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Quote: “Our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words.”
Peter Abelard (1079 – 1142) was a freethinker by twelfth-century standards, not bound by the wisdom of archbishops or saints. He challenged philosophers and theologians, including Anselm and his theory of the atonement. Christ’s death, he insisted, revealed his infinite love more than anything else. Abelard’s views on the atonement are as controversial today as they were in his day.
Abelard combined philosophy and theology and turned Anselm’s motto — “I believe in order to understand” — upside-down. In his volume Sic et Non (Yes and No), he set forth his guiding principle: “The first key to wisdom is the constant and frequent questioning. . . . For by doubting we are led to question, and by questioning we arrive at the truth.”
From his youth, Abelard had been an inquisitive student. He debated the best teachers of the day, turning academic rivalry into a sport. From rhetoric and debate Abelard moved on to theology. Soon he was challenging and besting his theology professor, and his reputation soared even higher. The peak of his teaching career came in his late thirties, at the Cathedral School of Notre Dame. His future looked to be brilliant — but for Heloise.
Canon Fulbert, uncle and guardian of Heloise, was Abelard’s superior at Notre Dame. He may have set aside his own better judgment when placing the sparkling teenager under the tutorship of the handsome teacher. Abelard conceded that he had more than dialectical discourses in mind. “I . . . decided she was the one to bring to my bed, confident that I should have an easy success.”
Taking advantage of her eagerness to learn, he laid his snare. Heloise resisted, but Abelard was not easily dissuaded. “Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love,” Abelard later confided. Heloise soon discovered she was pregnant. Fulbert was outraged not only by her pregnancy but also by Abelard’s dismissive response of putting Heloise in a convent while he carried on with his successful academic career. Though both sides tried to resolve the situation, it eventually exploded, ending in Abelard’s castration at the hands of Fulbert and his friends.
Abelard recovered from his terrible wounds, later reasoning that what happened was God’s means of setting him aside as a monk at the Abbey of Saint Denis. For Heloise, God’s mercy was not nearly so evident. Although she became a highly acclaimed abbess in her own convent, the Paraclete, she couldn’t deny her love for Abelard and never fully came to terms with their separation.
Frustrated with his monastery’s worldliness, Abelard tried to live as a hermit, but, constantly interrupted by eager students, he continued to teach, using philosophy as bait to interest students in theology — “true philosophy.” His popularity exacerbated the fury of his enemies, who charged him with heresy and incarcerated him at a monastery in Soissons.
On release he retreated to a remote area, but again he was inundated with students. Fearing persecution from church authorities, he fled to another monastery. But he couldn’t escape the clutches of critics — the most vitriolic being Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading reformer of Cistercian monasticism. Bernard was angered by Abelard’s explanation of Christ’s atonement and persuaded the pope to summon Abelard to appear at the Council of Sens in 1141, where his teachings were condemned. On his way to Rome to petition the pope, he was taken ill and died soon afterward. His body was interred on the grounds of the Paraclete abbey, where the grave was tenderly watched over by the abbess, Heloise. Some two decades later she was buried beside him.
The grave was not the end of Abelard, however. Although his writings had been condemned by the church, there was no going back on his “liberal” methodology. He, more than anyone else, introduced questioning and doubting of the sources — even the church fathers, who had been presumed authoritative.
Abelard’s nemesis, Bernard of Clairvaux, desperately sought to hold the conservative line, ridiculing this new method as stultilogia (stupidology) but the current was too strong. Abelard’s ideas would win the day in academia, while Bernard would go on to become a saint.
As one of the early proponents of scholasticism, Anselm (1033 – 1109) exemplifies the theological mindset of the eleventh century. Even as he develops his philosophical approach, he does not challenge the given wisdom of the age. His monastic theology grows out of his spiritual underpinnings: “I believe in order to understand” is his motto, and his best-known philosophical writing — his ontological proof for God — is presented as a prayer.
Born into landed nobility, Anselm is encouraged by his mother to become a monk at a nearby monastery — a calling delayed until he is twenty-seven because of his father’s objections. Anselm blossoms at the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy, under the scholarly leadership of Lanfranc. At thirty he is selected to succeed Lanfranc, who transfers to another monastery.
