The Age of Faith – Yearning for Piety and Hungry for Power

December 2, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
11. The Age of Faith – Yearning for Piety and Hungry for Power

We will fail to do justice to the age of faith unless we appreciate the great yearning for piety that surged through the European lands lately Christianized. We will insufficiently apprehend the lessons of the times unless we also recognize that the age of faith was also a time of great struggles for political domination. The Church, among other institutions, was hungry for power.

I would speak to you today of the long periods of history in which vast changes occurred and new, vigorous movements marked the times. Beginning with the breakup of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, and continuing on through hundreds of years till the dawn of the Renaissance, so much happened that of necessity, there can be but scant treatment of the whole period. if the Age of Faith can be seen as one great historical canvas, we shall just stop here and there along its vast scene, singling out certain details for examination, in much the same way that a book, portraying some of the masterpieces of art of that period, the Flemish painters for example, will sometimes separate out and enlarge smaller scenes from the larger canvas.

In pointing out some of the great swings of contrast between piety and power, I would also refrain from raking over the stories of lurid immorality in monasteries and convents. That there was immorality and crude standards in those times, no one can doubt. But this was a rough age. It is a characteristic of the Church in any age not to rise a great deal above the culture of its times, for the Church is always a child of its times, as well as, hopefully, a leader in its times.

The ambivalent hungers for piety and power can be understood somewhat in terms of three great contrasts that marked the Church during this long age. First of all, there is the contrast of the feudal system with the centralized Church. Secondly, we would set off the idea of monasticism against the action of the Crusades. Then we would consider the inquisitor and the saint – the Inquisition and the other side of the coin, Francis of Assisi.

The first great tension was between feudalism and the Church. After the highly-developed secular bureaucracy of the Roman Empire had crashed, the feudal system grew on its ruins. When the Roman Empire disintegrated, there was no longer centralized police power or an empire tax system to keep the wheels of government turning. In order to survive, the poor man, the undefended man, the freeman pledge allegiance to a lord of a great estate. Young soldiers would attach themselves to a feudal lord, ready to fight battles, in return for which they would be fed, housed, and entertained. Secular government had become decentralized.

The growing centralized power of the Roman Catholic Church was in sharp contrast. Together with consolidation of church power was recognition that the Bishop of Rome was the head of the Church. During the crucial century when Rome was being so badly beaten by Barbarian invaders, there was a series of strong, courageous popes established in the bishopric of Rome. Innocent I (402-417) was an able administrator, courageous and vigorous who strengthened the claim that the Bishop of Rome had universal jurisdiction over the Church. Less than a generation later, Leo I asserted that the Bishop of Rome was supreme because he was in direct succession to Peter, who had the “keys to the Kingdom.” Leo was more a theological debater. When the Barbarians stormed toward Rome, Leo I confronted the invaders outside the gates and forbade them to sack Rome.

Perhaps as significant as the contrast of the centralized, powerful Church with decentralized feudalism, were other contributions that the church made during centuries of formation and growth.

Although the early part of this period is referred to as the “Dark Ages,” because ignorance was so wide-spread and government so unstable, it is fair to recognize that although there was mass ignorance, such literate civilization largely existed due to the influence of the church. Although many of the clergy were ignorant too, the books that were written were by monks, priests or clerks of the church. While nine out of ten people had no schooling whatsoever, were illiterate and uninformed, the one person in ten who had any schooling had been taught by the Church.

We should note, as C. C. Colton and other historians have pointed out, that although the Roman Catholic Church was a centralized ecclesiastical body in this period, with tentacles of power reaching out to all Christendom, the local parish system was the product of grass-roots loyalties in the villages, more than missionary stations established by Rome. Culturally, the local parish had evolved from pre-Christian times and circumstances. Before Christianity prevailed, the local chief had the right to build a temple to whatever local gods were worshiped, had the power to appoint the priest and the privilege of charging religious dues.

The difference between local organization and centralized authority was the cause of one of the most difficult struggles between Rome and the Kings who succeeded feudal lords. When Christianity was young, there had been considerable democracy in the election of bishops. Bishops were elected by members of the congregation, as well as by other members of the clergy. During and after the Barbarian conquests, this practice fell into disuse. In the so-called “pagan” religions, the tribal chiefs had appointed their priest, and they continued to do so, even though nominally they had become Christian converts. These tribal chiefs, predecessors of the feudal lords, treated the bishops not as representatives of the central church at Rome, but as their own subjects and tenants. Because later on the king too granted the bishop authority for office, and gave use of the episcopal lands and properties, the kings also demanded loyalty and income.

