The History of Christian Spirituality from the Resurrection to the Crusades — Autumn 2013

The History of Christian Spirituality from the Resurrection to the Crusades – (Autumn 2013) — (Ten Sessions)

On Tuesdays in the Fall of 2013, for 10 weeks (from September 17 until November 19, 2013), Pastor Mandy led a group called “Growing Your Soul — Christian Spirituality before the Crusades”. The same class was repeated both in the afternoon and in the evening. This meant that there were two different meeting-times, but only one class. In the evening we covered the same material as in the morning.

 There is a growing interest today in spirituality, and the spiritual heritage of the Christian faith is an area ripe for exploration. In the Fall of 2013, participants were introduced to a sampling of the great riches of the Christian Spiritual Tradition from the time of its inception until the time of the Crusades. We looked at key leaders and practices as we explored the ways in which Christians from the earliest times sought to express and live out the deepest truths of our faith.

 The Bible and the life of Jesus Christ was the starting point for the story. Along the way, we looked briefly at the early Church Fathers, the saints and mystics, the monks and the Crusaders. And we practiced a few of the spiritual disciplines and prayed some of the prayers they have taught the Church through the years. The story of Christian spirituality bears witness to the countless ways in which individuals and religious communities have felt the presence and heard the call of God, have been disturbed by the divine anger, and have felt impelled to give all they had to give in response. In the autumn of 2013 we took a peek into this treasure. I posted a summary of each session on this website so that those who missed a session, could “get caught up”. We decided to leave these session summaries on the website to allow others to get a taste of what A History of Christian Spirituality entails.

 In the Autumn of 2014, we will spend ten weeks exploring what the Crusades meant to the development of Christian Spirituality. I hope you will join us.

 

The following is a You Tube video that I made in 2011 about the Jesus Prayer and how to pray it:

An Overview of What The Course Was About: Growing Your Soul – (The Weekly Assignments — September 17 – November 19, 2013) — The Prayers We Prayed:

 The Prayer of Humility by Raphael Cardinal Merry del Val: (Sept 17, 2013)

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, Hear me.

From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me Jesus 

From the desire of being loved …

 From the desire of being extolled …

 From the desire of being honored …

 

From the desire of being praised ….

From the desire of being preferred to others …

From the desire of being consulted …

From the desire of being approved …

 From the fear of being humiliated …

From the fear of being despised …

From the fear of suffering rebukes …

From the fear of being calumniated …

From the fear of being forgotten …

From the fear of being ridiculed …

From the fear of being wronged …

From the fear of being suspected …

 That others may be loved more than I, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I …

That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease …

That others may be chosen and I set aside …

That others may be praised and I unnoticed …

That others may be preferred in everything …

That others may become holier than I, provided I may become as holy as I should …

 by Raphael Cardinal Merry del Val, Secretary of State under Pope Pius X

 

The “Prayer of Abandonment” of Charles de Foucauld (September 24) Father, I abandon myself into Your hands; Do with me what You will. Whatever You may do, I thank You. I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only Your will be done in me, and in all Your creatures – I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into Your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to You with all the love of my heart, For I love You, Lord, And so need to give myself, To surrender myself into Your hands, Without reserve, And with boundless confidence, for You are my father.

 

 The Prayer of St. Francis De Sales  (October 1)  “Do not look forward to tomorrow. The same everlasting Father, who is with you today, will be with you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering or give you unfailing strength to bear it. So be at peace then, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations” — St. Francis De Sales

 

Practicing the Discipline of Forbearance  (October 8)This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins — Romans 3:15.

 “Forbearance” isn’t a word we hear much today, but if we learn to practice it on a daily basis, it can become one of our greatest weapons in staving off bitterness, contention, and unforgiveness. To forbearmeans to show restraint, to be parient in the face of provocation, to be long-suffering, willing to put up with people’s actions and inactions — to let things go.

 Forbearance is actually a by-product of love, the kind of love, as Paul put it so eloquently in 1 Corinthians 13, that “is not provoked … does not take into account a wrong suffered … bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (verses 5-7 NASB). Yes, some offenses need to be confronted and dealt with. But many others — most in fact — just need to be overlooked and put away. (Our problem is, we tend to confront the sins we should overlook, and overlook the sins we should confront!) A lack of forbearance in our homes and everyday circumstances causes us to exaggerate offenses until, as Charles Spurgeon said, “a [fly’s] egg becomes as huge as ever was laid by an ostrich.” It magnifies tension and intensifies conflict. It erects walls in relationships, makes us petty and peevish, and severs us from our friends. I’m convinced that many divorces could be averted if one or both partners would practice the grace of forbearance. Many tensions and minunderstandings in the workplace would vanish if we would be more forbearing with one another.

Bigger issues are sure to arise, requiring a great measure of forgiveness. Learning to forbear today is valuable practice for being able to forgive later. Practice the discipline of forbearance: Name something in recent memory that you should have let go instead of allowing it to slow bake. What might be different now if you had?

 The Prayer of Abandonment of Thomas Merton (October 15) My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and that I think I am following Your will does not mean I am actually doing so. But I believe the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know if I do this You will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

 Hymn:  God will Take Care of You  (October 15)

Text: Civilla Durfee Martin, Music: Walter Stillman Martin

Verse 1: Be not dismayed whate’er betide, God will take care of you; Beneath His wings of love abide, God will take care of you. Refrain: God will take care of you, through ev’ry day, o’er all the way; He will take care of you, God will take care of you.

Verse 2: Through days of toil when heart doth fail, God will take care of you; When dangers fierce your path assail, God will take care of you. Refrain.

Verse 3: No Matter what may be the test, God will take care of you; Lean, weary one, upon His breast, God will take care of you. Refrain.

Try singing the verses (not the refrain) to the tune of LBW 33 “The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns” or LBW 98 “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed” The LBW does not have a CM-with-refrain hymn in it, but it has several CM (Common Meter) Hymns.

 A Morning and an Evening Prayer  (October 22)

Two of my favorite prayers are wonderful ones for beginning and ending the day. The first I learned from Matins in the LBW, and the second I learned from Saint Augustine. They have really helped me feel closer to God; may they help you. During this week, pray each prayer every day, in addition to your usual devotions.

 

Morning Prayer: Lord God, you have called Your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Evening Prayer: Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest Your weary ones, bless Your dying ones, pity Your afflicted ones, shield Your joyous ones, and all for Your love’s sake. AMEN.

 

Prayer of St. Basil of Caesarea – For a Deeper Sense of Fellowship with All Living Things (October 29)  O God, grant us a deeper sense of fellowship with all living things, with our little brothers and sisters to whom in common with us You have given this earth as home. We recall with regret that in the past we have acted high-handedly and cruelly in exercising our dominion over them. Thus, the voice of the earth which should have risen to You in song has turned into a groan of travail. May we realize that all these creatures also live for themselves and for You, not for us alone. They too love the goodness of life, as we do, and serve You better in their way than we do in ours. Amen.

 

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (October 29)Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love;where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. AMEN.

