The Middle Ages (476-1453)
Since 1500 our civilization has not
had to endure any upheaval remotely comparable with the shattering and
rebirth of which accompanied the migrations and new institutions of the
Dark Ages between 400 and 900. (George Holmes)
In the Middle Ages a
number of earlier trends in theology and church authority were
strengthened, aided by a dramatic shift in the geopolitical situation. The
Roman Empire had earlier been divided into two main regions (the Western
Empire, where Latin was spoken, and the Eastern, where Greek was spoken).
This eventually grew to a complete severing in the 11th
century. The invasions of the "barbarians" as well as the
advance of Islam in the early Middle Ages contributed to the growing
division of East and West. In the Latin West (modern Spain, France, Italy,
etc.) the relative stability of the Roman Empire ceased to exist, and gave
way to a chaotic condition where numerous smaller barbarian centers of
power competed for dominance. In the power vacuum that ensued, the church,
in the form of monasticism and the papacy, grew stronger and became the
preservers of culture and order. Meanwhile in the East, the Roman Empire
(now called also the Byzantine Empire) continued for another thousand
years. There the state was much more powerful, and often imposed its will
on the church.
The Office of the Papacy
The word “pope”
simply means “father” or “papa” and in earlier times was simply
used to refer to any important bishop. The title “pope” was not
reserved solely for bishop of Rome until the 11th
century. The zenith of papal power that was reached under Boniface who
declared in Unum Sanctum (1302) that “outside of her [the one
holy catholic church] there is neither salvation nor the remission of
sins.” Not only that, he claimed that the successor of Peter (the pope)
is the “one head of the Church along with Christ” and the pope has
been given supreme authority in the temporal sphere (over kings) as well.
Those who do not acknowledge this, for example, the Greek Church, are not
considered a part of Christ’s flock
This must be understood
as part of a long-term trend that began late in the first century when
Clement, bishop of Rome acted with authority toward the Corinthian Church.
We saw earlier in Ignatius the beginnings of this pattern of authority for
local bishop. As time went on, bishops of leading communion were seen as
“sacrificing priests,” with the Eucharist no longer a mere memorial,
but a sacrament that brought renewed cleansing grace. By the time of
bishop Leo I of Rome in the first half of the fifth century, his office
had tremendous influence and prestige—even from the government. The
following edict was issued by the western emperor, during Leo’s reign,
urges unqualified submission on the part of other bishops:
Since, then, the
primacy of the Apostolic See is established by the merit of St. Peter
(who is the chief among the bishops), by the majesty of the city of
Rome, and finally by the authority of a holy council, no one, without
inexcusable presumption, may attempt anything against the authority of
that see. Peace will be secured among the churches if every one
recognize his rule…
We herewith
permanently decree that not only the bishops of Gaul, but also those of
the other provinces, shall attempt nothing counter to ancient custom
without the authority of the venerable father [Papa] of the Eternal
City. Whatever shall be sanctioned by the authority of the Apostolic See
shall be law to all; so that if one of the bishops be summoned to the
judgment of the Roman bishop and shall neglect to appear, he shall be
forced by the moderator of his province to present himself. In all
respects let the privileges be maintained which our deified predecessors
have conferred upon the Roman church.
Pope Gregory I
Gregory 'the Great,’
bishop of Rome ( 590-604), was able to fill the power vacuum left by the
barbarian invasions and collapse of the Empire. Since
the sack of the city in 410, Rome had been in disarray. Since there was
nobody else to do it, he organized the distribution of food among the
needy, took measures to guarantee shipments of wheat, and supervised the
rebuilding of aqueducts and defenses of the city. Refugees poured into
Rome as the Lombards to the north continually expanded their influence.
They also frequently captured members of the Roman populace and held them
for ransom. Gregory opened direct negotiations with the Lombards and
brought about peace. The result was that, by default, he was acting as
ruler of Rome and the surrounding area. This is why Gregory has been
called the first medieval pope because he exercised functions that had
previously belonged to “secular” authority.
Because of this political
influence and the growing prestige of the office of Roman bishop, Gregory
gained religious influence. His significance is not his originality but
his influence on medieval theology as an interpreter of Augustine.
However, the essential spirit of Augustine gave way to superstitious
mentality. The controlling motif is not Augustine’s peace of heart that
finds its rest in God, but the fear of uncertainty, which
seeks to attain security through the institutions of the church.
Gregory emphasized penance,
which was contrition, confession
and satisfaction for sin (remember the Church’s earlier preoccupation
with “post-baptismal sins”?). Satisfaction does not take place only in
this life, so “minor sins” would be purified "as by fire" in
purgatory. This doctrine was popular, but not official dogma until 1274.
