Church buildings in the Christian empire were carefully designed to emphasize the new hierarchy of Christ and emperor. The style was borrowed from the East. A Greek traveler visited Persia in the second century and described a palace in which there was “a hall covered with a dome; the inside was adorned with sapphires sparkling with a celestial blue brilliance, and standing out against the blue background of the stones were golden images of the gods, glittering like stars in the firmament.” This became the pattern for the mosaic-encrusted interiors of Byzantine churches—displaying, if not “golden images of the gods,” at least God and the “demigod” emperor who represented him on earth.
Church
Kilisenin Devletle Bütünleşmesinin Bedeli
The advantages for the church were real enough, but there was a price to pay. Constantine ruled Christian bishops as he did his civil servants and demanded unconditional obedience to official pronouncements, even when they interfered with purely church matters. There were also the masses who now streamed into the officially favored church. Prior to Constantine’s conversion, the church consisted of convinced believers who were willing to bear the risk of being identified as Christians. Now many came who were politically ambitious, religiously disinterested, and still half rooted in paganism. This threatened to produce not only shallowness and permeation by pagan superstitions but also the secularization and misuse of religion for political purposes.
Decius Zulmü ve Dinden Dönenler Sorunu
A general from the Danubian frontier, Decius was determined to have no nonsense from Christians. In his eyes, they were enemies of the empire. Their atheism was responsible for the many troubles in the realm. Thus Decius commanded all citizens of the empire to sacrifice to the traditional Roman gods.
To save their lives, many Christians complied. Others were able to obtain certificates without having actually sacrificed. But an unknown number of Christians were imprisoned or executed—among them the bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Those who were killed were called martyrs—that is, “witnesses.” Decius, however, was not out to make heroes. He wanted to discredit Christianity, so many Christians were tortured until they denied Christ by saying, “Caesar is Lord.” If a Christian endured this persecution without denying Christ, he was called a confessor. If a believer under torture did what the Romans demanded, he was classed among the lapsed, the fallen ones. The fury ended, at least for a season, in AD 251, when Decius, deserted by his gods, was killed in a battle with the barbarian Goths. Then the question of readmission to the church arose with striking intensity. Many believers were guilty of apostasy, sometimes as much as three-quarters of a congregation.
But how could the church receive those who had denied the faith? Didn’t Jesus say, “Whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:33)? Wasn’t this the “sin against the Holy Spirit” for which there was no forgiveness? What evil could be worse than to deny, from fear or pain, the only way to salvation? If this sin was pardoned, wouldn’t that mean the suffering of the martyrs was pointless?
Haçlı Vaaz Zamanlaması
the sermons be preached to potential crusaders on key dates in the church calendar, such as Good Friday – the day was chosen because religious feeling should be high and the churches would be full.
Haçlı Seferlerinin Siyasi Amaçlarla Kullanımı
Throughout the twelfth century, the language of crusading and the idea of just conflict arose in the political arena. In 1135, when Roger II of Sicily supported the antipope Anacletus II, Pope Innocent II declared that anyone fighting against Christianity’s enemies (i.e., Roger) would gain the same indulgence as those who had taken part in the First Crusade. It was, though, under the pontificate of Innocent III that the papacy began to call crusades to fight against political opponents within Europe on the grounds that they were threatening the papal states.7 This politicisation of the crusade was made clear in 1198, when Innocent III declared a crusade against Markward of Anweiler, opponent of the papal claim to hold the regency of Sicily. The dispute between Markward and the pope was largely political, though Innocent was trying to organise a crusade at the time and felt that Markward was hindering this, making a crusade against him justifiable.
Erken Ortaçağ Piskoposluk Yapısı
Quite different in kind were the bishoprics established as Christianity spread, in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, into the non-Roman or post-Roman world. Early medieval Ireland and England were not significantly urban and hence a new kind of bishopric was required, one that was not city-based, indeed, one that might be without a fixed seat, adapted to the needs of a people (gens) or, in Ireland, a monastic congregation. The early Anglo-Saxon bishoprics thus tended to shift with the varying political patterns and to take their titles from an ethnic group or a region rather than a city. Hence we find ‘bishops of the West Saxons’ before there were ‘bishops of Winchester’, ‘bishops of the Hwicce’ before ‘bishops of Worcester’. In this way the institution of the episcopate adapted itself to social conditions very different from those of its birth. Indeed, one of the main features of the ecclesiastical history of the British Isles in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the re-establishment of the territorial, city-based episcopacy that had come to be the Latin model or norm in place of this early medieval non-urban model.
East-West Christianity Hierarchical Difference
eastern Christianity was not exactly the same as in the west. The hierarchy of bishops was as active in the east as in the west, and increasingly bishops were city leaders here as well. Bishops were less prominent players in a wider politics, however, except those of the major cities; episcopal churches may have been less rich in land, and emperors were more powerful in ecclesiastical affairs than rulers were in the west. The hierarchy of the church was also not the only basis for religious activism. Autonomous monasteries grew rapidly in number, and were not always as closely associated with aristocratic power as in the west; they were foci for some quite rough-cut popular religiosity, and monks could be fanatical religious police in places where they were numerous, as around Jerusalem and in southern Egypt.
Lollard: Protestant Early Access
‘Lollard’ is an insulting term applied to people inspired by the teachings of John Wyclif – the radical Oxford theologian who was active in the 1370s and 1380s under the protection of Henry’s grandfather John of Gaunt. Lollards believe in Church reform. They despise the idea of churchmen holding wealth and property. They dismiss as superstitious nonsense concepts such as transubstantiation (the bread and wine of the Eucharist literally becoming Christ’s body and blood). They reject many other commonplaces of Christian practice – including baptism, confession, priestly ordination and the adoration of images.
Merovenj Devri Kiliselerin Zenginleşmesi
Cathedral churches and monasteries seem to have been immensely rich by the end of the Merovingian period in the early eighth century, partly because of the enthusiasm of the early Frankish nobility for their new religion and its promise of salvation—which gifts might have been thought to buy—and partly because of lands which wealthy Roman aristocrats brought to the church as they entered its hierarchy as bishops and abbots. Following on this there was a period of spoliation of church lands, to provide fiefs for warriors, during the course of the eighth century.
St Edmund Kültünün Doğuşu
The Passio was, transparently, a carefully crafted piece of promotional literature – a puff piece for an ineffective king, elevated to sainthood on account of his death at the hands of an ungodly horde. The cult of St Edmund developed in East Anglia remarkably quickly after his death, but it was Abbo’s writings that really got it off the ground. Shortly after it was written it was translated into Old English (in a mercifully abridged – and far more elegant – form) by the prolific writer and abbot of Cerne, Ælfric of Eynsham. With new-found interest beyond East Anglia, and a compelling myth with which to sell it, the cult grew during the latter half of the tenth century and into the eleventh. By the reign of Cnut, the shrine of the saint-king was receiving significant investment and royal patronage. Enthusiasm for the saintly Edmund continued beyond the Norman Conquest and grew throughout the Middle Ages: Edward I’s younger brother (1245–96) was named after him, and St Edmund also appears on the Wilton diptych as a patron and guardian of the angel-faced Richard II (r. 1377–99), alongside John the Baptist and Edward the Confessor. Although his prominence declined after the adoption of St George as the patron of Edward III’s Order of the Garter in 1348, Edmund’s tomb-shrine ceased to be a major place of pilgrimage only when it was destroyed in 1539 during the reign of Henry VIII. Nevertheless, the town and the abbey which housed it still bear his name – Bury St Edmunds: the burh (‘stronghold’) of St Edmund.