A Key to the Knowledge of Church History Part 13

There had been from very early times an extensive though not universal feeling in the Church, against the use of painting or sculpture in {96} Divine Worship. This feeling was occasioned partly by dread of the idolatry still prevalent amongst the heathen, and partly, especially in the East, where it was strongest, by the remains of Judaism still lingering in the Church of Christ. [Sidenote: lost in the West, but retained in the East.] As heathenism died out, it was gradually felt in the West that the strong reasons formerly existing against the adornment of Churches with pictures and images had pa.s.sed away; but the Eastern Church, with that dread of change which distinguishes it to this day, clung as before to the old sentiment.

[Sidenote: Image-breaking legislation]

In the eighth century, Leo III., "the Isaurian," then reigning at Constantinople, pa.s.sed a decree for the removal of all images and paintings from Churches, and his violent conduct in the matter occasioned such discontent in the West, that Italy withdrew altogether from the nominal allegiance she had hitherto paid to the emperors, about A.D. 730. [sidenote: dissolved the link between Eastern and Western Empires.] Other emperors were as fanatical in their Iconoclastic (or image-breaking) prejudices as Leo, and their extravagance excited a reaction in the other extreme in the Western empire. [Sidenote: Reactionary decrees in the West.] In A.D. 786, a Council, which was held at Nicaea, not only protested against the violent fanaticism of the East, but sanctioned the veneration of images and pictures to an extent which we find it hard to justify, and which was, in fact, deemed unjustifiable by many in the West, who yet wished for their retention as decorations and aids to devotional feeling.

Charlemagne, under the influence of our English Alcuin, opposed the decision of the Council, and held provincial synods (especially one at Frankfort, A.D. 794) {97} to condemn what was, at any rate, very like image-worship.

[Sidenote: Charitable supposition regarding them.]

Probably dread of Judaism and Mahometanism, with their hatred of our Blessed Lord and of His Image, as well as of all sculpture, had some influence on the decisions of the council of A.D. 786, and we may reasonably hope that it was not really intended to encourage any worship or veneration contrary to the express law of G.o.d. At any rate, the Iconoclast controversy aided very strongly to put an end to all political union, and with it to all public ecclesiastical intercourse, between East and West; though the bonds of external communion were not yet broken, and they were still one both in faith and practice.

Section 3. _The Controversy respecting the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost._

[Sidenote: Western addition to the Nicene creed.]

We have seen[1] that the summary of Christian belief, known to us as the Nicene Creed, was completed at the Council of Constantinople, A.D.

381; but with this exception, that the article defining the faith of the Church concerning the Third Person of the Ever-Blessed Trinity, a.s.serted only that "the Holy Ghost . . . . proceedeth from the Father,"

without the addition of the words "_and the Son_;" and it was the controversy as to the admission or non-admission of these words into the Creed which caused the formal division between Eastern and Western Christendom. The question is said to have first arisen in the fifth {98} century; and gradually the words in dispute came to be sung in the West during Divine Service. [Sidenote: Decrees against it.] In the ninth century an appeal was made on the subject to Pope Leo III., who decided in a provincial Council that no such addition could lawfully be made to the Creed, and ordered it to be engraved on silver plates exactly as the Council of Constantinople had left it. Towards the end of the same century another Council was held at Constantinople, which also decreed the disuse of the addition, and then the matter dropped for about a hundred and fifty years. [Sidenote: Dispute stirred up again for political purposes.] Its revival seems to have been chiefly owing to political jealousies and to the struggle for supremacy which was continually going on between Rome and Constantinople. We may be allowed to believe that the dispute was, in reality, a question of mere words, and that the two branches of the One Church did, and still do, hold the "One Faith," although differing in their mode of expressing it. [Sidenote: Actual schism in consequence.] Still the ultra-conservatism which has always distinguished the Eastern Church, and the unyielding temper which has been no less conspicuous in the Church of Rome, did in time bring about a formal schism; and in A.D.

