The History of the Christian Church

This is part three of “The Long Road to Reform.”In our last episode we looked at The Conciliar Movement that formed to end the Great Papal Schism and so many hoped would be a permanent fixture for reform in the Church. As well-intentioned as the movement was, it ended up resurrecting the Schism instead of solving it. In its long battle with the Papacy, Conciliarism eventually lost.We turn now to look at a reformer from Bohemia named John Hus; or more properly Jan Hus. One of my personal, all-time favorite church leaders.Bohemia was an important part of the Holy Roman Empire; a sovereign state with its capital at Prague. Today, it roughly corresponds with the Czech Republic. It had a long history as a place of vibrant Christianity, especially monasticism. In 1383, Bohemia and England were linked by the marriage of Anne of Bohemia and the English King Richard II. With this union, students of both countries went back and forth between the colleges of Prague and Oxford where the pre-reformer John Wycliffe.The revolt Wycliffe started at Oxford, expanded when he was booted and met with greater success in Bohemia than England because unlike England, it was joined to a strong national party led by a man named Jan Hus.Hus came from peasant parents in the southern Bohemian town of Husinetz. He studied theology at the University of Prague, earning a Master of Arts before teaching there and diving into the cause of religious reform.While a student, Hus was introduced to the early philosophy of Wycliffe, but it was only after his appointment as the pastor at Bethlehem Chapel that was exposed to Wycliffe’s more radical views on religious reform. He immediately adopted Wycliffe’s views that the church was an invisible company of the elect, with Jesus as its head rather than a Pope.Bethlehem Chapel was located near the University of Prague, giving Hus an open door to circulate Wycliffe’s writings. As his ideas took hold, paintings began to appear on the walls of the church contrasting the behavior of the popes and Christ. In one, the pope rode a horse while Jesus walked barefoot. Another showed Jesus washing the disciples’ feet as the pope’s were kissed.Bethlehem Chapel had been founded in 1391 to encourage the national faith of Bohemia, so Hus’s strong sermons in Bohemian stirred up popular support for reform. And wouldn’t you know it? Where do you think the first protests came from--That’s right: Students rioted both for and against the ideas of Wycliffe being promoted by Hus and his supporters.The Archbishop of Prague realized the threat Hus’s activities had for the upper echelons of Church Hierarchy and complained to the pope. The Pope responded, “Root out the heresy.” So the Archbishop excommunicated Hus. Bad move; for right away the Archbishop realized how little local support he had. When Hus realized he held the backing of the people, he ramped up his criticisms and attacked the pope’s sale of indulgences to support of his war against Naples. That was too much for the Bohemian King Wenceslas. Hus might have the support of the common people, but his condemnation of the sale of indulgences impacted a political issue the king didn’t want messed with. Negotiations between the Pope and king saw Prague being placed under a papal interdict; a political and religious slap on the wrist that had an immediate impact on people across the board. When under an interdict, people remained members of the church, but the sacraments were suspended. All of this happened because of Hus, so he left Prague to live in exile in southern Bohemia. It was during this time Hus wrote his most notable work, titled On the Church.The Council of Constance we recently looked at was fast approaching. This was the council set to solve the problem of the Great Papal Schism. At the urging of the Emperor Sigismund, Hus agreed to appear. He hoped to present his views on the nature of the Church to the members of the Council. He ended up instead a victim of the Inquisition.The rule of the Inquisition was simple. If enough witnesses testified to the guilt of the accused, he had to confess and renounce his error or he’d be executed by being burned, because, well – being good churchmen, they couldn’t shed blood. If the accused confessed, the sentence was life in prison, which in most cases was hardly better than being burnt at the stake. Hus’s case was handled in a manner typical for the Inquisition of that time. Greedy Inquisitors often went after someone simply because they lusted for their property. So people were accused of some grievous crime and there were usually enough witnesses-for-hire around who’d say whatever the Inquisitors paid them to. In Hus’s case, the Inquisitors weren’t after his wealth; the Church simply wanted him gone, so he was accused and found guilty of heresies he’d never taught.Now, Hus said he’d alter his views—IF they could be shown to be contrary to Scripture. But he refused to recant the heresies he’d been falsely accused of. It was a matter of principle; to recant of them, he’d have to admit he taught them. He hadn’t. How could he recant something he’d never taught? But the Inquisitors were adamant: Hus must recant.In words similar to what Martin Luther would say some time later while on Trial at Worms, Hus said, “I have said that I would not, for a chapel full of gold, recede from the truth. . . . I know that the truth stands and is mighty forever, and abides eternally, with whom there is no respect of persons.”It’s clear in the letters Hus wrote at this time his main anxiety was that “liars would say I’ve slipped back from the truth I preached.” This trial of Hus is one of those special stand-out moments in church history. His fidelity and refusal to swerve from Truth, even to save his life was duplicated many times over by thousands of the un-named, but it was Hus who forged the template.For 8 months he lay in prison in Constance. His letters during his last month rank among the great in Christian literature.“O most holy Christ,” he prayed, “draw me, weak as I am, after Yourself, for if You do not draw us we cannot follow You. Strengthen my spirit, that it may be willing. If the flesh is weak, let Your grace precede us; come between and follow, for without You we cannot go for Your sake to cruel death. Give me a fearless heart, a right faith, a firm hope, a perfect love, that for Your sake I may lay down my life with patience and joy. Amen.”On July 6th, 1415 Jan Hus was led out of his cell and began the walk to the place where he was to be burned. On the way he passed thru a churchyard and saw a bonfire of his books. He laughed, and told those looking on not to believe the lies being passed around about him. On arriving at the stake in a spot called The Devil’s Place, Hus knelt and prayed. Following protocol, the official in charge of the execution asked him for the final time if he’d recant and save his life. Hus replied, “God is my witness that the evidence against me is false. I have never thought nor preached except with the one intention of winning men, if possible, from their sins. In the truth of the gospel I have written, taught, and preached; today I will gladly die.”The Inquisitors thought Hus’s condemnation and execution would put the kibosh on the calls for Reform. They thought burning Hus was a kind of back-fire that would put out the forest-fire lit by Wycliffe’s criticisms. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The Bohemian rebellion grew and developed into both a moderate and a militant wing. The moderates were called Utraquists, a Latin term meaning “both” since their protest called for freedom to receive both the bread and the cup in Communion.The militants were called Taborites after the city in Bohemia that served as their headquarters. This was an apocalyptic group that called for radical reform.Facing armed resistance from the Bohemian King at the urging of the Pope, the various groups of Hus’s followers, loosely called Hussites, agreed to what’s called The Four Articles. Under the Articles, while the various groups might differ on this or that, they were far more united with each other in facing the King. The Four Articles were, à1) The Word of God was regarded as the chief authority and was to be taught freely throughout the kingdom.2) Per the Ultraquists, Communion would be given by BOTH bread and cup.3) All agreed that clergy should give up their wealth and live in apostolic poverty.4) Simony and any other public sin was to be punished.When King Wenceslas died in 1419, his successor was Sigismund, the guy who’d failed Hus at Constance. The Hussites demanded he agree to the Four Articles and grant them freedom of worship. Sigismund refused and petitioned the Pope to proclaim a Crusade against them. The Pope agreed and Sigismund marched on Prague where he and his army was crushed by the Hussites.Their leader was Jan Zizka who turned the many peasant carts into a kind of war chariot. In a follow up battle, the remnant of Sigismund’s army was wiped out. Then, a year later, an army of a hundred thousand crusaders fled yet again before Zizka’s carts. A 3rd Crusade, a year after that, in 1422, dissolved before it even met them.Under different leaders, the Bohemians crushed 2 later Crusades called against them, one in 1427 and the other in 31. The Council of Basel extended an olive branch to the Hussites, but they, fearing the same treatment Hus had met at Constance, refused. So yet ANOTHER Crusade was called against them. This was also put down. Good Grief! When are these people going to learn?Actually, this defeat convinced the Catholics negotiation with the Hussites was necessary. As a result of that negotiation, the church in Bohemia rejoined the rest of Western Christendom, but was allowed to retain Ultraquist communion as well as a modified form of the Four Articles.While most of the nobility accepted this arrangement and honored Sigismund as King, many of the commoners left the Church, and formed the Unitas Fratrum—or “Union of Brethren.” Their numbers grew in Bohemia and nearby Moravia.They’ll become closely aligned with the Reformation later.What the lives of Wycliffe and Hus make clear is that if the Church of Rome was going to be reformed from within, it had ample opportunity in the 14th and early 15th Cs. By the end of the 15th , those who hoped to bring reform by councils were themselves frustrated and by their opponents, repudiated. The treatment of Wycliffe and Hus by church authorities made clear to all the reform-minded how they were going to be dealt with. It was now clear:  Reform of the papal church from within was impossible. A time of “judgment” had come.In our next episode, we’ll take a look at an Italian Reformer from a bit later in the 15th C; Savonarola.

