5. City of God in the “Dark Ages”: Benedict to Gregory the Great
CHAPTER 5
City of God in the “Dark Ages”
Benedict to Gregory the Great
The funniest book I have ever read is John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, often labeled a cult classic. The main character, Ignatius Reilly, is a slob. He’s not just grossly overweight and a sloppy dresser with serious intestinal and gas issues, but he’s lazy and disrespectful and— though it’s hard to believe — incredibly arrogant. His primary occupation is writing his book, each section beginning with “Dear Reader.” But finally his mother pushes her freeloading son out to get a job. He works for a time in a pants factory and then pushes a hotdog-cart, a job that ends abruptly when his employer discovers he is eating all the profits.
What I find most amusing about the book is that Ignatius, himself a philosopher of sorts, looks to Boethius, the early medieval author of The Consolation of Philosophy, as his idol. I had memorized the name Boethius in order to pass a college philosophy test, but I had never given him further thought until I read this novel.
A late riser, Ignatius, lying in bed, “pulled his flannel nightshirt up and looked at his bloated stomach … contemplating the unfortunate turn that events had taken since the Reformation.” He is worried about his bad fortune, fearing he will go the way of Boethius and be tortured and killed.
Later in the book the “large, elegant, limited edition” of The Consolation of Philosophy is used as a weapon by a crime suspect about to be arrested by an undercover policeman. Still later, the name Boethius serves as a pick-up line for Ignatius, who meets Miss O’Hara, a “Boethian” stripper, in a dirty, dingy nightclub. The last time we hear of the book, we learn that “somebody stole it off him in the toilet”— a key piece of evidence in a conspiracy against Ignatius.
Of all the medieval writers, Boethius is truly the most accessible today, and thanks to Ignatius Reilly, The Consolation of Philosophy has enjoyed a bit of a revival in recent years.
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
The rocky road between ancient and medieval times, peppered with potholes, affords no mile markers or signposts. The church stumbles along, its flickering lamp casting shadows along the trail of the past as it tries to reconstruct its scenes, revive its echoes, and kindle the passion it once possessed. The glories of the ancient days, however, can never be recovered — most notably “Christian” Rome. Like Humpty Dumpty, the city has had a great fall, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can never put Rome back together again.
Augustine stands spread-eagled, like a colossus, straddling both the fourth and the fifth centuries. His immensely influential City of God seeks to explain the great calamities that have come upon the world from his — and from God’s — perspective. Other important figures arrive later on the scene to make their imprints not only on the church but in political, military, and economic affairs as well. This is a time when church and state are struggling through courtship conflicts, going their separate ways in anger, and then finding romance again. Most rulers after the era of Constantine had close Christian connections. The on-again, off-again courtship of church and state is seen in the lives of the leading figures of the age, including Boethius, Pope Leo I, Benedict, Pope Gregory the Great, and Saint Patrick.
By the beginning of the fifth century the church was well established in Rome, a cultural center as well as the financial hub of the entire region. The statement “All roads lead to Rome” was not an exaggeration. In the century before the birth of Christ, manual laborers and slaves had constructed a vast network of concrete roads leading to and from the city. Churches and government buildings, constructed from stone and concrete, were made to last. They demonstrated the marvels of advanced engineering, as did the hundreds of miles of underground aqueducts providing water for agricultural and industrial enterprises as well as for private homes, public fountains, sewers, and the city’s celebrated baths.
Situated on seven hills, Rome was home not only to the Coliseum, the Forum, the Pantheon, and other government edifices, but also to aristocrats living in palatial wooded estates as well as teeming masses of manual laborers packed into crowded inner-city ghettos. With a population of a million, Rome was the most economically diverse and cosmopolitan city of the age. What other location in the era of Emperor Constantine afforded the church so many resources for consolidation and expansion? Indeed, Constantine’s ambitious program of basilica building was remarkable, and the name Christian carried prestige. The once rag-tag church on the run was now holding its head high.
PARADE OF HISTORY
The western church of the fifth century seems almost to retreat, as wave after wave of barbarian marauders march into Rome. But amid the desecration there are bright spots. Martin of Tours is parading his cavalry regiment through the countryside of France when his life is instantly transformed in an encounter with Christ in the form of a beggar. Patrick, taken as a slave to Ireland, escapes and returns to Britain only to courageously march back to Ireland as a missionary. Today no saint outranks him for sheer parade power, as cities around the world celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
But storm clouds had been brewing on the horizon—and not for the church only. Despite efforts to ratchet up homeland security, terrorists were penetrating the leaky borders. It would be simplistic to compare the centuries-old Roman Empire with a twentieth-century superpower, but there are some similarities; and the sack of Rome on August 24, 410, was similar in some respects to New York City’s 9 – 11. As was the case in New York, Rome had been previously attacked, and more attacks should have been expected. But there was a sense of invincibility. Alaric, like Osama bin Laden, reigned over innumerable terrorist cells and was hiding a stash of weapons. But it was presumed that the empire, with its powerful military advantage, would prevail. “Mission accomplished” would be prematurely emblazoned on the banners flying over the capital.
WHAT DOES A BARBARIAN USE FOR KINDLING?
From time to time, a tribe of barbarians roared into Rome and made a terrible mess. Since these stalwart fellows largely lacked written languages, they did not understand about libraries. What was the use of having huge rooms stacked full of crackly stuff rolled around a stick? These weird objects burned very easily, however, and the wisdom of the ages went to kindle campfires.
Rose Williams,
The Lighter Side of the Dark Ages
As is true today, there was in Roman culture a disturbing penchant for casting blame, for trying to make sense of the catastrophic events from a sociological and theological and historical perspective. Pagans blamed Christians (who had enjoyed preferential status for most of a century) for what was wrong in the empire, including their lack of military service and their useless monastic escape to the desert. Augustine shot back, arguing that Rome had long been a decadent city. In his philosophy of history, The City of God, he interpreted history in light of God’s redemptive acts, pointing to the struggle between the heavenly city and the earthly city symbolized by Jerusalem and Babylon. Though a laborious tome, it served to guide both scholars and clerics for more than a millennium.
