UNIT FIVE
The Christian Church
Introduction
The Middle Ages has often been called the "Age of Faith" because of the importance of Christianity in peoples’ lives at that time. The church was everywhere in their lives. The people strove to please God. They built enormous cathedrals in his honor; painted murals and frescoes to tell Bible stories; made beautiful stained glass windows and wove tapestries to the honor of God. They wrote plays, poetry and songs to tell religious stories and to teach the faith and Christian morality. If a person got an education, the church gave it to him and it was assumed he would be a clergyperson. It is hard for us today to understand all this emphasis on religion, but the church and what it taught is a definite part of Western culture. Why was the church so important to these people? Let us go back in time to discover how the Christian Church began and how it became so influential in peoples’ lives.
The beginnings of Christianity
Christianity began in the first century A.D, as an outgrowth of Judaism. It was founded by Jesus of Nazareth. He had no intention of beginning a new religion; he simply wanted to reform the Jewish religion in certain ways. However, the Jews did not want to reform the religion in the ways he wanted. As we shall see, Jesus was killed for his beliefs. His followers continued his work, converting some Jews to follow them. At first, all the followers of Jesus were converted Jews. However, the Jews in large numbers never took on Jesus' beliefs. It remained for people outside the Jewish community to adopt the religion wholeheartedly. We will now study the story of Jesus' life, so you can see how the religion began.
Judea at the time of Jesus
Judea at the time of Jesus was ruled by the Romans. The emperor at the time of Jesus' birth was Augustus; later, in his life, it would be Tiberius. As you know, the Romans divided the conquered land into provinces; Judea was a province. The Jewish ruler of it was Herod. Herod was in the pay of the Romans, and the Jews hated him for being disloyal. The Roman military person in charge of Judea was Pontius Pilate. It was the policy of Rome toward its conquered provinces not to interfere with the peoples’ religious practices or their culture as long as they paid their taxes and did not revolt. It was Pilate's main job to make sure the taxes got paid to Rome and that there were no revolts..
We have little information about Jesus' life except for what is found in the Bible. The stories of Jesus' life are found in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. As you read these stories, you need to know that at least one purpose of these stories was to convert people to believing in Jesus. We don't know, of course, since we have no other information about Jesus except for the Gospels, how much of what is written in them is true and factual. It is open to question in some cases if the author it says wrote the Gospel, for example, Matthew, really did write the Gospel. Not all the stories, except for the crucifixion of Jesus, appear in all the Gospels. The Gospel of Mark is generally considered to be the most accurate, and it begins with Jesus' ministry. None of the Gospels was written during Jesus' life; the first one (Mark) appeared about 70 A.D, which was about forty years after he died. There are more stories of the disciples in Acts of the Apostles. We do know for sure that Jesus existed and that he was killed; Romans were organization freaks and kept careful records of births and deaths lest a person escape paying taxes!! The next section will cover briefly Jesus' life.
Jesus' Birth and Childhood; early life until his ministry
For the stories of Jesus' birth and childhood, we must go to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The authenticity of all the material prior to Jesus' ministry is questionable. The authors of these Gospels want you to believe Jesus was special; that's why these stories were told.
The story begins with Zechariah and Elizabeth. Zechariah was a priest, and one day when he was conducting a service, he had a visitation from an angel named Gabriel. In Jewish thought, an angel is a being, higher than humans but lower than God. Like men, angels had free will; they could decide whether to obey God. They were God's messengers, among other things. The Jews pictured angels as looking like human men; however, they had wings. There were different kinds of angels - the cherubim and the seraphim, for example. We have one short description of an angel in the book of Isaiah; the description says the angel had six wings; "with two it covered its face, with two it covered its feet, and with two it did fly" ( Isaiah ). The angel told Zechariah that he was going to have a son, a statement which Zechariah found difficult to believe since he and his wife were too old to have any children; they had not had any so far, and it didn't look they ever would now. This child was to be named John, and he would grow up to be John the Baptist. The story goes that Zechariah was struck dumb - couldn't talk because he had not believed the angel - until the child was born, and that his voice returned in time for him to name the child.
Shortly after Zechariah received his visitation from the angel Gabriel, a young girl in Nazareth received a similar visitation. This time the angel's news was a little different: the girl, who was named Mary, was to have a baby who would be fathered by the Holy Spirit, and he would be the "Savior of his people Israel". Mary was not a whole lot older than you are, and she was a little skeptical, too, but she was more obedient that than Zechariah, and she answered the angel, "be it done to me as you have said"; story has it that she sang a hymn known as the "Magnificat" at this point. Mary was not yet married, and this whole situation threatened to cause some problems with the people in the village. It even threatened to mess up the betrothal arrangement that her parents had made with Joseph the carpenter. The betrothal was saved, because as the story goes, Joseph had a dream in which God told him Mary's pregnancy was o.k.; she hadn't been cheating on him! However, Mary was sent away from the village to see her cousin Elizabeth in another village. This is the same Elizabeth who was pregnant with John. Mary stayed there for awhile.