This is part 2 of “The Long Road to Reform.”Before diving into the THE Reformation, we’ll do some review and add detail to the story of the Church. We do this because I fear too many of us may have the impression Martin Luther and John Calvin were wild aberrations. That they just sprang up out of nowhere. Many Protestants assume the Roman Catholic Church got progressively more corrupt during the Late Middle Ages and that Luther was a lone good guy who stood up and said, “Enough!” Many Roman Catholics would agree that the late medieval Church got a bit off but see what Luther did as a gross over-reaction that took him off the rails.So in this series of podcasts within the larger Church-story, I want to make sure we understand The Reformation was the inevitable result of a long attempt at reform that had gone on for awhile. To do that, we need to go back over some of the ground we’ve already covered.Pope Clement V made his headquarters the French city of Avignon. For the next 70 years, the popes resided there and bent their policies to the advantage of the French throne. The rest of Europe wasn’t real excited about this, giving this period the title of “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church.”When Clement V died in 1314, the cardinals found it difficult to agree on a successor so they decided to elect a 72 year old, assuming he’d not last long, but it would afford them time to reach a consensus on a real pope. But Pope John XXII turned out be far more than a mere place-holder. He lived for 18 years and surprised everyone with his vigorous rule. Pope John was determined to make the Italians honor his papacy and sent troops to force down recalcitrant nobles. To finance these military excursions as well as funding the expansion of the papal court at Avignon, John devised a complex tax system. This only added to resentment against his rule.In the decade Pope Clement VI reigned, nepotism in the Church reached new heights and the papal palace at Avignon rivaled those of the secular courts of Europe in pompous luxury.Innocent VI made arrangements to move back to Rome but died before doing so.The eight years of Pope Urban V were marked by reform. Urban was an austere man of great personal discipline. He simplified the life of the court and removed from office anyone who wouldn’t abide his reforms. In 1365, he returned to Rome to the acclaim of the people. But his policies weren’t pro-Italian enough and loyalty to him quickly eroded. When his rule was defied by large groups, he moved back to Avignon.When Urban V died in 1370, Gregory XI was elected. Gregory’s uncle was Pope Clement VI who made him a cardinal at the age of 17. It’s that nepotism thing I mentioned a moment ago. This Gregory is the pope St. Catherine of Siena urged to return to Rome, we talked about in an earlier episode. On January 17, 1377, amid great rejoicing, Gregory entered Rome. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church was over and most assumed things would return to normal. It was not to be. The Great Papal Schism is just around the corner.The Avignon Papacies engaged in numerous intrigues and conducted military forays into various regions of Europe that had to be funded. So the popes came up with ingenious ways to raise revenue that furthered corruption. When an ecclesiastical position was vacant, its income was sent to Avignon. So the popes rather preferred that these positons weren’t filled and churches went without bishops. When the positon WAS filled, it was auctioned off to the highest bidder in a return to the practice of simony Pope Gregory VII had worked so hard to end. Since these ecclesiastical offices were a source of income, some men managed to secure several of them. But, being that they could only be in one place at a time, they served as absentee landlords in their parishes. Added to this simony and absenteeism, the nepotism that marked the Avignon Papacy was so bad, by the end of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, there was a widespread sense of the need for radical reform of the Church. And since it was the papacy itself that needed reform, the voices calling for it increasingly understood reform would need to come from someone other than the Pope.While I’d love to dive into the story of the Great Papal Schism, I don’t think it would make for very good podcast material. We’ve already given a decent summary of it in previous episodes. Any more would devolve into a long list of names that become a jumble. The intrigues that went on during this time are rich and complex and would make for a great TV miniseries. But we’re going to pass over it now and just say that the emergence of 2, then 3 popes all claiming to be Peter’s rightful heir is one more obvious evidence things had gone horribly awry in the leadership of the Western Church.It became clear to everyone reform was needed. And in fact, many voices called for it.During the Great Schism, the conciliar movement wanted to reform the structure of the church while leaving its doctrine alone. Others, like John Wycliffe, who we recently looked at, and Jan Hus we have yet to - concluded it wasn’t just the structure of the Church that needed reform; so did its doctrine.As a backdrop to all this were the frequent popular movements, especially among the poor, who saw the Mongol threat to the East, the Hundred Years’ War, and the devastation of the Plague as harbingers of the End Times and potential judgments of God on a corrupt State and Church.The Conciliar Movement arose to deal with the Great Schism. Church leaders realized the history of the church had been dramatically shaped by its councils. They’d kept it ON THE RAILS at times it was being threatened with de-railing. It began all the way back in the 4th C, when Constantine called the first at Nicaea. Other crises were solved by similar councils over the centuries. Then, when popes gained power, the councils became instruments to enforce their power. This was especially true in the famous Fourth Lateran Council, which adopted a long list of polices of Pope Innocent III.But as papal authority diminished during the Great Schism, many hoped a new council would convene and undo the wrongs that had settled in as the status quo in both Church and State. As this theory grew, advocates said such a council held more authority than the pope because it would represent the WHOLE church, and not the partisan interests of one. Therefore, the council could select a new pope all could and should agree on.Now, this may seem imminently reasonable to us in the 21st C, but the issue was tied up in a sticking point its advocates had a hard time resolving à and that was this:Who had authority to call such a council. The first council was called by Constantine. Subsequent councils were convened by a notable church leader, and eventually by the popes. And—the findings of a council had to be officially endorsed by the Pope or they weren’t valid.This problem was solved in 1409 when cardinals of both sides in the Great Schism, agreed to a great council in Pisa. è And they all lived happily ever after.You know enough of the history of this period to know that’s not how the story goes. On the contrary, each of the rival popes called his own council to pre-empt the one at Pisa. You gotta’ wonder who would consent to such silliness and be on one of those councils. Wouldn’t you get an invitation and say, “Ah, thanks, I’m so honored. But, ummm, I have to decline. I need to uhhh, ummm – visit my dying uncle in Tuscany.”It seems this was in fact what some did because both papal councils failed. So the rival popes retreated to strongholds to await the outcome of the Pisan Council. It had the support of both colleges of cardinals and most courts of Europe.Rather than saying one of the two papal claimants was right, the council declared both unworthy and deposed them. The council then renewed opposition to simony and several other ecclesiastical ills.  They elected Alexander V as the new Pope.Convinced they’d ended the schism, the council adjourned.Ready for some fun? Here we go . . .All of this illustrates just how BADLY the Church needed reformation.Though the Pisan Council deposed the rival popes and installed Alexander, they refused to step down and had enough support to retain their position, in title at least. So now there were 3 popes. Then, months after being elected, Alexander died, and the cardinals appointed John XXIII. Turmoil saw John flee to the German Emperor Sigismund, who was himself in a tussle with 2 claimants to the throne, each supporting a different pope.Sigismund called another council to put an end to the now 3-way schism. John assumed this new council would endorse his papacy and agreed with Sigismund to call it in 1414 at Constance. The council realized John was not the reformer they needed and deposed him. He fled but was captured and returned to Constance where he agreed to resign. Worried he’d flee again and set up somewhere else, he was consigned to prison for the rest of his life.Then the Roman pope, Gregory XII, resigned as he’d promised if his rivals did likewise. The Constance council passed some rules for reformation and began the process of picking a new pope, which resulted in the selection of Martin V.Benedict XIII, last of Avignon popes, took refuge on the coast of Spain, where he continued his claim as pope, but by now, no one was listening. When he died in 1423, no successor was elected.Those who gathered at Constance hoped to rid the church of heresy and corruption. So they condemned Jan Hus, a guy they should have embraced as a fellow reformer.Then they fumbled when it came to ridding the church of simony and absenteeism simply because so many in the church’s hierarchy had attained their position that way. It issued some decrees and made provision for future councils that would meet regionally to address local issues.The next council, called by Martin V as agreed at Constance, gathered at Pavia in 1423, but then moved to Siena due to the plague. Attendance was thin and not much was done. As 1430 and the next council drew near, Pope Martin was inclined to skip it. Advisors informed him the urge for conciliarism was still strong and if he failed to convene it might provoke a new crisis. The council met in Basel, during which Martin died. The council picked Eugene IV as his successor and as soon as he was elected, Eugene adjourned the council. But they refused, and considered deposing him. Under threat by Emperor Sigismund, Eugene withdrew the decree of adjournment.Up to this point, the Basel Council had gone virtually unnoticed by Europe, but now, all eyes were on it. A council seemed to have gained power over a Pope. Some said the council ought to stay convened and rule the church directly.It was then that an urgent request for help came from Constantinople being severely threatened by the Turks. Both the Byzantine emperor and patriarch said they were willing to rejoin the Western church and take part in the council, if it would move to a city closer to Constantinople. Eugene saw this as a way to regain some of his mojo and moved the council to Ferrara in NE Italy. Most of the council refused to relocate, but some, in hopes of ending the long rift between East and West, went to Ferrara.And so it was that the conciliar movement, which had come into being as a response to schism, was itself “schized” (yeah, I know that’s not a word). There were now 2 councils à  and 1 pope.The Council of Ferrara later moved to Florence where it gained recognition for seeing the Eastern Church accept papal authority.The Council of Basel, meanwhile, became more radical in its pronouncements, causing increasing numbers of its members to leave and head off for Ferarra. Basel deposed Pope Eugene and named Felix V as the new Pope.Are you keeping track? There are now 2 councils and 2 popes. The conciliar movement, conceived as a way to end the schism resurrected it!But the truth is, the council in Basel had dwindled down to such a small number that people paid little attention to it. They moved to Lausanne and eventually disbanded when they realized they were irrelevant to church life. Felix V gave up his claim to the papacy.While it seemed for a while that conciliarism would be a standing feature of church life, in the end, the Popes won. Any future councils would be at their discretion.

This episode is the first of several I’m calling “The Long Road to Reform.” As I mentioned at the end of the last episode, we’ll track the Church’s long march to the Reformation, then pause before picking it up acwith THE Reformation by doing some episodes tracking Church History into the East.Until recently, most treatments of the History of Christianity have focused almost exclusively on the Church in Europe and what’s often called “Western” Christianity. Mention is made of the Church’s growth into other regions like North Africa, and the Middle and Far East. But it’s barely a nod in that direction. For every 10,000 words devoted to the Church in Europe, 10 are given to the Church of the East. What’s sad is that this Church has a rich history. We won’t make up for the lack of reporting on the history of the church in these regions, but we will seek to fill in some of the gaps and give those interested resources for learning more.Okay, here we go. We embark now on The Long Road to Reform.At the dawn of the 13th C with Innocent III, the papacy reached the zenith. The Dominicans and Franciscans carried the Gospel far and wide, new universities were hotbeds of theological enterprise, and Gothic Cathedrals seemed to defeat the law of gravity.Europe was united under the pope and the emperor; in theory at least. Because the Crusaders had taken Constantinople, the breach between East and West looked to have been finally healed. Yeah – it looked like Christendom was about to enter a Golden Age.As is often the case, looks can be deceiving. These were.By 1261, the West’s influence in Constantinople was over as well as the bogus union the 4th  Crusade claimed to have forged. Over the next 2 centuries, Europe saw several changes that set the scene for the modern world.One of the most important was in the realm of economics.When we think of the Middle Ages in Europe, we remember feudalism with its strict rules of class. There was the land-owning nobility and the commoners, serfs who worked the land for nobles in exchange for protection. We don’t have time to go into it here, but feudalism was largely the result of developments in the technology of warfare. Armored warriors, called knights, were expensive. It took a vast economic base to field them. So serfs worked lands in exchange for protection by knights. These serfs gave loyalty, called fealty, to nobles in ever higher levels from counts and barons to dukes and earls, with the king at the top. A third class in this tiered structure of medieval society were the clergy. The Church also owned lands and had serfs who worked for them. This made priests and abbots responsible for the secular rule of church and monastery estates. But toward the end of the Middle Ages, the cities of Europe began to grow and a new class of commoner emerged – the merchant.There were several reasons for the proliferation of merchants and the growth of villages into town and towns into cities. One of the most important was the boom in trade. The Crusades stimulated Europe’s taste for new things. Someone needed to buy up what Europe produced, which was a lot of wool, and take it to the East were all the goodies were. Increased trade meant increased wealth for merchants, who weren’t land-owners but who did buy themselves nice homes in the growing cities. Those houses needed furniture and art and all the other luxuries that mark a successful merchant so industries popped up to supply those wants – bringing even MORE to the cities. New credit systems were developed as extra money meant people looking to invest for a profit. And slowly but surely, a NEW social class developed – the middle-class who didn’t fit the strict class structure that had dominated Europe for several hundred years. When nobles began taxing the trade crossing their land, the merchants protested and called for a stronger central government that would reign in the nobles. A king could protect trade, quash the bandits that harassed caravans, establish a common currency, and put an end to silly conflicts that disrupted trade.Kings saw the merchants and emerging middle-class that supported them as a way to do an end run around the nobles who so often gave them grief. The king didn’t have to depend now on those nobles to supply knights and men at arms. From the taxes raised from the middle-class, they could field their own army.The growth of strong kings during the late Middle Ages in Europe goes hand in hand with the rising middle-class. And it’s out of this process the modern nations of Europe emerged. Regions that shared a common language and culture coalesced around strong central governments. So, nationalism became one of the factors that will lead to problems for the Church. Until the 13th Century, Europeans identified themselves by their town, city or county. By the 15th Century they identified themselves as English, French, Swedish …Where this emerging nationalism effected the Church was when a pope leaned in his policies toward this nation or that. When he did, that nation or this ignored his rule. And this led to the overall denigration of the pope’s office and authority. That in turn led to not a few looking to someone other than the Pope to lead in reform of the Church.What’s often neglected in a discussion of the roots of the Reformation is the impact of the Hundred Years’ War on Church History. Lasting almost 140 yrs, from 1337 to 1475, the war dragged in almost all of Europe at one point or another. Basically a conflict between France and England, it lasted so long and was filled with such intrigue, everyone seemed to want to weigh in at some point and take a few swings at the other guy.It was during the Hundred Years’ War that