Transcript: The Middle Ages (Episode 2, How Should We Then Live?)

PHI 230 - Ethics (3 Cr)

Day 11 - 20

Video: The Middle Ages (Episode 2, How Should We Then Live?)

Rome fell because of the internal degeneration of the entire Roman system the empire fell, the fall at a time of political, social and intellectual turmoil, and then a gradual cultural awakening, the Middle Ages. While there was a decline in learning in the West old manuscripts of the Greek and Latin classics as well as the Bible were kept copied and recopied. However, the original pristine Christianity of the New Testament gradually became distorted. The first century Church of course was a very simple church they met in homes and usually not in large numbers. As they met together in these small groups it centered around the singing of psalms and hymns. It centered around the breaking of bread and the communion. The first century church centered around, most of all, the preaching of the Bible as the absolute infallible word of God. If you read the book of Acts for example you find a tremendous emphasis on content. It wasn't religious as 20th century man thinks of religious, of something just what I would call in the area of non-reason, it really was down into the area of content it had to do with Christ rose from the dead in space and time it had to do with the fact that the Old Testament was the word of God and what these people really believed was in the truth of this not the religiousness of it and not even basically the religious experience of it but the truth of it. Look at these Christian catacomb paintings done prior to the Middle Ages. Even simply portrayed these are real people living in a real world. This vitality and livingness can be paralleled with the living Christianity of the early church, but gradually there was a change from the early Christianity. There was also a change in art. These are no longer real people but symbols. There was a contrast to the early Christian art by the 6th century the last vestiges of modern realism were abandoned says Michael Gough in The Origins of Christian Art. There is beauty here and these artists work with devotion looking for more spiritual values, but in doing so their art changed. This came to his climax in the 9th to the 11th centuries. I would like to go back for a few moments to the early days of the Middle Ages the early Christian Church had turned away from the old Roman music because, of its associations with the Roman social practices and the Pagan religious rites. There were strong human elements in some of the music of the early church. We can think for example of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in the 4th century, who wrote hymns and taught his people to sing them this was an innovation in his day. Later, under Pope Gregory there was a change to what we today call the Gregorian chant impersonal, mystical and otherworldly. From the earliest days Christians had struggled with a response to Christ prayer that they be in the world but, not of it. This challenged the Christians attitude to material possessions and style of living.

In the early church believers were noted for their openhanded generosity, their enemies admitted it, but in the Middle Ages the pendulum swung back and forth between utter disregard of the command to live modestly, caring for the poor, and the early monastic ideal to have no money at all.

The Papal Court is properly rebuked for its material lust. John of Salisbury told the Pope to his face the people thought that “The Roman church which is the mother of all churches behaves more like a stepmother than a mother. The scribes and Pharisees sit there placing on men's shoulders burdens too heavy to be born. They load themselves with fine clothes and their tables with precious plates. A poor man can seldom gain admittance.”

In the midst of all this Francis of Assisi recognizing the corrupting effects of money forbade his followers to receive money at all. Side by side, there were the luxury and the practical materialism of the Papal court and the monastic orders which gradually became centers of overwhelming wealth. The church in medieval society making attempts to curb the economic excesses of society, first trying to prohibit and then later limiting, the interest rates on loans then with the support of the secular rulers attempting to enforce just prices. Medieval economic teaching exalted the virtue of honest work well executed and when old age or infirmity made it impossible for the people the Middle Ages to work the church often provided them with hospitals and other charitable institutions. This hospital was open here in Siena in the Middle Ages much as it is today and while the modern patients in the 20th century may be glad for the modern medical advances at the same time, they may admire the superior artistic taste of the old Sienese interior decorators.

On another level, the challenge to be in the world but not of it could raise the issue of God's law as against the law of the state. The early of the state the early church had no problem in the confusion between church and state because until the time of Constantine the state was definitely built upon a non-Christian base but in the Middle Ages the problem was much more complicated. You see, Europe was considered as Christ Kingdom, Christendom, only the baptized person was really a full member of the European society. Thus, it could be said that it was as though the state itself was baptized or consecrated. Individually this meant an even more complex problem in regard to the state. This is Lorenzetti's allegory of good and bad government. It is in the council Chamber of the town Hall of Siena. It is from the 14th century. Bad government over here with the devil presiding over all those vices which destroy community and here good government and the Christian virtues from which flow all those activities among men which manifest man's oneness under God. The confusion in human government certainly existed in the Middle Ages when the state and church became intertwined. This is the idea of life under good government going on uninterrupted.

Look at these ordinary people portrayed in this marvelous fresco able to pursue their everyday lives protected by good government from chaos and violence. However, as the artist himself knew from the turbulent political history of Siena itself if the sources of good and evil were distinct the effects were a jumbled mixture humanly of good and bad intentions.

Remembering that the church was everywhere in Europe it was not surprising that the church worked along with society as a whole and especially through societies leaders. A prime example is Charlamagne, son of Pippen. He became King of the Franks in 771 AD and gain control over much of the territory of the former Roman Empire.

