1. AMERICA'S MORAL-SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE

EARLY CHRISTIANITY

But, of all the different social legacies that went into shaping American society – Jewish, Greek, Roman and, Christianity – it has been the last of this list, Christianity, that served ultimately as the foundational element of American society.

It was Christianity and its accompanying social order that birthed and then developed English America politically, economically, socially, etc. – serving as America's moral-spiritual foundations on which a new American society was built, even many generations before the establishment of the American Federal Republic in 1787.

America was not just suddenly founded with the writing of its Republican Constitution that particular year – or even with its Declaration of Independence a bit earlier in the well-known year of 1776.  Rather, America was birthed on very strong Christian foundations a whole century and a half earlier, in the early 1600s.   Indeed, the moral-spiritual features of Christianity had already served quite a long time as the young nation's social-moral foundations before these key events of the later 1700s came about.

These 150-year-old American religious norms and principles (largely Calvinist in nature) had a tremendous impact on the way that the Fathers or Framers of the 1787 Constitution understood social obligation, and the way that the Framers held personally a deep sense of social right and wrong.  Indeed, Christianity had long formed the moral foundations by which, as a free but united people, all Americans knew how to discipline themselves, in order to live in an orderly, cooperative fashion.  Living by that Christian moral-spiritual code, Americans needed no dictator (or English king!) to tell them how to live.  God's own instructions, found clearly in the Christian Bible, gave them just such guidance.

Christianity provided an unvarying body of personal and social instructions, already thousands of years old, ones in need of no "progressive" updating, such updating as both Athens and Rome went through repeatedly in a desperate attempt to improve their fundamental social orders. Such Athenian and Roman efforts at rational social reform inevitably unleashed greater personal debate, as their leaders found themselves in deep personal disagreement over the direction that such reform should take!  And ultimately, those disagreements became very brutal, resulting in the need to call on a dictatorial hand to restore order.

No, the Framers of the Constitution were not social reformers, nor were they dictators, but simply leaders charged with the responsibility of confirming in the creation of a new political order the social-moral-spiritual traditions that had long guided the colonies, traditions that they expected to now guide the thirteen newly-independent states in their quest to continue to work together in union as a free people – rather than as political competitors.  Anyway, more (much more) about this later!

That same Christianity also continued to give vision and moral guidance to the American Republic for many more generations after its founding in 1787.  Indeed, elements of it continue to perform that vital service even today.

But Christianity today also finds itself greatly on the defensive – as numerous Americans of major political influence want to see America made more "progressive", by "separating" (removing) Christianity and its long-standing social-moral principles from the ever-widening jurisdiction of a very "reformist" Federal government or "state" – a "progressive" state which today reaches into every dimension of life in America possible.

Those that now press the issue of "separation of church and state" – claiming that the Constitution itself requires the removal of religion from America's public domain – do not realize (or at least do not want to acknowledge) how deeply Christianity shaped America and its values, importantly including the understanding and motivation of those who first put the Constitution together.^[1]  Indeed the whole of Western Civilization as it has come down to us through many, many centuries, is a by-product of the Christian religion.

Of course many of those who want to see Christianity dismissed from public life actually know very little about Christianity itself – believing (without serious investigation into the matter) that it is restrictive in its quest for social order – and presumes a ridiculously superstitious belief in some kind of power or God who exists above the mechanically operating "natural" or material order – a God able to set aside the mechanical and self-running laws of science in order to favor (miraculously) individuals and societies that follow his guidance.

And such critics are partially correct – for Christians (as well as a lot of very highly respected modern scientists!) do believe God to be quite active in the life of this planet – because they have personally witnessed events that support this understanding.  But of course not everyone has seen such occurrences – or even wanted to see them.

Another piece of confusion that arises when modern Secularists or "Progressives" attack Christianity is that Christianity is treated as if it were some single social phenomenon.  But it has, in fact, (politically speaking) been many things, things frequently much opposed to each other – and occasionally – and tragically – even bloody in that opposition.

But apart from the politics that gets into even the Christian religion itself, there have always been a number of key ideas that truly define the faith – and which, if practiced faithfully, indeed give Christian society a high degree of unity, peace, and prosperity.  America has long served as an example of just that very possibility.

