A Christian Commonwealth I

Question 1

Who were the two competing entities that preoccupied the medieval concept of Christendom?

Answer 1

The church and the state.

Question 2

Who had the most influence in how the medieval mind viewed the relationship between church and state?

Answer 2

Augustine of Hippo. He wrote “The City of God”, where he discusses the end goal of God’s people, and the people of the world. He said that temporal powers would benefit from the church.

Question 3

What city did the western emperor rule out of?

Answer 3

Revena, in northern Italy.

Question 4

Which city was the capital of the East?

Answer 4

Constantinople.

Question 5

What were the 5 patriarchies of the empire?

Answer 5

Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Constatinople and Rome.

Question 6

What were the two options for how the state and church would partner?

Answer 6

Option 1: The state over the church.

Option 2: The emperor within the church.

Question 7

What is Ceasaro-Papism?

Answer 7

The emperor is over the church. This was the view taken early on by Eusibius, who said that Constantine was Christ’s annointed.

Eusebius said that there was an ideal Christian emperor. Constantine is Christ’s anointed. He has a crucial role of mediating between the logos and human society. He has a quasi religious role.

The emperor would call councils, not by popes. He sets agendas for that. He sides in theological disputes. The emperor becomes the patron of the church

Question 8

Why did some argue that the emperor needed to be within the church?

Answer 8

The empire used to persecute Christian. So some believed that the emperor must therefore be within the church like everyone else. There were people who didn’t appreciate emperor meddling in church affairs. We see this in examples from Athanasius of Alexandria and Basil of Caesarea.

Question 9

Who was the first to establish a tradition of episcopal resistance to the state?

Answer 9

Athanasius. Athanasius fought for homousious, and the divinity of Christ. Most of the church leadership, with the backing of the Arian emperors, did not agree. He was exiled 5 times as a result.

Question 10

Who was one of the first to argue that, “The Emperor is within the Church, not above it”? And what did he argue?

Answer 10

Ambrose of Milan.

• The church should be autonomous, but protection is provided by the state.
• He rebukes Theodosius after he had killed people in Thessalonica. He kicked him out because of moral failure, and readmitted him after he’d repented publically. That set prescedent.
• “Where matters of faith are concerned it is the custom for bishops to judge Christian emperors, not for Emperors to judge bishops”.

Question 11

Why was the west vulnerable to barbarian attacks?

Answer 11

Because the political heart of the empire had been moved to Constantinople in the East. It meant that the West was deprived of the political power needed to protect itself.

Question 12

In the absence of political leadership in the west, who became the authoritative figures?

Answer 12

The Popes of Rome emerge as principle political and cultural figures for Rome and its environs in the West.

Question 13

What institution gained political power in the west because of the vacuum in political leadership?

Answer 13

The only structure that had survived was the church, and that’s why it gained political power in the vacuum of state leadership.

Question 14

Why did the barbarians want to destroy Rome? And, what did the city represent to them?

Answer 14

Most barbarians didn’t want to destroy Rome, they wanted to enjoy it. But in assimilating the Roman culture, they did away with what Rome was and Rome because an ideal of something that had previously existed. The city of Rome, to them, represented civilization. And the representative of that was now the Pope.

Question 15

Name the three reactions to the barbarian invasions and assimilation of people in the West.

And, who were the major proponents of these ideals?

Answer 15

1. Spiritual disassociation from the Roman Imperial ideal (Augustine). In his City of God, the empire is just a human city that will eventually fall apart. The City of God does not put much stock in the city of humanity, but participates in it. Christians are in the world, but not of the world. Our citizenship is from above.
2. Accomodation and assimilation (Theodoric/Cassiodorus). Families from the ruling class of the Goths married to normal Roman families.
3. Reconquest and Reinstitution of Empire (Justinian). The Eastern emperor wanted to re-establish that old empire. But the Lombards came in, and they took over.

Question 16

Who was the emperor in the East when the West was being sacked by the Goths?

Answer 16

Justinian.

Question 17

Why was it hard for the Barbarian tribes to fully assimilate the remnants of the Roman people?

Hint: There are three major reasons.

