Early European History Part 65

St. Benedict sought to draw a sharp line between the monastic life and that of the outside world. Hence he required that, as far as possible, each monastery should form an independent, self-supporting community whose members had no need of going beyond its limits for anything. In course of time, as a monastery increased in wealth and number of inmates, it might come to form an enormous establishment, covering many acres and presenting within its ma.s.sive walls the appearance of a fortified town.

THE MONASTERY BUILDINGS

The princ.i.p.al buildings of a Benedictine monastery of the larger sort were grouped around an inner court, called a cloister. These included a church, a refectory, or dining room, with the kitchen and b.u.t.tery near it, a dormitory, where the monks slept, and a chapter house, where they transacted business. There was also a library, a school, a hospital, and a guest house for the reception of strangers, besides barns, bakeries, laundries, workshops, and storerooms for provisions. Beyond these buildings lay vegetable gardens, orchards, grain fields, and often a mill, if the monastery was built on a stream. The high wall and ditch, usually surrounding a monastery, shut it off from outsiders and in time of danger protected it against attack.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ABBEY OF SAINT GERMAIN DES PReS, PARIS This celebrated monastery was founded in the sixth century. Of the original buildings only the abbey church remains. The ill.u.s.tration shows the monastery as it was in 1361 A.D., with walls, towers, drawbridge, and moat. Adjoining the church were the cloister, the refectory, and the dormitory.]

MONASTIC OCCUPATIONS

St. Benedict defined a monastery as "a school for the service of the Lord." The monks under his Rule occupied themselves with a regular round of wors.h.i.+p, reading, and manual labor. Each day was divided into seven sacred offices, beginning and ending with services in the monastery church. The first service came usually about two o'clock in the morning; the last, just as evening set in, before the monks retired to rest. In addition to their attendance at church, the monks spent several hours in reading from the Bible, private prayer, and meditation. For most of the day, however, they worked hard with their hands, doing the necessary was.h.i.+ng and cooking for the monastery, raising the necessary supplies of vegetables and grain, and performing all the other tasks required to maintain a large establishment. This emphasis on labor, as a religious duty, was a characteristic feature of western monasticism. "To labor is to pray" became a favorite motto of the Benedictines. [22]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MONK COPYIST From a ma.n.u.script in the British Museum, London.]

ATTRACTIVENESS OF THE MONASTIC LIFE

It is clear that life in a Benedictine monastery appealed to many different kinds of people in the Middle Ages. Those of a spiritual turn of mind found in the monastic life the opportunity of giving themselves wholly to G.o.d. Studious and thoughtful persons, with no disposition for an active career in the world, naturally turned to the monastery as a secure retreat. The friendless and the disgraced often took refuge within its walls. Many a troubled soul, to whom the trials of this world seemed unendurable, sought to escape from them by seeking the peaceful shelter of the cloister.

THE MONKS AS CIVILIZERS

The civilizing influence of the Benedictine monks during the early Middle Ages can scarcely be over-emphasized. A monastery was often at once a model farm, an inn, a hospital, a school, and a library. By the careful cultivation of their lands the monks set an example of good farming wherever they settled. They entertained pilgrims and travelers, at a period when western Europe was almost dest.i.tute of inns. They performed many works of charity, feeding the hungry, healing the sick who were brought to their doors, and distributing their medicines freely to those who needed them. In their schools they trained both boys who wished to become priests and those who intended to lead active lives in the world.

The monks, too, were the only scholars of the age. By copying the ma.n.u.scripts of cla.s.sical authors, they preserved valuable books that would otherwise have been lost. By keeping records of the most striking events of their time, they acted as chroniclers of medieval history. To all these services must be added the work of the monks as missionaries to the heathen peoples of Europe.

126. SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY OVER EUROPE

THE ROMAN CHURCH AND THE BARBARIANS

Almost all Europe had been won to Christianity by the end of the eleventh century. In the direction of this great missionary campaign the Roman Church took the leading part. [23] The officers of her armies were zealous popes, bishops, and abbots; her private soldiers were equally zealous monks, priests, and laymen. Pagan Rome had never succeeded in making a complete and permanent conquest of the barbarians. Christian Rome, however, was able to bring them all under her spiritual sway.

RECONVERSION OF THE ARIAN GERMANS

Christianity first reached the Germanic invaders in its Arian [24] form.

Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Lombards were all Arians.

The Roman Church regarded them as heretics and labored with success to reconvert them. This work was at last completed when the Lombards, in the seventh century, accepted the Catholic faith.

