Carrubbers
Christian Centre
There is no such thing as church history. This is because the church can never be studied in isolation as it is always related to the wider social, economic and political context of the day. The church may not be of the world but it is most definitely in the world and must always be seen as such. In history then, there is a two way process whereby the church has an influence on the rest of society and the society influences the church. This is because it is people from society who make up the church. This series of articles will look at what the church of the middle ages was like, and how it related to the people who were both inside and outside it.
We are told that history repeats itself because nobody listens to it, but more realistically history repeats itself because man is essentially the same from one generation to the next. He has the same aspirations, fears and flaws; yet the way that these are expressed differs from age to age. This is why each period of history is different. The fact that man is the same yet different is what makes a study of the people who formed the medieval church directly applicable to our Christian lives and experiences of God today. Their God is now our God and their problems are now our problems, and we can learn from the struggles of those who have sought God before us.
The question that haunted medieval man was that of his own salvation. The existence of God was never questioned and the heart-cry of medieval society was a desire to know God and achieve intimacy with the divine. Leading a life pleasing to God was the uppermost concern, and the wide diversity of medieval piety is simply because people answered the question, 'How can I best lead a holy life?' in so many different ways.
Each new way of leading a holy life was thought to be progressively more acceptable to God by its proponents than the ones that had gone before. Such 'new ways' were normally inspired by a desire to break away from the corruption and worldliness which was perceived in the older or more established forms of Godly living. These new ways often became corrupt themselves and over time breakaways from them were hailed as a newer and more perfect way of following God. This roller-coaster ride of corruption and reform is basically the story of popular medieval religion as man battled to define and discover what it really meant to be a Christian.
Whilst this was the story of religion at 'grass-roots' level, at an organisational and hierarchical level, the church developed along a different line. It became more organised, more bureaucratic, more legal, more centralised and basically more powerful on a European scale. This process was spearheaded by the papacy and reached its pinnacle under Pope Innocent III in the early 13th Century. He embodied what became known as the 'papal monarchy' - a situation where the popes literally were kings in their own world, of which the fourth Lateran Council of 1215 was the highlight. The relative importance of spiritual and secular power in the world was a constant question in the middle ages with both secular emperors and kings, and the popes asserting their claims to rule by divine authority with God's commands for God's people proceeding out of their mouths. The power of the church is hard to exaggerate: its economic and political influence was huge, as its wealth, movements like the crusades, and even the number of churches that exist from this period show.
Christianity affected all men in Europe at every level and in every way. Such breadth however led to much diversity and the land of Medieval religion really is a land of contrasts. Innocent III, one of the most magnificent of all Medieval popes, is recorded holding up the relic of the seamless robe of the Lord, measuring it against himself and saying, "The Lord must have been a man of small stature." On the other hand, man's feelings of extreme sinfulness and desire for God are evident. Anselm of Bec in the late 11th Century wrote the following:
'I was in darkness knowing nothing of myself, in a slippery place, for I was weak and prone to fall into sin, I was descending into the chaos of hell, for in my first parents I had fallen from righteousness to wickedness, which is the way into hell... The weight of original sin dragged me downwards, and the unbearable burden of the judgement of God pressed upon me; my demon enemies thrust vehemently against me to make me do other damnable sins...'
Anselm was a great proponent of the monastic movement. For him the only real option for living a Christian life in the world was within the confines of a monastic cloister and next time we shall examine the phenomenon (which lasted for more than a thousand years) that resulted in people like Anselm seeking God by joining contemplative, ascetic orders. Eadmer, Anselm's biographer, records Anselm's decision making process by stating that Anselm, 'began to resolve in his mind how he could best form his life according to God's will, and he came to the conclusion that there was nothing in the life of men superior to the life of a monk...'
In Luke 4:1 we read that, "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert." Similarly, John the Baptist lived an ascetic lifestyle in the wilderness and we read that the word of God came to him in the desert. (Luke 3:2) In conscious imitation of these examples many early Christians withdrew to remote areas. Often this was to escape persecution, but it was also to flee the evil, prevalent in the Roman world and to seek God free from 'worldly' distraction. These communities of Christians that grew up in the Egyptian desert or in the wastes of Judaea were the unconscious fathers of monasticism. Although they had little organisation they regarded the best Christian life as a solitary, ascetic, celibate existence where the 'world' had been totally renounced and had been entirely replaced with heavenly contemplation.
