Pope Francis and Russian patriarch to meet in Cuba in historic breakthrough
VATICAN CITY (RNS) A historic meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, will take place in Cuba next week, following more than two years of secret talks aimed at healing ties broken nearly 1,000 years ago.
According to the surprise announcement, made simultaneously on Friday (Feb. 5) in Moscow and at the Vatican, Francis will make a brief stopover in Havana on Feb. 12 before continuing on to Mexico for a six-day visit.
Kirill will already be in Cuba on an official visit and will meet the pontiff for two hours at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport before signing a joint declaration with Francis.
It will be the first time in history the leader of the Catholic Church has met with a Russian patriarch.
The Eastern and Western branches of Christianity split in the Great Schism of 1054. Today there are about 1.2 billion Catholics in the world and upwards of 250 million Orthodox, and perhaps two-thirds of them are Russian Orthodox.
Orthodox Christianity is made up of a number of churches, largely based in Eastern Europe or the Middle East and grouped by nationality and language and cultural traditions as well as theology.
The ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople — modern-day Istanbul in Turkey — is the formal leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, the “first among equals.” But each church is fiercely independent and the Russian church has been especially careful to assert its autonomy.
Pope Paul VI met with the patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras, in Jerusalem in 1964 in a historic first, and subsequent popes — including Francis — have met with Athenagoras’ successors. (The current Constantinople patriarch is Bartholomew.)
But no pope has ever met with a Russian patriarch.
“The Holy See and the Moscow Patriarchate hope that it will also be a sign of hope for all people of good will. They invite all Christians to pray fervently for God to bless this meeting, that it may bear good fruits,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, told journalists.
Francis will be welcomed from the papal plane by Cuban President Raul Castro — whom he met during his visit to Cuba last September before coming to the U.S. — before the private meeting with Kirill, which will be held at the airport.
Accompanied by Russian and Spanish translators, the two religious leaders are expected to sign a joint declaration and make short statements; there will also be an exchange of gifts.
The chief impetus for the meeting — which was kept under wraps during two years of secret negotiations — appears to be concern over the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, which trumps even centuries-long suspicions between Moscow and Rome.
The last decade of upheaval and rising militancy has decimated Christian populations in the Middle East. It’s estimated that there are as few as 200,000 Christians in Iraq, remaining from a prewar population of 1.5 million.
In Syria, Christians figure prominently in the tide of refugees fleeing the armies of the so-called Islamic State and the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front. Coptic Christians remain vulnerable in Egypt despite assurances of equal treatment by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
At a press conference in Moscow on Friday, senior Orthodox cleric Metropolitan Hilarion said that long-standing differences between the two churches remain, most notably a row over the status of the Greek Ukranian Catholic Church in Ukraine, which follows Eastern rites but is loyal to Rome.
In fact, in announcing the pope-patriarch meeting, the Russian Patriarchate said in a statement that Ukraine remained a “bleeding wound.”
But Hilarion said these differences were being put aside so that Kirill and Francis could come together over persecution of Christians.
“The situation shaping up today in the Middle East, in North and Central Africa, and in some other regions where extremists are carrying out a genuine genocide of the Christian population, demands urgent measures and an even closer cooperation between the Christian churches,” Hilarion said, according to Reuters.
“We need to put aside internal disagreements at this tragic time and join efforts to save Christians in the regions where they are subject to the most atrocious persecution.”
The location of the meeting was chosen in part for its convenience; Kirill will already be in the country for an official visit, whereas the appointment is a short detour on Francis’ Mexico agenda.
But Cuba is also seen as neutral ground. It is a long-standing ally of Russia, and both Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, which generally supports Putin and his nationalist aims, are deeply suspicious of appearing to defer to the West, which would include the Roman Catholic Church.
In fact, Kirill could face backlash among his own ranks for even agreeing to meet Francis. Until a few years ago, the Roman pontiff was known as “the Patriarch of the West” and church officials in Moscow have had to deny rumors that a formal reunification with Rome was imminent.
The Catholic-Orthodox summit in Havana will also come just months before the expected first joint meeting, or synod, of the various Orthodox churches in more than a thousand years. Differences between the Russian and other Orthodox leaders have complicated planning for the landmark gathering.
Cuba is also ideal for Francis because he helped broker a diplomatic breakthrough between Havana and Washington last year, and has highlighted the island as a “meeting place” between East and West.
“It’s a place that positioned itself well for the circumstances,” Lombardi told reporters.
The historic meeting is the result of two years of talks between the Vatican and Moscow, Lombardi said. Although there have been reports of warming relations during Francis’ papacy, the Vatican’s announcement Friday was widely unexpected.
Returning from a meeting with Bartholomew in Istanbul in November 2014, Francis said that he had previously spoken by phone with Kirill and had told the Russian church leader, “I’ll go wherever you want. You call me and I’ll go.”
Francis said then that “both of us want to meet and move forward,” but he noted it was at the height of international tensions over Russia’s intervention in Crimea and Ukraine.
“The poor man has so many issues there that the meeting with the pope has been put on the back burner,” the pope said, referring to Kirill and the Ukraine situation.
When Putin met Francis in the Vatican in June last year, it was widely seen as a sign of Russia’s re-emergence in the West.
The contents of the proposed joint declaration the two will sign in Havana was not immediately published and Lombardi would not say whether the Havana accord would be followed by a papal trip to Russia. That would also be a first.
Following the appointment, Francis will travel to Mexico City, where he is due to arrive later that evening. The papal tour will include a much-anticipated visit to Ciudad Juarez, a city on the U.S. border that has been hit by drug-related violence in recent years.
Francis will also celebrate Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico City, and meet the indigenous community in San Cristobal de Las Casas in southern Mexico.
(Rosie Scammell covers the Vatican for RNS)
---------------
Historic step: Pope, Russia patriarch meet in Cuba Feb. 12, 2016
Updated 1:08 pm, Friday, February 5, 2016
FILE
- In this file photo combination Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill,
right, serves the Christmas Mass in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in
Moscow, Russia, on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016 and Pope Francis prays during
an audience at the Vatican on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016. Pope Francis and
the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church will meet in Cuba next week in
a historic step to heal the 1,000-year-old schism that divided
Christianity between East and West, both churches announced Friday, Feb.
5, 2016.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — In an historic step to heal the 1,000-year schism that split Christianity, Pope Francis and the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church will meet in Cuba next week in an attempt to begin bridging the church's East-West divide.
The Feb. 12 meeting between Francis and Patriarch Kirill was announced Friday by both churches. It will be the first-ever meeting between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the largest in Orthodoxy.
"This event has extraordinary importance in the path of ecumenical relations and dialogue among Christian confessions," said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.
The two churches split during the Great Schism of 1054 and have remained estranged over a host of issues, including the primacy of the pope and Russian Orthodox accusations that the Catholic Church is poaching converts in former Soviet lands.
Those tensions have prevented previous popes from ever meeting with the Russian patriarch, even though the Vatican has long insisted that it was merely ministering to tiny Catholic communities in the overwhelmingly Orthodox region.
Violence that threatens to extinguish the presence of Christians — Catholic and Orthodox — in the Middle East and Africa, however, has brought the churches closer together. Both the Vatican and the Orthodox Church have been outspoken in denouncing Islamic extremist attacks on Christians and the destruction of Christian monuments, particularly in Syria, where Russia has engaged in a bombing campaign in support of the Damascus government.
The meeting was years in the works and marks a major development in the Vatican's long effort to bridge the divisions in Christianity. For Kirill, it is perhaps trickier.
"Conservative forces within Moscow have said we don't like this reunification with the west ... (it) weakens us," noted Chad Pecknold, a theologian at Catholic University of America and author of "Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History."
He suggested the choice of Cuba, with its Soviet and communist ties, was significant particularly for Kirill, who will be in Cuba on an official visit at the time, his first to Latin America as patriarch.
In November 2014, Francis said he had told Kirill: "I'll go wherever you want. You call me and I'll go."
In the joint statement, the churches said the meeting "will mark an important stage in relations between the two churches."
Metropolitan Illarion, foreign policy chief of the Russian Orthodox Church, told reporters Friday that there are still core disagreements between the Holy See and the Russian Church, in particular over various Orthodox churches in western Ukraine.
The conflict centers on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the country's second-largest, which follows eastern church rites but answers to the Holy See. The Russian Orthodox Church has considered western Ukraine its traditional territory and has resented papal influence there.
Still, Illarion said, the threats to Christian communities in the Middle East and northern and Central Africa requires immediate action.
"In this tragic situation, we need to put aside internal disagreements and pool efforts to save Christianity in the regions where it is subject to most severe persecution," he said.
About two-thirds of the world's Orthodox Christians, or about 200 million, belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest and most powerful church in Orthodoxy. The Catholic Church claims about 1.2 billion faithful.
The Vatican has long nurtured ties with the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, who is considered "first among equals" within the Orthodox Church.
But the Russian Orthodox Church has always kept its distance from Rome. Joint theological commissions have met over the years and the Russian church's foreign minister has made periodic visits to Rome, but a pope-patriarch meeting has never been possible until now.
Christopher Bellitto, church history specialist at Kean University in New Jersey, said the meeting was a model for reconciliation.
"The two men are trying to heal a millennium of wounds in the Year of Mercy," he said, referring to Francis' jubilee year. "Even if they are not agreeing on everything, they are engaging in respectful dialogue — which is in short supply in our world."
The location of the meeting is significant. It has long been assumed that a "neutral" third country would be selected for any pope-patriarch encounter, but Europe had always been considered the natural location.
Cuba, though, presents a perhaps ideal location: physically removed from European territorial disputes between the churches, officially communist, yet known to both because of its colonial and more recent past.
In addition, Francis played a crucial role in ending the half-century Cold War estrangement between the United States and Cuba. That the one-time Soviet outpost in the Caribbean will now play a role in helping heal the 1,000-year schism between the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches is a remarkable feat of geopolitical and ecumenical choreography that may have the added effect of thrusting President Raoul Castro into the spotlight. Castro will greet the pope upon his arrival and preside over the signing of the joint declaration.
The Vatican spokesman, Lombardi, declined to speculate about a possible papal trip to Russia, or to offer hints about what the joint declaration might say. Pecknold, the Catholic University theologian, noted that a common date for Easter has been a long-sought goal in ecumenical circles.
Under Francis, the Vatican has encouraged continuing ecumenical ties with the Orthodox as well as other Christian denominations. And it has gone out of its way to be solicitous to Russia, especially in shying away from directly criticizing Moscow over its role in the Ukraine conflict.
Kirill was the church's foreign policy chief before he became patriarch in 2009 and is well-known in Vatican circles. In a 2012 interview with a Siberian Catholic newspaper, Kirill dwelt on the dispute around the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church but said the issue of Catholic snatching of churches and flock in Russia is not as pressing as it was a decade ago.
Compared to his predecessor Alexei II, Kirill cuts a more militant figure, seeking a greater role for the church in Russia's domestic affairs. His support for President Vladimir Putin and the government is also more pronounced than his predecessor who tried to keep a distance with the Kremlin.
___
Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed from Moscow; Rachel Zoll contributed from New York.
___
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Pope-Russian-Orthodox-patriarch-meet-in-historic-6809090.php
------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------
Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.
The history and authority of the Apostles Creed
The
origin of the precise text of the Apostle’s Creed is unknown; however,
it does not take much research to find that the text is fully supported
in the Bible. The Apostle’s Creed is a simplified statement of faith
that concisely articulates the basics of the Christian faith. The
Apostle’s Creed is the foundation of all modern Christian theology.
To deny any part of the Apostle’s Creed is to be ignorant of the
crucial teachings of the Christian church. While the Christian church
does not hold that Creeds and Confessions can replace or supplement the
Bible itself, it is important to know that the Apostle’s Creed itself is
only reiterating what the Apostles themselves taught.The Origin of the Apostles Creed
The early church had no codified defined creeds as we have today. The Christian teachings were handed down through the preaching of the Saints. The early church taught what is basically in the Apostles creed, yet, they never had a written form of their teaching and called it “The Apostles Creed.” It was not till heresies and divisions in the church that any creeds were established.The very first established creed that was accepted throughout the church as a whole was the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed was established by the Ecumenical church in 325 A.D.. The Apostles creed was established shortly after.
"The Old Roman Creed"
According to Henry Bettensons book “Documents of the Christian Church,”From Epiphanius, lxxii. 3 (P.G. xliii. 385 D). The creed of Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra, delivered to Julius, Bishop of Rome, c. 340. Marcellus had been exiled from his diocese through the Arian influence and spent nearly two years at Rome. On departing he left this statement of his belief.Henry Bettenson further shows that the modern rendition of the Apostles Creed was not found written till,
Rufinus, priest of Aquileia, Exposito in Symbolum, c. 400(P.L. xxi. 335 B), compares the creed of Aquileia with the Roman creed which he believed to be the rule of faith composed by the Apostles at Jerusalem, which had been retained as a baptismal creed in the Roman Catholic Church. This creed differs from that of Marcellus only in small details.
1. I believe in God almighty [Ruf. the Father almighty]
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord
3. Who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
4. Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried
5. And on the third day rose from the dead
6. Who ascended into heaven
7. Siteth at the right hand of the Father
8. Whence He cometh to judge the living and the dead
9. The Holy Ghost
10. The Holy Church
11. The remission of sins
12. The resurrection of the flesh
13. The Life everlasting. [Ruf. omits.]
Section II Creeds, Chapter I Apostles Creed, page 23
“A Gallican Creed of the Sixth Century. [Extracted from a sermon (psuedo-agustinus, 244) of Caesarius, Bishop of Arles, 503-543.]”While there is no verifiable written word for word representation of the Apostles Creed prior to 340 A.D., we can be confident that the Apostles Creed is the most accurate representation of the Christian Faith in the form of a creed. The teachings within the Apostles creed can be traced to the Bible itself and through the early church fathers.
Section II Creeds, Chapter I Apostles Creed, page 23
The teaching of the Apostles Creed handed down through the Saints
The origin of the Apostles Creed can be traced from the New Testament, the Apostles themselves, and through the early church fathers writings. All quotes from the Early Church Fathers come from “The Early Church Fathers,” by Philip Schaff (1819-1893).The Apostles Creed in the Bible
The Apostles Creed in a nutshell is the Gospel. It is easy to show that the Apostles taught the Apostles Creed as the Gospel of Christ. Below is a table of the Scripture proofs for the Apostles Creed.The Apostles Creed led to the development of other solid statements of faith from years of Apologetics (the defending of the faith). The Westminster Confession of Faith and virtually all Confessions and creeds are rooted in the Apostles Creed. Apologetics is a core part of the Christian/Catholic Faith. In the beginning of the Church, the Apostles spent much of their time counteracting divers views that were opposed to the Apostles original meaning. The Apostle Paul writes,
“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!”The Apostle Paul was constantly having to explain the gospel over again because of people spreading contrary views. The Apostles Creed developed through arguments against those who do not adhere to the original Apostolic teaching. All the Saints who followed the Apostles Biblical teaching stood firm in their faith in keeping that teaching which is found in the Apostle’s Creed.
Gal 1:8 NASB
The Rule of faith or truth
The Saints taught what they called "The Rule of Faith" which is essentially the Apostles Creed. The basics of Christianity and the gospel is the Rule of Faith which is found in the Apostles Creed.Apostle Peter
A major part of the Apostles creed is found in the Apostle Peters sermon in Acts.“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know– this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. “And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. “For David says of Him, ‘I was always beholding the Lord in my presence; For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. ‘Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; Moreover my flesh also will abide in hope; Because Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, Nor allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay. ‘Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; Thou wilt make me full of gladness with Thy presence.’ “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. “And so, because he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants upon his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay. “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. “For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Until I make Thine enemies a footstool for Thy feet.”‘ “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ– this Jesus whom you crucified.
Acts 2:22-36 NAS
Saint Ignatius of Antioch
Saint Ignatius of Antiochs teachings contained the essential parts of the Apostles creed within them. His Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians was written during the first century. Ignatius said,These things [I address to you], my beloved, not that I know any of you to be in such a state; but, as less than any of you, I desire to guard you beforehand, that ye fall not upon the hooks of vain doctrine, but that you may rather attain to a full assurance in Christ, who was begotten by the Father before all ages, but was afterwards born of the Virgin Mary without any intercourse with man. He also lived a holy life, and healed every kind of sickness and disease among the people, and wrought signs and wonders for the benefit of men; and to those who had fallen into the error of polytheism He made known the one and only true God, His Father, and underwent the passion, and endured the cross at the hands of the Christ-killing Jews, under Pontius Pilate the governor and Herod the king. He also died, and rose again, and ascended into the heavens to Him that sent Him, and is sat down at His right hand, and shall come at the end of the world, with His Father’s glory, to judge the living and the dead, and to render to every one according to his works. He who knows these things with a full assurance, and believes them, is happy; even as ye are now the lovers of God and of Christ, in the full assurance of our hope, from which may no one of us ever be turned aside!
The Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, Chapter XI.—I
Saint Irenaeus
Irenaeus explains how the teaching of the gospel (found in the Apostles Creed) is preserving the ancient tradition in his writing Against Heresies between a.d. 182 and a.d. 188.To which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, by means of Christ Jesus, the Son of God; who, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and having been received up in splendour, shall come in glory, the Saviour of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth, and despise His Father and His advent. Those who, in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith, are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner, and tenor of life, they are, because of faith, very wise indeed; and they do please God, ordering their conversation in all righteousness, chastity, and wisdom.
Against Heresies: Book III Chapter IV.—2
Tertullian
Tertullian, in around a.d. 208, wrote “The Prescription Against Heretics”, where he puts forth the basics of what is found in the Apostles Creed or “The Rule of Faith.”Now, with regard to this rule of faith—that we may from this point acknowledge what it is which we defend—it is, you must know, that which prescribes the belief that there is one only God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth; that this Word is called His Son, and, under the name of God, was seen “in diverse manners” by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the prophets, at last brought down by the Spirit and Power of the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, being born of her, went forth as Jesus Christ; thenceforth He preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles; having been crucified, He rose again the third day; (then) having ascended into the heavens, He sat at the right hand of the Father; sent instead of Himself the Power of the Holy Ghost to lead such as believe; will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both these classes shall have happened, together with the restoration of their flesh. This rule, as it will be proved, was taught by Christ, and raises amongst ourselves no other questions than those which heresies introduce, and which make men heretics
I. The Prescription Against Heretics. Chapter XIII
Novatian, a Roman Presbyter
Novatian writing after the heresy of Sabellius, which appeared 256 a.d., wrote “A Treatise of Novatian Concerning the Trinity.” This treatise contains the defense of the trinity and the basics of the Apostles Creed.The Rule of truth requires that we should first of all things believe on God the Father and Lord Omnipotent; that is, the absolutely perfect Founder of all things, who has suspended the heavens in lofty sublimity, has established the earth with its lower mass, has diffused the seas with their fluent moisture, and has distributed all these things, both adorned and supplied with their appropriate and fitting instruments.
