Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Number of quotes: 66
Book ID: 203 Page: 33/34
Section: 3A2
Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was within and advised men and women to worry about their own souls instead of social revolution or national redemption.…
The only revolution that mattered was the revolution of the human heart. That was the essence of Jesus’ message, and he kept repeating it, although people wanted him to say much more.
Quote ID: 4649
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 203 Page: 37
Section: 1A
Also, the church accommodated itself, to some extent, to existing circumstances – that is, to the institutions of the Roman Empire. Its own organization developed along the territorial and institutional lines of the empire, and cultural and philosophical strains appeared within Christianity that were neither Hebraic nor apostolic. From one point of view, then, the church thus developed away from pure, apostolic Christianity. On the other hand, it may be claimed that only thus could the church progress, adapting itself to a changing world, to new people and new ideas.
Quote ID: 4650
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 203 Page: 38
Section: 3A1
One explanation for the accommodation of church and empire may be that Christianity was not primarily a religion of slaves and of the downtrodden. Many (or most) of the Christians of the Roman Empire came from the middle class, and a few came from the ranks of the aristocracy. The men who rose to be leaders of the church were apt to be of substantial family, to be well educated, to be unlikely to attack the prevailing social order.
Quote ID: 4651
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 203 Page: 38
Section: 2C
The church developed a strict, organized hierarchy during its first three centuries that included a distinct priesthood, with priests separated from lay Christians; Christian priests became officeholders on the Roman model.
Quote ID: 4652
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 203 Page: 39
Section: 2C
Borrowing Platonic philosophy and the Roman system of government, the church developed the Christian priesthood, with its priests set apart from ordinary men and women. Jesus never made that distinction, although most model Roman Catholics argue that the distinction was implicit - or potential - apostolic Christianity.
Quote ID: 4653
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 203 Page: 39
Section: 1A
Under the Roman Empire, Christianity developed a distinct and complex culture that was heavily classical, with elements of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and classical rhetoric. Christians did not develop their own language, philosophy, law, or even organization; they adapted what they found.
Quote ID: 4654
Time Periods: 23456
Book ID: 203 Page: 39
Section: 1A
Even Tertullian, however, used an oratorical style based on classical rhetoric. Some of the Christians denounced elements of classical culture, but almost all of them made use of it: They absorbed classicism in speech and thought.
Quote ID: 4655
Time Periods: 23456
Book ID: 203 Page: 39
Section: 1A
These men made an underground religion into a successful, universal institution - an achievement requiring astute, tough, and determined leadership. One may question how well these early priests and bishops served Christianity by making the church a viable imperial institution - did they betray the ideals of Jesus when they created a conservative social organization?- but it is impossible to question their effectiveness.
Quote ID: 4656
Time Periods: 23456
Book ID: 203 Page: 40/41
Section: 1A
The causes and consequences of the fall of the Roman Empire in the West have been inexhaustible subjects of speculation and argument. Historians have even questioned whether there was such a phenomenon as a fall - perhaps the empire just gradually disappeared. However, it is obvious that in the political-military context at least, something happened in the fifth century. For the first time, the Romans were unable to drive German invaders out of the western part of the Empire.
Quote ID: 4657
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 203 Page: 41
Section: 1A
Despite revolutionary political change, however, it is fairly clear that the social and political institutions and the culture of the late empire did not vanish, but were replaced only gradually (and never completely) over the next two centuries. Modern historians, by and large, regard the fall of Rome not as a single military disaster, but as the consequence of long-range internal processes.
Quote ID: 4658
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 203 Page: 42
Section: 3A1
Gibbon’s other explanation for the decline of Rome was the success of Christianity. (He did not say that Christianity alone caused the decline, but that it was one factor.)…
Also, the church deprived the empire of its natural leaders, as able and educated men chose to become bishops and abbots, rather than imperial governors. One may respond that this situation was not entirely the fault of the church, that these men have been alienated from the state to begin with. By the late empire, government must have seemed a difficult and dangerous (if not hopeless) job, and many men looked for alternative careers.
