Chapter 16Terms:■ hagiography – a new type of literature; biographies of saints; (1) offered new,

spiritual heroes to replace the warrior-heroes so admired by Germanic peoples; (2) cult of saints introduced a new power into a world dominated by armed strongmen

■ calligraphy – a type of writing; a skill, along with art and Latin, that began being taught by monks to new converts

■ double monastery – a large monastery ruled by an abbess, attached to a monastery whose monks served as chaplains for local peasants and nuns.

People:■ St. Martin of Tours – King of Franks, Clovis, was afraid of offending Martin of

Tours who had a reputation as the most powerful saint. He has the power to heal the sick or strike an evil person dead with one word.

■ Columbanus – an Irish missionary who led monks from home in Ireland to establish a monastery at Luxeuil in Northeastern France in 590, then spread the gospel in France, Switzerland, and Northwest Italy

■ St. Boniface – English monk; founded monasteries; led work of evangelization; appointed bishops in the region; corresponded with pope and helped leaders of Franks reform Frankish church

Concepts:■ The development of religious art. The development and importance of the Latin

language:■ In Ireland missionary monks found themselves teaching the new converts the

Latin language as well as the skills of calligraphy and art. The converts soon joined in the monastic routine of praising God by daily recitation of the Old Testament Psalms from the Vulgate, St. Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible. Irish monks of the early Middle ages are famous for having produced copies of the Bible adorned with beautiful illustrations.

Chapter 17People:■ Reform popes often took the names “Leo” or “Gregory” in honor of Leo the Great

and Gregory the Great■ Leo the Great (440 – 461) – Sent 2 representative to Council of Chalcedon in 451

with a letter about how to best describe the divine and human nature of Christ. As a political leader, he directed the building of Rome and personally led teams of negotiators who somehow convinced Attila the Hun in 452 and Geiseric the Vandal in 455 that they shouldn’t invade Rome.

■ Gregory the Great (590 – 604) – Honored as father of the church for his writings. He led the cities of central Italy in an alliance to defend Italy against Lombard invaders, he assumed responsibility for feeding the poor of Rome, and he promised monasticism. He operated as bishop of all of Europe.

 Concepts:■ Role of Church in bringing stability to Europe. Rise of papacy:■ The papacy (office of the popes) became a historically important phenomenon in

the medieval church. The first Christian emperor moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the east. Rome became known as a symbol of the historic roots of the Empire and a symbol of the great civilization of the ancient Mediterranean world. Constantine’s departure left the bishops of Rome to be the leaders and caretakers of the once-great city. A series of popes made the bishop of Rome the foremost protector of the city, the Christian faith and civilization in the European world.

■ Two agency theory:■ “Two agencies govern this world: the sacred authority of the bishops and the

imperial power.” Gelasius’ definition of the 2 types of authority provided the basis for agreements hammered out during tense negotiations between Roman popes and German emperors in the 11th and 12th century.

Chapter 18Terms:■ Concupiscence – the inclination of humans to commit sins throughout their

lives; the Latin roots suggest the idea that humans slip into sinful deeds because they’re desiring all the wrong things.

■ Penitential books – guides developed by monks for assigning penances appropriate for each sin

■ Hostia – Latin for victim■ Accretions – local variations and additions to the basic prayers of the Sunday

worship. The church took care to preserve the prayers so they wouldn’t make the mass unrecognizable

■ Monstrance – carries the host■ Corpus Christi – a celebration in which the faithful proceed behind a

consecrated host help aloft in an ornate monstrance■ Sacerdotal society – one in which priest held a prominent place■ Small chapels – built alongside of the large churches

 Concepts:■ How baptism, penance and Eucharist evolved from origins:

■ Baptism began to be appreciated as the ritual cleansing of the stain of Original Sin. Parents chose to baptize children at birth because many died before the age of 5.

■ Traveling monks began to hear confessions of people’s sins and suggested little works of penitence to make satisfaction for sins. Over time another innovation was the offering of absolution.

■ To combat the Arian heresy, the church modified the prayers of the Mass to mention the divinity of Christ more frequently. The priest says words of consecration. Church passed canon laws reminding the faithful to receive communion 3 times a year.

■ Role of sacraments in the lives of the faithful:■ The priest says Mass for people’s personal intentions and pronounced the words

of absolution from sins. Chapter 19Terms:■ Scriptorium – a special room in every monastery that is used for copying ancient

writings■ Cathedral schools – by 1050, they were the foremost centers of learning;

sponsored by bishops■ Syllogism – standard, three-step arguments which made the basic elements of a

logical argument easier to identify■ Trivium – three basic liberal arts; consisted of grammar (reading and writing of

Latin), rhetoric (the art of persuasive expression) and dialectic (“logic”, the art of thinking in an orderly way)

 People:■ John Scotus Erigena – an Irishman who was master of the Palace School of the

King of the Franks. He wrote an entire book of Christian philosophy that built upon the ideas of the later followers of Plato.

■ Anselm – An abbot of the monastery of Bec who composed syllogisms to prove the existence of God. He created the Ontological Proof for the existence of God, an exercise in logic still taken seriously by professional philosophers today.

 Concepts:■ Role of the monasteries in life of Church:■ They were the European world’s only centers of learning during the early Middle

Ages. They trained a few priests to read so that they could read the Mass texts and read the scriptures for the people. Monks had to copy ancient writings in the monasteries.

■ How the Church becomes the center for education:■ Educated people were rare, so cathedrals became learning centers and began

education in the monasteries.■ Importance of Aristotle in medieval education:■ His famous treatises became lectures. He created 5 books on the rules for

orderly, error-free thinking. Monks were able to learn about fallacies to avoid, about the “Principle of Non-contradiction” and other axioms, and about the rules for writing syllogisms.

 Chapter 20Terms:■ Cistercians – the distinctive life of St. Benedict. By 1150 there were more than

300 Cistercian abbeys. They flourished for several centuries. They were instrumental in bringing difficult plots of land under cultivation. They contributed to the strong ties between life in the world and the life of faith so characteristic of Europe in the Middle Ages.

■ Carthusians – a group of monks who sought a more austere life. They maintained a monastery which promoted an austere and prayerful existence while offering hospitality to visitors.

 People:■ Bernard of Clairvaux – a Cistercians; their most energetic and deeply spiritual

abbot. He was Europe’s most famous man of prayer, the personal advisor of kings and popes.

■ Peter Damian – a Carthusian; after grounding himself in prayer and the hermit’s life, returned to the world to become one of the major figured in the movement for church reform in Rome.

 Concepts:■ Importance of monastery at Cluny:■ It began the hard work of reform. More than 100 monasteries, which answered

to Cluny’s monastery, constituted the church’s first “religious order” (a group of people under vows who followed the same rule of living and shared the same type of religious life). The Benedictine Order of Cluny was the first, and it produced holy men who led the efforts of parish priests, bishops and even popes to reform and improve their faith lives.

■ How the Cistercians and Carthusians arose:■ Cistercians: A small group of Cluniac monks asked permission to depart and

start a new life which they believed would reflect a closer adherence to the Rule

of Benedict. They sought out remote places and found success at Citeaux and their order came into being.

■ Carthusians: Founders were former Cluniacs and sought a more austere life than Cluny had to offer. They were influenced by the eastern tradition of asceticism and the hermit life.

■ Importance of reform in religious life:■ Over the centuries, reform of the religious orders has come in waves. The orders

supplanted by the reformers were not always in dire straights, and the succession of reform movements actually was a sign of good health: a healthy desire never to be entirely satisfied with efforts to cultivate the life of the Spirit.

 Chapter 24 Terms:■ Scholasticism – the Christian intellectual ideal of “faith seeking understanding”

that prevailed for several centuries■ Faith seeking understanding – by faith, the Christians already believed in God, in

Jesus, in salvation■ Sic et Non – “yes and no”; reflected a scholastic ideal; many used this method to

discuss the greatest of the disputed questions of Christian theology■ Theology – first used by Peter Abelard; used as the systematic investigation of

propositions about God and Christian doctrine People:■ Anselm – had tightly reasoned arguments about human free will, the definition

of truth, the existence of God and the meaning of Jesus’ death; had the ideal of faith seeking understanding

■ Abelard – a young logician from Paris who completely demolished the arguments of Master William of Champeaux

■ Thomas Aquinas – a Dominican scholar; nicknamed “dumb ox”; wrote up dozens of propositions such as whether God exists or known and logically beats down every alternate view; one of his most famous ideas is the distinctions between faith and knowledge: if a person has knowledge of something by use of human reason, he/she does not have faith about it. Also famous for idea of knowing God by analogy.

