The Triumph of Christianity (34 page)

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) agreed: “The things of God should be revealed to mankind only in proportion to their capacity; otherwise, they might despise what was beyond their grasp.... It was, therefore, better for the divine mysteries to be conveyed to an uncultured people as it were veiled.”
⁴⁸
So too, John Calvin (1509–1564) flatly asserted that God “reveals himself to us according to our rudeness and infirmity.”
⁴⁹
If scriptural comparisons between earlier and later portions of the Bible, for example, seem to suggest that God is changeable or inconsistent, that is merely because “he accommodated diverse forms to different ages, as he knew would be expedient for each.... [H]e has accommodated himself to men’s capacity, which is varied and changeable.”
⁵⁰
The same constraints applied to those who conveyed God’s words. Thus Calvin noted that in formulating
Genesis,
Moses “was ordained a teacher as well of the unlearned and rude as of the learned, he could not otherwise fulfill his office than by descending to this grosser method of instruction.... [Seeking to] be intelligible to all... Moses, therefore, adapts his discourse to common usage... such as the rude and unlearned may perceive.”
⁵¹

The principle of divine accommodation provides a truly remarkable key for completely reappraising the dispute over scripture and science. Calvin said straight out that
Genesis
is not a satisfactory account of the creation because it was directed to the unlearned and the primitive, even though, when they received it, the ancient Jews were far from being truly primitive. Consider that the ancient Jews would have been utterly mystified had God revealed creation in terms of Newtonian mechanics and an extensive discussion of genetics and mutation. Hence, John Calvin advised vis-à-vis Genesis: “he who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere.”
⁵²
As it stands, Genesis told the ancient Jews the important truth—that the universe was created by God. Indeed, that was enough to inspire Scholastic scholars to seek the rules according to which God’s creation functions! Seen in this light, all scientific findings are fully compatible with theology, inspiring the learned response, “Aha! So that’s how God did it!”

Finally, generations of attacks on religion in the name of science have fallen well short of their goal. The majority of American scientists still report themselves to be religious, and the more scientific their field, the higher the proportion who do so. That is, substantial majorities of mathematicians and physical scientists say they are religious, while only a minority of social scientists make that claim.
⁵³

Conclusion

T
HE ORIGINAL WARFARE BETWEEN
religion and science never happened: Christianity not only did not impede the rise of science; it was essential to its having taken place. As for the contemporary conflict between religion and science, it is a battle limited to extremists. On the “science” side are militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins who claim science has proved there is no God. On the “religion” side are fundamentalists such as the late Henry M. Morris (1918–2006), who claim the Bible proves that much of modern science is nonsense. This is a debate that can best be described by quoting Shakespeare, as “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

P
ART V
Christianity Divided

Chapter Seventeen
Two “Churches” and the Challenge of Heresy

P
ERHAPS THE GREATEST DIVISION IN
the history of Christianity developed during the fourth century within the Roman Catholic Church. Conflicts inherent in this division eventually caused the eruption of heretical movements at the start of the second millennium—the suppression of which disfigured the Christian spirit.

One of the sad ironies of life is that sincere efforts to do good can so often have unfortunate results. Such was the case with one of Constantine’s benevolent acts toward Christianity: When he showered privileges and status on the Christian clergy he inadvertently caused a “stampede into the priesthood.”
¹
Soon Christian offices, and especially the higher positions, were dominated by the sons of the aristocracy—some of them gaining bishoprics even before being baptized. As a result, many immoral, insincere, and indolent men were ordained, far too many of whom gained very important positions in the church. At the same time, of course, many who entered the religious life were not careerists or libertines, but were deeply committed Christians. Consequently, there arose what, in effect, became two parallel churches. These can usefully be identified as the
Church of Power
and the
Church of Piety
. In what follows, these two “Churches” are described and contrasted and their historical role in provoking and persecuting the great medieval heretical movements is examined.

The Church of Power

T
HE
C
HURCH OF
P
OWER
was the main body of the church as it evolved in response to the immense status and wealth bestowed on the clergy by Constantine. It included the great majority of priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes who ruled the church most of the time until the Counter-Reformation set in during the sixteenth century. Most clergy of the Church of Power were sensible and temperate men, but they tended to be worldly in both senses of that term—practical and morally lax.

This was reflected in the fact that their careers in the church were mainly determined by influence, commerce, and eventually heredity. Simony became the rule—an extensive and expensive traffic in religious offices, involving the sale not only of high offices such as bishoprics but even of lowly parish placements. There quickly arose great clerical families whose sons followed their fathers, uncles, and grandfathers into holy offices. Even the papacy soon ran in families. Pope Innocent (401–417) was the son of his predecessor Pope Anastasius (399–401). Pope Silverius (536–537) was the son of Pope Hermisdas (514–523). Many other popes were the sons, grandsons, nephews, and brothers of bishops and cardinals.