FALL OF ROME
The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long…. As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear, without surprise or scandal, that the introduction, or at least the abuse, of Christianity had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and [weakness]; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of the military spirit were buried in the cloister; a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the [cloister] …; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody, and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods….
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
A generation earlier, when the Roman army was overwhelmed at Adrianople in 378, Ambrose of Milan drew his conclusion from an Old Testament prophet. The enemy, he speculated, was the very Gog of which Ezekiel had warned: “The end of the world is coming upon us,” he wailed.
While Augustine argued that Christians should not be blamed for the fall of Rome — that pagans themselves were culpable — his two-city model did not encourage Christians to actively defend the worldly empire. Unlike Jerome, Augustine did not painfully lament the fall of Rome. Indeed, he saw Rome in all its materialistic glory and rebellion against God as the epitome of worldliness. The heavenly City of God, on the other hand, was centered on spiritual things. Nevertheless, Augustine’s magnum opus not only served medieval monasticism well but also set the stage for the growing power of the Roman Catholic Church.
Speculation on the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire were rife in the fifth century and following. One story widely circulated pointed a finger at the emperor himself. According to Procopius, the palace at Ravenna was occupied by nothing less than imperial fools. When informed by his chief of staff that Rome had perished, Emperor Honorius wailed in anguish, “Tis not an hour [has passed since] she was feeding from my hand,” imagining that his pet chicken by that name had died. When the official explained to him that he had been referring to the metropolis of Rome, the emperor was relieved.
ULFILAS AND MISSION OUTREACH
Some imagine that Alaric’s military attacks on Rome came from irreligious barbarians. In actuality most of them were professing Christians whose conversion to the faith was prompted by the ministry of Ulfilas (c. 310 – 383). Born one hundred years before Alaric’s sack of Rome, Ulfilas had been deeply concerned about the warlike ways of the Gothic peoples he had come to serve. Indeed, so concerned was he that when he translated the Bible into their language he omitted the books of Samuel and Chronicles because of their militaristic content. But any such lack of biblical support for their warring ways did not deter these Goths in battle.
Even if these barbarians were Christians, they were Arians and thus shunned by the Roman Church — worse in the minds of many than out-and-out pagans. Jerome, with strong anti-Arian bias, sarcastically describes them: “Those who had formerly used wagons for dwellings, now use a wagon for a church.” What did they learn in their wagon churches? Here is the creed of Ulfilas:
I, Ulfila, bishop and confessor, have always so believed, and in this, the one true faith, I make the journey to my Lord; I believe in one God the Father, the only unbegotten and invisible, and in his only-begotten son, our Lord and God, the designer and maker of all creation, having none other like him (so that one alone among all beings is God the Father, who is also the God of our God); and in one Holy Spirit, the illuminating and sanctifying power….
THE COMING OF TERRITORIAL CHRISTIANITY
In earlier Christian history, in the Christianity of the old Roman Empire, conversion, sealed by baptism, marked a person’s entrance into a new community. In the experience of northern and western Europe, Christian conversion led rather to a symbolic reordering of the community already existing.
This is the birthplace of territorial Christianity, the origin of the idea of the Christian nation. No Constantine, no Theodosius, could have envisaged the form of the territorial Christianity that developed in the north. The Roman Empire that they ruled had too much diversity, too many interest groups, too much inbuilt pluralism, to sustain anything of the kind. But the northern peoples, with no easy way of dividing sacred and profane custom, produced territorial Christianity by their need to have a single body of custom. A single people must follow a single code.
To this extent, territorial Christianity reflected the continuation of a principle inherent in the primal cultures of the north. But it also transcended these cultures…. In a sense the church continued the Roman Empire; if Rome had lost imperial political significance, it was still the set of the Empire of Christ…. In entering the Christian faith the peoples of the north and west entered a wider universe, recognized wider kinships, than they had done before: a single assembly of Christian princes and peoples, a single church, a single sacred language, a single tradition of learning.
Andrew F. Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History
Alaric I is often identified as the one individual most responsible for the Fall of Rome. Born into a Gothic military family of Arian Christians, he rose to the rank of a Visigoth warrior king whose military expertise served the Roman Empire well until he, with good reasons, turned against his employer. His aim, however, was never to bring Rome to ruins. Far from it. He aspired to be the empire’s leading general, and for that role he was willing to negotiate. But Honorius was more concerned about his own safety than that of Rome. Alaric and his hoards of backwoods soldiers and their women and children simply moved into the city. Rape and murder were uncommon, but fear was everywhere.
Alaric died soon after his army sacked Rome and before he realized his goal of occupying North Africa. The barbarian invaders who followed in his wake appeared to have no misgivings about rape and murder and pillage. Then, in 476, a German warrior chief forced Emperor Romulus Augustus to abdicate his throne, thus ending once and for all the Western Roman Empire that had spanned continents for some twelve hundred years. Fleeing the barbarian hordes, many of the urban dwellers escaped to North Africa or into the European countryside, leaving behind all the lavish wealth and conveniences of old Rome.
Despite the devastation in 410, Rome would remain an important center of church activities, though by the end of the fifth century the population had dropped to some fifty thousand. The bishop of Rome had for some time been recognized as the “first among equals” (the other “equals” being the bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem). The recognition of the bishop of Rome as pope, however, would not be fully developed until the time of Leo I, who set forth not only the primacy of Rome but also the supreme power of the pope. He was an administrative genius who strongly defended Rome and is remembered for his diplomatic coup in meeting Attila the Hun outside the city walls in 452, successfully convincing the barbarian general not to sack the city.
