Early European History Part 64

Christianity in the West presented two sharp contrasts to eastern Christianity. In the first place, the great heresies which divided the East scarcely affected the West. In the second place, no union of Church and State existed among western Christians. Instead of acknowledging the religious supremacy of the emperor at Constantinople, they yielded obedience to the bishop of Rome, the head of the Roman Church. He is known to us as the pope, and his office is called the Papacy. We shall now inquire how the popes secured their unchallenged authority over western Christendom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAPAL ARMS According to the well-known pa.s.sage in _Matthew_ (xvi, 19), Christ gave to St. Peter the "keys of the kingdom of heaven," with the power "to bind and to loose." These keys are always represented in the papal arms, together with the tiara or headdress, worn by the popes on certain occasions.]

ROME AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH

A church in Rome must have been established at an early date, for it was to Roman Christians that St. Paul addressed one of the _Epistles_ now preserved in the New Testament. St. Paul visited Rome, as we know from the _Acts of the Apostles_, and there he is said to have suffered martyrdom.

Christian tradition, very ancient and very generally received, declares that St. Peter also labored in Rome, where he met a martyr's death, perhaps during the reign of the emperor Nero. To the early Christians, therefore, the Roman Church must have seemed in the highest degree sacred, for it had been founded by the two greatest apostles and had been nourished by their blood.

ROME A "MOTHER-CHURCH"

Another circ.u.mstance helped to give the Roman Church a superior position in the West. It was a vigorous missionary church. Rome, the largest and most flourishing city in the empire and the seat of the imperial government, naturally became the center from which Christianity spread over the western provinces. Many of the early Christian communities planted in Spain, Gaul, and Africa owed their start to the missionary zeal of the Roman Church. To Rome, as the great "Mother-church," her daughters in western Europe would turn henceforth with reverence and affection; they would readily acknowledge her leading place among the churches; and they would seek her advice on disputed points of Christian belief or worship.

THE ROMAN CHURCH INDEPENDENT

The independence of the Roman Church also furthered its development. The bishop of Rome was the sole patriarch in the West, while in the East there were two, and later four patriarchs, each exercising authority in religious matters. Furthermore, the removal of the capital from Rome to Constantinople helped to free the Roman bishop from the close oversight of the imperial government. He was able, henceforth, to promote the interests of the church under his control without much interference on the part of the eastern emperor.

THE ROMAN CHURCH ORTHODOX

Finally, it must be noted how much the development of the Roman Church was aided by its att.i.tude on disputed questions of belief. While eastern Christendom was torn by theological controversies, the Church of Rome stood firmly by the Nicene Creed. [13] After the Arian, Nestorian, and other heresies were finally condemned, orthodox Christians felt indebted to the Roman Church for its unwavering championship of "the faith once delivered to the saints." They were all the more ready, therefore, to defer to that church in matters of doctrine and to accept without question its spiritual authority.

THE PETRINE SUPREMACY

The claim of the Roman bishops to supremacy over the Christian world had a double basis. Certain pa.s.sages in the New Testament, where St. Peter is represented as the rock on which the Church is built, the pastor of the sheep and lambs of the Lord, and the doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, appear to indicate that he was regarded by Christ as the chief of the Apostles. Furthermore, a well-established tradition made St. Peter the founder of the Roman Church and its first bishop. It was then argued that he pa.s.sed to his successors, the popes, all his rights and dignity. As St.

Peter was the first among the Apostles, so the popes were to be the first among bishops. Such was the doctrine of the Petrine supremacy, expressed as far back as the second century, strongly a.s.serted by many popes during the Middle Ages, and maintained to-day by the Roman Church.

123. GROWTH OF THE PAPACY

PONTIFICATE OF LEO I, 440-461 A.D.

Up to the middle of the fifth century about forty-five bishops had occupied St. Peter's chair at Rome. The most eminent these was Leo the Great. When he became bishop, the Germans were overrunning the western provinces of the empire. The invaders professed the Arian faith, as we have seen, and often persecuted the orthodox Christians among whom they settled. At such a time, when the imperial power was growing weaker, faithful Catholics in the West naturally turned for support to the bishop of Rome. Leo became their champion against the barbarians. Tradition declares that he succeeded in diverting Attila from an attack on Rome, and when the Vandals sacked the city Leo also intervened to prevent its destruction. [14]

PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY I, 590-604 A.D.

After Leo, no important name occurs in the list of popes until we come to Gregory the Great. Gregory, as the son of a rich and distinguished Roman senator, enjoyed a good education in all the learning of the time. He entered public life and at an early age became prefect of Rome. But now, almost at the outset of his career, Gregory laid aside earthly ambition.

He gave up his honorable position and spent the fortune, inherited from his father, in the foundation of monasteries and the relief of the poor.

He himself became a monk, turned his palace at Rome into a monastery, and almost ruined his health by too great devotion to fasts and midnight vigils. Gregory's conspicuous talents, however, soon called him from retirement and led to his election as pope.

TEMPORAL POWER OF GREGORY

The work of Gregory lay princ.i.p.ally in two directions. As a statesman he did much to make the popes virtual sovereigns at Rome and in Italy. At this time the Italian peninsula, overrun by the Lombards and neglected by the eastern emperor, was in a deplorable condition. The bishop of Rome seemed to be the only man who could protect the people and maintain order.

