Second Half of Class Flashcards

Question

What was Gottschalk's intervention in the transubstantiation dispute?

Answer 1

From his imprisonment Gottschalk intervened in the dispute about the Eucharist by citing Augustine’s doctrine in which he denied that the Eucharistic bread is identical with the historical a historic body of Christ he rejected Radbertus’ claim that communion is a sacrifice of Christ Gottschalk affirmed the real presence but maintained its a mystery beyond definition which is exactly what Orthodox Lutheran's do today

Answer 2

and in addition to these issues I want to say something about the increasing role of the priesthood in Roman Catholic circles you know of course that the New Testament does not authorize the formation of a professional priesthood Jesus Christ is our great high priest and all of his believing followers constitute a priesthood of all believers and so a clergy laity distinction is really not that important in Protestant beliefs as it is in Roman Catholic well one place where this shows the deviation of Catholicism is in the subject of penance now for the argument is that as the idea spread that Christ was really and truly present in the Eucharist as that idea spread the role of the priest went with it and spread far and wide and became more powerful than ever one way in which this is became evident was dealing with the forgiveness of sins in the ancient church when people sinned gravely and publicly they were often required to make a public confession before the whole congregation that of course was very embarrassing but it happened but in faraway Ireland Ireland remember was the edge of the world at the time nobody seemed to go beyond Ireland that was it never there all sorts of silly stories about monsters and falling off the edge of the world so forth anyhow in remote Ireland there was a type of Celtic Christianity established by monks and one of the developments that came from there and influenced the rest of his church radically was belief in priestly absolution from sin and this became known as a doctrine of penance the doctrine of penance as early as the sixth-century in the Irish churches it was a practice for individuals to confess their sins to a priest and ask him to act as a mediator with God and grant them absolution from their sins well when that happens the priests then dealt with sin privately where it would not be such an embarrassment as it was before the one that relieved the embarrassment it magnified the authority and influence of the priests and the priests assumed duties which were not rightly their own the priests would listen to the person recite his sins and prescribed a penalty or a penance to be exact now the penance was not always severe in fact today when the priest does that the person receiving for absolution accepts the duty usually to recite certain prayers the rosary beads for example are very popular yet in some places and the priests will order the person to recite the Rosary or a portion of the rosary or some other prayers as well sometimes the priest would require the confessing sinner to fast for a period of time or to give alms to the poor or to have abstain from sexual activity sexual pleasure after a period of time so this tooik the place of public penance which had been practiced in the early church

Answer 3

during the early church early the church fathers there are many disputes about the forgiveness of sins committed after baptism there was a popular belief that baptism cleansed all sin at that time not only original sin but all other sins committed prior to the baptism were washed away in the baptismal experience that was the idea there was a vigorous argument though about what happens after that what happens after a person has washed in baptism many sins again maybe you baptize the second time the answer was emphatically no baptism may be administrated once and once only well what's going to happen people that who have sinned and they can't have baptismal by cleansing well they go to the priest and recite the priest to the sins of the priest orally and ask him to forgive them please bless me Father for I have sinned it is 10 weeks since my last confession and then comes the list of offenses and the priest is satisfied he'll make the sign of the Cross like this and say send absolution contingent upon completing the prescribed penance that is ordered

Answer 4

well there was some resistance to the idea of private confession and there were efforts to abolish it but failed the Celtic practice eventually became the universal practice throughout the church and 1215 the fourth Lateran Council made annual confession obligatory every member of the church was obligated to go at least once a year and make a confession to a priest gradually this confession became the principal means of exercising church discipline it shows us the enhanced authority of the priesthood the priest could and did require penances that were more severe than just prayers or fasting sometimes they order the scourging of the body sometimes the payment of a very high fee and other times pilgrimage to a sacred shrine that was believed to be especially meritorious religious exercise to visit the shrine and these shrines were often many many miles away from the place where the person had confessed

Answer 5

one of the most popular shrines and Medieval Europe was in Spain Santiago de Compostela Santiago de Compostela this according to legend at the end is the burial place of Saint James that raises another question which Saint James unfortunately there are seven and we don't know for certain who's buried in that tomb but there is a tomb there and the name of James is on it and so people choose to believe that's the Apostle James who wrote the book of the Bible that bears his name he was there that far the half-brother of our Lord Jesus and so sometimes people would be required to make this journey to Santiago in order to obtain order to make their confession valid and the absolution effective that could be very very arduous and experience dangerous and expensive because people had to walk usually the use of the commitment of the priests movements a walk sometimes to say walk barefoot all the way to Santiago and some people would say I can't do that father please have mercy on me I can't do that if I do that I'll be glad from home maybe for years certainly for a months I have a business nobody will take care of it when I can pull off life my business is ruined and I've been impoverished isn't there some other penalty you could get me and at that point the priest might intervene and say yes I'll be merciful you gives this simulated sum of money to the church and you go you can avoid making the pilgrimage or you could pay somebody else to go in your place the series you see this year this is the high road to curb corruption copies ridiculous corruption massive corruption and by Luther's day it was a scandal everybody knew about it and Luther then lashed out against it for the sale of indulgences but that's a subject for another course you have to pay another fee it doesn't all right any questions about sacerdotal absolution all in favor of it say aye. just as I suspected nobody can't give it away let alone put it up for sale

Answer 6

alright now next item the rise of scholasticism and please read documents five at the Bainton book when do you have a moment and we're going to talk about an intellectual and academic movement which establishes control in the Universities which began to appear in Europe the 11th century and much more so in 12th and 13th centuries somewhere around 1100 something of a revival of interest in theological studies occurred this year of a new interest in relating theology and philosophy relating the queen of the sciences and the handmaiden of theology

Answer 7

about the same time the monastic movement was flourishing perhaps as never before monasticism was a quest for personal subjective benefit of a spiritual nature whereas the Scholastic's were more conservative objective understanding the theological interest became known as scholasticism which means literally the teaching of the schools teaching of the schools these schools are the monastic and cathedral schools some of which coalesce to join forces and became a nuclei universities

Answer 8

these schools were our congregations of thinkers what we could fit into a particular body of writing to study that or attach to some common method of study it was a very serious effort to break philosophy theology into combination and dialectics was the method employed dialectics is the art of proving something or disproving some through logical considerations

Answer 9

this is an age which was not so much concerned about new truth but demonstrating the truth already revealed in scripture in the church fathers and in the general traditions of the Church at large scholasticism to quote one scholar fused the theology of revelation and ancient philosophy into a natural theology scholasticism fused the theology of Revelation and ancient philosophy into a natural and theology in the theological development is that featured a world view in which theology provided the only acceptable theology buttress by her handmaiden, philosophy scholasticism became the philosophical tradition underlying the curricula of the universities which remained in control there until the coming of the Protestant Reformation and the advent of humanism in Renaissance Italy and later in other parts of Europe

Answer 10

logic was the basic science and to say of Aristotle's logic became the essential occupation and there were great efforts to show that Christian claims were entirely reasonable Aristotle was a pagan Martin Luther knew that, in fact he was fond of referring to Aristotle as that damned pagan like a little bit crude but he made his point I think he was right on both issues – both damned and pagan. Luther when he was in Universty of Erfurt where he got the BA and MA while he was there he was exposed to Aristotelian study and he found a lot of it to be quite shallow and trivial and misleading or so he thought

Answer 11

Greek philosophy though could be useful to Christian thinkers that was the idea in the universities and particularly Greek philosophy could serve as an apologetic tool to defend the truth claims of Christianity against its critics there are numerous people we could study as examples of scholastic theologian philosophers and well we're going to settle for dividing them into three periods the first period is the rise of scholasticism which we've been discussing now and we'll talk about Anselm of Canterbury Abelard Hugo of St. Victor and Peter the Lombard who we met a little bit anyhow already

Answer 12

all right now first example of a early scholastic philosophy illusion is Anselm of Canterbury he became Archbishop of Canterbury about 1093 and he's often cited as the father of scholasticism he held that faith should seek it understanding through rational philosophy and that philosophy could prove the existence of God Anselm’s arguments gained a lot of popularity he was very fond of philosophy yet he remained completely loyal to his church at all times he never denied any doctrinal affirmation of the medieval church but with Anselm while he believed in the great powers of human reason he held that human reason must always be in subjection to the authority of the church and her creeds

Answer 13

Anselm had one serious error which is is was it still is a common error that is a failure to appreciate the noetic effects of sin I hope you don't get tired hearing me talk about the noetic effects of sin it's an issue that is so important because it explains so many problems in the thinking of so many people the noetic effects of the sin upon the human mind sin is all pervasive every aspect of the human personality is polluted by sin and that includes the mind so there are no such thing is completely objective open minds on the contrary minds are infected by sin and therefore disposed against God and against his truth Anselm failed to recognize that he assumed that reasonable people could understand the claims of Christianity if those claims were presented to them in a logical coherent manner so he seemed to think that he could argue people into the kingdom of God long experience in theological disputes led him eventually to change that view it tried for many years to win converts by arguing people into the faith but his results were quite disappointing

Answer 14

he did publish his idea that he had found proofs that would prove the claims of Christianity but he and he did not have to deal as modern people would with atheism so atheism then was almost unheard of almost nobody affirmed atheism if people did they kept the denial to themselves it was not certainly not a popular belief I don’t know even today in our secular society atheists are probably a very tiny minority although there we have a lot of practical atheists who just indifferently ignore the claims of God Anselm built his apologetic upon the almost universal theism present in his day and he argued that the attributes of God are completely reasonable to believe the appearance of his work encouraged of course others to undertake the same studies

Answer 15

Anselm wrote a book on the atonement - and this is most famous work cordeus homo? And do you know what the translation is of his Cordus homo? Yeah, “Why did God become man?” right why did God become man he was Archbishop of Canterbury at the time he wrote that book it was a time when some Jews were denying the incarnation which Jew Jews have been doing for a long time but they become quite bold in their attacks upon the incarnation and Anselm responded with a vigorous defense

Answer 16

In reactions to the Filioque controversy was a Greek Church and some wrote a book entitled the procession of the holy spirit and which he defended the action of a Latin Church in altering the language of the Creed

Answer 17

Anselm published works to prove the existence of God even the nature of God he tried to verify God's existence even without appeal to scripture he thought that there are some people who don't believe the Bible and he thought the Jews were among them at least they don't believe the New Testament and he therefore thought he could argue with them on another basis and prove that they were wrong he didn't win many converts though both of his works that day before they wrote about the nature of God and the existence of God both of these works are in the form of prayers to God asking questions and considering possible Anselm employed logic to strengthen his faith in divine revelation he attempted to place the doctrine of the Trinity within the realm of natural theology but he was not successful anyhow

Answer 18

Anselm wrote about the freedom of the will also and he used the work of Saint Augustine as his model Augustine in his early days wrote in defense of free will it's a time when he was trying to deal with the Manicchean heresy The Manicchean heresy did deny the freedom of the will and the young Ausgustine took them on do his job of answering to that Manichees tried to prove them wrong later after several years of study and experience he came to believe that the doctrine of original sin included the paralysis of the human will and so Augustine true doctor of grace then acted accordingly incidentally if you read Augustine in a sense you have to understand him well it's necessary almost to read him backwards I don't mean that literally of course but at any particular time you're working with Augustine and you have a document in front of it find out when he wrote that and her and then see what he wrote before that what do you wrote after that because the later Agustin in some ways contradicted the early Augustine and so he want to know the real Augustine you have to take that into consideration I heard someone saying that in the medieval age everybody wanted to be Augustinian but nobody was entirely Augustine in his theology. Would you say that’s a fair statement? well maybe so in the sense that Augustine enjoyed immense prestige he was a single most intellectual of all the church fathers and I think looked at from our point of view the best of the bunch and so it was a fashionable thing for scholars to identify with Augustine some way or another and if they could find evidence that Augustine was in support of their own arguments so much the better it made them look convincing but there was always a dangerous that their misuse Augustine too and if they did not look at his work chronologically they could be miss misleading people and even themselves so the late Augustine is the the real Augustine

Answer 19

now he says for example God designed redemption of human beings so that human beings could go to heaven and fill the empty spaces left with rebellious angels were poured out of evidence splendid idea for which there's absolutely no evidence but he was given to speculation it's like that at times

Answer 20

purgatory and prayers for the dead

Answer 21

a little bit more about Anselm then we'll move on to Abelard okay Anselm’s method usually was to cite the presuppositions of so-called heretics and then to refute their contentions logically he didn't always use Scripture in fact he sometimes deliberately did not use scripture to impress people with the illogicality of their own arguments he thought he could win arguments that win converts to the faith - by exposing their their errors and calling for them to recognize them he's tried to show why only fools deny the claims of God and he did so by means of logical argument Anselm employed the rational method to shows that the Eastern Orthodox churches erred in rejecting the procession of the Son through the filioque controversy he wanted to clarify all Christian doctrines by showing their logical character and doing that through a series of arguments which he called proofs and he said the proving he approves the existence of God and this is the is that this is necessary as a precondition for all consistent thought so the reality of God's being can not be rejected without at the same time renouncing all rational arguments

Answer 22

Anselm was Italian by birth but he spent a good deal of his career in France prior to becoming Archbishop of Canterbury he for a while it was abbot of the monastery at Bec in France his scholarship brought fame to Bec and about 180 monks bucks joined that monastery while he was the abbot and 860 became Archbishop of Canterbury in those days installing Frenchmen for example in English Church positions was not unusual

Answer 23

1066 was a crucial year in English history what happened at Europe not only William the Concord Norman conquests that's right Wiliam the Duke of Normady led to conquest of England and made himself King and so thereafter he brought lots of Frenchmen into English politics and church life and so French bishops replaced English Bishop in some cases and French abbots replaced English abbots the installation then of French leaders in England was a fairly common practice after the Norman Conquest

Answer 24

now remember Anselm never denied any Catholic teaching his defense though of dogma was often rationalistic he sometimes composed entire theological treatises without citing a single verse of scripture he always insisted though he was able to compose rational arguments in defense of Christianity because of his prior faith in the God of Christianity he accepted scripture as true in every regard he claimed that all of his speculations were harmonious with biblical teaching his critics did not agree with that

Answer 25

Anselm is a very remarkable figure in one way though his book Cordeus homo Why the god man or Why did God become man? this set forth what we now call the penal substitutionary view of the atonement now this is not to say that nobody believed that prior to Anselm people did but he was the first one to put it in a coherent logical and in this case Biblical pattern he set forth the beliefs that human beings are all sinners and sin is true moral guilt before God God is infinite in his greatness so sin against God is a crime of infinite territory it is clear that human beings cannot provide the infinite satisfaction or atonement which is needed however man has sinned and so man must make the payment and this is where God came to the rescue of humanity by sending his son into down to earth as a human being among human beings and to make satisfaction by the sacrifice of his sinless self only man can offer the adequate satisfaction and the only man who is capable of doing that is the God man Jesus Christ our Lord

Answer 26

Now that brings us to Abelard a very controversial figure who was accused of heresy several times and among his accusers was the famous monastic figure Bernard of Clairvaux. Abelard came from the french nobility and he joined the abbey of son denis or st. denis but his publication of a book on the trinity led to the charge of heresy he wrote a book entitled “Concerning divine unity and trinity” and this is the one that got him in trouble he was quite rationalistic and that aroused the opposition of Bernard Bernard remember was quite the mystic in some ways and saw it Abelard the rationalist the principle of evil itself the synod of bishops at 1114 issued a condemnation of some of Abelard’s teachings and did that in response to an appeal from Bernard of Clairvaux

Answer 27

Bernard once said this to Abelard “by making plato a Christian you merely show that you yourself are a pagan” actually Abelard was not a total rationalist he did accept the authority of the Bible and he tried to use philosophy as an instrument for the defense of theology he believed that reason could not contradict revelation however where Anselm said I believe that I may understand Abelard said I understand that I may believe he wrote a dialectical treatise entitled in Latins sic et non “sic et non” yes and no and there he lists his statements some of them statements from the Bible some from other sources long list of statements theological in character and then on one side of the list he cited authorities affirming the statement on another side of the list authorities rejecting the statements he he did questions the writings of some of the Church Fathers and the decrees of church councils his influence was so great that one of his disciples became Pope Alexander iii in 1159

Answer 28

Abelard had gotten into trouble too when he was teaching at in Paris one of his pupils was a young lady named Heloise he fell in love with her and she with him and she became pregnant out of wedlock he was not a priest so he was eligible to marry but her relatives became so furious with him that they kidnapped him and castrated him yeah they were very very angry with him for what he had done he he remains a controversial figure even today and the church has never withdrawn the judgment of heresy against him

Answer 29

another early scholastic was Hugo of st. Victor st. Victor is a monastery there was a monastery in Paris so he was Hugo from the monastery of st. Victor st. the monastery there at st. Victor's operated a school and Hugo was one of the teachers in that school and while he was in that position he wrote a treatise entitled the sacraments of the Christian faith sacraments of the Christian faith this was a scholastic treatise an effort of producing a general dogmatic theology textbook in terms of doctrine Hugo is rather Augustinian but by personality he was quite mystical and that won for him the friendship of Bernard Bernard didn't trust Abelard because of Abelard’s rationalism but he did trust Hugo and his fellow mystic

