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THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MIDDLE AGES By Timothy Finigan M.A., S.T.L. This is the transcript of lecture, given under a different title, concerning Catholicism facing modern pluralism. But its early part well outlines the origin and development of the Middle Ages. ----------------------------- For a long time, it has been impossible to appreciate properly the contribution of the Middle Ages to the development of Western culture. The phrase of Gibbon describing the Middle Ages as "the triumph of barbarism and religion" still sums up the view which many of our contemporaries instinctively hold of the Middle Ages. It is unfortunate that this should be so because the monumental contribution of Catholic writers earlier this century has not had the influence it should. This is as much to do with the neglect of their thought by Catholics than with any sort of attack by those outside the fold. One such writer, Christopher Dawson, suggested in an essay on the sociological foundations of mediaeval religion that there were three ways in which a religion might relate to the culture in which it was exercised. A Religion may grow up with a people as part of their cultural life as it did with the Greeks and Romans. On the other hand, it might enter a fully formed culture from without as Buddhism entered China or Islam entered Persia. Finally, it may come as a religion with its own history and with its own organisation, which it adapts to meet the changing circumstances of a developing culture. This is the case with Christianity as it came to the barbarians of northern Europe. Ourselves included. In the Roman and Greek worlds, the Church had been closely tied to the cities. These were of less importance in the Western Kingdoms than the agriculturally based territorial units. Hence the greatest danger to the Church was from those who would make her a territorial organisation, absorbing her into the barbarian environment and stifling the possibility of any genuinely Christian culture. Such a form of Christianity was the Arianism of the Goths and Vandals which became a Germanic nationalised form of Christianity in which the bishop was rather the successor of the priests of the ancient heathen cults than of the apostles. Gothic Arianism could truly be said to have “taken people from where they are." Largely through the work of St Boniface, this was prevented from happening to the Catholic Church in western Europe. His means of preventing it was largely his insistence on unity with Rome over and above any local, national or territorial loyalty. It was furthered primarily through the influence of the Benedictine monasteries which could preserve their independence and the sovereignty of Rome, independent of local custom or law. Through their contribution to the culture of the world around them allied with their independence and their link with the universal Church, they were able, with a considerable decree of success, to lay the foundations for a genuinely Christian culture. Although the Carolingian system managed in a sense to complete the work of St Boniface by establishing full and universal canonical organisation, it was possible only because the whole Western Church had become like a kind of super territorial Church with the Pope under the control of the Emperor. Although the investiture controversy did not end in outright victory for the papal power but in the compromise solution of the diet of Worms, the very fact that it was a controversy at all in which 'the Holy See was able to negotiate from its own supreme authority in ecclesiastical matters meant a great increase in the public image of the Church which could no longer be seen as the tool of the Emperor. The distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers was fine in theory but in practice was almost impossible to achieve because of the make up and history of mediaeval society. In our own time, the Church exists within a society which is separately constituted as was the case during the time of the Fathers. In the Middle Ages, it would be more correct to say that the State existed within the Church. The two influences by which the Church became more concerned in temporal affairs and the State in spiritual made it extremely difficult in practice to achieve the full and proper division of responsibilities which was so nearly arrived at. The fact that it so nearly came about was due largely to the sanctity of many of those who held high office in the Church, often with a background in monastic life and spirituality.
The Advent of Science The most important achievement of the Middle Ages relevant to our purpose is the advancement of the natural sciences. Even to say as much will surprise anyone who has been taught within the context of a traditional British contempt for all things mediaeval. The assumption is that the schoolmen were ignorant and science properly so-called could only really begin with their downfall and the renaissance, taking off properly during the enlightenment. The fact is that the scientific legacy of the Greek world had already begun to decay by the time of Christ. The Romans, with their genius for military and civic organization, allowed the study of science to go the way of the other finer elements of Greek culture. The expansion of Christianity in the West seven centuries later was not to the detriment of science - the study of science had long since ceased. In the Islamic world it was not so. Rather than having to rely on the work of secondary Latin authors in a culture which did not appreciate the importance of scientific advance, the Islamic world had a direct contact with the descendants of the Greeks and had access to the great writers, particularly to the works of Aristotle. The meeting of the Christian and Islamic worlds of thought in the trading ports of the Western Mediterranean opened the way for the introduction into the Christian West of the scientific and philosophical legacy of the Greeks as mediated through the Arab philosophers. With tremendous speed, in less than 50 years in the twelfth century, major portions of the corpus of philosophical and scientific knowledge were translated and adapted for the West. No culture was better adapted to receive and advance this body of know ledge than that created by the Religious Orders in union with Rome. Dispersed throughout the West their members were free to learn, to teach and to synthesise with the advantage of a keen appreciation of the value of knowledge and of, for