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Church History Part #1: to the Great Schism of 1054

I. Why do we study history?

“It has been said that to try to do without history is to cease to be . Faith in Christ is based on events that have happened and have been witnessed in written records…Much of the Christian story is therefore found in written documents - the , the writings of the , the decisions of the early Church councils. Christian history comes down to us in Tradition - in the oral teachings, especially that of the Apostles and their successors, in the liturgy, in spirituality, in culture. Christian history is the record of God’s intervention in the human situation, an account of God’s love for his human creatures…The Incarnation happened in history as a divine-human event and it continues and is extended in the form of the Church, in her , in the , in her mission…In the end, it is always the story of the victory of grace and of the destiny of humanity.” (Cardinal Francis George, Chicago)

II. God sets the stage for the Church and the spread of the through the events of history.

A. Providence = God’s care or foresight (Webster’s Dictionary)

B. God chooses to communicate his in an ever expanding fashion through: an individual, a couple, a family, a collection of tribes, a nation, a kingdom, an empire, and finally the world.

He accomplished this “in the fullness of time” through a particular people (the Jews) and in a particular geographic region (the Middle East). The location and timing were just as critical as the choice of people

God used in his divine providence. The region was absorbed by both the Greek Empire of Alexander the

Great and the and yet they were located far enough on the fringe of those empires that they were successful in remaining monotheistic and traditionally set apart.

C. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) contributed to the spread of in two significant ways: contributing Greek philosophical thought and the literary arts to the world (which Catholic

Christians would later use to their advantage even up to the time of St. and until today) and forcing the world to learn one standardized language (I.e. Greek), which aided St. Paul in his evangelization and allowed a precise enough language for writers like St. Paul and St. John to speak more effectively of the mysteries of God. It also determined the of the used by the Church today via the

D. The Roman Empire (est. 753 BC) also contributed mightily to the form of the Church we

know today. The Roman culture contributed to reinforcing our hierarchical structure, our administrative form of dioceses, our structure of , our liturgical norms, etc. Also their well established system of highways and trade routes led to the quick spread of the faith. Further, the early Roman persecutions

(I.e. the blood of the ) and the later legalization and even governmental endorsement of under Emperor Constantine also contributed to the rapid spread of the as a public institution.

E. Summary - God’s omnipotence allows Him to use the events of history to His own purposes even while honoring our human freedom and refusing to interfere with historic events.

III. The Church in the first century AD

A. / The birth of the Church at (33 AD - 100 AD…)

List of key events: 1) Choice of Judas’ successor / , 2) The Coming of the Holy

Spirit, 3) Common life of the faithful, 4) Establishment of the Diaconate, 5) First martyrdoms / persecution under Saul…most notably the first apostle martyred (James the of John) and the first martyred (Stephen the “proto-”), The Gospel spreads to the Gentiles and is rejected by most of the

Jews and most of those in Palestine (i.e. the Gospel begins to rapidly spread from the Middle East into

Europe and Africa), Peter and Paul, the two most well known Christian leaders both are killed around 65

AD, Judaism and Christianity make a clean break after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70

AD, Two major persecutions under Nero and Domitian occur.

Note: The Early Church is noted for its charismatic nature and for a very loose structure of apostolic leadership under Peter and for its missionary zeal / itinerant preachers as local, particular churches begin to be established. However, Catholics believe that the Church is and has always been both spiritual and visible as an institution that is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. The fact that its form was still emerging does not change the fact that Jesus came to establish an institutional Church for the world to recognize and gather around. From the death of the last apostle (John) in 100 AD, the Church spread the

Gospel primarily through oral means and through the writing of letters. However, as the eye witnesses who knew Christ on earth gradually began to pass away and as the faith community began to realize that the 2nd coming of Christ might be delayed, they began to write the books that would later form the New

Testament of the Bible.

* Christian Ideal of the 1st Century - ( in his Passion)

IV. The Hierarchical Structure of the Church and its Practices Takes Shape (2nd - 3rd Centuries AD)

A. Did ache (Document dated by most scholars as being written late 1st cen. - early 2nd cen.):

The full translated title of the document is The Teachings of the Lord to the Gentiles (or Nations) by the

Twelve Apostles. The document first describes the two moral ways: the Way of Life and the Way of

Death. It then gives numerous liturgical guidelines for the celebration of the sacraments. is described with the Trinitarian formula and water, (preferably clear, cold, running water). Fast days for Christains are established as Weds./Fri. rather than Mon./Thurs. as the Jews did. The “Our ” and “Glory Be” texts are provided. Regarding the Eucharist, we read, “No one is to eat or drink of your

Eucharist but those who have been baptized in the Name of the Lord”. Regarding worship, the is one of the earliest documents confirming Sunday as the new Sabbath for . It also says,

“Assemble on the Lord’s Day, and break bread and offer the Eucharist; but first make of your faults, so that your sacrifice may be a pure one. Anyone who has a difference with his fellow is not to take part with you until they have been reconciled.”

