A Brief History of the Medieval Church 6

On the memorable thirty-first day of October 1517, which has ever since been celebrated in Protestant Germany as the birthday of the Reformation, Martin Luther nailed to the doors of the church at Wittenberg ninety-five Latin Theses on the subject of indulgences and invited a public discussion.  No one accepted the challenge and no discussion took place. But history itself undertook the disputation and defense. The Theses were copied, translated, printed and spread throughout Germany and Europe in a few weeks. The Theses of Luther found a hearty response with liberal scholars and with thousands of plain Christians. On the other hand, the Theses were strongly condemned by the clerical hierarchy and the universities.

The main writers against Luther were Tetzel, Conrad Wimpina and the formidable John Eck who was at first a friend of Luther, but now became his enemy. These men hurt their cause in public estimation by the weakness of their defense. They could produce no arguments for the doctrine and practice of indulgences from the Word of God, or even from the Greek and Latin fathers, and had to resort to extravagant views on the authority of the Pope. They even advocated papal infallibility, even though this was still an open question in the Roman Church, and remained so till the Vatican decree of 1870.

After the debate at Leipzig, Luther lost all hope of a reformation from Rome. Luther was prepared for the bull of excommunication. He then turned the tables against the Pope. The Pope had ordered his books to be burned and they were actually burned in several places. Luther returned fire for fire, curse for curse. On December 10, 1520, at nine in the morning, before a large number of professors and students, he committed the bull of excommunication, together with the papal decretals, the Canon Law and several writings of Eck and Emser, to the flames.

In his final stand for the truth he had preached, he spoke these immortal words, “Unless I am refuted and convicted by testimonies of the Scriptures or by clear arguments (since I believe neither the Pope nor the Councils alone; it being evident that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am conquered by the Holy Scriptures quoted by me, and my conscience is bound in the word of God: I can not and will not recant any thing, since it is unsafe and dangerous to do any thing against the conscience."

Dr. Eck exchanged a few more words with Luther, protesting against his assertion that Councils may err and have erred. "You can not prove it," he said. Luther repeated his assertion, and pledged himself to prove it. Thus pressed and threatened, amidst the excitement and confusion of the audience, he uttered in German, at least in substance, that concluding sentence which has impressed itself most on the memory of men: "Here I stand. [I cannot do otherwise.]  God help me!  Amen."

The Reformation work in Zurich was headed by Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli was elected to the position of chief pastor of the Great Minster, the principal church in Zurich by seventeen votes out of twenty-four, Dec. 10, 1518. He arrived in Zurich on the 27th of the month, and received a hearty welcome. He promised to fulfill his duties faithfully, and to begin with the continuous exposition of the Gospel of Matthew, so as to bring the whole life of Christ before the mind of the people. This was a departure from the custom of following the prescribed Gospel and Epistle lessons, but justified by the example of the ancient Fathers, as Chrysostom and Augustine, who preached on whole books. By his method of preaching on entire books he could give his congregation a more complete idea of the life of Christ and the way of salvation than by confining himself to detached sections.

In July of 1522 Zwingli, with other priests, sent a Latin petition to the bishop, and a German petition to the Swiss Diet, to permit the free preaching of the gospel and the marriage of the clergy as the only remedy against the evils of enforced celibacy. The petition was not granted, but several priests openly disobeyed. Zwingli himself married in 1522, but did not make it public till April 5, 1524 (more than a year before Luther’s marriage, which took place June 13, 1525).

By these preliminary measures public opinion was prepared for the practical application of the new ideas, but the old order of worship had to be abolished before the new order could be introduced. The change was radical. It began at Pentecost and was finished on June 20, 1524. In front of a deputation from the authorities of Church and State, the churches of the city were purged of pictures, relics, crucifixes, altars, candles, and all ornaments, the frescoes effaced, and the walls whitewashed, so that nothing remained but the bare building to be filled by a worshiping congregation. The Swiss Reformers regarded all kinds of worship paid to images and relics as a species of idolatry.

The mass was gone. The preaching of the gospel and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper by the whole congregation took its place. The first celebration of the communion after the Reformed usage was held in the Holy Week of April 1525. 

