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Page 2 of 4
2000 years ago
THE SPREAD OF
CHRISTIANITY TO THE ROMANS AND BY THE ROMANS
The next phase of the story of Christianity is the conversion of some
Romans from their pagan faiths to Christianity. The man
responsible around AD 50 was the non Jewish travelling evangelist, the
Pharisee Paul. The Romans like the Greeks before them were wealthy
enough to have time on their hands to think. Indeed Roman scholars took
many of the thoughts of the Greek philosophers (Inc. Socrates and
Aristotle) to fine tune the stories and teachings of Jesus.
The message of the early Christians was so strong that inspite of Roman
resistance and in many places local persecution, within 100 years there
were centres of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, even in the
far outposts of Roman Britain. A good example though a little later is
from present day St Albans (20 miles north of London England): a priest
was fleeing a lynching mob and was hidden by an early local Christian
in the then Roman town of Verulamium. When confronted by the mob (AD
304) saying “have you seen a priest?” said he was
the
priest and was immediately killed. St Alban as he is now
known
was the first known English martyr. A huge abbey marks the
spot
where the murder took place
The breakthrough came with the conversion of the Roman Emperor
Constantine in AD 312 who set about making Christianity the official
religion of the Roman Empire. Things moved quickly.
Constantine
changed the name of the eastern capital of the Roman Empire from
Byzantium to Constantinople (After himself) and set up important
religious colleges in the attractive local countryside. One by the lake
called Nicaea. (Now in Turkey and called Iznik some 100 miles south
east of Istanbul). From this college, the Roman Christian
religious clerics produced a written document (in 325 AD) stating what
Christians should believe. (It is now called the Nicaean Creed. The
Latin for “I believe” is
“Credo”). It is
still used today as follows:
THE NICAEAN CREED
“I believe in
one God the
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible
and invisible: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only
begotten
son of God, Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God Light
of Light, Very God of very God, Begotten not made, Being of one
substance with the Father, By whom all things were made.
Who for us men, and for
our salvation
came down from Heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the
Virgin Mary, And was made man, And was crucified by Pontius Pilot, He
suffered and was buried, And on the third day he rose again according
to the scriptures, And ascended into Heaven, And sitteth on the right
hand of the Father. And he will come again with glory to
judge
both the quick and the dead: Whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the
Holy Ghost the
Lord giver of life, Who proceedeth from the father and the Son, Who
with the father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, Who
spake by the prophets. And I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic
Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of
sins. And I look for the Resurrection of the dead and the
life of
the world to come”. Amen
This creed lasted with very little competition for over 1000 years that
is until the Reformation (circa AD 1500).
However in
the hundred or so years before it was agreed, the Christian church
welcomed debate and intellectual speculation. The opposite
would
be the case as the Roman Popes fostered theological conformity.
Particularly and not surprisingly, in the 2nd century there was much
debate about the Holy Trinity (God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit being one
and the same thing.)
Saint Augustine of Hippo
(354-430)
Some call him the father of the Christian church. Born in
Thagaste close to the North African Roman town of Carthage (modern day
Tunisia) he took a Christian wife and was finally converted to
Christianity by the Roman Bishop of Milan St Ambrose. As
Bishop
of Hippo (300 miles west of Carthage in present day Algeria) he wrote
the most influential books on Christianity for more than 800
years. Of particular interest and importance to the English
was
his influence on the Roman Britain St Patrick who became the patron
saint of Ireland who travelled to Hippo to learn from him.
1500 YEARS AGO
CHRISTIANITY COMES TO
ENGLAND.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. THE IRISH
EFFECT.
SAINT PATRICK. MONASTERIES.
The next milestone in the development of the Roman Christian church
came in 590AD though the powerful dogma of Pope Gregory
1st More than anybody he was responsible
for removing
any government control over the Church. (He had to come to an agreement
with the ruling race in northern Italy at the time, the Lombards of
Milan, one of the Germanic tribes who assisted in the fall of the Roman
Empire)
Pope Gregory sponsored his emissary Augustine to fully convert England,
then ruled by the Saxons, to Christianity. This was the first organised
plan to spread Christianity to England. Around the same time
Irish missionaries (Columba 521-597) who had been converted to
Christianity by the Irish St Patrick movement, landed on the west coast
of Scotland. Both movements survived the vicious pagan Viking
invasions into both England and Ireland between 800 and 1000
AD.
The writings of the Venerable Bede (written around 700AD in a monastery
in Jarrow in Northumberland founded by the St Patrick movement) are a
testimonial to this.(e.g. his “Ecclesiastical History of the
English People”).
Three other major events took place in Europe to fully establish the
Christian Church across Europe.
The Roman Byzantium Empire centred in Constantinople was not over run
by the Germanic tribes as befell Rome
Pope Leo 3rd in about 800 came to a deal with the effective Emperor of
Europe, Charlemagne, and crowned him Emperor of the Western Church or
Holy Roman Emperor. (Charlemagne was of German stock whose court was in
Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle in the west of Germany.) On
Charlemagne’s death the crown passed to the German Kings. The
best remembered of course being the Habsburgs whose court was in Vienna
Austria and then perhaps Charles 5th from Burgundy now in
France
who also became king of Spain and Naples in Italy The
succession
of the Holy Roman Empire remained solid until 1800 when it collapsed
under Napoleon.