The emotional bonds formed amid monastic living are often closer than family ties. In a letter written in his mid-forties, Anselm reveals pain comparable to that of a spouse forsaken by the other:
Brother Anselm to Dom Gilbert, brother, friend, beloved lover . . . sweet to me, sweetest friend, are the gifts of your sweetness, but they cannot begin to console my desolate heart for its want of your love. . . . But you have gained from our very separation the company of someone else, whom you love no less — or even more — than me; while I have lost you, and there is no one to take your place.
Despite such pain — or perhaps because of it — Anselm focuses his attention on God and on spiritual exercises and rigorous asceticism, writing devotions and prayers and songs. For him, meditation and prayer open minds to an understanding of God. His poetry captures visual images of God:
Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you:
You are gentle with us as a mother with her children;
Often you weep over our sins and our pride:
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.
You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds:
in sickness you nurse us,
and with pure milk you feed us.
The most difficult problem Anselm tackles is Does God exist? His ontological argument for the existence of God is still discussed today by theologians and philosophers. God’s nonexistence is inconceivable, he argues; therefore, God exists. One cannot speak of God and then claim he does not exist. But his “proof,” according to critics, is tangled in circuitous arguments. Almost immediately another theologian writes a response, and Aquinas likewise rejects Anselm’s argument, as do many philosophers of the Enlightenment and since. But his proof has had an astoundingly long shelf life, and a history of philosophy textbook would not be complete without it.
In 1092 Anselm journeys to England, is named a bishop, and later is appointed archbishop of Canterbury. After a clash with King William Rufus, Anselm is exiled. His exile allows him time to complete his writing on the atonement that is still widely referenced today. In Cur Deus Homo (Why a God-Man?), he argues that there is a rational explanation for the incarnation directly tied to Christ’s death on the cross. He asks why it was necessary for God to send his son to die for sin. He answers that sin robs God of his honor, and for God’s honor to be preserved there must be either satisfaction or punishment. Satisfaction for sin requires far more than an individual can render. But man’s sin must be satisfied by a man. Thus, in the incarnation God-man offered satisfaction for man’s sin.
Protestant Reformers draw on Anselm in explaining the atonement, although John Calvin emphasizes God’s holiness and justice over his honor. Of all the theories put forward, the one that draws the most attention is set forth by a young upstart more than forty years Anselm’s junior, Peter Abelard, who comes of age just as Anselm is finalizing his atonement theory.
After the death of King Rufus, Anselm returns to his post as archbishop. But the new king creates even more problems for him. Once again he journeys to Rome and is vindicated by the pope. Considered a saintly man in his lifetime, Anselm is still honored as a saint by both Catholics and Anglicans today.
That a woman would sit in the papal throne is not so inconceivable in light of the fact that some popes in this era were unordained teenagers. Furthermore, women often held an honored place in the church, sometimes, like Lioba, overseeing large monastic complexes.
John Anglicus was reportedly an English scientist who relocated in Rome and gained a reputation for erudite scholarship. His status and renown paved the way for church office. Indeed, the scientist soon became a cardinal and, with the death of Pope Leo IV, was elevated to the papacy in 853. All went well until one day, while in procession to the Lateran from St. Peter’s Basilica, the carriage was forced to make a quick stop while the pope gave birth to a baby “in a narrow lane between the Coliseum and St Clement’s church.” One of the earlier sources tells the story with a slightly different slant. She “disguised herself as a man and became, by her character and talents, a curial secretary, then a cardinal, and finally pope. One day, while mounting a horse, she gave birth to a child.”
Following the birth, the narrative is muddled. Pope John VIII, who was actually Pope Joan, reigned for less than three years. But when she was found to be disguising herself as a man, there was no mercy. By one account she was tied by the feet and dragged over the cobblestones while citizens of Rome stone her to death. She was then buried at the very spot where she gave birth – the whereabouts of the baby unknown. She was not “placed on the list of the holy pontiffs, both because of her female sex and on account of the foulness of the matter.” Another version suggests a more humane post-partum ending. She was secreted away to an undisclosed convent, where she repented and raised her son, who grew up to become bishop of Ostia.