1053, the Pope Leo IX. issued a sentence of excommunication against the Patriarch of Constantinople and all who adhered to him. In the following year the Patriarch Michael Cerularius summoned a synod at Constantinople, and retorted the excommunication upon the Latins. Two attempts at reconciliation were afterwards made, one in A.D. 1274, following the close of the last Crusade, and another which, after lengthened negotiations, came to an equally unsuccessful termination at the Council of Florence, A.D. 1430.

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[Sidenote: Outward union never since restored.]

Since that time the two great Branches of the One Vine, whilst still drawing Life and Nourishment from the same Divine Root of Jesse by means of the same Holy Sacraments, have yet abstained from all acts of outward communion, and have failed to recognize in each other those essential marks of Catholicity which G.o.d's Mercy and Providence has preserved to them even in the midst of all their respective defects of Charity, or their errors in theory and practice.

[1] Chap. VI., sec. 3.

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CHAPTER X

The Church of the Middle Ages

A.D. 900-A.D. 1500

[Sidenote: Foundation of the temporal power of the Popedom.]

The temporal power of the Popes gradually increased after the ninth century, when part of the territory since known as the States of the Church was bestowed on them by Pepin, whose son, the famous Emperor Charlemagne, confirmed the donation. The change thus wrought in the position of the Popes, who to their spiritual office of Bishop now added the temporal one of sovereign, was productive of a corresponding change in the claims they made upon the submission of the rest of Christendom, and these altered claims first a.s.sumed a definite form in the eleventh century.

Section 1. _The Supremacy of the Popes._

[Sidenote: Papal claims to spiritual supremacy.]

The Bishops of Rome had at first limited their ideas of universal supremacy to spiritual things: it was as Universal Bishop that they desired to be honoured and obeyed, and we have seen in the preceding chapter that a certain priority seemed to accrue to them by force of {101} circ.u.mstances. Rome had come to be regarded as the Mother of the Churches, much as Jerusalem was in the first ages of Christianity, and appeals for advice and help were at first voluntarily made to the learning and piety of the Bishops of Rome. [Sidenote: Further claims to temporal authority.] Later, instead of advisers they claimed to be absolute judges in ecclesiastical matters, and when the temporal possessions of the Popedom made the chair of St. Peter an object of ambition to covetous, designing men, the character of Bishop was too often merged in that of Prince, and spiritual power ceased to satisfy those who thought it their duty or their interest to enforce what was in fact an Universal Sovereignty.

[Sidenote: Plausibleness and actual advantages of Papal supremacy.]

It is not difficult to understand that the idea of one Visible Head and Centre of Christendom would appear to have much to recommend it; nor even that the power of the Popes was in reality the source of many blessings in the lawless state in which European society found itself for many centuries after the fall of the Roman empire. An authority which could reduce rebellious subjects to obedience, overawe refractory n.o.bles, or check the tyranny of an irresponsible sovereign, could hardly fail to be productive of some good effects when wielded by disinterested men, and with singleness of purpose. [Sidenote: Its corruptions and dangers.] But in the hands of worldly-minded and ambitious prelates, such as too many of the Popes undoubtedly were, this usurped prerogative of interference in the affairs of foreign states became an engine of mighty evil, and in the course of time it was felt to be such an intolerable yoke by the people of Europe that continued submission to it became impossible.

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[Sidenote: What the Reformation really was.]

The Reformation was in fact a casting off of an unjustifiable usurpation in temporal as well as in spiritual things, and a violent reaction against that course of events which, from the eighth century downwards, had been tending to reduce the different sovereigns of Western Christendom to the rank of va.s.sals of the Roman See.

Section 2. _Some account of the Popes of the Middle Ages._

A clearer view of the rise and results of papal supremacy may perhaps be gained by entering into a somewhat more detailed account of such Popes as from various causes occupy conspicuous places in the history of the Roman Church. [Sidenote: St. Leo the Great, and the first "papal aggression."] In order to do this effectually, it will be necessary to go back a little farther than the date at the head of the chapter, to the time of St. Leo the Great (A.D. 440-A.D. 461), whose claim to interfere between St. Hilary, Bishop of Arles, and Chelidonius, Bishop of Besancon, may be looked upon as the first "papal aggression" of which history gives us an example. Chelidonius had been deposed by a General Council of the Church of France under the presidency of Hilary, and so deeply did the French Bishops resent the unjust attempts of Leo to set aside their decision, that the Bishop of Rome found an appeal to the secular power necessary for the purpose of enforcing his claim to exercise jurisdiction over a foreign Church.

