An introduction to the history of Christianity, A.D. 590-1314

Introduction To The History

OF CHRISTIANITY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd.

TORONTO

AN INTRODUCTION

TO THE

HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

BY

F. J. FOAKES JACKSON

FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND PROFESSOR OF

CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS IN UNION THEOLOGICAL

SEMINARY, NEW YORK

1Rew JfJork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

192 1

All rights reserved

Copyright, 19 21, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1021.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 0! AMERICA

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND

BARRETT WENDELL

Preface

The object of this work is to give such an introduction to the history of the Middle Ages as to make its readers desire more knowledge of this important epoch in the development of mankind. I have attempted to present the main features of the period, treated in Chapters which are rather essays than chronicles, in the hope of stimulating further enquiry.

Of recent years comparatively little interest has been displayed in the Middle Ages; and the subject does not appear to be for the moment popular in the Universities either of Great Britain or America. This may be due to the history of the period being largely ecclesiastical, since nothing can explain it but the realisation that a Christian ideal dominated society. Possibly for this reason two views of the Middle Ages have become fashionable, both equally erroneous. On the one hand people have invested them with a halo of sanctity, and have even maintained that in the thirteenth century humanity reached a height which it has never since attained. That this century is worthy of this encomium, despite the great men which it produced, was strenuously denied by those who lived in it, and considered that the world had reached the culminating point of human wickedness; nor can the modern student wonder at this pessimism. On the other hand, and this has contributed not a little to the present lack of interest, it is maintained that the Middle Ages have little to teach us. A period of superstition and ignorance has no interest for days of enlightenment; and men who lived in a world of aristocratic privilege have nothing in common with those who enjoy the blessings of democracy. But the more we know of the conditions of those times, the plainer does it become that our problems are often the same under different names, and that even modern views, which pass for being advanced, have their counterpart in these days. After all we

Vll vin PREFACE

are the inheritors of the Middle Ages ; and they have bequeathed to us many of our hardest problems. The story of the Crusades is enough to convince the most sceptical that the Near East was one of the difficulties which our ancestors faced; and if they failed, can it be said that we have succeeded?

The closeness of our connection with this remote period is proved by our inability to write impartially concerning it. We cannot as purely disinterested persons hold the balance between the Papacy and the Empire, or discuss the Anglo- Norman conquest of Ireland as detached spectators of a drama which does not concern us. All we can do is to endeavour to transport ourselves back to the past, and try to realise how men acted under the circumstances. By this means we can learn from men's successes and mistakes how to encounter the problems of the present.

I had hoped to cover a longer period in this volume; but I found it impossible to do even the barest justice to the first part of the Middle Ages, which culminated in the close of the thirteenth century. The destruction of the most powerful crusading force, that of the Knights Templar, seemed a suitable halting place. Hereafter I hope to be able to continue the narrative in a volume, which might fitly be styled the "Decline and Fall of the Church Empire." This Empire, like that of Rome, has vanished, but has left its mark indelibly upon the world.

I have deliberately employed terms which are now supposed to be unscientific in speaking of Dark Ages and Middle Ages, because they are the most satisfactory expressions of my meaning. The period from Gregory I to the first half of the eleventh century witnessed the disappearance of the civilization, and, in a sense, of the very peoples of the ancient world. Dark as they were, the times were illuminated by the success and expansion of the Christian religion. After this arose a new fabric of social order, called Medievalism, with an art, political ideas and a philosophy of its own. Much has come down to us; for, in a sense, we are still in the Middle Ages.