Some time went by, and in the next story, Joseph and Mary were on their way to Bethlehem to pay taxes. They went to Bethlehem because that was Joseph's family's home. Joseph was a descendent of King David. Here the gospel author had "done his homework", as we say; he had read the prophecies in the Jewish Bible about the Messiah who is to come and save the Jewish people. This Messiah was to be related to King David, and he was to be born in Bethlehem; "...for thou, Bethlehem, are not the least among the cities of Judah; from out of thee shall come the Savior of my people Israel" (Isaiah). So the Gospel writer had Jesus be born in Bethlehem. This is to convince Jewish readers that Jesus was the Messiah.
When Joseph and Mary got to Bethlehem, the story tells us, they were unable to find a place to stay. They were finally allowed to sleep in someone's stable. The author tells us this to emphasize Jesus' humble and lowly beginnings, as that, too, was part of the prophecies. The baby was born in the stable one night. There were, according to the story, several sets of visitors to see the baby. First, there were the shepherds; they symbolize Jesus' mission to the Jews; then, there were the so-called "Wise Men" who traveled miles to see Jesus; they were "Magi", Persians who studied the stars. They had noticed an unusual star in the sky and that was what started them on their trip. They symbolize Jesus' mission to the "Gentiles" or people who weren't Jewish. According to the story, the gifts were symbolic, too: the gold, a symbol of Jesus being "king"; the incense, a symbol of his being God; and the myrrh, a foreshadowing of Jesus' death, since it is a sweet oil that was used then to embalm the dead.
We have only one story of Jesus when he was a child. We can assume he grew up in Nazareth; probably learned his father's trade; went to the synagogue; and did all of the other things Jewish boys of his time did. As time went on, Joseph and Mary had other children; these are referred to in the Gospels. It is important that you realize that he was thoroughly Jewish and he was very familiar with the Jewish Bible. The one story we have occurred when Jesus was about 12. According to the story, Jesus and his family went to Jerusalem for the Passover, a very important Jewish holiday, with a large group of other people. On the way home, Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem; no one caught on for a day or so because there were so many people in this group that he was missing; everyone assumed he was with someone else. When he was finally missed, his parents returned to Jerusalem to find him. They found him in the Temple, deep in discussion with the Temple priests and elders. Again, the purpose of this story is to show that Jesus was a special person; even at an early age he showed lots of interest in religion.
Jesus' ministry
Jesus' ministry began when he was 30 years old, and it lasted for three years. Jesus must have been a very charismatic personality. There is no exact English translation for the Greek word "charisma". "Leadership" is about as close as we can get; however, charisma is more than this. Charismatic people have almost a magnetic attraction for people. They talk, and people listen. What's more, people follow them. In droves. People give up home and family to be with these people. They even go out and die for them. Many of our greatest leaders have had this quality of charisma. It is a gift, like musical ability or talent for sports. We know this about Jesus because everywhere he went, we are told, crowds of people followed him. His disciples left home, work and family for him.
Jesus began his ministry with being baptized by John the Baptist. John was his cousin, remember. According to the story, while he was being baptized a dove came down from heaven and hovered over Jesus' head and said, "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased." This is when Jesus found out for sure who he was. After this experience, Jesus went into the wilderness to meditate. This was a custom that many people of that area of the world did in those days. No one thought much about it. The story says that Jesus was tempted by Satan to misuse his powers for evil, but he resisted Satan. Jesus then collected his disciples or followers. This, too, was not unusual in that place at that time. You often saw wandering teachers and their followers. Jesus then took on the Jewish establishment. He told them that they should not pursue the policy they had followed for many years of having nothing to do with people who weren't Jewish. He told them they were hung up with the law - not concentrating on the spirit behind the law, but rather on the letter of it instead. He told them they should not be so judgmental of people. He called them hypocrites because they made a show of their religion. He worked for peace instead of war. He told people they should forgive their enemies and people who had hurt them instead of wanting to get back somehow at them. These things he said made him very unpopular with the Jewish establishment. The things he said, and also the things he did. He made them feel foolish, and he hung out with all the "wrong" people - the poor, the sick, and last, but not least, Gentiles, who are non-Jews, remember. He even healed a Roman soldiers' daughter!