Chapter I
For John says: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us;” so that, reasonably, our body should be in Him, because indeed the Word took on Him our flesh. And for this reason blood flowed forth from His hands and feet, and from His very side, so that He might be proved to be a sharer in our body by dying according to the laws of our dissolution. And that He was raised again in the same bodily substance in which He died, is proved by the wounds of that very body, and thus He showed the laws of our resurrection in His flesh, in that He restored the same body in His resurrection which He had from us.
Chapter X
For in the same way as Isaiah says, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and ye shall call His name Emmanuel, which is, interpreted, God with us;” so Christ Himself says, “Lo, I am with you, even to the consummation of the world.”
Chapter XII
Or that He should sit at the right hand of the Father: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at my right hand, until I shall place Thine enemies as the stool of Thy feet.” Or when He is set forth as possessor of all things: “Ask of me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the boundaries of the earth for Thy possession.” Or when He is shown as Judge of all: “O God, give the King Thy judgment, and Thy righteousness to the King’s Son.”. Chapter IX
Eusebius of Cæsarea
Eusebius of Cæsarea shared with the council of Nice his churches creed they used in a.d. 325.The Creed of Eusebius of Cæsarea, which he presented to the council, and which some suppose to have suggested the creed finally adopted.
(Found in his Epistle to his diocese; vide: St. Athanasius and Theodoret.)
We believe in one only God, Father Almighty, Creator of things visible and invisible; and in the Lord Jesus Christ, for he is the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, life of life, his only Son, the first-born of all creatures, begotten of the Father before all time, by whom also everything was created, who became flesh for our redemption, who lived and suffered amongst men, rose again the third day, returned to the Father, and will come again one day in his glory to judge the quick and the dead. We believe also in the Holy Ghost. We believe that each of these three is and subsists; the Father truly as Father, the Son truly as Son, the Holy Ghost truly as Holy Ghost; as our Lord also said, when he sent his disciples to preach: Go and teach all nations, and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
The First Ecumenical Council. The First Council of Nice. The Nicene Creed
Saint Jerome
In about the year 398 or 399 Saint Jerome says,“In the symbol of our faith and hope, which was delivered by the Apostles, and is not written with paper and ink, but on fleshy tables of the heart, after the confession of the Trinity and the unity of the Church, the whole symbol of Christian dogma concludes with the resurrection of the flesh.’The teachings in the Apostles Creed are historically accurate to the Apostles teaching and contains the very gospel itself.
To Pammachius Against John of Jerusalem, Paragraph 28
http://apostles-creed.org/confessions-creeds-christian-theology/history-authority-of-the-apostles-creed/
---------------
A History Christianity
Edited By: Robert A. Guisepi
A History of the
Catholic Church
from Its Beginning
to the End of the Sixteenth Century
As both its critics and its champions would probably agree, Roman Catholicism has been the decisive spiritual force in the history of Western civilization. There are more Roman Catholics in the world than there are believers of any other religious tradition--not merely more Roman Catholics than all other Christians combined, but more Roman Catholics than all Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus. The papacy is the oldest continuing absolute monarchy in the world. To millions the pope is the infallible interpreter of divine revelation and the Vicar of Christ; to others he is the fulfillment of the biblical prophecies about the coming of the Antichrist.
These incontestable statistical and historical facts suggest that some understanding of Roman Catholicism--its history, its institutional structures, its beliefs and practices, and its place in the world--is an indispensable component of cultural literacy, regardless of how one may individually answer the ultimate questions of life and death and faith. Without a grasp of what Roman Catholicism stands for, it is difficult to make political sense of the settlement of the Germanic tribes in Europe at the end of the Roman Empire, or intellectual sense of Thomas Aquinas, or literary sense of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, or artistic sense of the Gothic cathedrals, or musical sense of many of the compositions of Haydn or Mozart.
At one level, of course, the interpretation of Roman Catholicism is closely related to the interpretation of Christianity as such. For by its own reading of history, Roman Catholicism began with the very beginnings of the Christian movement. An essential component of the definition of any one of the other branches of Christendom, moreover, is the examination of its relation to Roman Catholicism: How did Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism come into schism? Was the break between the Church of England and Rome inevitable? Conversely, such questions are essential to the definition of Roman Catholicism itself, even to a definition that adheres strictly to the official view, according to which the Roman Catholic Church has maintained an unbroken continuity since the days of the Apostles, while all other denominations, from the ancient Copts to the latest storefront church, are deviations from it.
Like any intricate and ancient phenomenon, Roman Catholicism can be described and interpreted from a variety of perspectives and by one or more of several methodologies. Thus the Roman Catholic Church is itself a complex institution, for which the usual diagram of a pyramid, extending from the pope at the apex to the believers in the pew, is vastly oversimplified; within that institution, moreover, sacred congregations, archdioceses and dioceses, provinces, religious orders and societies, seminaries and colleges, parishes and confraternities, and countless other institutions all invite the social scientist to the consideration of power relations, leadership roles, social dynamics, and other sociological connections that it uniquely represents. As a world religion among world religions, Roman Catholicism in its belief and practice manifests, somewhere within the range of its multicolored life, some of the features of every religion of the human race; thus only the methodology of comparative religion can encompass them all. Furthermore, because of the normative role of Scholasticism in the formulation of Roman Catholic dogma, a philosophical analysis of its system of doctrine is indispensable even for grasping its theological vocabulary. Nevertheless, the historical method is especially appropriate to this task, not only because two millennia of history are represented in the Roman Catholic Church, but because the heart of its understanding of itself is the hypothesis of continuity and because the centre of its definition of authority is the embodiment of divine truth in that historical continuity.
For a more detailed treatment of the early church, see Christianity, history of. The present article concentrates on identifying those historical forces that worked to transform the primitive Christian movement into a church that was recognizably "catholic," namely, a church that had begun to possess identifiable norms of doctrine and life, fixed structures of church authority, and, at least in principle, a universality (which is what "catholic" meant) that extended to all of humanity.
The emergence of Catholic Christianity
At least in an inchoate form all the elements of catholicity--doctrine, authority, universality--are evident in the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles begins by focusing on the demoralized band of the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem; but by the time its account of the first decades is finished, the Christian community has developed some nascent criteria for determining the difference between authentic ("apostolic") and inauthentic teaching and behavior. It has also moved beyond the borders of Judaism, as the dramatic sentence of the closing chapter announces: "And so we came to Rome " (Acts 28:14). The later epistles of the New Testament admonish their readers to "guard what has been entrusted to you" (1 Timothy 6:20) and to "contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3), and they speak about the Christian community itself in exalted and even cosmic terms as the church, "which is [Christ's] body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 1:23). It is clear even from the New Testament that the specification of these catholic features was called forth by challenges from within, not only from without; indeed, scholars have concluded that the early church was far more pluralistic from the very beginning than the somewhat idealized pictures in the New Testament might suggest.As such challenges continued in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, further specification became necessary. The schema of apostolic authority formulated by the bishop of Lyon, Irenaeus (c. 130-c. 200), may serve to set forth systematically the three main lines of authority for catholic Christianity: the Scriptures of the New Testament (alongside the Christianized "Old Testament") as the writings of the Apostles of Christ; the Episcopal centers established by the Apostles as the seats of their identifiable successors in the governance of the church; and the apostolic tradition of normative doctrine as the "rule of faith" and the standard of Christian conduct. Each of the three depended on the other two for validation; one could determine which purportedly scriptural writings were genuinely apostolic by appealing to their conformity with acknowledged apostolic tradition and to the usage of the apostolic churches, and so on. This was not a circular argument but an appeal to a single catholic authority of apostolicity, in which the three elements were inseparable. Inevitably, however, there arose conflicts--of doctrine and jurisdiction, of worship and pastoral practice, and of social and political strategy--among the three sources of authority, as well as between equally "apostolic" bishops. When bilateral means for resolving such conflicts proved insufficient, there could be recourse to either the precedent of convoking an apostolic council (Acts 15) or to what Irenaeus had already called "the preeminent authority of this church [of Rome], with which, as a matter of necessity, every church should agree." Catholicism was on the way to becoming Roman Catholic.
The emergence of Roman Catholicism
Internal factors
Several historical factors, some of them more prominent at one time and others at another, help to account for the emergence of Roman Catholicism from the catholic Christianity of the early church. The twin factors that would eventually be regarded as the most decisive, at any rate by the champions of the primacy of Rome in the church, were the primacy of Peter among the 12 Apostles of Christ and the identification of Peter with the Church of Rome. In the several enumerations of the Apostles in the New Testament (Matthew 10:2-5; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13) there are considerable variations, with further variations in the manuscripts; but what they all have in common is that they list (in Matthew's words) "first, Simon, who is called Peter." "But I have prayed for you," Jesus said to Peter, "that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren" (Luke 22:32 ); and again: "Feed my lambs. . . . Tend my sheep. . . . Feed my sheep" (John 21:15 -17). Above all, when Christ, according to the New Testament, said to the Apostle Peter, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock [Greek petra ] I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18 ), that was, according to Roman Catholic teaching, the charter of the church--i.e., of the Roman Catholic Church.The identification of this obvious "primacy" of Peter in the New Testament with the "primacy" of the Church of Rome is not self-evident, since; for one thing, the same New Testament remains almost silent about a connection of Peter with Rome . The reference at the close of the Acts of the Apostles to the arrival of the Apostle Paul in Rome gives no indication that Peter was there as the bishop or even as a resident, and the epistle that Paul had addressed somewhat earlier to the church at Rome devotes its entire closing chapter to greetings for many believers in the city but fails to mention Peter's name. On the other hand, the first of the two epistles ascribed to Peter does use the phrase (presumably referring to a Christian congregation) "she who is at Babylon " (1 Peter 5:13 ), which was a code name for Rome . It is, moreover, the unanimous testimony of early Christian tradition that Peter, having been at Jerusalem and then at Antioch , finally came to Rome , where he was crucified (with his head down, according to Christian legend, in deference to the crucifixion of Christ); there was, however, and still is, dispute about the exact location of his grave. Writing around the end of the 2nd century, the North African theologian Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225) spoke of " Rome , from which there comes even into our own hands the very authority of the apostles themselves. How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood! Where Peter endures a passion like his Lord's! Where Paul wins his crown in a death like that of John [the Baptist]!"
Alongside this apostolic argument for Roman primacy--and often interwoven with it-- Rome was honored because of its position as the capital of the Roman Empire : the church in the prime city ought to be prime among the churches. As the capital Rome drew visitors or tourists or pilgrims from everywhere and eventually became, for church no less than for state, what Jerusalem had originally been called, "the church from which every church took its start, the mother city [metropolis] of the citizens of the new covenant." Curiously, the transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople by the newly converted emperor Constantine in 330, which weakened Rome's civil authority, served only to strengthen its spiritual authority: the title "supreme priest [pontifex maximus]," which had been the prerogative of the emperor, now devolved upon the pope. The transfer of the capital also occasioned a dispute between Rome ("Old Rome") and Constantinople ("New Rome") over whether the new capital, as capital, should be entitled to a commensurate ecclesiastical preeminence alongside the see of Peter. The second ecumenical council of the church (at Constantinople in 381) and the fourth (at Chalcedon in 451) both legislated such a position for the see of Constantinople , but Rome refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of that prerogative.
It was also at the Council of Chalcedon, convoked to resolve the doctrinal controversy between Antioch and Alexandria over the person of Christ that the council fathers accepted the formula proposed by Pope Leo I (reigned 440-461). "Peter," they declared, "has spoken through the mouth of Leo!" That was only one in a long series of occasions when the authority of Rome , sometimes by invitation and sometimes by its own intervention, served as a court of appeal in jurisdictional and dogmatic disputes that had erupted in various parts of Christendom. During the first six centuries of the church the bishop of every major Christian centre was, at one time or another, charged with heresy and convicted--except the bishop of Rome (although his turn was to come later). The titles that the see of Rome gradually assumed and the claims of primacy it made within the internal life and governance of the church were, in many ways, little more than the formalization of what had meanwhile become widely accepted practice during these first four or five centuries of its history.
External factors
In addition to the transfer of the capital from Rome to Constantinople, there were at least two other external factors at the beginning of the Middle Ages that contributed decisively to the development of Roman Catholicism as a distinct form of Christianity. One was the rise of Islam in the 7th century. During the decade following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE his followers captured three of the five "patriarchates" of the early church--Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem--leaving only Rome and Constantinople, located at opposite ends of the Mediterranean and, eventually, also at opposite ends of the East-West Schism. The other force that encouraged the emergence of Roman Catholicism as a distinct entity was the fall of the Roman Empire and the migration into Europe of the Germanic and other tribes that were eventually to constitute its principal population. Some of them, particularly the Goths, had already become Christian before even coming into Western Europe . The form of Christianity they had adopted in the 4th century was, however, by the standards of Christian orthodoxy both Eastern and Western, heretical in its doctrine of the Trinity. Therefore the future of medieval Europe belonged not to the Christian tribes but to the pagan tribes, particularly the Franks, once these had become Christian. The Christianity they accepted after their arrival was not only orthodox on the doctrine of the Trinity but it was allied with the authority of the pope. The coronation by the pope of the Frankish king Charles (Charlemagne) as Roman emperor on Christmas Day 800 clearly symbolized that alliance.The early medieval papacy
During the centuries that marked the transition from the early to the medieval church Roman Catholicism benefited from the leadership of several outstanding popes; at least two of them--both called "the Great" by historians and "Saint" by the Roman Catholic Church--merit special consideration even in a brief article. Pope Leo I was, even for his pagan contemporaries, the embodiment of the ideal of Romanitas in his resistance to the barbarian conquerors. Twice in the space of a few years he was instrumental in saving Rome , from the Huns in 452, when he achieved their withdrawal to the banks of the Danube , and from the Vandals in 455, when his intercession mitigated their depredations in the city. His aforementioned intervention in the doctrinal controversy among Eastern theologians over the person of Christ and the role played by his Tome of 449 in the formula of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 was part of a concerted campaign to consolidate and extend the jurisdiction of the see of Rome over such remote areas as Gaul, Spain, and North Africa--a jurisdiction officially acknowledged by the Roman emperor. Pope Gregory I (reigned 590-604), more than any pope before or after him, laid the foundations for the Roman Catholicism of the Middle Ages. It was he who selected Augustine of Canterbury to bring about the conversion of England to the Christian faith and the Roman Catholic obedience. He asserted the primacy of his see over the entire church, including the patriarchate of Constantinople , and his diplomatic and political skills secured the independence of the Western Roman Catholic Church both from the Byzantine Empire and from the Germanic tribes occupying Italy . Gregory the Great was also one of the most important patrons of the Benedictine monastic movement, to which he owed a considerable part of his own spiritual upbringing (as his biography of Benedict manifests).Nevertheless, medieval Roman Catholicism would not have taken the form it did without the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 312. As a consequence of that event Christianity moved in a few decades from an illegal to a legal to a dominant position in the Roman Empire . Henceforth every branch of Christendom had to deal with rulers who claimed to profess its faith; conversely, the character of every branch of Christendom could in considerable measure be described on the basis of its way of relating church and state. For medieval Roman Catholicism the centralization of church authority in the pope made the relation of church and state a persistent issue in the very understanding of the nature of the church itself. As the church approached the conclusion of the first millennium of its history, it had become the legatee of the spiritual, administrative, and intellectual resources of the early centuries.
Most of the preceding analysis pertains to the whole of Christendom. The Eastern Orthodox Church has almost as large a share in the developments of the early centuries as does the Roman Catholic Church, and even Protestantism looks to these centuries for its authentication. The Middle Ages may be defined as the era in which the distinctively Roman Catholic forms and institutions of the church were set. The following chronological account of medieval developments shows how these forms and institutions emerged from the context of the shared history of the early Christian centuries.
The church of the early and High Middle Ages
The concept of Christendom
By the 10th century the religious and cultural community that is called Christendom had come into being. In every European state the religion of the state was Roman Catholicism. Christendom fought back against Islam in the Crusades (see below), which failed to repossess the lost territories but strengthened the unity of Christendom and rendered it conscious of its power.The Middle Ages saw the rise of the universities and of a "Catholic" learning, sparked, oddly enough, by the transmission of Aristotle through Arab scholars. Scholasticism, the highly formalized philosophical and theological systems developed by the medieval masters, dominated Roman Catholic thought into the 20th century and contributed to the formation of the European intellectual tradition. With the rise of the universities, the threefold level of the ruling classes of Christendom was established; imperium (political authority), sacerdotium (ecclesiastical authority), and studium (intellectual authority). The principle that each of these three was independent of the other two within its sphere of authority had enduring consequences in Europe .
The same period saw the growth of monasticism. One may see in this withdrawal from the world a response to the essential conflict between Christianity and Roman civilization; those who refused to accept the prevailing compromise between the religious and secular spheres could find no place in the world of the early Middle Ages. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of monasticism was that this withdrawal did not take the form of heresy or schism. Monasticism found a way of refusing the compromise without departing from the church that had made the compromise.
A period of decadence
This period also revealed the possibilities of corruption within the Roman Catholic Church. Without the accumulated prestige and the precedents established by the 9th-century popes, the claim to primacy would have had difficulty in surviving the subsequent period of papal decadence. In the 870s the imperial government in Italy declined in influence, and the bishopric of Rome , along with other European bishoprics, was increasingly at the mercy of the local nobility, with spasmodic interventions by the 10th-century German emperors.German kingship entered upon a new epoch in the 10th century. Under Otto I, the Great, the bishops and greater abbots were drawn into royal service and enriched with estates and counties, for which they did feudal homage. Otto conquered northern Italy and extracted from the pope an imperial coronation (962). Both he and his grandson Otto III regarded the papal territory as part of their realm; they appointed and removed popes and presided at synods. Otto III, an enlightened ruler, appointed as pope his old tutor, Gerbert of Aurillac--who took the name Sylvester II--whose brief reign (999-1003) was a shaft of light between two periods in which Roman factions dominated the papacy.
German "protection," however, had its price. When the emperor Henry III descended into Italy in 1046, deposing three rival claimants to the papacy (Sylvester III, Gregory VI, and Benedict IX) and then appointing his own candidate, Clement II (and later several successors), the Roman Church was in grave danger of becoming an imperial proprietary church, similar to those multitudinous lower churches in Europe whose royal or aristocratic owners regarded them, in accordance with age-old custom, as their own private property to be disposed of at will.
