The Age of Faith

by Will Durant

  Differences of language, liturgy, and doctrine during these centuries drove Latin and Greek Christianity further and further apart, like a biological species divided in space and diversified in time. Greek liturgy, ecclesiastical vestments, vessels, and ornaments were more complex, ornate, and artistically wrought than those of the West; the Greek cross had equal arms; the Greeks prayed standing, the Latins kneeling; the Greeks baptized by immersion, the Latins by aspersion; marriage was forbidden to Latin, permitted to Greek, priests; Latin priests shaved, Greek priests had contemplative beards. The Latin clergy specialized in politics, the Greek in theology; heresy almost always rose in an East that had inherited the Greek passion for defining the infinite. From the old Gnostic heresies of Bardesanes in Syria, and perhaps from the westward movement of Manichean ideas, there arose in Armenia, about 660, a sect of Paulicians that took its name from St. Paul, rejected the Old Testament, the sacraments, the reverence paid to images, the symbolism of the cross. Like some advancing pullulation these groups and theories spread through the Near East into the Balkans, Italy, and France. They bore heroically the most merciless persecutions, and still survive as remnants in the Molokhani, the Khlysti, and the Dukhobors.

  The monothelite controversy was more agitated by the emperors than by the people. And doubtless the people were not responsible for the filioque that so tragically advanced the schism of Greek from Latin Christianity. The Nicene Creed had spoken of “the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the Father”—ex patre procedit; for 250 years this sufficed; but in 589 a church council at Toledo made the statement read ex patre filioque procedit—“proceedeth from the Father and the Son”; this addition was accepted in Gaul, and zealously adopted by Charlemagne. The Greek theologians protested that the Holy Ghost proceeded not from but through the Son. The popes held the balance patiently for a time, and not until the eleventh century was the filioque officially entered into the Latin creed.

  Meanwhile a struggle of wills was added to the conflict of ideas. Among the monks who had fled from Iconoclastic oppression was Ignatius, son of the Emperor Michael I. In 840 the Empress Theodora recalled the monk, and made him patriarch. He was a man of piety and courage; he denounced the prime minister Caesar Bardas, who had divorced his wife and lived with the widow of his son; and when Bardas persisted in incest Ignatius excluded him from the Church. Bardas banished Ignatius, and raised to the patriarchate the most accomplished scholar of the age (858). Photius (820?–91) was a master of philology, oratory, science, and philosophy; his lectures at the University of Constantinople had drawn to him a group of devoted students, to whom he opened his library and his home. Shortly before his promotion to the patriarchal see he had completed an encyclopedic Myriobiblion in 280 chapters, each of which reviewed and sampled an important book; through this vast compilation many passages of classic literature were preserved. His broad culture raised Photius above the fanaticism of the populace, which could not understand why he remained on such good terms with the emir of Crete. His sudden elevation from layman to patriarch offended the clergy of Constantinople; Ignatius refused to resign, and appealed to the bishop of Rome. Nicholas I sent legates to Constantinople to inquire into the case; and in letters to the Emperor Michael III and Photius he laid down the principle that no ecclesiastical matter of grave moment should be decided anywhere in Christendom without the consent of the pope. The Emperor called a church council, which ratified the appointment of Photius, and the Pope’s legates joined in the confirmation. When they returned to Rome Nicholas repudiated them as having exceeded their instructions; he ordered the Emperor to reinstate Ignatius; and when his command was ignored he excommunicated Photius (863). Bardas threatened to send an army to depose Nicholas; the Pope, in an eloquent reply, scornfully pointed to the Emperor’s submission to the marauding Slavs and Saracens.

  We have not invaded Crete; we have not depopulated Sicily; we have not subdued Greece; we have not burned the churches in the very suburbs of Constantinople; yet while these pagans with impunity conquer, burn, and lay waste [your territories], we, Catholic Christians, are menaced with the vain terror of your arms. Ye release Barabbas, and kill Christ.27

  Photius and the Emperor called another church council, which excommunicated the Pope (867), and denounced the “heresies” of the Roman Church—among them the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, the shaving of priestly beards, and the enforced celibacy of the clergy; “from this usage,” said Photius, “we see in the West so many children who do not know their fathers.”