The Jewish establishment decided Jesus had to go. They went after him. They tried to trap him into making some claim to be the Messiah or God; something that they could say was blasphemy; but Jesus was always too clever for them, and they never caught him like that. Meanwhile, Jesus became more popular every minute. So the Jewish establishment plotted to have him killed. They hadn't the authority to do this themselves so they had to convince the Romans somehow that Jesus was a menace and had to be gotten rid of. They knew the Romans wouldn't care about some little Jewish religious quarrel, so, when the time came, they told the Romans that Jesus would start riots against Rome if he was allowed to go on living. The Romans didn't know if this was true, but they didn't like the crowds that followed Jesus; who knew what they might do? It made the Romans very nervous. Those in charge were supposed to keep Palestine quiet! So, in the year 33 A.D., at Passover time, Jesus was killed. He was killed by crucifixion, the death reserved for really bad criminals and rebels. Crucifixion was a horrible death because it took so long for the victim to die, and there was a lot of suffering. Normally victims were tied to the cross; the Romans, however, being very superstitious, were afraid Jesus might come off (they'd heard rumors of his having special powers) so they nailed him to it.
Christians believe that the crucifixion was not the end of the story. They believe that Jesus rose from the dead three days later. The story says that when Mary Magdalene and Martha, two of Jesus' followers, went to prepare the body for proper burial, the body was gone; in its place was an angel who told the astonished women that Jesus had risen from the dead. Christians call this event the Resurrection; to them it is the central saving act of God. Later, the disciples saw him two or three times. The last time he met with them, Jesus gave them their mission: "to go out and preach to all nations" and then he said he would send a "Comforter" to help them do that. About a week later, the disciples, meeting together at someone's house, had a strange experience. They heard a rushing wind, and then they saw, above each other's heads, a "tongue of fire" (think of a large candle flame). They found they were able to speak in languages they didn't know. They became "apostles" - those who go out and preach and defend a faith. They worked mostly with other Jews, and the earliest converts to believing in Jesus were all Jews. There were only a handful of them. Had the new religion depended on this for survival, it would never have made it. The Apostles, while hardworking and very determined, were limited. They were to carry the mission to the Gentiles (non-Jews) yet they could not appeal to them very well. The Apostles didn't know enough about the Gentiles' heritage, and they felt very uncomfortable around them because of that Jewish prejudice against Gentiles.
The ministry and mission of St. Paul
Saint Paul was born Saul of Tarsus. He was a Greek Jew. He was educated like a Greek; he was also an educated Jew; he was a rabbi. Originally, he found these new Judeo-Christians very offensive, and he persecuted them with a passion. Everything Saul did, he did with a passion; that was part of his personality. He was very thorough, organized and efficient. He never gave up until he got something done. One day, as he traveled along the road to Damascus ( he was on his way to persecute more Judeo-Christians) he was stopped by a blinding light. Jesus appeared to him and asked him why he (Saul) was persecuting him (Jesus)? After this experience, Saul was blind for awhile. He changed his name to Paul, and he became the greatest missionary of the Christian faith that the church has ever seen. We call what happened to him a "conversion experience". This means that your life is changed by the experience and you are never the same afterward. At any rate, Paul put all that energy and passion that he had once put into persecuting Judeo-Christians into converting people. He also had a charismatic personality, but probably not so much so as Jesus did. He put his organizational skills to work in building a strong network of churches. He kept in constant touch with them by writing letters (epistles). Other advantages that Paul had for the job he was to do were that he had a dual heritage; he was Jewish and had been educated in the Jewish tradition; also, he was Greek and knew that tradition, too. In other words, he could appeal to both groups of people, which was something he would have to do. Paul was a Roman citizen, which made it a little easier for him to travel and which saved his life a couple of times; and Paul was literate, which some of the Apostles weren't. Paul and his co-worker, Barnabus, were the first to call themselves "Christian" and to take the mission to the Gentiles. "Christian" comes from "Christos" which is Greek for "Savior" just as "Jesus" is Hebrew for "Savior".
Between 48 and 62 A.D., Paul traveled to Cyprus, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, Jerusalem, and Rome, taking advantage of the fine system of roads the Romans had built. Everywhere he went, he preached, converted and baptized people. He would set up a church, appoint elders to take care of it, and then go on to the next place. He preached that man would be saved by faith in a righteous God. Paul also taught that one needed to live a moral life; this came form his Jewish heritage; it was understood one would obey the Ten Commandments, for example. Paul saw Christianity as taking Jewish law one step further; that is, to understand the spirit behind the law, and not to get too hung up with the laws themselves. The mission he had undertaken was not always easy for Paul; a couple of times before his final crucifixion in Rome, Paul was arrested for his faith. On one occasion, Paul was stoned for his faith.
Paul was not one of the original twelve disciples of Jesus, who became the twelve Apostles, and he had not known Jesus personally as the disciples (Apostles) had. However, because of his hard work and his successful mission to the Gentiles, he has been accepted as the equal of the Apostles in church tradition. Tradition holds that Peter and Paul were both in Rome; Peter was the first bishop of Rome, the first "pope", and Peter and Paul were both crucified on the same day at the hand of Emperor Nero. Therefore, both Peter and Paul are seen as founders of the church in Rome.