Answer 30

not through scholarship but through a mystical union or vision of God he did not object to dialectical studies but he was not inclined to favor them for himself

Answer 31

Abelard wrote an autobiography and in there he gave a lot of information about his life he was ambitious for wealth and fame and when he worked at the school in Paris he taught dialectics grammar and logic his affair with Heloise though really ruined his reputation ruined his love life too you could be sure Abelard then became a monk as he could no longer function as a man so he might as well join the monastery for consolation his writing inspired the charge of heresy from Bernard and they are supported accusations eventually innocent ii cadet Mandalore's doctor silent pursue without mark as a theologian Abelard cited the Greek philosophers in support of his Christian doctrine they maintained that some of them had exceptional perception about the Godhead some of the pagans Renekton Socrates may have arrived at an understanding some understanding of the Trinity he thought but having he's verifying that he had no conception of the Noetic effects of sin he hailed the Greeks as harbingers of Christianity Plato in particular Abelard thought he perceived as writing the nature of God himself they thought the Plato's world soul in Plato's writing he often refer to a world soul and this refers to the Holy Spirit said Abelard, but a council with the church condemned that teaching as well

Answer 32

to come a combination of mystical temperament and scholarly interest was fairly common among medieval theologians we often think of scholarship as perhaps excluding mysticism or emotion in religion that's not the case though get to Thomas Aquinas for example- argued that he learned more from meditating in front of a crucifix then he did from reading the learned books of scholars and apparently he meant that he was known to do that quite often

Answer 33

explaining traditional Catholic beliefs theology his influence was great across Europe at large

Answer 34

Hugo wrote a book entitled sacraments of the Christian faith which is probably his greatest work in it he expressed ideas about doctrine and about mystical practice as well due to Hugo’s influence a whole movement developed around the convent of the monastery of st. Victor a Victorian movement as it was called became famous for producing philosophers and mystics as teachers stressed personal piety along with academic learning Hugo affirmed transubstantiation many treatises about the Eucharist appeared in this era most of them endorsing transubstantiation

Answer 35

Hugo was quite adept at using the scholarship of st. Augustine he loved Augustine very much he loved Scripture as well and he blended that with his mystical personal habits and piety and scholarship seem to go hand in hand as far as Hugo was concerned

Answer 36

he held that faith supports reason and reason is perfected by faith faith supports reason and reason is perfected by faith as a skillful philosopher and theologian Hugo wrote commentaries and several books of the Bible and he synthesized the writings of several different church fathers from antiquity his application of philosophy to theology occurred in connection with his work to correct the errors of Abelard he placed philosophy above the liberal arts but below theology and that was pretty much the pattern that emerged in the universities as far as education was concerned that philosophy stood below theology but above the liberal arts and the Master of Arts degree was heavily philosophical no matter what other study person might be preparing undertake and in the Master of Arts is heavily philosophical

Answer 37

his fondness for Augustine led him that some people to call him and alter-augustinist alter - another Augustine under his leadership the school at st. Victor became or the leading scholastic and mystical institutions in Europe at the time

Answer 38

and now we come to Peter the Lombard the last figure we’ll work with today Peter the Lombard Italian of course it came from Lombardi in Italy Peter taught at the Cathedral School of Notre Dame and later became Bishop of Paris his importance for medieval theology is reflected in his wide use of a working entitled “sentences of theology” and unfortunately in the Middle Ages the people were not hesitant to put exactly the same title on their books even though one book may be completely different from another so this is the work entitled sentences of theology by Peter Lombard but there are sentences theology by other scholars as well so it must have been rather confusing but keep in mind the number of books available was tiny compared to now really tiny he he then presented his book as a text for the teaching of dogmatics and it worked very well for him and he became world famous as probably the single most influential systematic theologian in Christendom at the time

Answer 39

he came from a poor family but he gained support from bernard of clairvaux and that enabled him to obtain a higher education he went to three universities Bologna Rheims Paris Bologna Reims and Paris earlier theologians had established their teachings on Scripture and the Church Fathers but by the 11th century dialectics have become so popular in academic circles that especially due to Abelard’s influence and the Peter Lombard studied Abelard’s work and endorsed Abelard’s method but did not endorse his heretical ideas

Answer 40

Peter became a professor at Notre Dame when he wrote the sentences of theology the first book of the sentences presents an argument for the existence of God it of course affirms the Trinity but it denies that any illustrations or analogies could be helpful in understanding the Trinity I think he had a point there I really do you've probably heard of efforts to illustrate the Trinity they all sound nice at first, but a little examination shows that quite unsatisfactory for example the Trinity is like this h2o h2o is can be water as liquid it can be gas oxygen and hydrogen and it can be solid as ice but it's all the same H2O what's that what does that really illustrate modalism modalism exactly right yeah and then the classic one and this maybe it's hardly legendary but it's a charming idea [Music] the idea goes back to st. Patrick actually did two things for which he’s always remembered chasing all the snakes out of Ireland and converting the pagans by convincing them that the Trinity was intelligible and he said look here's the Shamrock just pick it off the ground it has only one stem but three leaves Father Son Holy Spirit and so the conclusion has to be the father is a third god the son is the third God the Holy Spirit is a third god a third third third that God doesn't divide themselves that way folks that's not going to work and almost all the so-called ways of explaining the Trinity in the end fail and they really support modalism not that biblical trinitarianism at all

Answer 41

well lombard said that he has his heaviest debt to st. Augustine whom he dearly loved and on whom he depended really heavily the first book of his sentences presents this argument for the existence of God it affirms the Trinity and but says there's no way we can validly Illustrated divine revelation is the basis for believing in the trinity and complaints against Peters doctrine of God occurred at the Lateran Council in 1215 however and that point the Pope intervened Pope Innocent 3rd intervened at the council and he ratified the soundness of Lombard’s teaching that then took the pressure off Peter he was no longer being subject to occasional charges of heresy and his position became accepted throughout the Catholic Church by the time Martin Luther got to study theology at Erfurt and he was already reading Lombard extensively

Answer 42

but two of the sentences deals with the creation of of the world and particularly creation of angels it affirms free will in the sense that humans have the power to choose without coercion although their adamic nature is sinful I don't have a problem with that do you I don't have anything to object to there maybe if you realized that human beings do exercise the right to the power of choice they do it wrongly they choose against God instead of for him but nevertheless they're not being coerced to sin God never coerces anybody to sin when people sin it's because they desire to sin they're doing what they want to do and so who could be more free than a person does what he wants to do

Answer 43

Peter rejected Abelard’s view which was one of assumed human goodness Lombard insisted on the priority of grace and salvation he said grace sets the will truly free to desire God and to perform works good works earn merit but salvation is by grace alone so there's an Augustinian element quite apparent there in the writing of Peter the Lombard that grace enables people to perform good works which are meritorious but salvation is not a reward for merit but a product of grace alone

Answer 44

Book three covers Christology and is quite traditional nothing really exciting here even the language he used for Christology very much reflects traditional categories but it limits the effect of Christ's atonement through the eternal punishment and maintains that temporal punishments remain and this is a problem he said that that what the Christ did and his atonement has saved his people from eternal damnation however temporal punishments on earth they remain and baptism and penance remit those penalties so he had a sacramental or sacramentarian view of it after all baptism and penance remit the earthly and temporal penalties which were consequences of human sin

Answer 45

book 4 explains the sacraments he follows Hugo of St. Victor rather closely Lombard appears to have been the first theologian to specify the number of sacraments as seven prior to this there is no uniformity at all to read St. Augustine he was not at all sure how to define a sacrament so he used the term rather loosely and as a consequence there's no certainty about the number of sacraments but Lombard argued vigorously pursue the seven with are endorsed by the Catholic Church today he cited heavily from Scripture and the writings of Church Fathers especially the Augstine Ambrose and Jerome you know a lot about Augustine Ambrose was the Bishop of Milan who in the Providence of God became the instrument of augustine’s conversion and he was a known to be an outstanding preacher and then there was Jerome Jerome was a single greatest linguist among the Church Fathers he produced the help to produce and directed the production of the Vulgate Bible vulgate meaning common language Latins of course as a time so somewhere about the year AD 400 the Latin Bible and Jerome version appeared and became accepted broadly from that point forward in fact it wasn't many years ago that Roman Catholic scholars of America began translating from Hebrew and Greek instead of Latin they they finally realized their error the Protestants were way ahead of them in life but they finally got wise and they've done it themselves and so the work that Lombard accomplished was in general a compilation of traditional teachings arranged in systematic summaries with analysis here and there with controversies that were current in his own day

Answer 46

now we come to another stage of development and this development reached a pinnacle in the 13th century by the 13th century western european scholars were beginning to have access to the writings of greek philosophers and preeminent among them was aristotle the knowledge of aristotle became available mostly through arabic translators and Arabic commentators in the extreme south of italy and the island of sicily there were little colonies of arab and even jewish scholars patronized by that very interesting character holy roman emperor holy roman emperor Frederick ii and one of the spanish archbishops who had a lot of interest in that subject were there encouraging the arabs and the jews and most of the arabs to translate the greek of aristotle into latin and once it was available in latin then scholars all across europe would have access to it because latin was still the international language of higher learning

Answer 47

now at first when this movement began the papacy was somewhat worried fearing that the broadening of aristotelian studies might lead to false teaching to heresy who knows what because after all aristotle was a pagan and is there anything pagans can teach christians that christians ought to know oh perish the thought that should not happen that's the attitude that we have the truth and we don't have to listen to aristotle he's a pagan that attitude continued into today's early days of the protestant reformation when martin luther was fond of referring to aristotle as and I quote that damned pagan well you think about it he wasn't off the mark he was both damned and pagan so of that much we could be sure but anyhow aristotle's logic in particular became a fascination employed by scholars in this era the church attitude of disapproval led even to the threat of excommunication and certainly the papacy issued a directive forbidding the reading of aristotle well if you ever know somebody you really like and you like his book to be published and sold far and wide just start the rumor it's a very evil book and no good person order anyone touch it because if you do that and people think you're serious they'll buy the book and read it avidly and so that's what happened scholars became truly curious when the pope was banning the book the book and they began reading it and other things that aristotle had written

Answer 48

and by 1255 the study of aristotle's works was becoming required reading at the university of paris that was a premier university in the latin christian world at the time so aristotle there was being acclaimed as a fountainhead of truth whose philosophy helped to prepare for the coming of christianity some people referred to aristotle as a philosophical john the baptist as john was the forerunner of christ and directed men to christ so aristotle was a pagan used by the grace of God to spread prepare the way for the coming of christianity

Answer 49

the advent of aristotelian studies brought a great revival of philosophical activities to which the finest minds in latin Christendom devoted themselves by this time there were two new orders of monks that had come on the scene and we'll give them their due a bit later in the course but those two were the franciscans and the dominicans both of which are still in operation today in ohio there's a franciscan university and dominicans operate a number of catholic colleges in various parts of our country well the dominicans and franciscans led the way in theological study though they desired and through that they desired to fuse augustinian theology, canon law, and aristotelian logic to fuse augustinian theology canon law and aristotelian philosophy so that no longer would scholars have to depend almost entirely upon the work of peter the lombard remember peter had written that work entitled entitled sentences of theology sentences of theology and many other scholars wrote commentaries on peter's work and that was the epitome of you might say the zenith of scholastic achievement so far but now that aristotle was readable in latin that was no longer the case people could go directly to aristotle and see what he had to offer and they did

Answer 50

so a new method of study appeared which produced the writings which were called sumae s-u-m-m-a-e-summa would be the singular you can see the word summary or our english word summary and survive from that and so summary’s then used the method of study developed as a scholastic method and they made extensive examinations of aristotle to see where his work could be useful in the explication and or defense of catholic christianity

Answer 51

the franciscans produced a very notable scholar whose name was Alexander of Hales 13th century theologian he was the first to make full use of aristotle's works as they were known earlier among the arabs and arab commentators written on them he was the name of himself Alexander of Hales he was an arab israel he's not an arab himself no okay but he learned arabic and he was able to communicate with the arab scholars he was also known as a great advocate of scholastic piety which meant deep personal piety instead of just cold formal academic piety

Answer 52

another one who fits that description was bonaventure so Alexander of Hales and bonaventure were two of the important scholars whose work provided something of a hinge away from earlier and similar theology and doing more advanced and academic theology

Answer 53

a little bit about each of these men alexander of Hales a franciscan received the the master of art from the university of paris and five years later received the master of theology at paris he was the first one to lecture on the sentences of peter lombard at paris the interpreted aristotle enacts in augustinian ways and he employed the logic of aristotle in his form of teaching he affirmed the authority of the bible in principle but he emphasized a philosophical approach to the study alexander became famous as the originator of a doctrine which was going to become a permanent fixture in the catholic church it's the doctrine of purgatory purgatory is hell but hell on a temporary basis not an eternal one so purgatory place of purging the souls of lost people don't go if if they're extremely evil they go directly to hell if they're not extremely evil and they're in the good graces of the church they will eventually be forgiven after a time in purgatory to atone for their sins so it's a very very serious deviation from biblical doctrine it undermines faith in the sufficiency of jesus work on the cross alexander wrote commentaries on peter the lombard he wrote commentary on the apocalypse of the bible and he wrote a summary of all theology at least we think he did he's the most likely candidate summary of all theology two popes in a row they are innocent fourth and alexander fourth required all schools of theology to use the summary which which alexander had compiled

Answer 54

Bonaventure was a student of alexander at paris another franciscan who defended his order in the monastic order against critics Bonaventure eventually became a bishop and a cardinal he and other franciscans placed piety before scholarship and by the veteran wrote a book entitled itinerary of the soul to god itinerary to the of the soul to god which is a work by a great scholar but he intended it for less academic people so that everyone could feed his soul on the word of god as understood at the time he rejoined his philosophy as a religious activity leading to god and he held that all creation reflects god's reality and the human soul is the place to find god all knowledge of god is partial but god is present within believers although creatures are always separate from god keep that in mind because in this period of history even in the religious circles of the church influences or infiltrations of pantheism began to make themselves known you saw some of that Abelard earlier study last week and so the scholars who were loyal to the church and supposedly orthodox and doctrine had to be on their guard whenever the elements of pantheism made themselves felt

Answer 55

bonaventure sharply disagreed with aristotle about one very fundamental point that fundamental pointer issue was the eternity of the world that there never was an actual creation but the world itself is eternal now from there you could you can deduce a clear element of pantheism the world is eternal so that really if you take it to its logical conclusion the world is the only revelation anybody will ever have in fact we might draw a circle and in the middle of a circle write it that's it that's it don't talk about outside the circle there is no outside everything that is is in this system we call the universe and that's the way it always has been always will be well that's a pagan philosophy aristotle believes that and so some of his disciples were even more rigorous than he about it bonaventure had to deny that and he held that life in heaven will bring a union of the soul with god for those who desire to love god

Answer 56

bonaventure gradually eclipsed alexander as the preeminent franciscan theologian Bonaventure eventually became minister general of the franciscan movement that means he was the director he was the head of the of the order as a scholar he led the defense of his brothers against their critics at paris and it defended the the authority of scripture and tradition but bonaventure said that scripture and christian tradition are co-equal sources of authority scripture and tradition side by side

Answer 57

he has some perception but a rather dim one some perception of the noetic effects of sin for example he taught that reason sometimes fails to see the existence of God and and as truth and thereby they is necessary to deal with those people who hold that view by presenting them with irrefutable arguments to prove the existence of god and he seemed confident that he had achieved that very thing

Answer 58

to the embarrassment of the catholic church Bonavenure denied the immaculate conception of the virgin mary now what is that immaculate conception the simplest birth of mary what about the sinless birth of mary that mary had no sin yeah sinlessness of mary it started by saying that mary was not soiled by original sin the catholic church has always taught the transmission of adam's offense to adam's posterity right down to the present moment in history but the catholic church does not teach what we today call total depravity or total inability bonaventure denied that mary was sinless in fact it was easy to show she's not because mary herself admitted it do you recall when mary went to visit her cousin elizabeth and both women were pregnant at the same time and what did mary say my soul does magnify the lord and she refers to the lord as her savior yeah she said behold i was born in sin like david said in psalm 51 and born in sin in my in more concepts deceiving sin and my mother bore me and so uh we have biblical evidence from david in the old testament and marry herself in the new testament so mary cried out to god her savior my spirit my spirit has rejoiced in god my savior now if mary needed a savior as she admitted she did then mary was not sinless the only beings who needed a savior are sinners and mary was not excluded from that assembly of of people everyone else has been soiled by sin

Answer 59

albertus magnus means albert the great he didn't call himself that others called him that he was a bavarian german who went to italy and graduated from the university of padua and he established a reputation for being an outstanding student especially in the liberal arts he was not a franciscan though he joined the order of preachers the dominican friars and he earned his phd later at paris and taught in several monasteries as a skillful interpreter of theology in 20 in 1260 he became Regensburg the french call it Regensburg because they don't speak well but i got some war but if you signed you resigned that position after only two years and returned to state teaching at cologne oh that's french cologne the germans know better they say comb go k-o-l-n

Answer 60

when the critics attacked the works of aquinas albertus defended him against the charge that he was relying too much on pagan philosophers the catholic church canonized albert as a saint in the year 1931. pity albert wasn't around to enjoy it but he'd been going a long time canonization creates a special category of saintly people who bear the title of saint and it's awarded almost always after extensive examination and the attribution of miracles to the person being being canonized [Music] it doesn't happen often anymore it happened in the middle ages so the middle ages were better well possible probability of being declared a saint was much better than than now

Answer 61

albertus wrote a commentary on peter the lombard but then he wrote his own summary of theology commentaries on the psalms and the prophets commentaries on the gospels and in addition to all of that he was a very skillful scientist now i mean that in a complimentary way he was a pioneer in what we now call observational science not just logical deductions drawn from phenomenon but actual observations that confirm or deny the theorems being promoted at the time he was especially gifted as a botanist probably was the greatest botanist in the world at the time in philosophy he made extensive use of aristotle but with a very critical attitude he attacked the arab rationalists and he attacked the advocates of pantheism who were making trouble for the church in 1270 albert recruited troops for the eighth crusade we'll get to the crusades toward the end of the course and he went about as a preacher recruiting soldiers to march to the east to fight against the turks it was a miserable failure in the end albertus with thomas aquinas would be considered among the highest and most beloved most respected scholars of the mature scholasticism albert was a professor at cullen or cologne as i said and he had very broad philosophical and theological interests as well as botany astronomy and other sciences he was thoroughly conversant with the arabic language and he could use them as well as the greek text of aristotle he worked energetically to adopt aristotelian philosophy for the use of the church he wanted to harmonize theology and philosophy and his importance was that he led laid a foundation on which his famous people thomas aquinas would build so he made quite an Albert made a quite a name for himself at the time but in the long run he was completely overshadowed by his more famous pupil

Answer 62

now i've been in higher education now 55 years college seminary 55 years and i have had the experience where several of my students have far excelled me in terms of scholarship and teaching i'm jealous as you know what no i'm not i'm delighted i'm delighted that's the uh mark of success a successful teacher produces students who can outdo their teacher and that's what thomas did and so albert was not the least bit distressed by that he was he he considered that mark of his success in his profession and he was glad to see thomas take front and center which thomas did well thomas was always very respectful toward albert and their lives were co-extensive almost albert died in 1280 thomas dried in 1274.

