of the major principles of the Münsterites – for example, the linking of church and state, the validity of Old Testament social patterns, and the right of Christians to take up arms – were more typical of the official churches than they were of other Anabaptists. War no more In the aftermath of the suppression of Münster, the dispirited Anabaptists of the lower-Rhine area were given new heart by the ministry of Menno Simons (1496–1561). This former priest travelled widely, although in great personal danger, visiting the scattered Anabaptist groups of northern Europe and inspiring them with night-time preaching. Menno was unswerving in commending pacifism; as a result, his name came to stand for the movement’s repudiation of violence. Although Menno was not the founder of the movement, most of the twenty-first-century descendants of the Anabaptists are called ‘Mennonite’. Anabaptists had also spread in large numbers eastwards to the Tyrol and Moravia. The early missioner who took the message eastwards along the Alps to the Tyrol was Jörg Cajacob (‘Blaurock’ [bluecoat], 1492–1529), the first adult to be baptized, in 1525. When the Tyrolean Catholic authorities began to persecute them intensely, many of the Anabaptists found refuge on the lands of some particularly tolerant princes in Moravia, where they founded a long-lasting form of economic community called the Bruderhof. In part they aimed to follow the pattern of early apostolic times, but they sought community for practical reasons too – as a means of group survival under persecution. Their communities attempted to demonstrate that commitment to others comes before self in the kingdom of God. Consolidated under the leadership of Jakob Hutter (c. 1500–36), these groups came to be known as ‘Hutterites’. With the passage of time, and under the pressure of persecution, most of the extravagant variety of views, leaders, and separate movements of Anabaptism’s earliest years soon sifted out. Only three groups were able to survive beyond the mid-sixteenth century as ordered communities: the ‘brethren’ in Switzerland and southern Germany; the Mennonites in the Netherlands and northern Germany; and the Hutterites in Moravia. Over the centuries, these descendants lost many of their Anabaptist characteristics. Seeking purity, they became legalistic. In the interests of sheer survival, they lost evangelistic zeal. They became known as excellent farmers, good people, and the ‘Quiet in the Land’. Not until the late nineteenth century did they experience revival. During the late twentieth century Anabaptism was rediscovered as a source of renewal and a relevant historical movement. Anabaptism influences contemporary Christianity partly through the direct descendants of the Anabaptists – primarily the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, the Brethren in Christ, and the Hutterites – and also through their indirect descendants, such as the Baptists, and more distantly the Methodists. John H. Yoder and Alan Kreider The First English Baptists In 1608, John Smyth baptized himself in Amsterdam. He had been a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, but as a Separatist fled from the harsh rule of James I’s England. After his death one of his associates, Thomas Helwys, led back to England a group that had split from Smyth’s former congregation. They formed the first General, or Arminian, Baptist congregation in England at Spitalfields, London, in 1612. By 1638 at the latest there were also congregations holding a Calvinistic theology in London who practised believers’ baptism (‘Particular Baptists’), growing out of the first congregation of English Independents, although it is not known exactly when they adopted full Baptist views. A radical look at church principles, in the Puritan manner, led first to the understanding of the church as a gathered community, then to a realization that only the baptism of believers fitted such a view. The extent to which the early Baptists were influenced by European ideas and the thinking of the Radical Reformation is hotly contested. The links with the Dutch Mennonites in the very earliest days are clear; but it is equally clear that the English Baptist movement came out of a search among the English Separatists for the pattern of apostolic churches. They believed this could be discovered from the pages of the New Testament, and was the only pattern of church organization for all succeeding generations. These youthful Baptist churches were hurled into the current debate about the relationship between church and state and championed their own answers to that controversy at great personal cost. They soon also became involved, to varying degrees, in the millenarian speculations of the mid-seventeenth century. Like many others, the Baptists eagerly thumbed the pages of Daniel and Revelation, seeking the signs of the times and looking for guidance about their proper Christian obedience. At the same time parliamentary opposition to King Charles I hardened and led relentlessly to the outbreak of the Civil War, or ‘English Revolution’. Cromwell’s victorious New Model Army held religious opinions which differed from the state-Presbyterianism of Parliament; Independents and Baptists were dominant in the army’s leadership and amongst the rank and file. Although Cromwell allowed an established church to continue, he let Baptists, Independents, Presbyterians, and non-royalist Anglicans to act as ministers in it. Those who wanted to worship apart from a state church were permitted to continue a separate existence, provided they did not disturb the peace. Some Baptists accepted office in the state church, but the majority chose to continue independently. What Baptists stood for The Baptists achieved an early peak of numerical strength and national influence during the Interregnum. But even before the Restoration their position was seriously compromised by the loss of members to more radical sects, such as the Quakers, and the adoption of the revolutionary views of the Fifth Monarchists in many places. Vavasor Powell, a committed Fifth-Monarchist, saw two alternatives, asking his congregation whether God would have ‘Oliver Cromwell or Jesus Christ to reign over us?’ When these Baptist congregations claimed local independence, it was freedom from state interference they were seeking, not total competence for the local congregation. The need for mutual assistance between congregations led early to the setting up of a General Assembly amongst the General Baptists, and of regional ‘associations’ amongst the Particular Baptists. Both structures became important tools for expanding the work, as well as forums for discussing theological and disciplinary queries, and so for establishing a ‘Baptist viewpoint’. Particular Baptist association meetings discussed such issues as the gathering of churches, believer’s baptism, communion with the unbaptized, the ordination of ministers, the maintenance of the ministry, the place of the magistrate, missionary activity, liturgical usages – such as breaking bread, psalm-singing, foot-washing, and anointing the sick – ecclesiastical discipline, the grounds and manner of exclusion, domestic duties and relationships. John Bunyan John Bunyan (1628–88) is widely known as the writer of the English classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Born at Elstow, Bedfordshire, the son of a poor brazier or tinker, Bunyan served in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. In 1651 he encountered an Independent congregation meeting at Bedford. Despairing over his spiritual state for several years, he finally experienced assurance of salvation, joined the Bedford congregation, and began to preach successfully for them. This led to his imprisonment in Bedford jail after the Restoration (1660). Then Mr Valiant-for-Truth said: ‘I am going to my fathers, and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill, to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who will now be my rewarder.’ When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river side, unto which as he went he said, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ And as he went down deeper he said, ‘Grave, where is thy victory?’ So he passed over and the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.’ John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress During his jail years, Bunyan’s books began to appear. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) was an account of his own spiritual pilgrimage. The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) is an allegory based on Bunyan’s spiritual life, in which ‘Christian’ meets such characters as Evangelist, Faithful, Pliable, and Giant Despair during his hazardous journey from the City of Destruction until he finally enters the Celestial City. Bunyan’s language is a happy mixture of homespun phrases and echoes of the English Bible, while his beliefs are shaped by his own Calvinist and Independent position. His other well-known work, The Holy War (1682), uses warfare images to construct another allegory. Tim Dowley Persecution and decline By 1660 there were roughly 300 General and Particular Baptist churches in England and Wales. The Restoration brought a quarter of a century of intermittent persecution by the state; it was not until 1687 that the churches felt able to look back on ‘ye Times of our late Troubles’. The accession of William and Mary brought only limited toleration; the oppressive laws remained, though Protestant dissenters of Trinitarian faith, who subscribed to the main points of the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles, were exempted from penalty. But with toleration came tolerance for a wider range of theological views and Dissenters and Anglicans both suffered a decline in religious vitality. On the one hand, the General Baptists, like the Presbyterians, fell prey to the spread of Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ. By the end of the eighteenth century, many General Baptist congregations were calling themselves Unitarians or, at any rate, holding a Unitarian theology. On the other hand, some Particular Baptists, especially those who looked to the London leadership of John Gill (1697–1771) and John Brine (1703–65), overreacted against theological liberalism, tending so to stress the sovereignty of God that both individual moral action and evangelism were inhibited in what is known as ‘hyper-Calvinism’. A slow awakening Consequently Baptists were in no position to benefit immediately from the new life represented by the Great Awakening. But several distinct movements brought the impact of the Awakening to the Baptists. First, a group of working folk in some villages in Leicestershire who had been evangelized by one of the Countess of Huntingdon’s servants came to Baptist convictions in 1755. Dan Taylor, a Yorkshire miner, converted among the Methodists, similarly came to Baptist convictions by his own study of the subject. Eventually the Leicestershire group and Dan Taylor’s church, together with a few General Baptist churches that remained orthodox, formed the ‘New Connexion of General Baptists’ in 1770. These churches prospered in the emerging industrial communities of central England, the textile communities of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the hosiery and lace-making areas of the east Midlands. New life came to the Particular Baptists when, in 1785, Andrew Fuller of Kettering (1754–1815) published The Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation. He ‘proved that Calvinism itself, as distinct from the ‘false Calvinism’ which was common in the eighteenth century, was essentially a missionary theology’. This expressed systematically the doubts that a number of ministers had about the prevailing hyper-Calvinism. The Baptists went through a form of rebirth in the eighteenth century and their life from that time represents a debate between Puritanism and Evangelicalism. The General Baptists who opposed Dan Taylor’s enthusiasm lapsed into Unitarianism; the Particular Baptists who rejected the correcting force of the Evangelical Revival, and allowed only their own members to the communion table, became the Strict Baptists. Call to mission Fuller completed his book in 1781, but hesitated four years before publishing it. In 1784 he was able to apply the thought of the American theologian Jonathan Edwards to the English religious scene. Others too were influenced by the Awakening. Fuller’s colleague, John Sutcliffe, issued a ‘Call to Prayer’ to the Northamptonshire Baptists: ‘Let the whole interest of the Redeemer be affectionately remembered, and the spread of the Gospel to the most distant parts of the habitable globe be the object of your most fervent requests.’ Out of this renewal of Baptist life came the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792. William Carey and John Thomas became the Society’s first representatives abroad. Fuller, with John Ryland of Bristol (1723–1825), John Sutcliffe of Olney, and Samuel Pearce of Birmingham, supported them at home. The message of The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation not only revived the churches at home, it gave British Baptists a worldwide vision. In 1812 it was agreed that a more general union of Particular Baptists was desirable, particularly, though not exclusively, to support the work of ‘the Baptist Mission’. In such a way revival gave birth to mission and mission to denominational organization. But a further twenty years passed before the Baptist Union was founded. John Briggs Chapter 26 The Catholic Reformation The response of the Church of Rome to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and his attack upon its authority is both curious and revealing. It is curious because the Roman Church seems to have been unaware of the widespread unrest among the faithful that Luther’s protest represented. It is revealing in that the first response to the rumblings in northern Europe was low-key and almost nonchalant. Yet the way in which the Church of Rome reacted to Luther and his cause was to have far-reaching consequences. Leo and Luther Leo X (1513–21), pope at the time, had other things on his mind. Leo was in many ways a typical Renaissance pope: elegant, worldly, sophisticated, intelligent, consumed with political and family ambition, more of an administrator than ‘a servant of the servants of God’. An enthusiastic patron of Renaissance art and ideals, Leo aimed to advance the fortunes of his own family – the Medicis of Florence – and to increase the political power of the Papal States in central Italy, of which he was ruler. He revelled in Renaissance activities – spending a great deal of money on the arts and on gambling – while the day-to-day routine of managing the large and corrupt papal bureaucracy took much of his time and energy. All of this sapped his ability to give any kind of moral leadership over Christian Europe at a critical point in its history. When Leo first saw a copy of Luther’s Theses in 1518, he is supposed to have made two comments; probably neither of them is authentic, but both are in keeping with his known initial response to Luther. The first was: ‘Luther is a drunken German. He will feel different when he is sober.’ The second: ‘Friar Martin is a brilliant chap. The whole row is due to the envy of the monks.’ He concluded that it was probably ‘only a monks’ quarrel’. Two important points emerge about the short-term response of church and papacy to Luther. First, the negative and disdainful attitude of the church towards Luther’s initial pronouncements helped make the Wittenberg professor a major public figure, especially in Germany. Second, it showed the church was not aware of the significance of the threat it was facing. Indeed, the great irony and danger of the situation was that the pope was in no position to provide the kind of inspiring leadership necessary to head off Luther’s challenge, nor was he able to provide a constructive channel for this new force. Relations between Luther and the papacy deteriorated badly after 1519, as leaders of the church began to realize what Luther was actually saying. When they saw that he was calling for a spiritual authority other than the one established and accepted by the late medieval church, and for a major overhaul of the institution of the church itself – a threat to vested interests – they came to regard Luther as a ‘son of iniquity’. By 1520 the die was cast. Following his reading of Luther’s Babylonian Captivity of the Church in that year, Erasmus sadly noted: ‘The breach is irreparable’. And so it was. The Diet of Worms in 1521 confirmed Luther’s excommunication and declared him a political outlaw. But through all of this there were some who remained within the church of Rome – many in high places – who readily acknowledged the truth of Luther’s accusations of misplaced spiritual authority and institutional corruption. Many of these, troubled about the situation for a variety of reasons, did not leave the church. Instead, these pious individuals worked in many different ways to reform the Church of Rome from within. This large number of devout Catholics contributed to the long-term response to the Protestant challenge, now known as the Catholic Reformation. This movement was in part a direct reaction to the external threat of the Protestant movement, and in part an effort to correct internal abuses and restore genuine piety to the Roman Church. Among the various outworkings of the Catholic Reformation were the establishment of the Oratory of Divine Love; the reform of the papacy; the founding of the Society of Jesus and several other new monastic orders; the meeting of an ecumenical council at Trent; the rejuvenation and reorganization of the Inquisition; the issuing of an ‘index’ of books which the faithful were not permitted to read; the resurgence of Catholic mysticism in Spain; and ‘wars of religion’ which led to the forced re-conversion of certain areas of Europe from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Each of these features helped revitalize the Church of Rome, so that by 1650 it stood at the threshold of a new era of expansion and spiritual vigour. A society of reformers In 