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| ISBN-13: | 9780752494760 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 02/27/2003 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 406 KB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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The Christian World of the Middle Ages
By Bernard Hamilton
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Bernard HamiltonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9476-0
CHAPTER 1
The Medieval Western Church
The Formation of Western Christendom
Changes in Western Society
When Theodosius the Great died in 395 the empire was divided between his two sons: Arcadius ruled the eastern provinces and Honorius the western (see Map p. xviii). It is customary to refer to the eastern provinces after this time as the Byzantine Empire. Honorius and his successors ruled in Ravenna, protected from sudden attack by marshes and linked by sea to the eastern provinces. Considerable social and political changes took place in the Western Empire during the fifth century. They were in part caused by the Huns, a warlike, nomadic people who in the fourth century began to build an empire in southern Russia and eastern Europe, which led Germanic tribes to seek refuge across the Roman frontier. When the waters of the upper Rhine froze over on 31 December 406, a large body of Suevi and Vandals crossed into imperial territory. The Suevi finally settled in northwestern Spain, while the Vandals occupied the rest of the peninsula. The Visigoths, who had settled in Roman territory in the Balkans in 376, led by King Alaric moved into Italy, where they sacked Rome in 410. In 412 they settled in Aquitaine and, after the Vandals established a kingdom at Carthage in 429 (see p. 171), took over their lands in Spain as well. Meanwhile the Burgundians had gained control of south-eastern Gaul. The parts of the West which remained under direct Roman rule were gradually eroded. In 476 the German general Odoacer deposed his master, the Western Emperor Romulus (contemptuously called Augustulus, the Little Emperor), and transferred his allegiance to the Emperor Zeno in Constantinople. Then in 486, the Franks, who had formerly lived along the north-eastern frontier of Gaul, led by their young King Clovis (481–511), conquered most of Gaul north of the Loire. Thus within a century of the death of Theodosius the Western Empire had become a group of Germanic kingdoms.
The immigrant peoples did not consider that they were conquering Roman territory, but merely settling inside it. With the exception of the Vandals in north Africa, they were prepared to accept imperial overlordship and in return to defend the empire. Their help was indeed valuable, as the Visigoths proved when they fought alongside the Romans and defeated Attila, King of the Huns, when he invaded Gaul in 451. The Germanic kings wanted to preserve Roman institutions, which most of them admired, and some of them were extremely successful in doing so. It is possible to gain some idea of what the changes seemed like to contemporaries from the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430–86), a member of the senatorial aristocracy of southern Gaul.
Sidonius was educated in the classical tradition, possessed huge estates and was trained for a conventional career in the imperial administration. When his father-in-law, Avitus, briefly became Western Emperor (455–6), Sidonius wrote a panegyric in his honour and a statue was erected to him in the Roman forum. The Emperor Anthemius (467–72) appointed Sidonius prefect of Rome in 468–9. Then, in 471, he was elected Bishop of Clermont by the local people and tried unsuccessfully to defend the city, which was still directly under Roman rule, against the Visigothic King Euric. After a brief imprisonment by the Visigoths, Sidonius returned to his see, where he used his great wealth to benefit his flock. As his career shows, although there was much continuity, radical changes were taking place in the Roman Empire of the West by the 470s.
With the exception of the Franks, most of the Germans who settled in the empire were Arians. They owed their faith to Ulfilas, a Christian living under Gothic rule, who in c. 341 had been sent as an ambassador to the Emperor Constantius, who arranged for him to be consecrated Bishop of the Goths at a time when the court was moderate Arian. Ulfilas translated the liturgy and the Bible into Gothic, omitting the four books of Kings which he considered too bloodthirsty for his converts. Missionaries trained by him worked among the other Germanic peoples of central and eastern Europe, so that by the time they entered Roman territory many of them had been converted to Arianism. It is probable that they remained Arian because they were attached to the vernacular Gothic liturgy rather than for theological reasons. Except in the Vandal kingdom of Africa the Arian rulers did not persecute Catholics, but the difference in religion was important, because it kept the German settlers separate from the Roman population. Indeed, the latter came to identify the Catholic Church and its Latin liturgy with the traditional civilization of Rome. Latin at that time was the everyday speech of much of Italy, while in other parts of the West it was known by a quite wide cross-section of the urban population. The Roman aristocracy, many of whom had previously been hostile to Christianity, joined the Catholic Church, and some of them, like Sidonius, became bishops.
The Franks were pagans, but King Clovis received Catholic baptism in c. 496 together with many of his followers. He was already familiar with Christianity as his wife, Clothilde, was a Catholic Burgundian princess, but he attributed his conversion to the victory granted him by the Christian God over the Alemanni. His Catholicism ensured him the support of the Church hierarchy and of the Roman aristocracy of Gaul, and in 507 he was able to defeat the Visigoths at Vouillé and annex all their lands in Gaul. Because he was the only Catholic king in the West he was honoured by the Emperor Anastasius at Constantinople who conferred on him the dignity of a consul.
