1. AMERICA'S MORAL-SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE

EARLY CHRISTIANITY

But Rome declines in the West anyway.  Not only did Constantine reshape Roman culture by adopting Christianity as Rome's new moral spiritual foundation, he also moved the political center of the Empire east, from its original base in Italy to a new position at the point where the Black Sea empties into the Aegean Sea (Eastern Mediterranean) – anciently the city of Constantinople (named after him), today's Istanbul, Turkey.  He did so to move his operations closer to where the political (or more particularly, military) action was – against the Persians to the East and against the Germanic tribesmen to the North (the Balkan Peninsula) pressing the Empire from both directions.  But this move of the Imperial capital east from Latin-speaking Rome to Greek-speaking Constantinople left the old Italian city of Rome forlorn – pathetically so.

Thus it was that German tribes migrating into central Europe from the Northeast (under pressure from the Asian Huns coming in from further East) found the eastern half of the Roman Empire a solid barrier to expansion.  But as they slid westward, they found a very different dynamic: only a very weak Rome trying to hold its own ... an easy pickoff.

Indeed, in 410 Visigoth chief Alaric and his Germanic tribal troops breached the walls and plundered the helpless city of Rome.  This was then the signal for the Germanic tribes of north central Europe (Goths, Franks, Alemanni, Burgundians, Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Thuringians, Vandals, etc), to invade the western half of the Roman Empire in earnest.

It is important to remember that these Germans came not to destroy Rome but to capture the elegance of the once-famous Rome.  But there was very little elegance left to capture at this point.  Roman civilization had simply broken down in the West.<

Now travel on the Roman roads became dangerous, leading to a decline of commerce and trade.  Consequently, urban life decayed and eventually disappeared in most areas of Western Europe.  Survival now depended on the ability of the new tribal societies simply to support themselves locally from the bounty of the small farms that became the sole foundation of the Western European economy.  Materially an economic, then social, Dark Age fell upon the West.

Christian survival in the West.  Nonetheless a series of talented Christian Bishops of Rome, who remained behind in the ancient capital city, continued to command considerable respect within the Western Christian community – and slowly came to be recognized as the head of the Christian Church in the Latin West – eventually gaining the title "Pope," meaning something like Father – but Father (Papa) above all other priestly Fathers!   Especially notable among these popes were Leo I (pope, 440-461) and Gregory I (pope, 590-604), who managed to preserve and strengthen what little remained of Roman or Latin moral-cultural order in the West.

Indeed, the church of Rome not only survived the Germanic impact but converted some of the most important tribes to Trinitarian Christianity and restored the city of Rome to a position of some degree of religious cultural importance – at least within the West itself. ^[4]

And there was the British monk, Patrick, who brought Trinitarian Christianity to neighboring Druid Ireland in the early to mid-400s. In Patrick's 30-year mission to the Irish, he established over 300 churches and he baptized over 120 thousand Irishmen.  In turn the converted Irish would soon themselves become Christian missionaries to the Germanic and other Celtic tribes to the East of them, most notably: Columba (mid-to-late 500s) to Scotland; Columban (late-500s) to the Burgundians, the Alemanni and Celtic Gauls on the European continent; and Aidan (mid-600s) to the Angles, Mercians and East Saxons of Britain.

And there were other such missionaries, monks and priests who acquitted themselves quite honorably along vital moral-cultural lines, especially once the monastic movement had been disciplined by Benedict (early 500s), whose monastic rule was widely honored throughout the West.  These monks were sent out among the Germanic tribes to convert them not only to the Christian religion but also to the Roman Catholic political-religious order that accompanied that religion.  In many cases the effort by monks pointed only to the first part of the program: the saving of souls.  But the popes had more of the second part of the deal in mind.

Ultimately tribes had to decide where they belonged in the Christian program ... on their own as autonomous Christian tribes, or as components of the larger Western Christian or Roman Catholic community.  Thus, for instance, in 664, a religious council or "synod" gathered at Whitby (north central England), where the majority of the delegates voted to end the self-supporting religious life in England introduced by the Irish monks who had originally brought Christianity to the kingdom.  The Synod decided instead to bring the Northumbrian tribe or kingdom within the religious realm (and its particular Latin rites) overseen by the Pope at Rome.

In effect this decision conveyed the idea that the Pope was the ultimate authority, both religious and political, within Western Christendom.  Of course tribal kings tended to ignore in practice the moral-legal distinctions of this relationship.  But the popes, especially the more active political popes, were very aware of this special entitlement they possessed.

Charlemagne and the European feudal order.  Then in the late 700s a Frankish tribal king, Charles or "Charlemagne" (Charles the Great)^[5] succeeded in conquering nearly all of the other Germanic tribes of continental Western Europe.^[6] 

Such political power did Charlemagne accumulate for himself that he was able to end the independent existence of these various Germanic tribes, not only forcing a new unity on much of Western Europe but also making himself now the single landowner of Western Europe!  The former tribal lands were now his – personally his.  And when the Roman Pope certified Charlemagne as Emperor, any moral basis for contesting this development was eliminated.

