History of Christianity
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The history of Christianity concerns the Christian religion, Christian countries, and the Christians with their various denominations, from the 1st century to the present. Christianity originated with the ministry of Jesus, a Jewish teacher and healer who proclaimed the imminent Kingdom of God and was crucified c. AD 30–33 in Jerusalem in the Roman province of Judea.[1] His followers believe that, according to the Gospels, he was the Son of God and that he died for the forgiveness of sins and was raised from the dead and exalted by God, and will return soon at the inception of God's kingdom.[1]
The earliest followers of Jesus were apocalyptic Jewish Christians.[1] Christianity remained a Jewish sect for centuries, diverging gradually from Judaism over doctrinal, social and historical differences.[2] Christianity spread as a grassroots movement that became established by the third century.[3][4][5][6] The Roman Emperor Constantine I became the first Christian emperor and in 313, issued the Edict of Milan expressing tolerance for all religions thereby legalizing Christian worship.[7] Various Christological debates about the human and divine nature of Jesus occupied the Christian Church for three centuries, and seven ecumenical councils were called to resolve them.[8]
Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization in Europe after the Fall of Rome.[9][10][11][12][13] In the Early Middle Ages, missionary activities spread Christianity towards the west and the north.[14] During the High Middle Ages, Eastern and Western Christianity grew apart, leading to the East–West Schism of 1054. Growing criticism of the Roman Catholic church and its corruption in the Late Middle Ages (from the 14th to 15th centuries) led to the Protestant Reformation and its related reform movements, which concluded with the European wars of religion.[15][16][17]
In the twenty-first century, Christianity has expanded throughout the world.[18] Today, there are more than two billion Christians worldwide and Christianity has become the world's largest religion,[18] and most widespread religion.[19] Within the last century, the center of growth has shifted from West to East and from North to the global South.[20][21][22][23]
Origins to 312 edit
Jesus edit
Frances M. Young writes in the Cambridge History of Christianity that "The death of Jesus by crucifixion, together with his resurrection from the dead, lies at the heart of Christianity."[24]
The primary, though not the only sources of information regarding Jesus' life and teachings, are the four canonical gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and Pauline epistles. Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure.[25][note 1] However, in the twenty-first century, tensions surround the figure of Jesus, and what Young calls the "apparently legendary features" of the gospels, creating, for many, a distinction between the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’.[29][note 2] Yet, as Young has observed, "it is precisely Christology, the dogmas concerning the divinity and humanity of Christ, which have made Christianity what it is".[31]
An approximate chronology of Jesus can be estimated from non-Christian sources, and confirmed by correlating them with New Testament accounts.[32][33] Jesus was most likely born between 7 and 2 BC and died 30–36 AD.[32][34] The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist can be dated approximately from Josephus' references (Antiquities 18.5.2) to a date before AD 28–35.[35][36][37][38]
Amy-Jill Levine says "there is a consensus of sorts on the basic outline of Jesus' life. Most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John, debated with fellow Jews on how best to live according to God’s will, engaged in healings and exorcisms, taught in parables, gathered male and female followers in Galilee, went to Jerusalem, and was crucified by Roman soldiers during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (26–36 CE)".[39]
According to the Gospels, Jesus is the Son of God, who was crucified c. AD 30–33 in Jerusalem.[1] His followers believed that he was raised from the dead and exalted by God, heralding the coming Kingdom of God.[1] Jesus had urged his followers to worship God, act without violence or prejudice, and care for the sick, hungry, and poor. He had also criticized the hypocrisy of the religious establishment which drew the ire of the authorities.[40] The Talmud says Jesus was executed for sorcery and for leading the people into apostasy.[41]
Political, social and religious setting edit
The religious, social, and political climate of 1st-century Roman Judea and its neighbouring provinces was extremely diverse, and often characterized by socio-political turmoil,[1][42][43] with numerous Judaic movements that were both religious and political.[44] The Jewish Messiah concept, promising a future "anointed" leader (messiah or king) from the Davidic line, had developed in apocalyptic literature over the previous centuries.[45][1]
Jewish diaspora edit
When Christianity spread beyond Judaea, it first arrived in Jewish diaspora communities.[46] The dispersion of the Jewish people from their homeland had begun in BC 587/6 when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel and took slaves from Jerusalem into Babylon.[47] When later allowed to return, not everyone did so. Those remaining outside the homeland became a somewhat separate community unto themselves later referred to by scholars as the diaspora.[48] [note 3]
Many scholars have emphasized differences between Palestinian Jews and diaspora Jews, but it is likely they still had a common Judaism. Being Jewish had both ethnic and religious elements, and the basic aspects of Jewish faith - circumcision, the Sabbath, and other central practices prescribed by the Torah - were most likely carried out by the individual within the context of home and family no matter where they lived.[49]
One real difference of diaspora Judaism was in their use of Greek as both a spoken and written language, not only in everyday usage, but also for religious purposes. This demonstrates a high level of acculturation called Hellenization whose extent, depth and significance has long been, and continues to be, contested.[50]
Tessa Rajak writes in the Cambridge History of Christianity that "The crushing of the revolt in [AD 70–73], celebrated by Rome’s issue of the famous ‘Judaea capta’ coins, ...resulted in a degradation of the standing of Jews everywhere”.[51] In AD 115/16, diaspora Jews revolted, and it was only in the second half of the second century that Judaism entered a less turbulent era.[52]
According to Rajak, the essence of diaspora lies in powerlessness more than in power, and "the early Christian communities shared many of the same experiences."[53]
Roman Empire edit
The Christian gospel came into a Roman Empire which had only recently emerged from a long series of civil wars, and which would experience two more major periods of civil war over the next centuries.[54] This period saw the growth of the cult of the emperor which regarded the emperor as the "elect" of god.[55] Romans of this era feared civil disorder believing it produced anarchy, giving their highest regard to peace, harmony and order.[55]
In order to reinforce order, society's class boundaries, which were most obvious in the courts where advantages and disadvantages based on class were convention, were turned into legislation.[55] Status, and the pursuit of status through wealth and the accumulation of possessions, was the pattern of Roman life.[56] Piety equaled loyalty to family, class, city and emperor, and it was demonstrated by loyalty to the practices and rituals of the old religious ways not by the individual faith of Christianity.[56]
Christianity was mostly seen as odd, but also as disruptive, and by some, as a threat to "Romanness".[57] While Christianity was largely tolerated, it was also persecuted, though persecution tended to be localized actions by mobs and governors until Christianity reached a critical juncture in the mid-third century.[58] In 250, Decius made it a capital offence to refuse to make sacrifices to Roman gods. The majority of scholars see Decius' decree as a requirement applied to all the inhabitants of the Empire, but they also see it as possible he intended it as an anti-Christian measure.[59] Still, Decius did not outlaw Christian worship.[60] Valerian pursued similar policies later that decade. These were followed by a 40-year period of tolerance known as the "little peace of the Church". The last and most severe official persecution, the Diocletianic Persecution, took place in 303–311.[61]
Geographical spread edit
Beginning with less than 1000 people, by the year 100, Christianity had grown to perhaps one hundred small household churches consisting of an average of around seventy (12–200) members each.[62] It achieved critical mass in the hundred years between 150 and 250 when it moved from fewer than 50,000 adherents to over a million.[63] This provided enough adopters for its growth rate to be self-sustaining.[63][64]
Rodney Stark estimates that Christians made up around 1.9% of the Roman population in 250.[65] Scholars generally agree there was a significant rise in the absolute number of Christians in the third century.[66] Stark, building on earlier estimates by theologian Robert M. Grant and historian Ramsay MacMullen, estimates that Christians made up around ten percent of the Roman population by 300.[65]
In these early centuries, Christianity spread beyond the Roman Empire as well as within it. Armenia, Persia (modern Iraq), Ethiopia, Central Asia, India and China have evidence of early Christian communities.[67] Catholic historian Robert Louis Wilken writes that there is first hand evidence of Christian community in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and of the Syriac speaking church in Baghdad commissioning a bishop to send to Tibet.[68] By the mid-sixth century a merchant-traveler wrote of his discovery of fully formed Christian communities in Malabar on the southwestern coast of India, and on Socotra an island in the Arabian Sea. (These had originally been commissioned by the church in Persia.)[69] Georgia, where Christianity arrived before the third century, was North of Armenia. Two bishops from Georgia attended the Council of Nicaea in 325.[70][note 4]
In these early centuries, Christianity grew as individuals were drawn to the faith and instructed, often beginning with a King and Queen.[72]
Regional variations edit
Asia Minor and Achaea edit
Christine Trevett writes in the Cambridge History of Christianity that "Asia Minor and Achaea were nurseries for Christianity."[73] Christian churches grew in cities with diverse cultures mentioned in the New Testament: Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Pergamum.[73][note 5]
In the second and third centuries, conflicts over the degree and type of Christ's divinity and humanity emerged.[80] The belief in Jesus Christ as the incarnation of the pre-existent and creative 'logos' (word of god), held by many Christians of the east, fueled the later Arian controversy.[81] In the Christian ‘mainstream’, the apostles, those who had known them, and the apostolic tradition were used to respond to these challenges.[82]
Trevett writes that "There was not just Christian diversity but a proud distinctiveness in Asia Minor. Its catholic leaders stood their ground, despite the claims and differing practices of Rome".[83] By the end of the second century, catholic leaders gathered formally to form 'official' statements of ‘orthodox’ Christian belief using apostolic teaching.[84]
Egypt edit
There is no archaeological evidence of Christianity in Egypt before the fourth century, however, Birger Pearson writes in the Cambridge History of Christianity that the literary evidence of Christianity's presence there before the fourth century is "massive".[85][note 6] The most plausible explanation comes from papyrologist Colin Roberts who concludes that the earliest Egyptian ‘Christians’ were not a separate community but were instead an integral part of the Jewish community of Alexandria.[90]
Egyptian Christianity began in Alexandria probably very early.[91] According to Pearson, "Writings that would eventually become part of the New Testament canon were brought to Egypt ... probably in the first century".[85][note 7] From the first century on, countless Christian writings flowed into Alexandria from all over the Empire, and Alexandrian Christians were prolific in response.[94][note 8]
Gnosticism first appeared in Egypt in the second century.[96] According to Roberts, the early papyri provide no support for the view that Gnosticism was the earliest form of Christianity in Egypt.[90] Marcionite Christianity also came to Alexandria in the mid-second century.[96]
In Alexandria, Clement was a teacher and presbyter who wrote against gnosticism by distinguishing between ‘false’ knowledge and the 'true' knowledge that had come from the apostles.[97] Seen as the greatest scholar and theologian of the ancient church, Origen was one of the most prolific writers of antiquity.[98]
Christians wrote of the church’s core apostolic faith as the same the world over. Pearson writes that, "The church inherited this claim ... from Judaism, which, ... was the only other religion in the history of Graeco-Roman religions to have this feature".[94]
Christian organization in Alexandria evolved following the model of the synagogue. Each Christian congregation had its own presbyter.[99] According to Pearson, "The writings of Clement and Origen attest to this evolution ‘from the Christian community to an institutional church’."[100]
In this early period, Christian religion expanded beyond Alexandria into the interior of Egypt where it was influenced by native Egyptian culture and language. This produced a distinctive Coptic Christianity which is still active in the twenty-first century.[92]
Monasticism played a greater role in Egyptian Christianity than in any other regional church.[101] Pearson says that "Roger Bagnall is probably right" that Christians were already a majority in Egypt by the time of the death of Constantine in 337.[102]
According to Pearson: "By the end of the third century, the Alexandrian church was at least as influential in the east as the Roman church was in the west".[103]
Syria and Mesopotamia edit
Christianity in Antioch is mentioned in Paul's epistles written before 60 AD, and scholars generally see Antioch as a primary center of early Christianity.[104][note 9] The Chronicle of Edessa records a flood in Edessa, in the year 201, that destroyed ‘the temple of the church of the Christians’. This demonstrates there was a community in Edessa that was large enough by the third century to have a building worth noting.[106]
Harvey attests that "Eusebius knew an independent tradition linking Thomas to the conversion of Edessa..." (HE 1.3; 2.1; 3.1). Edessa proudly held the relic of Thomas’ bones – attested both by Ephrem and by the western pilgrim Egeria, who saw them on her visit to the city in April 384". Thomas was also associated with the founding of Christianity in Mesopotamia and India. [107]
Syria preserved the earliest known collection of Christian hymns, the Odes of Solomon, which Harvey notes use "powerful feminine imagery ... for the Holy Spirit".[108] Especially prominent are images of healing and bodily wholeness, one of the most pervasive and enduring themes of Syrian Christianity.[106]
The prophet Mani was born in Persian Mesopotamia in 216, and his religion, Manichaeism, was popular in Syria for some centuries.[109][110] Zoroastrian opposition led to Mani's imprisonment and death in 276.[110]
Christians in this region had little, if any, direct experience with persecution before the fourth century.[111] By the turn of the fourth century, foundation legends began to appear. "Most famous was the legendary correspondence between Jesus and king Abgar Ukkama (‘the Black’) of Edessa".[112]
Gaul edit
Founding members of Christianity in Gaul were probably from the already established communities in the East and Rome.[113]
Most of what is known of early Christianity in Gaul comes from the Letter of the churches of Vienne and Lyons concerning the persecution of Christians under Marcus Aurelius.[114] Doubts have been raised about the letter's authenticity, but it is generally accepted.[115] Eusebius gives two dates for the persecution ten years apart, the seventh year of Marcus Aurelius’ reign (166–167), and the seventeenth year (177), which is the date most widely accepted.[114] The letter was written in response to the rise of Montanism in Asia and Phrygia.[116] The letter specifically refers to the martyrdom of eleven Christians from Vienne and Lyons, although later martyrologies record 49 names.[117] In the letter, grisly details of the suffering and martyrdoms are interpreted theologically.[118]
Irenaeus, who became bishop of Lyons after the martyrdom of Pothinus, is the most likely author of the letter, but his primary work, written between 174 and 189 is "Detection and refutation of gnosis falsely so-called", (usually known by its Latin title Adversus haereses).[117]
Irenaeus describes how, in his early youth, he had known Polycarp, the bishop of the church in Smyrna. This connection with Polycarp was important for Irenaeus: he emphasises that Polycarp had been appointed bishop of Smyrna by the apostles themselves and spoke often about his discussion with John and others who had seen the Lord. Irenaeus thus brought with him to Gaul a living connection with the age of the apostles...[119]
There is nothing more of Christianity in Gaul until the beginning of the 4th century excepting one inscription, which can possibly be dated to the early 3rd century, from the cemetery of Saint Pierre l’Estrier in Autun.[120]
North Africa edit
The origins of Christianity in North Africa are unknown, but most scholars connect it to the Jewish communities of Carthage.[121]
African Christians formed church doctrines on the Trinity, the nature of the soul, biblical interpretation, the nature of the church itself, and roles for women, but did this mostly by solving practical problems rather than theological ones.[122]
'Collegiality' was a hallmark of African church governance in its first three centuries. Bishops might threaten excommunication but did not actually break communion.[123] There were internal issues in the church that produced division, but in spite of any disagreement, Tertullian and Cyprian both proclaimed the unity of the church.[124]
While there is no accurate count of the persons martyred in Africa, Christians were persecuted intermittently from 180 until 305.[125][note 10] In the first three centuries, the most serious threats occurred under Emperors Decius and Valerian when the requirement to sacrifice to the gods was universally enforced and documented.[127] Some Christians tried to acquire the necessary documents through proxies or bribery, while some went into exile, and others were executed. Many simply complied.[127] These were condemned by rigorists in the church as lapsi in contrast to the stantes who stood firm. Problems were created when the lapsi later tried to rejoin the church.[127]
In 253, a new persecution began under Valerian (r. 253–9) aimed at high-ranking clergy. Christian leaders were required to sacrifice and stop all Christian assemblies, while all Christians were forbidden to have their own cemeteries.[128] Maureen Tilley in the Cambridge History of Christianity writes that "Some clergy were sentenced to the imperial mines (Cypr. Ep. 76–9). During the summer of 256, the higher clergy became subject to the death penalty; upper-class men lost their status and property and, if they persisted in the faith, were also executed. Upper-class women were exiled and their property seized (Cypr. Ep. 80)."[128] Cyprian was arrested, tried and executed in 258.[128]
After Valerian’s death, there were four decades of relative peace. Then, according to Tilley, "in the 290s, the military began to execute soldiers, such as Maximilian of Theveste and Marcellus of Tingis, for refusal to serve after conversion".[129]
Martyrs reinforced Christian identity as something that included resistance to state authority when necessary.[129]
Rome edit
Markus Vinzent makes the argument in the Cambridge History of Christianity that:
Rome "absorbed many cross-currents from around the early Christian world, and, far from itself generating or disseminating a specific theology, the Roman church was fragmented and subject to repeated internal upheavals in the first three centuries. Time and again, this church found itself affected by controversies imported by immigrants from around the empire. This seems, generally speaking, a truer characterization than Walter Bauer’s much discussed thesis that originally heretical forms of Christianity elsewhere were brought into line by Rome seeking to impose its authority on other Christian communities".[130]
