Stories # 13

Recap

Roman empire was barely hanging on.

An emperor arose and reigned for 20 years which helped the empire.

Constantine came to power after, was converted, and Christianity became the religion of the state.

Councils, Nicea being one of them.

The Papacy began during this time.

Near the end of the Roman Empire, expansion to Europe began.

The Question we asked: Whose Kingdom are we serving?

Christian Middle Ages (A.D. 590-1517)

Gregory the Great (Died in 609 AD)

Brought more prestige and honor to the Papacy to bring unity to the Church in a time of constant change due to the Roman Empire’s fall. As a matter of fact, almost the only major organized civilization in the West to do so was the Roman Church.

He taught that a spiritual leader’s inner life should not be neglected.

Search For Unity

Charles the Great (Charlemagne 768 AD)

3 Main Goals

Military Power to crush his enemies

Religious Power to direct his people’s souls

Intellectual Power to instruct both souls and minds

His success in these areas made Europe-the new political order-nominally Christian, for better or for worse, for a thousand years!

In medieval theory church and state were but two aspects of Christendom; the one representing Christian society organized to secure spiritual blessings, the other the same society united to safeguard justice and human welfare. Theoretically church and state were in harmonious interplay, each aiming to secure the good of mankind.

In fact, however, the pope and emperor were contestants. The ever-present question was, should the church rule the state, or the state control the church?

After Charlemagne

Feudalism was the prevailing political structure of the day

Feudalism was a type of government in which political power was exercised locally by private individuals rather than by the agents of a centralized state.

This caused tension for the church and church leaders who saw the Pope as God’s anointed shepherd of their people, it was hard to submit to local authorities when they had once submitted to a larger empire whose government was Christian.

Shelley, B. L. (1995). Church history in plain language (Updated 2nd ed., p. 177). Dallas, TX: Word Pub.

The Church did seek better behavior in their feudal authorities, though, and this was positive.

Only after the German king Otto the Great revived the Roman Empire in the West in 962, was some sense of unity restored for the political powers, instead of Feudalism. With the renewal of the empire, however, came the old rivalry between church and state.

The church was ill-prepared to challenge kings and emperors; it needed to set its own house in spiritual order. This began with a far-reaching revival within the reformed Benedictine order of Cluny, founded in 910.

The ultimate goal of the Cluniac reformers was to free the entire church from secular control and subject it to papal authority. Some 300 Cluniac houses were freed from lay control, and in 1059 the papacy itself was removed from secular interference by the creation of the College of Cardinals, which henceforth elected the popes.

What can Christians hope for in human society? If God’s will were done on earth as it is in heaven, what would earth look like? Believers in every age have asked that question, but no age has reached for the stars quite like the so-called High Middle Ages.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the papacy led an admirable attempt to constitute a perfect society on earth. The church achieved an incomparable power and majesty.

Church History in Plain Language The Decline into Feudalism

Under his weak successors the empire disintegrated amid the confusion of civil wars and devastating new invasions. When Vikings began sweeping out of the Northland, people increasingly surrendered both their lands and their persons to the many counts, dukes, and other local lords in return for protection. These disintegrating conditions presented a new challenge to the church and to the unity of Europe. We call it feudalism.

Feudalism was a type of government in which political power was exercised locally by private individuals rather than by the agents of a centralized state.

Church History in Plain Language The Decline into Feudalism

Since the church was so much a part of medieval life, it could not escape inclusion in the feudal system. The unsettled conditions caused by new invaders—Vikings from the north and Magyars from Asia—forced church officials to enter into close relations with the only power able to offer them protection: the feudal barons in France and the kings in Germany.

Church History in Plain Language The Decline into Feudalism

This loyalty to higher lords created unusual conflicts for those bishops who looked to the pope as God’s appointed shepherd of the church.

Church History in Plain Language The Decline into Feudalism

On the positive side, however, the church in time sought to influence for the better the behavior of the feudal barons. In addition to attempting to add Christian virtues to the code of knightly conduct called chivalry, the church tried to impose limitations on feudal warfare.