A Brief History of the Medieval Church 5

The Pre-Reformers

The title, Reformers before the Reformation, has been fittingly given to a group of men of the 14th and 15th centuries who anticipated many of the teachings of Luther and the Protestant Reformers. Each of them stands in solitary prominence: Wickliffe in England, Huss in Bohemia, Savonarola in Florence, and Wessel, Goch and Wesel in Northern Germany. They differ, except for the moral reformer Savonarola from the German mystics in that they expressed open disagreement from the Church’s ritual and doctrinal teachings.

John Wickliffe, called the Morning Star of the Reformation was born about 1324 near the village of Wickliffe, Yorkshire, in the diocese of Durham. His own writings give scarcely a clue to the events of his career, and little can be gathered from his immediate contemporaries. Wickliffe occupies a distinguished place as an Oxford scholar, a patriot, a champion of theological and practical reforms and the translator of the Scriptures into English.

Wickliffe’s career as a doctrinal reformer began in 1378. He attacked the theological structure the Schoolmen and the abuses that had crept into the Church. A council condemned 24 articles, ascribed to the Reformer, 10 of which were pronounced heretical, and the remainder to be against the decisions of the Church.

Two years before his death Wickliffe had a stroke that disfigured but did not completely disable him.  He received a citation to appear before the pope. With unabated conviction, he replied to the Pope that of all men he was most under obligation to obey the law of Christ, that Christ was of all men the most poor, and subject to mundane authority. No Christian man has a right to follow Peter, Paul or any of the saints except as they imitated Christ. While saying mass in his church, he was struck again with paralysis and died two or three days later on December 29, 1384.

The dead man was not left in peace. By the decree Wickliffe’s writings were suppressed. The Lateran decree of February 1413, ordered his books to be burned and the Council of Constance formally condemned his memory and ordered his bones exhumed from their resting-place and "cast at a distance from the grave of the church."  The synod declared John Wickliffe a notorious heretic, excommunicated him and condemned his memory as one who died an obstinate heretic."  In 1429, at the summons of Martin IV the decree was carried out by Flemmyng, bishop of Lincoln. Fuller’s words, describing the execution of the decree have carved themselves on the pages of English history. He wrote, "They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into Swift, a neighboring brook running hardby. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed the world over."

Wickliffe’s chief service for his people was his assertion of the supreme authority of the Bible for clergy and laymen alike and his gift to them of the Bible in their own tongue. In his treatise on the value and authority of the Scriptures, with 1000 printed pages, more is said about the Bible as the church’s appointed guidebook than was said by all the medieval theologians together. Wickliffe was the first to give the Bible to his people in their own tongue. His version, which was made from the Latin Vulgate, was the outgrowth of his burning desire to make his English countrymen more religious and more Christian.

Up to the close of the 14th century, a number of laymen in high position at court had favored Wickliffefism. This support was for the most part withdrawn when persecution took an active form.  

In Bohemia the views of Wickliffe they took deeper root than in England and assumed an organized form. The English Reformer was called the fifth evangelist and in its early stages the movement went by the name of Wickliffefism. It was only later that the name Hussitism was substituted for Wickliffefism. Its chief spokesmen were Jan Huss and Jerome of Prague, who died at the stake at Constance for their avowed allegiance to Wickliffe.

In denying the infallibility of the pope and of the Church visible, and in setting aside the power of the priesthood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, Huss broke with the accepted theory of Western Christendom; he committed the unpardonable sin of the Middle Ages. These fundamental ideas, however, were not original with the Bohemian Reformer. He found them in Wickliffe’s writings.

Public hearings were had regarding Huss and his writings. Whenever a copy of his book on the Church was shown, they shouted, "Burn it."  Whenever Huss attempted to explain his positions, he was met with shouts, "Away with your sophistries. Say, Yes or No."  Huss exclaimed that God and his conscience were on his side.  After seven months of imprisonment Huss was pronounced an ecclesiastical outcast and criminal. He was placed in the middle of the church on a high stool, set there especially for him. The bishop of Lodi preached from Rom. 6:6, "that the body of sin may be destroyed."  The extermination of heretics was represented as one of the works most pleasing to God. The sentence said, "the holy council, having God only before its eye, condemns Jan Huss to have been and to be a true, real and open heretic, the disciple not of Christ but of John Wickliffe, one who in the University of Prague and before the clergy and people declared Wickliffe to be a Catholic and an evangelical doctor." 