our purposes, the clarity and insight of many saints and holy men. Thus it was that the schoolmen set about developing a synthesis of science and religion, of philosophy and theology, which was to form the foundation, not only of theological faculties which adhered rigidly to it for far too long, but also of modem scientific advance which in its development has seldom acknowledged its debt. The great problem was that of mechanism and the relationship of spirit to matter. In the Greek world, matter and spirit were part of one order of being varying in its spirituality. On this view, our lives were determined by fate in a cyclical process which was driven by an abstract mind expressed in the celestial bodies. For us, as for the schoolmen, there are two orders of being and God is the Supreme and personal spirit. Our lives are also part of an economy, which has a beginning and an end which is the fulfilment of all things through Christ in the Father. The problem was how to assimilate and cope with the new knowledge in the context of orthodox Christianity. And here. it may he welcome to advert, we arrive at the crux of the matter as it relates to our modem world. Comparisons with modern culture There were of course those who rejected the new knowledge and regarded those who dabbled in it as heretical. Much the same reaction greeted the theory of evolution from the mouths of many short-sighted ecclesiastics. One notable exception, as we would expect, was John Henry Newman. Then there were those who were absorbed by the new knowledge and indeed fell into heresy. Here we find an important difference in our own times. In the Middle Ages, the Church was strong in the West, not only in its own organisation but as a part of its culture. Therefore the aberrant views of a few who left aside the teaching of the Church to follow false philosophy were neither influential nor long lasting. Today, the Church does not hold a strong position in the surrounding culture. Not only then is the temptation stronger to conform to worldly philosophies at the expense of the Catholic Faith but the resulting damage will be much more widespread. And so it is. Probably the greatest challenge facing the Western Church is that of answering the modern world on its own terms without sacrificing fidelity to our Revealed Faith. This is similar to the challenge taken up by St Thomas Aquinas. On the one hand it would have been possible to aver the complete separation of philosophical and theological knowledge and thereby to range freely through Aristotelian philosophy which was so attractive because of its sophistication and completeness. On the other hand, it would have been possible to reject it as of no real interest to the theologian. Such an attitude is perhaps responsible for Baronius' apparently clever remark during the Galileo crisis that the job of the Church is not to teach us how the heavens go but how to go to heaven. The problem is that the wisdom of Aristotle, of Galileo, of Darwin and of Einstein will not go away, nor will its challenge. To take refuge in the solution of the Christian Averroists and say that philosophy and theology may be kept separate will not do either. In the wisdom of God, there can only be one order of truth and there must be, in each age, a synthesis or the Church will be left floundering, obscurantist and ineffectual. St Thomas Aquinas answered the challenge by constructing a synthesis in which the cardinal principles of Aristotelian physics were given true weight but in the context of Christian belief. He moved away from the neo-Platonist emphasis on the spiritual nature of man being imprisoned temporarily in a world alien because of its material nature and he made matter the principle of human individuation and the soul the form of the body.
By this means he could account for human intelligence while remaining true to the Christian faith and absorbing the best of the newly discovered Aristotelian scientific world-view. The dilemma posed in the modem world is similar in many respects to that posed in the Middle Ages. Several influences have combined to pose a challenge to the Church. The rise of the liberal and democratic movements in the nineteenth century raised the question of religious freedom and the relationship of Church and State. The writings of Karl Marx and the practical attempts to form Communist societies not only confronted the Church directly with State Atheism and the persecution of religion but also offered a complete philosophical account of man and his relations with society in terms appropriate to industrial rather than purely agricultural society. The further rapid developments of modem physics and the writings of Sigmund Freud which bore an influence far outweighing their merit left the Church with the choice of falling in with the world, keeping the world out, or forming a new synthesis. The modernist movement of the turn of the twentieth century was an obvious attempt to meet the challenge in the manner of the mediaeval Averroists by sacrificing Christian truth in the wholehearted avowal of modern thought. There is a curiously familiar ring to the notion that faith and religious truth are of a different order from scientific truth and to the attempt to adapt Christian formulae so that they may be understood in accordance with an intact non-Christian world-view. At the heart of a community of fallen men The ideal of true humanism is good but the cost must be borne in sacrifice. This is often neglected because of a failure to accept the Christian analysis of the present condition of man as fallen and subject to weakness as a result of Original Sin. This is the mistake of classical Marxism as it relates to the human person. The root of struggle is not the necessary contradiction inherent in nature but a contingent result of personal evil which can be overcome. Nevertheless, Marx did at least recognise the need for a struggle to achieve the good. The agnostic humanist in a society which is content to rest for many of its assumptions about the nature of man, on the very imperfect work of Freud, will seek to achieve all progress essentially through the process we know best as advertising. We find the use of commercial style advertising more and more in our own political campaigns. The process is further advanced in the USA. The advertisement does not offer what is best suited to the nature of man in community. It offers what will most easily attract the greed of an individual fallen man. In the democratic state, it has always been necessary to win elections. It has not