PREFACE IX

Many of my friends have allowed me to occupy much valuable time in the discussion of various points. My colleagues at the Union Theological Seminary have been unfailing in their sympathy and assistance. Professor E. F. Scott has read all the proof sheets; Professor Rockwell has revised the bibliographies; Professor H. Ward has given me the benefit of his advice on the economic history of Chapter XIII; Professor Fagnani has saved me from several mistakes in Chapter XIV; I have to thank Professor E. Munroe Smith of Columbia University for revising and correcting the legal statements in Chapter VIII. I have also to acknowledge the help I received from my brother fellow Mr. B. L. Manning of Jesus College, Cambridge, and the good advice given from the Roman Catholic standpoint by Mrs. Charles B. Perkins of Boston, Mass. The Index has been prepared as a gracious act of friendship by Miss Helen Maud Slee. The literary assistance I received from my friend, the late Professor Barrett Wendell, to whose memory I have dedicated this book, was invaluable.

Contents

CHAPTERS PAGES

I. The Pillars of the Medieval Church . . . 1-27

II. The Church and the Empire 28-56

CHAPTER I Monasticism and the Papacy

The Middle Ages are hard to define — Sense in which the word medieval is employed — Why the sixth century has been selected — Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, classicists — Gregory the Great medieval — World renunciation — Monasticism and the Papacy — Asceticism in primitive Christianity — Rapid spread of Monasticism — Benedict of Nursia, — Rule of St. Benedict — Missionary activity of the monks — Clergy become monastic — The Breviary — Monasticism preserved civilization — Growth of an hierarchy of Bishops — Antioch — Alexandra — Constantinople and Jerusalem — Rome and the Western Church — The early popes — Rome becomes a holy city — Rise of the medieval papacy — The City of Rome from Justinian to Gregory — Rome attracts pilgrims — Rome has to depend on herself for protection — Papal estates — Gregory a Roman Noble — Gregory at Constantinople — The Dialogues — Gregory and relics — Primacy of Rome — Gregory and Maurice — John the Faster — Ravenna and the "pall" — Gregory and the Episcopate — Conversion of the English — The Papal Administration — Dramatic appeal of the Church in Rome (a) Gregory's procession — (b) Baptismal ceremonial — (c) The Mass — The Canon — Gregory's additions.

It cannot be determined precisely where the line between medieval and early Christianity is to be drawn. The historian who attempts to do this must know that he cannot succeed, because there are no definite periods in history. Just as in life it is impossible to say when a man passes from boyhood to youth or from youth to middle age, so, because there is a continuity in history as in life, it cannot be alleged at this period a certain age ends and another commences. Yet both in the lifetime of an individual, and also in the longer story of a great institution like the Church, it is perfectly clear that certain traits and characteristics belong to middle age rather than youth. For this reason the first step will be to state what seem to be characteristics of the Middle Ages, and the next to say why a date has been chosen even somewhat arbitrarily as a starting point.

The adjective "medieval" is applied to the civilization which was created after the complete break up of the earlier Graeco-Roman society. It can only strictly be employed in this sense of the Western half of the Christian Church, because the civilization which radiated from Constantinople was, till its destruction by Turkish barbarism, that of the ancient world. New Rome had for eleven centuries conserved the art, the literature, the laws of Greece and Imperial Rome. She had never sunk into the barbarous condition of the ancient city in the ninth, tenth, and first half of the eleventh centuries. Nor had the lands under the sway of the Caesars of Byzantium suffered the utter destruction which had overwhelmed the Gauls, Spain, and Britain, and compelled the reconstruction of society with little assistance from the experience of the past.

The Western world began to build from the very foundation and in so doing developed a new structure of society, a new art, and a new learning. For a time at least the old classical culture was abandoned, and in its place an endeavour was made to create a civilization entirely Christian. In the East the Empire was continued and became Christian; but in the West a Christian Empire was deliberately recreated after the lapse of centuries. The Gothic cathedral, with its rejection of classic forms and its new conceptions of beauty, is a permanent symbol of the spirit of medieval reconstruction; and even scholastic learning was, not so much an attempt to bring Aristotle into accord with Christianity, as to make the old Christian learning conform to the laws of the newly discovered Aristotle.