■ Albert the Great – (Albertus Magnus) One of the most universal thinkers during the Middle Ages. His interests ranged from natural science to theology; teacher to Aquinas.

■ William of Ockham – a Franciscan; along with others, began to question the confidence in the human ability to know

■ St. Bonaventure – a great Franciscan scholar; around the year 1250 used the insights of St. Augustine in combination with his knowledge of the sentences to create the first “system” of thought which made all of theology intelligible

■ Peter Abelard – composed the Introduction to Theology; first person to use the term theology. Argued that the morality of any human act should be judged in terms of a person’s intentions in performing the act.

■ Peter Lombard – His 4 Books of the Sentences (sentences meaning learned opinions) were about the 4 great subjects in Christian theology (God, creature/creation/human history, the Incarnation and Redemption, and the sacraments, death, heaven, and hell). They inspired numerous imitators.

■ Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus – the greatest theologian in Christendom; produced the book On Learned Ignorance; he argued that to be truly learned and great is to realize that mankind is ignorant about the infinitely great God

 Concepts:■ How the great universities of Bologna, Paris and Oxford came about:■ At the beginning of the 12th century, new schools continued to spring up. Paris,

Oxford, and Bologna were home to centers of advanced learning, which came eventually to be called “universities.” The leading thinkers at these new schools were fully aware of their debt to the great minds of the past even while enthusiastically offering their own, new insights.

■ Example of how philosophy and theology were compatible as well as incompatible:

■ Compatible: “faith seeking understanding,” “scholasticism,” Master Thierry tried to use Greek philosophy to enrich Christian’s understanding of Genesis and taught that God created the heavens and the earth

■ Incompatible: Many interpreted Genesis in terms of Plato’s ideas of a World-Soul and “procreative agencies.”

 Chapter 25 Terms:■ Conversi – laypeople who assumed primary responsibility for the Cistercian

monastic farm■ Shrine – such as the famous Gothic cathedrals, were built in part to display relics■ Confraternity – the one known example of a movement begun by laypeople; they

organized themselves for the purpose of Christian charitable work, collecting food to distribute among the poor. Sometimes the confraternities also undertook the upkeep of the local church building

 

Concepts:■ The Christian life of the average layperson:■ Groups of 3 to 5 took limited semi-monastic vows, lived simply, and received a

modest income for taking care of cemetery grounds or a large church building like a cathedral.

■ Importance of saints, relics, and pilgrimages:■ Saints were spiritual heroes, the subjects of hagiographies, and intercessors

who took people’s prayers to God. Relics were holy objects. They were in such high demand that Rome insisted the relic had to be authenticated by the Holy See. The single most important expression of faith was a believer’s pilgrimage to a shrine to visit the relics. Christians were in love with physical signs of the spiritual invested in pilgrimages.

 Chapter 26 People:■ Pope Eugenius III – Pope who instructed Abbot Bernard to preach a sermon

about the need for a crusade to take the Holy Land away from the Muslims by force

■ Bernard of Clairvaux – able to speak convincingly to a large crowd about the Holy Land. Thanks to his work and reputation, the abbey of Clairvaux created 64 more Cistercian monasteries. He had a reputation for intervening to protect peasants when the nobility were exploiting them, so it was odd that he was preaching about the need to wage war. Bernard is honored as a Doctor of the Church for his many writings (most famous was a treatise on Christian love).

■ Pope Urban II – preached in France in 1095 to urge knights to make a first armed expedition to the Holy Land

 Concepts:■ How the Crusades arose and their lasting effects:■ Sacred items were believed to have had spiritual powers. There was a fight to

control of a holy site, Jerusalem, the home of countless sacred places and things. Muslim forces attacked. The crusade ideal dominated the imagination of Christians for several centuries. The warfare between Protestant and Catholic Christians during the 16th century made it impossible for Europeans to dream of expedition toward the lands controlled by Muslims. The Muslims busied themselves by once again invading Christian territories. A treaty between the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire and the Christians of the Spanish Empire brought 850 years of intermittent religious warfare to a close.

■ Relationship between Canon law and crusades:

■ Canon law protected pilgrim’s property while they were away from home and threatened excommunication for any thief who harassed a pilgrim. Many pilgrims went to visit the bones of Mary Magdalene in Veselay. Knights traveled there to hear the great abbots call for a journey to fight for control of another holy site, Jerusalem.

■ How the Old Testament stories were used to support Crusades:■ Medieval Christianity was steeped in the tradition of the Bible, and Christians of

the time paid close attention to Old Testament stories about Joshua, Gideon, Judith, David and a host of others who had fought to protect God’s people from their powerful neighbors.

■ Time periods of various crusades:■ 1st Crusade (1096-1099); 2nd crusade (1147-1149); 3rd Crusade (1187-1192);

4th Crusade (1202-1204); 5th Crusade (1217-1221); 6th Crusade (1228-1229); 7th Crusade (1248-1254); 8th Crusade (1270); 9th Crusade (1271-1272)

 Chapter 27Terms:■ Vita apostolica – the lifestyle of Jesus and the apostles (poverty and simplicity)■ Mendicant – “begging men” who refuse to own anything at all and decide to live

simply upon what was given to them (it was a sign of their complete trust in God); Francis of Assisi and his companions were the first

■ Friar – “brother”; they were tied to no farm or monastery but traveled in pairs, preaching about moral and spiritual renewal, and begging for their bread.

■ Rule of Francis – There should be no Franciscan property, such as a monastery or hermitage. Some Franciscans and church officials were trying to modify his rule and create structure so that the fastest-growing religious order in the church could continue its work and meet people’s needs

■ Third order of Franciscans – laypeople who pledged to live simply and follow the advice of Franciscan spiritual directors while living and working in the world

 People:■ Pope Innocent III – in 1203, sent Dominic to Provence to preach about Christian

doctrine and practice. He also gave Francis and friends permission to preach■ Dominic de Guzman – his foremost wish was to preach to the people of the

region effectively. He and his band of preachers adopted a simple lifestyle. He sought papal approval to create a new religious order, the Order of Preachers.

■ John Bernadoni (Francis of Assisi) – nicknamed Francis because of the family’s love of French fashions and manners. While wounded during a small battle, he had time to think about his life. During prayer he heard a voice saying “rebuild

my house.” He repairs a small abandoned chapel, but did more than that. He was given permission to preach the good news of simplicity and Christian love.

■ Clare of Assisi – Francis’ friend; founded a group of women who likewise adopted the ideal of voluntary poverty

 Concepts:■ The Dominicans, Franciscans, and Poor Clares and their way of life and

charisms:■ Dominicans chose poverty as their ideal, gained new recruits with amazing

speed, and by their preaching and personal example transformed the lives of thousands of people in Christian Europe during the 13th century. They continue today to serve primarily as teachers. Dominican sisters are devoted primarily to work in hospitals.

■ Franciscans live a life of poverty (mendicants). They preach. Franciscans and Dominicans became the first worldwide religious orders, tied to no single monastic house but free to spread the gospel. They continue to live simply, and often serve in parishes in poor neighborhoods.

■ Poor Clares: Women couldn’t safely walk the roads from town to town so their poverty and simplicity were lived in a cloister (living behind walls that symbolized their being apart from the world and its ways). They still live in cloistered communities, dedicated to a simple life; they are known for responding to desperate people’s requests for prayers of intercession.

■ The role of poverty in religious orders during 13th and 14th century: Franciscans, Dominicans, and Poor Clares adopted the ideal of poverty. The ideal of poverty continued to inspire people outside the 2 famous orders.

Chapter 31The Condition of the Church on the Eve of the Reformation■ October 31, 1517: date considered to be the beginning of the Reformation.■ The very term “Reformation” suggests that things had taken some “form” which needed

to be corrected.■ Rituals, pilgrimages, saints, fasting, and votive Masses were still popular in 1517.