Jesus the Christ or "Anointed One," as founder of this Christian religion that was so foundational to American birth and development, was something of a Jewish teacher or rabbi – except that he did his teaching out in the open fields as well as in the local synagogues.  He preached a call to come to God personally – like coming to your own Father (and thus he spoke of God as "Abba" or "Daddy" in the language of the day) – so familiar in expression that it shocked proper Jews who thought he was not showing respect to Almighty God.  He preached not only to proper Jews (who anyway thought that they did not need his advice) but also to the rejects of Jewish society – and even to non-Jews or Gentiles.

In fact, that broadness of his spiritual reach was the very heart of his ministry, the demonstration that God as Father was not interested in the various ways that we humans divide the surrounding world into various identity groups, ones to be loved and supported and those to be despised and forcefully rejected.  And Jesus's wide-ranging realm of love included not only tax collectors and women of questionable repute (major sinners in the Jewish social scheme), but also foreigners such as a Roman centurion and the despised Samaritans, and even lepers.  And he also had a high regard for the importance of children, a group of small beings who had not yet earned the right of high regard or social respect in the thinking of the time (and maybe still even today).  Furthermore, he drew into his closest circle of friends people of no greater status than that of fishermen.

Jesus heals the leper
Matthew 8:2-4 / Mark 1:40-45 / Luke 5:12-16

Jesus inspires a rejected Samaritan woman at the well
John 4:4-26

In short, Jesus was no practitioner of identity politics.  Quite the opposite.  His ministry was a clear demonstration of the fact that our Heavenly Father made no such human distinctions in his love of humankind.  That was man's own particular failing:  to judge others on the basis of where these others stood in the comparative realm of identity politics.

Jesus demonstrates the power of such faith.  And just as shocking, Jesus performed signs and wonders or miracles, calming the storms, performing deep physical healings even of lepers, raising individuals from death (even as in the case of his friend Lazarus from the grave itself) – all undertaken to drive home his point about the importance of getting into a right relationship with God as Father.  With God as personal Father, even the laws of the physical universe must submit to strong human faith. 

Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the grave
John 11:1-44

Of course people of reason (they existed back then no less than they do in today's "scientific" culture) were disbelieving and even hostile to such demonstrations of Jesus's authority, which he assured others was also – through the simple power of faith in God as Father – within their reach as well.

The cross of Jesus Christ.  Ultimately the Jewish political authorities had enough of Jesus's threat to their well-structured universe^[2] by way of his miracles and most unusual street ministry, and had him arrested and turned over to the occupying Roman governor of the day, falsely accusing Jesus of encouraging rebellion even against Rome itself – something to get him to be put away by the cruel Roman device of hanging criminals on a wooden cross until they died a slow and agonizing death.  And so it came to Jesus. 

Jesus is put to death on a Roman cross
... along with two thieves (Good Friday)
Matthew 27:31-56 / Mark 15:20-40 / Luke 23:26-49 / John 19:17-37

But then hundreds of his followers were most certain that he returned (briefly, for 40 days or so) from the grave and again taught them his gospel (good news) message before being taken up to Heaven to join the Father at God's right hand – and by doing so, releasing the Holy Spirit to come among the people (on the day of Pentecost) in order to continue the work themselves that Jesus had started.

 

It is ironic that the Roman device, the cross – that was intended to force the most humiliating death as possible on a criminal – would itself become the very symbol of Christianity.  This is because Jesus's death on the cross was understood by his followers to be an act of cosmic significance:  the blood sacrifice or sin-offering required by the power of Heaven as the price for entry into eternity.  But Jesus himself was without sin ... and so the sins he was paying for in his self-sacrifice on the cross were not his own.  Instead the sins being paid for by the cross were in fact the sins of the entire range of humanity.

But how could one man's sacrifice be sufficient to pay for the sins of all humankind?  Actually, Jesus was ultimately understood to be not just a mere man – but was fully divine – and thus able, as God himself, to offer himself in sacrifice for the sins of the world. A very loving God had, in essence, offered himself through his Son as the payment for the sins of all mankind – at least for those, anyway, that were willing to put themselves under such divine grace and receive, at the foot of Christ's cross, God's full forgiveness.  Furthermore, in doing so, they also received a new, powerful life from the hand of God – without being in any way specially deserving of such favor.  In this new life they would live by and through the power of God's own Holy Spirit, to help them take on the challenges of life – including even the challenges presented by their own moral frailties.  And they would continue to be fully empowered to meet the particular challenges presented to them individually – and jointly (as members of a Christian society) – until they were to draw their last breath, and at that point, when their work on earth was done, join their Heavenly Father in eternal paradise.