EVERYDAY LIFE
The Backwoods of the “Dark Ages”
The term Dark Ages, long used to identify the early Middle Ages and no longer politically correct, is not without justification. Civilization seemed to go in reverse and retreat into the back woods. “What is there to please us in this world?” Pope Gregory lamented. “Everywhere we see sorrow and lamentation. The cities and towns are destroyed, the fields are laid waste and the land returns to solitude. No peasant is left to till the fields, there are few inhabitants left in the cities, and yet even these scanty remnants of humanity are still subject to ceaseless sufferings…. Some are led away captive, others are mutilated and still more slain before our eyes.”
It is difficult to exaggerate the backward fall of civilization into the “Dark Ages.” The high civilizations of classical Greece and Rome had virtually disappeared in many regions in the generations after the sack of Rome. Outside the Mediterranean world, Europe was populated with primitive bands of warring barbarians who had no established towns or written languages, not even stone architecture. Nor were there organized political or religious entities. Indeed, Europe was largely a cultural vacuum.
Enter the church. With military and missionary power combined, the Christian faith, beginning in the fifth century, would move north even as barbarians were pushing south. Once a Mediterranean religion, Christianity would spread throughout the whole of Europe. A vast army of missionary monks, initially commissioned by Gregory, brought their culture with them: education, agriculture, politics, and law, all under the umbrella of the Christian faith. Indeed, Pope Gregory I is sometimes identified as the Father of Western Culture.
The monks not only brought Latin culture, but they also helped restore the ruined countryside by tilling the soil and introducing new agricultural methods. Monasteries were farms and schools of learning all in one It is incorrect, however, to imagine Christianity coming via Latin higher learning Rather, it came largely through what has been described as Christian mythology or the cult of the saints — a cult dependent on relics and associated miracles The faith was often introduced through power encounter, with monks countering shamans on their own terms.
LIFE IN THE VAST WESTERN BACKWOODS
The new Western world which emerged, the world of the first half of the Middle Ages, was to be a world where countrysides were vastly more important than towns — which indeed shrank to a vanishing point — and where life was a very primitive thing and a great contrast to life in the centuries-old urban civilization of the Hellenistic East where the Church was born and for four hundred years had its first developments. This world of peasants and country-bred, fighting warrior-lords and barbarian princes was an all but illiterate world, and the language they spoke was moving ever further and further away, not from the tongue of Cicero only, but from anything that resembled grammatical Latin…. Life in this vast Western backwoods — on this vast frontier — was hard and cruel, of course; filled with all the violent crime one cares to imagine.
Philip Hughes, A Popular History of the Reformation
Leo I: First Real Pope
Born into an aristocratic family ten years before the sack of Rome, Leo (c. 400 – 461) was singled out by the emperor to serve as a diplomatic envoy in settling a dispute in Gaul. While he was away, the bishop of Rome died, and Leo was unanimously elected to fill the post. He moved quickly to secure power, insisting that popes were in a direct line of succession from the apostles and that anyone who rejected papal authority was not within the “body of Christ.” He consolidated this authority by moving against heretics, particularly Pelagians and Manicheans.
Leo, in the judgment of many historians was the first real pope. The term pope (papas in Greek) did not always specify the head of the church. It was used for bishops and even more broadly as a term of respect for church officials. But beginning with Leo, the term began to be used almost exclusively for the bishop of Rome. Less than a century earlier, Damasus I (who authorized the Vulgate translation) sought to elevate his position as bishop of Rome to head of the church. But true papal supremacy was not clearly defined until the reign of Leo, coming to full bloom under Gregory I.
Leo’s rule was theological as well as political. As was true in earlier centuries, so-called heretics often served to clarify doctrine. Such was the case when Leo received a letter in 448 from Eutyches, an abbot in a monastery near Constantinople. Eutyches writes of the influence of the Nestorian heresy (that separated Christ’s two natures by insisting God could not be a baby in a manger). But then he himself comes under fire for allegedly subscribing to the same heresy and is excommunicated by Bishop Flavian. He asks Leo to reinstate him, and when Leo fails to act, he is absolved in a “robber council,” an action that is perceived to be a threat to papal power and is promptly annulled by Leo — supported by Emperor Theodosius II (of the East).
In 449 Leo writes a letter to Bishop Flavian. This “Tome of Leo” becomes a key document as the church continues to define orthodoxy at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Here Leo’s definition of the two natures of Christ is deemed the orthodox position. He illustrates the problem by referencing the “scandal” relating to Eutyches. The abbot seeks to “dissolve Jesus” in his endeavor “to separate the human nature from him, and to make void by shameless inventions that mystery by which alone we have been saved.” Leo charges Eutyches with “senseless blindness with regard to his Passion” in thinking “the Lord’s crucifixion to be unreal.”
Eutyches is anything but a rookie just out of seminary. He is seventy years old and the head of a monastery of some three hundred monks. He refuses to appear before Bishop Flavian, convinced that the deck is stacked against him. When he finally does appear and is questioned, he waffles on precisely what he is willing to confess. But the statement he makes leaves no doubt among the supporters of Leo that he is a heretic. “I confess that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but after the union I confess one nature.”
Leo regards such a confession as blatant heresy, not only “absurd and perverse” but also “extremely foolish and extremely blasphemous.” He seeks to clarify the incarnation and the twofold nature of Christ with words that rise above dry dogma:
Without detriment therefore to the properties of either nature and substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt belonging to our condition inviolable nature was united with possible nature, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and not die with the other.
