Blog by-the-Sea

The Memorial of Bl. Alcuin

May 19 is the memorial of the Blessed Alcuin, from 8th century York, who worked to rebuild western education under Charlemagne.  The Patron Saints Index has links to resources and a prayer to Bl. Alcuin.  There is more in the Catholic Encyclopedia. 

Bl. Alcuin is often remembered for promoting Saturday for devotion to the Blessed Virgin.  He wrote six formularies for Votive Masses for certain days of the week.  He assigned two Masses for Saturday in honor of the Blessed Virgin. (See here).

He is mentioned in this blog in a post on the "Dark Ages" for his contribution to bringing Western Europe out of its decline.  He wrote to Charlemagne about Charlemagne's wish to create an educational system for his empire:

“If most men were to embrace your outstanding intentions, perhaps a new Athens would be brought to perfection in Francia, indeed a far more excellent Athens.  For ennobled by teaching of Christ the Lord, our Athens would surpass the wisdom of the Academy.  Educated only in the disciplines of Plato, the old Athens glimmered thanks to the seven liberal arts.  But enriched by the sevenfold plenitude of the Holy Spirit, the new Athens would surpass every glory of worldly wisdom.”

The Prayer Requests of a Great Missionary: St. Boniface

May 5 is the memorial of St. Boniface of Mainz, also called St. Boniface of Devon.  Once called "the greatest Englishman," he was an eighth century missionary who is credited with converting much of Germany to the Church, and with bringing Christians who had fallen away from the Church back into communion with Rome.

Previous posts on this blog about St. Boniface include a biographical post about St. Boniface, a discussion of the importance of his work to western Europe's emergence from the Dark Ages in a post about 410 to 741, a quote from one of his letters ("The Ship of Christ, His Dearest Spouse"), and a post titled Reflections on St. Boniface, Blindness and Our Lenten Fast.

To honor his feast day, here are excerpts from 3 letters in which he asked others to pray for him.  There is similarity with what St. Teresa of Avila asked Carmelites to pray for priests in The Way of Perfection (discussed here: Prayer in a Time of Heresy).  These are the things one of Church history's most honored missionaries asked others to pray for him about, which could be taken as examples of what we might ask for the priests and missionaries of our own time (from Ephraim Emerton's translation of the Letters of St. Boniface):

Letter XXIII:
(A letter to Bishop Pehthelm of Shithorn in Scotland, written in 735)

"This German ocean is dangerous for sailors and we pray that we may reach the haven of eternal peace without stain or injury to our soul, and that while we are striving to offer the light of Gospel truth to the blind and ignorant who are unwilling to gaze upon it, we may not be wrapped in the darkness of our own sins, neither 'run or have run in vain,' but, upheld by your intercessions, may we go forward unspotted and enlightened into the splendor of eternity."

Letter LI:
(A letter to Bishop Daniel of Winchester, written ca. 742-746)

"In all these matters we seek first your intercession with God that we may finish the course of our ministry without injury to our soul.  We pray you from the depths of our heart to intercede for us, that God, the gracious comforter of his laborers, may keep our souls safe and free from sin in the midst of such tempestuous times."

Letter LIII:
(A letter to Abbess Eadburga of Thanet, written ca. 742-746)

"Pray, therefore, the merciful defender of our lives, the only refuge of the afflicted, the Lamb of God, who has taken away the sins of the world, to keep us safe from harm with his sheltering right hand, as we go among the dens of such wolves; that where there should be the lovely feet of those who bear the torch of Gospel peace, there may not be the dark and wandering footsteps of apostates, but that when our loins are girded the Father all-merciful may put blazing torches in our hands to enlighten the hearts of the Gentiles to the vision of the Gospel of the glory of Christ."

A Response to AC Grayling, Part V: From 1003 to 1145

This is the last of a series of 5 posts that have considered two questions in a challenge posted by British philosophy professor and blogger A.C. Grayling.  The earlier posts can be found in this blog's category Church History: The "Dark Ages".  The two questions posed by Professor Grayling, addressed in the first 4 parts of the series, were:

1.  Did Christianity Cause the Dark Ages?

2.  What has Christianity, as a body of beliefs, contributed to science?

The Time Frame

The time frame for this series of posts, generally about the "Dark Ages," was based on a time frame chosen by A.C. Grayling to define his challenge.  It was given in his comment to a post by Carl Olson on Insight Scoop in the series of blog posts last January that prompted this series.  Professor Grayling's comment specified the time frame in question as follows, in his comment to Carl Olson:

"First may I pick you up on your point about my rhetorical "thousand years": you leave to your readers to work out the period I concede to you, from 318 (summoning of the Council of Nicea) to 1145 (your choice: the beginning of the building of Chartres Cathedral) is 827 years."

His choice, was based, in part, on a reference made by Dr. Olson in a January 24 post in which he mentioned Chartres Cathedral.  Dr. Olson had pointed out that Professor Grayling had probably seen some towers and domes from medieval buildings, including Chartres Cathedral.  He was not defining Chartres Cathedral as a turning point in the Dark Ages.  Rather, he referenced an article in Wikipedia saying that the building of Chartres Cathedral had begun in 1145 with the "Cult of Carts."  In response, Grayling set 1145 as the end of his time frame for the "Dark Ages" with the beginning of the construction of Chartres Cathedral. 

For that reason, this post addresses the construction of Chartres Cathedral and ends with the Cult of Carts in 1145.  However, historians would not describe that time frame as the "Dark Ages," and many do not use that term at all.  As discussed in Part IV of this series, the collapse that followed the fall of the Roman Empire was really over by the end of the seventh century.  The period of rebuilding had begun.  Part IV covers the early centuries of rebuilding.

As a result, the answers to Professor Grayling's challenges were actually completed in Part IV of this series.  Part V will simply consider the building of the Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Chartres,  For more buildings from that era, see the videos of such churches in an earlier post from today.  For lives of people from the Church history of that era, see posts about St. Anselm (11th century rebuilding in England) and about the Blessed Hildegard of Bingen (12th century Germany).

The Building of Chartres Cathedral

In a guided tour of Chartres Cathedral, if you go there today, you can go down into the crypt, now used as a chapel, and down to the very bottom of the building.  The lower paving dates back to the first cathedral in that location, built in the fourth century.  There is a well there, inside the church, that is even older.  The well dates back to Gallic times when a Druidic community worshiped there before the first cathedral was built.  It is from the era discussed in Part II of this series of posts.

Also still there in the crypt, at the bottom of a Carolingian column, is a Gallo Roman base that was part of a sixth century cathedral that replaced the original fourth century church.  That the bases of columns in the sixth century would have been strong enough to bear the weight of a cathedral demonstrates that not all of Western Europe had fallen into ignorance.  The Gallo Roman construction is from the era of collapse described in Part III of this series.

That church, in turn, was destroyed by the Duke of Aquitaine in 743, and the church that followed it was destroyed by Viking invaders in 858.  In the Viking attacks, of the kind mentioned in Part IV, some Christians are said to have been thrown into the old Druidic well.  The well became a place of Christian martyrdom, and from then on what had been remembered as pagan took on Christian symbolism too.

The oldest part of the crypt, beneath the choir, is part of a Carolingian church that was built after the destruction of 858, during the reign of Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne.  The Carolingian cathedral, in turn, was destroyed by fire in 1020.  However, part of the crypt from that era survives.

Rebuilding began then under Bishop Fulbert of Chartres  -- the same Fulbert whose teaching at the monastic school there was mentioned in Part IV of this series of posts.  Fulbert is thought possibly to have been a student of the great Gerbert of Aurillac, and he was known for his study of medicine before he became bishop in 1007.  From 990 to 1007, his school drew students from throughout Western Europe. The growing monastic schools would lead to the universities of the twelfth century, with an ever increasing demand for knowledge.

The building of many churches after the year 1000, and the use of classical knowledge of geometry in the process, was discussed in Part IV.  Bishop Fulbert's cathedral, begun after the fire of 1020, was finished in 1037.  A picture in an illumined manuscript shows it with a central western tower and a nave that was almost as long as that of the present cathedral.  In the crypt today, there is a faded eleventh century fresco.  It is a picture of Mary with the baby Jesus, with the magi to her left and with two bishops credited with evangelizing Chartres at her right.  An 11th century flight of steps still leads up from the crypt to the sanctuary.

In 1134, a fire destroyed much of Chartres, including part of the cathedral.  The rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral, as it stands today, actually began in the mid 1130's on the west side of the church, which probably was heavily damaged. The photo in the upper left corner of this post (taken by me) shows the west wall and the two towers from a distance.  The north tower was begun as early as 1134, although the north spire now in place was not there until 1507.  The south tower was begun by 1145, and the portals (not visible in this photo) were begun around 1145.  The year 1145 was a turning point in the rebuilding of the west end of the building.

However, no one then would have thought that they were beginning to build Chartres Cathedral, as most of Bishop Fulbert's cathedral was still intact, and people then thought it was a miracle that it had survived the fire.  They were rebuilding only the damaged west end.

Another fire in 1194 destroyed what remained of Bishop Fulbert's structure, sparing the west front that had been built in the twelfth century, and sparing most of the crypts.  On the level of the crypt today, the ambulatory has 3 wide barrel-vaulted Romanesque chapels from before that fire, and 4 rib-vaulted Gothic chapels added after 1194,  The 12th century St. Clement Chapel has a 12th century fresco, and a 12th century baptismal font that is still used today for baptisms.