A guard of a thousand armed men was at hand. The streets were crowded. As Huss passed by he saw the flames on the public square that were consuming his books. His hands were tied behind his back and his neck was bound to the stake by a chain. The offer of life was renewed if he would recant. He refused saying, "I shall die with joy today in the faith of the gospel which I have preached."  Huss’ clothes and shoes were thrown into the flames. His ashes were gathered up and cast into the Rhine. A year after Huss’ martyrdom, on May 30, 1416, his friend Jerome of Prague was condemned by the council and also suffered at the stake. He shared Huss’ enthusiasm for Wickliffe. Huss’ life was spent in Prague and its vicinity. Jerome traveled in Western Europe and was in Prague only occasionally. Huss left quite a body of writings. Jerome left none.

The Reformation

No period in the history of the Christian Church has a more clear date set for its close than the Middle Ages. In whatever light the Protestant Reformation is regarded there can be no doubt that a new age began with the nailing of the Theses on the church doors in Wittenberg.

The initial issue that started the Reformation was the selling of indulgences. The idea of selling and buying by money the remission of punishment and release from purgatory was acceptable to ignorant and superstitious people. It was revolting however to sound moral feeling. Long before Luther it raised the indignant protest of earnest minds, such as Wickliffe in England, Huss in Bohemia, John von Wesel in Germany, John Wessel in Holland, Thomas Wyttenbach in Switzerland, but without much effect. 

A Brief History of the Medieval Church 4

Michael Cerularius, Patriarch from 1043 to 1059, renewed and completed the schism.  Prior to him the mutual anathemas were hurled only against the contending heads and their party; now the churches excommunicated each other. Pope Leo IX sent three legates to Constantinople. The legates were lodged in the palace, but Cerularius avoided them.  Finally, on the 16th of July 1054, they excommunicated the patriarch and all those who should persistently censure the faith of the Church of Rome or its mode of offering the holy sacrifice. Cerularius immediately answered by a counter-anathema on the papal legates. The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem adhered to the See of Constantinople. Thus the schism between the Christian East and West was completed. The number of sees at that time was nearly equal on both sides, but in the course of years the Latin Church quickly outgrew the East. During the Crusades the schism was deepened by the brutal atrocities of the French and Venetian soldiers in the pillage of Constantinople in 1204, the establishment of a Latin empire and the Pope’s appointment of Latin bishops in Greek sees.

Corruptions of the Church

This period saw the introduction of several corruptions of the Church’s practice. The most important was the worship of Mary, which Mary entered into the soul of medieval piety and reached its height in the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception. The titles given to Mary were far more numerous than the titles given to Christ and every one of them is extra-biblical except the word "virgin." 

The medieval estimate of Mary found its highest expression in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception: the doctrine that Mary herself was conceived without sin. In 1854 the Pope (Pius IX) made it a dogma of the Church that Mary in the very instant of her conception was kept immune from all stain of original sin.

Another degradation of the Church’s worship was the veneration of relics. The worship of relics was based by Thomas Aquinas upon the regard nature prompts us to pay to the bodies of our deceased friends and the things they held most sacred. Following the seventh ecumenical council the Scholastics denied that when adoration is paid to images, worship is given to the image itself. It is rendered to that for which the image stands. In the earlier years of the Middle Ages Italy was the most prolific source of relics.

Among the objects transmitted to Western Europe from the East were Noah’s beard, the horns of Moses, the stone on which Jacob slept at Bethel, the branch from which Absalom hung, our Lord’s foreskin, his navel cord, his coat, tears he shed at the grave of Lazarus, milk from Mary’s breasts, the table on which the Last Supper was eaten, the stone of Christ’s grave, Paul’s thorn in the flesh and a tooth belonging to St. Lawrence. Christ’s tooth was only debunked because Guibert of Nogent argued that when Christ rose from the dead he was in possession of all the parts of his body. He also attacked the genuineness of the umbilical cord. The true cross was found more than once and fragments of it were numerous that one could build an entire forest from the fragments.

Another defect of this age was the neglect of preaching. True preaching was virtually forgotten in the Middle Ages. The office of the preacher was overshadowed by the function of the priest. The 12^th and 13^th centuries have each contributed a single pulpit orator of the first order: St. Bernard and Berthold of Regensburg. Probably one-half of the priests in Germany in the 12^th century did not preach. The synod of Treves in 1227 forbade illiterate priests to preach. Before the arrival of the friars, a sermon in England was rare.