Pope Leo the Great meets Attalia
Heresy is not the only matter weighing Leo down. Only a few years after the landmark Council of Chalcedon, he is facing a desperate situation in Rome — those pesky barbarians again threatening to sack the city. Attila, nicknamed “the scourge of God,” is making his way to Rome. One early account serves to establish Leo as “the Great” for the centuries that follow. According to the anonymous author, Attila “came into Italy, inflamed with fury, after he had laid waste with most savage frenzy Thrace and Illyricum, Macedonia and Moesia, Achaia and Greece, Pannonia and Germany. He was utterly cruel in inflicting torture, greedy in plundering, insolent in abuse.” Leo, in his fifties, stands strong. Though he might have objected to the way he is portrayed, his saintliness is secure:
The old man of harmless simplicity, venerable in his gray hair and his majestic garb, ready of his own will to give himself entirely for the defense of his flock, went forth to meet the tyrant … and he spoke to the grim monarch, saying “The senate and the people of Rome, once conquerors of the world, now indeed vanquished, come before thee as suppliants. We pray for mercy and deliverance. O Attila, thou king of kings … the people have felt thy scourge; now as suppliants they would feel thy mercy.”
As Leo said these things … suddenly there were seen the apostles Peter and Paul, clad like bishops, standing by Leo, the one on the right hand, the other on the left. They held swords stretched out over his head, and threatened Attila with death if he did not obey the pope’s command. Wherefore Attila … straightway promised a lasting peace and withdrew beyond the Danube.
That Leo served both as head of state and chief diplomat demonstrated the weakness of Imperial Rome since the events of 410. But his talking down Attila surely did not signal the end of the invasions of the city. Some years later, Vandal marauders moving northward from Africa pillaged the city despite Leo’s pleas. For the next years, until his death in 461, he took charge of cleanup and restoration as well as ministering to those who had been taken captive to Africa.
The Mediterranean in the early sixth century
Benedict of Nursia: Father of Western Monasticism
Today in the Catholic Church the Feast of St. Benedict is celebrated on July 11, and Benedictine monasticism flourishes around the world. Born into a prosperous family in northern Italy, Benedict (480 – 550) grew up with his twin sister, Scholastica, who later founded a sister order of Benedictines and is also heralded as a saint.
As a young man, Benedict traveled to Rome seeking education and spiritual development, but all he finds is worldliness. Disgusted with the increasing wealth of the church, he soon leaves town, seeking solitude. Setting out for a remote mountainous region, he tells no one but a family servant who insists on joining him and caring for his needs. So the young man, not yet twenty, trudges north with an old woman. While stopping in a village along the way, the old woman breaks a clay jar and then tells the locals that Benedict has miraculously restored it.
Not wanting to gain fame as a miracle-worker, he leaves the garrulous servant behind and sets out alone to live a life of solitude. On his way he meets Romanus, a resident monk in a small monastery who agrees to show him the way of a hermit. The monk supplies him with a warm hooded robe fashioned from animal skins and helps him find a cave overhanging a cliff. Each day for the next three years Romanus brings a portion of his own meal and lowers it by basket from above. Benedict is left entirely alone to his solitary thoughts.
Miracle stories are later associated with these three years of solitude. On the first Easter Sunday, for example, a priest preparing for his own celebratory feast hears a voice saying: “Thou art preparing thyself a savoury dish while my servant Benedict is afflicted with hunger.” With these words, the priest is out the door in search of the hungry man. He finds him, and together they enjoy an Easter picnic. In other instances the voices and visions — including one of an alluring woman — are from Satan, as his biographer Pope Gregory recounts:
On a certain day when he was alone the tempter presented himself. A small dark bird, commonly called a blackbird, began to fly around his face and came so near him that, if he had wished, he could have seized it with his hand. But on his making the sign of the cross, the bird flew away. Then followed a violent temptation of the flesh, such as he had never before experienced. The evil spirit brought before his imagination a woman whom he had formerly seen, and inflamed his heart with such vehement desire at the memory of her that he had very great difficulty in repressing it. He was almost overcome and thought of leaving his solitude. Suddenly, however, with the help of divine grace, he found the strength he needed. Seeing near at hand a thick growth of briars and nettles, he stripped off his habit and cast himself into the midst of them and plunged and tossed about until his whole body was lacerated. Thus, through those bodily wounds, he cured the wounds of his soul.
Benedict of Nursia
Later, as Benedict ventures out of his cave, he is spotted by shepherds. News of the hermit sighting quickly spreads, and pilgrims make their way to the cave offering food and seeking counsel. Among those who climb the cliffs are a band of monks begging Benedict to become their abbot. He agrees, only to realize that his strict asceticism does not agree with their careless ways. In fact, so repugnant is his discipline that they poison his wine. But as he makes the sign of the cross over his glass, it miraculously breaks, spilling on the floor. Forgiving them, he asks: “Why have you plotted this wicked thing against me? Did I not tell you beforehand that my ways would not accord with yours? Go and find an abbot to your taste.” With those words he leaves and returns to his cave.
Hearing of this fiasco — and miracle — more pilgrims arrive, many wishing to follow him in strict discipline. For Benedict this is an answered prayer. He realizes that solitude is not the way of discipleship. He is now prepared to organize a community. In the succeeding years he establishes monastic houses of twelve monks each. Along the way, he performs miracles. When a monk is clearing land along a lakeshore, the head of his axe flies off and lands deep in the water. When Benedict lowers the wooden handle into the water, “immediately from the bottom rose the iron head and fastened itself in the shaft.”
But troubles are never far away. His success causes animosities with a local priest who, according to Gregory, sends him a gift of poisoned bread and induces lewd women to tempt his monks. Convinced that he must move on, Benedict abandons his twelve monastic houses and travels with a small group of disciples to an even more remote area that lies in ruins from the devastation of the marauding Goths, its inhabitants having reverted to paganism. Soon Benedict and his disciples are preaching the wrath of God and tearing down the pagan altars. In the ruins of the pagan temple they build the monastic compound of Monte Cassino. Again pilgrims arrive, pleading to join the brotherhood and the movement rapidly expands.