a French teenager named Joan had visions that stirred her countrymen to rally behind the French prince and give the British a good run for their money. Actually, money was the perennial British problem in this War. They’d win amazing victories on the battlefield at places like Crecy and Agincourt, then have to withdraw for lack of funds.This long conflict with all its many chapters had enormous consequences for the Church. It was during this time the so-called “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy” took place, with the popes relocating from Rome to the French city of Avignon. Popes became virtual puppets of the French throne. So the English disregarded the papacy. Then, during the Great Papal Schism, when two rival popes vied for control of the Church, Europeans aligned under whichever pope supported their cause in the War. That made putting the Schism to an end, even MORE difficult. All of this of course, weakened the claims of the Pope to universal authority.And what are to say of the Plague that devastated whole regions of the continent? The Little Ice Age of the 14th C set crop yields back and led to virtual famine in some places. This in turn shattered the fragile economy and set those already living hand to mouth into a physically vulnerable position. Their immune systems were degraded so when the Plague arrived, hundreds of thousands were susceptible to its ravages. Between 1348 and 50, the Black Death swept Europe. While numbers vary, with a general account of a third of Europeans dying, there were some regains were as much as HALF the population succumbed. Just imagine what that did to the social fabric of these places! Well, imagine what it would be like living where you do with only half the people. For those in urban centers, that may sound like a dream come true – at first. But realize half those who die are the only ones with the know-how or skill to do a good part of the work that keeps your system running. Half the houses are now empty. Half the stores, closed. You get the idea.The Plague sent a shockwave through the collective conscious of Europe. How could a society so dominated by Christianity have suffered such a devastation? Maybe the Church had gone astray so badly God’s wrath was in evidence. Could the Black Death be His way of cleaning house? While life had always been precarious, death now hovered over all, so life became little more than preparation for life after death. Pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem were sought. The poor who couldn’t make such a journey went on local pilgrimages to local holy spots. Trade in relics boomed, even though the Fourth Lateran Council tried to put a kibosh on it.In the mid-15th Century, when it was clear the Turks were determined to take Constantinople, the Byzantine emperors appealed to the West for help, even though the 4th Crusade had been a colossal failure. In trade for assistance, the popes required the East affirm their loyalty to Rome. Under threat of imminent demise, the East agreed to terms at the Council of Ferrara in 1439. But the Pope wasn’t able to persuade the Knights and armies of Europe to go to the aid of Constantinople. In the East, many of the Christians there saw the emperor’s bowing to Rome as a capitulation to heresy. They refused to fight for him or his cause. In 1443, the patriarchs of, Alexandria, Antioch, and  Jerusalem rejected the Council’s decisions and broke communion with Constantinople. In 1452, after more than 400 yrs of animosity, a Roman mass was celebrated in Hagia Sophia. But Constantinople’s days were numbered. A year later, Muhammad II laid siege to the City. His new guns punched holes in those once impregnable walls. Emperor Constantine XI died defending the City. The great Hagia Sophia became a mosque and the city was renamed Istanbul.It was King Philip IV of France who managed to wrap the papacy tightly around his finger. His long contest with Pope Boniface VIII is what helped lead to the Avignon Papacy and Great Schism.The next Pope was Benedict XI. A Dominican of genuine piety who sought to undo the acrimony Boniface had managed to stir up across Italy and France. Despite Benedict’s attempts at harmony, King Philip insisted on calling a council to condemn the acts of Boniface. Benedict refused as it would be yet another denigration of papal authority at the hands of the French monarch. But this wasn’t enough for the conservatives regarded Benedict’s reconciliatory acts as giving away of too much papal mojo. He died after only a year as Pope.A rumor spread he’d been poisoned; both sides claiming the other had done the deed. And by both sides, I mean those French cardinals who backed Philip and the Italian, German and English cardinals who backed Rome. Except for those who didn’t. Yeah, I know it gets confusing. è Welcome to church history.Through a clever bit of subterfuge, the French cardinals wrangled an agreement to elect Clement V. Clement seemed to be a neutral candidate, when he’d in fact been scheming with the French all along. During his term as Pope, from 1305-14, he never visited Rome even once.He appointed 24 cardinals; all but 1 of them, French; ensuring the next several Popes would also be a pro-French interest. Several of these cardinals were his relatives. While Clement V’s papacy was abysmal, probably the most shameful moment was his consent to the destruction of the Templars.The Templars were one of the military orders founded during the Crusades. Since the Crusades were over, the Templars were really obsolete. But they were incredibly wealthy and powerful. This was at a time when King Philip was on a campaign to assert his absolute dominance over all French nobility. The Templars were an obstacle to overcome as they provided both funds and arms to the very nobles Philip wanted to subjugate. He also owed them a considerable sum in the loans he’d taken from them. So in a fascinating tale of intrigue, Philip persuaded others to do his dirty work for him. He had the Templars accused of disgusting crimes, besides the more pedantic evil of heresy. Under torture, some Templar leaders confessed, including their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay. De Molay later recanted his confession, but it was too late. He and a companion were executed. The Templars were disbanded, their wealth confiscated by the French Crown.We’ll pick it up at this point next time.

This episode is titled “The Witness of Stones.”I’ve had the privilege of doing a bit of touring in Europe. I’ve visited the cathedral at Cologne, Germany on several occasions. I’ve been to Wartburg Castle where Luther hid out. Mrs. Communion Sanctorum and I did a 2-week tour of Florence and Rome for our 30th Anniversary. We saw lots of churches and cathedrals. No matter what your thoughts about medieval Christianity, you can’t help but be impressed by the art and architecture the period produced.Some modern Christians, especially those of the Evangelical stripe, visit a medieval European cathedral, and come away impressed at the architecture, but mystified and maybe, a few anyway, a bit angry. Mystified on WHY people would go to such extremes to build such an immense and impressive structure. Angry at the massive expense such a structure meant.This episode seeks to explain the why behind medieval cathedrals.Churches in general and cathedrals in particular served two main purposes. First, the building was a place for worship; that worship being centered on the Mass. Second, the church was a place of instruction.The architecture was used as a tool for BOTH of these.In an age when only a small portion of society was literate, church buildings became a kind of “book in stone,” telling God’s story in the paintings and carvings that adorned the walls, and later, in the dazzling light of stained glass windows.Churches and cathedrals were made elaborate because of the theology of the Mass that we’ve looked at in the episode on the Eucharistic controversy. While the debate was long, the Church eventually settled in on the doctrine of transubstantiation; the belief that at the words of the priest, the bread and wine of Communion are transmuted into the literal body and blood of Christ. A portion of the consecrated host is kept in a container called a tabernacle, making the church into a house that holds the most precious thing in the universe; the body of Christ. It’s for this reason churches have long been regarded as sacred refuges. The church’s specialness derived from the presence of the host. And of course, that host deserved a house worthy of its importance.Think of the consecrated host as the finest gem. Such a jewel deserves an elaborate setting. It was this mentality that fueled the building of Europe’s Medieval Cathedrals. While churches were the meeting place of the faithful, their primary function was to serve as the location where the great miracle of transubstantiation took place.Following the Edict of Milan ending official persecution of Christians, the first church buildings were built in the same pattern and plan as Roman basilicas. These were civil government buildings used for a variety of purposes but officially designated as the hall where the king held court. The Roman basilica was in the shape of a capital “T.” Churches built in the 7th thru 11th C, a period called Romanesque, were built in a small “t” floor plan. The addition of the space at the top of the “t”, called the apse, was to provide room for the clergy who became increasingly distinct from the laity. As more priests and monks were added to the choir, the apse grew.Another major change in Romanesque churches was their roofs. They went from wood to stone. Stone roofs were possible because of the use of semi-circular arches that supported the additional load. When arches transect each other, it forms a vault. The challenge these arches, vaults, and stone roofs put on builders was the lateral stress they exerted. The weight of all that stone had to go somewhere and where it went was to the walls of the church. To keep them from toppling over, they were made sturdier by adding weight and width. So Romanesque churches are massive, imposing structures of thick walls and few windows.In the mid-12th C, Romanesque architecture gave way to a new movement called Gothic. That label was applied much later by those who considered the style barbaric, so worthy of association with the Goths who’d helped bring Rome down. The basic floor plan for churches remained the same, but Gothic architects used pointed, rather than semi-circular arches and vaults. This allowed much higher ceilings. The weight was born by columns rather than walls, which doubled and trebled the lateral thrust on the columns. So external columns were built outside the church and used as additional support for the internal columns by means of an ingenious prop called a flying buttress. Since the weight was now born by columns rather than walls, the walls grew lighter and could be replaced by large stained- glass windows, whose scenes depicted stories from the Bible and lives of the saints.Just imagine the first time a peasant wandered into Cologne Cathedral! The only church he’d ever known was the centuries old massive block building back home that could hold no more than 200. He stands in the plaza in front of Cologne cathedral and tilts back his head as he takes in the church’s front façade, carved with hundreds of statues of Apostles and saints. His head keeps going back and back because there seems no end to the spires that rise ever higher, pointing like fingers toward God in His heaven. Dumbstruck that anything could be so big and reach so high, he stumbles in the front door, expecting to be greeted by the thick gloom he’s used to in the church back home. But this church isn’t dark; it’s filled with light. On his right is the main sidewall of the church, pierced by the most magnificent works of art he’s ever seen. More than that—than he’s ever even conceived! They are massive windows of colored glass through which the light streams. And they cast images of stories he’s heard many times. These are the Apostles, Jesus, Mary, and the saints. And the ceiling over his head is so high he can’t see it because it’s veiled in shadow. He stands there with mouth hanging open and wonders how he’s going to make his wife and family believe the wonders he’s seeing. He simply has no words to describe it; no point of reference in all his experience.Earlier I said that medieval churches were books in stone. These books told the story of God's creation and the human condition. The average town church only told a few chapters of that story while a cathedral was an entire encyclopedia.The story begins outside, looking at the front façade. While the Gothic cathedrals of Europe are all unique, they bear many similarities. Most have twin towers that soar into the sky. Most are entered via 3 doors; a North, Center, and South entrance that leads to the center and side aisles of the nave of the central hall. Cathedrals were built on an East-West axis with the façade at the west end. Above the central entrance is a large circular stained-glass window, called the Rose window. The central porch and entrance are the largest and were often kept closed for normal church services as they were for the exclusive use of the king or nobles. Commoners used the north and south doors.The porches for each door were elaborately decorated with sculptures of dozens upon dozens of figures both large and small. The left or North porch was often devoted to depictions of normal, everyday life. The labor of the months and various occupations are found there. The idea was to capture the human condition, especially as it intersected with the Life of Faith.The Central porch was more often than not a rendering of the Last Judgment. So, Jesus is seen seated in glory at the apex, judging the souls of mankind, who are found lower down rising from the dead. At the very bottom are depictions of hell and the torment of those souls cast into eternal damnation. Flying around Jesus’ throne are the saved in heaven and myriad angels.The South, right-hand porch was often given to the elevation of Mary.Standing across the front of the entire façade are statues of the OT prophets, the Apostles, and Saints.Poised above the central portal is the West Rose Window. From outside one cannot see the beauty of its stained glass, but the design is still noteworthy. Many of these rose windows have the appearance of an elaborate spoked wheel.If you stroll around the outside of the cathedral, rather than rushing to enter through one of those glorious portals, you’ll note how though the building lies heavy and squat on the land, it’s many spires and vertical embellishments all seem to lighten the effect. Like they are “lifting” it off the ground.Those gruesome gargoyles that have fascinated so many aren’t just for decoration. They served an important architectural and engineering purpose. They added weight to the columns that bore the load of the roof. Figures of fearsome demeanor, perched outside, they reminded people making their way into the church that while evil was outside in the world, the Church was a holy sanctuary free of such malevolence.Tourists entering a medieval cathedral today are often met by a lot of stone. The walls are gray, the stone rough. When first built, these walls were awash in color. The sculptures were painted. Gold-leaf was everywhere. And the treasures of the church were on full display. Well, they were when times were good. When not so good, they were sold and used to buy food or outfit soldiers for defense of the realm. Yes, cathedrals were a kind of public storehouse, kept against times of trouble.Inside, as you arrive at the head of the central aisle, you approach the altar area and the choir, or apse; sacred place for the clergy. Cathedrals were built where they were because they possessed some special relic from the Church’s past, a piece of the true Cross; the thumb of some saint. These relics were often kept in a special box called a reliquary and stowed away in a vault under the main altar of the church. They would be taken out and carried in procession at special events and days of the year.The back of the apse, so the East wall of the cathedral, was the building’s most elaborate and largest stained glass windows.Protestant visitors to Europe’s medieval churches and cathedrals are often confused on why there are so many little side rooms that dot the walls of the nave. They appear almost as places were smaller services were held – and that is in fact what they were; chapels for smaller services. Some of these were the donation of wealthy patrons and families where they would conduct their own private services. It’s in these chapels that some of Europe’s greatest art is to be found.As we end this episode, I want to again thank all those who’ve left a message on FB or gone by and Liked the page. Those reviews on iTunes are stellar and one of the best ways to get the word out to others about the podcast. Each country has its own iTunes store, so reviews from each country are only seen by people there. So I encourage our many international listeners to leave a review of CS on their iTunes store. Thanks.Let me give a quick preview of what’s coming . . .I’ve been doing a LOT of reading and study for our next phase of Church History. The next era we’ll dive in to is the Reformation in Europe. The more I read, the more I realize we need to go back a bit and take a closer look at the call for reform that had been heard in the Western church long before Martin Luther came on the scene. It’s a real injustice to the history of the Church to think he arose out of thin air. That fact is, Luther could have done nothing if there hadn’t already been a lot of work done in moving for reform.Once we’ve laid the groundwork for the Reformation, we’ll take a look at what was happening in the rest of the word as far as the Faith was concerned. Then we’ll return to the story of Reform in Europe.So, get ready for some fun stuff.