France during this period was fragmented into many feudal domains. This allowed the ecclesiastical hierarchy there a certain independence and cohesion, while the growth of the French reform-oriented monastery at Cluny prepared the country for its message of reform. In England there was a unique intermingling of ecclesiastical and royal administration that, in fact, left the church entirely free. On the fringes of Christendom-- Scandinavia , Scotland , Ireland , and northern Spain --there was little hierarchical development.
Popular Christianity c. 1000
The greater part of central Christendom had by the 11th century been divided into bishops' dioceses and individual parishes. But in the northern and western regions the proliferation of small private churches had not yet been wholly absorbed, and the existence of proprietary and exempt enclaves continued to the Reformation and beyond. The priest, in rural districts usually a villein of the lord (subject to the lord but not to others), cultivated his acres of glebe (revenue lands of the parish church), celebrated mass on Sundays and feasts, recited some of the hours (liturgical or devotional services for use at certain hours of the day, according to the monastic daily schedule), and saw that his flock was baptized, anointed, and buried. Lay people normally received communion four times a year--Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and Assumption (August 15). Auricular (privately heard) confession was widespread but not universal.Education in the early Middle Ages was at a very low ebb outside the monasteries. Cathedral schools were few, and rural priests who could read Latin easily were rare. Almost all literary work came from the monasteries and in Celtic lands (mainly Ireland ) from the half-monastic Culdees (religious recluses). The larger monasteries, such as Cluny or St. Gall ( Switzerland ), were towns in miniature with a variety of social services; they were also the only reservoirs of learning and artistic skill. On the land, pious practices and beliefs often merged into superstition or "white" magic; and marriage customs, together with the complicated degrees of prohibited relationships, provided endless problems in an epoch when the presence of a priest was not necessary for a valid union. In an age of protective lordship, heavenly patrons were highly valued, and the body or relics of a reputed saint made him the persona, a quasi-living protective presence, of a church or abbey. This aspect of belief explains the popularity of pilgrimages to shrines such as that of the Apostles at Rome , St. James at Santiago de Compostela ( Spain ), the Magi at Cologne ( Germany ), and countless others. Monastic piety was expressed not only in the liturgy but also in "little offices" (liturgical or devotional services) of the Blessed Virgin, of the cross, of all saints, and of the dead; the primary reason for a monastery's existence was intercessory prayer--hence the numerous monastic foundations by royal and noble families.
The first reformers: Leo IX and Nicholas II
Leo IX (reigned 1049-54) was the first pope to impose his authority upon the church in general; he achieved this by a tactic of lengthy tours beyond the Alps , punctuated by synods, in which decrees both dogmatic and disciplinary were passed. He also began the practice of appointing non-Romans to curial (papal administrative) posts and sending legates (papal representatives) to carry out his decrees. A man of great energy and spiritual purpose, he must nevertheless bear the responsibility for a disastrous war that ended in capitulation to the Normans and for choosing the rigid and violent Humbert for the mission to Constantinople in 1054, the year from which the Schism between the churches of the East and West is dated. In the years of confusion that followed, the papal election decree of Nicholas II in 1059 stands out: it gave the right and duty of papal election to the cardinals, tacitly eliminating the king of Germany . The same pope shortly afterward renewed earlier decrees on simony and clerical celibacy but avoided the issue of pope and empire.The reign of Gregory VII
Hildebrand, who succeeded in 1073 as Gregory VII (reigned 1073-85), proved to be one of the greatest of his line and had more influence than any other person of his time upon the external fabric of the church. In his long struggle with the German king Henry IV he suspended and excommunicated his opponent, pardoned him as penitent at Canossa, Italy (1077), excommunicated him again (and was himself twice deposed), and was finally driven from Rome by Henry to die in exile at Salerno (1085). In opposition to Henry's claim to be the divinely appointed vice regent of Christ over the activities of the church, Gregory presented himself as heir to the unlimited commission of Christ to Peter over all souls (Matthew 16:18-19). Beneath these lofty claims lay the ruler's resistance to losing his ancestral right of appointing to office his most influential subjects (who often also held the richest fiefs) and the pope's insistence on the authority of ancient canon law and papal decrees. If the king's claims were inconsistent with the current conception of a free church, the pope's claim and actions were without precedent within the memory or records of his age.Even more directly influential was Gregory's centralization of the church. Through the appointment of plenipotentiary legates (representatives with full power to negotiate), the immediate control of diocesan bishops, canonical elections, and Roman and local synods, and the publication of canonical collections and polemical manifestos a web was spun in which every thread led to Rome . The scattered priests and the distant bishops were gradually becoming a class, the clergy, distinct from others and with a law and a loyalty of their own. Although Gregory died a lonely exile, his principles of reform had found reception all over Europe , and the new generation of bishops was Gregorian in sympathy and obedient in practice to papal commands in a way unknown to their predecessors.
The Investiture Conflict (1085-1122)
The efforts of the reformers to make the church independent of lay control inevitably centered upon the appointment of bishops by the ruler of the country or region. In ancient canon law, election of bishops had been by clergy and people; entrance upon office followed lawful consecration. Feudalism and royal claims had transformed election into royal appointment, and admission to office was by means of the bestowal, or investiture, by the lord, of ring and staff (symbols of the Episcopal office), preceded by an act of homage. This savored of simony, both because a layman bestowed a spiritual benefice and because money was often offered or demanded. The conservatives appealed to immemorial practice, accepted and even enjoined by the papacy.Gregory VII, though asserting the principle of freedom, was in fact tolerant of royal appointments free from simony. Pope Urban II (reigned 1088-99) was equally inconsistent, though in other ways he was a reformer. Pope Paschal II (reigned 1099-1118) at once condemned lay investiture, thus precipitating the crisis in England between Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury , and King Henry I. This and a similar crisis in France were settled by a compromise. Election (by the cathedral chapter) was to be free; lay investiture was waived, but homage before the bestowal of the fief was allowed. Meanwhile Paschal, at odds with the German king Henry V, who was demanding imperial coronation, suddenly offered to renounce all church property held by the king if lay investiture were also abandoned. Henry accepted, but the bishops refused the terms; thereupon the King seized the Pope who, under duress, allowed lay investiture. By this time, however, a large majority of the bishops were Gregorians, and the Pope was persuaded to retract. Eleven years later Pope Gelasius II accepted the Concordat of Worms (1122). According to this agreement free election by ecclesiastics was to be followed by investiture (without staff and ring) and homage to the king.
This ended the strife of 50 years, in which pamphleteers on both sides had revived every kind of claim to supremacy and God-given authority. Nominally a compromise, the concordat was in effect a victory for the monarch, for he could usually control the election. Nevertheless, the war of ideologies had exposed the weakness of the emperor who in the last resort had to admit the spiritual authority of the pope, and the struggle left intact the claim of the church to moderate the whole of society.
The Crusades
The authority
of the papacy and the relative decline of the empire also became clear in
the unforeseen emergence of the Crusades as a major preoccupation of
Europe . The papacy had been stirred more than once
by the disasters befalling Eastern Christians, such as their defeats by
the Seljuq Turks at Manzikert (1071) and
Antioch
(1085) in
Asia Minor , when the Byzantine emperor Alexius I
appealed for help to Pope Urban II. Although this appeal may have been the
decisive motive for the Crusade, there were obvious advantages in
diverting the Normans of Sicily and other turbulent warriors from
Europe to wage a sacred war elsewhere. Urban's
celebrated call to the Crusade at Clermont (France) in 1095 was
unexpectedly effective, placing the pope at the head of a large army of
volunteers. Even though the capture of
Jerusalem
(1099) and the establishment of a Latin kingdom in
Palestine
were balanced by disasters and quarrels, the papacy had gained greatly in
prestige. Though
Germany
as a whole had remained aloof, a pope had for the first time stood out as
the leader of a European endeavor. The Crusades, with their combination of
idealism, ambition, heroism, cruelty, and folly are a medieval phenomenon
and, as such, outside modern man's experience. But they were part of the
religious background for two centuries and added greatly to the anxieties,
both spiritual and financial, of the papacy.
The church of the late Middle Ages
The Proto-Renaissance
The 12th century, or, more correctly, the century 1050-1150, has been called the first Renaissance. A more accurate title would be the adolescence of Europe , in which higher education, techniques of thought and speech, and a fresh attack upon the old problems of philosophy and theology appeared for the first time in postclassical Europe . All these activities were carried out by clerics and controlled by churchmen. The focus of educational activity was the cathedral school, and the new agent of instruction was the semiprofessional, unattached teacher, such as the French philosopher-theologians Berengarius, Roscelin, and Abelard, though monks such as Lanfranc, Anselm of Canterbury, and Hugh and Richard of the Monastery of St. Victor, Paris, still had a share.Philosophy was revived through the development of logic and dialectic, which were applied to doctrines of the faith, either as formal exercises, Augustinian speculation, or critical reformulation. From 1100 onward theology, in the modern sense of the word (first used by Abelard), emerged. The teachings of Scripture and of the early Church Fathers on the various doctrines were consolidated and organized in works called Sentences. The first handbook of theology was composed by Abelard. Finally, Peter Lombard (bishop c. 1159) published his Four Books of Sentences, which summarized the Christian faith, using the sic-et-non (yes-and-no) dialectic popularized by Abelard and the canon lawyers, and he also pronounced on vexing questions. His classic manual may be said, in modern terms, to have created the syllabus of theological study for the age that followed. Together with the expansion of logic--brought about by the arrival (through Muslim sources) of what was called the new logic of Aristotle--and the emergence of the university, the Sentences ended the era of literary, humanistic, and monastic culture and opened that of the formal, impersonal, Scholastic age.
Reformed monasticism
The most distinctive feature of the century 1050-1150, according to some scholars, was the appearance and diffusion of reformed monasticism. Beginning with a few relatively small quasi-hermit orders in Italy, such as the Camaldolese and the Vallombrosans, the movement spread to France with the extreme eremitical Grandmontines (founded in 1077) and the eremitical Carthusians (founded in 1084) and became as wide as Christendom with the multiplication of the daughter monasteries of Cîteaux (founded in 1098). The keynote of the Cistercians (based at Cîteaux) was exact observance of the Rule of St. Benedict, with emphasis on simplicity, poverty, and manual work. The addition of lay brothers tapped a large reservoir in an age of economic and demographic expansion and the organization of the order--with annual visitations and a general chapter--ensured good discipline and enabled the order to accommodate itself to the strain of a vast family of houses scattered throughout the Latin Church. The success of Cîteaux owed much to the genius of St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux from 1115 to 1153, who was for 30 years the untitled religious leader of Europe . Owing to his influence, other new orders, such as the Premonstratensians, the English Gilbertines, and the military Knights Templars, accepted or imitated Cistercian practices. All these and others had a popularity that in any other age would have seemed miraculous, since they practiced austerity. By the end of the 12th century the saturation point for monasticism had been reached all over Europe, save in a few peripheral regions, and the golden age of monasticism had passed.The papacy at its height: the 12th and 13th centuries
Gregory VII has often been portrayed as an innovator who lacked both authentic ancestors and true successors. It must be affirmed, nonetheless, that the later history of the papacy, modern as well as medieval, was shaped by what he and his followers did, while the continuing disabilities characteristic of the medieval papacy owed much to what they left undone. Thus, the assimilation of the biblical notion of church office as grounded in love for others to the political notions of office as grounded in power and law--a development in process since the 4th century and earlier--reached a point of no return with Gregory. He functioned within a unified Christian society in which "state" and "church" were no longer conceived as distinct societal entities and was thus impelled by its very dynamic to assert a claim to jurisdictional supremacy even over the Christian emperor. For the next two centuries papal history was characterized by a deepening involvement, direct and indirect, in matters political. As a result there were, under Alexander III (reigned 1159-81) and Innocent IV (reigned 1243-54), renewed clashes with the German emperors and, under Innocent III (reigned 1198-1216), extensive and damaging papal interference in German internal affairs. What alarmed these popes was the fear that imperial policy, by encroaching upon papal territorial independence, also threatened the autonomy of papal action. But with Innocent IV, at least, such a fear was matched by his wish to vindicate, even in temporal matters, the papal claim to supremacy.Though much of the drama of papal history in this period focused upon these conflicts, the impact that the thoroughgoing politicization of church office had upon the nature and structure of ecclesiastical government and the pope's place in it was of more enduring significance. Here again Gregory's pontificate was something of a watershed. Any lingering belief that the pope's primacy might be regarded primarily as one of honor was now dispelled, and any hesitation about implementing the jurisdictional primacy that had supplanted it now disappeared. The need for papal leadership was so widely accepted that throughout much of the 12th and 13th centuries the demand for it came from the local churches themselves. The outcome was an acceleration in the process that had led, by the late 13th century, to a papal exercise of judicial authority going far beyond the mere acceptance of appeals from lower courts; to an arrogation of the wide-ranging legislative powers manifest in the Decretals of Gregory IX (1234), the first officially promulgated collection of papal laws; and to the system of "papal provisions" (direct papal intervention in the disposal of benefices) that was finally to be completed by Benedict XII in 1335.
Papal leadership in the church was eventually replaced by papal monarchy over the church. Positively, this transformation was evident in the reforming legislation of the fourth Lateran Council (1215). The negative aspect was to become increasingly obvious as the 13th century wore on. It was no accident that what turned out to be the permanent schism between the Latin and Greek churches occurred at a time when Leo IX had embarked upon a more active exercise of the papal primacy. The more his successors succeeded in establishing the fullness of their jurisdictional power (plenitudo potestatis) within the Latin Church, the less chance there was of healing the schism. Nor did papal sponsorship of the Crusades, however great the prestige it had brought to Urban II at the time of the First Crusade, ultimately redound to the benefit of the religious life of the church.
Least justified of all was the administrative centralization attendant upon the exercise of the plenitudo potestatis when it was finally measured against the price that had to be paid--notably the corruption spawned by the stringent financial measures (e.g., sale of indulgences, benefices, etc.) needed to support the growing army of clerical bureaucrats at Rome. And on this point one of the things left undone by the Gregorian reformers proved to be crucial. Their failure to uproot the notion of the "proprietary church" explains both the willingness of later canonists to classify the laws governing the disposition of ecclesiastical benefices under the heading not of public but of private law (law pertaining to the protection of proprietary right) and also the tendency of medieval persons in general to regard ecclesiastical office less as a focus of duty than as a source of income or an object of proprietary right. When the 13th-century popes found that direct papal taxation did not yield funds sufficient to support their bureaucrats, they adopted the practice of "providing" them to benefices all over Europe , for the law itself encouraged them to think of such benefices as sources of much needed revenue. Thus arose the characteristic abuses of pluralism (holding more than one benefice) and nonresidence against which church reformers from the mid-13th century on railed in vain and the blame for which they were soon to lay at the door of a papacy that had finally come to be regarded as an obstacle rather than a spur to reform.
The age of faith
Below the level of the papacy, however, a spiritual revival had taken place. The 12th century, perhaps more than any other, was an age of faith in the sense that all men, good or bad, pious or worldly, were fundamentally believers, and religious causes and interests (crusades, monastic foundations, building churches, and assisting education and charities) made up much of the life of the literate and administrative classes. Lay religion was, as never before or since, permeated with monastic ideals. Prodigious numbers of the populace became monks, knights (members of military-religious orders), laborers (lay brothers), and lay people who followed monastic rules, and the favorite lay devotions were short versions of monastic offices. Almost every church--whether cathedral, monastic, parochial, or private--was built or rebuilt between 1050 and 1200. Almost all baronial families founded a monastery, and townspeople not only paid for their cathedrals but often supplied materials and labor.The pontificate of Innocent III saw the appearance of a totally new form of religious life, that of the penniless or mendicant friar. Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226), a personality of magnetic originality who believed that he was called by Christ to preach poverty, had no thought of founding an order; but his message and his genius exactly suited his age, and the vast concourse of his followers gradually changed from a homeless, penniless band of preachers and missionaries in Italy into an international body governed by a single general and devoted to the service of the papacy. Dominic of Spain (c. 1170-1221), on the other hand, with a vocation to preach doctrine to heretics and with followers keeping a canonical rule, changed his existing institute into one of friars. Gradually the two groups became similar: international, articulated groups of men bound to an order but not to a community. They took the customary monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience but dropped the vow of stabilitas (stability) in favor of mobility, and they were governed by elected superiors under a supreme chapter and general. Unpredictably, first the Dominicans and then the Franciscans entered and soon dominated the theological schools of Paris and Oxford . Two similar bodies joined them, the Carmelites and Austin Friars, and for almost a century the friars were the theologians, the preachers, and the confessors of the Christian people.
The rise of
heresy
Before the
middle of the 12th century heresy on a large scale was unknown in the
West. The early dissenters were often radical reformers such as the
Italian canon Arnold of Brescia (d. 1155), an outspoken critic of clerical
wealth and corruption. Then there appeared in northern
Italy
and southern
France
the sect, Eastern and Manichaean in origin, later known as the Cathari
(the "pure," from the ascetic lives of their leaders). This sect had an
organization and liturgical life that imitated Christianity; but it
overtly denied many key doctrines, such as the incarnation of Christ, and
was dualistic in that it regarded matter and the human body as evil and
the spirit as good. Its emphasis on poverty and its genuine solidarity of
mutual assistance appealed to many by contrast with the luxury and wealth
of the Catholic hierarchy. A little later another type of dissent appeared
with the Waldenses (founded by a French reformer named Valdes) of the
Rhône
Valley
and
Piedmont . These groups, basically and professedly
orthodox, together with the reform-minded Humiliati of Lombardy (
Italy
), practiced poverty, Scripture reading, and preaching. The Cathari were
proscribed as heretics by the papacy and were attacked by a crusade and
later by the Inquisition, and they gradually disappeared. The Humiliati
remained orthodox as a quasi-religious order. The Waldenses, largely
through mismanagement by the bishops, drifted away from the church and
remained throughout the Middle Ages and after a non-Catholic body. These
heretical movements, together with numerous legal disputes between monks
and bishops, and bishops and metropolitans (ecclesiastical provincial
leaders), imparted a sense of decline and peril to the last decades of the
12th century, which were notably barren of saints and great men. The
church was too rich and too set in its hierarchical ways to meet the
demands of larger populations and economic stresses, especially in urban
conditions. Reformers demanded a spirit of poverty and a fresh wind of
spirituality.