Once you climb the stairs up to the cathedral above the crypt, what you see today was built from around 1134 through the present.  After the 1194 fire, most of the present day High Gothic cathedral was built, beginning in the thirteenth century.  However, the twelfth century towers still stand, along with the twelfth century royal portals and the 3 stained glass windows above them.  The other stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral, including the rose window above those 3, are more recent.

In this YouTube video of Chartres Cathedral below, a panorama of the interior, you will twice see the oldest stained glass windows -- three windows on one wall beneath a large rose window:

The second video shows the same 3 windows from the exterior, and the doors beneath them (the royal portals) also date back to that era:

The Cult of Carts

The Cult of Carts came into being while the north tower was being constructed.  Whitney S. Stoddard describes its impact in Art & Architecture in Medieval France:

"People of noble birth and humble peasants came to help pull the carts laden with stone from the quarries some distance from Chartres.  This act of devotion to rebuild the Queen's House on Earth has rarely been equaled in recorded history.  By 1145 two towers were under construction, with the south tower completed in the 1160's.  The Royal Portals and the three stained-glass windows above were in place by 1150."

Thus, while it may not be quite accurate to say that 1145 marks the beginning of the construction of Chartres Cathedral, the year marked the great initiative of the construction, a combined effort of rich and poor alike.  It was not an effort of great technology, but rather a simple community effort done in devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

The cathedral had had a long history as a place of special devotion to the Blessed Virgin for whom it is named.  Referring to the later rebuilding after the fire of 1194, Etienne Houvet explains the enthusiasm that began when they found a precious relic.  Mary's veil, which the Carolingian cathedral had received from Charles the Bald, was found in the rubble:

"Chartres was then what Lourdes is today.  Sick people were nursed in the crypt, generally for a period of nine days.

"The veneration of Our Lady drew great crowds here.  The pilgrims slept in the cathedral, which accounts for the slope of the nave paving allowing a thorough washing, and panels of the stained glass windows could be taken out to air the building."

It was not, then, a transition away from the faith that spurred the twelfth century people to build Chartres Cathedral.  Without question, the design and building benefited from the growth of intellectual knowledge and the value that the Church and monastic teachers placed on reason, classical philosophy, the Church Fathers, geometry, and science.  Men like Boethius, Alcuin, Gerbert and Fulbert were among the great teachers and students of that era who had contributed to that restoration.  However, in the end, it was their devotion to the Lord and to his Blessed Mother that spurred them to build, and to build again when each building in turn was burned.  What did Christianity, as a faith, contribute to the great architectural development in the building of Chartres Cathedral?  Answer:  That is what motivated them to build it.

Bibliography:

Crypts of Chartres Cathedral, The (a hand-out from the guided tour given by the cathedral in 2005).

Houvet, Etienne, Chartres: Guide of the Cathedral

Stoddard, Whitney S.,Art & Architecture in Medieval France.

Photo: Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Chartres, taken by me in October 2005.

A Response to AC Grayling, Part IV: From 741 to 1003

This is Part IV of a series of posts on Christianity, science and the Dark Ages. Click here for Part I, II or III.  All posts in the series will be in the "History 2007" category for now.  Given the length, I am thinking about setting up a separate category for this series.  Part V will follow when time permits.

Myth Busting about the Era from 741 to 1003:

The photo in the upper left hand corner of this post is a picture of the interior of St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim, Germany.  The church is considered a prime example of western European architecture of the late tenth century, founded in 996 A.D. and constructed in the early 11th century.  That photo (shown here as a thumbprint) and others are on this Hildesheim tourism page.  Later in this post, there is a topic on architecture in the 8th to 10th centuries with more photos and links to buildings from that era.  All are in thumbprint as I am not sure if they are rights protected.  Links are provided for the pages with the full-size photos.

It is important to show the pictures in answer to AC Grayling's assertion that:

"By the accident of its being the myth chosen by Constantine for his purposes, it plunged Europe into the dark ages for the next thousand years - scarcely any literature or philosophy, and the forgetting of the arts and crafts of classical civilisation (quite literally a return to daub and wattle because the engineering required for towers and domes was lost), before a struggle to escape the church's narrow ignorance and oppression saw the rebirth of classical learning, and its ethos of inquiry and autonomy, in the Renaissance."

Sir Richard W. Southern, in Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, spoke of the way the era  in question is now understood as compared to the way it was once seen by the people who invented the term “Middle Ages”:

“For them it meant the age of barbarism, superstition, and ignorance, lying between the two ages of civilization, ancient and modern.  Almost no one now thinks that this is at all a fruitful way of looking on the period [of the Middle Ages]. . . The fall of the Roman Empire left a mental and spiritual as well as a political ruin which it took centuries to repair.  The collapse was a long and complicated business, but in the West it was complete by the end of the seventh century.  It was then that the work of rebuilding began.”

In a similar vein, Avital Wohlman wrote, in the Introduction to the English translation of John Scottus Eriugena’s ninth century Treatise on Divine Predestination:

“According to a tenacious prejudice, the Renaissance appeared as a sudden dawn putting an end to the prolonged darkness of the Middle Ages.  Studies appearing in recent decades, however, have shown just how simplistic such a vision has been.  We have discovered, with increasing amazement, that the Middle Ages were marked by successive renaissances which progressively shaped humanism in the West.”

Although the concept of a ninth century "Renaissance" from the time of Charlemagne to the early tenth century is disputed among historians, there is widespread recognition of the accomplishments of the people of that era, including those discussed in this post.  Many of those accomplishments detailed here were taken from the recent historical research and writing by French medievalist Pierre Riché.

Similarly, German historian Gerd Tellenbach rejected the traditional concept of the expansion of Christianity, and wrote, in The Church in Western Europe from the tenth to the early twelfth century:

"[I]t would be better to see the period of mission as lying between the middle of the ninth century and the early thirteenth century, for only then were the last remnants of paganism eliminated in north Europe and among the Slavs of the Elbe and Baltic regions.  Taking western Christianity as a whole it is also significant that the crucial advance of the Spanish reconquista came at the beginning of the thirteenth century."

The more conventional view would see the expansion of Christianity from the "point of view of European rather than Global Church history."  Moreover, even in the era discussed in this post, according to Tellenbach, "Christians and heathens coexist under Viking rule in England and Ireland." Normandy was only gradually Christianized, becoming a French feudal state in the eleventh century.  Sweden did not become truly Christian until around 1100,

Thus, the real process of Christianizing Europe was simultaneous with the process of recovery from the Dark Ages -- not the process of falling into them.  Thus, even the chronological argument, by which some historians in an earlier era blamed Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire because they believed, erroneously, that the spread of Christianity through Europe was simultaneous with its collapse, must fail.  Not only was that argument unsupported by evidence of causation, but even the assertion that the events were in chronological proximity was factually incorrect.

Pippin III and the Papacy

After the death of King Charles (the “Hammer”) Martel in 741, local revolts were eventually overcome by his sons, Carloman and Pippin III.  Carloman’s abdication in 747 left Pippin in control.

Far from having controlled Europe through the worst of the Dark Ages, the Church was in need of reform.  There were previously Christianized regions in need of re-evangelization.  Paganism had not yet disappeared.  Carloman asked Boniface to convoke a synod, because Church discipline had been shattered for decades.  Pippin likewise condemned superstition and paganism and sought to restore the use of the Rule of St. Benedict in religious houses.  The western Church, at that time, was by no means a strong enough moral force to have caused or prevented the Dark Ages.  That was about to change.

In 750, the Umayyad dynasty was overthrown in Baghdad, replaced by the Abassid dynasty.  The Umayyad Abd ar-Rahman I, the survivor of the caliphs who had spread Islam through the Middle East, fled to Spain.  There, he established a caliphate in Cordoba.  Pippin, who was then at war with Arabs in western Europe, established diplomatic relations with the Muslim rulers.  Envoys from Baghdad wintered in Metz in 768.

He soon drew papal attention.  As of 700, the Byzantine emperor had been the effective ruler of much of Italy, including Rome, and the Bishop of Rome had been loyal to the Byzantine emperor.  Until 752, the Popes had been Greek more often than Roman.  But Lombard attacks on Italy had undermined Byzantine control.  The Byzantine emperor had visited Rome for the last time in 663, and would not do so again until the 14th century.  The Pope had visited Constantinople in 710, received with reverence, but would not do so again for many centuries.  The last Greek Pope, Pope Zachary, held the papacy from November, 741 to March, 742, early in Pippin’s reign.

Losing effective protection from the Byzantine emperor, Pope Stephen II determined to build ties with King Pippin.  In 754, Pope Stephen II came to Gaul and declared Pippin and his two sons to be “patricians of the Romans,” responsible to protect the papacy.  The following year, Pippin went to Rome.  The next Pope corresponded with Pippin, calling him the “new Moses” and the “new David.” 

An inter-dependence developed between the Carolingians and the papacy in which there was no clear division between the role of the Church and the role of King or Emperor.   The emperor, in a sense, became a part of the Church.  In contrast with the largely Greek papacy of the previous era, from 752 to 1054, there were 44 Roman popes, 11 Italians, 4 Germans, 1 Frenchman and 1 Sicilian.  The presence of St. Peter in Rome became the focus of western unity.