 

Two Prayers of St. Anselm (November 5)

The Prayer of St Anselm: O Lord my God, teach my heart this day where and how to find you. You have made me and re-made me, and you have bestowed on me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know you. I have not yet done that for which I was made. Teach me to seek You, for I cannot seek You unless You teach me, or find You unless You show Yourself to me. Let me seek You in my desire; let me desire You in my seeking. Let me find You by loving You; let me love You when I find You. Amen.

 The Prayer of St Anselm In Time of Spiritual Dryness: — O supreme and inaccessible Light, O complete and blessed Truth, how far You are from me even though I am so near to You. How remote You are from my sight even though I am present to Yours. You are everywhere in Your entirety, and yet I do not see You; in You I move and have my being, and yet I cannot approach You. O God, let me know You and love You so that I may find my joy in You; and if I cannot do so fully in this life, let me at least make some progress every day, until at last that knowledge, love, and joy come to me in all their plenitude. Amen.

 

Two prayers by St. Bernard of Clairvaux – (November 12)O Sacred Head: O Sacred Head , now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down / Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown. O sacred Head, what glory, what bliss, till now was Thine! Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine.

 How pale Thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn! How doth Thy face now languish that once was bright as morn! Grim death, with cruel rigor hath robbed Thee of Thy life; Thus Thou hast lost Thy vigor, Thy strength, in this sad strife.

 What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered was all for sinners’ gain; mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain. Lo, here I fall, my Savior! Tis I deserve Thy place; Look on me with Thy favor, and grant to me Thy grace.

My Shepherd, now receive me; My guardian, own me Thine. Great blessings Thou didst give me, O Source of gifts divine. Thy lips have often fed me with words of truth and love; Thy Spirit oft hath led me to heav’nly joys above.

 What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest Friend, for this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end? O Make me Thine forever! and should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love for Thee.

 My Savior, be Thou near me when death is at my door; then let Thy presence cheer me, forsake me nevermore! When soul and body languish, O leave me not alone. But take away mine anguish by virtue of Thine own!

 Be Thou my consolation, my shield when I must die; remind me of Thy Passion when my last hour draws nigh. Mine eyes shall then behold Thee, upon Thy cross shall dwell, my heart by faith enfold Thee. Who dieth thus dies well.

 Jesus, the Very Thought of You: Jesus, the very thought of You fills us with sweet delight; but sweeter far, Your face to view and rest within Your light.

 No voice can sing, no heart can frame, nor can the mind recall a sweeter sound than Your blest name, O Savior of us all.

 

O Hope of ev’ry contrite soul, O joy of all the meek, How kind You are to those who fall! How good to those who seek!

 O Jesus, be our joy today; Help us to prize Your love; Grant us at last to hear You say: “Come share My home above.”

 O Jesus, King most wonderful! O Conqueror renowned! O source of peace ineffable, in whom all joys are found.

 When once You visit darkened hearts, then truth begins to shine, then earthly vanity departs, then kindles love divine.

 O Jesus, light of all below, the fount of life and fire, surpassing all the joys we know, all that we can desire.

 May ev’ry heart confess Your name, forever You adore, and seeking You, itself inflame to seek You more and more!

 O may our tongues forever bless. may we love You alone and ever in our lives express the image of Your own.

 

Growing Your Soul – (Session 1 –September 17) — The Foundations and Vitality of Christian Spirituality

Why bother practice any Spiritual Disciplines at all? (See Pastor Mandy’s blog for September 7, 2013 & the Video posted right on You Tube entitled “Why Practice Spiritual Disciplines?”)

 a. Some people believe that Jesus’ Death on the cross was not enough for our salvation. They believe that people need to do something in order to be saved.

 b. Lutherans believe that we cannot even say “yes” to God. Even when we say “Yes, I believe” it is only because God is already acting in our lives. See Revelation 3:5 – our names are already written in His Book of Life.

 c. Because of Original Sin, all we are free to say is “No”. And God will never force us to do what He wills that we do/ If we really want to go to Hell, God will give us our way and blot our names OUT of His Book of life. For example, see “The Garden of Eden” by Hans Christian Anderson, a Lutheran.

 

The only thing that Practicing Spiritual Disciplines will do is turn us toward the places OUTSIDE ourselves where God has said He is to be found:

a. Bible Study (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

b. Holy Communion (2 Corinthians 11:23-26)

c. Worship with other Christians (Matthew 18:20)

d. Service to the needy neighbor (Matthew 25:31-46)

 

The Spiritual Disciplines help us build enduring habits of a particular kind: virtues

a. Blueprints of a Cathedral / The cathedral that is built (The same cathedral)

b. A Sapling that is planted / The tree when it is grown (The same tree)

c. Wedding vows / 50th Wedding Anniversary (Habits of Love)

 

Scripture advises us to practice these disciplines .

a. 1 Timothy 2:7

b. Hebrews 12:14

 

What are the foundations of Christian Spirituality? (See Pastor Mandy’s blog for September 8, 2013). The vitality of Christian Spirituality comes from two foundations:

a. From our Jewish roots, Christian Spirituality gets its stress that ALL OF LIFE (including physical life) must be seen in terms of our relationship with God through Christ. Don’t forget that Christians believe in the physical resurrection of the body, and were responsible for feeding the hungry, building hospitals for the sick, and beginning universities. (For further reflections on this wholistic focus see Matthew 25: 31-46, Romans 8: 18 – 30, Galatians 5:22 and Leviticus 19: 1-35) This is the Wholistic foundation.

 

b. From our Greek roots (especially from Plato), Christian Spirituality gets its stress that what is “good” is spiritual, invisible, incorporeal, and immortal while what is “bad” is physical – because it doesn’t last and is earthbound. This led to ascetic practices like fasting and “denial of the flesh”. This is the Dualistic Foundation.

 

c. Both foundations have led to Christian emphasis on beauty in our worship services.

 

d. These two influences are bound together in tension in Christianity. You can see them bound together in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 as St. Paul describes how God slowly transforms us into the people He created us to be.

 

The Rock-Bottom basics of Christian Spirituality flow from the life, death, resurrection, and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. No child is too young to learn these; no theologian is so far along the path s/he can stop practicing them: (See Pastor Mandy’s blog for September 9)

a. Weekly Worship with the Christian Community (Reception of the Sacrament)

b. Tithing (Growing toward giving a tenth of your income back to God.)

c. Service to those in Need / Almsgiving

d. Obeying the 10 Commandments (growing in understanding and obeying them)

e. Daily Prayer and Bible reading

 

Growing Your Soul – (Session 2 –September 24) — What We Learn from the Example of Jesus

 What We Learn From Jesus’ Example of prayer as found in the New Testament. (For more information see “Jesus’ Example of Prayer” on Pastor Mandy’s blog for September 18, 2013 found on the Holy Trinity Website under “News and Blogs”.)

 Jesus’ own rhythm was prayer-activity-prayer. He had a regular pattern of withdrawal into solitude to pray before going out to preach teach and heal

 

This is how the Gospel of Mark begins: Mk 1:35 (flurry of activity 1:14 – 34; prayer 1:35; flurry of activity 1:36-39)

 

We see this pattern at every significant event in Jesus’ ministry. Things happen when Jesus prays: Luke 3:21 (at Jesus Baptism); Luke 5:15-16 (He would teach and then withdraw); Luke 6:12-13 (He prayed before choosing the 12 disciples); Luke 9:18 (He prayed before Peter’s Confession); Luke 9:28-29 (He prayed before the Transfiguration); He prays in Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46).