Medieval faith was a growing faith. “Stations of the Cross” were invented during this time.

■ Problems of the church: Simony, nepotism, uninspired bishops and poorly trained bishops. Monastic religious orders were in need of reform. 

■ There were signs of good health too. Before the Reformation, 5 new religious orders began in Italy: 3 orders of priests who specialized in preaching, 1 order of men who cared for orphans and widows and 1 order of religious women who educated young women. 

■ The Beguines, laywomen from the Netherlands, established informal communities dedicated to the simple life. They chose to serve the poor. A movement of laymen also started in the Netherlands and spread all over Europe: the Brethren of the Common Life. They were able to create schools dedicated to teaching boys from the poorest families. Graduates included Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus, Erasmus, and Luther. 

■ Erasmus’ book Manual of the Christian Soldier, warned against overemphasis upon external devotions such as fasting and pilgrimages, which he said could kill the spirit within. 

■ The first best-sellers were books of religious instruction: The Art of Living Well, Paradise of the Christian Soul, Self-Knowledge, and Self-Control.

■ The Black Plague spread and killed 1/3 of the population around 1350, until 1550. Widespread fear that the end of the world was near created a powerful desire to avoid eternal damnation.

■ Christians’ desire to be certain that they were saved from eternal damnation also affected their appreciation of the Eucharist. Ridiculous case: King Henry V of England set up 20,000 masses after his death. 

■ The University of Alcala, founded by Ximenes (Bishop of Toledo, Spain and a cardinal) in 1498, began creating a 3-language dictionary (Hebrew, Greek, Latin) for serious study of the Bible. 

■ Responsibility for preaching had fallen primarily to the tens of thousands of travelling Dominican and Franciscan friars. 

■ The kings had won over the appointment of bishops -- they were not men of great faith. Pluralism scandals were plenty: bishops ruled 2-4+ dioceses at the same time, collecting fees from all, but only being present in one.

■ The Papal Schism -- the 40 year long competition between French and Italian Popes who sought to be supreme leader of the church -- had undermined the authority of the papacy. Each pope tried to surround himself with people he could trust -- appointed administrators and cardinals from his own family. Complete failures as religious leaders, these pontiffs aided the creation of the finest religious art in the history of western Christianity. 

 Chapter 32 Uniqueness of Luther■ Tommaso de Vio earned a reputation as the foremost philosopher among the

Dominicans. In addition, Pomponazzi and Pico della Mirandola, were two most famous philosophers during Tommaso’s life. Tommaso was made general director of the Order of Preachers by 1508. Told his fellow Dominicans that no one ought to preach unless he devoted 4 hours each day to serious study. At the urging of the Dominican leader, the Pope called a general council at the Lateran Palace in Rome in 1512. 

■ Abbot Giles of Viterbo was already well known for his efforts toward reforming the Augustinian Order of Friars. Giles declared that the church suffered from widespread corruption, and nowhere was the corruption more serious than among the Cardinals in Rome.

■ Tommaso and Giles and other reformers of their day are now only studied by specialists in history, whereas Martin Luther is now recognized as one of the giants of Western history, as the man who created a new branch of the Christian religion. 

■ Luther’s 95 Theses was considered the spark that set off the Protestant Reformation in 1517. 

■ Luther could easily play on anti-Roman feelings and then appeal to German princes to protect him if he ran afoul of church authorities. 

■ Only Martin Luther started a revolution unlike anything in Christian history. What was unique about him were his ideas. His justification was on faith alone, and his ideas would make all popular practices of the past 11 centuries irrelevant to Christian life. Luther came to see pilgrimages, fasting and monasticism as “useless works” -- distractions from the real work of salvation. 

 Justification by Faith Alone■ Martin Luther was acutely aware of his own sinfulness. He finished his doctoral studies

in 1512 and became a professor of theology at the new University of Wittenberg. He familiarized himself with works of Aristotle, with Peter Lombards’ Sentences, and with the writings of the foremost theologians of the later Middle Ages: Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and his followers.

■ Dr. Luther judged that there was far too much use of Aristotle and too little reliance upon the Bible in scholastic theology. Luther also concluded that all who made use of Aristotle in their theology, especially Ockham and his disciples, fell prey to Pelagian thinking -- the old heretical view that human beings are not entirely dependent upon a merciful God but can actively bring about their own salvation.

■ He set out to oppose Aristotle’s teaching. He also tried to remove what he saw as Pelagian tendencies in the church’s theology and practices. 

■ Luther’s own thinking drew heavily upon the Psalms, especially Psalm 51 and Paul’s Letter to the Romans (especially Rom. 1:17). He put strong emphasis upon the utterly sinful nature of the human being -- idea called “depravity,” which remained one of the fundamental ideas of Protestant Christianity for centuries. 

■ Depravity: The “just” or “justified” Christian is the one who has faith or trust that the loving God, even knowing human depravity, has sent Christ for the salvation of sinful humans. This faith is what saves, not any good works aimed at making a person better or more loving himself. 

 The Indulgence Controversy

■ The Church’s traditional teaching about sin was that a sorrowful sinner could make a confession to a priest and be given absolution -- release from the guilt of sin. 

■ The time or state of penance was called “purgatory” -- a word taken from the Latin word for “cleansing.”

■ Indulgence -- time off from suffering during purgatory, or a lightening of penance. It could be granted if the sorrowful sinner had performed a good deed, such as a series of thoughtful prayers, a pilgrimage to a holy sight, or an exceptional act of charity. The ultimate authority in granting an indulgence lay with the pope. 

■ Indulgences came to be exploited as a means of raising money. Charitable deed or sacrificial pilgrimage began to be overlooked as a means of lessening one’s punishments for past sins. Indulgence was now granted most often for a gift of money to the church. 

■ John Tetzel, a Dominican given the task of preaching the indulgence, put no emphasis upon the requisite sorrow for sins. 

■ Luther saw Tetzel’s crass promotion of the indulgence as a clear instance of the church’s failure to remind people of their sinfulness, God’s justice, and the faith which Luther saw as the only means of salvation. He posted the 95 Theses -- an invitation to debate with all comers about indulgences -- on October 31, 1517. 

■ Among the 95 propositions were clear indications that Luther saw the pope’s promotion of indulgences as a serious abuse of papal authority. Luther believed that both popes and councils had made doctrinial errors in the past and that the only trustworthy authority is the sacred scripture. 

■ Luther’s Freedom of the Christian restated in clear terms his fundamental doctrine of justification by faith, not works. His Babylonian Captivity of the Church stated that there are only 3 sacraments: Baptism, Eucharist, and Penance (the last was dropped from the list later on). The sacramental system kept the true church captive to Rome and its priests, who alone claimed the right to dispense sacramental grace as a means of salvation. His Address to the German Nobility attacked papal authority and presented the new radical idea of sola scriptura: Scripture alone is the source of Chrisitan doctrine, not councils or papal decrees. 

 Growth of the Protestant Movement■ While in hiding Luther translated the entire Bible into German. Luther’s translation of the

German Bible is considered the beginning of the modern German language. ■ Sermons, and the entire Masses were said in the vernacular. Priests stopped wearing

special vestments while celebrating the Eucharist. Communion was offered under both kinds: both body and blood. After Luther published an essay, monasteries and convents closed. Priests and sisters were encouraged to marry.

■ Luther joined the German Protestants in promoting practical reforms which proved so useful that the Roman Catholic Church adopted them as well. Lutherans promoted the

vernacular Bible and Mass, and Congregations singing at Mass. The German princes continued to support Luther. 

■ The reform movement was free to develop through the 1520 and 1530s. 1529: after Charles V’s forces turned back 30,000 Turks at the gates of Vienna, open war between Protestants and Catholics broke out. Charles eventually handed over the imperial throne to his younger brother, Ferdinand. 

■ 1555: Ferdinand and the Lutheran princes signed the Peace of Augsburg -- both sides agreed to stop fighting. The settlement seemed reasonable: all person living in the lands controlled by a Catholic duke or prince were to be Catholic, while all living in lands ruled by a Lutheran were to be Lutherans. The majority of territories in southern Germany were Catholic; northern -- Lutheran. Lutheran form of Christianity spread to the Scandinavian countries. 