Trinitarianism.  This idea of a loving Heavenly Father, sacrificing on the cross his own divine Son for the sins of the world, and then empowering those who accepted for themselves this act of divine forgiveness with the gift of God's own Holy Spirit – all of this came together as a key belief system known as Trinitarianism: a single God in three "persons" – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Unitarianism.  However, receiving the salvation that God himself lovingly offered by way of Christ's cross turned out not to be such an easy concept to get over to many people – because it is a more natural instinct of man to want to earn his own moral credits himself – as a matter of moral pride.  Setting aside that pride and receiving the undeserved saving grace of God himself just was more than most normal egos could handle.

Those that could not or would not rise above the idea of earning moral merits through one's own good works argued that Trinitarianism sounded like merely another version of Dionysian Greek religion or philosophy.   Indeed, members of the Roman world who lived in the predominantly Greek cultural areas of the Empire were more able to understand and embrace Trinitarianism.  But those of the Semitic world of Syria, Palestine and Arabia, for instance, refused to embrace Trinitarianism because it did not conform well to their cultural understanding of moral behavior and social obligation. But this would also include many German tribes north of the Roman borders, who did come to accept Christianity, but also only of the Unitarian variety.

Ultimately, as Unitarian Christians, they understood Jesus as a fully human creature – not another form of God while on earth. To Unitarians, Jesus was a human without sin to be sure, which made him a perfect moral example worthy of complete devotion by others – one indeed so perfect in behavior that at his death he was raised in heaven to sit at the right hand of God as God's favored Son.  And as far as the notion of an assisting Holy Spirit – Unitarianism found no place in its understanding to include such a concept. That was way too Greek for a Semitic or Germanic mind to grasp.

Trinitarianism versus Unitarianism would remain an ideological tension that would reach through the long history of Christianity and its impact on the larger world – even down to today.

Those who early took up the "Way" of Jesus the Christ during the first couple of centuries of the Christian community did so in a rather typical Jewish way – gathering together regularly at least weekly on the "Lord's Day" (Sunday), although largely in secret because it was very dangerous to be a Christian at that time.  Here they would recall the sayings of Jesus, pray together, and just in general fellowship as mutual followers of Christ.

Catacomb of Ss. Pietro and Marcellinus - Rome
 

 
Christ healing the bleeding woman - Catacomb of Ss. Pietro and Marcellinus

Efforts were soon made to bring together for study various narratives about Jesus' life and ministry (the gospels) – plus letters circulated among the various churches written by key Christian leaders advising them on the Christian life, many of these letters written by the Jewish convert, Paul (formerly Saul).  Thus was formed the foundations of the Christian New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible, following the longer Jewish or Old Testament portion of the Bible.  Such writing served not only as the central document that described Christian life in the years of Christ and immediately thereafter – but also as a social model instructive for Christians at all times and for all generations.

Intense Roman persecution.  During those first few centuries, Christianity was not well accepted, either in its Jewish homeland or in the broader context of the Roman Empire.  It was subject to waves of intense Roman persecution – not because of its rather un-Roman religious beliefs (Rome was actually very tolerant of an amazing wide variety of religious beliefs held by their citizens), but because the Christian religion refused to also acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor (emperor worship).  This was too drastic a departure from Rome's imperial policies.  Thus the Christians were hunted down ruthlessly, and then put to death for their refusal to worship the Emperor.  This involved even gruesome public displays of Christian slaughter by wild animals or gladiators, or anything designed to entertain the Roman spectators.