The golden age of Scholasticism
The 13th century was an age of fresh endeavor and splendid maturity in the realms of thought, theology, and art. Philosophy, hitherto almost exclusively devoted to logic and dialectic, had stagnated in the later 12th century. It was revived by the gradual arrival from Spain and Sicily of translations of the whole corpus of Aristotle's writings, often accompanied by Arabic and Jewish commentaries and treatises. Aristotle, especially in his Metaphysics and Ethics, opened the whole field of philosophy to the schools. After a short period of hesitation his works were used by theologians, at first eclectically and then systematically. The great German philosopher and theologian Albert of Cologne (known as Albertus Magnus) and his more famous pupil Thomas Aquinas rethought the system of Aristotle in Christian idiom, pouring into it a fair dose of Neoplatonism from St. Augustine . Aquinas, in some 25 years of work, set theology firmly on a philosophical foundation. The Italian theologian Bonaventure (1217-74), in an even shorter career, renewed the traditional approach of Augustine and the Victorine monks regarding theology as the guide of the soul to the vision of God. At the same time masters in the arts school of Paris used Aristotelian thought to present a naturalistic system that clashed with orthodox teaching. The condemnations that ensued in 1272 and 1277, coinciding with the deaths of Bonaventure and Aquinas (1274), included some Thomist theses. This apparent victory of conservatism ended the long era in which Greek thought was regarded as right reason and foreshadowed the age of individual systems and the divorce of philosophy from theology.Ecclesiastical life in the 13th century
The coming of the friars and the legislation of the fourth Lateran Council in Rome (1215)--including requirements of annual confession and communion and a reduction in number of the impediments to marriage--saved the lower classes for the church and silenced many of the critics of the establishment. Well-trained and extremely mobile, the friars were able to reach and hold regions and peoples that the static monks and clergy had failed to move. The 13th century in Europe as a whole was a time of pastoral endeavor in which bishops and university-trained clergy perfected the diocesan and parish organization and reformed many abuses. It was an age of active and spiritual bishops, many of them masters in theology and themselves friars. There also were controversies. The early friars served and were welcomed by the bishops and parish clergy, but clashes soon occurred; the papacy gave the friars exemptions and privileges so wide that the basic rights of the secular clergy were threatened. An academic war of pamphlets led to an attack on the vocation and work of the friars. A compromise was finally arranged by Boniface VIII (reigned 1294-1303) that was just and workable; under a revised form it lasted for two centuries. The bishop could refuse friars entry into his diocese, but once they had been admitted, the friars were free from his control.Troubles of the church c. 1300
The last quarter of the 13th century was a time of growing bitterness and harshness. The golden age of Scholastic theology had come to an abrupt end. The troubles of the Franciscans--divided into those who stood for the absolute poverty prescribed by the rule and testament of Francis (the Spirituals) and those who accepted papal relaxation and exemptions (the Conventuals)--were a running sore for 60 years, vexing the papacy and infecting the whole church. The Inquisition (the ecclesiastical tribunal instituted in 1229 to deal with heretics) and the papal court incurred odium for their inhumane and inequitable treatment of those suspected of heresy.Another instance of hardening sentiment is seen in the treatment of the Jews. Between 800 and 1200 the Jewish population had increased significantly in Lombardy , Provence , and the towns of the river valleys of the Rhône, the Rhine , and the Danube . They entered England only after the Norman Conquest (1066.) Apart from heretics such as the Cathari they were the only "foreign body" in Western Christendom and as such attracted the special notice of the ignorant and brutal. There were shocking massacres of Jews when the Crusades were preached, especially in the Rhineland , and after various instances of panic on the part of Christians, Jews were accused of sacrilege and child murder. These, however, were all mob movements, resisted by kings and bishops. Later the Jews suffered from suspicions that were aroused by the Cathari. The fourth Lateran Council gave the Jews a distinguishing badge and forbade their employment by governments. This established once and for all the ghetto system in large towns but did not at first impair Jewish prosperity. Later on the growing class of Christian merchants became jealous and hostile, and in 1290 and 1306 the Jews were expelled from England and France . This swelled their numbers in Germany , thenceforward called "the classic land of Jewish martyrdom." Groups remained in Italy , and the Roman colony was never disturbed. In Spain toleration gave way to widespread persecution and conversion under duress, which left a heritage of sorrow for the future.
The "Babylonian Captivity"
In 1303, despite its resounding claims and its complex governmental machinery, the prestige of the papacy had fallen so low that it was possible for mercenaries in French pay and under French leadership to harass and humiliate the pope with impunity; Boniface VIII, at Anagni was arrested in his own family (Caetani) palace. The aftermath of this "outrage of Anagni" was the "Babylonian Captivity"--the desertion of Rome by the popes and their long residence (1309-77) at Avignon , Fr.--so called after the 70 years of Jewish exile in Babylon in the 6th century BC.The disputes of the Franciscans, which had crystallized finally upon the teaching of the Spiritual Franciscans that their absolute poverty was that of Christ, were harshly settled (1322) by the irascible octogenarian John XXII (reigned 1316-34). A group of Franciscans, however, led by Michael of Cesena, general of the order, and William of Ockham, became bitter and formidable critics of the papacy. With them for a time was the Italian political philosopher Marsilius of Padua, a Paris master who, in his Defensor pacis (1324), outlined a secular state in which the church was a government department, the papacy and episcopate human institutions, and the spiritual sanctions of religion relegated to a position of honorable nonentity. Between them, Ockham and Marsilius used almost all the arguments that have ever been devised against the papacy. Condemned more than once, Marsilius had little immediate effect or influence, but during the Great Schism of the papacy (1378-1417) and later, in the 16th century, he and Ockham had their turn.
With the papacy "in captivity" and Nominalism capturing the universities, Europe and the church entered upon an epoch of disasters, of which the Hundred Years' War between England and France (began 1337) and the Black Death (1348-49) were the most clearly seen by contemporaries. For all this, Christian life in the first half of the 14th century changed little. Many of the largest parish churches of Europe date from this time, as do many popular devotions, prayers, hymns, and carols; also, many hospitals and almshouses were founded. Though the relations between the friars and the secular clergy had been canonically settled, friction continued. The friars came under wider criticism for worldliness and immorality, but they remained popular. Though heresy and antisacerdotal (anticlerical) sentiment became almost endemic in the cities of Belgium and the Netherlands , the 14th century produced some of the greatest mystical writers of the church's history: Johann Tauler and Jan van Ruysbroeck in the north, Catherine of Siena in Italy , and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing and Walter Hilton in England .
The missionary enterprise during the period 1000-1350 involved three principal fields of work: Spain, central Europe , and Asia . In Spain the absorption of the Mozarabic Church (the Arabic term for Spanish Christians under Moorish rule) and the reestablishment of Catholic practices was accomplished by Spaniards who followed the crusade ideal and by volunteers, partly monastic, from beyond the Pyrenees . In central Europe , Pope Sylvester II (reigned 999-1003) had founded the ecclesiastical hierarchies of Hungary and Poland . The region between these countries and Germany was gradually conquered and Christianized by neighboring bishops and German missionaries. The Baltic lands were won by a mixture of preaching and the swords of the Teutonic Knights (a military monastic order) between 1100 and 1400. Purer in motive and magnificent in design were the efforts of the Franciscans and Dominicans in the Middle and Far East . Both orders preached to the Muslims, and early in the 13th century the Franciscans were in Georgia and Persia and the Dominicans in Syria . In mid-century the Franciscans penetrated Mongolia and established a church in China with an archbishop and 10 suffragan bishops, and under John XXII there was a hierarchy in Persia . All this might well have endured, had not the last of the great invasions (1383), under the Turkic conqueror Timur, or Tamerlane, broken all links between Europe and the East.
From the late Middle Ages to the Reformation
The most decisive--and the most traumatic--era in the entire history of Roman Catholicism was the period from the middle of the 14th to the middle of the 16th century. This was the time when Protestantism, through its definitive break with Roman Catholicism, arose to take its place on the Christian map. It was as well the period during which the Roman Catholic Church, as an entity distinct from other "branches" of Christendom, even of Western Christendom, came into being. There is therefore much to be said for the thesis that Roman Catholicism in the form in which it is known today is, in many fundamental ways, a product of the Reformation.Late medieval reform: the Great Western Schism and conciliarism
Reformation of the church and the papacy was what the advocates of a return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome had in mind. In the pope's absence, both the ecclesiastical and the territorial authority of the papacy had deteriorated within Italy itself, and the moral and spiritual authority of the papacy was in jeopardy throughout Christian Europe. This condition, so many believed, would continue and even worsen so long as the papacy remained in Avignon . Pope Urban V (reigned 1362-70) attempted to reestablish the papacy in Rome in 1367, but after a stay of only three years he returned to Avignon , only to die soon after his return. It was finally Gregory XI (reigned 1370-78) who, in 1377, permanently moved the papal headquarters back to Rome ; but he died only a few months later. The immediate result of the return to Rome was the very opposite of the restoration of confidence and credibility that, for differing reasons, the prophetic voices and the political calculations of the 14th century had predicted would come from it. For not only had the church during its residence in Avignon come under the political and religious domination of France, which resisted the repatriation of the papacy to Italy, but the weakness of the papacy in Avignon had enabled the college of cardinals and the papal bureaucracy to fill the administrative vacuum by developing a pattern of government that can only be described as oligarchic. The powers that the cardinals had succeeded in appropriating were difficult for the centralized authority of the papacy, whether in Avignon or in Rome , to reclaim for itself.Meeting in Rome for the first time in nearly a century, the college of cardinals elected Pope Urban VI (reigned 1378-89). But his desire to reassert the monarchical powers of the papacy, as well as his evident mental illness, prompted the cardinals to renege on that choice later in the same year. In his stead they elected Clement VII (reigned 1378-94), who soon thereafter took up residence back in Avignon . (This Clement VII is officially listed as an antipope, and the name was later taken by another pope, Clement VII [reigned 1523-34].) The years from 1378 to 1417 count as the time of the Great Western Schism, so identified to distinguish it from the no less great East-West Schism. The Great Western Schism divided the loyalties of Western Christendom between two popes, each of whom excommunicated the other and all of the other's followers. In the conflict between them, kingdoms, dioceses, religious orders, parishes, even families were split; and the pretensions of a church that claimed to be, as the Nicene Creed said, "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" were seen as a mockery, since the empirical church--whichever it was--was in fact none of these. No one could be absolutely certain about the validity of the sacraments if the integrity and very unity of the church, and therefore of the episcopate, and therefore of the priesthood, were in doubt. Speaking for a broad consensus, the University of Paris proposed three alternatives for resolving the crisis of the institution, which had now become, for laity and clergy alike, a crisis of faith: resignation by both popes, with the election of a single unchallenged successor; adjudication of the dispute between the two popes by some independent tribunal; or appeal to an ecumenical council, which would function as a supreme court with jurisdiction over both claimants.
The third of these, the summoning of a general church council, seemed to the theologians at Paris and to many others to be the preferable route. The first of several reform councils was held at Pisa in 1409 to deal with the schism and with the many other problems of discipline and doctrine that had arisen. Pisa elected Alexander V (reigned 1409-10) as pope in place of both incumbents. But, because neither of the other two would acknowledge the authority of the council and resign, the immediate result was that for a few years, as one cardinal said, the church was treated to "a simulacrum of the Holy Trinity"--the spectacle of three popes. That spectacle and the Great Western Schism itself came to an end through the work of the Council of Constance (1414-18). In addition to the settlement of the question of papal legitimacy, Constance enacted legislation on a variety of reform issues. Among others it stipulated that thenceforth, as a matter of church law, the church council was not to be seen as an expedient to be resorted to in an emergency but as a standing legislative body, a kind of ecclesiastical senate that should meet at brief and regular intervals. The decree of the Council of Constance justified this provision on the principle that the authority of the ecumenical council as the true representative of the entire church was superior to that of the pope, who could not make a similar claim for himself apart from the council. In oversimplified form, this elevation of conciliar over papal authority may be taken as the central tenet of the late medieval movement called conciliarism.
This action also helps to account for the ambiguous position of the Council of Constance in the history of later Roman Catholic canon law, with opinions of canonists and historians differing to this day about which sessions of the council are entitled to the status of a true ecumenical council. An ambiguity even more complex attended the next of the reform councils, which used to be known in history books as the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence but is now sometimes divided into two councils, that of Basel and that of Ferrara-Florence, with the legitimacy of the Council of Basel contested in whole or at least in part. The council opened at Basel in 1431, was transferred by the pope to Ferrara in 1438 (although a substantial portion of its membership remained in Basel , continued discussing and legislating, and was eventually excommunicated as schismatic), moved to Florence in 1439, and held its closing sessions at Rome in 1443-45. While still at Basel , the council reaffirmed the conciliarist teaching of Constance about the superiority of the council to the pope.
Both the Council of Constance and the Council of Florence have additional importance in the history of late medieval reform in Roman Catholicism: Constance for dealing with the problem of heresy within the Western Church , Florence for addressing itself to the relation of Western Roman Catholicism to Eastern Christendom.
Jan Hus
A major item on the agenda of the Council of Constance was the challenge posed to the authority of contending parties, council as well as pope, by the teachings of the Czech preacher and reformer Jan Hus (c. 1372-1415) in Prague . In every century of the Middle Ages there had been calls for reform in the church, and in times of moral corruption or of administrative chaos such calls inevitably became more intense. But the Hussite movement proved to be more than just another protest. It was animated by a definition of the church, rooted in the Augustinian tradition that drew a sharp distinction, if not quite a disjunction, between institutional Christendom as headed by the pope and the true church as headed by Christ. The true church consisted only of those who had been predestined for membership by God and who were true believers and saints; no hypocrite, even one in the highest ecclesiastical position, could belong to that true church.Despite the accusations of his critics, it seems clear that Hus did not draw from this premise the radical conclusion that sacraments administered by a hypocritical priest or bishop or pope were invalid in themselves; the priestly office and the sacraments retained their objective validity. A prominent element of the Hussite demands, however, was a call for the administration of Holy Communion to the laity "under both kinds--bread and wine--[sub utraque specie]," that is, they demanded the restoration of the chalice; the followers of Hus emblazoned a chalice on their banners. The Hussite program of reform coalesced with the rising nationalism of the Czech people, many of whom saw in the Roman Catholic Church a symbol of Italian and German domination.
In 1411 Hus was excommunicated by Pope John XXIII (reigned 1410-15), now identified as an antipope, but in keeping with the widespread spirit of conciliarism he appealed his case to an ecumenical council of the church. Therefore he was summoned to appear before the Council of Constance and was promised a safe-conduct by Sigismund (1368-1437), the Holy Roman emperor. Once at the council, however, Hus was arrested and incarcerated. He was tried for heresy (particularly because of his doctrine of the church) and condemned, and on July 6, 1415 , he was put to death. His main prosecutors were also the leaders of the reform movement at the Council of Constance, notably Jean de Gerson (1363-1429), chancellor of the University of Paris . The death of Hus was not, however, the end of his movement. A principal difference between Hus and most other medieval reformers was that while they and their followers remained (though sometimes just barely) within the boundaries of Roman Catholicism, the outcome of his agitation was in fact the founding of a new church, one that continued to exist outside the structure of Roman Catholicism. In this respect, as well as in various specific doctrinal and moral teachings, he anticipated the development of the Protestant Reformation a century later, and his 16th-century disciples saw that development as a vindication of his and their position.
Efforts to heal the East-West Schism
At Basel , and then especially at Florence , there were extensive negotiations and discussions over the newly revived proposals for effecting a reunion of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Western Roman Catholicism. Earlier attempts at such a reunion, for example at the Council of Lyon in 1274, had failed. But now the time seemed ripe on both sides for a new effort at negotiation and reconciliation. Christian Constantinople was under increasing threat from the Turks and wanted Western support, moral as well as military. Leaders of the West, regardless of party, saw the prospect of achieving a long-sought rapprochement with the East as a means of restoring the prestige of both the papacy and the ecumenical council, which could then be seen as having resolved both of the major schisms of Christian history--the Great Western Schism and the East-West Schism--in the space of one generation. The patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph II (c. 1360-1439), and the Byzantine emperor, John VIII Palaeologus (1391-1448), both came in person to the Council of Florence for the theological negotiations pointing toward reunion of the two churches.In the course of the doctrinal discussions between Greeks and Latins all the major points of difference that had historically separated the two churches received detailed attention. The Greeks acknowledged the primacy of the pope, and the West acknowledged the right of the East to ordain married men into the priesthood. The chief sticking point, as always, was the doctrine of the Filioque: Did the Holy Spirit in the Trinity proceed from the Father only, as the East taught, or "from the Father and the Son [ex Patre Filioque]," as the Western addition to the text of the Nicene Creed affirmed? At stake here was not only the dogmatic Trinitarian question itself, over which the disputes between the Latins and the Greeks had been raging since the 9th century, but the authority of one part of the church, viz., the Roman Catholic Church, to make an alteration in the text of an ecumenical creed through unilateral action, that is, without the sanction of a truly ecumenical council representing the entire church. Almost all those present at Florence came to an agreement that the dispute over the Filioque was chiefly one of words, not of content, since it could be amply documented that both versions of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit had substantial attestation from the teachings of the Church Fathers in both churches. Agreement on the Filioque and on all other points at issue led to the adoption of a document of union, Laetentur Coeli, promulgated on July 6, 1439 (and still commemorated in a plaque on the wall of the Duomo in Florence ). But the reunion came too late for both sides. It was repudiated in the East, both at Constantinople and in the other Orthodox churches, notably the Church of Russia ; and it was soon evident that in the West the internal problems of the church and the papacy had not been laid to rest by this temporary victory. Once again, as so many times throughout Christian history, the reunion of the Eastern and the Western Churches proved to have been a dead letter and an unattainable goal.
Roman Catholicism on the eve of the Reformation
The decline of Scholastic theology
The transition from the Middle Ages to the Reformation was a gradual one, but--at least in hindsight--its direction seems to have become clear already in the 14th and especially in the 15th century. One development that was both a cause and a result of that transition was the decline of Scholastic theology. As practiced, albeit with great divergence of opinion on many issues, by its leading expositors, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, Scholasticism had been the systematization of the Roman Catholic understanding of the relation between the claims of human reason and the authority of divine revelation. To that end it had made use of philosophy, particularly of the newly available works of Aristotle, to describe the natural potentialities of human ways to truth in order then to enthrone Christian theology as "the queen of the sciences."With good reason have historians seen in that schema of reason and revelation the counterpart in the life of the mind to the schema of church and society set forth, earlier in the century of Aquinas and Bonaventure, by Pope Innocent III (reigned 1198-1216). These historians draw a similar correlation between the waning prestige of the papacy in the late Middle Ages and the shattering of the Scholastic synthesis by the work of such philosophical theologians as William of Ockham. Some of the theological descendants of Bonaventure, less confident of the powers of human reason than he, elevated the primacy of faith and the authority of Scripture to an almost exclusive position as a way to truth, while some of the philosophical descendants of Aquinas appeared, at least to their critics, to be expanding the realm of what was knowable by natural means to the point that the primacy of faith was threatened by an all-engulfing rationalism. All the varieties of Scholastic teaching, moreover, were under attack from those leaders of late medieval Roman Catholic piety who contended that the crisis of faith and of the church called for a return to the authentic religious experience of the primitive church as set forth in the New Testament.