From the thirteenth century into the Renaissance, the report of Pappess Joanna was widely disseminated – in one instance to defend a pope who was a heretic. If being a woman does not disqualify one from being pope, so the argument went, why should heresy? Although the church officially denied the account, the rumors persisted – one asserting that for a time there was a statue near the Lateran called “The Woman Pope with Her Child.” Likewise, the church was rumored to be so nervous about the possibility of electing another woman pope that the chair used for the papal consecration was designed with a hole so that an inspector can verify gender with certainty. Sixteenth-century Reformers used the story to disparage the church. Since that time the account of the female pope has continued to resurface, but it is generally considered to be no more than a fascinating, albeit false, story.
Like military leaders before him, Charlemagne (742 – 814) was a ruthless warrior bent on expanding his vast domains. Yet by all accounts he was a religious man who promoted and funded monasteries. The oldest son of Pippin III and grandson of Charles Martel, Charlemagne grew up in a military family that controlled a large portion of what is today Switzerland and France. His mother, Bertha, a daughter of royalty, brought prestige and lands to the marriage.
Little is known of his childhood but, according to his earliest biographer, his physical presence as an adult was unmistakable: “He was six feet four inches tall, and built to scale. He had beautiful white hair, animated eyes, a powerful nose . . . always stately and dignified.” Disciplined in eating and drinking, his mealtime entertainment was not the usual fare of court jesters. Rather, an aide read aloud the best literature of the day. He was conversant in other languages, believing that “to have another language is to possess a second soul.”
On his father’s death in 668, when Charles is in his mid-twenties, he and his brother Carolman become co-heirs to the vast kingdom. When Carolman dies three years later, Charles becomes sole king of the Franks. His mother arranges a marriage with Desiderata, daughter of the king of the Lombards, for obvious political gain, but the marriage is annulled the following year. Charles then marries thirteen-year-old Hildegard, a duke’s daughter. She bears him nine children, several of whom grow up to be their father’s land-grabbing warriors. With Desiderata out of the way, Charles conquers the Lombards in northern Italy. From there he pushes the borders of his kingdom into what is today Spain, Hungary, and Germany. Ruthless as a commander, he reportedly executes more than four thousand Saxon prisoners in a single day.
Though Charles holds back invading Muslims, expansion is his forte, often through relatively peaceful means with little dismantling of local culture. Indeed, surrendering to his forces has positive effects. With a unified administration, local wars diminish, and commerce, farming, and education are vastly improved.
The turning point in Charlemagne’s reign comes in 800. A year earlier Pope Leo III had appealed for protection. Having risen up through the ranks from the lower classes, Leo is scorned by Roman aristocrats and fears for his life. Charles uses the opportunity to boost his own standing. He comes to Saint Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Day 800 to pray, and there the pope crowns him Holy Roman Emperor. Labeled “Charlemagne’s Pope,” Leo reigns until he dies in 816. Yet he stands his ground against the emperor on some matters, particularly when Charlemagne, motivated by expansionist aims, seeks to change the Nicene Creed by adding the filioque (“and the son”), a move considered heretical by the Eastern Church.
With wars yet to wage, Charlemagne reforms the realms already under his rule. Inaugurating the “Carolingian Renaissance,” he courts scholars and encourages education across the empire. His court at Aachen becomes an impressive cultural and educational center. He creates a university town, drawing talent from all social levels and fostering a wide range of academic disciplines. Music, art, architecture, roads, bridges, and thermal baths add to the city’s prestige.
But to the end of his life, Charlemagne the warrior is sending troops into battle, sometimes leading the charge himself. In 811, as he marches his men north to attack King Godefrid and his Norse army, he learns that the king has been murdered. The seventy-year-old Charlemagne turns back. It would be his last campaign. He dies in 814 with his son, Louis the Pious, succeeding him. His long reign of forty-seven years can be summed up in his own terms: “By the sword and the cross.” Most of his subjects had known no other ruler. A monk penned lines that spoke for many:
From the lands where the sun rises to western shores, People are crying and wailing . . . stung with mourning and great worry . . . the young and old, glorious nobles, all lament the loss of their Caesar. . . . The world laments the death of Charles.