Answer 63

let's look at thomas thomas was an italian aristocrat who against the wishes of his family became an a dominican friar the dominicans had earned a reputation for fine scholarship and they were very influential in church affairs and sir thomas was drawn toward them because he's impressed with their learning and with their devotion to duty and their piety thomas studied under albert at paris then at naples and then finally at rome aquinas surpassed his teacher in bringing the new aristotelian concepts and the christian tradition together in one organic union to say that thomas was a genius would be almost to make an understatement i don't know what higher dignity to award him wrote commentaries on aristotle there were many books of the bible he wrote two of the most influential catholic theological works of all time one is in latin is the summa cultura gentiles that means summary against the gentiles gentiles in this case would be the unbelievers and then the second work morphem is still summa theologicae summary of theology that is his most famous and influential treatise

Answer 64

in 1323 the aquinas was canonized as a saint see much earlier than Albertus and in 1880 the papacy declared thomas aquinas as the patron saint of all catholic schools all catholic schools once when somebody asked thomas for what he thanked god most he replied here is his own words i have understood every page i ever read boy i wish i could make that bonus of course he didn't have to grade examinations like i do i feel it's safe to say no one reads them like you do way either right like the people in england say over there you americans drive on the right side of the word road we drive on the correct side now

Answer 65

in addition to that because he was a rather quiet and retiring personality aquinas earned the nickname the dumb ox of sicily his family lived on sicily and had extensive lands and a castle there and so he was called the dumb ox of docks of sicily when albert learned that listen to what albert said as a rebuttal you call him a dumb ox i tell you the dumb ox will bellow so loud his bellowing will fill the whole world and there was no exaggeration he was correct

Answer 66

thomas's family was part of the feudal nobility in south italy his father was a count count landdolph and as his father wanted to place him in a monastery but not a dominican house the older and larger and more traditional monastic movement was the order of saint benedict benedictines as we'd say and the benedictines had a very large and influential establishment in italy on mount casino monte casino and so that's where thomas wanted to go his family actually tried to prevent him from going in fact tried to prevent him by force at one point his brothers locked him in a room and wouldn't let him out they slid slid food under the door to him but they wouldn't let him out and they they weren't getting anywhere with him he wouldn't agree to become a Benedictine she's invented neckties old and well established owned a lot of land very valuable land and this family of thomas was involved in a sort of career ecclesiastical corruption involving the sale of church lands to wealthy aristocrats who could afford them and that would enrich the church financially but the benedictines had taken a vow of poverty when they joined the movement so they were contradicting their own vow by seeking riches and thomas was aware of that and he wanted none of it whereas the franciscans and dominicans were serious about the vow of poverty they too eventually succumbed to the temptation of wealth but for during thomas's life they were an example of strict adherence to the vowel of poverty once when his brothers were losing patience with him entirely they hired a harlot a prostitute and they pushed her into the room where thomas was locked locked the door behind her and told her to seduce him she tried thomas walked over to the fireplace picked up a burning log wave under her nose and said don't you touch me or i'll set you on fire now you talk about dealing with temptation that's effective really works so if you’re ever tempted to lust go find a burning lock somewhere take the log out of here thomas had to flee from them they finally gave up their persistence he let him have his way and despite the disapproval of his relatives he did become a dominican friar order of saint albany

Answer 67

aquinas wanted to refine the works of others particularly aristotle aristotle has some pantheistic elements as i've noted to for you and thomas recognized that and he wanted to purge them from the works of aristotle and then too he dealt with some of the commentators the arab commentators of aristotle and he found unwholesome ideas there which he exposed he held that knowledge is of two kinds natural and supernatural natural knowledge is the realm of reason while supernatural is the realm of revelation so natural knowledge is the realm of reason while supernatural knowledge is the realm of revelation however there are not two sets of truth rather the two supplement each other reason and revelation philosophy and theology are parts of one system and according to aquinas human beings may arrive at a knowledge of god's existence through the exercise of reason reason is competent to prove the existence of god said thomas however reason can't go far beyond that it cannot comprehend god's actual nature or god's attributes this knowledge comes only by divine revelation the supernatural knowledge of god is the proper subject of theology and this knowledge is received by faith and is distinguishable from rational verifiable knowledge the area of reasoning

Answer 68

the influence of aquinas upon theology was huge in soteriology reading thomas can be a surprising experience because we know him as the preeminent catholic thinker of all time now i would i would say that until about the middle of the last century almost all roman catholic theologians made made thomas aquinas the authority when they wanted to know something they turned to thomas he was a canonized saint and they declared to be a doctor which means teacher of the church a doctor term doctor we generally think of first of all physicians as doctors that's correct they are but the term doctor itself or doc doctrina in latin means teaching a person who teaches is a doctor needs to be just something's useful many times they're not useful anyway aquinas then was a huge influence upon theology in soteriology doctrine of salvation he believed strongly in predestination now he was no inventor of the concept back Gottschalk in the middle ages was one of the well-known ones and then probably more than anybody the famous than St. Augustine of hippo but the teachings of those men seem somehow or enveloped or encapsulated in all sorts of deviant ideas vaguely written three diseases and their influence paled away to almost insignificance but thomas revived it in affirming it very quickly quietly he spoke of an infusion of grace now that goes way back to the third century to the church father tertullian from north africa infused grace means a person that does something that makes him worthy of salvation but he does it because god has granted him an infusion of grace so it's not salvation by works as such but salvation by works made possible by preceding grace so human beings cannot initiate salvation this comes in response to the infusion of what he called uncreated grace it is this grace which enables one to have faith and once this infused grace has been received additional grace will be imparted as God is pleased with that person and comes to his aid and enables him to perform meritorious works

Answer 69

thomas had a strong view of providence too he referred to in these words god's planning and arranging immediately engages every event though his providence is carried out executively and the world is governed through secondary sources any protestant reformer of the 16th century would have shouted amen to that i'll read it again god's planning and arranging immediately engages every event though his providence is carried out executively and the world is governed through secondary causes

Answer 70

although thomas rejected the eternity of the universe he did make this admission the world has not always existed this belief is to be held by faith and cannot be demonstrably proven i'm sure it can he said take away evil well the problem of evil he used augustine's idea that evil is a deficiency of goodness evil is an deficiency of goodness thomas wrote take away all evil and much good would go with him god's care is to bring good out of evil with and not to abolish evil itself [Music] at least not till the end of time although god is the final cause of all events human beings are genuine secondary causes and they operate without compulsion so god doesn't grab people by the scruff of the neck and drag them kicking and streaming into heaven no he respects their freedom the knowledge that they have and without any compulsion he urges them to perform good works thomas therefore was not a pelagian he was much closer to augustine on soteriology and he was the pelagius he did affirm original sin as inherited from adam all human beings including the virgin mary have been contaminated by the sin of adam souls become sinful at conception as god and conception infuses them into bodies and then they are infected personal sins follow original sin and the sin this designates a deed or desire against the law of god thomas said that free will remains in fallen creatures but free will alone cannot and will not conquer sin thomas wrote this when we speak of man doing what lies in his power we imply that his being moves is moved there too by god so god's action comes first and human's response to that action comes second man needs grace to please god and if he pleases god sufficiently he will prove himself deserving of everlasting life yet man cannot prepare himself without the aid of grace sinners can by free will refuse grace and in doing so they deserve damnation here is his own remark those only are deprived of grace who of themselves offer hindrances to grace again those only are deprived of grace who of themselves offer hindrance to grace now this takes us to the all-important topic of justification of the sinner justification that god demands i think we'll stop there and take a 10-minute recess go back and begin looking at thomas on justification

Answer 71

now then let's take a look at what thomas has to offer us on the doctrine of justification and its consequent doctrine of sanctification according to thomas justification is by grace but that grace is a grace that god infuses into undeserving people to enable them to perform good works which will merit salvation and therefore they would escape damnation and he said only those who are deprived of grace or are the only ones who are deprived of grace are those who offer a hindrance to grace well justification is by grace and that grace that uses spiritual power into the souls of people and disposes of souls to seek the glory of god and so he looked upon justification and sanctification as two parts of a continuing process it begins with an infusion of grace and that is usually accomplished through the sacraments of the church so people who avail themselves of the sacramental grace are on the pathway to justification but the sanctifying grace unites people with god and makes them pleasing to god this grace is always effectual in god's elect and the elect by free will embrace the work of christ thomas wrote god selects those who are infallibly directed to heaven from among others who are not so blessed election is without regard for human merit although it leads to meritorious deeds no human work or on his own could accomplish the work of election or justification such work is made possible only by grace but you might underwear the term possible there that that it is made possible grace is made possible the grace of election such work is made possible by grace grace is the meriting cause of glory the meriting cause of glory thomas exclaimed but he made the mistake of confusing justification and sanctification and so this was part of an ongoing process it begins with the infusion of grace probably with baptism and then goes forward from there and as a person avails himself of the means of grace through the church he acquires merit and that merit is pleasing to god and it helps prepare him to make the free will gift a funeral decision to accept the gift of god faith is a gift from god which produces the believers ascent to the truth that is declared in the word of god thomas what taught that no one could be certain of his election or his perseverance so instead of assurance the best believers can claim is what thomas called confident conjecture confident conjecture in other words assuming a person is showing a good example that is faithful to the church and always lrelating to the doctrine of grace this person then can be confidently conjectural that he has won the way of salvation but and grace removes the eternal punishment of sin but it does not remove the temporal punishment from sin god sometimes punishes sinners for offenses committed on earth and he punishes them while they're on earth in fact there are biblical examples of people being struck dead by god as punishment but grace then removes the eternal punishment but the temporal punishment requires the purgatorial cleansing and when jesus descended into hell he freed the elect souls who were there so that prior to the atonement the christ made in calvary all saved people were detained and not permitted into heaven itself and would not be until the atonement but christ did make the atonement and he freed all the elect souls who are confined in purgatory christian souls in purgatory may be relieved of their suffering and even to shorten their time in purgatory if the living people on earth will have masses said for their benefit and they will pray for these souls the repose of the souls in purgatory they may give alms for the benefit of souls of purgatory and they may undertake fasting for people in purgatory the eucharist of the mass is the most powerful aid for departed souls the eucharist would be that point in the mass where the priest consecrates bread and wine and they become the body blood soul and divinity of christ not they represent anything but they literally become the body and blood of jesus christ transubstantiation to change the substance changing from bread and wine into body and blood yet the accidents or the appearances of bread and wine remain when people receive that sacrament it tastes like bread it smells like bread it feels like bread same with a wine but it is in reality been transposed into the body and blood of christ

Answer 72

now people ask thomas the question that sometimes you may have asked somebody or somebody may have asked you why does god choose some and reject others have any ideas on that it's a good pleasure his sovereign good pleasure nothing more than that that's it thomas knew that thomas do that he said yes he said that god's will is a sole reason for election

Answer 73

thomas revered the fathers of the ancient church but he did not believe they were infallible and he did not allow their authority to intimidate him from doing his own work and to come into his own conclusions in academic circles the universities of cologne and louvain their lands in belgium became thomas strongholds strongholds of thomas's teaching this is a major victory for scholarship because it helped to discredit the belief that all valuable truth resided in the patristic sources that was common thinking so that's for most of the middle ages when so school so called scholars were doing their work and publishing their findings they very often cited the ancient church fathers as authorities for what they believed and what they should do and thomas had the courage to depart from that and to expose all of the ancient fathers to critical analysis whenever he had opportunity

Answer 74

in part opposition to scholastic treatises reflected distrust which was due to arab influence upon scholastic authors arabs had undertaken the study of aristotle before christians made a serious attempt to do it and once the christians made that attempt then they became subject of criticism and complaint that they were allowing the arabs to mislead them and they were becoming dependent upon anti-christian sources but the scholastic wanted to reconcile faith and reason and faith and reason were important to muslims as well some muslim authors like their catholic counterparts resisted this tendency to merge faith and reason or to merge christianity and muslim philosophy

Answer 75

there was one muslim by the name of muhammad now this is not muhammad the prophet his name is muhammad ghazali g-h-a-z-a-l-i muhammad al-ghazali he lived from 1058-1111 and he was the foremost theologian of the muslim faith at the time and he wrote a book entitled the destruction of the philosophers the destruction of the philosophers and this was his effort at rebutting muslim dependence upon aristotle and other greek thinkers later however he softened his attitude and he wrote a work entitled the agreement of religion and philosophy thomas and other catholic scholars had to endure much criticism when they resorted to pagan philosophers as interpreted by muslims especially you understand why that happened

Answer 76

now another point that needs to be made about thomas is that he had his own doctrine of the atonement now everybody believes that christ died for sinners on the cross that is all professing christians believe that what did he actually accomplish though when he died in the place of sinners that was often the subject of debate by his death said thomas christ sufficiently merited salvation for the whole human race again by his death christ sufficiently merited salvation for the whole human race and each of us must seek his own cure again although by the death of christ by his death christ sufficiently merited salvation for the whole human race each of us must seek there his own cure baptism and penance are necessary to obtain the benefits of the atonement so that what christ did in itself itself is not sufficient not sufficient he made an atonement which became of the benefits of which were available through the sacraments of baptism and penance baptism would wash away original sin and penance would observe would obtain forgiveness for post-baptismal offenses in baptism a person is a passive recipient of grace in penance the person is a deliberate actor trying to secure forgiveness for post-baptismal sins so the key to remembering thomas's error is that he said that the death of christ was sufficient for the whole human race but the benefits of his sacrifice were to be obtained by believers receiving the sacraments of baptism and penance the order of preachers the dominican friars and their theologians interpreted aristotle or augustine rather within the framework of aristotle and thereby they modified aristotle to make elements of his system suitable for inclusion in christian theology although the primitive church had only two sacraments baptism and the eucharist or the lord's supper

Answer 77

incidentally there's nothing wrong with the word eucharist protestants seem to be scared to death of it because of the catholic misuse of it but it means thanksgiving lucaristia means thanksgiving and says thanksgiving is always appropriate for christians thanking god thanking one another thanking our our families and so forth it's a good thing and so if we could very well revive the use of the eucharist and explain what it means it would be completely suitable there are only two of them though baptism and the lord's supper

Answer 78

peter the lombard though said there are seven sacraments now this was in a time when there had been a lot of confusion and debate and and confused debates sometimes nobody seemed to know what a sacrament was exactly and how many of them should be observed now then the primitive church said there were only two but the medieval church following the lead of lombard said there were seven and here they are baptism confirmation holy eucharist penance extreme unction holy orders and matrimony once more baptism confirmation holy eucharist penance extreme unction holy orders and matrimony these were officially adopted as the teaching of the roman church at the council of florence which met in florence italy in 1439.

