A christian blog with a decidedly biblical perspective on the world and events around us. Look around, read, enjoy and feel free to comment. Interesting story, send us the info via our contact page. Subscribe by clicking here.
Subscribe to RSS
Quote: “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”
The son of Pietro di Bernadone, a wealthy Italian fabric merchant, Francis of Assisi is one of seven children. Young Francis spends several years vacillating between the life of a troubadour, time in the military, and visions of God speaking to him.
In 1209, in his late twenties, he hears the voice of Go, saying: “Preach, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. Provide neither silver nor gold, nor brass in your purses.” This becomes his rule of life.
He discards his purse and shoes, dresses in rags, and feels guilty if he meets someone poorer than he. He lives with lepers, washing their puss-filled sores and kissing their fingerless hands and stubbed feet. His father and his friends think he has gone mad. Initially, he is a loner. But then a follower comes along, and by the end of the year, with ten more disciples, the “Lesser Brethren” beg from house to house, spending nights out of doors.
In Rome Francis seeks the papal blessing. Initially, Innocent III is insulted by his apparent show of disrespect, but, he later agrees to give provisional approval for a new religious order. Final sanction will come only after they have proven themselves worthy.
Poverty is not new to monasticism, but Francis gives it greater prominence, bringing new meaning to urban poverty. He embraces poverty rather than separating from it as hermits and monks had done. The inward emphasis on personal self-denial is turned upside-down with an outward focus on the poor and needy living on the margins of society.
Although having taken a vow of celibacy, he considers himself married to Lady Poverty, revering her as “the mistress and queen of the virtues.” Second only to Lady Poverty is his other love, Mother Nature. So close was Francis to nature that he preached sermons to those he regarded as his companions: “Brother birds,” he admonished, “you ought to love and praise your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flying, and all things that can be of use to you.” An environmentalist before his time, he asked the emperor enact laws to protect “our sisters, the birds.”
For Francis, however, life is far from idyllic. For many of the less-committed friars, the love for Lady Poverty quickly evaporates. They rebel against what they perceive to be an evil stepmother. Having been stirred by the personal charisma and emotion-charged sermons of Francis, they have second thoughts about being on the bottom rung of society. Other monks, they observe, live the good life. Supported by clerics, angry friars replace Francis with a new leader while he is away on a mission trip. It is the most dramatic coup in monastic history. He returns to find a wealthy cleric in charge of the very ministry he has founded. He might have rallied his dedicated followers and led them away and begin anew. But this, he reasons, is not the way of humility. He accepts the stunning reversal as God’s will. He tells his followers, “From henceforth I am dead for you. Here is brother Peter di Catana whom you and I will obey.” He then prostrates himself before his new superior and directs the friars to follow in submission. His heart is broken, but there is no other course of action for this most singular saint.
Despite this turn of events, Francis is widely regarded as a saint, and his death in 1228 only increases his stock as a holy man. After he dies, the vicar of the Franciscan order testifies to the miracle of the stigmata on the body of Francis. Church leaders from far and near, including Pope Gregory IX, bask in his popularity. In fact, the pope preaches at his funeral, lays the cornerstone for a church in his memory, and canonizes him as a saint.
Quote: “These visions weren’t fabricated by my own imagination, nor are they anyone else’s. I saw these when I was in the heavenly places. They are God’s mysteries. These are God’s secrets.”
A contemporary of Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) left behind a large portfolio of writings that sheds light on her inner thoughts as well as the world around her. The tenth child born into an aristocratic family, Hildegard grows up sickly and saintly. When she is a small girl she informs her nurse that a pregnant cow is carrying a white calf with colored spots on its head, back, and feet. For her accuracy she is given the calf as a pet. Soon after, she is sent away to study with the celebrated anchoress Jutta.
Like Jutta, Hildegard testifies to revelations and visions. On the death of Jutta, she assumes the leadership of the young women who have now joined together in community. In her early forties she testifies that God has given her the ability to comprehend the meaning of sacred texts and has commanded her to record the meaning given to her through visions. Seeking sanction as God’s mouthpiece, she contacts Bernard of Clairvaux. He passes her request on to the pope, who encourages her to continue transcribing her visions. She begins publishing her visions as Scivias (know the ways [of the Lord]), which soon becomes popular.
The revelations, according to Hildegard, do not come during a dream or a trance, “but watchful and intent in mind I received them according to the will of God.” She speaks with authority, yet when commanded by God to write down what she is seeing, she feels “wretched in my womanly condition” and an “unworthy servant”:
Self-doubt made me hesitate. I analyzed others’ opinions of my decision and sifted through my own bad opinions of myself… Then, when my good friends Richardis and Volmar urged me to write, I did. I started writing this book and received the strength to finish it, somehow, in ten years. These visions weren’t fabricated by my own imagination, nor are they anyone else’s. I saw these when I was in the heavenly places. They are God’s mysteries. These are God’s secrets. I wrote them down because a heavenly voice kept saying to me, “See and speak! Hear and write!”