The popes at Rome insisted that the bishop’s office was not a privilege to be bestowed by a king, but a spiritual benefit conferred only by the bishop of Rome, properly in the apostolic line. That the bishop’s authority could be conferred by a layman was unthinkable to the bishop of Rome. But strong kings did make the appointments, time and time again.

This controversy known as “investiture” continued. This was not so much a prestige encounter for the honor of choosing a bishop, but more a struggle for wealth and power. By the end of the first thousand years of Christianity, the Church owned probably twenty-five percent of the land in every country in Christendom. If the king could not elect the bishops, he lost control of these lands, and political power as well as ecclesiastical would reside in Rome.

As nations emerged from feudalism, this contest between secular ruler and Roman pope intensified. English history has a classic illustration of this struggle between growing nationalism and the central Church. In the twelfth century, Henry II, King of England, appointed Thomas A. Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas A. Becket had been an able soldier and statesman, loyal chancellor for the king. Henry II had expected the loyalty of Thomas A. Becket to continue, and, consequently, the control of the vast estate and powers of Canterbury. Thomas A. Becket knew internal conflict. Should he serve his king or his pope? Significantly, he was ordained a priest the day before he was consecrated as Archbishop. His loyalty was to his Church. He opposed the encroachments of the State and Henry II in the affairs of the Church. Trouble began.

While forced to submit to the famous Constitutions of Clarendon, in 1164, Thomas A. Becket then repudiated his consent, escaping to France. Later he returned to England, but was murdered at the altar in Canterbury Cathedral by four retainers of Henry II.

While it is far from certain that Henry II authorized the murder in the cathedral, certainly this assassination starkly illuminated the contest between the State and the Church. Not only did Thomas A. Becket’s tomb at Canterbury become the shrine for the Canterbury Pilgrims immortalized by Chaucer, but even today, Becket’s life is the setting for one of the hit plays on Broadway this year, “Murder in the Cathedral.”

The question might very well be raised again seriously. Religious institutions are acquiring more and more land, tax-free, not only properties for churches and parochial schools, but also for non-profit enterprises, owned by religious institutions. The seeds of similar struggle may be being sown in our time. Eventually, if religious institutions become too powerful a force in the control of land and wealth in our nation, then again we may see a rebirth of the struggle which led to bitterness and bloodshed in the Age of Faith.

In the eleventh century and shortly thereafter, the Church won the victory. The stronger popes used the weapons of excommunication and interdict. When interdict was applied, priests were forbidden to perform the sacraments in a given country. The people were ignorant and superstitious for the most part. Bell, book, candle, wafer and wine were a strong influence so that even kings were forced to acknowledge the power and authority of Rome. Nationalism was somewhat thwarted. Centuries later it was to come into fullness of power and bubble in the ferment of the Reformation.

I would speak of another great contrast of this Age of Faith, representing differences between the yearning for piety and hungry for power. Almost from the earliest days of Christendom, deeply convinced Christians had been bothered by the difficulty of living a Christian life in a worldly culture. In the earliest days, individuals had escaped to the wilderness or caves, or stood on pillars, renouncing the evils of this world. Then came a time when some hermits saw the necessity of group living apart from the worldly temptations. Eventually there were many such orders, including Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans. Legislation or rules for group living were necessary. The Benedictine rule shows the nature of commitments which caused monasticism to become such an important influence in the Western World. Benedict (480-543) founded his movement at Monte Cassino, that location which became so well known during the bloody fighting during World War 2 in Italy.

Monks in the Benedictine community were require to pledge vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. After a year’s trial period, the vows were irrevocable. The Abbot must be obeyed. A monk was required to worship at least four hours every day, in at least seven periods of prayer.

Of no less importance were the vows of poverty and chastity. The vow of poverty prevented acquisitions. As this was a celibate order, the monks had no descendants to whom they could leave property. Therefore all property acquired belonged to the Benedictine order. Of great significance was the rule that physical labor was to be a standard work experience of all monks. The Benedictine rule made work a sacred obligation that the committed man was required to perform. The centuries had not been many since the domination of classical society where physical work had been considered degrading, to be performed by slaves. Under the Benedictine rule, and other monastic orders followed suit, work became sacred and honored. Because of work in monastery shops and intelligent tilling of the fields, surplus accumulated and the monastic orders tended to become wealthy.