Thus, to speak of the Carolingians as bringing western Europe out of the Dark Ages is to speak of the Church having done so.  They drew from Christianity -- from the examples of Moses and David -- in deciding what should be the role of a king.

New Intellectual and Liturgical Beginnings

The liturgical forms used in Frankish churches had varied before Pippin.  Pippin instituted liturgical reform with the help of Bishop/Saint Chrodegang of Metz to incorporate the Roman liturgy into Carolingian churches.  Moreover, the Carolingians did not simply incorporate what then existed in Rome.  Rather, new forms developed that were distinctively Carolingian, influenced by Rome as well as by the East and by the native Frankish music.  An old theory that Gregorian chant was brought to the Franks when Pope Stephen came to visit Pippin II is now widely rejected by music historians, including Kenneth Levy and the Abbey of Solesmes.  Instead, it was the Carolingians who developed Gregorian chant and, in a later century, carried it to Rome.

St. Chrodegang, greatly knowledgeable of Latin culture, improved Latin linguistic skills among the clergy.  Pippin entrusted royal administrative duties to clerics, resulting in improvement in royal documents, a more regular Latin script, and greater command of language in official documents.  Manuscripts in Greek, a language little known to the Franks, were brought to Gaul and translated into Latin.  Among the more important, those manuscripts included early translations of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius.  Pippin also furthered the knowledge of Roman law among his jurists.

The value that Christianity had placed on the written word, music and liturgy were foundational, following references in Scripture and Church Fathers such as St. Augustine.  Scriptural references to the importance of literacy and the written word are widespread: "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." (Ex. 34:27)  "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success." (Jos. 1:8) "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night." (Ps. 1:1,2) "O sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things!" (Ps. 98:1) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father." (John 1:1, 14).

Charlemagne

The greatest of the Carolingians was Charlemagne, who reigned for 47 years.  His Thirty Years War succeeded in 804 at Christianizing Saxony, an achievement at which the Romans had failed.  While the Celts (known as “Scots”) never became part of Charlemagne’s empire, some of their most brilliant people journeyed to the Frankish Kingdom.  The Anglo-Saxon Alcuin settled in Gaul, where he furthered the reforms begun by Chrodegang.  Charlemagne asked him to prepare a correct Latin text of the Bible, which became the standard Latin text of the Middle Ages.

By 780, a new lower case script had developed, regular in appearance, with equal spaces between the words. In 789, Charlemagne wrote that Catholic books for worship should be carefully corrected, and that the Gospels, Psalter and Mass books should only be copied by people who write very carefully.  By the Renaissance, the Caroline script was mistaken for ancient Roman script, and it was used for Italic fonts and Roman typography.  Chapel and court libraries were created, as well as monastic libraries, where books were shared.  Goldsmiths and ivory carvers decorated luxury manuscripts.

On Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne was crowned “emperor” by Pope Leo II in a Byzantine rite in St. Peter’s in Rome.  A western empire had been re-created.

In 789, Charlemagne ordered each monastery and bishopric to create schools for boys.  They were to be taught reading, writing, grammar, music, and arithmetic.  In villages, the priests were to hold school, free of charge to the parents. Correct Latin came back into fashion.  A poet praised Charlemagne for making as much effort to remove mistakes from books as to defeating his enemies.  The growth in learning also gave the culture an increasing appreciation for the philosophical and scientific classics from the later Roman Empire.

At the palace at Aachen, Bl. Alcuin described a palace school with intellectual debates in which all could participate.  He wrote to Charlemagne, concerning Charlemagne’s wishes for education in the empire, which Alcuin worked toward achieving:

“If most men were to embrace your outstanding intentions, perhaps a new Athens would be brought to perfection in Francia, indeed a far more excellent Athens.  For ennobled by teaching of Christ the Lord, our Athens would surpass the wisdom of the Academy.  Educated only in the disciplines of Plato, the old Athens glimmered thanks to the seven liberal arts.  But enriched by the sevenfold plenitude of the Holy Spirit, the new Athens would surpass every glory of worldly wisdom.”

Charlemagne died on January 28, 814.  Three years before his death, he partitioned his valuables among friends and officers.  A description of the things partitioned includes gold, silver, precious stones, vases, and a series of silver tables with maps of Rome and Constantinople.

Louis "the Pious" and Charles the Bald

Before Charlemagne’s death, he crowned his sole surviving son, Louis “the Pious”, as co-emperor, “Emperor and Augustus.”

Louis’s son, Charles the Bald, was crowned emperor of the Romans by Pope John VIII at St. Peter’s in Rome on Christmas Day, 875. Among his gifts to Rome were a Bible still held at St. Paul’s Outside the Walls and the “Throne of St. Peter” held in a reliquary at St. Peter’s.  He used the seal “Empire of the Romans and the Franks.”  While he tried to re-establish ancient traditions, and to regain the entire empire that had been Charlemagne’s (portions of which had been lost), he would not have time to succeed.  He died on October 6, 877.

Like his predecessors, Charles the Bald loved reading and learning.  Like his forbears, he fostered the production of gold and ivory artwork and beautifully decorated books.

The Carolingians who followed him continued to hold power, to one degree or another, for another century.  They were often called “emperor,” but with smaller territory.  Western Europe entered a period of weakness, with new Viking invasions beginning in 879.  In 882, pillagers threatened Reims.  Abp. Hincmar of Reims, who had counseled emperor Charles the Bald, fled with the church treasury and relics.  Reims survived the attack, but Hincmar died later that year.  Pope John VIII also died late that year, possibly assassinated by one of his own entourage.  Pagan Slav and Magyar invasions plagued western Europe through the early tenth century.

In the course of raids and invasions, much of what the Carolingians had had was pillaged or destroyed, including artwork, libraries, and buildings.  Nonetheless, growth in population and growth in learning continued during the ninth century.

Alcuin, John Scottus Eriugena, and Intellectual Awakening of the Ninth Century

It was the eighth century Alcuin who set in motion the intellectual awakening that came to fruition in the ninth century.  He and the Carolingian emperors had worked to rebuild education and the knowledge of classical texts.  His work was based upon Scripture and the Church Fathers, especially Bl. Boethius and  St. Augustine.  However, Alcuin was a teacher, and not an original thinker.  His writings echoed those of St. Augustine, rather than adding to them.  It was not until the ninth century that substantial creative intellectual work was seen.

John Scottus, called "Eriugena," is among the foremost examples of that ninth century intellectual development.  He was one of many Irish scholars who fled the Viking raids and settled in the Carolingian Empire.   The Irish immigrants were well respected for their learning and apparently brought with them some of the classical Roman books that had been preserved in Irish monasteries through the barbarian invasions that had destroyed many Roman libraries.

While the major theological issues of the eighth century had been largely framed by eastern theologians centered in Constantinople, the major theological issues of the ninth century west developed separate from eastern thinking.  They reflected a competition between the two centers of Constantinople and Aachen for supremacy.  There were issues derived in part from questions over interpretations of the thinking of Augustine and Boethius on issues such as grace and free will (predestination); the question of whether the body of Christ was present in the Eucharist in truth or in spirit (transubstantiation); and the question of the interaction of Scripture, the Church Fathers, and reason in theological discussion (authority).

Although Eriugena's proposed answers to those questions were rejected as heretical, they represented an early effort to frame issues and to offer argument derived as much from reason as from Scripture, the Church Fathers, and the writings of Greek and Roman scholars of antiquity.  His work was rejected initially because he applied the dialectic -- the science of secular philosophical reason -- to theological analysis.  By the late tenth century, the application of reason to theology was no longer as controversial, but it would not be until the thirteenth century that St. Thomas Aquinas would truly find a balance and a unity between faith and reason that would prove to be lasting.

Nonetheless, Eriugena was protected by the emperor.  He remained free, and his writings continued to be read and preserved.  At the emperor's request, he made a translation from Greek to Latin of the work of Pseudo-Dionysius.  His Treatise on Predestination weaves together ideas from St. Augustine, Bl. Boethius and Pseudo-Dionysius with an ease that somewhat belies the belief of that era that Pseudo-Dionysius was the convert of St. Paul, rather than nearly a contemporary of Augustine and Boethius (The writings of all three are known today to fall within a little more than one century).  He did not appeal to reason in rebellion against the Christianity but, rather, in response to his understanding of Christianity.

A sampling of his writing reflects the Christian motivation for his work:

"The blessed theologian John [the Apostle] therefore flies beyond not only what may be thought and spoken, but also beyond all mind and meaning.  Exalted by the ineffable flight of his spirit beyond all things, he enters into the very arcanum of the one principle of all. . . . And if you want to know how, or by what reason, all things are made through the Word thus subsist vitally, causally, and in the same manner in him, consider examples chosen from created nature." (Homily on the Prologue to John's Gospel). 

