Story of Civilization – IV.xxvi.iv – IV.xxxii.v

The story of the Middle Ages is in large part the story of the Roman Catholic Church.  But what exactly was the Church?  It was not a state, though at times it acted like one.  It was not merely a religious organization, as we currently understand the concept.  Nor was it a cultural or ethnic collective, for it contained within it a broad range of Western European cultures.

I would posit that there is in fact no single word that can describe the Church of the Middle Ages, that it was an entity unique to history.  It was unique both in the breadth and depth of its influence on the peoples under its control, and in the relative lack of civil control it exercised relative to what would be usual for an entity of its size and power.

Perhaps the key to understanding the nature of the Church lies in the tangled webs of the feudalistic power structure.  Feudalism revolved around lords, who controlled the land, and vassals, whom the lords permitted to use the land in exchange for allegiance.  (Cf. Wikipedia.)  A lord himself could be holding lands “in fief” from another lord, and be his vassal.  In fact, almost all lords were vassals, at least in name, to some higher lord; the Pope and a few kings were the only exceptions.  Lords were responsible for the internal peace and external security of the lands under their control.

A common practice was for a feudal sovereign to give his lands as a gift to the Pope, and become the Pope’s vassal, in exchange for Papal support, usually in the form of a declaration of the sovereign’s righteousness in a war against his neighbors.  At one time or another, it seems that nearly every sovereign in Europe resorted to this tactic (e.g. Portugal).  The consequence was that, in theory, the Pope exercised secular power over much of Europe, although the giving and taking of Papal fiefs was frequent enough that at no time did the Pope come near to complete control.

Such power was theoretical at best; it is not clear that the secular power that came theoretically with Papal suzerainty was ever exercised with much success beyond the Papal States.

This is not to say that the Pope had no power, or even little power.  If money is power, the Pope was for much of the Middle Ages the most powerful man in Europe, by far.  The Church directly owned huge fractions of land in all of Western Europe, ranging from a fifth (England) to half (Livonia), and on lands that it did not own, it received the tithe, or tenth part of the revenue.  These lands accounted for the local revenues of the Church, and may have paid the expenses of the Church’s numerous charitable works, and the building of its monasteries and cathedrals, the latter of which are perhaps the grandest cultural achievement of the Middle Ages, or perhaps any age.

But the true power of the papacy rested, I think, in the revenues that went directly to the Pope.  He siphoned from various sources of local revenue, and had his own revenues as well.  What is important, in the end, is that his income is estimated to have been greater than that of all of the lesser sovereigns of Europe combined.  It was this income that tempted so many popes into wars, crusades, and power struggles.

This was the nature of the papacy, but what was the nature of the Church itself?  The theological and ethical elements of Catholicism were as important in the Middle Ages as ever, and local priests and monks propounded constantly the doctrines of what might be called traditional Christianity; indeed, one of the few virtues of the modern Catholic Church is that it has functioned remarkably well to preserve these doctrines relatively unchanged.  The most striking figures of this local dissemination of Catholic doctrine were the mendicant saints, of whom the most prominent example is Francis of Assisi.  Saint Francis lived a life of extreme poverty and asceticism, preaching the faith both by word and example, and following what he regarded as the simplest essences of Jesus’ teachings.

Not all saints were as benign as Francis.  Saint Dominic was one of the prime movers of the Inquisition.  Perhaps it was merely the juxtaposition of two unrelated stories playing tricks on my mind, but as I read the story of Saint Dominic, I could not help but compare it to the story I had just read of the remarkable escape of a New York Times reporter from the Taliban.

Indeed, perhaps the Taliban is the closest modern analogue of the Church of the Middle Ages.  Like the Church, the Taliban, according to Mr. Rohde, exercises both secular and religious control over a large area of Afghanistan/Pakistan.  Without speaking of the higher echelons, at the lower echelons, the Taliban and the Church look remarkably similar.  The vast majority of the subjects are simple people of faith; the actual footsoldiers of the faith, be they inquisitors, monks, priests, or mendicant saints, or alternatively, soldiers, guards, and insurrectionists, have diverse motivations, but share several things in common: they are usually young men, removed from what might be regarded as the normal occupations of youth, and in particular, social intercourse with young women.  The Inquisition inflicted similar terrors in some localities that the Taliban inflicts on the civilians of its own state today, to wit constant fear and occasional violent death.

As I have remarked previously, the great sin of modern Christianity is hypocrisy; the great sin of modern Islam is the violence it commits in the name of faith.  As I have said before, in truth, Islam is a religion of violence, but perhaps hypocrisy is the lesser of the two evils.  It is to be hoped that Islam will soon mature, with wealth, from a religion of violence to a religion of hypocrisy.

A Sermon – Isaiah 9:1-6

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.  You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing, as they rejoice before you as at the harvest, as people make merry when dividing spoils.  For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.  For every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for flames.  For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests.  They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.  His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, from David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever.  The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this!”