A powerful, united, Roman church capable of forcing its will on others did not exist in this early period.[131][132] Before the eighth century, the Pope as the 'Bishop of Rome,' did not have special influence over other bishops outside Rome and had not yet manifested as the central ecclesiastical power.[133]
Community development edit
Church hierarchy edit
Gerd Theissen writes that church leadership in primitive Christianity transformed from itinerant preaching into resident leadership (those located in a particular community over which they exercised leadership) laying the foundation for the church structure that followed.[134]
Episkopoi were overseers – bishops – and presbyters were generally elders or priests. Deacons served. However, the terms were sometimes used interchangeably.[135]
Following the administrative pattern set by the Empire, the territory administered by a bishop came to be known by its ordinary civil term: diocese.[136] The bishop's actual physical location within his diocese was his "seat", or "see".[137]
A study by Edwin A. Judge, social scientist, shows that a fully organized church system had evolved before Constantine and the Council of Nicea in 325.[4]
New Testament edit
During the rise of Christianity in the first century AD, new scriptures were written in Koine Greek. Christians eventually called these new scriptures the "New Testament", and began referring to the Septuagint as the "Old Testament".[138] New Testament books already had considerable authority in the late first and early second centuries.[139] Even in its formative period, most of the books of the NT that were seen as scripture were already agreed upon. Linguistics scholar Stanley E. Porter says "evidence from the apocryphal non-Gospel literature is the same as that for the apocryphal Gospels – in other words, that the text of [most of] the Greek New Testament was relatively well established and fixed by the time of the second and third centuries".[140]
When discussion of canonization began, there were disputes over including some texts, such as the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, the First and Second Epistle of Peter, the First Epistle of John, and the Book of Revelation.[141][142] The list of books included in the canon of the early Catholic Bible was established by the Council of Rome in 382, followed by those of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397.[143]
Spanning two millennia, the Bible has become one of the most influential works ever written, having contributed to the formation of Western law, art, literature, literacy and education.[144][145]
Church fathers edit
The earliest orthodox writers of the first and second centuries, outside the writers of the New Testament itself, were first called the Apostolic Fathers in the sixth century.[146] The title "Church Father" is used by the church to describe those who were the intellectual and spiritual teachers, leaders and philosophers of early Christianity.[147] Writing from the first century to the close of the eighth, they defended their faith, wrote commentaries and sermons, recorded the Creeds and church history, and lived exemplary lives.[148][note 11]
Variety, orthodoxy and identity edit
Jewish Christianity edit
Christianity originated in 1st-century Judea as a sect of apocalyptic Jewish Christians within Second Temple Judaism.[1][158] In the early first century, the temple in Jerusalem was still central to Judaism, though synagogues were also established as institutions for prayer and the reading of Jewish sacred texts.[159]
While there is evidence supporting the presence of Gentiles even in the earliest Christian communities (Acts 10), most early Christians, such as the Ebionites, remained actively Jewish.[158]
The early Christian community in Jerusalem, led by James the Just, brother of Jesus, was singularly influential.[160][161] According to Acts 9,[162] they described themselves as "disciples of the Lord" and [followers] "of the Way", and according to Acts 11,[163] a settled community of disciples at Antioch were the first to be called "Christians". [note 12]
Gentile Christianity edit
Christianity grew apart from Judaism for several reasons. Jerusalem fell to the Romans, and the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD.[168] Christianity did not support the Jews in their rebellion against Rome and blamed Judaism's rejection of Jesus for the Temple's destruction.[164][2]
The fourth-century church fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius of Salamis cite a tradition that, before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 the Jerusalem Christians had been warned to flee to the mountains in the north (Mark 13:14), but instead they went to Pella in the East in the region of the Decapolis across the Jordan River, although the historicity of Christians in this location is also heavily debated.[169][170]
Heresey and orthodoxy edit
Emerging Christianity embraced some theological, ecclesiological and regional diversity, but ‘insider-outsider’ boundaries were still being determined in this period.[171] ‘Orthodoxy’ was not the exclusive property of one group, and many of the ideas in Gnostic or New Prophecy/Montanist or Marcionite teachings overlapped traditional views.[83] Defining ‘orthodoxy,’ therefore, took time.[172] According to Christine Trevett, "the lines of demarcation were not solid", making it questionable whether orthodoxy and heresy can even be spoken of as real categories of thought before the council of Nicaea.[171]
The earliest writers emphasized the unity of Christianity.[124][94] 'Core beliefs' on doctrine, ethos, fellowship and community as well as many doctrinal tenets such as monotheism, Jesus as Christ and Lord, and the Gospel as a message concerning salvation were seen as based on apostolic authority.[173][82][97]
Heresy was first to arrive in some regions, however, there is also unambiguous evidence in other regions (such as Ephesus and western Asia Minor) that heresy was neither early nor strong, that it was preceded by orthodoxy, and that orthodoxy was numerically larger.[174][90]
Early Beliefs and practices edit
Early Christian communities were highly inclusive in terms of social stratification and other social categories.[175] Paul's understanding of the innate paradox of an all powerful Christ dying as a powerless man created a new understanding of power and a new social order unprecedented in classical society.[176][note 13]
Christianity in its first 300 years was also highly exclusive.[180] Believing was the crucial and defining characteristic that set a "high boundary" that strongly excluded the "unbeliever".[180] In Daniel Praet's view, the exclusivity of Christian monotheism formed an important part of its success, enabling it to maintain its independence in a society that syncretized religion.[181]
Historian Raymond Van Dam says conversion produced "a fundamental reorganization in the ways people thought about themselves and others".[182] Women were able to negotiate an expanded role in society that was not available in Judaism or Romanism.[183]
Prior to Christianity, the wealthy elite of Rome mostly donated to civic programs designed to elevate their status.[184][185][186] Christians, on the other hand, offered last rites to the dying, buried them, distributed bread to the hungry, and showed the poor great generosity.[187][188][note 14]
An important cultural shift took place in the way Christians buried one another: they gathered unrelated Christians into a common burial space, then "commemorated them with homogeneous memorials and expanded the commemorative audience to the entire local community of coreligionists" thereby redefining the concept of family.[189][190]
Classics scholar Kyle Harper says "Christianity not only drove profound cultural change, it created a new relationship between sexual morality and society... [replacing the] ancient system where social and political status, power, and the transmission of social inequality to the next generation scripted the terms of sexual morality. ...There are risks in over-estimating the change in old patterns Christianity was able to begin bringing about; but there are risks, too, in underestimating Christianization as a watershed".[191]
Late antiquity to Early Medieval Christianity (325 – c. 600) edit
According to Michele R. Salzman, fourth century Empire featured sociological, political, economic and religious competition, producing tensions and hostilities between a large number of various groups. Christians described themselves as triumphant and focused on suppressing heresy.[192]
Influence of Constantine edit
Averil Cameron, in the Cambridge History of Christianity, writes that, "The reign of Constantine ... was momentous for Christianity".[193] The Roman Emperor Constantine I became the first Christian emperor in 313, (though he did not become sole emperor until after defeating Licinius the emperor in the East in 324).[194] In 313, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, (which had been the policy of Licinius), expressing tolerance for all religions, thereby legalizing Christian worship.[194] Christianity did not become the official religion of the empire under Constantine, but the steps he took to support and protect it were vitally important in the history of Christianity.[195]
He established equal footing for Christian clergy by granting them the same immunities pagan priests had long enjoyed.[195] He gave bishops judicial power. [196] By intervening in church disputes, he initiated a precedent.[197][198][note 15] Bishops were grateful to Constantine, (instead of rejecting state authority), and this attitude proved to be critical to the further growth of the church.[196]
Constantine's church building was influential in the spread of Christianity.[196] He devoted imperial and public funds, endowed his churches with wealth and lands, and provided revenue for their clergy and upkeep.[199] Cameron explains that, "In a sense he was simply following the example set by his pagan predecessors ... Nevertheless his activities set a pattern for others, and by the end of the fourth century every self-respecting city, however small, had at least one church".[199]
How much Christianity Constantine personally adopted is difficult to discern.[7][200] Constantine was over 40, had most likely been a traditional polytheist, and according to historian Peter Brown, was a savvy and ruthless politician when he declared himself a Christian.[201] His religious belief has always been a matter for speculation, but as Cameron says, it is clear that whatever zeal he held for the church "did not absolve him from the harsh realities of power";[202] "Constantine was a pragmatist".[203]
Cameron concludes that Constantine brought the Christian church and the Roman state together "in a completely new way, and in this his reign was fundamental for subsequent history".[204]
Regional developments edit
Germanic Christianity edit
The integration of barbarian people into the Roman world of the fourth century transformed both Romans and barbarians. One aspect of this change was religious. Beginning with the Goths around 369, various Germanic people adopted Christianity, and began to form into the distinct ethnic groups that would become the future nations of Europe.[205] Vandals converted shortly before they left Spain for northern Africa in 429.[206] Clovis I converted to Catholicism sometime around 498, founding what would eventually become the Carolingian Dynasty.[207]
In all cases, Christianization meant "the Germanic conquerors lost their native languages" as these languages became Latinized.[208] At least one historian of the time, Orosius, wrote that conversion made the barbarians milder and set limits on their "savagery".[209]
A seismic moment edit
In 416, the Germanic Visigoths had crossed into Hispania as Roman allies.[210] They converted to Arian Christianity shortly before 429.[206] An important shift took place in 612 when the Visigothic King Sisebut declared the obligatory conversion of all Jews in Spain, contradicting Pope Gregory who had reiterated the traditional ban against forced conversion of the Jews in 591.[211] Scholars refer to this shift as a "seismic moment" in Christian history.[212]
Justinian I and Eastern influence edit
The Eastern Roman Empire, with its heartland in Greece and Asia Minor, became the Byzantine Empire after the fall of the Roman West.[213] With its autocratic government, stable farm economy, Greek heritage and Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine Empire lasted until 1453 and the Fall of Constantinople.[214]
From the late seventh to the middle of the eighth century, eleven of the thirteen men who held the position of Roman Pope were the sons of families from the East. Before they could be installed, these Popes had to be approved by the head of State, the Byzantine emperor.[215]
This Byzantine papacy, along with losses to Islam and changes within Christianity itself, helped put an end to Ancient Christianity in the West.[216][217] This helped transform Christianity into its eclectic medieval forms.[218][219][220]
Byzantium edit
The Chalcedonian council (451) asserted two separate natures for Jesus, one human and one divine, thereby contradicting the conclusions of Nicea that Christ had one nature. In the last century of this period, support and opposition split the eastern churches into those who accepted Chalcedon (called Chalcedonians) and those who did not: the Monophysites and Nestorians.[221]
Jews, pagans and heretics edit
Jews and supersessionism edit
In the fourth century, Augustine argued that the Jewish people should not be forcibly converted or killed, but that they should be left alone. Until the thirteenth century, that meant the Jews were both protected and condemned by Christian teaching. According to Anna Sapir Abulafia, most scholars agree that Jews and Christians in Latin Christendom lived in relative peace with one another until the thirteenth century.[222][223] Scattered violence toward Jews occasionally took place during riots led by mobs, local leaders, and lower level clergy without the support of church leaders who generally followed Augustine's teachings.[224][225]
Sometime before the fifth century, the church had taken its universally held traditional interpretation of Revelation 20:4–6, (Millennialism), and augmented it with supersessionism.[226][227] Millennialism is the hope of the thousand-year reign of the Messiah on earth, centered in Jerusalem, ruling with the redeemed Israel.[228] Supersessionism is a historicized and allegorized version of this which sees the church as the metaphorical Israel, thereby eliminating the Jews altogether.[229]
Supersessionism is significant because "It is undeniable that anti-Jewish bias has often gone hand-in-hand with the supersessionist view".[230] Many Jewish writers trace anti-semitism, and the consequences of it in World War II, to this particular doctrine among Christians.[231][232] Supersessionism has never been an official doctrine and has never been universally held, but has been a part of Christian thought for much of Christian history.[233][228]
Pagans edit
Constantine ruled for 31 years and never outlawed paganism.[234][235] What he did do, according to Bradbury, was confiscate temple hoards of gold and silver to finance his building projects and establish a stable currency. On a few occasions, he confiscated temple land.[236] He refused to personally support pagan beliefs while also speaking out against them.[237] He forbade pagan sacrifices and closed temples that continued to offer them.[234] He wrote laws that favored Christianity,[238][197] and he personally endowed Christians with gifts of money, land and government positions.[239][240]
Blood sacrifice was the element of pagan culture most abhorrent to Christians, though Christian emperors often tolerated other pagan practices.[241][242] Constantine authored several laws that threatened and menaced any who continued to practice sacrifice.[243][244] Peter Brown notes that the language of the anti-sacrifice laws "was uniformly vehement", and the "penalties they proposed were frequently horrifying", evidencing the intent of terrorizing the populace into acceptance.[245] Sacrifice, a common practice in nearly all nations of the world prior to this, largely disappeared from the cities by the mid fourth century.[241]
There is no evidence of any of the horrific punishments ever being enacted.[246] There is no record of anyone being executed for violating religious laws before Tiberius II Constantine at the end of the sixth century (574–582).[247] Society did not substantially change its pagan nature under Constantine's rule, and paganism itself, (sans sacrifice), continued into the fifth century, and in some places, into the sixth and beyond.[237][248][249]
In Eusebius' church history, he claims Constantine campaigned against the temples as well as sacrifice, however, there are discrepancies in the evidence.[250] Temple destruction is attested to in 43 cases in the written sources, but only four have been confirmed by archaeological evidence.[251]
Trombley and MacMullen explain it is common for discrepancies between literary sources and archaeological evidence to exist.[252][253] For example, the ancient chronicler Malalas claimed Constantine destroyed all the temples; then he said Theodisius destroyed them all; then he said Constantine converted them all to churches.[254][255] At the sacred oak and spring at Mamre, a site venerated and occupied by Jews, Christians, and pagans alike, the literature says Constantine ordered the burning of the idols, the destruction of the altar, and erection of a church on the spot of the temple.[256] The archaeology of the site shows that Constantine's church, along with its attendant buildings, occupied a peripheral sector of the precinct leaving the rest unhindered.[257]
Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming confiscated properties for the church, whenever these issues were brought to his attention, and he used reclamation to justify the destruction of some pagan temples such as Aphrodite's temple in Jerusalem. For the most part, Constantine simply neglected them.[258][259][260][note 16]
Christianity as a state religion edit
The first countries to make Christianity their state religion were Armenia (301), Georgia (4th century), Ethiopia and Eritrea in 325.[268][269][270]
Theodosius I (347–395) was described after his death, by fourth century Christian writers, as the emperor who established Nicene Christianity as the official religion of the empire. Contemporary scholars see this more as part of the narrative those Christian authors created in their battle against Arianism than they see it as actual history.[271][272][273][274]
Cameron explains that, since Theodosius's predecessors Constantine, Constantius, and Valens had all been semi-Arians, it fell to the orthodox Theodosius to receive credit for the triumph of Christianity from Christian literary tradition.[275][note 17]
Many twentieth century scholars have written that a universal ban on paganism, and the establishment of Christianity as the "official" religion of the empire, (though never explicitly stated), could be implied from Theodosius' law of November 392.[277][280][281] However, Alan Cameron observes that this law was sent only to Rufinus in the East;[282] it is concerned solely with private domestic sacrifice, and bans the magic and idolatry associated with such sacrifice.[283][284] The law makes no mention of Christianity.[285][286] Sozomen, the Constantinopolitan lawyer, wrote a history of the church around 443 where he evaluates the law of 392 as having had only minor significance at the time it was issued. Sacrifice had mostly ended by the mid-300s.[287][288]
Paganism in the larger sense was not ended in 392 AD, though it had been gradually declining in popularity since the second century BC.[289][290] Polytheists were accustomed to offering prayers to the gods in many ways and places, writes Brown. Pollution was only associated with sacrifice, and the ban on sacrifice had fixed boundaries and limits.[291] Paganism thus remained widespread into the early fifth century continuing in parts of the empire into the seventh and beyond.[292]
Cameron concludes in The Last Pagans of Rome that, "There was no pagan revival in the West, no pagan party, no pagan literary circles, no pagan patronage of the classics, no pagan propaganda in art and literature, no pagans editing classical texts, above all, no pagan last stand... but (Roman tradition, Rome's glorious past) continued to exercise real power and influence on men's minds... [playing] a vital and continuing role in shaping the thought world of Christians, both at the time and in the centuries to come".[293]
Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysites and the first ecumenical councils edit
During Antiquity, the Eastern church produced multiple doctrinal controversies that attempted to define how, and when, the Christ became both human and divine.[214] These were often dubbed heresies by their opponents, and during this age, the first ecumenical councils were convened to deal with them.
The first, and most influential, was between Arianism and orthodox trinitarianism. Arianism argued that the Christ was divine, but was a creation, and was therefore not equal to the Father. This spread throughout most of the Roman Empire from the 4th century onwards.[note 18][note 19] The First Council of Nicaea (325) and the First Council of Constantinople (381) resulted in a condemnation of Arian teachings as heresy and produced the Nicene Creed. Arianism was eventually eliminated by orthodox opposition and empirical law, though it remained popular for some time.[294][295]
The Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth ecumenical councils are generally considered the most important of the remaining councils, and all are characterized by Nestorianism vs. Monophysitism.[296] The West came down firmly on the side of stressing the humanity of Christ and the reality of His moral choices. To preserve His Divine nature, the unity of His person was described in a looser way than in Eastern theology. It was primarily this difference which was at the heart of the Nestorian controversy.[297]
The resulting schism created a communion of churches, including the Armenian, Assyrian, and Egyptian churches.[298] By the end of the 5th century, the Persian Church had become independent of the Roman Church eventually evolving into the modern Church of the East.[299] Though efforts were made at reconciliation in the next few centuries, the schism remained permanent, resulting in what is today known as Oriental Orthodoxy. Most Christians in Asia belonged to branches of the Nestorian church from the end of the fifth century into the thirteenth century.[300]
Beliefs and practices edit
Triumph edit
Christians of the fourth century believed Constantine's conversion was evidence the Christian God had conquered the pagan gods in Heaven.[301][302] Fourth century Christians writing after 312 constructed this as a universal narrative, describing the "mighty conflict" as begun with the resurrection of Jesus and victoriously completed in Constantine.[303][304][305]
Brown says, Constantine's conversion meant that, as far as paganism was concerned, "everything was done but the sweeping up".[306] "In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and, apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence.[307] Fourth century Christians focused on heresy as the higher priority.[308][309]
Monasticism and hospitals for the poor edit
Christian monasticism grew from roots in certain strands of Judaism and views in common with Graeco-Roman philosophy and religion, and was modeled upon Scriptural examples and ideals such as John the Baptist who was seen as an archetypical monk.[310][311] Christian monasticism emerged separately from these other previous forms in the third century; by the 330's, it had become a significant social and religious force.[310]
By the fifth century, Christian monasticism was a dominant force in all areas of late antique culture.[312][note 20]
Monastic communities were, in general, devoted to prayer, moderate self denial, manual labor and mutual support.[316]
Early monastics also developed a health care system which allowed the sick to remain within the monastery as a special class afforded special benefits and care.[317] This destigmatized illness and formed the basis for future public health care. The first public hospital (the Basiliad) was founded by Basil the Great in 369.[318]
Central figures in the development of monasticism were Basil in the East and, in the West, Benedict, who created the Rule of Saint Benedict, which would become the most common rule throughout the Middle Ages and the starting point for other monastic rules.[319]
Early to High Middle Ages (c. 600 – c. 1100) edit
Christendom c. 600 edit
Most organized societies, with few exceptions, called themselves Christian because they were headed by Christian rulers, not because populations were fully converted.[320] Peter Brown has written in the Cambridge History of Christianity that,
It is easy to forget that the territories of Christianity itself were subject to constant flux. “De-Christianization” was just as much a feature of the Christian world in 600 as was “Christianization.” Barbarian invasion, deportation, or sheer neglect by distant authorities could produce entire “unchurched” populations, for whom Christianity remained a residual religion, but without ecclesiastical structures.[321]
The “harmony” of Church and State (declared by Justinian I) had grown, from the ground up, in 680 cities, and Church and State were inseparably mixed together.[320] Still, Brown says Christianity was not exclusively an urban religion, even though its “nerve centers” were urban bishoprics that had been established 500 years earlier.[322] [note 21]
According to Brown, it was the sheer size of this world that leant a sense of "immensity to the Christian conviction that a yet wider Kingdom of Christ stood, as it were, as the invisible backdrop to the history of western Eurasia".[323]
The Age of the monk edit
Historian Geoffrey Blainey writes that the Catholic Church in the period between the Fall of Rome (476 C.E.) and the rise of the Carolingian Franks (750 C.E.) was like an early version of a welfare state. "It conducted hospitals for the old and orphanages for the young; hospices for the sick of all ages; places for the lepers; and hostels or inns where pilgrims could buy a cheap bed and meal". It supplied food to the population during famine and distributed food to the poor.[324][325]
Monasteries preserved classical craft and artistic skills while maintaining intellectual culture within their schools, scriptoria and libraries. As well as providing a focus for spiritual life, they functioned as agricultural, economic and production centers, particularly in remote regions.[326]
Medieval monasteries were models of productivity and economic resourcefulness, teaching their local communities animal husbandry, cheese making, wine making, and various other skills.[327] Medical practice was highly important and medieval monasteries are best known for their contributions to medical tradition. They also made advances in sciences such as astronomy, and St. Benedict's Rule (480–543) impacted politics and law.[325][328]
The formation of these organized bodies of believers distinct from political and familial authority, especially for women, gradually carved out a series of social spaces with some amount of independence thereby revolutionizing social history.[329]
Different Places, different traditions edit
Western missionary expansion edit
After the Fall of Rome in the late fifth century, the church gradually replaced the Roman Empire as the unifying force in Europe, providing what security there was, actively preserving ancient texts and literacy.[330][331]
Pope Celestine I (422–430) sent Palladius to be the first bishop to the Irish in 431, and in 432, Gaul supported St Patrick as he began his mission there.[332] Relying largely on recent archaeological developments, Lorcan Harney has reported to the Royal Academy that the missionaries and traders who came to Ireland in the fifth to sixth centuries were not backed by any military force.[332]
Recent archaeology indicates Christianity had become an established minority faith in some parts of Britain by the fourth century. It was largely mainstream, and in certain areas, was continuous.[333] Irish missionaries led by Saint Columba, went to Iona (from 563), and converted many Picts.[334] The court of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, and the Gregorian mission who landed in 596 sent by Pope Gregory I and led by Augustine of Canterbury, did the same for the Kingdom of Kent.[335]
The Franks first appear in the historical record in the 3rd century as a confederation of Germanic tribes living on the east bank of the lower Rhine River. The largely Christian Gallo-Roman inhabitants of Gaul (modern France and Belgium) were overrun by the Franks in the early 5th century. They were persecuted until the Frankish King Clovis I converted from Paganism to Roman Catholicism in 496.[336] Clovis I became the first king of the Franks to unite all of the Frankish tribes under one ruler.[337]
Clovis' descendent Charlemagne began the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of intellectual and cultural revival of literature, arts, and scriptural studies, a renovation of law and the courts, and the promotion of literacy.[346] Charlemagne himself could not read or write, but he admired it, so in order to address the problems of illiteracy, Charlemagne founded schools and attracted the most learned men from all of Europe to his court. They had many accomplishments including the development of lower case letters called Carolingian minuscule.[347] Beginning in the late 8th century under Charlemagne, renaissance continued into the 9th century under his son, Louis the Pious.[348]
Eastern Christianities (604–1071) edit
Brown has written that the "Church of the East," the Christian church within the Persian/Sasanian Empire, was concentrated "in the towns and villages of northern Iraq, in the foothills of the Zagros, and in the trading posts of the Persian Gulf".[349] The Sasanian Empire encompassed modern Iraq, Iran, and parts of Central Asia. Brown writes that, in the late 500s, it entered a period of "military and diplomatic confrontation with Constantinople which stretched throughout the Middle East from the northern Caucasus to Yemen. It was a colossal confrontation. It reached so deep into Central Asia and Inner Asia that it stirred the interest of the Chinese court in the affairs of the distant West for the first time since the days of Marcus Aurelius (121–80)".[350]
A generation after 600, the shattering of the Sassanian Empire led upper-class refugees to move further east to China, entering Hsian-fu in 635.[351]
Byzantine Orthodoxy edit
Brown writes "With a population of over half a million, Constantinople had become overwhelmingly the largest city in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In Gaul and Spain, the Roman Empire, as it continued at Constantinople, had remained the preeminent model for earthly power at its most ebullient, formidable, and God-fearing".[350]
Following a series of heavy military reversals against the Muslims, Iconoclasm emerged within the provinces of the Byzantine Empire in the early 8th century. In the 720s, the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian banned the pictorial representation of Christ, saints, and biblical scenes. In the Latin West, Pope Gregory III held two synods at Rome and condemned Leo's actions. The Byzantine Iconoclast Council, held at Hieria in 754 AD, ruled that holy portraits were heretical.[352] The iconoclastic movement destroyed much of the Christian Church's early artistic history. The iconoclastic movement was later defined as heretical in 787 AD under the Second Council of Nicaea (the seventh ecumenical council) but had a brief resurgence between 815 and 842 AD.
Africa edit
The kingdom of Axum, in Ethiopia became Christian around 340.[353] Up to 570, the kingdom of Himyar (in modern Yemen) was Jewish, but the kingdom itself had Christian rulers supported by military power from the highlands of Ethiopia. [353]
Slavic Christianities edit
According to Brown, major moments of official Christianization in the Slavic regions coincided with diplomatic offensives from Constantinople.[354]
Throughout central and eastern Europe, the Balkan Peninsula (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia), and the area north of the Danube (Poland, Hungary, Russia), Christianization and political centralization went hand in hand.[355][356] Local elites wanted to convert because they gained prestige and power through matrimonial alliances and participation in imperial rituals.[357][note 23]
Significant missionary activity in this region only took place after Charlemagne defeated the Avar Khaganate several times at the end of the 8th century and the beginning of the ninth centuries.[358]
Two Byzantine brothers, Saints Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, played the key missionary roles in spreading Christianity to Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia territories beginning in 863.[359] They spent approximately 40 months in Great Moravia continuously translating texts, teaching students, and developing the first Slavic alphabet while translating the Gospel into the Old Church Slavonic language.[360][361] Old Church Slavonic became the first literary language of the Slavs and, eventually, the educational foundation for all Slavic nations.[360]
Rise of universities edit
Modern western universities have their origins directly in the Medieval Church.[362][363][364] The earliest were the University of Bologna (1088), the University of Oxford (1096), and the University of Paris where the faculty was of international renown (c. 1150).[365][366] Matthews and Platt say "these were the first Western schools of higher education since the sixth century".[367]
They began as cathedral schools then formed into self-governing corporations with charters.[367] Students were considered clerics.[368] This was a benefit that imparted legal immunities and protections. Schools were divided into faculties which specialized in law, medicine, theology or liberal arts (largely devoted to Aristotle), awarded degrees and held the famous quodlibeta theological debates amongst faculty and students.[367][369]
Western Europe (c. 1100 – c. 1500) edit
Forging Christendom edit
Christianity of the Middle Ages was a complex and diverse mix of cultures.[370] Clergy initiated reform and renewal even while Christians were often troubled by non-Christians.[371] The intense and rapid changes of 1100 to 1300, are considered some of the most significant in the history of Christianity.[372]
10th to 13th century Monastic reform edit
The church of this era had immense authority, but the key to its power were three monastic reformation movements that swept Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries.[373][374] Prior to this, the church had become riddled with corruption, the buying and selling of church offices, and disregard for the sacraments.[375] The monks formed a new focus on reforming the world as well as themselves and this influenced the next 400 years of European history.[372]
Owing to its stricter adherence to the reformed Benedictine rule, the Abbey of Cluny became the leading centre of Western monasticism from the later 10th century.[376] The monastery at Cluny was established in 910 by the Benedictine Order without feudal obligations, allowing it to institute reforms.[375] The Cluniac spirit was a revitalising influence on the Norman Church, at its height from the second half of the 10th century through the early 12th century.[372]
The next wave of monastic reform came with the Cistercian movement. The first Cistercian abbey was founded in 1098, at Cîteaux Abbey. The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to a literal observance of the Benedictine rule, rejecting the developments of the Benedictines. Inspired by Bernard of Clairvaux, the primary builder of the Cistercians, they became the main force of technological advancement and diffusion in medieval Europe.[377]
A third level of monastic reform was provided by the establishment of the Mendicant orders. Beginning in the 12th century, the Franciscan Order was instituted by the followers of Francis of Assisi, and thereafter the Dominican Order was begun by St. Dominic. Ancient Christians had not thought of their movement in terms of social reform, whereas a "profound revolution in religious sentiment" led the new monastics to see their calling as actively working to reform the world.[378][379] Commonly known as "friars", mendicants live under a monastic rule with traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience but they emphasize preaching, missionary activity, and education.
Dominicans came to dominate the new universities; they traveled about preaching against heresy, and eventually became notorious for their participation in the Medieval Inquisition, the Albigensian Crusade and the Northern crusades.[380] Christian policy denying the existence of witches and witchcraft would later be challenged by the Dominicans allowing them to participate in witch trials.[381][382]
Christian beliefs and practices edit
Medieval people believed that participating in the sacraments, and upholding church ceremony and morality, granted them access to Heaven.[383] The seven sacraments were the outward manifestation of God's grace: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, marriage, last rights and ordination for priests.[384] Confession and penance became widespread from the eleventh century, and by 1300, were an integral part of both ritual and belief.[377]
Women edit
While the Middle Ages was a difficult time for most women, abbesses and female superiors of monastic houses were powerful figures whose influence could rival that of male bishops and abbots.[385][386]
The Gregorian Reform also impacted women in general by establishing new law requiring the consent of both parties before a marriage could be performed, a minimum age for marriage, and by codifying marriage as a sacrament.[387][388] That made the union a binding contract, making abandonment prosecutable with dissolution of marriage overseen by Church authorities.[389] Although the Church abandoned tradition to allow women the same rights as men to dissolve a marriage, in practice men were granted dissolutions more frequently than women.[390][391]
Mary edit
The veneration of Mary developed within the monasteries in western medieval Europe.[392] Feminist' analysis sees it as arising out of human need for maternal comfort and the resulting return to goddess worship.[393]
Rachel Fulton in the Cambridge History of Christianity writes that medieval European Christians praised Mary for making God tangible.[394] She goes on to add that "It was Mary, in her suffering with her Son as she stood by him under his cross, who made God visible as empowering and inspiring love, and in doing so, taught those praying to her how they, too, might participate, through love, in both her Sorrows and her Joys ... The artistic and devotional effects ... are still visible throughout Europe".[395]
Music edit
Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation leading to the development of classical music and all its derivatives.[396]
Mysticism edit
Christian mysticism abounded in the Middle Ages, particularly among nuns and monks, inspiring believers to transcend the material realm as well as one's own individual soul, and 'touch' the Divine Wisdom that exists beyond human speech yet is shared in human community.[397]
Art edit
Popes became the leading patrons of the new Renaissance style, and the Church commissioned and supported such artists as Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Bramante, Raphael, Fra Angelico, Donatello, and Leonardo da Vinci.[398]
Bible in the 1400s edit
Fifteenth-century theologians believed the Bible was coherently arranged in a theological structure that reflected a historical record of interactions between God and people. Progressing from promise to fulfilment, the Bible's ultimate purpose was human salvation.[399] Christopher Ocker writes that,
All people interested in Scripture must have agreed that its function was identical to the spiritual purpose of the church – gradually restoring human beings to an ideal form of life, salvation. Yet so benevolently disguised, the Bible could infiltrate and unsettle any region of late medieval Europe’s cultural worlds".[400]
Scholars of the Renaissance created textual criticism which revealed writing errors by medieval monks and exposed the Donation of Constantine as a forgery. Popes of the Middle Ages had depended upon the document to prove their political authority.[401]
Science edit
Christian scholars traveled to Sicily and Spain between 1150 and 1200 to retrieve the writings of Aristotle, which had been lost to the West after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. Insights gained from Aristotle triggered a period of cultural ferment that one "modern historian has called the twelfth century renaissance".[367]
Thomas Aquinas responded to this intellectual challenge to faith by writing his monumental summas in support of human reason as compatible with faith.[402] Christian theology adapted to Aristotle's secular and humanistic natural philosophy, adjusting the church's understanding of several sciences, including astrophysics, for the next 500 years - until Galileo.[403]
By the Late Middle Ages, Aquinas's rationalism was being heatedly debated in the new universities.[404] William Ockham resolved the conflict by arguing that faith and reason should be pursued separately so that each could achieve its own end.[404] Historians of science David C. Lindberg, Ronald Numbers and Edward Grant have described what followed as a "medieval scientific revival".[403]
For example, Bishop Robert Grosseteste devised the first scientific method using hypothesis, mathematics and testing of the hypothesis, while Roger Bacon, a Christian monk, advocated an experimental method. Nicholas Oresme, followed their methods postulating in the 1300s that the earth moved.[405] Science historians, including Noah Efron, therefore give credit to these early Christian scientists for providing the early "tenets, methods, and institutions of what in time became modern science".[406][407][408][409]
Growing power and repression edit
Papal monarchy edit
The popes of the fourteenth century worked to amass power into the papal position, building what is often called the papal monarchy.[410][411] This was accomplished partly through the reorganization of the ecclesiastical financial system. The poor had previously been allowed to offer their tithes in goods and services, but these popes revamped the system to only accept money. A steady cash flow brought with it the power of great wealth. The papal states were thereafter governed by the pope in the same manner the secular powers governed. The pope became a pseudo-monarch.[410]
These fourteenth century popes were greedy and politically corrupt, so that pious Christians of the period became disgusted, leading to the loss of papal prestige.[410][412][note 24] Devoted and virtuous nuns and monks became increasingly rare. Monastic reform had been a major force in the High Middle Ages, but it is largely unknown in the Late Middle Ages.[414]
People living during the fourteenth century experienced plague, famine and war that ravaged most of the continent; there was social unrest, urban riots, peasant revolts and renegade feudal armies, and this was in addition to the religious changes often forced upon them by their new monarchies. They faced all of this with a church unable to provide much moral leadership as a result of its own internal conflict and corruption.[415]
The church reached its low point in the early 1400s when there were three different men claiming to be the rightful Pope.[416][410]
Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism edit
In 1309, Pope Clement V moved to Avignon in southern France in search of relief from Rome's factional politics.[410] Seven popes resided there in the Avignon Papacy until 1378.[417] Troubles had grown while the prestige and influence of Rome had declined without a resident pontiff. In 1377 Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome. After his death, the papal conclave met in 1378 in Rome and elected an Italian Urban VI to succeed Gregory.[410] The French cardinals did not approve. They held a second conclave electing Robert of Geneva instead. This began the Western Schism.[416][410]
Different secular leaders threw their support behind one or the other. Papal authority declined. In 1409, both sets of cardinals called the Pisan council electing a third pope and calling on the other two to resign, but they refused, leaving the church with three popes. The Council of Constance (1414–1418), called by the Holy Roman Emperor, finally resolved the conflict by electing Pope Martin V to replace the rest.[410]
In 1418, the Papacy regained control of the church, consolidated the Papal States and focused on the pursuit of power.[398] During this time, wealthy Italian families secured episcopal offices for themselves. The individuals who became Pope Alexander VI and Pope Sixtus IV were known for ignoring the moral requirements of their position. Pontiffs such as Julius II often waged campaigns to protect and expand their domains, and popes spent lavishly pursuing personal grievances, private luxuries and public works.[418]
Christendom and the beginnings of monarchial absolutism (c. 1100) edit
By 1150, European culture in the West was at a watershed. Kings and their nations were leaving the concept of Christendom behind and becoming more secular. Therefore they actively worked to centralize power into themselves and their newly forming nation-states.[380] Later monarchs of the 1600s-1700s would take this foundation, reform its bureaucracies and create new ones to support their divine right to absolutist rule.[419]
The twelfth century state gained power by attacking older kinship-based systems, taking legal, military, and social powers away from the local level aristocrats, and local church leaders, who had traditionally held such powers. [420] By redefining being a member of a minority (such as being Jewish or homosexual) as a threat to the social order, the state then used stereotyping, propaganda and legal prosecution to socially and politically legitimize the state's right to whatever power it needed to protect itself from those the state had defined as dissidents and disruptors.[420][note 25]
Moore writes that persecution became a functional tool of power and a core element in the social and political development of Western society.[430][431][432] By the 1300s, "The maintenance of civil order through legislated separation [segregation] and discrimination was part of the institutional structure of all European states ingrained in law, politics, and the economy".[433][425][434]
The church did not have the leading role in this but had a part in it through new canon laws.[435][436][437] According to the Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, during this period the religion that had begun by decrying the role of law as less than that of grace and love (Romans 7:6) developed the most complex religious law the world has ever seen, and in it, Christianity's concepts of equity and universality were largely overlooked.[438]
Law edit
Canon law of the Catholic Church (Latin: jus canonicum)[439] was the first modern Western legal system, and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West,[440] predating European common law and civil law traditions.[441] Justinian I's reforms had a clear effect on the evolution of jurisprudence, and Leo III's Ecloga influenced the formation of legal institutions in the Slavic world.[442]
By the 1300s, most bishops and Popes were trained lawyers rather than theologians.[438]
Medieval Inquisition edit
The Medieval Inquisition, including the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230) and the later Papal Inquisition (1230s–1240s), was a type of criminal court established and run by the Roman Catholic Church from around 1184. Inquisition placed an overseeing authority into the position of the "wronged party" who made the accusation against the suspect; then that same authority did the investigating and also judged their guilt.[443]
Dependent upon undependable secular support, inquisitions dealt largely, but not exclusively, with religious issues such as heresy.[443] Inquisition was not a unified single bureaucratic institution.[444][445] Jurisdiction was often local and limited; lack of support and outright opposition often obstructed it; and many parts of Europe had erratic inquisitions or none at all.[444]
Historian Christine Caldwell Ames writes that Dominican inquisitors saw their work as proving the "true faith" by interpreting Christ as the just persecutor of evil.[443] Ames calls this a "measured manipulation of the Christian faith" supported by circumstance, since heresy had exploded across Christendom in the 11th century.[446]
At the same time, inquisition was contested stridently through continuous and various kinds of opposition and complaint, both in and outside the church. Opponents charged heresy inquisitions with proving the Roman church was "unchristian" and "a destroyer of its gospel legacy, or even the real enemy of Christ".[447]
Criticism of the Catholic Church's abuses and corruption edit
John Wycliffe (1320–1384), an English scholastic philosopher and Christian theologian best known for denouncing the abuses and corruption of the Catholic Church, was a precursor of the Protestant Reformation.[448] He emphasized the supremacy of the Bible and called for a direct relationship between God and the human person, without interference by priests and bishops.[448] The Lollards, a Proto-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of Wycliffe, played a role in the English Reformation.[448]
Jan Hus (1369–1415), a Czech Christian theologian based in Prague, was influenced by Wycliffe and spoke out against the abuses and corruption he saw in the Catholic Church there.[449] His followers became known as Hussites, a Proto-Protestant Christian movement.[449][448] Hus was a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation,[449][448] who became a powerful symbol of Czech nationalism and the impetus for the Bohemian/Czech and German Reformations.[450][451]
Although Wycliffe died of ill health before it could be implemented, both Wycliffe and Hus were accused of heresy and subsequently condemned to the death penalty for their outspoken views about the Catholic Church.[452][449][448]
Church militant edit
The Rise of Islam edit
The rise of Islam (600 to 1517) unleashed a series of military campaigns that conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia by 650, adding North Africa and most of Spain by 740. Only the Franks and Constantinople were able to withstand this medieval juggernaut. Historians Matthews and Platt have written that, "At its height, the Arab Empire stretched from the Indus River and the borders of China in the East, to the Atlantic in the West, and from the Taurus mountains in the North to the Sahara in the South". Islam was the colossus of the Middle Ages.[453][note 26][note 27]
Crusades edit
Generally, the Crusades (1095–1291) refer to the European Christian campaigns in the Holy Land sponsored by the Papacy against Muslims in order to reconquer the region of Palestine.[470][471][472] The crusades produced cultural changes in both East and West fundamentally altering the political map of both. Crusades contributed to the decline of Byzantium and to the development of national identities in the newly forming European nations. The West's polarization and militarization increased its alienation from the East, and contact between Islamic and Christian cultures led to the exchange of medical knowledge, art and architecture and increased trade.[473][474]
The Holy Land had been part of the Roman Empire, and thus subsequently of the Byzantine Empire, until the Arab Muslim invasions of the 7th and 8th centuries. Thereafter, Christians had generally been permitted to visit the sacred places in the Holy Land until 1071, when the Seljuk Turks closed Christian pilgrimages and assailed the Byzantines, defeating them at the Battle of Manzikert. Emperor Alexius I asked for aid from Pope Urban II against Islamic aggression. He probably expected money from the pope for the hiring of mercenaries. Instead, Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom in a speech made at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095, combining the idea of pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of defending the defenseless by waging a holy war against infidels.[475]
The First Crusade captured Antioch in 1099 and then Jerusalem. The Second Crusade occurred in 1145 when Edessa was taken by Islamic forces. Jerusalem was held until 1187 and the Third Crusade, after battles between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. The Fourth Crusade, begun by Innocent III in 1202, intended to retake the Holy Land but was soon subverted by the Venetians. When the crusaders arrived in Constantinople, they sacked the city and other parts of Asia Minor and established the Latin Empire of Constantinople in Greece and Asia Minor. Five numbered crusades to the Holy Land culminated in the siege of Acre of 1219, essentially ending the Western presence in the Holy Land.[476]
Investiture controversy edit
The Investiture controversy was the most significant conflict between secular and religious powers that took place in medieval Europe.[477] It began as a dispute in the 11th century between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII concerning who would appoint bishops (investiture).[478] Ending lay investiture threatened to undercut the power of the Holy Roman Empire and the ambitions of the European nobility. But allowing lay investiture meant the Pope's authority over his own people was limited.[479][note 28] It took "five decades of excommunications, denunciations and mutual depositions...spanning the reign of two emperors and six popes" to settle the controversy in 1122.[482]
A similar controversy occurred in England between King Henry I and St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, over investiture and episcopal vacancy.[483] The English dispute was resolved by the Concordat of London (1107).[482]
Baltic wars edit
When the Pope (Blessed) Eugenius III (1145–1153) called for a Second Crusade in response to the fall of Edessa in 1144, Saxon nobles in Eastern Europe refused to go.[484] From the days of Charlemagne (747–814), the free barbarian people around the Baltic Sea had raided the countries that surrounded them, stealing crucial resources, killing, and enslaving captives.[485] For the leaders of these Eastern European countries that meant subduing the Baltic area was more important to them than going to the Levant.[484] In 1147, Eugenius' Divini dispensatione, gave the eastern nobles crusade indulgences for the Baltic area.[484][486][487] The Northern, (or Baltic), Crusades followed, taking place, off and on, with and without papal support, from 1147 to 1316.[488][489][490]
These rulers saw holy war as a tool for territorial expansion, alliance building, and the empowerment of their own young church and state.[491] According to Fonnesberg-Schmidt, "While the theologians maintained that conversion should be voluntary, there was a widespread pragmatic acceptance of conversion obtained through political pressure or military coercion".[492] There were often severe consequences for populations that chose to resist.[493][494][495]
Albigensian Crusade edit
Cathars, also known as Albigensians, were the largest of the heretic groups that began reappearing in the High Middle Ages. They were concentrated in the Languedoc region along the Mediterranean coast, which was not then a part of France.
After decades of having called upon secular rulers for aid in dealing with the Cathars and getting no response,[496] Pope Innocent III and the king of France, Philip Augustus, joined in 1209 in a military campaign that was promulgated as necessary for eliminating the Albigensian heresy.[497][498] Scholars disagree on whether war was determined more by the Pope or by King Philip and his proxies for his own purposes.[499][note 29]
The war began on 22 July 1209. In the first battle of the Albigensian Crusade, mercenaries rampaged through the streets killing all they came across in what came to be known as the Massacre of Béziers. Some twenty years later, a story that historian Laurence W. Marvin calls apocryphal, arose claiming the papal legate, Arnaud Amaury, saw this and said: "Kill them all, let God sort them out". Marvin says it is unlikely the legate ever said any thing at all. "The speed and spontaneity of the attack indicates that the legate probably did not know what was going on until it was over".[504] Other scholars argue that the statement, genuine or not, is not inconsistent with what is known of Arnaud Amaury's character and attitudes.[505][506]
Four years later, in a 1213 letter to Amaury, the pope rebuked the legate for his conduct in the war and called for an end to the campaign.[507] The campaign continued anyway. The Pope was then reversed by the Fourth Lateran council which re-instituted crusade status two years later in 1215; afterwards, the Pope removed it yet again.[508] Throughout the rest of the campaign, Innocent vacillated. Unable to make up his mind if the crusade had been right or not, he sometimes took the side favoring crusade then sided against it.[509]
By the end of the war 16 years later, the campaign no longer had the status of a crusade. Its fighters were not rewarded with dispensations. The army had seized and occupied the lands of nobles who had not sponsored Cathars but had been in the good graces of the church which had been unable to protect them. The result of these seizures was that the entire region came under the rule of the French king and became southern France.[510]
Catharism continued for another hundred years (until 1350).[511]
Iberian Reconquista edit
Between 711 and 718, the Iberian peninsula had been conquered by Muslims in the Umayyad conquest. [note 30] The military struggle to reclaim the peninsula from Muslim rule took place for centuries until the Christian Kingdoms reconquered the Moorish states of Al-Ándalus in 1492.[515]
Isabel and Ferdinand married in 1469, united Spain with themselves as the first king and queen, fought the Muslims in the Reconquista and soon after established the Spanish Inquisition.[516]
During this time, "New Christians" had begun to appear as a socio-religious designation and legal distinction in the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire.[515] Most of the history of the "New Christians" refers to the Jewish converts, who were generally known as Conversos or Marranos,[517] while the Muslim converts were known as Moriscos.[518]
The Spanish inquisition was originally authorized by the Pope in answer to royal fears that Conversos and Muranos were spying and attempting to sabotage the new state. The initial inquisitors proved so severe that the Pope soon opposed it and unsuccessfully attempted to shut it down.[519] Ferdinand is said to have pressured the Pope, and in October 1483, a papal bull conceded control of the inquisition to the Spanish crown.[520] According to Spanish historian José Casanova, the Spanish inquisition became the first truly national, unified and centralized state institution.[521]
Eastern Christianity (11th to 15th centuries) edit
East–West Schism edit
Many differences between East and West had existed since Antiquity. Disagreements over whether Pope or Patriarch should lead the church, whether that should be done in Latin or Greek, whether priests must remain celibate and other points of doctrine such as the Filioque Clause which was added to the Nicene creed by the west, were intensified by cultural, geographical, geopolitical, and linguistic differences between East and West.[214][522][523] Eventually, this produced the East–West Schism, also known as the "Great Schism" of 1054, which separated the Church into Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.[522]
The Byzantine Commonwealth edit
The heart of Byzantium was Constantinople, a famously prosperous and powerful city with numerous market places, massive walls and magnificent monuments.[524] Its material blessings were attributed to it being the ‘God-protected city’. [524] Jonathan Shepard writes that even the "furthest-flung outsiders could make the connection between Byzantine prosperity, striking-power and religious devotion".[524]
So long as an emperor worthy of this ancient centre reigned in Constantinople, a particular cosmic order still obtained. It was a matter of political self-interest for leaders of other Orthodox polities not to be seen to flout it. In fact, there was much to be said for abiding by the rites of worship, religious doctrines and ideals of supremely pious conduct that were supposed to prevail in the centre-out-there – Constantinople. In so far as these rites and values commanded general assent, adherence to them was not a matter for the leaders alone to decide. The ‘force field’, once entered, could be manipulated, but it could not be abandoned or radically reprogrammed to the unequivocal advantage of individual rulers while emperor, patriarch and City still presided on the Bosporus.[525]
Fall of Constantinople edit
In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire. The flight of Eastern Christians from Constantinople, and the Greek manuscripts they carried with them, is one of the factors that prompted the literary renaissance in the West.[526]
The Ottoman government followed Islamic law when dealing with the conquered Christian population. The Church's canonical and hierarchical organization were not significantly disrupted and its administration continued to function.
However, these rights and privileges, including freedom of worship and religious organization, were often established in principle but seldom corresponded to reality.[527][528] The Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon, which had been Christian churches for nearly a millennium, were converted into mosques. Violent persecutions of Christians were common and reached their climax in the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides.[529][530]
The Russian church edit
In a defining moment in 1380, Grand Prince Dmitrii of Moscow faced the army of the Golden Horde on Kulikovo Field near the Don River, there defeating the Mongols. Michael Angold writes that this began a period of transformation fusing state power and religious mission: "a disparate collection of warring principalities" thereafter formed "into an Orthodox nation, unified under tsar and patriarch and self-consciously promoting both a national faith and an ideology of a faithful nation".[531]
Coptic, Melkite, Nestorian and Jacobite Christianity edit
The Coptic, Melkite, Nestorian and Jacobite communities existed in lands under Muslim rule.[532] In the 600s, Christianity had been the majority faith in those lands conquered by the Arabs, but by the eleventh century, Christianity had declined demographically, culturally and socially, while Islam set the social norm.[533]
Under Muslim law, Christians had the juridically inferior status of dhimma. On the one hand, this provided security and autonomy guaranteeing members of the community rights of protection for themselves and their property, but in other ways, dhimma status discriminated against them through legal inferiority.[532] From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the Christian material position deteriorated.[534] During the rule of sultan Saladin (1171–93) Christians were required to wear a yellow belt, were forbidden to ride horses or mules, and were expected to remove crosses from the outsides of churches.[534] This sometimes led to "gangs of thugs inflamed by hatred" attacking them.[535]
A Monophysite church, (currently known as the Coptic Church), was the dominant force in Egyptian Christianity displaying a strongly Egyptian identity.[221] The Copts integrated fully into an unmistakably Arab Egypt leading to arabization.[536]
"Melkite" was the term applied to those loyal to the Chalcedonian creed which had been adopted by the emperors of Constantinople.[537] The Melkites held the patriarchate of Jerusalem, and for more than a century Antioch and the surrounding region came under Byzantine rule.[538]
Nestorian Church of the East edit
The church in Persia established some independence from Byzantium in 486.[539] Intense missionary activity between the fifth and eighth centuries led to eastern Iran, Arabia, central Asia, China, the coasts of India and Indonesia adopting Nestorianism. Syrian Nestorians also settled in the Persian Empire. After the Abbasid' conquest, many Nestorians were highly esteemed and employed by Muslim leaders.[539] Christianity was in full retreat by the end of the eleventh century in what had been Mesopotamia (interior Iran - Nisibis, Basra, Irbil, Mosul), but the communities further to the east continued to exist.[539]
Having continued as a dhimmi community under the Sunni Caliphate after the Muslim conquest of Persia (633–654), the Church of the East played a major role in the history of Christianity in Asia. Between the 9th and 14th centuries, it represented the world's largest Christian denomination in terms of geographical extent. It established dioceses and communities stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and today's Iraq and Iran, to India (the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of Kerala), the Mongol kingdoms in Central Asia, the Turkic tribes in Central Asia,[540] and China during the Tang dynasty (7th–9th centuries). In the 13th and 14th centuries, the church experienced a final period of expansion under the Mongol Empire, where influential Church of the East clergy sat in the Mongol court.[541]
Armenians and crusade edit
The onset of the Arab period began an era of consolidation in Armenian Christianity.[542] The structures of the institutional church, its sacraments and the legitimacy of its representational art were defended.[542] Armenians of all types were united in devotion to St. Gregory the Illuminator who had brought Christianity to the Armenian court in the early fourth century.[543]
Religious differences were a source of friction, but also substantial interchange.[544] In the mid-eleventh century the Seljuq Turks came out of the east, crusaders came from the West, followed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century, and the Timurids in the 1380s.[544] Micheau says, "The arrival of the crusaders upset the political and religious balance of the Near East, which in time proved harmful to eastern Christians".[545][note 31]
Early modern period (c. 1500 – c. 1750) edit
Expansion and Reform edit
Colonialism edit
Following the geographic discoveries of the 1400s and 1500s, increasing population and inflation led the emerging nation-states of Portugal, Spain, and France, the Dutch Republic, and England to explore, conquer, colonize and exploit the newly discovered territories.[550] While colonialism was primarily economic and political, it also opened the door for Christian missions.[551][552] Some missionaries supported colonialism and an almost equal number opposed it.[553] According to historical theologian Justo González, colonialism and missions each sometimes aided and sometimes impeded the other.[554]
Different state actors created colonies that varied widely.[555] Some colonies had institutions that allowed native populations to reap some benefits. Others became extractive colonies with predatory rule that produced an autocracy with a dismal record.[556] Persecution, and violence toward local people and their native religions was a frequent aspect of these colonies.[557][15][16][17]
For 200 years, European society had been legislating discrimination as part of its own institutional structures.[433][431][432][434] Therefore, beginning with the first wave of European colonization, nearly all colonies were established using the familiar practices of religious discrimination (such as segregation), what was believed to be "scientifically based" racialism, and political discrimination.[557][15][420]
Protestant Reformation edit
In the early 16th century, attempts were made by the Christian theologians Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli, along with many others, to reform the Catholic Church. They considered the roots of corruption within the Catholic Church and its ecclesiastical structure to be doctrinal, rather than simply a matter of depravity, moral weakness, or lack of ecclesiastical discipline, and thus advocated for God's autonomy in redemption, and against voluntaristic notions that salvation could be earned. The Reformation is usually considered to have started with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Luther in 1517, although there was no schism until the 1521 Diet of Worms. The edicts of the Diet condemned Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas.[558]
Radical Reformation edit
Beginning in Germany and Switzerland in the 16th century, the Radical Reformation was a disorderly collection of loosely related reformation groups that included Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Evangelical Rationalists.[562] They opposed the traditional church-state theories of classical Protestantism (Lutherans, Reformed and Elizabethans), were often indifferent to governmental jurisdiction altogether, and supported a full separation from the state. Rejecting Luther's key teachings on salvation by faith alone and predestination, along with Catholic transubstantiation, places them "equally distant from classical Protestantism and Tridentine Catholicism, according to historian George Huntston Williams.[559]
Counter-Reformation edit
The Counter-Reformation was the response of the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation. It consisted of the Confutatio Augustana, the Council of Trent, the Roman Catechism, and the Defensio Tridentinæ fidei, heresy trials, the exiling of Protestant populations from Catholic lands, the seizure of children from their Protestant parents for institutionalized Catholic upbringing, a series of wars, and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
Protestant Christians were excommunicated and persecuted, prompting some to live as crypto-Protestants (also termed Nicodemites), against the urging of John Calvin who urged them to live their faith openly.[563] Crypto-Protestants were documented as late as the 19th century in Latin America.[564]
The Council of Trent (1545–1563) initiated by Pope Paul III addressed issues of corruption such as simony, absenteeism, nepotism, the holding of multiple church offices by one person, and other abuses. It also reasserted traditional practices and doctrines of the Church, such as the episcopal structure, clerical celibacy, the seven Sacraments, transubstantiation (the belief that during mass the consecrated bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ), the veneration of relics, icons, and saints (especially the Blessed Virgin Mary), the necessity of both faith and good works for salvation, the existence of purgatory and the issuance (but not the sale) of indulgences. Protestant doctrinal objections and changes were rejected. The council fostered an interest in education for parish priests to increase pastoral care. Milan's Archbishop Saint Charles Borromeo set an example by visiting the remotest parishes and instilling high standards.[citation needed]
Catholic Reformation edit
Simultaneous to the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Reformation consisted of improvements in art and culture, anti-corruption measures, the founding of the Jesuits, the establishment of seminaries, a reassertion of traditional doctrines and the emergence of new religious orders aimed at both moral reform and new missionary activity. Also part of this was the development of new yet orthodox forms of spirituality, such as that of the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality.[note 33]
Religious wars (16th, 17th and early 18th centuries) edit
In the Early modern Era, "religious" wars ranging from international wars to internal conflicts were fought in parts of Europe and England. Many scholars see these wars as at least partly fought to obtain security and freedom for differing religious confessions; however it is also asserted they were fought more for political gain, since national, dynastic, and mercenary interests generally prevailed over religious concerns.[566][567]
They began in the Holy Roman Empire with the minor Knights' Revolt (1522).[568][569] Warfare intensified in the First Schmalkaldic War (1546-1547) and the Second Schmalkaldic War (1552-1555) after the Catholic Church began the Counter-Reformation.[570] The rise of Calvinism triggered a second wave of wars.[570] Seven years after the Peace of Augsburg had established a truce in Germany on the basis of territorialism, France became the centre of religious wars which lasted for 36 years.[567] The final wave was the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The involvement of foreign powers made it the largest and most disastrous.[570]
The causes of these wars are debated.[note 34] Political scientist James Bernard Murphy writes that "Virtually all major [political] theorists ... cite the ‘‘wars of religion’’ to ... demonstrate the dangers that religious belief poses to political order".[575] However, scholars have largely interpreted these wars as struggles for independence that coincided with the break up of medieval empires into the modern nation states.[570]
Inventing policies of tolerance edit
Historian Nicolette Mout writes in The Cambridge History of Christianity that debate on toleration occupied every Christian faith from the Reformation onwards.[576] Did peace require the punishment of heretics? Or should ancient opinions defending leniency, (based on such scriptures as the popular parable of the tares and wheat in Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43), be revived? What was the role of individual conscience?[576]
This world changing debate was not confined to religion.[576] The modern states of Europe needed political stability. Luther had warned secular leaders this required them not to intervene in their subject's religious' lives.[577] However, secular leaders believed, as most people did at the time, that stability necessitated allowing only one faith within their countries. (It seemed apparent to those experiencing religious wars that plurality produced chaos.[578] The debate on religious toleration made it necessary to rethink, on a political level, all of the State's reasons for persecution.[576]
Many theologians began arguing in favor of tolerance, and "even the staunchest Puritan admitted that conscience should not be forced".[579] They were soon followed by famous philosophers and thinkers such as the Christian rationalist Decartes (1596-1650), Jewish philosopher Spinoza (1632-1677) and the Christian humanist Erasmus (1469-1536).[580]
The Peace of Westphalia (1648) gave the Holy Roman Empire what Mout describes as "a highly durable legal and constitutional foundation for a form of toleration".[581] Over the next two and a half centuries, many other treaties and political declarations of tolerance followed, until concepts of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of thought became established in most western countries.[582][583]
Society and culture edit
Modern inquisitions edit
History of the Inquisition divides into two major parts: its Papal creation in the early thirteenth century, and its transformation into permanent secular governmental bureaucracies between 1478 and 1542.[584]
Historian Helen Rawlings says, "the Spanish Inquisition was different [from earlier inquisitions] in one fundamental respect: it was responsible to the crown rather than the Pope and was used to consolidate state interest.[585]
The Portuguese Inquisition, in close relationship with the church, was also controlled by the crown who established a government board, known as the General Council, to oversee it. The Grand Inquisitor, chosen by the king, was nearly always a member of the royal family.[586]
T. F. Mayer, historian, writes that "the Roman Inquisition operated to serve the papacy's long standing political aims in Naples, Venice and Florence".[587] Its activity was primarily bureaucratic. The Roman Inquisition is probably best known for its condemnation of Galileo.[588]
Science and the Galileo Affair edit
The Galileo affair has been considered by many to be a paradigm defining moment in the history of the relationship between religion and science.[589][590][591]
In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing observations made with his new telescope. These and other discoveries exposed difficulties with the understanding of the heavens that was common at the time.
Since Aristotle's rediscovery in the 1100s, western scientists, along with the Catholic Church, had adopted Aristotle's physics and cosmology with the earth fixed in place.[592][406] Jeffrey Foss writes that, by Galileo's time almost 500 years later, the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of the universe was itself fixed in place and "fully integrated with Catholic theology".[593]
As a result, the majority of Galileo's fellow scientists rejected Galileo's assertions that planets moved. Most of them had no telescope, and Galileo had no theory of physics to explain how planets could orbit the sun; according to Aristotelian physics, that was impossible. (That would not be resolved for another hundred years.) Galileo's peers alerted religious authorities to his "errors" and asked them to intervene.[594]
In response, the church forbade Galileo from teaching it, though it did not forbid discussing it, so long as it was clear it was merely a hypothesis. Instead, Galileo published books and asserted scientific superiority.[593] He was summoned before the Roman Inquisition twice. First warned, he was next sentenced to house arrest on a charge of "grave suspicion of heresy".[591]
French historian Louis Châtellier writes in the Cambridge History of Christianity that Galileo's condemnation - a devoted Catholic - caused much consternation and private discussion.[595] Speculation was about whether the judges were condemning Galileo or the "new science" and anyone who attempted to displace Aristotle. Thus, Châtellier concludes, "...in the mid-seventeenth century the relationship between scientific thinkers and ecclesiastical authorities was marked by reciprocal mistrust".[596]
Enlightenment critique of Christianity and Christian Enlightenment edit
There has long been an established consensus, (based on scholars seeing a single Enlightenment movement as taking place mostly in France), that the very essence of the Enlightenment was its attack on religion. Helena Rosenblatt writes in the Cambridge History of Christianity that:
According to Paul Hazard’s influential interpretation, the express aim of the Enlightenment was to ‘put Christianity on trial’ and even to annihilate ‘the religious interpretation of life’; similarly, Peter Gay described the Enlightenment as a ‘war on Christianity’. Many scholars before and after agreed with this point of view. They described the Enlightenment as being – by its very nature – anti-Christian, anti-Church and even anti-religious.[597]
Twenty-first century scholars tend to see the relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment as complex with many regional and national variations.[598][597] In many places in Europe, the Enlightenment was not simply a war with Christianity because, Rosenblatt says, much of what took place did so "within the Christian churches themselves".[597] These Christians saw themselves as moderates positioned equally between the fanatical and the irreligious.[599]
According to Rosenblatt, Christians who embraced enlightenment "were at least as worried about what they called religious ‘enthusiasm’ as they were about any supposed ‘war against Christianity’. ...an influential group of English thinkers ... began to view reason as a valuable ally ... these English Protestants elaborated an Enlightened religion which they then exported to the rest of Europe".[600] For example, John Locke wrote The Reasonableness of Christianity in the 1690's with the intent of bolstering Christianity.[601]
In Margaret Jacob's view, critique of Christianity began among the more extreme Protestants typical of the Radical Reformation who were enraged by fear, tyranny and persecution from both the established church and absolutist rulers.[602] After 1660, many of them became vocally anti-clerical, anti-Catholic, and eventually even anti-Christian.[603]
The efforts of kings to impose absolutism threatened not only religious independence, but also the very stability of northern and western Europe, putting pressure on all Protestants.[604] The changing world brought additional pressures of new philosophical systems, while the discoveries of science shattered prior certainties.[598] And Protestants tended generally to equate political absolutism with Catholicism.[598] According to Jacob,
In 1685, all signs pointed to a revival of religious warfare, ... Well over 200,000 French Protestants made the journey out of France, and those who stayed behind were imprisoned or submitted to conversion.
These are the events that form the essential background to understanding the Enlightened critique of Christianity as it emerged with virulence in the period of the 1680s. From that moment onward, the critique only became more pointed, more strident, sometimes less anonymous, but always suspicious of clerical authority and often bitter. It lay at the heart of the crisis provoked by monarchical absolutism.[605]
Spinoza, an Amsterdam Jew, was one of many who published against religion in its entirety. His first tract, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), in Latin, was quickly translated in renegade Protestant circles in the Dutch Republic and his ideas were then spread through numerous anonymous books and manuscripts.[606][note 35] Spinoza, Hobbes and their followers supported a matter based (materialistic) mechanistic universe with no need of God. Newtonian science offered a response, but after 1750, secularization at every level of European society can be observed.[612]
Many enlightenment thinkers moved from believing in the reasonableness of the Protestant version of Christianity towards the belief that simply being reasonable would be enough, however, doubts had begun to arise about whether the cause of tyranny really was religious fanaticism, or if the problem was more systemic in European culture.[613]
Witch trials (c. 1450 – c. 1750) edit
Until the 1300s, the official position of the Roman Catholic Church was that witches did not exist.[614][note 36] While historians have been unable to pinpoint a single cause of what became known as the "witch frenzy", scholars have noted that, without changing church doctrine, a new but common stream of thought developed at every level of society that witches were both real and malevolent.[618] Records from inquisitions show the belief in magic had remained so widespread among the rural people that it has convinced some historians Christianization had not been as successful as previously supposed.[619] Since it was believed witches could call up hail storms at will, Wolfgang Behringer ties witch frenzy to climate change caused by the Little Ice Age which began around 1300 and lasted into 1850 CE. Scapegoating is observed by 1560.[620] There is broad agreement that approximately 100,000 people were prosecuted, (about 80% women, most over 40), while approximately forty to fifty thousand people were executed between 1561 and 1670.[621][618][note 37]
Late modern period (c. 1750 – c. 1945) edit
Economics, capitalism and banking edit
Protestantism promoted economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in the period after the Scientific and the Industrial Revolution.[630][631] Scholars have identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation,[632] work ethic,[633] economic development,[634] and the development of the state system.[635]
Max Weber in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–1905) asserted that Protestant ethics and values along with the Calvinist doctrine of asceticism and predestination gave birth to capitalism.[636][637] Weber says this contributed to economic growth and the development of banking across Northern Europe.[638][639] It is one of the most influential and cited books in sociology, yet its thesis has been controversial since its release. In opposition to Weber, historians such as Fernand Braudel and Hugh Trevor-Roper assert that capitalism developed in pre-Reformation Catholic communities. Joseph Schumpeter, an economist of the twentieth century, has referred to the Scholastics as "they who come nearer than does any other group to having been the 'founders' of scientific economics".[640]
Great Awakenings edit
With roots in German Pietism and British Evangelicalism, and in order to counter the extreme rationalism of biblical criticism of the Age of Enlightenment, a revitalization of religious piety known as the first Great Awakening swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s.[641][642][643]
Beginning among the Presbyterians, it quickly spread to Congregationalists (Puritans) and Baptists, creating American Evangelicalism and Wesleyan Methodism.[644] Moderates disapproved and battles over the movement and its dramatized style raged in both congregations and denominations. This caused the division of American Protestantism into 'Parties' for the first time, which eventually led to critical support for the American Revolution.[645] In places like Connecticut and Massachusetts where one denomination received state funding, other churches now began to lobby local legislatures to end that favoured treatment, separating church and state.[641]
The Second Great Awakening (1800–1830s) led to the beginnings of the Mormons, the Restoration Movement and the Holiness movement. In 1801, over 25,000 people gathered in the small frontier community of Cane Ridge, Kentucky.[646] They united in extolling moral reform as the Christian alternative to armed revolution, and established societies that operated separately from any church to "teach the poor to read, suppress sexual vice and ungodly amusements such as cockfighting and bear-baiting, and to abolish the slave trade".[647] These were pioneers in developing nationally integrated forms of organization which produced the mergers and business consolidations that reshaped the American economy.[648] The beginnings of social reform movements concerning the abolition of slavery, women's rights, and temperance have been directly connected to this religious revival.[649]
The Third Great Awakening began from 1857 and was most notable for taking the movement throughout the world, especially in English speaking countries.[650]
The final group to develop from the "great awakenings" in North America was Pentecostalism, which had its roots in Holiness movements, and began in 1906 on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. Pentecostalism would later lead to the Charismatic movement.[651]
American colonialism edit
The beginning of American Protestant missions abroad followed the sailing of William Carey from England to India in 1793 after the Great awakening. A great effort was also made to evangelize America.[652] Missionaries played a crucial role in the acculturation of the American Indians.[653][654]
Restorationism edit
Restorationism refers to the belief that a purer form of Christianity should be restored using the early church as a model.[655][656] In many cases, restorationist groups believed that contemporary Christianity, in all of its forms, had deviated from the true, original Christianity, which they then attempted to "reconstruct", often using the Book of Acts as a "guidebook" of sorts. Usually, Restorationists do not describe themselves as "reforming" a Christian church which has continuously existed since the time of Jesus, instead, they describe themselves as restoring the Church that they believe was lost at some point in the history of Christianity. "Restorationism" is frequently used to describe the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement.
The term "restorationist" is also used to describe movements such as Adventism, a movement which originated in the 1830s in the United States during the Second Great Awakening when Baptist preacher William Miller first publicly shared his belief that the Second Coming would occur at some point between 1843 and 1844, and the Jehovah's Witness movement, founded in the late 1870s by Charles Taze Russell. The term can also be used to describe the Latter Day Saint movement, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the Community of Christ and numerous other Latter Day Saint denominations. Latter Day Saints, also known as Mormons, believe that Joseph Smith was chosen to restore the original organization which was established by Jesus, now "in its fullness", rather than reform the church.[657][658][659][660]
Eastern Orthodoxy edit
The Russian Orthodox Church held a privileged position in the Russian Empire, expressed in the motto of the late empire from 1833: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Populism. Nevertheless, the Church reform of Peter I in the early 18th century had placed the Orthodox authorities under the control of the tsar. An ober-procurator appointed by the tsar ran the committee which governed the Church between 1721 and 1918: the Most Holy Synod. The Church became involved in the various campaigns of russification,[661] and was accused of involvement in Russian antisemitism,[662] despite the lack of an official position on Judaism as such.[663]
The Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries saw the Church, like the tsarist state, as an enemy of the people. Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes led to imprisonment.[664][665][666] Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals, as well as execution.[667][668]
In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, one journalist reported 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.[670] This included people like the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna who was at this point a monastic.[note 38] Recently released evidence indicates over 8,000 were killed in 1922 during the conflict over church valuables.[671] More than 100,000 Russian clergymen were executed between 1937 and 1941.[672]
New imperialism (19th and 20th centuries) edit
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, New Imperialism was a second wave of economic and political colonialism that lasted until World War II.[673] During this time, colonial powers gained territory at almost three times the rate of the earlier colonial period, opening many new territories with some assurance of safety for Christian missionaries who soon followed.[674] The sixteenth century had been the "great age of Catholic expansion" whereas the nineteenth century was that for Protestantism.[675]
Protestantism initiated translations of the Bible into native languages which supported the development of national literatures, and was instrumental in generating a democratic legacy for many colonies.[676] Translating developed a dictionary, a written record of native customs, spread literacy, mass printing, and developed voluntary organizations.[677] This profoundly impacted native cultures in Africa which responded with "movements of indigenization and cultural liberation".[678] According to Sanneh, that means western missionaries began the "largest, most diverse and most vigorous movement of cultural renewal in [the] history" of Africa.[679][680]
"Although contact with Christian missionaries might have had beneficial long-term effects for human capital, political participation, and eventually democratization, contact with the colonial slave trade has had pernicious effects".[681]
Decolonization edit
In the post-colonial world, it has become necessary for Christianity to break free of its colonial moorings, says Sanneh.[682] After World War II, Christian missionaries played a transformative role for many colonial societies moving them toward independence in the development of decolonization.[683]
Trends in Christian theology edit
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term for religious movements within late 18th, 19th and 20th-century Christianity. According to theologian Theo Hobsen, liberal Christianity has two traditions. Before the secular Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, a specifically Christian Idealism imagined a liberal state. Its concepts took form in the Radical Reformation's view of political and cultural liberty, and was essential to the creation of the modern secular state.[684]
This has largely been eclipsed by the second tradition of liberal Christianity born of seventeenth century rationalism. Rationalistic humanism sought to wean Christianity from its "irrational" cultic roots.[685] Lacking any grounding in Christian "practice, ritual, sacramentalism, church and worship", liberal Christianity lost touch with the fundamental necessity of faith and ritual in maintaining Christianity.[686] This eventually led to the twentieth century revolt against liberal Christianity, the birth of fundamentalism, and liberalism's recent decades of decline.[687]
Fundamentalist Christianity is a movement that arose mainly within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century in reaction to modernism.[688] Before 1919, fundamentalism was loosely organized and undisciplined. Its most significant early movements were the holiness movement and the millenarian movement with its premillennial expectations of the second coming.[689]
In 1925 fundamentalists participated in the Scopes trial, and by 1930, the movement appeared to be dying.[690] Then in the 30s, Neo-orthodoxy began uniting moderates of both sides.[691] In the 1940s, "new-evangelicalism" established itself as separate from fundamentalism.[692] Today, fundamentalism is less about doctrine than political activism.[693]
Under Communism and Nazism edit
Under the state atheism of countries in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, Christians of many denominations experienced persecution, with many churches and monasteries being destroyed, as well as clergy being executed.[note 39][note 40][note 41]
The position of Christians affected by Nazism is highly complex.[697] Pope Pius XI declared – Mit brennender Sorge – that Fascist governments had hidden "pagan intentions" and expressed the irreconcilability of the Catholic position and totalitarian fascist state worship, which placed the nation above God, fundamental human rights, and dignity. His declaration that "Spiritually, [Christians] are all Semites" prompted the Nazis to give him the title "Chief Rabbi of the Christian World".[698]
Catholic priests were executed in concentration camps alongside Jews; for example, 2,600 Catholic priests were imprisoned in Dachau, and 2,000 of them were executed (cf. Priesterblock). A further 2,700 Polish priests were executed (a quarter of all Polish priests), and 5,350 Polish nuns were either displaced, imprisoned, or executed.[699] Many Catholic laymen and clergy played notable roles in sheltering Jews during the Holocaust, including Pope Pius XII. The head rabbi of Rome became a Catholic in 1945 and, in honour of the actions the pope undertook to save Jewish lives, he took the name Eugenio (the pope's first name).[700] A former Israeli consul in Italy claimed: "The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all the other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organisations put together".[701]
Most leaders and members of the largest Protestant church in Germany, the German Evangelical Church, which had a long tradition of nationalism and support of the state, supported the Nazis when they came to power.[702][703] A smaller contingent formed the Confessing Church which strongly opposed Nazism. In a study of sermon content, William Skiles says "Confessing Church pastors opposed the Nazi regime on three fronts... first, they expressed harsh criticism of Nazi persecution of Christians and the German churches; second, they condemned National Socialism as a false ideology that worships false gods; and third, they challenged Nazi anti-Semitic ideology by supporting Jews as the chosen people of God and Judaism as a historic foundation of Christianity".[704]
Nazis interfered in church affairs, harassed members, executed mass arrests and targeted well known pastors like Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.[705][706][note 42] Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, was later found guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and executed.[708]
Contemporary Christianity edit
Second Vatican Council edit
On 11 October 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, the 21st ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council was "pastoral" in nature, interpreting dogma in terms of its scriptural roots, revising liturgical practices, and providing guidance for articulating traditional Church teachings in contemporary times. The council is perhaps best known for its instructions that the Mass may be celebrated in the vernacular as well as in Latin.[709]
Ecumenism edit
On 21 November 1964, the Second Vatican Council published the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio.[711] With a pre-history of its own, it can also be seen within the overall context of the many rapid changes taking place in relationships among Christian churches in the United States between 1961 and 1964.[711] Protestant Bible scholar and leader in the World Council of Churches, Paul S. Minear (1906 - 2007) describes these changes as "revolutionary" while Robert Wuthnow calls them a complete "restructuring of American religion".[712]
The Roman Catholic goals of ecumenism, (as given to the World Council of Churches and propagated by the Second Vatican Council), are to establish full communion amongst all the various Christian churches in faith, sacramental life and ministry.[713] Not all churches engaged in the pursuit of ecumenism have accepted these goals.[714] Amongst Evangelicals, there has not been an agreed upon definition, strategy or goal.[715]
Pentecostalism is the largest and fastest growing movement in Christianity of the early twenty-first century.[716] It has a different ecclesiology which has prevented its involvement in, and produced some hostility toward, the formal, creedal and institutional practices that have characterized the ecumenism of the WCC.[717] Pentecostals do not see ecumenism as the pursuit of unifying all into one. Instead, they see it as a many centered unity of faith.[717]
Historically, divisions in Christianity have been caused by theological differences, but also by political and cultural differences.[718] In the U.S. after WWII, political and cultural lines were crossed in the name of "individual freedom, equality, national unity and a shared faith in God". Ecumenical debates over religious liberty and biblical studies intertwined historically with cultural and social changes such as support for the Civil Rights movement. The 1960 election of John F. Kennedy was symbolic of the change in American attitudes.[719]
In the twenty-first century an indifference to ecumenism has developed, but scholars see this as reflective of difficulties faced by the churches themselves.[720] Churches have become captive to culture, and sentiment is widespread that ecumenism has stalled.[720] Modern proponents of ecumenism take the approach that the ecumenical movement is best served operating from within each confessional identity as the framework which will eventually make ecumenism possible.[721]
World Christianity edit
World Christianity, otherwise known as "global Christianity", has been defined both as a term that attempts to convey the global nature of the Christian religion[20][23][722] and an academic field of study that encompasses analysis of the histories, practices, and discourses of Christianity as a world religion and its various forms as they are found on the six continents.[723] However, the term often focuses on "non-Western Christianity" which "comprises (usually the exotic) instances of Christian faith in 'the global South', in Asia, Africa, and Latin America".[724]
Historian Philip Jenkins observes that Christianity is growing rapidly in China and some other Asian countries.[725][726] Sociologist and specialist in Chinese religion Fenggang Yang from Purdue University writes that Christianity is "spreading among the Chinese of South-East Asia", and "Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity is growing more quickly in China".[727] In the first decades of the twenty-first century, Pentecostalism is the largest and fastest growing form of Christianity.[728]
Social Anthropologist Juliette Koning and sociologist Heidi Dahles of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, agree there has been a "rapid expansion of charismatic Christianity from the 1980s onwards. Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia are said to have the fastest-growing Christian communities and the majority of the new believers are "upwardly mobile, urban, middle-class Chinese". Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang have reported in their book Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia that "Asia has the second largest number of Pentecostals/charismatics of any continent in the world, and seems to be fast catching up with the largest, Latin America."[730] The World Christian Encyclopedia estimated 135 million in Asia compared to 80 million in North America.[730]
It has been reported in America Magazine that increasing numbers of young people are becoming Christians in several countries, such as China,[731][732] Hong Kong,[733] Indonesia,[734] Iran,[735][736] Japan,[737] Singapore,[738][739][740] and South Korea.[741] The Council on Foreign Relations says the "number of Chinese Protestants has grown by an average of 10 percent annually since 1979".[742]
Award-winning historian of Christianity, Todd Hartch of Eastern Kentucky University, has written that by 2005, around 6 million Africans were converting annually to Christianity.[743]
According to Iranian historian Ladan Boroumand "Iran today is witnessing the highest rate of Christianization in the world".[744]
According to a 2021 study by the Pew Research Center, Christianity has grow in India in recent years due to conversion. Most converts are former Hindus, though some are former Muslims.[745][746] While the exact number of Dalit converts to Christianity in India is not available, religion scholar William R. Burrow of Colorado State University has estimated that about 8% of Dalits have converted to Christianity.[747]
Since the 1960s, there has been a substantial increase in the number of conversions from Islam to Christianity, mostly to the Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions of Christianity.[748] The 2015 study Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census estimated that 10.2 million Muslims converted to Christianity.[749] Countries with the largest numbers of Muslims converted to Christianity include Indonesia (6,500,000), Nigeria (600,000), Iran (500,000 versus only 500 in 1979), the United States (450,000), Ethiopia (400,000), and Algeria (380,000).[750] Indonesia is home to the largest Christian community of converts from Islam. Since the mid and late 1960s, between 2 and 2.5 million Muslims converted to Christianity.[751][752][753]
See also edit
- Christian anarchism
- Christianity and Neoplatonism
- Christianity and Paganism
- Christianization
- History of Christian theology
- History of Christian universalism
- History of the Eastern Orthodox Church
- History of Oriental Orthodoxy
- History of Protestantism
- History of the Catholic Church
- Mandaeism
- Rise of Christianity during the Fall of Rome
- Role of the Christian Church in civilization
- Timeline of Christian missions
- Timeline of Christianity
- Timeline of the Roman Catholic Church
Notes edit
- ^ Toward the end of the Twentieth century, multiple scholars traced elements of Christianity to currents in first-century Judaism and discarded nineteenth-century views that Jesus was based on previous pagan deities.[26] Mentions of Jesus in extra-biblical texts exist and are supported as genuine by the majority of historians.[27] Differences between the content of the Jewish Messianic prophecies and the life of Jesus undermine the idea that Jesus was invented as a Jewish Midrash or Peshar.[28]
- ^ Young lists some of the difficulties:
- Post-Enlightenment questions about the perspectives and beliefs of those who told the story, not least the belief in miracles and supernatural power
- The nature of the sources and the question of their mutual compatibility
- Considerable time-spans between the events and the accounts
- Questions about the validity of oral traditions
- Gaps in the evidence
- Issues about the authenticity of material remains
- Post-Reformation rejection of relics and their veneration.[30]
- ^ The extent of the Jewish diaspora included most of the Roman Empire: Jews lived in Egypt, Syria and most of Asia up to the Black Sea, the European continent and North Africa. Arabia also contained Jews. There were Jewish communities in Spain, Gaul and Germany, and the Peloponnese, including the islands Euboea, Cyprus, Crete.[48]
- ^ Church historian Eusebius wrote (HE 3.1.1; cf. 3.4.1) that Christianity spread and diversified because of the influence of different apostles ministering in different regions and producing differing results: Asia had had John, Achaea had Andrew, Peter preached in Asia Minor as well as Rome, and Paul worked from 'Jerusalem to Illyricum’ (Acts 16:6–7; 17:10–18:1; 18:23, 19:1,10; 26:9–15; Rom 15:19).[71]
- ^ Achaea, especially Asia Minor, was the geographical heartland between west and east in the Roman Empire.[74] Corinth’s two ports were accessible to Italy and Asia alike, and traffic and correspondence between Asia Minor and Achaea was constant.[74]
Cenchreae had a Christian presence in the 50s (Rom 16:1).[75] Ephesus was the recipient of one of the Pauline epistles.[76] The church at Ephesus is one of the seven churches in the Book of Revelation, and the Gospel of John may have been written there.[77][78] Ephesus was also the site of several 5th-century Christian Councils (see Council of Ephesus).[79]
- ^ New Testament manuscripts, datable to the second century, consist of papyrus fragments of Matthew, Mark, John, Titus and Revelation... Other early Christian literature introduced into Egypt and attested in second-century Greek manuscripts include the Egerton Gospel (probably from Syria), The Shepherd of Hermas (from Rome), Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1 (Gos. Thom. 26–8, from Syria), and Irenaeus’ Adversus haereses (‘Against heresies’, composed in Gaul and probably introduced into Egypt from Rome)."[86]
Egyptian Christians, more than any other region, also abundantly produced their own religious literature during the second and third centuries.[87] The Gospel of the Hebrews, the The Gospel of the Egyptians -- The Nag Hammadi Library|Gospel of the Egyptians, the Secret Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of the Saviour, Kerygma Petri [‘Preaching of Peter’], the Apocalypse of Peter, Traditions of Matthias, the Gospel of Eve, Jannes and Jambres, some Christian Sibylline oracles, and the Apocalypse of Elijah are all of Egyptian provenance.[87]
Works that were probably written in Egypt include the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle to Diognetus, Second Clement, The Sentences of Sextus, Agrippa, Castor, Pseudo-Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, Theognostus, Pierius and Theonas.[87]
Gnostic writings include Basilides works such as Basilidians, Carpocrates and the Carpocratians, the writings of Valentinus, Theodotus Heracleon, and Julius Cassianus. All written in Egypt. The list includes the Gospel of Truth (NHC i,3; xii,2), Interpretation of Knowledge (NHC xi, 1), Treatise on the Resurrection (NHC i,4), A Valentinian Exposition (NHC xi, 2), Tripartite Tractate (NHC i,5), Apocryphon of James (NHC i,2), On the Origin of the World (NHC ii,5; xiii,2), Exegesis on the Soul (NHC ii,6), Sophia of Jesus Christ (NHC iii,4; BG,3) Apocalypse of Paul (NHC v,2), The Thunder, Perfect Mind (NHC vi,2), Concept of Our Great Power(NHC vi,4), Second Treatise of the Great Seth (NHC vii,2), Apocalypse of Peter (NHC vii,3)17), Letter of Peter to Philip (NHC viii,2), Testimony of Truth (NHC ix,3), Hypsiphrone (NHC xi,4), the Gospel of Mary (BG,1), the Books of Jeu (Bruce codex), and [the collection of Coptic Gnostic fragments found at Bala’izah.[88]
Pearson writes that the literary evidence also includes "works translated into Coptic and preserved in Coptic manuscripts: twelve codices plus loose leaves from a thirteenth found near Nag Hammadi, Egypt: the Gnostic Berlin Codex (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502), the Askew Codex (Pistis sophia), the Bruce Codex, and fragments from another codex found at Deir el Bala’izah.[87] The Apocryphon of John (NHC ii,1; iii,1; iv,1; BG,2), Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC ii,4), Gospel of the Egyptians (NHC iii,2; iv,2)15, Three Steles of Seth (NHC vii,5), Zostrianos (NHC viii,1) Melchizedek (NHC ix,1), Thought of Norea (NHC ix,2) Allogenes (NHC xi,3), and Trimorphic Protennoia (NHC xiii,1).[89]
- ^ The Coptic Church credits the apostle Mark with the founding of the Alexandrian church, and there is a legend that Mark’s cousin Barnabas was also involved. There is even a hint in the New Testament in a variant reading of Acts 18:25 of Christianity already existing in Alexandria.[92] These are not considered likely.[93]
- ^ Jewish immigration into Egypt from Palestine had begun as early as the sixth century BC, and by the first century AD, the Jewish population in Alexandria numbered in hundreds of thousands.[95] With the coming of Roman rule in 30 BC, the situation of the Jews declined, leading to a pogrom against the Jews in 38 AD. In 115, diaspora Jews in Alexandria revolted. Under Trajan, this led to the virtual annihilation of the Alexandrian Jewish community in 117 AD.[93]
The revolt was also a crucial event for Christians.[90] Much of the literary legacy of the lost Jewish community was saved by Christians who treasured and preserved it, and this legacy heavily impacted their literary production.[90]
- ^ Susan Harvey writes in The Cambridge History of Christianity that the Semitic dialect of Aramaic known as Syriac, became the primary Christian language of the region during the late first and second centuries, and that virtually every text written before the fourth century is in both Greek and Syriac.[105]
- ^ The earliest martyr story is Martyrum Scillitanorum acta.[126] The next two early stories are from a generation later when Septimius Severus made conversion to Christianity illegal.[126] They depict charismatic Christianity as having more authority than ordained clergy.[126] This conflict of authority would later become a major stress point for the African church.[126]
- ^ In Origen's time (c. 185 – c. 253), I Clement, The Shepherd of Hermas, and the Gospel of Barnabas were regarded as scripture, whereas after Athanasius in 367, Christian history was revised with the view that Christian theology was not yet fully developed during this early period.[149] This allowed the genuine writings to be interpolated with Neo-Platonic theology of the fourth century. Other authentic writings were only preserved within collections of outright forgeries.[150] The authentic texts did not become available to be studied until the seventeenth century. The Didache was not published until 1883.[151] Early Christian doctrine was less defined and less elaborate than later theology as none of the early church fathers were professional theologians.[152] Their writings are largely concerned with practical problems, church polity and discipline.[153] These writings provide insight into how the Bible and church traditions were understood through rational interpretation during the earliest days.[154] As Christianity spread throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire and beyond its borders, it acquired members from high-ranking social classes and the well-educated circles of the Hellenistic world; they sometimes became bishops who wrote famous sermons and treatises. They were primarily defenders of orthodoxy, but they also wrote philosophy and theology as well as apologetics and polemics.[155] Historians and theologians refer to this as the "golden age" of Christian thought.[156]
Figures such as John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Basil, Gregory of Nazianus, Gregory of Nyssa, and the prolific Augustine, all wrote major works that are still studied. For example, Augustine on human will became a focus for later philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.[157] Augustine's philosophical method, especially demonstrated in his Confessions, had a continuing influence on Continental philosophy throughout the 20th century.
- ^ The inclusion of Gentiles posed a problem, as they could not fully observe the Halakha. Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle, persecuted the early Jewish Christians, then converted and started his mission among the Gentiles.[164] The main concern of Paul's letters is the inclusion of Gentiles into God's New Covenant, sending the message that faith in Christ is sufficient for salvation.[164][165][166]
- ^ Christianity was experienced as a new start, and was open to both men and women, rich and poor. Baptism was free. There were no fees, and it was intellectually egalitarian, making philosophy and ethics available to ordinary people including those who might have lacked literacy.[177] Heterogeneity characterized the groups formed by Paul the Apostle, and the role of women was much greater than in any of the forms of Judaism or paganism in existence at the time.[178] New Testament scholar N. T. Wright argues that these ideas were revolutionary to the classical world.[179]
- ^ Robin Lane Fox provides examples. During the siege of Alexandria in 262 CE, two Christian leaders arranged to rescue many Christian and pagan people who were old and weak. During the great famine of 311–312 CE, rich pagan donors gave at first, but then withheld funds fearing they themselves would become poor. Christians fed them.[187]
- ^
In one of the most momentous precedents of his reign, during Constantine’s twentieth anniversary celebrations in 325, some 250 bishops assembled at Nicaea in the emperor’s presence and at his order to settle difficult issues of contention across the empire about the date of Easter, episcopal succession and Christology. Constantine made a point of deferring to the bishops. He did not preside himself and only took his seat when they did, but it was the emperor who had summoned the council, and the sanctions that followed for the small number of dissenters including Arius were also imposed by him.[198]
- ^ A number of elements coincided to end the temples, but none of them were strictly religious.[261] Earthquakes caused much of the destruction of this era.[262] Civil conflict and external invasions also destroyed many temples and shrines.[263]
This progressive decay was accompanied by an increased trade in salvaged building materials, as the practice of recycling became common in Late Antiquity.[264] Economic struggles meant that necessity drove much of the destruction and conversion of pagan religious monuments.[261][265][266] In many instances, such as in Tripolitania, this happened before Constantine the Great became emperor.[267]
- ^ Nearly all the sources available on Theodosius are ecclesiastical histories that are highly colored and carefully curated for public reading.[271] Beginning with contemporaries like the bishop Ambrose, and followed in the next century by church historians such as Theodoret, these histories focus on Theodosius' impact on the church, frequently moving into panegyric and hagiography.[276]
Theodosius championed Christian orthodoxy, and the majority of the laws he wrote were intended to eliminate heresies and promote unity within Christianity.[277] In 380, he issued the Edict of Thessalonica to the people of Constantinople. It was addressed to Arian Christians, granted Christians no favours or advantages over other religions, and it is clear from mandates issued in the years after 380, that Theodosius had not intended it as a requirement for pagans or Jews to convert to Christianity.[278] For example, legal scholar Pál Sáry explains that, "In 393, the emperor was gravely disturbed that the Jewish assemblies had been forbidden in certain places. For this reason, he stated with emphasis that the sect of the Jews was forbidden by no law".[279]
- ^ "Arius wanted to emphasise the transcendence and sole divinity of God ... . God alone is, for Arius, without beginning, unbegotten and eternal. In the terminology of negative theology, Arius stresses monotheism with ever-renewed attempts. God can only be understood as creator. He denies the co-eternal state of the Logos with God, since otherwise God would be stripped of his absolute uniqueness. God alone is, and thus he was not always Father. ... Following Proverbs 8:22–25, Arius is able to argue that the Son was created. For Arius the Logos belongs wholly on the side of the Divine, but he is markedly subordinate to God".[294]
- ^ "A heresy of the Christian Church, started by Arius, bishop of Alexandria (d. 336), who taught that the Son is not equivalent to the Father (όμοούστος = consubstantialis), thereby provoking a serious schism in the Christian Church, which in turn affected the fortunes of the Jews in many countries. In view of the fact that most Germanic peoples—such as the eastern and western Goths, as also the Franks, the Lombards, the Suevi, and the Vandals—were baptized into Arian Christianity, and that these tribes settled in widely spread districts of the old Roman empire, a large number of Jews, already resident in those lands, fell under Arian domination. In contrast with the domination of the orthodox church, the Arian was distinguished by a wise tolerance and a mild treatment of the population of other faiths, conduct mainly attributable to the unsophisticated sense of justice characterizing the children of nature, but also traceable in some degree to certain points of agreement between the Arian doctrine and Judaism, points totally absent in the orthodox confession. The very insistence upon the more subordinate relationship of the Son—that is, the Messiah—to the God-father is much nearer to the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah than to the conception of the full divinity of the Son, as enunciated at Nicaea".[295]
- ^ The deserts of the Middle East became inhabited by thousands of male and female Christian ascetics, hermits and anchorites, including St. Anthony the Great (otherwise known as St. Anthony of the Desert), St. Mary of Egypt, and St. Simeon Stylites, collectively known as the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers.[313] In 963 an association of monasteries called Lavra was formed on Mount Athos, in Eastern Orthodox tradition.[314] This became the most important center of orthodox Christian ascetic groups in the centuries that followed.[314] In the modern era, Mount Athos and Meteora have remained a significant center.[315]
- ^ Brown writes:Frankish Gaul had 116 bishoprics, Visigothic Spain had 66. With 237, for its relatively small size, Italy positively buzzed with bishops, as did North Africa, with 242, increasingly clustered along the eastern coastal regions. With over 680 bishops, the territories of the Roman Empire of Justinian and his successors remained the true center of gravity of the Christian world, especially as many of its cities were considerably larger than those of the West. Across the Roman frontier, the very different cities and large villages of the Sasanian Empire supported over 50 bishops. The church of Armenia could rally some 20 bishops, distributed, rather unevenly, according to the holdings of the noble families of the region".[322]
- ^ Saxon resistance to rule by the Carolingian kings was fierce and often targeted Christian churches and monasteries.[338] In 782 Saxons broke yet another treaty with Charlemagne, attacking the Franks when the king was away, dealing the Frankish troops heavy losses.[336][339][340] In response, the Frankish King returned, defeated them, and "enacted a variety of draconian measures" beginning with the massacre at Verden.[341] He ordered the decapitation of 4500 Saxon prisoners offering them baptism as an alternative to death.[342] These events were followed by the severe legislation of the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae in 785 which prescribes death to those that are disloyal to the king, harm Christian churches or its ministers, or practice pagan burial rites.[343] His harsh methods raised objections from his friends Alcuin and Paulinus of Aquileia.[344] Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in 797.[345]
- ^ Historian Ivo Štefan asserts that, in general, adoption of Christianity in Bohemia, Poland and Hungary was not forced either by pressure from outside or by violence.[357]
- ^ Ullmann writes: "What the observer of the papacy witnessed in [these] centuries was a gradual, though clearly perceptible, decomposition of Europe as a single ecclesiastical unit, and the fragmentation of Europe into independent, autonomous entities which were soon to be called national monarchies or states. This fragmentation heralded the withering away of the papacy as a governing institution operating on a universal scale".[413]
- ^ Jews and homosexuals were the first. Previously, papal bulls served as a charter of protection for the Jews.[421] From the time of Augustine, the church had advocated freedom for the Jews. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church still upheld the Constitutio pro Judæis (Formal Statement on the Jews):
Constitutio pro Judæis were papal bulls which set out the official position of the papacy regarding the treatment of Jews. The first bull by that name was issued in about 1120 by Calixtus II and served as a papal charter of protection to Jews. It was prompted by attacks on Jews by the First Crusade, during which over five thousand Jews were slaughtered in Europe. The bull forbade Christians, on pain of excommunication, from forcing Jews to convert, harming them, taking their property, disturbing the celebration of their festivals and interfering with their cemeteries.[421] Then contents of the Talmud mocking the central figures of Christianity became public.[423] Historians agree this was a turning point in Jewish-Christian relations.[424] In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council met and accepted church laws that required Jews to distinguish themselves from Christians in their dress, prohibited them from holding public office, and prohibited Jewish converts from continuing to practice Jewish rituals.[425][426] In the words of Hebrew University historian Ben-Zion Dinur, from 1244 on, both state and church would "consider the Jews to be a people with no religion (benei bli dat) who have no place in the Christian world".[427]We decree that no Christian shall use violence to force them to be baptized, so long as they are unwilling and refuse.…Without the judgment of the political authority of the land, no Christian shall presume to wound them or kill them or rob them of their money or change the good customs that they have thus far enjoyed in the place where they live".[422]
Expulsions of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600 In the eleventh century, the legal code of the Kingdom of Jerusalem ordained the death penalty for "sodomites". From the 1250s onwards, the legal codes in the nation-states of Spain, France, Italy and Germany followed this example. Sociologist R. I. Moore writes that "By 1300, places where male sodomy was not a capitol offense had become the exception rather than the rule".[428] In the next few centuries, the penalty was extended to Gypsies, beggars, spendthrifts, prostitutes, and idle former soldiers.[429]
- ^ Since they are considered "People of the Book" in the Islamic religion, Christians under Muslim rule were protected as dhimmi.[454][455] However, dhimmi are inferior to Muslims in Muslim culture, and Christian populations living in the lands invaded by the Arab Muslim armies between the 7th and 10th centuries AD suffered religious persecution, religious violence, forced conversion to Islam,[454][456] and martyrdom multiple times at the hands of Arab Muslim officials and rulers.[455][457][456][458] Many were executed under the Islamic death penalty for defending their Christian faith.[457][456][458]
During the Umayyad Caliphate, Christians subject to Islamic rule were allowed to practice their religion with some notable limitations stemming from the apocryphal Pact of Umar. This treaty, supposedly enacted in 717 AD, forbade Christians from publicly displaying the cross on church buildings, from summoning congregants to prayer with a bell, from re-building or repairing churches and monasteries after they had been destroyed or damaged, and imposed other restrictions relating to occupations, clothing, and weapons.[459]The Umayyad Caliphate persecuted many Berber Christians in the 7th and 8th centuries AD, who slowly converted to Islam.[460]
The Abbasid Caliphate was less tolerant of Christianity than had been the Umayyad caliphs.[455] Those such as Elias of Heliopolis, monks and prisoners of war who refused to convert were frequently killed.[461]
Nonetheless, Christian officials continued to be employed in the government, and the Christians of the Church of the East and the Jacobite Church were often tasked with the translation of Ancient Greek philosophy and Greek mathematics.[455][462]
- ^ Eastern Christian scientists and scholars of the medieval Islamic world (particularly Jacobite and Nestorian Christians) contributed to the Arab Islamic civilization during the reign of the Umayyad and the Abbasid, by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards, to Arabic.[463][462][464] They also excelled in philosophy, science, theology, and medicine.[465][466] And the personal physicians of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrian Christians such as the long serving Bukhtishu dynasty.[467] Many scholars of the House of Wisdom were of Assyrian Christian background.[468][469][462]
- ^ Bishoprics being merely lifetime appointments, a king could better control their powers and revenues than those of hereditary noblemen. Even better, he could leave the post vacant and collect the revenues, theoretically in trust for the new bishop, or give a bishopric to pay a helpful noble.[479] The Roman Catholic Church wanted to end lay investiture to end this and other abuses, to reform the episcopate and provide better pastoral care and separation of church and state.[480] Pope Gregory VII issued the Dictatus Papae, which declared that the pope alone could appoint bishops.[480] Henry IV's rejection of the decree led to his excommunication and a ducal revolt. Eventually, Henry IV received absolution after a dramatic public penance, though the Great Saxon Revolt and conflict of investiture continued.[481]
- ^ According to historian Elaine Graham-Leigh, Pope Innocent believed the tactical, as well as policy and strategic decisions, should be solely "the papal preserve".[500] J. Sumption and Stephen O'Shea put forth Innocent III as "the mastermind of the crusade".[501][502][499]
Jean Markale, on the other hand, suggests the true architect of the campaign was the French king Philip Augustus, stating that "it was Phillip who actually petitioned Innocent for permission to conduct the Crusade".[499] Historian Laurence W. Marvin says the Pope exercised "little real control over events in Occitania".[503]
- ^ Spain and Sicily are the only European regions to have experienced Islamic conquest.[512] The blended Muslim, Christian and Jewish cultures that resulted from the eighth century onward left a profound imprint on Spain.[512] The Mozarabs, or more precisely Andalusi Christians,[513] were the Christians of al-Andalus, or the territories of Iberia under Muslim rule from 711 to 1492. Following the Umayyad conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania, the Christian population of much of Iberia came under Muslim control. In Umayyad al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula), the Mālikī school of Islamic law was the most prevalent.[456] The martyrdoms of forty-eight Christian martyrs that took place in the Emirate of Córdoba between 850 and 859 AD[514] are recorded in the hagiographical treatise written by the Iberian Christian and Latinist scholar Eulogius of Córdoba.[457][456][458] The Martyrs of Córdoba were executed under the rule of Abd al-Rahman II and Muhammad I, and Eulogius' hagiography describes in detail the executions of the martyrs for capital violations of Islamic law, including apostasy and blasphemy.[457][456][458]
- ^ The situation of Greater Armenia became increasingly unstable with the decline of the Mongol Ilkhâns from the 1330s onward, opening up a power vacuum facilitating the disastrous Timurid invasions of the last two decades of the century. Despite this, a resurgence of the Armenian Apostolic Church is manifest there under the forceful monastic leadership of Małak‘ia Łrimec‘i. [546] However, this decisive de ́marche in turn provoked an equally swift, unequivocal retort from influential members of the Greater Armenian clergy, who decided that the time was ripe to implement their predecessors’ frequently reiterated threats of schism. Thus in 1441 the cathedral of Ējmiacin in the ancient capital of Vałaršapat became the seat of an anti-catholicate, which soon established itself as the primary see of the whole church. The medieval Cilician episode in Armenian history had now come to an end.[547]
- ^ Early protest was against corruptions such as simony (the buying and selling of church offices), the holding of multiple church offices by one person at the same time, episcopal vacancies, and the sale of indulgences. The Protestant position also included the Five solae (sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria), the priesthood of all believers, Law and Gospel, and the two kingdoms doctrine. The three most important traditions to emerge directly from the Reformation were the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican traditions, though the latter group identifies as both "Reformed" and "Catholic", and some subgroups reject the classification as "Protestant".[559]
Unlike other reform movements, the English Reformation began by royal influence. Henry VIII considered himself a thoroughly Catholic king, and in 1521 he defended the papacy against Luther in a book he commissioned entitled, The Defence of the Seven Sacraments, for which Pope Leo X awarded him the title Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith). However, the king came into conflict with the papacy when he wished to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, for which he needed papal sanction. Catherine, among many other noble relations, was the aunt of Emperor Charles V, the papacy's most significant secular supporter. The ensuing dispute eventually led to a break from Rome and the declaration of the King of England as head of the English Church, which saw itself as a Protestant church navigating a middle way between Lutheranism and Reformed Christianity, but leaning more towards the latter.[560]
Consequently, England experienced periods of reform and also Counter-Reformation. Monarchs such as Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, Elizabeth I, and Archbishops of Canterbury such as Thomas Cranmer and William Laud, pushed the Church of England in different directions over the course of only a few generations. What emerged was the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and a state church that considered itself both "Reformed" and "Catholic" but not "Roman", and other unofficial more radical movements, such as the Puritans. In terms of politics, the English Reformation included heresy trials, the exiling of Roman Catholic populations to Spain and other Roman Catholic lands, and censorship and prohibition of books.[561]
- ^ The papacy of St. Pius V was known not only for its focus on halting heresy and worldly abuses within the Church, but also for its focus on improving popular piety in a determined effort to stem the appeal of Protestantism. Pius began his pontificate by giving large alms to the poor, charity, and hospitals, and the pontiff was known for consoling the poor and sick as well as supporting missionaries. These activities coincided with a rediscovery of the ancient Christian catacombs in Rome. As Diarmaid MacCulloch states, "Just as these ancient martyrs were revealed once more, Catholics were beginning to be martyred afresh, both in mission fields overseas and in the struggle to win back Protestant northern Europe: the catacombs proved to be an inspiration for many to action and to heroism".[565]
- ^ Theorists such as John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson argue that these religious wars were varieties of the Just war tradition for liberty and freedom.[571] William T. Cavanaugh points out that many historians argue these ‘‘wars of religion’’ were not primarily religious, but were more about state-building, nationalism, and economics.[572] If they had been motivated most deeply by religion, Catholics would fight Protestants, whereas Catholics often formed alliances with Protestants to fight other Catholics and vice versa. Historian Barbara Diefendorf argues that religious motives were always mixed with other motives, but the simple fact of Catholics fighting Catholics and Protestants fighting Protestants is not sufficient to prove the absence of religious motives, since religious conf