Christians and Rome - The Persecutions
Paul was very successful at converting people to the new faith. One reason was the person of Paul himself (see above for description of Paul). Another was that the people of the Empire, particularly the Greeks and Romans, were in the market for a new religion. They had gotten to the point that they were no longer satisfied with the twelve gods on Mt. Olympus. They wanted a religion that might give some meaning to their lives; where there was some sort of moral example and expectation; and where there was something to work toward - such as leading a better life, for example. Romans were big into mystery religions at this time - such religions had a lot of magic and secret rituals and so on but they weren't very satisfactory when it came to telling one how to live on this earth right now. Christianity had a definite appeal. It was about a real person, who had lived and died, and who had set an example by his life of how people were supposed to live. Christianity preached acceptance of everyone - rich or poor, Gentile or Jew, all were equal in the sight of God. Also, people liked the promise of an afterlife where one would be rewarded for good behavior and the bad people would be punished. Soon there were large groups of Christians in every city of the Empire, and they were beginning to cause problems. Let's see why.
Early Christians took their religion very seriously. The seriousness with which they took it is shown by the fact that when they were persecuted, they would not give up the faith; they'd die sooner that do that. All early Christians believed that Jesus would return to earth soon and they wanted to be ready for him. They really tried to live by Jesus' example. Many of them lived in community; that is, in groups, together, sharing all their possessions. They took care of their own; that is, they took care of their poor, homeless and sick people. They all took "witness" seriously, too - that is, they believed it was part of the deal to go out and try to convert others. They were pacifists; they would not fight, and they tried to carry out what Jesus had said to do: to love their neighbors. Of course, they celebrated the Communion - Jesus' last meal with the disciples. They also allowed women a more important role than was usual in Roman society then. They were viewed by non Christians as very weird! and rumors soon started to circulate. It was said that they practiced ritual murder and infanticide (killing babies for rituals); that they used human blood in their rituals.
The government of Rome had its own problems with the Christians. The Christians would not worship the emperor as a god; they would not pay taxes to a "pagan" empire; and they would not do military service, feeling as they did that war and killing were morally wrong. As long as there were only a few of the Christians, things weren't so bad, but as the numbers of Christians grew larger, the more obvious they became in their disobedience of the law. Rome couldn't have this go on and not look foolish. To the Roman authorities, these people were majorly disobedient, and something had to be done. The Roman government made the Christian religion illegal. What was done next was to the Roman enforcing the law; to the Christians, it was persecution for their faith. Depending on the conditions and on who was emperor, the law about Christianity’s being illegal was enforced strictly or loosely. As a policy, strict enforcement of the law or persecution, whichever, did not work; the Christian religion grew larger and larger! Finally, in 313 A.D., the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and made the religion legal in the empire. Constantine is said to have had a conversion experience like Paul's. Before an important battle, he looked into the sky and saw a cross against the sun and the words, "In this sign, you shall conquer". He put the sign on the battle standards of his army and won the battle, which he attributed to the Christian God.
While the Christians lived in persecution, they stayed alive by hiding. In Rome, for example, they lived under the streets in what was called the Catacombs, where the Romans buried their dead! The Catacombs consisted of long, winding tunnels so they made a good hiding place. Christians communicated by the use of a sign language which meant something to them but not to their persecutors. Many of the Christian symbols, which Christians still use today, were originally part of that sign language. Christian services were held in each others' homes. These services were secret. Even with all the precautions, though, hundreds of Christians were killed. These people are called "martyrs" in the church, and they are celebrated on certain religious holidays in the Christian church year. Two examples that will relate to you at this school would be St. Stephen, who was stoned to death - his day is December 26; the other example would be St. Agnes, who was killed because she refused to marry a non-Christian - her day is January 21. Both of these people were about your age or just a little older at the time of their martyrdom. (Agnes is supposed to have been about 13; Stephen was 16)
During the persecutions, Christians were so busy trying to stay alive that serious questions of doctrine and belief did not come up. Unity was necessary to survive so the people stayed unified. You also had no half-hearted believers. No one became a Christian because "it was the thing to do". Accepting the religion was a decision one made as an adult with the firm realization that one was taking one's life in one's hands by becoming a Christian. It was too dangerous for the weak in spirit. When Christianity became legal, and the persecutions stopped, a whole new set of problems came up. The next section will be about these and how they were solved.
CHURCH ORGANIZATION
As the church grew larger, it became necessary for it to have some kind of administration and organization. The Christian Church was born under the rule of the Roman Empire so it was natural that they would look at that for ideas. Because the Empire had one head with all authority, the church set up a person with all authority also. He was called the "Pope" and this was the highest office there was. The Pope's word was the final word on everything. Later, it would be claimed that the Pope was infallible, or, free from human error. Because Rome was the center of the Roman Empire, its capital, Rome, became the center of the Christian church also. Rome was also supposed to be special because Peter and Paul had both preached and been martyred there, and because Peter was the first bishop of Rome, and Peter was the apostle that Jesus said would found his church ( speaking of Peter, Jesus is supposed to have said, "upon this rock, I will build my church" ).