1517, the same year that Luther posted his Theses at Wittenberg, the Oratory of Divine Love appeared in Rome. An informal society of about fifty clergy and lay people, the Oratory stressed reform along liberal lines similar to the ideas of Erasmus. The group met frequently in the Church of Saints Sylvester and Dorothea for prayer, meditation, mutual encouragement, and discussions about reforming the institutional church through love and moral improvement. The society included in its ranks some of the most influential leaders in the Roman hierarchy; few of its members favoured radical doctrinal or structural changes Among those who identified with the Oratory were Jacopo Sadoleto (1477–1547), Gian Matteo Gilberti (1495–1543), Gaetano da Thiene (1480–1547), Reginald Pole, Gian Pietro Caraffa (who later became Pope Paul IV, 1476–1559) and Gasparo Contarini (1483–1542). Of these, Contarini was the most deeply committed to reform on the lines of Erasmus’ ideas, and the most openly sympathetic with the Protestant point of view. Contarini was an experienced politician and diplomat, and a Christian humanist. He was a layman in 1517, but later took holy orders and was made a cardinal in 1535. He was by temperament a peacemaker and apparently shared some views with the reformers. Philipp Melanchthon, from the Lutheran camp, is often compared with him, because of their similar personalities, conciliatory natures, and humanism. Contarini influenced Pope Paul III in the direction of reform, presided over a papal reform commission, supported attempts at reconciliation with the Protestants, and advocated a return to the faith of the apostles by the church. Perhaps Contarini’s supreme attempt to bring real and lasting reform to the Church of Rome occurred in 1541 when he was a papal legate (or delegate) at the Colloquy of Regensburg. At that meeting, the last major effort was made to work out a compromise statement of theology acceptable to both the evangelical Reformers and the Roman leaders. Basing their discussions upon about twenty articles largely drawn up by Protestants, Melanchthon and Contarini hammered out a verbal statement of the doctrine of justification by faith acceptable to both men. However, they were less successful in reaching agreement on questions regarding transubstantiation and the authority of the papacy. After reaching an impasse on these and related points, Melanchthon and Contarini returned to their respective parties, only to have their views repudiated in the areas where they had reached agreement. Luther adamantly refused to accept the compromise formula on faith. When Contarini returned to Italy, he was accused of heresy and associating with enemies of the church. Exhausted and grief-stricken, he died the next year, before these charges could be pressed further. The failure of Contarini and other liberals to work out a peaceful solution to the split in the church opened the way for the militant programme of the Catholic hardliners. But before the militants gained control of the papacy, the positive spiritual momentum created by the Oratory of Divine Love led to its reform. Papal reforms A reformed papacy made possible the vigorous programme of the Catholic Reformation. The popes most responsible for reforming the papal office were Clement VII (r. 1523–34), Paul III (r. 1534–49), and Paul VI (r. 1555–59), who had to deal with several monumental problems. For one thing, there were serious divisions among those who remained faithful to Rome over which course of action to take to meet the Protestant threat. Another difficulty facing these popes was the complex political situation in Europe at the time. For example, rulers holding a common Roman Catholic faith were often military and diplomatic rivals. The political situation was muddied further by the fact that the pope was himself the temporal ruler of the Papal States as well as the spiritual leader of the international Roman Catholic Church. Finally, those with a vested interest in a corrupt church were reluctant to give a reform-minded pope a free hand to cleanse the church of abuses. Pope Clement VII accomplished little in the way of reform despite sincere efforts. The political manoeuvrings of the Emperor Charles V and King Francis I (1515–47) of France often put Clement in an utterly hopeless situation. Each monarch exerted enormous pressure on the pope to side with him. In the end, Clement suffered the wrath of both. An illustration of the political vice in which Clement found himself was the dilemma he faced following Henry VIII of England’s request in 1527 for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Henry’s plea arrived in Rome at a most untimely moment: the city was surrounded by the army of Charles V, who happened also to be Catherine’s nephew. In this situation, no matter what the pope decided, he had to lose. Thus, when he refused Henry’s request, the first step towards the English Reformation was taken. Perhaps the best thing Clement might have done would have been to call an ecumenical council to seek a solution to the problems besetting the church. He did in fact seriously consider such a move, but finally gave up the idea because of the political pincers in which he found himself, as the king of France and the Holy Roman Emperor struggled for supremacy in Europe. He could suggest no venue for the proposed council that was acceptable to both rulers. Pope Paul III Clement made some attempts to end corruption in the church. However, his major contribution to reform was probably his recommendation that the highly gifted Alessandro Farnese should succeed him. Farnese became Pope Paul III, the most sincere reformer to mount the papal throne in the sixteenth century. Under Paul III, many positive steps were taken to correct abuses and bring about needed change. Perhaps the most outstanding of these were his appointment of reformers to the College of Cardinals, the setting up of a papal reform commission, and the calling of the Council of Trent in 1545. Gasparo Contarini Cardinal Contarini (1483–1542) was a leader of reform in the Roman Catholic church. Belonging to a leading family in Venice, he studied at the University of Padua, and became well known for his scientific studies and for defending the doctrine of the immortality of the soul against Pietro Pomponazzi. He served Venice as ambassador to the Emperor Charles V and in other important posts. Contarini was also deeply concerned with religious reform. In 1511 he underwent a religious conversion similar to Luther’s, and wrote tracts on the ideal bishop, the papacy, the sacraments, and Lutheranism. In 1535 Pope Paul III made Contarini a cardinal and the following year named him chairman of a reform commission. Contarini helped win approval for the Jesuits, and as papal legate to the Regensburg Colloquy of 1541 urged reconciliation with the Protestants, but failed to reach agreement on the sacraments. When Contarini returned to Italy, Rome refused to approve his views on justification and Luther attacked them too. Contarini died shortly after. His life reflects – better than that of any contemporary – the political, intellectual, and religious crisis of Italy during the early sixteenth century. John P. Donnelly Among those made cardinal by Paul III were such dedicated reformers as Contarini, Caraffa, Pole, Sadoleto (all former members of the Oratory of Divine Love – the Rome Oratory was disbanded in 1527), Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) and Jean du Bellay (c. 1493–1560). These appointments revealed Paul’s determination to rid the College of Cardinals of its moral laxity and make it more international. More important was the papal reform commission that Paul appointed in 1536. The pope named nine leading cardinals to serve on it, and made Contarini its head. Its task was to recommend reforms for the church and to prepare the way for a council. It made a wide-ranging study of conditions in the church – especially in the papal bureaucracy – and issued a formal report entitled Advice … Concerning the Reform of the Church, submitted to the pope in February 1537. The report analyzed the causes of the disorder in the church, and recommended immediate action to correct the worst offences and to remove the worst offenders. The language of the document was painfully blunt: the papal office had become too secular. Both popes and cardinals needed to give more attention to spiritual matters and stop flirting with the world. It gave concrete examples of the kind of problems which needed attention: bribery in high places, abuses of papal power, the evasion of church law by lay people and clergy alike, laxity in the monastic orders, the abuse of indulgences, and the high number of prostitutes operating in Rome itself. Despite the opposition of a number of powerful older cardinals, Paul took action to end several of these problems. He reformed the papal bureaucracy, ordered an end to the taking of money for spiritual favours, and forbade the buying and selling of church appointments – but this amounted to only a few of the commission’s recommendations. Meanwhile Protestants obtained a copy of the commission’s report and published it as evidence of the corrupt state of the Roman Church. The Council of Trent Paul III’s most significant action was to call an ecumenical church council to deal with reform and the growing menace of Protestantism. After intense negotiations with the Emperor and the French king, Paul finally named Trent as the venue for the council, a compromise location. Trent is a city in present-day northern Italy, but at the time it was just inside the area of the Italian peninsula ruled by the Emperor. The French were offended by this choice, and only a handful of French church leaders attended the council. As it turned out, Trent was the most important ecumenical council between Nicaea (325) and Vatican II (1962–65). It was to deal with the massive problems posed by the split in the church and with the renewal of the Church of Rome. In this it was only partly successful. Despite this failure to achieve all its goals, the council shaped the response of Rome to the Protestant Reformation. The council met in three main sessions: 1545–47, 1551–52, and 1562–63. It was not a continuous meeting, but really three different gatherings attended by three different – but overlapping – groups of representatives of the Roman Church. Attendance was scanty and irregular for an enterprise of such significance. The first session opened with only four archbishops, twenty bishops, four generals of monastic orders, and a few theologians present. The largest number of delegates to attend the second session was fifty-nine. The third session was the largest, with as many as 255 at one of its meetings. The Italians were the best represented throughout the council, with many bishops attending too from Spain and the Empire. Other areas, including France, were noticeably under-represented. It proved most difficult to bring the Spanish into agreement with the decisions of the majority; they were not only doctrinal hardliners, but also sensitive to the Emperor’s wishes (Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was also Charles I, king of Spain), and held that councils were superior to popes – a view repulsive to the papacy. Sometimes feelings ran so high that there were physical struggles between delegates. Despite all these difficulties, the council persevered and accomplished much. Perhaps the most interesting session of the council was the second, when a number of Protestants were present. The Emperor held back the German bishops from this session until the pope agreed to allow Protestants to attend; however, the pope did not agree to the Emperor’s demand that the Protestants should also be allowed to vote. Consequently, not one leading Lutheran theologian came, nor did any Calvinists show up. However, at least three delegations of Protestants arrived late in 1551: one from Brandenburg, one from Württemberg, and one from Strasbourg. In January 1552, they were joined by representatives of Maurice of Saxony. The Württembergers wanted to discuss their own confession of faith – not a statement imposed by the papal legate. Johann Sleidan (1506–56), a distinguished Protestant historian, led the Strasbourg delegation in maintaining their doctrinal position. They refused to compromise. When the group from Saxony arrived, the Protestants drew up a list of demands that included a chance to re-examine all decrees on doctrine previously accepted by the council. They started by declaring, in effect, that the pope was the servant of the council and not its master; but they also indicated that these points were negotiable. Nothing came of the Protestant presence at the second session. Informal talks were held, but nothing appeared on the formal agenda concerning the points they raised. So the Protestants departed in March 1552, convinced there was nothing to be gained by remaining any longer at Trent. The inability or unwillingness of the two sides to come to some sort of understanding illustrates the width of the theological chasm between them. Catholic doctrine clarified For the Roman Church, the third session proved to be the most productive. A number of issues debated in earlier meetings were resolved. Medieval orthodoxy was reaffirmed, as it related to most of the doctrines under dispute in the Reformation. For example, transubstantiation, justification by faith and works, and established medieval practices connected with the mass were all upheld. The seven sacraments were once again insisted upon, and the celibacy of the clergy, the existence of purgatory, and indulgences were all reaffirmed. However, the post of indulgence-seller was abolished and abuses connected with the distribution of indulgences were condemned. In short, the council clarified and reasserted most of the doctrines of the late medieval Roman church. In addition, papal power was increased by giving the pope the authority to enforce the decrees of the council, and by again requiring that church officials had to promise him obedience. Protestants were bitterly disappointed – though not surprised; most shared Luther’s initial scepticism concerning the ‘irreformability of the church’. Trent ruled out any possibility of Christian reconciliation in the immediate future. Scholastic-style definitions, with accompanying curses on anyone who did not agree with them, killed any lingering Protestant hopes of restored unity. But by elevating the papacy once more, by improving church organization, by dealing with the most flagrant of the abuses pointed out by the Protestant Reformers, and by clarifying doctrine and dogma, the Council of Trent gave the Church of Rome a clear position to uphold in the next four centuries. The work of Trent would stand the church in good stead during the wars of religion and the period of missionary expansion that lay ahead. Loyola founds the Jesuits Present at the Council of Trent were two suave, intelligent, and highly influential members of the Society of Jesus – the new monastic order which Pope Paul III had approved in 1540. The two Jesuits, as the fledgling order soon became popularly known, were Diego Laynez and Alfonso Salmerón. The founder and leader of their order – one of the most dramatic and powerful figures in Christian history – was Ignatius of Loyola, often taken as the embodiment of the Catholic Reformation. Loyola had been a professional soldier, but a serious wound cut short his military career. While recovering, he had time to think about his rough-and-tumble past and his future. Loyola’s period waiting for God’s guidance was immensely important and has been compared to Luther’s monastic experience. But whereas Luther finally found peace by rejecting the traditions of the medieval church in favour of the biblical basics of primitive Christianity, Loyola finally found peace by rededicating himself to the conventions of the medieval church. Loyola emerged from his convalescence a curious mixture of soldier, mystic, and monk. He wrote up his own spiritual pilgrimage as The Spiritual Exercises, the book which – with its powerful appeal to the imagination and its great emphasis on obedience to Christ and his church (meaning the Church of Rome) – provided the cornerstone for the new ascetic order that Loyola founded. Ignatius of Loyola Ignatius of Loyola founded the dedicated and powerful Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). A Spanish nobleman, Ignatius was born in 1491 at the castle of Loyola, near the Pyrenees. His career as a professional soldier was ended by a leg wound in 1521, but, through reading lives of Christ and the saints while convalescing, he resolved to become Christ’s soldier. He hung up his sword at the altar of Mary in Montserrat and then spent a year (1522–23) in prayer and meditation at Manresa Monastery, seeking total consecration to Christ. Here he drafted his Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), founder and first Superior General of the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits. © Georgios Kollidas/Dreamstime.com Between 1524 and 1534 Loyola studied at Barcelona, Alcalá, Salamanca, and Paris, preparing for service. Then he and six friends vowed to practice poverty and celibacy, to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (this never came off), and to devote the rest of their lives to apostolic labours, in this way initiating the Society of Jesus. ‘Jesuits’, as its members were called, vowed total obedience to the pope as, in effect, commander-in-chief, and under him to the general of the order. Ignatius, a fine organizer, was general till his death in 1556. Prayer Teach us, good lord, to serve thee as thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to f ight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to ask for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward save knowing that we do thy will. Through Jesus christ our lord. Ignatius of Loyola All Roman Catholic ordinands still go – at least once – through Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, which form a four-week retreat programme of devotional meditations and instructions. Week one is on sin, week two on Christ’s kingship, week three on his passion, and week four on his risen life, with the aim of achieving complete consecration, appealing to the will through understanding, imagination, and conscience. J. I. Packer After many initial setbacks and discouragements, Loyola finally gathered about him a small group of young men wholly dedicated to serving Christ through the Church of Rome. As the new order took shape, it bore the indelible stamp of its founder. The Jesuits were to become a new spiritual élite, at the disposal of the pope to use in whatever way he thought appropriate for spreading the ‘true church’. Absolute, unquestioning, military-style obedience became the hallmark of the new society. The famous Jesuit dictum was that every member of the society would obey the pope and the general of the order as unquestioningly ‘as a corpse’. After some hesitation, Paul III gave papal approval to the Society of Jesus in 1540. The constitution of the new order insisted on a fourth vow in addition to the traditional ones of poverty, chastity, and obedience: a special oath of absolute obedience to the pope. The purpose of the society was to propagate the faith by every means at the order’s disposal. Recruits for the Jesuits were to reflect Loyola’s spirituality and his stress on military-style organization and obedience. They were to be of robust health, handsome in appearance, intelligent, and eloquent in speech. No one of bad character, or with even the slightest hint of unorthodox belief, was admitted. The growth of the Jesuit order was extraordinarily rapid. When Loyola died in 1556, there were members of the society in Japan, Brazil, Ethiopia, and the coast of central Africa, as well as in nearly every country in Europe. Many had reached high positions in the church: two served as the pope’s ambassadors in Poland and Ireland, while a number were professors in the largest and best universities in Europe. By 1556 the half-dozen original followers of Loyola had grown to more than 1,500. The Jesuits’ work centred on three main tasks: education, counteracting Protestants, and missionary expansion in new areas. The Jesuits provided high-quality education, and by this means upgraded the training of Catholic believers as well as winning the opinion-makers of society for the Roman Church. Their schools soon became famous for their high standards and attainments, and many individuals of the élite were won to Roman Catholicism by this means. Children were given special attention. Before long the now-familiar Jesuit saying was coined: ‘Give me a child until he is seven, and he will remain a Catholic the rest of his life.’ Counter-reform was a second major Jesuit preoccupation in the second half of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth. In France, in what is today Belgium, in southern Germany, and most noticeably in eastern Europe, the Jesuits led the counter-attack against the Protestants. Using almost any means at their disposal, they recaptured large areas for the Church of Rome, earned a reputation as ‘the feared and formidable storm-troops of the Counter Reformation’. Only in England did their campaign fail. Jesuit missions The third task at which the Jesuits excelled was missionary activity in new lands. Increasingly, Jesuit priests travelled in the ships of Spain and Portugal as they sailed the seven seas in search of new colonies and new riches. Jesuit missionaries travelled to America, Africa, and Asia in search of converts, helping to counterbalance the greedy imperialism of the European merchants and soldiers. They produced scholarly accounts of the history and geography of the new places they visited; but above all they left their converts with an enthusiastic brand of Catholicism, and produced devout, tough Catholics, on their own model. The Jesuits played a leading role in the conversion of Brazil and Paraguay. They were not as successful in Africa, where native peoples often resisted their efforts. The greatest stories of Jesuit heroism come from Asia, where the courageous Francis Xavier (1506–52) towered above the rest as the ‘apostle to the Indies and to Japan’. Xavier was born into the Spanish nobility, and was one of the original members of the Society of Jesus. Loyola early recognized that this handsome, bright, and cheerful young man would make a powerful servant of God. He became the most widely-acclaimed Jesuit missionary of all time. Xavier was appointed the pope’s ambassador and sent to evangelize the East Indies in 1542, and spent three years there, followed by preaching and baptizing in present-day Malaysia, Vietnam, and Japan. His most remarkable mission was in Japan, where he established a Christian community which has survived to this day, despite numerous periods of severe persecution. Xavier died of a fever when he was only forty-six years old, while attempting to take the Christian message to China. The Jesuits, together with the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians, led the Church of Rome in a new period of rapid overseas expansion between 1550 and 1650. By this means nearly all of Mexico, Central America, and South America, along with a large part of the population of the Philippines, and smaller numbers of people in Africa, India, the East Indies, and the Far East, became adherents of the Church of Rome. The Inquisition revived On Sundays I assemble all the people, men and women, young and old, and get them to repeat the prayers in their language. They take much pleasure in doing so, and come to the meetings gladly … I give out the First Commandment, which they repeat, and then we say all together, Jesus Christ, Son of God, grant us grace to love thee above all things. When we have asked for this grace, we recite the Pater Noster together, and then cry with one accord, Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, obtain for us grace from thy son to enable us to keep the First Commandment. Next we say an Ave Maria, and proceed in the same manner through each of the remaining nine Commandments. And just as we say twelve Paters and Aves in honour of the twelve articles of the Creed, so we say ten Paters and ten Aves in honour of the Ten Commandments, asking God to give us grace to keep them well. Francis Xavier, Jesuit missionary, describing his methods in South India The Jesuits were most active in the border areas of Europe and in the newly-discovered lands overseas. In the traditionally Roman Catholic countries such as Italy, Spain, and France, the Inquisition became the major instrument of the Catholic Reformation. The Inquisition, or Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, as it was officially called, was not an invention of the sixteenth century. The so-called Roman Inquisition begun in 1542 was child and grandchild of the medieval and Spanish Inquisitions that had gone before it in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries respectively. The rejuvenation of the Inquisition as a means of reform and counter-reform was largely the work of Cardinal Caraffa. Originally a theological moderate, Caraffa became increasingly conservative as the Protestant Reformation progressed. By 1542, he was an outspoken critic of those who sought reconciliation with the Protestants and, instead, advocated fighting them with the weapons of coercion, censorship, and propaganda. It was at his urging that the new Roman Inquisition was established – ‘Roman’ because it was to be controlled by the papacy from Rome. Caraffa was one of the six cardinals appointed as Inquisitor General. In this capacity, and later as pope, he supported the Inquisition as the most effective means of dealing with heretics. Caraffa and his fellow inquisitors regarded heretics as traitors against God, and the foulest of criminals. It was for their own good, and for the good of the church, that they had to be sought out and dealt with by the Inquisition. If the Holy Office could not return these benighted individuals to the church, then they must be eradicated before they contaminated other immortal souls with their spiritual disease. Thus, they were to be removed from the body of Christian society in much the same way as surgeons remove cancer tissue from the human body in order to save a person’s life. The Inquisition commonly used terror and torture to obtain confessions. If the death penalty was required, the convicted heretic was handed over to the civil authorities for execution, since canon law forbade the church to shed blood. The Jesuits The Jesuits, or Society of Jesus, were founded by Ignatius of Loyola and approved by the papacy in 1540 as an order of Catholic priests depending solely on charity (mendicants). In 1535, in Paris, Loyola and six remarkable disciples took vows of poverty and chastity, and promised to go as missionaries to Palestine. When war between Venice and the Turks blocked their passage, they began work in the north Italian cities. They gathered new recruits, sought direction and approval from Pope Paul III, and elected Loyola as their general. He devoted the rest of his life to writing the Jesuit Constitutions at Rome, and to directing the rapidly spreading order. The new order had several distinctive features. It was highly centralized: all its leaders were appointed by the general, who was elected for life. The Constitutions imposed no religious uniform, no bodily penances or fasts, and no choral recitation of the daily liturgy. But Loyola insisted that recruits be carefully selected and arduously trained (later fifteen years’ training became quite normal), and also stressed obedience and a close link with the papacy. Above all, the Jesuit was to cultivate an inner life based on meditation and Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises; prayer was to mould him into an effective apostle. Loyola wanted quality rather than numbers, yet the order grew rapidly. By 1556 there were more than 1,000 Jesuits – mainly in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, but also in France, Germany, the Low Countries, India, Brazil, and Africa. By 1626 there were 15,544, and during the next 130 years the Jesuits grew slowly but steadily, working in almost every corner of the globe. In 1773 the Bourbon monarchs of France and Spain forced the pope to suppress the Jesuits, though a few survived in Prussia and Russia. In 1814 the papacy restored the Jesuits throughout the world; they reached a peak of 36,038 members in 1964, but in the unrest following Vatican II membership fell – to 19,000 by 2007. Education quickly became the most important Jesuit emphasis; within a decade of their foundation they already had a dozen colleges. By 1626 there were 400 colleges, and by 1749 about 800, including seminaries. These schools were open to all classes of people and generally charged nothing for tuition. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth century a high percentage of the educated people of Catholic Europe passed through Jesuit schools. Jesuit education was based on the Plan of Studies of 1599 which purified and simplified Renaissance humanism. Jesuits insisted on pupils attending classes and a carefully planned curriculum took students forward step by step. The Jesuits used friendly rivalry instead of the rod to stimulate their students. Philosophy in their schools generally followed Aristotle, while theology was freely adapted from Thomas Aquinas, as in the system of Francisco Suarez (1548–1617). Jesuit schools were famous for their drama: moral and religious values were taught through a pageantry that rivalled early opera. Missions Foreign missions were always the most highly regarded of Jesuit activities. Francis Xavier (1506–52), who worked in India, Indonesia, and Japan, was the first and greatest Jesuit missionary. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) founded modern mission work in China and adapted the gospel to Chinese traditions and thought-forms. The Jesuits used their Western scientific knowledge to gain entry to court circles in Peking, yet never succeeded in converting a Chinese ruler. Robert de Nobili (1577–1656) applied Ricci’s methods of adapting the gospel to the local culture in India. Isaac Joques, Jacques Marquette, and many other French Jesuits worked with mixed success among the Canadian Indians. Eusebio Kino (1645–1711) built mission stations and introduced advanced agriculture among the Indians of northern Mexico and south-western United States. Other Jesuits organized towns (Reductions, or reducciones de indios) to convert and ‘civilize’ the Indians of Paraguay and Brazil. Loyola did not found the Jesuits in order to combat Protestantism, but this increasingly became a Jesuit goal during the sixteenth century. Several Jesuits served as papal representatives (legates) in complex negotiations to link countries such as Ireland, Sweden, and Russia more firmly to Rome. Other Jesuits served as court preachers or confessors to the Emperor, the kings of France and Poland, and the dukes of Bavaria. Peter Canisius (1521–97) from Nijmegen, in the Low Countries, and Robert Bellarmine (1542–1611) from Montepulciano, Tuscany, wrote catechisms and anti-Protestant works of theology that were influential for centuries. John P. Donnelly The Inquisition was used widely and effectively in Italy, except in Venice. In Spain, it was fused with the older Spanish Inquisition and produced substantial results, while in France it was modified and kept under quite close control by the French monarchs. It was not widely used in Germany, where there was no inquisitorial tradition. In England, common law prevented its introduction. It was most effective where the population was still largely Roman Catholic. With wide popular support, it became a major deterrent to the further spread of the Protestant faith. Books banned Associated with the concept of coercion by the Inquisition was the idea of a list of prohibited books. In fact, the practice of maintaining a catalogue of heretical and dangerous books was an old one, used in the Middle Ages with varying degrees of success. In the early sixteenth century, several theological faculties and the Holy Office itself circulated lists of books pronounced unfit for the eyes of the faithful. The first real papal ‘index’ of prohibited books was issued by Pope Paul IV in 1559. It was extensive, naming books, parts of books, authors, and printers. The last major session of the Council of Trent issued the most authoritative index of prohibited books of the period. Their list – the so-called Tridentine Index – was handed over to Pope Pius IV (1559–65) to enforce. He published this Index in 1564 and called on true Christians everywhere to observe it. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) censored nearly three-quarters of all the books that were being printed in Europe at the time. Almost the only books permitted were Catholic devotional literature and the Latin Vulgate Bible. The pope also appointed a ‘Congregation of the Index’ to update the list periodically. The practice of keeping up the Index lasted until 1966, when it was finally abolished. Both in the sixteenth century, and in the centuries following, it was largely a failure. Catholic Missions in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Mystics in Spain Let everyone understand that real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which we usually long, just because they console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude of soul, and humility. Teresa of Avila One expression of the Catholic Reformation which was not particularly welcomed by the Church of Rome was the revival of Catholic mysticism in Spain. Mysticism makes the institutional church nervous because – carried to its logical conclusion – it does away with the need for the priesthood and the sacraments. The mystic emphasizes personal religion and his or her direct relationship to God, with the ultimate goal of losing himself or herself in the essence of God. The Christian mystic usually stresses the personal reality of Christ, and seeks personal union with God through the Son. Often this ultimate union comes in a blinding flash of supreme ecstasy. In short, Christian mysticism is contemplative, personal, and usually practical. Such was the case with Teresa of Avila (1515–82), the best-known of the sixteenth-century Spanish mystics. Teresa and her devoted follower, John of the Cross, revitalized a large part of the spiritual life of Spain through their practical mysticism. Teresa was a Carmelite nun who searched for the life of perfection. Ill-health caused her great anguish and threatened her career as a nun. Finally, in the 1550s, during a period of intense prayer, she experienced the first of her many heavenly visions. She wrote of her mystical experiences, but did not stress them, because she recognized their dangers as well as their value. Teresa of Avila Teresa of Avila (1515–82) was one of the most famous mystics of sixteenth-century Spain. Born in Avila into a Spanish noble family, as a young woman Teresa committed herself to converting the heathen and healing the division with Protestants. In 1536 she entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation in Avila. Although her religious career was interrupted for a time by severe illness, she was able to return to the convent in 1540. Teresa was persuaded of the need to reform the lax – often scandalous – condition of Spanish monasteries. Supported by wealthy relatives and friends, she founded a reformed Carmelite convent, St Joseph’s (San José), in Avila, followed by sixteen more religious houses, and travelled the length and breadth of Spain inspecting monasteries, encouraging monks and nuns, and preaching reform. Teresa was familiar with the great religious literature and epics of the Spanish Golden Age, and herself wrote an autobiography, El Camino de Perfección (The Road of Perfection), and El Castillo Interior (The Interior Castle). The theme of her best writing is the mystical life. She sought oneness with God through contemplation and prayer, which led to a profound experience and personal knowledge of God through love which she described as ‘mystical marriage’. She spoke of a second conversion, and of union through love. In her Life Teresa describes an ecstasy – which can appear embarrassing, and even erotic – in which a seraph appeared to her carrying a spear tipped with fire. He plunged the spear into her heart, piercing to her innermost being and leaving her aflame with a great love for God. This experience, she says, was both painful and sweet beyond description, and symbolized the mystical union of the believer with God. Teresa and her companions represent the Catholic Reformation’s emphasis on emotion and religious passion. Caroline Marshall Santa Teresa the mystic was also Sister Teresa the powerful figure who did not suffer fools gladly. Contemporaries admired her, describing her as single-minded, even brash. She was a good negotiator for her order, and had learned something of finance and law. She enjoyed conversations about good books, knew many people in the community beyond the confines of her convent, and liked having a good meal and a hearty laugh. She is reputed to have said, ‘There is a time for penance and a time for partridge.’ Nevertheless, she committed herself totally to God, and lived a life of the spirit which many wanted to follow. Spurred on by her personal relationship with God, Teresa became the great reformer of the Carmelite Order and proved that mysticism could stimulate practical reform. Because she and John of the Cross spread Catholic mysticism throughout the country, many of the faithful experienced spiritual satisfaction. The reform of the Spanish monasteries and convents begun under Teresa also helped to head off the criticism of those religious houses in other parts of Europe which made the Protestant case for reform so compelling. John of the Cross John of the Cross (1542–91) was a Spanish mystic who, with Teresa of Avila, helped found the reformed or barefoot (Discalced) Carmelite Order. Born Juan de Yepes Álvarez, John came from a noble but poor background. He joined the Carmelites at their monastery at Medina (1563) and then studied theology at the University of Salamanca. After John had been ordained a priest, Teresa of Avila persuaded him to join in the reform of the Carmelites. Later he became confessor at the Convent of the Incarnation of Avila (1572–77). Opposition arose against the austerity and simplicity of the new Carmelite movement, which led to John’s brutal imprisonment at Toledo (1578). He expressed his experience in The Spiritual Canticle. After escaping from prison, John spent the rest of his life in monastic administration and in elaborating his mystical theology. He was a prior on several occasions, rector of the college at Baeza, and vicar of the southern province of the Carmelite order. During these years he wrote The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul, which consist of poems with commentaries, instructing the soul on how to achieve union with God. John made contact with Muslim mystics, and studied Scripture and the writings of Aquinas. These and his personal experiences are all reflected in his works. He died amidst controversy over the reform movement, but his writings influenced many later spiritual writers. Robert G. Clouse Europe divided The intensity and scope of the Catholic Reformation helped set the stage for the wars of religion which broke out in many parts of Europe following the failure of the Lutherans and Roman Catholics to achieve reconciliation at Regensburg in 1541. Major fighting between the Lutheran princes and the imperial forces in the 1540s and early 1550s finally came to an end with the compromise Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The Augsburg agreement provided for the co-existence of Lutheran and Roman Catholic expressions of Christianity in Germany on the basis of ‘whose the rule, his the religion’ (Latin, cuius regio, eius religio). That is, the prince could decide the faith of his subjects. France In France, a series of civil wars involving both religious and political considerations raged intermittently from 1562 until 1598. The conflict was essentially between the Huguenots (Calvinist Protestants) and the Roman Catholics, with political issues often complicating the picture. Eventually, a third force appeared when the politiques (politically-inspired) announced it was immaterial which religion dominated France; all that mattered was the political well-being of the nation. After much devastation, and with all parties on the point of total exhaustion, a compromise was reached by partitioning the country. This settlement, expressed in the royal Edict of Nantes in 1598, gave the Huguenots religious freedom and political control of certain parts of the country, while Roman Catholicism remained the official religion of the realm and retained by far the larger portion of the nation. This compromise lasted on an increasingly precarious foundation until it was revoked by King Louis XIV (1643–1715) in 1685, for which the Jesuits were partly responsible. Louis’ act was the signal for hundreds of Protestants to reconvert to Catholicism, and for thousands of others to flee. Many Huguenots left France in 1685 and made their way to Geneva, Germany, England, and North America. Others remained and either suffered persecution or fled to the mountains of central France to try to avoid it. Many of the Protestants who left France in the period were professional people or skilled craftsmen. Their exodus may not have crippled the French economy – as some historians in the past have claimed – but it was certainly significant both socially and economically. France lost many of its most intelligent and hardworking citizens as a result of this act of religious bigotry. The Dutch war for independence, 1560–1618, is also an example of fighting in this period which had an important religious dimension. Along with political, economic, and racial considerations, religion was a major motivation in the Protestant Dutch struggle for independence from Catholic Spain. Likewise, the English Civil War (1642–49) involved a large element of religious conflict. The Thirty Years’ War The last of the so-called wars of religion was the Thirty Years’ War, 1618–48. This conflict began as essentially a religious struggle with political overtones, and ended as a basically political struggle with religious overtones – heralding the modern era. The build-up of tension between Protestants and Catholics in Germany in the period between the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618 reflects in part the vitality of the Catholic Reformation in that area. When the Jesuit-educated Ferdinand II became Emperor and king of Bohemia, growing religious tensions came to a head. Anti-Protestant religious violence broke out in 1618, and the Bohemian nobles, mostly Protestants, appealed to the Emperor for protection and a guarantee of their religious liberties. Receiving no satisfaction, they rose in revolt. The war began as a conflict between Calvinists and Catholics. Calvinism had not been recognized as a legal religion in the Empire in the Treaty of Augsburg in 1555, which posed a continuing problem for those German princes who became Calvinists after 1555. The situation became still more complicated when in 1618 the Bohemian nobles declared their king, Ferdinand II, deposed, and offered the crown to the Calvinist ruler of the Palatinate, one of the major German states. His acceptance of the crown of Bohemia sparked off fighting between Calvinists and Catholics all over Germany. Eventually, the German Lutherans, Danes, Swedes, and even the French became involved in the warfare in Germany. Catholicism in Europe in 1650 The war dragged on sporadically for nearly thirty years. Finally, a peace was hammered out between the belligerents in a series of conferences held in the German province of Westphalia in the years 1643–48, the resultant agreements being known collectively as the Peace of Westphalia. The war left Germany culturally, politically, economically, and physically devastated. Only the principality of Brandenburg escaped major destruction. But the peace signalled the end of the religious wars in Europe. Ironically, the treaty in essence provided for a return to the religious situation of 1529, when certain German princes and representatives of various imperial free cities made their first famous ‘Protestation’ on behalf of the Lutheran faith at the Diet of Speyer. All the bloodshed and misery had brought the religious settlement full circle in that tormented land. In 1648, the religious lines were broadly drawn much as they were in 1529 – and much as they remain today. Results of the Catholic Reformation What were the results of the response of Rome to the Protestant Reformation? There arose a new Roman Catholic piety and a better-defined Roman Catholic orthodoxy. The Council of Trent, and the leadership of reform-minded popes, provided a solid basis for this new piety and renewed orthodoxy. The beliefs of the Church of Rome were better understood, even by the rank and file, and differences between Roman orthodoxy and Protestant doctrine stood out more clearly. Roman Catholic missionary expansion overseas in this period was fuelled as a response to the Protestant Reformation. Partly to make up for the loss of large areas of Europe, the rejuvenated church turned its attention to the newly-discovered lands overseas as a means of recouping its fortunes. Thanks mainly to the Jesuits and other monastic missionaries, many people in other parts of the world embraced the Roman faith during this period. Even today large numbers of people in the Americas, Africa, India, Japan, and Sri Lanka owe their affiliation to the Roman Church to the Catholic Reformation. The political and cultural consequences of the Catholic Reformation were far-reaching. The resurgence of the Church of Rome in countries such as Germany and France kept them from becoming Protestant, as England, Scotland, and Sweden had done. The Catholic Reformation also helped Italy and Spain to retain their particular Catholic religious and cultural identities. Most important, the success of the Catholic Reformation in preventing the further spread of the Protestant faith meant that Europe developed from that time without a shared cultural base. Once again, the irony is striking: the success of the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation eventually ended the cultural and religious unity of medieval Europe. Robert D. Linder George Fox and the Quakers In 1650 a judge in Derby, England, sentenced a young man to six months in jail on charges of blasphemy. The youth had claimed that Christ, the Saviour, had taken away his sin, and in Christ there was no sin. Before he was sentenced, George Fox told the judge to tremble in the fear of God. The judge knew that Fox and his followers sometimes shook with emotion at their meetings, and told him, ‘You folk are the tremblers, you are the quakers.’ ‘Quaker’ was a derisive nickname, and it stuck. The people to whom the name was applied referred to themselves as ‘Children of the Light’, ‘publishers of Truth’, or simply ‘Friends’ – following the words of Jesus, ‘You are my friends, if you do what I command you’. Later, when dissent from the Church of England was made legal, Quakers called themselves the ‘Society of Friends’, as they are today. George Fox was weary of formal religion. To him it seemed the church had given up spirituality and become a kind of public service, managed by state- appointed officials, whom Fox called ‘priests’ – whether Catholic or Protestant. The liturgy might vary; the system never. The church had become apostate. George Fox went to spiritual advisers, asking them theological questions until they were uncomfortable. Then one day Christ was revealed to him in immediate experience. Later, George Fox climbed Pendle Hill, in the north of England, where he had a vision of ‘a people to be gathered to the Lord’. He felt impelled to proclaim that Christ liberates people from the power of sin in their lives – and began preaching in the open air to thousands. ‘Christ has been too long locked up in the Mass or in the Book,’ he said, ‘let him be your prophet, priest, and king.’ This appealed to the people of north-west England. A band of young men and women – the ‘Valiant Sixty’ – became Quaker evangelists, fanning out across England, and wherever ships would take them. Many ‘seekers’ joined the movement, as well as those who had previously belonged to other denominations. Three years after the Pendle Hill vision, there were 50,000 Quakers and, before the end of the seventeenth century, double that number. The movement crossed cultural barriers; servant girls took part in worship with aristocrats, such as the Scottish scholar Robert Barclay (1648–90). Early Quaker preachers sounded rather like the Old Testament prophet Amos: they proclaimed Christ as truth and let that truth stand in judgment over current evils. Blasphemy? James Nayler (1616–60), who at one time led the London Quakers, tried to illustrate the inward coming of Christ into the heart by staging a ‘triumphal entry’ into Bristol, complete with donkey and hosannas. This shocked townspeople and scandalized Friends. He was branded on the forehead ‘B’ for blasphemer, his tongue bored through with a hot iron, and he was imprisoned. This episode caused Quakers to check the ‘Spirit’s leadings’ against what Scripture says and by prayer meetings; indeed in the eighteenth century they became very cautious. Fox once went to Oliver Cromwell to plead for religious freedom, commending a Christian life-style that rejects military weapons in favour of the armour of the Spirit. Cromwell remarked that Quakers were people whom he could not influence, ‘either with gifts, honours, offices, or places’. Quakers were imprisoned – sometimes many of them – for such offences as refusing to speak deferentially to judges, meeting in forbidden religious assembly, or refusing to pay the compulsory state-church tithe. If asked to take the oath in court, they refused on the basis of Jesus’ words, ‘Swear not at all …’ North American Friends In Boston, New England, a confrontation occurred between the Puritans who had left their homes in England to set up a pure Christian community and Quakers who challenged their religious exclusiveness. When banishment failed to eliminate the Quakers, Governor Endicott ordered the death penalty. Three Quakers were hanged on Boston Common (1660–61), but their deaths raised an outcry that helped pave the way for religious liberty. As early as 1659 the Quaker John Taylor visited native Americans, urging them to turn from darkness to the light of Christ in their own hearts, beginning a long and friendly relationship with aboriginal people, some of whom later became Quakers. John Woolman (1720–72), a modest New Jersey tailor, became convinced slavery was wrong, and campaigned to persuade fellow Quakers against keeping slaves. Through the Quakers, the conscience of others was reached; if Woolman was guest in a home where a slave worked, he would politely pay for their services, in a non-violent form of protest. Arthur O. Roberts Chapter 27 Art and the Spirit Christianity and its cultural expression The tensions that accompanied the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern world were resolved in the arts, particularly in Italy, in the new approach of the High Renaissance, around 1500. High Renaissance The greatest examples of High Renaissance Roman Catholic art are to be found in Rome, in the work of Raphael (1483–1520) and Michelangelo (1475–1564) in the Vatican Palace, and above all in the new St Peter’s. Most of the outstanding artists of the day contributed to what was intended to be the greatest of Christian churches. Donato Bramante (1444–1514) and Michelangelo (who designed the cupola) both took a share. In the second half of the sixteenth century, following the Catholic spiritual renewal, Giambattista della Porta (1535–1602) and Carlo Maderna (1556–1629), one of the founders of Italian Baroque, worked on the façade of St Peter’s. In Venice a similar High Renaissance took place. Titian (c. 1488/90–1576), and, in the second half of the sixteenth century, Tintoretto (1518–94) both worked there, Tintoretto’s art expressing an intense Roman Catholic piety. As the Roman Catholic Church slowly recovered from the shock of the Reformation, and gained new strength through the Counter Reformation, a new art gradually emerged, founded on the work of the High Renaissance, particularly that of Raphael and the Venetian artists. One of the first examples of the new style was the Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuit order in Rome, begun in 1568 by Vignola (1507–73), which set the style for many churches built in the following centuries. The Caracci brothers and Caravaggio (1571–1610), working around 1600, helped create this new style which we know as Baroque. The interior of St Peter’s Basilica, Rome. © Aaron Otani / Dreamstime.com Reformation spirit Meanwhile, in Germany, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) pointed the way towards a new style which combined the best elements of earlier German and Flemish art with strong influences from the Italian Renaissance. Dürer’s art breathed the spirit of the Reformation, a spirit found as early as 1498 in his famous series of woodcuts illustrating the book of Revelation. Dürer’s art strives to depict reality in all its aspects; he has never been equalled in the field of engravings and woodcuts, and he was also a great and prolific draughtsman and painter. Few artists have covered such a wide range of subjects: from simple animals and plants to figure studies, portraits, buildings with accurate perspective, biblical and classical stories, and even fantasy scenes and dreams. Although the painters Cranach and Holbein were also Lutheran Protestants, few other great artists came from this tradition in the following centuries; in Germany, the Protestant spirit expressed itself mainly in music. In the late sixteenth century, Calvinist refugees from the southern Netherlands settled in Holland, where, after a while, a new art emerged, with biblical and Calvinist roots. Many churches were built in this tradition, for example by the architect Hendrick de Keyser (1565–1621) in Amsterdam, while many older churches were given new furnishings. Dutch art But Dutch Protestantism found its supreme expression in painting. After some experiment, the new art emerged around 1600 in Haarlem, quite different from the Baroque of southern Europe. The Dutch painters were mainly based in Haarlem, Amsterdam, Delft, and Dordrecht. They included world-famous masters: Frans Hals (portraits), Solomon and Jacob van Ruysdael, Jan van Goyen (landscapes), Heda and Peter Claesz (still-lifes), Brouwer and van Ostade (genre-painting), Gerard Dou (interiors), the Delft school – Vermeer and Pieter de Hoogh – and of course Rembrandt (biblical and historical themes, portraits, and etchings). These Dutch painters concentrated on depicting everyday reality in a variety of ways. Historical and biblical scenes are quite rare; their most characteristic subjects were everyday life. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) was the exception, since he painted many biblical subjects. The Dutch painters’ art expressed a deep love for reality, but was not mere naturalism. Through their use of ‘emblems’ and other kinds of visual metaphors, their carefully constructed compositions, and their choice of subject, they were ‘preaching’ in their art. They pointed morals: the vanity of everything; redemption with its cosmic and human implications; the positive and negative sides to life; and the beauties of the created world. Their art was imbued with the wisdom of the Bible and of common sense. Masters of the Baroque Two geniuses appeared after 1600, both of whom used the Baroque style of Roman Catholic art of the Counter Reformation. The first was Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), who worked mainly in Antwerp, but also in Italy, England, France, and Spain. The altarpieces he painted are unsurpassed, portraying the Madonna and the lives and martyrdom of saints. He also painted historical and classical subjects, portraits and landscapes, and exerted an immense influence. The second genius was the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), responsible for some of the principal statues inside St Peter’s, Rome, as well as for the great piazza in front. All later Baroque sculpture can almost be called the ‘school of Bernini’. Francesco Borromini (1599–1667), another great Roman architect, worked out the inward and outward curved façades and oval-shaped plans characteristic of Baroque churches. The Baroque is recognized as the art of the Counter Reformation, expressing the aims and serving the goals of Catholic renewal. Baroque art built on the style of the Renaissance, but added the effects of light and darkness. It can be called a ‘naturalism of the supernatural’, stressing that we live in an open world, where communication is possible between earth and heaven, with the Virgin and saints interceding. The Baroque church had to overwhelm the visitor, and was designed to impress with its display of riches and power, convincing the visitor of the value, importance, and truth of the doctrines upheld. All the means of salvation had to be represented dramatically: the Madonna, the saints and revered relics, the mass, and the host. Baroque churches displayed many images, including the Trinity and Christ the Redeemer, whose suffering on the cross was often linked with the host on the altar. But, above all, the images exalted the Virgin, as Madonna, Queen of heaven, and the Immaculate Conception, assumed up into heaven. Other images portrayed the mystic fervour of the saints, whose piety and asceticism provided examples for the faithful; the great events of the Bible and of church history; and allegorical figures and scenes that spoke in more general terms of theological truth or of human and natural reality and values. A remarkable painter, Pietro da Cortona (1596/7–1669), was at work in Rome in the mid-seventeenth century; his painted ceilings mark the final stage of the fantastic art of sotto in su – painting the supernatural world as seen from below. Examples in Rome include the Palazzo Barberini and Chiesa Nuova. Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709), who followed Cortona, painted the astonishing ceiling of St Ignatio, Rome, before taking this style to Austria at the end of the seventeenth century. The other main centre of the Counter Reformation was Spain, where we also find great painters. Zurbaran (1598–1664), Ribera (1591–1652), and Murillo (1617–82) all excelled in altar pieces and religious art, and Velásquez (1599–1660) was an outstanding portraitist. But perhaps the most characteristic expression of burning Spanish piety is found in architecture, based on the examples in Rome, but amazingly developed, with a profusion of detailed statues and ornaments. This style was to spread all over the Spanish-speaking world, including South and Central America. In eighteenth-century Italy the centre of the Baroque shifted north, where the great Tiepolo (1696–1770) painted Baroque altarpieces of unsurpassed lyrical fluency in a style that was both naturalistic and idealized. Baroque in Bavaria The last great flowering of Baroque Counter Reformation art was in Austria and southern Germany. The architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723) was working in Vienna and Salzburg early in the eighteenth century, and with his followers was responsible for the magnificent architecture of eighteenth-century Austria – which still today dictates the appearance of Vienna and other Austrian cities. In Bavaria this style of architecture was taken to great heights by the Asam brothers, Cosmas and Egid, in their Weltenburg Abbey Church, about 1720, and by Balthasar Neumann (1687–1753) in the Basilika Vierzehnheiligen, about 1750. Johann Michael Fischer (1692–1766) also built many churches and monasteries, the most important being the basilica at Ottobeuren Abbey. The church at Wies (about 1750), designed by Dominikus Zimmermann (1685–1766), is regarded as the best example of this amazing late Baroque, or ‘religious Rococo’, art. The designs were worked out very elaborately, with complex imagery carefully planned down to the smallest detail, following a scheme drawn up by a theologian. But the Baroque also had a popular, dramatic character, which extended its appeal to the masses. The Baroque church is one rich, festive whole: altars, paintings, sculptures, furnishings, organ, stucco-work, and other ornaments all contribute, with their gilding and soft but magnificent colouring. There is play with light and shade, a unity of style and content. The whole church comes to life when filled with Mozart’s music performed on the organ, orchestra and choir, and packed full for a religious festival. The artists who decorated these churches remained relatively anonymous; their art was part of the whole, as they depended on one another’s work. Death of an era The Counter Reformation, with its exalted piety and worship, found its ultimate expression in these Baroque churches. Yet a visitor to them will often find the body of a saint, exposed on or under the altar. Death seems to be at the centre. The whole display is intended partly to reassure us in the face of death that will surely come. The inner spirit disappeared from this eighteenth-century Baroque art, leaving a more worldly emphasis, the beautiful forms becoming a mere façade, which may explain the sudden end of this art. Around 1780, just as the best works were completed, the tradition stopped, and nothing more was attempted in this style. Neo-classicism, with its ‘rationality’ and almost totally secular expression, took over. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment had won the battle. Soon the revolutionary wars would bring about the suppression of the monasteries and closing of churches, and the Roman Catholic church lose its power. Hans R. Rookmaaker The magnificent ceiling of the pilgrimage church at Wies, south-west Bavaria, designed by Dominikus Zimmerman (1685–1766). © Hiro1775 | Dreamstime.com Further reading Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700, London, 2003. Martin Marty, Martin Luther, New York, 2004. Bernard Cottret, Calvin: A Biography, Grand Rapids and Edinburgh, 2000. Robert Birley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700, Houndmills, 1999. C. R. Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion 1440–1770, Baltimore, 1967. Study questions Was the Protestant Reformation inevitable? What was the core of Martin Luther’s quarrel with the Church of Rome? How did Martin Luther and John Calvin differ? Why? What changes in the church did the Roman Catholic reformers demand? What impact did vernacular Bible translations have upon the church? Why were the first missionaries Roman Catholics? How did the rise of Humanism affect the church? What influence did Ignatius Loyola have upon the church? How do the cultural expressions of the Reformation and Counter Reformation differ? Would the Reformation have occurred without the Renaissance? 5 Reason, Revival, and Revolution 1650–1789 Summary The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century paved the way for the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, a movement which gave its name to the era: the Age of Reason. Enlightenment intellectuals believed that, through reason, they could understand and master nature, and this would lead to ‘progress’. Major Evangelical Revivals, which started in Germany and spread to Britain and North America, were partly a reaction against the speculation and moralism of Deism, and partly a response to the spiritual deadness of Protestant orthodoxy. John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards were leaders in this movement, the repercussions of which were eventually felt all over the world. A period of political uncertainty developed during the eighteenth century, with major implications for the future of Christianity in the West. Growing hostility towards the Church in France contributed to causes of the French Revolution of 1789. Chapter 28 Expansion Worldwide European missions For some decades before 1650, much of Europe had been embroiled in warfare. The nations were fighting for the control of Europe – and of worldwide commerce. The powerful Habsburg rulers of Austria and Spain, usually backed by the pope, had been pitted against the kings and princes of north-west Europe, most of whom were Protestants. The last religious war With the Peace of Westphalia (1648) an era came to an end; wars of religion now belonged to the past. A variety of churches and denominations were recognized in Europe, though religious discrimination and persecution persisted. In the same year, by the Treaty of Münster, Dutch independence was recognized. The German principalities, Denmark, and Sweden all turned away from war. The nations which had avoided total involvement in the Thirty Years’ War reaped the benefits. France, England, and the Netherlands had used the opportunity to expand their fleets, establish trading colonies overseas, and manoeuvre themselves into dominant positions in Europe. By 1650 the tide had turned in their favour. Spain – weak in armies and finance – continued to be a major colonial power, but lost the ability to keep up with her northern neighbours. Portugal’s population was too small, her grip on her colonies too weak, and the colonies themselves too far-flung to protect them adequately. Britain increased in power and influence until 1789. France’s colonial growth was halted only by the first Peace of Paris (1763) when she was forced to give up some colonies to Britain. For a time the Dutch, and even the Danes, did not lag far behind. But the fortunes of Catholic Spain and Portugal steadily declined. In the East, Christianity, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, was on the defensive, facing Islamic Turkey’s penetration into Europe. In 1529, and again in 1683, Turkish armies put Vienna under siege. The minarets to be found in Eastern Europe today witness to the Turkish occupation of much of the Balkan territories. As Russia expanded to the east – in 1648 Russians stood for the first time on the shores of the Pacific Ocean – Orthodox missions began. These Russian missions – some state-sponsored, others voluntary – began to claim the Eastern territories for the Orthodox Church. They tended to develop in a sporadic way – but displayed apostolic simplicity and zeal, and there were many martyrs. Europe colonizes the world Christian missions form part of the story of European colonization; their history must be seen in that context. Friars and missionaries followed merchants and colonial administrators to remote, exotic lands; sometimes the missionaries arrived first. Spain sustained her earlier control of the Philippines, Central and South America. In some areas she extended her control; for example on the coast of California and in the semi-arid stretches north and east of Old Mexico. In the Caribbean and along the Gulf coast, Spain suffered losses. The British repeatedly fought Spain for the possession of Florida. French explorers also claimed this area, as they did Louisiana, which became a French territory after 1682. England occupied the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Trinidad, and in 1655 took Jamaica. To her colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint Christophe, France added Haiti in 1697. The Dutch, French, and English each carved out their respective Guianas on the north-east coast of South America, to form buffers between the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. One by one the islands of the West Indies – colonial jewels – were contested by the new powers. By the eighteenth century the Caribbean had become the most cosmopolitan sea in the world. The Church in Europe in 1700 Portuguese colonies in Africa and the Far East came off even worse. As the northern colonial powers increased their shipping around the Cape of Good Hope, they established settlements on both the east and west coasts of Africa. The French, who had founded a post in Senegal in 1626, gained Madagascar in 1686, and took Mauritius from the Dutch in 1715. After 1652, the Dutch held tenaciously to the tip of Africa, and Netherlanders gradually began to colonize this area. Not to be outdone, the English settled a colony at the mouth of the River Gambia, in West Africa. By the eighteenth century, Portugal had rivals for the rich, prized trade with India. Although she retained Goa, other European nations made their colonies in India too. The French had Surat, Calicut, Pondicherry, and Chandarnagar; the British had Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta; the Danes could be found in Tranquebar. Although in general the Dutch ignored India, they wrested Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641 and took Sri Lanka in 1655. They also increased their holdings in the Spice Islands, particularly after winning land and trade from a Javanese ruler in 1677 in exchange for military assistance. With few exceptions, the Europeans went to Africa and Asia mainly to trade. Yet even this was opposed in China and Japan: the Manchu rulers in China cut short trade, and the Tokugawas in Japan virtually stopped it. Chinese bandits drove the Dutch from Formosa in 1661. Not until the nineteenth century did further huge chunks of Africa and Asia come under Western domination. Meanwhile European missionaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, followed the trade routes, taking with them the Christian gospel. The ‘Propaganda’ Catholic missions were shaped by the new policies and organizational structures introduced by Pope Gregory XV (r. 1521–23). In 1622 Gregory founded the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, usually referred to simply as the Propaganda, in an attempt to bring Catholic missions more directly under Vatican control. This new policy aimed to replace the patronage system, which had been used in missions since the end of the fifteenth century. Patronage had been granted by the pope to the monarchs of Spain and Portugal, giving them responsibility for Christianizing natives, establishing dioceses, and appointing clergy in their colonies. Because these responsibilities had been neglected in many instances, Gregory set up the Propaganda, a body of clergy charged with spreading the Catholic faith, to work in countries where the faith was either unknown or under attack from heretics. Under the direction of its first secretary, Francesco Ingoli (1578–1649), the Propaganda made a series of investigations into the condition of Catholic missions. It documented many evils: rivalry between the religious orders; political interests taking priority over the spread of the gospel; and the abuse and alienation of native populations. As a result, the Propaganda in 1627 persuaded Pope Urban VIII (r. 1623–44) to found the College of Urban, for the training of missionaries. The Propaganda also found missionary recruits, gave financial aid to missions, printed liturgies and catechisms for use overseas, and requested reports from its agents to guide its work. By the time of Ingoli’s death in 1649, the Propaganda had become the most important force in Roman Catholic expansion. Sixteenth-century manuscript illustrating Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66) besieging Vienna in 1529, from the Topkapi Palace Museum. Sonia Halliday Photographs The Propaganda made great use of the office of vicar-apostolic, which was designed to overcome the evils of patronage, and to establish bishoprics in areas not held by Spain or Portugal. The vicar-apostolic was given the full authority of a bishop, and was directly responsible to Rome. He was chosen from the non-monastic clergy, to avoid getting entangled with the religious orders. Although he was known by the name of a diocese, he was not limited to one area, and was in fact a roving missionary. The vicar-apostolic was often instructed to keep his title and mission secret until he arrived at his destination, and met the stiffest opposition from the clergy still working under the patronage system. In 1637 Matthew de Castro, a Brahmin convert who had been an outstanding student in Rome, and Franciscus de Santo Felice were named the first vicars-apostolic. The latter was appointed Archbishop of Myra and sent to Japan, although he never arrived there. Castro was named