Under the persecutions of the Roman empire, those who had given their lives in martyrdom were regarded as being the most perfect Christians. With the conversion of Constantine in 312 however the age of the martyrs had come abruptly to a close and the scene was set for the 'new martyrs' to take the stage. These 'new' martyrs were monks: theirs was a life of daily martyrdom as they constantly died to self and lived totally for God. The monks paid particular veneration to the physical remains of the martyrs (relics) and were therefore connected to the martyrs who they replaced. The rise of ascetic monasticism and relic worship however was ver controversial: "Under the cloak of religion we see what is all but a heathen ceremony introduced into the churches..." raged Vigilantius in (400. Both the worship of relics and ascetic monasticism however became mainstays of Medieval religion, and the idea that monks were a new form of martyr persisted and over time monks as well as martyrs were venerated as holy men.
The first of these new holy men was St Martin of Tours (316-397) who combined the austerity of a monk with the office of a bishop. His epitaph read: "Here lies Martin the bishop of holy memory whose soul is in the hand of God; but he is fully here, present and made plain in miracles of every kind." His miracles were known to have been the result of his holiness, and his holiness was evident through his ascetic, prayerful and intimate relationship with God. In popular eyes then the martyrs became monks, and many monks in turn became miracle workers, and slowly but surely the mindset of Western Christendom was changing to accept a very powerful and potent idea: that the monastic vocation was the most important spiritual calling. Monks came to be known as 'Milites Christi' - the soldiers of Christ.
Monks renounced all their worldly belongings and by taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, joined a community of monks. Their lives were spent in communal worship, devotional reading, prayer and manual labour all under the authority of the abbot of the monastic house. Particular monks often had particular jobs- the cellarer or the infirmarer for example, and these like every aspect of monastic life were laid down in the 'Rule'. Monks were nearly always of noble extraction (one had to have wealth in order to give it up) but could also be given to the monastery as children (called oblates) to be brought up as monks.
Hindsight has blurred our vision of the Medieval monk and the result is that the modern Christian mindset has condemned him for his selfish escapism from the world and for his apparent neglect of those who needed Christ outside of the cloister. The Medieval mindset was very different. The monastery was an integral part of the local community- it probably owned most of the farming land in the area- and the fortunes of the people in any area were bound up with the spirituality of its monastic house. The monks were on the front line of the spiritual battle-it was they who did battle in prayer for their community, who warded off devils and demons and who prayed tirelessly for the salvation of the souls of those in their community. Rather than being the cowards of Christianity unable to take the strain of living a Christian life in the real world, the monks were the spiritual storm troopers interceding for an area against its supernatural enemies in much the same way as a local lord in his castle protected an area against its physical enemies. The people gave gifts to both lord and abbot in return for a service.
This can be illustrated well by a phenomenon known as the 'monastic strike'. If the monks were wronged they would literally go on strike and refuse to pray or carry out the duties of their daily offices, and the local people would lose spiritual protection and prayer for salvation. The fear of natural disaster or of impending divine judgement was normally enough to make the wrongdoer repent and make restitution. The monks were spiritual soldiers fighting for the good of their community but they were also contemplative ascetics seeking God for the good of their own souls and this should never be forgotten. Abbot Guigo 1(1110-1136) of the later Carthusian order said, "We did not flee to the solitude of this desert in order to undertake the material care of other mens bodies; we did so to seek the eternal salvation of our own souls."
The constant tension between the role of a monastery in its local community and the necessity of a strict and spiritual monastic life for its own monks led to constant pressures and the result was regular reforms with each 'new' movement claiming that it and it alone was a more genuine return to the simplicity of the Rule, and was unfettered by the worldliness that contact with a local community inevitably brought. The original Benedictine order branched out in this manner, with the foundation of the Cistercians in 1075, the Carthusians in 1084, the Premonstratensians in 1120 and many more besides resulting in the ruins of the huge numbers of monastic houses that can still be seen today. (Take a day trip to the Borders or Northumbria!!) At one of them, Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, Bede was one of 600 monks in 716. He had entered the monastery as an oblate aged 7 and spent his entire life there writing books, praying and studying the Bible. At the end of one of his books he puts into a prayer the desire of his heart and one cannot help but be touched by the humility of the plea:
I pray you good Jesus that as you have given me the grace to drink in with joy the word that gives knowledge of you, so in your goodness you will grant me to come at length to yourself, the source of all wisdom, to stand before your face for ever.
