The History of the Christian Church

This is the 7th & Last episode in our series The Long Road to Reform. In Italy, the Renaissance was a time of both prosperity & upheaval. We moderns of the 21st C are so accustomed to thinking of Italy as one large unified nation it’s difficult to conceive of it as it was throughout MOST of its history; a patchwork of various regions at odds with each other. During the Middle Ages & a good part of the Renaissance, Italy was composed to powerful city states like Florence & Venice who endlessly vied with each other. Exacerbating the turmoil was the interference of France and Germany who sought to influence affairs in Italy to their advantage. It was within this mix of prosperity, intrigue, and emerging Renaissance ideals the papacy carried on during the last decades before the Reformation. (more…)

This is the 6th episode in our series The Long Road to Reform. Much of the reform energy in the European Church of the Late Middle Ages was among the poor, and being poor meant being illiterate. The poor and illiterate don’t, as a rule, write books about their hopes & dreams.  So it’s often from sources hostile to the reforming movements of this era we learn of them. That hostility colors the picture of them much of history since has regarded them by. Wycliffe’s ideas lived on, not among scholars at Oxford or the few nobles who initial endorsed them, as among the poverty-committed Lollards who went from village to village, carrying his reforms like torches that continually set new places ablaze with reforming zeal. The Lollards preached a simple Gospel that contradicted a great deal of what commoners heard from their local priests. (more…)

This is the 5th episode in a series we’re calling “The Long Road to Reform.” What do you think of when I say “The Inquisition”? Many shudder. Some get a slightly queasy feeling in their stomach because of the way the Inquisition has been cast in novels & movies. There’s a bit of truth in that portrayal, one-sided & stereo-typed as it may be. We’re backing up yet again in our timeline as we take a closer look at this sad chapter of Church History. The 4th Lateran Council of 1215 was the high-water mark of the medieval papacy under Innocent III. The Council was really little more than a rubber stamp committee for Innocent’s reforms. Those reforms both brought much needed change to the morals of the clergy, but also installed structures that worked against later reform. The 4th Lateran Council established the doctrine of transubstantiation and the sacrament of penance. And the Inquisition, which had begun as a commission of inquiry under Pope Alexander III a generation before, became a permanent feature of Church life. (more…)

This is the 4th episode in a series we’re calling “The Long Road to Reform.” A few weeks back I mentioned the Podcast awards coming up in April. I’ll have another announcement about that at the end of this episode. It was late Spring of 1490 when a Dominican friar stood at the gates of Florence. This was not the first time the 33 year old Girolamo had made the 160 KM / 100 miles trip from his native Ferrara to the city of the Medici’s. He’d lived for a spell in the city. The Florentines admired his scholarship but were put off by the vehemence of his preaching. They also had a hard time adapting to his accent. But now he returned at the invitation of Lorenzo de Medici; Lorenzo the Magnificent, who virtually owned Florence, and to whom he’d been recommended by the famous philosopher Mirandola. (more…)

This is the third episode in a series titled “The Long Road to Reform.” In our last episode we looked at The Conciliar movement that formed to end the Great Papal Schism and that so many hoped would be a permanent fixture for reform in the Church. But as well intentioned as the movement was, it ended up resurrecting the Schism. In its long battle with the Papacy, conciliarism eventually lost. We turn now to look at a reformer from Bohemia named John Hus;  or more properly Jan Hus. Bohemia was an important part of the Holy Roman Empire; a sovereign state with its capital at Prague. Today, it roughly corresponds with the Czech Republic. It had a long history as a place of vibrant Christianity, especially monasticism. In 1383, Bohemia & England were linked by the marriage of Anne of Bohemia and the English King Richard II. With this union, students of both countries went back and forth between Oxford where John Wyclif was, and the schools of Prague. (more…)

This is the second episode in a series titled “The Long Road to Reform.” Before diving into the THE Reformation, we’ll do some review and add not a few details to the story of the Church. We do this because I fear too many of us may have the impression Martin Luther & John Calvin were wild aberrations. That they just sprang up out of nowhere. Many Protestants see the Roman Catholic church as getting progressively more corrupt during the mate middle ages and that Luther was a lone good guy who stood up and said, “Enough!” Many Roman Catholics agree the late medieval Church got a bit off but see what Luther did as a gross over-reaction that took him off the rails. So in this series of podcasts within the larger Church Story, I want to review make sure we understand The Reformation as an inevitable result of a long attempt at reform that had gone on in the Western church for a long time. And of course to do that, we’ll need to go back over some of the ground we’ve already covered. (more…)

This episode is the first of several I’m calling “The Long Road to Reform.” As I mentioned at the end of the last episode, we’ll track the Church’s long march to the Reformation, then pause before picking it up with THE Reformation by doing some episodes tracking Church History into the East. Until recently, most treatments of the History of Christianity have focused almost exclusively on the Church in Europe & what’s often called “Western” Christianity. Mention is made of the Church’s growth into other regions like North Africa, and the Middle & Far East. But it’s barely a nod in that direction. For every 10,000 words devoted to the Church in Europe, 10 are given to the Church of the East. What’s really sad is that this Church has a rich history. We won’t make up for the lack of reporting on the History of the church in these regions here, but we will seek to fill in some of the gaps and give those who are interested some resources for learning more. (more…)

