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Church and State

Alex Tokarev, Ph.D., Economist at The King’s College, NYC

I. Introduction: The Rise of the Church

A century ago, Max Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For all its failures to

explain why some Calvinist areas prospered while others remained poor, this book drew the attention of the

economic historians to attitudes as a key element of institutions, which determines economic performance. –

refers to institutions or attitudes? This paper claims that attitudes are embedded in the existing institutional

structures. The latter set their own limits, which are just as powerful as natural constraints. I analyze below the

evolution and transmission of powerful, hierarchical, authoritarian government structures from ancient Rome to

the Church and from there to the medieval western European kingdoms.

Our story begins in Rome in the first century before Christ when the state had already grown beyond the

imagination of its most ambitious leaders. Unlike the rise of Hellenistic Macedonia in the fourth century B.C.,

Roman expansion was more systematic and sustainable. Yet the boundaries of the empire gradually expanded

beyond the limits of control. Thus, as Eberhardt (1961 pp. 28-30) notes, “constant acquisition of provinces

overtaxed the digestive powers of republican government.” The amazing new opportunities for accumulation of

wealth through warfare and rent-seeking activities deepened the “cleavage between a wealthy oligarchy and an

impotent democracy.” The old system of government could not bear the increase of power and responsibility

and “the stage was set for dictatorship.”

The first in a long succession of dictators, Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.), did not dismantle the republican

Senate. Instead he kept it as “an imperial council to advise but not to consent.” From that moment on,

appointments to the state hierarchy and control over all parts of the growing empire was concentrated in the

palace. “Provincial governors were all named by the emperor and held to strict accountability.” The next

absolute ruler of Rome, Augustus (63 B.C.–14 A.D.), accelerated the pace of bureaucratic centralization. “The

upper classes were given showy offices but the imperial bureaucracy… grew in importance.” Augustus saw the

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benefit of combining religious and temporal powers and “permitted divine honors to himself, thus deifying

patriotism and making religious dissent high treason.” An irreversible process began, at the end of which the

hierarchical institutional structures stifled almost all innovation and progress.

During that time the Church was established as a horizontally structured, responsibility-decentralized,

open to the world, service-oriented, local-community-based organization. It acknowledged only one authority

that was not of this earth. This brought “charges of disloyalty to Caesar… Those who fled or were banished

helped to spread the Christian faith.” (McSorley, 1944 p. 13) The decentralized structure gave the early

Christians better chances to survive as a community. When political authorities captured and jailed members of

one congregation, they could not reach and destroy other congregations through torture and interrogation of key

figures.

An important advantage of the lack of rigid hierarchy was that it gave the early missionaries the

flexibility to reach people of different cultures. Being horizontal, the Church also diffused ambitions, thus

preventing conflicts for power. An ecclesiastical office, while carrying the burden of heavy responsibility for

preserving the faith under persecutions, did not provide any worldly rewards. In fact, when being a Christian

was a capital crime, appointment to a bishopric was a short cut to Rome’s most wanted list for almost two

hundred and fifty years.

For the absolute dictators of Rome “refusal to participate in the state cult and to think as the state does

was a crime against the state (crimen laesae Romanae religionis).” (Kung, 2001 p. 24) Roman authorities “were

unable to make a clearcut distinction between loyalty to the state and religious allegiance… No one had ever

dreamt of the distinction between church and state, between religion and civic duty.” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 64) One

can hardly accuse most emperors of being lenient. As the Church grew, so did State resistance against it.

Eventually rulers had to resort to systematic extermination of Christians and the world witnessed “persecutions

throughout the empire, which… under the emperors Decius and Valerian, were no longer sporadic and regional

but universal.” Yet “all the persecutions… proved to be a fiasco.” (Kung, 2001 p. 31) Fighting ideas with

soldiers is as wise as trying to put out a small kitchen fire with a bucket of gasoline. Instead of killing the

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Church, outside pressures made it stronger. McSorley (1944 p. 49) observes that “the threat of torture helped to

rid the Church of weak and unstable members.”

Imperial persecution was not an environment conducive to the evolution of hierarchical power

structures. Mourret (1931 pp. 80-6) draws attention to the fact that in the early Church structure, the apostles

share responsibility for the community of Christ and that “no territorial circumscription limits their powers.”

For a short while, the Church was distinctly Judeo-Christian, and that put a stamp on its organization. “Among

the Jews it was customary to entrust the direction of each synagogue to a council of ancients. Upon this

institution the Apostles modeled the organization of their first communities.” Yet, as Jewish leaders kept

persecuting the followers of Christ, Gentiles became the majority in most Christian communities and they

abandoned the traditions of the Synagogue. Pagan Greco-Roman culture started very slowly to modify the

Church—I would use a split infinitive here to improve flow in a well-known pattern. When “the individual

churches become organized in a more stable manner, the bishop’s authority emerges more emphatically.”

Persecutions had a mixed effect on the structure of the Church. In the short run, they preserved the

horizontal organization of the Christian communities. In the long run, however, hostility provoked educated

Greek converts1 to become apologists for their faith. The rise of Christian theology in the cradle of ancient

western philosophy led, according to Kung (2001 pp. 26-30), to

“Hellenization of Christian preaching… The Christian concept of truth was originally not contemplative

and theoretical like the Greek concept, but operative and practical… The new christology increasingly

forced… a doctrine and finally a church dogma… Whereas in Judaism… there have been arguments

about the correct practice of the law, in Hellenized Christianity the arguments have been increasingly

about the right, the orthodox, truth of faith. No wonder that now the christological heresies became

increasingly numerous and that more and more often it was thought necessary to note deviations from

the truth… The term “catholic” (whole, universal, all-embracing), which was originally not polemical in

any way, was now increasingly focused polemically on having a true belief, on being orthodox. The

1 These great eastern theologians lived, as Dwyer (1985 p. 80) puts it, “under the spell of Plato”

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catholic, or mainstream, church… defended its belief by laying down clear standards (Greek kanon) of

what is Christian2.”

Initially “right living (orthopraxis) was more important than right teaching (orthodoxy).” The rise of

heresies created different needs in the Church, needs for structure and direction.3 Eventually judgement?

Authority?—need number agreement “on the correct, apostolic teaching was entrusted to bishops… tradition,

generally became increasingly important, and the power of the bishops grew ever greater. The bishops displaced

the charismatic teachers.” The establishment of clear standards “created a structure for theology and

organization and with it a very resistant inner order.”

Thus far it is clear how alternative views of what it meant to be a Christian arose from the early

horizontal structure of the movement. We see the following chain of action-reaction: the open, decentralized

“service-oriented” character of the Church caused her growth among the pagan citizens of the Roman empire,

which caused imperial persecution, which caused Christian apologetics that caused the establishment of a

dogma, which caused the rise of various “heresies” i.e. unorthodox interpretations4. How the latter, together

with the influence exercised by the imperial government, caused ossified centralized hierarchical structures

(especially after the State became Christian), is the focus of the next sections.

II. The Christian Empire and The Imperial Church

Persecutions against Christians went through different phases. Emperor Trajan (99-117), for example,

made it illegal to be Christian. As the Church spread in the following century, it was no longer possible to kill

them all. So another emperor, Severus (249-251), made it illegal to convert to Christ. Perhaps he was hoping

2 For example, bishop Irenaeus of Lyons (130-200) wrote ‘Against Heresies’ to defend the dual nature of Jesus 3 And so, as a result of the Gnostic crisis, “the church became more tightly and more hierarchically organized” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 82) 4 For details on those, read Eusebius’ “The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine”

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that this law would cut the supply of new members and the Church would wither away. When this also failed,

emperor Diocletian (284-305) in desperation went back to the methods of Nero. Churches were destroyed,

Bibles burned, bishops and priests executed. No cruelty was able to prevent the triumph of the new faith. In the

face of rampant bureaucratic corruption, deepening economic crisis, and the persistent pressure from barbarians,

it “no longer made sense to persecute Christians, especially when more and more Roman citizens were

becoming Christians. Rome needed all the talent it could get to solve its problems.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 5)

Mourret (1931 p. 279) notes that in the periods when imperial anti-Christian zeal subsided, the Church

“profited… to develop her hierarchical… institutions.” The war on Christ finally ended for the Roman citizens

with the death of emperor Galerius5 (A.D.305-11). A war broke out in which Constantine I (the Great) allied his

forces with those of Licinius and defeated his enemy Maxentius in A.D 312. The winners could not share the

power and twelve years later Constantine emerged as the sole leader of the empire. After capturing the throne,

he moved the capital from Rome to Byzantium. He re-named the latter after himself – Constantinople.

Constantine the Great was the first Roman emperor who became a Christian convert and before his

death in A.D. 337 the Church acquired official recognition.6 The actions of this earthly prince tied the eastern

ecclesiastical structures to the fate of the eastern Roman imperial government for the next eleven centuries.

“The Church,” notes Rentel (2006 p. 255), “could not help but reflect the changes that the empire underwent.”

In A.D. 315 the punishment of crucifixion was abolished and branding criminals on the face was prohibited on

the grounds that the face of man is the image of God. In 321 Sunday was introduced as a legal festival and by

323 the pagan religion was characterized as superstitio, i.e. false worship. And so “the church took over the

political divisions and structures of the empire (dioceses, for example) and converted the pagan temples to

Christian worship.” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 93) “The right of the Church to live was no longer disputed; her possession

of the truth will now be contested.” (Darras 1867 p. 354)

Danielou (1978 pp. 220-35) provides us with a good analysis of the quick and easy conversion of the

pagan state. “The vital forces of the empire were largely Christian… but… the official life of the empire

5 At his deathbed Galerius issued a decree ‘ut denuo sint Christiani’ i.e. ‘that Christians might exist again’ 6 By that time half of the population of the empire had supposedly received baptism and the emperor must have realized that paganism “no longer had enough religious substance to provide a basis for political and social renewal.” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 94)

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demanded acts of pagan worship. So those Christians who were appointed magistrates found themselves in a

difficult position… The framework no longer corresponded to reality. By loosing the empire’s ties with

paganism, Constantine was not a revolutionary; he was merely recognizing de jure a de facto situation.”