"For he is the highest intellect in which all things exist together -- rather he is himself all things although called by a variety of names which take their meaning from the rational nature which was created in order to search him out. . . .Accordingly God, who fashioned all things, first in his goodness created the substances of the universe he was to create, and then in his generosity arranged to bestow gifts on each according to its rank.  Manifestly, among those substances, he brought into being the nature of man under the control of a rational will.  For man is not a will for the reason that he is will, but because he is a rational will." (Treatise on Divine Predestination)

The Ottonians

Henry I, an heir of the Carolingians, restored the German monarchy.  He designated his son Otto as his successor in 936.  Otto, called by some the “new Charlemagne” or “Otto the Great”, regained control of Italy in 951.  In 962, re-established the empire after 85 years of lesser unity.  Under the Ottonians – Otto I, his son Otto II, and his grandson Otto III – the Carolingian concept of empire saw its final and greatest development from 962 to 1002.

Following the example of earlier emperors, the Ottonians also supported learned bishops who could teach the clerics on whose work they relied.  Otto III collected books, including volumes written by Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Cassiodorus, among others.  The artwork in his Gospel Book (such as an illustration of St. Luke) are celebrated. 

In 954, Otto I’s son William became Archbishop of Mainz and brought the clergy and monks into the work of beautifying the liturgy.  Otto II’s marriage to a well educated Byzantine princess, Theophano, brought to the royal chapel a group of Greek clerics and workmen.  Textiles, ivory artwork, and manuscripts were created in a style similar to Byzantine style.  The late tenth century saw religious art and manuscripts as a means of glorifying God and communicating God’s glory to the viewer.

Also, in contrast with the ninth century, the dialectic was increasingly taught in the schools.  There was also a rebirth of Roman law, and a renewal of legal studies.

Rome, parts of which had long been empty, began to see new growth as the population rose.  Otto III, who took pride in his Byzantine and Roman philosophical heritage, wanted Rome to be his imperial capital.  Rome had still not fully recovered from the devastation of the sixth and seventh centuries.  Its population had recovered, but only to the extent that it had 20,000 people.  Regional conflicts plagued the city, which would never in fact become Otto III's imperial city. 

Like his father, he sought a Byzantine bride.  The request was granted, but the Byzantine emperor's niece was still in her journey to Bari when Otto III died at the age of 22.

The monk Gerbert of Aurillac was introduced to Otto I as a young man.  Gerbert became tutor to Otto II, then abbot, archbishop, and eventually pope in 999 with the support of Otto III.  Little remains of Gerbert’s writing other than letters and one short treatise.  However, he imparted to his students an appreciation for the writings of Boethius, Plato, Aristotle, and other classical Greek and Roman writers, a mathematical understanding of music, and an understanding of geometry and astronomy.  His creativity was so startling in his era that legends arose a century after his death, calling him a magician.  As Pope Sylvester II, beginning in 999, Gerbert nurtured the new churches of Poland and Hungary.  He worked to reform the clergy.  Together with Otto III, he sought to re-establish the unity between east and west, to unify both Empire and Church as they once had been.  In all of that, he often emulated Boethius.  He even encouraged the emperor to venerate the tomb of Boethius in preference over that of St. Augustine during a visit to Pavia.

The Growth of Science and Technology

The new society, learning the technology that was known in theory in the ancient world, readily put it into practice.  They often developed it creatively so that the use differed in different parts of Europe.  Water mills spread throughout Europe.  During the Roman Empire, the technology was known but little used.  By 1086, the Domesday Book shows that there were 6,000 mills in England alone.

Gerbert of Aurillac and several other teachers of the tenth century were greatly successful.  Gerbert carried into western Europe some of the Muslim knowledge of math and science in that day, having studied the abacus and Arabic treatises translated into Latin which were then available in Spain.  Those included the writings of Maslama ibn Ahmad al-Majjriti on astronomy and the writings of Abu al Qasim on medicine.  Gerbert's student Richer, a monk at the Royal Monastery of St. Remi, later wrote that "The number of students grew unceasingly."

Gerbert also made several contributions to science.  He built a newly designed abacus which, according to Richer, made it possible for people to mentally perform multiplication and division of numbers "in less time than it took to formulate them."  He wrote a treatise on the abacus for one of his students.  He built wooden spheres to study the earth's zones and revolutions of planets and stars.  He built an ocular tube to observe planets and stars, which is thought to have been used as a nocturnal to tell the time at night.

One of his students is thought, more likely than Gerbert himself, to have written a text on the use of the astrolabe which is often attributed to Gerbert.  The fragments of Constance on the astrolabe, written in Richenau in 1008 based upon a model from around 995 confirm the use of a treatise on astronomy by monks educated by the Church in the tenth century.

The study of medicine was restored by another master, Vulfad, a monk of Fleury, at the school of Chartres in the late tenth century.  At Chartres, another great master known as Fulbert of Chartres became famous for his understanding of medicine.  After studying under Gerbert, Richer went to Chartres, where he studied the aphorisms of Hippocrates and a book titled "The Concordances of Hippocrates, Galen, and Soranus."  He described learning pharmacy, botany, and surgery.  Christian students in the tenth century also learned from the writings of Jewish doctors, including Hasdai ibn Shaprut.

Dramatic Growth in Music Theory and Composition

The western liturgy and chant developed with Carolingian and Ottonian support for learning and for the Church.  As the spread of Christianity through Germany had helped to unify the region under St. Boniface earlier in the eighth century, reform and development under another German bishop, Chrodegang, was supported by the Carolingians later in the same century.  Under Bishop Chrodegang, the chant of the Mass developed in Metz around 765.  It was called "Gregorian" in honor of Pope/St. Gregory the Great.  The chant of the Office was developed at St. Martin of Tours around 800, where Charlemagne sent Alcuin toward the end of Alcuin's life.

Gregorian chant spread through western Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries, aided by newer, more sophisticated forms of musical notation.  Boethius's 6th century Treatise on Music was influential through the ninth and tenth centuries, an analysis of both the physics and mathematics of music, in harmony and scales, as well as the philosophy of music and its effect on people.  Much of Boethius' work had been lost for 300 years, resurfacing in the early 9th century.  Historian Calvin Bower hypothesizes that a copy of his work on mathematics had been preserved in Ireland, while Italian libraries were destroyed in Barbarian invasions. Michael Bernhard theorizes that the work of Boethius was then collected in Charlemagne's library at Aachen.  In the tenth century, Gerbert of Aurillac paid attention to copying the classical manuscripts, particularly those of Boethius. 

And yet, there can be no doubt that the medieval Christians drew from that classical theoretical analysis and applied it to produce new musical applications.  Those applications spread far beyond the achievements of Roman and Greek theoretical understanding.  Music and rhetoric were part of liturgy, and liturgy was for the whole Christian population, not the province of the elite few.

Some time in the late tenth or early eleventh century, the Carolingian antiphons began to be used in Rome, along with the newer Carolingian liturgy.  By the turn of the eleventh century, improvements in the way music was written dramatically changed the ability to spread music by written notation.  That, in turn, changed the connection between the singer and the written music.  The change was a matter of music theory, of a new understanding of the mathematical and physical relationships of notation.  It has been called "the most significant turning point in the entire history of music in the west." (Saulnier)

Lastly, the Carolingian liturgy included a western way of saying the Creed, with the filioque.  At that time, the Roman churches still used an older liturgy that did not include a creed.  The adoption of the Carolingian liturgy in the Roman churches, probably under Henry II in the eleventh century, was destined to have troubling consequences. 

Restoration and New Creativity in Architecture

In contrast with the poor housing seen among invading peoples, and those left in poverty within the de-populated west of the seventh century, Pierre Riché's writings on the Carolingians and the year 1000 (linked below) provide repeated examples of how the Carolingians began to build.  They created new structures with the magnificence fitting for imperial buildings. As the population grew and education improved, particularly in times of stability, more structures were built.  Some of them were elaborate.

In the course of the Carolingian era, 100 royal residences were constructed or refurbished.  27 cathedrals and hundreds of monastery buildings were built.  Ancient treatises on architecture, including that by Vitruvius, were discovered and put to new use, prompting a renewal of construction in stone.  Kings who had traveled to Italy wanted arches and beautiful churches and chapels.  Carolingian architects put their own ideas into the work, rather than merely copying older Roman plans.

The octagonal Royal Chapel at Aachen [photo at left from this page], designed by Odo of Metz, and built beginning in 702, still survives.  The royal residence there once included four groups of buildings.  They included a royal audience hall similar in size to the aula palatina in ancient Trier.  Marble columns for the palace were taken from older structures.  A covered walkway connected the palace residence to a group of religious buildings arranged as a Latin cross.  Beyond that were the houses of bishops, merchants, and dignitaries.  Nearby were a hunting park and menagerie, where Charlemagne kept an elephant he received from an Abbasid caliph.  A foundry in Aachen created decorative metals, including the wrought iron and bronze doors that still survive in the chapel.

The palace was well known, and its features were imitated elsewhere in the empire into the 11th century.  A church at Ottmarsheim in Alsace, built early in the eleventh century, reflected the design at Aachen.

New monastic buildings were also constructed at St. Denis in the 8th century.

John Scottus Eriugena wrote a description of the Carolingian chapel at the monastic foundation at Compiègne, a building that no longer exists.  Here is part of his poem describing the chapel:

“A house built varied with columns of marble,
Made beauteous in accord with the hundred-length norm!
Behold the curving angles and the rounded vaults, . . .
The towers, the parapets, the coffered ceiling, and skillful roof;
The tapered windows, the breaths of light beglassed; . . .
All glimmers with gems and glistens with gold.”