Bishop of Chrysopolis and sent to Idalkan, an area of India free of Portuguese control, though not entirely free of its influence. The Portuguese clergy in Goa obstructed Castro’s work so successfully that he was forced to give up. The Propaganda next sent him to Golconda, a kingdom recently taken from Portugal by the Mogul rulers of India; here Castro still met with opposition from Goa, but won a number of converts. He began training native clergy, and handed over his work to two successors – like himself Hindu converts acting as vicars-apostolic. Mission to Vietnam The Propaganda turned increasingly to France for vicars-apostolic and for finances, since the French clergy were free from the ties of patronage. France’s rise as a commercial power was accompanied by a growing sense of missionary obligation, fostered by widely-circulated missionary journals and accounts. Both the nobility and the clergy made generous gifts and promoted foreign missions, and organizations such as the Capuchins, the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, and the Lazarists became deeply committed to mission. A veteran French Jesuit, Alexander de Rhodes (1591–1660), was the man mainly responsible for bringing together the Propaganda and French missionary concerns. He laboured in the Far East from 1623 until 1645, with about half this time spent in Macao. But de Rhodes’ most effective work was done in Vietnam before 1630, and between 1640 and 1645. He quickly mastered the Vietnamese language and reduced it to writing, and also trained a group of native catechists who continued his work when he was banished from Vietnam in 1645. The catechists were organized as a celibate lay order. They showed dedication and knowledge of the faith, and were given medical instruction by de Rhodes. By the mid-seventeenth century the mission had resulted in a flourishing Vietnamese church numbering about 30,000. When he returned to Rome, de Rhodes urged the Propaganda to appoint vicars-apostolic to train and ordain native clergy in the Far East. The Propaganda was initially cool to his idea, suggesting he should recruit missionaries in his homeland. De Rhodes found ready volunteers among his French Jesuit brothers, but desperately wanted men from the secular clergy, who could take a vow directly from the Propaganda. He found the priests he was looking for among a small group called the ‘Good Friends’, who had already committed themselves to foreign service. ‘Good Friends’ in Asia Out of this group grew the Society of Foreign Missions (Société des Missions Étrangères) in Paris, which in 1663 dedicated its seminary to the training of missionaries. The papacy and Propaganda finally accepted de Rhodes’ suggestion, after prodding by the Assembly of the French Clergy in 1655. In 1658 two ‘Good Friends’, François Pallu (1626–84) and Pierre Lambert de la Motte (1624–79), were appointed vicars-apostolic. De la Motte was entitled Bishop of Beirut, for service in Cochin, and Pallu entitled Bishop of Heliopolis, for service in Tonkin. They were followed by Pallu’s friend, Ignazio Cotolendi, who was sent as Bishop of Metallopolis to central and northern China, which included Peking. Cotolendi died soon after reaching Asia, and the other two were strongly opposed by Portuguese clergy; but their work marked a new departure for Catholic missions in the Far East. For the first time Rome had direct rule over all areas in the Far East that were not subject to Portuguese patronage. In 1665 the first native seminary was opened in Ayutthaya, Thailand. The earlier work of de Rhodes was consolidated on a firm local basis. The future of Catholic missions seemed bright. Questioning the instructions But in 1659 the Propaganda issued a set of instructions to its vicars-apostolic which touched on an issue that was ultimately to divide. The instructions dealt partly with missionary attitudes towards native culture. Until this date there had been two opposite theories on this subject. Most Catholics demanded converts should make a complete break with their ethnic culture, holding that local customs and practices were rooted in non-Christian religion and should be tested by the gospel, and cleansed of any trace of paganism. But a minority of Catholics had followed a different policy. Missionaries, such as Robert de Nobili in south India and Matteo Ricci in China, had adopted the native dress and customs, studied local literature and beliefs, and lived in the style of their adopted country. The instructions of 1659 opted for the approach of de Nobili and Ricci. Vicars-apostolic were advised to learn the local language, and warned not to revolutionize the habits, customs, and culture of the people to whom they had been sent. The instructions claimed it was absurd to attempt to turn Asians into Europeans. The Propaganda felt the mission would be undermined if local customs were constantly criticized. If some things were clearly incompatible with Christianity, any changes undertaken must be gradual and gentle. The two methods clashed most sharply in China. As the century wore on, the controversy developed into a battle between the religious orders. Vicars-apostolic found it difficult to work out exactly what the instructions meant, the debate on method became heated, and parties were formed. The Propaganda found itself caught between the Jesuits on the one hand and the Franciscans and Dominicans on the other. The Jesuits had held a favoured position in China since the days of Ricci. They impressed the Chinese with such skills as clock-making, mathematics, map-making, canonry, and astronomy, and also gained access to the imperial court, where they acted as advisers to the Chinese government. When the Ming dynasty toppled, between 1644 and 1662, the German Jesuit, Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666), weathered the crisis. When the new rulers took over, he was appointed chairman of the board to regulate the Chinese calendar. His younger colleague, a Fleming named Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–88), was befriended by the emperor, Kang Hsi, who held the Chinese throne until 1722. A church in China Do not regard it as your task, and do not bring any pressure to bear on the peoples, to change their manners, customs, and uses, unless they are evidently contrary to religion and sound morals. What could be more absurd than to transport France, Spain, Italy, or some other European country to China? Do not introduce all that to them, but only the faith, which does not despise or destroy the manners and customs of any people, always supposing they are not evil, but rather wishes to see them preserved unharmed … Part of the Instructions sent out by the Propaganda, 1659 The Jesuits used their prestige to win an edict of toleration for Chinese Christians in 1692. By 1700 a flourishing Chinese church existed, with as many as 300,000 converts. But such gains had not come without a price. The Jesuits had studied Confucius and concluded he was not a Chinese god, and that Confucian temples were merely meeting-places for scholars. They decided that incense burned, and prayers offered for the dead, were not idolatry, but healthy respect for ancestors. They also claimed that Confucian terms such as Tien (heaven) and Chang-ti (sovereign lord) were Chinese names for the God of whom the Jesuits themselves spoke. The Jesuits strongly advocated that the Chinese language be used in worship, and translated the liturgy into Chinese as early as the 1660s. Issues such as these were called into question, particularly by religious orders whose ranks were filled by Spaniards from the Philippines. The problem became known as the ‘rites controversy’. Differences in the missionaries’ national backgrounds, and differences between their orders, sharpened differences over the Chinese rites. Ultimately the Propaganda, caught in the middle, had to make a choice. The Baroque façade of St Paul’s Roman Catholic church (Sam Ba Sing Tzik), Macau, China, completed in 1637, at which time it was the largest in East Asia. © Ilia Torlin / Dreamstime.com Gradually both the Propaganda and the vicars-apostolic began to question the Jesuit approach. As early as 1684, Charles Maigrot, Pallu’s successor, voiced his opposition. By 1704 Pope Clement XI (r. 1700–21) banned Jesuit missionary methods and ordered Charles-Thomas Maillard De Tournon (1668–1710), papal legate and cardinal to the East Indies, to enforce his decision. The emperor of China himself appealed to Rome, but was ignored. Angered by this, Kang Hsi, the emperor, delivered an edict forbidding evangelism. Seven years later every missionary, except a few Jesuit advisers, was expelled from China. Christians suddenly found themselves persecuted, and believers were martyred. The mission effort, which by 1684 had produced a native vicar-apostolic named Lo Wen-Tsao (Luo Wenzao, 1616–91), lost all its power. The Chinese Church shrivelled; not until the mid-nineteenth century would the Chinese Catholic Church again flourish. But the Vatican did not take this opportunity to rethink the question of missionary methods. Mission to Asia Meanwhile the Vietnamese mission continued fruitfully, even if it never repeated the dramatic results of de Rhodes’ time. In the Philippines, Spanish orders worked without interruption, impeded only by the remoteness of unreached tribes and the low level of Philippino morale. The Philippines themselves became a base from which missions were launched to other parts of Asia. The northern and central regions of India remained closed to missionaries. But in southern India, John de Britto (1647–93), a Portuguese nobleman, used de Nobili’s methods as he evangelized the lower castes. His work was short-lived, lasting only from 1685 until 1693, when he was martyred. De Britto was succeeded by the Italian Constanzo Beschi (Tamil name, V-rama-munivar, 1680–1742), who used his fluency in the Tamil language as he built a native church between 1711 and 1742. Along India’s narrow coast, the Catholic Church grew more rapidly, and by 1750 was led by many native priests and bishops. In Sri Lanka, Joseph Vaz (1651–87), a half-caste priest, proclaimed the faith with piety and dedication; despite Dutch control of the island, he founded scores of churches and made tens of thousands of converts. The Middle East, though not impenetrable by Europeans, was not fertile mission territory. It was dominated by the Ottoman Turks, who allowed occasional French and Italian explorer-missionaries to pass through, on the old overland route to China and the northern slopes of the Himalayas. Catholic trading consuls sometimes brought Christian influence to the area, too. French missions in Persia were able to win Armenians to the Catholic faith. But such examples are exceptional; the Middle East belonged to Islam. In Africa, Christianity had by 1789 lost the ground gained in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Capuchin order’s work on the coasts of modern Zaïre and Angola claimed more than half a million converts in the later seventeenth century. But these gains were weakened by European rivalry for Africa, by the instability of the tribes, and by the slave trade. Slaving reached its peak during this period, and undermined any chance of Christianity being planted effectively in West Africa before 1800. French religious orders made sporadic efforts to do mission work in Madagascar. But their approach was feeble, and thwarted by native hostility. Islam was reviving in North Africa and easily withstood Roman Catholicism. Evangelizing America In Canada, Catholic Christianity grew primarily through French colonization. The church there increased from 3,000 believers in 1650 to more than 75,000 by 1763. A handful of courageous priests, such as Jean de Brebeuf (1593–1649), made early attempts to convert the Hurons and the Iroquois, but paid with their lives. In 1658 the Propaganda sent François de Laval (1623–1708) to New France as vicar-apostolic. Less than twenty years later, Quebec was made a diocese, and Canada no longer technically considered a mission territory by Rome. The notable expedition of the trapper Louis Jolliet and Father Marquette, begun in 1673, which led them to the Mississippi Valley, was more interested in exploration than evangelization. The fur trade soon began to boom in Canada. Alcohol and venereal disease introduced by the Europeans first debased and then slaughtered the Indian peoples. Self-sacrificing missionary service was the exception, and the moral climate hardly conducive to the planting of a flourishing Indian Church. The Cathedral of The Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Havana, Cuba, built by the Jesuits in the Baroque style – though with asymmetrical towers – between 1748 and 1777. Tim Dowley Associates In Latin America, the patronage system remained intact, despite pressure from the pope. The cross and the crown were more closely linked in this area than anywhere else in the Catholic world. The ‘Council of the Indies’ in Madrid continued to control important appointments in the Latin American Church. All the major religious orders – tens of thousands of priests – contributed to the almost complete, but superficial, Christianization of Latin America. Mission annals are filled with accounts of dedicated people who fought against the political and economic oppression suffered by native populations. In the mid-seventeenth century, for example, António Vieira (1608–97), a Portuguese ambassador who later entered the Jesuit order, won concessions for Brazilian Indians and blacks from the Portuguese government. The Jesuit experiment Ruins of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of São Miguel das Missões (St Michael of the Missions),
Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil, built between 1735 and 1745 by Jesuit missionaries as a Reduction for the Guaraní Indians. © Alexandre Fagundes De Fagundes / Dreamstime.com The Jesuits tried a new experiment in missionary methods in the vast, uncolonized areas of Paraguay. To protect and defend the Indians, as well as to Christianize them, the fathers gathered them into self-contained and self-sustaining villages called reductions. Their experiment flourished between 1650 and 1720. Natives were instructed in the basics of Christianity, and their lives organized into times for prayer, work in the fields or at trades, religious festivals, and recreation. At the peak there were approximately sixty reductions, involving a total of over 100,000 people. The controversial experiment collapsed in the eighteenth century, Spanish-Portuguese boundary disputes over the area and increased opposition to the Jesuit order contributing to its failure. In Spanish North America, more permanent gains were made. After one hundred years’ missionary progress among New Mexico’s Indians (1580–1680), a revolt drove out the Spanish in the early 1680s. By 1692 they had retaken New Mexico and their mission centres had been rebuilt. Meanwhile, in 1686, the Jesuit Eusebio Kino (1645–1711) entered southern Arizona, using his skills as explorer, physician, architect, and astronomer to educate and Christianize the Pima Indians of the area. In 1690, Franciscans under Damián Massanet founded short-lived missions in east Texas. Thirty years later, other Franciscans constructed six flourishing settlements along the San Antonio river. These missions were similar to the reductions of South America, and from this base the Catholics expanded to Texas. Spanish Catholic Mission of San Xavier del Bac, outside of Tucson, Arizona, founded in 1692 by the Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino. © James Feliciano / Dreamstime.com In the mid-eighteenth century, Junípero Serra (1713–84), a Majorcan, erected a chain of missions along the coast of northern California. The original church buildings of many of these early missionaries still stand today. These Spanish missions all refused to train local Indian clergy. By 1789 Catholic missionaries had traversed the globe and organized about sixty dioceses outside Europe. In the Americas and parts of Asia, they founded a Catholic Church that still survives today. The missionaries experienced policy differences, friction between rival orders, political tensions, and obstacles of travel and climate. But they were people with faith, vision, and dedication. Colonies and companies Protestant Christianity expanded during this period along two different – but not unrelated – lines. The first approach rested on the assumption that all the citizens of a nation formed the Christian church of that country – a view of society later undermined by religious dissent. But it shaped missions of two types during the early part of this period. The first type of mission worked through the national trading companies; the second type through the overseas colonies of European emigrants. Both the companies and the colonies were chartered by the crown; thus both bodies were expected by the state to promote the form of Protestantism practised in the homeland. The second approach used by Protestants was through voluntary societies and denominations, which regarded mission as their duty. A number of societies were formed specifically to evangelize peoples outside Western Europe, their vision fuelled by movements such as Pietism in Germany and the awakenings in England and America. In time, denominations such as the Moravians and the Quakers became directly involved in spreading Christianity overseas. The missionary vision is clearly set out in the hymns of Nicolaus Zinzendorf, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and John Newton. A survey of Protestant missionary work needs to begin by looking at the trading companies and European colonies. In London, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, the boards of trading companies faced the problem of whether they should attempt to Christianize the peoples they contacted through their trading ventures. The Dutch East India Company, and for a time the British East India Company, ordered their chaplains to engage in native evangelism; the other companies ignored or resisted missions. Later the British East India Company prohibited mission work in India, afraid of disrupting their good trade