FRANKS AND ANGLO-SAXONS CONVERTED TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM

The Franks and the Anglo-Saxons, whose kingdoms were to develop into the chief states of medieval Europe, adopted from the outset the Catholic form of Christianity. The conversion of the Franks provided the Roman Church with its strongest and most faithful adherents among the Germanic tribes.

[25] The conversion of Anglo-Saxon Britain by Augustine and his monks, followed later by the spread of Roman Catholicism in Ireland and Scotland, firmly united the British Isles to the Papacy. [26] Thus Rome during the Middle Ages came to be the one center of church life for the peoples of western Europe.

ST. BONIFACE AND THE CONVERSION OF THE GERMANS

An Anglo-Saxon monk, St. Boniface, did more than any other missionary to carry Christianity to the remote tribes of Germany. Like Augustine in England, St. Boniface was sent by the pope, who created him missionary bishop and ordered him to "carry the word of G.o.d to unbelievers." St.

Boniface also enjoyed the support of the Frankish rulers, Charles Martel and Pepin the Short. Thanks to their a.s.sistance this intrepid monk was able to penetrate into the heart of Germany. Here he labored for nearly forty years, preaching, baptizing, and founding numerous churches, monasteries, and schools. His boldness in attacking heathenism is ill.u.s.trated by the story of how he cut down with his own hands a certain oak tree, much reverenced by the natives of Hesse as sacred to the G.o.d Woden, and out of its wood built a chapel dedicated to St. Peter. St.

Boniface crowned a lifetime of missionary labor with a martyr's death, probably in 754 A.D. His work was continued by Charlemagne, who forced the Saxons to accept Christianity at the point of the sword. [27] All Germany at length became a Christian land, devoted to the Papacy.

CONVERSION OF THE SLAVS

Roman Catholicism not only spread to Celtic and Germanic peoples, but it also gained a foothold among the Slavs. Both Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great attempted to Christianize the Slavic tribes between the Elbe of the Slavs and the Vistula, by locating bishoprics in their territory. The work of conversion encountered many setbacks and did not reach completion until the middle of the twelfth century. The most eminent missionaries to the Slavs were Cyril and Methodius. These brother-monks were sent from Constantinople in 863 A.D. to convert the Moravians, who formed a kingdom on the eastern boundary of Germany. Seeing their great success as missionaries, the pope invited them to Rome and secured their consent to an arrangement which brought the Moravian Christians under the control of the Papacy. [28] From Moravia Christianity penetrated into Bohemia and Poland. These countries still remain strongholds of the Roman Church. The Serbians and Russians, as we have learned, [29] received Christianity by way of Constantinople and so became adherents of the Greek Church.

FINAL EXTENSION OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM

Roman Catholicism gradually spread to most of the remaining peoples of Europe. The conversion of the Norwegians and Swedes was well advanced by the middle of the eleventh century. The Magyars, or Hungarians, accepted Christianity at about the same date. The king of Hungary was such a devout Catholic that in the year 1000 A.D. the pope sent to him a golden crown and saluted him as "His Apostolic Majesty." The last parts of heathen Europe to receive the message of the gospel were the districts south and east of the Baltic, occupied by the Prussians, Lithuanians, and Finns.

Their conversion took place between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.

127. SEPARATION OF EASTERN AND WESTERN CHRISTIANITY

DIVERGENCE OF EAST AND WEST

Before the Christian conquest of Europe was finished, Christianity had divided into two great communions--the Greek Church and the Roman Church.

Their separation was a long, slow process, arising from the deep-seated differences between East and West. Though Rome had carried her conquering arms throughout the Mediterranean basin, all the region east of the Adriatic was imperfectly Romanized. [30] It remained Greek in language and culture, and tended, as time went on, to grow more and more unlike the West, which was truly Roman. The founding of Constantinople and the transference of the capital from the banks of the Tiber to the sh.o.r.es of the Bosporus still further widened the breach between the two halves of the Roman world. After the Germans established their kingdoms in Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Britain, western Europe was practically independent of the rulers at Constantinople. The coronation of Charlemagne in 800 A.D.

marked the final severance of East and West.