Christians providing entertainment for the Romans

But ironically, Christian martyrdom merely became an even more-powerful social force spreading within the Empire – because of the very quiet bravery of Christian martyrs undergoing such cruel Roman death.  Romans grew increasingly impressed with Christianity's ability to give its followers such incredible personal moral and spiritual strength, even in the face of a most terrible death.  Christian morality stood out glowingly in high contrast to the obvious moral collapse going on within a darkening Roman Secular/Materialistic imperialist culture. ^[3]

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^[3]The Roman government's offering of "bread and circuses" to the masses to keep them supportive of a decadent imperial order was a classic case of a ruling elite failing to understand what it is that makes for a vibrant society, one defended willingly even to the point of death by its members.  Cheap material rewards offered by a ruling class will never rescue a society whose moral order is failing.

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THE "ROMANIZATION" OF CHRISTIANITY:  "CHRISTENDOM"

Then Christianity's fortunes – and its very character – changed dramatically when the Roman Emperor Constantine decided in the early 300s not only to accept Christianity for himself, but also to make it the new moral-spiritual foundation of the decaying Roman Empire.

At the time, Christianity was having a huge impact on the Roman Empire, so much so that the Emperor prior to Constantine, Diocletian, had conducted one of the cruelest efforts to eliminate Christianity (thereby supposedly bringing Rome back to good order), but had succeeded no more than the emperors before him.  Then when he died, four imperators competed for the position as grand ruler of the Roman Empire.

One of them, Constantine, in 312 received a vision in the night before a crucial battle with a competitor (the latter was equipped with a much larger legion supporting him), a vision that told Constantine to place the chi-rho (Greek symbols representing Christ) on his men's shields, indicating that they were doing battle for Christ as well as Constantine.  And indeed, the victory of Constantine the next day was so impressive that it confirmed for him the critical importance of Christianity, although his familiarity with the religion was rather shallow at the time. 

 

From an 800s Byzantine manuscript showing Constantine at
Milvian Bridge conquering under the sign of the cross ...
engraved with the Greek inscription ἐν τούτῳ νίκα (En touto Nika
 – "In this conquer" ... its Latin equivalent: In hoc signo vinces)

In any case, it would be another ten years before his sole claim to emperorship would be completed.  But nonetheless, in conjunction with an imperial ally, Licinius, Constantine the next year (313) issued the Edict of Milan, ending all further persecution of Christianity.

Indeed, Constantine even took for himself the title pontifex maximus, making himself also the religious head of the Roman Empire, and as such began to reorganize the Christian religion, Roman style.  He called conferences with the bishops or Christian leaders to clear up the clutter of three centuries of unsupervised religious development, by clarifying the doctrines (or "creeds" or "confessions"), deciding which of the considerable body of Christian writings were to be officially authorized as "canonical," and by developing a huge, bureaucratic ecclesiastical (church) structure to supervise the life of this religious community, whose religion had now officially become the moral-spiritual underpinning of Constantine's Empire.

Thus this 4th century Imperial Christianity would look very different from the 1st century Christianity described in the Bible.  Besides the whole Christian social order being put under massive Roman bureaucratic supervision, Jesus would be elevated in status to that of Christus Rex or Christ the King – friend and colleague of the Roman emperors – the person supposedly authorizing and thus conferring ultimate legitimacy on the Roman emperor then in power.  This in effect took Jesus out of the hands (and the hearts) of the common people, forcing them to look elsewhere for personal spiritual support.

This then led to the adoration of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  In fact it became her, rather than Jesus, that the common people now generally turned to for emotional support – something along the lines of the very popular Earth Mother worship (Isis, Astarte, Aphrodite, Demeter, etc.) which had just been suppressed by Christian Roman authorities. 

The Madonna (Mary) and Child (Jesus) - by Raphael

And along those same lines, certain Christian saints reputed to have special powers in particular areas of life came to replace the pagan deities that people once prayed to for favor in dealing with daily life and its specific challenges.

In short, in becoming Rome's official religion, Christianity got "Romanized."

Religious works vs. divine grace.  This Romanization of Christianity would also have a tendency to move Christianity slowly over the centuries towards Unitarianism – as salvation or access to heaven depended less and less on God's grace and the individual's repentance and transformation in being confronted by that grace – and more and more on the powers of the official Roman Church to offer salvation to the Christian faithful.  The Church now required regular periodic confessions to a priest (followed up by certain works performed by the penitent sinner as specified by that priest), allowing the person to be qualified to receive the holy sacraments or blessings of the priest in order to help cleanse the sinner of his or her sins.  Thus it was that works slowly took the place of Divine grace in the way the Church instructed the faithful concerning the requirements for salvation, and the reward of eternal life.