But even the authority of Valentinian III., Emperor of the West, did not succeed in obliging Hilary to cede the liberties of the Church of France, and it is a significant fact that the Bishop of {103} Arles is reverenced as a saint by the whole Western Church, although his sense of what was due to his position as a member of the French episcopate would not suffer him to yield his just rights, in order to obtain a reconciliation with one so personally worthy of esteem and honour as St. Leo.

[Sidenote: Papal claims strengthened and extended by St. Gregory]

The good and wise St. Gregory the Great (A.D. 590-A.D. 604), though he strenuously disclaimed for himself, and denied to others, the right of a.s.suming the t.i.tle of "Universal Bishop," appears to have had very strong ideas respecting the authority which he conceived to belong to the successors of St. Peter, whilst his talents and holiness gave him an extensive influence over his contemporaries. [Sidenote: and Hadrian I.] Succeeding Popes laid claim to more extended powers, especially Hadrian I. (A.D. 772-A.D. 793), who first advanced the doctrine that the whole Christian Church was subject to the see of Rome. [Sidenote: Rise of the temporal power of the Popes under Leo III.] His successor, Leo III. (A.D. 795-A.D. 816), having crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the West, A.D. 800, received from that monarch the sovereignty of Rome, and thus became a temporal prince as well as a Bishop, and about the same time there began to appear certain forged canons (or Church laws), professing to be ancient decrees collected by St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, and having for their object to give primitive sanction to Roman Supremacy. [Sidenote: "Pseudo-Isidore" Decretals]

These "Pseudo-Isidore" Decretals, as they were afterwards called, were frequently appealed to, apparently in good faith, by subsequent Popes; and their genuineness was generally believed in, almost without question, until the time of the Reformation in {104} the sixteenth century. By about the middle of the ninth century these decretals were made use of to settle ecclesiastical questions, and Nicholas I. (A.D.

858-A.D. 867) laid great stress upon them when the liberties of the French Church were again defended by Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, in a very similar case to that in which St. Hilary had offered opposition to St. Leo. [Sidenote: Hincmar's opposition to papal claims.]

Hincmar's zeal in opposing the usurpations of the Roman see had some little success during the episcopate of Hadrian II. (A.D. 867-A.D.

872), but its effects pa.s.sed away when John VIII. (A.D. 872-A.D. 882) espoused the cause of Charles the Bald, and thus enlisted the interests of the crown on his side.

The troubles and disorders consequent on the breaking up of the great empire of Charlemagne, had had a very injurious effect on morals and religion; and unworthy persons, to whom the temporal possessions of the Popes had by this time become an object of ambition, took advantage of the depressed state of the Church to seize upon the bishopric of Rome either for themselves or for others in whom they had an interest.

[Sidenote: Unspirituality caused by temporal power.] Hence the history of the papacy during the next century and a half is full of dreary records of corruption and wickedness. The elevation of John XII. to the papal throne at the age of eighteen (A.D. 955), and his evil life, called forth the interference of the Emperor Otho the Great, who deposed him and elected Leo VIII. (A.D. 963-A.D. 965) in his stead.

[Sidenote: Interference of Emperors of the West.] From this time the emperors frequently interfered to check the continual disputes between Popes and anti-Popes, which often ended in the murder of one of the rivals. Silvester II. (Gerbert) (A.D. 999-A.D. 1003), {105} who was made Pope through the influence of Otho III., was prevented by death from carrying out the reforms he meditated, and at length, in A.D.