The century before Constantine was a turbulent time of wars, economic crisis, and anarchy. So, “to

overcome the dangers… the Roman world… had to accept a very severe discipline. The new Empire seems to

us a veritable totalitarian state… trying to subordinate to its authority all the energy of its subjects by absorbing

and unifying them. The authority of the sovereign, bent on absolute power, is exercised through cunningly

hierarchic administrative machinery. Obtrusive bureaucracy… lead to… crippling taxes and a strictly regulated

economy which tends to over-centralize. Like every totalitarian regime, the Late Empire is a police state whose

heavy threats hang over everyone… Finally, and most importantly, the new ideal extols the charismatic quality

of the Leader: the prince is held to possess qualities which make him in some sense divine and raise him above

common humanity. Since Augustus, the structure of imperial power has always contained a religious ingredient;

with the new regime this is accentuated and even becomes different in kind.”

One might think that the trend toward centralizing spiritual and temporal powers would cease when the

empire became Christian. In fact, the new religion strengthened the authoritarian government. Pagan emperors

“could believe themselves ‘gods’ but they identified themselves only with the godlings of the polytheist

pantheon.” Christian Emperors, on the other hand, “while remaining men, reflect the fearful majesty of the God

of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Thus, in the words of Danielou, Constantine’s reign “witnessed perhaps the

most important change in the history of the Church before those of the modern times.”

Christians rejoiced that they could worship without fearing imperial persecutions. As it turned out, “the

benevolent state was a far greater danger to the church than the hostile state had ever been.” (Dwyer, 1985 p.

94) Being a Christian stopped being a dangerous occupation. Simultaneously, however, it became a way to

climb the social ladder. The State turned the Church into a corporation with unlimited opportunities for

accumulation of riches. Where persecutions failed to hurt the fellowship of Christ, plenty succeeded. Earthly

concerns with wealth, power, and social status corrupted the body of the Church starting with some of the

bishops. Christian leaders must also have realized that a growing decentralized structure meant they would be

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facing the following threats with a weakened immune system. Thus in just 30 years, the Church evolved from a

horizontal, flexible, illegal organization into a persecutor of pagan rites - hierarchically structured, intellectually

rigid, and supported by the law.

White (1993, p.42) describes the recent changes in the Church in the former Soviet Union as “mild

compared to those happening to fourth-century Christians. Suddenly their furtive assemblies had become public

convocations…. Simple ceremonial was replaced with elaborate performances. Space always dictates what is

possible and the house-church simplicity yielded to imperial magnificence in the new churches…. The same

shift is obvious in the organizational structure of the churches. The early rather ad hoc organization with a

variety of ministries, ordained and charismatic, increasingly gave way to a standardized form imitating in many

ways the grades and jurisdictions of the empire itself. The incipient hierarchical patterns… prevailed

increasingly.”

Eberhardt (1961 p. 311) points out that “in practice the persons and concerns of the two authorities

(Church and state) were closely linked, interchanged, and even confused. In place of two antagonistic societies,

one the persecutor of the other in the pagan imperialistic environment, Christian permeation of secular society

had now gone so far that harmony of ideals of the Church and Christian state was taken for granted.” Based on

an old ideal of “co-operation between priesthood and statesmanship… Church and state merge into the diarchy,

the condominium, that is known as Christendom.”

Gradually, the once persecuted fellowship in Christ acquired the status of an imperial religion called

“Christianity.” In this new “institutionalized” role, the Church was shaped without much resistance into an

image of the Empire. McSorley (1944 p. 71) explains the intimate connection of Church and State: “Having

found paganism ineffective for the establishment of political unity, the emperors pressed Christianity into

service… When the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction overlapped, Constantine and his successors solved the

problem by personally undertaking the management of both.”

During Constantine’s reign, Christians “lost much of the independence they had possessed in earlier

times when they had to fend for themselves. For the first time, the Church had to deal with issues of political

power and wealth.” Alas, notes Gilles (2000 p. 6), the Church “did not always resolve such issues wisely.”

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Constantine may have changed the religion, but he was not going to change much about his pagan imperial

status of a high priest – he referred to himself as “a bishop of God,” and even issued “orders to the actual

bishops as if they were his underlings.” Thus, especially in the East, “the Church gradually came more and

more under the thumb of the imperial bureaucracy.”

Christian faith had a tremendous impact on the lives of the Roman citizens. At the same time the

Hellenistic culture of the new converts caused an important change in the structure of the Church. “Christianity

was younger than the Roman Empire… [it] faced a society and culture that were venerable and deeply rooted.”

(Eberhardt, 1961 p. 311) Darras (1867 pp. 337-8) draws attention to the fact that in the Greco-Roman world

“the worship of the gods, and the institutions that belonged to it, were bound by the closest ties to the system of

the state, and bore, in the highest degree, political character. The centre of the empire… was herself the object

of religious worship. The belief in the divinities of the empire was so identified with the sentiment of patriotism,

that it seemed impossible to abandon one without violating the other.”

“Neither in Rome nor in Greece had religion ever been independent of the civil authority; and

Constantine the Great, regarding himself as a “bishop” divinely appointed to rule over both Regnum and

Sacerdotium, took charge of ecclesiastical affairs as a matter of course. He established a tradition so solid that

the first eight general councils were all assembled by imperial order… They decided theological questions by

imperial decrees, treated bishops as court officials, and in general, followed the theory that the Church was to be

ruled from the throne – a policy later called “Byzantinism” or “Caesaropapism.” During heretical disturbances,

orthodox bishops had to contend not only with deluded theologians and ambitious prelates, but also with

highhanded emperors.” (McSorley, 1944 pp. 71-2) One only needs to enter a Constantinian basilica and look at

the emperor’s image right next to those of Christ and Peter to grasp the idea “of a social structure in which the

Emperor granted his protection to the Church, but demanded in return not only a normal gratitude, but also a

certain temporal fidelity which went as far as vassaldom, or even to complete subordination.” (Pichon, 1950 p.

32)

Long years of anti-Christian persecutions had provoked well-educated converts to write apologies

(defenses) of their faith. Those early theologians approached their mission in the best traditions of the ancient

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Greek philosophy. The intellectual influence of one of them, the martyr Origen (185-254), played a decisive

role in the mixing of Christianity with the Hellenistic culture in the following century. This great scholar’s

eagerness “to use all the resources which Greek philosophy put at his disposal, in order to penetrate the

mysteries of the Christian faith… gives us a strongly Hellenized version of the Gospel. Certain ambiguities in

his teachings about the nature of Christ, which were a consequence of this Hellenization, were to cause great

difficulties for the church.” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 88) Origen’s “combination of faith and knowledge, theology and

philosophy… worked out that theological change which made possible the cultural change… And this cultural

change in turn furthered the political change: the alliance of church and state.” (Kung, 2001 p. 31) Imperial

ambitions become absolutely clear with the publishing of Constantine’s decree after victory over Licinius: “My

design… to bring all nations respecting the Deity to… uniformity.” The head of the State felt a “twofold duty:

that of head of the Empire, and that of God’s instrument.” Such duties appeared to Constantine “not merely

reconcilable, but quite harmonious. The unity of the Empire and the unity of religion naturally strengthened

each other.” (Mourret, 1931 p. 526)

No longer an object of state persecution, the Church now “had the leisure to devote itself to

metaphysical problems of the kind which had always delighted the Greek mind. But the ensuing struggles were

divisive in the extreme.” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 95) Christian apologetics defined the orthodoxy against incorrect

teachings. In the early decentralized structure of the Church, this naturally led to disagreements on key issues of

the faith. Constantine was not happy with that state of the affairs, seeing “a spiritual split threatening the unity

of the empire which had just been united politically.” (Kung, 2001 p. 36)7 Taking over the honorary presidency

in the council of churches, the emperor was exploiting this new source of power. He called 300 bishops for the

meeting at Nicea in A.D. 325. How concerned Constantine was about religious dissent is evident from his

statement8: “I consider dissention in the Church,” he said, “more dreadful and more painful than any other

war… I was convinced that this matter required my attention before all others” (Laux 1930 p. 110)

7 See also Dwyer, 1985 p. 97 8 Preserved by Eusebius

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The Nicene Council condemned the heretical teaching of the ambitious Alexandrian priest Arius9 and

the Church accepted her Creed. This statement of faith would be confessed by all Biblical Christian churches

over the next 1700 years 10. But here is something very important to consider - “it was the emperor who had the

say at the council… guided it through a bishop whom he appointed… made the resolutions of the council state

law by endorsing them. At the same time he took the opportunity of assimilating the organization of the church

to the organization of the state: the church provinces were to correspond to the imperial provinces (dioceses),

each with a metropolitan and a provincial synod… All of this meant that the empire now had its imperial

church.” (Kung 2001 p. 36)

“Christian Rome… accepted most of pagan culture’s laws and sociopolitical institutions… Christians

appropriated the classical but at different times in different spheres.” The message of Christ was changing the

lives of pagans, but at the same time, the imperial institutions were changing the ecclesiastical organization.

“Had Rome conquered the church or had the church conquered Rome? Did it simply take over from pagan

Rome rather than transform it? ... Shifts in terminology suggest that Rome had conquered… The word for the

territories of the civil administration, “dioceses,” was adopted for ecclesiastical districts.” (O’Grady, 2001 pp.

189-90)

Danielou (1978 pp. 239-42) sheds light on the processes that amalgamated imperial and ecclesiastical

structures under Constantine’s rule: “By the years 300-330, with nearly three centuries of history behind it, the

Church had had time to develop its organization… all its fundamental institutions were already in place.” The

Christian world “seems to have been divided into a series of local communities each under the authority of a

bishop.” A dividing line between clergy and laity had slowly emerged but it “did not prevent the most

cultivated, the richest and the most generous lay people from exercising a sometimes important influence on the

administration, government and even the life of the Church.” For most of the Church’s first three hundred years

“the basic unit was the local church… From the fourth century onwards a plan of coordination was sketched

which opened the way to a more complex and hierarchical structure. The bishops of a single Roman province

9 Disputing the divinity of Christ just five years after the imperial Rescript of Toleration 10 Despite their differences and disagreements on almost any other issue

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(notice the influence of the secular administrative framework), or of a larger region, tended to gather around and

under the authority of a metropolitan, who was usually a bishop of the principle city and church. This

institution, still in its infancy, varied from region to region.”

The Greco-Roman world was uniting behind Christ, but much of the old pagan culture still survived.

Thus “the dividing line between… the profane and the sacred, was not yet clearly established in the case of the

institutions of the Church and those of the Empire.” The advantages to the secular were obvious. “The imperial

power… appeared like an earthly image of the divine monarchy.” The ruler of the empire “was not content

merely to facilitate the holdings of councils… He himself took the initiative in summoning councils and laid

before them the dogmatic or disciplinary problems which they were to handle.” Being a Christian in deed,

despite postponing his baptism, “the Emperor thought of himself quite naturally as the leader of the Christian

people: as a new Moses, a new David, at the head of the true Israel, that of the New Covenant.”

Life under Constantine was “increasingly dominated by the slogan “One God, one emperor, one empire,

one church, one faith.” (Kung, 2001 p. 37) One aspect of this transformation is that the original diversity of

worship formats “began to come together in remarkably similar ritual patterns.” (Baldovin, 2006 p. 77) Soon

the Church saw itself becoming “‘the kingdom of God on earth,’ no longer distinguishing its earthly or secular

dimension from secular political structures. The biblical notion of the people of God gave way to a far more

political concept – the Christian people – who were identified more and more with the population of the

Empire… The cross… became a political monogram and the church became the imperial church.” (Dwyer,

1985 p. 94) It seemed like a clear case of mutually beneficial arrangement. The newly established relationship

between Church and State called Caesaro-papism united the empire politically. It may also have been at the

time, according to Eberhardt (1961 pp. 160-61), the only possible “alternative faced by the Church… to the

anarchical tendencies of the age… Imperial protection afforded the Church many advantages… The Church

made her contribution by inculcating respect for authority, patriotic loyalty… and promoting imperial unity and

cultural homogeneity. But the price paid for this was a high one, since the imperial rulers always tended to

make of the Church a department of the state and to make use of ecclesiastical institutions for political

purposes… Separation of powers seemed unthinkable in a Christian empire.”

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The Christian communities had “entered a period of violent theological debate, when the very definition

of dogma was put in doubt.” (Danielou, 1978 p. 242) This intensified the evolution of hierarchical structures in

the Church. Gilles (2000 p.7) compares the early Church to a “closely knit family, which we can imagine

holding hands together and standing in a circle. After Constantine, the Church came to be thought of as a

pyramid.” The new format meant that the central command could more efficiently suppress the unorthodox

doctrines that had plagued the new faith since the first century. That the spread of heresies was a significant

problem in the early decentralized Christian communities is evident in “The History of the Church from Christ

to Constantine,” where the Greek bishop Eusebius pays attention to forty-seven heretics and their teachings11.

McSorley (1944 p. 35) claims that “the heresies of the second century indirectly helped to develop ecclesiastical

organization. Each community became aware of the value of a bishop to govern each definite area.”

Reviewing the second century, McSorley (1944 p. 35) notes “the rapid growth of the Church and also

the emergence of better organization and more definite discipline.” This process reached a qualitatively

different level with the ascent of Constantine, after whose reign “Christians began to identify Christianity with

the empire. When Rome declined the church found itself gradually taking over many civic functions (charity,

building)… But if the church shaped Rome, Rome also shaped the church… Recognition of the church made it

part of that system, and it came to govern through decretals similar to imperial rescripts, which were definitive

written replies, with the force of law, to requests for guidance… the church had inherited an imperial capital.”

(O’Grady, 2001 p. 13-14)

Alas, any process of structural reorganization contains certain trade-offs. The Church proved to be

subject to that rule immediately after the death of the first Christian emperor. While the pyramidal organization

proved to be heresy-resistant from below, it also proved to be easily corruptible from above. We have Kung’s

(2001 p. 37) description of how the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantius (337-361) “engaged in a fanatical

policy of intolerance against the pagans.” Continuing his father’s policy of mixing ecclesiastical with secular,

during his rule “Christianity increasingly permeated all political institutions.” When he fell under the influence

of Arianism, the emperor dethroned the orthodox pope Liberius (352-66), and installed in 355 an antipope in his

11 Even Tertullian embraced a heresy called Montanism in the later part of his life

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place under the name of Felix II. Another Arian emperor, Valens (364-78) continued persecutions of orthodoxy

in the East.12

History was repeating itself. The Church was going through the same evolution as the Roman republic

in the first century B.C. “Theodosius the Great (379-95)… issued an edict – published in the West by Gratian

also – requiring all subjects of the Empire to be Christians.” (McSorley, 1944 pp. 73-4) In A.D. 388 the Roman

Senate declared Christianity as the established religion of the empire. Four years later pagan worship, even in

private, was forbidden by state law. Banning all pagan cults, Theodosius “made heresy a crime against the

state.” (Kung, 2001 p. 38) Danielou (1978 p. 236) gives a wonderful illustration of the speed at which state-

supported Christianity replaced paganism: “The first Christian symbols appear on the coinage, that wonderful

instrument of propaganda, in 315; the last pagan representations disappear in 323. The Catholic Church receives

a privileged legal status: sentences passed by the Episcopal tribunal, even in purely civil cases, are recognized

as valid by the State.”

“Now, Christian education and formation is being taken over by ordained men. Further, doctrine is

becoming highly formalized… Dioceses led by bishops are replacing small congregations led by hometown

pastors. And bishops themselves are being appointed, rather than chosen by the faithful… All in all, the Church

is growing toward a more formal structure. It is becoming less of a family and more of an institution.” This is

the picture of some of the important changes in the Church during the fourth century painted by Gilles (2000 p.

36). Christians from the previous generation would never have recognized their community had they witnessed

another amazing transformation – “the persecuted church had become the persecuting church.” In this new

environment “Christians killed other Christians because of differences in their views of the faith.” The new

converts “soon became quite accustomed to this idea.” Quickly getting used to the new position of power, “the

proud Roman Hellenistic state church hardly remembered its own Jewish roots anymore. A specifically

Christian ecclesiastical anti-Judaism developed out of the pagan state anti-Judaism that already existed.” (Kung,

12 As some Germanic hordes came in contact with the Roman empire in those troubled days, they were converted to Christianity by Arian missionaries and carried the heretical seeds to Southern Gaul, Iberia, and North Africa. Their story will be told later.

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2001 p. 38) From the reign of Theodosius “edicts against heretics multiply: there were 68 in 57 years. By the

fifth century the death penalty will be threatened and sometimes invoked.” (Eberhardt, 1961 p. 162)

Christian content was taking an imperial format in more than one way. Roman citizens accepted the new

without discarding most of the old. “Although Christianity became their religion, their culture remained

classical: the two cohabited… Rules of conduct were derived from pagan sources.” (O’Grady, 2001 pp. 46-7)

While during the centuries of persecutions the places of worship were mostly in private homes, now the State

poured vast amounts of riches into transforming old basilicas and building new ones dedicated to Christ. Inside

the magnificent buildings designed in the pagan days to “house the conduct of public business, whether a law

court, an imperial audience chamber, or even a market” (Baldovin, 2006 p. 80), simple worship was ritualized.

“The clergy,” tells us Gilles (2000 p. 7), “being among the most educated and skilled people in the empire, were

drawn into the service of the State… given titles like “most illustrious”… began to dress like imperial officials.

For example, the bishop’s tall, cylindrical hat, or miter, was patterned after the hats worn by imperial officials,

who thought that by wearing tall hats they “stood above” everyone else.” This amalgamation is also evident in

the art of the century. “The apse mosaic of St. Pudenziana, the earliest extant figural representation in a Roman

church, completed at the beginning of the fifth century, shows the apostles dressed in senatorial togas, reflecting

the Christianization of Rome but also the Romanization of Christianity… the mosaic also hinted at a senatorial

takeover of the church.” (O’Grady, 2001 p. 86)

In an age when atheism was not an option, Constantine had made it “politically advantageous to join the

Christian church.” With the imperial interference in ecclesiastical matters, the dogmatic formulas of the

ecumenical councils “were taken more seriously than the text of the New Testament itself… Tragically, the

universalism of Christian faith was absorbed in the universal political claims of the Empire, and of its various

political and cultural descendents.” (Dwyer, 1985 pp. 122-3) State support allowed the church in Constantinople

to become a religious monopolist. Everyone enjoyed such status and sought ways to keep it. Being a monopolist

also corrupts and, unsurprisingly, Church leaders engaged in activities not directly related to spiritual matters.

The heads of the churches in various parts of South Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa started to

compete not only for influence inside the Church, but also for political power and economic benefits. These

15

new incentives intensified disagreements over dogmatic issues. After three centuries of persecution, the Church

found itself unprepared to follow its mission in a completely different environment. The fact that “Church

discipline varied in the East and West, and sometimes from province to province” did not help to solve the

problems of the day. (McSorley, 1944 p. 82)

The main advantage of decentralized structures in the economy is that they allow for more innovation to

occur. In most cases of organized religion, innovation is the last thing to be considered useful. As Eno (1949 p.

49) points out: “In a world where tradition is a primary value, creativity has its risks.” As more and more people

joined the Church, more and more non-Biblical teachings tried—teachers tried? to dilute Christian faith. The

Church, in her early horizontal, decentralized format, turned out to be very susceptible to heresies. Such

structure also provided little opportunity for ambitious bishops to amass power within the circle of believers and

later in the world. “By centralizing all Church authority into the hands of ordained men, the Church was acting

just like the imperial bureaucracy.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 43)

The Orthodox Church had to defend herself against non-orthodox “prophets.” Commenting on the

structure of the primitive local churches, Eno (1949 p. 21) notes how the “threat of the centrifugal forces which

pull apart the unity of the congregation, especially the threat of false teachers and teachings, points to the need

for a solution and, more often than not, that solution points in the direction of giving more authority to

community leaders.” The latter came to seek safety on a regular basis by asking advice and submitting to the

authority of regional leaders. The East was “blessed” with too many apostolic sees. Their significance varied

over time based on political changes in the empire. These dynamics made the East the theological center of

Christendom but they also contributed to a series of violent theological wars. The West, on the other hand, had

only one apostolic see to boast about – the old imperial capital where both Peter and Paul preached and died

martyrs. In those lands, Roman bishops “came to be seen as preservers of the old Pax Romana… assumed more

and more control over the Western Church’s institutional structure… stepping into a leadership vacuum and

asserting more and more authority over both Church and Western society.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 7) Rome’s ascent to

absolute power outside the jurisdiction of the emperor of the East is covered in the following sections.

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III. The Rise of the Papacy

External and internal pressures consolidated the Christian communities and they evolved as centralized

hierarchical organizations. At a time when geography did matter, physical distances led to the establishment of

several regional centers of power. Even though Christians remained in spirit parts of one body, the churches in

Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem (and to some extent Ephesus and Corinth)

proclaimed themselves superior to the rest and started acting in a more or less autonomous manner. Each of

them developed and strengthened a distinctly pyramidal power structure. Competition among the separate units

of the Church intensified. This quite natural but very unfortunate behavior and the spread of old and new

heresies strongly affected them and over the years they became more hierarchical in structure and authoritarian

in nature. “The Churches identity – its self-image – was changed drastically.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 8)

As the center of political power in the Roman empire moved from Italy to the Bosporus, the western

territories were left with little protection against the barbarians. Preserving the Eastern Roman empire became a

priority for the royalty in Constantinople. Huns, Goths, Franks, Vandals, and many other tribes found it easier to

conquer its western lands. By the end of the fourth century, the West often felt abandoned by its emperors. Thus

“the need of a strong central authority became clear… and gradually events brought about more definite and

explicit recognition of the pope as unique possessor of universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction.” (McSorley, 1944

pp. 74-5)

Eastern ecclesiastical affairs, on the other hand, “were profoundly affected by the development of

Constantinople.” It was quite natural that an organization based in the new imperial capital “attained a position

of political supremacy.” It was soon accepted that “the see of Constantinople should take first rank among the

Eastern patriarchates.” (McSorley, 1944 p. 81) “In the fourth and early fifth centuries, the church in the West

was beginning to unite around Rome… seen as the symbol and bond of unity.” In contrast, the presence of the

emperor in the East tended “to make the eastern church more and more a national church for ethnic Greek, and

this was an important fact in the eventual dissolution of the Empire and in the fragmentation of the eastern

church into a number of mutually hostile national churches.” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 118)

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Tensions on the axis of Constantinople-Rome were to be expected. Here is how Eno (1990 p. 89) sees

the fourth-century roots of the following clash between East and West: “Rome’s Petrine theory… connection

with Peter… preserved Roman supremacy and excluded Constantinople… The Eastern preferred view, the so-

called Pentarchical theory, that the universal Church was to be guided by the five principle sees… in some sort

of conciliar way, was typically collegial rather than monarchical.” Gilles (2000 p. 8) explains how in this case

geography made history: “The Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, was largely Greek in language and

thought. The western Church, centered in Rome, was principally Latin in orientation. This meant that Eastern

Christians tended to approach their faith more conceptually, wanting to understand abstract doctrines like the

Trinity. Western Christians tended to be more practical, focusing on issues like Church authority and

organization.” These differences were going to play a crucial role in the development paths of the two branches

of Christianity during the Dark and Middle Ages.

McSorley (1944 p. 222) describes the complete subordination of the churches under the Eastern

emperors: “The hierarchy sank to the status of a body of political appointees, obedient to the will of the

emperor… the idea of an imperial church grew in favor among the higher clergy.” At the same time, in the

forming political vacuum in Italy, the “reluctance of provincial bishops to see to their own problems and the

propensity to seek Roman guidelines was obviously an important factor in fostering both centralization and

greater uniformity of practice in the West.” (Eno, 1990 p. 90) As far as Rome’s ambitions for universal

leadership go, Eno (1990 p. 147) notes that “the esteem with which the Roman Christian community was held

from an early moment… could co-exist peacefully with a fierce determination to go one’s own way and follow

one’s own traditions within the broad limits of the unity of the Church.”

McSorley (1944 pp. 102-4) focuses on the effect that turbulent political changes had on ecclesiastical

life in the western remnants of the empire. “By the year 400, Christianity… was lending support to the badly

shaken Empire. Despite the emperor’s withdrawal from the West and the “Demotion” of Rome, the old idea of a

universal Roman imperium still persisted from Syria to Spain, From Britain to Africa; and coextensive with that

imperial jurisdiction ran the authority of the Christian Church… The zeal of clergy and laity, reinforced by

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social and political pressure, had brought about a quasi-identification of the Church and the Empire, so that, by

the beginning of the fifth century, the Christian faith was the generally recognized bond of Roman unity.”

Western clergy had become “custodians of the traditions of Roman law” while in the East emperors

“functioned very much like priest-kings.” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 131) Following in the steps of Constantine, his

successors continued to intervene “to save political unity by the suppression of theological heresy. Practically

speaking, they made the Church one department of a highly organized bureaucracy… At the beginning of the

century it seemed to many that the interwoven Church and Empire would last forever; yet, before its end, the

imperial structure had broken down and the popes were called upon to find an answer to the problems

confronting Western civilization. Measuring up to the responsibility thus thrust upon them, they undertook the

protection of the people; they dominated the barbarians… and they saved the ancient tradition.” (McSorley,

1944 pp. 104-7)

Kung (2001 pp. 40-7) provides a detailed analysis of the opportunities and challenges that faced the

Roman bishops in their early stages of ascent to domination. The main disadvantage that the embryonic papacy

faced was that “the focal point of the Catholic Church clearly lay in the east, which had a greater population and

was stronger economically, culturally, and in military terms. Almost all the apostolic churches… were here. All

the ecumenical councils took place here… Around the middle of the fourth century Latin Christianity still

appeared largely to be no more than an appendix to Eastern Roman, Byzantine Christianity.” Then came the

Teutonic invasions and “the scourge” of Attila the Hun and “suddenly the hour of the bishop of Rome struck.

For at the very moment when ancient culture and civilization were largely sinking in the West along with the

Roman state, the bishops of Rome exploited the power vacuum.”

The problem with the oppressive presence of the emperor solved, Rome still had to legitimize its

ambitions for power. The problem was that “there could be no question of a legal primacy – or even of a

preeminence based on the Bible – of the Roman community or even of the bishop of Rome in the first

centuries… The promise to Peter from the Gospel of Mathew (16.18), “You are Peter, and on this rock I will

build my church,”… so central for today’s bishops of Rome… is not once quoted in full in any of the Christian

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literature of the first centuries… in connection with Rome.” The first appeal to this promise was made by

Bishop Stephen (254-7).

There were some early attempts to exorcise universal authority from Rome. Bishop Victor’s

authoritarian approach in late second century to deciding the date for Easter was a failure - “at that time the rule

of one church over the other churches was rejected even in the West.” It took 150 more years for the world to

see the beginnings of the “slow rise of the Roman community and its bishop to a monarchical position of

dominance in the West. The emperor was remote and predominantly involved in the East.” Papal Rome did not

rise overnight but “purposefully, and aware of their power, the fourth- and fifth-century bishops of Rome

developed their competence in the direction of universal primacy.”

Under Bishop Julius (337-52), “Rome declared itself a universal court of appeal.” Then along came the

“unscrupulous Damasus (366-84), first to use the saying about the rock to back up claims for power.” He was

the first to call his fellow bishops “sons” and stress the capital letters in the “Apostolic See” when applied to

Rome. His successor, Siricius (384-99) was the first to call himself “pope” (to be seen as the only heir of Peter

and the father of the universal Church) and his own statutes “apostolic.” The first self-named pope “adopted the

style of Roman officials and the chancellery: like the emperor communicating with his provincial governors, he

responded to the inquiries and requests of other churches with brief rescripts, with decreta and response.”

During the fifth century Christians in the West “concluded that for defense they could rely only on the

city’s bishop.” (O’Grady 2001 p. 45) With bishops looking to Rome for guidance, popes soon took control over

all churches in that part of Europe. Innocent (401-17) made all “minors” coordinate their decisions with him,

requiring that “any important matter discussed at synods should be presented to Rome for decision.”13 In a letter

to his colleagues he stressed the “canonical obligation of bishops to residence” and warned “against the absence

of prelates from their dioceses.” (Darras, 1867 p. 547) Being a Christian at the time was very different from

what it meant a century earlier. Now it was “first and foremost to occupy a place in… highly structured society,

the Church. In the course of the century… the Church developed its organization and defined its inner

discipline.” (Danielou, 1978 p. 309)

13 See also O’Grady (2001 pp. 89-90)

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“Church unity was a more important concern than episcopal independence… When people of the West

looked to the Church for moral leadership, there already existed an institution which was fully Roman that

could provide… the sense of unity which society needed – the papacy.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 24) During his short

pontificate, Zosimus (417-18) hardened the papal policy of taking away the right of others to question the

decisions of Rome. It did not take long for negative results of this centralization to come. Struggle for the

immense power of the Roman See broke between two interest groups and led in 418 to the election of two

popes – Eulalius and Boniface. The latter emerged victorious in this quarrel over the papal throne as Boniface I

(418-22). He continued his predecessors’ attempts to ban appeals of Rome’s judgments, judgments that the

pope considered ultimate and permanently binding.

Roman claims for supremacy did not go well in the east, where “people looked down on Rome

disparagingly as the old capital which had gone into a decline, hardly anyone took them seriously. There,

alongside the emperor, the ecumenical council, which could be convened only by the emperor, was regarded as

the supreme authority.” Even “the great contemporary of Bishops Damasus, Siricius, Innocent, and Boniface,

the most significant theologian of the West… Augustine (354-430)… thought nothing of a universal legal

primacy of the bishop of Rome.” (Kung, 2001 p. 44)

Augustine may have thought very little of the papacy in his days, but his work laid a solid foundation for

the rise of Rome in the following centuries. He “developed an emphatically institutional and hierarchical

understanding of the church.” Probably in a moment of frustration during his lifelong battle against

Pelagianism, he wrote a passage advocating a certain degree of violence against heresies. This unfortunate

legacy of Augustine was exploited later by Rome to justify horrible perversions such as forcible conversions of

whole nations, torture and burnings at the stake by the Inquisition, and “holy” wars. (Kung, 2001 p. 47)

The barbarian invasions of the fifth century would have completely wiped out the old civilization west

of the Balkans had it not been for the Roman church, which “through force of circumstances, took over

functions formerly exercised by pagan administrators.” (O’Grady, 2001 p. 190) McSorley (1944 p. 141) notes

how the “lack of secular leadership provided the papacy with a unique opportunity… While the barbarians were

founding new kingdoms… the pope stood forth as father and protector of the West.” Darras (1867 p. 546)

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explains the rise in “the power of the pope and of the bishops… standing amid the universal wreck… The

authority of the Roman Pontiff rises simultaneously with the fall of the Caesars… the Church seemed to gain in

strength, union, and harmony, what the empire lost in greatness.”

“Now there was only one institution left from Roman times which could provide the stability that the

Empire had formerly provided, and that institution was the Church.” Roman bishops “increasingly took over

from the defunct Empire the role of providing society with a stable base. The Church served to bring something

of the ancient Pax Romana into a disintegrating society.” Thus it seems quite natural that it “was not the

emperor or one of his generals who went to negotiate peace with Attila, but Pope Leo the Great.” (Gilles, 2000

p. 23)

Kung (2001 pp. 57-61) calls attention to the pontificate of Leo I (440-61), whom he labels “the first real

pope.” This man rose to his bishopric, like so many other powerful figures in the western churches, after a

career as a lawyer and a statesman. With such a background, Leo naturally “understood the classic passage

relating to Peter in the crudely legalistic sense of a fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis) given to Peter, a

primacy of rule for the leadership of the whole church.” The pope “defined the legal position of Peter’s

successor more precisely with the help of the Roman law of inheritance. The successor might not inherit the

personal characteristics and merits of Peter, but he did inherit the official authority” together with all of Peter’s

functions and privileges. Thus “even an unworthy pope was a completely legitimate successor” of the first chief

apostle, a fact that makes the Roman bishop a “primate” outranking all his colleagues.14

And that was not the end of it. Leo took one giant leap forward as the first bishop of Rome “to adorn

himself with the title of the pagan chief priest, pontifex maximus, which the Byzantine emperor had dropped.”

The mixing of the spiritual and temporal spheres that started in the pagan days of the empire and continued with

Constantine and his Christian successors had equipped the church hierarchy with a whole arsenal of political

and legal tools. No trick was spared and “the popes, particularly from the fifth century on, decisively extended

their power with explicit forgeries” such as imperial letters and writings by the pseudo-disciple of Paul,

14 For the first time someone “gave clear definition to the judicial conception of the papal office, by establishing the legal connection between St. Peter and the reigning pope… as the indignus haeres beati Petri, the heir who, in Roman law, legally continued the deceased, taking over his rights and duties.” (K. Hughes, 1965 p. 7) See also O’Grady (2001 pp. 89-90) and Eno (1990 p. 105)

22

Dionysius. Kung (2001 p. 74) mentions no less than two hundred and forty forged and falsified documents that

attempted to give “the impression that the early church had been ruled by papal decrees down to the details of

its life.”

Eno (1990 p. 104) notes that with Leo’s pontificate “the hierarchical pattern is completed by the single

supreme leader at the top of the pyramid. Later centuries would elaborate on this vision and the distinction

between the power of orders and jurisdiction.” This pope set very high standards for the future leaders of the

Western church. “Roman to the core in his legal understanding of his office… Leo obtained from Valentinian

III, emperor of the West, a rescript recognizing papal jurisdiction over the entire West” when a bishop of Arles

challenged his authority. (O’Grady, 2001 pp. 88-90)

This gifted leader became one of the pillars upon which the Western church survived the turbulent

transitions from the Roman imperial era to the new order of the barbarian kingdoms. “Tradition made the

Roman bishops fear novelty above all else… the chief duty of bishops: to pass things on unchanged, intact,

adding nothing and subtracting nothing. This was the fixist ideal of Antiquity. Leo’s ideal was not to “start

something new, but to renew the old.” (Eno, 1990 p. 111) Thus the rigid rules and the conservative

administration that Leo left to his successors became the bridge between the ancient and the medieval worlds.

“Alongside the Latin theology of Augustine and the development of the Roman papacy as a central

institution of rule there was a third element without which the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages would have

been inconceivable: the Germanic peoples… would ensure that the ecclesia catholica did not go under with the

Roman empire.” (Kung, 2001 p. 74) When the State made Christianity the official religion, many citizens of the

empire called themselves Christian without experiencing spiritual conversion. They simply assumed that

Roman culture and Christian faith were one and the same and that it was a matter of political correctness for

Romans to be Christian. “Was Church “unity” confused with social conformity? And what about “converting”

the barbarians? Were they to be truly converted to the gospel, or simply brought into Roman life and told to

accept the official religion? These were hard questions, and the Church did not always do such a good job

answering them. But one thing was sure. The Church would be changed forever by its contact with the new,

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non-Roman peoples breaking across the frontiers of the Empire.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 22) The effects of the clash

between the papacy and the barbarians will be discussed next.

IV. The Western Church and the Barbarian States

In the twelve centuries after the death of Constantine, most of Europe’s history can be analyzed through

the struggle for power and riches between “Pope and Emperor, Church and State, Archbishop and King. This

tension was to continue for many years, and indeed, in a sense, must always be present so long as men have

dual allegiance to the Church and to society.” (J. Moorman, 1967 p. 74) Whatever pyramidal structure enforced

better discipline on its members prevailed in this prolonged struggle. Gilles (2000 p. 24) notes that “when the

Church grew lax and its moral authority diminished, people were more willing to side with the state when it

attempted to control the Church.” The following pages analyze the effects of this constant shift of power

between the ecclesiastical and temporal government structures.

The first goal for the clerics was scored soon after the official recognition of Christianity. Emperor

Theodosius15 (379-95) killed 7000 people in suppression of a rebellion in Thessalonica in A.D. 390. Ambrose, a

former governor of Liguria and Aemilia and a son of the prefect of Gaul, found himself forced by a crowd of

clerics and lay people to become a bishop in Milan (374-97). The newly hatched church leader obviously

thought very highly of his duties. He refused the ruler of the mighty empire access to his church service. The

offense: failing to show Christian mercy. For the first time, an earthly prince publicly confessed his sin in order

to receive forgiveness from a modest bishop. Adhering to his bold statement that “the Emperor is not above, he

is within the Church,” made Ambrose one of the most influential clerics of the fourth century. (Laux, 1930 p.

133)

“How do we know,” ask Caldwell and Stearn (1977, p. 33), “at what point the character of a people

weakens?” The answer is simple: “When they give over to government those duties which they should be

pleased to perform themselves. When they are told they will be fed and sheltered even when they won’t work,

15 The last to rule over an undivided empire.

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when they are promised security from the cradle to the grave, when they are told the state will take over the

supervision of their children and say what schooling they should receive and where. When they are told all

these things and supinely accept them.” Riches and the introduction of a system of social welfare added to the

problem of corruption from the centralization of power. These developments had brought moral decay to the

late pagan empire, a process that could not be easily reversed with the spread of Christianity in its

institutionalized format. As a result, “by the late fourth century, Rome was a shadow of its former greatness.”

(Gilles, 2000 p. 20) Barbarian invasions in the western territories of the empire during the fifth century brought

chaos and unprecedented economic, social, and cultural decline. Roman bishops saw an opportunity in this dire

situation to extend their influence over the “newcomers.” Teutonic tribes conquered land from the emperor but

soon found themselves conquered in a much more permanent and significant way by the papacy.

Christianity soon found its way in the darkness – “first with the East Goths in present-day Bulgaria

though the activity of Bishop Ulfilas, who created a Gothic script, literature, and translation of the Bible; from

there also among the West Goths; and finally among most Germanic peoples.” Through the papacy, Latin

shaped the national languages (French, Italian, Spanish) of the new barbarian kingdoms. The Church became a

“decisive factor of continuity in this fundamental revolution” of civilizing the Teutons” since the “clergy

possessed and preserved the monopoly on education… The office of the bishop was also reinforced; now the

bishop often received political dominion over a city, with a multiplicity of worldly tasks, so that his office

became the privilege of leading families.” (Kung, 2001 pp. 63-4) “Christianity,” notes O’Grady (2001 p. 87),

“had arrived culturally as well as socially. It had been difficult enough for pagans when opposed by Christians,

such as Ambrose, who had a classical culture. But it became almost impossible for them when Christians

accepted classical culture… The Christian and classical melded.” The hybrid of Hellenistic Christianity was an

irresistible shaping force for the government and society in most of the newly established barbarian kingdoms.