  While Greek messengers were bearing these pleasantries to Rome, the situation was suddenly changed (867) by the accession of Basil I, who had murdered Caesar Bardas and had superintended the assassination of Michael III. Photius denounced the new Emperor as a murderer, and refused him the sacraments. Basil called a church council, which obediently deposed, insulted, and banished Photius, and restored Ignatius. But when Ignatius soon thereafter died, Basil recalled Photius; a council reinstated him as patriarch; and (Nicholas I having died) Pope John VIII approved. The schism of East and West was for a moment postponed by the death of the protagonists.

  V. THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF EUROPE: 529–1054

  The most momentous event in the religious history of these centuries was not the quarrel of the Greek with the Latin Church, but the rise of Islam as a challenge to Christianity in both East and West. The religion of Christ had hardly consolidated its victories over the pagan Empire and the heresies when suddenly its most fervid provinces were torn from it, and with alarming ease, by a faith that scorned both the theology and the ethics of Christianity. Patriarchs still sat, by Moslem tolerance, in the sees of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria; but the Christian glory was departed from those regions; and what Christianity remained in them was heretical and nationalist. Armenia, Syria, and Egypt had set up church hierarchies quite independent of either Constantinople or Rome. Greece was saved to Christianity; there the monks triumphed over the philosophers, and the great monastery of the Holy Lavra, established on Mt. Athos in 961, rivaled the majesty of the Parthenon, which had become a Christian church. Africa still had many Christians in the ninth century, but they were rapidly diminishing under the handicaps of Moslem rule. In 711 most of Spain was lost to Islam. Defeated in Asia and Africa, Christianity turned north, and resumed the conquest of Europe.

  Italy, bravely but narrowly saved from the Saracens, was divided between the Greek and Latin forms of Christianity. Almost on the dividing line was Monte Cassino. Under the long rule (1058-87) of Abbot Desiderius the monastery reached the zenith of its fame. From Constantinople he brought not only two magnificent bronze doors, but craftsmen who adorned the interiors with mosaics, enamels, and artistry in metal, ivory, and wood. The monastery became almost a university, with courses in grammar, classical as well as Christian literature, theology, medicine, and law. Following Byzantine models, the monks executed exceptionally fine illuminated manuscripts, and copied in a beautiful book hand the classics of pagan Rome; some classics were only thus preserved. In Rome the Church, under Pope Boniface IV and his successors, instead of permitting the further disintegration of pagan temples, reconsecrated them to Christian use and care: the Pantheon was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and All Martyrs (609), the temple of Janus became the church of St. Dionysius, the temple of Saturn became the church of the Saviour. Leo IV (847-55) renewed and embellished St. Peter’s; and through the growth of the papacy and the coming of pilgrims, a polyglot suburb grew around that group of ecclesiastical buildings which took its name from the ancient Vatican Hill.

  France was now the richest possession of the Latin Church. The Merovingian kings, confident of buying heaven after enjoying polygamy and murder, showered the bishoprics with lands and revenues. Here, as elsewhere, the Church received legacies from penitent magnates and devout heiresses; Chilperic’s prohibition of such bequests was soon canceled by Gunthram. By one of the many pleasantries of history, the Gallic clergy were almost wholly recruited
from the Gallo-Roman population; the converted Franks knelt at the feet of those whom they had conquered, and gave back in pious donations what they had stolen in war.28 The clergy were the ablest, best educated, and least immoral element in Gaul; they almost monopolized literacy; and though a small minority led scandalous lives, most of them labored faithfully to give schooling and morals to a population suffering from the greed and wars of their lords and kings. The bishops were the chief secular as well as religious authorities in their dioceses; and their tribunals were the favorite resort of litigants even in non-ecclesiastical concerns. Everywhere they took under their protection orphans and widows, paupers and slaves. In many dioceses the Church provided hospitals; one such hôtel-Dieu—“inn of God”—was opened in Paris in 651. St. Germain, Bishop of Paris in the second half of the sixth century, was known throughout Europe for his work in raising funds—and spending his own—to emancipate slaves. Bishop Sidonius of Mainz banked the Rhine; Bishop Felix of Nantes straightened the course of the Loire; Bishop Didier of Cahors constructed aqueducts. St. Agobard (779-840), Archbishop of Lyons, was a model of religion and a foe of superstition; he condemned trial by duel or ordeal, the worship of images, the magical explanation of storms, and the fallacies involved in the prosecutions for witchcraft; he was “the clearest head of his time.”29 Hincmar, the aristocratic primate of Reims (845-82), presided over a score of church councils, wrote sixty-six books, served as prime minister to Charles the Bald, and almost established a theocracy in France.