THE PAPACY AND THE EASTERN EMPERORS

The division of the Roman Empire led naturally to a grouping of the Christian Church about Rome and Constantinople, the two chief centers of government. The popes, it has been seen, had always enjoyed spiritual leaders.h.i.+p in the West. In temporal matters they acknowledged the authority of the eastern emperors, until the failure of the latter to protect Rome and Italy from the barbarians showed clearly that the popes must rely on their own efforts to defend Christian civilization. We have already learned how well such men as Leo the Great and Gregory the Great performed this task. Then in the eighth century came the alliance with the Frankish king, Pepin the Short, which gave the Papacy a powerful and generous protector beyond the Alps. Finally, by crowning Charlemagne, the pope definitely broke with the emperor at Constantinople and transferred his allegiance to the newly created western emperor.

RISE OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE

The patriarch of Constantinople, as bishop of the capital city, enjoyed an excellent position from which to a.s.sert his preeminence over the bishops of the other churches in the East. Justinian in 550 A.D. conferred on him the privilege of receiving appeals from the other patriarchs, and a few years later that dignitary a.s.sumed the high-sounding t.i.tle of "Universal Archbishop." The authority of the patriarch of Constantinople was immensely strengthened when the Mohammedans, having conquered Syria and Egypt, practically extinguished the three patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. [31] The Church in the East now had a single patriarch, just as that in the West had the one bishop of Rome. Rivalry between them was inevitable.

RIVALRY BETWEEN POPE AND PATRIARCH

One source of strife between pope and patriarch was the controversy, arising in the eighth century, over the use of images in the churches.

These images seem to have been, not statues, but pictures (icons) of the apostles, saints, and martyrs. Many eastern Christians sought to strip the churches of icons, on the ground that by the ignorant they were venerated almost as idols. The Iconoclasts ("image-breakers") gained no support in the West. The Papacy took the view that images were a help to true devotion and might, therefore, be allowed. When a Roman emperor issued a decree for the destruction of all images, the pope refused to obey the order in the churches under his direction, and went so far as to exclude the Iconoclasts from Christian fellows.h.i.+p. Although the iconoclastic movement failed in the East, after a violent controversy, it helped still further to sharpen the antagonism between the two branches of Christendom.

Other causes of dispute arose in later times, chiefly concerning fine points of doctrine on which neither side would yield.

THE FINAL RUPTURE, 1054 A.D.

The final rupture of Christendom was delayed until the middle of the eleventh century. In 1054 A.D. the pope sent his legates to Constantinople to demand obedience to the Papacy. This being refused, they laid upon the high altar of Sancta Sophia the pope's bill of excommunication. Against the patriarch and his followers they p.r.o.nounced a solemn curse, or anathema, devoting them "to the eternal society of the Devil and his angels." Then, we are told, they strode out of Sancta Sophia, shaking the dust from their feet and crying, "Let G.o.d see and judge." The two branches of the Christian Church, thus torn apart, were never afterward reunited.

[32]

128. THE GREEK CHURCH

THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCH COMPARED

The Greek and Roman churches, in some respects, are nearer together than Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Both recognize three orders for the ministry, namely, bishops, priests, and deacons. Priests of the Greek Church may marry, but this privilege is not extended to bishops, who, therefore, are chosen from the monks. Baptism, by both churches, is administered to infants, but by the Greek Church under the form of total immersion. Confirmation in the Greek Church follows immediately after baptism; in the Roman Church it is postponed to the age of reason. In the communion service the Greek Church gives leavened bread, dipped in wine.

The Roman Church withholds wine from the laity and uses only a dry, unleavened wafer. While the services of the Roman Church are conducted in Latin, for those of the Greek Church the national languages (Greek, Russian, etc.) of the communicants are used. Its festivals do not coincide in time of celebration with those of the Roman Church, since the "Julian Calendar" followed in the East is now thirteen days behind the "Gregorian Calendar." [33]

SPREAD OF THE GREEK CHURCH

The Greek Church has not lacked missionary zeal. Through her agency the barbarians who entered southeastern Europe during the early Middle Ages were converted to Christianity. At the present time nearly all the peoples of the Balkan peninsula, including Greeks, Montenegrins, Serbians, Bulgarians, and Rumanians, belong to the Greek Church. [34] Its greatest victory was won toward the close of the tenth century, when the Russians were induced to accept the Greek form of Christianity. Outlying branches of the Greek Church are found also in the Turkish Empire. It now includes about one hundred and thirty-five million adherents in European lands.

PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF THE GREEK CHURCH

The patriarch of Constantinople is the spiritual head of the Greek Church.

He enjoys, however, no such wide authority over eastern Christians as that exercised by the pope over all Roman Catholics. There are as many as sixteen branches of the Greek Church, each self-governing and under its own officers. Despite the local independence of its branches, the Greek Church remains unified in doctrine. It claims to be the only "Orthodox"