Amen
Some view the crusades as the last of the barbarian invasions. Raymond of Aguilers described the fall of Jerusalem in 1099 in the following way, graphically illustrating the atrocities committed in the name of the Father.
In all the ... streets and squares of the city, mounds of heads, hands and feet were to be seen ... But I have yet described only the minor horrors .... If I described what I actually saw you would not believe me! What an apt punishment! The very place that had endured for so long blasphemies against God was now marked in the blood of the blasphemers. It was most rewarding to see the devotion of the pilgrims before the Holy Sepulchre; how they clapped in exultation, singing a new song to the Lord...
For others the Crusades are the most romantic and chivalrous of medieval religious exploits. For Robin Hood in Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves they were a 'foolish quest'.
Few, if any regarded the Crusades as a 'foolish quest' in 1095, for this was the year when Pope Urban II preached the first great Crusade to the Holy Land. At the church council of Clermont on 27 November, he responded to a request from the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople for military help. It is hard to know what Urban intended and impossible to know what he actually said, but what actually happened was a military enterprise that not only helped the Byzantine emperor repel Moslem incursions, but also exceeded everyone's expectations by capturing Jerusalem in 1099. Urban emphasised that the Crusade was an opportunity to unite the church and relieve the suffering of Christian brothers. To encourage people to go he emphasised the significance of Jerusalem in Christian tradition and the role of the French in history as the 'elect' of God.
These ideas alone just go to show how many different strands of Medieval thought came together to create Crusading and became of this, Crusading pulled at the heart strings of all in Western Christendom. This made it popular for prince and peasant alike as people were propelled to the Holy Land for religious, social, economic, political and military reasons.
Because Crusading was so nebulous in nature it could evolve and adapt, and it was to remain prominent in religious thought for at least seven centuries. Even today we still speak of evangelistic 'crusades'. The effect of the Crusades on us today is not only limited to the language we use but has also shaped the doctrine that some practise. The Catholic doctrine of indulgences, whereby individuals pay for their salvation, sprang directly from the need to finance crusading enterprises and parts of Eastern Europe owe their 'conversion' almost entirely to the Slavic Crusades which increased Christian influence through military conquest.
In 1147 St Bernard of Clairvaux spent much time preaching to propagate the second Crusade. When this enterprise failed he had to explain to all who had trusted him why God allowed his people to be defeated and humiliated. What Bernard wrote became one of the greatest resignations to the sovereign will of God ever written:
How can human beings be so rash as to dare to pass judgement on something that they are not in the least able to understand? The promises of God never prejudice the justice of God...
Spiritually some blamed the failure of the Crusade on the sinfulness of Western Christendom while others saw the whole expedition as a demonic scheme to lead God's people astray and into ruin.
Crusades against Moslems in Spain and the Holy Land and against pagans in Eastern Europe all defended Western Christendom from the threats without, but by the 13th century the Crusade was being used to protect Christendom from the enemy within.
The Papacy, especially under Innocent III, used Christian violence against heretics, Christian kings who didn't follow papal policy, and eventually against the Eastern Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church. This gives an idea of how far Crusading had come and also how convenient a weapon Crusading was in a world where the church discovered that secular weapons were needed to exercise spiritual power effectively. Crusading was now not only directed at a specific place (i.e.: Jerusalem), but was for a specific purpose (the furtherance of the church's ends - whatever they may be).
Crusading was God's will for God's elect for the benefit of God's flock, therefore prayer, confession and penance were vital to its success. The picture shows a Crusader at prayer from a 13th century English prayer book (Source: The Atlas of the Crusades, J Riley-Smith (Ed), Times Books 1991).
Despite such belief, the effectiveness of the Crusades was limited. They were very expensive, very harsh on the participants, very unreliable in execution and over time, the response of people to the consistent call to arms by the church became less and less. The Western enclaves in the Holy Land were short lived and Jerusalem itself was re-taken by Saladin in 1187. It had been in Western hands for under 90 years.
