Dictionary and Thesaurus
Think about it for a moment. Christianity was not legally recognized and
did not begin its evolution its real institutional evolution until 313,
two years after the death of Diocletian, the emperor who had divided the
empire. The eastern had of the empire was already much different from the
West, but the two regions had been held together by a centralized
government supporting unifying institutions. Now that unity had been
broken and the two imperial governments -- eastern and western --
were no longer investing money and energy in maintaining it, the eastern
and western halves of the old Roman empire began to develop in different
directions. Christianity was part of that situation, and so, throughout
the fourth century, the Church in the West slowly began to develop a
character and organization distinct from the Church in the East.
This was not a steady or obvious matter, since during the first
quarter-century of its evolution the imperial Church had been part of the
empire that had been reunified by the emperor Constantine, and Constantine
attempted to create a Christian Church that would be a unifying force
within the empire. For it to be so, the Church had to be universal, and so
Constantine began dismantling the old state religion and turning its
buildings, assets and functions over to the Christian Church. As an aside,
however, he confiscated the gold owned by the other religions and used it
to restore the gold currency, a reform that Diocletian had attempted but
failed to institute. With its greatly expanded material base, the Church
needed more financial and administrative skill than its personnel was able
to provide.
This difficulty solved itself, by and large. Constantine established that,
like many other Roman administrative functions, the Church should operate
as a local institution with its centers located in the civitates,
the municipalities that formed the basic governmental unit of the empire.
These positions were filled, at least at first, through the election of
bishops by members of the local community, approved by a representative of
the imperial government and confirmed by a ceremony called
investiture in which the candidate was "clothed" in the symbols and
uniform of his office. The ceremony of investiture was conducted by two or
more neighboring bishops and so represented the Church's ratification of
the selection. This concentration of Church authority in urban centers
made little difference in the East, where the population was denser and
more sophisticated, and where there was little distinction between urban
dwellers and residents of country villages. This was not the case in the
West, however, and placing the focus of Christianity in the urban centers
of this region effectively delayed the conversion of the inhabitants of
the rural areas of the civitates, called the pagus. It was
not until the seventh and eighth centuries that appreciable progress was
made in converting the country- dwellers, pagans, of the West to
Christianity.
On the whole, however, this practice allowed local communities to choose
the sort of man they needed as bishop. Some chose spiritual leaders
unversed in the ways of the secular world, and others chose rich and
experienced men from the Roman nobility. In the West, at least, this had
the side effect of reintegrating the Roman senatorial nobility -- who had
been exempt from almost all civil responsibility -- back into society. It
also had the effect of placing direction of the Church into the hands of
men with little knowledge of the nature or meaning of the Christian
faith.
Consequently, one of Constantine's primary concerns was to establish a
clear and commonly accepted definition of the Christian faith, especially
since there appeared to be considerable dispute among the early Christians
over the nature and status of Jesus. Although the details are complex, the
basic division was between the followers of a priest by the name of Arius,
who supported Arianism. Very roughly, the Arians held that Jesus
was a human being endowed with divine powers. Their opponents, followers
of Bishop Athanasius, believed that Jesus was made out of the same
substance as God the Creator and so was equal to and identical with both
Him and the Holy Spirit. In order to settle this dispute, Constantine
called an assembly of the Christian bishops to meet in the city of Nicaea
(the eastern imperial capital at the time) in 325. Although the Council of
Nicaea decided on a definition of Christianity that followed the beliefs
of the followers of Athanasius, this did not settle the conflict within
the Church. Constantine and some of his successors tried to move the
Church to a compromise position closer to Arianism, but, by 381, the
Church finally and firmly embraced the Athanasian Creed. Only for a
short time during this period, had the Church accepted Arianism, but it
was during this period that a missionary by the name of Ulfilas
carried the Christian message to the Germans. The result was that, even as
the imperial Church settled on the Athanasian form of Christianity, their
German neighbors in the West were adopting the Arian form.
