But for decades after the council, it appeared that an Arian perspective on the person of Christ would carry the day and the conclusions of Nicaea would disappear in a theological and ecclesial dustbin. The Roman emperors were an important influence. A series of emperors beginning with Constantine understood their role to include the right to intervene in the affairs of the church, particularly when division within the church threatened the unity of the Roman Empire itself.
Thus, if a Roman emperor was disposed favorably toward Arian ideas—as Constantius and Valens were—bishops supporting the creed formulated at Nicaea could be severely punished, most often by being deposed and exiled. If an emperor favoring Nicaea was in power, Arian believers would suffer. Yes, the bishops of the church continued to play the major role in interpreting Scripture and constructing theology based on biblical exegesis. Yet behind the bishops and presbyters during and after the Council of Nicaea stood a series of Christian Roman emperors more than willing to intervene in the church's affairs and doctrine.
When a series of pro-Arian emperors arrived on the scene, Arianism spread like wildfire. Take the case of Constantine himself. Concerned over the growing rift within the church over Arius's ideas, Constantine both convened and intervened in the Council of Nicaea.
Rowan Williams observes that when Constantine viewed Arius as a schismatic, the emperor penned a letter to Arius "and his supporters which is extraordinary in its venom and abusiveness, dubbing Arius an 'Ares,' a god of war, who seeks to create strife and violence. Constantine was not averse to taking harsh legal steps to bring wayward theologians back in line. Williams notes that the emperor's acid reply to Arius grouped Arius and his supporters with Porphyry, "the great pagan critic of the church.
Within ten years of the Council of Nicaea, though, Constantine became convinced that Arius's ideas fell within the pale of orthodoxy, though the exact details of Arius's position—at least as represented to the emperor in the years following Nicaea—remain somewhat murky. What is clear, though, is that neither Constantine nor later sons such as Constans and Constantius were skilled biblical interpreters or theologians.
These Roman emperors were more concerned with preserving the unity of the church than engaging in prolonged debates over what to them often seemed theological nitpicking. Manlio Simonetti, for instance, comments that Constantine was "convinced that religious peace could be assured only by a broad concentration of moderate elements" and "was as averse to some of Arius's more radical opponents as he had been to the radicalism of the Arians.
It was Constantine who in A. Over the 56 years separating the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople, Roman emperors frequently deposed and exiled bishops and presbyters they deemed schismatic and heretical.
These actions created a long-lasting atmosphere of suspicion, intrigue, division, and hatred within the church. Eastern bishops who supported Nicaea suffered severely during the reign of Constantius. After the murder of Constantius's brother Constans in , the empire was consolidated under the rule of Constantius. It appeared that the entire Christian world had fallen into Arian hands. Though Constantius died in , successors were more concerned with maintaining the unity of the empire than with pursuing theological clarity.
When Valens took command in the East in , Simonetti says, he behaved "ferociously" against bishops who questioned the Arian position. In addition to the help they got from the emperors, Arius's ideas were deeply attractive because they offered a rationally satisfying model of the relationship between the Father and the Son. Arius began with the fundamental presupposition that the divine essence is an indivisible unity, not a substance that can be divided or distributed like helpings of mashed potatoes.
If this was true, how could one argue coherently that God could be divided into persons? It was impossible for God to "beget" a divine Son, for such a begetting or generation would involve dividing the inherently indivisible. Thus, the Son must be created rather than uncreated. If we were to draw a line between the uncreated divinity and all creatures—however exalted those creatures may be—the Son would necessarily be included with all other creatures.
Though Arius did not question the Son's exalted status over all creation, he could not be eternal in the same sense as the Father. Nicaea's response to Arius was that the Son was of the same substance homoousios with the Father, a statement vigorously debated throughout the fourth century. The church needed these years to sort through and clarify what the creed meant by homoousios. Some Christians criticized the homoousios clause because they believed it led to the disturbing conclusion that there is no genuine distinction between the Father and the Son.
That is, the Nicene Creed simply served as a disguise for Sabellianism also called Modalism. Some believers who firmly affirmed the deity of the Son advocated the idea that the Father and the Son share a similar nature, not the same nature. This formula seemed to avoid the confusion caused by homoousios , but it raised questions of its own. If the Son's essence is only similar to that of the Father's, in what way is it different?
The theological pressure cooker of the years between Nicaea and Constantinople revealed the hidden fault-lines in the Arian model.