 

No wonder His example inspired the disciples. So they asked Him to teach them to pray: Mt 6:9-13; Luke 11:1-4

 

Why does Jesus spend so much time alone with God? Because He loves God; God is His father; In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus shows us that God has a father-heart towards us (I don’t think any child can really understand this)

 

God delights to answer our prayers: Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:9-13

 

Some other of Jesus’ prayers: Matthew 11:25-27; John 11:41-43; John 12:28; John 17, 1, 11, 24; Mark 14:36; Luke 23:34; Luke 23:46; Luke 22:31-32; Mark 15:24

 

The Sermon on the Mount contains some general teaching about prayer: Matthew 6:1-7

 

Luke tells us 3 parables about prayer that are only recorded in his gospel: The Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5-8); the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1-8); The Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14)

 

All of Jesus’ teaching on prayer must be seen in the context of His stress on God’s love for us. We must never see prayer as something that, if we can only do it right, will convince God to answer our prayer. God delights to answer our prayers, so just ask (John 16:23-24)

 

Sentence Prayer and the Jesus Prayer (For more information see “Sentence Prayer and The Jesus Prayer” on Pastor Mandy’s blog for September 18, 2013 found on the Holy Trinity Website under “News and Blogs”.)

 

The Jesus Prayer: Greek monk Diadochus of Photike (400 – 486 AD) He is the one who taught this prayer to the Church – the heart is the location of the inner self where God meets the person – “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me a sinner” This prayer is based on Scripture: People pleaded to Jesus using these prayers: the blind men (Mt 9:27; 20:30; Mark 10:47; Luke 18:38); the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:22); some lepers (Luke 18:13); the tax collector of Luke 18:13)

 

Sentence Prayer: What we encourage at Holy Trinity to help everyone become comfortable praying aloud.

The following is a You Tube video that I made in 2011 about the Jesus Prayer and how to pray it:

 

 Growing Your Soul – (Session 3 –October 1, 2013) — The Spiritual Habits of the New Testament Church

 

The Spiritual Habits of the New Testament Church: (See blog for Sept 19, 2013)

 

In the Book of Acts, we find the earliest Christians “constantly at prayer” (On the beach – 16:25; 21:5); (Going to the temple for Afternoon prayer – 3:1; 10:3, 30); (We see Paul going to the Temple and even paying for people’s vows and offerings – 21:23-27; 22:17)

 

Please notice that the earliest Christians were convinced they were still Jews. They thought Jews could believe that in Jesus God Himself had become incarnate and still remain Jews – why not?

 

Back in the first century, Judaism was very evangelistic. Gentile “God-fearers” had a court in the Temple and are mentioned in all sorts of places: See Acts 10:2; 10:22 – Cornelius was a “God-Fearer”; See Acts 16:14 – Lydia was a “God Fearer”)

These God-Fearers were converting from paganism to Judaism

 

Jewish travelling evangelists / travelling rabbis were invited to speak at the Jewish synagogues and at major Jewish worship services. This is why no one is surprised at Peter and the eleven speaking to those Jews who came from all over the diaspora for the Jewish feast of Pentecost (aka ”Feast of Weeks ) The 3 Feasts during which Jewish men were required to travel to Jerusalem were Passover, Weeks/Pentecost, Tabernacles/Booths. As the Feast of Weeks/Passover was one of these three feasts, nearly all of those baptized that day came to Christ from Judaism (Acts 2:36-41)

 

In fact, these travelling rabbis were invited to speak at the local Jewish synagogue whenever they came to town, which is why you so often find Paul preaching in the synagogue (See Acts 8:40; 9:20, 27; 13:5, 14-43; 17:1-5; 17:10-13; 17:16-21; 18:4; etc). This is why most of the earliest Christians were Jews first.

 

In fact, it was not until later that Christianity was not even seen as something different from Judaism (Acts 11:26)

 

Many of the Pharisees became Christian (Acts 15:5)

 

The first controversy the Church had to resolve was whether a pagan could come to Jesus straight out of paganism or had to convert to Judaism first (Acts 15:1-5) – This is what the entire Jerusalem Council was about; this is what the entire controversy about circumcision was about

 

Naturally, the earliest worship patterns of Christianity were taken from the Synagogue: scripture readings (including sung psalms), sermons and prayers. There would also be Holy Communion celebrated at someone’s home on Sunday (See 1 Cor 11:17-33)

 

When the earliest Christians got together, there were four elements to their worship service, even if the worship service was spread over two days (the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day): the apostle’s teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers (Acts 2:42)

 

Paul describes them gathering for the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:20) and tells them to give their financial offerings on the first day of every week – Sunday (1 Cor 16:2).

 

Other Christian writers urge their readers to gather for worship and “spiritual sacrifices” — Hebrews 10:25; 13:15; 1 Peter 2:5) They are told to sing “Psalms and hymns and spiritual tunes.” Ephesians 5:19 – and some of these hymns are cited in the epistles (Phil 2:6-11; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:3; 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 3:18-22)

 

The letters contain instructions for worship – the longest set is 1 Corinthians 10-14.

 

Love should be what characterizes the Christian’s behavior in worship.

 

At the heart of these instructions is a spirituality that is centered on being the body of Christ: every member has a purpose, is united with every other, and Christ is the head.

Here you see both the wholistic approach of Judaism (Christianity as the Body of Christ in the world; focus on the breaking of the bread and baptism and acts of charity) and the dualism it got from the Greeks (everything must be undergirded with prayer – 1 Thess 5:17; Phil 4:6; Rom 15:30; 2 Corinthians 1:11; Col 4:3)

 

James agrees with Paul’s stress on prayer and insists that faith must be embodied in acts of charity (prayer: James 1:5-6; 4:2-3; 5:16-18) (Acts of charity: 1:27; 2:1-7; 5:1-6)

 Growing Your Soul – (Session 4 –October 8, 2013) — Christian Spirituality and Martyrdom

 

Christian Spirituality and Martyrdom ( See blog for September 28, 2013)

In the Greek, a “martyr” was a witness in the legal sense: one who testifies to the truth of what s/he says by his or her intense suffering or death (as opposed to one who gives “false witness.”)

 

In the Old Testament, Jewish law required two or more witnesses to verify an accusation (Deut 17:6) The New Testament often appealed to this principle (Mt 18:16; Hebrews 10:28). In the Old Testament, both reliable witnesses (Ruth 4:9-11; Isaiah 8:2) and false witnesses (Ex 23:1; Proverbs 6:16-19) are common.

 

In Daniel 7-12 we find developed a concept of the suffering “of God’s Holy Ones” before their entrance into the Kingdom of God. See Daniel 7:17-26 where these sufferers are called “the saints of the Highest One”.

 

There is also an emphasis in the New Testament on the death of the Old Testament prophets who proclaimed and witnessed to the Word of God. In fact, in the New Testament it is consistently presupposed that all the prophets of Israel suffered persecution at the hands of their own people (See Acts 7:52) The killing of Christ and the persecution of His followers were seen as the repetition of a pattern which had been followed over and over again in the national life (Mt 5:12; 23:34-37; 1 Thess 2:14-16).