 Chapter 33 Ulrich Zwingli and the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland■ Ulrich Zwingli’s enemy was also the corrupt leadership in Rome. He also had the same

inclination to look to the scripture for authoritative teachings to counter Rome’s teachings. He followed Luther in points based on faith alone, like sola scriptura. They disagreed on the nature of the Eucharist. 

 Erasmus’ Ideas, Anti-Roman Feelings■ Zwingli’s favorite author: Desiderius Erasmus, Europe’s most famous intellectual and the

most outspoken critic of the Church. From the book, Enchiridion, Zwingli adopted belief in the importance of scripture study and of cultivating an inner, spiritual life without excessive reliances upon outward signs and shows of faith. 

■ 1516: When Erasmus published his new, critical edition of the New Testament in Greek, Zwingli threw himself into study of the Christian scriptures. 1518: appointed chief preacher in central church of Zurich, where he explained the whole New Testament, verse by verse, to the local Christians. 

■ Zwingli was so harsh in his criticism of traditional practices and papal policy that by 1520, people speculated whether the pope was going to try and burn both Luther and Zwingli at the stake as heretics. Thanks to support of Zurich’s city council, Zwingli escaped punishment.

 Bread and Wine as Symbols■ The distinctive features of Zwingli’s reforms were those related to Sunday worship.

Zwingli denounced the Roman doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He insisted that the eucharistic bread and wine were not the body and blood of Christ, but only symbols.

■ The communion service itself, then, was merely a commemoration of the Last Supper, and Zwingli proposed having communion only 4 times a year. Zwingli believed that instructing the people about true Christian behavior was the church’s greatest responsibility. Nothing should distract from the presentation and explanation of God’s Word. Zwingli propsed iconclasm (literally, “image-breaking”) -- a policy of removing all statues, crucifixes, stained glass windows, tabernacles, and other ornaments from churches. 

■ 1528: Catholic resistance to Protestantism was becoming well organized, war seemed likely. Zwingli was eager to create an alliance of Swiss and German cities that supported the Protestant cause. Disagreements with Luther about doctrine threatened to undermine the alliance. 

■ The meeting between Luther and Zwingli in Philip’s castle in Marburg in 1529 was a disaster. Luther believed in the doctrine of Real Presence, while Zwingli denied it. Both leaders were not even respectful to each other. 1531: Swiss Catholics marched to war, and Zwingli was slain at the Battle of Kappel. 

■ Zurich continued to follow Zwingli’s teachings concerning Sunday worship. By 1540s: Geneva was becoming the leading city in Swiss Reformation, and its leader, John Calvin, was emerging as the greatest leader of the entire Protestant movement. The city of Zurich however still pressed for the Zwinglian understanding of symbolic presence, iconoclasm, and infrequent communion. Calvin’s own understanding was much closer to Luther’s, but he accepted the Zwinglian doctrine and practice. 

■ In the end, it has been variations of Zwingli’s conception of Sunday worship which have prevailed in virtually all Protestant churches.

Chapter 37: The Catholic Reform  ■ During the 1490s, St. Catherine of Genoa and others had promoted the Oratory of

Divine Love, a group of reform minded Italian laypeople and priests who met to promote personal spiritual renewal and charitable work with the poor. 

■ Alessandro Farnese was elected Pope Paul III in 1534. Farnese was the perfect example of what had been wrong with the Roman Church throughout the Renaissance period. He became the example of what was possible for the church if the Roman leadership resolved to make things right. 

■ The Fifth Council of the Lateran addressed problems in the church but achieved nothing; yet as the council closed in 1517, the worldly Cardinal Farnese realized that when would-be reformers at the council complained about the corruption in Rome, they were talking about cardinals like himself. 

■ Alessandro Farnese was not elected pope until 1534, when he was 65 years old. As Pope Paul III one of his first acts was to appoint 2 of his own relatives to be cardinals.

 The Reform Begins

■ The next 6 men named as cardinals by Paul III were among the best-known reforms in Europe. Two of them would later become popes. 

■ They are: Cardinal Sadoleto, a reform bishop from southern Switzerland; Cardinal Carafa, cofounder of the new Theatine Order; Cardinal Reginald Pole, humanist scholar from England; and Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, the foremost layman in the Oratory of Divine Love. Contarini, his most gifted cardinal. 

■ Their jobs were to travel through Europe asking hard questions of all the church’s leaders. Their assignment was to create the most thorough critique of corruption in the church that had ever been undertaken. 

■ 1536: Pope Paul III approved the creation of the Capuchin Order, a reformed branch of the Franciscans. 

■ In 1540, he gave approval to St. Ignatius and his companions to create the Society of Jesus. 

■ Equally bold was his approval in 1546 of the Ursulines, the first order of sisters who would live not in the cloister but in the world, as teachers of young women. 

 The Council of Trent, 1545-1563■ Wars and outbreaks of the plague forced the council to be completed in 3 major

sessions over a period of 18 years. ■ The bishops at Trent responded to the Protestants’ doctrine of sola scriptura by arguing

that the church’s responsibility is to protect and spread the gospel that has not 1 but 2 parts: scripture and tradition. It is the right of the church to interpret scripture and tradition. The church responded to new teachings about the sacraments by reaffirming belief in 7 sacraments. 

■ Ulrich Zwingli’s teaching the church reaffirmed the traditional understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist: Christ is really present, in the forms of bread and wine. 

■ The council taught that by Christ the whole essence of Original Sin is removed, not simply “alleviated;” but concupiscence, an inclination to commit sins, remains even after baptism. 

■ Faith is the beginning of salvation, but the entirety of the Christian life consists of growing closer to God through growth of faith, hope, and love. Doing good works is 1 important means of growing in the 3 Christian virtues. 

 Implementation and Counter-Reformation■ The council sought to make bishops the pillars of the Church. Some of the most

important reform work after the council was carried out by great bishops, such as St. Charles Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan. 

■ The council re-emphasized the importance of the sacrament of Holy Orders, and soon after the council, the bishop in each diocese was expected to create a seminary -- a

school for the training of young men so that priests could be good pastors, not the scandal of the Christian world. Also the council renewed the Church’s need to combat the threat of Protestantism. 

■ Pope Paul IV created the Index of Banned Books, a list of dangerous books by Luther and others, even by Erasmus. Promoted the activities of the Inquisition, which came to be notorious for cruelty and intolerance. Heresy was made to be seen as the most serious sin, since the heretic could lead people away from the Catholic church. 

■ Shortly after the Council of Trent came to an end in 1563, 4 important books were published by the church. The (1) Catechism of the Council of Trent was a concise summary of Catholic doctrine. The (2)Breviary standardized the Divine Office, the monks’ set of prayers based upon the Psalms. The (3) Roman Missal contained all the portions of the Latin Mass and all the scripture readings and prayers for every single day, so masses were the same everywhere on any given day. St. Thomas Aquinas’ (4) Summa Theolgiae was endorsed as the standard handbook of Catholic theology for seminaries and universities. 

 Chapter 38: An Age of Titans Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross■ Order of Carmel -- an order which under instructions of the pope, had softened its

formerly harsh discipline to make a life of prayer more accessible to a greater number of women. 

■ Peter of Alcantara was Spain’s most famous mystic (a person who experiences deep union with God during prayer).

■ Francis Borgia was the new Father General of the Jesuits during this time. He declared that there was nothing offensive in what Teresa had to say. She began to produce books about her prayer life, such as Interior Castle, now considered a spiritual classic, as well as an autobiography. She set herself to work in the world, founding a new, reformed and highly disciplined Carmelite convent in 1562. Teresa of Jesus created and supervised 16 new reformed convents until her endless travels killed her through exhaustion. 

■ Her efforts inspired a young man, John of the Cross, to imitate both Teresa’s devotion to prayer and her plans to establish new houses of prayer. Falsely accused of heresy, John spent 8 months in jail, during which he composed The Spiritual Canticle, the first of his 4 famous books on prayer. 

■ Teresa was examined and approved by Spain’s grand inquisitor, Peter of Alcantara., Francis Borgia and even Spain’s monarch, Phillip II. 

■ John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, the monk and the nun, appeared to have been the 2 most famous people in Spain during the late 16th century. It was an age of faith. 

 Francis Xavier, S.J.