The Mass as a sacrifice is another of Gregory's favorite doctrines. This
sacrifice, in which Christ is offered anew, may benefit not only those who
are 1iving, but also the souls in purgatory. Gregory urged prayer to
Saints and had an obsession with relics. These seeds later evolved into a
whole penitential system—a “treasury of merits” and indulgences by
which one could have their sin dept paid and be freed from purgatory.
Gregory was rather accommodating in his missions strategy:
As pope he
[Gregory] contributed more than anyone to bridging the sophisticated
past of the Roman Empire and now barbarian society of the West. He liked
to send wonder-working relics, such as filings from St. Peter's chains,
to barbarian princes. Against puritan iconoclasts he vigorously defended
pictures and images in churches which were the "poor man's
Bible." He urged that the Church should take over old pagan temples
and symbols and give then a Christian meaning. (Henry Chadwick)
Contemporary with
Gregory in the early and mid 7th century, a militant Islam
arose and forced its way across North Africa, basically erasing the church
there. It also conquered vast territories and cities to the northwest of
Arabia that until then had been important centers in the life of the
church—Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria.
After Gregory, the papacy weakened and was bossed around by
Constantinople. Later popes would turn the north instead of the east, as
we will see.
At the same time
that Islam was experiencing its greatest territorial expansion, in western
Europe a new political power was growing to the north of Rome in the
Franks, whose most powerful ruler was Charlemagne. In the year 800 the
Pope crowned Charlemagne “Emperor,” in an attempt to resurrect the
ancient Western Roman Empire. While this act in itself was largely
symbolic, it was the external manifestation of the growing power of the
papacy, which was becoming more and more like de facto ruler of Rome, and
of the Franks, who protected Rome from hostile invaders, including the
Muslims who advanced into Spain earlier in the century. Within a few
decades of Charlemagne's reign and brief “renewal” of culture, the
whole empire began to disintegrate. His sons and grandsons split up what
remained and barbarian tribes ravaged Europe again, including the Vikings
from the North. Even so, for centuries after the crowning of Charlemagne,
the alliance between the papacy and the “Holy Roman Emperor” would
grow even through beleaguered periods and even with the ambiguity about
which institution had the upper hand.
Because of the collapse of the
Empire, the economy and education, social order broken and gave rise to
feudalism, a type of government
in which political power was exercised locally by private individuals rather than by the agents of a
centralized state. Feudalism works basically like this: the “lord”
gives land for knight service (protection). Each feudal lord followed his own
policies and made war as he pleased.
The land was divided and subdivided. The “manor” was the
smallest division of land, having one lord. This was then subdivided for
“serfs.” Thus, there was a complex set of allegiances, which the
church became enmeshed with. Eventually the church owned 40% of the land
in Western Europe. Another aspect of feudalism was that it
made bishops of the church lords or
"prince bishops," and "secular" princes because
land involved allegiance and supplying knights. This puts clergy in a very
compromised position, where they are forbidden the use of “the sword,”
yet are sanctioning the violence of their knights. The feudal system
served for a long time, but was unraveling by the eve of the Reformation
in the 14th and 15th centuries as corruption was
being exposed, trade routes were again opened, and a cash economy (rather
than land) returned.
The situation
permitted survival, and even brought about the independence of the West,
but made life very constricted. The main reason for constriction was poverty.
As a result of plague, famine, destruction, and commercial atrophy, the
whole of the West was thinly populated, with no towns of more than a few
thousand inhabitants, with no important industries, with a rural
population practicing a primitive agriculture in adverse circumstances.
Since these were times of pain,
death, and disorder, Christian worship, instead of centering on the
victory of the Lord and on his resurrection, began to be concerned more
and more with death, sin, and repentance. Therefore communion, which
until then had been a celebration, became a funereal service, in which
one was to think more on one's own sins than on the victory of the Lord.
(Gonzalez)
Turning
briefly back to the East, Gonzalez notes, “Probably the greatest
achievement of Byzantine Christianity was the conversion of Russia,
usually dated on the year 988. The relation between the East and the West
became increasingly tense, until the definitive rupture in 1054.”
It was during the 11th
through the 13th centuries, that the papacy reached the height
of its prestige and power. This was the period when popes could make kings
back down. It was the time of the Crusades, which began in 1095 and
lasted for several centuries. It was also in this period the Spanish drove
out the Moors (Muslims) from the Iberian Peninsula.