B. (50-107 AD) (3rd of Antioch after St. Peter and Evodius): Acts tells us it was in the city of Antioch that believers were first called Christians ( to that they were known as followers of the New Way or Nazarites). Ignatius was famously martyred in 107 AD in Rome but on his way there in a prison transport he wrote seven letters to the particular churches that he passed near on the journey, giving us a clear idea of how the Church had quickly taken on a more defined structure after only a few decades. He writes, “Hold the in as great respect as Jesus Christ; just as you should also look on the bishop as a type of the Father, and the as the Apostolic circle forming his council; for without these three orders no church has any right to the name” (Letter to Tralles). In all seven of his letters, it is clear that the Church has taken on a more settled geographic character with established communities and the three-fold hierarchical ministry of as we know it today.

Ignatius is also the first to use the name “Catholic Church” in his letter to the Smyrneans. And we have some very clear images of the Mass, the common celebration of the Eucharist, baptismal practices and the discipline of excommunication for those who break with the teachings of the apostles.

C. Clement of Rome (4th after Peter, Linus, Anticletus (a.k.a. Cletus)): In 96 AD, Clement writes to the Corinthians, urging them to have more disciplined moral conduct. He also emphasizes the need to offer the Eucharist according to the norms of form and time and not in haphazard fashion, each according to his station in life, implying that there is already a well established liturgy. Clement urges confession for those who have caused scandal or division (which was celebrated in a public rather than private fashion). Clement’s reference to Levites as some sort of additional lay or ordained ministers and his reference to the intercession of the as Old Testament figures as well as his lengthy treatment of the community’s doubt in the resurrection point out some unique charactersitics of this early time.

D. St. of (69-155 AD) and St. (130-200 AD) (Polycarp was a and friend of and first bishop of Smyrna and Irenaeus, in turn, was Polycarp’s disciple and bishop of ). Polycarp was numbered among the 2nd generation believers and was martyred in 155

AD at the age of 86. Ironically, the charge brought for his execution was the crime of because he would not acknowledge the Roman gods as real. His writings are directed toward the refutation of the

Gnostics who were dualists that denied the Incarnation and the Resurrection among other things.

Irenaeus is the first to offer the complete list the books that we make use of today, although the universal canon of scripture was not established until the end of the 4th century. He also wrote against the Gnostics and later the Montanists as well, who were a group of charismatics who claimed knowledge and additional of the life of Jesus. These two men give us a image of the theological challenges to early Christianity.

E. St. (100-165 AD) and Hyppolytus of Rome (170-236 AD) - Both of these men give detailed liturgical descriptions of the Mass. St. Justin does so to make the case to the Roman government that Christianity is a legitimate religion and is not made up of cannibals (Romans had heard that Christians eat the body and drink the in their gatherings and requests were made to outlaw Christians as unsavory and dangerous elements of society). Hyppolytus was a Catholic priest and wrote a liturgical guideline for clergy to follow. Collectively, these early accounts give us about what we already believe: that the Mass has been celebrated since the time of Christ and according to the same basic skeletal structure that we follow today. Look at this example from Justin Martyr’s First

Apology (Ch. 64):

"On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons." (In chapter 65, Justin Martyr says that the kiss of peace was given before the bread and the wine mixed with water were brought to "the president of the brethren." The language used was doubtless Greek, except in particular for the Hebrew word "Amen", whose meaning Justin explains in Greek , saying that by it "all the people present express their assent" when the president of the brethren "has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings." )

F. St Clement of (bishop of Alexandria, , died 215 AD): Clement wrote the very first Church Catechism and offered a detailed guideline on how new converts were to be received into the Church through the Season. At this time Advent and are not widely celebrated. The entire focus is on (the date of which is disputed in the East and West). Clement’s guideline has generally been reapplied to our modern times within the Catholic Church. He emphasized that the entire faith community should fast and due for the new converts and he believed that the symbols of the liturgy spoke for themselves. He did not offer detailed explanations to the new Christians until after the

Easter experience through a process he called the Mystagogia.