For this reason it has been decided to commence the story of the Middle Ages neither with the Peace of the Church in A.D. 313, nor with the so-called end of the Western Empire, though much may be said in favour of both dates. When the persecution, begun by Diocletian, was ended finally by the edict of Milan, the compact between the Christian Church and the Roman Empire to unite to rule mankind was really initiated. The vision of Constantine which assured him that Jesus would protect the army with the standard of the labarum is as medieval as the discovery of the true Cross by his mother St. Helena. So again, when Odovacar handed over the imperial insignia to Constantinople with a message to the Emperor Zeno that an Augustus was no longer needed in Italy, it was the beginning of an era in which the barbarian Teutons openly recognized themselves as the real rulers of the Western provinces; and this might fitly be made an excuse for alleging that the Middle Ages had already begun. The reason for choosing a later date is, however, the distinction to be drawn between the medieval Christian and his predecessors who may be said more properly to belong to the classical period.

Three of the four great fathers of the West, Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, were educated, if not under pagan, at least under classical influences. Ambrose, as is well known, was elected Bishop of Milan, when he was an unbaptized official, present in the city in order to keep the peace between the rival Christian factions. He had been brought up and educated as a Roman gentleman of the fourth century. He drew many of his ideas during his episcopate from the books he had studied in his youth. His ethics, for example, are based as much on Cicero as on the Wisdom books of the Old Testament or on the moral teaching of the New. Augustine, an African born in a humbler rank of life, but educated for academic employment, though his mother was a devout Christian, became one himself only after a long search. Acquiring an admiration for virtue from Cicero's Hortensius, he sought for truth in vain among the Manichaeans, and found it partially in Neo-platonism. All the while he was acting as a teacher in different universities, Carthage, Rome and Milan. As for Jerome, who was not born in a position entitling him to take part in the administration of the Empire, nor with the necessity of making a living by the drudgery of professorial labour, he was far better equipped as a scholar than either of his famous contemporaries, and throughout his life he affects to deplore the fatal fascination which the classical literature exercised on his mind. In vain did he try to recollect that an angel had told him, "Thou art not a Christian, but a Ciceronian."

Very different is the fourth great father, Pope Gregory I. Like Ambrose he was born of a patrician family, and began life as a civil administrator, rising to the dignity of prefect of Rome. But here the parallel ceases. By education he was a Christian, and no humanist. He has no hankering after the beauties of antiquity; to him they are pagan and nothing more. He writes well, because he is an honest capable man who has something worth saying, not because he has studied the best models and is anxious about his style. His outlook is not that of a converted pagan, but of a Christian born and bred. In him the classical age, which closed with Boethius, is dead and a new era has begun.

For a spirit had come into the world which completely changed the old order. With the cessation of persecution the monastic movement had begun; and of the Middle Ages it may be said that everybody was a monk at heart, in the sense that no man was so usefully employing his life for the benefit of others, but he acknowledged that the summons of the monastery or of the hermit's cell was a call to better things, and even sinners believed that repentance could most surely be found in the self-torture of solitary asceticism. To all men the monastic life represented the highest goal on this earth. In this way the medieval ideal is quite distinct from the modern, which places service as a citizen, as the head of a family, as a worker for others, far above the life of contemplation, whereas in the Middle Ages it was held that the more a man devoted himself to meditation and subjugation of the flesh to the spirit the more pleasing was he in the sight of God. In England, and later throughout Europe, the dissolution of the monasteries sounded the death-knell of medievalism.