The conversion of the Franks to Catholicism and their dominance in Gaul may have been one reason which inclined the Emperor Justinian (527–65) to attempt to restore imperial power in the West. The rapid success of his forces against the Vandal kingdom of Carthage in 533–4 (see p. 172–2) encouraged him to attack the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy. The Arian Ostrogoths, who had settled in the province of Pannonia in the 450s, had been used by the Emperor Zeno to overthrow Odoacer in 489 and had established a kingdom in Italy. In the reign of Theodoric (d. 526) late Roman civilization in Italy had enjoyed a final flowering. It took Justinian almost twenty years (535–54) to bring the whole of Italy under direct imperial rule and to destroy Ostrogothic power, and the cost was high. The entire peninsula had been impoverished and Rome had suffered two long sieges during which the aqueducts had been cut, so that its population declined drastically.
Soon after Justinian's death in 565, the Lombards, a Germanic people whose rulers were Arians, invaded Italy and by 590 had conquered Lombardy, Tuscany and the Duchy of Benevento in southern Italy. Venice, the Exarchate – a band of territory extending across central Italy from Ravenna to Rome – Apulia, Calabria, the maritime cities of Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta, together with Sicily remained under Byzantine rule. Consequently, the Papacy was subject to the Eastern Emperor even though most of Western Christendom was governed by German kings.
Arianism gradually died out. The Arian churches in north Africa and Italy did not survive the destruction of the Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms by Justinian. The Burgundians had accepted Catholicism in the time of King Sigismund (516–23), while in Spain the Suevi became Catholics in the 560s and the Visigoths in 589. Finally, the Lombards became Catholic after the death of King Rothari in 652.
The Response of the Western Church
The Western provinces of the Roman Empire were in the main coterminus with the Western Church, which worshipped in Latin and looked towards Rome as the senior bishopric. That Church proved itself to be very resilient during the troubled years which followed the death of Theodosius. Despite the edict of 392 paganism remained strong, specially among the senatorial aristocracy. The members of this articulate and powerful group were shocked by the Gothic sack of Rome in 410, which, they argued, was a direct consequence of the abandonment of the worship of the traditional gods of Rome. St Augustine of Hippo responded to this criticism by writing what was in effect a Christian philosophy of history, The City of God. He argued that human history was an ongoing conflict between two cities, the City of God, consisting of those who tried to act in conformity with God's will, and the City of the World, which was made up of those who through self-regard or wilful defiance opposed God's will, a conflict which was part of a wider cosmic battle between the forces of Good and Evil which would only end with the Last Judgement. Augustine refused to make a crude equation between the City of God and the Church, since not all Christians did the will of God and not all pagans were opposed to it. Divine approval could not be assessed in terms of worldly success, as Augustine's opponents urged it should be, for as he pointed out, Rome had suffered comparable vicissitudes to the Gothic sack while it was a pagan city.
Although by c. 500 the Roman aristocracy had for the most part been received into the Catholic Church, paganism still remained strong among the peasantry. The evidence for this in the enactments of church councils and in anecdotes in the lives of saints is convincing because of its unanimity. In part this reflects the lack of resident clergy in rural areas. By 400 bishoprics had been established in all the main cities of the West and the whole area was divided into dioceses, some of which were very large. There were churches in most of the old Roman cities, and landowners built some in the countryside, but there was as yet no system of rural parishes. Although a high proportion of the rural population had probably been baptized by itinerant priests, few of them had received any serious instruction in the faith, or had much opportunity to practise it regularly. Monasteries came to have a very important role in the work of evangelization.
Early western monasticism was strongly influenced by eastern Mediterranean models. John Cassian (c. 360–430), founder of St Victor at Marseilles, was particularly influential, for he had spent ten years in Egypt and brought a deep understanding of the spirituality of the Desert Fathers to the Western Church (see Chapter Four). He wrote the Institutes, an account of the way of life of the monks of Egypt, and the Conferences, reports of his discussions of the monastic life with some of the most distinguished Egyptian abbots, and these works became spiritual guides for western monks.
In the early sixth century a specifically western form of monastic observance developed which was attributed to St Benedict of Nursia. In his Dialogues Pope Gregory I (590–604) relates that Benedict (c. 480–c. 550) when a young man had become a recluse at Subiaco near Rome, where he later founded a monastery. In c. 529 he founded another monastery at Monte Cassino near Capua, of which he became abbot and for which he wrote his Rule. There seems no longer any doubt that Benedict did write the Rule which bears his name; what is in dispute is the degree of originality in his work. There is now general, though not total, consensus that he made extensive use of an anonymous work written in c. 500–530, known as the Regula Magistri, or Rule of the Master. This is a much longer Rule and it never became influential, but Benedict was indebted to it just as he was to the works of John Cassian and of St Basil.