Answer 79

aquinas argued that baptism confirmation and holy orders can never be repeated they may be administered once and only once and that he said that these sacraments make an indelible mark on the souls of people who receive them the validity of the sacraments depends entirely or the virtue inherent in themselves the primary effect of the sacraments is to restore his original righteousness to man through the importation of the redemptive merits of the savior

Answer 80

well anyhow getting back to thomas thomas said the penance removed sins committed since baptism and extreme unction prepares one for death or for recovery if a person is gravely ill but does not die and often a priest will hasten to the bedside of a dying person and if the person is is conscious and able to swallow he will offer the sacrament of extreme of a holy eucharist to that person if he once desires it but if he's unconscious and can't swallow that's another matter but he anoints the body with oil recites prayer over the bodies and tries to encourage the person to prepare for death to confess his sins if he's able and if he's able he'll receive the sacrament of penance upon his deathbed

Answer 81

thomas wrote this sacraments are not simply signs of grace which god bestows in an invisible manner they are in a real sense the cause of grace in this view the sacraments do not depend upon the faith of the recipient or upon the faith of the minister i mean the priest being the minister might be a scoundrel he might be just take a hypothetical situation the local priest receives all the collections and offerings of the people and he dips into that treasury every time he needs a buck and that certainly is a sinful thing to do he's stealing from the church yet he continues the same acts hear confessions and so forth well his ill behavior and his corrupt morality do not invalidate the sacrament now i think we would agree with that too suppose that you learned to your dismay that the presbyterian pastor who baptized you was at the same time a drunkard and a whoremonger would you have to be re-baptized no you would not it's not the minister who makes the validity of the sacrament thomas knew that

Answer 82

the sacramental system really had a two-fold significance first it offered some tangible evidence of salvation or hope for salvation and secondly it shows us the hierarchical tendencies of the church the individual was bound to the church to receive the means of grace for the and the church could withhold the means of grace as punishment if a person behaved badly the sacramental system was easy to abuse especially penance penance involves oral confession of one's sins to a priest a person is supposed to examine his conscience first and when he is sure he is enumerate all of his sins then go into a confession box and where it's where it's dark and they talked with the priest and the confessor talked to each other through a screen they never actually look at each other and they don't know each other by the name or that at least the the person doesn't know the pre the by then you might know the phrase and so the priest then acts as the absolver and makes the sign of the cross like this and in the name of the father son and holy spirit i absolve you from your sins and then he will assign a discipline which is called a penance person is to perform the penance as a condition for receiving absolution if he fails to perform the penance the absolution is invalid and if he deliberately refuses to confess certain sins that invalidates the confession and so if a person makes a bad confession he will have to confess even the bad confession next time he goes to the priest what's the reasoning behind the kind of like privacy screen to save people embarrassment really that you go into a catholic church say saturday afternoon that's usually when confessions are held and the priest sits in a box and besides the box is a kneeling pad and the person confessing kneels down and asks the priest please bless me father for i have sinned it's been nine weeks since my last confession and these are my offenses right down the list and the priest will say something to the effect are you sure that's all yes father that's all okay and he assigns the fans this practice began in ireland in the sixth century the irish monks introduced it they were very rigorous and ascetic in their lifestyle they believed that they could if they could torment the body they could cultivate the health of the soul and so that practice slowly spread out of ireland onto the continent of europe and people who were not so rigorous adopted is just the same and at the council of florence in 1439 penance was one of these seven sacraments officially accepted as dogma in the church it just seems a bit like if you're able to confess your sins you know privately well hey you would think the priest if he knows his congregation would recognize voices and then be that are you actually shouldn't you shouldn't the shame and embarrassment of being known for your sins be part of the penance see in the ancient church it's a very ancient church somebody committed a scandal to sin that brought disrepute upon the church the church required an open public and oral confession and to stand before the congregation recite his sins and began forgiveness [Music] that was embarrassing really embarrassing maybe it's a better way of doing it but it was embarrassing but then the monks in ireland devised a concept of private confession and that's what took over and been the practice of the sins there's a church in philadelphia my old town saint joseph's catholic church jesuit priests operating it's been there since colonial days it's the oldest catholic church in pennsylvania it's way downtown almost on the delaware river or a little street called williams alley and the building doesn't even look like a church it looks like an apartment building but there's a courtyard beyond the gate and if you look at once you get the courtyard you realize there's a church there your stained glass windows and a doorway opening into the catholic sanctuary well for about 25 years i used to say college students on history tours of philadelphia and its environments and one stop always on our tours with saint joseph's catholic church because of its historic significance oldest catholic church in pennsylvania but uh when we first went there for several years the confession boxes were all lined up two or three on each side of the church so it was a very traditional practice last few years you were there the confession boxes were gone and more liberal priests had taken control of that parish and they claimed that private confession is not necessary only to the extent that they can be private with god they if they are truly president and confess their sins to god he will forgive them without the intervention of an earthly priest that's a major change did you know the pope actually said that during the beginning of lockdowns i'm sorry during the beginning of the coronavirus lockdown pope actually said the same thing last year he said you can't get to a church just go privately to god pope francis is quite the liberal in fact he has a lot of critics inside the catholic church i have catholic relatives who are very very disturbed about pope francis they do not like him and some people are even circulating petitions calling the pope a heretic yeah they arrive their petitions have arrived in rome what's going to become of them i don't know probably nothing it seems to me like the roman catholic system though wouldn't even allow for that if you're the pope then you define what is heretical and well that's that's the old-fashioned idea right but liberalism has crept into the ranks and some of the catholic priests and nuns even are now taking a much more liberal stand is it the conservatives who are petitioning of the folks of heretic yeah because francis is so liberal main francis speaks approvingly of islam [Music] what kind of a deal is that the so-called infallible teacher of all roman catholics and what's he do he praises his Islam mother teresa you know mother teresa yeah everybody knows her good ladies a lot of good work orphanages and so forth good woman when she was interviewed by a newspaper or radio reporter or whatever he asked her the question well how do you relate you work in india here how do you relate to hinduism and she said well i'm not here to convert hindus i'm here to help them become better hindus [Music] and she's she's now a candidate for sainthood she might not make it that's that statement for susie would probably be used against her yeah she is she's considered a saint now she's not the same yet is she it says as of 2016 she was canonized oh she was categorized in 2016. how about that she made it all right teresa what does that gain them in their worldview to get sainthood is that what's that is there a value to the deceased in their system if they get sainted like did mother teresa get a boost in heaven over their love their life yeah she probably has she's probably not even there i hate to say i'm not infallible i don't know for sure but i i can't imagine with statements like that that she has really embraced christ as your savior sure i i should have been more clear in the catholic doctrine and their assumption what a what is a deceased person that gets sainted is it have any benefit to them after life in the afterlife so in there is she in heaven and she just got some kind of an extra bump a bigger room there is a superstition i call it popular among catholics that people can pray to saints in this case should be saint teresa and saint theresa can hear her prayers our prayers and respond by going to god and asking specific favors for the person on earth that's common extensive belief and the virgin mary is the most powerful of all the intermediaries and so they love to pray to mary and ask mary to turn to christ with this request this presupposes that all the people in heaven are omniscient they know everything's going on on earth they're up there looking down and they say oh they're good so it's on salsa he did that thing again i'm telling you it's a sad situation because the catholic church says we have a lot in common with catholic churches and sometimes on public cultural issues we stand with them against abortion against homosexuality although the pope is not necessarily oppose the homosexuality he says oh god made them that way who are we to to question them and that in my things scope of thinking does not hold water do you think that the election or choosing or whatever term you want to use for a pope is liberal as he says more about the overall trend of liberal slide within the catholic church or about corruption among the leadership i say you pay your money and you make your pick yeah i really don't know i'm just curious the catholics are not all poured out of the same mold anymore some of them are very independent in their views others are almost slavish in their obedience to the church and prior to vatican council too the old timers were that that's almost slavish you know begged the church

Answer 83

yeah all right the sacramental system was easily abused especially penance sometimes it became a matter of contrition confession and contribution contrition confession and contribution contrition is sorrow for sin confession to the priest and then contribution doing the penance prescribed and sometimes in earlier centuries the penance might have been financial and so at first he was buying forgiveness with monetary means that was not widespread but it did happen and especially among the upper classes usually today the assigned penances prayers many catholics still carry a rosary bead instead of 50 beads on the rosary and when they pray they finger that bead and they pray to the virgin mary hail mary full of grace the lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb jesus holy mary mother of god pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death amen i say that 50 times i think somebody i i remember made an uncomplimentary remark about that about vain repetition who was that it wasn't pope francis no it's jesus you said that yeah okay and uh in ancient times though even medievaldays sometimes people could be required to make public penance for their sin it was so serious and the father confessor might direct that person to undergo a pilgrimage and one of the most popular pilgrimage shrines was in spain the the legendary bergdarian place of santiago santiago means saint james problem was which saint james or half a dozen of them in the calendar and so you spend your money and you make your choice fasting is another punishment that can be applied in this regard and a person who receives merit from his penance and actually performs more merit than required that surplus merit is to be deposited in a spiritual treasury called the treasury of merit and the church can dip into that treasury of merit and pull out merit and award it to people who are deficient and need more merit so it becomes a problem for the cpas oh indulgences uh appeared in south the south of france in the 11th century the first place called plenary indulgence public current was granted in the year 1040 by pope benedict the ninth indulgences were officially regarded as remitting only canonical penalties but the popular opinion assumed came to regard indulgences as absolute forgiveness of sins and often the church did nothing to discourage the misconception these abuses did evoke protests through the high middle ages but no real reform took place

Answer 84

in medieval catholicism three things were required to make fallen man righteous with god first an infusion of healing grace and this meant direct reliance on the church and the sacraments which formed the narrow gate to salvation second the free turning of the will to god away from sin and this was called ethical cooperation with grace and then third the remission of the guilt incurred by sin by priestly absolution the certainty of salvation was regarded as vain presumption joan of arc later canonized as a saint was in her own day condemned for heresy because she claimed the assurance of salvation uh i have a question that goes a little bit back to um one of the requirements of making a pilgrimage so let's say a man goes before his priest and penance to in france he has to go to make a pilgrimage in italy what happens if he sins along the way and since if he sins along the way then it nullifies his i suppose so i don't know i can't point you to chapter and verse over that one but i suppose that would be the case i guess with people um i guess what i would would ask if someone sinned on the way to make the pilgrimage knowing it was that it would um cancel out the priests yeah keep in mind that the catholic church says there are two categories of sin there are there are mortal sins which means deadly sins they're so grave that they sever a person's relationship with god and those people are in urgent need of penance and say they would be the ones who if they are sincere would flock to the priests soon after they committed that grave sin then there are venial sins which are lesser offenses and people who commit lesser offenses will never be denied heaven for unconfessed venial sin but they would be for unconfessed mortal sin so you i mean you you go through these matters with a fine tooth comb and find almost anything you want to find i think there's probably no uniformity among them catholic practice okay we're gonna wrap it up right there today i thank you for your attention

Answer 85

today we're going to finish our look at medieval scholasticism we've dealt with the early development of it and the mature development of it and we come today to what we might call almost anti-scholasticism that wouldn't be quite correct so i call it late scholasticism and point of time it comes in the 14th century so that's late by comparison to the other authors we've cited but in this case his reaction against heavy reliance upon greek philosophy the scholarly method of scholasticism was not at stake here everybody was agreed upon that but the question was how much authority should be ascribed to greek philosophy since the greek philosophers were all pagans

Answer 86

but the question was how much authority should be ascribed to greek philosophy since the greek philosophers were all pagans well this is something of a turning point in the development of scholasticism it occurred with the work of duns scotus a franciscan scholar who led a reaction against aquinas and against aristotelianism to be sure scotus employed the authority of scripture and of the church as opposed to speculation in theology and he contended that most of the so-called scholastics of his era were people who were who were heavily leaning upon aquinas and they were using aquinas where aquinas did not deserve to use

Answer 87

he attacked aquinas were being for trying to supply rational proofs for the existence of the triune god or rational approach for the immortality of christian believers according to scotus these concepts and others like them are to be accepted by faith an act of faith and not dependent upon arguments submitted from from christian scholars who in turn had borrowed heavily from the pagans the dominican order the order of preachers as it's known officially the dominican order was very much involved in the study of greek philosophy and so Scotus had nothing kind to say about those people

Answer 88

a little bit about scotus himself he appears to have been born in scotland and she's called duns scotus Duns of Scotland he joined the franciscan movement at newcastle england about 1290 and then went from there to paris to study at the university he later became a professor at cologne or koln the germans would say and he became a noted critic and a critical scholar ready to challenge preceding authorities including of course aquinas himself

Answer 89

Duns was says he was committed to the authority of the bible but the authority of the bible as interpreted by the church so really he had two co-equal sources of authority the bible and the catholic church he was a aware of the works of the great saint augustine of hippo and he did borrow heavily from augustine but he really was not augustinian in the matter of anthropology the doctrine of man he held that the human will and human freedom have not been impaired by the fall into sin man can still turn to god by his natural power and thereby merit what is called justifying grace this is at best a semi-pelagian view and it had become a strong tradition in the franciscan order

Answer 90

now you might note that the franciscan order in getting involved in these disputes that order was going contrary to the wishes of its founder francis of assisi was not a scholar he did not trust scholars in general and he warned against the temptation to rely on pagan sources especially right here we find a whole string of scholastic philosophers and many of them are some of the many now franciscan friars going contrary to the teaching of their founder

Answer 91

scotus's view of the eucharist is rather interesting it comes very close to martin luther's view that would emerge later somebody i don't know who it was somebody called luther's view of the eucharist consubstantiation con means with trans means change and so luther said there is no change in the bread and wine but the body and blood of christ dwell with the bread and wine at the time that they are offered to god in in the church well luther had a dislike for the term consubstantiation he thought it was a somewhat rationalistic effort to explain something that we have to say is by its nature miraculous so luther said we accept the words of jesus who said this is my body this is my blood he didn't say this represents anything but he said this is my body it is my blood luther said we can't understand that but nevertheless it's true because jesus himself declared it so luther was very reluctant to go very far trying to explain the nature of christ's presence in the sacrament the closest thing he ever came to doing that was on one occasion when he was quizzed he said take a piece of iron and throw it in a roaring fire after a while the iron will get red hot and the iron is in the fire and the fire is in the iron but the iron's still iron and the and the fire is still fire there's no transubstantiation and so he said it was just a matter of taking jesus literally at his word and luther was convinced he had done that but anyhow the franciscan order was dabbling with matters of rather archane doctrine and in doing so was betraying its allegiance to francis himself

Answer 92

another very influential franciscan of the 14th century was william of ockham he was an englishman he went much farther than scotus in attacking the system of thomas aquinas william of ockham contended that no theological doctrine is demonstrable by pure reason no theological doctrine is demonstrable by pure reason to welcome claims such as the oneness of god and the infinity of god must be looked upon as confessions of faith nothing else just confessions of faith

Answer 93

Ockham in sharp disagreement with aquinas did not regard theology as a science now keep in mind that our concept of science today is much more narrow than it was in the middle ages in the middle ages almost every academic pursuit was known as a science and that included academic pursuit of theology occam said that the articles of faith are not to be subjected to logical analysis accept them at face value because they come from god

Answer 94

in the eyes of ockham the papacy was not above criticism and he said the bible was his preeminent authority and he did not hesitate to criticize the pope at times and other members of the church hierarchy however this attachment to the bible did not produce a major effort at church reform at that time that's because occam worked under the illusion or maybe delusion that the doctrines of the church were identical with the teachings of the bible he saw no contradiction no tension between the two and so his view of the bible was itself subject to the authority of the church although he would not have said that he held that the bible is verbally inspired the actual words of scripture are the words of the holy spirit yet Ockham who professed to love the bible did not have a great deal of well he some of his views are clearly not biblical teaching and he was unable to see the errors in his own work

Answer 95

concerning salvation Ockham taught that a person who does all he is able to do in seeking god will be rewarded with divine grace so instead of contending grace is the unmerited gift of god grace is a reward to people who are doing within them the best that they can under the circumstances and with the gifts god has given them he said humans are able to love god by the exercise of their natural power and so he rejected even the earlier scholastic idea that grace is prerequisite for meritorious deeds

Answer 96

Ockhamism as we call his teaching became entrenched at paris the college of the sorbonne that was a college endowed by a wealthy french aristocrat named sorbonne and so it's still there and still has that name but it's no longer strictly a school of religious study it was very popular too in germany at the university of Erfurt that's e-r-f-u-r-t and who is going to be Erfurt’s most notorious graduate martin luther that's right yes very good martin luther indeed and luther studied there when it was a stronghold of ockhamist teaching however as fully influential and bold as occam was at the time his arguments did not prevail over those of thomas tomism had gotten the high ground and was not going to be replaced by Ockhamism Aquinas’ teaching came to dominate the whole church