This began to change in the thirteenth century through the example of the friars. They were preachers and went among the people. Vast audiences gathered in the fields and streets to listen to a popular preacher like Anthony of Padua and Berthold of Regensburg. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Franciscans received formal permission from Clement V, "to preach on the streets the Word of God."

A Brief History of the Medieval Church 3

From here on, the entire medieval history of Europe is basically the history of the papacy and the empire. They were considered as the two arms of God for governing the church and the world. The papacy served as a wholesome check against military despotism of the emperors. The empire served as a check on the abuses of the papacy. Both secured order against the disintegrating tendencies of society. Both nourished the great idea of a commonwealth of nations, of a brotherhood of mankind, of a communion of saints. Nevertheless, the tendency of both was ultimately self-destructive.

The papacy grew in power and influence and the popes began to assert ever more blasphemous things of themselves – things, which the people, who had been pummeled into submission, accepted without question. Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) made “Vicar of Christ” the exclusive title of the pope, replacing older titles like “vicar of St. Peter.”  Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) in his bull Unam Sanctum, declared that the salvation of every human depends upon obedience to him. He saw the pope as Christ on earth.

Four other things of note happened during this period. This first was the rise of Islam; the second was the Great Schism in 1054, third was the German mystic movement and lastly was the translation of the Bible into English by John Wickliffe.

Islam

Islam employed brutal techniques in proliferating the doctrines of Mohammed. Christianity made its conquest by peaceful missionaries and the power of persuasion. Islam conquered the fairest portions of the earth by the sword and cursed them by polygamy, slavery and desolation. In its conquering march Islam took forcible possession of the lands of the Bible, and the Greek church, seized the throne of Constantine, overran Spain, crossed the Pyrenees and for a long time threatened even the church of Rome and the German empire, until it was finally repulsed beneath the walls of Vienna. The Crusades, which figure so prominently in medieval Christianity originated in a desire to wrest the holy land from the followers of "the false prophet."  Even the Reformation in the sixteenth century was complicated with the Turkish question, which occupied the attention of the diet of Augsburg as much as the Confession of the Evangelical princes and divines. Luther, in one of his most popular hymns, prays for deliverance from "the murdering Pope and Turk," as the two chief enemies of the gospel - (Erhalt uns,Herr, bei deinem Wort, Und steur’ des Papst’s und Türken Mord).

Viewed in its relation to the Eastern Church Islam was well-deserved divine punishment for the unfruitful speculations, bitter contentions, empty ceremonialism and virtual idolatry that degraded and disgraced the Christianity of the East after the fifth century.

The Schism

No two churches in the world are at this day so much alike and yet so averse to each other as the Greek and Roman. They hold, as an inheritance from the patristic age, essentially the same body of doctrine, the same canons of discipline, the same form of worship. Yet their antagonism seems irreconcilable. The Greek and Latin churches were never organically united under one government, but differed considerably from the beginning in nationality, language and various ceremonies. These differences, however, did not interfere with the general harmony of faith and Christian life, nor prevent cooperation against common foes. As long and as far as the genuine spirit of Christianity directed them, the diversity was an element of strength to the common cause.

The doctrinal difference on the procession of the Holy Spirit existed before the Schism. However it assumed practical importance only in connection with the broader ecclesiastical and political conflict between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome. The West did insert the filioque clause into the Creed without the East’s consent and without a Council, but the doctrinal issue was not as central as the two sides made it out to be. The West has continually denied that they mean to assert two First Principles into the Godhead. The East has continually asserted that this is what the West is doing. The East has been intransigent on this issue, even after demonstrations that the great Eastern theologians, such as Athanasius had taught the Dual Procession.

The first serious outbreak of this conflict took place after the middle of the 9^th Century when Photius and Nicolas, two of the ablest representatives of the rival churches, came into collision. The dispute between them was at first personal. The deposition of Ignatius as patriarch of Constantinople, for rebuking the immorality of Caesar Bardas, and the election of Photius, then a mere layman in his place (858), were arbitrary and uncanonical acts that created a temporary schism in the East and prepared the way for a permanent schism between the East and the West. Photius was outraged by this conduct and held a counter-synod, and in turn deposed the successor of St. Peter in 867. In his Encyclical Letter to the Eastern patriarchs, he charged the whole Western church with heresy and schism and, most of all, for corrupting the Nicene Creed by the insertion of the filioque, and thereby introducing two principles into the Holy Trinity. This letter clearly indicates all the doctrinal and ritual differences that caused and perpetuated the schism to this day. The subsequent history is only a renewal of the same charges aggravated by the misfortunes of the Greek church and the arrogance and intolerance of old Rome.