G. There is a wealth of other early Christian writings similar to these but the examples I have listed are among the most famous. What can we take away from the emerging structure of the early

Church? Christians were liturgical. They celebrated the Eucharist. They had , priests and deacon. They practiced public reconciliation and followed the as a moral guide.

And therefore, if these basic elements are absent from your today, then you have divorced yourself to some degree, knowingly or unknowingly, from the Church establish by Jesus. These early writings confirm our Catholic Tradition as remaining faithful to what was established in the early centuries under the guidance of the .

Note: The first four centuries AD were marked by sporadic persecutions but these were not global events.

In some regions, Christians worshiped openly and publicly. However, in the central Roman Empire, the

Church was an underground and secretive community. They used secret signs and held private initiation rites not shared with the uninitiated until the Easter .

* Christian ideal of the 3rd and 4th centuries - The Desert (e.g. St. Anthony of Egypt) and other ascetical models (Imitation of Jesus who remains 40 days in the desert)

V. The Church is Legalized and Enters Public Life Openly - 4th - 5th Centuries

A. Edict of Milan 313 AD - Emperor Constantine legalizes Christianity and therefore reverses the law established by Nero outlawing it. Through his own Christian conversion, Christianity even takes the new status of official religion of the empire. Constantine donates countless government buildings, called basilicas, to be used as public places of worship. The Church adopts the Roman system of dioceses

(like counties) to establish ministerial jurisdiction. Constantine also builds a number of key churches that are still in use today, including St. Peter’s Basilica which he had intentionally built over the tomb of St.

Peter. In order to do this he himself violated two major laws in having Vatican hill, a public cemetery, leveled and the bodies of Roman citizens reburied elsewhere. It was a new world for Christians.

B. Church Councils - 1st Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Constantine even called the 1st together. The was established and various Christological heresies were addressed. 1st Council of is called in 381 AD which addresses similar heresies about the

Holy Spirit, lingering Christological heresies, and more formulations of the Creed. The following year, work on the of the Bible (The ) begins. There were also councils in Ephesus 431

AD and Chalcedon 451 AD which clarified some of our Trinitarian doctrine and teachings on Mary among other things. [The Church held 21 councils in all from 325 AD to 1965 AD]. Key theologians in this time include: St. Athanasius, St. , St. Augustine, St. , St. and St. Gregory of

Nazianzen.

C. The complete canon of scripture is established in 382 AD. Prior to that, different regions had variations of what might be called the Bible. In all, there were over 100 documents proposed for inclusion in the final New Testament. The Church settled on 27 for the New Testament and 46 for the Old

Testament, choosing for various to follow the Jewish canon of the Septuagint.

* Christian Ideal - Monastic Life (e.g. St. Basil in the East or St. Benedict in the West) (Imitation of Christian common life as seen in Acts or the Upper Room with Jesus and the Apostles). This new model of Christianity evolved as Christianity became legalized. Constantine endorsed Christianity partly out of political motives and many of the newer Christians were more lax. Mainstream Church life became more worldly and as a result, people like Basil and Benedict fled the cities to establish new monasteries away from the distractions.

VI. The Fall of Rome and the Dark Ages Begin - 5th - 9th Centuries

A. Rome falls in 476 AD after decades of pressure from the “Northern Hordes”. The Roman

Empire became over-extended in waging multiple wars and its political system became more and more corrupt and morally depraved. The emperors moved their capital from Rome to Constantinople in the East and Rome became a run down slum. During this time, under Pope Leo the Great (400-461 AD), the took on a whole new political authority seeing after the western half of the empire as the emperors looked after the East. Essentially, they abandoned Europe to its fate. The Germanic people, and later the

Vikings too (in the 900s AD), laid waste to much of the cities of Europe and the western half of the Roman

Empire. In the process they burned down libraries and infrastructure. It was at this time that monasteries essentially saved the western civilized world, preserving books in their remote locations as well as agricultural know-how and other advanced techniques in science, the arts, etc.

B. Rise of Islam with Muhammad and the Koran (570 - 632 AD) - Jihad leads to the capture of

Jerusalem by the Muslims in 638 AD, the destruction of many of the churches built on holy sites and replaced by mosques and the killing of Catholic religious and pilgrims. As the Islamic movement grows in power, the eastern half of the Roman Empire comes under assault. [ Islam brought the end of influence to three of the five great Christian : Antioch, Jerusalem, and Antioch. This trend later led to the

Christian response of the but the first would not be waged until almost 400 years later.

Ultimately, Islam even brought down the fourth of Constantinople (now Istanbul, ) and ultimately only Rome remained. Today most Eastern Catholics are endangered minorities in their own lands.]