Quote: “I know my own soul, how feeble and puny it is: I know the magnitude of this ministry, and the great difficulty of the work; for more stormy billows vex the soul of the priest than the gales which disturb the sea.”
John Chrysostom (c. 347 – 407) is a bishop of Constantinople and known for eloquence in preaching — hence, his name Chrysostom, meaning “golden mouth.” So captivating are his words that his congregation is sometimes moved to tears. On other occasions they applaud and stomp their feet, a response he finds utterly out of place in a worship service. In fact, he is so disturbed that he devotes one sermon to proper worship conduct. So moved are the people that they give him rousing approval with their hands and feet.
Born in Antioch, John is raised by his widowed mother, Anthusa, who arranges for his education with Libanius, one of the most renowned teachers of rhetoric in the ancient world — and a pagan. On his deathbed, Libanius confides to a friend that John would naturally have been his successor “if the Christians had not taken him from us.”
Initially living as a hermit, John denies himself sleep and stands most of the day and night reading and memorizing Scripture. After two years and in ill health, he returns to Antioch, where he is ordained a deacon and then a priest. In this capacity he develops his rhetorical skills. His sermons reveal a wide range of perspectives, from deep theological and spiritual insights to outright anti-Semitism and spiteful notions about women.
In the meantime he preaches thousands of sermons based on a literal rather than an allegorical interpretation of Scripture. His application is often pointed. He asks his wealthy parishioners if they believe they honor Christ, saying, “Do not imagine you are doing so when you show up at worship in your finest attire, bowing before an ornate altar, while you neglect the poor all around you.” He also preaches on childrearing, instructing parents not to parade their boys around in “fine raiment and golden ornaments.” Rather, funds should support a “strict tutor.”
The home is to be ordered with husbands and wives fulfilling their assigned roles, though the husband, in Chrysostom’s construct, is not head of the home.
To woman is assigned the presidency of the household. . . . She cannot express her opinion in a legislative assembly, but she can express it at home, and often she is more shrewd about household matters than her husband . . . and frees him from all such household concerns . . . about money.
With so much freedom for women, John might appear to be a fourth-century feminist, but he is not. He restricts women in church leadership because “the woman taught the man once, and made him guilty of disobedience, and wrought our ruin.” But he is inconsistent. In reference to Junia, in Romans 16, he writes, “Think how great the devotion of this woman must have been, that she should be worthy to be called an apostle!” Yet again, he suggests that men would be better served by being taught by lower forms of animals than by women.
Women, however, fare much better in John’s sermonizing than do Jews. His harshest attacks against Jews come in 386 while serving as a presbyter in Antioch. Christians are freely participating in Jewish holidays and rituals, which John regards as “Judaizing. ” He preaches eight sermons timed to correspond with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Here he rails that the synagogue is no better than a theater or brothel. And worse: “The Jews have degenerated to the level of dogs. They are drunkards and gluttons. They beat their servants. They are ignorant of God. Their festivals are worthless. . . . [They are] the Christ killers” — words used by Christians (and Nazis) to persecute Jews in later generations.
In many ways, John is an equal-opportunity slanderer. His attacks reach the inner sanctums of power where Empress Eudoxia reigns in extravagant luxury. When a silver statue is erected in her honor within sight of his cathedral, he explodes. “Again Herodias raves, again she is troubled; she dances again; and again desires to receive John’s head in a charger.” He is banished a second and final time and dies in exile.
The Cappadocian Fathers, as they later came to be known, were brothers Basil and Gregory and Gregory Nazianzen, all from Cappadocia, a region in central Turkey. Recognized for their monastic leadership, they were also astute theologians. The term Cappadocians , however, is more fitting than Cappadocian Fathers because it captures three generations of a family, both women and men. The grandmother of Basil and Gregory was Macrina the Elder, who fled persecution only to be left widowed and impoverished. Yet she ministered to those who were even more needy and was canonized as the patron saint of widows.
One of Macrina’s sons was Basil (the elder), who had nine children, five of whom were designated as saints. Macrina (the younger) (324 – 379), named for her grandmother, was the older sister who had a profound influence on her siblings as well as on her mother.