Answer 17

1. Gothic tribes were Arian Christians. They weren’t pagans, but they weren’t Orthodox. They couldn’t hold communion with the Romans because they were heretics, and as a result could marry them.
2. Invaders kept their own tribal law. Romans had civil courts. Goths had military courts. So, German had their own laws, even in their new Roman home. So everyone had different laws. Man, that sounds horrible.
   a. Law ceases to be territorial, and becomes personal.
   b. Breakdown in unity of society under the bond of its law. Yup. Sounds like a huge mess. You need to remember that the empire was brought together by law, without it, the empire fell.
3. An auspicious event: the conversion of the pagan Franks—the Merovingians under Clovis—to Catholic Christianity (ca. 500). They identified with the Roman cause. They began to expand against the Arians. The Franks will have a significant impact on medieval Christianity

Question 18

What impact did the different concepts of law have in the lands that had been invaded by barbarians?

Answer 18

Invaders kept their own tribal law. Romans had civil courts. Goths had military courts. So, German had their own laws, even in their new Roman home. So everyone had different laws. Man, that sounds horrible.

a. Law ceases to be territorial, and becomes personal.
b. Breakdown in unity of society under the bond of its law. Yup. Sounds like a huge mess. You need to remember that the empire was brought together by law, without it, the empire fell.

Question 19

Who were the first barbarians to convert to orthodox Christianity?

Answer 19

The Merovingian Franks.

Question 20

What barbarian leader was the first to convert to orthodox Christianity, and when did this happen?

Answer 20

Clovis converted to Catholic Christianity (ca. 500). The Franks identified with the Roman cause. They began to expand against the Arians. As a result, the Franks will have a significant impact on medieval Christianity.

Question 21

What physical space did the Franks rule?

Answer 21

Clovis ruled the Kingdom of the Franks. The territory was Gaul, not France. They ruled in Belgium, France and Germany. They south was more Mediterranean, and with amphitheaters, they had temples like Rome. The southern part belonged to Romania, and remained in contact with the Mediterranean world.

Question 22

What was unique about the way the Franks ruled?

Answer 22

What made them interesting is that the Franks saw themselves as rulers of the Frankish people, not of a location. Gaul was merely the place where they lived. The Franks were more like military chieftains, and less like modern day heads of state.

Government was not really their thing, because they had no interest in it. But they took it over because it served the purpose of ruling the people. For the Merovingians it was just a way of making money for the king.

Question 23

Why did the bishops become important in Merovingian Gaul?

Answer 23

The bishops, therefore, became important in Merovingian Gaul, because they were Roman, and because they did care about the local people in ways that the Merovingians didn’t. They cared about the territory. The bishop was elected by the people, but was to be confirmed by the king. After that he was not allowed to be moved from his see. The count could be removed, but never the bishop. The bishops would have no problems spending money for their territory. The counts, who represented the Franks, didn’t care about the locals. So you have a situation where by default people were going to prefer the church. And, the bishop could give sanctuary to people, and the counts could not question it because they feared God.

Question 24

What came out of this marriage between Franks and the Church?

Answer 24

• Feudalism

* Holy Roman Empire

Question 25

What were the three major theological controversies during the Middle Ages?

Answer 25

“Semi-Pelagianism,” Orange (II) 529, and the Legacy of Augustine’s doctrine of Grace.

2. The Eucharistic Presence
3. The Filioque

Question 26

What is the filioque clause?

Answer 26

This term is Latin for “and the Son” in the Nicene Creed, when we say “and I believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This phrase was not in the original creed, but added in the Western church (probably at the court of Charlemagne in the 9th century) both as an anti-Arian formula and as an expression of peculiarly western (and Augustinian) understanding of the Trinity. The churches of the East found it to be very bad theology, and protested mightily against the addition (the Roman pope would not go along with it at first either). This difference contributed greatly to the schism between Rome and Constantinople in the ensuing centuries, continuing until today.

Question 27

Explain the controversy surrounding the eucharist.