Answer 97

now getting back to occam's biography he born in england as i said graduated from oxford university with a ba then went to paris and picked up an m.a in paris he was a student of dons scotus and his ideas around such concern at paris that the faculty of philosophy denounced him and they waited though until he left the university which appears they were not prepared to tangle with him

Answer 98

Ockham being a franciscan] insisted that the franciscans must conform with france's greatest concern and the greatest virtue in the christian life according to francis of the was what more second guess poverty poverty now vow of poverty all the clergy of the catholic church took that vow but none was more serious about it than francis of assisi and the first generation of franciscan brothers

Answer 99

Ockham’s doctrine of god featured a belief in god's absolute freedom and so salvation is according to god's good pleasure god accepts the merits of believers only because it pleases him to do so he made merit essential for salvation sin he said is the perverse use of free will but it does not produce depravity in human souls god could have forgiven without any form of satisfaction he just he could have done it because it would be his good pleasure but instead it pleased him to exempt the virgin mary from original sin so here we have another scholar hastening to the defense of mary's eternal virginity

Answer 100

most of the works of Ockham are in a language so arcane that only fellow philosophical scholars would be interested in reading them and so the teaching while it was profound in some ways was not that all that influential in the end only professional scholars would be attracted to to read these works the uh he lectured in logic and philosophy at a number of franciscan schools and he wrote a summary of logic summa logicai summary of logic

Answer 101

in 1324 the pope called Ockham to avignon to answer charges of heresy against him Avignon was at the time the residents of the papacy we'll go into that more detail later but for about 70 years the popes reigned from avignon rather than rome and they went back to rome in the end well this boat called occam to rome to Avignon or rather in order to charge him with heresy there was however no formal condemnation pope john 22 did not like Ockham at all because Ockham was an outspoken critic of clerical wealth in the church he said not only franciscans but all members of the clerical establishment were to be serious about the vow of poverty for that is the only way people can truly imitate the example of christ jesus said foxes have holes birds of the year have nests but the son of man has no place to lay his head so that should be have settled the matter and all the clerical members of the church should be committed to poverty without hesitation that was not the case and objection number one was against the pope because the pope was living like a king the vatican was a very elaborate luxurious place all kinds of servants were there to do the pope's bidding and so that aroused the criticism of occham and the pope of course in response was more than a little bit annoyed

Answer 102

before any action could be taken against Ockham however he escaped from the papacy and went to the and accepted the hospitality of the holy roman emperor who at that time was ludwig of bavaria south germany logic of bavaria he too was an opponent of the pope he'd had political quarrels with the pope over various issues of that nature occam said that the time was coming when the church must have major reform now he didn't mean reforming the doctrine but he did mean reforming the church by eliminating corruption and abuse of which there was plenty

Answer 103

occam's prescription for achieving a reform was to convene a general counsel of the church and let that council take the control of a program for reform the popes however were very reluctant to do that and but he insisted that if the pope will not call a council the emperor has every right to do so because go back to the first general council where is that Nicea 325 AD 325. nicely who can mean that emperor constantine that's right pretty good and for a constant time and so there was a precedent and the bold critic of corruption occum called upon the church to recognize that and to follow that example if the pope will not convene a council

Answer 104

all right so that brings us now to the end of our look at the scholastic movement for a while and we'll move on to late medieval mysticism now one would think that scholarship and mysticism don't go very well together scholars are generally very thoughtful people they're often somewhat cold in their disposition and the contrary of that is mysticism which places a very heavy emphasis upon the emotional side of life and the emotional side of christianity mysticism has a very long history period and almost as long history within catholicism in fact it's still there every now and then somebody comes along claiming a revelation from god now that's the fundamental issue right there do christians of the post-biblical era do they or do they not enjoy special revelation directly from god well you get a variety of answers not only in catholic circles but in protestant circles as well i i can't tell you how many times i've dealt with people who said i was going to do this but the lord told me not to do it or he told me to do it as a case maybe and they claim to have impressions that come from god they don't usually claim that they have visions although sometimes they do remember the old evangelist oral roberts oral roberts claimed that he had a visitation from christ himself and christ told him sternly he should raise i think it was six million dollars to cover all the expenses of the medical school at oral roberts university and jesus threatened him said if you fail i'm going to kill you that doesn't reflect very well on jesus now does it doesn't make doesn't make him look very good at all and i think it makes oral roberts look a lot worse because there's a fundamental flaw in his understanding of revelation it's no coincidence i'd say that the book of the revelation is the last book of the canon and there's a threat there about tampering with the canon and people who claim to have special revelations are are doing that very thing thomas aquinas great philosopher that he was very profound thinker he too was a mystic you think of anybody he would not be one but he was and he said for example that he learned more from kneeling in front of a crucifix and gazing at the image of christ that he could ever learn from reading scholarly books and he wasn't alone in that either mysticism has had its advocates in every period of time one of the finest representatives of it i would say was bernard of clairvaux we talked about him and his -- before and he stands out as a person with strong mystical connections or inclinations this shows us that there are always so sensitive people for whom theology as a doctrinal formation is not satisfying it doesn't satisfy their emotional needs and so they go beyond scholarship and doctrinal study and look for some direct contact with god

Answer 105

for some reason nobody has ever been able to pinpoint germany became the site of a great outbreak of mystical fervor toward the end of the medieval age this was connected with a group called Die Gottesfreunde can you fathom what that would translate in english godfinders god finders god's friends god's friends that's yes very good thank you Die Gottesfreunde is german for we in english would say friends of god all right the friends of god had many advocates among the dominican friars and the areas of christian belief which interested them most were the doctrines of god angels the human soul the sacraments and the liturgy again god angels the soul of man sacraments and the liturgy there were thousands of people who aligned themselves with Die Gottesfreunde so it was not a small and inconsequential movement by any means

Answer 106

the most noted of elite mystical late medieval mystics was Meister Eckhart von Hockheim Master Eckhart von Hochheim he was a dominican friar who studied in paris now that was part good and proper for a dominican because the founder dominic was quite a scholar and he deliberately organized a band of scholars and so after dominic was gone his disciples continue that tradition that conflicts with the franciscans who were going against their founder when they dabbled in arcane philosophy eckhart was a very popular teacher and preacher but his doctrine was charged with heresy probably because he was very unguarded in his language he was imprecise in some things the way he expressed himself and so therefore some of his declarations in the eyes of many people had pantheistic elements in them and the church as a whole was opposed to pantheism for obvious reasons eckhart talked for example about a divine nucleus in the soul of man and at times he spoke as though he believed that the creation of the world was an emanation from god it was something a influence that came out from god and created the world and it's a small step from that to saying and god and the world are one and the same he emphasized the need to have god dwell within the human heart and union with god was probably the best way to summarize his teaching he was not like bernard of clervaux bernard was not greatly interested in dogma he accepted all the traditional dogmas without hesitation or complaint but he was not really attached to exploring them in deep detail

Answer 107

in the case of eckhart though his mysticism was not anchored to a biblical foundation i'll give you example going back to aquinas for a moment aquinas was very interested in the doctrine it's called the beatific vision or the vision beautiful the vision of perfect beauty what is perfect beauty who possesses perfect beauty well thomas had no hesitation it is god who is perfect beauty he possesses perfect beauty and he alone human beings however who love god and serve him faithfully will one day be taken to heaven where they will see the beauty of god for the first time so there you see thomas was guarded he wasn't calling down visions from heaven on earth at the time instead he was pointing to the future but eckhart said it is possible for people who are deliberately holy and pious it is possible that they might see the vision of god on earth instead of waiting to get to heaven he didn't claim to have the experience but he said he thought it was possible well unguarded language uh that eckhart employed led to much criticism and many accusations of heresy pantheistic heresy when eckhart was accused of heresy there then erupted a heated dispute in the church between the dominican friars and the bishops of the church we call that the episcopal hierarchy the dominicans were very proud of eckhart who had served them well they said and and remember that eckhart for a while was a prior of a monastery of a dominican monastery and a professor of theology in a dominican school at cologne

Answer 108

because eckart taught in language which sounded pantheistic the archbishop of cologne who had been persecuting heretics vigorously initiated an investigation into eckhart's doctrine and when eckhart was summoned before the episcopal court he protested his innocence and he accused his critics of slander but his reputation suffered very badly eckhart died before his case could be decided but the order of preachers appealed to the pope where the episcopal court declared eckhart heretical john 22 in avignon confirmed the archbishop's verdict he said he had found 17 of eckhart's teachings were suspect of heresy 17. and the episcopate the bishops had triumphed over the benedictines or the the dominicans in that quarrel

Answer 109

eckhart taught that man unites with god through the practice of silence and that was not unusual among mystics they somehow think that if they can dismiss themselves or isolate themselves and go into full and total silence and just think that that would be something that would nourish their faith and perhaps could give them a picture of god eckhart like ockham denied that people could reason their way to god by finding evidence of his intentions in nature eckhart held it was possible to know god through spiritual experience without knowing him intellectually eckhart asserted that humans are nothing but god is everything this led to the charge of pantheism for it seemed to deny the doctrine of creation and the creator creature distinction which is fundamental to everything anybody can say about god

Answer 110

one effect of ockham's and occam and eckhart's remote rejection of tomism was to separate faith from reason and theology from science so the Gottesfreunde which gave rise to eckhart as the preeminent mystic in the movement

Answer 111

another very very prominent movement a remember of the movement was Johannes Tauler He too was a practicing mystic a practicing mystic he however did not create as much a sensation as eckhart had done Johannes Tauler his works were translated into german and they appeared in germany in the late 15th century and attracted a good bit of attention and while luther was a student at Erfurt he came across some of the writings of Tauler and he sometimes expressed appreciation for them he said at the very least that there were conspicuously evangelical elements in the teaching of Tauler he didn't endorse Tauler in total but nevertheless he did indicate that there was evangelical elements in Tauler Tauler was abused sometimes too for his views and he found it very difficult to get along with the hierarchy of the church Tauler did place a lot of emphasis upon scripture but a lot more emphasis upon the authority of emotional experience so he was a practicing mystic for sure then

Answer 112

in addition to those two men there were the Fraticelli well before we get to Fraticelli there's an anonymous little book entitled the german theology and this well illustrates the devotional fervor of some german mystics unfortunately nobody knows who wrote the german theology but it it was edited and published by martin luther in 1516. and luther was still a monk he had not yet broken with a church and he once said next to the bible and St. augustine this book has taught me more than any other now luther would take that back in a way later as luther had to deal with mystics in person and some of them were violent mystics who claimed that god had authorized them to slay the ungodly and luther would have none of that and so he became disenchanted with the mystics entirely and went the other direction to become an anti-mystic and so luther had no patience with people who were dabbling with god in the matter of emotion

Answer 113

all right then that brings us to the Fraticelli can see that language is not german what is it as the germans would say it's italianisch all right this were the movement of people in florence italy florence was a seat of renaissance learning that's a gross understatement it was a great there was a great place of renaissance so we're now in that area where the middle ages are seeming to fade and early modern history is taking its place with the renaissance in italy that would spread of course to other places but the renaissance was the spirit provided the spirit that motivated people through new forms of study new forms of art new forms of architecture in fact the term renaissance means rebirth and some of the advocates of and participants in the renaissance really regarded themselves as producing an entirely new world a world that was not tarnished and warped by the middle ages in fact they they really disliked the middle ages the renaissance scholars and artists often with contempt referring to the middle ages as the dark ages well they weren't entirely dark by any means but that prejudice attitude was very prominent during the renaissance

Answer 114

well another italian who made a contribution in the area of mysticism was catherine of sienna she was a lady without much formal education at all but when she was only seven years old she claimed to have a vision from god from christ and thereafter she said she would devote herself to christ no matter what happened or where she went in fact she said that christ had appeared to her and placed a wedding ring upon her finger problem was when people look at her finger they couldn't see any ring but that didn't seem to bother her she said the vision of the ring was reserved for her it was not intended for the public at and she she claimed to have visions of more than one occasion she was very much worried about the condition of italy the various italian principalities and republics and so forth often fought among themselves particularly fought for territory and in response to a one vision she put herself out or she represented herself as a woman god had chosen to promote peace between warring factions and she went to rome in order to do that

Answer 115

during the time when the papacy was divided between rome and avignon that was yet to come she supported the roman claims to the papacy not the ones of avignon she wrote a work entitled a dialogue of divine providence dialogue of divine providence this was very influential for a while and because of her visions and so forth people had a great deal of curiosity about her now she said that she was not prepared or qualified to expand the doctrines of the faith because she was uneducated and she was only semi-literate she dictated many of her writings to supportive scribes undeterred by complaints catherine preached very often and the roman church received her her word as divine truth at times she said she was performing exorcisms that is casting out demons so we can see that women as well as men played an important role in the mystical movement the order of preachers that's the dominican order was particularly supportive of catherine and she was sort of an adjunct member of it she didn't join the movement formally but she wore the garment of a dominican and she associated very closely with dominicans whenever she had the opportunity and

Answer 116

in addition to the so-called wedding ring she'd gotten from jesus she claimed also to possess the stigmata anybody know what the stigmata is this is a greek term bearing the marks of christ what is it bearing the marks of christ on the body yeah bearing the the marks of christ marks of of christ yeah when jesus was crucified the crown of thorns was put on his head his hands and feet were nailed to the cross a roman soldier incised his side and outrushed blood and water and of course this was a this was a common occurrence in sensitive sense that the romans borrowed the practice of crucifixion from the carthaginians of north africa and then it became the roman way of humiliating and intensifying the suffering of a criminal to make it unbearable and we bring about death well catherine was not ever crucified but she claimed that she had on her body the visible marks of her crucifixion the thorns on the head nails through the hands nails through the feet the incisions in the side and she she did actually invite people to see these these wounds these scars and several of them testified as in fact they had seen it now that raises an interesting question how did it happen i i can't believe that she nailed her own dances across although maybe she did i don't know the mind can do crazy things that it shouldn't do but uh in fact she she's not the only one in history who's had that experience the respect was not all that long ago in the first half of the 20th century there was an italian priest named pio padre pio pio he had the stigma and he too was willing to show it to people francis of assisi had it and he showed it to people and so it there’s no denying that these people did have some crazy experience that left the marks on their bodies i don't lose any sleep at night over that because i'm trusting in the finished work of what jesus did at calvary and what other people have done it might be in some way similar it does not really impress me that much but uh they they have the cert in the catholic church the stigmata still has its advocates it might not be at all surprised if somebody else appears with it are they claiming to have died and rose again or just simply to have the marks just have the marks all these people died because everybody has to burn in the catholic church that was it but the stories about them of course live on and there are people still are thrilled to read about it and the testimonials from other people have seen it are sometimes very persuasive of course in the case of catherine there no one was able to see the uh this the ring or the woods

Answer 117

but here's what i've survived she left behind 373 letters 26 prayers and a conversation between catherine and god

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well to summarize this look at mysticism mystics seek through contemplation to comprehend the truths of god which are beyond human understanding they desire revelation directly from god whereas christianity to the contrary posits belief in the object of revelation not the subject of revelation now in response to the holy spirit's operation then human beings will readily believe the bible and will abide by its teaching and that's of course what we are really obligated to do meditation upon revealed truths in scripture is quite wholesome but the quest from the knowledge of divine mysteries through contemplation that is not remember in deuteronomy 29 29 the secret things belong to the lord our god those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children so that even in that early part of the bible it's said emphatically that we are not to seek revelation apart from god's self-disclosure in the scripture sometimes extreme mystics seek to which to achieve identity with god uh this is not common in so-called christian circles it is common in some of the far eastern religions such as buddhism zen buddhism and other movements there but to seek absorption into god into the essence of god is of course to obliterate the creator creature distinction and the doctrine of creation is fundamental to everything else that christians believe and there be no doubt about that the contemplative of life some people say is essential for union with god and some mystics think that they have actually achieved that others claim to experience a stigmata as the fruit of contemplation and perhaps the mystical movement was a reaction to the cold starwell scholarship of our of theologians at that time

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let's take a look at this subject the year 800 is a very important year in the historical development of the church it was the year when the king of the franks charlemine by name or more properly Karl der Grose charles the great now in that year the pope put a crown upon the head of charlemine and it bestowed a title upon him he said i hail thee charlemagne emperor of the romans well that was must have been sound very strange at the time after all the empire in the west had collapsed centuries before that but now it looked like the public's declaring the roman empire was back in business this time with a christian emperor because charlemagne made a strong profession of christianity and so therefore the future looked very right because church and state would work together hand in glove each supporting the other in in accomplishing its duties charlemagne didn't live very long after becoming emperor of the romans though in 814 he died and when he died strong government began to disappear to crumble and disappear and in its place there developed a feudal pattern as we call it where there was no imperial state of any great significance any longer the crown was still there in fact it was gradually by the 11th century it became common to refer to that crown not as emperor of the romans but as holy roman emperor holy roman emperor and in the 18th century much later with the benefit of infallible hindsight the french social critic voltaire looked at the map in the 18th century and lo and behold what was right there in the middle of europe the holy roman empire he looked at it shrugged his shoulders and said there are about three things wrong with that it is not holy it is not roman and it is not an empire and voltaire was right on all accounts it was none of those things now instead