Macrina the Younger had chosen a life of asceticism after her fiancé died, and she treated her servants as sisters and equals. She later joined with Basil to form a convent in conjunction with his monastery. The most celebrated of the Cappadocians, he is recognized as Basil the Great (329 – 379), Father of Eastern Monasticism. Setting aside worldly aspirations and touring monasteries in Egypt, Basil returned to Cappadocia, where he established a monastery. His “Longer Rules” and “Shorter Rules” are still used today, and all monks in the Eastern church are Basilian monks. Basil viewed monastic life as one of service to those in need, setting the example by selling his family’s estate for famine relief and calling on other wealthy landholders to do likewise. He worked in the kitchen and dispersed provisions alongside ordinary monks, distributing food freely to any in need, regardless of ethnicity.
Basil had a flare for words and is remembered particularly for “The Six Days,” his series of nine sermons on creation that display the beauty of God’s natural wonders. In 370 he was named bishop of Caesarea, pitting him against Emperor Valens, an Arian. When he died in 379, the entire population of Caesarea – Christians, Jews, and pagans – is said to have followed his funeral cortege with weeping.
Basil’s younger brother Gregory of Nyssa (335 – 394) did not enter the monastery and may have been married to Theosebia, a much-heralded deaconess in the church at Nyssa, where Gregory served as bishop. His writing set the stage for the Eastern church’s focus on apophatic theology, which emphasizes that God is ultimately unknowable. While strongly defending the doctrine of the Trinity, he insisted that God is infinite and transcendent and thus beyond our understanding. The true way to God is through darkness.
Gregory Nazianzen (c. 325 – 389), the third of the Cappadocian Fathers, was a close associate and friend of Basil and Gregory of Nyssa. His mother was instrumental in converting her husband, Gregory, who subsequently became bishop of Nazianzus. Young Gregory accused his father of tyranny and left home, only to later return and work with his father in the church.
Gregory later gave away his wealth and entered a monastery. On his own deathbed, Basil, not a man to hold grudges, recommended his friend Gregory to a post as the leading theologian in Constantinople with the hope that he would defeat Arianism. As such, Gregory’s tenure in Constantinople was anything but peaceful. The city was deeply divided, but he began drawing crowds with his powerful preaching. His “Five Theological Orations,” defending the Trinity and the deity of Christ, were aimed at Arians.
Arian opponents stormed his church in 379 during the Easter vigil, killing one bishop and wounding Gregory. Matters improved when Theodosius ascended the throne and vowed to rid the East of Arians once and for all. Gregory was elected bishop of Constantinople to replace the Arian bishop dismissed by the emperor, but his problems were far from over. Accused of attaining his position illegally, he resigned: “Let me be as the Prophet Jonah! I was responsible for the storm. . . . Seize me and throw me.” The emperor accepted his resignation, and Gregory returned to Cappadocia where his ministry began.
Quote: “The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelief, that, late as it was, I might remember my faults and turn to the Lord my God with all my heart.”
Growing out of the ministry of Celtic monks in Britain is the work of an illustrious missionary to Ireland. Patrick (c. 389 – 461) is a much-celebrated saint, though his actual identity is shrouded in legend. Indeed, historians have for centuries wondered if there were actually two individuals (Pelladius and Patrick) melded into one. The first of these individuals is thought to have died in 461, and the second in 493. History is not always an exact science, and the story of St. Patrick is too good to be set aside for want of solid data. So Patrick and his double become one, and we recognize that hagiography and biography are often blended.
Patrick is born in Britain into a Celtic Christian family of clerics — his father a deacon and his grandfather a priest. Kidnapped by a band of Irish plunderers when still a youth, Patrick is sold into slavery. For six long years he herds swine and seeks God. During this time he is convinced that he hears the voice of God telling him that a ship is waiting to take him home. He escapes and journeys to a port where he works aboard ship for his passage home. Now a free man, he finds refuge in a monastery and then returns to his home. There God speaks in a vision:
I saw a man named Victoricus, coming as if from Ireland, with innumerable letters; and he gave me one of these, and . . . while I was reading out the beginning of the letter, I thought that at that very moment I heard the voice of those who were beside the wood of Focluth, near the western sea; and this is what they called out: “Please, holy boy, come and walk among us again.” Their cry pierced to my very heart, and I could read no more; and so I awoke.