As early as the Council of Sardica in 341, church leaders promulgated rules against ordaining men into the priesthood following their appointment to a bishopric, requiring that bishops have previous service in a lower clerical office. These rules were frequently ignored: late in the fourth century Auxentius became bishop of Milan without even having been baptized. Or the rules were circumvented by a candidate’s being rushed through ordination and a series of lower clerical ranks in a week or two prior to becoming a bishop.
²
This did not always result in the elevation of an impious opportunist— St. Ambrose (340–397) went from baptism through ordination and the clerical ranks to his consecration as a bishop, all in eight days. But very often this allowed dissolute, corrupt, lax, and insincere persons to gain high positions in the church. St. Jerome (347–420) attacked many clerics of his era for having entered the church mainly in order “to have access to beautiful women.”
³
And even Eusebius, in his laudatory biography of Constantine, complained that because of the “Emperor’s forbearance... wicked rapacious men... [had] slipped into the Church.”
⁴

Power and Corruption

C
ONSEQUENTLY, BY THE START
of the eleventh century, after centuries of rule by the Church of Power, European Christianity lay in political and moral ruin. Politically, the papacy was controlled by the aristocratic families of Rome in competition with the German Holy Roman Emperors. “Of the twenty-five popes between 955 and 1057, thirteen were appointed by the local aristocracy, while the other twelve were appointed (and no fewer than five dismissed) by the German emperors.”
⁵
Note the rapid turnover rate: during this century papal reigns averaged only four years. Worse yet, during the “long” century between 872 and 1012, a third of all popes had died violent deaths,
⁶
many of them having been murdered as a result of the constant intrigues among the Roman ecclesiastical families.

Consider the making and unmaking of popes by Marozia (890–937), a promiscuous and domineering Roman noblewoman of the powerful Theophylact family.
⁷
When she was fifteen, Marozia became the mistress of Pope Sergius III (served 904 –911), who had murdered Pope Leo V (served 903) to gain the papal throne and by whom Marozia had an illegitimate son. Marozia’s mother was the mistress of Pope John X (served 914 –928), whom Marozia conspired to have suffocated and replaced by Pope Leo VI (served 928), whom she quickly replaced with Stephen VII (served 928–931). At this point Marozia managed to get her illegitimate son—fathered by Pope Sergius—placed on the papal throne as Pope John XI (served 931–936). Subsequently, when her son Alberic became ruler of Rome, he so feared her conspiracies that he had her imprisoned. She eventually died in her cell.

Many popes in this era had no prior clerical experience—Pope John XII (served 955–964) was elected when he was only eighteen; Marozia’s son John XI was only twenty-one when he became pope; John XIX (served 1024–1032) was elevated from layman to pope in a single day and his successor, Benedict IX (served 1032–1048), “was a layman and still in his twenties when elected”
⁸
and may never have been ordained a priest. That so many young men with no prior religious service became popes helps explain why the moral condition of the papacy in this era can best be described as “squalid.”
⁹
Thus, John XII assembled a harem of young women—“some accused him of converting the Lateran Palace into a brothel.”
¹⁰
He also consecrated a ten-year-old as bishop, had a cardinal castrated, and loudly invoked pagan gods when he gambled. At age twenty-eight he died in bed with a married woman, probably killed by her irate husband.
¹¹
Benedict IX was an even more notorious pope. When he succeeded two of his uncles as pope, there followed the “spectacle of the Pope carousing and whoring his way around Rome,” displaying himself as “unblushingly and arrogantly dissolute.”
¹²
Eventually things got so bad that even the corrupt Roman aristocracy could not continue to look the other way, and so they paid him to leave office.

Keep in mind that dissolute living was not peculiar to popes or even to the hierarchy in Rome. At all levels of the church, everywhere, notorious clergy prospered. Many priests kept concubines, came to church drunk, or didn’t show up at all, and otherwise discredited their offices. Not all, of course, but many.
¹³

The Church of Piety

I
N MANY WAYS THE
Church of Piety was sustained as a reaction against the Church of Power. It pressed for virtue over worldliness, as would be expected given that most of its leaders as well as its rank-and-file were monks and nuns. Indeed, at the same time that there had begun a “stampede” into the priesthood by opportunistic sons of privilege, there was a rapid expansion of monasticism: by the middle of the fourth century there were tens of thousands of monks and nuns, nearly all of them living in organized communities. Naturally, those living an ascetic life felt themselves spiritually superior to others, as was in fact acknowledged by Catholic theology. However, their antagonism toward the regular clergy, and especially the church hierarchy, had a different basis; it was not merely that these men were not leading ascetic lives, but that so many were leading dissolute lives. This was an issue that would not subside. Again and again leaders of the Church of Piety attempted to reform the Church of Power, and during several notable periods they managed to gain control of the papacy and impose major changes. But most of the time, the “church” was the Church of Power. This may not have been entirely due to Constantine. Once it became the dominant religion, Christianity was bound to become more bureaucratic and worldly. But Constantine made this shift occur very rapidly and to a remarkable degree.