 

However, to be fair, the persecution of the prophets in Old Testament times seems to have been relatively rare except during times of religious and moral decadence — and then, one of the sure signs of the moral decadence of the times was the persecution of the prophets (1 Kgs 16:29-17:5; 19:1-7; Jeremiah 21:17-24; Jer 38; 2 Kings 21:10-16)

 

From the beginning of the Book of Acts, the martyrs were understood as the solemn legal witnesses regarding Jesus’ unjust but voluntary death and his resurrection, even when these witnesses did not themselves die (Acts 1:21-22; 2:32; 3:15-16; 5:29-32; 10:34-41)

 

As the Church became more socially visible, it began to attract more interest from the political authorities. Christian witnesses began to be persecuted and killed. Martyrs were believed to gain crowns in heaven next to Christ, as spoken of in Revelation (Revelation 2:10-11; 3: 8-12; 6:2).

 

These witnesses provided the kind of legally recognized testimony required to substantiate their preaching of the Gospel. The opening chapters of Acts tell of attempts by the Great Sanhedrin to prohibit public preaching by the apostles (4:17-22) but they were unable to secure obedience even though the apostles were flogged (5:27-42). The first sustained persecution arose around Stephen (7:54-8:1). Jesus had spoken of the stoning of those sent by God to Jerusalem as witnesses (Matthew 23:37) and Stephen died as a faithful witness (Acts 7:57-60), at whose stoning St. Paul makes his first appearance into Christian History (Acts 7:58; 8:1-3; Acts 22:20).

 

Christian men and women were thrown into prison, many were driven to seek safety in flight — which led to a wide and significant expansion of the Christian mission (8:4-25; 11:19-26)

 

Shortly before the end of his life (AD 44), Herod Agrippa 1, king in Jerusalem, struck savage blows at the leaders of the Church. He executed James the son of Zebedee and put Peter into prison (Acts 12:1-11) which indicates that the public generally had become hostile to Christians at this time. St Paul almost died a martyr’s death in Lystra as he was preaching the Gospel (Acts 14:19-20).

 

By the time Hebrews was written, although no one in that community had yet died as a witness for their faith there had already been suffering and persecution (Hebrews 10:32-39), and the possibility of dying a martyr’s death was seen to exist (Hebrews 12:4). See also Hebrews 11:4, 35, 37. The witness of all who had already died for their faith is used to motivate the community of Hebrews to focus on Jesus, even if/when witness and endurance mean bloodshed and martyrdom (Hebrews 12:1-4)

 

1 Peter presents an extensive theology of suffering (1 Peter 2:19-24; 3:14-18; 4:12-19) because the community he is writing to is undergoing persecution. Peter then assures the readers that their experience of suffering will last only a little while before God brings them to spiritual completeness (1 Peter 5:8-10) Scripture and tradition combine to tell us that St. Peter died a martyr’s death (see 2 Peter 1:14-15), probably during the time of the emperor Nero.

 

During the first generation, the church had constantly to contend with popular hostility (and the possibility of mob violence) but seldom with official governmental hostility; the Roman authorities as a rule protected the Christians from mob violence. However under the emperor Nero, there came a change.

 

The Christian Church in Rome began to suffer inhuman treatment at the command of Emperor Nero, following the great fire that broke out in July of 64 AD. The populace had already come to detest Nero, and were convinced that he had ordered the fire set in order to clear a space for his great building projects. Nothing Nero could do had any effect in dissipating these rumors, so Nero began looking for a scapegoat. Since the populace already hated the Christians anyway, he accused the Christians of arson. The apostle Paul probably was martyred during Nero’s persecution of Christians.

 

Christians were persecuted during the reigns of the Emperors Domitian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Diocletian (with Revelation being written during the persecution of Diocletian). With increased persecution came increased martyrdom. The Early Church Father Tertullian is credited with saying “The blood of the martyrs is indeed the seed of the church. Dying we conquer.” Thus he held that the witness of the Church was furthered decisively by the martyrdom of the faithful. But it is a distortion to believe that thousands of early Christians were martyred. The total number of early Christian martyrs should probably be measured in the hundreds rather than the thousands, but those hundreds were indeed martyred.

 

And the early church celebrated these martyrs! Following the Martyrdom of Bishop Ignatius of Antioch in 107 AD, during the reign of the Emperor Trajan, his seven letters were preserved, treasured, and sent around to the churches; the office of bishop rises to real prominence in the Church for the first time; and the understanding that martyrdom proves a disciple to be a true disciple became on of the most powerful images of Christian heroism in the face of totalitarian oppressors. Those who died for the faith were regarded as gathered around the throne of God in heaven and still interceding for the Church on earth.

 

Around 155-160 AD, The Martyrdom of Polycarp was written. It was written shortly after Polycarp’s death. The 86 year old Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna does not seek martyrdom, but refuses to take an oath to Caesar. He accepts his execution with steadfast courage saying “For eighty-six years I have been His servant and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my king who has saved me?” After his death, his fellow Christians collected his burnt bones and preserved them as precious artifacts, with the intention of celebrating “the birthday of his martyrdom.”

 

Several of these martyrdom accounts make good reading and might be available for free on your e-readers: Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History (Hist Eccl 5:1.3-63), The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, The Acts of Justin and His Companions, The Acts of the Martyrs of Scilli in Africa, and Tertullian’s To the Martyrs.

 

The unyielding resolve of these early martyrs, struck pagan society as a deranged fanaticism, as a sign of a religious system that was so determined not to be absorbed into the surrounding culture that it transgressed the fundamental structures that held ancient society together such as submission to civic authorities in all public matters (ie: making sacrifice to the emperor). Yet Christianity was ready to withstand opposing religious systems and other alternative social and moral visions at the cost of apalling personal suffering.

 

The idea of the martyr as the true disciple (“The Martyr Cult) was to exercise a profound influence on the entire later life of the Church. Not everyone might be called to suffer for the faith, but those who had been tried and executed for the faith, were seen as the supreme symbols of those who had entered into a profound imitation of Jesus Christ, the suffering Lord.

 

The Church began to see herself as a cosmic “Communion of Saints” where the heroic martyrs came to be seen as heavenly intercessors whose prayers in heaven came to be seen as very powerful before the Throne of God, and whose festivals (Saint’s Day) were regularly instituted to mark their deaths. This was the beginning of the Christian calendar of Saints and the belief in the sanctity of their relics.

 

Under the Emperor Constantine (288 – 337 AD), Christianity became a legally recognized religion of the Roman Empire (with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD) and the persecutions were over. Almost 70 years later, with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. As some Christians began to wonder how they could most closely follow Christ, there was the development of a desert spirituality. Monks and nuns becan to separate from the world and practice aesceticism — into which we (Growing Your Soul) will look next. “Aesceticism” was a kind of “victimless” martyrdom, a giving up of one’s life by separation from the things of this world, rather than a giving up of one’s life by a violent death.

 

Growing Your Soul – (Session 5 –October 14, 2013) — Christian Spirituality and The Desert Fathers (and Mothers)

 

Christian Spirituality and the Desert Fathers:

Under the Emperor Constantine (288-337 AD) Christianity became a legally recognized religion of theRoman Empire, with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. As Christianity became legal, martyrdom became a thing of the past.