For Patrick the vision is God’s call, but the clerics are not convinced. In spite of one delay after another, however, he finally arrives back in Ireland in 432, now past the age of forty. His mission field is isolated and hostile, beyond the borders of the empire. There are scattered Christian communities, but his encounters are primarily with pagans who have no desire to turn away from their traditional ways of worship. They revere the sun and wind and fire and rocks, a worldview that finds magic and spirits everywhere in nature. The druid priests mount strong opposition, but Patrick eventually prevails. He trumps their magic with magic (or miracles) of his own, causing some historians to wonder if Patrick might have been the mightiest druid of them all.
In the years that follow, Patrick impresses political leaders and makes alliances that promote church growth. Within fifteen years much of Ireland is reportedly evangelized. His missionary story features perilous journeys, life-threatening opposition, kidnapping, and captivity. After some thirty years of ministry, he laments: “I fear to lose the labor which I began” lest God “would note me as guilty.”
The evangelization of Ireland by Patrick and others is a venture conducted primarily by the Celtic church, as opposed to the Roman church. One of the most noted of the Celtic abbot-missionaries is Columba, who, with twelve clerics to serve under him, establishes his headquarters just off the coast of Scotland on Iona, a small barren, foggy island, battered year-round by pounding waves. Here he sets forth a monastic life of prayer, fasting, meditation, Bible study, manual labor, and training for evangelists who are then commissioned to preach, build churches, and establish more monasteries.
Although Gregory I is credited with initiating the conversion of Europe through missionary and military undertakings, the work of Patrick, Columba, and others is also an important piece of the puzzle. Indeed, this is an era when missionary ventures spurred by monastic expansion begin in earnest.
Quote: “It is doubtless impossible to cut off all abuses at once from rough hearts, just as a man who sets out to climb a high mountain does not advance by leaps and bounds, but goes upward step by step and pace by pace.”
Gregory (c. 540 – 604) descended from Roman nobility and was himself a propertied government administrator. But the church was in his blood. Three aunts were nuns, as was his widowed mother, Silvia, and his great-great-grandfather was Pope Felix III.
Wave after wave of barbarian armies have brought ruin to the region. His dream is to escape, though not to the monastery. “Late and long,” he recalls, “I put off the grace of conversion.” But in his mid-thirties he leaves behind his government post, donates his property to charity, and sets out to establish Benedictine monasteries. Later he becomes a cloistered monk himself. In 579 he is appointed papal ambassador to Constantinople, where he becomes embroiled in a theological controversy.
Gregory (at this time only a deacon) confronts Eutychius, the patriarch of the city, who argues against the bodily resurrection of believers, while Gregory insists that just as Christ’s physical body was raised from the dead so also would the bodies of his followers be raised. Eutychius’ treatise is condemned and burned. Gregory returns to Rome to serve as abbot of St. Andrew’s monastery before he is elevated to the papacy in 590. For nearly a century the church has not demonstrated strong leadership in the West, but Gregory quickly consolidates his power. A self-described “servant of the servants of God,” he defends his absolute authority over the church.
During his fourteen-year reign as pope, Gregory serves virtually as head of state during wartime, overseeing welfare for refugees and others displaced by hostilities. But he is primarily a preacher who speaks with urgency, convinced that he is living in the end times. At the same time, he seeks to bring solemnity to public worship, establishing a training school for church musicians. The hauntingly beautiful Gregorian chants date to this period, as do standard liturgies of scripture readings and prayers for each Sunday of the year.
Pastoral care is also one of his passions. He writes Liber Regulae Pastoralis (Book of Pastoral Rule) in response to questions on the topic, using the symbols wine and oil offered by the Good Samaritan to denote the balance between discipline and compassion.