Monasticism was the first characteristic of this long period: the second was respect for ecclesiastical authority. The priest was not so much the minister or servant of the people as the intermediary between them and heaven, the dispenser of those blessings without which salvation was impossible. And higher ve*ll,f than all priesthood in the West was that of the supreme pontiff, the representative of the Chief of the Apostles and the Vicar of Christ upon earth. In a word monasticism and the papacy were the cornerstones of the medieval system, without which the edifice raised by the toil of ages could not stand. ■ 1 ;> As Christianity was originally neither an ascetic nor an hierarchical religion, the first thing to be sought is how it became both within five centuries of its inception, if not much earlier. No doubt Jesus Christ often withdrew to the desert for communion with God, and fasted before he entered upon his mission to mankind. Still He was no ascetic. He says that he came "eating and drinking": He lived among men, sharing in their homely festivals, and not disdaining the hospitality of his friends. His disciples are contrasted with those of John and of the Pharisees, who fasted often. Nor were the early Christians confused with any of the ascetic Jewish sects. But the seriousness of the call, and the dread of impending judgment predisposed many to stricter discipline, which, however, was distrusted by some wiser Christians, as savouring of the Gnostic abhorrence of material existence. But the almost morbid fear of the early Church of anything approaching sexual impurity led to asceticism, and to the belief that an absolutely virgin life was far more pleasing to God than the performance of family duties. Hence in most churches the profession of virginity became increasingly popular. Martyrdom also contributed to the practice of asceticism. Those who looked forward to the contest for the faith before the judge and in the arena, regarded themselves as "athletes of Christ" and trained themselves for the trial by abstinence and mortification; and there is but little doubt that the extraordinary insensibility to pain manifested was in part the result of long mental, moral, and, perhaps, physical discipline. But with the disappearance of the danger of martyrdom Christian zeal sought other outlets. The Church, tolerated and favoured by imperial authority, could not satisfy the zeal which had but recently braved the fire of persecution; and men fled from a half heathen world to seek for God and wrestle against the powers of evil in the remotest wilderness.

In the first decades of the fourth century the monks had spread themselves throughout the deserts of Egypt.

From this time the passion for monastic life spread throughout the Christian world. It appeared next in Syria. In 340 Athanasius went to Rome, it is said, with monks in his company, who attracted much attention. Before the close of the century it was customary to visit Egypt in order to study the monks in their original home. By the opening of the fifth century there were monks throughout Gaul and in distant Britain. The movement was lay rather than clerical: it was an impulse which drove men into the solitude of the desert, which thousands were forced to obey. At first it was completely unorganized. In some instances the solitaries grouped themselves around some renowned ascete, in others men attempted to work out their own salvation by themselves. Gradually some sort of order was found to be indispensable, and rules were established for groups of monks. The first legislator was Pachom, an Egyptian who established a community at Tabennae, an island on the Nile. St. Basil, the great Bishop of Caesarea (ob. 379), organized the monastic communities in his diocese and furnished them with his rule which has since become the normal standard of Christian monasticism in the East. About this time Jerome was living among the Syrian hermits and rivalling them in austerity. A little later Cassian visited Egypt and brought back a report of the monastic discipline to Gaul. Rome attracted hosts of monks, some of them impostors, as Jerome asserts, who preyed on the fine ladies of the capital. Jerome himself directed his female followers in asceticism and finally retired to the Holy Land to found a monastery at Bethlehem, whilst his noble and learned friends, Paula and Eustochium, dwelt in the neighbouring nunnery. Augustine was converted by hearing of the austerities of the monks in Egypt; and as a bishop lived a semi-monastic life surrounded by his clergy. His great adversary Pelagius was a monk of Britain. Within little more than a century of its inception the monastic life had come to be regarded as the consummation and flower of Christianity.

The great epoch of Western Monasticism, however, began in the sixth century with St. Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the celebrated Benedictine rule. When quite a boy he fled accompanied by his nurse to the site of Nero's famous villa at Subiaco (Sub lacum). There he practised his austerities and attracted disciples. He was exposed to many trials from the jealousy of the neighbouring monks, and when he accepted the duty of abbot over some of them, he was almost poisoned for endeavouring to bring them to a sense of their obligations. As, however, the fame of his sanctity increased he issued to his immediate disciples his famous Rule, which, though only intended for the monasteries in the neighbourhood of Monte Cassino, became a standard for all western monks. His advice is remarkable for its wisdom, its knowledge of human nature, and its recognition of the duty of work as well as devotion; and it is noteworthy that in later days every reform of Benedictine Monasticism lay in making the rule of the saint more burthensome. The greatest testimony to his wisdom, however, lies in the fact that the order, which adhered faithfully to his principles, outshone all those who tried to surpass it in austerity; and to this day a Benedictine monastery is almost inevitably a home of learning. With the founder, however, work meant field labour; and it was only later that study became a part of the Rule.