 

Then men and women began moving to the deserts singly and in groups. Desert Monasticism began to appear nearly simultaneously in several areas, including Syria, Egypt and Palestine.

 

These Christian hermits, monks and nuns came to be known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. These Desert Fathers and Mothers had a major influence on the development of Christian Spirituality. Furthermore. Christian monasticism would later grow out of these informal gatherings of monks and nuns.

 

Both the Western Christian “Rule of St, Benedict” and the Eastern Christian Monastic tradition at Mt. Athens were strongly influenced by the traditions that began in the desert.

 

All of the monastic revivals of the Middle Ages looked to the desert for inspiration and guidance. Even modern renewal movements such as Pietism and the Methodist Revival in England were influenced by the Desert Fathers.

 

Some of those who came to be called “the Desert Fathers” were hermits (both male and female) who lived alone. Some were monks and nuns who lived (celibately) in community. Some were those who lived solitary lives but in small groups of 3 or 4, often as disciples of a master.

 

These “Desert Fathers” were ascetics who lived without much sleep or food or baths, who wore ragged clothes, and who engaged in hard work, no sex, and no leisure. They kept silence in order better to hear the Word of God. They broke the rules of the world (which claimed that ownership of property, ownership of goods, and engaging in sex and domesticity was necessary for full humanity) in order to live as simple Children of God.

 

Anthony the Great, a moderately wealthy Christian, launched the movement that became “The Desert Fathers” after he heard a Sunday Sermon sometime around 270 AD. This was a sermon on Mark 10:21 in which Jesus said that He wanted a follower “to sell all you have and follow Me”. So that’s what Anthony did. He moved deep into the desert to seek complete solitude.

 

Anthony lived during what became a time of transition for “Christian Spirituality.” He became the first of those who left for the desert, seeking an alternate Christian society at a time when it became no longer illegal to be Christian. The solitude, austerity and sacrifice of the desert was seen by Anthony and others as an alternative to martyrdom — which before 313 AD was seen as the highest form of sacrifice.

 

As Anthony made his way into deeper and deeper solitude, his fame as a Christian hero for a new generation began to spread. He attracted disciples to his radically simplified lifestyle. Soon he emerged as a Christian teacher of the practical ways to achieve a high standard in a Christian lifestyle. Disciples began to gather around him, themselves seeking the ‘solitary life”.

 

So the monastic movement soon had two forms:

1) a person lives in complete seclusion, sometimes being approached for wise counsel but generally committing himself (herself) to a life of extreme simplicity, celibacy and constant prayer.

2) a group of monks (or nuns) gathers in a loose form of community around a well-known teacher. These older teachers came to be known as “Abbas and Ammas” (Fathers or Mothers / Old men or old women) NOT “abbots or abbesses”.

 

Books began to circulate in the Church telling the stories of these “heroes of the desert”. These were either books of “Wise sayings” or books of their lives. To see some of these books, go to www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

or www.coptic.net/articles/paradiseofdesertfathers.txt

 

The “exploits” of these monks and nuns were used to capture the popular imagination as a kind of “replacement heroism” to martyrdom.

 

Just as the martyr was believed to be able to intercede before the Throne of God, so these ascetic monks and nuns came to be seen as intermediaries for us with God.

 

By the 300s and 400s AD the monastic movement had gained such importance and popularity within Christianity that more and more of the important Christian bishops came to be drawn from the ranks of the monks. To this day in Eastern Orthodoxy, a bishop must be a monk.

 

As the monastic movement grew, the renunciation of the world came to be a central principal of the ascetic movement. This spirituality of renunciation (or asceticism) became a dominant aspect of Christianity from before the Dark Ages to the present. It has come to mark all manner of Christian attitudes toward ethics, politics, and spiritual reflection.

 

And it all grows out of the Desert Fathers … who came into being as a replacement for martyrdom.

Growing Your Soul – (Session 6 & 7 –October 22 & 29, 2013) — Christian Spirituality and the Dark Ages

 

Christian Spirituality and the Dark Ages — This week we will spend the first half of the session looking at more of the writings of the Desert Fathers. Then we are going to spend the second half of this week’s session and most of next week’s session viewing the History Channel’s production “The Dark Ages.” (Those of you who missed either session can view “The Dark Ages” on YouTube. Just Google “The Dark Ages” and then click the program on YouTube. )

 

The Dark Ages was one of the most desolate periods in human history. It was a time of cataclysmic societal breakdown as classical culture was devastated by the barbarian waves.

 

At its height in the second century AD, the Roman Empire was the beacon of learning, power and prosperity in the ancient world. But the once powerful Rome lay open to barbarian warriors who came in wave after wave of invasion, slaughtering, stealing and settling. As chaos replaced culture, Europe was beset by famine, plague, and a state of war that was so persistent it was only rarely interrupted by peace.

 

This History-channel DVD looks at those warlords whose armies threatened to cause the death of European society to the men and women who valiently tended the flames of justice, knowledge, and innovation as they fought for peace and enlightenment.

 

It was in the shadows of this turbulent time that the seeds of modern civilization were sown. The production looks mostly at what was going on politically (and ecclesiastically) in these times, but in tandem with all the political chaos, the entire monastic system was developing as a quiet source of peace and productivity. As we study the Dark Ages, you will realize how much Western Civilization itself owes to Christian Spirituality — especially as this Spirituality found expression in monastic life.

 

The Dark Ages: Toward the end of the fourth century, the fabric of Western Society began to break down under harsh economic and political conditions. The Christian Church did everything it could to reverse this decline, but there was nothing the Church could do to stop the barbarian invasions which ruined or impoverished cities and made impossible the life of the scholar or scientist. The destruction of civilization would only have been worse had it not be for the Church which maintained some measure of order in a crumbling civilization.

 

By the late second century, a hodgepodge of Germanic tribes had begun to move west and press on the frontiers of the Roman Empire by the Rhine and Danube. The Roman generals were too busy making and unmaking emperors to guard the frontiers, and so these German barbarians began to pour in through the resulting gaps in the Roman defenses.

 

Augustine, the Great Theologian: The Fall of the Roman Empire is argued to have happened on August 24, 410 AD when Alaric the Goth sacked Rome itself, but the long period of dissolution of many aspects of Roman societal life had begun long before. During this period of dissolution, the greatest theologian of the early period of Western Christianity lived and wrote: Augustine of Hippo (354-430AD). He was an intellectual whose writings dominated all Western Christian thought from his own time right up to the present. Luther himself was heavily affected by this great theologian; he was an Augustinian monk. Augustine’s life story became famous from the autobiographical account of his early years – The Confessions—in which he recounted the story of his conversion to the service of Christ. This story was so vividly written and with such fine regard for the inner workings of the human mind and heart that it became one of the great classics of Western literature.

In their own time, Augustine’s Confessions began a large debate about the way in which God works in human lives. This became known as the controversy over grace.

 

Augustine saw all that was good in a Christian as attributable to God: God initiates every movement of a human creature towards the good. This is the miracle of grace. And all that is defective in a person is that person’s fault.