Gregory also plays a major role in theological matters, particularly in advancing the concept of purgatory, with its corresponding merit of the saints, particularly those who were miracle workers. His Dialogues, filled with miracle stories, ranks high as popular devotional literature for more than a thousand years. One story that Gregory reports in his Dialogues goes to the heart of his belief in purgatory. Justus, a monk at his monastery who has earlier stowed away money, dies repentant of this sin. However, Gregory, concerned for his soul, offers a month of Masses for him. On the thirtieth day, a visionary Justus appears to another monk, announcing that he has been freed from the flames of purgatory. These thirty Masses are believed to be so effective that the practice — known as “Gregorian Masses” — continues for centuries, particularly in Benedictine monasteries.
Even as barbarians plunder Italy and neighboring regions, Gregory is setting the stage for medieval missionary outreach. In 596 he commissions Augustine, the prior of St. Anthony in Rome, and forty monks to serve as missionaries in Britain. It is a dangerous mission, and before they arrive at the destination Augustine has second thoughts and turns back to Rome. But when word reaches Gregory, he orders them to turn around and carry on with their journey. On Christmas 597, soon after they arrive, Augustine baptizes ten thousand people. The mass baptism, remembered as the “Miracle of Canterbury,” paves the way for the reestablishment of the church in that region. Gregory’s concern for this mission venture is evident:
The heathen temples of these people need not be destroyed, only the idols which are to be found in them. . . . If the temples are well-built, it is a good idea to detach them from the service of the devil, and to adapt them for the worship of the true God.
Gregory later promotes Augustine to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine dies in 604, just months after the death of Gregory. Their combined efforts leave the church in this region on a solid foundation.
Born into an aristocratic family ten years before the sack of Rome, Leo (c. 400 – 461) is singled out by the emperor to serve as a diplomatic envoy in settling a dispute in Gaul. While he is away, the bishop of Rome dies, and Leo is unanimously elected to fill the post. He secures power, insisting that popes are in a direct line of succession from the apostles and that anyone who rejected papal authority was not within the “body of Christ.” He consolidates this authority by moving against heretics, particularly Pelagians and Manicheans.
Leo, in the judgment of many historians, is the first real pope. Not always specifying the head of the church, the term pope was used for bishops and as a broad term of respect for church officials. True papal supremacy is not clearly defined until the reign of Leo, coming to full bloom under Gregory I.
Leo’s rule was theological as well as political. In 448, Leo receives a letter from Eutyches, an abbot in a monastery near Constantinople. Eutyches writes of the influence of the Nestorian heresy, but then he himself comes under fire for allegedly subscribing to the same heresy and is excommunicated by Bishop Flavian. He asks Leo to reinstate him, and when Leo fails to act, he is absolved in a “robber council,” an action that is perceived to be a threat to papal power and is promptly annulled by Leo.
In 449 Leo writes a letter to Bishop Flavian. This “Tome of Leo” becomes a key document as the church continues to define orthodoxy at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Here Leo’s definition of the two natures of Christ is deemed the orthodox position. He accuses Eutyches of seeking to “dissolve Jesus” in his endeavor “to separate the human nature from him, and to make void by shameless inventions that mystery by which alone we have been saved.” Leo charges Eutyches with thinking “the Lord’s crucifixion to be unreal.”
Eutyches, seventy years old and the head of a monastery of some three hundred monks, refuses to appear before Bishop Flavian, convinced that the deck is stacked against him. When he finally does appear and is questioned, he waffles on precisely what he is willing to confess. But the statement he makes leaves no doubt among the supporters of Leo that he is a heretic. “I confess that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but after the union I confess one nature.”
Leo regards such a confession as blatant heresy, seeking to clarify the incarnation and the twofold nature of Christ with words that rise above dry dogma: “Without detriment therefore to the properties of either nature and substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality.”
Heresy is not the only matter weighing Leo down. Only a few years after the landmark Council of Chalcedon, he faces a desperate situation in Rome; barbarians again threaten to sack the city. Attila, nicknamed “the scourge of God,” is making his way to Rome. One early account serves to establish Leo as “the Great” for the centuries that follow. According to the anonymous author, Attila “came into Italy, inflamed with fury . . . He was utterly cruel in inflicting torture, greedy in plundering, insolent in abuse.” Leo stands strong, approaching Attila and saying, “We pray for mercy and deliverance. O Attila, thou king of kings . . . the people have felt thy scourge; now as suppliants they would feel thy mercy.” This account records the appearance of Peter and Paul, who “threatened Attila with death if he did not obey the pope’s command. Wherefore Attila . . . straightway promised a lasting peace and withdrew beyond the Danube.”