Roman Catholicism and Renaissance humanism
At least some of that skepticism arose within the intellectual and literary milieu of Renaissance humanism, whose relation to Roman Catholicism was far more complex than has often been supposed. The efforts of 19th-century historians of the Renaissance--many of whom were themselves under the influence of both anticlericalism and skepticism--to interpret humanism as a neopaganism in revolt against traditional Christian beliefs have been fundamentally recast by modern scholarship. Not only were many of the popes during the 15th and 16th centuries themselves devotees and patrons of Renaissance thought and art, but a Renaissance figure like Nicholas of Cusa, arguably the greatest mind in Christendom East or West during the 15th century, was at the same time a metaphysician of astonishing boldness and creativity, an ecumenical theologian looking for points of contact not only with other Christians but even with Islam, and a reform cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.Thus in the light of recent study the humanists emerge as Christians who were working simultaneously for the reform of the church and of literary culture. To achieve those ends, they urged a return to the basics of Christian civilization, that is, to the Greek and Latin classics and to the monuments of biblical and patristic literature. Lorenzo Valla in Italy and then Desiderius Erasmus in the North are by no means isolated cases among the humanists for this blending of Christianity and classical culture. Erasmus ridiculed the Scholastics for their philosophical abstractions and for their bad Latin, and in his anonymous satire Julius exclusus e coelis he lampooned the effort of Pope Julius II (reigned 1503-13) to get into heaven. Erasmus also edited the writings of most of the major Church Fathers in both Latin and Greek. His edition of the Greek New Testament, the Novum instrumentum of 1516, was intended to stimulate a renewal of authentic Christian faith and life, which he himself called "the philosophy of Christ," in a corrupt Roman Catholicism. Significantly, this merciless critic of the current state of Roman Catholicism nevertheless found it impossible to affiliate himself with the Protestant Reformation when it arose, and he died a faithful, if unappreciated, member of the Roman Catholic Church.
The age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation
The specter of many national churches supplanting a unitary Catholic Church became a grim reality during the age of the Reformation. What neither heresy nor schism had been able to do before--to divide Western Christendom permanently and irreversibly--was done by a movement that confessed a loyalty to the orthodox creeds of Christendom and professed abhorrence for schism. By the time the Reformation was over, Roman Catholicism had become something different from what it had been in the early centuries or even in the later Middle Ages.Roman Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation
Whatever its nonreligious causes may have been, the Protestant Reformation arose within Roman Catholicism; there both its positive accomplishments and its negative effects had their roots. The standing of the church within the political order and the class structure of western Europe had been irrevocably altered in the course of the later Middle Ages. Thus the most extravagant claims put forward for the political authority of the church and the papacy, as formulated by Pope Boniface VIII (reigned 1294-1303), had come just at the time when such authority was in fact rapidly declining. By the time Protestantism arose to challenge the spiritual authority of the papacy, therefore, there was no longer any way to invoke that political authority against the challenge. The medieval class structure, too, had undergone fundamental and drastic changes with the rise of the bourgeoisie throughout western Europe; it is not a coincidence that in northern Europe and Britain the middle class was to become the principal bulwark of the Protestant opposition to Roman Catholicism. The traditional Roman Catholic prohibition of any lending of money at interest as "usury," the monastic glorification of poverty as an ascetic ideal, and the Roman Catholic system of holidays as times when no work was to be done were all seen by the rising merchant class as obstacles to financial development.Accompanying these sociopolitical forces in the crisis of late medieval Roman Catholicism were spiritual and theological factors that also helped to bring on the Protestant Reformation. By the end of the 15th century there was a widely-held impression that the resources for church reform within Roman Catholicism had been tried and found wanting: the papacy refused to reform itself, the councils had not succeeded in bringing about lasting change, and the professional theologians were more interested in scholastic debates than in the nurture of genuine Christian faith and life. Such sentiments were often oversimplified and exaggerated, but their very currency made them a potent influence even when they were mistaken (and they were not always mistaken). The financial corruption and pagan immorality within Roman Catholicism, even at the highest levels, reminded critics of "the abomination of desolation" spoken of by the prophet Daniel, and nothing short of a thoroughgoing "reformation in head and members [in capite et membris]" seemed to be called for.
These demands were in themselves nothing new, but the Protestant Reformation took place when they coincided with, and found dramatic expression in, the highly personal struggle of one medieval Roman Catholic. Martin Luther asked an essentially medieval question: "How do I obtain a God who is merciful to me?" He also tried a medieval answer to that question by becoming a monk and by subjecting himself to fasting and discipline--but all to no avail. The answer that he eventually did find, the conviction that God was merciful not because of anything that the sinner could do but because of a freely given grace that was received by faith alone (the doctrine of justification by faith), was not utterly without precedent in the Roman Catholic theological tradition; but in the form in which Luther stated it there appeared to be a fundamental threat to Catholic teaching and sacramental life. And in his treatise The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, issued in 1520, Luther denounced the entire system of medieval Christendom as an unwarranted human invention foisted on the church.
Although Luther in his opposition to the practice of selling indulgences was unsparing in his attacks upon the moral, financial, and administrative abuses within Roman Catholicism, using his mastery of the German language to denounce them, he insisted throughout his life that the primary object of his critique was not the life but the doctrine of the church, not the corruption of the ecclesiastical structure but the distortion of the gospel. The late medieval mass was "a dragon's tail," not because it was liturgically unsound but because the medieval definition of the mass as a sacrifice offered by the church to God--not only, as Luther believed, as a means of grace granted by God to the church--jeopardized the uniqueness of the unrepeatable sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. The cult of the Virgin Mary and of the saints diminished the office of Christ as the sole mediator between God and the human race. Thus the pope was the Antichrist because he represented and enforced a substitute religion in which the true church, the bride of Christ, had been replaced by--and identified with--an external juridical institution that laid claim to the obedience due to God himself. When, after repeated warnings, Luther refused such obedience, he was excommunicated by Pope Leo X in 1521.
Until his excommunication Luther had gone on regarding himself as a loyal Roman Catholic and had appealed "from a poorly informed Pope to a Pope who ought to be better informed." He had, moreover, retained an orthodox Roman Catholic perspective on most of the corpus of Christian doctrine, not only the Trinity and the two natures in the person of Christ but baptismal regeneration and the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Many of the other Protestant Reformers who arose during the 16th century were considerably less conservative in their doctrinal stance, distancing themselves from Luther's position no less than from the Roman Catholic one. Thus Luther's Swiss opponent, Ulrich Zwingli, lumped Luther's sacramental teaching with the medieval one, and Luther in turn exclaimed: "Better to hold with the papists than with you!" John Calvin was considerably more moderate than Zwingli, but both sacramentally and liturgically he broke with the Roman Catholic tradition. The Anglican Reformation strove to retain the historical episcopate and, particularly under Queen Elizabeth I, steered a middle course, liturgically and even doctrinally, between Roman Catholicism and continental Protestantism.
The polemical Roman Catholic accusation--which the mainline Reformers vigorously denied--that these various species of conservative Protestantism, with their orthodox dogmas and quasi-Catholic forms, were a pretext for the eventual rejection of most of traditional Christianity, seemed to be confirmed with the emergence of the radical Reformation. The Anabaptists, as their name indicated, were known for their practice of "rebaptizing" those who had received the sacrament of baptism as infants; this was, at its foundation, a redefinition of the nature of the church, which they saw not as the institution allied with the state and embracing good and wicked members but as the community of true believers who had accepted the cost of Christian discipleship by a free personal decision. Although the Anabaptists, in their doctrines of God and Christ, retained the historical orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed while rejecting the orthodox doctrines of church and sacraments, those Protestants who went on to repudiate orthodox Trinitarianism as part of their Reformation claimed to be carrying out, more consistently than either Luther and Calvin or the Anabaptists had done, the full implications of the rejection of Roman Catholicism, which they all had in common.
The challenge of the Protestant Reformation became also the occasion for a resurgent Roman Catholicism to clarify and to reaffirm Roman Catholic principles; that endeavor had, in one sense, never been absent from the life and teaching of the church, but it came out now with new force. As the varieties of Protestantism proliferated, the apologists for Roman Catholicism pointed to the Protestant principle of the right of the private interpretation of Scripture as the source of this confusion. Against the Protestant elevation of the Scripture to the position of sole authority, they emphasized that Scripture and church tradition were inseparable and always had been. Pressing that point further, they denounced justification by faith alone and other cherished Protestant teachings as novelties without grounding in authentic church tradition. And they warned that the doctrine of "faith alone, without works" as taught by Luther would sever the moral nerve and remove all incentive for holy living.
Yet these negative reactions to Protestantism were not by any means the only, perhaps not even the primary, form of participation by Roman Catholicism in the history of the Reformation. The emergence of the Protestant phenomenon did not exhaust the reformatory impulse within Roman Catholicism, nor can it be seen as the sole inspiration for Catholic reform. Rather, to a degree that has usually been overlooked by Protestant historians and that has often been ignored even by Roman Catholic historians, there was a distinct historical movement in the 16th century that can only be identified as the Roman Catholic Reformation.
The Roman Catholic Reformation
The Council of Trent
The most important single event in that movement was almost certainly the Council of Trent, which met intermittently in 25 sessions between 1545 and 1563. The bitter experiences of the late medieval papacy with the conciliarism of the 15th century made the popes of the 16th century wary of any so-called reform council, for which many were clamoring. After several false starts, however, the council was finally summoned, and it opened on Dec. 13, 1545 . The legislation of the Council of Trent enacted the formal (and apparently final) Roman Catholic reply to the doctrinal challenges of the Protestant Reformation and thus represents the official adjudication of many questions about which there had been continuing ambiguity throughout the early church and the Middle Ages. The either/or doctrines of the Protestant Reformers--justification by faith alone, the authority of Scripture alone--were anathematized, in the name of a both/and doctrine of justification by faith and works on the basis of the authority of Scripture and tradition; and the privileged standing of the Latin Vulgate was reaffirmed, against Protestant insistence upon the original Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture.No less important for the development of modern Roman Catholicism, however, was the legislation of Trent aimed at reforming--and at re-forming--the internal life and discipline of the church. Two of its most far-reaching provisions were the requirement that every diocese provide for the proper education of its future clergy in seminaries under church auspices and the requirement that the clergy and especially the bishops should give more attention to the task of preaching. The financial abuses that had been so flagrant in the church at all levels were brought under control, and stricter rules were set requiring the residency of bishops in their dioceses. In place of the liturgical chaos that had prevailed, the council laid down specific prescriptions about the form of the mass and liturgical music. What emerged from the Council of Trent, therefore, was a chastened but consolidated church and papacy, the Roman Catholicism of modern history.
New religious orders
Some of the outcome, and much of the enforcement, of the Council of Trent was in the hands of the newly established religious orders, above all of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. Unlike the Benedictine monks or the Franciscan and Dominican friars, the Jesuits were specifically dedicated to the task of reconstructing church life and teaching in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation. They thus came to be called the "shock troops of the Counter-Reformation." In pursuit of that mission they became especially active in scholarship and education, above all in the education of the nobility; through their pupils they sometimes wielded as great an influence in the affairs of the state as in those of the church. Although they were by no means the only religious order in the foreign missions of the church, their responsibility for regaining outside of Europe the power and territory that the church had lost in Europe as a consequence of the Protestant Reformation made them the leading force in the Christianization of newly discovered lands in the Western Hemisphere, Asia, and the islands of the sea. At the beginning of the 17th century, for example, they established in Paraguay a virtually autonomous Jesuit colony.In addition to the Jesuits, other Roman Catholic religious orders, too, owed their origin to the age of the Reformation. The Capuchin friars renewed the ideals of the Franciscan order, and by their missions both within and beyond the historical boundaries of Christendom they furthered the revival of Roman Catholicism. The Theatines were founded by Gaetano da Thiene and the bishop of Chieti (Theate), Gian Pietro Carafa, who went on to become Pope Paul IV (reigned 1555-59); both through the program of the order and in his pontificate, the correction of abuses in the church assumed primary importance. Despite the attacks of the Reformers on the institutions and even the ideals of monasticism, it was in considerable measure a reformed monasticism that carried out the program of the Roman Catholic Reformation.
The Counter-Reformation
Recognition of the scope and success of the indigenous movements for reform within 16th-century Roman Catholicism, therefore, has rendered obsolete the practice of certain earlier historians, who lumped all of these movements under the heading "Counter-Reformation," as though only Protestantism (or, perhaps, only the historian's own version of Protestantism) had the right to the title of "the Reformation"; hence the use here of the term Roman Catholic Reformation. Yet that does not deny a proper meaning of "Counter-Reformation" as part of the larger phenomenon, for counteracting the effects of Protestantism was part of the program of the Council of Trent, the Society of Jesus, and the papacy during the second half of the 16th century and beyond.The Counter-Reformation was launched wherever there had been a Protestant Reformation, but it met with strikingly varied degrees of success. Most of the "German lands" in which Luther had worked remained Protestant after his death in 1546, but major territories, above all Bavaria and Austria , had been regained for Roman Catholicism by the time the 16th century was over. The Huguenot Wars between 1562 and 1598 regained France for the Roman Catholic cause, although the Edict of Nantes of 1598 granted a limited toleration to the Protestants; it was revoked in 1685. Perhaps the most complete victory for the Counter-Reformation was the restoration of Roman Catholic domination in Poland and in Hussite Bohemia.
The victory of the Habsburg Counter-Reformation there and the defeat of Czech Protestantism were a consequence of the Battle of White Mountain of 1620 in the early years of the Thirty Years' War. Often called the first modern war, this series of conflicts wrought devastation in the populations of central Europe, Roman Catholic at least as much as Protestant. The conclusion of the war in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 meant for Roman Catholicism the de facto acceptance of the religious pluralism that had come out of the Reformation: Protestantism, both Lutheran and Calvinist, obtained a legal standing alongside Roman Catholicism in what had previously been regarded as "Catholic Europe." In a war that had presumably begun as a "religious war" aimed at the resolution of the confessional impasse brought about by the Reformation, the formation of a military alliance between Cardinal Richelieu of France and the Lutheran king of Sweden, Gustav II Adolf, was a symbol of a process of the secularization of politics in which the old antitheses, including finally the very antithesis between Roman Catholic and Protestant, no longer seemed as relevant as they had once been.
Post-Reformation conditions
The signing of the peace in 1648 may have meant that the era of the Reformation had ended, but for those who remained loyal to the see of Rome it meant that what had been thought of as a temporary disturbance would now be a permanent condition. The church still claimed to be the only true church of Jesus Christ on earth, but, in the affairs of men and of nations, it had to live with the fact of its being one church among several. The Roman Catholic Church was also obliged to deal with the nations and national states of the modern era one by one. To understand the history of modern Roman Catholicism, therefore, it is necessary to identify trends that went beyond geographic boundaries and to consider trends within particular states or regions--such as France , Germany , the New World , or the mission field--only as illustrations of tendencies that permeated the entire life of the church. Most of the development of Roman Catholicism since 1648 makes sense only in the light of this changed situation.The results of the change became evident in the papacy of the 17th and 18th centuries. On June 6, 1622 , Gregory XV (1621-23) created the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, hence "propaganda"). Its responsibility was, and still is, the organization and direction of the missions of the church to the non-Christian world as well as the administration of the affairs of the church in areas that do not have an ordinary ecclesiastical government (for example, the United States as late as 1908). It has therefore played an important role in the efforts to restore Roman Catholicism in Protestant and, to some degree, in Eastern Orthodox territories.
|
|
http://history-world.org/a_history_of_the_catholic_church.htm
---------------
A Timeline of Catholic Church History: 1 - 500 A.D.
This timeline is researched and prepared by Suzanne Fortin, Copyright 2003. All rights reserved.Other Timelines:
Timeline of how the Bible came to us
All Popes back to Peter
Timeline of Catholic/Orthodox Church relations
| AD | Event |
|---|---|
| 20s | *c. 29 AD Our Lord's Resurrection. The First Pentecost. St. Peter preaches in Jerusalem and converts three thousand people, creating the first Christian community. |
| 30s | *c. 35 Saul of Tarsus has an apparition of Jesus Christ and is converted to Christianity. *c. 39 St. Peter baptizes Cornelius. This event marks the beginning of the missionizing to the Gentiles. |
| 40s | *42 The first persecution of Christians in Jerusalem under Herod Agrippa. Many Christians escape to Antioch, establishing its first community. *44 Martyrdom of St. James the Great, brother of the Apostle John. He is the first apostle to die for the faith. He was sentenced by Herod Agrippa in 44 AD. Today he is honored at the shrine of Santiago Compostela. |
| 50s | *c. 51 The Council of Jerusalem. It rules that Gentile converts do not have to observe the Moasaic Law. |
| 60s | *62 Martyrdom of St James the Less, Bishop of Jerusalem.
He is stoned to death.
*64 First persecution of the Christians by Nero, who
blames them for setting a fire that burned much of Rome.
Christianity soon after becomes a capital crime.
*66 Jews revolt against Roman authority. The Christians, remembering the prophecies of Christ, leave Jerusalem, led by their bishop, St. Simeon. A civil war ensues. Nero sends Vespasian and Titus to put down the insurrection. *mid-60's Martyrdom of St. Paul. *67 Martyrdom of St. Peter. Tradition states that he was crucified upside down. St. Linus succeeds him as Pope (-76). *69 Fall of Jerusalem. The Temple is destroyed. Tacitus records that 600,000 Jews were slaughtered during the siege; Josephus said it was a million. |
| 70s | *76 Pope St. Cletus (Anacletus) reigns(-88). |
| 80s | *c. 88 The reign of Pope St. Clement I (-97). During his pontificate, he issues a letter to the Corinthians, urging them to submit themselves to lawful religious authority. He writes "Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry." |
| 90s | *95 Persecution of Christians in Rome under Domitian. *97 Pope St. Evaristus accedes to the Chair of Peter (-105). |
| 100s | *c. 100 Death of John, the last apostle. The period of
Public Revelation comes to an end.
*c. 100 Birth of St. Justin Martyr (d. c. 165), Church
Father. He wrote two Apologies of the Faith, and A
Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew. In his writings, he bears
witness to a number of Catholic doctrines. In one famous
passage, he describes the Order of the Mass.