  In each country Christianity took on the qualities of the national temperament. In Ireland it became mystic, sentimental, individualistic, passionate; it adopted the fairies, the poetry, the wild and tender imagination of the Celt; the priests inherited the magic powers of the Druids and the myths of the bards; and the tribal organization favored a centrifugal looseness in the structure of the Church—almost every locality had an independent “bishop.” More numerous and influential than the bishops and priests were the monks who, in groups seldom numbering more than twelve, formed half-isolated and mostly autonomous monasteries throughout the island, recognizing the pope as head of the Church, but submitting to no external control. The earlier monks lived in separate cells, practicing a somber asceticism and meeting only for prayer; a later generation—the “Second Order of Irish Saints”—diverged from this Egyptian tradition, studied together, learned Greek, copied manuscripts, and established schools for clerics and laity. From the Irish schools in the sixth and seventh centuries a succession of renowned and redoubtable saints passed over into Scotland, England, Gaul, Germany, and Italy to revitalize and educate a darkened Christianity. “Almost all Ireland,” wrote a Frank about 850, “comes flocking to our shores with a troop of philosophers.”30 As Germanic invasions of Gaul and Britain had driven scholars from those lands to Ireland, so now the wave returned, the debt was paid; Irish missionaries flung themselves upon the victorious pagan Angles, Saxons, Norwegians, and Danes in England, and upon the illiterate and half-barbarous Christians of Gaul and Germany, with the Bible in one hand and classic manuscripts in the other; and for a time it seemed that the Celts would win back through Christianity the lands they had lost to force. It was in the Dark Ages that the Irish spirit shone with its strongest light.

  The greatest of these missionaries was St. Columba. We know him well through the biography written (c. 679) by Adamnan, one of his successors at Iona. Columba was born at Donegal in 521, of royal stock; like Buddha he was a saint who could have been a king. At school in Moville he showed such devotion that his schoolmaster named him Columbkille—Column of the Church. From the age of twenty-five he founded a number of churches and monasteries, of which the most famous were at Derry, Durrow, and Kells. But he was a fighter as well as a saint, “a man of powerful frame and mighty voice”;31 his hot temper drew him into many quarrels, at last into war with King Diarmuid; a battle was fought in which, we are told, 5000 men were killed; Columba, though victorious, fled from Ireland (563), resolved to convert as many souls as had fallen in that engagement at Cooldrevna. He now founded on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, one of the most illustrious of medieval monasteries. Thence he and his disciples brought the Gospel to the Hebrides, Scotland, and northern England. And there, after converting thousands of pagans and illuminating 300 “noble books,” he died, in prayer at the altar, in his seventy-eighth year.

  Kindred to him in spirit and name was St. Columban. Born in Leinster about 543, he does not enter history till we find him, aged thirty-two, establishing monasteries in the wilds of the Vosges Mountains of France. At Luxeuil he instructed his novices:

  You must fast every day, pray every day, work every day, read every day. A monk must live under the rule of one father, and in the society of many brethren, that he may learn humility from one, patience from another, silence from a third, gentleness from a fourth…. He must go to bed so tired that he will fall asleep on the way.32

  Punishments were severe, usually by flogging: six stripes for coughing when beginning a psalm, or neglecting to manicure the nails before saying Mass, or smiling during services, or striking the teeth on the chalice at communion; twelve for omitting grace at meal; fifty for being late at prayers, one hundred for engaging in a dispute, two hundred for speaking familiarly with a woman.33 Despite this reign of terror there was no lack of novices; Luxeuil had sixty monks, many from rich families. They lived on bread, vegetables, and water, cleared forests, plowed fields, planted and reaped, fasted and prayed. Here Columban established the laus perennis, or unending praise: all day and night, through relays of monks, litanies were to rise to Jesus, Mary, and the Saints.34 A thousand monasteries like Luxeuil are a pervasive element in the medieval scene.