Below the Pope was the archbishop. He was responsible for all the churches in a large area; he oversaw many bishoprics or episcopal sees; he ruled from a major Roman city, and his see was called a province. Below him were the bishops. Bishops were in charge of all churches in a small area. A bishop ruled from a city, supposedly those cities that had some connection to Paul or one of the Apostles. The area he ruled was called a diocese. Below the bishop was the parish priest. He was in charge of a church and the surrounding area, which was called his parish. Eventually, there also got to be priests in training called deacons, and they worked with parish priests. The clergy, as these people collectively were (and are) called, had to undergo some education to be clergy, and they were ordained, which separated them from the ordinary people in the church, like you or me, who were (and are) called laity. In time, only the clergy could do things like hear confessions, give penance, consecrate the bread and wine for the Communion, extend absolution, confirm people, and ordain new priests. Thus, in the medieval world that took religion very seriously, these guys were very important people!
It is important to know that the clergy were thought of as being in a special relationship to Jesus because, as the story went, Jesus thought of Peter as the'rock' on which he would found his church and established Peter as the first bishop of Rome. This blessing was thought of as being passed down to future popes and bishops through the generations by the "laying on of hands" in the ceremony of ordination. This also added to their importance. In a figurative sense, Jesus had chosen them for their role.
Promotion through the ranks of the hierarchy - deacon, priest, bishop, archbishop, Pope - was supposed to be based on holiness. Eventually, there got to be one more rank - that of cardinal. Cardinals eventually elected Popes when necessary from among their number - meaning that every Pope was once a cardinal.
In addition to the secular clergy (those that did not give up the world outside the church) there were those who took the holy orders. These were the monks and nuns. From the beginning of the church, there were those who thought they could best serve Christ by withdrawing from the world, and by depriving themselves of physical comforts. In the early days of the church, these people went off into the desert and lived on whatever they could find. They spent hours in meditation and prayer. Some of them took this to extremes, however, and there were cases of these people who lived in trees; one even climbed to the top of a flagpole and stayed there! Some of them took "deprivation of physical comfort" to the extreme of punishing themselves! They'd whip themselves, go without food and water for days, wear hair shirts and the like; they thought all this suffering proved to God you loved him! To keep this from going on, the church set up orders of monks and nuns. The orders each had their own rules which the monks and nuns had to live by if they were in that order. Most of the rules included things like living in poverty, prayer and meditation, and work - for themselves and their community outside the monastery or convent. Monks and nuns did many useful services in the Middle Ages - they took care of the sick, put travelers up for the night, took in homeless people, raised orphan children, and spent hours copying old books, especially the Bible. The only way in the Middle Ages to get a new copy of a book was to copy it by hand; the fact that we have any of the books from that time period today shows how hard these people worked on the task of copying.
As the Roman Empire began to fall apart, and the emperors seemed to have less and less control of things, the church's hierarchy stepped in and began to take care of things that a government, not a church, is supposed to do. The church found itself taking secular authority as well as religious authority. "Secular" means "of this world"; the church wasn't supposed to be making rules about that. At the time, the church stepped in because it had to; there was nobody else to do the things. However, as we shall see, it was very hard to get the church to give up this secular authority. Once they were mixed together, it became very hard to separate the church from the state.
In the early Middle Ages, the church was the only organized institution left. There was nothing else left. Central government had disappeared. People were frightened by the constant warfare and they needed comfort and help. The church offered this comfort and help. Because of this, people looked to it for everything: for education, care for the sick, for shelter during times of war, for defense, for organizing relief efforts, for a place to stay overnight when traveling, for taking in orphaned children, for entertainment - you name it, the church did it. It is important for you to realize that the majority of people in the early Middle Ages were illiterate - that is, they could not read or write- and they were ignorant. When you finished first grade, you could read and write, maybe not as well as you can now, but you were basically literate. If you really think about this, you will be able to understand how the world must have seemed to these people in the early Middle Ages. They had no way of finding out anything. Thus, they were totally dependent on the one institution who could tell them something - the church. Think some more and you will understand the kind of total power over the people that this gave the church. In the next section, you will learn what Christians believed, and you will see that that gave the church even more power over the people.
Christian Beliefs
Just like as the church grew larger, it needed structure and organization, it also needed to define what it believed. Called upon to defend their faith, what were Christians going to say? How was their religion different from all the other religions in the Roman Empire? In the beginning, while those who had known Jesus were still alive, the problem was not so bad, you could always ask one of the Apostles what Jesus had said or done about something. As the people who had known Jesus began to either die or be killed by the Romans, Christians realized the necessity of writing down what Jesus said and did, and thus the Gospels began to be written. These served as some sort of reference as to what Christians were supposed to believe. A simple creed or statement of beliefs was made up that Christians said before they were baptized. This creed is the Apostles Creed, and it is the earliest and shortest of the creeds. While the Christians were living under persecution, few arguments about this creed came up. The church could not afford arguments at that point.