Soon Hildegard relocates her nuns to the Rhine River in Bingen. Here her reputation flowers as she and her nuns write in a number of genres on a wide variety of topics, including plays, letters, music, and treatises on natural medicine. Throughout her ministry she criticizes corrupt clergy, warning people not to seek out priests for salvation, but to seek Christ and the Scriptures.
She also responds to more ordinary concerns as a Dear Abby of the day. She firmly counsels parents not to place children in convents without their consent. Nor is she prudish on the topic of sex, challenging the common belief that the woman is passive in the sex act. Indeed, the woman plays an active and manly role.
Along with visions are personal problems and struggles with demons. During Hildegard’s long service as an abbess, a young nun, Richardis von Stade, becomes her beloved personal assistant. Due in part to an unexplained falling out (of which Hildegard writes that they both have sinned), Richardis arranges to move to another convent where she will become abbess. Hildegard claims that God has told her Richardis should not go. To the archbishop she writes: “Your curses and your malicious and threatening words are not to be heeded.” To Richardis, after she has departed, Hildegard writes: “Why have you forsaken me like an orphan? I loved you for your noble bearing, your wisdom, your purity, your soul and all your life!” Hildegard relentlessly battles for her “daughter” to return, demanding such in a court of law. Richardis prevails, but the battle ends only at her death.
Unlike her cloistered sisters, Hildegard travels and preaches widely. In fact, despite her poor health, she conducts four preaching tours over a span of thirteen years, the final one completed during her seventy-fourth year. She visits monasteries and cathedrals, counseling and preaching to men more often than women. She corresponds with popes and bishops and heads of government as well as lesser clerics and laity. She also writes music and is now recognized as one of the great medieval composers.
Bernard of Clairvaux: Preaching Christ Most Excellently
Quote: “While I am in this life this more sublime philosophy will be mine — to know Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”
The most celebrated of the Cistercians monks and the leading reformer of the twelfth century, Bernard (1090 – 1153) was more than a monastic leader. He was a theologian, a papal confidant, a Crusader, and a hymn writer. Indeed, he was one of the few medieval Roman Catholics widely heralded by the Reformers. John Calvin regarded him as the premier proclaimer of truth in the centuries between Gregory the Great and the Reformation, and Martin Luther found him to be “superior to all the doctors in his sermons, even to Augustine himself, because he preaches Christ most excellently.”
Born in a French castle, Bernard turns away from wealth and prestige to become a Cistercian monk in his early twenties. Like his six brothers and a sister, he is influenced by the deep faith of their mother, Aletha. According to his earliest biographer she, with her husband, “governed the household in the fear of God, devoting herself to deeds of mercy and rearing her children in strict discipline. . . . not so much for the glory of her husband as for that of God; for all the sons became monks and the daughter a nun.”
Bernard’s decision to become a monk, according to his biographer, occurs suddenly. Riding one day through a dense forest, he comes upon a roadside chapel, goes in, and prays. ”From that hour . . . God had kindled [fire] in the heart of his servant.” Bernard then seeks out a Cistercian monastery, bringing thirty men with him. His early life of luxury is behind him, and three years later he is commissioned to take twelve monks and start a new community. They march northward through deep forests to a valley near the headwaters of the River Aube. Here he and his followers build the Abbey of Clairvaux.
For the next thirty-four years Bernard ministers in this region, preaching, praying, and reaching out to those in need in the surrounding areas. So compelling are his recruitment efforts that women reportedly warn their husbands and lovers and sons to stay away from his monastery because he has magical powers for turning men into monks. The story of his sister Humbelina — the one sibling who had refused to enter the cloister — sheds light on his power. She is married with children, but Bernard is not moved by her maternal instincts. When she turns away from his demands, he refuses to speak with her. Eventually he breaks her will, and she consents to leave her family and spend the rest of her life in seclusion.
A celebrated traveling wonderworker, Bernard leaves behind testimonies of healings — particularly of young boys suffering a variety of afflictions who then join his band of recruits. On one occasion thirty young men who are healed or witness a healing follow him back to the monastery. By the middle of the twelfth century the Abbey of Clairvaux has some seven hundred monks and seventy daughter houses under his strict discipline — all secluded cloisters. When a monk leaves for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Bernard appeals to the pope, demanding that the monk be returned lest he encourage others to leave.
Yet for all his insistence on curbing the travel and curiosity of his monks, Bernard abides by no such rule for himself. Engaged in the most critical debates of the era, he is tireless in his efforts to end a church schism in 1130, and he becomes the attack dog in the campaign against Abelard. With the same intensity, he promotes the Second Crusade, launched in 1145. Before he becomes involved, there is little excitement for another long march east. But then he aims his evangelistic arrows at those needed to liberate the Holy Land. “I opened my mouth,” he testifies, “and at once the Crusaders have multiplied to infinity.”