C. The Church sets out to convert the barbarians (the name meaning “the bearded ones“). St

Patrick to Ireland, Augustine of Cantebury to England, St Ansgar to Scandanavia, St. Boniface to

Germany, Sts. Cyril and Methodius to the Slavic lands, etc. The major force behind this new evangelization was the monastic movement of Ireland, which evangelized Europe. Although not all conversions were delicately achieved (often tribal leaders forced tribe members to adhere to their choice of faith), still Europe was tamed and wars gradually came to a decline. This newfound stability would later open the way for the building of universities, developments in science and technology, etc.

D. (King Charles the Great) of the Franks (742-814 AD) - Brings Carolingian Reforms in the Church - including the establishment of , universal canon law, universal liturgical norms, schools attached to every , emphasis on Church art and precious vessels for Mass, etc. (previously, churches had been sacked by barbarians and the treasury of the Church had basically been stolen). New

Golden Age for worship in the Church.

VII. The Great Schism - (The Events Leading Up To 1054 AD)

A. At its height of influence, the number of Christians in Constantinople and the East far exceeded that of the West in Rome. More Christians were worshipping in Greek than Latin and the eastern liturgies of St. John Chrysostom dominated over what we are familiar with as the Mass of the West.

Rome remained the seat of the successors to Peter (i.e. the popes) but all political and military influence as well as the greatest minds and artists had moved east with the emperor and the entire royal court.

B. The beginnings of tensions between the East and West: Justinian I (482-565 AD) - From

Constantinople, Justinian still fancied himself head of both Church and State. However, he was a monophysitist (I.e. He believed that Christ’s human nature was completely subsumed by his divine nature, or in other words…Jesus was not truly God and truly man but only God).

C. Tensions grew from 725-843 AD during the Iconoclastic Controversy - Those Christians in the East who were iconoclasts began to believe that any religious /art/statuary that depicted Jesus were forms of and they began to burn and destroy . The West maintained that Jesus himself, through the Incarnation, was the original of God and that therefore, other art depicting him was permitted as a way of honoring Jesus. Later Church Councils declared a heresy.

D. the source of division came when Rome came under direct threat from Attila the Hun and other barbarian raiders. Popes made various attempts to travel to Constantinople to seek defense but were denied on the grounds that the East had its own troubles. This occurred in the 700s AD.

E. Pope St. Leo III crowned Charlemagne as emperor in a surprise event in 800 AD further infuriating the East, whose leaders considered themselves the rightful emperors.

F. Finally other matters brought things to a head. These included:

1. An eastern refusal to give communion to a western visiting politician in 857

AD which brought much anger and confused response from the West

2. The controversy (does the Holy Spirit proceed form the Father and the Son or

from the Father through the Son)

3. The role of the pope which was seen in the West as the hierarchical head but in the

East as only one of five main patriarchs (i.e. rule by committee).

4. Concern over the rise in influence coming from the West with a spirit of reform (i.e.

perceived threat that the ancient ways of the East would not be honored or allowed to continue

combined with political tension between East and West over dominance.

5. Tensions also rose over differneces in disciplines of worship, including celibate priesthood in the West vs. married priesthood in the East, the use of leavened vs. unleavened bread, beared vs. clean shaven priests, the date of Easter, etc.

G. Mutual Excommunication and Schism: East and West split

1. Cerularius was named of the East. As an eastern traditionalist he closed all Latin churches and banned Latin missionaries from Eastern Europe. Some Eastern Catholics even took the step of trampling on the Eucharist in some Latin churches as a protest. Pope Leo IX was angered and sent Cardinal Humbert to the East with his official response. He attended the at the Hagia in Constantinople, and laid a decreee of excommunication of the eastern patriarch on the there. Their arrogance and lack of diplomatic skill was further aggravated by the fact that, technically they had no authority to do so in the pope’s name since he had died during their trip. It was too late. The damage was already done. Eight days later, the eastern patriarch responded by excommunicating the pope and declaring that the had perverted the faith.

Conclusion: Today, that rift still continues. Many have returned to the Catholic Church and, as they still maintain their unique spirituality and liturgical customs, they are referred to as Eastern Catholics or Uniate Churchs in union with Rome. Their breathren who remain separated from the Catholic Church are today known as Orthodox Christians. In 2001 Pope John Paul II met with the patriarch of the and they jointly rescinded their decrees of excommunication. Unlike the case with other

Christian Churches, Catholics recognize all seven sacraments in the Orthodox Churches as valid because they also have an unbroken apostolic tradition. The role of the Pope remains the single greatest source of division between the two traditions.