Church History in Plain Language The Decline into Feudalism

Only after the German king Otto the Great revived the Roman Empire in the West in 962, was some sense of unity restored. With the renewal of the empire, however, came the old rivalry between church and state.

Church History in Plain Language Setting in order the House of God

The church was ill-prepared to challenge kings and emperors; it needed to set its own house in spiritual order. This began with a far-reaching revival within the reformed Benedictine order of Cluny, founded in 910.

Church History in Plain Language Setting in order the House of God

The ultimate goal of the Cluniac reformers was to free the entire church from secular control and subject it to papal authority. Some 300 Cluniac houses were freed from lay control, and in 1059 the papacy itself was removed from secular interference by the creation of the College of Cardinals, which henceforth elected the popes.

Church History in Plain Language 19. Lifted in a Mystic Manner

What can Christians hope for in human society? If God’s will were done on earth as it is in heaven, what would earth look like? Believers in every age have asked that question, but no age has reached for the stars quite like the so-called High Middle Ages.

Church History in Plain Language Thy Kingdom Come

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the papacy led an admirable attempt to constitute a perfect society on earth. The church achieved an incomparable power and majesty. Like the Gothic cathedral the medieval church shot upward into the heavens, calling all below it to the glory of God. But like the cathedrals, the papacy reached for the impossible and first cracked, then, in time, crumbled to earth.

The Papacy and Crusades

The power of the Papacy; the wild cards against corrupt governments:

Threat of Excommunication: While under Excommunication, persons could not act as judge, juror, witness, or attorney. They could not be guardians, executors, or parties to contract. After death they recieved no Christian burial, and if, by chance, they were buried in consecrated ground, the church had their bodies disinterred and destroyed.

The second weapon was the interdict. While excommunication was aimed at individuals, the interdict fell upon whole nations. The church basically withdrew from the region.

The soaring dreams-and delusions- of the papacy during this period appear preeminently in the crusades and in Scholasticism. In one the pope claimed power over the holy cause in history; in the other he maintained authority over the souls of men even in eternity.

Scholasticism

The church became the center for higher education. All that thinking put the Papacy on a pedestal and gave it great prestige and put it at the top of the spiritual food chain.

It changed everyone’s perspective and gave great power to the church.

Scholasticism

The Crusades

Islam;

Muhammed (570 AD), at 40 he started going into a cave for daily contemplation and meditation. Here he said he had seen an angel who ordered him to recite, and from that came the Koran.

Muhammed gained a following and from that movement many cities fell to Islam militarily (Jerusalem, Damascus, and Cairo)

After Muhammed’s death a struggle for power ensued.

Now, in the age of cathedrals, crusades came from western Europe to take the Holy Land back from Islam. This only happened because an extremist Islam group persecuted those on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

For seven centuries Christians have tried to forget the crusades, but neither Jew nor Muslim will allow them to do so. In our liberated generation it is easy to dismiss the whole bloody affair as insane religious bigotry, forgetting the context in which it occurred.

But the crusaders were human beings, so their motives, like our own, were mixed and often in conflict.

There were 7 Crusades in all.

The first was the most effective. Recapturing Jerusalem.

They didn’t keep it.

The ones that followed caused a furthering of the rift between the Western and Eastern churches

The Results of the Crusades

Not Impressive

If the goals of the crusades were to win the Holy Land, check the advance of Islam, and heal the rift between the churches, it failed miserably.

Splendor was added to the office of the Papacy

The New International Version Chapter 18

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

~

Church History in Plain Language Results of the Holy Cause

But like the Gothic architects who built their cathedrals higher and higher until the towers cracked and then crashed to earth, the popes tried the impossible. Christian Europe had no need for Syria or Jerusalem. She took them in a fit of enthusiasm and had no power to retain them. When trade and towns turned rulers and people to new interests at home, the popes remained faithful to the old ideal, Christian control of the Holy Land. It was their constant preoccupation.

Unfortunately the popes never held two basic truths that we must never forget: Christianity’s highest satisfactions are not guaranteed by possession of special places, and the sword is never God’s way to extend Christ’s church. This fault assured the religious collapse of the whole structure.

What do you need to give up in order to bring the kingdom of God to corner of the world?