Perhaps the most holy, respected and useful activities of the Christian
church were their monasteries which were centres for dedicated
religious people to live, work and pray, generally eight times a
day. They became the best brains of their day and most
importantly did good works in their neighbourhood. This took the form
of creating books for reading before printing was invented, teaching,
the only real source of education at the time, and such things as
helping local farmers with capital projects they could not afford like
draining the land. The men and women who lived in monasteries
took vows to spend their lives doing good works in the name of
God. Marriage was disallowed for monks and nuns.
The first
simple monasteries were set up in Ireland by St Patrick where one of
their key jobs was to make copies, by hand of course, of all the vital
Christian books being rapidly destroyed by the Saxons and Vikings in
England. The official founder of the movement was the Italian
St
Benedict who was not a priest but set up 12 monasteries manned by 12
monks each. Around 525 AD he and a few monks established a centre in
Monte Cassino and set out the rules for monastic life which have not
changed much to this day. A number of universities owe their
origins to monasteries notably Paris 1100 and Oxford 1249.
The
Pope’s emissary St Augustine founded the Benedictine
monastery at
Canterbury in 597 AD
1000 YEARS AGO
POWER STRUGGLES BETWEEN
CHURCH AND KING.
POWER STRUGGLES BETWEEN
CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS
CRUSADES.
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
SPLITS BETWEEN ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE.
There were three main authorities “governing”
England over the next 500 years:
- The King
- His Barons (eventually became a parliament after Magna
Carta)
- And the Church
A power struggle waxed and waned between the three. The
Church
under the guidance of the Archbishop of Canterbury organised the daily
life of the people. A massive church building programme gave each
village a parish church. A monastery to help with major capital
projects was never far away.
A good example of the power struggle between an English King and Roman
Church is illustrated in the story of King Henry 2nd (1154-1189) and
his friend and Archbishop Thomas Becket. Henry was one of the
best kings England ever had and at the time was the best King in
Europe. He ruled the whole of the British Isles including
Ireland
and more of France than the contemporary French King. Henry was noted
for his efforts to improve justice for everybody, equally, regardless
of power or rank.
To put things in perspective, it was customary at this time for justice
to be metered out by the baron’s men in the most barbaric
ways. The suspect was proven guilty or innocent by immersing
a
bandaged hand into boiling water for some minutes. The man was innocent
if when the bandages were taken off he had no blisters! Some
men
were exempt from this, most notably the Bishops. Their judgement was
based on a test of eating bread at the trial. His peers were asked to
pray to the angel Gabriel and ask him to make the priest choke if
guilty. Not too many were found guilty! Henry wanted two
things.
The same rules for everybody and the judges to report to the King.
Things were brought to a head when a bishop was tried in the old way
for murder. The King complained to his friend and Archbishop
Becket. Becket maintained the church was exempt and not only
this, the final adjudicator for a churchman was the Pope in
Rome.
The friendship between the two men evaporated and Becket fled to
northern France. The King very much missed Becket who he had made his
political right hand man (Chancellor) as well as Archbishop.
Finally Becket returned to Canterbury Cathedral but the arguments
between these two highly intelligent men with different views
persisted. By chance Henry was overheard by four Knights to say
(perhaps in jest) “Why am I surrounded by such a load of dumb
heads none of whom have the guts to rid me of this pestilent
priest.” The Knights immediately travelled to
Canterbury
and killed Becket in his cathedral (1170). Of
course the
King was devastated but the story illustrated a political and religious
structure designed without a single line of authority and hence the
time bomb set to explode some 300 years later. (See the Reformation)
THE START OF AN
800 YEAR WAR WITH THE MUSLIMS
A little earlier, immediately after the turn of the millennium (and
coincidentally?) just 40 years after the breakaway from Rome by the
Church in Constantinople, 1054, see below) Pope Urban
2nd
in Rome answered a call for help from Constantinople(1095) for military
action against the Muslims who were threatening their territory. The
Pope thus called upon the kings across Europe to wage a holy war
against the Muslims mainly to recapture the Christian (and Jewish) holy
city of Jerusalem (Indeed the Muslims moved into Jerusalem very soon
after the start of their movement. Circa 700 AD) .
These
crusades lasted on and off almost 500 years and in general were an
expensive failure from a Christian point of view. The English Norman
King, Richard the Lion Heart who inherited the throne from Henry 2nd in
1189 spent most of his ten year reign, not looking after his extensive
empire in England and France but swanning about at the Popes behest in
middle eastern crusades (holy wars). He had some success in
the
sense he retook Jerusalem, and also had the sense to talk to the great
Muslim ruler of Egypt and Syria, the Turk Saladin. to get permanent
access for Christian pilgrims into Jerusalem.
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