There is no such thing as church history. This is because the church can never be studied in isolation as it is always related to the wider social, economic and political context of the day. The church may not be of the world but it is most definitely in the world and must always be seen as such. In history then, there is a two way process whereby the church has an influence on the rest of society and the society influences the church. This is because it is people from society who make up the church. This series of articles will look at what the church of the middle ages was like, and how it related to the people who were both inside and outside it.
We are told that history repeats itself because nobody listens to it, but more realistically history repeats itself because man is essentially the same from one generation to the next. He has the same aspirations, fears and flaws; yet the way that these are expressed differs from age to age. This is why each period of history is different. The fact that man is the same yet different is what makes a study of the people who formed the medieval church directly applicable to our Christian lives and experiences of God today. Their God is now our God and their problems are now our problems, and we can learn from the struggles of those who have sought God before us.
The question that haunted medieval man was that of his own salvation. The existence of God was never questioned and the heart-cry of medieval society was a desire to know God and achieve intimacy with the divine. Leading a life pleasing to God was the uppermost concern, and the wide diversity of medieval piety is simply because people answered the question, 'How can I best lead a holy life?' in so many different ways.
Each new way of leading a holy life was thought to be progressively more acceptable to God by its proponents than the ones that had gone before. Sunch 'new ways' were normally inspired by a desire to break away from the corruption and worldliness which was percieved in the older or more established forms of Godly living. These new ways often became corrupt themselves and over time breakaways from them were hailed as a newer and more perfect way of following God. This roller-coaster ride of corruption and reform is basically the story of popular medieval religion as man battled to define and discover what it really meant to be a Christian.
Whilst this was the story of religion at 'grass-roots' level, at an organisational and hierarchical level, the church developed along a different line. It became more organised, more bureaucratic, more legal, more centralised and basically more powerful on a European scale. This process was spearheaded by the papacy and reached its pinnacle under Pope Innocent III in the early 13th Century. He embodied what became known as the 'papal monarchy' - a situation where the popes literally were kings in their own world, of which the fourth Lateran Council of 1215 was the highlight. The relative importance of spiritual and secular power in the world was a constant question in the middle ages with both secular emperors and kings, and the popes asserting their claims to rule by divine authority with God's commands for God's people proceeding out of their mouths. The power of the church is hard to exaggerate: its economic and political influence was huge, as its wealth, movements like the crusades, and even the number of churches that exist from this period show.
Christianity affected all men in Europe at every level and in every way. Such breadth however led to much diversity and the land of Medieval religion really is a land of contrasts. Innocent III, one of the most magnificent of all Medieval popes, is recorded holding up the relic of the seamless robe of the Lord, measuring it against himself and saying, "The Lord must have been a man of small stature." On the other hand, man's feelings of extreme sinfulness and desire for God are evident. Anselm of Bec in the late 11th Century wrote the following:
'I was in darkness knowing nothing of myself, in a slippery place, for I was weak and prone to fall into sin, I was descending into the chaos of hell, for in my first parents I had fallen from righteousness to wickedness, which is the way into hell... The weight of original sin dragged me downwards, and the unbearable burden of the judgement of God pressed upon me; my demon enemies thrust vehemently against me to make me do other damnable sins...'
Anselm was a great proponent of the monastic movement. For him the only real option for living a Christian life in the world was within the confines of a monastic cloister and next time we shall examine the phenomenon (which lasted for more than a thousand years) that resulted in people like Anselm seeking God by joining contemplative, ascetic orders. Eadmer, Anselm's biographer, records Anselm's decision making process by stating that Anselm, 'began to resolve in his mind how he could best form his life according to God's will, and he came to the conclusion that there was nothing in the life of men superior to the life of a monk...'