■ Pope Paul III gave approval to the new Society of Jesus in 1540. Only Ignatius was left in Rome, to work on writing a constitution for the Society of Jesus, and Francis Xavier. 

■ By 1542, Francis found himself in western India. After travels to Indonesia, he had earned a reputation as the greatest Christian missionary since St. Paul. 

 Vincent de Paul■ Huguenots were the French Calvinists. ■ Vincent de Paul was a talented boy from a poor family who wanted so desperately for

their boy to escape poverty that they sold their only cow to pay his tuition for school. ■ He founded the Daughters of Charity to work among the poor, then made a career of

convincing women and men from the French nobility of the need to create religious orders to serve the lower classes. 

■ Vincent founded the Congregation of the Mission, and priests on mission continue to bring religious enthusiasm to parishes even in the 21st century. 

■ He also founded seminaries, built orphanages as well as rest homes for the elderly, and organized retreats for the renewal of the faith of priests. Vincent de Paul’s “trademark” was his ability to recruit others to labor on behalf of the poor. 

■ St. Vincent de Paul Society remains the Catholic Church’s best known organization dedicated to aiding the less fortunate. 

 The Methodist Movement■ The Wesley brothers, John and Charles, founded the Methodist movement, which aimed

at injecting new life into the Anglican Church. One of their aims was to restore enthusiasm to Sunday worship, and to that end, Charles, composed more than 2K new hymns. 

■ Both brothers travelled all over England and even to America to spread their message of enthusiasm and a reasonable approach to faith. 

 Music and the Arts■ “Baroque” Culture = an artistic style which emphasized grandness and showiness while

focusing often upon religious themes. ■ Bach’s work helps to account for why the organ is the instrument most often used in

church services today. ■ George Friedrich Handel saved his best work for the writing of an oratorio, “The

Messiah,” which many people believe is the greatest piece of religious music ever written.

■ Caravaggio, an Italian, is best known for paintings which employed Baroque characteristics to portray religious themes. 

■ However, the most associated artist with this time period is Gianlorenzo Bernini. He made his reputation as a sculptor by daring to attempt his own version of the “David,”

when Michelangelo’s “David” was already the most famous statue ever made. One of his greatest sculptures was “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” depicting Teresa of Avila’ extraordinary experience in prayer. Most notably as an architect, he finished St. Peter in Rome. 

■ The years that followed the Catholic and Protestant reforms were a time of religious intolerance, of such things as the witch-hunts carried out by both Catholic and Protestant leaders, ad even religious wars that both sides came to regret. 

 Chapter 39: Missionaries to Asia and the New World■ By no later than 1493, the Pope ordered the Catholic monarchs of Spain and Portugal to

bring Christian missionaries along with the sailors and soldiers who were venturing into foreign territories. 

■ Out of the converts came outstanding men and women of holiness, including St. Rose of Lima, the Blessed Kateri Tekakawitha and St. Martin de Porres. 

■ Christian missionaries came in for criticism, for failing to curb the excesses of conquistadores (conquerors) and for imposing Christianity upon peoples with scarcely any consideration of those peoples’ existing religion and culture. 

■ Hebrew and Christian scriptures provide insights into human sin and weakness. The insights are valuable in assessing the behavior of the explorers and the missionaries who accompanied them. 

■ Asian rulers blocked Christians, for they believed that the Europeans were insufficiently educated about the wonders of the host culture. Franciscan, Jesuit, Augustinian, and Dominican missionaries were all denied by China. Jesuits soon got in on premise of studying the Chinese culture. 

 Matteo Ricci, S.J. in China■ Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit, charmed the Chinese by mastering the Cantonese

language, studying Confucian literature, and creating a map of the entire world. He translated the 10 Commandments into Chinese, then composed 3 original works in Chinese. 

■ In his finest work, The True Doctrine, he used reason to challenge idol worship and to defend belief in the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and God’s creation of the world. He managed to pave the way for thousands of conversion in the next century. Honored as Christian missionary who promoted respectful dialogue between cultures. 

 Missionaries in the New World■ Franciscan missionaries arrived in Mexico shortly after Cortez’s conquest in 1521. ■ Missionaries were concerned about the treatment of native peoples against an

entrenched system which was making local overlords and the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs rich.

■ Many missionaries had problems with establishing traditional beliefs. The first bishop of Mexico created schools to train a native clergy, but closed it after he mistrusted Aztecs who still followed their old practices. In Peru, missionaries administered the sacraments of baptism, confession, and matrimony, but withheld the Eucharist, judging that the Inca people could not understand communion. 

■ Bartolome de las Casas was a Spaniard who came to direct an encomienda. He left his job and became a Dominican bishop, and recorded numerous instances of mistreatment of Indians in his History of the Indies. Promoted the idea that he foremost responsibility of missionaries was to teach Christian doctrine and European farming methods. 

 Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay ■ Portuguese slavers kidnapped so many Brazilian villagers that Jesuits in 1609 created

havens, called “reductions,” for people of the region known as the Guarani. Eventually there were more than 20. There were houses, a school, a church, and a hospital. 

■ Jesuits and Guarani worked together to create a distinctive architectural style which blended European style and native elements. They also made music and musical instruments. 

■ 1767: Spanish government ordered the Jesuits out of Spain and all its territories.  Chapter 41: The Enlightenment, the First Modern Review of Christianity■ In Europe, the 30 Years War -- the last of the religious wars between Catholic and

Protestants -- was devastating Germany and surrounding lands, and causing human misery on a large scale. Under these circumstances European intellectuals began to promote the ideal of reasonable moral standards and reasonable conclusions, independent of any Christian revelation. 

■ In 1624, Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbery, argued in his book About Truth that common human beliefs (such as the existence of God and the idea of God would judge people for their moral or immoral behavior) were accessible to all persons apart from any special revelation of the truth by God. 

■ Much of the other discussion turned upon scholars’ judgement concerning the credibility of the Bible’s prophecies and miracle stories. The new ideas were most aggressively promoted by intellectuals from France, and was given a collective label of “The Enlightenment,” an invitation to follow the “light” of reason alone, and to leave behind the “darkness” of superstition, faith and any trust in a divine revelation. 

■ French thinkers were proposing to replace traditional Christian ideas with new, reasonable beliefs concerning God, law, and human nature. Advocates of the new ideas called themselves “les philosophes” -- “the philosophers.” The clear implication was that only people who accepted their views deserved to be called true philosophers.

 Deism

■ The Enlightenment’s new understanding of God was called “deism.” It is reasonable, the philosophes said, to believe in a Supreme Being, a Deity, a powerful Creator; since it is obvious that there is an entire world which could not have caused itself into existence, any reasonable person should believe in the existence of a First Cause or God. The Deist belief was in an impersonal Supreme Being. 

■ The implications of the deist anti-religion show up clearly in the novel Candide, by Voltaire. Candide, perhaps most famous satire ever written, and the target of Voltaire’s biting humor is the traditional Christian belief in providence, the idea that God watches over human events. In the world of Voltaire, God values humans no more than mice, and human suffering has absolutely no meaning. 

 Human Nature and Human Law■ The philosophes rejected the ideas of Original Sin and divine grace; they argued at great

length about where the evils in the world come from and about how such evils could be overcome. Denis Diderot argued that human nature is fundamentally good -- a person could never go wrong by following his passions. Evil comes about only when a person reasons wrongly about what he should do. By teaching people to reason better, society could eliminate evil. 

■ Voltaire said humans are not inherently good or bad; its just that society corrupts them.■ Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his famous Discourse on the Origins of Human Inequality,

argued that human nature is not evil, but that if each individual follows his natural instinct for self-preservation, conflicts in society can arise. 

■ The sublime maxim,” of course, was Jesus’ Golden Rule -- “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Rousseau was proposing to replace Jesus’ fundamental teaching about morality with his own. Overall, the representatives of the French Enlightenment were ambitiously attempting to replace Christian beliefs on virtually every important subject. 

■ By the end of the 18th century, debate between Christians and the philosophes was disrupted by another world changing event, the French Revolution. The ideas of the Enlightenment themselves were called into question by a later generation of European thinkers. Modern, post-Enlightenment Christians find themselves shaping their lives in terms of beliefs which are not universally accepted and which have been subjected to harsh criticism. 