In the years that follow, the one-time cave-dweller amasses large tracts of land, villas, and churches, as wealthy benefactors donate their property. His popularity and reputation as a holy man of miracles swells. Travelers come from great distances just to be in his presence.
More significant than money and land and increasing numbers of disciples is Benedict’s Rule. Having previously borrowed guidelines from other monastic leaders, he is determined to write a rule that mirrors his own principles. The Rule requires that followers relinquish their wills in submission to authority — that being “the strong armor of obedience, to fight under our Lord Christ.” But overall, the rule is judicious in its way of monastic living. The first sentence of the document promises that “we shall ordain nothing severe and nothing burdensome.”
The monk’s daily life is a combination of solitude and community living. Times of prayer and liturgy are balanced with manual labor, study, and communal activities.”Idleness is the enemy of the soul,” Benedict warns in the Rule. “At set times, accordingly, the brethren should be occupied with manual work, and again, at set times, with spiritual reading.” The monks fast until their noonday meal and even then are not allowed to eat meat. But austere asceticism is strongly discouraged. When a monk chained himself to a rock, Benedict sent word: “If thou art truly a servant of God, chain thyself not with a chain of iron but with a chain of Christ.”
THE RULE OF BENEDICT IN NORTH DAKOTA
Few books have so strongly influenced Western history as the Rule of St. Benedict…. I met the Rule by happy accident, when I found myself staying in a small Benedictine convent during a North Dakota Council on the Arts residency at a Catholic school…. I felt it necessary to tell the sisters, however, that I wasn’t much of a churchgoer, had a completely Protestant background, and knew next to nothing about them…. The sisters listened politely and then one of them said, with a wit I’m just learning to fathom, “Would you like to read our Rule?” …. What happened to me then has no doubt happened to many unsuspecting souls in the fifteen-hundred-plus years that Benedictines have existed. Quite simply, the Rule spoke to me.
Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk
Despite the rule, internal conflicts continued. Indeed, Benedict’s troubles were not over. The lands that had been reclaimed for Christianity were once again overrun by marauding hoards, this time the Lombards. The monastery was attacked and the monks were in danger. But the Rule of Benedict lived on, serving as the primary monastic guide for some five hundred years.
Boethius: A Medieval Modern Man
In many ways, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480 – 524) stands apart from all other great Christian thinkers and writers before the Renaissance. A Christian whose worldview surely influenced his writing, he did not write or translate Christian books per se as did those who came before and after him; his writings have a more secular feel. He was born into a centuries-old aristocratic family, a nursery for popes and emperors and other high officials. Like his father, he was a Roman consul, as were both of his own sons. But before he died when Boethius was seven, his father had also been a teacher in Alexandria. With his father’s books, he was likely home-schooled in the classics in either Alexandria or Athens. Whatever the mode of his education, it is clear from his writing that he enjoyed well-rounded classical learning.
With a government appointment, Boethius ventures into scholarly endeavors as a true renaissance man. He translates scholarly Greek works into Latin on topics ranging from philosophy and theology and astronomy to math and music. His dream is to translate all the works of Aristotle and Plato, but his life is cut short. Religious convictions and ethical principles prompt him to take a stand that he knows will enrage Theodoric of Italy, the very king who has granted him and his sons their government offices. The Arian controversy is still dragging on, and the king is allied with Arians. Boethius, true to his orthodox faith, is accused of plotting against Theodoric and supporting the Eastern emperor.
In 523 he is charged with treason, imprisoned, and brutally executed the following year. A contemporary observer offers a clipped account of what happened: “He was tortured for a very long time by a cord that was twisted round his forehead so that his eyes started from his head. Then at last amidst his torments he was killed with a club.”
During the preceding year of imprisonment, Boethius wrote his masterpiece, The Consolation of Philosophy, the most widely read philosophy book of the Middle Ages, still very readable today. The book begins with a poem that reflects on the joys of his past pleasures and his present state of suffering:
To pleasant songs my work was erstwhile given,
and bright were all my labours then;
but now in tears to sad refrains
am I compelled to turn.
He laments his loss of companions, who had been “the pride of my earlier bright-lived days.” And he laments his old age: “White hairs are scattered untimely on my head, and the skin hangs loosely from my worn-out limbs.” But he is not just an old man facing hard times. He is in prison waiting execution:
Fortune’s fickle bounty,
and while yet she smiled upon me,
the hour of gloom
had well-nigh overwhelmed my head….
Why, O my friends, did ye so often puff me up,
telling me that I was fortunate?
For he that is fallen low
did never firmly stand.
Here is Boethius, in his final days, receiving consolation from a visionary friend, Lady Philosophy: “While I was pondering thus in silence, and using my pen to set down so tearful a complaint, there appeared standing over my head a woman’s form.” Lady Philosophy is here to diagnose — and to cure — his disease. Indeed, she rebukes him for his poetic lines and reminds him that he had been “nourished upon the milk of my learning, brought up with my food until you had won your way to the power of a manly soul.”
But now he is wallowing in self-pity, forgetting the “weapons as would keep you safe.” With her opening words, the “dark night [was] dispelled, the shadows fled away, and my eyes received returning power as before.” It is only now that Boethius is recognizing who this visionary woman is:
So when I turned my eyes towards her and fixed my gaze upon her, I recognized my nurse, Philosophy, in whose chambers I had spent my life from earliest manhood. And I asked her, “Wherefore have you, mistress of all virtues, come down from heaven above to visit my lonely place of banishment? Is it that you, as well as I, may be harried, the victim of false charges?” “Should I,” said she, “desert you, my nursling?.”
Using the dialectical method, Lady Philosophy questions Boethius regarding the guidance and direction of the universe. Boethius answers that he does not know if God is actively involved, to which Lady Philosophy responds that his very answer allows her to diagnose his disease. He has forgotten who he is and what his place is in the universe. How, she wonders aloud, does he presume to know the beginning but not the end and purpose of all things. She reminds him that his attitude toward his misfortune is misguided — that happiness comes from within rather than from outward circumstances. No outside power — not even the king who has wrongly imprisoned him — has the power to destroy inner peace that comes from God. All that which is derived from wealth and power is fleeting and does not offer real happiness.