St Benedict describes his work as 'a little Rule for beginners'. It marks a complete break with the Egyptian monastic tradition because it makes no provision for extreme asceticism but is characterized by moderation and common sense. Members of the community have to be trained to live and work and pray together, and that means that they must be considerate of others and obey the abbot, but Benedict accepted that individual monks have different strengths and weaknesses. All the brethren are required to recite the long night office in chapel, but Benedict accepts that some people find it more difficult to get up than others and no penalty is attached to those who come late to chapel provided they arrive before the end of the first psalm. The Rule, in fact, sets out to train a community which is a well-run household. Benedict required a monk to take a fourth vow at his profession, that of stability – the promise to stay for the rest of his life in the community in which he was professed. This did not preclude the possibility that some monks might feel a vocation to become hermits, because they would still remain attached to the community. Benedict was concerned to discourage gyrovagi, gadabout monks, of whom there were many, who, while keeping their vows, spent their lives wandering from one monastery to another. Although the Rule of St Benedict was later to become immensely influential, this was a slow process. In the early Middle Ages it was only one rule among many observed in western monasteries.
The primary function of monastic communities was to worship God in liturgical prayer, but they soon acquired social commitments as well. They were given landed endowments and therefore had to assume responsibility for the spiritual wellbeing of their tenants, while lay people who were not necessarily their tenants also came to them for help and advice and attended their chapels on great feast days. Yet arguably the greatest contribution which the monasteries made to the formation of a Christian Europe was the witness which they bore to the Catholic faith, for in their chapels the Divine Office was sung eight times every twenty-four hours, without a single day's intermission, for centuries on end.
Monasteries were not uniformly distributed, and in many rural areas the peasantry's knowledge of Christianity and their opportunities to practise it remained slight. Even so, the spiritual landscape of the West was changing in ways that affected everybody. One example of this was the popular cult of relics. The early Christians had revered the martyrs who, in accordance with Roman customs, had been buried outside the city walls. In the early Middle Ages urban churches were built in honour of those saints and their relics were brought into the cities and placed beneath the altars, while relics from Rome and elsewhere were translated with great solemnity to new churches in other parts of Europe, and it later became obligatory for every altar in Catholic Christendom to contain a relic. Peter Brown has rightly pointed out how revolutionary this was, because in the pre-Christian, Graeco-Roman world the bodies of the dead had been considered polluting and might not be buried inside the city walls, whereas in the medieval world relics were considered important as a point of physical contact with the saints who stood in the presence of God and could pray for the needs of Christians on earth. This sensibility persisted throughout the medieval centuries. When in 1458 the skull of St Andrew was brought to Rome from Patras by a refugee Byzantine prince, Pope Pius II, a distinguished humanist scholar, held it aloft and admonished the crowd outside St Peters:
Here, here the Spirit of God alighted [at Pentecost] ... here were the eyes that often beheld God in the flesh, the mouth that often spoke to Christ. Behold a mighty shrine.
The saints were not at all like the pagan gods, who could grant or withhold benefits from their votaries without reference to any other power. The saints were the servants of God. They could only ask him to help their devotees, but they could not forgive sins or guarantee salvation. Real power belonged to God alone.
Living holy men and women who led lives of extreme asceticism were also held in great esteem, since it was believed that God would answer their prayers and sometimes enable them to perform healing miracles or to prophesy accurately about the future. Many of them were recluses who lived in remote places, but local people sought them out and asked them to right injustices. The holy man had no counterpart in the ancient world, and he was powerful. Because they believed that God listened to him, landlords and princes would take notice of what he said. Again, regard for this kind of spiritual authority lasted throughout the Middle Ages. When Louis XI of France was dying in 1483, he had the Calabrian hermit, St Francesco of Paola, brought to his bedchamber to pray for his soul, considering his intercession superior to that of other people.
The cosmic conflict in which Christians were involved came to be reflected in human experience. The Devil sometimes appeared in person to tempt man, and lesser demons frequently did so, but the angelic powers also manifested themselves to men, including St Michael, captain of the heavenly host, who attracted many votaries, particularly among warriors.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Christian World of the Middle Ages by Bernard Hamilton. Copyright © 2013 Bernard Hamilton. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,INTRODUCTION: THE CHURCH IN LATE ANTIQUITY,
Chapter One The Medieval Western Church,
Chapter Two The Church in Byzantine Lands,
Chapter Three Christian Rivalry in the Levant and the Caucasus,
Chapter Four The Churches of Medieval Africa,
Chapter Five The Church in Medieval Asia,
EPILOGUE,
Notes,
Bibliography,