This 74th Episode of CS is the 2nd Overview, where we pause to sum up the journey we’ve taken since the last overview in Episode 35.That summary began with the Apostolic Church and ran up through the 5th C marking the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. This Overview starts where that left off and brings us up to the 15th C. We’re about to move into what’s called the Reformation and Counter- Reformation Era, but have a bit more work to do in looking at some trends that took place in the Church in Europe in the waning decades of the Middle Ages.Turns out, there was a lot of reform-oriented activity that took place in the Church well before the birth of Martin Luther. So we’ll take a look at that, filling in some of the holes left in the story so far.The reason these overview / review episodes are important is because of the need to set the events of Church history into the larger context of world history. But a danger lies in the very thing many dislike in the study of history; that inevitable list of names and dates. We have an advantage here because the assumption is – you LIKE history > Or for goodness sake, why would you be listening? I sure hope no home-school student has to listen to these, and no parent uses them as a form of discipline. Although, I guess they could be used in some kind of enhanced interrogation technique.Anyway à Here we go . . .  Picking up where we left off in the last Overview àChristianity came to England early, at the end of the 3rd C. Patrick took the Gospel to Ireland in the 5th.The Goth and Hun invasions of Europe altered both the political and religious landscape. As the political structures of the Western Roman Empire fragmented, people looked to the Church to provide leadership. Being generally pretty capable leaders, the task of providing guidance fell to the dozens of Christian bishops.Then we briefly examined a subject that could have occupied us for much longer; the emergence of the Roman bishop as the Pope and de-facto leader of the Church.We spent an episode considering Pope Gregory the Great’s monumental impact on the Church in the 6th C, how the Church proved to be a crucial feature of the Middles Ages and how Augustine’s work on theology formed the intellectual core of that era.We charted the Faith’s expansion into Africa, Mesopotamia, Asia and the Far East.Charlemagne’s tenure as Holy Roman Emperor was reviewed. The Iconoclast Controversy in the Eastern Church was covered. Then we saw the rift between the Eastern and Western churches that occurred in the 11th C.The Crusades occupied us for 4 episodes; the growth of monasticism for 5 as we took a closer look at both Francis of Assisi and Dominic. We were fascinated by the career of the brilliant Bernard of Clairvaux. We attempted an examination of two major controversies –Investiture and the Eucharist.Universities were founded; the two most important at Paris and Oxford, but several lesser schools as well – giving rise to the movement known as Scholasticism which we took 3 episodes to cover. Scholasticism was fueled by the earlier work of Anselm and Abelard, but really took off with the labor of Thomas Aquinas and Dun Scotus.Thomas Beckett was made the Archbishop of Canterbury, then killed by over-zealous knights.In the mid-late 12th C, Peter Waldo started a movement of mendicants that would birth a movement that lasts to this day. We haven’t said much about that yet but will in a near episode.The Third Lateran Council met in 1179 and a Middle Eastern Church known as the Maronites made common cause with the Roman Catholic Church rather than the Eastern Orthodox.In 1187, Saladin captured Jerusalem and the 3rd  Crusade set out.Innocent III became the most powerful Pope of the Middle Ages and convened the monumental Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.A Crusade was launched against the Cathars in Southern France.King John issued the Magna Carta.Pope Gregory IX appointed the first Inquisitors, another episode of church history we need to devote an episode to.Coming up to recent episodes, we looked at the emerging tension between the Church and State, Popes and Princes, that was a harbinger of Europe’s emergence into the Modern world. Pope Boniface VIII’s papal edict Unam Sanctum in 1302 was the proverbial gauntlet hurled at the foot of the secular power, denying salvation to anyone outside the Church.We reviewed the Great Papal Schism when there was—count them; not 1, nor 2, but for a time, 3 popes!In 1312, the Knights Templar were suppressed.Nine years later the Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy.1337, the Hundred Year’s War began and a decade later the Plague killed off a third of Europe.Then, as we start to move inexorably toward the emergence of serious reform attempts, we saw the central place of Sacramentalism in the mindset of people in the Middle Ages – that salvation is free and by grace, but that it’s dispensed THROUGH the Church, BY the clergy performing the sacraments.One episode looked at the Mystics who managed to keep the focus on God while it seemed so much of the rest of the clergy had been consumed by the intrigues of European politics.We paused to see what was happening with the Mongols and their rapacious conquest of the East, and ended with a look at John Wycliffe, Morningstar of the Reformation.It’s important we understand, the reform of the Church was not something that began with Martin Luther in the 16th C. Far from it. There’d been many reform movements and the century and half before Luther went far to prepare the ground for his emergence.Jesus spoke of the problem of wineskins. New wine needs a new skin. If you put new juice in an old skin, as it ferments, the already stretched bottle will burst, ruining both skin and wine. Noà Jesus wasn’t giving wine-making lessons. He illustrated a spiritual axiom. When God does a new thing, He often goes outside the current religious “skin”, the existing structure, and uses a new vessel, medium, or method.From one perspective, we could say that Church History is a long tale of fresh movements of the Spirit, and how the Faith has embodied, or given expression to those new movements.The challenge of the modern student of history is to avoid layering back onto history our own particular experience and evaluation. People with smartphones and the Internet with a vast searchable electronic encyclopedia, literally at their fingertips, could easily consider people just a hundred years ago to be terribly uninformed; and people 500 years ago to be bereft of knowing much of anything.   It’s said by some that the brilliant polymath Thomas Young, who died in 1829, was the last man to know everything. What that means is that until the early 19th C, the body of information available in the form of books, the repositories of knowledge in that time, was of such a volume that a single human being could potentially have at least a working knowledge of ALL of it. But after that, the proliferation of knowledge began to grow exponentially so that it became impossible for one person to have such knowledge.We don’t need to attempt such a knowledge upload today when we can download any piece of knowledge we need in an instant.I say all that as a preface for this: As we soon move in our podcasts into the Reformation Era and the breakaway of the Protestants, it’s easy for us who’ve lived so long with the tension between Roman Catholics and Protestants, to project that paradigm back onto the Church before the Reformation. That would be wrong, a gross distortion of the facts.Before the Reformation, there really was just one church in Europe – and we ought not call it the “Roman Catholic Church” because what we think of TODAY as the RC Church was not that! The Roman Catholic Church today is what it is, in good measure, BECAUSE of the Reformation, as we’ll see. Western Christians today probably ought to understand the Church of Europe before the Reformation as “our church” – regardless what your denominational stripe is now. Eastern Christians, of course, look to the Eastern or Greek Orthodox Church as their Church and have for a thousand years.The point is, the numerous attempts at reform prior to the Reformation were all kept in-house. Most of the monastic movements were attempts at reforming, not just monasteries, but the entire Church. Some of the popes had a reform agenda and were able to accomplish somewhat in the way of getting the Church back to its Apostolic ideal. The Reformation split the Church precisely because of a perfect storm of several factors that combined in Europe when it was obvious to just about everyone there was something seriously wrong in the leadership of the Church. And when the Church wouldn’t install the reforms it so obviously needed, a door had opened to allow those who wanted out, to leave.The factors that contributed to that perfect storm were . . .First, the growing tension between Popes and Princes.As the Investiture Controversy made clear, there’d been strife between secular rulers and the Pope for a while. It all went back to Charlemagne and his descendants who ruled by having their crowns bestowed by the Pope; their rule sanctioned by the Church. But as the different rulers of Europe jostled each other for territory and wealth became more important to fielding ever larger armies, these rulers competed with the Church for income. As the borders of Europe became thicker, the tension between Church and State grew.Second, the emergence of the European middle-class meant the feudalism that dominated European politics and economics began to loosen its grip on society. Though the social structure was still tightly controlled, new options began to appear. The emerging middle-class possessed more disposable income, fueling more markets and options. Cities began to grow. More were educated. Questions were asked, and the Church didn’t always have satisfying answers.Third, the printing press arrived and books began to proliferate. Ideas that had taken months to move from one place to another were now making the trip in days.Fourth, the scandal of the Papal Schism, with the governance of the Church being argued over by three claimant-popes all at the same time was simply embarrassing to many of Europe’s faithful. It was clear to everyone, including the Pope’s themselves, that serious changes was needed. This Church, divided as it was, could NOT be what Jesus and the Apostles had in mind.So, in the next episodes, we’ll take a look at some of the attempts at reform that occurred in the Late Middle Ages that act as precursors, foreshocks, if you will, to the eventual rift brought by the Protestants.