 Chapter 44: The Church and the Modern State, Part 1: From the Reformation to the French Revolution■ On the European continent for many centuries, the Church had control over many

services: ownerships of schools, granted loans to students, welfare payments, and ownerships of hospitals. Even the legitimacy of governments was upheld by the church, as bishops and popes crowned and anointed kings. 

■ The Church played key roles in many political incidents as well as in the everyday business of governing, in which religion played a key role and church leaders exercise tremendous influence -- a far cry from the separation of church and state which is the rule of thumb in the US, and most European countries today. The transition took place in the 17-19th centuries.

■ Thanks to improvements in administration, the government became competent enough to undertake a greater number of tasks. The church, however, resisted all attempts to take away its historic privileges and functions, and in the heated church-state struggles which ensued, the church and religion itself were forcibly driven out of the center of public life. 

 The Beginning: Erastianism■ When writing the famous Peace of Augsburg, the negotiators invented a formula for

deciding which church Germans would belong to: cuius regio, eius religio. The Latin words translate to “whose region it is, his religion it is.” Both Catholic and Lutheran leaders agreed to this in order to keep peace. However, the Catholic leaders were disturbed by the implications: a secular leader, a duke or prince of a region rather than a bishop, was the one who determined the religious identity of all the people. 

■ A German named Thomas Lieber, who wrote under the pen name “Erastus,” put forth 2 important ideas in his book Explicatio Gravissima, publish in 1589: first, secular rules ought to control and direct all civic life. Second, secular rulers ought to be responsible for piety, for the Christian life of the people they govern. His ideas, called “erastianism,” were enthusiastically embraced by Europe’s kings during the 17th and 18th centuries. 

 The Suppression of the Society of Jesus■ Given the symbolic importance of weakening the papacy, an attractive strategy was to

undermine the papacy’s strongest ally. The ally was the Society of Jesus, the religious order of priests who made a special vow to serve to pope in any way he called for. The Jesuits were the highest educated priests in the Roman Catholic Church. Employed as teachers, missionaries, preachers, and diplomats by popes during the Reformation.

■ Jesuits were too competent, too well placed, and too openly loyal to the papacy; they were a misfit in an erastian world. There was pressure from many governments to get rid of the S.J.

■ 1773: Pope Clement XIV ordered the suppression of the Society, for the sake of peace. Many governments, including ones of France, Spain, and Portugal. From 1773-1810, the Jesuits were an underground group. 

 The French Revolution■ Suppression of the Jesuits hurt the church by silencing some of its foremost

intellectuals, who were effective in defending the church’s beliefs during an era of

controversies over belief. The French Revolution began in spring of 1789, when the ministers of the King of France concluded that the French government was bankrupt. Their bankruptcy set off the chain of events.

■ The new government soon voted to confiscate all the lands of the church to pay off the government’s debts. This caused all religious orders to disband except those who carried out socially useful functions in the schools and hospitals. All priests and bishops would become employees of the government, receiving standard salaries. 

■ As government officials bishops and priest were required to take an oath of loyalty -- loyalty to the revolutionary government, to the exclusion of power (such as the pope) outside the government. After July 12, 1790, in France, 131 of 135 bishops left the country rather than taking the oath. 50% of priests did as well. Those who did not take it could not preside at funerals, marriages, couldn’t distribute communion, and had no income. Year later: another oath was required -- this time all income was taken away from the clergy. 

■ During the Revolution, the leaders of this Revolution were quick to execute anyone who even seemed like a possible enemy of the democratic movement. Priests were often sent to the guillotine -- any priest denounced by 6 people was given the death sentence. Soon it was Christian belief that was under attack. It came to the point that every sort of religious celebration was banned from 1795 to 1801. 

■ The Catholic Church in France fell apart. They lacked clergymen and the government took over the Catholic universities. Many French Catholics did not return to practice.

Chapter 45: The Church and the Modern State: The Pontificate of Pius IX■ The ideas put into practice in America and France during the 1780s and 1790s --

representative government and basic human freedoms -- came to be known as “liberalism.” (Term derived from Latin liber, meaning “free.”) Liberal ideas were put forth aggressively all over Europe during the 1800s. 

■ Kings of European nations resisted attempts to install democratic governments, and they were not eager to experiment with constitutional monarchy. A large number of Europeans were monarchists. 

■ Part of the church leaders’ resistance to liberalism was the result of experience. From that experience, church leaders developed a critique of liberalism. They saw the concept of popular sovereignty as the root of the problem. Political authority, the popes and bishops said, comes not from the people but from God; people are not free simply to overthrow any governments whose policies they disapprove. 

■ Roman Catholic leaders argued that civic freedoms should not be without limits. Freedom of religion is even more dangerous because it puts false beliefs on par with the Christian truth. The pope most know for resistance to liberalism was Pius IX. 

 Conflict with Italian Revolutionaries

■ The pope was the monarch who ruled Rome and central Italy, a region called “the Papal States.” He also created a constitution for the Papal States to provide for a ruling council of elected representatives. Pius took liberal ideas so seriously that he granted this council the power to veto the pope’s political decisions. Italy at this time, was not a united nation. 

■ Since a pope whose reforms made him popular in the Papal States was an obstacle to unifying Italy, Pius had to be brought down. Liberal leaders incited riots in Rome during February 1848. They complained Pius was betraying Italy by refusing to promote a war to drive Austria out of northern Italy. 

■ Piedmont (kingdom) and its leaders never gave up control of the Papal States and by 1860, the city of Rome was all that the pope still controlled. 

 The Syllabus of Errors■ In many countries, but Piedmont especially, liberal regimes were overturning laws

against divorce, in defiance of the Roman Church; declaring that marriage was only a civil contract; closing convents and monasteries; and taking control of Catholic hospitals and schools. 

■ Pius IX came to be mocked in the newspapers, satirized in political cartoons as “The Giant Pope,” the enemy of human freedoms. 

■ 1864: In response to requests from Europe’s bishops for a summary of Roman Catholic policy toward liberal governments, Pius issued the Syllabus of Errors. It was a collection of all the letters the pope had written to bishops about liberalism. Sentence 80 seemed to summarize the entire syllabus: “The Roman pontiff can in no way be reconciled to modern progress and civilization.” 

 Vatican I■ While the pope’s standing in the world declined, his status within the Church was

enhanced. He was the longest pontificate in the history of the church (1846-1878), Pius IX became the first ruler of a truly worldwide church. 

■ The bishops at Vatican Council I intended to discuss the relationship of the church to the world. The bishops thought that it would be helpful first to define the church and all its parts -- the pope, the bishops, the priesthood, the men and women of the religious orders, and the laity. 

■ Bishops took up the question of the infallibility of the pope -- that is whether the pope, speaking for the whole church, taught infallibly, without error. Assembled bishops declared the pope infallible. 

■ The official teaching, defined at Vatican I, is that the pope, speaking ex cathedra (“from the chair” of St. Peter) for the entire church, teaches without error in matters of faith and morals. 

■ Dogma of Infallibility confirmed a traditional understanding of the church’s and the pope’s power of teaching, but non-Catholics understood the dogma as giving a strange, new power to the leader who had already condemned progress, freedom, and democracy. 

■ However highly esteemed the Roman pontiff was within the church, the papacy’s standing in the world had reached a new low.

 Chapter 46: The Church and Modern State: Leo XIII & Call for Catholic Citizenship■ Bishops that were in Rome for the First Vatican Council left the city in haste. Vatican

Council I was finished before the planned discussion about the nature of the entire church and all its offices could take place. 

■ The proclamation that the pope teaches infallibly on matters of faith and morals was misunderstood by the general public, and it was received badly. Governments, mistrustful of the church and its leader in Rome, soon began curtailing the public functions of the Roman Catholic Church in their countries. 

■ Piedmont army’s arrival in Rome allowed Victor Emmanuel was in a position to proclaim himself king of the newly united nation of Italy. Pius IX considered the new king nothing more than a thief. Pius refused to negotiate with the new government; Pius IX locked himself inside the Vatican and remained their for 8 years until his death. 

■ Election of the pope was split -- some wanted an anti-liberal, others wanted a liberal candidate. The cardinals chose Joachim Pecci, Pope Leo XIII. Over time, he reconsidered and modified the Roman Catholic teaching about church-state relations and liberal politics in general. He re-crafted a traditional form, called the “encyclical,” as a means of teaching the faithful new ways of understanding the social, political and economic issues of his day. 