The Lazy Monopoly

A
LTHOUGH THERE WAS CONSTANT
competition between the two churches, when in control each faction conducted the affairs of the faith as a monopoly—with the exception of Jews, non-Christian faiths were not permitted. However, when in charge the Church of Piety pursued its affairs with far more vigor than did the Church of Power, which often neglected even to protect its best interests—unless these were seriously threatened. As Adam Smith (1723–1790) pointed out, all monopolies, even monopoly churches, are inclined to be complaisant and lazy. Smith noted that some religions depend on the voluntary support of members, while others are supported by the state. Clergy who must depend upon their members will usually exhibit far greater “zeal and industry” than those who are provided for by law. Smith also noted that history is full of examples wherein a kept clergy “reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up the fervour of faith and devotion in the great body of the people... having given themselves up to indolence.”
¹⁴

Constantine’s favor transformed the church from an institution based entirely on member contributions and led by a clergy of but modest means into an institution based on immense state support and led by a rich and powerful clergy recruited from the upper ranks of society. He thereby created a lazy monopoly institution that behaved in precisely the way Smith described. Thus, subsequent to Constantine, church efforts to convert the rural areas (where nearly all Europeans lived) were feeble, and many pagans became “Christians” only to the extent of adding Jesus to their pantheon of gods. Missions to unconverted northern areas of Europe were slow to develop and then mostly settled for the baptism of kings and courts, leaving the populace relatively undisturbed. Even in the most Christian cities, mass attendance was very low and the religious instruction of the clergy, let alone the laity, was almost nonexistent, as was documented in chapter 16. Indeed, the lazy Church of Power tended even to ignore heresy until it was perceived as a very serious challenge to its rule.

A number of historians
¹⁵
of medieval religion have remarked the disappearance of heresy in Europe between about 500 and about 1100
CE
—Malcolm Lambert claimed that until the eleventh century there had been no capital punishment for heresy since “the execution of Priscillian of Avila in 383.”
¹⁶
But what really had disappeared was not heresy, but any serious concern about heresy by church authorities. Through the centuries there were many quite visible heretics, but they did not inspire mass movements sufficient to threaten the church monopoly and therefore were either ignored entirely or “treated mildly by the authorities.”
¹⁷
Ironically, reform efforts by the Church of Piety eventually resulted in an unprecedented eruption of heretical mass movements beginning in the twelfth century, to which the Church of Power responded with brutal repression, as will be seen.

Piety and Reform

I
N 1046, AFTER CENTURIES
of dominance by the Church of Power, the Church of Piety suddenly was given control of the church by Holy Roman Emperor Henry III (1017–1056). Henry’s determination to reform the church, beginning with the papacy, reflected the close connections that existed between monasticism and the nobility with the result that the nobility, as a group, may well have been more pious than most clergy of the Church of Power. It was very common for the sons and daughters of powerful families to enter the church,
¹⁸
and especially a religious order—three-fourths of ascetic medieval saints were from noble families, and 22 percent of them were the sons or daughters of kings.
¹⁹
Entering a religious order usually did not disrupt family ties; often the monastery or convent was nearby and frequent visits took place. Thus it was not unusual that of Henry’s four
²⁰
daughters, two became abbesses of convents. In addition, Henry’s cousin Bruno was not only the bishop of Toul, but an ardent supporter of the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, which was the hotbed of church reform. In 1049 Henry had Bruno seated as Pope Leo IX (served 1049–1054).

The new pope began an immediate cleansing of the church. First, he called a council at Rheims and demanded that all “the bishops and abbots present declare individually whether they had paid any money for their office.”
²¹
In response, some fled and were excommunicated. Many confessed and were pardoned. Next up was celibacy. Leo vigorously attacked incontinent priests on all appropriate occasions and filled the high administrative offices of the church with monks. But perhaps the most radical step that Leo took was to become a traveling evangelist at a time when very few priests preached to the public at all and almost no one had ever laid eyes on a cardinal, let alone a pope. Throughout his five years in office Leo traveled constantly, and everywhere he went he preached “eloquently to huge crowds.”
²²
Always his theme was reform.