A Brief History of the Medieval Church 2

Gregory II (715–731) marks a transition to a new state of things. He clashed with the emperor Leo the Isaurian about the worship of images. Under his pontificate Liutprand, the mightiest king of the Lombards, conquered Ravenna and became ruler of Italy. But the popes found the dominion of a barbarian and formerly Arian authority more loathsome to the than that of distant Constantinople. So, stuck between a heretical emperor and a barbarian, they looked to the young and rising power of the Franks for deliverance and protection. The Franks had been converted under Clovis and under Charles Martel (the Hammer) had attained an impressive victory over the Saracens (732), which saved Christian Europe against the oppression of Islam. They had therefore become the protectors of Latin Christianity. They also lent their aid to Boniface in the conversion of Germany.

Pope Zacharias (741–752) brought Liutprand to terms of temporary obedience. Astolph, his successor once again threatened to integrate Rome with his kingdom. Zacharias sought the protection of Charles Martel’s son and Charlemagne’s father, Pepin the Short. In return for this aid Zacharias helped him to the crown of France. This was the first step towards the creation of a Western empire and a new political system of Europe with the pope and the German emperor at the head.

In 800, while Charlemagne was kneeling at the alter in St. Peter’s celebrating Christmas, the pope, under a sudden inspiration (but no doubt because of a premeditated plan, placed a golden crown on his head and the people of Rome shouted, “To Charles Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific emperor of the Romans, life and victory!"  From then on he was adored by the pope and was titled Emperor and Augustus instead of Patrician. For the West this was a reestablishment of the old Roman Empire. Together with the papacy the two controlled the history of the Middle Ages. The pope and the emperor represented the highest dignity and power in church and state.

The legal relation between the two powers is the struggle of centuries. In theory, it was easy to distinguish the two. The pope was confined to spiritual affairs and the emperor to temporal affairs. But because of their theocratic theory of the union of church and state the two quarreled frequently. Since the pope had voluntarily conferred the crown upon Charlemagne, he might claim that the empire was his gift, and that the right of crowning implied the right of un-crowning. This right was exercised by popes at a later period - popes who wielded the secular as well as the spiritual sword and absolved nations of their oath of allegiance. This is the medieval hierarchical theory, which derives all power from God through Peter as the head of the church.

Charlemagne, though he was devotedly attached to the church and the pope, was too absolute a monarch to recognize any other sovereignty within his own. His idea of theocracy was derived from the Old Testament relation between Moses and Aaron. He really believed that he was the divinely appointed protector of the church and the regulator of all her external (and to some extent also her internal) affairs.  

Charlemagne‘s main ambition was to unite all the Teutonic and Latin races on the Continent under his temporal scepter in close union with the spiritual dominion of the pope. His ecclesiastical domain extended over twenty-two archbishoprics or metropolitan sees. He gave his personal attention to things great and small. He introduced a settled order to his empire. He secured Europe against future heathen and Muslim invasion. He was universally admired or feared in his age.

Charlemagne was a firm believer in Christianity and a regular worshipper in the church. He is recorded to have attended church going morning and evening, even after nightfall, besides attending the regularly scheduled mass. He was very generous to the clergy. He gave them tithes throughout the empire. He appointed worthy bishops and abbots, endowed churches and built the grand cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he was buried. His respect for the clergy went so far as the veneration of the bishop of Rome as St. Peter’s successor. 

In spite of his many virtues, he was not as pure as the poetry of the church represented him, and far from being worthy of canonization. He sacrificed thousands of human beings to his immense ambition and obsession for conquest. He converted nations at sword-point in a war of religion for the annihilation of heathenism. This is contrary to the spirit of Christianity and is rather the Islamic principle: submission to the faith, or death. The most serious defect in his private character was his lack of self-control and disregard for the inviolability of the marriage bond. In this regard he was no better than an Oriental despot or a Muslim Caliph. He married several wives and divorced them at his pleasure. 

Charlemagne died after a short illness on January 28, 814, at the age of 71 and in the 47^th year of his reign. He was buried on the same day in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle.