Growth of Church Institutions, The
The Rev. Edwin Hatch, M. A., D.D., (Reader In Ecclesiastical History In The University Of Oxford Sec
Number of quotes: 42
Book ID: 230 Page: 4
Section: 2A5
The justification of the existence of differences is to be found in the nature of Christianity itself. It was designed to be at once universal and permanent, to embrace all races of mankind, and to meet the needs of successive ages. The presumption is that, this being so, [the Faith] was also designed to adapt its outward forms to the inevitable changes of human society, and that its earliest institutions were meant to be modified when it gathered new races of men into its fold, and came into close contact with new elements of human life. The presumption does not run counter to any words, or to any clear inference from any words, of the New Testament, and it has been universally accepted by all Christian communities.
Quote ID: 5766
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 230 Page: 9
Section: 4B
In Gaul, and Spain every important city had its colony of Roman settlers, in whose hands were not only the executive and judicial functions of the imperial government, but also for the most part, the municipal administration.[also page 9 – used this part of the quote] In the empire of the first three centuries the Roman colony formed also the centre of that worship of the Emperor which, rather than the worship of Jupiter and Mars, was the official religion. In the later empire it formed the centre and nucleus of Christianity.
Quote ID: 5768
Time Periods: 12345
Book ID: 230 Page: 10
Section: 3A1,3A4,3D2
Here and there, on the large estates of Roman owners, there was a chapel for Christian service; but the mass of the Celtic peasantry was unconverted. The familiar word “pagan” or “villager” comes to us from this time, and indicates this feature of it. Christianity was the religion of the governing classes and their immediate dependants; it belonged to the cities and not to the country; it was almost a part of the imperial regime.Upon this state of things came the slowly rolling waves of Teutonic conquest.
Quote ID: 5769
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 230 Page: 11/12
Section: 3A1,3A3,3A4,3D2,4B
The Celts and Romans still formed the mass of the population. They retained their customs and their laws. The framework of the imperial organization remained without material change. And within that framework two features, the one of German character and the other of German usage, preserved much that was old, and laid the foundation of much that was to come. The one feature was that the Germans loved the country rather than the town, and that consequently, though great estates changed hands, the cities were left for the most part to their former inhabitants. The other feature was that, following their traditional usage, they did not impose their own laws upon the inhabitants of the territories which they conquered, but allowed each race to retain, and to be judged by, its own legal code. The general result was that in the cities was gathered together almost all that survived of Rome; the schools preserved the Roman tongue, the courts preserved Roman law, the Church preserved Roman Christianity. Of all this survival of Roman life, the bishop of the civitas was the centre. Round him the aristocracy of the old Roman families naturally gathered. He symbolised to them their past glories and their ancient liberties. He was their refuge in trouble, and their chief shield against oppression. His house was not infrequently the old praetorium, the residence of the Roman governor. Even his dress was that of a Roman official. In him the empire still lived.3A
Quote ID: 5770
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 230 Page: 12/13
Section: 3A1,3A4,3D2
He came to have a seat side by side with the Teutonic graf or comes, and ultimately had a jurisdiction of his own. His wealth arose partly from the practice of the Roman landowners, sometimes in default of heirs and sometimes in spite of them, bequeathing their lands to him as the head of the political party to which they belonged; and partly from the growing custom on the part of the non-Roman element in the population, of endowing the Church with property “in remedium animae,” i.e., to save their souls. The city bishop thus became in a large number of instances a great landowner. As such he not only was the dispenser of ample charities to the poor, but also had a large number of dependants in the serfs, or slaves, upon the Church lands. He was, in short, a personage of such wealth and power that the Frankish king, Chilperic, is reported to have said more than once, “Absolutely the only persons who reign are the bishops: our i.e. the royal influence has perished, and is transferred to the bishops of the cities.”{1}
Quote ID: 5771
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 230 Page: 18/19
Section: 2A5
The diocesan system as it now exists is the effect of a series of historical circumstances. It is impossible to defend every part of it as being primitive, nor is it necessary to do so. It is sufficient to show that it is the result of successive readaptations of the Church’s framework to the needs of the times. Behind those readaptations we may properly believe that the Holy Spirit has been working.
Quote ID: 5772
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 230 Page: 24
Section: 4B
For, as a rule, such communities had come into existence under very different conditions from those of the earlier Christian communities, whether in the East or the West. They were not the free associations of Christian colonies who met together, and elected their own officers. They were formed by the owners of great estates who, being themselves Romans and Christians, built chapels in which they and their households might worship, and round which the new converts from paganism gradually clustered. Their officers were not elected, but nominated. They were appointed, paid, and dismissed by the owner of the estate on which they served.
Quote ID: 5773
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 230 Page: 27/28
Section: 3D1
The pseudo-priests are much more numerous than Catholic priests; there are heretical pretenders, calling themselves bishops and presbyters, who never were ordained by any Catholic bishop, deluding the people, confusing and disturbing the ministries of the Church; there are false vagrants, adulterers, murderers, effeminate sacrilegious hypocrites; there are treasured slaves who have run away from their masters, slaves of the devil, transforming themselves into ministers of Christ; who, living as they please, without the control of a bishop, and having influential men as their protectors against bishops to prevent their wicked ways from being stopped, form separate congregations of the people who agree with them, and exercise their heretical ministry not in a Catholic Church, but in country places, in the cottages of peasants, where their uneducated folly may be concealed from the bishops.Pastor John’s Note: The disgust Roman Christians felt toward those who followed the New Testament pattern of service to God is expressed by Pope Zachary in AD 748
Quote ID: 7377
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 28
Section: 3D1,4B
It is pertinent to point out that the victory which was ultimately won was a victory not only of centralisation over independency, but also of Catholicism over Arianism.For both faith and discipline the crisis was supreme; and it is of singular importance to note that the reformation which shaped the history of the West in all subsequent centuries was effected, under God, by the co-operation of Church and State.
Quote ID: 5774
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 230 Page: 29
Section: 3A1,4B
Both the co-operation itself, and the form which it took, were due to the enthusiasm and genius of our great countryman Boniface. To him more than to any other single cause the main features of the ecclesiastical system of the West are due.
Quote ID: 5775
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 230 Page: 31
Section: 3A1,3D2
The precise means by which the new system was framed and enacted will be variously described as ecclesiastical, or civil, or both, according to the point of view of the narrator. The enactments are to be found, without variation of phrase, in the collections of Church councils and in those of Frankish laws; they are quoted sometimes as ecclesiastical canons, and sometimes as civil “capitularies.” The preamble, in almost all cases in which it has survived, recites that they were made by the head of the State, with the joint advice of clergy and laity.
Quote ID: 5776
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 230 Page: 38/39
Section: 3A1,3A2A,3G
It is important to note that, from the time of Charles the Great, a bishop on his visitation tour acted in a double capacity, partly as an officer of the Church, preserving the ancient tradition of ecclesiastical discipline, and partly as an officer of the State, exercising powers with which the State had armed him.....
The bishop in his visitation was commonly invested with a commission to inquire into cases of murder, adultery, and other wrongdoings “which are contrary to the law of God, and which Christian men ought to avoid.” He was, above all, to stamp out the remains of paganism. He was to be an active agent in carrying out the great policy of establishing a Christian empire.
....
The weapon with which he was armed was in the first instance the legitimate ecclesiastical weapon of excommunication. Any one who was found to be guilty of flagrant immorality, or of practising pagan rites, was excluded from the Church. And if the ecclesiastical weapon failed of its effect, the bishop might resort to the “secular arm.” In any case the king’s officers were bound to help him; and a determined resistance to his sentence involved the severest penalties of the civil law.
Quote ID: 5777
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 40
Section: 3A1,3D1,3G
It is certain that, at least for the time, the system was an enormous gain. Whatever be its merits or demerits in its abstract relation to Christianity, it must at least be credited with the great work of having saved the Churches of the West from a disintegration which would have involved for the clergy a revival of Arianism, and for the masses of the people a relapse into paganism.
Quote ID: 5778
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 44
Section: 2E3,4B
The owner of a church building claimed and exercised the right of appointing and dismissing its ministers at his pleasure and without reference to any other authority. In the city churches the ancient rule remained; their officers were appointed by the bishop with the approval of his council and of the whole community.
Quote ID: 5779
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 230 Page: 45
Section: 2E3,4B
It must be remembered that the mass of country churches were not, in the modern sense of the term, consecrated, and that those who had built them retained over them the same right of ownership which they had over other buildings on their estates. They could sell, alienate, or destroy them. They appointed officers to them as they appointed farm-bailiffs. There was no right of interference, either ecclesiastical or civil. It is obvious that in such cases discipline was impossible.
Quote ID: 5780
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 230 Page: 46/47
Section: 3G,3A2A
Charles the Great endeavoured to treat the matter with a strong hand;---“Let Your Utility be aware,” he writes in a circular letter or edict to his vassals and administrative officers, “that there has resounded in our ears an enormous presumption of some or you that you do not obey your bishops as the authority of the laws and canons requires; I mean that, with incredible temerity, you refuse to present presbyters to bishops: nay, more, you do not shrink from taking other men’s clerks, and venture to put them into your churches without the bishop’s consent....We therefore bid and require that no one whatever of our vassals, from the least to the greatest, venture to be disobedient to his bishop in things which pertain to God.... If any one take an opposite course, let him know that without doubt, unless he speedily amends his ways, he will give an account thereof in our presence”{1}
Quote ID: 5781
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 50
Section: 2E3
The Roman law continued to be of force. Indeed, it is probable that the Germans had no precedent or rule for the holding of property by what we should now call, “spiritual corporations.” That is to say, the bishop’s church continued to hold its property because it was governed by Roman law; the country churches could not hold property because neither in Roman nor in German law was there any precedent for their doing so.
Quote ID: 5782
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 52
Section: 2E3,3A1B
When country churches began to receive gifts of land, the city bishop was the only person who could legally hold them. In some cases he was not slow to claim them. However strongly a man might desire to specially benefit the church of his own district, and however much the ministers of such a church might need support, the city bishop was legally entitled to claim whatever was offered.
Quote ID: 5783
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 82
Section: 2E3
The rrapolkia was thus not a local area, but an aggregate of persons. It does not appear to have been applied to a local area until the Church was fully organised, and it was then applied to the area over which a bishop presided, that is to say, to what is now call a “diocese.”
Quote ID: 5784
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 230 Page: 85
Section: 2E3
But although the basis of the arrangement had been laid in Teutonic lands by pre-Christian agencies, the superstructure is wholly Christian, and may be traced mainly to the operation of two sets of causes, that is, partly to the regulations respecting the celebration of baptism, and partly to the regulations respecting the payment of tithes.
Quote ID: 5786
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 86
Section: 2E3
The regulation took the form of requiring that baptisteries should only exist in places in which the bishop appointed them. It was first made in one of the earliest councils of the Carlovingian Reformation, that which was held by Pippin at Vernon, Normandy, in 755.{1} The regulation had the effect of dividing all churches outside the bishop’s own church into two classes, those in which baptisms could be performed and those in which they could not.
Quote ID: 5787
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 88/89
Section: 3A1B
Exactly a century after the Council of Vernon, a council or parliament which was held by Lewis II at Pavia recites the complaint of the clergy that “some laymen who have churches on their own property....do not give their tithes to the churches where they receive baptism, preaching, confirmation, and the other sacraments of Christ, but assign them at their own pleasure to their own churches and their own clerks”{1} The complaint was listened to, and the distinction between churches to which tithes were paid and those to which they were not paid came to be even more important than the distinction between baptismal and non-baptismal churches, and served as the real ground-plan upon which the later parochial system was built.
Quote ID: 5788
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 92/93
Section: 3A1
In this, as in almost all similar cases, the organisation of the church followed the lines of the civil organisation of the country and the age in which that organisation began. The lines were already marked out, and there was no need for disturbing them. They were found in time to need subdivision, but it was only in rare cases that they were found to require rearrangement.
Quote ID: 5789
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 230 Page: 97
Section: 3A1B
In this way the parish became a prominent element in the later organisation of Christianity. The territorial idea completely ousted the original idea of a community or congregation. The members of the Church were not free to worship where they pleased, or to associate for religious purposes with whom they would.
Quote ID: 5790
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 102
Section: 3A1B
The evidence against the view that tithes have had a continuous and general existence in the Christian Church is negative, but at the same time conclusive. It is that for the first seven centuries they are hardly ever mentioned.
Quote ID: 5791
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 230 Page: 102/103
Section: 3A1B
Tithes as a Christian institution date, in fact, from the eighth century. They are one of the results of the great Carlovingian reformation. They are not strictly ecclesiastical in their origin, but came to the Church from the State. They were a rent paid for the leasing of church lands.
Quote ID: 5792
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 103
Section: 4B
The tenth or tithe of the produce was a traditional and customary rent for lands to leased.
Quote ID: 5793
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 230 Page: 107
Section: 3A2B
But both throughout the Middle Ages and until the present time tithes have preserved at least one indelible mark of their origin. Being originally a rent, and sometimes a rent for land of which the State had enforced the leasing, they shared with all other kinds of rent the nature of a contract. They were consequently a payment which the State could properly enforce. From time to time indeed, and under exceptional circumstances, the secular law has lent its aid to the enforcing of other claims of the Church against property. But its enforcement of the payment of tithes has been constant.
Quote ID: 5794
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 108
Section: 3A2B
Hence throughout the Middle Ages and to the present day tithes have been a legal charge upon property, and not the least of the bonds which in most Christian countries have bound the Church to the State.
Quote ID: 5795
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 109
Section: 3A2B
The earliest Eastern rule which specially mentions tithes is in the seventh book of the Apostolical Constitutions (c. 30), which expands a passage of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. It is as follows: “All firstfruits of the produce of the winepress and threshing-floor, of oxen and sheep, thou shalt give to the priests; all tithes thou shalt give to the orphan and the widow, to the poor and the stranger.”
Quote ID: 5796
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 230 Page: 112
Section: 3A2B
The earliest civil enactment on the subject is probably a law which Charlemagne made for Bavaria in 799,{1} which expressly quotes, and re-enacts in regard to tithes, the regulation of Pope Gelasius which has been given above.
Quote ID: 5798
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 114
Section: 3A2B
These regulations, which are contemporary with, and sometimes immediately added to, the original statements of the obligation of tithes, show beyond question that tithes were destined not only for the clergy, but also for the poor.
Quote ID: 5799
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 114/115
Section: 3A2A
And it can hardly be denied that whatever evidence exists in our own country for the payment of tithes at all in pre-Norman times exists also for their appropriation, not to the clergy only, but also to the poor.
Quote ID: 5800
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 141/142
Section: 4B
But a system which is the product of considerations of expediency tends also to be modified by considerations of expediency. In certain of its features the grouping of Churches according to Roman provinces, or combinations of provinces, has been permanent; but in certain other features it has given way to a system of grouping according to political divisions, in which the organisation of the Roman empire has been superseded or ignored. Provincial Churches have been succeeded by national Churches.
Quote ID: 5801
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 230 Page: 142/143
Section: 4B
Each kingdom found an ecclesiastical organisation existing, and endeavoured to incorporate it. The earlier bonds began to give way under the pressure of the new need of keeping the kingdom together. The kings gathered together the bishops and clergy within their domain, irrespective of the earlier arrangements.
Quote ID: 5802
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 230 Page: 143/144
Section: 4B
And when assembled in such mixed meetings of clergy and laity under the king’s authority, they did not attempt to draw a sharp distinction between secular and ecclesiastical affairs. Whatever affected the people at large came within the sphere of their control. Out of such meetings grew the sense of a unity which was not only political, but also ecclesiastical. The nation and the Church of the nation grew from the same roots and side by side. Each was independent of external control, but neither asserted an independence of the other.
Quote ID: 5803
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 230 Page: 152
Section: 4B
It was in this way, by the holding of meetings at which both the ecclesiastical and civil elements were represented, and which dealt with ecclesiastical no less than with civil questions, that there grew up the conceptions of both ecclesiastical and political unity which, more than physical force, welded together the diverse populations of what are now Spain, France, and England, each into a single whole. The older Roman arrangements lasted on, but only for limited purposes. The province was superseded by the nation in almost all respects, except that of internal discipline. The meetings of bishops in provincial councils tended to vanish under the influence of their meeting side by side with the nobles and civil officers in the more important national council. Of the ecclesiastical unit which was so formed the national council was the only representative.
Quote ID: 5804
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 230 Page: 154
Section: 4B
The great medieval institution of national Churches claims our respect as an instrument of spiritual good in the past.
Quote ID: 5805
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 157/158
Section: 3D2
The conversion of the Teutonic and Celtic races was a slower process than has sometimes been supposed. For several centuries after the adhesion of the Frankish kings to the Catholic faith, although the network of Christian organisation appeared to cover the greater part of the Frankish domain, Christianity was, in fact, only a thin veneer over the surface of a pagan society. It was the religion of the court, and of the survivors of the Roman population; but it was not the religion of the masses of the people. The Teutonic gods were openly worshipped. In some places their altars stood by the side of the Christian churches. It was thought not only that the two religions might coexist in the State, but also that the gods of their forefathers and the God of the Christians might be worshipped side by side. Even after the majority of the people began to come to Christian worship, and to receive the Christian sacraments, heathen practices lingered on a considerable scale.
Quote ID: 5806
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 230 Page: 159/160
Section: 3A1,4B
In the century which had immediately succeeded the collapse of the Roman administration the majority of the clergy were Romans, citizens of the Roman municipalities, imbued with Roman traditions, and on a higher level of civilisation than the greater part of those to whom they ministered. In the eighth century the clergy, as is shown by their names, were mostly Teutons or Celts; and they do not seem to have been far removed from the ordinary level of their countrymen. Not only had the Christian ministry become a profession and means of livelihood; it had also become a lucrative profession. The great increase in the wealth of the Christian churches had fostered the growth of a class of clergy who were almost completely secularised. They hunted; they hawked; they traded; they lent money upon usury. And with the secularisation of their office came the degradation of its ideal of living.Pastor John’s note: Hatch romanticizes Romanness.
Quote ID: 5807
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 230 Page: 163
Section: 4B
In a capitulary of Pippin for his kingdom of Lombardy in 782, {1} the bishop was required to compel his clergy to live under “canonical” order; and if he failed to do this, the king’s officer was to decline to treat them as clerks and to put them on a level with other freemen in regard to liability to military service. That this penalty was an onerous one may be inferred from the number of persons who became clerks in order to escape it.
Quote ID: 5808
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 230 Page: 226/227
Section: 4B
Nor can we believe that the form under which we ourselves live is final. The wisdom of our forefathers must yield to the wisdom of our contemporaries, and the wisdom of our contemporaries will in its turn yield to the wisdom of our children. And yet it is possible even for one who accepts this inevitable law of change to look with regret at some of the ancient forms which are passing into the world of shadows, and to express the hope that from the mists of the unrealised future there may come forth institutions as fruitful for good to the souls of men as those of the beautiful but irrecoverable past.
Quote ID: 5809
Time Periods: 6
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