In this passage we have expressed the messianic hope that is one of Christianity’s most spectacular messages.  One can hardly read this passage without getting goosebumps at the wondrous descriptions of the savior.  The messianic hope, indeed, is one of the three fundamental virtues of Christianity: faith, hope, and love.

A priest could preach a very moving sermon on hope, and on the blessings that a savior could bring to the world.  How wondrous it would be if one God-man could rescue us from the strife and faction that infests every corner of our world, could wrest from us the poverty and pollution that we cling to as a heritage.  How wonderful to be children again, with a Father Forever to watch over us, to administer to us justice, and to take responsibility for us!

The greatest evil of Christianity is just this false hope.  No such things will occur.  Old men will never be innocent again, the flower of our youth is gone forever.  Peace will not be seen on Earth in our lifetimes, nor justice, nor cleanliness.  A religion that preaches that these things will be delivered to us, given to us, as our destined heritage, is a false religion.

God is dead, and so we must be the heroes of our own lives.  This message is chilling, but also liberating.  We are freed from the slavery of expectation, empowered to take action.  If we wish for peace, we must work for it.  We must create our own peace, our own justice, our own prosperity.  It will not be given to us.

There is no power watching over us, no savior to redeem our sins.  No “something out there” loves us; it is only we that love ourselves, and only we that are protecting ourselves.  It is only we that can grant happiness.

Those we have wronged, we have wronged, and only they can forgive us.  Those who have died in poverty, misery, and violence, are dead forever.  Some will say that to deny the Christian storyline denies their suffering meaning, but I say the opposite.  I say that to affirm that story, to claim that this suffering is part of some deity’s grand scheme of good, or to say that it will be some day redeemed or made right, this deprives that suffering of meaning.  Only by recognizing the great magnitude of evil that our own failings as a race have allowed to happen will the meaning of that suffering emerge; only by owning these sins, and learning from them, will that suffering and those sins become part of a better future.  Even still, the horrible truth remains: for those that lived and died in suffering, there is only suffering.

It has been said by some, ironically, that “Freedom is Slavery.”  I say that this is true, and its converse too.  The slavery of religion brings freedom from responsibility; to be a servant of God is to be free from the responsibility for the evil that occurs in the world, to be free from the eternal sorrow at the irredeemable suffering that has already occurred.  To be a servant of God is much like being a “citizen” of the Chinese state; it is the obligation of God the Messiah, or the state, to provide justice and judgment, peace and heroism, in the end.  It is not for the Christian or Chinese slave to question the directives of his master; his duty is only to obey, no matter to what atrocities this may lead.

Freedom is slavery.  To reject these doctrines, that someone else, some other power, will save us and provide for us, is to be burdened with a responsibility that the weak-minded think so awesome that they assign it to super-human entities.  In a way, our responsibility as free people is even greater than that which the Christians assign to their God… we must not only make the good immanent, we must first learn what it is… God has the fortune of already knowing this.  But once knowing the good, it becomes our onerous duty to advance it at every step; every second of leisure, every diversion, is time stolen from the harshest of masters.  For not to advance the right is as great a sin as to advance the wrong.

This Christmas, instead of seeking a new savior in the world, a hero who will bring us peace and justice, let us realize that only we can be such heroes, and the longer we fail to recognize this, the greater are those things we irrevocably lose.

Story of Civilization – III.xxiv.vii – III.xxvii.ii

The story of Joshua (Jesus) and Paul is remarkable, but as Durant says, nothing comes out of nothing.  Past pages have already covered the deepening religiousness of the Roman people during the later parts of the empire.  We have also seen the rise of the mystery cults of Isis and Osiris, Mithras, and Dionysus.  We have seen the philosophy of Philo, and other references to the doctrine of the Logos.  Even, in the years preceding Joshua, we see that the messianic movement dominated the religious culture of the Hebrew people.

But all of these currents did not have to be united by Joshua and Paul.  Like so many other currents of thought in human history, they could have met, intermixed, and then dispersed again.  It was not inevitable that Hellenized Jews would contribute anything more to Western thought than Hellenized Parthians.  Nor was it inevitable that a single, fanatical, monotheistic religion would take Europe by storm; Durant’s constant observations of the polytheism and old faiths underlying the practice of Christianity are proof enough of this.

It is thus tempting to wonder how history would have occurred had none of this happened – had Joshua choked on a nut as a child, or Paul gotten kicked by a camel.  After the painful throes of its birth and early years, Roman Catholicism was a powerful force of order in Europe.  Who knows but that without monks patiently keeping cultural life alive, the printing press would never have been invented?

Perhaps there are some more obvious consequences, though.  The ascetic facet of Christianity, and in particular, the general opprobrium cast upon relations between the sexes, was what ultimately released England from the authority of religion.  An even greater zeal drove Martin Luther and the Reformation to tear away irrevocably the religious fervor of the people from patriotism.  Perhaps Christianity is responsible for the modern secular state, and without it, we would all still be offering hecatombs to Zeus as the protector of the state.