■ 1881: Leo XIII opened the secret archives of the Vatican. At Leo’s invitation, scholars came to Rome to work in the archives, the world’s most extensive collection of historical documents. Thanks to Leo XIII’s strategy, peace was negotiated between the Catholic Church and the German government in 1882. 

 Encyclical Letters■ Leo XIII’s most original contribution was his adaptation of the encyclical letter to the

new circumstances of a world of democratic governments and a mostly literate population. He made sure the letters were translated into all vernacular languages, so not only the bishops could read it. 

■ His letters provided a Christian perspective on issues. He tried to make his case in a way that any reasonable, open-minded person could understand. The pope helped create well informed and articulate Christian citizens who could participate in the democratic processes in their countries, and have an impact upon policy and law. 

 

The Encyclical Immortale Dei■ 1881: Leo wrote an encyclical letter which carefully avoided the usual papal

condemnations of liberalism. 4 years later, Leo penned another letter which addressed the key ideas of liberalism as well. The encyclical letter Immortale Dei repeated the traditional Catholic belief that all political authority comes from God. It also said, a constitutional monarchy, like England’s, or a republic like that of France or the United States, is acceptable. The pope was saying Catholics were not required to be monarchists. 

■ Church and state are both necessary, he said, and the two should work together on some matters. The pope argued that the modern tendency for the state to be neutral toward all churches is not healthy. He was critical of the principle of religious toleration because he feared that it would lead to indifference about religious questions of great importance. 

■ The best way to encourage people’s religious observance is for the state to endorse the one true church. He said that he did not condemn governments for allowing other churches and other religious practices to persist. 

 Citizenship■ 1890: In another encyclical entitled Sapientiae Christianae, Leo taught that Christians

have an obligation to share Christian wisdom with all people. The pope was saying that Catholic Christians needed to involve themselves directly in the democratic process. 

■ The biggest political issue of the day was what to do with the angry workers in European and American factories, who were going on strike to protest low wages and terrible working conditions. 

■ 1891: Leo XIII issued his most famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum; in this letter, he took formulated a distinctive, Christian understanding of social and economic issues. Catholic political parties began to take the pope’s ideas into their political debates.

 Chapter 50: The Second Vatican Council ■ Angelo Roncalli, a papal diplomat whose age, 76, made it clear that he was viewed as a

caretaker for the time being (Pius XII passed away in 1958). Roncalli himself, who took the name John XXIII, referred to himself as a “transitional pope.” 

■ After WW2, the Catholic Church had reason to be at ease: Seminaries were full, and religious orders seemed to be flourishing. In the US, Catholic churches and schools were full. 

■ Pope John took everyone by surprise when he called for an ecumenical (worldwide) council -- only the second council in 400 years. The caretaker pontiff insisted that the church needed to open its windows and let in a bit of fresh air. A new agenda was drawn up by the bishops. 

■ Women were given prominent places in the Vatican building as observers, and in the later stages of the council they contributed to the writing of some of the council’s decrees. All 16 documents produced at Vatican II were all accompanied by Protestant commentaries. 

■ Each of the bishops was encouraged to bring a peritus, or theological expert to Rome. The church believes that the bishops, as the successors of the apostles, are the church’s authoritative teachers. The changes in Catholic worship which came out of Vatican II are perhaps the most striking sign of the bishops’ humility in using the insights of the scholars. 

■ December 4, 1963: Decree on the Liturgy, which called for changes in the Mass, made headlines. Root ideas of it and other important documents already appeared in Lumen Gentium, which the council published in late November 1963. Lumen Gentium laid down the church’s basic doctrines concerning the church itself. It proclaimed that the whole church is the entire people of God. The Decree taught that since the Eucharist is the summit of the entire church’s worship of God, it is essential that all the faithful should be led to participation in liturgical celebrations. Eucharist = word comes from Greek roots meaning “the work of the people.”

■ To enhance the people’s participation the Vatican II applied ideas from the Decree during the years after the council made momentous changes. The celebration was in the people’s language. The priest no longer offered the sacrifice to God with his back to the people but faced the congregation instead.

■ People in the pews were now encouraged to say prayerful responses and sing the major acclamations, namely, the Alleluia, the Holy, Holy, Holy, the Memorial Acclamation, the Great Amen, and the Lamb of God. The traditional doctrine of Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist was re-emphasized in the Decree on the Liturgy. 

■ Christ is present, the bishops asserted, in the Eucharistic bread and wine, as the church has long believed. Once again, the idea that the church is the entire people of God was foremost.

■ That same idea from Lumen Gentium was applied in a striking way in the Decree of Ecumenism, which called for friendly dialogue with other Christian churches. Given what Jesus himself had said, the bishops at Vatican II declared the divisions among Christians a scandal, and cause for remorse. The Decree on Ecumenism also acknowledges that the separated churches are truly the “church,” and their baptism is truly Christian baptism. Vatican II represented a turning point in Christian history. 

■ The other question which Vatican I had only begun to discuss before the abrupt end of the proceedings was the relation of the church to the world around it. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World was (usually remembered by the its Latin title, Gaudium et Spes) the answer. The fundamental message of the document is that the church needs to be in dialogue with the world for 2 reasons. 

■ First the church needs to be in touch with the new ideas and scientific breakthroughs of the modern age -- and in the decades since Vatican II the church has made good use of the insights of modern psychology and other social and physical sciences. 

■ Second, the church needs to speak to the ideas of the time, respectful of even the questioning and anti-religious views of the day while, of course, proclaiming the good news that the church is called to share with mankind. 

■ Pope John Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control met quick disapproval and his encyclical on about the obligations of rich nations to poor nations was generally ignored. 

■ The Pope’s ideas in Evangelium Vitae were, of course, accessible only to the well educated, but the work of Mother Teresa with people dying in the streets of Calcutta made Christian belief in the dignity of humans intelligible to all. 

Chapter 45: The Church and the Modern State: The Pontificate of Pius IX■ The ideas put into practice in America and France during the 1780s and 1790s --

representative government and basic human freedoms -- came to be known as “liberalism.” (Term derived from Latin liber, meaning “free.”) Liberal ideas were put forth aggressively all over Europe during the 1800s. 

■ Kings of European nations resisted attempts to install democratic governments, and they were not eager to experiment with constitutional monarchy. A large number of Europeans were monarchists. 

■ Part of the church leaders’ resistance to liberalism was the result of experience. From that experience, church leaders developed a critique of liberalism. They saw the concept of popular sovereignty as the root of the problem. Political authority, the popes and bishops said, comes not from the people but from God; people are not free simply to overthrow any governments whose policies they disapprove. 

■ Roman Catholic leaders argued that civic freedoms should not be without limits. Freedom of religion is even more dangerous because it puts false beliefs on par with the Christian truth. The pope most know for resistance to liberalism was Pius IX. 

 Conflict with Italian Revolutionaries■ The pope was the monarch who ruled Rome and central Italy, a region called “the Papal

States.” He also created a constitution for the Papal States to provide for a ruling council of elected representatives. Pius took liberal ideas so seriously that he granted this council the power to veto the pope’s political decisions. Italy at this time, was not a united nation. 

■ Since a pope whose reforms made him popular in the Papal States was an obstacle to unifying Italy, Pius had to be brought down. Liberal leaders incited riots in Rome during February 1848. They complained Pius was betraying Italy by refusing to promote a war to drive Austria out of northern Italy. 

■ Piedmont (kingdom) and its leaders never gave up control of the Papal States and by 1860, the city of Rome was all that the pope still controlled. 

 The Syllabus of Errors■ In many countries, but Piedmont especially, liberal regimes were overturning laws

against divorce, in defiance of the Roman Church; declaring that marriage was only a civil contract; closing convents and monasteries; and taking control of Catholic hospitals and schools. 

■ Pius IX came to be mocked in the newspapers, satirized in political cartoons as “The Giant Pope,” the enemy of human freedoms. 