Answer 27

The only real internal controversy dealt with the presence of Christ in the elements in the Lord’s Supper (= the Mass). Two theories had been put forward in the early church: a symbolic presence and a “real” presence. Both are found in Augustine, but Ambrose of Milan had stressed the latter. Two monk/scholars debated the issue during the decade of the 840s: Rantramus (“real” presence) and Radbertus (“symbolic” presence). Rantramus and his forces won, and “symbolic” presence was rejected: when one ate the bread, one actually “chewed” the body of Christ in the form of bread. This controversy kept active until at least the 13th century, when the doctrine of “transubstantiation” was to be put forward as orthodoxy at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, thus sealing the “real” presence model. But in fact the focus of the debate between Rantramus and Radbertus was indicative of a revolutionary shift from the primitive and patristic conception of the
Eucharist as a work of the people, themselves the “body of Christ” and participating in the one Eucharistic act of Christ their head by their liturgical action, to a priestly action repeating in some form the sacrifice on Calvary, with the laity reduced to seeing and hearing (and not much “hearing” eventually, since the mass was increasingly spoke in a murmur for the most part), tied to the special spiritual endowment of the priesthood by the grace of ordination. The performance of the mass produced its own “quantum” of grace, a work of merit that could be transferred to benefactors, etc., and as such often done privately without the need of the laity. This transformation began subtly in the 4th century, and achieved its full expression in the high and late Middle Ages; but it proceeded through both practical changes and theological reinterpretation. This 9th century debate on the Eucharistic presence is indicative of the shift of focus in the manner of Christ’s presence, and from the Eucharistic rite as a whole to a focus on the Eucharistic elements.

Question 28

Council of Orange II (529)

Answer 28

This controversy—really a hold- over of our previous period—was important for how Augustine’s theological legacy was appropriated in the larger western church, and hence in the Medieval Church of the future. In the aftermath of the condemnation of Pelagius, there was a movement—above all centered around the monasteries of Marseilles and Lerins, and whose ablest proponents were the eastern refugee monk John Cassian and bishop Faustus of Riez—to accept in general the position of Augustine against Pelagius, but still to assert the fundamental ability of even the fallen will to accept or reject that grace which Augustine had argued so necessary for salvation (and hence also opposed his hard line on predestination).

They were opposed by more thorough-going followers of Augustine such as Prosper of Aquitaine. In modern scholarship this movement has received the moniker of “Semi-Pelagianism,” and the controversy—centered on southern Gaul—resulted in a conciliar decision largely delineating the legacy of Augustine’s view of grace for the future western church: in 529, the Second Council of Orange (in Southern Gaul) met, and was chaired by another follower of Augustine, Caesarius bishop of Arles. The “Semi-Pelagians” were not formally condemned, but effectively their position was, while Augustine’s view of faith as always a gift of God, and not to be derived from natural abilities such as the will, was upheld. However, the council condemned one of the more controversial entailments of Augustine’s rigid predestinarian position: God’s predestination of part of humanity to perdition apart from any foreseen merit or evil. The decisions of Orange (II) in 529 were subsequently ratified by Pope Boniface II in 531.

Hence the western Latin Church ended endorsing Augustine’s emphasis on the devastating and enduring impact of Adam’s original sin on the religious and moral capacities of all his descendants. Endorsed, too, was the assertion that without some prior gift of divine grace a person can do nothing to please God, since even the desire to believe presupposed the prevenient workings of the Holy Spirit. But there was no mention of irresistible grace, and the idea that God has predestined some to damnation was roundly condemned. It was clearly in human power, then, to spurn God’s advances, and it was suggested only a little less clearly that we retain some power freely to cooperate with God’s grace and by such cooperation to do at least something to further our own salvation. Hence, though the doctrine of grace transmitted to the medieval church was fundamentally Augustinian in inspiration— and so understood by them—it left substantial room for differing interpretations, which were tested at various times throughout the medieval period. And disagreements often had the form of dissension with regard to the precise import of Augustine’s own views. Repeatedly the pastoral and missionary concerns of the original Pelagians surfaced in medieval debates and positions, leading some to emphasize human responsibility and the efficacy of natural human effort in the process of salvation. But correspondingly so did the fundamentally confessional urge that had moved Augustine to acknowledge the impulsion of divine grace at every critical juncture in his own life. This debate would continue into the Reformation (and beyond).