When one studies monastic history, and sees how one ascetic tried to surpass the other in extravagant austerities, the character of the Benedictine rule is truly surprising. The Roman in the founder appears in his love of order, system, regularity. There is a sense of proportion in all he enjoins and at the same time all is placed on the highest level of duty to God and desire to please Him. The great virtues recommended are ready obedience to superiors, and humility, which is reached by twelve stages. The work insisted upon is to be that best suited to the monk. If he has a trade he may ply it for the benefit of the monastery. The rule of cloister is to be strictly observed and each monastery is to be, if possible, self-supporting. Benedict's own monastery of Monte Cassino was destroyed by the

Lombards in 580 and his monks and his rule migrated in that year to Rome.

Nothing in the Rule of St. Benedict, or for that matter in any other rule, provides for monks working directly for the benefit of mankind: the ideal is seclusion. The monk may save the world by his piety and holiness; but it is not part of his duty to labour for that end. Yet in its great days monasticism could never be a purely selfish pursuit of virtue, and it almost invariably broke through the bounds of the cloister for the sake of the world. Monasticism everywhere became a great missionary agency. From East to West it was the same. Over the deserts of Central Asia Nestorian monks were pressing towards China; Greek monks were making inroads into Russia; Irish or Scottish monks were planting monasteries on islands on the coast of Britain, exploring in boats of oxhide the inland waterways, and preparing to invade the heathen Angles, and to go far afield in pagan Europe with the message of the Gospel. The same spirit was in the monks of St. Andrew's on the Caelian Hill, whom Gregory selected to go to convert England and make it a province of the Roman Church. Centuries later, when Russia was groaning under the tyranny of the Tatar Khans, it was her Christian monks who were preparing for her vast empire by founding monasteries far beyond her northern frontiers, and in distant Siberia. Whatever were the original purpose and ideal of the movement, it was by monks that the Christian religion was being carried beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire at the height of its glory. The Christianity of the new nations was, unlike that of the first believers, a monastic creed.

With the appearance of monasticism the clergy themselves tended to come under some sort of ascetic rule. In newly founded missionary churches the bishop was an abbot and the clergy a convent of Benedictine monks. But in other places the bishop and his priests tended to form a community under some monastic rules; and it is claimed that such clergy or "Canons," from the Greek word meaning a rule, existed from the very age of the Apostles. This probably contributed to make it a law in the West, that, unlike the East, all the priests should be unmarried.

The life of the monk was naturally spent largely in prayer: and in the West the expression of his devotion is to be found in the Breviary. The Hours of Prayer began overnight with Matins, succeeded before daybreak by Lauds; then followed Prime, Tierce, Nones, Sext, Vespers and Compline. This incessant round of prayer consisted originally of the recitation of the hundred and fifty psalms but gradually developed into devotions more varied, and possibly more edifying. The Psalms were rearranged and divided into Nocturns, their recitation was broken by readings from Scripture, anthems, antiphons, and responses. The stories of the saints were read as legenda (things to be read, hence our word "legend"). Short expressive prayers occur, and also hymns. A calendar regulated the offices for the day. There was no necessary uniformity; but the basis of all was the Psalter; out of this was gradually evolved the Breviary which has to be said daily by every Roman Catholic priest, and is otherwise known as the Divine Office. From this is derived the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England, which has adapted a monastic service to congregational use.