That Leo served both as head of state and chief diplomat demonstrated the weakness of Imperial Rome since the events of 410. But his talking down Attila surely did not signal the end of the invasions of the city. Some years later, Vandal marauders moving northward from Africa pillaged the city despite Leo’s pleas. For the next years, until his death in 461, he took charge of cleanup and restoration as well as ministering to those who had been taken captive to Africa.
Quote: “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.” (Augustine, Confessions)
Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) is one of the giants of church history. In the fifteen-hundred-year span between the apostle Paul and Martin Luther, no one looms larger in the minds of most Protestants. With the possible exception of Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, his influence as a theologian is unparalleled. And his memoir, Confessions, is given a place in literature as the first recorded memoir. Augustine was an African, and it is fitting that this man of such great stature is still read and debated today, when the African church, having come full circle, is again a center of vibrancy and scholarship.
As a sexually charged youth, Augustine finds himself in “the thorny branches of sex and temptation.” He also sows his wild oats for several years as an adherent of Manichaeism, a dualistic religion in which the spiritual realm is manifested in conflict between light and darkness, spirit and body. There is no good God who reigns supreme; individuals are essentially on their own, seeking knowledge to save themselves.
Manichaeism eventually proves to be intellectually unsatisfying for Augustine, who turns to skepticism and then to Neo-Platonism, a philosophy extolling truth, goodness, and beauty. This intellectual shift parallels a geographical move from Carthage to Rome. From Rome he moves to Milan, where his mother joins him and soon becomes enamored with Ambrose and influences her son to attend his sermons. All the while, Augustine is moving away from a philosophical worldview toward orthodox Christianity.
His “garden conversion” is the spiritual climax of his memoir. While weeping in a garden, Augustine overhears a child’s voice calling, “Take up and read.” Augustine takes this as a sign from God, and reaches for a manuscript of Paul. There his eyes fall on these words: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in concupiscence” ( Rom. 13:13 – 14).
“Instantly at the end of this sentence,” he writes, “by a light of serenity infused into my heart, all darkness of doubt fled away.” Biographers and historians have pointed out that this was a conversion to a celibate monastic life as much as a recommitment to the Christian faith of his heritage and that it had been some time in coming.
On Easter Sunday 387, Ambrose baptizes Augustine, who leaves behind his teaching position to immerse himself in Scripture. He then returns to Africa to live quietly in his hometown as a monk, but the locals recognize his capabilities and elect him to be their priest. Then, in 395, only eight years after his baptism, he is elected bishop of Hippo. Unlike many bishops of the era, he seeks to retain a monastic way of life while preaching several times a week and writing more than a thousand treatises in addition to extensive correspondence.
During the course of his bishopric, several controversies arise between Augustine and other sects. One of these is with the Donatists, a sect arising in the aftermath of the Great Persecution of Emperor Diocletian. When Imperial officials demand that Christians hand over the Scriptures under penalty of death, some Christians surrender their manuscripts and are considered traditors by the Donatists.
The Donatists regard denial of the faith to be the ultimate crime against the church and against God; traditors are no longer part of the church. If someone is baptized by a traditor bishop, that baptism is invalid. In defense of priests and bishops who had surrendered the Scriptures, Augustine argues that the sacrament is valid irrespective of the sinfulness of the priest who administers it. The grace of Christ is operative in the sacrament; thus the worthiness of the priest is irrelevant. Grace is conferred through the sacrament.
Augustine’s most bitter theological controversies involve Pelagius, a devout and stout British monk, who teaches that individuals are responsible for their sins, even as they are for their good deeds. That humans inherit original sin from Adam he deems patently false; whether one sins or not is a matter of self-control and free will rather than determinism. Augustine, emphasizing God’s sovereignty and election, counters that our sinful nature propels us to sin and that no one has the innate capability to do good.
Yet Augustine knows above all else that God is entangled with mystery. “Since it is God we are speaking of,” he cautions, “you do not understand it. If you could understand it, it would not be God.”
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