But this was an enormous reach of territory for a single individual to be governing – as Charlemagne had no vast bureaucracy, civil or military, by which to manage his lands.  So, appointments were made by Charlemagne (and his descendants), to certain well-respected supporters or vassals – authorizing them to govern certain areas of his Empire – all in Charlemagne's name of course.  These vassals were then permitted to become lords themselves of these assigned territories, appointing their own supporters, their own vassals, to help manage smaller regions within their own appointed land.  Completing this ruling class were then numerous warriors or knights who came into full service to the local lords, offering these lords military support and receiving in return the right to share the dining tables and residence in the castles of their lords.

Over a period of time, these feudal responsibilities tended to be passed on from fathers to sons.  Thus it was that Europe's ruling class came to be made up only of individuals born to this small group of privileged families.  Likewise, those who tended to hold the higher offices in the Church – which authenticated or legitimized this social arrangement – also were themselves usually drawn from these same families.  As far as the rest of the 95% of the population, they remained permanently locked out of entry into this privileged ruling class.  Instead, as peasants, they tended the fields and performed the manual labor needed by the local lords and ladies.  And this was then the feudalism that would govern European life for centuries.

Viking blood added to the mixture.  But about the time Charlemagne was bringing Western Europe under this feudal system, attacks were happening along the edges of his vast Empire – and across the way even in the British Isles. Northmen (Normans) or Vikings coming from the Scandinavian North were beginning to conduct horrible raids on Christian Western Europe – stopping cold the cultural advance that had almost got up and running with Charlemagne's social-political revolution.  These Viking raids effectively plunged Christian Europe back into the Dark Ages.

However, around the start of the second Christian millennium (ca. 1000 AD) the barbaric attacks of the Vikings or Normans slowed up considerably, giving Europe something of a degree of peace, the first in a long time.  Part of this was due to the settling of the Normans within the communities they had once raided ruthlessly – the Vikings or Normans adopting both the local languages and the Christian religion of the people they had overrun – now becoming as dukes or even kings, protectors of those same communities – such as French Normandy, the English Danelaw, eventually England itself (1066), and even places as distant from the North as the Mediterranean island of Sicily.

The Crusades – and encounter with Islam's great wealth.  But even with their settling in, the Normans lost none of that energy – though this energy was now tamed and converted to the powerful service of Christian or Western society.

And in 1095 this energy would be called on by the Christian Pope to rescue the Holy Lands from the Muslim Turkish "infidel" who had made Christian pilgrimage to the Holy sites of the East very difficult, if not even impossible.  The Normans – but also the Germanic kings and noblemen (as well as multitudes of commoners) – boldly answered the call to go crusading ("to take up the cross") in the Holy Lands of the Mediterranean East.

The Crusades which followed over the next two centuries (1100s and 1200s) in turn inspired two major developments in Christian culture or civilization at the time.  First, it involved the outpouring of a renewed religious spirit eager to spread the Christian faith to the Muslim lands of the East.  This spirit could be found high and low in Christian society – although the European feudal nobility of kings and princes quickly took the lead in the enterprise.

But secondly, the Crusades brought the rather materially primitive Europeans into direct contact with the East's fabulous wealth, such wealth as Western Europe had not seen since the fall of Rome many centuries earlier.  Not surprisingly, the Crusaders themselves wanted to participate in that world of wealth.  Some of the Crusader noblemen even settled themselves amidst the wealth of Islam, establishing Norman kingdoms in the recently conquered lands of the Middle East – sort of "going native" – not exactly abandoning their Christian faith, but wanting very much to combine their Christian world with this higher level of Muslim material wealth.  But this new hunger for material wealth would include also those crusaders who returned to their kingdoms and principalities in Europe after having fulfilled their pledges to crusade for Christ in the East.

The Franciscans and Dominicans. In the early 1200s a spiritual "awakening" was to come to a young, very wealthy and very brash Francis of Assisi, through both a series of personal hardships and a mystical call to give his life over to serving the poor, as Christ himself exemplified.  In fairly short order a much-transformed Francis attracted a large number of other young Italians to such service, forming something of a monastic community, which the Pope then forced him to bring under Roman or papal supervision (lest he be declared a heretic).  Out of this the huge Franciscan movement developed, one that would eventually take multitudes of Franciscan monks to all corners of the world, and one that finds Franciscans even today serving the poor both in urban ghettos and rural villages everywhere.

At about the same time (also the early 1200s) another individual, the Spanish priest, Dominic de Guzman, began to train Christian teachers in order to rebuild proper faith in the Church and its Christian ministry.  Here too his new monastic movement (with considerable papal support) spread rapidly around Europe, as vast numbers of Dominican monks or "Friars" were sent out to teach and enforce Christian orthodoxy.