The title of this episode of Communio Santorum is A Glimmer of Reform.I assume most listening to this are students of history, or—why would you be listening? Some like history in general. Others find a fascination with certain eras or moments of the past. Whatever your interest, every student recognizes that as time passes, things change. Sometimes that change is merely incidental to the thing changed, a cosmetic difference that does little to the substance. Other change is deep, fundamentally altering the thing changed; and in some cases, doing away with it altogether.Institutions and beliefs held for long periods can be swept away in a matter of days, while others abide for centuries without being touched.Jesus challenged the Guardians of Tradition of His day with the Parable of the Wine-skins. The point of the parable is that while truth doesn’t change, the container it’s put in and dispensed from will change, it MUST change. The rabbinic and Pharisaical Judaism of Jesus’ day had become an inflexible complex of traditions that obscured the Spirit behind the Law. The Rabbis and Pharisees played an important role after the Babylonian Captivity in moving the Jews away from their age old tendency to idolatry. But their exaltation of tradition had become so rigid it ended up missing what the Law of Moses was intended to promote. Jesus came to cut through the thick vines of tradition and make a path back to God.Sadly, some seem to think the parable of the wineskins only referred to 1st C Judaism. They don’t realize what Jesus said is an abiding truth with application to every age; including the Church. Historically, God births a fresh move of the Spirit and people are mobilized to maximize the effect of that movement. Spiritual inspiration builds a structure, a vehicle for the movement to take place in and through. But as time passes, man makes policies and procedures regulate the movement. They’re needed so people can work together. Leaders want to ensure future members of the movement know where they came from and why. The problem is, those policies and procedures often become a limit, a line, a defining mark that says, “This is us, and beyond that line is NOT us. This is who we are; we are not that. This is what we do, we do NOT do that.”Traditions. à Which can be good and necessary for passing on values and identity; but can get in the way of hearing what else God might say.All of this is crucial to the next phase of Churchy History we’re looking at. So bear with me as I use an illustration I hope makes all this clear.Let’s say as a young Christian, I’m addicted to TV. I watch TV hours a day. What I watch isn’t the issue – just that I spend way too much time on it. At church one day, while in worship, I’m convicted about the TV, so I decide to only watch an hour each night, and spend the rest of the time reading, visiting other Christians and volunteering at the local mission.I experience such amazing spiritual growth, I decided to forego TV altogether.  After a couple months of astounding deepening, I get angry at all the time I wasted and come to loath TV. So I take it out to the dumpster and toss it. I now abhor TV and when invited over to a friend’s house on the weekend, when he turns on the TV, I excuse myself and go home. As I drive home I grumble about how immature he is for watching TV. After that I use every opportunity I have to “encourage” others to turn off their TV’s and spend that time in more profitable and God-honoring ways. Several of my friends see major spiritual progress and become equally energetic in their anti-TV crusade as I. We form a group that makes watching TV a test as to whether or not someone is a real follower of Jesus. Then something interesting happens. The loss of visual entertainment moves a couple in the group to suggest we start performing dramas that enact Biblical stories and faith lessons. An acting group forms that stages weekly plays. And three years later what’s developed is a whole movement of TV bashers who’ve made mini-plays a part of their traditional church services.When someone in the group suggests they film one of their plays and put it on TV, he’s kicked out of the church.The spiritual condition of the leadership of the Western European church had sunk abysmally in the 14th C. The papacy and its supporting mechanism had become little more than a political battlefield. When the papacy was split between three contenders, all claiming to be Peter’s legitimate successor, it was a evidence things had gotten completely out of hand.It was time for reform; for a new wineskin to contain and dispense God’s Grace and Truth.I want to be clear. While the upper echelons of Roman Catholic hierarchy had become hideously corrupt, thousands of local priests and monks continued to serve God faithfully. Don’t forget that the original Reformers were members of the Roman church.The Babylonian Captivity at Avignon and the Great Schism of the Papacy that followed it revealed a grotesque abuse of power. The failure of the counciliar movement made it clear no real reform would come from within the Church. People believed the Pope was essential, not just for providing leadership of the spiritual realm, but as a means of sanctioning political rule as well. By the end of the 14th C, Europeans recognized that the Popes were often grossly self-interested, power-hungry despots.  But they couldn’t shake the assumption the Pope was the cornerstone of Christendom.It was two brave souls, an Englishman named John Wyclif, and a Czech named Jan Hus, who got the dialog rolling on what the Church is and ought to look like.  Of course, they weren’t the first to broach this important topic. Augustine had done back in the 4th C. His ideas shaped the Roman church’s doctrine and polity. It was time to hold them up to the light of Scripture and see if they’d been properly interpreted and implemented.In a word, John Wyclif was a zealot. And, as is typical of zealots, there was no gray with him; it was all black or white. He was a polarizer. People either supported or opposed him. He left no room for no-opinion.There’s considerable confusion about the real Wyclif because we know little about him. He had a habit of hiding himself under many pages of scholarly discourse. So we know what he believed but not much about him personally.His early life is hazy; we don’t even know when he was born. He was brought up in North England but emerges from the fog when he became a student at Oxford. He attained a doctorate in 1372 and rose quickly as a leading professor there.The hot topic at that time was the nature of authority, specifically as it related to governance. Everyone knew authority comes from God, but the question was HOW it was conferred to men so they could rule.The majority-view said all authority was only just when it was bestowed by the Roman hierarchy. God entrusted the Pope with ‘catholic’, that is universal dominion over all things and persons. So, any authority used by civil rulers not under the auspices of the Pope was unlawful and invalid.The minority-view said authority inhered in civil rulers as a work of God’s general grace and was not officially bestowed by the Church. As long as a ruler remained within the scope of God’s grace, his rule was legitimate. This group went further and said if such grace was the basis of rule by civil authorities, how much more was it necessary for spiritual leaders?Wyclif was in the minority and dove into the debate with an important addition. He said the English government had a divinely assigned responsibility to correct abuses in the church and remove from office those clergy who’d proven by immoral or unethical behavior to be abusers of God’s grace. Wyclif went further, saying the State could even seize the property of corrupt church officials.Uhh – you can see where this is going for JohnW, can’t you?In 1377, the Pope condemned Wyclif’s teaching. But of course he didn’t back down. It led to the kind of brouhaha that saw the Church condemn, not just Wyclif’s teachings, but Wyclif himself. But powerful friends in England made sure no action was taken beyond threats.Wyclif’s teaching on authority was one of the early doctrinal wedges that would eventually lead to the Reformation. It posited the idea of spiritual freedom for all followers of Christ because of God’s grace, bestowed by Himself, in Himself, and through Himself, à not via the Church. Everyone, whether priest or layman is equal before God. Salvation doesn’t bring someone into the Church so they can get to God, so much as it brings people to God, and so includes them in the Church.  It’s crucial we understand how radical Wyclif’s ideas were, how revolutionary. What he proposed was a personal relationship between God and man; something modern Evangelicals take as a given.Because of this, it was God in the heart and mind of a person that qualified them to hold office in the Church. Character and Calling were everything. Based on what he found in the Bible, Wyclif said priests did NOT mediate salvation by conducting masses. How could they, He asked, if as it says in Hebrews, Jesus died once for sins? How could they, if Jesus is the ONE mediator between God and man? Wyclif’s thoughts foreshadowed Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. Both men dismantled the medieval barriers between God and man.Wyclif’s doctrine of “authority bestowed by grace” was just the first of his theological hammer-blows delivered toward Roman doctrine. The decisive year of his reforming career was 1378, the same as the Great Papal Schism. Seeing the travesty of one pope excommunicating another, Wyclif ramped up his calls for reform.He spent a lot of time critiquing the Pope. He said, following the example of Christ and the Apostles, the Pope should be the shepherd of the God’s flock and a preacher who brings men to Christ. His view left no room for the temporal power Popes. The papacy as a political force constantly striving for mastery over men by political means was absurd and detestable to Wyclif. He abhorred trappings of power and denounced the crass worldliness and luxury of some of Church hierarchy.Wyclif rather welcomed the Great Schism precisely because it made obvious to all the problems in the Papacy of the 14th C. But as the Schism went on and the rhetoric of church officials grew more intense, Wyclif became more determined to call for the dismantling of the Papacy.He listed the many ways Popes had departed from the simple faith and practice of Christ and His disciples. He scoffed at the idea that just because Peter died in Rome every bishop of Rome was above all Christendom. He reasoned, by that logic, Muslims might conclude their “sultan in Jerusalem,” where Christ died, was greater than the pope. No, Wyclif claimed, Christ alone is head of the Church and that headship is communicated through the Spirit of God working through the Word of God.Again, remember that Wyclif WAS PART OF THE ROMAN CHURCH at this point. This was an internal discussion, where there were many priests and bishops who found Wyclif’s idea thoroughly Biblical. They might not be politically safe, but they were theologically sound.But when Wyclif’s call for reform was met with resistance by those who could and should implement it, he took a fateful step. He passed from being an orthodox preacher of reform into a Protester; From Reformer to Protestant.His break with the papacy was part of a new idea he’d formed of the Church.Wyclif’s concept of the Church was prescient in its foreshadowing of what John Calvin would later propose. Wyclif said the church was less a visible institution as it was an invisible body of the elect; men and women chosen by God to be saved.  Their salvation was a work of God’s sovereignty, and not subject to the ministrations of priests.Building on this, Wyclif challenged a whole range of medieval beliefs and practices: pardons, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages, the worship of images, the adoration of the saints, the treasury of merit, and the distinction between venial and mortal sins.He retained a belief in purgatory and extreme unction. He said if images increased devotion they need not be removed; and prayers to saints were not necessarily wrong. He considered confession to be useful if it was voluntary.  We catch something of the spirit of his revolt when he declared that preaching was “of more value than the administration of any sacrament.”The standard Wyclif used in his evaluation of the practices of the Church was Scripture. He said, “Neither the testimony of Augustine nor Jerome, nor any other saint should be accepted except in so far as it was based upon Scripture.”He maintained the right of everyone to examine the Bible for himself: “The New Testament is of full authority, and open to the understanding of simple men, as to the points that be most needful to salvation.”But in all his protests and call for reform, Wyclif aroused no hostility like that sparked by his attack on the doctrine of transubstantiation¸ which lies at the heart of the Mass.In the Summer of 1380, he published twelve arguments against the idea that the bread and wine of were transformed into the literal, physical body and blood of Christ. He said the early church considered the elements as symbols of Christ’s body and blood. So, Christ is present in the elements sacramentally, not materially. The point of the sacrament he said, was the presence of the PERSON Christ in the soul, not the body of Christ in the belly.Wyclif’s denial of transubstantiation gave his enemies their opportunity. His support dwindled to just a few at Oxford. A council condemned his doctrines and forbade him lecturing. Then, William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, convened a council that condemned ten of Wyclif s doctrines, labeling them heretical. By 1382, Wyclif was persona non-grata at Oxford.He turned to the people for support. He called for the Bible to be produced in the language of craftsmen and peasants so they could read and study and see how far the Church had departed from its roots. He led a handful of scholars at Oxford in the translation of the Latin Bible into English and copied the methods of St. Francis and the friars by wandering around, preaching outdoors, anywhere people would listen.Wyclif sent out priests sympathetic to his cause to win the souls of the neglected. Clad in brown robes of undressed wool, without sandals, purse, or scrip, a staff in their hand, dependent for food and shelter on the good will of their neighbors, Wyclif’s “poor priests” soon became a power in the land. Their enemies dubbed them Lollards, meaning “mumblers.” They each carried a few pages of Wyclif’s English Bible and his tracts and sermons as they went throughout the countryside, preaching. The movement spread and soon, many became lay-preachers.Wyclif gained enough support that the authorities decided to not move against him. But his followers were hunted, expelled from Oxford, and forced to renounce their views. Wyclif, driven from the university, was left to end his days in peace at his parish at Lutterworth. He died there in 1384.