Then the persecution ended, and the church had a new set of problems with regard to beliefs. The emperors were now Christian and it was now the thing to do to join the church. However, many pagans wanted to be both Christian and pagan at the same time - that is, not to completely give up their pagan practices and beliefs. Some of these practices the church could not allow to go on as they were against the Christian moral code. Many new members of the church were not really that committed to the church. They had only joined because it was fashionable to do so. More seriously, Christians, especially the Greek ones, began to argue and debate about the Christian faith; for example, what was the nature of Jesus? How much man was he? How much God? Did he really hurt on the cross? Was he created? If so, when? What was his substance? This kind of arguing could undermine the faith of the church if it was allowed to go on too long (even though the Greeks had a lot of fun with it). It was decided that Christian beliefs would have three sources: the church fathers - Apostles, St. Paul, and then some others were added later: St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine -; the church councils - huge meetings where the clergy met and talked about some of the questions listed above and resolved them; and the Pope, who had the last word. Incidentally, two of the councils wrote additional creeds to try to resolve the issues above. These creeds are the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed. (If you want to see them, both are in the prayer book you use every Thursday at chapel. One is in the Morning Prayer service and the Athanasian Creed is in the historical documents at the back of the book.)
Christians accept what Jews believe about God: there is only one God; this God created the forces of nature but was not the forces of nature; this God was invisible (therefore, you could not make statues or pictures of him); this God had a name (YHWH) and was personal; God cared about people and what they did; God was fair and just; God could enter history and change the course of events; God did not want human sacrifice; God knew everything, was everywhere at once and was all powerful. In addition to that, Christians add that God is merciful; God sent his Son to redeem the world and to die for our sins; they see God acting in history in raising Christ from the dead; thus, the Resurrection is the central saving act of God. Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God; that he was both wholly man and wholly God at the same time; that he rose from the dead and was recognizable - the disciples who saw him knew him and could touch him (in other words, he was not a spirit or ghost; you couldn't put your hands through him like you would Casper the friendly ghost); Jesus was crucified to save us from sin; since Jesus is God, he has all the qualities of God. Christians believe the Holy Spirit is inside us; that little voice inside us that lets us know when we aren't being our best selves, if you will. Christians believe all the manifestations of God are still ONE God. Christians refer to the three manifestations of God-God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit - as the Holy Trinity.
Christians believe that God created man "just and right; sufficient to have withstood; though free to fall" (Milton in Paradise Lost); meaning that while we were made to be good and obey God, we also have free will and we can use that to make wrong choices that hurt our relationships with God, other people and ourselves. Christians call these choices that result in damage to our relationships "sin". This is complicated to understand when you read it, but you are familiar with sin, it happens every day. You have some sort of misunderstanding with someone - who hurts? That person does, obviously. After you calm down and think about it, you probably do, too. And, if you know you were in the wrong, the chances are that you wouldn't want to meet God right then, either! Christians believe humans can sin by thought, by word, and by deed. This is pretty heavy, if you think about it. To even think that you hate someone and wish something bad would happen to him is a sin! Obviously, Christians sin 24 hours a day and are going to need some kind of help! Christians also believe in life after death; like Jesus wasn't a ghost, humans won't be, either. For the good, there was the promise of heaven, of being with Jesus and God and the other holy people. For the bad, there was the promise of hell - permanent separation from God, and as the thought of medieval days went, torture -physical punishment that would hurt!
This sounds pretty hopeless; but there was help. Every Christian believed Jesus had died for him - Jesus had taken other peoples' sins on himself and had, therefore, by dying, made up for the sins. (To understand this, we have to go back into Jewish history for a ceremony they used to perform to get rid of sin. They caught a goat, tied it up, and ceremonially put their sins on its head. Then they let it go in the wilderness. Such a goat was called a scapegoat. Jesus was a scapegoat for the sins of everyone. The word scapegoat is useful for you to know as it is still used to mean a person or a group of people we blame for our troubles) All the Christian had to do was believe in Jesus, and repent for his sins. However, the second part of this is not that easy to do! It involved being able to face what the Christian did wrong, and, if it was another person he did it to, to go to that person, admit he was wrong and apologize. Christians believe that if they believe in God and Jesus, and they pray about it, this reconciliation will be easier to do.