For nearly a thousand years the monastic ideal was in a sense to dominate the Western Church and it is hardly too much to say that thereby Christianity was saved from being utterly overwhelmed by the constant inroads of the barbarians. Nor can it safely be said that its influence is dead, or that it will not again assert itself in Christianity. In a falling world, like that of the age which ushered in the medieval period, men were impelled to take refuge in the desert, the cloister or the forest that they might at least save their own souls from the impending destruction. Circumstances forced many to acknowledge the emptiness and misery of life on earth and to look for happiness outside the world. That those who did so were not all actuated by base or cowardly motives is proved by the services of the monks to mankind. Whether their world denying ethics will again be demanded to save civilization time alone can show.

IO INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

The Medieval Church in the West was a body which tended more and more to centralize authority in the Church of Rome. Though in theory all bishops were endowed with equal powers, those who presided over the most important cities exercised increasing influence over their brethren. Long before the Peace of the Church, Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were looked up to by all the surrounding churches, whilst Carthage had evidently extensive jurisdiction over the numerous episcopate of Africa and Numidia. But not only were the bishops of great capitals and sees of apostolic foundation regarded with respect, those of the leading provincial cities enjoyed a sort of local primacy. Thus before the Church entered into relations with the Empire the principles of an hierarchy of bishops existed, though the distinguishing titles of archbishop, patriarch, etc., had not yet come into use.

The three sees of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch had long been recognized as the leading bishoprics. Of these the most ancient was Antioch, where the believers were first called Christians, whence Barnabas and Saul started on their missionary journey, where Paul withstood Peter on the question of Gentile liberty. It was also famous for having sent Ignatius, its bishop, the greatest of all the primitive martyrs, to die at Rome for the Faith. The city was, moreover, recognized as the capital of the East and its bishop was regarded as the leader of churches stretching far beyond the frontiers of the Empire.

The peculiar position of Alexandria as capital of Egypt, which was not a province of the Roman Republic, but the personal property of Caesar, gave its bishop an unique status. For a long time he was the only bishop in Egypt, nor did he originally seek his orders at the hands of his episcopal brethren. The twelve great presbyters of Alexandria elected one of their number, and placed him in the episcopal throne. The church could not boast an apostolic founder, but its origin was traced to the Evangelist St. Mark, once the companion of St. Paul, and distinguished by St. Peter as "Marcus my son." It claimed the position of the second see after Rome.

Two other sees were destined to enjoy with Alexandria and

THE PILLARS OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH II

Antioch the dignity of a patriarchate. Constantinople or New Rome was given by the Second General Council a place only inferior to that of Old Rome, and after much controversy it became the second see of Christendom; and Jerusalem which had, after the destructions of the Jewish city by the Romans, become a gentile city, called iElia Capitolina, was added to the patriarchates, though its jurisdiction was very limited.

But the West was not partitioned out like the East. It was a patriarchate of itself under the jurisdiction of the bishop of the capital of the world. Not that the Roman Church claimed its position because of the earthly glory of the city. It had other and more spiritual claims to reverence. Peter and Paul were its founders: and both had testified to the faith by death in Rome. The martyrs of the first and most terrible persecution by Nero suffered there. Clement, the friend of Paul and follower of Peter, a name held in the highest honour in history and legend, was Bishop of Rome. Ignatius had written to the Roman Church on his way to martyrdom in the City, as to the church which held "the primacy of love"; Irenaeus had taught at Rome and declared that there the true tradition, handed down from the days of its founders, was preserved. In the days of doubt and difficulty, when in every church bishops of suspicious orthodoxy had presided, Arians in Constantinople and Antioch, Monophysites at Alexandria, the Roman pontiff* had always maintained the Faith. He had proved himself the protector of those whom the East had unjustly condemned, like Athanasius and John Chrysostom; he had stricken down heretics like Nestorius and E^tyches. Such were the claims of Rome to respect in antiquity, and even though in this enumeration a few less creditable incidents, like the alleged Arianism of Liberius, have been conveniently ignored, the tradition of the Roman Church was more honourable than that of any great Oriental sees.