relations. In the late eighteenth century, the British public became outraged at the inhumane policies of colonial governors such as Robert Clive (1725–74) and Warren Hastings (1732–1818). The company was forced to change its policy and send out chaplains such as the Scot Claudius Buchanan in 1796 and Henry Martyn in 1805. The Dutch go east The Dutch East India Company had been established in 1602, and supported the training of twelve men at a missionary training centre in Leiden from 1622 to 1633. Although the college collapsed for lack of finance, the company continued to support mission work. Its chaplains in South Africa, Sri Lanka, and the Malay archipelago were paid a sum of money for every native converted and baptized. The company filled missionary posts, established schools, and encouraged Bible translation and the pastoral care of converts. An interesting relationship developed between Classis Amsterdam and the Dutch East India Company. The Classis, a regional division of the Dutch Reformed Church, controlled the theological education and ordination of the chaplain-missionaries while the company paid their salaries. The results of the Dutch work were often superficial, but most of the Calvinist churches founded still exist today. By 1800 a native church, estimated at 200,000, existed in the East Indies. The New Testament was translated into the Malay language by 1688, and the entire Bible by 1734. The Dutch tried unsuccessfully to root out Portuguese Catholicism in Sri Lanka, founding a network of schools, and translating the Bible into the native dialects of the island. In 1690 they opened two seminaries for training Sinhalese catechists and teachers, and by the mid-eighteenth century there were well over 300,000 Protestants on Sri Lanka. In South Africa, minister-chaplains concentrated their evangelism on Dutch and Huguenot refugees. Some slaves were baptized and instructed in the faith and formed a small, local church. The fortunes of the Dutch East India Company waned after 1750, and the number of missionary-chaplains fell. The company was disbanded in 1798. Praying towns The best example of Protestant expansion through colonies is in Puritan New England. When Charles I (r. 1625–49) granted the Massachusetts Bay Company a charter as a colony, the document contained a clause concerning missions: The people from England may be so religiously, peaceably, and civilly governed, as their good life and orderly conversation may win and incite the natives of the country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind, and the Christian faith. In the 1640s, Thomas Mayhew Sr (1593–1682) took the gospel to Martha’s Vineyard, an island just off the coast of Massachusetts, a work that was continued by the next four generations of Mayhews. About the same time, John Eliot (c. 1604–90), a Puritan minister at Roxbury, Massachusetts, began to evangelize the Native Americans of the Pequot tribe, gathering New England Indians into ‘praying towns’, where he taught them trades, agriculture, and academic subjects. Eliot believed he had to civilize the Native Americans before he could Christianize them, so he mastered their language, into which he translated the Bible by 1663. Eliot was familiar with Catholic missionary methods, and seems to have borrowed some of his ideas from the Jesuits. He sent several Native Americans to Harvard College for training as pastors. In 1675, there were two dozen Native American evangelists at work, fourteen ‘praying towns’, and about 4,000 Christian Native Americans. However in that year war between the Native Americans and the colonists virtually destroyed his work. News of Mayhew’s and Eliot’s work reached England through printed reports known as the Eliot Tracts, which generated interest that led to the formation of the ‘Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England’ in 1649 – the first Protestant missionary society. This organisation supported the work of both Eliot and Mayhew, and continued to finance Native American missions until the American Revolution, when it channelled its resources into missions among Canadian tribes. European colonists on the Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean began to evangelize Native Americans and blacks early in the eighteenth century. Previous pioneers included Roger Williams (c. 1603–83) in Rhode Island, Swedes in Delaware, and Quakers throughout the colonies. But Europeans did not colonize the New World for the express purpose of evangelizing non-Christians, although some contemporary writers suggested that they should do so. A burning fire Towards the end of the seventeenth century an evangelical piety began to appear among Protestants, crossing denominational and political boundaries. Protestants again emphasized the importance of personal conversion, holy living, and the need to tell non-Christians about Christ’s saving work. They believed that the entrance of Jews and Gentiles into the church, and the kingdom of Christ, would fulfil promises in the Bible. The First English Missions A revolution took place in English preaching during the later years of the seventeenth century – largely brought about by John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury 1691–94 – and it changed from theological interpretation and magnificent eloquence to moral argument and practical simplicity. One effect of this was that ‘groups of serious men’ formed voluntary societies for religious and social purposes, influenced by some of the great preachers in London. Both the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) owe their foundation to the initiative of a small group of lay people and clergy, under the leadership of Dr Thomas Bray (1656–1730). Bray was rector, first of a parish in Warwickshire, then in London, and was concerned by ‘the gross ignorance of the Christian religion’ which was so prevalent. In 1696 he drew up a plan for ‘a Protestant Congregation or Society’ to work in a similar way to the Propaganda of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1698, with four laymen, Bray set up the SPCK, whose objects were ‘to promote and encourage the erection of charity schools in all parts of England and Wales; to disperse, both at home and abroad, Bibles and tracts of religion; and in general to advance the honour of God and the good of mankind by promoting Christian knowledge both at home and in the other parts of the world by the best methods that should offer’. During the first half of the eighteenth century, the SPCK gave much of its attention to education, helping to found charity schools, where poor children were given an elementary education and religious instruction. The SPCK also published books and tracts, encouraged the formation of libraries for the clergy, corresponded with Protestant churches on the continent of Europe, assisted Protestant refugees, and provided religious books for settlers in the American colonies. When the SPCK had become active in so many fields, Bray decided to found a separate society to engage in overseas mission. Started in 1701, this was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), whose object was to provide an Anglican ministry for British people overseas, and to evangelize the non-Christian subjects of the British monarch. It had a more official position within the Anglican Church than the SPCK, being authorized by the English clergy in Convocation and incorporated by royal charter. In 1699 Bray had made a brief visit to Maryland as the Bishop of London’s representative (Commissary), having become aware of the weakness of the Church of England in the American colonies. As a result, the society concentrated at first on raising money to provide ‘a sufficient maintenance for an orthodox clergy’ to care for the spiritual needs of the colonists. But in 1710 the SPG agreed to concern itself also with the ‘conversion of heathens and infidels’, and during the eighteenth century its missionaries worked in the North American colonies, Canada, and the West Indies. The SPG was the first missionary society of the Church of England. Leonard W. Cowie English Puritans and dissenters, and Dutch Calvinists, had practised this form of piety early in the seventeenth century. Philipp Spener’s Pia Desideria (1675) gave it a new name and new direction, in the form of German Pietism. It caught fire among some Anglicans in the early eighteenth century, in the Great Awakening, and burned in virtually every church in the American colonies. Wherever it appeared it generated a practical interest in mission. In Britain, Thomas Bray (1658–1730) adopted the use of the society for Christian missions. He was appointed Commissary for the colony of Maryland by the Bishop of London in 1695. Bray recruited evangelists for the colonies and collected funds to establish parish libraries, and out of these efforts grew the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in 1698. Bray next helped to found the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), in 1701, a society with specifically missionary aims. During the eighteenth century it supported several hundred men working among British colonists, Native Americans, and blacks in North America and the Caribbean. In 1709 the Scottish SPCK was founded. All three agencies, together with the older New England Company, supported missionaries who had a zeal sparked by evangelical piety. The Danes depart Much of the religious fervour of the eighteenth century began in Germany. Spener, and after him August Francke (1663–1727), founded several projects and institutions in Halle which provided a stream of foreign missionaries. When King Frederick IV of Denmark (r. 1699–1730) wanted missionaries for his colony in Tranquebar, he found them among the Pietists in Halle. Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) and Heinrich Plütschau (1678–1747) responded to his appeal in 1705, marking the beginnings of the Danish-Halle mission. These two missionaries arrived in India the following year, but met harsh criticism from Lutherans in both Denmark and Germany, whilst the Danish governor of Tranquebar opposed them too. Plütschau died five years later, but Ziegenbalg continued the work for fifteen years. Their example aroused wide interest in missions in Europe. They concentrated on educating children, translating the Bible into the native language, preaching a gospel of personal conversion, and training a local clergy – all of which became hallmarks of evangelical Protestant missions. In 1714 a royal authority was established in Copenhagen, guaranteeing missionaries official Danish sanction and support in further areas. Hans Egede (1686–1758) started a missionary colony in Greenland in 1722, while other missionaries went to the West Indies. By 1800 Halle had contributed approximately sixty people to the Danish-Halle enterprise. The English also became involved in the Danish-Halle mission. Anton Wilhelm Böhme, a former student of Francke, persuaded the SPCK to support Danish-Halle missionaries in British holdings in India. These evangelicals from Germany used Anglican Church practices, and ministered to British troops in India for decades, despite their links with Halle and Copenhagen. One of the most successful of these missionaries was Christian Friedrich Schwartz (1749–98), who served with such distinction that, upon his death, the Rajah of Tanjore (Thanjavur) erected a marble monument in his memory. The most significant missionary movement arising directly from Halle Pietism was the work of the Moravians. In Copenhagen in 1731, Count Zinzendorf met two Eskimo converts from Greenland and a West India Christian, who pleaded with him for missionaries. When he returned home to Herrnhut, Zinzendorf inspired the Moravians to respond to this appeal. Moravian missions Within thirty years, the Moravians had begun missions in at least ten countries. By 1740 they had reached the Virgin Islands, Greenland, Surinam, the Gold Coast (West Africa), North America, and South Africa. Their self-sacrifice, love, and total commitment to evangelization are unparalleled in the history of missions. Despite the group’s small size, the Moravians sent out hundreds of missionaries in the eighteenth century – and inspired countless others. One notable Moravian missionary is David Zeisberger (1721–1808). He was educated at their centre in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and then worked among the Iroquois and Delaware Native Americans. He followed the Iroquois when European colonizers pushed their tribe into eastern Ohio, where he founded several Native American settlements, which were later ruthlessly exterminated by white colonists during the American Revolution. But wherever the Moravians went with the gospel, their loving spirit, strong faith, and commitment conveyed such an attractive example of Christianity that hundreds of converts were made. One historian has estimated that the Moravian missions achieved more in this period than all the Protestant efforts before them. The English awakened Meanwhile in England and the American colonies the awakenings created new evangelistic efforts. In 1741–42 the Scottish SPCK sent Azariah Horton (1715–77) and David Brainerd (1718–47) to work among the Native Americans. Brainerd’s diaries and journals long outlived his short, ascetic service, inspiring later missionaries such as William Carey and Henry Martyn. Thomas Coke promoted Methodism in the West Indies towards the end of the eighteenth century, and is remembered for giving the Methodist movement a commitment to evangelize the non-whites. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Protestant expansion was led largely by movements arising out of the new piety. Instead of kings and trading companies, voluntary societies – organized specifically for promoting Christianity – now sponsored missions. The Moravians pointed forward to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when mission came to be regarded as the duty of each denomination. The heroic examples and literature associated with eighteenth-century Protestant missions formed the basis for the numerically greater achievements of the next 150 years. Russia Christian expansion in this period cannot be recorded solely in terms of Western Christianity. The Eastern churches were intimidated and repressed by Islam, but the Russian church contributed to missionary outreach. Czar Peter the Great, whose reign began in 1682, encouraged the expansion of Christianity into his eastern territories as part of his overall policy. Filofei Leshchinskii, Metropolitan of Tobolsk, 1702–9, gained the Czar’s permission to promise tax concessions to new Christians. He gained 40,000 converts, and planted about 300 new churches in western Siberia, but this work declined after his death in 1727. In the early 1700s Peter excused from military service men of the middle Volga region who were baptized as Christians. But the Christianization of tribes in this area was not completed until the mid-eighteenth century, by Bishop Luka Konashevich. In 1720 Peter the Great campaigned to raise religious and moral standards among both clergy and people, but missionary efforts remained sporadic and were often politically motivated. In 1721, as a result of the Ecclesiastical Regulation, the Russian Orthodox Church in effect became a section of the imperial bureaucracy. Some missionary work may have been achieved by the Russian diplomatic delegation in Peking, and there was also mission work among the Kalmucks, and missions to eastern Siberia and the peninsula of Kamchatka. But the poor state of Russian Orthodoxy, the political situation, and the geographical vastness and ethnic diversity of Russia all tended to discourage missionary outreach. It is amazing that as much Christian expansion occurred as did in Russian territories. Compared with what followed in the nineteenth century, Christian expansion between 1650 and 1800 was limited. But from its achievement the next generations of mission leaders gained inspiration and guidance. The missionary vision did not pervade the Christian West as in the next century, but issues such as the relationship between Christianity and indigenous culture, the need to train local Christian leaders, and the importance of translating the Bible were grappled with by Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics. In this era, their Christian faith became global. James A. De Jong Chapter 29 Awakening The Evangelical Revival and the Great Awakening In many of the English-speaking churches the Age of Reason became the Age of Renewal. In the 1730s and 40s, the tide of rationalism was stemmed, and dead formalism suppressed, as a rebirth took place with its roots in both European Pietism and English Puritanism. In Britain the movement was known as the Evangelical – or Methodist – Revival; in the North American colonies as the Great Awakening. The latter began in Northampton, Massachusetts, under Jonathan Edwards in 1734 – which preceded the conversions of both George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers, and can be regarded as feeding the Evangelical Revival in Britain – and came to fruition in New England between 1740 and 1743, the time of Whitefield’s visit. The first American Protestants Successive waves of immigrants from Britain and Europe had come to the east coast of North America. All but one of the thirteen English colonies had Protestant beginnings, and most of the newcomers were Calvinists. Calvinism in its most direct form was carried across the Atlantic by the Scots and the Dutch, who set up both Presbyterian and Reformed churches. The early settlers also brought the modified Calvinism of the English Puritans and Separatists, whose beliefs were to have a notable influence. Groups tracing their origin to other Reformation movements – Dunkers, Lutherans, Moravians, and Mennonites – came later and in smaller numbers. The earliest American Protestants were Anglican. In 1607 a community was set up at Jamestown, Virginia, with Robert Hunt (c. 1568–1608) acting as chaplain. But Anglicanism was never popular either in Virginia or in the other colonies. The church authorities failed to provide a bishop for New England, which weakened the Episcopalian Church during the colonial