Quote ID: 4659
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 203 Page: 47
Section: 3D
It is often said that the Romans of the late empire lost their public spirit, but this is not to say that they had become corrupt. Indeed, in private morality they were more puritanical under Christian rule. However, the Roman Empire had become a burden, and when great demands were made on its constituents, the essential artificiality of the imperial structure was revealed. Many people had never been genuinely committed to Rome or involved with the empire, and they were not distressed at the prospect of its defeat.NOTE: a substandard scholar. Romans were very proud of their Romanness.
Quote ID: 4660
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 203 Page: 47
Section: 3C,3E
The character of the eastern Roman empire was largely fashioned by two emperors, Constantine in the fourth century and Justinian I in the sixth. Their social backgrounds were remarkably similar; they were both of Balkan peasant stock. Constantine’s father and Justinian’s uncle both rose from this humble background to be important generals and later attained imperial power. Constantine’s mother Helena (St. Helena in the Greek church) had been a Balkan barmaid and probably a prostitute. Justinian married a circus dancer, Theodora, probably also a prostitute. Constantine and Justinian also resembled each other in great industry, administrative ability, and devotion to the church.
Quote ID: 4661
Time Periods: 46
Book ID: 203 Page: 47
Section: 3C
Constantine was born 280 to Helena and Constantius Chlorus, who later became caesar, or assistant emperor, in the western empire in charge of Britain and Gaul. Constantius Chlorus’ religion tended toward pagan monotheism in the form of the Unconquerable Sun.
Quote ID: 4662
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 48
Section: 3C
This conversion of Constantine has become a controversial subject among historians. Much of the evidence for the conversion of Constantine to Christianity comes from Lactantius, a Latin writer in Asia Minor, who, about 320, wrote the Death of the Persecutors, a popular book in the Middle Ages.
Quote ID: 4663
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 48/49
Section: 3C2
Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the first historian of the Christian church and a friend and confidant of Constantine, gives three accounts of the events leading to Constantine’s great victory. In 316 he stated vividly that Constantine accepted Christianity and put the chi-rho upon the shield of his legionnaires. In 325, in the Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius asserted that Constantine prayed to the Christian God before the battle and later erected in Rome a statue of himself with the Christian standard. No evidence of the statue has ever been found, and the account is probably untrue. Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, written shortly after the emperor’s death in 337, presents the model for the standard life of a Christian monarch that was followed until the eleventh century. In this work Constantine and his army are said to have seen a flaming cross in the sky and the inscription “By this sign thou shalt conquer” before they crossed the Alps to Italy. This sight demonstrated to Constantine the power of the Christian God, whose standard his army henceforth carried.
Quote ID: 4664
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 203 Page: 50
Section: 3C,4A
To the western Christians their Greek-speaking fellows were trying to define the indefinable - the trinity of God, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The deeply philosophical problems that were of such overriding importance to the easterners gave way in the West to more pragmatic problems of church administration and consideration of the relationship between the deity and man.
Quote ID: 4665
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 52
Section: 3C
The Reformation, in the instance of Protestant sectarianism, showed its Donatist heritage: To be a full member of the church, you had to have a conversional experience and you had to have a conviction of reception of grace. The problem the Catholic church faced was that in absorbing society there was the chance that, just as society would be civilized and changed by its association with the church, so, too, could the church be barbanized by society. Had Christianity remained a religion of the elite, this danger from society would have been reduced, and the Donatist ideal of a church of the saints could have been realized. But a church of the saints could not at the same time be a catholic church bringing the means of grace to all mankind. There never could be a compromise between Donatism and Catholicism. Poor Constantine was bewildered by the Donatist dispute. His attempts at peacemaking between the two groups inevitably failed.
Quote ID: 4666
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 52
Section: 3C
The Reformation, in the instance of Protestant sectarianism, showed its Donatist heritage: To be a full member of the church, you had to have a conversional experience and you had to have a conviction of reception of grace. The problem the Catholic church faced was that in absorbing society there was the chance that, just as society would be civilized and changed by its association with the church, so, too, could the church be barbanized by society. Had Christianity remained a religion of the elite, this danger from society would have been reduced, and the Donatist ideal of a church of the saints could have been realized. But a church of the saints could not at the same time be a catholic church bringing the means of grace to all mankind. There never could be a compromise between Donatism and Catholicism. Poor Constantine was bewildered by the Donatist dispute. His attempts at peacemaking between the two groups inevitably failed.
Quote ID: 4667
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 52/53
Section: 3C2
Eusebius’ Life of Constantine is one of the most important works of medieval literature. It sets the pattern for the ideal life of a medieval king. Medieval kings were, by and large, hard, brutal, and barbarous men until at least the late eleventh century. The lives of these men were written, however, by clerical ministers of the king who wished to portray their masters as men of noble virtues called to their office by God and as great friends of the church, as well as temperate and kind.Early medieval historical literature, like hagiography (saints’ lives), was based upon the concept of presenting a fulfillment of the ideal and not the actual.
Quote ID: 4668
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 203 Page: 53
Section: 3C2
According to this thesis of Eusebius, the world entered its greatest stage with the joint inauguration of the Christian faith and the Roman imperial power, both personified in Constantine. The Roman Empire would make sure that Christianity lasted forever, Eusebius believed, and God would reward the empire with yet greater glory and happiness.
Quote ID: 4669
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 54
Section: 3C
Constantine did not feel powerful enough to force the old aristocracy into the church, but hoped he could undermine the position of Rome in the world and sabotage the influential position of the pagan aristocracy. The Roman aristocracy continued to enjoy wealth and power in the West, particularly in Rome. In building Constantinople, Constantine envisioned a new imperial capital where Christianity would be supreme and unchallenged.
Quote ID: 4670
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 55/56
Section: 3A4,3C,4B
The advance of a Christian to the imperial throne produced an inevitable reconsideration of the church’s attitude to kingship. As long as the emperor was a non-Christian, sometimes openly anti-Christian, the theoretical question of church-state relations scarcely arose; the church could take a negative attitude toward the state without any doubt or hesitation by its leaders. But the emergence of the Christian king raised a host of new problems, for which the solution was not readily apparent.The readjustment in the church’s conception of kingship was further made inevitable by the close involvement of the emperor and bishops in each other’s affairs in the fourth century. Heresies, schisms, and requests for state interference in the life of the church by Christian bishops, on the one side, and what J. B. Bury aptly called the emperor’s despotic instinct to control all social forces, on the other, brought about a close union between church and state.
Quote ID: 4671
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 57
Section: 3C
Great benefits accrued from the Christian acceptance of political monotheism and its implications. The recovery of imperial unity and authority in the fourth century would have been impossible without the ideology that regained for the emperor the loyalty and devotion of the illiterate masses of the empire. By the time of Constantine it is difficult to see any other basis for the restoration of popular loyalty than the association of the imperial office of divinity. Political monotheism was a political necessity.
Quote ID: 4672
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 57
Section: 3C1
Constantine had been baptized on his deathbed by an Arian bishop, and his sons who succeeded him tended to be sympathetic to the Arian cause. By the fifth decade of the fourth century, the situation had become critical for orthodoxy. All the voices that could be raised in favor of the Nicene Creed or in protest against the intrusion of the prince in ecclesiastical matters were silenced by the state.
Quote ID: 4673
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 58
Section: 3C
Thus the Christian church, in the fourth century, finally settled the great controversy that had so seriously disturbed ecclesiastical life. But it did so only by subordinating itself to the will of the emperor.
Quote ID: 4674
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 59
Section: 3C2
Julian is generally known as Julian the Apostate. Like his uncle Constantine, he also experienced a conversion, but in the opposite direction - from Christianity to paganism. While Julian had been brought up in the Christian religion, he had acquired a taste for Roman literature and Greek philosophy, and he finally abandoned the Christian religion for that monotheistic kind of paganism already described.
Quote ID: 4675
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 61
Section: 3A1B
Gratian’s removal of the altar of victory from the Senate was the occasion for a great debate between Symmachus, the leader of the pagan aristocracy, and the ablest Italian ecclesiastic, Bishop Ambrose of Milan (St. Ambrose).…
Symmachus was the eternal liberal with all his good and bad qualities: He was tolerant and generous, but weak and not a little naïve.
…
Ambrose was the hard man who knew that he possessed the Truth - Christianity is the one true religion; all others must be destroyed.
Quote ID: 4676
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 61
Section: 3D
Theodosius, who had already destroyed the enemies of the orthodox Christians within the church, went further than Gratian in the matter of paganism and sought to destroy the enemies of orthodox Christianity outside the church. In 392, after he gained control of the whole empire, he issued an official proscription of paganism, forbidding anyone in any place whatsoever, even in private, to exercise any of the rites of the ancient religion.…
The victory of Theodosius thus marks the final defeat of paganism.
Quote ID: 4677
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 203 Page: 63
Section: 3E,2D
The first pope who seems to have perceived the great role in western civilization that the bishopric of Rome could possibly attain as a result of the disintegration of the Roman Empire was Pope Leo I, usually called St. Leo the Great (440-461).…
It was Leo I who clearly formulated the doctrine upon which the papacy could make those claims to jurisdiction that came close to fulfillment in the High Middle Ages. St. Leo can therefore be said to be the creator of the doctrine of the medieval papacy. St. Leo was born in the last decade of the fourth century and was elected bishop of Rome in A.D. 440. He was a member of an old aristocratic Roman family.
Quote ID: 4678
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 203 Page: 64
Section: 3E,2D
[Used BOLD part only]Twice, in 452 and 455, Leo, aware of the impending collapse of the Roman state, went out from Rome to engage in negotiations with barbarian kings who had invaded Italy and implored them to spare the city of Rome. In at least the first instance, in his negotiations with the Huns, he was successful. In 455 he had less success dealing with the Vandals, but it is significant that the bishop of Rome had taken the place of the Roman emperor as defender of the Eternal City.
…
Yet half-consciously the pope worked to make the Roman episcopate the successor of the Roman state in the West. The way for this transformation of leadership in the West from the Roman state to the see of Rome was prepared not only by Leo’s activities, but even more by the success with which he vindicated the claim of the Roman see to theoretical supremacy in the church.
Quote ID: 4679
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 203 Page: 65
Section: 3E,2D
Thus the bishop of Rome alone possesses the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. He alone is the vicar of Christ on Earth. He is the chief shepherd of Christ’s flock. This view was never accepted by the Greek bishops; it had, in fact, been denied by North African Latin Christians as late as the third century.…
But although the bishops of the western half of the empire recognized the validity of the claims made by St. Leo for the Petrine doctrine, the pope’s effective power was confined to Italy. France and Spain were on their own, and there were to be great labors and struggles in these other areas in succeeding centuries as the pope tried to extend his jurisdictional influence and make himself the real head of the western church. This attempt to turn the Petrine doctrine into a practical reality was to be the main theme in the history of the medieval papacy.
Quote ID: 4680
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 203 Page: 65/66
Section: 3E,2D
We can look back over the whole period between the death of Constantine and the end of the pontificate of Leo the Great and see that, unintentionally, the Christian Roman emperors had laid the foundation for the power of the medieval papacy. During the fourth century, the bishops of Rome were a succession of weak and incompetent men who used the great traditions and inherently vast powers of their office to little advantage. Fortunately, the emperors did the popes’ work for them. They crushed paganism and made Rome into a Christian city, which Constantine had failed to do and which the popes by their own efforts would almost certainly have never done. The emperors destroyed heresy and assured the doctrinal unity of the western church. They endowed the church with enormous material benefits and corporate privileges. Then in the middle of the fifth century the Roman state in the West collapsed. All that was necessary was the appearance of a great personality on the throne of Peter, a man of bold ideas and enormous energy, for the bishop of Rome to take over the leadership of the western church from the empire. St. Leo was the right man. Thanks to the work of the Christian emperors, the foundations of papal power had been laid.
Quote ID: 4681
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 203 Page: 145
Section: 3E
The leadership that was so badly needed by the disorganized western society of the sixth century could come initially only from the church, which had in its ranks almost all the literate men in Europe and the strongest institutions of the age. The church, however, had also suffered severely from the Germanic invasions. The bishops identified their interests with those of the lay nobility and in fact were often relatives of kings and the most powerful aristocrats.…
The secular clergy in general was ignorant, corrupt, and unable to deal with the problem of Christianizing a society that remained intensely heathen in spite of the formal conversion of masses of Germanic warriors to Christianity. Heathen superstitions and magic were grafted onto Latin Christianity: The religiosity of the sixth and seventh centuries was infected with devils, magic, relic worship, and importation of local nature deities into Christianity in the guise of saints, and the general debasement of the Latin faith by religious primitivism.
Quote ID: 4682
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 203 Page: 146
Section: 3E
The Latin church was preserved from extinction, and European civilization with it, by the two ecclesiastical institutions that alone had the strength and efficiency to withstand the impress of the surrounding barbarism: the regular clergy (that is, the monks) and the papacy.
Quote ID: 4683
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 152
Section: 3E
Even in Benedict’s day the Roman aristocrat and scholar Cassiodorus had envisaged monasteries as the most suitable places for the educational and literary centers of the new society.…
He therefore established a large monastery with the conscious purpose of using it as a center for Christian education and scholarship, and in his Introduction to Divine and Human Readings he carefully outlined a program for the monastic school.
…
This educational work, Cassiodorus pointed out, presupposed that the monastery would have a good library of Christian and classical texts.
Quote ID: 4684
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 203 Page: 155
Section: 3F
In the early 590 the first of these monastic popes, Gregory I the Great (died 604) ascended to the throne of Peter. His pontificate marks one of the most important turning points in the history of the medieval church.…
Gregory I’s importance lies in his clear formulation of the program that the papacy was to follow over the next two centuries. He clearly perceived that the historic destiny of the papacy lay in western Europe and that the way to assert papal leadership in European society was through an alliance with the monastic orders and the Frankish monarchy.
Quote ID: 4685
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 203 Page: 158
Section: 3F
Pope Gregory was first of all conscious of the fact that he was a member of the episcopate, and in his Book of Pastoral Care he delineated for his episcopal colleagues their duties as pastors of the Christian flock, contrasting these duties with the privileges they enjoyed as ecclesiastical princes and nobles, which tended to be their primary concern.…
He did not contribute anything new to the evolution of papal ideology, but he carefully summarized the Gelasian doctrine and Leo I’s Petrine theory. This view of papal office was summed up in the term servus servorum Dei, “servant of the servants of God,” which he used as an official appellation and that still appears as a subtitle on papal documents.
…
The hierocratic principle found its biblical support in Christ’s statement in the Gospel of Mark: “Whoever is the chief is the servant of all”- that is, he who has the most responsibility has the most power. Since the pope was responsible before for his ministry as the leader of the Christian church, he required unlimited authority to carry out the divine work entrusted to him.
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Clever!
Quote ID: 4686
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 203 Page: 159
Section: 3F
To achieve the creation of a European civilization, Gregory saw with a prophetic clarity that the papacy would somehow have to ally itself with the Frankish monarchy.
Quote ID: 4687
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 203 Page: 159
Section: 3F
Gregory’s letters to the Merovingian king had no consequences in his own day. It was not until the eighth century that the Frankish rulers were sufficiently intelligent to understand the possibilities for the growth of their own power in an alliance with the papacy. The surprising consequence of Gregory’s missionary work was the bringing into existence of a group of churchmen who, in the eighth century, fomented the Frankish-papal alliance on which the new European civilization was to be founded.
Quote ID: 4688
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 203 Page: 160
Section: 3F
In the half century after Gregory’s death the Latin monks, advancing northward from Canterbury, and the Celtic missionaries at work in the north contended for the adherence of the English people. Finally, in 664, a synod of the English churchmen decided to bring the whole country under Roman rule.
Quote ID: 4689
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 222
Section: 3F
Early eleventh-century ideals of church and kingship were given monumental form in the style of architecture that modern art historians have chosen to call Romanesque.
Quote ID: 4690
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 222
Section: 3F
The Romanesque churches were chapels for the lay and sacerdotal hierarchies, whereas the later Gothic churches were designed to bring in the masses for public worship. Second, the Romanesque churches were ecclesiastical fortresses; they were built by the same architects and artisans who erected the feudal fortresses of the eleventh century. The Romanesque church was God’s fortress, and it reflects a view of Jesus as head of the feudal hierarchy and the prototype of theocratic kings.
Quote ID: 4691
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 243
Section: 3G
The eight decades from the middle of the eleventh century to the end of the third decade of the twelfth constitute one of the great turning points in European history.
Quote ID: 4692
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 243
Section: 3G
Such a period of fundamental and, at the same time, rapid change was the age of the Gregorian reform and the investiture controversy that the Gregorian reform precipitated. The Gregorian reform gets its name from Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), the most visible leader of the reform movement. The term investiture controversy is derived from the crucial issue of whether kings and other great lords had the right to invest bishops and abbots with the symbols of their office, that is, whether laymen had the right to appoint church officials.
Quote ID: 4693
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 244
Section: 3G
Each world revolution has begun with some just complaint about moral wrongs in the prevailing political, social, or religious system. In the investiture controversy the leaders of the revolution, who have been called the Gregorian reformers, complained about the domination of the church by laymen and the involvement of the church in feudal obligations.
Quote ID: 4694
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 245
Section: 3G
As in all other world revolutions, the ideologists of the investiture controversy were only partially successful in creating the new order. They succeeded in destroying the old system, but the new world was not the revolutionary utopia.…
The church gained a large measure of freedom from secular control, and there was a noticeable improvement in the moral and intellectual level of the clergy. But the church itself, from the time of the investiture controversy, became more and more interested in secular affairs, and so the papacy of the High Middle Ages competed successfully for wealth and power with kings and emperors. The church itself became a great superstate that was governed by the papal administration.
Quote ID: 4695
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 262/263
Section: 3G
The last of the four Gregorian reformers, Pope Paschal II, the only radical Gregorian aside from Hildebrand to obtain the papal throne, carried the debate much further and provided a definite answer, although one unpalatable to the great majority of the leading churchmen of his time.…
Paschal’s solution of the debate over church-state relations was both simple and radical. Since the origin of the controversy lay in the question of the relative jurisdictions of regnum and sacerdotium, he proposed to the emperor that the German churchmen surrender to the imperial crown their lands and secular offices and constitute themselves a purely spiritual church. In return, Henry V promised not to interfere with the affairs of the German bishops and abbots; of course, the delighted emperor could afford to do so in view of the tremendous accretion of landed wealth and public offices he was given by Paschal’s proposal. Paschal’s concession was neither the unaccountable act of an eccentric old man nor the consequence of force majeure by the emperor, as the papal court later claimed in repudiating Paschal’s treaty. The Concordat of 1111 was fully in accord with Paschal’s ideological position, which was, in turn, and offshoot of radical Gregorianism.
…
The provocative doctrine of the apostolic poverty of the church thus made its first clear appearance in the policy of the last of the Gregorian popes. Rejected by the high medieval papacy, looked upon with horror by the wealthy and powerful ecclesiastics of western Europe, this doctrine was to find favor with the popular heretical movements of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Ha!
Quote ID: 4696
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 395
Section: 3H
The investiture controversy had shattered the early-medieval equilibrium and ended the interpenetration of ecclesia and mundus. Medieval kingship, which had been largely the creation of ecclesiastical ideals and personnel, was forced to develop new institutions and sanctions. The result, during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, was the first instance of a secular bureaucratic state whose essential components appeared in the Anglo-Norman monarchy.
Quote ID: 4697
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 417
Section: 3H
Since the death of Alexander III in 1181, the papal throne had been held by a succession of well-meaning but weak men who seemed to have been paralyzed into a state of immobility by the vast problems affecting the church as a consequence of the twelfth-century changes in learning, piety, and power. Papal leadership was becoming such a negligible factor in European life that the cardinals went to the other extreme in 1198. They chose the ablest member of the college of cardinals, Lothario Conti, who took the title of Innocent III (1198-1216). At the time of his accession Innocent was only thirty-seven years old, phenomenally young for a pope. Innocent III came from one of the leading families of the Roman aristocracy.
Quote ID: 4698
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 417
Section: 3H
He believed that “everything in the world is the province of the pope,” that St. Peter had been commissioned by Christ “to govern not only the universal Church but all the secular world.”
Quote ID: 4699
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 418
Section: 3H
The reforms that Innocent introduced all through his pontificate were summed up and confirmed by the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, one of the three most important ecumenical councils of the Catholic church, the other two being the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century.
Quote ID: 4700
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 419
Section: 3A3B
The Fourth Lateran Council’s listing of marriage as a sacrament was an important step in a trend that had been gaining momentum in the previous century- demanding a church ceremony for legitimation of a marriage. In the year 1000 the majority of people in Christian Europe were not married in a church ceremony. Marriage involved Germanic-style cohabitation, frequently signified by the giving of a ring. By 1200 perhaps half the people in Western Europe, particularly among the wealthier and more literate classes, were married by a priest.…
This was a way of increasing the importance of the priesthood in everyday life.
