Ecclesiology
Yuri Koszarycz
The Understanding of Church
in the West (11th - 13th Centuries)
Innocent III considered a crusade to regain the Holy Land
to be an urgent task of his pontificate. What he did not count
on was the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, who
never did reach Jerusalem. The triumphalism with which Innocent
greeted the establishment of primacial authority in Constantinople
demonstrated his global view of the Church as an institutional
force.
If the Fourth Crusade represented the low point of Innocent's
pontificate, then the Fourth Lateran Council called by him in
1215 was the high point of his pontificate (Brooke, 1971; Granfield,
1981; Powell, 1965). It was the first genuinely universal Council
in the Medieval West; not only Bishops but Abbots and Provosts
as well as the secular powers were invited. Representation was
accorded to all the various Orders within the Church and all
"Doctors" received the power to vote. In one sense,
the thirteenth century Church thus believed that the supreme
magisterium of the Church belonged to the Church as a whole and
not exclusively to the Bishops. The Council dealt mainly with
the preservation of faith, particularly against heretics. Decrees
were enacted on preaching, education of the clergy, elections,
marriage and tithes. "The assembly was an impressive testimony
of the standing and function of the papacy as the monarchic instrument
of governing Christendom" (Ullman, 1972: 232).
Theology within the Church of the 12th and thirteenth centuries
was still very much influenced by the writings of Augustine:
In theology and philosophy it was not only his teaching
that was of paramount influence; his whole outlook on the world
of men and things, above all his characteristic blending of the
natural and the supernatural, or rather his acceptance of human
life as it is in fact lived by the Christian, a human creature
and yet a child of God, impressed itself upon the whole fabric
of medieval religious thought so as to seem not merely one interpretation,
but the only possible outlook (Knowles and Obolensky, 1969: 250).
Augustine's world-view was unquestionably accepted, and
the Church as a physical and political reality was seen as being
in mystical communion with Christ. Christ was its head, and all
those who are joined by the Spirit, visible and invisible, earthly
and heavenly make up the Body, with the Holy Spirit being the
Soul of this communion. Augustine himself saw the earthly Church
as an inferior part of the total Church, and as Dulles expresses
it: Augustine saw it as "the communion of saints that exists
imperfectly here on earth and perfectly in the blessed in heaven"
(1978: 105).
Yet, these four centuries also saw the extra-ordinary contribution
of great saints and great intellectuals such as Bernard of Clairvaux,
Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Francis of
Assisi, Bonaventure, Thomas of Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William
of Ockham, and Catherine of Sienna to the philosophy, theology
and spirituality of the Western Church. These, and other scholars
of the time influenced Church teaching in a way not experienced
since St. Augustine. Table six, at the end of this module, presents
a time-line which indicates the richness of these centuries for
the development of Christian learning and spirituality.
Thomas Aquinas believed that "the Church essentially
consists in a divinising communion with God, whether incompletely
in this life or completely in the life of glory" (Dulles,
1978: 47). For Aquinas, the unifying force that bonded the earthly
and heavenly together was the Holy Spirit, for through grace
and the commitment to Christ human nature could be sublimated
and an interior union with God made possible. In this way grace
perfected nature (Knowles and Obolensky, 1969: 363). Thomas applied
Aristotelian principles of philosophy in his theological arguments.
In this way he endeavoured to build a bridge between faith and
knowledge. Yet within his own lifetime the intellectual insights
of Aquinas were not appreciated:
His conception of the relationship of faith and intelligence
was both too profound and too radical, and by the end of the
century in which he died, men in the theological faculties of
the universities were beginning to lose confidence in the power
of human intelligence to understand God and his works. As is
always the case, loss of confidence in the power of human intelligence
marked the beginning of the decline of a great culture (Dwyer,
1985: 182).
These centuries can be viewed through many windows; they
also witnessed the establishment of the Carthusians, the revival
of the Cistercians, the founding of the Carmelites, Franciscans
and Dominican order. The ideal that one should live a life as
closely related to that of heaven was promoted by reformers such
as Bernard of Clairvaux and by the monastic orders at Cluny,
where the ideal monk was seen as "a dedicated servitor who
by means of an almost perpetual stream of vocal prayer and praise
helped to form the earthly counterpart of the heavenly choir"
(Knowles and Obolensky, 1969: 255). Bernard believed and taught
that the Church must serve and nor demand service; must be poor,
not seek enrichment. To Pope Eugene (1145 - 1153) he had written:
"If we are to think highly of ourselves, we should perceive
that a burden of service is laid upon us, not the privilege of
lordship bestowed" (Nigg, 1959: 205).
It is interesting to note that under the Dominicans and
the Franciscan Friars (both groups won the patronage of Innocent
III) an alternative model of Church began to emerge. During his
pontificate, Innocent was increasingly confronted by a slightly
better educated population, who were becoming increasingly critical
of a legally fixed and judicially enacted brand of Christianity.