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the effort of reviving the roman empire failed and it failed for a number of reasons which we'll talk about here in just just a moment i want to show you what europe looked like during charlemine's era yep here we have it this is a good account then of just how extensive charlemine's empire was at the time the frankish empire preceded charlemine by oh several years and sherlock's kingdom then came became the basis for the so-called holy roman empire but there was never really a central government after the death of charlemont he seemed to have the whole structure glued together with the strength of his own personality and when he was gone from the scene everything began to fall apart and in very short order germany example split into hundreds i mean hundreds of independent principalities tiny villages a few large commercial cities not many and there is no single authority that ruled all of us any longer even the princes who claimed to be adherents to the concept of holy roman empire often were not nothing of the kind they were bent upon maintaining their own autonomy and they were not about to surrender anything to it to a so-called emperor there was no emperor and everybody seemed to know it so europe then germany and italy in particular were now to be divided into a huge number of states i did have sons and for a while it looked as though they would be able to take up where he left off but didn't work didn't work very well that way on the contrary the three sons quarreled among themselves repeatedly and heatedly and eventually they brought about a three-fold division of charlemagne's structure and so one was called the kingdom of lothar another the west frankish kingdom and the third the kingdom of italy but even at thirst terms king of the kings were not really in control they had to enter into alliances with so-called lesser noblemen dukes and counts and vi counts and you name it and as a consequence talking about political unity in europe was pretty much of a joke and foolishness it wasn't going to happen right and then that that threefold division would give give way to hundreds of little divisions thank

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dr roman yes would it have been fair to call it though maybe not holy but the roman empire while charlemagne was still alive or even in his time would you say an empire of course he was known roman reigns through and through but his territory still included rome at that point correct theoretically yes actually no okay yeah but in principle but not in practice there was something called a holy roman empire it appeared on all the maps of europe at the time but that could be misleading if somebody come on from another planet and look for the holy roman empire it would be hard to find. you really really would where was his headquarters or his charitable home yeah he had a palace at a place called isla chappelle as a chapel and that's where he lived most of the time and from which he operated it he conducted his operation politically and militarily he was a very strong militaristic leader never nonsense ruler took no money from anybody and gave out a lot of his note turned out thank you

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and the theoretical support between the holy roman emperor and the popes was theoretical in more ways than one the papacy at this time saved in the ninth century the first pope to research supremacy over all secular authority was nicholas the first 858-867 pope nicholas first claimed supremacy over all secular authority and he did not hesitate to interfere in the affairs of the kings for example lothar he lothar had a very unhappy marriage he wanted to get it annulled uh getting an annulment is not easy it was not easy then it's not easy now chur roman shorts make it very difficult and says categorically the church will never recognize divorce annulment yes since very few cases most of the cases where people filed for annulment they didn't get it if the pope had any moral courage at all and some of them did they would say no because you have no christian basis for ending your marriage and when left there tried to twist the pope's arm so to speak and force him to agree to an element the pope said absolutely no and he answered charlemine by declaring himself that the ruler independent ruler independent of papal interference so that's at least what he wanted to be the king had obtained the approval of two french archbishops for an annulment but nicholas deposed the archbishops and informed luther his marriage was still intact the pope based his action on the responsibility of the church for the moral welfare of all people and so if the king set a bad moral example it was up to the pope to rebuke him and if necessary according to theory the pope had the right to remove him to remove him and his kingdom from his kingdom and give it to somebody else that did happen on a couple of occasions but not often the success of the popes and asserting their authority usually depended upon the personal strength of the pope in question and the personal strength or weakness the case may be for the secular ruler with whom the pope was contending give you an example adrian ii became pope at age 67. he tried to impose a settlement in a territorial dispute between louis the german and charles the bald two german monarchs who really were not kings strict sensitive term more like dukes but anyhow the vote failed in his effort to impose a settlement and end their quarrel yet john the viii was able to crown the frankish emperor and to claim that the emperor ruled the crown and owed his crown to the pope alone late in the eighth century politics in italy became chaotic so the nobleman became arrogantly independent of the emperor and the papacy was very much involved in a wild chaos political conflict

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the popes of this era were for the most part unscrupulous and grossly immoral men pope john 12 was perhaps the worst pope of all time he came to the papal throne in 955 this pope became involved in a tangle with a german ruler otto the first often nicknamed otto the great he appealed to otto for protection against rebellious italian nobleman now since otto had ambitions to extend his authority into italy he responded to the pope's request and sent military forces into italy to support the pope's program and in 962 otto was crowned holy roman emperor by this pope john john 12. the relationship between john and otto that did not remain cordial the pope ordered the emperor merely as a protector for the papal territory now the papal territory was located right in the middle of italy it went from shore to shore about perhaps 35% of italian geography was a personal property of the pope and it's valuable land mineral deposits there were quite valuable and so the pope had a lot of territory there to protect and he often needed outside help so he turned to the so-called holy roman emperor and and begged otto and otto went into germany supported the pope declaring himself protector of the papal states but otto his return for his aid wanted to get control over the church in germany in particular he wanted the german bishops to be subject to him not to the pope but to otto otto himself when john rebelled at this he was driven from rome and deposed by otto the next two popes otto himself selected they were hand-picked stooges selected by the german king who had the title holy roman emperor when eventually john 12 died while in office he died because he was engaged in the act of adultery with the wife of one of his father's mistresses he had been accused of sacrilege adultery violation of widows living with his father's mistress and the invocation of the pagan gods jupiter and venus and as seemed to summarize it all up by saying that john 12 was turning the papal palace into a brothel the mother of john 12 was notoriously immoral herself and her son followed his mother's bad example i asked a clarifying question i just i don't mean to interrupt but i got a little confused i thought you said that otto had deposed john the 12th yeah but he died in office well he died in bed okay this was after he was deposed no oh well yeah i i think it was that after he's legally deposed but he's still claiming to be public would he wouldn't recognize the deposition no okay and he was caught in the act of adultery and one of the henchmen of otto killed this pope and of course it was good riddance because he was such a wicked pope

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anyhow with the death of otto italy reverted to civil worst civil turmoil sylvester ii became the first french pope in 1999 he was a very scholarly man and a better quality pope than most of his predecessors in 1014 henry ii became holy roman emperor and he expressed a desire to improve the condition of the church while exercising careful supervision over church affairs himself so henry ii then was very intrusive as far as the papacy was concerned this initiated another time of scandalous debauchery in the papal office and all appearances were by this time in history in the 10th century the church was rotten at the core and desperately in need of reform reform was going to be forthcoming now we say reform okay don't think about luther and calvin they wanted to reform in doctrine not so these medieval reformers they wanted to cleanse the church of abuses and corruption but leave the doctrine untouched and when reform began in earnest the leader was a monk named hildebrand hildebrand himself became pope gregory 7 in 1073 but while he was still a a monk reformer he worked to eliminate some of the most obvious and outstanding features of corruption and they were for example simony what was simondy accepting money for religious acts i'm sorry i can't hear you accepting money uh in order to do religious favors yes selling church offices which had lucrative incomes attached to them and so it was a financial swindle from start to finish and hildebrand had the courage to denounce that as sin he also denounced clerical concubinage priests were not to marry but they could have concubines and a large number of them did he work to eliminate that as well and he wanted to eliminate the interference of the civil authority in the affairs of the church he thought the best way to accomplish these ends was to establish papal authority as it has completely independent of all secular control and in fact as completely superior to all secular control this led to an all-out struggle to break the power and authority by which the german emperors had wielded in the church for so long rome then entered into an alliance with a viking tribe the normans now if you go to france today on the western coast of france there's a region known as normandy it was the site of a massive allied invasion against the nazis in world war ii well the normans at that time were descendants of vikings would come down from scandinavia and settled along the french coastline their leader was robert giesgaard and robert giesgaard became recognized in feudal terms as a duke of normandy the norm is under robert giesgaard tried to offset the power of the german emperors at the same time hildebrand's agents stirred up resentment against the clergy who had gotten their offices by simony or or had been keeping concubines or both when

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hildebrand became pope 1073 he fearlessly engaged in conflict with the next holy roman emperor henry iv this was called the investiture controversy when a man was installed as a bishop in the catholic church of the middle ages it was a formal ceremony called investiture he was invested with the authority of a bishop entitled to wear the costumes of a bishop and to issue proclamations which the lower clergy must obey now hildebrand then found himself and they engaged in a very bitter controversy with henry iv and this pope concluded that henry iv was completely out of line and he excommunicated him for disobeying papal authority and to put buttress the validity of his action this pope referred to the doctrine of the keys now the word is key is plural it's a biblical word you know where it is [Music] matthew 16 that's right very good yeah matthew 16. jesus was engaged with his disciples he said whom do men say that i the son of amen and the response was well some say you're elijah some say you're jeremiah some say you're john the baptist numbers public opinion was in a hopeless state of confusion nobody got it right except peter peter said you are the christ the son of the living god and jesus was delighted with peter's answer and he said i say to you you are peter and upon this rock i will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it so that was the lord's answer to the situation as it developed well then later in the middle ages because the concept of the keys was the argument was that the keys were plural one key unlocked the gates of the church and the other the gates of the state but who held the keys the pope yet peter's successor petrine succession is the concept there and so as key holder of the case the pokemon was supreme in temporal affairs as well as religious ones and since the pope is responsible for the souls of all mankind he claimed the right to pass moral judgment on everybody including kings thus gregory vii banned lay investiture and threatened henry with excommunication if he disobeyed and he did henry refused to obey the papal demand and the practical state of war between king and emperor erupted right there and the bishops in the in the most cases lined up in support of the german monarch not the pope they had more to gain in material ways from the emperor than they did from the pope and so they put their money where their their mouths were their money was he would put it that way and they lined up in support of the king rather than the pope and the bishops not only supported the king they took aggressive or assertive action against the pope here's what they did they composed a letter now if you were going to write a letter to the pope and you wanted to he really wanted him to read it you wouldn't address them by something minor term or some uncomplimentary one you should i'll be trying to think figure out the most august title you could find that might get us attention well they didn't do it they dressed their letter to brother hildebrand and they denounced allegiance to hildebrand saying he was no longer pumped and henry in his argument with the pope decided what was good for the bishops was good for him too he'd sent a love letter to rome and he did and here it is henry king not through usurpation but through the holy ordination of god to hildebrand at present not pope but false monk that stings the closing paragraph of the letter is this one i henry king by the grace of god do you say unto thee together with all our bishops descend descend to be damned throughout the ages so gregory replied to this at this business by excommunicating the archbishop of mainz who was the chief author of the bishops letter and then excommuting henry and not only excommunicated for the church but declared he was no longer a valid king he was being deposed by papal action this led to open rebellion in germany with the bishops supporting the emperor and most of the nobles supporting the pope papal agents spread hostility against henry throughout germany and finally the nobles threatened that he promised henry unless he came to terms with gregory henry then realized that he better not press this matter much farther or he's liable to lose everything and with the nobility ganging up against the king the king was suitably concerned and decided however embarrassing it will be i must come to terms with the pope and he did well he uh he heard that the pope was traveling toward germany and he was going to confront henry face to face and he was going to announce to the whole world he had he was deposing henry as king and emperor well henry decided he'd head him off at the gulch well the ghost wasn't far away what would he do he heard that the pope was in the mount alps mountains traveling towards germany and he stopped briefly at a castle the castle of canasa belonged to a female noble lady forget her name offhand but now he uh he henry learned that the pope was at canasa and was i was going to continue his journey into germany and deposed henry henry decided he had him off of the gulch he went to ganasan henry went to konasana stood out the gates outside the gates of the castle pleading with the pope to come out and forgive him and the pope had him where he really wanted him and he said let the old boy cool his tables he did the heels got real cool it was winter and it began to snow and there was henry standing barefoot in the snow dressed in sackcloth and ashes pleading for the pope's forgiveness well the pope was a priest and one of his priestly responsibilities was always to extend forgiveness to penitent sinners and my word who could be more penitent than this barefoot and ashes flee in the snow pleading forgiveness wow who could who could deny forgiveness to him so the pope did his duty granted him remission and the pope went back to rome this the zone only had interviewed into drama though church and state were not reconciled yet and there were several more clashes before this pope died in 1085. henry had humiliated himself but he had saved his position and was able to remain in office without the interference much coming from rome the normans that i mentioned a moment ago were had landed in italy as allies to the pope but they misbehaved while they were there the pope's grievances got worse because the normans began plundering italy including the papal states they were going to be there as allies of the pope but they decided it would be more fun to plunder and that's what they did now the main significance of this controversy was that the papacy by interfering in the politics of germany helped to set back the cause of national unification a compromise on church and state was achieved later in 1122 it's called the Concordat of Worms same Warms where martin luther made his stand here a bit later and this brought a cooling of tempers i guess you'd say the concorde provided that church officials would select and invest the bishops at abbots because the king was to be present at the election and he was to invest them with their lands and symbols of their office

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all right we're gonna look at england today then this is another serious collision between church and state and it occurred especially during the pontificate of pope alexander iii in the 12th century at that time that alexander iii was pope henry ii was king of england and henry ii was one of the most able intelligent and ambitious kings in english history and he he found himself involved in a quarrel with the papacy and with some of the hierarchs in the english catholic church but not many of them and in 1164 the king issued a what today we call an executive i think somebody in washington is very fond of that right now issuing executive orders well that's what the king was doing his intention was to transform england completely from any semblance of feudalism into the character of a completely autonomous nation state and to do that he would have to bring the hierarchy of the catholic church into the jurisdiction of the civil government now england never had an absolute monarchy the english people were very jealous to preserve their rights and even when powerful kings were on the scene the uh and he was particularly concerned that the hierarchy of the catholic church in england be subject to the same law as everybody else because there are really two systems of courts and therefore two pathways at least in principle two pathways to justice one for the laity and the other for the clergy and the clergy had the privilege of exemption from civil law and that had been the case for a long time not only in england but on the continent of europe too back as far as emperor constantine when he declared himself a christian christian he made it known that he wanted the clergy to be obedient to the state and he had conflicts with the papacy at times but in england the heritage there was one of libertarian thinking and the idea was that everybody should be subject to the same law civil law so bishops and monks for example were not to be exempt and as long as they were exempt they prevented the formation of a truly modern nation state well henry issued a executive order known as the Constitutions of Clarendon clarendon to the city in england and he issued the constitutions of clarendon when he was there and this was to put the clergy all of them under civil jurisdiction henry had earlier appointed a archbishop of canterbury the archbishop of canterbury for a long time enjoyed the distinction of being the highest ranking catholic churchman in the land and the man that henry appointed to that position was Thomas a Becket thomas a beckett thomas a beckett was a norman by birth and remember as he cited the last time that the normans had settled along the coastline of france and the normans had viking ancestry now the vikings were raw pagans but by the time the normans began appearing in england many of them had converted to christianity at least in some understanding of that term i wouldn’t venture to guess how many were sincere or how many were looking for political advantage but the constitution specified that the church would have no civil authority the clergy could not go to rome without the king's permission and the church could not impose excommunication without royal approval as the conflict became severe beckett found himself at odds with the king very much so even though the king had and appointed beckett as archbishop beckett sided with the papacy in the matter of church state relations beckett came from a merchant family and was related to people in the lower ranking french nobility his father and he did not have a close relationship but his relationship with his mother was very close indeed she was a very chaste and devout believer and thomas followed her example but it's but while he displayed these virtues of piety and devotion and strict morality these virtues were matched by vanity and a great deal of ambition because his family suffered financial misfortunes thomas was placed in the service of an archbishop while he was yet in his childhood period this training grew to be quite valuable and enabled him to rise in the ranks of the clergy and at that time come to the attention of the king henry ii so henry regarded thomas as a dear friend who who is likely to support the monarchy but much to the kings dismay thomas did just the opposite he did not support the king at all but he supported the papacy when he became a bishop beckett hair cloth now this is a little hard to understand i guess but by this time in history there was a belief that it acquired some popularity it was simply this that to cultivate the health of the soul it was sometimes necessary to punish the body and one way to punish the body was to wear a hair shirt underneath his normal garments hair's shirt was very very rough it rubbed the skin raw and they somehow had a weird idea that by punishing the body that way he they could cultivate the health of the soul and that was the perspective of thomas a mecca as well in addition to that even when he was a bishop he watched the feet of four people in public and he gave lavish sums of money to charity but at the same time he lived in a palace with all the splendors of a bishop's uh office on occasion he amazed the monks of canterbury with the severity of his self-denial he was a vigorous advocate for the reform of the papacy and in this period he was quite eager to aid the papacy in taking the leadership of all the bishops in the church and and so doing further the independence of the church from the state so without the king's knowledge some of the king's friends decided to come to his rescue he was publicly embarrassed and privately very very dismayed that his friend thomas had turned on him the way he did and so the king was outraged by this and on occasion he was gathered together with some of his double men and he said something to this effect will nobody rid me of this pestiferous priest the pastiferous priest of course was thomas beckett well nobody rid me of him well his so-called friends decided they'd do exactly that they went down to canterbury crept into the cathedral there where thomas was kneeling in prayer whipped out their swords and spilled his brains right there on the floor of the cathedral when the king learned about that he was grief-stricken he never intended this that to happen he was just frustrated inventing his frustration when he said well nobody rid me of this pesticide priest but he was now heartbroken because of what has happened he disavowed the whole matter but he would he rather courageously accepted responsibility for the murder and to do to atone for his sin he stripped himself bare to the waist went down the canterbury monastery the monks lined up on two sides he walked between them as they lacerated his back with whips so he was very sincere in his love for uh for beckett but uh he could not undo the damage of course was that a common uh castigation was it what the whipping was that a common i don't know how common it was but it it went on and it still does where he asked some of our filipino students to describe good friday on in the philippine islands oh yeah it involves actual crucifixion well that i'm familiar with i meant in terms of as a act of penance or whatever for yeah for the monks to do that you know it was it was not unusual for monks to do it okay yeah it's amongst were sincere about their profession they would let no opportunity pass but they wanted to suffer somehow supplementing the suffering of christ so the big problem as we can see clearly is that they had an inadequate understanding of the atonement the sufficiency of what christ did at calvary needs no supplement right and to assume that he could a person could win the favor of god by whipping himself is quite outrageously wrong and people suffer needlessly for that reason and that does go over to the philippine islands tonight it used to go on quite a lot in colombia as well i haven't heard any reports of it lately it's it's fairly popular at least in various forms in the southwest and around the small villages in new mexico and arizona how about that picture that makes me shake with discontent all right anyhow becca then was a sincere monk in every regard and he wanted to preserve the authority of the papacy but about the friends of the king murdered him brutally he was buried at canterbury and it became a that the site of his burial became a pilgrim site and a very early and very now famous type of english literature tells the story of canterbury tales you know who that was jose justin jeffrey chauceria jeffrey chaucer and it's 1172 the pope went a step beyond that and declared thomas a beckett a saint canonized as a saint and that was a stinging rebuke to henry ii so henry's desire to create an independent nation state with the church some some in subjection to the state that failed otherwise he might have succeeded and been the founder of modern england but he was not