period. The Congregational churches, together with the Presbyterians, formed the largest group in the English colonies. American Congregationalism arose from a merging of Separatists and Puritans. The Pilgrim Fathers who disembarked at Plymouth, New England, in 1620, were Independents who had already left the English national church to seek ecclesiastical asylum in Holland. The much larger group who migrated from 1628 onwards were Puritans in the strict sense of the term: those who desired reform from within the Anglican Church. Driven from England by repressive measures during the reign of Charles I, they settled in Massachusetts. The Separatists and Puritans eventually joined forces, and in 1648 expressed their agreement in the ‘Cambridge Platform’ – the charter of American Congregationalism. Christianity in North America in 1650 The Presbyterians arrive Presbyterianism first appeared in America in the form of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1626 the Dutch East India Company founded a colony on the Hudson River, renaming Manhattan Island as ‘New Amsterdam’. Two years later a minister was appointed, and the Dutch Reformed Church continued to flourish after the colony was handed over to England, in 1664. By 1700 the church held a strong position in New York. The form of Presbyterianism that was to play a particularly prominent part in American Christianity came from Britain, founded by Francis Makemie (1658–1708), who was commissioned by an Irish presbytery to work in the American colonies. Churches were planted in Maryland as early as 1683, and in 1706 the presbytery of Philadelphia was formed, with Makemie as its moderator. He encouraged many Scottish and Irish Presbyterians to seek refuge in America from oppression under the Stuarts. From 1710, the flow of immigrants increased dramatically, after England imposed economic sanctions on Ireland. American Baptists American Baptists trace their ancestry to a congregation at Providence, Rhode Island, first gathered in 1639 by Roger Williams, a Separatist from London, who had been ejected from the Puritan colony in Massachusetts Bay. Most of those making up the first congregations were English or Welsh Baptists, who already shared Williams’ beliefs. The Baptists grew slowly until after the Great Awakening. Meanwhile the Quakers launched their ‘holy experiment’ in Pennsylvania in 1681. In 1690 the population of the colonies – some 250,000 – was almost exclusively British. But European Protestants had begun to arrive – Huguenots and Mennonites, as well as the Dutch Calvinists – a movement that intensified at the opening of the eighteenth century, when there was a large-scale influx of German Lutherans, most of them fleeing persecution in the Palatinate. When William Penn invited them to his colony, Pennsylvania, they crossed the Atlantic in thousands. By the middle of the eighteenth century there were 70,000 Germans in Pennsylvania alone, and almost 200,000 in North America as a whole, comprising Moravians, Dunkers, and Schwenkfelders as well as Lutherans. These German settlers, some of whom had already been touched by the Pietist movement, introduced a new element into American Christianity, hitherto dominated by the Calvinist tradition. Formal religion By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the American churches had been overtaken by paralysis. The evangelical enthusiasm of the pioneering generation of colonists had not been maintained. The development of commerce, and the accompanying increase in wealth, bred a materialism that blunted the keen edge of Protestant witness. The fervour of the fathers was not reproduced in their children. The Puritan ideal of a society ruled by God faded from view. Previously believers had been obliged to assent to a church covenant to qualify for church membership; now this was seriously compromised. The ‘Half Way Covenant’ of 1662, promoted by Solomon Stoddard of Northampton, Massachusetts (1643–1729), allowed the children of uncommitted parents to be received in baptism, whereas previously only those who could testify to a conversion experience were admitted as members. Now any ‘persons not scandalous in life’ could be included. Moral respectability – rather than spiritual rebirth – had become the criterion. A Presbyterian Synod held at Boston in 1679 discussed ‘the necessity of reformation’, and described the evils that had ‘provoked the Lord to turn His judgments on New England’. For the next thirty years, zealous ministers bemoaned the worsening situation, and called on their congregations to repent. In 1727, an earthquake that disturbed much of New England and neighbouring provinces was interpreted as a sign of God’s judgment. There was a temporary rush to the churches – but little lasting improvement. Something more than reform was required, and by the 1730s people were calling for revival. It began in Northampton in 1734. There had already been early signs elsewhere. The German, Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1692–1747/8), a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, was revived by Pietism in his homeland and while in Holland studying. When he arrived in America, he was shocked by the lifeless orthodoxy of his denomination, and launched a campaign of evangelism and reform. In 1720 he embarked on a mission in the Raritan Valley, New Jersey, where his impassioned preaching produced many conversions, but earned the disapproval of the Amsterdam church authorities, who still controlled the American congregations. By 1726 revival was spreading to the Presbyterian churches of the district. There was scarcely a single person in the town, old or young, left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. Those who were wont to be the vainest, and loosest; and those who had been most disposed to think, and speak slightly of vital and experimental religion, were now generally subject to great awakenings. And the work of conversion was carried on in a most astonishing manner, and increased more and more; souls did, as it were, come by flocks to Jesus Christ. From day to day, for many months together, might be seen evident instances of sinners brought out of darkness into marvellous light, and delivered out of a horrible pit, and from the miry clay, and set upon a rock with a new song of praise to God in their mouths. This work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that in the spring and summer following, anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. Jonathan Edwards, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God In the same year, the Irish-born Gilbert Tennent (1703–64) was ordained as a Presbyterian minister and placed at New Brunswick, where he was influenced by Frelinghuysen and brought revival to his own denomination. Tennent saw signs of revival among his congregation, composed mainly of Ulster refugees. He followed Whitefield as one of the great itinerant figures of the Awakening, provoking scandal with his sermon ‘On the Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry’. Jonathan Edwards One further local revival is regarded as inaugurating the Great Awakening. It occurred in Northampton, under Jonathan Edwards, and had a profound effect not only elsewhere in America, but in Britain too, through the circulation of Edwards’ account of what happened, his Narrative. Edwards followed his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, as pastor of the Congregational church at Northampton, but found the people ‘very insensible of the things of religion.’ In 1734, Edwards preached a series of sermons on justification by faith, and towards the end of December ‘the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in’. The revival grew and ‘souls did as it were come by flocks to Jesus Christ’. ‘The town never was so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then,’ Edwards declared. The effect was felt in the surrounding area and even in neighbouring Connecticut. Although the excitement in Northampton subsided within a couple of years, Edwards was convinced something had started that would have widespread repercussions. Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards (1703–58), whose name is inseparably linked with the Great Awakening, was born in Connecticut, New England, the son of the local pastor. He was a precocious child, fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at thirteen. At sixteen, while at the Collegiate School of Connecticut (afterwards Yale), he worked out a speculative philosophy on Being that anticipated the thinking of the British philosopher, Bishop Berkeley. Edwards graduated head of his class in 1720, then studied divinity and, after a short period as a Presbyterian minister in New York, became a senior tutor at Yale in 1724. In 1727 Edwards had an experience that gave him a new awareness of God’s absolute sovereignty, and of his dependence on God, which he described in his Personal Narrative (1739). In 1727, too, he became the associate pastor of the Congregational church at Northampton, Massachusetts, where, in 1735, and under his preaching, came the Awakening. Edwards described and analyzed in minute detail what happened, believing it was a genuine work of God, expressing itself in both mental and physical excitement. Edwards was dismissed from his pastorate in 1750, after a long controversy about admitting unbelievers to the church ordinances – especially the Lord’s Supper – and then went as a missionary to the frontier hamlet of Stockbridge, preaching to the Housatonic people and white settlers. Edwards produced his most important work at Stockbridge, Freedom of the Will (1754), in which he denies that human beings are free to choose, a view that fitted with his Calvinistic doctrines of election, predestination, and the fallenness of humanity in every aspect. In January 1758 Edwards reluctantly became President of the College of New Jersey, Princeton. But, after being inoculated against smallpox, he died of the disease. His arguments for a clear, Calvinistic position delayed the liberal theology that was to dominate New England in the nineteenth century. Unusually, he brought together evangelistic zeal and a powerful intellectual curiosity. Howard J. Sainsbury George Whitefield When the Awakening reached its peak in 1740, Northampton was again a centre, and Edwards important; but now the major figure was George Whitefield. Converted in 1735, Whitefield had been a pioneer in the English Revival. He arrived in New England in September 1740 for his second visit to America, and set off on a six-week tour that resulted in the most general awakening the American colonies had experienced. In Boston, the crowds soon grew too large to be accommodated in any of the churches, so Whitefield took to the open air – as he had done previously in England. He preached his farewell sermon to a congregation estimated to number 20,000, and, before leaving, invited Gilbert Tennent to Boston ‘to blow up the divine fire lately kindled there’. The revival continued in Boston for eighteen months, thirty ‘religious societies’ were formed, churches were packed, and services were regularly held in homes. A similar tale was told as Whitefield continued his triumphal journey. George Whitefield George Whitefield was an outstanding preacher during the Revival. Born in Gloucester in 1714, he was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he became associated with the Wesleys and others in the ‘Holy Club’. Converted in 1735, he was ordained deacon in 1736, and set sail for Georgia the following year. In America, he engaged in a variety of charitable and church work, returning to England briefly between 1738 and 1739 to be ordained priest, and to collect money for his new orphanages and schools. On this visit he first discovered his talent for open-air evangelism and made contact with Howell Harris and the Welsh revival. He returned to Georgia, and in 1740 his Calvinistic form of Methodism came into sharp conflict with the Wesleys’ Arminianism, opening up a breach that was never healed. Returning to England in 1741, Whitefield embarked on a round of missionary tours that took him huge distances and were to continue almost to the end of his life. He paid fourteen visits to Scotland, on the second of which, in 1742, he helped at the Cambuslang revival; visited America seven times; and travelled all over England and Wales. Whitefield became closely associated with the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, and toured South Wales several times with Howell Harris. He preached in many chapels owned by the Countess of Huntingdon, whose preachers’ college at Trevecca he opened in 1768. George Whitefield died in America in 1770. Whitefield is generally thought of as a fervent persuader, who left others to build churches out of his converts. Certainly his letters to Wesley, and his entrusting the care of his English societies to Harris in 1749, show his lack of interest in the administrative task of raising and caring for infant churches. But he founded the English Calvinistic Methodist Connexion, whose first conference met in 1743, and which boasted important London chapels, such as Moorfields and the Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road. These churches, known as ‘the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion’, mainly in the south and west of England, kept up a separate existence, until absorbed into Congregationalism in the nineteenth century. Whitefield centred his theology on the English Puritan themes of original sin, justification by faith, and regeneration. Sometimes he was militantly Calvinist, but he preached with a passion to convert. ‘Calvinistic Methodist’ was a term with real meaning when applied to him. His preaching was dynamic and compelling; he spoke with fervour, yet in a style plain, unadorned, and often colloquial. His physical bearing commanded attention, while the range of his voice was astonishing. Anglican pulpits were often barred to him: his open-air services were often interrupted, and he was a favourite target for anti-Methodist propaganda. In many ways, Whitefield’s work complements that of Wesleyan Methodism – though in some respects he was a forerunner of the Wesley brothers: for example, in his choice of Bristol as a base for evangelism, in publishing a magazine, founding a school, daring to preach in the open air, and summoning a conference of preachers. Ian Sellers Within three years around 150 churches were affected by the Awakening, not only in New England, but also in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. In the latter colony, revival started in Hanover County under William Robinson (d. 1746), paving the way for the outstanding preaching of Samuel Davies (1723–61), and the growth of the Presbyterian Church there. The Baptists began to expand too, through such evangelists as Daniel Marshall (1706–84) and Shubal Stearns (1706–71). Devereux Jarrett (1733–1801) also attempted to arouse the established church, but it proved largely unresponsive. The Awakening was not impelled solely through the campaigns of itinerant preachers. One effect of Whitefield’s visits was to rouse the ministers. ‘The reason why congregations have been so dead,’ he explained, ‘is because dead men preach to them.’ During the Awakening ‘dead men’ came alive and themselves revived their people. Renewed churches began to show a novel concern for evangelism, and missionary enterprise was stimulated. David Brainerd, a product of the revival, became the apostle to the Native Americans. As the movement gained support – or provoked opposition – parties tended to polarize. Denominational barriers were broken down, and a new spirit of co-operation prevailed among those sympathetic to the Awakening. Higher education was encouraged; as a result of the revival, major institutions such as Princeton College opened. Spiritual liberation paved the way for political liberation, and contributed indirectly to the American Revolution. German Pietism On the continent of Europe revival had its source in the Pietist movement, cradled in the early seventeenth century Dutch Reformed Church. It was probably Theodore Untereyk (1635–1693) who introduced it to Germany, where it flowered in the Lutheran Church, breathing new life into a country exhausted by the Thirty Years’ War. This was an age of Protestant scholasticism, when the insights of the Reformers had hardened into rigid formulas. Reacting to this barrenness, one writer, Heinrich Müller (1631–75), described the font, the pulpit, the confessional, and the altar as ‘the four dumb idols of the Lutheran Church’. In contrast, the Pietist revival re-emphasized the importance of the new birth, personal faith, and vital Christian experience as a spur to effective mission. Pietism in Europe Philipp Jacob Spener (1635–1705), a Frankfurt pastor, was a central figure. He wanted to recover Luther’s appeal to the heart, and set up house-meetings for prayer, Bible study, and the sharing of Christian experience. August Herman Francke, professor of Hebrew at the University of Leipzig, founded a Bible school, which led to an awakening among undergraduates and citizens. When he was appointed to Halle in 1692, he made that city a centre of Pietist influence, founding a poor school, an orphanage, and other institutions. Philipp Spener Philipp Jacob Spener (1635–1705) was the founder of Lutheran Pietism. Having studied history and theology in Strasbourg, he was appointed a senior member of the Lutheran clergy in Frankfurt in 1666. In his sermons Spener stressed the value of a life of devotion, rather than correct dogma. He began to hold devotional meetings – known as Collegia pietatis (‘schools of piety’) – which quickly multiplied and formed a basis for the Pietist movement. In 1675 Spener published his Pia Desideria (‘Holy Desires’), a plan to remedy spiritual decay he saw in the church at every level. He believed the reason for this decay was the absence of a true, living faith. Spener sought to promote Bible-reading, put into practice the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, and shift the emphasis from the theory to the practice of Christianity. Pia Desideria was completely in line with Lutheran theology, except for Spener’s