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MEDIEVAL CHRISTENDOM

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.

Alaric sacking Rome - by Andre Durenceau

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.

Map showing the growth of the Frankish Kingdom
(From:  William R. Shepherd, "The growth of Frankish power, 481–814," Historical Atlas, 1926 edition, p. 53)

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.

Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont (1095) calling for a crusade
against the Muslims ruling the Eastern Holy Lands

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.

The taking of Jerusalem by the crusaders - 1099

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. 

Pope Innocent authorizing the Franciscans - by Giotto

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.

Dominic de Guzman ... founder of the Dominicans

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^[4]Some of these tribes, particularly the Goths, were already Christian, though Unitarian or "Arian" thanks to the missionary effort of Ulfilas and the leadership of the Gothic chieftain Fritigern in the 300s; Rome was "Trinitarian" and thus looked on these tribesmen as not yet fully Christian, and thus in the need of conversion.

^[5]He was the grandson of Charles Martel (the "Hammer") who had made his own great place in history by being able to stop the spread of Islam into Europe by defeating Muslim forces at the Battle of Tours (732) in central France.  He went on to establish the Carolingian dynasty ruling France, which Charlemagne was soon to head up.

^[6]The Saxons and Celts of the British Isles excepted, as they continued to lay outside Charlemagne's conquered territory.  Likewise, most of Spain also fell outside Charlemagne’s realm because it remained under Arab-Berber Muslim control, and would do so in part for the next 700 years.

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THE STIRRINGS OF A NEW EUROPE

The rise of urban Europe.  Meanwhile, taking advantage of Europe's awakened consumer or materialist spirit brought on by the crusades were a number of port-cities located strategically along the sea routes that made for easy access to the wealth of the East.  Prominent in this regard within the key Mediterranean region were a number of city-states of Italy, not at all feudal domains but instead types of urban republics – the most important being Venice (which actually went on to develop a vast commercial empire linking Europe and the East) – but including importantly also Genoa (another shipping center) and Florence (a banking center situated in the center of the flow of moneyed wealth East and West).   But coastal cities of the Atlantic – such as Portugal's Lisbon, Flanders' Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent and England's London (not on the coast but accessible to the high seas by way of the Thames River) – and the cities of the Hansa League of northern Germany, such as Lübeck, Hamburg and Danzig and the Rhine region such as Cologne also got involved – and also grew quite wealthy from this new East-West trade.

A view of Venice
Scala - Florence

Canaletto - The Doge's Palace – Venice (ca. 1730)
The Royal Collection - Windsor Castle

 

The "Carta della Catena":  a 15th century view of Florence (c. 1490)
Florence, Museo de Firenze Com'era

Renaissance Europe.  By the 1300s and 1400s, Europe was being stirred by this flow of wealth and power to a vast cultural awakening, later termed the "Renaissance" (French for "rebirth").  God and Christ soon became upstaged in popular interest by simply the life of man himself, and his new-found ability to bring his world seemingly under human mastery.  Thus "Humanism" increasingly became the cultural motif of Renaissance Europe.

A classic example of such Humanism was found in the works of the political analyst, Niccolò Machiavelli.  In his early 1500s study, The Prince, Machiavelli insightfully described the way for a dictator to bring unity to a conflicted society, through everything from brute force to simple political deception.  Humanists would later denounce Machiavelli for his less than elegant depiction of the human spirit.  But they would also find it impossible to prove him wrong.  In any case, none of this had anything to do with traditional Christianity and its role in European society.

Indeed, traditional Christianity at the time was suffering deeply under the greed and political corruption of the Church, even papal authority itself, such as the very corrupt Pope Alexander VI and his Borgia family which directed the church during the period 1492-1503, in political opposition to the powerful della Rovere family (Pope Julius II, 1503-1513) and the Medici family (Pope Leo X, 1513-1521).  The Church had become a matter of constant, sometimes even brutal, politics – and very little spirituality.

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    Go on to the next section:
The Breakup of Christendom

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  Miles H. Hodges