 

But a Christian named Pelagius disagreed. He thought such a view denigrated the need to preach the robust call for Christians to “self-improve.” Pelagius was a famous moral preacher who criticized Augustine for his doctrine of the “complete pre-eminence of God.” Pelagius argued that Christ had set moral standards and challenged His disciples to meet them. If God had set those standards, then they were surely attainable by men and women who tried hard enough.

 

This disagreement grew into one of the largest arguments over theology in the Church. And this controversy surfaced over and over both during the medieval period and the Reformation (and it surfaces today)

 

Augustine’s critics argued that his great stress on the divine grace coming before, during, and behind every human activity for the good, diminished or destroyed the human freedom of will that was absolutely necessary for moral choice.

 

Augustine countered that there can be no freedom at all, only psychic and material enslavement to evil habits, unless God’s grace first gives us that freedom, which then we exercise. So even the freedom to choose the good is a gift of God. Without it, humans can have only one course of action, and that is enslavement to the bad, which is the negation of all freedom. He argues this in The City of God: The first immortality, which Adam lost by sinning, was the ability not to die; the new immortality [which he will receive on The City of God] will be the inability to die. In the same way, the first freedom of choice conferred the ability not to sin, whereas the new freedom will confer the inability to sin … We would surely not conclude that because our very God is unable to sin, therefore God has no freedom of choice?

 

Despite his massive influence on the intellectual and theological structure of Western Christianity, Augustine is most loved for his autobiographical accounts in the Confessions where he vividly describes a heart that is torn between groping toward God and living for decadence – until that moment when God seized him and in a moment flooded his life with grace and mercy. His Confessions had a major influence on most forms of Western Christian spirituality that followed. He is responsible for giving the concept of “conversion” such a high priority in the West (comparable in importance to the notion of the transfiguration of Christ that correspondingly organized most of Easter Christian spiritual thought.).

 

Augustine died after he had asked for the psalms to be painted on the walls of his room so that he could recite them on his deathbed. As Augustine lay dying, the Vandal barbarian warriors were besieging the city walls of Hippo, a sign of much that was to happen in the West as the old Roman order gave way before the barbarian invasions from the East. The Dark Ages had begun.

 

The Dark Ages: With political order severely disrupted around them and the division of the western Roman Empire into a patchwork of barbarian kingdoms a fait accompli, bishops priests and religious men set out to reestablish the groundwork of civilization.

The barbarians were nomadic peoples with no written literature and little political organization. All the Romans could make out of their various languages was “bar bar bar” – hence the name “barbarian.”

 

Compared to the Romans, the barbarians were warrior peoples whose customs and conduct struck the Romans as savage. They were perceived to regard homicide as the most honorable occupation and vengeance as synonymous with justice. The Franks who had settled in Gaul (modern France) were the most significant of these barbarian peoples. So, when a man named Clovis became king of the Franks in 481, churchmen wrote the new king a congratulatory letter that reminded him of the benefits that would accrue to him if he cooperated with the episcopate. He was told “Always turn for advice to the bishops . If you are in harmony with them, your land will prosper.”

 

Clovis was apparently moved by much of what he heard about the life he Christ. When he was told about the crucifixion, he is reported to have exclaimed, “Oh, if only I had been there with my Franks.” By 496, Clovis was baptized, and although it would be another 400 years before all the barbarian peoples of Western Europe had been converted, the project was off to an auspicious start.

 

Given the strong identification of the barbarian peoples with their kings, it was generally enough to convert the monarch and the people would follow. This was not always a smooth process, as the people would want to continue to worship their old pagan gods while beginning to receive the Christian Sacrament of the Altar. Plus, it did prove to be a mistake for the Church to have aligned itself so closely with the ruling families. When the family would begin to deteriorate, so would the episcopate. Men would vie with one another to take control of bishoprics that to them represented only power and wealth, and depravity and immorality then began to infect the priesthood. It would be from Catholic missionaries who came from another part of the world (another part of the former Roman Empire) that a renewal of faith, order and civilization would come. This went on for hundreds of years – through the time of the Merovingians, the Carolingians, and so on.

 

Where civilization continued was in the monasteries. Early forms of monastic life are evident by the third century as many Christian men and women retreated to the desert for the sake of their own spiritual perfection. These men and women were mostly hermits, who retreated into remote solitude so that they might renounce worldly things and concentrate intensely on their spiritual life. These hermits typically lived alone or in groups of two or three, finding shelter in caves or simple huts and supporting themselves on what they could produce in their small fields or through such tasks as basket-weaving.

 

The lack of an authority to oversee their spiritual regimen led some of them to pursue unusual spiritual and penitential practices. Some of them hardly ever ate or slept. Others stood without movement for whole weeks together (the stylites) or had themselves sealed up in tombs or inside the walls of churches, remaining there for years, receiving nourishment only through small windows or crevices in the masonry (the anchorites).

 

Cenobitic monasticism (monks living together in monasteries) developed in part as a reaction against the life of the hermits and in recognition that people were created to live in community. Still the hermit life never entirely died out – at one point a hermit was elected pope: Celestine V (“the pope who quit”).

St. Benedict of Nursia: St. Benedict first established 12 small communities of monks about 38 miles from Rome, and then founded the great monastery at Mount Cassino for which he is remembered. There he composed the famous Rule of St. Benedict, around 529 A.D., which was almost universally adopted throughout Western Europe in the centuries that followed.

 

This Rule provided moderation, structure, and order: it took for granted that a monk would receive adequate food and sleep, each Benedictine house was independent of every other and had an abbot to oversee its affairs and good order. Monks were no longer free to wander from one place to another but remained attached to his own monastery. It did not matter whether a monk came from great wealth or abject poverty because “in Christ all are one … God is no respecter of persons.” A monk retired to a monastery in order to cultivate a more disciplined spiritual life and to live under a regimen that would facilitate this purpose: ora et labora – prayer and work. The monks prayed at prescribed times of the day and night (The Hours) and they worked hard at agricultural pursuits.

 

During a period of great turmoil, the Benedictine houses remained oases of peace and order. By the fourteenth century, the Benedictine order had supplied the Church with 24 popes, 200 cardinals, 7,000 archbishops, 15,000 bishops, 1500 canonized saints. At its height it had 37,000 monasteries – and had also enrolled twenty emperors, ten empresses, forty-seven kings and fifty queens. The influence of the monastic ideal had permeated the entire society by the fourteenth century. (And it is VERY interesting that right now, of the two living Roman Catholic popes, one has become a hermit and the other is a monk — and living with the monks, not in the papal apartment.)

 

All educated people know that the monks carefully preserved the writings of the Greeks and Romans as well as the writings of the Early Christian Fathers. But not everyone realizes that the monasteries were responsible for the agricultural restoration of Europe.

 

Wherever they came, they converted the wilderness into a cultivated country. They planted orchards, fields of crops, and vineyards. They kept bees, made beer, dug wells, dammed streams and drained swamps. They planted trees and managed forests. They bred cattle and horses. They started fisheries and made cheese. Every Benedictine monastery was an agricultural college for the entire region in which it was located.

 

The land the monks were given was primarily the land that could not be farmed. They were given land that was deemed too swampy or arid to be useful. Yet wherever they went the monks introduced crops, industries or production methods with which the people had not previously been familiar. It would be difficult to find any group anywhere whose contributions were as significant and indispensable as those of the Catholic monks during a time of general turmoil and despair.