The Unraveling of the Medieval Ideal
The late Middle Ages (14th
and 15th centuries) witnessed the disintegration of the ideal
of a unified Christendom under the papacy. Contributing to this unraveling
was the rise of capitalism, which was influenced by contact with the
Muslim world through commercial trade. With this development, cash again
becomes important—not land as before. Since capitalism is a cash
economy—no longer the barter system of feudalism, banking was
necessitated. This had enormous implications for the church, which was up
to its neck in land. When
wealth changed to cash, the church was in trouble--money had to be raised.
The “voyages of discovery” are fueled under these circumstances by
Spain and Portugal to the “New World.” Thus we find the selling of
ecclesiastical offices, indulgences (by which you could buy someone out of
purgatory). People believed in this-they did not question authority and
they did not read the Bible for themselves. Nor could they, since most
were illiterate and the Mass was not said in the local language, but in
Latin.
Because the growing
middle class of tradesmen became an ally of the monarchy in each country,
we see along with an end to feudalism, the rise of nationalism. Before
this time, people thought of themselves as part of Europe, part of a
united “Christendom.” With nationalism, being French would outweigh
being European. Two very strong kingships arose in Spain and France. They
became heads of the church in their own country and kept most of the
tithes collected, rather than sending them to Rome (later Henry VIII would
want this for England).
During a significant part
of this period, France and England were at war, which drew in most of the
rest of Europe. It was also
the time of the "plague," which laid waste to a huge portion of
the population of Europe and produced great demographic and economic
disruption.
Not only was
Europe not unified, but the papacy came under the domination of the French
King (at Avignon). Because the French would not send gold to Rome, the
papacy goes bankrupt and moves to Avignon. (1305-78).
This is what was behind the “Hundred Years’ War” war between
England and France. The pope could not mediate or help because the French
King owned him. The bishop of Rome and Avignon both claimed to be Popes.
This disunity and the later exposure of the lavish lifestyles of the
Renaissance Popes scandalized the people fed a clamor for reform.
In terms of academic
theology, scholasticism coincided
with the rise of universities and the rise of cities.
Prior to this, schooling was primarily in monasteries. With universities,
education is more and more independent of Church control. Scholars found
out that Muslims have the ancient manuscripts of the Greek philosophers
(especially Aristotle). In their work, which was partly apologetics to the
Muslim world, they attempted to harmonize reason and faith. This work was
known as “natural theology,” since it attempted to argue from the
created order or natural revelation (along the lines of Romans 1) to the
existence of God. The foremost of these thinkers was Thomas Aquinas.
Among the scholastics there was a philosophic shift away from the
notion of "universals"
as per Plato known as realism to a school influenced by the
rediscovery of Aristotle called nominalism.
In nominalism, a table, for example, is not a copy of a
“universal ideal” or “form” as in realism. A table is table
because we give it that name. Its “tablehood” is not inherent, but
named. Why does this subtlety matter?
There are tremendous implications for the authority of the church
and state: under realism church and state were copies of heavenly
(celestial) counterparts. In nominalism, church and state are human
inventions that we set up or destroy. Therefore, the church should change
it if it needs improved. Furthermore, the king is not there by “divine
right.” He can be removed or replaced.
Also in academic circles,
was the new mood of mood of Renaissance “humanism”—not in the modern
sense of secular or rationalistic, but a revival of the study of the
ancient classics and humanities. There was among humanists a new emphasis
on the dignity of human beings as noble creations of God—an emphasis
that had been sorely lacking in the Middle Ages with so such emphasis on
sin and the fear of hell. The humanists would contribute powerfully to the
Reformers' rediscovery of justification by faith alone through their
challenge to go back to the sources—back to the Bible, rather than
popes, councils and traditions.
The most telling feature
of the mindset of the Middle Ages was sacramentalism.
This was the nearly magical view that, because God’s was given
though the sacraments (primarily baptism and communion or “the Mass”)
and because only the ordained clergy had the power to confer grace through
the sacraments, there was no salvation possible outside the Church. As
Noll says, “The distinctive shape of these convictions [about grace] was
that saving grace comes to people through the sacraments in a social
setting defined by the cooperation of church and state.” In addition to
the necessity of being “refilled” with grace through the sacrament of
communion, there was the added burden of the sacrament of penance, whereby
a person would seek further forgiveness from post-baptismal sins.
Since it was almost impossible to know if you had been cleansed
from sin, people naturally trembled at the fear of hell. At the heart of
medieval sacramentalism was transubstantiation, the idea that the
wine and bread of communion changed into the body and blood of Jesus.