Nicene advocates such as Athanasius continued to think through the implications and underpinnings of the creed formulated at Nicaea. This attack spawned the protracted civil and ecclesiastical strife in Germany and Italy known as the Investiture Controversy.
At issue was who, the pope or the monarchs, had the authority to appoint invest local church officials such as bishops of cities and abbots of monasteries.
The conflict ended in , when Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II agreed on the Concordat of Worms, which differentiated between the royal and spiritual powers and gave the emperors a limited role in selecting bishops. However, the emperor did retain considerable power over the Church.
Both these efforts, although ultimately unsuccessful, greatly enhanced papal prestige in the 12th and 13th centuries. Such powerful popes as Alexander III r. Throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, popes struggled with monarchs over power. Christian monasticism, which consists of individuals living ascetic and often cloistered lives that are dedicated to Christian worship, became popular during the Middle Ages and gave rise to several monastic orders with different goals and lifestyles.
Christian monasticism is the devotional practice of individuals who live ascetic and typically cloistered lives that are dedicated to Christian worship. Monasticism became quite popular in the Middle Ages, with religion being the most important force in Europe. Monks and nuns were to live isolated from the world to become closer to God. Monks provided service to the church by copying manuscripts, creating art, educating people, and working as missionaries.
Convents were especially appealing to women. It was the only place they would receive any sort of education or power. It also let them escape unwanted marriages. From the 6th century onward most of the monasteries in the West were of the Benedictine Order. He then attracted followers with whom he founded the monastery of Monte Cassino, between Rome and Naples, around He established the Rule, adapting in part the earlier anonymous Rule of the Master Regula magistri , which was written somewhere south of Rome around , and defined the activities of the monastery, its officers, and their responsibilities.
Early Benedictine monasteries were relatively small and consisted of an oratory, a refectory, a dormitory, a scriptorium, guest accommodation, and out-buildings, a group of often quite separate rooms more reminiscent of a decent-sized Roman villa than a large medieval abbey. A monastery of about a dozen monks would have been normal during this period. Medieval monastic life consisted of prayer, reading, and manual labor.
Apart from prayer, monks performed a variety of tasks, such as preparing medicine, lettering, and reading. These monks would also work in the gardens and on the land. They might also spend time in the Cloister, a covered colonnade around a courtyard, where they would pray or read. Some monasteries held a scriptorium where monks would write or copy books.
When the monks wrote, they used very neat handwriting and would draw illustrations in the books. As a part of their unique writing style, they decorated the first letter of each paragraph. The monasteries were the central storehouses and producers of knowledge.
The next wave of monastic reform after the Benedictines came with the Cistercian movement. The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to a literal observance of the Benedictine Rule, rejecting the developments of the Benedictines. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, and especially to field work. Inspired by Bernard of Clairvaux, the primary builder of the Cistercians, the Cistercians became the main force of technological diffusion in medieval Europe.
By the end of the 12th century the Cistercian houses numbered , and at its height in the 15th century the order claimed to have close to houses. Most of these were built in wilderness areas, and played a major part in bringing such isolated parts of Europe into economic cultivation. During the rule of Pope Innocent III — , two of the most famous monastic orders were founded. They were called the mendicant, or begging, orders because their members begged for the food and clothes.
At their foundation these orders rejected the previously established monastic model of living in one stable, isolated community where members worked at a trade and owned property in common, including land, buildings, and other wealth. By contrast, the mendicants avoided owning property, did not work at a trade, and embraced a poor, often itinerant lifestyle.
They depended for their survival on the goodwill of the people to whom they preached. They would usually travel in pairs, preaching, healing the sick, and helping the poor. Francis of Assisi founded the order of the Franciscans, who were known for their charitable work. The Dominicans, founded by Saint Dominic, focused on teaching, preaching, and suppressing heresy.
The Dominican Order came into being in the Middle Ages at a time when religion was starting to be contemplated in a new way. Men of God were no longer expected to stay behind the walls of a cloister. Instead, they traveled among the people, taking as their examples the apostles of the primitive Church. Like his contemporary, Francis, Dominic saw the need for a new type of organization, and the quick growth of the Dominicans and Franciscans during their first century of existence confirms that the orders of mendicant friars met a need.