There was also help from what was called the sacraments. The sacraments were the link between human and God. Sacraments were the outward sign of the grace of God. Christians believed (and believe today) that they MUST have the sacraments to have any chance at salvation. By salvation, a Christian meant "going to heaven when they died" and also, that God might help them with their relationships and their life here on earth. The sacraments were rituals but they were said to have a spiritual significance beyond the actual acting out of the ceremony. There were seven sacraments. They were the Eucharist, Baptism, Penance, Confirmation, Marriage, Ordination, and the Last Rites. Eucharist was the "Communion", where the faithful reenacted the last supper Jesus had with his disciples, as Jesus had told the disciples to do; symbolically, it represented the person's being nearer to Jesus and it took away sins. Baptism was done when an individual joined the church. The individual was either sprinkled with or immersed in holy water, and spiritually, it, again, took away sin. Penance involved confession of a person's sins to the priest and doing a penance to show his repentance. Confirmation reaffirmed the promises made at a person's baptism. Confirmation became necessary when the church began the practice of infant baptism. Obviously, an infant doesn't know what baptism is all about. His sponsors make promises for him. Confirmation occurs when the person is old enough to understand the promises and take them on him or herself. In marriage, the man and the woman exchange the rings and promise that they are "glued together body and soul" forever. A marriage symbolizes Christ's relationship with his church. In the Last Rites, which occurs right before a person dies, the person's final confession is heard and the Eucharist is administered to him. Ordination is the ceremony by which a person became a priest. The bishop laid his hands on the person's head, symbolically passing the power of the Holy Spirit, St. Peter and St. Paul to new clergy.
Christians also believe in a second coming of Jesus and in a "Day of Judgment". Each person when he dies will have his life assessed as to how good or evil that person was, and his afterlife will be adjusted accordingly.
Those who did not believe what the church said they should were known as heretics. Heresy was very sinful, and the church got rid of heretics as fast as it could find them. It was considered bad for a person's spiritual health to hear heresy; that's why heretics were dealt with immediately. The punishment for heresy was being burned at the stake usually. Of course, all other religions were heresy.
What Christians of the Middle Ages Believed about the Universe
Christians of the Middle Ages believed the earth was round and flat like a penny or a disc. At the center of the disc was Jerusalem which was very holy because that is where Jesus was crucified. The earth was the unmoving center of the universe; the universe revolved around the earth, and the earth was God's special creation. Man was God's favorite and very special creation. Man was separately created; he did NOT evolve from some other life form. A person could walk too far on this flat earth and he would come to an edge! over which he could fall.
Christians believed that above the earth was heaven. There were nine levels of heaven. On each level, there was a planet, the sun or the moon. (They knew about 7 planets; the other two hadn't been discovered yet) The planets were held up there by crystal glass spheres. The planet was embedded in the sphere. Since people then still believed, as Aristotle had told them , that if something moved, then something had to push it, they believed the planets were moved in their orbits by "invisible spiritual movers". It was nice in heaven. The sun always shone and the sunlight reflected off the crystal spheres and made little rainbows everywhere. There was always music; the spheres made music when they moved, and the angels sang. At the top of heaven were God, Jesus, and the saints, such as the Apostles and Paul.
Below the earth, shaped like a cone, was hell. Hell also had nine levels. Hell was very unpleasant. There were tortures in hell for the people assigned there; how bad the tortures were depended on the level of hell the person went to. At the bottom of hell was Satan. Satan was a fallen angel. The story went that Satan used to be in heaven, one of the heavenly host of angels, but one day Satan started thinking about how he'd like to be God, and sin "sprang out of his head, on the left side". Satan then started "impious war" in heaven, lost, of course, and was kicked out of heaven as a punishment. Satan never forgave God for this, and determined that he would get back at God somehow. The way he chose to do so was to try to tempt God's favorite creation (that's man, remember) to do bad things and to hurt God. Satan's first attempt was the Garden of Eden story where Satan made himself into a snake and got Adam and Eve to disobey God and eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. Having failed to really ruin all humans, Satan and his employees, you might say, roamed over the earth, trying to hurt people and tempt them. People in the Middle Ages believed demons existed on this earth, and they could get inside them and "possess" them. People believed there were humans in the pay of Satan also. These people were witches and warlocks; these people worshipped Satan instead of God. People in the Middle Ages were afraid of these witches and warlocks. In addition to hell and heaven, there was a third place, Purgatory. It was in between heaven and hell, and it was for the average sinner. Again there were nine levels. It wasn't as bad as hell but wasn't as nice as heaven, either.
Christians believed that when a person died, that person had a little talk with St. Peter or Paul, or maybe even Jesus, where the two kind of went over that person's life and his sins were balanced out against the good things he'd done, and it was decided where that person would go for his afterlife. Middle Ages Christians believed that you could do things on this earth that would make your afterlife better - good things might kind of balance all the sins a person was bound to commit. They also believed that the prayers offered for a person after he died might help the person by taking away some of the punishment for the sins.