■ 1864: In response to requests from Europe’s bishops for a summary of Roman Catholic policy toward liberal governments, Pius issued the Syllabus of Errors. It was a collection of all the letters the pope had written to bishops about liberalism. Sentence 80 seemed to summarize the entire syllabus: “The Roman pontiff can in no way be reconciled to modern progress and civilization.” 

 Vatican I■ While the pope’s standing in the world declined, his status within the Church was

enhanced. He was the longest pontificate in the history of the church (1846-1878), Pius IX became the first ruler of a truly worldwide church. 

■ The bishops at Vatican Council I intended to discuss the relationship of the church to the world. The bishops thought that it would be helpful first to define the church and all its parts -- the pope, the bishops, the priesthood, the men and women of the religious orders, and the laity. 

■ Bishops took up the question of the infallibility of the pope -- that is whether the pope, speaking for the whole church, taught infallibly, without error. Assembled bishops declared the pope infallible. 

■ The official teaching, defined at Vatican I, is that the pope, speaking ex cathedra (“from the chair” of St. Peter) for the entire church, teaches without error in matters of faith and morals. 

■ Dogma of Infallibility confirmed a traditional understanding of the church’s and the pope’s power of teaching, but non-Catholics understood the dogma as giving a strange, new power to the leader who had already condemned progress, freedom, and democracy. 

■ However highly esteemed the Roman pontiff was within the church, the papacy’s standing in the world had reached a new low.

 Chapter 46: The Church and Modern State: Leo XIII & Call for Catholic Citizenship■ Bishops that were in Rome for the First Vatican Council left the city in haste. Vatican

Council I was finished before the planned discussion about the nature of the entire church and all its offices could take place. 

■ The proclamation that the pope teaches infallibly on matters of faith and morals was misunderstood by the general public, and it was received badly. Governments, mistrustful of the church and its leader in Rome, soon began curtailing the public functions of the Roman Catholic Church in their countries. 

■ Piedmont army’s arrival in Rome allowed Victor Emmanuel was in a position to proclaim himself king of the newly united nation of Italy. Pius IX considered the new king nothing more than a thief. Pius refused to negotiate with the new government; Pius IX locked himself inside the Vatican and remained their for 8 years until his death. 

■ Election of the pope was split -- some wanted an anti-liberal, others wanted a liberal candidate. The cardinals chose Joachim Pecci, Pope Leo XIII. Over time, he reconsidered and modified the Roman Catholic teaching about church-state relations and liberal politics in general. He re-crafted a traditional form, called the “encyclical,” as a means of teaching the faithful new ways of understanding the social, political and economic issues of his day. 

■ 1881: Leo XIII opened the secret archives of the Vatican. At Leo’s invitation, scholars came to Rome to work in the archives, the world’s most extensive collection of historical documents. Thanks to Leo XIII’s strategy, peace was negotiated between the Catholic Church and the German government in 1882. 

 Encyclical Letters■ Leo XIII’s most original contribution was his adaptation of the encyclical letter to the

new circumstances of a world of democratic governments and a mostly literate population. He made sure the letters were translated into all vernacular languages, so not only the bishops could read it. 

■ His letters provided a Christian perspective on issues. He tried to make his case in a way that any reasonable, open-minded person could understand. The pope helped create well informed and articulate Christian citizens who could participate in the democratic processes in their countries, and have an impact upon policy and law. 

 The Encyclical Immortale Dei■ 1881: Leo wrote an encyclical letter which carefully avoided the usual papal

condemnations of liberalism. 4 years later, Leo penned another letter which addressed the key ideas of liberalism as well. The encyclical letter Immortale Dei repeated the traditional Catholic belief that all political authority comes from God. It also said, a constitutional monarchy, like England’s, or a republic like that of France or the United States, is acceptable. The pope was saying Catholics were not required to be monarchists. 

■ Church and state are both necessary, he said, and the two should work together on some matters. The pope argued that the modern tendency for the state to be neutral toward all churches is not healthy. He was critical of the principle of religious toleration

because he feared that it would lead to indifference about religious questions of great importance. 

■ The best way to encourage people’s religious observance is for the state to endorse the one true church. He said that he did not condemn governments for allowing other churches and other religious practices to persist. 

 Citizenship■ 1890: In another encyclical entitled Sapientiae Christianae, Leo taught that Christians

have an obligation to share Christian wisdom with all people. The pope was saying that Catholic Christians needed to involve themselves directly in the democratic process. 

■ The biggest political issue of the day was what to do with the angry workers in European and American factories, who were going on strike to protest low wages and terrible working conditions. 

■ 1891: Leo XIII issued his most famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum; in this letter, he took formulated a distinctive, Christian understanding of social and economic issues. Catholic political parties began to take the pope’s ideas into their political debates.

 Chapter 50: The Second Vatican Council ■ Angelo Roncalli, a papal diplomat whose age, 76, made it clear that he was viewed as a

caretaker for the time being (Pius XII passed away in 1958). Roncalli himself, who took the name John XXIII, referred to himself as a “transitional pope.” 

■ After WW2, the Catholic Church had reason to be at ease: Seminaries were full, and religious orders seemed to be flourishing. In the US, Catholic churches and schools were full. 

■ Pope John took everyone by surprise when he called for an ecumenical (worldwide) council -- only the second council in 400 years. The caretaker pontiff insisted that the church needed to open its windows and let in a bit of fresh air. A new agenda was drawn up by the bishops. 

■ Women were given prominent places in the Vatican building as observers, and in the later stages of the council they contributed to the writing of some of the council’s decrees. All 16 documents produced at Vatican II were all accompanied by Protestant commentaries. 

■ Each of the bishops was encouraged to bring a peritus, or theological expert to Rome. The church believes that the bishops, as the successors of the apostles, are the church’s authoritative teachers. The changes in Catholic worship which came out of Vatican II are perhaps the most striking sign of the bishops’ humility in using the insights of the scholars. 

■ December 4, 1963: Decree on the Liturgy, which called for changes in the Mass, made headlines. Root ideas of it and other important documents already appeared in Lumen Gentium, which the council published in late November 1963. Lumen Gentium laid down

the church’s basic doctrines concerning the church itself. It proclaimed that the whole church is the entire people of God. The Decree taught that since the Eucharist is the summit of the entire church’s worship of God, it is essential that all the faithful should be led to participation in liturgical celebrations. Eucharist = word comes from Greek roots meaning “the work of the people.”

■ To enhance the people’s participation the Vatican II applied ideas from the Decree during the years after the council made momentous changes. The celebration was in the people’s language. The priest no longer offered the sacrifice to God with his back to the people but faced the congregation instead.

■ People in the pews were now encouraged to say prayerful responses and sing the major acclamations, namely, the Alleluia, the Holy, Holy, Holy, the Memorial Acclamation, the Great Amen, and the Lamb of God. The traditional doctrine of Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist was re-emphasized in the Decree on the Liturgy. 

■ Christ is present, the bishops asserted, in the Eucharistic bread and wine, as the church has long believed. Once again, the idea that the church is the entire people of God was foremost.

■ That same idea from Lumen Gentium was applied in a striking way in the Decree of Ecumenism, which called for friendly dialogue with other Christian churches. Given what Jesus himself had said, the bishops at Vatican II declared the divisions among Christians a scandal, and cause for remorse. The Decree on Ecumenism also acknowledges that the separated churches are truly the “church,” and their baptism is truly Christian baptism. Vatican II represented a turning point in Christian history. 

■ The other question which Vatican I had only begun to discuss before the abrupt end of the proceedings was the relation of the church to the world around it. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World was (usually remembered by the its Latin title, Gaudium et Spes) the answer. The fundamental message of the document is that the church needs to be in dialogue with the world for 2 reasons. 

■ First the church needs to be in touch with the new ideas and scientific breakthroughs of the modern age -- and in the decades since Vatican II the church has made good use of the insights of modern psychology and other social and physical sciences. 

■ Second, the church needs to speak to the ideas of the time, respectful of even the questioning and anti-religious views of the day while, of course, proclaiming the good news that the church is called to share with mankind. 

■ Pope John Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control met quick disapproval and his encyclical on about the obligations of rich nations to poor nations was generally ignored. 

■ The Pope’s ideas in Evangelium Vitae were, of course, accessible only to the well educated, but the work of Mother Teresa with people dying in the streets of Calcutta made Christian belief in the dignity of humans intelligible to all.