1046, the Emperor Henry III. was called upon to decide between three claimants to the papal throne. He settled the question by appointing a German, Clement II. (A.D. 1046-A.D. 1047), after the synod of Sutri had put aside the claims of the original disputants. Henry thus took the election of the Popes entirely out of the hands of the Clergy of Rome, with whom it had hitherto nominally rested, and appropriated it to himself. [Sidenote: This interference unjustifiable.] This was an undoubted usurpation on the part of the secular power, though Henry seems to have been in earnest in his endeavours to check the simony which had been so disgracefully prevalent in the papal elections, and to appoint Bishops who might be worthy of their position. [Sidenote: Hildebrand's influence.] [Sidenote: Overthrow of secular interference.]

Leo IX. (A.D. 1048-A.D. 1054) and his successor, Victor II. (A.D.

1055-A.D. 1057), aided and influenced by the famous Hildebrand (afterwards Gregory VII.), succeeded in effecting considerable reforms in religion and morals, and were very zealous in discouraging simoniacal appointments to offices in the Church, but a gradual and increasing resistance was growing up against the imperial encroachments, and after the death of Henry, Pope Nicholas II. (A.D.

1059-A.D. 1061) was enabled to obtain a decree that the election of the Popes should, for the future, rest with the Roman Cardinals, subject to the consent of the Roman Clergy and people, and with some vague reference to the emperor's wishes.

[Sidenote: Hildebrand Pope.]

At length Hildebrand, the counsellor and support of {106} several preceding Popes, was himself called to the see of Rome under the t.i.tle of Gregory VII. (A.D. 1073-A.D. 1083), and at once devoted the energies of his powerful mind to the work of reforming the Church. [Sidenote: His reforms] The two means on which he chiefly relied for accomplishing his object were the enforcing of celibacy on the Clergy, and the abolition of simony, under which head he included every species of lay invest.i.ture. [Sidenote: and their consequences.] The prosecution of his plans soon brought him into a violent dispute with the weak and wicked Emperor Henry IV., who was as eager to secure the right of bestowing upon Bishops the ring and pastoral staff, as well as of their sole appointment, and thus reduce them to the state of mere secular va.s.sals, as Gregory was by the same means to secure their ecclesiastical obedience to the see of Rome, and their total independence of any civil power. [Sidenote: Result of the contest.]

The contest lasted till the death of Gregory in exile, and was carried on by his successors, until during the popedom of Calixtus II. (A.D.

1119-1124) a compromise was agreed upon by which the emperor left to each Church the free election of its Bishops, who were to receive the ring and staff from the altar, and the temporalties of their sees from the crown.

[Sidenote: Wars between Rome and Germany.]

This arrangement did not, however, bring peace between the Popes and the emperors, the Popes siding with the Guelphs in the long civil wars of the next two centuries, in opposition to the Ghibelline emperors.

Hadrian IV. (A.D. 1154-A.D. 1159), or Nicholas Breakspear, the only English Pope, found it expedient to seek the a.s.sistance of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, to aid him in quelling the insurrection headed by Arnold of {107} Brescia; but Alexander III. (A.D. 1159-A.D. 1181) came into fresh collision with Frederic, who was at length obliged to submit and beg for peace. [Sidenote: Climax of the papal power under Innocent III.] The minority of Frederic II. was favourable to the ambitious schemes of Pope Innocent III. (A.D. 1198-A.D. 1216), and under him the power of the popedom reached its greatest height. He laid both England and France under an interdict, placed on the imperial throne, and then deposed, Otho IV., and took measures for the suppression of the Albigenses, which eventually resolved themselves into the dreaded Inquisition. The old strife was continued by Gregory IX. (A.D.

1227-A.D. 1241), who excommunicated Frederic II., and the sentence was renewed by Innocent IV. (A.D. 1243-A.D. 1254). The treatment of the emperor by these successive Popes was something akin to a persecution, and was apparently occasioned by a feeling of opposition to any authority which conflicted with the claims of Rome, and by a hatred of the Ghibelline race.

[Sidenote: Decline of the temporal power of the Popes.]

From the death of Innocent IV. the excessive power of the Popes may be said to decrease. Gregory X. (A.D. 1271-A.D. 1276) and the Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg were good, earnest-minded men, who put an end to the long-standing feud between Rome and the empire, and after a succession of short pontificates, Boniface VIII. (A.D. 1294-A.D. 1303) usurped the papal throne in the place of the "hermit Pope," Celestine V.