*c. 105 Death of Pope St. Evaristus. Pope St. Alexander I replaces him (-115). *c. 107-117 Martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch, apostolic Father and bishop. He was a disciple of St. John, along with St. Polycarp. Theodoret, the Church historian says he was consecrated bishop by St. Peter, who was at first bishop of Antioch before going to Rome. Ignatius was martyred in Rome under Emperor Trajan's rule. It was during the journey to Rome that he wrote his famous letters that contain invaluble information about the early Church. He was the first to use the term "Catholic" to describe the Church. |
| 110s | *111 Pliny the Younger, govenor of Bithynia, writes in a
letter to the Emperor Trajan that to his surprise, the
Christians are not guilty of any of the vices they are
rumoured to engage in. He executes Christians who would not
apostatize.
*c. 115 Pope St. Sixtus I begins his reign (-125).
*117 Persecution of Christians under Hadrian (-138). |
| 120s | *125 Pope St. Telesphorus begins his reign (-136). |
| 130s | *c. 130 Birth of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Church Father and
bishop. He had heard St. Polycarp in Smyrna. He wrote a
famous treatise, Against Heresies, refuting
Gnosticism, and intervened in favour of the Quartodecimians
when they were excommunicated by Pope Victor I for not
observing Easter according the Roman Calendar (i.e. the
first Sunday after the full moon after the Spring equinox).
*135 Emperor Hadrian excludes Jews from Jerusalem.
*136 Pope St. Hyginus accedes to the see of Peter (-140). |
| 140s | *140 Election of Pope St. Pius I (-155). *144 Marcion of Pontus is excommunicated for heresy (Marcionism): he believed that the God of the Old Testament is a different God than that of the new, and that he is a vengeful God; he denied the inspiration of the Old Testament. Marcionites established a parallel church that survived for several centuries. |
| 150s | *155 Death of Pope St. Pius I. St. Anicetus becomes Pope (-166). *c. 156 Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, disciple of St. John the apostle. First recorded instance of devotion to a martyr and the devotion to relics in the Martyrdom of Polycarp. |
| 160s | *c. 160 Birth of Tertullian, Church Father. Tertullian
apostatized to the Montanist sect and in his later years
rejected the Catholic Church. However, in his earlier years,
c. 200 AD, he justified Catholic belief against heretics by
appealing to the apostolic origin of the Church, whereas the
heretics and their heresies were subsequent to it.
*165 Death of St. Justin Martry (b. 100), Church Father.
*166 St. Soter becomes Pope. (-175). |
| 170s | *172 Montanus launches his Montanist movement, based on
his private revelations. He claimed that there was an age of
the Father (the Old Testament), the Age of the Son (the New
Testament) and the age of the Holy Spirit, which he would
inaugurate and which would announce the end of the world. It
denied the divine nature of the Church and preached a very
rigorous morality.
*175 St. Eleutherius succeeds as Pope (-189).
*c.176-177 Athenagoras writes Embassy for the Christians, aka Apology, a work addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus that shows the reasonableness of the Christian faith and the absurdity of the charges made against Christians. It also defended the notion of the Trinity. *177 St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against All Heresies, a work of apologetics refuting Gnosticism, which claimed salvation through an esoteric knowledge. Irenaeus argues that this belief counters that universal tradition handed down from the apostles, and that the bishops are the successors of the apostles who have the authority to transmit Revelation. To make his point, he lists the succession of Popes beginning with Peter. |
| 180s | *185 Birth of Origen, controversial Church Father. His
writings were, in many ways, productive for the orthodox
faith. However, a number of his ideas were problematic or
downright heretical. Among them: his excessive allegorism in
Scriptural interpretation, his subordinationist tendencies,
his belief in eternal creation and final salvation of all
souls. His
writings sparked complex doctrinal controversies.
In spite of the problems, he had many admirers among
orthodox Fathers.
*189 Pope Victor I takes over the See of Peter. (-199)
*189 Pope Victor I excommunicates the Quartodecimians. The Quartodecimians of Asia Minor reckoned the date of Easter according to the Jewish Passover, as 14 Nisan, regardless of whether or not it fell on a Sunday, contrary to the majority of the faithful in various parts of the Empire. Pope Victor ordered Bishop Polycrates of Ephesus to call a synod and have the bishops of Proconsular Asia submit to the Roman practice. The bishop called the synod, but the assembly refused to submit, citing that the apostles John and Philip followed the same custom. The Pope then excommunicated the bishops and their followers. St. Irenaues protested this action as too harsh, but did not say the Pope had overstepped his authority. This is the first record of an episcopal council in the post-apostolic age. |
| 190s | *190 Pope Victor I excommunicates Theodotus for his denial that Jesus is God. The latter gathered together a band of followers, whose teachings would eventually influenced Paul of Samosata, the true originator of Arianism. *199 Pope St. Zephyrinus accedes to the See of Peter (-217). Pope Zephyrinus was not inclined to philosophical speculation and would not either endorse or condemn St. Hippolytus' attacks against the Monarchian heresy. This made the Pope's faith appear suspect. |
| 200s | *c. 200 Death of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Church Father and
bishop.
*c. 200 Monarchianism makes its appearance. In contrast
to Arianism, Monarchians affirm Jesus is God, but in order
to safeguard the unity of God, they essentially deny the
distinction between the Son and the Father. St. Hippolytus
was an ardent opponent of this heresy.
*202 Emperor Septimius Severus persecutes Christians with the aim of establishing one common religion in the Empire. *c.208 The first record of prayers for the dead in the writings of the Church Fathers. Tertullian writes that a good widow prays for her dead husband's soul in On Monogamy. |
| 210s | *c.213 Birth of St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, (d. c. 270)
aka the Wonderworker, aka Thaumaturgus. He defended the
Unity and the Trinity of God in his writings.
*217 Death of Pope St. Zephyrinus. Pope St. Callistus I
succeeds him (-222). Callistus was a former slave who was in
charge of his master's bank. He lost a lot of money to bad
debts, some of the debtors being Jews. When he attempted to
recover the money, some Jews denounced him as a Christian
and he was sent to the mines of Sardinia, but survived to
return to Rome in 190 AD. During Pope Zephyrinus' reign, he
was a power behind the throne, making his faith appear
suspect to the future anti-Pope St. Hippolytus.
*217 Election of anti-Pope St. Hippolytus, Church Father, the first anti-Pope in Church history, and the only one venerated as a saint. He considered Pope St. Callistus I to be a Monarchian heretic, and he continued his claim to the Chair of Peter through to the reign of Pope St. Pontian. He reconciled with the Church before being martyred in the mines of Sardinia in 235. |
| 220s | *220 Pope St. Callistus I excommunicates Sabellius, a
priest who taught that the Son of God did not exist before
the Incarnation, and that God exists in three "modes" but
not in three persons, therefore the Son and the Father
suffered at the passion. This heresy, Sabellianism, would
become prevalent in the fourth century.
*222 St. Urban I becomes Pope (-230).
*222 Alexander Severus becomes emperor (-235). He lifted many harsh laws against the Christians, and essentially gave them the right to exist as a religion. They now had the right to own property and assemble for worship. He had a personal devotion to Jesus Christ, but he honoured him as one among many gods. |
| 230s | *230 Death of Tertullian, Church Father who later joined
the Montanists, a heretical sect. His
writings are
invaluable for the historical testimony they provide.
*230 St. Pontian succeeds St. Urban I as Pope (-235). In
235, the Emperor Maximian launched a persecution against the
heads of the Church. Pontian was banished to the mines of
Sardinia. In order to make possible the election of a new
Pope, he resigned.
*235 Pope St. Anterus reigns for forty days (-236). *236 Election of Pope St. Fabian (-250). Eusebius relates in his history of the Church that when it came time to elect a new Pope, the assembly put forward several names of prominent people, but a dove rested on Fabian's head, whom no one had considered for the office. The assembly took it as a sign of divine favour and selected him as the new Pope. |
| 240s | |
| 250s | *250-251 The Decian Persecution. The Emperor Decius
requires all citizens in every town and village of the
Empire to perform acts of worship to the gods of the State.
People suspected of Christianity are brought before a
commission and required to sacrifice. Refusal meant a long
prison stay and subjection to torture so that the accused
would apostatize. Failing that, they are put to death. Many
Christians apostatize or obtain certificates stating that
they had sacrificed. This systematic persecution produces
numerous martyrs.
*250 Martyrdom of Pope St. Fabian in the Decian
persecution. He was not given the opportunity to apostatize
but was swifty executed for his faith.
*c. 250 The devotion to martyrs, once a more private practice, becomes widespread after the Decian persection due to the great numbers of martyrs it produced. *c. 250 Birth of St. Anthony of Egypt (d. 355) considered to be the founder of monasticism. Approximately 5000 disciples of both sexes had gathered around him in the Nitrian desert (Egypt), despite his opposition. We know of him through a biography of St. Athanasius. *251 Council of Cartage under St. Cyprian allows those who lapsed during the persecution to be readmitted after a period of penance. *251 Pope St. Cornelius succeeds Pope St. Fabian (-253). *251 Novatian becomes the second anti-Pope in Church history (-258). He strongly disagrees with Pope Cornelius' stance allowing those who apostatized during the Decian persecution to return to the fold after a suitable penance. He insisted on permanent excommunication for them. This period is known as the Novatian Schism. The Novatian church will continue to exist up to the eighth century, but will be absorbed by the Catholic Church. *c. 251 St. Cyprian writes his famous treaty, On the Unity of the Church. He argues that the Church was founded on Peter, and that the local bishop was the head of the local Church. In practice, however, he contradicted himself by asserting that the Pope could not make him accept Christians baptized by heretics. *c. 253 Death of Origen, Church Father. He probably died from the tortured he suffered under the Decian persecution. * 253 Election of Pope St. Lucius I (-254). *254 St. Stephen I is elected Pope (-257). He is the first Pope known to have invoked Matt. 16:18 as evidence for the authority of the Chair of Peter. *256 Pope St. Stephen I upholds the baptisms administered by heretics. *257 The Emperor Valerian launches a persecution against Christians (-259). The clergy is summoned to sacrifice to the pagan gods. If they refused, the church property they legally held in the church's name was to be confiscated and they were to be exiled (a year later, the penalty would be immediate execution). All faithful Christians who met in religious assemblies were punishable by death. *257 St. Sixtus II becomes Pope (-258). He was arrested very shortly after his election and beheaded for his faith. *258 Martyrdom of St. Cyprian of Carthage. He defended the readmission to the Church of those who apostatized during persecution, but rejected the idea that baptism by heretics and schismatics is valid. In his writings, he defended the primacy of Peter as the source of unity in the Church. He remained the foremost Latin writer until Jerome. At his execution, his followers placed cloths and handkerchiefs near his place of execution in order to catch his blood and thereby have a relic of him. *259 Peace of Gallenius. Emperor Gallenius succeeds to the throne, ends the persecution of Christians and legally recognizes their existence. Church property is restored. This peace lasts for forty years. Churches are built, bishops gain social prestige and Christians acquire more social status. Christians serve the regimes of various emperors. Christianity still remains a target for hostility. *259 Pope St. Dionysius begins his pontificate (-268). |
| 260s | *c. 260 Birth of Eusebius of Caesarea, Church Father,
bishop and "Father of Church history." his Church history
is an important source of information about the Early
Church. He also wrote the Life of Constantine.
*261 A period of relative peace begins for the Church
(-303).
*c. 265 Three councils held at this time in Antioch condemn Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, for his heretical teachings on the relationship of God the Father and God the Son. He maintained that Jesus the man was distinct from the Logos and became the Son of God through adoption because of his merits, and that God is only One Person. His teachings were a pre-cursor to the Arianist heresies of the fourth century and beyond. *269 Pope St. Felix I fills the See of Peter (-274). |
| 270s | *c.270-275 Death of St. Gregory of Neocaesarea (b. c.213)
, aka the Wonderworker, aka Thaumaturgus, Church Father and
bishop.
*c. 272 Crucifixion of Mani by Bahram, king of Persia.
Mani founded the Manichaean religion, which centred on the
battle between the good god and the evil god. He had
travelled widely, going as far as India, and drew from many
philosophies and religions-- including Buddhism. He also
claimed to be the Paraclete. His
religious ideas would
persist throughout the Middle Ages, and were adopted by the
Cathari and the Bogomils.
*272 Emperor Aurelian rules that the bishop of a city is whomever the bishops of Italy and Rome acknowledge as such. The ruling deprived the deposed Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, of all church property--including churches. This way the secular arm made it possible for Rome to effectively depose bishops. *275 Pope St. Eutychian succeeds Pope St. Felix I.(-283). |
| 280s | *283 Pope St. Caius is elected head of the Church (-296). *285 Partition of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western halves. Diocletian rules the Eastern half, Maximian, the Western. |
| 290s | *293 Diocletian forms the Tetrarchy. In order to improve
the transition of power upon the death of an emperor,
Diocletian created a system of co-rulers. Thus, the Emperors
are Augusti, their heirs apparent are Caesars. Diocletian
chooses Galerius as Caesar; Maximian chooses Constantius I
Chlorus. The Tetrarchy system would eventually fail in its
goal of assuring smooth transitions of power.
*296 Election of Pope St. Marcellinus I (-304).
*c. 297 Birth of St. Athanasius (d. 373), Doctor of the Church. Archbishop of Alexandria. He was a staunch defender of the Divinity of Jesus Christ against Arianism, and was exiled sevral times for his orthodoxy. |
| 300s | *c. 300 Christianity introduced in Armenia.
*Constantine re-unites both halves of the Empire, becomes
sole emperor.
*302 Growing intolerance of Christians leads to the army and the imperial service being closed to professed Christians. *303 Persecution of Christians by Diocletian through a series of edicts.All people were to worship state gods. Churches were to be destroyed, Christian books were to be burned. The first act of the persecution was to burn down the cathedral at Nicomedia. *304 Christians faithful to the their religion are now subject to the death penalty. The government commits massacres to terrify the faithful. *304 Death of Pope St. Marcellinus I. *305 Emperors Diocletian and Maximian resign. Galerius, viciously anti-Christian, succedes as emperor in the East. The new emperor in the West, Constantius Chlorus, ceases the persecution in his domains. *c. 305 The Council of Elvira, Spain approves the first canon imposing clerical celibacy. *306 Constanine becomes the emperor in the West and continues the policy of toleration towards Christians. *306 Galerius orders all his subjects to make pagan sacrifices. *306 Birth of St. Ephraem the Syrian (d. 373), Doctor of the Church. Known as the Harp of the Holy Spirit. Author of the Nisibene Hymns, some of which are Marian. *308 Election of Pope St. Marcellus I (-309). His stance against apostates who demanded immediate re-entry into the Church raised a commotion and led to the Emperor Maxentius exiling him. He died soone after leaving Rome. *309 Reign of Pope St. Eusebius. |
| 310s | *310 Sapor II becomes king of the Persian Empire (-381).
Until the third century, the Church grew in Persia without
persecution. However, with the accession of the Sassinid
Dynasty (227 AD) the Church became suspect and was
eventually persecuted. Under Sapor II, Christians are
subject to a persecution worse than any undertaken by the
Roman Emperors. It was considered the religion of the Roman
Empire, with whom the Persian were constantly at war.
*311 An edict of toleration is emitted in the names of
Galerius, Constantine and Licinius. The emperors come to
realize that persecution produced non-believers in either
the gods of the state or in the Christian God. Emperor
Maximinus of Daza only follows the policy for six months,
then continues the persecution in the East.
*31l Pope St. Militiades begins his reign (-314). *311 The Beginning of the Donatist Schism. Donatus, Primate of Numidia, will not recognize the election of Cecilian as Bishop of Carthage. Cecillian's consecrator is Felix of Aptonga, a man who had allegedly apostatized under Maximian's persecution (303-305). To the Donatists, apostasy and other serious sins destroys a priest's spiritual powers. The priest's powers are therefore dependent on his personal holiness. Donatus holds a council which illegally elects a pretendant to the see. Although he lives in Carthage, Donatus has no jurisdiction there. *312 Martyrdom of Lucian of Antioch during the persecution of Maximinus of Daza. He taught that the Word (logos) was a creature. He taught Arius, the heresiarch, and his teaching was at the origin of the Arian heresy. He is also known for having rejected allegorical interpretations and was strongly literal in his biblical interpreations. He reconciled with the Church. *312 Constantine defeats the Emperor Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The night before the battle, Constantine has a vision of a cross in the sky and the words "In this sign you shall conquer." After the victory, Constantine orders that the cross be put on the soldiers' shields and standards. Once Constantine enters Rome, he offers the Lateran Palace to the Pope as a residence. *313 Edict of Milan. Toleration of Christians in the Western Roman Empire. All people, not only Christians, have freedom of religion so long as they render honour to "the divinity." Emperor Constantine returns Church property. In the Eastern Empire, Maximinus continues to persecute Christians until he grants them toleration in a last-ditch effort to gain their favour and keep alive his struggle against his enemy Licinius. *313 Constantine intervenes on the Donatist schism and recognizes the election of Cecillian of Carthage, the orthodox candidate. The churches held by Donatists are handed over to Catholics. *313 The Lateran palace makes its first appearance in Catholic history as it is the scence of an appeal of the Donatists in the matter of Cecillian's election as Bishop of Carthage. Emperor Constantine chose the bishops to sit on the tribunal, but the Pope presided over it. It rules in favour of Cecillian. *314 St. Sylvester I is elected Pope (-335) *c.314 Constantine agrees to hear a new appeal by the Donatists in the case of Cecillian's Episcopal election. This time the appeal is brought to a secular court. The Donatists maintained that Felix of Aptonga could not have validly ordained Cecillian because he had apostatized during a persecution. The police books of the persecution were produced, and there was no evidence Felix had ever been arrested. It was also shown that the Donatists had attempted to forge the certificate proving his guilt. Constantine sends this evidence to the Council of Arles, where the Fathers note that the Donatists are "crazy fanatics, a danger to Christianity." They rule in favour of Cecillian. *315 Birth of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 387), Doctor of the Church. He fought Arianism in the East. *315 Birth of St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. 368), Doctor of the Church. *316 Constantine hears another appeal of the Donatists in the matter of the election of Cecillian of Carthage. He rules in favour of Cecillian. He rules that the churches held by the Donatists were to be handed over to the Catholics, and that the Donatists were forbidden to meet. *c. 318 Beginnings of the Arianist controversy. Arius taught: that the Father and the Son were not of the same substance, and therefore the latter was inferior; and that the Word (Logos) is a creature and that the Holy Spirit is a creature of the Logos. |
| 320s | *320 St. Pachomius founds the first two monasteries-- on
for each sex in Tabennisi.