His Coronation by the Pope as a Roman style emperor followed easily. In return he supplied a strong land base for the Pope in Italy, and he supported missionary activities in the areas which he conquered for example among the Germanic tribes he also made tithing compulsory, and this supplied funds for church administration. Charlamagne built impressive churches this one is the Palatine Chapel in Auckland the city where Charlamagne had his home in his old age thus church and state power coexisted as well as feeding each other culturally. The time of Charlamagne was a step forward culturally. The art objects were not large, but they were exquisite to call the period that produced them in the dark ages as the humanists of the Renaissance later did would be totally incorrect. Charlamagne encourage scholars, learning experience to restirring through sheer industry, enthusiasm and systematic propagation. The scholar Alcuin 50 years old at the time came all the way from York in northern England to become Charlemagne's adviser and head of his Palace school. Charlamagne and his scholar courtiers laid the base for unified ideas throughout Western Europe aided by the beautiful Carolinian minuscule script which was widely copied. All of Charlamagne scholars were the clergy, learning was not general, it seems that those Charlamagne could read he could not write. Then gradually came a period of further awakening of cultural thought and an awakened piety and a slow moving forward to the two great contrasting movements which more so mark history right up to our own day. First the humanistic elements of the Renaissance and Secondly the Reformation. It would be impossible to discuss the growing culture in the Middle Ages without looking carefully at the architecture of the time. This is the white tower of the Tower of London in which is the Chapel of Saint John. At this time Romanesque architecture was being born. A leap forward in cultural awakening. Romanesque owes much to the Roman form but added its own flavor as well. The rounded arch, thick walls, the dim interiors, this magnificent rib vault ceiling located at Durham cathedral prepared the ground in a very real way for Gothic architecture. The Abbey of Saint-Denis just outside of Paris was built by Abbot Suger in 1140 another leap forward in the awakened culture of the Middle Ages. This is indeed the birthplace of the gothic. Notice the pointed arches at the Cathedral Chartres.

Notre Dom gives us an example of the gothic flying buttresses. Sainte-Chappelle in Paris shows the gothic high windows, large windows, many windows, and the wonder of the Rose window, but the church was moving increasingly away from the teaching of early Christianity. In the early church the authority rested on the Bible alone but in the Middle Ages there gradually had come a change with the authority divided between the Bible and the Church. Then came Thomas Aquinas a Dominican Monk he was the outstanding theologian of that period and his thinking still has much influence. He had an incomplete view of the fall of man.

As man had revolted against God, in his view, the human will was fallen or corrupted, but the intellect was not. As a result of this emphasis gradually philosophy began to act in an increasingly independent autonomous manner more and more the teachings of the Bible and those of the classical non-Christian philosophers were freely mixed. He reintroduced the teaching of the Greek philosopher Aristotle although Pope Urban the 4th had previously forbidden it. Because Aquinas emphasized Aristotle a problem was raised which later became crucial in the humanist elements of the Renaissance.

Aristotle emphasized the individual things around us the particulars. This cot is a particular the molecules which make up this cut are particulars and you and I are particulars beginning for men alone and from the individual things in the world that is the particulars the problem then is how to find an ultimate an adequate meaning for the individual things and most important how to find a meaning for men and for life and what will be man's basis for morals value and law. Later the mixture of biblical teaching and non-Christian philosophy led to the question is the Bible really necessary since truth could seemingly be reached without it. What's happened of course is that Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages has opened the floodgates in his emphasis on Aristotle and on the particulars and as this is done philosophy is increasingly made free from anything that God has said and as such and we find that man begins to take over and place himself at the center. Increasingly the authority of the church took precedence over the teaching of the Bible and it was emphasized more and more that Salvation rests on people meriting the merit of Christ instead of on Christ work alone. Gradually there grew up a humanistic element and that is what the church decided was made equal with what the Bible decided and this just changed everything because then everything can be brought in and anything can be brought in for example immediately led to a different emphasis on how to approach God through mans added works to the merit of Christ as well as the merit of Christ itself and all kinds of things changed but at the same time there began to develop a reaction against these distortions of the original Christianity John Wycliff an Oxford professor of the 14th century raised his voice. He said the Bible who is the Supreme authority his translation of the Bible into English had an important influence throughout Europe.

Jean Hus of Czechoslovakia said the Bible is the only final authority man must return to God through the work of Christ only and Wycliff when he came forward and Hus really understood that the deviation had come at a central point and that central point was the lack of having the Bible as the only authority. And one must say about Christianity two things the heart of the Christian message is that through the substitutionary death of Christ we can return to God and our true moral guilt is removed on the basis of Christ work but on the other hand as far as facing humanism is concerned the central thing is not the acceptance of Christ as savior but the fact that we have absolute truth in contrast to relative truth and this is the real tension are we merely beginning with man as autonomous or is the truth from a personal God that gives us real absolutes and therefore we're not only dealing with statistical averages.

Now this is a tremendous impact in the area of morals and the impact of law and political life as well as religious life. It’s not minimizing at all the acceptance of Christ as savior its quite contrary there is no other way to come to God except on the basis of his finished work but unless this is framed in the concept that we're talking about truth and not just an endless series of relativistic things. Merely talking about accepting Christ as savior will never meet the humanist dilemma. There is only one real solution and that's right back where the early church was. The early church believed that only the Bible was the final authority. What these people really believed, and it gave them their whole strength was in the truth that the Bible as the absolute infallible word of God.