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now the high water mark of papal prestige and power occurred in in the 12th century when innocent third was the pope without a doubt every historian who has studied this matter concludes that innocent third was the greatest pope of all time he was completely committed to cleansing the church of wicked corruption he was a fearless enemy of corruption and he wanted to improve the administration of the church and he was a man of deep mystical piety he had studied law at bologna in italy and study theology at paris he came from our old roman family the conti family c-o-n-t-i the Conti family that name is still in use in italy today and and he he was made a cardinal by his uncle who was pope clement iii innocent third wide family name was lothar l-o-t-h-a-r-l-o-t-h-a-r he became pope innocent third at age 37 which was really quite young at his consecration as pope and bishop of rome he expressed his belief in these words the pope is unquote below god but beyond man less than god but more than man who shall judge all and be judged by no one now there is a clear unequivocal assertion of autocratic thinking this book meant business he justified his claims to temporal supremacy by citing the episode when pope leo iii crowned charlemine as emperor of the romans the pope stood there with a crown on constant time was on his knees on christmas day in the year 800 and the pope placed the crown upon the head of charlemine and said i hail thee emperor of the romans now as far as we could tell that was not something that the two two had arranged between them on the contrary the emperor as you would now be called was very much taken by surprise and if he had his choice he would not have ever submitted to that ceremony but he was caught without any defense without creating a tragedy or about creating a scandal in the church so rather than do that constantine accepted the crown and out of that came the custom of referring to the imperial crown as the holy roman emperor holy roman emperor but remember as voltaire would say in the 18th century there are three things wrong with that it is not holy it is not robin it is not an empire otherwise it's fine well innocent remove the imperial court from he announced that the court in constantinople that was the eastern empire emperor imperial court that that authority was not to extend anywhere into western europe because he the pope would be supreme in western europe and in principle he would be supreme in the east too but he couldn't get the eastern emperor and the eastern bishops to go along so that was hanging in the wind you might say he did not achieve that did that start at constantine like when he says the west is it west of constantinople or was there a different boundary line uh the the influence of the eastern empire was it went up and we came and we came down okay there is no pointing to a specific boundary and saying you cross this line you're out of the no it's not that way because the quarrels over land continued and depended who won the quarrel who would have the land okay all right so when innocent became pope he had to struggle to make his position secure especially in the city of rome where he had many political opponents likewise the pope had much difficulty establishing his rule over that section of italy which we customarily called it this the papal states it actually the original term was the uh the patrimony of saint peter the theory in theory peter was the first vote every other vote there's an unbroken line of succession from peter and so innocent was especially determined to secure his position because he knew that even in the papal states heretics were active even the qathar heretics that you've read about in the presentable yeah and he was very much concerned about that like any italian prince this book waged war to achieve his ends he was the first pope to claim the title vicar of christ vicar of christ on earth before that the typical way to identify a pope was vicar of saint peter but innocent went a step beyond that and declared himself vicar of christ he was the first pope to use extensive force to suppress non-conformity and belief and so his own particularly for his animosity toward the cathars and he was the pope who authorized a crusade against the cathars in southern france when philip augustus was king of france from 1179 to 1223 his actual title was philip ii augustus he had a marital problem he was very unhappy with his wife and he therefore wanted to quote to agree to dissolve the marriage keep in mind in roman catholic teaching there could be no divorce divorce is out of the question but somebody could find a factor that illegitimized the marriage to begin with then that might lead to an annulment and so that's what the king of france expected to get after all he was a very powerful king france was the most powerful state on the continent of europe and the king was known to be a catholic and so for that reason why not grant him the the annulment the pope however didn't see it that way and when augustus tried to end the marriage himself the king compelled him to relent he did that by placing france under interdict now what's interdict do you sort of excommunicate a whole country that's it it's a excommunication would refer normally to one person but a whole nation could be suspended from the church and keep this in mind that by this time in history people in europe as a whole had an institutional view of salvation they were fond of quoting something from the great saint augustine of hippo outside the catholic church is no salvation now when he said that he didn't necessarily mean the papal church he meant the catholic church the universal church but little by little the papacy made good use of that concept and imposed it emphatically upon the people of europe and this case the pope was acting like the moral conscience of christendom and he engaged the kings of both england and france in severe controversy and he triumphed over both of them innocent was a very skillful church administrator and he very shrewdly played politics in germany and italy so as to assure himself that the imperial crown would not collapse into the hands of people opposed to the papal program king john ruled from 1199-1216 he's the one who became famous for the robin hood tales king john it reminds me of an incident i experienced one time i was leading a study group through england and we got to a place called runaway and as we passed through runaway the bus driver said look over there to the left see that big oak drink that's where king john surrendered to his parents and somebody said well when did that happen and the guide said in 12 15 oh we just missed him by an hour that actually did happen i was witness to that all right so the pope was never there was never the breadth of scandal on his administration he was a completely sincere very able and very determined pope and he hated the concept of corruption in the church or the monasteries and he lashed out against it and he intervened whenever necessary to further his program and on one occasion when he was arguing with king john it was over an appointment to the archbishop of canterbury and john was so angry with the pope he said if the pope didn't leave him alone he was going to set fire to canterbury monastery with the monks inside the lesson there folks don't make a bluff don't laugh unless you're you're really convinced you have the power to do it the pope did not he was made to look very foolish the king survived in that regard he did place england under interdict and there was some suspension of the services but the next vote went beyond that when it looked like since the king was not coming to terms the next pope called for a crusade against england and lo and behold who looked like he was eager to join such a crusade the king of france philip augustus philip ii augustus he didn't actually join the crusade there actually was no crusade but the threat was there just the same john then backed down in in his deal joining for the pope but he did so not because of anything the pope did but his own barons his own noblemen told him he had to get peaceful relations with the with the pope or they would take the matter into their own hands and so john backed down in the face of pressure from his own nobleman with great humiliation king john surrendered to the pope he said he's delivered the whole country to the pope as a feudal thief so that the king of england and now be humiliated into a position where he no longer had even theoretical authorities over his own kingdom and innocent then he gave the king the kingdom back to john only with strict uh limitations john was now to become the pope's vassal and for a king of england to sink that low must have been a huge embarrassment

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the most enduring monument of innocence influence though was a general counsel of the church which convened in 1215. this is the fourth lateran council the lateran palace is a papal property in rome and that's where the meeting was going to occur and the pope threatened severe penalties for bishops who did not attend the council 412 bishops did so 800 monastic abbots did so and and some of the latin patriarchs of the east likewise could concur no not as the greek patriarchs participated in any way because by this time they were ready to renounce the pope anyhow one of the noteworthy personalities present at this conference was the now famous saint dominic the founder of the order of preachers we'll talk more about him at a later time Lateran four made the first official use of the term trans transubstantiation what's that mean transubstantiation the substance of the brand wine turns into uh flesh and blood that's it good yeah it means that when the priest consecrates bread and wine in the holy sacrifice of the mass at that point the bread and wine become and here's the official language body blood soul and divinity of christ body blood soul and divinity of christ innocent himself was something of a theologian he wrote a book about transubstantiation the sacramentaris mysteria concerning the mystery of the sacred altar the declaration of the council says that the bread becomes christ's body the wine becomes his blood even though the appearances of bread and wine are still there they look like bread and wine they taste like red and wine they smell like red and wine but they're not red wine any longer they become the body and blood of christ later catholicism declared that either or both of the species used in the sacrament contained the full body and blood and for a long time the roman church did not allow the laban to receive the sacramental wine they received just the bread but the teaching was expanded to say the bread contains both the provision the bread is both the body and the blood of christ many of the canons of latter at four were intended to curb abuses in the church and here are some the one of the cannons issued at the fourth laddering council strictly forbade the clergy from engaging in duels can you imagine well for more exciting presbytery they were not to act as surgeons apparently some have been doing that as well rits of excommunication were no longer to be removed for money there would no longer be any sale of relics and the practice of usury was to be left to people who who everybody else despised i'm talking about the jews the jews at the time were hated by catholics in general and the church authorities in particular looked upon the jews with scorn after all they were the people who crucified jesus they can't be worth anything there's nothing good that they can contribute well what could they do could they be useful yes they could be useful let them become money lenders ah money lenders they did in fact they became very good money lenders and they enriched themselves in the process because they charged substantial rates of interest from the money they loaned aha and the practice of usury then was to be left to the jews but no jew or pagan should hold authority over professing christians so the council then and for all of the other things it did the fourth lateran council put a stamp of approval upon ruthless anti-semitism when the innocent died in 1218 papal prestige and power began to decline with a slow decline of course but there was no pope of innocence caliber ready to serve the church and even if there had been it's not likely he would have succeeded because political conditions political conditions change drastically as the effects of the crusades made themselves felt we'll talk about the crusades in detail at later time by about the year 1300 feudalism was beginning to wane in western europe and the process of growth toward nationhood was rapidly gaining strength in france england portugal and spain so some very fundamental changes have taken place

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the next noteworthy pope was Boniface the viii Boniface VIII ruled from 1298-1303 he's the one who excommunicated the king of france who replied by accusing the pope of heresy and the king of france said that the pope should be placed on trial for heresy well what was his harmony could a pope be be guilty of heresy the king said yes and i can prove it well go ahead your majesty prove it and he did he said i heard this pope say he would rather be a dog than a frenchman now everybody knows dogs don't have immortal souls and so the pope denied immortality by referring to his preference for a dog wow seems hideous but they probably couldn't have any any perception that people in the 21st century would be doing this laughing about their foolishness well Boniface became pope in a time of great confusion he followed a predecessor who may have had the shortest papacy in history there's one other real short one too but this was celestine the fifth Celestine the fifth became pope against his wishes the the papacy was vacant the cardinals had gathered to elect a pope and they could not agree they kept they kept coming up with a thai vote and so somebody said well there is a monk who lives like a hermit he lives as a hermit and he's very very popular among some people he's known for his great devotion to the church so let's make him our next boat and so they sent their agents to the cave where this guy was living and told him that he should be delighted now for they were there to invite him to become pope he said no he said i had no ability to leave the church he was happy with his life as a hermit and please leave me alone but the cardinals in rome decided they were not thinking no for an answer they sent some people down there and grabbed the poor guy dragged him out of his hermitage and took him to rome and installed him as pope he reigned from august to december in 1294 that's all about four months august to december he had become a benedictine mok when he was 17 years old and sometime thereafter was ordained as a priest he was known to be extreme in his ascetic behavior he loved john the baptist and said john the baptist was his marvel of a true christian this pope wore a hair shirt and he wore iron chains around his waist his disciples were numerous and by the time he died there were 36 monasteries at various points in europe calling themselves celestini celestini in other words monastic houses loyal to selestein the pope after some contentious debates about the cardinals they settled on making this man their pope there were only 12 cardinals at the time 10 were italian two were french and they hailed the election as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and the immediate reign of the holy spirit was now at hand god was going to do miraculous things with this very devout hermit on the papal throne problem was when he got seated on the throne he didn't have the faintest idea what to do he was totally out of his element he was a simple-minded monk that's all he wanted to be and so he tried to to be a vote for a while he made some appointments for example but sometimes he appointed two or three people in the same office and that of course caused mammoth confusion he issued orders very recklessly he created seven french cardinals and five neapolitan cardinals but the church was now in serious disorder the pope was unable to to understand his role correctly and the king of naples who had vigorously supported the election of Celestine then began manipulating him and the pope lived in naples not in rome you may know that there's no law in the roman church that requires the papacy to reside in rome he could reside elsewhere and not totally long ago there was such an effort after world war ii at the overthrow of mussolini's dictatorship at that point the uh at that point the papacy was up for grabs you might say the communist party in italy had come out of world war ii very strong in the common the communists patrons patriots i guess you'd say uh war against the the uh republican ratio that came out of the war and the pope was so frightened by the turmoil in italy he began packing his banks to leave he said he was going to move to the most catholic country in europe where would that have been 1945 say 1950. ireland where ireland ireland that would be a logical choice i would think but it wasn't the one but the ireland was certainly very staunchly catholic it's not anymore but it was that no it was in quebec which also was a highly second secular culture today but it in that period in the late early 1950s it was the most catholic country in europe in the judgment of the pope pope there was pope pius xii well in 1296 celestine died by that time he had become a prisoner of one of the most ambitious cardinals Celestine’s family name was peter moroney m-u-r-r-o-n-a peter moroney and he appeared on the scene at a time when self-appointed prophets were promising the coming of a highly spiritual pope who would cleanse the church of all corruption the cardinal who wanted to deal with this and imprisoned Celestine was his name was Taetani t -a-e-t-a-n-i but uh he became the next pope by having Celestine brutally murdered well he wasn't really murdered he's allowed to starve to death that's that's brutal or nothing he was allowed to starve to death he was an old man when he died and he was a prisoner of his successor in 1313 the pope clement v canonized Celestine as a saint so he's now saint silverstein purely because he was pope or for any particular reason i'm sorry where is that done he was canonized purely because he was a pope and killed or was there most of us were never categorized as the reason himself was just completely out of his element

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the next pope issued a executive order entitled oonam sanctum one holy the custom in roman catholicism is when a pope issues an official document it's always in latin which is the international language of the church and usually thereafter the document will be known as the first two or three words in the text ludum suggest one holy there is one holy and apostolic church that was the claim and the church therefore was to receive people leadership and people protection as it had in previous centuries philip forth was king of france 1294 another bottom festival 90 bottom fast was 1294. and monifast was very much opposed to any competition of course coming from any clergyman whatever he banned the practice of of the clergy he banned the idea of making cardinals stooges who would favor political factions each each cardinal seemed to have a tendency to do that boniface threatened to excommunicate any layman who collected taxes from a current cleric the clergy were to be tax-exempt as they had been back as far as a time of constant time so that should be in order and that's what the pope insisted because the papacy was reaping huge sums of revenue in the form of tithes and various specified contributions artifacts finally was taken prisoner are the kings asians the king of france philip forth philip forth incidentally had a nickname he was known as phil the fair but be careful how he used the term “fair” he was handsome that's what it meant he was fair to look at he was not a nice guy he was a brutal brutal man and willing to duel to the death with anybody who stood in his way and that included popes and so philip's agents seized Boniface VIII and he died from the effects of maltreatment they received he received at their hands so this chaos then was really something to witness and the church appeared to be crumbling because of it