always been necessary to do so with quite the cynical disregard for truth that we have learned to live with relatively recently. We have moved from political debate which was based on principle and sought to popularise the principle and make it palatable to the voters, to a corporate struggle in which the principles themselves are only relevant insofar as they provide good publicity. We should note here in the political life of our own country the influence of a principle which has remained powerful and damaging since its first major triumph at the Reformation. The principle of private judgement struck at the heart of the Church as a community with Christ at her head. The community of the Church expresses her belief and makes plain the meaning of the Scriptures. The community of the Church was also responsible for the welfare of the weaker members of society, not through altruistic benevolence but because such care was theirs by right as men and women made to the image and likeness of God. As the place of the Church was usurped by the State, the controls on social exploitation gradually became loosened. A notable example of this is the prohibition of usury. To fulfil the place of the Church, the State would have to appeal always to the authority of moral principle and natural rights so that the individual received due protection. The erosion of this communal care was inevitable if the norm of truth is private judgement rather than the authority of Christ. Gradually the charismatic reformers would be replaced by smaller and more self-centred successors. Because of the fallen nature of man, the heart of community will necessarily be found in a self-sacrificing love. General benevolence towards humanity will not do. This will inevitably come to grief on the rocks of human sin and selfishness. The reforming movements in our own country during the last century came about because men were willing to sacrifice ambition and personal prestige to fight for unpopular causes. They ultimately won votes because of their appeal to the hearts and minds of people converted to a higher and better standard than they had previously made do with. Social policy that will genuinely reform society will only be possible through the willingness of many to sacrifice comfort or personal gain not only in the eyes of the television camera to help the more glamorous classes of the disadvantaged, but also in ways that will not be generally applauded, often to repair the damage done by evil and selfishness - qualities not exclusive to those who fiddle their benefits.
The right of the Church to exist and to speak To talk in this way about a self-sacrificing love to bring about an improvement in society is to raise the whole question of what society should make possible and encourage for its members. It raises the question of the fundamental rights of man which is to say in another way the question of whether there is a natural law independent of, and prior to, the laws of society and subject to a higher authority. It is around this question that the fiercest debates rage about the place of the Church in society. In a pluralistic society, we are told, the Church has no right to impose her views on others. This statement of case is as hypocritical and falsely construed as it is commonplace and easily trotted out by indoctrinated youngsters. It is obviously hypocritical because of all the bodies which influence society, the Church is probably the least coercive in imposing its views. It still has some weight with the general public because of a residual respect for sincerity in a society tired out with seeing everything through the veil of PR. This residual respect alone accounts for the political importance of the Church. It is nothing more than could be claimed by any citizen. We could be forgiven for suspecting the more extreme humanist of wishing to deny us even the rights of citizenship. Far more coercive than the Church, is the power of money and the control of ideas through the mass media. When they rebel through the clothes that they wear and the fashions that they espouse in music, the young are not rebelling at all. They are simply following the rituals laid down by commercial interest which will part them from their pocket money. They are only free to buy what is available and advertised. When they express rebellious ideas, they are more indoctrinated than any of our Catholic children. Even schools which have managed to provide a thorough Catholic education, do so in a society which constantly challenges that teaching. Their children will be living in a far more pluralistic society than children from the local county school. In most cases, even the ideas of rebellion and the slogans of dissent are pre-packaged, sold and profited from. The problem columns of their magazines, the phone-in programmes on their radio stations, the interviews manufactured by the managers of their pop stars, the programmes of their local youth service - all of these teach with catechism regularity the same faith. "Nobody should impose their views on others". "The Catholic Church fills people with guilt". "If you love your partner, whatever you decide between you is your own concern”. "Use a condom". Perhaps the saddest phrase of recent advertising is "This is not the voice of an actor". The message has so thoroughly permeated that you don't even need to make an actor learn the lines. Our Western society is pluralist only on issues that are of lesser importance. On all the basics of human nature, it is becoming increasingly unified around one creed of liberal humanism. In such a society, the Church will be seen at best as a benevolent society existing for the benefit of its members and, if it is doing its job properly, helping out the poor in the community. It is easy for the Church to respond to this stereotype by complying with it. Shying away from a high profile Catholicism which will proclaim its Faith confident that Christ whom she preaches is life and life more abundant to man. The Church is to be found making all the right noises about the poor in the inner city while acquiescing in the so-called pluralism of society. As I have said, this pluralism is nothing more than the opposition to revealed truth in any religion. It is not pluralistic on the doctrine that all religions are basically the same (namely benevolent societies in community). This is a doctrine that all must adhere to on pain of being excommunicated as doctrinaire. Rather than challenge these assumptions, the Church seems content to reinforce its image as a