At the beginning of Book III, Boethius praises Lady Philosophy: “Greatest comforter of weary minds, how have you cheered me with your deep thoughts and sweet singing too! No more shall I doubt my power to meet the blows of Fortune.”
In their conversations, the two deal with the age-old conundrum of evil — its source and how a good God can permit evil. Boethius also raises questions about predestination, free will, and chance. What does God know and determine, and what is left to free will and chance? Throughout the four books are prayers, particularly prayers for understanding:
Grant then, O Father, that this mind of ours may rise to Thy throne of majesty; grant us to reach that fount of good. Grant that we may so find light that we may set on Thee unblinded eyes; cast Thou therefrom the heavy clouds of this material world. Shine forth upon us in Thine own true glory.
Despite his acclaim throughout the medieval period and beyond, Boethius has been largely lost to the modern-day student of church history. However, his words and his questions are as relevant today as they were nearly fifteen centuries ago. Of this great masterpiece, C. S. Lewis wrote: “Until about two hundred years ago it would, I think, have been hard to find an educated man in any European country who did not love it.” The legacy of Boethius was most appropriately a gift bestowed on Christian scholars in the generations following his own. These “Dark Ages” caused many to wonder where, indeed, was the hand of God.
Gregory the Great: Pope and Politician
Like Pope Leo and Boethius, Gregory (c. 540 – 604) descended from Roman nobility and was himself a propertied government administrator. But the church was in his blood. Three aunts were nuns, as was his widowed mother, Silvia; and all four of them were canonized as saints. His great-great-grandfather was Pope Felix III, uncle of Pope Agapitus.
Gregor y was a young boy when Benedict died and had given no consideration to becoming a Benedictine monk. He would rather follow his father into government service. Although reared in moderate wealth, he knows nothing of a carefree and lavish lifestyle. Wave after wave of barbarian armies have brought ruin to the region. His dream is to escape, though not to the monastery. “Late and long,” he recalled, “I put off the grace of conversion.” But in his mid-thirties he leaves behind his government post, donates his property to charity, and sets out to establish Benedictine monasteries. Later he becomes a cloistered monk himself. In 579 he is appointed papal ambassador to Constantinople, where he becomes embroiled in a theological controversy.
Pope Gregory I
Even as Pope Leo had confronted Eutyches, Gregory (at this time only a deacon) confronts Eutychius, the patriarch of the city. More than a century has passed, but the same issues still smolder. Eutychius argues against the bodily resurrection of believers, while Gregory insists that just as Christ’s physical body was raised from the dead so also would the bodies of his followers be raised. Eutychius loses the battle. His treatise is condemned and burned. Gregory returns to Rome to serve as abbot of St. Andrew’s monastery before he is elevated to the papacy in 590. For nearly a century the church has not demonstrated strong leadership in the West, but Gregory quickly consolidates his power. A self-described “servant of the servants of God,” he defends his absolute authority over the church.
During his fourteen-year reign as pope, Gregory suffers ill health primarily due to strict asceticism combined with heavy responsibilities and long workdays. In addition to administrative duties (serving virtually as head of state during wartime), he oversees welfare for refugees and others displaced by hostilities But he is primarily a preacher who speaks with urgency, convinced that he is living in the end times At the same time, he seeks to bring solemnity to public worship, establishing a training school for church musicians The hauntingly beautiful Gregorian chants date to this period, as do standard liturgies of scripture readings and prayers for each Sunday of the year.
MARTIN AND GREGORY OF TOURS
In medieval times and earlier, Tours was a popular destination. Five Roman roads and one river passed through it. For a serious pilgrim, Tours was on the itinerary. It was the religious metropolis of Gaul, and its shrines promised miracles. Believers came in droves. Both Martin and Gregory, separated by two centuries, were bishops of Tours. Gregory wrote the Life of St. Martin, featuring his supernatural wonders. But Martin had been a legend in his own time. Today more than three thousand churches are dedicated to him in France alone.
Gregory of Tours by Jean Marcellin. Stone, before 1853
The story most often associated with Martin (c. 316 – 397) touches his life as a Hungarian cavalry officer. He is leading a regiment of troops through the countryside on a blustery winter day when he encounters a beggar. Instead of kicking him out of the way with his boot, which might have been a normal response, Martin stops, takes off his warm cape, and wraps it around the pitiful vagabond, thus easing his own conscience. What happens next changes his life. Glancing again at the man, he realizes that the beggar now clothed in his cape is actually Jesus. Transformed, Martin leaves the military, founds a monastery, and works miracles.
Gregory of Tours (c. 538 – 594) was born into a family with a long clerical lineage. Reportedly, thirteen of the eighteen previous bishops of Tours were related to him, including his great grandfather Gregory of Langres (in an era when bishops were fathers and grandfathers). An inspirational writer, Gregory endeavored to “fire others with that enthusiasm by which the saints deservedly climbed to heaven,” while at the same time exposing heresy. But his most noted work was Historia Francorum (History of the Franks), a work that stood alone for centuries with little challenge, serving yet today as a key primary source.
Pastoral care is also one of his passions. Liber Regulae Pastoralis (Book of Pastoral Rule) was written in response to questions on the topic. The conduct of the minister is critical and should be “so far superior to the conduct of the people as the life of a shepherd is accustomed to exalt him above the flock.” He must “consider how great a necessity is laid upon him to maintain uprightness.” He uses the symbols wine and oil offered by the Good Samaritan to denote the balance between discipline and compassion: “Thus it is necessary that he who sees to the healing of wounds should apply in wine biting pain and in oil soothing tenderness, for wine cleanses … and oil promotes the course of healing/ In other words, gentleness is to be mingled with severity.”