This episode is titled “Meanwhile, Back in the East” because before we dive into the next phase of church history in Europe, we need to catch up on what's happening to the East.The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th Cs occupied the largest contiguous land empire in history. Rising originally from the steppes of Central Asia and stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan; from Siberia in the north to Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Iranian plateau, and the Middle East. At its greatest extent it spanned 6000 miles and covered about 16% of the planet's total land area.Genghis Khan was a shamanist, but recognizing the need to unite the Mongol clans. He adopted a policy of religious toleration that remained official policy during his reign and that of his son Ogedai. Several of the tribes that formed the core of the Mongol horde were Christians in at least a cultural sense. The Keriats, Onguds and Uighurs owed the Christianization of their culture to the Eastern expansion of Christianity we’ve looked at in earlier episodes.It's important to insert a short parenthetical comment here. Knowing what devastation the Mongols wrought during the 13th and 14th Cs and the literal wagon-loads of blood they spilled, we have to be careful when we call these tribes Christian. They certainly weren't evangelical missionaries. Their faith was a highly-distorted Nestorian version of the Gospel that exercised little restraint on the barbaric rapaciousness that marked their conquests. Still, they called themselves ‘’Christians and their claimed allegiance to the Gospel had a huge impact on what happened in the Middle East.Genghis Khan’s son Tolui, married a Christian woman from the Keriat tribe. One of their sons was the Mongol ruler Hulegu. Another was the famous Kublai Khan, founder of the Yaun Dynasty in China. While Hulegu seems to have identified as a Christian, Kublai certainly favored Christians in his court. When Hulegu conquered Baghdad, the Islamic capital of the day, his Christian wife urged him to destroy the city's mosques but protect the churches. Her goal was to dismantle Islam in the region and hand it a permanent setback.The Mongols took control of the Caliph’s palace and gave it to Baghdad's Christian patriarch. It ended up being made into a grand church. With such obvious favor being shown Christians, many Mongols converted.Asian Christians who'd suffered under the tyranny and oppression of Islamic rule for generations began to look to the advancing Mongol army as deliverers. One writer lauded the genocidal Hulegu and his wife as great luminaries and zealous combatants for the Christian religion. Beleaguered Western Crusaders were stoked by reports of allies in the East doing noble battle with the Muslims. Some Crusaders even sent emissaries to try to link up with the Mongols and help them in their conquest of the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1260. The Mameluke victory at Ain Jalut over the Mongols was a major disappointment.Hulegu’s son married a Byzantine princess and he favored Christianity over both Buddhism and Islam. Over the next few decades the Mongols didn't persecute Muslims but they did impose what the Muslims felt was a heavy burden. They were no longer able to treat Christians living among them as a subject people they could extract heavy tolls and fines from. The Mongol attitude was that as long as everyone paid their taxes, they were free to practice whatever religion they wanted. So a huge source of wealth to Muslims was lost.Christians all across the Middle East took advantage of their newfound freedom and hoped things would stay that way indefinitely under a sympathetic Mongol rule. With Hulegu and his heirs in power, Christians began doing things that had been forbidden under Islam; like carrying the cross in public processions, drinking wine, and building churches where none had been permitted.Then, in 1268 in Baghdad, I aks you to pay close attention to. Maybe this will bring a little light to why there's such tremendous hatred on the part of certain elements within Islam towards Christians today; especially in that region of the world. The Christian Catholicos, the title of the archbishop, ordered a man drowned for converting from Christianity to Islam. Muslims were scandalized and rioted. Following Mongol policy, the rioting was brutally crushed. Christians took this as further evidence they were now the favored faith. But that favor was soon to turn against them.The Mongol leaders became increasingly aware that Islam, with its embrace of jihad in the extension of the Faith by the power of the sword, was much more compatible with their values than either Christianity or Buddhism. They began to drift towards Islam until 1295, when the new Khan, Mahmoud Gazahn, persecuted Christianity and Buddhism. His successors followed his policies. During the early years of the 14th C, Christians found themselves under the control of a Muslim super-state. Their position radically change from what they'd known under the Arab caliphate. Now Christians were subject to intense persecution. In the regional capital of Al-Malek in 1338, all Christians in the city were killed. The few traces of faith among the Keriats and Uighurs didn't last much into the 15th C.Islam's victory among the Mongols proved devastating for the remaining Christians of Central Asia and the Middle East. These communities had managed to weather the storm of the Muslim Arab conquest of the 7th C and it settled down to an uneasy peace with their new neighbors. But the brief respite brought by the Mongol invasion allowed the Christians to emerge in a dominant role for a time that they used to inflict the Muslims with real hurt. When a few years later, Muslims were back in control, this time with the authority of a Mongol Muslim powerhouse à Well, they decided it was payback-time. It was the Christians in Egypt who first bore the brunt of this new intolerance.From the start of the 13th C, Egypt was the main target of Western Crusades. Frustrated Egyptian governments regularly retaliated for the Crusades by attacking the Copts, the native Egyptian church. In the mid-13th C, Egypt was ruled by the Mamelukes and with the loss of Baghdad to the Mongols, the center of gravity of the Muslim world shifted to Mameluke Egypt. They considered the Christians in their region as a 5th column, in cahoots with the Mongols pressing west toward Egypt. After the loss of Baghdad, it wasn't hard to imagine a world in which Egypt would stand alone as the last great Muslim power in a Middle East dominated by Christian-Mongols.The greatest Mameluke leader was General Baibar, the Scourge of both Crusaders and Mongols. Baibar hated Christians in general, but had an extra dose of loathing for those of the European variety. When he captured Antioch in 1268, he wrote the city's Crusader ruler, who’d barely escaped, “Had you stayed, you’d have seen the crosses in your churches smashed, the pages of a false testament scattered, the patriarchs’ tombs overturned. You would have seen your Muslim enemy trampling over the places where you celebrated Mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests, and deacons upon your altars--bringing sudden death to the patriarchs and slavery to your royal princes.”This attitude was radically different from the tone of earlier Muslim-Christian affairs. It reflected Baibar’s fury at the Christian alliance with the Mongols who themselves were utterly brutal in their conquests. This intolerance was increasingly evident in Egyptian policies toward their still substantial Christian minority. Persecution in Egypt wasn't new, but things deteriorated quickly after the Mameluke-Mongol wars.Between 1293 and 1354, the Egyptian government launched four campaigns to enforce the submission of Christians and Jews and drive them to accept Islam. Each wave of violence became more intense and better organized. A review of this half-century gives us a much better understanding of the ancient hostilities that have inflamed the Middle East ever since.A quick sketch of what happened.In 1293, an initial persecution fizzled when the sultan’s officials realized the Christians they were about to execute controlled the country's finances and were the most competent scribes.In 1301, a vizier visiting from Morocco was appalled at the wealth and status of Egyptian Christians and Jews. In Morocco, they had to pay a steep fine if they refused to convert and were subject to all kinds of public indignities.  But in Egypt they held high public office, wore rich clothes and rode the best mounts. The vizier's criticisms moved Egyptian officials to install the same rules as Morocco. A wave of repressive laws followed, and ordinances closed all the churches and synagogues outside of Cairo. Some ancient churches were demolished, relics burned. Non-Muslims were dismissed from public employment and were forced to wear distinctive clothing; blue turbans for Christians, yellow for Jews. They were forced to ride only on donkeys and whenever a Muslim approached, they had to dismount and bow. Visitors to Egypt said that the enforcement of these rules continued all the way into the 19th C.The effects of this crisis linger to the present day, since the rigorous Muslim legalism that emerged at that time shaped modern Islamic fundamentalist movements. From the 1290s, Muslim jurists produced ever harsher interpretations of the laws governing minorities, particularly through the work of militant puritanical scholars like Ibn Taymiyyah. His life was shaped by the disasters of the Mongol wars which forced him into exile in Egypt. He saw his goal as the militant restoration of Islam in the face of its enemies at home and abroad. His work has had a long afterlife. Ibn Taymiyyah is regarded as the spiritual godfather of the Wahhabi movement and of most modern extremist and jihadist groups. Among many others, Osama bin Laden cited him as a special hero.The Muslim hostility toward Christianity in the early 14th C was reflected in outbreaks of extreme anti-Christian violence.  In 1321, Muslim mobs looted and destroyed Cairo's Coptic churches. Usually, a Muslim cleric would give the signal for the attacks by mobilizing crowds in the mosques under the cry of “Down with the churches.”Now, the sultan tried to keep order, but the hatred of Christians was too powerful to contain. They were blamed for setting fires across Cairo. When some of the accused confessed under torture, the authorities were forced to support the popular movement. At one point, the Sultan faced a mob of 20,000 calling for the forceful suppression of Christians. In order to safeguard his rule, the Sultan permitted purge. The government went further and announced that anyone who found a Christian was permitted to beat him and take his goods.By the mid-14th C, Muslim writers had a whole catalog of anti-Christian charges that bear a close resemblance to the libelous anti-Jewish tracks - The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Christians were accused of being spies, ever on the lookout for opportunities to betray the Muslim cause. Cases in both Egypt and Syria proved, and I’m using air-quotes around that word “proved”-- they were serial arsonists. Some were even reported to have planted a bomb in the Great Mosque of Medina.Given modern-day stereotypes of Islam in the West, it’s ironic that Christian minorities were then so feared because they allegedly plotted terror attacks against prestigious symbols of Muslim power.In a society founded on honor and family pride, the humiliations of these new policies were too much to bear for many wealthy urban Christians who then converted to Islam. Other, poorer Christians proved firmer; particularly if they were located in rural areas where government policies were slower to penetrate. But later waves of intimidation wore down there resistance. Violence in the 1320s reduced Christian numbers and prepared the way for the disasters of 1354. From the end of the 14th C, Egypt's Coptic Christians were reduced to a minority they retain up to the present day. The Coptic Church entered a period of hibernation that lasted until the mid-19th C. This is sad when we consider that Egypt had been a major center of Christianity for hundreds of years, and the place of dozens of vital and prolific monasteries. What were once the thousand monks of Bufanda, were reduced to just two.Once their Mongol rulers converted to Islam, conditions became equally difficult for the Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria. Between 1290 and 1330, the story of Christianity in these parts, like that in Egypt, becomes a long list of disasters and ever harsher laws. One edict commanded that churches be demolished and services halted. All clergy and Christian leaders were to be executed. The storied churches of Tabriz, Arbella, Mosul, and Baghdad were torn down. Bishops and priests were tortured and imprisoned. Some laws struck directly at ordinary believers rather than just the institutions and hierarchy. Some of these edicts came from the Khans themselves while others came from the initiation of local governors. But the effects were just as damaging. Even when the Khans tried to limit persecution, they could hardly stem the zeal of local officers. In some cities, local laws ordered forcible conversion to Islam and prohibited the exercise of Christianity upon the pain of death. One Muslim ruler in Armenia passed ruinous taxes and ordered that anyone who refused to convert to Islam should be branded, blinded in one eye, and castrated. Christians and Jews were to be instantly recognizable by wearing distinctive clothing. In the words of one contemporary, “The persecutions and disgrace and markings and ignominy which the Christian suffered at this time, especially in Baghdad, well the words cannot describe.” The persecution reached its height with wholesale massacres at Arbella in 1310 and at Amita in 1317. There at Amita, where 12,000 were sold into slavery, the destruction of churches and monasteries was so thorough the fires burned for a month. These persecutions had a greater effect on the churches of the Middle East than any other event since the conversion of the Roman Empire. The succession of church leadership that had remained unbroken since the time of the Apostles came to an abrupt end. Whole Christian communities were annihilated across Central Asia and surviving communities shrank to tiny fractions of their former size. Christianity disappeared in Persia and across southern and central Iraq the patriarchs of Babylon now literally headed for the hills, taking up residence on the safer soil of northern Mesopotamia.