*321 The Donatists appeal to Constantine for toleration.
He grants it, in spite of his contempt for the sect.
*323 Licinius, Emperor of the East launches a persecution against Christians. *323 Constantine and Licinius do battle at Chrysopolis. Licinius dies six months later. Constantine has no rival and is the sole ruler of the Empire. Constantine preserves freedom of religion but his attitude towards paganism becomes contemptuous. Paganism and Christianity enjoy equal status before the law. *325 The Council of Nicea. Presided by Emperor Constantine and Hosius of Cordoba. Pope St. Sylvester I sends papal legates, being too old to make the journery from Rome. Many of the bishops in attendance had been physically injured in the persecutions of previous decades. The Council defines trinitarian belief in God. The Father and God the Son are declared of the same substance against the teachings of Arius. Emperor Constantine considers heresy to be a form of rebellion, and banishes Arian bishops to Illyria. *325 Building of Church of Natitvity, Bethlehem. *326 Constantine recognizes the Novatian Church, the parallel Church established under the Novatian schism in the preceding century. It would die out a century later in Rome, but would survive until at least the seventh century in the East. *329 Birth of St. Basil the Great (d. 379), Doctor of the Church and father of Eastern monasticism. He was the first to draw up a rule of life and he developed the concept of the novitiate. *c. 329 Birth of St. Gregory of Nanzianzus (d. 389), Doctor of the Church, one of the traditional four Greek Doctors. |
| 330s | *330 Building of first St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. It
was torn down in 1506 and re-built.
*330 Birth of St. Gregory Nanzianzus (d. 390), Doctor of
the Church. One of the Cappadocian Fathers.
*331 Seat of the Roman Empire moved to Constantinople (formerly Byzantium). *331 Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian, schemes to have a local synod depose the orthodox bishop Eustathius of Antioch. Constantine recognizes the authority of the synod and expels Eustathius. His successor, Paulinus of Tyre dies a few months later, and, for the first time in history, a secular ruler interferes in the choice of a bishop. Constantine recommends the Arian Euphronios, who was elected. *335 By this time Eusebius of Nicomedia succeeds in convincing the emperor of his orthodoxy by proposing at the Council of Jerusalem an ambiguous formula of faith to which both Arians and Catholics can adhere. *336 Reign of Pope St. Mark. *336 Death of Arius, heresiarch, creator of the Arian herersy. Right before his death, the Emperor Constantine's sister, Constantia, requested on her deathbed that Arius be recalled from his place of banishment and exonerated. The Emperor paid heed to her request. He ordered the bishop of Alexandria to give Arius Communion, but the latter died right before he was to receive. The populace views it a sign of divine condemnation. *336 The earliest record of the celebration of Christmas in Rome. The East kept the Feast of Epiphany, January 6th. *337 Death of Constantine. He was baptized on his deathbed by bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, an ally of Arius. The Empire is ruled by his three sons, Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans. *337 Election of Pope St. Julius I (-352). *338 Election of St. Julius I (-352). |
| 340s | *c. 340-350 The Arian bishop Ulfilas makes a corrupt
translation of the Bible into the Gothic language and
converts the Goths. From then on, barbarian tribes that
converted to Christianity were Arian, until the conversion
of the Franks in the 6th century.
*340 Birth of St. Ambrose of Milan, one of the four
traditional Latin Doctors of the Church. He baptized St.
Augustine. He fought the Arian heresy in the West and
promoted consecrated virginity.
*341 Emperors Constants and Constantius II abolish and prohibit pagan sacrifices. Pagan sentiment becomes very anti-Christian. *341 Death of Eusebius of Nicomedia, bishop of Constantinople. He schemed to depose Catholic bishops throughout the empire and replace them with Arians. He made Arians appear orthodox through ambiguous formulas of faith. *c. 343 Birth of St. Jerome (d. 420), one of the four traditional Doctors of the Latin Church. He translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek texts into Latin and produced the first authoritative translation, the Vulgate. At that time, Latin was still a vernacular language. He also wrote a treaty against Helvidius, upholding the Virgin Birth. *347 Birth of St. John Chrysostom (d. 407), Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Constantinople. He is the foremost Greek Doctor of the Church, known especially for his homilies on Scripture. He alienated the court at Constaninople with his preaching against the vanities of the rich. The conspiracy of his enemies resulted in his exile. The Pope and many Western bishops supported him but could not obtain justice for him. *347 Emperor Constans ends the toleration of Donatists in Numidia. The period of Donatist dominance in Africa had been one of license, including riots and massacres. He exiles the Donatist bishops and hands their churches to Catholics. |
| 350s | *350 Assassination of Emperor Constans. Constantius II,
an Arian, becomes sole Emperor. Arians attempt to link St.
Athanasius with Constans' assassin.
*353 Emperor Constantius II prohibits idol worship under
penalty of death. The Western Empire is majoritarily Pagan.
*352 Reign of Pope Liberius (-366), the first Pope who is not considered a saint. He would not be pressured by Constantius to condemn St. Athanasius. *354 Birth of St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), Doctor of the Church. One of the four traditional Doctors of the Latin Church. One of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church. Among his most famous works: Confessions, City of God, On the Trinity. *354 Constantius II ignores his own law and confirms the rights and privileges of the city of Rome, including their share of state subsidies. *c. 355 Constantius II kidnaps Pope Liberius to pressure him to condemn St. Athanasius, and thereby approve the Arian creed. The Pope refuses and is banished to Baerea in Thrace. Constantius attempts to replace Liberius with Felix, but the laypeople of Rome would not hear of it. *357 Constantius II is persuaded to allow Pope Liberius to return to Rome. There is some dispute as to whether his return was prompted by his signing a semi-Arian formula that would have satisfied Constantius, or by the Roman faithful, who drove out Felix, the anti-Pope. Much appears to be uncertain about this situation. |
| 360s | *c. 360 Scrolls begin to be replaced by books.
*361 Emperor Julian "the Apostate" becomes Roman Emperor
(-363). He was brought up in Arian Christianity in his early
childhood, but was tutored by Pagans in his adolescence.
Upon his accession to the throne, he attempts revive
Paganism, and in his contempt the Christian Faith, he tries
to re-build the Temple in Jerusalem, but fails.
*362 Emperor Julian recalls the exiled Donatist bishops. *363 Emperor Julian "the Apostate" dies before getting a chance to launch a systematic persecution against the Christians, although mobs that riot and kill them go unpunished. *363 Jovinian, a Catholic, becomes Emperor. He restores toleration for all religions.He reigns only for nine months. *364 Valentinian, a Catholic, now rules the Western empire (-375). He takes the property of State-run temples, but instead of handing it over to the Church, as Constantius II did, he puts the imperial treasury in charge of it. *364 The Arian Valens becomes Emperor of the Eastern Empire (-378). He seeks to Arianize his Christian subjects and makes life difficult for Catholics. *366 Reign of Pope St. Damasus I (-384). He is most famous for compelling St. Jerome to undertake a faithful translation of the Scriptures, the version known as the Vulgate. St. Damasus condemned Apollinarianism and Macedonianism. He approved the canons of the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (381). *c. 368 Death of St. Hilary of Poitiers (b. 315), Doctor of the Church and bishop. He was exiled for his orthodox faith by the Emperor Constantius, but eventually was able to return to Poitiers. He attempted to reconcile the Semi-Arians and the orthodox faithful. |
| 370s | *370 Valens, Emperor of the East, orders the bishops of
his realm to conform to an Arian formula on pain of of
deposition and exile. Many refuse. Their churches are handed
over to Arian appointees. Other dioceses organize
resistance, and in some cases massacres ensue.
*373 Death of St. Athanasius (b. 297), Doctor of the
Church, Bishop of Alexandria.
*373 Death of St. Ephraim of Nisibis, Church Father. Gratian, Emperor of the Western Empire (-383). He abolishes the office of Pontifex Maximus, the head of the Pagan religion, which, by default, was held by the Roman Emperor, even if he was Christian (although he did not necessarily exercise the office). Under the influence of Ambrosius, Gratian prohibited Pagan worship at Rome; refused to wear the insignia of the pontifex maximus as unbefitting a Christian; removed the Altar of Victory from the Senate House at Rome, despite protests of the pagan members of the Senate, and confiscated its revenues; forbade legacies of real property to the Vestals; and abolished other privileges belonging to them and to the pontiffs. Nevertheless he was still deified after his death. Gratian also published an edict that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith). The move was mainly thrust at the various beliefs that had arisen out of Arianism, but smaller dissident sects, such as the Macedonians, were also prohibited. *376 Birth of St. Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444), Doctor of the Church. Opposed Nestorianism. *377 A synod in Rome condemns the teachings of Apollinaris of Laodicea. Apollinarism posited that Christ had a human body and a human sensitive soul, but his rational mind was taken over by the Logos or the Divine nature of the Second Person of the Trinity. It was also condemned at the first Council of Constantinople, 381. *379 Theodosius, a devout Catholic, becomes the Eastern Roman Emperor (-395). For the first time in half a century, the State would favour Catholicism over Arianism. Theodosius is the first emperor to legislate against heresy. The churches of heretics are to be confiscated and handed over to the Catholic Church. Heretical gatherings are forbidden and heretics cannot make wills or inherit. He also legislates against apostasy from Christianity to Paganism. *379 Death of St. Basil the Great (b. 329), Doctor of the Church. |
| 380s | *c. 381 Emperor Theodosius makes Christianity the de
facto official religion of the Empire by forbidding the
worship of the ancient Gods.
*381 The First Council of Constantinople. Presided by
Pope Damasus and Emperor Theodosius I. It proclaimed the
divinity of the Holy Spirit.
*382 By this time, the pagan priesthood in the Western Empire no longer enjoys any of its former privileges, and the State has confiscated temple property, making their legacies void. *383 Roman legions begin to leave Britain. British Christians gradually disconnected from Rome until St. Augustine of Canterbury re-introduces the faith in 590. *384 Pope St. Siricius begins his reign (-399). *c. 385 Priscillian becomes the first heretic ever sentenced to death under a Christian prince. He was executed for witchcraft, which was a capital offense, but in reality, he made enemies because of his Manichaean doctrines. Many in the Church protest this action. St. Martin of Tours objects to the interference of a lay court in an ecclesiastical matter. Pope Siricius denounces Bishop Ithacus of Treves for being the leader of the campaign against Priscillian. *c. 386 Death of St. Gregory of Nyssa, Church Father, brother of St. Basil the Great. Before he became a monk, he was married. His wife either died or became a nun. *c. 386 Death of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. He is famous for a quotation demonstrating the antiquity of the practice of Commuion in the hand: "Do not come with thy palms stretched flat nor with fingers separated. But making thy left hand a seat for thy right, and hollowing thy palm, receive the Body of Christ, responding Amen." *386 St. Ambrose refuses to hand over a church to the Arian sect when ordered to do so by the Emperor. In a sermon he says a famous phrase " The emperor is within the Church, and not above the Church." He says of the Arians: " it has been the crime of the Arians, the crime which stamps them as the worst of all heretics, that "they were willing to surrender to Caesar the right to rule the Church." The Emperor backs down. *388 Christians attack and burn down a synagogue in Callinicum at the instigation of the Bishop. St. Ambrose persuades Emperor Theodosius to not force the local bishop to pay for its restoration. In a letter to the Emperor, he makes many arguments, but principal among them is that re-building the synagogue would amount to being disloyal to the Faith, and that the law is unfairly applied, seeing as Jews burned a number of churches during the reign of Julian the Apostate, and no one was punished. The Emperor ignores the letter. But when he attends Mass presided by St. Ambrose, the bishop refuses to offer the sacrifice until the Emperor revokes his edict. *c. 389 Death of St. Gregory of Nanzianzus, Doctor of the Church. |
| 390s | *390 St. Ambrose threatens Theodosius with
excommunication for massacring 7000 people in Thessalonica
as punishment for the murder of an imperial official.
Theodosius does public penance.
*391 Emperor Theodosius closes all pagan temples in his
realm.
*392 Upon the death of Western Emperor Valentinian II, Theodosius becomes the sole ruler of the whole Roman Empire. He forbids all pagan household rites and idols, but does not compel any of his Pagan subjects to become Christian. Paganism will continue to exist, mainly in the backwaters, for the next three centuries. *c. 392 Death of Apollinaris of Laodicea, heresiarch. In his early years, he was respected for his classical and Scriptural knowledge, on the same level as St. Athanasius, St. Basil and St. Jerome. However, he taught that Christ's reason was taken over by the Logos. Apollnaris did not reconcile with the Church. *c. 393 Birth of Theodoret of Cyrus, Church Father, bishop and historian. He opposed St. Cyril of Alexandria in the Nestorian controversy, but he eventually submitted to the Council of Ephesus on the matter. *397 Death of St. Ambrose of Milan (b. 340), Doctor of the Church. *399 Election of Pope St. Anastasius (-401). A man of great holiness, he was friends with St. Augustine and St. Jerome. He condemned Origenism. *397 Death of St. Martin of Tours. He was the first saint honoured for his asceticism, not for martyrdom, and whose prayers were invoked in liturgy. He is considered the founder of monasticism in the West. He was also the first to attempt to convert the pagan countryside of Gaul. |
| 400s | *401 Reign of Pope Innocent I (-417).
*405 St. Jerome completes his translation of the Old
Testament from the Hebrew.
*405 Emperor Honorius declares Donatists to be heretics and that they should be rooted out. *407 Death of St. John Chrysostom (b. 347) Church Doctor and Bishop of Constantinople. He died from exposure to the elements during his forced march to Pontus, his place of exile. |
| 410s | *410 The Sack of Rome by the Visigoths, led by Alaric.
This event is the inspiration for St. Augustine of Hippo's
monumental work, The City of God.
*410 The Donatists are granted toleration by Emperor
Honorius.
*c. 411 Beginning of the Pelagian controversy in Northern Africa. Pelagius, an unordained monk, denied the theory of Original Sin, stating that death was a physical necessity, not a result of Original Sin, and that Adam's fault was transmitted through bad example. He denied the necessity of grace to perform good acts, and affirmed it was possible to lead a life completely free of sin. St. Augustine refuted these beliefs at length. *411 286 Catholic Bishops and 279 Donatist Bishops meet at a conference in Carthage to discuss reunion. It was presided by an Imperial official. He rules that the Donatists have to submit to the Catholic Church. An imperial edict the following January, 412, confirms this decision and threatens banishment for all who disobey. *415 After the Jews massacred a group of Chrisitans, St. Cyril of Alexandria organizes a mob to drive out the Jews from Alexandria, as the Prefect of the city, Orestes, sided with the Jews and had condemned a guilty Christian for disturbing the peace. *417 Election of Pope St. Zosimus (-418). *418 Election of Pope St. Boniface I (-422). *418 The Council of Carthage condemns Pelagianism. Emperor Honorius banishes all Pelagians from the cities of Italy. Eighteen bishops, led by Julian of Eclanum, must leave their sees for refusing to sign an orthodox creed, not because it was anti-Pelagian, but because it was based on St. Augustine's ideas. *419 The Council of Africa produces the first Code of Canon Law in Church history: the Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Africanae. It forbade appeals overseas in disciplinary matters, including to Rome. |
| 420s | *c. 420 The Semi-Pelagian controversy erupts. Many
Pelagians accepted the condemnation of their beliefs at the
Council of Carthage (418). In light of that, a more moderate
form of Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, arose. It stated that
the act of will preceded the grace of salvation. The main
proponents of this belief were the monks of Marseilles,
including Vincent of Lerins and its main opponents were St.
Augustine and his disciple Prosper of Aquitaine. It was
condemned at the Second Council of Orange, 529.
*422 Pope St. Celestine I begins his pontificate (-432).
During his reign, Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople,
professed the heresy of the two-person nature of Christ,
known as Nestorianism.
*c. 422 A mob of Christians in Alexandria murder Hypatia, a renowned female pagan philosopher. They tore her to shreds using sharp roof tiling, then burnt her remains. Damascius attributes the murder to St. Cyril of Alexandria's envy of her reputation; he is, however, a Christian-hater. The Church historian Socrates does not mention any motive on Cyril's part, but says that it did bring disgrace on the Church of Alexandria. More about the incident here *426 The Council of Africa formally requests the Pope that he not be so ready to hear appeals settled in their jurisdiction or lift excommunications that they have imposed. Rome makes no reply. *427 Nestorius, heresiarch, is appointed Bishop of Constantinople. *428 Nestorius campaigns and obtains a new law against heresy. His friend, the monk Anastasius, in attempt to promte Nestorius' theology, preaches that the title "Mother of God" should only be used with the greatest of care, if at all. This creates a tumult. Nestorius excommunicates those who object to this novel theology. They appeal to the Emperor. *429 Vandals invade North Africa led by Genseric. They were Arian and very anti-Catholic. Catholic churches are burnt, Catholic meetings are prohibited, and Catholic clergy are exiled and replaced by Arian clergy. |
| 430s | *430 Death of St. Augustine (b. 354), Church Doctor and
bishop.
*431 Ecumenical Council of Ephesus, presided by St. Cyril
of Alexandria in the name of Pope Celestine I. It condemns
Nestorianism, the belief that Christ is two persons and
declared Mary is the Mother of God (theotokos). It also
condemned Pelagianism.
*432 Pope St. Celestine I sends St. Patrick to evangelize Ireland. *432 Pope St. Sixtus III begins his pontificate (-440). *c.434 Death of St. Vincent of Lerins, Church Father and Abbot, famous for upholding the universal opinion of the Fathers as the Rule of Faith in disputed matters. *436 Promulgation of the Theodosian Code, isseud by Theodosius II. It was a systematic presentation of laws in existence. Observance of Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost enforced. |
| 440s | *440 Election of Pope St. Leo I "The Great" (-461),
Doctor of the Church. He vigourously fought many heresies:
Manichaenism, Priscillianism, Euctychianism, Monophytism and
Nestorianism. He is famous for his encounter with Attilia
the Hun, whom he persuaded not to pillage Rome. He also
obtained a promise from Genseric, leader of the Vandals,
that they would not injure the inhabitants of Rome when they
sacked it in 455.
*444 Death of St. Cyril of Alexandria (b. 376), Doctor of
the Church. He fought the teachings of Nestorius,
proclaiming Christ had two natures in one person, and that
Mary was thereby the God-bearer (Theotokos) the Mother of
God. Unfortunately, he used the phrase " one incarnate
nature of God the Word" to express his orthodox belief. This
phrase led to misunderstandings, to the extent that
Monophysites claimed he was on their side.