O’Grady (2001 p. 87) draws attention to the uninterrupted building of churches after the barbarian

capture of Rome in 410 as a reflection of “the fact that the church had emerged from the invasion better than the

Senate: many aristocrats had fled but churchmen remained.” The lights of the Western Roman Empire were

finally put out in A.D. 476 and the lands outside the jurisdiction of Constantinople entered the Dark Ages. The

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only lighthouse that remained standing was the residency of the popes. After Odoacer deposed the last Roman

emperor of the West, he “preserved the imperial administration and established good relations with both the

church in Rome and the Senate.” (O’Grady, 2001 p. 93)

Later in that century, “the kingdom founded in Italy by the cultured Arian, Theodoric, had but a short

life; yet it did serve to carry over the old tradition to subsequent generations, so that Italy never ceased to be

Roman.” (McSorley, 1944 p. 105) It is striking how much of the Roman civilization has rubbed on this

“barbarian” prince, a great admirer of “Roman law… and ordered government.” (O’Grady, 2001 p. 95) Before

their invasion of Italy in 489, the Ostrogoths had already “acquired something of Roman civilization in the

Balkans.” When the Germanic tribe conquered land for a kingdom in the cradle of the empire, the transition

caused “comparatively little disturbance to the ancient Roman way of life… Administration was conducted by

Roman methods.” Theodoric the Great (489-526) proved to be a fast learner and “surrounded himself with a

praetorian guard, and a bureaucracy… Local officials were generally continued in office. Even Procopius,

Justinian’s hypercritical secretary, admitted that Theodoric’s rule was worthy of the best Roman precedents.”

(Eberhardt, 1961 p. 276)

“The tribes that swept across the Rhine and the Danube were soon assimilated into the Christian body…

the pope replaced the emperor as Pontifex Maximus; Rome, already symbol of the ancient tradition… became

center of a new civilization.” (McSorley, 1944 p. 133) The conquered Christian population “reaped the benefits

of the prestige attached to the civilization they inherited because many of the new peoples were keen to accept

the urban order identified with Rome, the administration, the roads, the law, and the plumbing. Acceptance of

the faith was also acceptance of a culture, a socioeconomic upgrading.” (O’Grady, 2001 p. 191)

One by one the barbarian leaders were absorbed into civilization through the gravitational pull of the

Roman church. The conversion to the Catholic faith of the third Merovingian king, Clovis of Gaul, won for him

in 496 “a welcome into the political family of Christendom… and the support of the Roman element against

rival Goths and Burgundians; and he alone of the German chieftains founded an enduring kingdom. He was

recognized as the official defender of Christianity in the West; and every inhabitant of his immense empire had

to be a Catholic and a Frank.”(McSorley, 1944 pp. 105-6) The alliance between the papacy and a powerful

26

leader such as Clovis opened “the door to the ritual and social realities of Christianity’s adoption across a

swathe of Western Europe.”16 (Driscoll, 2006 p. 175)

“The Church,” notes Gilles (2000 p. 21), “is a human institution that lives in a human society.” As social

environment changes, institutions either adapt or disappear. In the case of the western Christian community, the

institution took on “a new identity in order to meet new challenges.” The papacy “faced two questions: First,

could it remain Roman, in the sense of preserving all that was good about the Empire, with its order, peace,

stability, learning and culture? Second, how could the Church, as Roman, also make its appeal catholic, or

universal…? The answer was that the Church had to… stay rooted in its ancient Roman origins, and it had to

reach out” in an authoritative manner to barbarians who only paid attention if spoken to from a position of

power.

The turmoil of the transition from Antiquity to the Dark Ages in the West solidified the church pyramid.

“The maintenance of hierarchical subordination between bishops was all-important at a period when multiplied

revolutions worked continual changes in the temporal rulers of the provinces. The popes, therefore, kept an

ever-watchful eye to this matter.” (Darras, 1867 p. 605) Parallel to the ossification of the Roman ecclesiastical

structures ran a process of emancipation whereby the head of the church consciously sought to replace the head

of the empire at the top of the social structure of Christendom. When pope Gelasius (492-6) established the

exemption of the apostolic see from secular jurisdiction, “it became increasingly clear that the papacy formed

an impassable obstacle to state control of religion. The Roman bishop boldly wrote a letter to emperor

Anastasius I (491-518) claiming superiority of the priestly spiritual power over the temporal power of the head

of the State. The fifth century, therefore, witnessed the earlier stages of that rupture of interests between

Byzantium and Rome which was to receive official recognition in the permanent schism six centuries later.”

(McSorley, 1944 p. 108)

Barbarian invasions in fact came as a blessing to the ambitious leaders of the western church. Their

sister in “Greek Constantinople, so favored by the emperor, remained – except for a brief interval – a state

16 Three centuries later, one pope would find a permanent solution to his problems with the eastern Roman emperor by promoting another Frankish king to be emperor of the West.

27

church, ruled from the throne. In the Latin West, the immense patriarchate of Rome, practically abandoned by

the emperor and left to face the twofold menace the Arians and the Germans, was giving evidence of almost

incredible vitality.” (McSorley, 1944 p. 116) Popes weakened the influence of the see of Milan and remained

the only source of help for the weak and the only example of stable government structure for the powerful in the

West. When later Islamic swords almost exterminated African and Middle-Eastern Christianity,17 the

patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem lost most of their influence in Christendom, thus

concentrating even more power and responsibility in Constantinople and Rome.18

The emperor continued to intervene “with great authority… in the administration and daily life of the

Church… On the other hand he demanded, as a natural right, that the Church should help in making his own

institutions work well… A constitution dated 530 ended by placing the bishops ‘at the head of all financial

administration in the towns, including food supplies and public works.’” (Danielou, 1978 p. 389) “The

Pragmatic Sanction (554) granted the popes rights of supervision over all city officials, with authorization to

inspect fortifications and aqueducts, regulate hospitals and welfare institutions, and imposed responsibility for

the grain supply, and later, for payment of troops.” Placing in his hands such an enormous amount of power and

responsibility “made the pope virtually prefect of Rome.” The Lombard invasion in 568 “prepared the way for

Italian isolation from Constantinople.” (Eberhardt, 1961 p. 278)

“When the Roman Empire grew weak and crumbled bit by bit, dragging down with it most of the

institutions on which the old civilization was based, the Church alone or almost alone survived, and it was to the

Church that Christians gradually grew accustomed to turn for support – and even survival.” (Danielou, 1978 p.

413) In the later days of the empire, bishops “had come to be… substitutes for Caesar’s governors… It was to

the bishops that the wiser barbarian chiefs… had turned as intermediaries… to secure that degree of grudging

co-operation from the Romans which made life possible. The bishops in the universal breakdown of…

administration… had assumed many details of secular government in the public interest.” (Eberhardt, 1961 pp.

312-3)

17 Churches that produced Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine 18 Kung (2001 pp. 67-8) notes how “the excessive complications of the dogmas of Christology and… the inner divisions of Christianity, in comparison to the simplicity… and initial cohesion of Islam, essentially contributed to the downfall.”

28

The most striking feature of the fifth and sixth centuries in the East, according to Danielou (1978 p.

383), is their “continuity with preceding centuries. Here there is no break between Antiquity and the Middle

Ages; the latter prolong the former.” Life in the barbarian kingdoms in the West, on the other hand, was much

more “interesting.” The new states could have taken different paths of development had the Teutonic armies in

Italy and Iberia gone beyond attacking the political order19. Not only did the barbarian kings leave the

ecclesiastical structures alone, they enthusiastically copied them in an attempt to solidify their precarious

position as sovereigns over states with constantly changing borders.

The last remains of the Roman imperial institutions in Italy collapsed under the attacks of the Lombards.

When Gregory (590-604) became pope, the Church was the only survivor against the latest wave of barbarian

invasions. The ancient world was buried in the dust and the new European rulers had only the western

ecclesiastical structures as examples of how to build their states. “Long before civil authority was established on

a firm basis” in the new kingdoms, the city bishop “was the first to lend his assistance in matters far removed

from the spiritual realm. His was the duty to secure and maintain the stock provisions necessary for the citizens,

as well as to see to the upkeep of public highways.” (Poulet, 1954 p. 311) “The Church was the only institution

that outlived the ruin of the Western Empire… The barbarian invaders needed the Church as the only source of

the inestimable blessings of religion, order, and culture.” (Laux, 1930 p. 176)

“St. Gregory the Great and his successors began to protect and administer not merely the provincial

metropolis or civitas, but the traditional capital of the still awe-inspiring empire.” (Eberhardt, 1961 p. 313) The

pope engaged in organizing life on many fronts - farming (collecting the rents), building houses for the poor,

hospitals, orphanages, distribution of alms, keeping records of all in need of public assistance, social reforms

(freeing slaves), etc. “The church underwent decisive changes while salvaging a culture and shaping society…

took over civil functions in the devastated city when no one else could fulfill them, repaired the social fabric,”

and laid foundation for the unification of Europe under papal rule. (O’Grady, 2001 pp. 193-4) With

19 As did their Anglo-Saxon cousins

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inexhaustible energy, Gregory20 “slowly laid the foundations for the temporal power of the papacy, awaiting the

day when the latter would be completely emancipated from imperial authority.” (Poulet, 1954 p. 286)

The preservation of the hierarchical church institutions in the west is the main reason for the relative

ease with which a new order emerged from the chaos in those parts of the continent. Gregory the Great had

experience as a prefect of Rome and successfully combined spiritual and temporal power in the face of floods,

epidemics, war, and famine. The pontiff knew that the Holy Bible would be more effective against the

conquerors than the sword. As the Church grew in authority, so did the economic and political stability of the

barbarian states. Before the newly “civilized” princes realized what was happening, Rome put an end to the

anarchy and emerged as the political center of the West. Willingly or forced by the circumstances, “the