 

The monasteries were noted for their contributions to agriculture, to technology (use of waterpower for mills, clocks, gliders), to metallurgy, to charity, to medicine, to painting and engraving. The monasteries were noted for their libraries.

 

These monasteries were often the last repository of culture for those long centuries between the Classical Age and the Renaissance. Western Civilization owes an inestimable debt to these monasteries. In fact, it could be said that Western Civilization owes its soul to Christian Spirituality.

Growing Your Soul – (Sessions 8 & 9 –November 5 & 12, 2013) — Christian Spirituality and The Crusades

 Christian Spirituality and The Crusades The history of the Crusades is very difficult to understand, but I just finished a terrific book that I highly recommend to you.

 

It is The New Concise History of the Crusades and it is by Thomas F. Madden, a widely recognized expert on the Crusades and Christian-Muslim conflict and professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University.

 The reviewer for Washington Post Book World writes “As an introduction to the vast literature of the crusades, this is a jewel of a book. It has all one needs to understand the epic nature of the various mobilizations and invasions, who the important players were and how they operated, and why what was for centuries romanticized as chivalrous has today become odious.”

 

Understanding the Crusades is complicated — but Madden makes this vast and complicated field of study readily accessible to the non-scholarly reader. And, complications notwithstanding, it is fair to conclude that “a crusade army was a curious mix of rich and poor, saints and sinners, motivated by every kind of pious and selfish desire, yet it could not have come into being without the pious idealism that led men to risk all to liberate the lands of Christ.”

 

The Crusades were religious conflicts during the Middle Ages. Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade in 1095, with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem. There followed a whole series of Crusades against Muslim territories in the east as part of an intermittent 200-year struggle for control of the Holy Land that ended in failure. All historians are agreed on this.

 

The conduct of the Crusaders was shocking to modern sensibilities. They pillaged the countries they crossed, massacred 8,000 Jews in the Rhineland, sacked Constantinople, slaughtered a purported 70,000 citizens in the fall of Jerusalem, and the nobles carved up the territory they siezed from the Muslims, rather than returning it to the Byzantines. Even so, the majority of crusaders were the poor who were motivated to go on an armed pilgrimage to the Holy Land out of concern for their own salvation and the liberation of the Holy Sites. Historians are agreed on this.

 

Whatever you may have heard, the Crusades were NOT acts of unprovoked aggression by Western Europe against the Islamic world, but were a delayed response to centuries of Muslim aggression which grew fiercer than ever in the eleventh century. These were wars for the recapture of Christian lands and the defense of Christians; they were not called in order to convert Muslims or anyone else to Christianity by force.

 

Some important background for the Crusades: (This wonderfully succinct summary comes from Kenneth Borah’s comment on the blog) The fact is that the struggle between Christianity and Islam had been ongoing since soon after Islam’s inception. In 630, Muhammad marched on Mecca. By his death in 632, the entire Arabian peninsula had been conquered. This brought Islam into contact with Christian territory. Over the next two centuries, Mohammad’s successors went on an unchecked spree of conquest – first of the Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean, then North Africa, and ultimately Europe:

 

633-651 – Conquest of Persia & Mesopotamia (Iraq)

637 – Conquest of Syria

639 – Conquest of Armenia

639 – Conquest of Egypt

652 – Conquest of North Africa

654 – Conquest of Cyprus

664-712 Conquest of the Sindh (Northern India & Pakistan)

662-751 Conquest of Transoxiana (Afghanistan & Turkestan)

665 – Conquest of North Africa

674-678 – First Siege of Constantinople

711-718 – Conquest of Hispania & Septimania (Spain, Portugal & portion of Southern France)

717-718 – Second Siege of Constantinople

736 – Conquest of Georgia

820 – Conquest of Crete

827 – Conquest of Southern Italy

(And this is just the list for the first 200 years!)

 

Their expansion in the West was stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours (aka Poitiers) in October 732. Many view Tours as a key factor in not only stopping the Muslim advance, but also maintaining Europe’s Christian identity. As Leopold von Ranke wrote, “Poitiers was the turning point of one of the most important epochs in the history of the world.”

 

It would take, however, another 700 years until the Muslim threat to Europe was eliminated. In 1492, the Crowns of Aragon and Castilla (Castile) united to form the nucleus of modern day Spain and, in the process, expelled the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula. In 1529, the Ottomans under Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to Vienna. As Arnold Toynbee wrote, “The failure of the first [siege of Vienna] brought to a standstill the tide of Ottoman conquest which had been flooding up the Danube Valley for a century past.”

 

Finally, in 1571, the Holy League (a coalition of Catholic Mediterranean powers), defeated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, effectively ending the Ottoman maritime threat and bringing to a close nine centuries of expansionism.

 

Back to the Crusades: However it is also true that the general avarice and slaughter associated with the Crusades have created an ugly stain on the reputation of the Christian Church. One horrific account described the Crusaders’ entry into Jerusalem in the First Crusade this way: “One of our knights, Letholdus by name, climbed on to the wall of the city. When he reached the top, all the defenders of the city quickly fled along the walls and through the city. Our men followed and pursued them, killing and hacking, as far as the temple of Solomon, and there was such a slaughter that our men were up to their ankles in the enemy’s blood. The emir who commanded the tower of David surrendered to the Count [of St. Giles] and opened the gate where pilgrims used to pay tribute. Entering the city, our pilgrims pursued and killed the Saracens up to the temple of Solomon. There the Saracens assembled and resisted fiercely all day, so that the whole temple flowed with their blood. At last the pagans were overcome and our men seized many men and women in the temple, killing them or keeping them alive as they saw fit. On the roof of the temple there was a great crowd of pagans of both sexes, to whom Tancred and Gaston de Beert gave their banners [to provide them with protection]. Then the crusaders scattered throughout the city, seizing gold and silver, horses and mules, and houses full of all sorts of goods. Afterwards our men were rejoicing and weeping for joy to adore the sepulchre of our Savior Jesus and there discharged their debt to Him.” [RGD Laffan, ed. and trans., Select Documents of European History 800-1492, volume 1, Henry Holt, 1929. See also “The Crusaders Capture Jerusalem, 1099,” EyeWitness to Hostory, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com [2000]

 

It is more than jarring to our modern sensibilities to read a positive account of such a wanton massacre: it is repugnant and abhorrent. The Crusader’s sack of Jerusalem was a heinous crime — particularly in light of the religious and moral principles they professed to uphold.

 

However, by the military standards of the day, it was not out of the ordinary. For example, it is a matter of record that Muslim armies frequently behaved in exactly the same way when entering a conquered city. This is not to excuse the Crusaders’ conduct by pointing to similar incidents and crying out that “everybody did it” but it does illustrate that the Crusader’s behavior in Jerusalem was consistent with that of other armies of the period — since all states subscribed to the same notions of siege and resistance. [See Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p 145 and Thomas F. Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades (Barnes & Noble, Inc., 2007), p 181-82.]

 

Any answer to the question,”were the Crusades just or not?” needs more than a simple “Yes or No” answer. Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095 A.D., when he gave a very famous sermon and the crowds responded by declaring ‘God wills it!’