Gregory had very great success in this task. He appointed governors of cities, issued orders to generals, drilled the Romans for military defense, and sent amba.s.sadors to treat with the king of the Lombards. It was largely owing to Gregory's efforts that these barbarians were prevented from conquering central Italy.

GREGORY'S SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY

Gregory was no less eminent as a churchman. His writings and his personal influence greatly furthered the advancement of the Roman Church in the West. We find him sternly repressing heresies wherever they arose, aiding the conversion of Arian Visigoths in Spain and Arian Lombards in Italy, and sending out monks as missionaries to distant Britain. [15] He well deserved by these labors the t.i.tle "Servant of the servants of G.o.d," [16]

which he a.s.sumed, and which the popes after him have retained. The admiration felt for his character and abilities raised him, in later ages, to the rank of a saint.

POSITION OF THE PAPACY

When Gregory the Great closed his remarkable career, the Papacy had reached a commanding place in western Christendom. To their spiritual authority the popes had now begun to add some measure of temporal power as rulers at Rome and in Italy. During the eighth century, as we have already learned, [17] the alliance of the popes and the Franks helped further to establish the Papacy as an ecclesiastical monarchy, ruling over both the souls and bodies of men. Henceforth it was to go forward from strength to strength.

124. MONASTICISM

THE MONASTIC SPIRIT

The Papacy during the Middle Ages found its strongest supporters among the monks. By the time of Gregory the Great monasticism [18] was well established in the Christian Church. Its origin must be sought in the need, often felt by spiritually-minded men, of withdrawing from the world --from its temptations and its transitory pleasures--to a life of solitude, prayer, and religious contemplation. Joined to this feeling has been the conviction that the soul may be purified by subduing the desires and pa.s.sions of the body. Men, influenced by the monastic spirit, sought a closer approach to G.o.d.

EARLY CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM

The monastic spirit in Christianity owed much to the example of its founder, who was himself unmarried, poor, and without a place "where to lay his head." Some of Christ's teachings, taken literally, also helped to exalt the worth of the monastic life. At a very early period there were Christian men and women who abstained from marriage, flesh meat, and the use of wine, and gave themselves up to prayer, religious exercises, and works of charity. This they did in their homes, without abandoning their families and human society.

THE HERMITS

Another monastic movement began about the middle of the third century, when many Christians in Egypt withdrew into the desert to live as hermits.

St. Anthony, who has been called the first Christian hermit, pa.s.sed twenty years in a deserted fort on the east bank of the Nile. During all this time he never saw a human face. Some of the hermits, believing that pain and suffering had a spiritual value, went to extremes of self- mortification. They dwelt in wells, tombs, and on the summits of pillars, deprived themselves of necessary food and sleep, wore no clothing, and neglected to bathe or to care for the body in any way. Other hermits, who did not practice such austerities, spent all day or all night in prayer.

The examples of these recluses found many imitators in Syria and other eastern lands. [19]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. DANIEL THE STYLITE ON HIS COLUMN From a Byzantine miniature in the Vatican.]

RULE OF ST. BASIL

A life shut off from all contact with one's fellows is difficult and beyond the strength of ordinary men. The mere human need for social intercourse gradually brought the hermits together, at first in small groups and then in larger communities, or monasteries. The next step was to give the scattered monasteries a common organization and government.

Those in the East gradually adopted the regulations which St. Basil, a leading churchman of the fourth century, drew up for the guidance of the monks under his direction. St. Basil's Rule, as it is called, has remained to the present time the basis of monasticism in the Greek Church.

ST. BENEDICT

The monastic system, which early gained an entrance into western Christendom, looked to St. Benedict as its organizer. While yet a young man, St. Benedict had sought to escape from the vice about him by retiring to a cave in the Sabine hills near Rome. Here he lived for three years as a hermit, shutting himself off from all human intercourse, wearing a hair shirt, and rolling in beds of thistles to subdue "the flesh." St.

Benedict's experience of the hermit's life convinced him that there was a surer and better road to religious peace of mind. His fame as a holy man had attracted to him many disciples, and these he now began to group in monastic communities under his own supervision. St. Benedict's most important monastery was at Monte Ca.s.sino, midway between Rome and Naples.

It became the capital of monasticism in the West.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF KIRKSTALL ABBEY, YORKSHIRE]

RULE OF ST. BENEDICT, 529(?) A.D.

To control the monks of Monte Ca.s.sino St. Benedict framed a Rule, or const.i.tution, which was modeled in some respects upon the earlier Rule of St. Basil. The monks formed a sort of corporation, presided over by an abbot, [20] who held office for life. To the abbot every candidate for admission took the vow of obedience. Any man, rich or poor, n.o.ble or peasant, might enter the monastery, after a year's probation; having once joined, however, he must remain a monk for the rest of his days. The monks were to live under strict discipline. They could not own any property; they could not go beyond the monastery walls without the abbot's consent; they could not even receive letters from home; and they were sent to bed early. A violation of the regulations brought punishment in the shape of private admonitions, exclusion from common prayer, and, in extreme cases, expulsion.

SPREAD OF THE BENEDICTINE RULE

The Rule of St. Benedict came to have the same wide influence in the West which that of St. Basil exerted in the East. Gregory the Great established it in many places in Italy, Sicily, and England. During Charlemagne's reign it was made the only form of monasticism throughout his dominions.

By the tenth century the Rule prevailed everywhere in western Europe. [21]

125. LIFE AND WORK OF THE MONKS

A MONASTIC COMMUNITY