The abbey church of St. Germain was rebuilt in the 9th century, designed from a wax model.  Antique columns were brought from Provence, and frescoes decorated the corridor and chapels by the saint’s relics in the crypt [photo at left from this page].  The frescoes were found under plaster in 1927.

Frescoes appear to have been common decorations for Carolingian churches.  Other such frescoes survive from the time of Charlemagne at the Church of St. John at Münster, Switzerland, including 20 Old Testament scenes and 62 Gospel scenes.

An architectural study still exists from the early 9th century, showing a great church with two apses, east and west.

Around the year 1000, Archbishop/St. Willigis built new cathedrals in Mainz and also sought to encourage church art as an expression of God’s glory.

Not far from Mainz, Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim built the Church of St. Michael’s in the late tenth century, featuring towers and other sophisticated architectural features.  The interior is shown in the picture in the upper left corner of this post.  Although the building was badly damaged in World War II, it still stands as restored and rebuilt in the 1950's.  Now celebrated bronze doors were built for the abbey of St. Michael at the turn of the 11th century.  Among the books from that era of St. Michael’s history are a copy of Vitruvius’ treatise on architecture and Boethius’ De Arithmetica.  The geometric principles from those books were applied in the construction of the transepts and the east and west apses of the abbey church in Hildesheim.

The cathedral of Reims was restored beginning 976.  Nearly one-quarter of the vaults of the church were demolished and rebuilt.  After the fire of Orléans in 987, the cathedral and several other churches were rebuilt.  The Basilica of Our Saviour (Lateran Basilica) was restored and became the location of the tombs of the popes, rather than St. Peter's.

The Roman forms were not merely copied, but rather were applied creatively.  The architectural style varied in different regions of the empire, as artists and architects sought to create a new art form.

Archaeological evidence suggests a great effort to restore churches in the late 8th century, and another such effort in the tenth and eleventh centuries.  Gerd Tellenbach notes that the restoration of churches, and foundation of many new churches, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, began as invasions died down. It was a time when the population was growing and populations were moving.  Tellenbach mentions, "The imaginative Rodulfus Glaber reported enthusiastically that after the millennium the world clothed itself in a white robe of churches."

The Christianization of Kievan Russia

While the Ottonian west spread Christianity to Poland and Hungary in the tenth century, it was the Byzantine liturgy that spread in the that century to Kievan Russia.  The impact of a family connection is not clear.  However,Ottonian Empress Theophano, the Byzantine wife of Otto II, was the cousin of the Byzantine princess Anne who was given in marriage to Russia’s Prince Vladimir before his conversion to Christianity.  Theitmar, the German Bishop of Magdeburg who was the contemporary of Otto II and Vladimir, had called Vladimir “an exceptional fornicator.”  The western Church expressed disgust at the marriage of their empress’s cousin to the notorious Russian prince in 988.  However, the prince had had a Christian mother and grandmother.  Tradition places Vladimir’s baptism on January 6, 988, while historian George P. Fedotov estimates the year at 1000.  Whatever the date, after his conversion and baptism, Vladimir became committed to Christian mission.  A glowing description of Prince Vladimir followed in 1008, when Saint/Bishop Bruno of Querfurt wrote to Henry II about his encounter with Vladimir during a missionary journey.

The joy with which the Russian people accepted Christianity is shown in Hilarion’s Eulogy for Prince Vladimir, who is St. Vladimir the Great in the Orthodox Church:

“See also your city beaming in its grandeur!  See your blossoming churches, see the growing Christianity, see the city gleaming in its adornment of saintly images, and fragrant with thyme, and re-echoing with hymns and divine, sacred songs!  And seeing all this, rejoice and be glad, and praise the good God, the creator of all this.”

The Hope for Unity

The hope for a unity of Church and Empire was a pragmatic reality in the year 1000, when the Byzantine Empire was linked to the Ottonian Empire and the Kievan Empire by the marriage of two Byzantine princesses to Prince Vladimir of Kiev and to Otto II, the mother of Otto III.  The western Emperor, who took pride in his philosophical Greek and Roman heritage, had wanted to build the center of his empire in Rome.  He adopted Greek titles, replacing the Latin, for some of his officials.  His request for a Byzantine bride had been granted, and a niece of Byzantine Emperor Basil II was en route to the west to become his wife at the time of his death.

The young Otto III viewed Rome, Aachen and Constantinople as the 3 imperial cities.  Although the Ottos had been crowned emperor in Rome, and had been in Italy for a little more than a third of their combined reign, Otto III never gained control of the city.  Regional powers were gaining in strength who did not wish to see imperial power extended.  There were people who wanted the half-Greek Otto III and his philosopher Pope to devote more attention to the historic central Carolingian region in Germany.  Theophano had never been fully accepted by the western European people.  As she continued to dress in Byzantine fashion, she was sometimes called "the Greek Empress."

In the spring of 1001, Otto III and his army entered Rome, but never went beyond St. Paul's Outside the Walls.  They soon learned that opposition to their efforts was growing in Germany.  They returned to Germany for a synod at the end of the year, hoping to raise support for the expedition.  Returning to Rome, the emperor fell ill from malaria at Paterno, north of the city.  He died there on January 24, 1002.

Gerbert was over 60 years old and was considered an old man in that day.  He was allowed back into Rome, considered relatively harmless without his emperor.  Following Otto III's death, Gerbert changed his title to one that reflected his desire to be the pope of all Christians, and not just those of western Europe.  He had previously signed his name "Gerbert also known as Silvester" or "Silvester who is called Pope Gerbert."  He began to call himself, "Supreme Pope and Universal Vicar of the Blessed Peter, Servant of the Servants of God."

Otto III's successor, Henry II, had no interest in attempting to re-unite the old Roman Empire.  Regional powers were gaining strength in preference over a western empire.  Gerbert died in Rome on May 12, 1003, having fallen ill while saying Mass at Rome's Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. 

Bibliography:

Autour de Gerbert d'Aurillac: Le pape de l'an mil

Boethius, Treatise on Music

Carabine, Dierdre, John Scottus Eriugena

Eriugena, John Scottus, with an introduction and reflections by Christopher Bamford, The Voice of the Eagle: The Heart of Celtic Christianity

Eriugena, John Scottus, with an introduction by Avital Wohlman, Treatise on Divine Predestination

Fedotov, George P., The Russian Religious Mind: Kievan Christianity, The Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries

Gerbert of Aurillac, Letters, with an introduction and notes by Harriet Lattin

Guilmard, P. Jacques-Marie, of Solesmes, Interview with Zenit

Hilarion of Kiev, "Eulogy for Prince/St. Vladimir"

Levy, Kenneth, Gregorian Chant and the Carolingians

Poppe, Andrzej, “St. Vladimir as a Christian,” from The Legacy of St. Vladimir: Byzantium, Russia America

Riché, Pierre, Gerbert d'Aurillac: Le Pape de l'an mil

Riché, Pierre, Les grandeurs de l'an mille

Riché, Pierre, The Carolingians

Saulnier, Dom Daniel, Gregorian Chant: A Guide

Southern, R.W., Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages

Tellenbach, Gerd, The Church in Western Europe from the tenth to the early twelfth century

The photo below is one of several photos of the statue of Gerbert in Aurillac, France, generously taken by a reader, Georg, in Aurillac. This one shows the base of the statue, with pictures of Gerbert at the far right with an invention.  To his left, behind a child, is the French King Hugh Capet.  Behind King Hugh are the Emperors Otto I, Otto II and Otto III, with Bishop Fulbert of Chartres:

 

Calling a Synod in 1002

"Midst the diverse headaches caused by disorder we are unable to attain the inward harbor of joyfulness, because we see clergymen of all grades neglecting the precepts of the Catholic religion.  This knowledge has, in fact, deprived us of sleep, while tears flow in rivers down our cheeks and we gasp for breath. [Ps. 6:7, Ps. 119:136]

"Of what moment is it to speak of the ends of the earth [Acts 1:8, Matt. 28:19] when your principality, our very neighbor, does not blush to sell openly the sanctuaries of God through its bishops, when your bishops and priests all openly secure wives, and, like money-changers [Matt. 21:12] and money-lenders, pursue worldly wealth, making use of lay business for the divine office?  Assuredly, the coals of this wickedness are being heaped upon your head [Rom. 12:20], for you must exterminate this iniquity.  You, on whom God bestowed power ought not to be thus forgetful of that same God."

* * * * *

"Let the rules of the canons guide you.  Exercise your impartiality strictly and the power of a Catholic prince piously with regard to the acceptance of [proper] persons [at synod] and [let there be] no simoniacal giving of gifts but only the tradition handed down by the holy fathers."

- Pope Sylvester II (Gerbert of Aurillac), letters to St. Peter Urseolus, Doge of Venice and monk, and to Vitale IV, patriarch of Grado, ca. January 1002, instructing them to call a provincial synod concerning the reform of the clergy, translated by Harriet Pratt Lattin, Letter 256 in the English translation, Letters of Gerbert of Aurillac.

A Carmelite Connection to Gerbert of Aurillac

Two of the common topics in this blog are medieval Church history and Carmelite spirituality.  I was thus interested to see a short article by Claude Grimmer about a reference to Gerbert in the writing of a 17th century Discalced Carmelite friar.  Grimmer's article appears in the anthology of writings Autour de Gerbert d'Aurillac: Le pape de l'an mil.