benevolent society by making marginal criticisms of society occasioned often by particular issues. The exception to this is its opposition to abortion. Even on this issue, there is a marked weakening of enthusiasm in many quarters particularly where the political action of well organised lay people causes embarrassment by giving too high a profile to the Church. Even more sadly, in answer to the liberal humanist doctrine found on the lips of any youngster who has had a discussion in class, that religion is "just your point of view", the Church has now produced for her own schools a scheme of religious education in which her own doctrine is referred to as "Catholics believe" alongside the various others who believe other things. Two streams of authority in society I would like to consider now the answer which we might make to the liberal humanist culture of the West. First of all, we should refuse to accept the model of the Church as a benign club existing with all the others. This is not an adequate description of the Catholic Church. We do claim to be the Church of Christ and we do claim a right to exist as such in society. To claim as much is not to usurp any of the functions of the State. If such is suspected, it is much more likely to be because the State has usurped the functions of the Church. Ultimately it boils down to the question of whether there truly is a transcendent personal God and the question of what is the nature of man. There are of course plenty in society who would be happy to deny absolutely the existence of God and to regard man as he exists now as complete and as he should be. "That's the way God made you" is the modem humanists way of using the God myth as convenient language for "That's how you are and it's fine as it is". Although such exist who would happily defend these doctrines, they are largely unnoticed because of the average person's failure to see the importance of philosophical principle for the practical formation of society. What happens in practice is that the State will enact legislation corresponding to the moral level of the average chap. When this is done, the legislation will take on the value of moral principle until a further descent from the truth is generally, acceptable. Human selfishness makes immoral legislation likely. It is easier for fallen man to make contraception and abortion available than to try to live chastely. It will be found easier to encourage euthanasia than to increase the tax burden sufficiently to cope with the increasing numbers of old and sick people just as it is easier to provide abortion on detection of abnormalities than to create attitudes in society which will ensure care for those who are weakest and difficult to look after. To observe this process is to see the most obvious reason for the separate institutions in the economy of God of the Church and the State. The State derives upwards from man, from the community. It is divine insofar as it is true to the nature of man to live in society and to organise his life in this way. The Church, however, does not derive upwards from man but comes from God directly as his foundation in Jesus Christ, the heir of the ages and the fulfilment of the plan and economy of God. It has to be this way because of the fallen nature of man and it is necessary for us that the moral teaching through which the laws of society are framed does not come from a democratic consensus but from God himself. Even the direct knowledge of the natural law which we possess will not be enough because of the fall and the weakness of human nature which will always tend to dilute the demands of the fullness of life in God. We need the wisdom of Christ to state with clear and divine authority the fullness of the law and we need the magisterium of the Church to make the teaching of Christ plain in each age. A democratic consensus would never have produced Humanae vitae and yet the footnotes of Paul VI's text demonstrate clearly the pedigree of that teaching as it is re-expressed century after century in fidelity to Christ. Evangelisation and a renewal of confidence If then, there are these two streams of authority in society from two different sources, the question for us is how to renew the influence of the Church in the modern state. We have already said that it is not an option for us to ignore the philosophical challenge of our scientific society. In a sermon he gave in Oxford some years ago, Eric D'Arcy described this attitude graphically as "sealing the door between the sacristy and the laboratory so that the smell of incense is never allowed to mingle with that of hydrogen sulphide". Many of us have witnessed in pastoral life the disastrous result of accepting with demur the idea of a supposedly pluralist society and thereby abandoning any effective catechesis. In the modem democratic State faced by the predicament of pluralism, the Church of the 1990s and beyond needs a vision of the Faith which will form a synthesis of the best advances of modem scientific culture within orthodox Catholic thought. It will be necessary to address directly the issues raised by modem cosmology and by the theory of evolution as it relates to the book of Genesis. It will be necessary to give a convincing account of human nature within two distinct orders of, matter and spirit. We will need to present a coherent account of Original Sin. Most importantly of all, we will need to present a vision of Jesus Christ, the heir of the ages as the fulfilment of the whole of Creation. The Church needs to preach confidently to her own members and to the world the one law, wisdom, or economy of God which sweeps from the very beginnings of Creation as we now marvel to it, through the course of its purposeful development to fulfilment in the person of Christ who is the Son of Man and the fullness of life for men and women. Above all, we must petition the Holy Spirit urgently for the humility, the insight and the courage to take up this urgent work for the Church. The work is, of course at the heart of the publications and the apostolate of FAITH, especially of the magazine of which I recently became the editor. I hope you will not think it impertinent, but I could not conclude an address to such an inspiring gathering such as this without asking for your encouragement, sympathy and active support in the task. Reprinted with permission from ‘Faith Magazine’ of May 1992. Published by: The ChurchinHistory Information Centre http://www.churchinhistory.org/ Version: 23rd March 2008
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