Like most human institutions, following initial period of growth and achievement, monasticism suffered a decline. There were abuses, corruption, immorality. But about the time of the Norman conquest of England (1066), there was a monastic revival. Known as the Cluniac reforms, led by the great Bernard of Cluny, the monasteries again assumed an important place in the life of the church and the world. Many of the monks had become powerful leaders of the Church. They were teachers and missionaries.

Nor were the monasteries devoted entirely to accumulating stores of goods for themselves and establishing honor and power for the Church. While some historians may exaggerate the contribution of the monastic orders, [it was] there [that] histories and chronicles of the times were written, copies of sacred books made. The monasteries were not only the schools, they were the hospitals as well as the libraries of the age. Sir Arthur Bryant (MAKERS OF ENGLAND) says, “That in the days of no hotels, newspapers or post, the monasteries with their international organization were the means of communicating news, learning, crafts and discoveries.”

The monastic movement was one of the more important social movements of the Age of Faith. It has had a direct bearing on movements in the Western World since. There are scholars who believe that the early Benedictine movement, with its emphasis on work, prudence and thrift in a situation where the individual was not able to accumulate wealth separately from the order, was one of the important fore-runners of the Capitalist system.

If the monastic movement at its best represented the constructive application of the yearning for piety, the Crusades represented one of the bloodiest swindles in the name of religion. For about one hundred years, the Crusades occupied a good deal of the attention of the people of Europe. Pope Urban II called the First Crusade (1096). In some ways it was a concept that would unify the separate feudal lands and nations with the Holy Roman centralized Church. Urban II asserted the rule of the papacy over all disunited Europe. In a time of economic distress in Europe, men would be kept busy by going to the Holy Lands to recapture the holy places from the Moslems. They could help their separated Christian brothers in Eastern Orthodoxy by helping defend Constantinople against the Turks who were threatening that center of Eastern power.

Venice, Genoa and Pisa managed to acquire the contracts for transporting and supplying the Western armies in the Holy Land. In so doing, they acquired lucrative trade monopolies in silk, glass and other commodities from the Middle East. Slave-trading became extensive and profitable. The pathetic Children’s Crusade resulted in great numbers of children being sold into Moslem slavery, if they managed to survive the unseaworthy vessels and awful conditions.

Under the name Crusade and the symbol of the cross, there [was] plunder, raping, extortion. The cruelties exerted against Moslems and Jews in Jerusalem are almost beyond stating. When the Christians captured Jerusalem, they slaughtered so many Moslems and Jews that it was said that the blood ran as high as horses’ knees. Not the least of the consequences of these Crusades was the enduring suspicion of Moslems toward the Christian world.

One of the vicious consequences of the idea of Crusades to the Holy Land against the “infidel,” was that those who could not go to the Holy Land, or did not want to, turned against heretics and Jews at home. These home crusaders labored under the bigoted mis-apprehension that if they could not go to the Holy Land and kill Turks, they could stay at home and kill Jews. In the cities along the Rhine River where the many Jews were concentrated in pursuit of commercial occupations, there were horrible massacres.

In this same period, the Church turned on the Albigensians in Southern France, labeled them heretics. They were tortured and dispersed in the internal Crusade to destroy heresy. Here the Inquisition began its sinister operations.

This leads to the third striking contrast that we see reflected in this age of piety and power – the Inquisitor as against the Saint.

Of all the encroachments upon human liberty and human dignity in Christian history, the Inquisition is probably the most notorious. The Inquisition was organized to search out, not bad people, but non-conforming people, people who had interpretations of religious experience other than the dogmas officially pronounced by the Church. Augustine laid the theoretical groundwork for the repression of non-conformity in his influential theology. The Crusade against the Albigensians led to the founding of the Inquisition.

With the appearance of the Inquisition, opportunity for expansion within the society of the Middle Ages seemed to be ended. Society officially became closed – closed Church – closed doctrine, closed state of mind. Those who did not obey, those who did not renounce their heresy, were condemned to torture and frequently execution. Under some popes, the horrors were somewhat lessened than under the more militant. The abuses of the Inquisition are a long and painful story, a testimony to the abuses which can be a consequence of the hunger for unquestioned and unlimited power to make men conform. The official opinion was that a person was better off being tortured into conformity to the Church than permitted to live in freedom. If this was honest conviction, then certainly it was mistaken, and has done incredible harm everywhere it has been exerted against human rights. Nothing is more clear in history, than all institutions which have pretended infallibility, and assumed all power, have soon demonstrated that they do not have all the truth, and should not have had all power. The non-conformist, the heretic has provided the alternation which has meant growth in wisdom, stature and the rights of man.