The 17th century Carmelite who attracted Grimmer's attention was Géraud Vigier, who was known in religion as Dominique de Jésus (Dominic of Jesus).  Vigier was from Aurillac, and he taught theology in Paris.  Vigier wrote several works on Church history.  Among them was a book about three saints of Upper Auvergne, the region where Aurillac lies, written at the request of the bishop of Saint-Flour. 

Vigier's reason for writing was to motivate the people of Auvergne to Catholic spiritual revival.  While he also wanted to write history, his primary purpose was to have them see themselves "as Israelites after a long captivity," who would take "the trowel in hand to rebuild the house of God by the reform of the clergy and the introduction of the religious families."

In the course of writing, Vigier added 4 pages about Gerbert of Aurillac.  His primary sources of information were a 17th century French edition of the letters of Gerbert and a 17th century biography of Gerbert written by a Polish Dominican.  Vigier did not mention the legends of magic associated with Gerbert.  Rather, he presented him as a pious and erudite scientist, tutor, and churchman.  He attributed the legends of magic to the simple people of a barbarian era, who "believed that all who counted how many tiles were in a roof by the rules of arithmetic  were magicians."

In writing hagiographically, Vigier assembled what he could to describe Gerbert as the first among the men of Auvergne.   However, it was not until the 19th century that other scholars from Aurillac would take a new view of Gerbert and the reality that lay behind the magical legends.

Medieval Muslim Mathematics and the History of Christianity

This week's issue of Science Magazine has an article about classical quasicrystalline tilings in twelfth century Muslim architecture.  Two authors from Harvard and Princeton studied the geometric patterns in a building in Iran and concluded that they reflect an understanding of mathematical principles that were only discovered 20 or 30 years ago by western mathematicians.  Although the entire article is not online on the journal's website, there is an article about it today from Reuters.

Medieval knowledge of mathematics and architecture in the Muslim world holds interest for the history of Christianity, despite the usual characterization of the west in that era as the "Dark Ages."

In the late tenth century, the Benedictine Gerbert of Aurillac is thought to have had access to some Muslim knowledge of science and mathematics when he was educated in tenth century Spain.  His knowledge of mathematics and science, and his own discoveries, astounded those who knew him as a monastery teacher.  He is known to have invented a form of abacus that was said to make it possible to calculate math problems as quickly as they could be formulated, an instrument used for telling the time at night, and other such inventions.  As he lived in an era when math and science were taught mostly face to face, and the personal interaction between teacher and student was considered to be more important than what could be recorded in books, we have little left in writing other than his letters and one short treatise.  However, we know that his teaching was so groundbreaking that it clearly frightened the people of the following generation, who instead emphasized more mystical and spiritual things.  By 100 years after his death, legends had developed wrongly accusing him of magic and of Satanic influence.  In truth, his only remaining writings show him to have been a Benedictine who maintained his friendships with monasteries from the area where he grew up, who remained loyal to the imperial family that had supported him even when their fortunes were failing and it could have jeopardized his safety, and who wept over the sins of some of the clergy of his era.  As Pope Sylvester II, he was a reformer of the clergy of his era.

Also during the tenth and early eleventh centuries, some of Gerbert's contemporaries who knew him, including St. Willigis, the Archbishop of Mainz, furthered the construction of new cathedrals and churches in the west.   Earlier posts here mention the art and architecture of that era, in and near Mainz in particular, here and here.  Around that time, a more mathematical and scientific view of music enabled the development of written music that was accurately placed on staff lines (see this post).

Not far from Mainz, the Basilica of St. Remi, in Reims, France, was constructed beginning in the eleventh century.  Here is a photo of the exterior.  Gerbert had taught at the abbey of St. Remi in the tenth century, and Reims had been a center of the learning of that era.  The pillars of the massive nave are still there from construction at the beginning of the 11th century.  The building actually constructed was still smaller than the one originally planned, due to lack of funds.

While much of that era's learning seems not to have been furthered in the following century in western Europe, some aspects of it did live on and influenced intellectual development of the following centuries.  With the link between Christianity and Islam in late tenth century Spain, new information about the extent of Muslim mathematical and architectural knowledge of that era also sheds light on that era in the history of Christianity, particularly through the knowledge of Gerbert of Aurillac and his students, and others who similarly benefited from Muslim scholarship in that era.  Intellectual exchanges among Muslims, Jews and Christians were most fruitful in the 13th century Aristotle revival, but intellectual exchanges existed much earlier.

For those who think that only the growth of secularization in a much later century brought Western Europe out of the Dark Ages, a greater understanding of the mathematical knowledge of the tenth to thirteenth centuries in East and West may be informative.  Islam and Christianity held in common a belief in the personal God of the Hebrew Scriptures.  The mathematical and philosophical developments of the tenth through the thirteenth centuries repeatedly benefited from intellectual exchanges between the two faiths and between their scholars, rather than from secularization.

A Response to AC Grayling, Part III: From 410 to 741

In Part I and  Part 2, I began to respond to two challenges/questions raised by atheist philosopher and blogger AC Grayling:

1.  Did Christianity Cause the Dark Ages?

2.  What has Christianity, as a body of beliefs, contributed to science?

Part I was an introduction, for anyone wondering what prompted my interest in writing this.  Part II covers the time frame from Jesus to 410 A.D. with a particular focus on those two questions.  This post covers the time frame from 410 to 741 A.D. with a focus on the same two questions.  As before, particular individuals are offered as examples from the time frame in question.

Philosophy and Christianity in the Fifth and Early Sixth Century East

Pagan neo-platonic philosopher Proclus Lycaeus began his work in Athens in the 430’s A.D., creating one of the most extensive expressions of Greek Neo-Platonic philosophy.  The rise of Christianity in the eastern and western Roman Empire did not suppress the development of Greek philosophy.  Alexandrian Platonic influence is found throughout Christianity, affecting the thinking of the Capadocian fathers in the East and St. Augustine in the West.

Indeed, the eastern schools continued in much of their pagan character, despite the contradictory views between Greek scholarship and Christianity.  Similarly, although there was involvement of Church and State in the palaces, Christian values were never imposed on Byzantine rulers, whose society continued to follow a pagan structure. 

Accordingly, the Church cannot be blamed for the limited scientific development in Byzantium, as the Church never attempted to control the education system there. 

Although Proclus was a pagan, his work was neither ignored nor suppressed by Christian thinkers of his era.  At some point between 430 and the following century, an unknown Christian writer created a series of books and writings, under the name of "Dionysius" which reflect Neo-Platonic ideas derived from Proclus.  The writings of that Pseudo-Dionysius influenced later Christian writers in the Byzantine east and, in the ninth century, spread to the west in a Latin translation made by John Scotus Eriugena.

While that Greek academic system, which never fully accepted Christian values, saw no advancement, there was impressive creative advancement within the eastern monasteries.  Within the monasteries, Pseudo-Dionysius developed his mysticism that drew from Scripture and from Neo-Platonism.  It was within the monasteries that music and liturgy developed, as the eighth century’s St. Andrew of Crete developed the canon.  It was the monasteries that produced beautifully creative writing, like that of St. John Climacus , St. John of Damascus, and St. Andrew of Crete.  And it was the monasteries that developed and defended iconography against opposition from eighth century iconoclasm.

St. Patrick and Fifth Century Britain

There was not a large enough Christian population for Christianity to have substantially contributed to the collapse of Roman control over Britain, which was officially abandoned in 410 A.D.

Moreover, fifth century Christians placed a high value on education.  As a result, St. Patrick of Ireland  (born in Roman Britain around 387 or 390) expressed embarrassment that he had never learned Latin as a child.  He wrote about his difficulty writing Latin in his Confessions, widely regarded as an authentic fifth century writing by St. Patrick.  He had had the opportunity to study rhetoric in his youth, and he regretted later that he had not taken that opportunity.

Soon after the middle of the fifth century, the British Church lost communication with the Church in Gaul and in Rome, in what historian R.P.C. Hanson called “a curtain falling", an interruption of normal life: “The literary evidence dies out.  The Gaulish Chronicler could gain the impression that the Saxons had virtually enslaved all Britain.”  Fleeing invasions by Angles, Jutes and Saxons, many of the Christians, in what would be known in the seventh century as England, settled in Wales, Cornwall and Cumberland.

The Church, under Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century, sent missionaries to England.  It would take more than a century to complete the Christianization of the peoples that had settled there and those who had converted to their way of thinking.  In 669, Rome sent more missionaries under Theodore and Hadrian.  In the early eighth century, the boy who would become known as St. Boniface lived in a newly Christianized region in Devon, near a monastery of Benedictine monks who set up a preaching cross to evangelize pagan regions as a Christian ruler overtook them.

To blame Christianity for the Dark Ages in England would assume that Roman Britain was more Christianized than the evidence supports.  By the eighth century, when England was fully Christianized, the worst of the Dark Ages were practically over.

On the other hand, Christianity’s evangelistic spirit was a direct cause of the efforts by Gregory the Great and his successors to bring England into the Church and to bring England back into European civilization beginning in the sixth century, and those efforts succeeded.