It is interesting to note, when considering his acceptance of
the Franciscans and Dominicans, that he seemed to be sympathetic
to such non-conformists and their emphasis on pastoral work and
apostolic poverty. His attitude seems quite enlightened as long
as their was no sin against "divine majesty" and no
compromise with the orthodoxy of faith. The twelth and thirteenth
century saw the building of many cathedrals to contain relics
and major works of religious art. The wealthy were major contributors,
many buying favours and indulgences through their patronage:
In one sense the glorious cathedral was the epitome
of everything that was wrong with the late Middle Ages: signs
of privilege and wealth, segregation from the masses and vast
centers of relic collecting, money-making shrines and vast commercial
enterprises inflicted on the common people by nobility and wealthy
aristocrats (Bausch, 1981: 213).
In terms of models of Church, Innocent III's pontificate
presents a contradiction: A Church which was so structured that
all power and authority came from one person; a Church which
was brutal and violent through the Crusades and the Inquisition;
a Church which showed service to the poor and needy through the
Franciscans and Dominicans; a Church that stood for no opposition
in its theological authority; a Church that patronised the establishment
of centres of higher learning where men such as Thomas Aquinas
would develop new ways of theological reflection.
In a very real sense, Innocent's reign saw the zenith of
the papal monarchy with its centre in the curia. The Church as
a community of the faithful had been replaced by a narrower hierarchical
church, comprising clerical orders in ascending ranks jealously
guarding their rights and privileges. Even the reforming Fourth
Lateran Council had its program imposed upon it by Innocent,
and in reality it was to the papacy that the people looked to
reform the Church. Innocent's pontificate presents for church
historians a dramatic dichotomy - the institutionalised church
beginning to give birth to the servant Church. Bausch quotes
Professor Knowles in a final assessment of this pontificate:
Innocent III's pontificate is the brief summer of papal
world government. Before him the greatest of his predecessors
were fighting to attain a position of control; after him, successors
used the weapons of power with an increasing lack of spiritual
wisdom and political insight. Innocent alone was able to make
himself obeyed when acting in the interests of those he commanded.
We may think, with the hindsight of centuries, that the conception
of the papacy which he inherited and developed was fatal, in
that it aimed at what was not attainable and undesirable, the
subordination of the secular policy to the control of a spiritual
power, but this conception was as acceptable and desirable to
his age as has been to our own the conception of a harmonious
and peaceful direction of the world by a league or union of nations.
...It is impossible to dismiss the whole of Innocent's
government of the Church as an exhibition of power politics to
the exercise of an ambitious and egotistical man or even as an
achievement of mere clearsighted efficiency. He appears rather
as one who was indeed concerned to use and extend all the powers
of his office to forward the welfare of something greater, the
Church of Christ throughout Europe, and the eternal welfare of
her children...The judgement which sees in him no more than a
mitred statesman, a papal Richelieu, a loveless hierocrat, does
not square with evidence. The man, who in the midst of business,
could recognise and bless the unknown and apparently resourceless,
radical Francis was not only farsighted but spiritually clearsighted.
He died when the world still needed him, when he might have saved
the papacy...He died at Perugia; his court left him, and his
robes and goods and very body were pillaged by his servants (Bausch,
1981: 225 - 226).
This same theocratic monarch who began the reform by allowing
a place for the Franciscan and Dominican Orders "saved the
Church from petrification in a rigid hierarchy; it made possible
its adoption to the requirements of a new social environment
- namely the rising towns with their urban proletariat... it
allowed room for new lively spirits of deep religious feeling,
which earlier policy had driven out of the Church" (Barraclough,
1968: 129).
The 12th and 13th centuries were a time of change not only
in the ecclesiastical but also secular spheres. It was an age
which witnessed the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the signing
of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, the ascendancy of the Hapsburgs
to power, and the institution of the Papal Inquisition. The society
of the period was hierarchical in structure, being made of established
estates or orders, each having its duties, rights and obligations,
its privileges, honours, prerogatives and functions. Canon law
became a power that produced not only a highly organised, political
and central papacy, but also a power that so influenced societal
law, that it gave rise to a new secular order and a culture that
was almost totally ecclesiastical (Congar, 1969: 29).
The thirteenth century witnessed the foundations of universities
in Paris, Padua, Naples, Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg and Cologne,
as well as a re-discovery of the writings of Aristotle who greatly
influenced the thinking of medieval scholars - Thomas Aquinas
in particular. "These universities quickly rose to importance
and became famous throughout Europe. They were given special
privileges by the Popes, including freedom from interference
by the local bishop" (Dwyer, 1985: 178). These universities
were to play a vital role in the intellectual life in the centuries
to follow. Previously, judgements of orthodoxy had been pronounced
by regional bishops' councils, and were sometimes followed by
appeals to Rome. However in the thirteenth century universities
began to take on a magisterial role. For example, the doctrinal
decrees of both the Council of Lyons in 1245 and 1274 were submitted
to the universities for approval before being published.
This century witnessed the uprooting of the papacy from
Rome and its re- establishment in Avignon for a period for almost
seventy years. The fourteenth century ended in witnessing a papacy
in turmoil and disarray, forced into a schism which saw three
rival popes enthroned simultaneously in confusion and conflict.
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