If hunger for power created the Inquisition and put a blot on Christian history, then this same age of faith also produced Francis of Assisi, whose gentle piety remains one of the remarkable instances of spirituality in men. Francis has been called “the only Christian since Christ.”

Son of a cloth merchant, christened by John Bernadone, Francis was a leader in his youth with no strong interest in religion. He seemed to have little use for learning, being more interested in sports and soldiering. Recovering from battle wounds, he abandoned his soldier’s life, although conversion seemed a gradual process. He was concerned for poor people, giving them affection and help. He cared for sick people, even the most ravaged leper received his love and care. Because he completely rejected worldly goods and power, Francis was thought to be insane by many men, including his father. For years he went about, laboring with his hands, working for the restoration of chapels.

Experiencing a vision in 1209, he believed that the command had come from Christ to preach the good news of the kingdom. Gathering a few disciples, they committed themselves to poverty. Happily singing, clad only in robes of undyed wool, they went about trying to serve all God’s creatures. They loved nature. Their commitment was to the most poor, humble and sick.

Francis prepared a simple rule for his brotherhood and secured the approval of the Pope. Not a heretic, Francis was anxious to serve the Church obediently. But he felt strongly moved by Christ’s injunction to give all one’s goods to the poor, take up one’s cross and follow.

Francis went on the Crusades; he visited Moslem camps in an effort to bring about peace. Still coming strongly to us down through the ages is his radiant serenity. So deep was his spiritual commitment, it was said there appeared on Francis’ body the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, nailmarks on hands and feet. This appearance of stigmata was apparently the first time it had appeared in Western Christendom, at least. Francis was the first to set up a crèche at Christmas. He did this, not to set up a collection of toys, but because of the feeling that the mighty and the theologian should be warned, “behold your God, a poor and helpless child.”

Francis lived long enough to see his ideals betrayed. The Franciscan order eliminated the requirement of poverty and became rich and powerful, rivaling the other orders.

When civil war was threatening Assisi, Francis sent the contending powers a hymn of peace hoping they would listen to his words where he said,

“Praise my Lord for those who for thy love forgive
Content, unavenged in quietness to live.
Bless those who in the way of peace are found
By thee O Lord most high
Shall they be crowned.”

He is a Catholic saint whose life, work and influence all may respect.

The Age of Faith was rough and stormy with many tides of power-struggle washing many shores. Most of the people were unlearned and illiterate. Many of the beliefs in magic, demons and other superstitions of Norsemen, Teuton, Celt and Slav remained entrenched in their attitudes. Always there was compromise with religions that existed. The old temples became Christian churches; the old festivals, Christian celebrations. Many of these compromises and assimilations were probably unavoidable in order for more enlightened aspects of Christianity to begin to have influence among men. In the rhythms of yearning for piety and hunger for power, many things did emerge which were good for culture.

Perhaps the greatest inspiration coming to us from the age of faith may be not so much the struggles and wars, but the lives of men of courage and conviction, who because of what religion meant to them, risked life and safety, time after time.

Consider Patrick, the missionary to Ireland: Grandson of a priest, raised as a Christian, seized in a raid in the 5th century, he was a slave in Ireland for six years. Escaping, he became a member of a monastic order on the coast of France; in 432 was ordained as a missionary bishop, went back to Ireland where he labored until his death in 471. Here was a man returning voluntarily to the land where he had been a slave. He braved the wrath of the Barbaric slave-trading princes of Tara’s hall. It is said, (Sir Arthur Bryant) that Patrick faced the king and his druid magicians and said, “I have cast myself on almighty God and he shall sustain me.”

From the work of such men as he did the nations grow. Good men nurturing ideas that are great, have helped preserve the seed of many of the great ideals we cherish and the worthy goals we seek. Always men and women of understanding and conviction must be alert to push back the power-hungry who would seize control of the minds and rights of men. But always too, if we are wise, we shall be alert to those people of authentic piety who see in the moral, mental and physical welfare of their fellow human beings, the way to identify with the God of all things.