This episode is titled The Mystics and looks at the Mysticism of the Western Church during the Late Middle Ages.Alongside the Scholastics we spent a couple episodes on, was another movement within Medieval Christianity in Europe led by a group known as “The Mystics.”Don’t let that title mislead you. They weren’t wizards with black, long-sleeved robes and tall pointed hats embellished with moons and stars. Don’t picture Gandalf or some old man bent over a dusty tome reciting an incantation. The Mystics weren’t magicians. They were Christians who thought a vital part of the Faith had been left behind by the academic pursuits of the Scholastics. They aimed to reclaim it.Think of the Medieval Christian mystics this way; if the Scholastics sought to synthesize faith and reason, to give a rational base for the Christian faith, the Mystics wanted such reason to be fervent. If Scholastics emphasized the head, Mystics emphasized the heart. They wanted there to be some heat added to the light the Scholastics shined on the Faith. They added adoration to analysis.The primary message of the Mystics was the call for Christians to maintain a deeply personal and intimate connection to God. For some, that still meant going through the sacraments we looked at in the last episode, but the goal was to experience the divine. This is why they were called Mystics; their movement = Mysticism.  That experience of the divine was inexpressible—indescribable. No formula can be given to obtain it, and once felt, to adequately describe it. It’s a mystery, one the mystics thought believers ought to aim for; the essence of the soul’s communion with God.The word which best captures the activity of the mystics is devotion.  While the Scholastics looked for evidence of God “out there” the Mystics looked within. Not for some internal divine essence, as the earlier Gnostics had or some later mystics would. Rather, they engaged in an inner quest to discover the presence of the Holy Spirit working to conform them to the image of Christ. Faith wasn’t merely an intellectual pursuit. Mystics wanted to FEEL their faith, or better, what their faith was fixed on. They relied more on experience than definitions.There’s a common misconception about the medieval mystics that they were all hermits; living in seclusion in some esoteric pursuit of the divine. That’s not the case. For the most part, they weren’t recluses. They lived in monastic communities.The Mystics drew a good part of their material from the 5th C Church Father Augustine, who also furnished the Scholastics with their core ideas. It was Augustine who said, “You have made us for Yourself O God and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”While Mysticism and Scholasticism are often set over against each other as separate movements, the truth is, most of the Scholastics show a flavor of the mystical, just as the Mystics often show a surprising element of the rational. The mystical element was strong in the greatest of the Scholastics; Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure.While Scholastic theology was developed in the cathedral schools and new universities, Mysticism grew up in convents and monasteries. Clair Vaux and St. Victor near Paris were the nurseries of medieval Mysticism. It was in the cloistered halls of monasteries that the passionate hymns of the Middle Ages were composed.The leading Mystics of this period were Bernard of Clair Vaux, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Joachim of Fiore.  Hildegard and Elizabeth of Schoenau [Sker-naw] belong in a class by themselves.Bernard is considered one of the first medieval mystics, though he lived well before the flowering of Mysticism in the 13th C. His writings reveal an intimate acquaintance with Scripture.  One historian called him the religious genius of the 12th C, the leader of his age, the greatest preacher Germany ever had. In matters of spiritual contemplation he was a new Augustine.Bernard maintained it was prayer and devotion that led to the knowledge of God rather than doctrinal disputes.  It’s the saint rather than the scholar who understands God. Humility and love are the fundamental ethical priorities of theology. In other words, Bernard said, if our learning about God does not bring us nearer His moral makeup, it’s a false knowledge.Bernard reformed the community life of convents and monasteries. But he said the cloistered life, with its vigils and fastings, isn’t an end in itself; it’s but a means to develop the two fundamental Christian virtues of humility and love.Sounding very much like one of our finest Bible teachers today, Bernard said our love grows alongside our apprehension of God’s love. He maintained as the soul contemplates the cross it’s pierced with the sword of love, as when the Song of Solomon says, “I am sick from love.” Love towards God has its reward, but love loves without regard for reward.Then, moving more into what we might call classic mystical expression Bernard wrote - As the drop of water dropped into wine loses its color and taste, or as iron held in the fire loses its shape and becomes like the flame, or as air illuminated by the light of the sun, becomes itself like the light, even so all feeling in the believer is wholly infused and transmuted by God’s will, so that God becomes all and in all.Bernard preached 86 Sermons on the Song of Solomon. Not 8, not 6 – 86! And he only made it to the 1st verse of the 3rd chapter. Every one of them was a mediation on love, both God’s prior love and man’s reply. While commentaries on the Song of Solomon are rare today, it was a favorite of the Middle Ages precisely because of the influence of the Mystics who used it as the premier text for meditations on God. Everything in it is allegorized.The mysticism of Bernard centers in Christ. It is by contemplation of Him that the soul is filled with knowledge and ecstasy. The goal which the soul aspires to is that Christ may live in us, and our love to God becomes the all-controlling affection.The Abbey of St. Victor in Paris became a center of mystical theology in the 12th C. The two most famous Mystical leaders who worked there were Hugo and his pupil, Richard.  With both men, Mysticism was linked to the work of the Scholastics. With Bernard, mysticism was a highly developed personal experience. With the Victorines, it was brought within the limits of careful definition and became a system. Hugo and Richard centered their activity on the convent, taking no part in the public controversies of the age, where as we’ve seen in other episodes, Bernard was all over the place in the early 12th C; preaching up the 2nd Crusade, participating in the Great Papal Schism, founding the Knights Templar, and a host of other major events.Hugo, the first of the great German theologians, was born about 1097 in Saxony. In 1115 he went to Paris and became a monk at St. Victor’s. He was a friend of Bernard’s. Hugo left behind him many writings. He was an independent and fair thinker who influenced contemporary writers by whom he’s often quoted. He wrote commentaries on Romans, Ecclesiastes, and other books of the Bible, and a treatise on what would now be called a Biblical Introduction. Going against the standard allegorical slant most Bible study of the time followed, Hugo emphasized the historical sense of the text. But having developed that historical sense, Hugo went on to allegorize the text along mystical lines.Richard of St. Victor was Hugo’s student. If Hugo was reserved, Richard was extravagant. We know little of his life other than he was born in Scotland and became prior of St. Victor in the late 12th C.Richard’s style was awash in exuberance. His commentaries on the Books of the Bible follow a truly mystical path as he sees all kinds of connections between the Gospel and the stories of the Old Testament. Today we’d call Richard an inveterate Possibility-thinker. In his work titled Emmanuel, a treatise directed to Jews, he praised sin as a happy misdemeanor,—felix culpa,—because it brought about the Incarnation of Christ.  è I guess that’s one way to look at it.For all Richard’s mystical leanings, he magnifies Scripture and makes it the test of spiritual experiences. This is something modern mystics should take to heart. Everything, Richard said, is to be looked upon with suspicion which does not conform to the letter of Scripture.The leading idea of these two Victorines is that we must believe, love, and sanctify ourselves in order that the soul may reach the ecstasy and composure of contemplation in the knowledge of God. The Scriptures are the supreme guide and the soul by contemplation reaches a spiritual state which the intellect and argumentation could never bring it to.Hildegard was born to noble parents in Germany. From the age of three she experienced visions, which over time revealed to her the nature of God and the universe. At a young age, her parents sent her to be educated at a Benedictine convent where she spent the rest of her life.In 1141, for the first time, she informed others of her visions. They persuaded her to have the revelations she had experienced written down. It was titled Scivias and became a classic of medieval mysticism. The highest authorities in the church, including the Pope, regarded her as a prophetess.Bernard of Clair Vaux was numbered as one of her admirers. They carried on a lifelong correspondence dealing, among other topics, with the need for church reform. Because of her leadership abilities, she eventually became abbess of her convent and in 1148 founded a new convent near Bingen where she remained until her death. Besides her administrative duties, she maintained a wide correspondence and authored books on science, medicine, hymnology, and lives of the saints. She joined other leaders of the church in condemning the heresy of the Cathars but unlike others she opposed sentencing them to death.Caterina Benincasa’s birth into a middle-class wool dyer’s family caused scarcely a ripple; she was after all, the 23rd of 25 children. Another event that year, a flea full of the bacillus pestis entered the Italian port of Messina and brought a tidal wave of disease called the “Black Death.” In just 3 years, 1348 to 50, more than a third of Europe died. Baby Catherine somehow survived the Plague.As a young girl, she often went to a cave near her home in Siena to meditate, fast, and pray. At 7, she claimed to have seen a vision of Jesus and announced to her parents her determination to live a religious life. Convinced of her devotion, they gave her a small room in the basement of their home that acted as a hermitage. She slept on a board with a log for a pillow. A few years later at the age of 15 her parents thought her period of religious devotion had run its course and that she ought to marry. She cut off her hair to thwart their designs.The path for young women at that time who wanted to devote themselves to the religious life was to enter a convent as a nun. But Catherine didn’t want a contemplative life; she wanted to help the poor and sick. Her cousin was a Dominican priest who persuaded her to join the Dominicans as a lay sister. She lived at home, wore distinctive clothes, and directed her activities in sacrificial service to the needy.From 16 to 19, Catherine continued living a secluded life at home and attracted many followers, who were drawn by her feisty personality and exemplary sanctity. She learned to read and became familiar with the Church Fathers; Gregory the Great and Augustine, as well as the popular preachers of the day. At the end of this 3-year seclusion, Catherine experienced what she later described as a “spiritual marriage” to Christ. In a vision, Jesus placed a ring on her finger, and her soul attained mystical union with God.She returned to her ministry to the poor, sick, and imprisoned of Siena. When a wave of the plague struck her hometown in 1374, most people fled, but she and her followers stayed to nurse the ill and bury the dead. She was tireless, working day and night, healing all of whom the physicians despaired.When the crisis ended, she began a letter-writing ministry to convert sinners and reform the Church and society. Like many reformers of the day, she was disturbed by the blatant corruption of Church officials, and believed the source of the problem was the Great Papal Schism. In a series of letters, Catherine exhorted the Pope to address the problems of the church and charged him to return to Rome. She wrote, “Respond to the Holy Spirit who is calling you! I tell you: Come! Come! Come! Don’t wait for time because time isn’t waiting for you.”A year later, in 1377, after Catherine visited with him in Avignon, Gregory XI finally returned to Rome. It was the great moment of her public life.In her 383 letters and book The Dialogue, Catherine describes her mystical experiences and her all-consuming desire to love God.At the heart of Catherine’s teaching was the image of a bleeding Christ, the Redeemer—ablaze with fiery charity, eager sacrifice, and unqualified forgiveness. It wasn’t the cross or nails that held Christ to the tree; those were not strong enough to hold the God-Man. It was love that held Him there.Catherine died in Rome at the age of just 33. What a life she lived and example she set.

In this, the 70th Episode of CS , we take a look at Sacramentalism; a mindset that dominated the religious landscape of late Medieval Christianity.The question that consumed Europeans of the Middle Ages was, “How can I be saved? What must I believe and do that will preserve my soul from the torments of hell?”Rome answered that with what’s called Sacramentalism.Now, let me be clear; the basic answer was, “Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.” But the Church went on to define what that trust looked like with a set of rules and required practices. Yes, people are saved by grace through faith, but that grace is received by special acts only authorized clergy may conduct. These acts were called “sacraments” from the word “sacred” meaning holy. But there was a specific flavor to the word sacrament that carried the idea of mystery. Precisely HOW the sacraments communicated grace was unknown, while that they did was a certainty. So while salvation was by grace, one had to go to the Church to get that grace. The sacraments were channels of grace and necessary food of the soul. They accompanied human life from the cradle to the grave. An infant was ushered into the world by the sacrament of Baptism while the dying were sent on their way out by the sacrament of Extreme Unction.While all the sacraments were important, the most essential were Baptism and the Eucharist.Baptism was thought to open the door to the Kingdom of Heaven by removing the stain of original sin. But that door to glory was only opened. The baptized needed to follow up their baptism as an infant with later sacraments like Confirmation, Marriage and others. So important was baptism, in an emergency, when an infant appeared to be in distress and a bishop wasn’t close enough to perform the rite, the Church allowed the nearest available pious person to baptize.The Lord’s Table, Communion, or as it’s referred to by some churches, the Eucharist, was the sacrament of grace by which people nourished and nurtured their spirits and progressed in sanctification.Besides these, other rites were called sacraments, but until the time of the Scholastics, there was little agreement as to the proper number. Before the Scholastics, the number of sacraments varied from four to twelve.Bernard of Clairvaux listed ten and including foot-washing and the ordaining or as it was called, “investiture” of bishops and abbots. Abelard named only five. A mystic theologian named Hugo of St. Victor also gave five but went on to suggested thirty possible means by which the Church dispensed special grace. Hugo divided the sacraments into three classes,—First were the sacraments necessary for salvation; Baptism and the Eucharist.Second were those which sanctified the worshipper and made spiritual progress possible. This includes holy water and the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday.A third class prepared the way for the other sacraments.Though Thomas Aquinas listed seven sacraments, he recognized some of the lesser rites as quasi-sacramental in character.The uncertainty concerning the number of the sacraments was a heritage from the Church Fathers. Augustine defined any sacred rite as a sacrament. In 1179, the Third Lateran Council used the term in a wide sense to include the investiture of bishops and burial. The Catholic Church today makes a distinction between certain sacred rites, called sacramentalia, and the seven sacraments. Aquinas gave as the reason for