Germanic tribes, which appropriated for themselves the fruits of the Greco-Roman culture in the West, made no

deliberate attempt to destroy the old civilization… The tradition of a common religion persisted… Europe

became the home of a single social order stabilized by Christianity.” (McSorley, 1944 p. 140)

North (1981 pp. 124-5) describes the rise of feudalism as “basically conditioned by the heritage of

Greco-Roman civilization, which persisted (particularly in southern Europe) and modified and ultimately

shaped many of the institutional arrangements that emerged in the sixth to the tenth centuries.” A similarity is

observed between the Roman villa and the manor, between the dependent coloni and the serf, between Roman

and feudal laws concerning property rights, etc. Further North draws our attention to the vessel through which

the ancient world was linked to the medieval one: “It was the Church that carried over the cultural heritage of

the classical world to the Middle Ages… It has the characteristics of a state, with the pope as a ruler and a vast

bureaucracy through which the pope amassed wealth and power and agents (archbishops and bishops)

themselves siphoned off riches and became rich and powerful.”21

Preserving wealth sometimes required that the papacy turn to princes for protection. Thus “the popes

acted more and more like… secular rulers than like the spiritual leaders they were… The popes wanted to keep

20 Who referred to Peter as “the prince of all apostles” (see Gilles, 2000 p. 25) 21 Here we find a curious parallel: the biblical story of Noah tells about the preservation of the anatomy of all creatures during the flood through the Arc – the very symbol of Christ’s Church; in the 6th century we observe the preservation of the pyramidal structure of ancient institutions during barbarian invasions through the Church.

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both their worldly power and their possessions intact. This was a bad omen. The Church was entering into a

period when it started acting like another secular state. As that happened, the Church’s spiritual and moral

authority eventually went into a tailspin.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 40) The Roman ecclesiastical pyramid evolved as the

most influential center of power in Europe over the following centuries. Crucial in this process was the

transplant of the ancient imperial government structures within the body of the Church - the establishment of

the diocesan system “based on the political organization of the late Roman Empire. The diocese of the bishop

corresponded to a civitas, a city district, while the ecclesiastical province was analogous to the secular province

of the fourth century comprising several civitates, with the secular capital of the province, the metropolis, as

centre.” (Levison, 1946 p. 19)

Another example of continuity between the ancient Roman institutions and the medieval Roman-

Catholic pyramid is the office of the papal legate (comparable to the Roman imperial proconsuls). Those

emissaries were used to exercise strict centralized control over all regional churches. From the top of the

ecclesiastical pyramid, the popes desired to command all parts of Christendom through their legates by giving

the latter temporary status that outranked the local archbishops. Since earthly princes were expected to bow

down to the heads of their churches, the throne of St. Peter carried more than simple respect – it became the

most real power in this world.

It did not take long for the Church hierarchy to realize that the sky was the limit. The temptation was

irresistible and it should not come as a surprise that groups competing for that power in the seventh century

brought three popes simultaneously on the scene – Paschal, Theodore, and Sergius I. “In attempting to be both

Roman and Catholic, the Church would find itself faced with constant challenges” and troubles were inevitable

when popes “responded in the ways of the world.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 26) In addition to the intensified struggle for

St. Peter’s throne, the Church was becoming increasingly hostile to innovations. Observing the “conversion of

once progressive churchmen to conservatism once they have been elevated to the hierarchy,” Eno (1990 p. 149)

wonders if maybe the Church’s concern about the past had become “so obsessive as to be counterproductive for

the future.” “How,” he asks, “do we distinguish living Tradition from dead traditionalism?”

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The establishment of so many new and different political entities presented the papacy with a difficult

problem – how to balance “unity with diversity” in western Christendom. And it had to pay a high price to learn

that they were not the same thing. (Gilles, 2000 p. 25) The ossification of the Church pyramid helped to stifle

unorthodox religious teachings from below. Unfortunately it also discouraged free-thinking and non-traditional

behavior in other spheres of life at the bottom of the social pyramid. Had it not been for the pressures of

continuous warfare, Europe would have experienced almost no technological innovation for centuries.

Eberhardt (1961 pp. 311-2) notes that “when the Germans were converted, they lacked a pre-existing

civilization comparable with the Graeco-Roman… The precious remnant of Roman culture survived vitally

only in the institutions of the Christian Church and it was thence that the Teutons drew that modicum that they

were at first capable of absorbing. They came to regard the church in consequence as more that a spiritual

leader. For them she was also the temporal guide who had given them all they prized of education, law, culture -

even of material civilization. The Church’s influence was therefore the greater upon these unprejudiced minds,

bound by no attachment to previous culture… The Church … did become the center of Everyday Teutonic –

and Celtic – life, and her voice was heard in all temporal occupations.”

“The central idea of the Middle Ages is all-pervading influence of the Church.” (Eberhardt, 1961 p. 311)

Kung (2001 p. 68) also notes that “for many centuries as a matter of course the Catholic Church remained the

institution which dominated the whole of cultural life.” D. Kagay (1997 p. 61) identifies the eleventh century as

the one that “assigned a superior position to the Church” in all spheres of life in Europe but this result has its

long prehistory. At the beginning of this rise were the conversions of two powerful Germanic tribes – the

Visigoths22 and the Franks. “The widespread adoption of Latin, introduction of good administrative structures

and methods… united the Frankish part of… Europe. Franks had been Catholic for almost three centuries, and

good relations with the clergy strengthened the kingdom.” (O’Grady, 2001 p. 183)

Pippin23 III the Short (751-68) desired a crown but “needed higher legitimation because of his lack of

royal blood. Only the pope could give him this, and moreover the pope boldly appointed himself kingmaker.”

22 Their fate will be discussed in the next chapter. 23 Or Pepin

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(Kung, 2001 p. 69) Pippin’s dream came true as he deposed the king of the Franks Childeric III with the support

of the papal legate St. Boniface. This “introduced the idea of royal prestige being derived from the church; and

the Carolingian24 king, unlike the Merovingians, ruled ‘by the grace of God.’” (Niebuhr, 1959 p. 110) Pippin

was the first Frankish ruler anointed by a priest. His “solemn consecration confirmed the divine origins of his

power and was explicitly associated with the baptism of Clovis, which furnished a dynastic legitimacy to this

usurper of the Merovingians.”25 (Driscoll, 2006 p. 182)

The barbarian rulers “utilized the authority of the Catholic bishops in the building up of a new society…

Among the Franks the bishop… combined his ecclesiastical office with that of a temporal lord or prince. After

parishes were established the bishop relinquished certain responsibilities to minor ecclesiastical officials, thus

freeing himself for the administrative affairs of his diocese.” (McSorley, 1944 p. 153) Soon after Pippin

received his crown, the Lombards threatened the papacy and the king was called to pay his debt. “Instead of

becoming poor and humble,” pope Stephen II (752-7) chose to seek help from the barbarian prince “in order to

protect his religious and secular power.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 40) As the Lombards were defeated, a document

surfaced conveniently in the papal archives. In this forgery, Constantine seemed to have left the West to pope

Sylvester (314-35), giving a legitimate appearance to the creation of the Papal states26.

Here is a witty parable by Gilles (2000 p. 41) about the consequences of Stephen’s actions: Becoming

papal protectors, Frankish kings assumed that they had also gained “the right to tell popes how the Church

should be governed. Because they acted like secular leaders, the popes would be treated accordingly. Thus the

papacy found that by inviting the Franks to come to their rescue they were in the same situation as the Arab

who allowed a camel to stick his nose into the tent. The camel liked the tent so much that he was not content to

stick just his nose inside. He wanted to bring the rest of his body inside as well. In the end, the camel was

sleeping in the Arab’s bed.”

24 The powerful dynasty survived until 987. 25 Here the stories of the ancient Jewish kings Saul and David must ring a bell. 26 Those existed until 1870.

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Pippin’s son, king Charlemagne (768-814)27 conquered most of western and central Europe. Pope Leo

III (795-816) saw an opportunity to use Charlemagne in his political struggle against Constantinople. That is

how, on Christmas of the year 800, Charles the Great was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. “This title delighted

the Franks. To them it meant that now they had been given divine approval to succeed to the dignity and

prestige of the former Roman Empire.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 41) Charlemagne exercised his temporal powers over a

territory that included what today are France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, half of Germany and Italy, and

parts of Spain and Austria. McSorley (1944 pp. 153 and 143) notes how the ancient Roman legal system was

preserved by shaping Church law and how the latter in turn greatly modified the laws of the new barbarian

kingdoms. And so we see Charles the Great seeking “to restore the imperial prerogative of lawmaking by

edict.” (Eberhardt, 1961 p. 317)

The announced goal of the restoration of the ancient Roman empire in this new form was to unite all

Christian peoples and establish the kingdom of God on earth. Popes naturally assumed that it was going to be

under their headship. Things went well for both parties as Charlemagne placed his “military resources and his

organizing ability in the service of the pope; and the pope, in turn, lent his spiritual prestige to the support of the

Western Empire.” (McSorley, 1944 p. 198) Nothing new under the sun, we may add at this point – just another

marriage of the sword and the Bible, similar to the one five centuries earlier when the sword was carried by

Constantine the Great. In this new alliance, however, the question of who should be the head of the family was

not to be easily resolved.

Together with his crown, Charles had “received the advocatio of the Church; that is, the official mission

of protecting and defending it.” Thus he had become “publicly and juridically the suzerain of Rome, where

henceforth the Pope… merely exercised the authority of the local lord.” In addition, the emperor had obtained

the right of authenticating the election and of approving the choice of the Pope.” On the other hand “the Pope

alone, was to hold the right of conferring the imperial crown.” The imperial crown, just as the papal tiara, was

not hereditary but “concordatary” and the designed “system of mutual designation” paved the way for bitter

struggles over whose should be the leadership in God’s earthly kingdom. (Pichon, 1950 pp. 40-1)

27 Carolus Magnus (Charles the Great) was the sole ruler of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman in 771.