What Christians believed, and their views about the universe, about heaven and hell, also gave the church power over them, just as being ignorant did. Where did a person go to learn what to do to be saved ? The church, of course. The church said a person HAD to have the sacraments, for example. To get the sacraments, a person had to go to the church. If the church was displeased with someone, it could deny that person the sacraments; that really worked in those days to bring a person in line. One German prince who had gotten in trouble with the Pope was denied the sacraments, and he spent hours crawling around in the snow, begging the Pope to forgive him. When the church denied a person the sacraments, it was called "excommunication" and it was the worse thing the church could do to a person. The church taught the people about heaven and hell. Every time a person went to a cathedral, he saw pictures of the demons and the damned people writhing in agony in hell. He also saw pictures of heaven and how nice it was. The church taught that Satan was ever ready to "get" you. If a person thought he or she was possessed by one of Satan's demons, the church had the service, called "exorcism", that got rid of the demon for you. People were terrified of dying because of what the church taught about hell. The church also told a person what he could do to make up for his sins; how to make his afterlife better. People would do the things, too; their fear of hell made them very willing to any and everything to avoid it.
To understand the power of the church in the Middle Ages, you need to put together the things you have learned about the church’s organizational structure, the fact that it "took over", so to speak, for government far awhile there in the early Middle Ages, and the things you have learned about the church’s beliefs. You also need to remember about the times – that it was anything but safe- that there was constant fighting and war – and that people died a lot younger than they do now and in greater numbers at one time than people do now. Chances are you don’t think about death very often if at all, but a person your age in the Middle Ages would have been well acquainted with death already. The church was your only hope; it gave you comfort and security in an unsettling world; it was the one constant that you could depend on. Christian belief also taught you that you needed the church as your only "ticket" to a good life in the hereafter. You also need to remember that people had no way of finding things out on their own. You had to believe what the church told you or there was no explanation at all for anything, a very unsettling thought. It is not surprising that the church was so powerful and influential.
The church and feudalism
One thing the church told you you could do to help your chances in the hereafter was to donate some or all of your land to the church. Therefore many nobles did just that and after awhile, the church became a huge landowner! Since land equaled power and wealth, the land increased the church’s power and made it very wealthy! Since the church had the one supreme head, the Pope, all this land was owned by him. He gave it out to the higher clergy – bishops, archbishops and the like and they could do what they wanted with it. Usually the bishop set up a feudal manor on his land, with knights, peasants, craftsmen and so on. The fact that the church was a big landowner is an important one for you to know for both this year and next.
The church and central government
As you learned in the chapter on feudalism, there was no one person to whom everybody pledged allegiance; no real central authority. One of the reasons there wasn’t was that the church did not encourage it, and if any one tried to start such an idea, if a "king" tried to put some manors together and start central government, the church was a huge obstacle in so many ways to his doing that that he often gave up. Let’s see why this happened and how the church was an obstacle.
The church, as you will remember, in the early days of the Middle Ages, when the barbarians were attacking and the Roman Empire ceased to have any control over that, had taken over the responsibilities of government and obviously, the power that went with that. Once the church had that power, it quite naturally did not want to give it up. It guarded its power jealously and opposed anyone who had it in his mind to challenge that power. To make sure that it did not lose any power, the church asserted that it was a separate ecclesiastical (holy) monarchy that had its own governmental structure, law and justice, and that no earthly power, such as a king, could challenge it. What this meant, in practical reality, was the following: first, the Pope was "higher" than the king, and the king had better obey him. If he did not, the Pope could not only excommunicate him, but also his entire kingdom through the use of something called an interdict; second, the Pope could collect "taxes" (the tithe) separate from the king’s taxes and people had to pay them; third, the king could not tax the church’s land ( remember, now, the church is a huge landowner) or the clergy’s income; fourth, the king had no control over the clergy whatsoever since they had been appointed by the Pope and were only responsible to him; fifth, clergy who misbehaved and broke the king’s laws could not be tried in the king’s courts – they were tried in separate courts by church people using the church’s law (canon law) –often the punishments were not the same; sixth, the king could not touch church land, even to pursue criminals hiding out on it. Kings who tried to challenge the church usually found themselves punished and begging for mercy. Small wonder that few people decided to take on the challenge of setting up a central government in a country! The struggle to separate church from government was a long and often bitter one, and issues involved in keeping church and government separate come up every so often even today.
Questions and Outline
The Christian Church
II>Origins of Christianity
III>Judea at the time of Jesus
2.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
VI> The ministry and mission of Saint Paul
2.
3.
4.
2.
3.
2.
3.
4.
2.
3.
F. Next after that was the ___________________. What was his job?
XI> Christian Beliefs
B. Why were the Gospels written?
C. What is a creed?
D. After the persecution ended, the church had a new set of problems.
1.
2.
3.
X>What Christians believed about the universe
B. What was at the center of the disc?
C .What was the earth in terms of the universe? Did the earth move? What did move?
D .What did people of the Middle Ages believe about mankind?
extra credit questions and projects
Chapter6-The Secular State Begins