the proper number to be seven—saying that three is the number of Deity, four of creation, and seven represents union of God and man. A rather interesting “reason” for the supreme Scholastic to make since it sounds far more like the work of one of the Mystics.Following the inquisitive nature of the Scholastics however, ingenious and elaborate attempts were made to correlate the seven sacraments to all the areas of mankind’s spiritual need. They were understood as undoing the Fall and its effects.Seven corresponds to the seven classic virtues. Bonaventura allegorized the sacraments to a military career. He said the sacraments furnish grace for the spiritual struggle and strengthened the warrior on the various stages of his/her conflict. Baptism equips him on entering the conflict, confirmation encourages him in its progress, extreme unction helps him at the finish, the Eucharist and penance renew his strength, ordination introduces new recruits into the ranks, and marriage prepares men to be recruits. Augustine compared the sacraments to the badges and rank conferred upon a soldier, a comparison Thomas Aquinas adopted from him.By the authority of the well-regarded Peter the Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, seven was chosen as the sacred number. The seven sacraments are Baptism, Confirmation, Penance which includes confession and absolution, Eucharist, Marriage, Ordination, and Extreme Unction; sometimes called Last Rites.Confirmation was closely connected with baptism as a kind of supplement. It was a way for someone who’d been baptized as an infant to personally appropriate the faith of his/her parents by endorsing baptism as their own choice. They “confirmed” their faith in God and His Church. In the Greek Church, Confirmation can be performed by any priest, but in the Latin church, only by a bishop.Penance was deemed necessary for sins committed after Baptism and Confirmation. The penitent confessed his/her sins to a priest, who then prescribed certain acts that were understood to mark genuine repentance, such as praying the rosary or performing some compensatory act that rectified the error. Either upon completion of the penance, or in anticipation of its completion, the priest would announce the confessor absolved of the confessed sins. Being thus morally and spiritual clean the penitent was qualified to partake of the Eucharist.Ordination is the sacrament by which priests are authorized to their office.Marriage lies at the basis of the family and society in Church and State, and the rite of marriage was jealously guarded by the Church against any and all forces that would weaken it. The Church sanctioned marriage and it was to the Church one had to appeal to have a marriage annulled.In the Middle Ages, ordination and marriage were mutually exclusive. Since priests were to be celibate, they were ordained, and since lay people weren’t ordained, they were provided the sacrament of marriage. The idea back of both was the sense of divine call and fitting to the role each was to play in the plan of God.Extreme unction was first mentioned as a sacrament in the Synod of Pavia in 850. Originally it was a special prayer for someone gravely ill. It was meant to replace the use of amulets and incantations and could be applied by both laymen and priests. Later, priests alone were permitted to offer it and it was only given to those about to die.The Scholastics taught that the effectiveness of the sacraments were ex opere operato, meaning that their virtue as channels of special grace were inherent in them and independent of the moral character of the priest or recipient. The only requirement was that they be performed in the proper manner with right intent.If this sounds familiar, you may remember the Donatist controversy that so incensed Augustine. The Donatists of North Africa insisted that Baptism and Communion, the only sacraments or ordinances they recognized, were invalid if performed by a derelict priest or unqualified bishop. Augustine upheld the idea that the sacraments carried inherent virtue. His ideas shaped the theological base of Sacramentalism.Thomas Aquinas said the sacrament imparts its virtue without the operation of faith on the part of the recipient. Protestant scholars have often claimed the Scholastics ascribed a magical virtue to the sacraments that was unaffected by the attitude of the recipient. But that’s not really their view. Aquinas said it was the activity of God that made the sacrament efficacious, not the rite as divorced from Him. The Scholastics maintained Christ gave the Sacraments to the Church, to give to the people as a way to convey saving and sanctifying grace. Only the duly ordained church hierarchy of Pope, Cardinals, bishops and priests, possess the power to administer the sacraments. Under Sacramentalism, salvation is by Christ alone, but through the mediation of the Church.This is why and how the Medieval Church was able to exert such tight control over the lives of the people of Europe. They were the spiritual gatekeepers of heaven, declaring who was in and who was out.To the mediaeval mind, the sacraments were essential food of the religious life, and, in building up the sacramental system, the mediaeval theologian thought he was strengthening the Church. In the authority to administer them lay the power of the priesthood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven.Duns Scotus, whose opinions were set aside by the Church for those of Thomas Aquinas, insisted that God can confer grace apart from the sacraments, and their efficacy is dependent on the will of the recipient. Scotus said the sacraments acted indirectly. They weren’t supernatural vehicles of saving or sanctifying grace. They were symbols used to affect a change of heart and mind in someone so an opening could be made for God’s grace.The relation the priest sustains to the sacraments is a vital one, and except in extraordinary cases his administration of the rites is essential. As already said, their effectiveness doesn’t depend upon the priest’s personal character; it’s only important that he perform them according to proper procedure. An immoral priest can confer sacramental grace. To use the mediaeval illustration, pure water may be conveyed through a lead pipe as well as thru a silver. The priest acts in the name of the Church, and in uttering the sacramental formula gives voice to the Christ-ordained authority of the Church. That’s enough for bestowing a perfect sacrament.Bonaventura said that in the event of an emergency, when a sacrament was necessary but a priest wasn’t available, the ritual could be performed by laymen outside the Church, IF the recipient then re-enacted the rite within the Church as soon as possible.Three of the sacraments; baptism, confirmation, and ordination, were thought to confer an indelible mark on the soul. Once baptized, always baptized. Once confirmed, forever confirmed. Once ordained, permanently ordained. However, in extreme cases, the state these marks ushered one into could be forfeited by becoming an apostate and being excommunicated.While Sacramentalism dominated the theology and practice of the Medieval Church, the Reformers set about to dismantle it. They claimed it was based on a faulty interpretation of Scripture. Martin Luther called Sacramentalism the Church’s Babylonish captivity, in which the rights and liberty of believers were fettered by the traditions of men.In our next episode we’ll take a look at another theological strain that operated at this time – The Medieval Mystics.As we end, I want to once more thank those who’ve donated to CS to help defray the cost of maintaining the site and server. Every bit helps.

The title of this episode of CS is The Not-So Great After All Schism.At the end of our last episode, a Frenchman, the Archbishop of Bordeaux was elected by the College of Cardinals in 1305 as Pope Clement. But Clement never set foot in Rome, because the locus of political power had shifted to France and her King, Philip.  This marks the beginning of what’s called the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy, a 72–year long period when France dominated the papacy. After Clement, the next 6 Popes, all French, made their headquarters in Avignon, France rather than Rome. Though it began as a small town when Clement first located there, over the next 70 years it grew to a population of some 80,000, nearly all of them associated in some way with the Church bureaucracy.This transfer of the papacy from Rome to France had a profound impact on the way all Europe came to see both the Pope and the leadership of the Church. Rome was the Eternal City. The Church of Rome, with the Pope as its bishop, went all the way back to Peter. That’s why people regarded it as special; why it called the shots for everyone else. If the Pope no longer sat in Rome, if he could now reside in some other church, what did that say about his authority? Was he indeed Peter’s successor? Was he truly The Vicar of Christ? And what did it mean when the Pope seemed to be little more than the political mouthpiece for the King of France?While the French enjoyed having the Pope close to home, the rest of Europe didn’t find it much to their liking. The duchies and other regions of what would later be called Germany in particular resented it, being in constant tension with their French neighbors.A good part of the hostility toward the Avignon papacy revolved around the abuse of money. Since the Papal States in Italy were no longer contributing, the papacy nearly went bankrupt. To replace lost income, French popes employed a slew of schemes. There were fees for this and taxes for that. Whenever a new bishop was appointed, his first year’s income went to the Pope. Veteran bishops were transferred between churches, so the Pope could start the process all over again. Sometimes no bishop would be appointed so the entire income went to Avignon.The most lucrative practice was the granting of indulgences. These were passed out for just about any reason; any venture the Church figured was in its interest. From minor public works to war could earn someone an indulgence. And what the indulgences earned those they were granted, grew as time passed. The common people, who couldn’t afford to purchase such spiritual extravagances, and trusted in a more sincere form of devotion, saw all of this as a gross departure from the path of genuine righteousness. Bitter feelings toward Avignon grew, especially when the Pope demanded an increase in revenue under the threat of excommunication. Hell was for un-repentant sinners, not people who couldn’t afford to pay ever more taxes and fees.By 1360, the outcry over the French domination of the Church made it clear the Avignon papacy could not continue. But no one foresaw the incredible events a return to Rome would bring.In 1377, the elderly Pope Gregory XI re-entered Rome. But the joy that attended the re-establishment of the papacy there was short-lived. Gregory died within a year. The College of Cardinals, still filled by Frenchmen, yielded to the clamor of a Roman mob and chose an Italian. On Easter Sunday, April 18, Urban VI was crowned as the new Vicar of Christ. As the next months unfolded, it became clear Urban was a harsh dictator. The Cardinals had second thoughts about his election. In August, they announced that in their earlier decision, a mob had forced the selection of an apostate and the proceedings were invalid.End of Round One.A month later, the so-called apostate Pope Urban VI fired off Round Two by creating a new College of Cardinals. The sitting College, dominated by French cardinals, chose a new Pope from among their number, Clement VII. Clement took a tour of Italy to present himself as the real Pope, then headed back to à Avignon.This brings us to what’s known as “The Great Schism.” It lasted 39 years. Each papal court had its own College of Cardinals, insuring the succession of its choice. Each Pope claimed to be the true Vicar of Christ, with the power to excommunicate those who refused to acknowledge him. The other guy was “antichrist.”Of course, the French went with Clement; Italy and most of the rest of Europe, with Urban. But since England went with Urban, Scotland went with – can you guess? Yep – Clement. Within each kingdom, there were minorities of support for the “other guy.” Riots broke out. Property was burned and a new crusade was called for.In 1395, professors at the University of Paris proposed a general council, representing the Universal Church, to meet and heal the schism. Problems immediately arose. Canon Law said only the Pope could call a general council; and only the Pope could ratify any decision it made. Which Pope had those rights? In effect, Canon Law prohibited the reunion of Christendom.By 1409, a majority of cardinals from both sides agreed something had to be done. They met for a general council at Pisa in Italy. They deposed both Popes and elected a new man, Alexander V. Wouldn’t you just know it; neither of the two deposed prelates accepted the action. Now the Church had not two, but three Popes!One of them called for a crusade against another and sold indulgences to pay for it. This ridiculousness finally stirred the people of Europe to action. In 1414, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund assembled the most impressive Church gathering of the era at the German city of Constance. Even the Eastern Greek Orthodox Church sent representatives.For the first time, voting took place on a purely national basis. Each nation had one vote. The national structure of the council was highly significant. It shows that the Church was reluctantly coming to realize the new alignment of power turning Europe into the modern world.It took three years, but eventually the council got one of the Popes to step aside, deposed the other two and chose a new Pope, Martin V. One of the deposed popes tried to retain his title, but for all practical purposes, the council in Constance brought an end to the Great Schism.Just when it seemed things would get back to normal, the new Pope made a move which seemed to slit his own throat. The instant he was seated, he repudiated all acts of the council, except the one by which he ruled. Yet it was the council’s acts that had built the authority by which they could name him Pope. It was as if he said his election was based on a fiction.Looking back, Pope Martin’s actions seem foolish, but he had good reason to deny the work of the council. It raised an important question: Who’s greater, a council that seats a Pope, or the Pope who’s authority convenes councils?This blatant foray into political machinations dug a trough for the papacy it would be a while getting out of.As we end this episode on the Not-So-Great-After-All Schism, it seems a good place to pause and make an editorial comment.Over the years I’ve done this podcast, I’ve had only a few Roman Catholics who’ve gone after me for not being fair with the Church and Papacy. A lot more have remarked on how fair they’ve found the podcast. So let me say this à The Church, whether we’re talking about the Eastern Orthodox, the Church in the East, the Roman Catholic Church, or the dozens of Protestant groups have a mixed record when it comes to faithfulness to God. There are high points and low. Golden Ages, Glided Ages, and periods of growdy mud. There’s no point in white-washing those times in Church History when the People of God didn’t act like it. This era of the Great Schism is at best an embarrassment. No amount of spin can make it anything else.Pope Alexander VI’s real name was Roderigo Borgia. He ruled from 1492–1503 and was grossly immoral; obsessed with providing wealth and power for his children. Yes, I said “children.” So much for being celibate. The entire 15th C is an abysmal period for the Popes as they were far more interested in politics and the arts than the things of God. As Shelly puts it, “The pope often could not make up his mind whether he was the successor of Peter or Caesar. Political corruption and immorality in the Vatican reached unbelievable heights under the Borgias.”And while things were horribly out of whack in the upper reaches of Church Hierarchy, there were many godly bishops, priests, and deacons who served their parishes well, with a heart to glorify God. It’s just that the Papacy was certainly no example to follow.So, Pope Martin tried to up-end the Council of Constance but what happened there was not to be forgotten by the representatives. Estrangement from the Vatican was growing. Men began to think in terms of “national churches,” and a church governed by representative bodies instead of a tyrannical dictator.The ground for the Reformation was being plowed.