Quote ID: 4701
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 419
Section: 3H
Innocent greatly expanded the system of papal legates as a way of bringing the bishops of western Europe under closer control by Rome.
Quote ID: 4702
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 420
Section: 3H
The pontificate of Innocent III thus witnessed a general increase in the legal powers of the papacy as the high court of Christendom and the refinement of the legal institutions of the church.
Quote ID: 4703
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 421
Section: 3H
Accordingly, in 1199 Innocent levied the first general income tax on European churchmen for papal needs. Its great success made it the first of a variety of taxes levied by the thirteenth-century papacy on the clergy.
Quote ID: 4704
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 421
Section: 3H
By 1205 he had firmly established the authority in his own city. Since Rome lived largely off the business of the curia, it could not long withstand the demand of the pope to control its municipal government. Innocent had even greater success with the patrimony of St. Peter, and during his pontificate the papal states attained the dimensions that they retained until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Quote ID: 4705
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 422
Section: 3H
In 1212 Innocent recognized young Frederick II as king of Germany, after first extorting from Frederick the promise that he would abdicate as king of Naples and Sicily when he established his effective rule in Germany.
Quote ID: 4706
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 423
Section: 3H
Finally Innocent encouraged Philip Augustus to prepare for the invasion of England under the papal banner, and John, terrified that he would lose England to his great enemy as he had lost most of his continental possessions, abnegated himself before the pope. He not only accepted Langton as archbishop, but he became the pope’s vassal and made England the fief of the papacy. These sensational events seemed to demonstrate that no king could withstand for long the will of the papacy.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Wow
Quote ID: 4707
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 423
Section: 3H
When the titanic northern princess arrived in France, Philip changed his mind and refused to accept her as his wife. The affair dragged on for years until Innocent became pope and adopted his accustomed drastic measures, including the leveling of a papal interdict on France that forced Philip to give way.
Quote ID: 4708
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 424
Section: 3H
The fourth crusade of 1204, which Innocent had proclaimed, had been turned by the Venetians from its initial aim of fighting the Moslems to the attack and capture of Constantinople. Innocent readily accepted the change in plans because he saw the Latin Kingdom of Constantinople as the means of bringing the Greeks back into union with the Latin church and under the authority of the papacy.
Quote ID: 4709
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 424
Section: 3H
The Albigensian crusade took on the qualities of a land grab. The northern barons, led by one Simon de Montfort, a lord from the Ile-de-France, indiscriminately attacked the heretics and the orthodox and perpetrated bloodbaths in the southern cities.
Quote ID: 4710
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 425
Section: 3H
The first and main aim of the court of Inquisition was to persuade and pressure defendants to confess and recant. For those who did so, on first offense, the normal penalty was mild. But those who refused to confess and who remained under suspicion of heresy and subversion of the Roman church were put to torture in Roman law’s traditional manner of getting at the truth.
Quote ID: 4711
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 426
Section: 3H
No one would claim that the Inquisitorial courts were liberal institutions. These courts used torture in the Roman manner, did not allow defendants to confront or often even to know the names of their accusers, sorely harassed and frightened people, and confiscated substantial property of the wealthy and high-born.
Quote ID: 4712
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 203 Page: 426
Section: 3H
The heretics were enemies of Christian civilization and had to be eliminated - by persuasion, if possible, or by force, if necessary. St. Augustine had propounded such a doctrine, and it became much more meaningful when the Latin church was confronted with the mass movement of popular heresy around 1200.
Quote ID: 4713
Time Periods: 457
Book ID: 203 Page: 426
Section: 3H
Nothing, as Innocent said, was outside the province of the papacy, and he felt compelled to legislate not only on the matter of heretics, but on the treatment of the Jews. He forbade attempts to convert them to Christianity by force, but he advocated ghettoization- their exclusion as social pariahs from European society. The Fourth Lateran Council decreed that Jews should wear a yellow label so they could easily be distinguished as outcasts.
Quote ID: 4714
Time Periods: 7
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