Gregory also plays a major role in theological matters, particularly in advancing the concept of purgatory, with its corresponding merit of the saints, particularly those who were miracle workers. His Dialogues, filled with miracle stories, ranks high as popular devotional literature for more than a thousand years. In some cases the miracle is less than spectacular. For example, Honoratus, a young man who has vowed to abstain from meat, is mocked by his parents until a servant who has gone to draw water from the well finds in the bucket a fish — and more than a mere minnow at that. “The fish was so great that it served Honoratus very well for all that day…. and afterward, in that place which is called Funda, he built an Abbey, wherein he was the father of almost two hundred monks.”
“We make Idols of our concepts, but Wisdom is born of wonder.”
Pope Gregory I
But according to Gregory, the greater miracles are associated with Honoratus’s merit as a saint. After he dies, Libertinus, one of the monks at the abbey, is traveling abroad, and as “always, did he bear about him in his bosom one of [Honoratus’s] stockings.” Along the way he meets a woman “carrying the corpse of her dead son.” She pleads with Libertinus to raise her son from the dead. After some hesitation, “the holy man … fell upon his knees, lifted up his hands to heaven, drew the stocking out of his bosom, laid it upon the breast of the dead corpse; and behold, while he was at his prayers, the soul of the child returned into the body.” The merit of Honoratus, Gregory insists, is effective in the working of this miracle.
Another story that Gregory reports in his Dialogues goes to the heart of his belief in purgatory. Justus, a monk at his monastery who has earlier stowed away money, dies repentant of this sin. However, Gregory, concerned for his soul, offers a month of Masses for him. On the thirtieth day, a visionary Justus appears to another monk, announcing that he has been freed from the flames of purgatory. These thirty Masses are believed to be so effective that the practice — known as “Gregorian Masses” — continues for centuries, particularly in Benedictine monasteries.
Merits and good works, according to Gregory, do not affect one’s place in purgatory only. Indeed, they have a direct correspondence to one’s place in heaven: “For if there were not inequality of rewards in … heaven,” Gregory argues, “then [why] were there … many mansions … in which divers orders and degrees of God’s saints [will] be distinguished … in … their merits and … good works.”
Even as barbarians plunder Italy and neighboring regions, Gregory is setting the stage for medieval missionary outreach. Before he is elevated to the papacy, he spots blond boys on the slave auction block in the Roman forum. He asks where they are from and is told they are Angles. “Angles?” he declares. “Say rather they are angels! What a pity that God’s grace does not dwell within those beautiful brows!” He buys the boys, brings them back to the monastery, and catechizes and baptizes them. He then makes plans to go to their homeland as a missionary but is occupied with other duties.
In the meantime Æthelbert, the third Scottish king of Kent, marries Bertha. She is a princess and a Christian; he is a pagan who (influenced by Bertha and the prospect of political gain) later becomes a Christian. Through Bertha’s active involvement the church, with its own bishop, is reestablished in Canterbury (a centuries-old church that has been in ruins) Now in contact with Pope Gregory, she and her husband welcome the prospect of missionaries.
THE LAST OF THE LATIN FATHERS
Gregory the First, or the Great, the last of the Latin fathers [Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome preceding him] and the first of the popes, connects the ancient with the medieval church, the Graeco-Roman with the Romano-Germanic type of Christianity. He is one of the best representatives of medieval Catholicism: monastic, ascetic, devout, and superstitious; hierarchical, haughty, and ambitious, yet humble before God; indifferent, if not hostile, to classical and secular culture, but friendly to sacred and ecclesiastical learning; just, humane, and liberal to ostentation; full of missionary zeal in the interest of Christianity and the Roman see, which to his mind were inseparably connected. He combined great executive ability with untiring industry, and amid all his official cares he never forgot the claims of personal piety. In genius he was surpassed by Leo I., Gregory VII., Innocent III.; but as a man and as a Christian, he ranks with the purest and most useful of the popes. Goodness is the highest kind of greatness, and the church has done right in according the title of the Great to him rather than to other popes of superior intellectual power.
Philip Schaff, History of Christianity
In 596 Gregory, as pope, commissions Augustine, the prior of St. Anthony in Rome, and forty monks to serve as missionaries in Britain It is a dangerous mission, and before they arrive at the destination Augustine has second thoughts and turns back to Rome But when word reaches Gregory, he orders them to turn around and carry on with their journey On Christmas 597, soon after they arrive, Augustine baptizes ten thousand of Æthelbert’s subjects. The mass baptism, remembered as the “Miracle of Canterbury,” paves the way for the reestablishment of the church in that region Gregory’s concern for this mission venture is evident in his response to Augustine’s inquiries, insights that have stood the test of time for Catholic missionaries:
The heathen temples of these people need not be destroyed, only the idols which are to be found in them If the temples are well-built, it is a good idea to detach them from the service of the devil, and to adapt them for the worship of the true God And since the people are accustomed, when they assemble for sacrifice, to kill many oxen in sacrifice to the devils, it seems reasonable to appoint a festival for the people by way of exchange. The people must learn to slay their cattle not in honor of the devil, but in honour of God and for their own food…. If we allow them these outward joys, they are more likely to find their way to the true inner joy…. It is doubtless impossible to cut off all abuses at once from rough hearts, just as a man who sets out to climb a high mountain does not advance by leaps and bounds, but goes upward step by step and pace by pace.
Gregory later promotes Augustine to the position of archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine dies in 604, just months after the death of Gregory Their combined efforts leave the church in this region on a solid foundation.