After the Fourth
Lateran Council of 1215, medieval Catholic theologians explained the
presence of Christ in the Eucharist by reference to the dogma of
transubstantiation. Using
the categories Aristotelian philosophy they taught that the moment in
the Mass where the priest consecrates the bread and wine, a miracle
occurs: the substance of the elements is suddenly changed
(transubstantiated) to the body and blood of Christ while the accidents
in the elements remain the same. In other words, when the priest lifted
the bread off the altar and said, “Hoc est corpus meum,” was
really holding his hands the very body of Christ although it's still
looked and tasted like bread.
Although most
people communicated only annually, the elevation of the Host (from the
Latin word hostia, “sacrifice”)
in the Mass became the focus of intense devotion in the later Middle
Ages. At the moment of
concentration bells would be rung so people in the congregation could
look with wonder and adoration upon the elevated host.
The feast of Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ) spread from
France throughout Europe. On
this occasion, the consecrated host would be paraded through the streets
and public squares in solemn procession, the people bowing in reverence
as the host passed by. (Timothy George)
The seven sacraments are: Baptism,
confirmation, penance, Eucharist, extreme unction, marriage and
ordination.
The Medieval View of Justification
As McGrath puts it, there
was "considerable confusion on matters of doctrine in the medieval
period, particularly concerning justification." The question,
"what shall I do to be saved?," seemingly so easily answered by
Paul in Acts 16:30,31, became enigmatic in a quagmire of conflicting
traditions, theologies, and philosophical orientations. Even even the most
grace-oriented theologians saw justification by faith as requiring
something from the human side. It was not
meritorious works, but a "prepared condition" to receive
grace. That condition was recognition of one's need for grace, and an
appeal to God, in his mercy, to bestow it. Yet, with all that said, the
medieval concept of justification was a humanly
initiated state that God would then respond to. Faith required humility,
and humility was understood as a self-abasing state, the condition of
seeing oneself as detestable. If you think about this very long, you
realize that faith had taken on the
role of a work--a rigorous one at that. How could one know if he has
become humble enough? He could not.
In the several centuries
previous to Luther there where growing cries for reform, some going as far
to say that the Pope was the antichrist and Rome was the Babylonian of
Revelation. On the milder side was the attempt to reform through church
councils, which there were a few of, but the papacy "recovered"
its power and effectively killed the movement. There was a rising
anti-clericalism and anti-sacramentalism as the peasants became fed up
with taxes, taxes, taxes (as tithes) as they saw the clergy living
luxuriously. So for many the cries were for administrative, moral, and legal reform—the abuses and immorality
must be eliminated. For
others, the most pressing need concerned the spirituality
of the church. There were others, however, who added a different demand to
this list--the demand for a
reformation of Christian doctrine, of theology of religious ideas.
[The Reformers]
realized that more than a general house cleaning was demanded. It would
do no good to sweep out the cobwebs if the foundation itself was rotten.
What was needed was a new definition of the church based on a fresh
understanding of the gospel (Timothy George).
To Luther and others, the
church has lost sight its intellectual heritage. Their devastating attack
on the structure of the church was not in the first place moral, but
theological, and therefore went to the heart of the problem—which was
not simply excessive taxation or the corruption of morals, but
sacramentalism itself.
An effective denial of
the efficacy of the sacraments for salvation or of the priestly power to
dispense them would undermine the whole penitential system and its power
to hold people in fear. Theologians within the church, such as John
Wycliffe and Jon Hus, questioned the doctrine of transubstantiation,
arguing that the Eucharist was not the body and blood of Christ. Both of
these reformers' attempts were condemned by the church at the Council of
Constance in 1415. Hus was burned at the stake, and since Wycliffe was
already dead at the time, his bones were exhumed and burned.
In
terms of technology, the implementation of the printing press in the late
15th century was a tremendous breakthrough. Before this time, a wood
carving for each page of a book was required. Without printing, the
Luther’s 95 theses could not have been as widely distributed. Now with
printing, an individual might be killed, but his ideas live on-read and
read. This is part of why people who said what Luther said before were not
heard.
Meanwhile
the Byzantine Empire, ever weaker, finally succumbed to the Turkish
[Muslim] advance.
The sad state of the church in the
early sixteenth century was simply a symptom of a more radical disease--a
deviation from the distinctive ideas
of the Christian faith, a loss of intellectual identify, a failure to
grasp what Christianity really was. To
Luther and Calvin, these distinctive ideas had been obscured, if not
totally perverted through series developments in the Middle Ages.
Sources
Chadwick,
The Early Church
George,
Theology of the Reformers
Gonzalez,
Church History: An Essential Guide
McGrath,
Luther’s Theology of the Cross
Noll,
Turning Points: Decisive Moments in Church History
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