The bishops who had assembled at Nicaea also realized that they needed
some less cumbersome organization, although Constantine might have
preferred dealing with a quite decentralized Church. They decided to
establish the bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome as
patriarchs, leaders of the bishops in their regions. As soon as
Constantinople had been as established as the new Roman capital, its
bishop was admitted to this select group. If Constantine had hoped that
the Council of Nicaea would establish a uniform faith that would help
unify the empire, he was disappointed. He failed to obtain an accepted and
universal definition of Christianity, and he saw his assembly adopt a
regional organization that would almost guarantee that the Church would
evolve in different directions in different parts of the empire.
There was another area that needed regularization, however. Over the
years, a vast collection of "Christian" literature had grown up. Some of
these works were copies of accounts from the period around 60 A.D. and
represented authentic records of the early Church, while others were
fragmentary or even fabulous stories, some written with pious intent and
others as mystic revelations, adaptations of tales of pagan heroes, or
books of miracles and wonders. Constantine appointed a commission of
scholars to sift through these materials, choosing those that they
believed to be authentic, editing out spurious or unwanted materials, and
preparing a standard edition of their canon, or accepted collection
of works. The work they produced was the Septuagint, written in the
form of Greek that was the common language of the Eastern empire, and the
basis of what is generally called the New Testament.
This lasted a bit longer than the emperor's attempt to establish a common
definition of the Faith and something other than a regionalized Church,
but it too finally succumbed to the forces that were driving the East and
West in different directions. Between 385 and 415, a resident of Rome by
the name of Jerome, who had taken up the monastic life in Judaea, devoted
himself to preparing translating the Greek and Hebrew books of the Bible
into Latin. This translation, the famous Vulgate (meaning
"common"), although differing in certain important respects from the
Septuagint, became the standard form of the Bible used in Western Europe
and established yet another significant difference between eastern and
western Christianity.
Constantine had succeeded in one respect, however, he had established, for
a time, the principle that the emperor played the leading role in Church
affairs. This principle, known as caesaro-papism, seemed acceptable
to the eastern patriarchs, but was opposed by the bishop of Rome and other
western leaders, who rejected the idea that the Church was primarily a
secular institution or that the practice of the Faith could be regulated
by someone without a spiritual mandate such as Jesus and the Holy Spirit
on the day of Pentecost had given the disciples and their successors. By
390, Ambrose, bishop of Milan, required the emperor Theodosius (379-395)
to do penance for executing a number of Christians. In the West, not only
was caesaro-papism rejected, but there was a strong belief that the
emperor was subject to Church leaders in spiritual and moral matters.
The Council of Nicaea had made another decision with unforeseen
consequences. By proclaiming only one patriarchate in the West, that of
Rome, they had virtually assured that there would be a greater unity in
the western Church that in the East. Moreover, the ecclesiastical politics
of the day elevated the position of the bishops of Rome within the Church
as a whole. Constantinople and Jerusalem usually were on the other side of
any dispute from Antioch and Alexandria, so the bishop of Rome generally
held the balance of power and eventually gained the reputation of
"ever-orthodox," and never supporting a position that was eventually
discarded
In the course of the early fourth century, the bishops of Rome became the
accepted secular rulers of the city of Rome itself. The city had decayed
materially, its population had diminished, and it was quite indefensible,
as the sack by the Visigoths under Alaric in 410 had shown. So the capital
was moved elsewhere, to more defensible positions closer to the frontiers
where the emperor would be better situated to lead his armies and defend
the empire's borders. Sirmium in modern Croatia, Triers near the
French-German border, and Milan and Bologna in northern Italy all served
as the imperial capital until, at the opening of the fifth century, it was
established at Ravenna, a small town located on an "island" in the midst
of the marshes of the Po River's delta, where it was protected from land
attack and had a port to accommodate naval reinforcements if the need
should arise. Here it remained until the very end of the Roman empire in
the West.