Rome in the Late Fifth and Early Sixth Centuries

The barbarian Odovacar unseated the Roman emperor in 476.  In 493, Theodoric became the Ostrogothic king.  Theoderic valued Roman law and culture, even if all real power was now held by the Goths in the military.  Roman Catholics governed the western empire, Arian Goths controlled the western army, and the Goths’ military leader held the most powerful post at that time – not the Catholics.

Bl. Boethius, who wrote both philosophy and theology, was born around the early 480’s to a Roman family of senatorial rank.  He is exemplary of the synthesis of secular and theological education in Western Europe, in contrast with the East.  He studied Aristotle and the Neoplatonist writings of Porphyry and Proclus.  As a young man, he wrote about arithmetic and music.  Perhaps in an effort to gain the Goths’ alliance and to bring peace, he designed a sundial and a waterclock (probably assisted with other people’s technical skills).

The inventions that he championed are indicative of the contribution of the Christian religious mind to science to the development of science.  As demonstrated by economic historian Carlo M. Cipolla, it was the Western European attitude toward clocks and toward regulating life by time that led to the development of crafts guilds and scientific discoveries that eventually led to the Industrial Revolution.

An interest in clocks, and an interest in regulating life by time, appears both in the work of Bl. Boethius and St. Benedict in the sixth century, both of them prompted in part by Christian values of orderly life and a daily cycle of prayer.

In the mid-sixth century, the Emperor Justinian began to retake lands from Germanic control, and quickly retook Africa from the Vandals.  Gothic control of much of the western empire was overthrown around 550, and the wars between Romans, Goths and Vandals officially ended in 554.

The eastern and western empires were soon reunited while both were under Christian control.  The ability to re-establish unity after centuries of fractures is a testament to the strong value placed on unity and peace within Christianity.  The Byzantine and Latin cultures had changed in different directions and, indeed, the populations were not ethnically the same people, their Churches had different theologians in different languages, and yet, they managed to re-establish unity of both Church and State. 

The Cataclysmic Sixth Century: Epidemics, Floods and Earthquakes

Pope/St. Gregory the Great was born in Rome around 540, when it was still possible to obtain a Roman elite education in a few places in the west.  However, Rome was about to see a series of devastating events, while fighting off Lombard invasions.

Plagues struck parts of the already weakened Roman Empire in the 540’s.  The first epidemic in 542 took the lives of a third of the affected population.  Following the wave of immigrants in the early fifth century, many aristocratic families fled to Constantinople and elsewhere.  The Roman Senate was replaced in some regions by local authorities, and the Roman government truly began to collapse in the sixth century.

In 587, along with the damage of war, heavy rains caused the Tiber to burst its banks, flooding the area around Rome.  In February, 590, Pope Pelagius died of the plague.  In September, 590, Gregory the Great became Pope, and held the position for 13-1/2 years.  During his first year as pope, he completed several well written books that remain classics.  “Pastoral Care”, his book on leadership, applied to leadership of both Church and State.  It was based on principles of servant leadership not unlike those of contemporary best selling books on business management and church leadership.

Another storm during 590 destroyed houses and churches in Rome, plagues continued, and by 593, Gregory preached, “a deserted Rome is burning . . . we see buildings destroyed, ruins daily multiplied.”

It was, at last, that series of natural disasters, plagues, and Lombard invasions to which the last of the Roman political system finally succumbed in the west.

In 592, the Church took another step toward holding order through the series of disasters.  Gregory began to issue orders to the local militia in defense of the city, as he and his fellow bishops gradually assumed such secular responsibilities, paying daily expenses in Rome when impoverished public finances left inadequate military power.  When Roman troops were left unpaid by the government, Gregory paid them from the Church’s funds.

As the Roman education system collapsed in the west, more western monasteries began to provide education, holding libraries, accepting children as students and sometimes as monks, serving not only as places of prayer but also as places of reading and knowledge.

The Rise of Islam

At the time when Western Europeans fled to the East, much of the East was Catholic, including Egypt, Palestine, Greece and Asia Minor.

That began to change in the seventh century with the rise of the Persian and Arab Empires.  Forty-four monks were martyred at the monastery of Sabas during the Persian invasion of Jerusalem in 614.  Some monks had fled, forced to wander from place to place as the Persians, and later the Arab Muslims, advanced.  Syria fell in 636, Palestine fell in 638, and Egypt fell by 642.

The Persian occupation of Damascus from 612 to 628 and its surrender to the Arab empire in 635, still allowed a Christian, such as St. John of Damascus, to have a prominent role.

In 651, Damascus became the capital of the first of the Umayyad caliphs who ruled the Arab Empire, including the eastern and southern provinces of what had been the Byzantine Empire in an earlier time.  There, it had been possible to receive a classical education, becoming proficient in his knowledge of Greek prose and verse.  St. John of Damascus was educated there.  In early adulthood, he followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, serving in the fiscal administration of the Arab empire although he was a Christian.

However, around 706, the Umayyad civil service switched its official language from Greek to Arabic.  Within a decade or so afterward, John of Damascus left his post and became a Palestinian monk.

By the late seventh century, Muslim Arabs had gained control of northern Africa, taking Carthage in 698.  By 715, the Eastern and Western Empires had become irrevocably divided and Arab attacks plagued Constantinople.  Constantinople was besieged by Arabs from 717 to 718.  In the wake of frequent wars, people faced plagues and famines, adding to their hardships.

In the early eighth century, the Berbers, led by Arabs, invaded Spain, taking it from one of the strongest Visigothic states within weeks.  The invaders destroyed the Spanish culture that had produced, earlier in the same century, the work of Isidore of Seville, who had introduced Aristotle to seventh century Spain – the last of the classical Christian philosophers.

That era of decline in the east cannot be attributed to Christianity as a religion.  The Byzantines eventually prevailed, successfully defending Constantinople, although portions of what had once been part of the Byzantine Empire remained under Arab control.  Constantinople was still Christian when it emerged from its decline of the seventh and eighth centuries, and it was the wealthiest city in the world for centuries afterward.

The Rebuilding of Seventh and Eighth Century Western Europe

in 687, Pippin II gained control of the Frankish Kingdom, negotiating agreement among various factions of the nobility.  He established an era of peace and founded monasteries, as Irish monks spread through Gaul.

At Pippin’s death, the kingdom might have fallen apart, as his own personality had held it together.  However, his 30-year old bastard son, Charles Martel succeeded in securing the kingdom in 716.  Charles Martel provided for abbots and clergy who supported him, but he also secularized some Church property to gain the resources he used to build an army.

In 722, St. Boniface began his major missionary work in Germany.  He faced a divided and sometimes heathenized church and pagan religions, including Bortharians who worshiped Thor, the god of thunder.  There was idol worship, fortune-telling, sorcery, and even human sacrifice among the pagans.  Boniface often sought books for his own use and books to be copied for his clergy and for monasteries.  He carried his own books with him wherever he went.

At that time, Muslim invaders were moving beyond Spanish boarders.  In 721, they advanced along the lower Rhone basin.  In 725, they reached Burgundy and Autun.

The risk of Muslim invasion in the Frankish Kingdom continued until 732.  That year, the Muslim ruler of Spain invaded Aquitaine, leading to the Battle of Tours (Poitiers).  As the Muslims moved toward the wealthy St. Martin’s of Tours, Charles Martel’s army, and that of Duke Odo of Aquitaine, defeated the invaders.  While the battle may have held minor importance in itself, the victory became famous and was greeted as a sign of God’s favor.  In time, Charles also took back the Rhone Valley and Provence.

Charles Martel died in 741, after a reign of 25 years, having turned the corner in the battle against Muslim aggression in Western Europe.  After his death, the Carolingians who followed him helped to build a culture that fostered developments in science, music, and philosophy that ultimately served to bring Western Europe out of the Dark Ages.  Christianity, through the evangelistic and educational efforts of St. Boniface and the Irish monastic foundations, was again a part of the solution.

(In addition to the bibliographies given in the biographies linked here, sources include Pierre Riché, The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe and G.P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind.  I plan to post Part IV next week-end or, perhaps more likely, the following week-end, as time permits after Easter -- I'll get to it.)

A Response to AC Grayling, Part II: From Jesus to 410 A.D.

This is Part II of a series of posts in response to questions raised by AC Grayling.  The background and the questions are addressed in Part I.  All will be in the "History" category.

Roman Culture, the Human Person, and Insurrection

The ethics of the Roman Empire, in practice, did not reflect the Utopian image of the classics.  Slavery was common, and life was cheap.  As summarized on a PBS webpage about Rome in the first century, although life was good for the wealthy:

"Poorer Romans, however, could only dream of such a life. Sweating it out in the city, they lived in shabby, squalid houses that could collapse or burn at any moment. If times were hard, they might abandon newborn babies to the streets, hoping that someone else would take them in as a servant or slave. Poor in wealth but strong in numbers, they were the Roman mob, who relaxed in front of the popular entertainment of the time – chariot races between opposing teams, or gladiators fighting for their life, fame and fortune."

The persecution of Christianity is an example of the low value that the first century Roman Empire placed on the human person, although not the only example.  According to the Talmud, when Roman soldiers attacked Jerusalem in 70 a.d., they did not merely destroy the Jerusalem temple; they catapulted a pig’s head onto the altar, insulting the Jewish faith as they attacked their temple.  Roman methods of that type did not endear the Roman government to outsiders, and those outsiders, increasingly, were moving into Rome yet not becoming Roman.