*c. 447 Death of Sozomen, Church Father and historian. He continued the Church history begun by Eusebius in the previous century. *449 The "Robber Council" of Ephesus. Eutyches, a monk from Constantinople, had been condemned by his bishop, Flavian, for teaching that Christ only had a divine nature. He made an appeal to the emperor to hold a Council, which has been dubbed the "Robber Council" of Ephesus. Pope St. Leo I had written a famous letter for the occasion, the Tome of Leo, in which he explained the Catholic Faith on the subject of the two natures of Christ. His letter is ignored at the Council. Eutyches' condemnation is made void, while Flavian is deposed and sentenced to prison for his orthodox faith. |
| 450s | *451 The ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, presided by the Emperor Marcian and the legates of Pope St. Leo I. Over five hundred bishops attend. They approve the Tome of St. Leo as an orthodox statement of faith. It affirms that there is a hypostasis in Christ, a union of the Divine and the Human natures in one person. Bishop Dioscoros of Alexandria is condemned for having protected Eutyches the heretic. The Council also denounces the intervention of the Emperor in religious affairs. *454 At the death of the exiled Monophysite bishop Dioscoros of Alexandria, they elect a successor, Timothy, nicknamed "the Cat" to replace the Catholic bishop who had already been installed. Imperial troops are sent in to restore order and Timothy the Cat is exiled along with other Monophysite bishops. |
| 460s | *461 Beginning of reign of Pope St. Hilarus (-468).
*461 Death of St. Patrick, apostle to the Irish.
*468 St. Simplicius becomes Pope (-483). |
| 470s | *477 Death of Genseric, King of the Vandals and persecutor of Catholics. His successor, Hunseric, seeks to eliminate Catholicism entirely from Northern Africa. He assembles 466 Catholic bishops and gives them four months to apostatize to Arianism, or else the traditional imperial decrees against heresy would be applied to them. Many trades are closed off to the common people unless they can produce a certificate of Arian conformity. |
| 480s | *480 Birth of St. Benedict of Nursia (d. 543), founder of
Western monasticism and originator of the Benedictine Rule.
*483 St. Felix III is elected Pope (-492).
*484 Beginning of Acacian Schism. Pope Felix III excommunicates Patriarch Acacia of Constantinople for signing the Henoticon, a vague document, which contained no heretical statement, but did not condemn Monophytism. It was intended by the Emperor Zeno to be a compromise formula of faith to please both Catholics and Monophysites. |
| 490s | *491 The Armenian Church secedes from the Church of Rome
and Constantinople.
*492-496 Pope Gelasius I. He was also a staunch defender
of the papal office during the Acacian Schism.
*494 Some persecuted bishops of North Africa are recalled from exile. *496 Pope Anastasius II begins his reign (-498). *496 Clovis, king of the Franks, converts to Catholicism. When his troops appear to be losing against the Alemanni at Strasbourg, he invokes the God of his Catholic wife Clotilda to give him victory. He is baptized by St. Remi, and brings the Franks to the Catholic fold, the first barbarian people to adopt Catholicism. *498 Election of Pope St. Symmachus (-514). *499 The Synod of Rome issues decree on papal elections. It banned discussions on the election of a future Pope during a reigning Pope's lifetime. It was an attempt to conspire to make an election truly democratic, and not make the reigning Pope choose his successor. |
Editorial note on the Timeline
The primary purpose of the Timeline is to be a quick reference to important dates for Catholic apologists. It also gives a general overview of the history of the Church to the Catholic who might like an idea of what occurred in the past, but has little inclination to read in-depth. The Timeline contains dates concerned with secular history that are pertinent to the Catholic apologist, as well as quirky Catholic history bits for the trivia buff. I've attempted to include as many important events as possible, both good and bad, and to include facts commonly raised in Catholic apologetic discussions. In some cases, I have attempted to debunk common myths. It would be beyond the scope of this work to count every historical objection and accusation made regarding Catholicism.
Sources
- Bernard Grun, Timetables of History
- The online Catholic Encyclopedia-- numerous articles.
- Oxford Dictionary of Saints
- Our Sunday Visitor Online Almanac
- Philip Hughes, A History of the Church to the Eve of the Reformation
- J.M. Roberts, The Penguin History of the World
http://www.catholicbridge.com/catholic/timeline_of_catholic_church.php
---------------
APOSTLES' CREED - Historical Note
Although not written by apostles, the Apostles' Creed reflects the theological formulations of the first century church. The creed's structure may be based on Jesus' command to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In a time when most Christians were illiterate, oral repetition of the Apostles' Creed, along with the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, helped preserve and transmit the faith of the western churches. The Apostles' Creed played no role in Eastern Orthodoxy.
In the early church, Christians confessed that "Jesus is Lord" but did not always understand the biblical context of lordship. The views of Marcion, a Christian living in Rome in the second century, further threatened the church's understanding of Jesus as Lord. Marcion read the Old Testament as referring to a tyrannical God who had created a flawed world. Marcion believed that Jesus revealed, in contrast, a good God of love and mercy. For Marcion, then, Jesus was not the Messiah proclaimed by the prophets, and the Old Testament was not Scripture. Marcion proposed limiting Christian "Scripture" to Luke's gospel (less the birth narrative and other parts that he felt expressed Jewish thinking) and to those letters of Paul that Marcion regarded as anti-Jewish. Marcion's views developed into a movement that lasted several centuries.
Around A.D.180, Roman Christians developed an early form of the Apostles' Creed to refute Marcion. They affirmed that the God of creation is the Father of Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, was buried and raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where he rules with the Father. They also affirmed belief in the Holy Spirit, the church, and the resurrection of the body.
Candidates for membership in the church, having undergone a lengthy period of moral and doctrinal instruction, were asked at baptism to state what they believed. They responded in the words of this creed.
The Apostles' Creed underwent further development. In response to the question of readmitting those who had denied the faith during the persecutions of the second and third centuries, the church added, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." In the fourth and fifth centuries, North African Christians debated the question of whether the church was an exclusive sect composed of the heroic few or an inclusive church of all who confessed Jesus Christ, leading to the addition of "holy" (belonging to God) and "catholic" (universal). In Gaul, in the fifth century, the phrase "he descended into hell" came into the creed. By the eighth century, the creed had attained its present form.
http://www.creeds.net/ancient/Apostles_Intro.htm
--------
Nova Scotia Libraries... Kentville Library- Annapolis Valley Regional Library
-------------------
----------------
BLOGGED:
Canada Military News: Hell is out and Heaven is in Afterlife and what religions and non believe/Hell is out Heaven is in/ - for those who believe/Lent/Understand Islam and Allah/Yom Kippur/Stations of the Cross/Many folks are helping those in need in their communities this year for Lent
---------------------
Russian Orthodox church: early history and art
Russian Orthodox church is largest autocephalous, or ecclesiastically independent, Eastern Orthodox church in the world. Its membership is estimated at between 40 and 80 million. Internet resources on Christianity are available from the Russian Christian Home Page ( English and Russian versions), courtesy of Oleg Voskresensky (vosole@bethel.edu)Removal of the empire's capital from Rome to Constantinople, the "second Rome," in 330 greatly strengthened the temporal power of the bishop of Rome. In the Byzantine Empire the patriarch of Constantinople remained under the political control of the Christian emperor. Cultural, political, philosophical, and theological differences strained relations between the two cities. Rome demanded Latin as the one ecclesiastical language, but Constantinople encouraged national languages for the liturgy and emphasized translation of the Scriptures. In 1054 leaders of the two bodies excommunicated each other.
One reflection of growing difficulties lay in counterclaims to pursue mission in and hold the allegiance of border areas between the two jurisdictions. Rostislav of Great Moravia sought help from the Emperor, who (presumably through the Patriarch) in about 862 sent two brothers, Constantine (later called Cyril; c. 827-869) and Methodius (c. 825-884), from Constantinople to Moravia. They provided Scriptures and liturgy in the mother tongue of each people evangelized. They also trained others in their methods--a major factor in winning Bulgaria.
Constantinople's greatest mission outreach was to areas known as Kievan Rus that later became Russia. Christianity was apparently introduced into Kievan Rus by Greek missionaries from Byzantium in the 9th century. An organized Christian community is known to have existed at Kiev as early as the first half of the 10th century, and in 957 Olga, the regent of Kiev, was baptized in Constantinople. Undoubtedly influenced by his Christian grandmother and by a proposed marriage alliance with the Byzantine imperial family, Olga's grandson Vladimir I (c. 956-1015) prince of Kiev, from among several options, chose the Byzantine rite. Baptized in 988, he led the Kievans to Christianity. His son Yaroslav encouraged translations and built monasteries.
Under Vladimir's successors, and until 1448, the Russian church was headed by the metropolitans of Kiev (who after 1328 resided in Moscow) and formed a metropolitanate of the Byzantine patriarchate.
While Russia lay under Mongol rule from the 13th (Genghis Khan's army entered Russia in 1220s) through the 15th century, the Russian church enjoyed a favoured position, obtaining immunity from taxation in 1270. This period saw a remarkable growth of monasticism. The Monastery of the Caves (Pecherska Lavra) in Kiev, founded in the mid-11th century by the ascetics St. Anthony and St. Theodosius, was superseded as the foremost religious centre by the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, which was founded in the mid-14th century by St. Sergius of Radonezh (in what is now the city of Sergiev Posad). Sergius, as well as the metropolitans St.Peter (1308-26) and St. Alexius (1354-78), supported the rising power of the principality of Moscow. Finally, in 1448 the Russian bishops elected their own patriarch without recourse to Constantinople, and the Russian church was thenceforth autocephalous. In 1589 Job, the metropolitan of Moscow, was elevated to the position of patriarch with the approval of Constantinople and received the fifth rank in honour after the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
In the mid-17th century the Russian Orthodox patriarch Nikon came into violent conflict with the Russian tsar Alexis. Nikon, pursuing the ideal of a theocratic state, attempted to establish the primacy of the Orthodox church over the state in Russia, and he also undertook a thorough revision of Russian Orthodox texts and rituals to bring them into accord with the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy. Nikon was deposed in 1666, but the Russian church retained his reforms and anathematized those who continued to oppose them; the latter became known as Old Believers and formed a vigorous body of dissenters within the Russian Orthodox church for the next two centuries.
After Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Russia continued for several centuries to develop a national art that had grown out of the middle Byzantine period. During the 10th-15th centuries, Russian art had begun to show marked local variation from the Byzantine model, and after the fall of Constantinople it continued along these distinctive lines of development. This period of Russian art, which lasted until the adoption of western European culture in the 18th century, is also known as the Moscow or National period. You can browse miscellaneous icons, XV-XIX centuries (index of inline images, maintained by the Christian Orthodox Page).
After the hegemony in the world of Orthodox Christianity shifted to Muscovite Russia, Moscow, having become the new city of Constantine--the "third Rome"--and aspiring to rival the older centres of culture, launched a building program commensurate with its international importance. The Kremlin and two of its important churches were rebuilt by Italian architects between 1475 and 1510. These churches, the Assumption (Uspensky) Cathedral and the Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel, were largely modeled after the churches of Vladimir. The Italians were required to incorporate the basic features of Byzantine planning and design into the new cathedrals; it was only in the exterior decoration of St. Michael the Archangel that they succeeded in introducing Italian decorative motifs. A third church, the modest Annunciation Cathedral (1484-89), with its warm beauty, was the work of Pskov architects. There the kokoshniki were introduced in the treatment of the roof. This element, similar in outline to the popular Russian bochka roof (pointed on top, with the sides forming a continuous double curve, concave above and convex below), foreshadowed a tendency to replace the forms of the Byzantine arch by more elongated silhouettes. Ecclesiastical architecture began to lose the special features associated with the Byzantine heritage, becoming more national in character and increasingly permeated with the taste and thought of the people. The most important change in Russian church design of the 16th century was the introduction of the tiered tower and the tent-shaped roof first developed in wood by Russia's carpenters. Next was the substitution of the bulb-shaped spire for the traditional Byzantine cupola. This affected the design of masonry architecture by transforming its proportions and decoration and even its structural methods. The buildings acquired a dynamic, exteriorized articulation and specifically Russian national characteristics.
The boldest departures from Byzantine architecture were the churches of the Ascension at Kolomenskoye (1532) and the Decapitation of St. John the Baptist at Dyakovo (c. 1532) and, above all, the Cathedral of St. Basil (Vasily) the Blessed (or, the Pokrovsky Cathedral) in Moscow, 1554-60. In St. Basil the western academic architectural concepts, based on rational, manifest harmony, were ignored; the structure, with no easily readable design and a profusion of disparate colourful exterior decoration, is uniquely medieval Russian in content and form, in technique, decoration, and feeling. St. Basil, like its predecessors the churches at Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo, embodies the characteristic features of the wood churches of northern Russia, translated into masonry. An effective finishing touch was given to the ensemble of the Kremlin's Cathedral Square by the erection of the imposing Belfry of Ivan II the Great, begun in 1542. The colossal white stone "column of fame," with its golden cupola gleaming above the Kremlin hill, was the definite expression of an era, reflecting the tastes and grandiose political ambitions of the rising Russian state.
The basic types and structural forms of the Russian multicolumned and tented churches were fully developed in the 16th century. It remained for the next century to concentrate its efforts on the refinement of those forms and on the embellishment of the facades. The tent spires degenerated into mere decoration; they were used as exterior ornamental features set loosely in numbers over gabled roofs and on top of roof vaulting (Church of the Nativity in Putinki in Moscow, 1649-52). This decorative use of the formerly functional element was combined with the liberal employment of the kokoshnik. The latter, in converging and ascending tiers and in diversified shapes and arrangements, was used as a decorative screen for the drumlike bases of the spires and sometimes as parapets over the cornices. At the same time the formerly large expanses of unbroken wall surfaces (of the Novgorod-Pskov architectural traditions) were replaced by rich decorative paneling. Polychromy asserted itself: coloured and glazed tile and carved stone ornament, used in combination with brick patterns, were employed extensively. This was especially evidenced in a large group of Yaroslavl churches.
Internet resources on Christian orthodoxality are available via the Christian Orthodox Page. Alternative description of the early history (up to 1725) of Russian Orthodox church is available from Treasures of Czars education guide. Michael (David) Vezie (<dv@best.com>) is manager of the Orthodox Christian Page.
(text in part by) Arthur Voyce. Historian of Russian art and architecture. Author of "The Art and Architecture of Medieval Russia" and others.
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~mes/russia/moscow/history.html
-------------
A History of the Orthodox Church: Outline
Introduction | History | Doctrine
1. THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH
The Church as a Eucharistic Community | The First Persecutions and MartyrsThe Councils as the Manifestation of the Church Unity
2. THE CHURCH OF THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS (323-843)
The Establishment of the Imperial Church | Fighting against the heresies1. Nicaea - The Defeat of Arianism
2. Constantinople - The Teaching upon the Holy Spirit
3. Ephesus - The Victory over Nestorianism
4. Chalcedon - The Triumph of the Orthodox Christology
5 & 6. Constantinople - Chalcedon Confirmed - The Victory over Monotheletism
The Dispute over the Holy Icons
7. Nicea - The Victory of the Iconophiles and the Final Triumph of Orthodoxy
3. THE CHURCH OF IMPERIAL BYZANTIUM
Byzantine Christianity about AD 1000 | Relations between Church and stateThe Development of Monasticism
Relations with the West | The Crusades | The Mongol invasion
Attempts at ecclesiastical union
Relations with the Western Church | Theological and monastic renaissance
4. ORTHODOXY UNDER THE OTTOMANS (1453-1821)
The Christian ghetto | Relations with the West5. THE CHURCH OF RUSSIA (1448-1800)
Origin of the Muscovite patriarchate | Relations between patriarch and tsarThe reforms of Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1725)
6. THE ORTHODOX CHURCHES IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Autocephalies in the Balkans | In Greece | In Serbia | In Romania | In BulgariaThe church in imperial Russia
7. THE ORTHODOX CHURCH SINCE WORLD WAR I
The Russian Revolution and the Soviet periodThe Balkans and eastern Europe
The Orthodox Church in the Middle East | Orthodoxy in the United States
The Orthodox diaspora and missions
------------------------
BLOGSPOT:
Canada Military News:
RECONSTRUCTION AFTER WAR- huge cost of wars… even in victory… and then to
rebuild… RECONSTRUCTION AND WORLD WAR I: INTERNATIONALISM AND THE IDEA OF THE
EXPERT A Study in City Planning and Rebuilding – creepy $6Trillion UN a year
racket on the backs of Humanity and Environment-Pope Francis is right...dump
the arrogance of the $$$war and embrace humanity and environment and education
future where we are all equal/United Nations Peacekeeping costs- and horrific
reputation and more abilities must b met /links as always
St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church
48 BELCHER STREET, KENTVILLE
The first church of St. Joseph was built in an area now known as Chipman’s Corner between 1688 and 1689. It was located about two miles northeast of the present St. Joseph’s Church in Kentville. In 1689, the territory was divided into two parishes, one being St. Charles with its centre at Grand-Pré, and the other, St. Joseph’s at Riviere aux Canard. The latter included the district from the Cornwallis River to Pereaux.
With the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, the church building was razed to the ground and with it an attempt made to remove the church body. Irish settlers in the Kentville area gave the parish renewed strength, and in 1839, an acre of land for a church, cemetery and residence for a parish priest was deeded for the Roman Catholic Church.
Organized Catholic missionary work in Kentville did not begin until 1853. Work began on a new St. Joseph’s Parish Church about 1840 and was completed on December 10, 1853. It was a plain, wooden building capable of seating about one hundred fifty people. The Parish was first known as the District of Cornwallis, Kentville and Aylesford before it became St. Joseph’s.
In 1892 the church was demolished and the present church on Chapel Hill was begun by Rev. Philip M. Holden. The cornerstone was laid on October 26th. The building of the Glebe house was begun in 1906 and completed in the fall of 1907. In 1923 the interior of the church was redecorated and refurbished. The altar was erected as a memorial to the men of the parish who died in the First World War. In 1952 a side chapel was dedicated. Through the years improvements have been made and a new organ installed. In 1981 a new chapel was added to the church.
The oldest tombstone in St. Joseph’s Churchyard is that of Martin Ryan, a native of County Tipperary, Ireland, who died December 16, 1838, aged sixty-two.
In the words of local historian Mabel G.Nichols; “…The church is one of the finest structures in the town and its tall symmetrical tower with its illuminated cross may be seen from a considerable distance.”
WORKS CITED
- Coffill-Deveau, Mary. “Parish’s colorful history unfolds during its 300th birthday.” The Advertiser. April 18, 1989: pg. 1C.
http://kentville.ca/community/churches/st-josephs-roman-catholic-church/
------------
Veni Veni Emmanuel
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.