The pope called upon barons and others to go to the Holy Land and retrieve it from the Muslims who were occupying it and who were thought to be the foes of Christ. Although the First Crusade met with some success, Jerusalem was back in the hands of the Muslims by 1187 A.D. Despite this serious reversal, the Crusades continued until the loss of the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land in 1291 A.D., when a town called Acre was taken over once again by Muslims.

 

Those early Crusaders would have thought they were doing something beautiful for Christ. But as you study the details of what actually happened, you become really troubled. In fact, in one Crusade, the Fourth, the participants didn’t even make it to the Holy Land. They got as far as Constantinople, seized it, and set up their own kingdom. Tremendous bloodshed ensued as Western Christians killed Eastern Christians.

 

In addition to the violence, another major problem was the motivation of some who went. In 1215 A.D., Pope Innocence III actually instructed people that if they went on the Crusades, this could earn their salvation. Even sending someone to fight in their place would earn their salvation. This is an obvious distortion of Christianity.

 

Even in the early part of the 13th century, a number of Christians were crying out against the avarice and slaughter associated with the Crusades. In fact, one reason why the crusading ideal disintegrated was due to the genuine discrepancy between authentic Christianity and the reporting of what the Crusades had been like. In later centuries, popes tried to launch crusades but were unable to gain popular support. There have always been people who have done things in the name of Christ they should never have done, but not everything done in the name of Christ can or should be attributed to Christianity.

 

And so, faced with the Muslim’s continued pursuit of jihad into the heart of Europe, the Crusader’s inability to establish any lasting Christian states of even continued presence in the Holy Land, and the enmity that the Crusades sowed not only between Christians and Muslims but between Eastern and Western Christians, most historians have deemed the Crusades a failure.

 

After all, the Crusaders’ objective was to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. They originally established the Crusader states for this reason, but after the Second Crusade, those states were immensely diminished and remained so; after 1291, they were gone. Nor did the Crusaders prevent Islamic warriors from crossing into Europe.

 

However, the level of Islamic adventurism in Europe dropped significantly during the era of the Crusades.

 

In short, the biggest thing that the Crusades accomplished was that they bought Europe time — time which gave Western Civilization the opportunity to fluorish.

 

If the Crusaders hadn’t risked their lives to uphold the honor of Christ and His Church thousands of miles from home, the jihadists would almost certainly have swept across Europe.

 

Not only did the Crusader armies keep the jihadists tied down, they also brought together armies that would not have existed otherwise. Pope Urban’s call united men around a cause; had that cause not existed or been publicized throughout Europe, many of these men would not have been warriors at all. Consequently, they would have been ill-equipped to repel a Muslim invasion of their homeland.

 

Without the Crusades, it is distinctly possible that the world might never have known the works of Dante Alighieri, or Michaelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Mozart, or Bach. It is likely that there would never have been an El Greco or Giotto. An oppressed community that must expend all its evergy just to survive does not easily pursue art and music. The Crusades may have made the full flowering of European civilization possible.

 

(The following is from Kenneth Borah’s wonderful comment on the blog .)To really understand the Crusades, they must be viewed in the context of the period of 732 to 1571 in which Europeans were fighting for not only their religion, but also their very way of life – their homes, their families, and their culture. Those who view the Crusades as nothing more than nobles and clergy hatching a scheme to increase their wealth forget this context. The Muslim threat was an existential one. Had Charles Martel not stopped the Muslim advance in 732, all of Western Europe could have been overrun. Spain was already under the Umayyad Caliphate and the same would have happened to France and most likely the Low Countries. England may have held out for a period, but for how long? Germany and Italy, both mosaics of city-states, duchies, and principalities, loosely held together as the Holy Roman Empire, would have been besieged on both sides.

 

With that in mind, let’s take our thinking of the Crusades one step further. In this context, it would have been very easy for Europeans to ignore Pope Urban II’s call for the First Crusade in 1095. However, Europeans of all walks of life answered his preaching of the crusade with “Deus vult” (“God wills it”). As Jonathan Riley-Smith writes in “The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam”, the average European fighting in the Crusades did not do so for the sake of nationalism or imperial expansionism; but rather, out of a sense of religious obligation to free the Holy Land. In doing so, they saved the Church and Western Civilization, and set the stage for what would become the “discovery” of the Americas and the founding of our own nation.

 

A Word About Why Crusade Research is so Difficult: There are two basic reasons why Crusade research is so difficult: 1) The primary sources are in languages other than English (so unless you are a medieval scholar you have to rely on secondary sources and translations of primary sources); 2)practically every secondary source draws conclusions based on a pre-existing ideology.

 

What makes it even more difficult is that agenda-driven secondary sources are as old as Crusades Research. For example, as early as the 1500s , historians viewed the Crusades through the lens of their own religious beliefs: Protestant historians viewed The Crusades as one example of how corrupt the medieval Roman Catholic papacy was, while Roman Catholic historians viewed The Crusades as an unadulterated force for good in the world.

 

By the time of the Enlightenment (basically by 1750 AD) historians tended to view both The Crusades and the Middle Ages as periods of barbarianism and religious fanaticism.

Modern secular historians have tended to express outrage at the conduct of the crusaders. In the 1950s Sir Steven Runciman wrote a three-volume work that became the most highly-respected single-author survey on the subject in English. Prior to Runciman, many historians (after 1850)related the Crusades as an idealistic attempt of Christendom to push back Islam. Runciman regarded the Crusades as “a barbaric invasion of a superior civilization.”

 

Thomas F. Madden, author of The New Concise History of the Crusades (copyright 2007 by Barnes & Noble) stresses the impact of Runciman’s style and viewpoint: “It is no exaggeration to say that Runciman single-handedly crafted the current popular concept of the crusades. The reasons for this are twofold. First, he was a learned man with a solid grasp of the chronicle [primary] sources. Second, and perhaps most important, he wrote beautifully. The picture of the crusades that Runciman painted owed much to current scholarship yet much more to Sir Walter Scott. Throughout his history Runciman portrayed the crusaders as simpletons or barbarians seeking salvation through the destruction of the sophisticated cultures of the east. In his famous “summing up” of the crusades he concluded that “the Holy War in itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.” (P. 216)

 

Even though Runciman’s three-volume History of the Crusades remains the primary reference on the Crusades, his work is now outdated and recognized by scholars of this period to be seriously flawed.

 

Consequently, if you are wanting to do further reading into the Crusades, there are two books I highly recommend to you. The first is the very accessible work by Thomas F. Madden that I recommended earlier: The New Concise History of the Crusades. It is easily available and inexpensive on the internet. The second is Peter Lock’s The Routledge Companion to the Crusades. This 500+ page book “begins with an excellent chronological outline. full of interesting detail. this is a comprehensive work on a vast topic that incorporates an awe-inspiring level of detailed knowledge in a manner that is easilyaccessible” — Reference Reviews

 

These two should get you started on this complicated but rewarding study.

 

Growing Your Soul – (Session 10 –November 19, 2013) — Overview and Reflections

 

 

 

Subscribe to Holy Trinity

Enter your email address to subscribe to Holy Trinity and stay up-to-date with events and activities at the church.