  The stern temper that framed this rule allowed no compromise with other views; and Columban, who banned disputes, found himself in repeated quarrels with the bishops—whose authority he ignored—with secular officials—whose interferences he repelled—and even with the popes. For the Irish celebrated Easter according to a reckoning practiced by the early Church but abandoned by her in 343. In a consequent conflict with the Gallic clergy these appealed to Gregory the Great; Columban rejected the Pope’s instructions, saying, “The Irish are better astronomers than you Romans,” and bade Gregory accept the Irish mode of calculation or be “looked upon as a heretic and repudiated with scorn by the churches of the West.”35 The rebellious Irishman was expelled from Gaul (609) for denouncing the wickedness of Queen Brunhild; he was put by force on a vessel bound for Ireland; the ship was driven back to France; Columban crossed the forbidden land and preached to the pagans of Bavaria. He could hardly have been as terrible a man as his rule and career picture him, for we are told that squirrels perched confidently on his shoulders and ran in and out of his cowl.36 Leaving a fellow Irishman to found (613) the monastery of St. Gall on Lake Constance, he painfully crossed the St. Gotthard Pass, and established the monastery of Bobbio in Lombardy in 613. There, two years later, in the austerity of his solitary cell, he died.

  Tertullian mentions Christians in Britain in 208; Bede speaks of St. Alban as dying in the persecution by Diocletian; British bishops attended the Council of Sardica (347). Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, went to Britain in 429 to suppress the Pelagian heresy.37 William of Malmesbury avers that the Bishop, presumably on a later visit, routed an army of Saxons by having his British converts shout “Hallelujah!” at them.38 From this vigorous condition British Christianity pined and almost died in the Anglo-Saxon invasions; we hear nothing of it again until, at the end of the sixth century, the disciples of Columba entered Northumberland, and Augustine, with seven other monks, reached England from Rome. Doubtless Pope Gregory had learned that Ethelbert, the pagan King of Kent, had married Bertha, a Christian Merovingian princess. Ethelbert listened courteously to Augustine, remained unconvinced, but gave him freedom to preach, and provided food and lodging for him and his fellow monks in Canterbury. At last (599) the Queen prevailed upon the King to accept the n
ew faith; and many subjects followed their example. In 601 Gregory sent the pallium to Augustine, who became the first in an impressive line of distinguished archbishops of Canterbury. Gregory was lenient to the lingering paganism of England; he allowed the old temples to be christened into churches, and permitted the custom of sacrificing oxen to the gods to be gently transformed into “killing them to the refreshing of themselves to the praise of God”;39 so that the English merely changed from eating beef when they praised God to praising God when they ate beef.

  Another Italian missionary, Paulinus, carried Christianity to Northumberland (627). Oswald, King of Northumberland, invited the monks of Iona to come and preach to his people; and to help their work he gave them the island of Lindisfarne off the east coast. There St. Aidan (634) founded a monastery that glorified its name by missionary devotion and the splendor of its illuminated manuscripts. There and at Melrose Abbey St. Cuthbert (635?—87) left behind him loving memories of his patience, piety, good humor, and good sense. The holiness of such men, and perhaps the peace and security they enjoyed amid recurrent wars, brought many neophytes to the monasteries and nunneries that now arose in England. Despite occasional lapses into the ways of common men, the monks gave dignity to work by their labor in woods and fields; here too, as in France and Germany, they led the advance of civilization against marsh and jungle as well as against illiteracy, violence, lechery, drunkenness, and greed. Bede thought that too many Englishmen were entering monasteries; that too many monasteries were being founded by nobles to put their property beyond taxation; and that the tax-exempt lands of the Church were absorbing too much of England’s soil; too few soldiers were left, he warned, to preserve England from invasion.40 Soon the Danes, then the Normans, would prove the worldly wisdom of the monk.