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“In Teutonic law, or in the Germanic conception of law, Charlemagne was both chief of his tribe and

chief priest of his people. This meant that he saw himself as called by God to provide guidance and supervision

to the Church… Charlemagne looked at the Church and state as if they were virtually one entity. Thus distorted

Church-state relations were the root of a long and protracted struggle between medieval popes and emperors.”

(Gilles, 2000 p. 42) The Holy Roman Emperor, “probably inspired by the Byzantine model… took the sacral or

religious side of his royal office very seriously… He expected the bishops in his Empire to render political

service… and… did not hesitate to intervene directly in the affairs of the church. He regarded his military

ventures as holy wars,” precursors of the medieval crusades.” (Dwyer, 1985 p. 151)

History was repeating itself as Charlemagne followed in the steps of Constantine in trying to unify an

empire using the Church as an instrument. Just as the adoption of a single creed gave the old empire stability,

the new one saw the adoption of “a single liturgy as a possible aid” to such endeavor. (Driscoll, 2006 p. 186)

Just as in Constantine’s empire, “the ecumenical pernicious equation Christian = Catholic = Roman increasingly

became established… Charlemagne, lord of the empire, felt quite theocratically that he was also lord of the

church. Imperial politics was church politics and church politics was imperial politics. Moreover, without any

moral or religious scruples, Charles also imposed his form of Christianity on the subject peoples… The unity of

the empire came first for him.” (Kung, 2001 p. 70)

“Roman institutions gained new importance because of the enlarged temporal jurisdiction of the pope,

and because, through Charlemagne’s influence, Roman customs set standard throughout the empire.” To

solidify the marriage, “the Roman clergy included an upper class recruited from the sons of noble families.”

(McSorley, 1944 p. 207) The Christian kingdom was founded on two pillars: the pope and the emperor. Alas,

dual authority cannot work in pyramidal structures. Sooner or later, one of the pillars had to take over all power

and burden itself with all responsibility. Roman bishops started to believe that it was one of their duties to

decide who was fit to rule the kingdoms of the West. The temporal power of the princes over human bodies was

pronounced to be inferior to the spiritual power over souls, the latter belonging to the pope as the head of the

Church. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, a king receives his powers from the pope – this was now

being preached to the western congregations.

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V. Conclusion: The West after Charlemagne

Slowly, the papacy would gain supremacy in all spheres -- even those traditionally in the jurisdiction of

the State. In the chaos that followed Charlemagne’s death, “the Church stood out as the one solid, enduring

institution; her bishops attained unique importance… Unfortunately, these conditions suggested to many

ambitious men the pursuit of an ecclesiastical career as the most promising path to wealth and power.”

(McSorley, 1944 p. 221) Probably the worst consequence of the twisted union between the secular and the

spiritual was “the deterioration of Church discipline, leading to a decline in competence and morality among the

clergy… uneducated men appointed by the imperial court… Many priests didn’t really want to be priests – and

they lived a life-style to prove it… The bishop… saw himself as part warrior, part landowner, part imperial

servant – and, oh yes, part bishop.” (Gilles, 2000 pp. 42-3)

One should not forget that, as pagans conquered the Western Roman empire piece by piece in the fifth

century, most kings of the newly established countries received baptism not as believers but for purely political

reasons. All that most of them sought in the turbulent times of uncertainty and constant warfare was some kind

of legitimacy and recognition. They were frustrated with being treated as barbarians by Constantinople and

Rome and desperately wanted to become part of the “civilized” world. Having received baptism without

becoming followers of Christ, some of them felt the need to spread the new religion the only way they knew -

by swords. Thus, state support for the Church caused Christianity more harm than state persecutions in earlier

centuries.

By the end of the ninth century, with the Saracens28 invading southern Italy and the Norsemen attacking

from the North, Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire no longer existed. But history was not yet done repeating

itself. Another warrior rose in Saxony in the eastern Frankish territories. Pope John XII (955-64) proved that the

Church had learned nothing from her mistakes in the past. He offered the imperial crown to king Otto I (936-73)

28 Whose conquest of Spain will be discussed in a following chapter and who also easily conquered land from the eastern Roman empire at a time when the latter was shaking from a religious dispute over Christian art (the iconoclastic controversy).

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in 962 in exchange for help against papal enemies. The very next year, Otto the Great kicked the pope out of his

office and installed a layman under the name of Leo VIII (964-5) in his place. Reviving “the spirit and practice

of Caesaro-papism of Constantine and Charlemagne” brought the West close to the end of the Dark Ages.

(Dwyer, 1985 p. 156) Otto III (983-1002) filled his grandfather’s shoes well as he intervened in a quarrel over

the papal tiara by arresting, torturing, mutilating, and publicly humiliating pope John XVI (997-8). Things did

not change much as the Ottonian dynasty was succeeded by the Salian, whose first representative demonstrated

the imperial domination of the western church by installing a twelve-year-old boy as Pope Benedict IX (1033-

45).

The appalling way in which German emperors interfered with papal policies brought to the throne of St.

Peter a generation of reformers, who speeded up the process of centralization in the western Church and society.

The reforms continued a process started under emperor Constantine in the fourth century, one of distorting

Church offices and their association with “power, prestige and possessions – rather than with service of the

flock.” (Gilles, 2000 pp. 44-5) Placing all power in the hands of one man might have been initially only the

means to deal with the corruption, but as often happens it soon became an end in itself. What is more, over the

next few centuries it proved correct the observation that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

A series of early-medieval ecclesiastical reforms sought to “purify” the Church by centralizing church

order and uprooting “local deviations from the Roman norm… Principally, it encouraged a form of church unity

that centered on absolute papal headship… and, in time, became the reform’s self-justifying ends.” (Driscoll,

2006 p. 202) Nine centuries after Constantine legalized Christianity, Pope Innocent III made all Christian rulers

serve Rome. Christendom had come to mean “the entire domination of Western life, culture and society by the

Christian faith.” (Gilles, 2000 p. 64) During the Fourth Crusade that intended to free the Holy Land from the

presence of the Muslim, Eastern-Orthodox Constantinople was captured and the Latin Empire (1204-61)

established. Even Tsar Kaloyan (1197-1207) became Roman-Catholic and the recently restored Bulgarian

37

empire had its first and last “king.”29 On the other side of the continent, the Muslim prince Abu Zayd was

forced by the advance of Fernando30 III (1201-52) of Castile and Jaime31 I the Conqueror (1212-76) of Aragon

to accept Christianity – a “classic mode of secret conversion for grave reasons of state.” (Burns, 1997 p. 177)

Thus, the last of the rulers of the Almohad empire in Iberia became a vassal to pope Gregory IX (1227-41).

Duggan (1965 p. 96) describes pope Innocent III “as the conscious and supremely confident leader of

Western Christendom: Vicar of Christ, mediator between God and men, judge of all men but judged by none,

arbiter of all human affairs as well in temporal as in spiritual matters.” Schaff’s (1986 pp. 157-8) analysis of this

pope’s theory of the papacy gives us a peek into the mind of a megalomaniac dedicated to establishing a type of

world domination that no tyrant before or after even dreamt of: “As God gave to Christ all power in heaven and

on earth, so Christ delegated to Peter and his successors the same authority… God founded the Apostolic see…

entrusted with the dominion of the Church, but also with the rule of the whole world… at once king and

priest… He can depose princes and absolve subjects from the oath of allegiance… enforce submission by

placing whole nations under the interdict.”

Moorman (1967, p. 92) analyzes the last stages of the growth of the ecclesiastical pyramid: “Rome in

the thirteenth century was in process of a vast development in centralized, curial administration. Innocent III

was convinced that the struggle for supremacy both over the temporal powers within Christendom, and against

the menace of Islam from without, could only be carried on by increasing the central power of the papacy and

by building up a strong monarchical authority… centralization meant a vast increase in the number of officials.”

Providing for the gigantic bureaucratic pyramid put an intolerable burden on the European population, gave

unprecedented opportunities for abuse and corruption, and planted anti-papal seeds throughout the continent.

Almost all of 13th-century Europe became part of the Roman-Catholic pyramid and it looked as if there

was no power on earth to change the status quo. Just when all outside enemies of Rome seemed to have been

defeated, however, the monstrous pyramidal structure started to fall under its own weight. The “sin of

29 This did not last long – the Bulgarian army defeated the Latin invaders whose emperor died in a Bulgarian prison. Bulgaria makes a peculiar exception to the other European kingdoms since King Kaloyan de facto entered as an equal into a union with Innocent III and the pastor of the Bulgarians never abandoned his patriarchal dignity. 30 Or Ferdinand III. 31 Or James I.

38

hierarchical pride” brought down the most absolute rule known by the Europeans. (Schaff, 1986 p. 772) By the

time conditions were ripe for the State to begin its ascent to absolute power, the Church had dominated the lives

of most Europeans for more than fifty generations. All layers of the western Society had gravitated around the

pyramidal ecclesiastical structures for such a long time that it was almost impossible to imagine another

institutional arrangement. Comparisons of western European ecclesiastical and political histories reveal that

where papal influence was stronger, centralized lay governments took deeper roots. This environment led to the

rise of mercantilism and entrepreneurial attitudes, in which wealth was seen as a preexisting reality - something

to be plundered through wars or obtained through participation in the redistributive bureaucratic government

machinery. Thus, even after the European economies were freed from most of the restrictions imposed by

organized religion, much of the existing entrepreneurial potential (in France, Spain, Portugal, etc.) was not

utilized in a way that would bring national prosperity.