This Episode is titled “The Witness of Stones.” I’ve had the privilege of doing a bit of touring in Europe. I’ve visited the cathedral at Cologne, Germany on several occasions. I’ve been to Wartburg Castle where Luther hid out. Mrs. Communion Sanctorum and I did a 2-week tour of Florence & Rome for our 30th Anniversary. We saw lots of churches and cathedrals. No matter what your thoughts about medieval Christianity, you can’t help but be impressed by the art & architecture the period produced. Some modern Christians, especially those of the Evangelical stripe, visit a medieval European cathedral, and come away impressed at the architecture, but mystified and maybe, a few anyway, a bit angry. Mystified on WHY people would go to such extremes to build such an immense and impressive structure. Angry at the massive expense such a structure meant. (more…)

This 74th Episode of CS is the 2nd Overview, where we pause to sum up the journey we’ve taken since the last overview, which was Episode 35. That summary began with the Apostolic Church and ran up through the 5th Century and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. In this Overview, starts where that left off and brings us up to the 15th C. We’re about to move into what’s called the Reformation & Counter- Reformation Era, but have a bit more work to do in looking at some trends that took place in the Church in Europe in the waning decades of the Middle Ages. Turns out, there was a lot of reform-oriented activity that took place in the Church well before the birth of Martin Luther. So we’ll be taking a look at that. And filling in some of the holes left in our story so far. (more…)

The title of this episode of Communio Santorum is A Glimmer of Reform. I assume nearly everyone listening to this is a student of history, or—why would you be listening? Some like history in general. Others find a fascination with certain eras or moments of the past. Whatever your interest in history, every student recognizes as time passes, things change. Sometimes that change is merely incidental to the thing changed, a cosmetic difference that does little to the substance. Other change is deep, fundamentally altering the thing changed; and in some cases, doing away with it altogether. Institutions and beliefs held for long periods can be swept away in a matter of days, while others abide for centuries without being touched. (more…)

This episode of CS is titled “Meanwhile, Back in the East” because before we dive into the next phase of church history in Europe, we need to catch up on what’s happening to the East. The Mongol Empire of the 13th & 14th Cs occupied the largest contiguous land empire in history. Rising originally from the steppes of Central Asia and eventually stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan; from Siberia in the N to Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, & the Iranian plateau, & the Middle East. At its greatest extent it spanned 6000 miles and covered about 16% of the planet’s total land area. Genghis Khan was himself a shamanist, but recognizing the need to unite the Mongol clans. He adopted a policy of religious toleration that remained the official policy during his reign and that of his son Ogedai. Several of the tribes that formed the core of the Mongol horde were Christians in at least a cultural sense. The Keriats, Onguds & Uighurs owed the Christianization of their culture to the Eastern expansion of Christianity we’ve looked at in some earlier episodes. (more…)

This episode is titled The Mystics & looks at the Mysticism of the Western Church during the Late Middle Ages. Alongside the Scholastics whom we spent a couple episodes on, was another movement within Medieval Christianity in Europe led by a group of people known as “The Mystics.” Don’t let that title mislead you. They weren’t wizards with black, long-sleeved robes & tall pointed hats embellished with moons and stars. Don’t picture Gandalf or some old man bent over a dusty tome reciting an incantation. The Mystics weren’t magicians. They were simply Christians who thought a vital part of the Faith was been left behind by the academic pursuits of the Scholastics. They wanted to reclaim it. (more…)

In this, the 70th Episode of CS ver. 2, we take a look at Sacramentalism; a mindset that dominated the religious landscape of late Medieval Christianity. The question that consumed Europeans of the Middle Ages was, “How can I be saved? What must I believe and do that will preserve my soul from the torment of hell?” Rome answered that with what’s called Sacramentalism. Now, let me be clear; the basic answer was, “Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.” But the Church went on to define what that trust looked like with a set of rules & required practices. Yes, people are saved by grace through faith, but that grace is received by special acts only authorized clergy can conduct. These acts were called “sacraments” from the word “sacred” meaning holy. But there was a specific  flavor to the word sacrament that carried the idea of mystery. Precisely HOW the sacraments communicated grace was unknown, but that they did was a certainty. So while salvation was by grace, one had to go to the Church to get that grace. The sacraments were channels of grace and the necessary food of the soul. They accompanied human life from the cradle to the grave. An infant was ushered into the world by the sacrament of Baptism while the elderly were sent on their way out by the sacrament of Extreme Unction. (more…)

The title of this episode of CS is The Not-So Great After All Schism. At the end of our last episode, a Frenchman, the Archbishop of Bordeaux was elected by the College of Cardinals in 1305 as Pope Clement. But Clement never set foot in Rome, because the locus of political power had shifted to France & her King, Philip.  This marks the beginning of what’s called the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy, a 72–year long period when France dominated the papacy. After Clement, the next 6 Popes, all French, chose to make their headquarters in Avignon rather than Rome. Though it began as a small town when Clement first located there, over the next 70 years it grew to a population of some 80,000, nearly all of them associated in some way with the Church bureaucracy. (more…)

The title of this episode of is Of Popes & Princes. As far as the Church in the West was concerned, the 14th C opened on what seemed a strong note. Early in 1300 Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed a Year of Jubilee, something new on the Church calendar. The Pope’s decree announced a blanket pardon of all sins for all who visited the churches of St. Peter & St. Paul in Rome over the next 10 months. Huge crowds poured into the city. Boniface VIII was an interesting man. He had a definite flair for the pomp & circumstance of what some might call pretentious ceremony. He regularly appeared in public dressed in royal, or even better, imperial robes, announcing, “I am Caesar. I am Emperor.” His papal crown had 48 rubies, 72 sapphires, 45 emeralds, & 66 large pearls. He could afford to be generous w/pardons. At the Church of St. Paul, pilgrims to Rome kept priests busy night & day collecting & counting the unending offerings. (more…)