The inspiration for the Franciscan Order came in when Francis heard a sermon on Matthew that made such an impression on him that he decided to devote himself wholly to a life of apostolic poverty. Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and, after the Evangelical precept, without staff or scrip, he began to preach repentance. Francis was soon joined by a prominent fellow townsman, Bernard of Quintavalle, who contributed all that he had to the work, and by other companions, who are said to have reached eleven within a year.
The brothers lived in the deserted leper colony of Rivo Torto near Assisi, but they spent much of their time traveling through the mountainous districts of Umbria, always cheerful and full of songs, yet making a deep impression on their hearers by their earnest exhortations.
Their life was extremely ascetic, though such practices were apparently not prescribed by the first rule that Francis gave them probably as early as , which seems to have been nothing more than a collection of Scriptural passages emphasizing the duty of poverty. Similar to Francis, Dominic sought to establish a new kind of order, one that would bring the dedication and systematic education of the older monastic orders like the Benedictines to bear on the religious problems of the burgeoning population of cities, but with more organizational flexibility than either monastic orders or the secular clergy.
Dominic inspired his followers with loyalty to learning and virtue, a deep recognition of the spiritual power of worldly deprivation and the religious state, and a highly developed governmental structure. They were both active in preaching and contemplative in study, prayer, and meditation. The brethren of the Dominican Order were urban and learned, as well as contemplative and mystical in their spirituality. While these traits had an impact on the women of the order, the nuns especially absorbed the latter characteristics and made them their own.
In England, the Dominican nuns blended these elements with their own defining characteristics and created a spirituality and collective personality that set them apart.
The Western Schism was a prolonged period of crisis in Latin Christendom from to , when there was conflict concerning the rightful holder of the papacy. During that time, three men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope. Driven by politics rather than any theological disagreement, the schism was ended by the Council of Constance — For a time these rival claims to the papal throne damaged the reputation of the office.
The schism in the Western Roman Church resulted from the return of the papacy to Rome under Gregory XI on January 17, , ending the Avignon Papacy, which had developed a reputation for corruption that estranged major parts of western Christendom. On April 8, the cardinals elected a Neapolitan when no viable Roman candidates presented themselves.
Urban had been a respected administrator in the papal chancery at Avignon, but as pope he proved suspicious, reformist, and prone to violent outbursts of temper. Many of the cardinals who had elected him soon regretted their decision; the majority removed themselves from Rome to Anagni, where, even though Urban was still reigning, they elected Robert of Geneva as a rival pope on September 20, This second election threw the church into turmoil.
There had been antipopes —rival claimants to the papacy—before, but most of them had been appointed by various rival factions; in this case, a single group of church leaders had created both the pope and the antipope. The conflict quickly escalated from a church problem to a diplomatic crisis that divided Europe. Secular leaders had to choose which claimant they would recognize.
In the Iberian Peninsula there were the Ferdinand Wars and the — Crisis in Portugal, during which dynastic opponents supported rival claimants to the papal office. Sustained by such national and factional rivalries throughout Catholic Christianity, the schism continued after the deaths of both initial claimants; Boniface IX, crowned at Rome in , and Benedict XIII, who reigned in Avignon from , maintained their rival courts.
When Boniface died in , the eight cardinals of the Roman conclave offered to refrain from electing a new pope if Benedict would resign, but when his legates refused on his behalf, the Roman party then proceeded to elect Innocent VII. In the intense partisanship characteristic of the Middle Ages, the schism engendered a fanatical hatred between factions.
Efforts were made to end the schism through force or diplomacy. None of these remedies worked. The suggestion to have a church council resolve the schism was first made in , but was not initially adopted because canon law required that a pope call a council. They balked at the last moment, and both colleges of cardinals abandoned their popes. A church council was held at Pisa in under the auspices of the cardinals to try solving the dispute.
At the fifteenth session, on June 5, , the Council of Pisa deposed the two pontiffs as schismatical, heretical, perjured, and scandalous. But it then added to the problem by electing another incumbent, Alexander V. He reigned briefly from June 26, , until his death in , when he was succeeded by John XXIII, who won some, but not universal, support.
The council elected Pope Martin V in , essentially ending the schism. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content.
The Middle Ages in Europe. Search for:. The Catholic Church. Key Takeaways Key Points Christianity spread throughout the early Roman Empire despite persecutions due to conflicts with the pagan state religion. When the Western Roman Empire fell in , the Catholic Church competed with Arian Christians for the conversion of the barbarian tribes and quickly became the dominant form of Christianity.
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