Revolts against the Romans were brewing already during the life of Christ.  At the time of the crucifixion, the Gospels tell us that at least some of Jesus' disciples believed that he would seek to overthrow Roman control of Jerusalem, and it appears that one of the things that may have prompted Judas to betray him was the discovery that Jesus did not plan such an attack.  Barabbas, the prisoner who was released on demands of the crowd in preference over Jesus, is described in Mark's Gospel as being "bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection" (Mark 15:7), and the crowd preferred that (Mark 15:11-15).  Widespread opposition to the Roman government existed long before Christianity spread to Rome. 

As another example of the brutality of Roman culture, in late 249, the emperor Decius issued an order that the entire empire was to make sacrifices to the Roman gods. Christians may have been particularly targeted for their belief that Christianity was the exclusive way to salvation.  The emperor’s order was issued to the entire population – men and women, adults and children, citizens and non-citizens.  Fabian, the bishop of Rome, was martyred in January 250.  In Carthage, the order was effective in April, 250, enforced at first by exile and later by torture in prison to those who would not comply, including children.

However, as St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote in the early second century,  in his Epistle to the Romans, "Christianity lies in achieving greatness in the face of a world's hatred."  And as Tertullian wrote somewhat later, the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church.

A Christian View of Philosophy

As the Church grew, although it opposed Roman mistreatment of Christianity and of the poor, the Church absorbed the better side of classical philosophy.  That can be seen already in the Acts of the Apostles, with St. Paul preaching at the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34). 

It can be seen more clearly in the second century, with the work of St. Clement of Alexandria.  As a young man, Clement of Alexandria had traveled from place to place, learning from “blessed and truly remarkable men” in Greece, south Italy, Lebanon, Egypt, Assyria, and Palestine, before he “found rest” in Alexandria, Egypt.

In reaching the culture of second century Alexandria for the Gospel message of salvation, Clement accepted the truth he found in Greek philosophy as indicative of God’s creation of man in His image, planting the seed of truth in all people.  He saw Plato and Aristotle as preparing the Greek people for the true message of the Gospel, just as the Old Testament had prepared the Hebrews.

Christianity thus began to synthesize the Hebrew concept of the human person as having intrinsic value, created in the image of God, with that part of Greek philosophy consistent with Christian values.  In so doing, they combined what they found in the Neo-Platonic view of eternity with the Jewish (Pharisaic) belief in the bodily resurrection of the dead.  They synthesized the physical, metaphoric Hebrew (in which one of the many words for "dance" becomes the word for "celebration", and the word "to burn" also means "to love" and "to hate") with the logical Greek.  Both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity trace their roots back to that transforming combination of Hebrew and Greek cultures that developed in first century Palestine.  Christianity addressed that combination as the working of God in the hearts and minds of the Greek and Roman people.  The early Christians thus presented Christianity as the fulfillment of classical Greek philosophy and as providing what was missing in it.

Christianity and the Roman Government

The picture of Roman government as being under Christian control from the time of Constantine is not accurate.  During the fourth century, when Julian became emperor, he returned to paganism and tried to return the empire to pagan worship.  The Arian Valens became emperor in 364 and began to travel through the eastern empire compelling churches to accept Arianism.

By the early fourth century, Rome was a city of about 2,000,000 people, some pagan and some Christian.  However, it was no longer the city of the emperors, who more often lived in Constantinople, Milan and Trier.  The Western Empire was in deplorable condition by then.  Roman justice was corrupt, and the Roman world was in decay.

Constantinople arose as a second capital, eventually called the "New Rome", as people with wealth and education left Rome for reasons that had little or nothing to do with the rise of Christianity.  The western empire did not so much collapse as it relocated.  It was thus that St. Ambrose became pastor to the western emperor's family in Milan, and St. John Chrysostom became pastor to the eastern emperor's family in Constantinople.  St. Basil the Great was educated in Athens together with the future pagan emperor Julian.

As I mentioned on an earlier post, the Church Fathers were often in conflict with Arian and Pagan emperors during the fourth century, after Constantine.  Constantine's conversion led to an end to the severity of persecutions that had existed in the second and third centuries, but it did not immediately make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.  The eastern emperor Valens, whose embarrassing battle against the Goths could be viewed as a major development in the decline of Rome, opposed the Catholic churches.  Indeed, a comparison of Valens with his contemporary St. Basil illustrates the changing roles of Church and State during the fourth century.  As the regal and brilliant Basil, caring for the poor and the sick, faced the unimpressive but egoistical Valens, one might question which of the two men was truely emperial in the eyes of the people.

Here is a discussion of this from one of the most respected textbooks of Early Church history, The Rise of Christianity by W.H.C. Frend, Fortress Press (Frend was Emeritus Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Glasgow, Scotland, an expert in the history of the Early Church, and a fellow of the British Academy from 1983):

The [Edict of Milan of 313 A.D.] marks the end of the era of the persecutions.  It also marks the first steps toward the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the empire.  Nominally it proclaimed complete religious freedom beginning, "Since we saw that freedom of worship ought not to be denied, but that to each man's judgment and will the right should be given to care for sacred things according to each man's free choice. . . ."  Hence, unrestricted freedom was granted to the Christians along with complete and free restoration of all church property still remaining in the hands of the state or of individuals. . . .An attentive reader might have caught an echo of the demands for complete toleration for all religions made by Western Apologists from Tertullian to Lactantius.  "It is not in the nature of religion to compel religion," Tertullian had urged, and Lactantius had claimed that "to worship as one pleased was a privilege of nature." . . . (Pg. 483)

It was not until the emperor Theodosius, in the late fourth century, that the state began to suppress paganism and heretical sects.  Frend says:

"In some ways, Theodosius I (379-95) recalls Constantine."   (pg. 635) "The edict that he issued to 'the inhabitants of Constantinople,' but addressed in fact to 'all the inhabitants of the empire' from his headquarters at Thessalonica on 28 February [380] was strongly Western in outlook.  All were ordered to follow 'the form of religion handed down by the apostle Peter to the Romans, and now followed by Bishop Damasus and Peter of Alexandria' described as 'a man of apostolic sanctity.'  All other teaching, described as 'heretical poison,' must be abandoned.  This was the first step toward enforcing a universal Catholic faith over the whole empire.  During the next months, however, Theodosius's ideas as to what Catholicism was would modify in favor of the views of his Eastern subjects. . . . On 10 January 381 Theodosius issued a new edict proclaiming once more the sole orthodoxy of the Nicene faith, forbidding heretics the right of assembly, but omitting any reference to Damasus and Peter (or his successor Timothy, 380-85) as orthodox leaders." (Pp. 636-637)

Even then, the Church did not control the State, but it did begin to function as a moral correction to abuses of power.  When the emperor Theodosius ordered the massacre of 7,000 Thessalonicans in retribution for a riot, Ambrose excommunicated the emperor, readmitting him to the Church only after he completed penance.  The Church, for the first time, became a force for correction of the State.

This status of the Church as the State religion of the Roman Empire thus was not long lived before Alaric took Rome in 410 A.D.  From then until the sixth century, many of the most educated people fled Rome.  Not only did the Roman education system collapse over the next 2 or 3 centuries, but it became difficult to even find safe water.

Christianity and Education

The elite education that could be obtained in fourth century Rome, Constantinople, and Athens was valued by Christians whose families could afford it.  St. Basil the Great, mentioned above, is an example of that as he was educated with the elite of fourth century society.  He studied in Constantinople and then in Athens.  He and his close friend and fellow Christian, Gregory, studied together with the young prince Julian, a nephew of Constantinius, who would later be a pagan emperor of fourth century Rome.  St. Ambrose, similarly, had an elite education, in his case in Rome.

Upper class Christian girls in fourth century Rome then received the same education as boys in literature, especially studying the classic poets.  As soon as Christian girls were able to learn, they began to learn the Bible and to memorize the entire book of Psalms.  In the late fourth century, St. Jerome became Bible teacher and spiritual advisor to a group of highly educated Roman women who had chosen an ascetic lifestyle. One of the women, Paula, was a fine Greek scholar, who with her daughters learned Hebrew so that they could sing the Psalms in the original language.  Another, Marcella, was described by Jerome in eulogy as someone who knew Scripture as well as anyone in Rome  in her day.  Christianity did not discourage education among women.  Rather, it further educated them in the faith.  Jerome wrote: "The unbelieving reader may perhaps laugh at me for dwelling so long on the praises of mere women . . .", a reference to the difference between the Roman view of women in his day and the Christian view of them.

F. Homes Dudden, D.D., in The Life and Times of St. Ambrose, a 2-volume, 755-page scholarly biography published in 1935 by Oxford at the Clarendon Press, offers the following discussion of the fourth century Roman education system, not only as it pertains to men but specifically as it pertained to Christian women:

"The average woman, no doubt, was mainly taken up with her husband, her children, her house, her toilet, and her amusements.  There were many, however, who, not content with the common round of social and domestic duties, sought an outlet for their energies in pursuits which until recently had been regarded as inappropriate for females. . . . the intelligent and 'advanced' women, who actively interested themselves in literature and science, in philanthropy and religious work.

"Of those who distinguished themselves in intellectual pursuits a few instances may be mentioned.  Serena, the wife of Stilicho, was an enthusiastic student of Greek and Lat