Saint Patrick: A Legendary Life
Long before Augustine journeyed to convert the Angles, Christianity had been carried to the region by Celtic monks Growing out of their ministry is the work of an illustrious missionary to Ireland. Patrick (c. 389 – 461) is a much-celebrated saint though his actual identity is shrouded in legend. Indeed, historians have for centuries wondered if there were actually two individuals (Pelladius and Patrick) melded into one. The first of these individuals is thought to have died in 461, and the second in 493. History is not always an exact science, and the story of St. Patrick is too good to be set aside for want of solid data. So Patrick and his double become one, and we recognize that hagiography and biography are often blended.
Patrick was born in Britain into a Celtic Christian family of clerics—his father a deacon and his grandfather a priest, both married, as were most clerics at this time. Kidnapped by a band of Irish plunderers when still a youth, Patrick is sold into slavery. For six long years he herds swine and seeks God:
Mountain in County Antrim, where St. Patrick is reputed to have shepherded as a slave
The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelief, that, late as it was, I might remember my faults and turn to the Lord my God with all my heart; and He had regard to my low estate, and pitied my youth and ignorance, and kept guard over me even before I knew Him, and before I attained wisdom to distinguish good from evil; and He strengthened and comforted me as a father does his son.
During this time he is convinced that he hears the voice of God telling him that a ship is waiting to take him home. He escapes and journeys to a port where he works aboard ship for his passage home. Now a free man, he finds refuge in a monastery and then returns to his home. There, “in the depth of the night,” God speaks in a vision:
I saw a man named Victoricus, coming as if from Ireland, with innumerable letters; and he gave me one of these, and … while I was reading out the beginning of the letter, I thought that at that very moment I heard the voice of those who were beside the wood of Focluth, near the western sea; and this is what they called out: “Please, holy boy, come and walk among us again.” Their cry pierced to my very heart, and I could read no more; and so I awoke.
For Patrick the vision is God’s call, but the clerics are not convinced. In spite of one delay after another, however, he finally arrives back in Ireland in 432, now past the age of forty. His mission field is isolated and hostile, beyond the borders of the empire. There are scattered Christian communities, but his encounters are primarily with pagans who have no desire to turn away from their traditional ways of worship They revere the sun and wind and fire and rocks, a worldview that finds magic and spirits everywhere in nature The druid priests mount strong opposition, but Patrick eventually prevails He trumps their magic with magic (or miracles) of his own, causing some historians to wonder if Patrick might have been the mightiest druid of them all.
THE DUTIES OF A DOZEN MISSIONARY MONKS
Their method was to visit a country and, where it seemed suitable, found a missionary village. In the centre they built a simple wooden church, around which were clustered schoolrooms and huts for the Celtic monks, who were the builders, preachers, and teachers. Outside this circle, as required, dwellings were built for the students and their families, who gradually gathered around them. The whole was enclosed by a wall, but the colony often spread beyond the original enclosure. Groups of twelve monks would go out, each under the leadership of an abbot, to open up fresh fields for the Gospel. Those who remained taught in the school, and, as soon as they had sufficiently learned the language of the people among whom they were, translated and wrote out portions of Scripture, and also hymns…. When some converts were made, the missionaries chose from among them small groups of young men who had ability, trained them specially in some handicraft and in languages, and taught them the Bible and how to explain it to others, so that they might be able to work among their own people…. They avoided attacking the religions of the people, counting it more profitable to preach the truth to them than to expose their errors.
E. H. Broadbent, The Pilgrim Church
In the years that follow, Patrick impresses political leaders and makes alliances that promote church growth Within fifteen years much of Ireland is reportedly evangelized His missionary story features perilous journeys, life-threatening opposition, kidnapping, and captivity After some thirty years of ministry, he laments: “I fear to lose the labor which I began” lest God “would note me as guilty.”
The evangelization of Ireland by Patrick and others was a venture conducted primarily by the Celtic church, as opposed to the Roman church A noteworthy Celtic abbot-missionary was Columba, who was born into a prosperous Irish family in 521 and brought up in the Christian faith As a young man Columba entered a monastery and in the decades that followed is credited with establishing churches and monasteries throughout Ireland, including ones at Derry, Durrow, and Kells. But his greatest work was in Britain With twelve clerics to serve under him, he established his headquarters just off the coast of Scotland on Iona, a small bleak, barren, foggy island, battered year-round by pounding waves Here he set forth a monastic life of prayer, fasting, meditation, Bible study, and manual labor — and, most importantly, training for evangelists who are then commissioned to preach, build churches, and establish more monasteries.
Although Gregory I is credited with initiating the conversion of Europe through missionary and military undertakings, the work of Patrick, Columba, and others is also an important piece of the puzzle Indeed, this is an era when missionary ventures spurred by monastic expansion begin in earnest.
What if….
What if Alaric, the warrior king of the Visigoths, had made peace with Emperor Honorius and become a great Roman army general known for defending, rather than sacking, Rome? How might history be different today if the Roman Empire had lived on through the Middle Ages?
What if Leo had not proclaimed that anyone who rejected papal authority was not to be considered within the body of Christ? What if Gregory had not upheld that claim?
What if Boethius had never been imprisoned and seen a vision of Lady Philosophy? His Consolation of Philosophy, which had a profound influence on the medieval mind, might not have been written.
What if Patrick—or his double—had never caught a vision in the night and evangelized Ireland?
Selected Bibliography
Boethius, Ancius. The Consolation of Philosophy. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Butcher, Carmen. Man of Blessing: A Life of St. Benedict. Cape Cod, Mass.: Paraclete, 2006.
Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
Collins, Roger. Early Medieval Europe: 300 – 1000, 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.
Dawson, Christopher. Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. New York: Doubleday, 1950.
Freeman, Philip. St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.
Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. New York: Oxford University, 2007.
Marenbon, John. Boethius. New York: Oxford University, 2003.
Markus, R. A. Gregory the Great and His World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Ward-Perkins, Bryan. The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Wells, Peter S. Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.
White, Caroline, ed. The Rule of St. Benedict. New York: Penguin, 2008.