Bernard spends a year traveling from town to town, appealing for troops. But the early news of Crusader defeats dampens his spirits. Surely, he reasons, God must be punishing the sins of the Crusaders. In the end, the Islamic armies prevail, and Jerusalem is taken. Despite setbacks, his popularity is high, and he is canonized a saint in 1174, barely two decades after his death.
Quote: “Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.”
Regarded today as the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224 – 1274) was viewed with skepticism in his own day. Born of nobility in a castle situated south of Rome, he was educated at a local Benedictine school from age five. At sixteen he entered the University of Naples, planning to become a Dominican monk. Horrified, his family kidnapped him, tempted him with a prostitute, and called on the archbishop of Naples for support. But after more than a year of captivity, they realized that their efforts failed. His mother intervened and helped her strong-willed son to escape. Still a teenager, he joined the Dominicans.
His brilliant mind impressed his superiors, who arranged to have him study in Cologne with Albertus Magnus, the greatest Dominican scholar of the day. During this time the hulking youth acquired the nickname, “Dumb Ox,” but Albertus defended him, reportedly saying: “You call him ‘a dumb ox,’ but I declare before you that he will yet bellow so loud in doctrine that his voice will resound through the whole world.” His influence on Aquinas was profound, and when Albertus transferred to Paris, Aquinas accompanied him. After completing his studies in Paris, Aquinas returned to Cologne to teach and write.
After teaching at Cologne, Aquinas relocated to the University of Paris, where he continued to pursue his education and teaching. Beginning in 1260 and until his death in 1274, he traveled throughout Europe, preaching and teaching and consulting. He performed service for the pope and for the Dominican Order. Amid his other duties, he wrote obsessively, his works eventually filling some twenty large volumes. His magnum opus was Summa Theologica, the most comprehensive treatise on theology ever written, acclaimed more for its sheer volume and breadth than for its originality. Not venturing into uncharted terrain, Aquinas cited authorities and sought to harmonize contrasting views.
Christian scholars would later come to cite Thomas Aquinas as “the theologian” as easily as Aquinas cited Aristotle as “the philosopher.” More than presenting merely an objective encyclopedia of theological positions, Aquinas took a solid stance, and his work serves as a standard for correct doctrine. Because of his heavy dependence on Aristotle, Aquinas was strongly criticized after his death by other theologians, including William of Ockham and Duns Scotus, who recognized the inherent contradictions in revelation and reason.
Lofty matters of metaphysics comprise only a portion of Summa Theologica. Among down-to-earth matters included in his tome is a lengthy discussion of sex, specifically as it relates to sin. In discussing unnatural vice (masturbation, sodomy, and bestiality), Aquinas asks whether this is the greatest of such sins. His affirmative answer is not surprising in light of his marriage of theology and natural science. What is against nature is against God.
The range of topics that Aquinas addresses in his thousands of pages of writing is astounding. In fact, according to the testimony of one of his closest associates, he would sometimes dictate to three or four secretaries at a time on different subjects, from memory rather than from notes or manuscripts. When stumped on a particular theological conundrum, he would pause to go into deep meditation and prayer and then return to the topic with clarity.
Aquinas, who proved the existence of God with “Five Ways,” found God most real in a vision. He had experienced visions earlier in life, but a vision near the end of his life affected him so profoundly that he set aside his writing. His closest aide pleaded with him to take up his pen again. “I cannot,” he confided. “Such things have been revealed to me that what I have written seems but straw.” The vision has physical consequences as well, causing some to speculate that he may have had a stroke or a mental breakdown. Some time later he was injured while riding a donkey and died soon after.
Recognized as a great scholar during his lifetime, Aquinas continued to be revered after his death. In 1323 he was canonized a saint by Pope John XXII. Then in 1879 Pope Leo XIII declared that his writings represent official Catholic teaching, though not so authoritative as to be above challenge.
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.
An archbishop of Canterbury and the most popular saint of the High Middle Ages, Thomas Becket (1118 – 1170) is the reason for which People make pilgrimages to Canterbury – “the holy blisful martir for to seke.” Without this saint, who from the tomb heals all varieties of diseases, the wonderfully earthy poetry of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales would not have been written. Thomas Becket, murdered in the cathedral, is loved and hated as both saint and traitor.
Through family wealth, good connections and street smarts, Becket easily climbs the ladder of success. He begins his career as an aide to the archbishop of Canterbury. Later appointed archdeacon of Canterbury and eventually Lord Chancellor in service of King Henry II, he helps to maximize royal power over church office and land. But his tenure is not without tension. Taxing church property is unpopular among clerics whose incomes are diminished. As the king’s right-hand man, Becket is perceived as the archenemy of the church.
In 1162, to secure absolute authority over the church, Henry appoints Becket archbishop of Canterbury, a brilliant strategic stroke, he imagines. Becket is ordained a priest on Saturday and an archbishop on Sunday. However, unlike previous advancements, the promotion has a dramatic effect on Becket. Henry is no longer his superior – only God is. Suddenly, he becomes a servant leader. In championing the church rather than the state, he takes a page from desert asceticism. He sets aside his ornate clerical wardrobe, dons a hair shirt and rags, and takes on the diet of a beggar. He daily washes the feet of lepers, and to atone for his sins he lashes his back until his flesh is raw.
The king is not impressed. But there is more at stake than an archbishop flaunting his asceticism. Devoted to God and the church, Becket now opposes the king in matters of church property taxes and challenges church authority in general. He refuses to accede to the Constitutions of Clarendon that favor royal power. The tensions escalate to the point that Becket fears for his life. Though he flees to France in 1164, still his motives and activities are questioned by friend and foe alike. He is at odds with his own bishops, whom King Henry II manages to ingratiate, and his dealings with both papal and state authorities are tangled.
He attempts to convince the pope to excommunicate Henry and to place an interdict on England – suspending all worship services and sacraments. Under this threat, Henry seems to back down, promising Becket safe passage to England and restoration of his post as head of the English church.
On December 1, 1170, Becket, having spent some six years in exile, returns to a Palm-Sunday style entry: people line the roads, throwing their cloaks before him and hailing him. But Becket’s enemies among clerics and court officials are numerous – and for good reason. He adamantly refuses to back down on his demand for independent power for the church. And more than that, he excommunicates all those who sided with the king. Henry is enraged. From his sickbed he moans a message, which his closest aides understood as, Who will rid me of that troublesome priest?
Before dawn on his fatal last day, Becket arises, officiates at the Mass, and confesses his sins. There is a sense of foreboding as he warns those close to him to flee. In the late, cold afternoon of December 29, 1170, four knights enter the cathedral during the vesper service and attack Becket as he is proceeding to the high altar. It is a grisly scene. According to an eyewitness, “The crown of his head was separated from the head in such a way that the blood, white with brain, and the brain no less red from the blood, dyed the floor of the cathedral.”
Within minutes Becket has become the greatest martyr the English church had ever known. Nearly four hundred years after his death, during the reign of Henry VIII, Becket is charged with treason. His tomb is plundered and pilgrimages and festivals are outlawed. But not even Henry VIII could erase the devotion in the people’s hearts. Even today he is revered as a martyred saint by both Catholics and Anglicans.
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.
viagra and hearing loss Ed Treatment Natural Female use of viagra female version of viagra 761.
erectile dysfunction vacuums Cialis Dysfunction Erectile Levitra how to get viagra
herbal remedy for erectile dysfunction; Erectile Dysfunction Psychological Zocor erectile dysfunction zoloft erectile dysfunction 147.
robin williams viagra Viagra Spray "explore advances in male impotence treatments"
viagra perscription online Natural Remedy Erectile Dysfunction male hormone dhea impotence levels
will ferrell erectile dysfunction Viagra Perscription Online ed treatment with ginko
erectile dysfunction pills evaluated; On Viagra "non prescription viagra"
cialis viagra How To Buy Viagramale impotence age
Cigarette smoking and erectile dysfunction cigarette smoking causing male impotence 395. Impotence Viagra The latest treatment for ed topical ed treatment 237.
most effective ed treatment! Viagra 50 Mg actos erectile dysfunction
l dopa for male impotence! Buy Cheap Viagra erectile dysfunction and pravastatin;
male impotence pumps vacu Holistic Ed Treatment cost of viagra
female forcing male sexual impotence; Male Impotence Brochure actos erectile dysfunction
accounting treatment for sr ed Water Ed Treatment Male impotence due to surgery male impotence enema 629.
lamictal erectile dysfunction! Accounting Treatment Sr Ed Ias "buy viagra online"
problems with viagra, Viagra Cheap erectile dysfunction link suggest
"non prescription viagra" Viagra Uk viagra times;
viagra soft tabs? Ed Treatments erectile dysfunction ed treatment
u 3312 viagra cialis Male Impotence Advice yohimbie bark and male impotence
facts male impotence psychological effects
lexapro erectile dysfunction,
erectile dysfunction paypal, Zetia And Erectile Dysfunction straighttalk net erectile dysfunction review
male impotence and solutions? Make Your Own Viagra newest transdermal treatment for ed
tricor erectile dysfunction Hebal Ed Treatmenterectile dysfunction exercise
Viagra and alternatives viagra and blood pressure 767. How To Make Viagra how to take viagra
cialis medication erectile dysfunction Erectile Dysfunction Pills accupril and erectile dysfunction
Subscribe to RSS