Rome itself was forgotten and when, in 453, Attila the Hun appeared before
the city, it was Pope Leo I the Great (440-461) who negotiated with
the Hunnic Chieftain on behalf of the city of Rome and arranged the
tribute that purchased his withdrawal. Leo did more than that, however. He
claimed that the bishops of Rome were the heirs to Peter, who had died in
the city, and so had inherited Peter's preeminence in spiritual affairs,
which Jesus had granted in the famous words "Thou art Peter and on this
rock, I will found my Church," going on to grant Peter the power to "bind
and loose" in both Earth and heaven. Later popes would use this principle,
known as the "Petrine Doctrine" to claim a supreme position among all
other churchmen.
Other things were happening in the West. Throughout the fourth century, a
series of excellent scholars and philosophers had arisen to deal with some
of the basic problems facing the Church as it was drawn into the political
structure of a decaying western imperial administration. Three of these
men stand out as the Latin Fathers: Jerome (345-420), who
translated the Greek and Hebrew Bibles into a standard Latin bible for the
western Church; Ambrose (340-397), who devoted himself to defining the
roles and function of bishops, and presented and defended the position
that bishops were superior to emperors in spiritual and ecclesiastical
affairs. This direct rejection of caesaro-papism was perhaps a reflection
of the lesser power exercised by western emperors, but it effectively
differentiated the western Church from its eastern counterpart. The most
important of the Latin Fathers was doubtless the philosopher, Augustine of
Hippo (354-430), who considered and formulated the most basic of Christian
doctrine, answering such questions as: If God is wholly good and made
all things, where did evil come from? If God is whole good and is
all-powerful, why do the virtuous suffer and the evil prosper? If God is
all-knowing, does that mean that the future is already fixed, and He knows
who will achieve salvation and who will be damned? But if he is all
powerful, couldn't he change that future and save the sinners from
damnation? But if everything is already determined and God will not
interfere, and it is already decided who will be saved and who will be
damned, why should the individual worry? He can't do anything to change
matters. These three men, together with other western thinkers, gave the
western Church a unique character.
During the first half of the sixth century, the Church had to face the
difficulty of preserving itself under the rule of Germanic kings who were
all too often followers of Arianism. Although this situation caused
the western Church great trouble, it also placed the western Christians in
a position in which they could not afford the weakness of disunion, so its
persecutions at the hands of the Arians may actually have strengthened the
western Church, It had to be strong to survive.
After the reconquest of the West by the emperor Justinian, the Church had
to face and determined Byzantine effort to establish the principle of
caesaro-papism in the West, and this ended only with the invasion of Italy
by the rather unsophisticated Lombard tribes. Byzantine control over Italy
disintegrated, and the bishops of Rome found themselves the sole champions
of Roman culture, or what was left of it, and "true" Christianity in the
entire West. This power vacuum was filled by Pope Gregory I the
Great (590-604). Trained in law, as many of the other western
churchmen, he was a masterful administrator, who used his family's not
inconsiderable wealth, mainly in the form of fertile lands in Sicily, to
endow the Church and to put its operations on a firm financial basis. In
addition, he wrote voluminously, always trying to establish a more unified
western Church and a better-equipped and more aware episcopacy to lead the
western Church. Perhaps even more important, he set the conversion of the
pagans as the primary function of the Church and sent missionaries out to
convert the English, among others. Although there would be problems in the
future, the western Church had now established its peculiar identity. It
was a centralized church, headed by a pope who was secure in ruling the
land on which his capital was located, and so it was less prone to
religio-political strife than the eastern Church. It was less interested
in theological disputes of fine points of doctrine that in establishing a
rational and coherent set of rules and regulations to govern its affairs.
Finally, it had a sense of active purpose. The clergy of the West might
yearn for the solitary life spent in mortification of the flesh and
seeking God in some desert waste, but there was little time for such
self-indulgence when pagan nations were waiting to hear the Good News and
to have their sins of scarlet washed as white as snow in the waters of
baptism.
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