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so philip's agents seized Boniface VIII and he died from the effects of maltreatment they received he received at their hands so this chaos then was really something to witness and the church appeared to be crumbling because of it Innocent III had saved the church temporarily his leadership was quite effective and some people thought it was inspiring some people were willing to attribute prophetic inspiration to innocent but after innocent was gone everything he accomplished began to fall apart in 1377 1377 one of the pope's gregory 11th by name decided to exercise his prerogative and move the papacy out of rome and move it to avignon avignon was a papal property on the border of france not in french territory specifically but very very close it was an ideal place for the french king where he could meddle in church affairs almost at will and he often did so parallel with the decline in the power of the papacy there is a moral degeneration which caused disgust with the clergy and so weakened the church's appeal to secular powers the moral and political decline converged and they met their lowest point where the king of france phillip forth hand-picked clement fifth to be the pope otherwise he ignored the cardinals chose the pope he wanted and put him in office and this uh was now to be the beginning of a situation in which the papacy would govern the church from avignon but not from rome and it is often called the babylonian captivity of the church it lasted about 70 years like the biblical babylonian captivity so it's common to refer to it as the babylonian captivity of the church the pope moved to avignon and the papacy remained there from 1305 to 1376. and during that period of about 70 years all the popes were frenchmen all of them were thoroughly nominated by the french kings philip forth even perverted the inquisition into an instrument of state he had borrowed huge sums of money from a former crusading order called the knights templars the night step large had spent some time in the east fighting against the turks but that proved to be not unproductive and they left and went back to europe but they took with them a great deal of plunder and with that blunder they could enrich themselves and then become money lenders to people who needed revenue and nobody needed revenue as much as the pope the popes were living like kings acting like kings spending like kings and so clement v as pope was a stooge for the king of france philip iv the papal court at Avignon was soon notorious for its corruption and while the popes were there people lands in italy were being overrun by italian noblemans it's amazing if of all the nationalities we might think that the italians would be the most steadfastly loyal catholics of them all the familiarity breeds contempt here's a good example of it here [Music] the irish for example in the quebecois we were much more devout and loyal to the church Avignon employed mercenary soldiers to recover lost italian lands and to pay the troops papal taxes were levied on churches in germany england and france this uh tax really reached extortionate proportions and led to corruption which brought in a lot of money but degraded the papacy in the process eventually it got to the point where some people began predicting that the church was going to crumble because of its own inner corruption

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and one of those who was making such a claim was a mystical nun named catherine of siena siena is in italy as you know and catherine was a very very committed very devout catholic she engaged in a lot of self-denial asceticism she was a good example of one who thought that she could improve the health of her soul by punishing her body and catherine claimed to have visions from god and in one such vision god told her to go to the pope in avignon and tell him to leave avignon and move back to rome and the pope realized how serious his position had become he was nothing but a stooge for the kings of france and so he agreed to take the papacy back to italy which he did he was decidedly anti-french and when french cardinals went home they said that this man whose name was urban urban six urban six was an illegitimate pope he had moved back to rome by his own decision he should should have accepted the direction of his king next the papal court avid young had to be dismissed had to be dissolved and for a long time the animosity between rome and avignon would continue even to the point of splitting the papacy until there were two rival popes and then eventually three so there was a traditional site was wrong avedon was the second site and then pisa in italy was a third we'll get to look at the details a bit later all of europe was now beginning to sex science in this quarrel where is the true pope is he a drum or avid young or pisa well while this was going on the germans the french the spaniards the scots the apollonis and sicilians all these people had to make a choice which pope was they going to support well some of them were so disgusted they weren't ready to support anybody but most of them did choose sides so europe was cracking down the middle you might say with the roman fraction on one side the avenue and section on the other and then later a third fraction in pisa this drastically reduced the popular confidence in the pregnancy which was already low so healing this great system as it was called was no easy matter when it became clear that the division was serious and liable to ruin the church and completion uh completely this uh led the theologians at the university of paris to deal with the two pumps they should resign and and allow for the election of a third the two pumps involved and roman avignon both refused to resign and they excommunicated the theologians for making such a proposal so nevertheless there were broad public support for ending the scandal in 1409 when benedict third was put by the victor john benedict 13th and xiii was spoken about and gregory 12 in rome both colleges of cardinals realized that they had to do something to settle this matter and so they met under the protection of the french king and they met in pisa and in pisa the cardinals they were convinced for the need of reform and both of the popes denounced the council and they refused to attend however hundreds of cardinals bishops and theologians did attend and the council declared both bombs were deposed and excommunicated and they elected alexander v as the new pope he too was going to have a very short pontificate 1409 to 14 10. this really compounded the problem because where previously there were two papal competitors now there were three Rome Avignon and Pisa this wicked the acceptance of the council's decision however there was precedent for the emperor calling a council now remember go all the way back to the council of nicaea 325. that council met at whose summons constantine yes godson died himself that's right yeah and so he did not even invite the bishop of rome to attend he allowed the bishop of rome to send a delegation of representatives but not not the mission himself and so constantine presumed that he was the highest authority over the church and he insisted that the church resolve its theological quarrel which dealt with the uh with the divinity of christ and the trinity so the council of pisa had been called by cardinals there was no precedent for such a summons and this weakened the council's appeal however there was precedent for an emperor calling the council and the holy roman emperor at this time was sigismund of bohemia sigismund of bohemia brought his prestige to bear and he insisted on a general counsel of the church to be and resolve the problem he persuaded pope john 23rd who had just succeeded alexander v as pope and rome spoke at the peace and line rather so when the council of conscience met it did so at the joint summits of a pope and eight and emperor both of whom were attended in person john 23 didn't want any part of this he tried to escape when the imperial asians caught him brought him back and forced him to attend the council session of pisa benedict xiii was obsolete he was not going to let anybody deprive him of his papacy and to the day that he died he insisted he was the only true pope his residence then was in spain spanish delegates and constance however repeated him and he was deposed martin fifth was installed as a new pope and this isn't ended nonsense today was a was a very important gathering it superseded visa account self-conscious called by sigismund was now going to govern and reform the church and when it disbanded there was general agreement that a leader of council would meet and take up the matter of specific reforms this led to bitter controversy over the question of whether the final authority would be that of a pope or a council it would be that of a probe after all but that's the story we'll see for next time

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now that we were talking last time about the church and state conflicts and the conflicts within the church itself over the role of the papacy we saw how that for some time the catholic church of the middle ages had to endure something that later scholars called the babylonian captivity of the church well a point of time it did coincide with the biblical about melodious captivity it's approximately the same length 70 years it was a time when the papacy was not in rome but he had moved to avignon which was a maple property and keep in mind there's no papal law no catholic law that requires the papacy to stay in rome you could move tomorrow and move to timbuktu i don't think it will but it could ruin almost any place the pope wanted to go and during that time was a long string of folks who were very very subservient to the french kings and so the research state collisions at the time but they were collisions that were involved because the king dominated the popes and so the pope's university i would call stooges to the king of france that caused a great deal of resentment in other countries particularly in italy where the papacy had been for so long been there for hundreds of years and there were people who claimed that the only legitimate home for the papacy was in rome i repeat that's not so but they chose to believe that and they complained about it on that basis and no sooner did the babylonian captivity end and there was another scandal and this one was what we call the great schism the great division a great separation and here was a problem where the one pope we took to took the papacy back to rome died soon after he arrived there and upon his death and the cardinals had the responsibility of choosing the next pope and they were not happy with the choices they they made they were at loggerheads with each other on that and once again it was the french cardinals against the roman cardinals in particular finally the resolution of the great schism was accomplished by the holy roman emperor sigismund of bohemia sigison of bohemia intervened in this struggle and demanded that the folks agree a general counsel should re resolve the problem by that time there were three popes one in rome one in avignon and one in pisa and there was a council of a church in pisa which had made a herculean effort to restore unity in the papacy but was not successful and the situation went from bad to worse so there instead of two contestants there were three each one came to be the only valid pope and each of the three excommunicated the other two and put yourself in a situation there you're a loyal roman catholic you've been taught to believe that outside the catholic church is no salvation and now the question arises where was the catholic church well the catholic church was the church under the authority of the pope okay which pope i said the situation got very very confusing and to loyal catholics almost terrifying because if they were not following the real pope then they as a consequence were cutting themselves off from the way of salvation and they surely didn't want to do that sigismund realized the problem and he ordered that the church hold another general counsel this one to meet in switzerland at constance in the swiss alps just to the north of italy and the council of constance then was to deal with the issue of reuniting the church and did in fact accomplish that the spanish delegates at constance were particularly angry that the romans and the peasants were so bullheaded and obstinate when it came to resolving the problem but eventually martin fifth became the new pope duly installed and the great schism ended it ended during that time during the while the council was in session there was a lot of arguing about the issue and how to proceed with reuniting the church one of the popes at the time of the contestants for the papacy was john 23rd he was the peasant pope and he was kept under guard by the emperor while the council went ahead and healed decision by electing martin fifth john later submitted to martin and was allowed to remain a cardinal until his death he was a cardinal and a bishop bishop of florence in italy and he finally came to terms with reality and surrendered his claims to the papacy constance was the last time that non-cardinals participated in choosing a pope last time non-cardinals participated in choosing a pope pump the council of constance asserted its supreme authority and here you can see another issue coming to the fore even if the papacy is restored to singularity even if that's the case what about the papacy and the general council if a general council healed decision and elected the new pope then the general counsel seemed to be superior to the pope no pope wanted to agree to that but that seemed to be the case and the council itself while it was still in session issued some decrees one was called sacrosancta sacrosancta sacred and holy and in this document the pope declared that the council declared rather that the pope must obey conciliary decrees particularly relating to the healing of the great schism and when constance elected martin V six of the delegates from each nation joined with the cardinals to make the choice so it wasn't just the cardinals alone but six delegates from each catholic nation participated and that was the last time other people other than cardinals participated in the election of the pope

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well at the council of constance even after the great schism was resolved the council of conscience had to deal with a matter of heresy as well this was the heresy that arose in bohemia bohemia is just to the east of germany today it's part of the czech republic it was part of the czechoslovakian republic earlier than that but after the fall of the communist regime it became just the czech republic and bohemia is a component state of the czech republic and the heresy that originated there in bohemia had to deal with the teaching of a theologian from the university of prague proud being the premier university in bohemia and this theologian's name was john huss huss is a czech name it means goose so he was john goose in our language but john huss now at the time that uh huss appeared on the scene bohemia had experienced a great deal of anti-papal resentment the council of constance declared jan huss a heretic and eventually he was burned at the stake the emperor ordered john huss to appear at the council of constance to answer charges made against him he appeared he appeared because the emperor had given him assurance that he would have safe conduct to and from the meeting that he had nothing to fear he would be given full opportunity to defend his own position but when huss got there he was very quickly arrested and put into prison and detained there in the company of john 23rd the pope or the so-called pope who had been taken prisoner earlier and so here is a situation then where the emperor had given his promise safe conduct for huss to and from the council he ignored that promise and did not give Hus any real arrangement that would allow him to defend himself sufficiently instead he was declared a heretic and burned at the stake now what does that do that intensified the animosity in the situation now not just a animosity against competing popes but against the emperor as well so church and state were in a terrible situation a situation of great disunity and animosity there are many uprisings in bohemia and soon this grew into an outright revolt fighting against the church of the emperor to meet these crises which were crises to church and state another council of the church came into being now go back to constance for a moment sancro sancta was one canon issued by that council another one is entitled frequence f-r-e-q-u-e-n-s that's our word frequently and the council of constance insisted it was entitled to reconvene at any time when the situation in the church required it the popes who did survive the council were absolutely enraged against that idea and they agitate it more and more and as a consequence under the terms of frequency the account the emperor called another council this was the council of basel in switzerland and it met under the terms of frequence frequency was the assertion that the church and the papacy and the church and the council have a right to meet frequently whenever a crisis arises so that the catholic church then was not to be governed as a monarchy where the pope is practically the king no he was being governed in a republican manner where there would be representation from various offices and levels of the church and that council could convene at any time in fact when constance ended its work it did not actually adjourn instead it suspended further operations until such time as the need would require a resumption and basel then was really a resumption of the council of constance situation was nothing better than chaotic

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when it came time to the uh to fight over these issues the imperial forces went into battle in bohemia and other places where the hussite doctrine had spread it spread into germany italy and uh and bohemia and the hussite forces were defeated in battle but the hussite religion could not be stamped out and once the church tacitly agreed to tolerate the hussites in bohemia that made it possible for their outside to choose would they return to the catholic church which was willing to make concessions or would they stay out of the catholic church and become an independent movement well some chose one some chose the other now this is interesting that the catholic church through the papacy especially seem to be conciliating the the parties involved to give you an example huss had a friend named jerome you recall him jerome of prague jerome had been to england he studied at oxford university at a time when the teachings of john wycliffe were still very much in discussion he was not there anymore he was he had died by that time he died of natural death but but now the papacy agreed that the bohemian people bohemian catholics could have permission to conduct church services in the bohemian tongue the czech language up until that time the the compulsion was latin latin is the official language of the papal church everybody must be prepared to worship in the latin language well that of course meant that most people who even who did obey that victim were completely at a loss to know what was going on they couldn't read or speak a word or two of latin and so it was all very confusing religion therefore had become what i call a spectator sport spectator sport and instead of being involved in the actual performance of worship the congregations stood there or sat there looking at the priest watching what he did and trying to respond as best they could pathetic picture really because the church now was willing to grant the checks the bohemians the right to language of their own for worship and beyond that huss was very concerned about an outstanding scandal in the church and he and his fellow hussites as we call them were very much concerned about the condition of the church and the sale of indulgences now we think of martin luther when we say indulgences his 95 theses which he nailed on the castle door in wittenberg 1517 was the year for that but he wasn't the first one to complain about indulgences and huss like luther later did not attempt to overthrow the practice of indulgence luther at first for example thought that he could correct the abuses connecting with the sale the sale was what made it a scandal people thought they were buying tickets to heaven in fact luther was confronted by a catholic emissary coming from rome to rebuke him and luther made it clear that he had not denied the validity of indulgences but he had denied the validity of selling them for that gave people the impression they could buy tickets to heaven which of course is sure nonsense but the council of basel now council of basel was willing to reduce the amount of traffic in the sale of indulgences without removing the practice of indulgences themselves and later the sale of indulgences did remain now we talk about that what is an indulgence who can tell us go ahead essentially uh the ability to release someone from purgatory yes or they at least reduce the time a person might have to spend in purgatory that's right but initially when the concept of indulgences made its debut really wasn't much to do with purgatory it was uh dealing with penalties the earthly church had imposed on earthly people if a person for example committed some scandalous abuse it brought discredit upon the church at large the george might respond by placing this person in suspension from his duties or his privileges and might have to pay a substantial fine even for doing such outrageous things but eventually it did become as you say a way of inducing where somebody would hope that might eliminating purgatory altogether did the practice begin it didn't begin with the crusades it started much earlier than that right much earlier than that yeah in fact uh there was just little glimmers of it right in the new testament yeah not in that word indulgence but church discipline there was passages in the new testament which called for the discipline of arabic church members and so allowing the person to escape that penalty by taking a lesser substitute that could have been called an indulgence and so the council did its work and huss was executed in the flames very cruel very very brave refused to compromise and put his life on the line and lost it

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council of Basel remained in session even after the military defeat of the hussites even though it had no clear program to follow but while it was still in session an urgent plea came from constantinople now if we go back to the year 1054 for a moment and i'll explain why 1054 was the climax of a long series of controversies between the papal church of the west and the imperial church of the east excuse me [Music] the church of the east is well done was a subservient to the imperial government the bishops were selected by the emperor not by the pope and so the church in constantinople took its orders really from the pope uh or from the emperor not from the pope and while the council was still in session a detective a appeal came from constantinople for help but the problem was that the turks were overrunning imperial territory and sometimes were threatening to conquer the city of constantinople itself and the appeal was for help please send military forces to the east to save your christian brothers and sisters whose lives are in jeopardy because of the turks in order to comply positively with that request the papal church said it would have to have a promise from the bishops of the eastern church that they would accept the latin creed and not the greek creed and this of course required theological discussions the greeks agreed to hold the discussions and the council for that explicit purpose convened in florence 1438 but the oddity is the council in florence met at the same time while the original council was still sitting in basel and now there was tension between councils you have been the church and state before now it was councils of the church the pope approved of the meeting in florence and the delegates said basel became very angry and they for a moment anyhow elected another pope this meant that there were two rival councils in session each one condemning the other as a consequence the whole principle of conciliar government and authority came into disrepute florence did reach an agreement with the greeks for the moment but it and it looked like there's going to be a healing of the east and the west because the greek and latin churches would come together and form a union that however did not happen in fact some of the bishops of the greek church said they would rather submit to the turks than to the pope some of them are so bold as to say the pope is antichrist and will have nothing to do with him so they forfeited any hope then of long-term aid coming from the west so the whole principle of conciliarism was coming into this repute when the greeks returned home from the meeting in florence their bishops really repudiated the whole agreement with the latins anyhow

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so the cause of the church reform was lagging far behind the need that's for certain the emperor tried to implement a union with east and west but his opposition prevented the publication of the florentine decrees for a long time some greeks said they reprefer to submit to the rule of islam rather than the popes tensions leading to the schism of 10 54 extended backward into ancient times and they reflect the contest between popes and emperors theological disputes such as iconoclasm remember that one the role of images in worship theological disputes such as iconoclasm caused a great deal of tension and then there was the question of the text of the nicene creed now the nicene creed which we use today is really more than just the original nicene creed it's an on-scene-constant apollon creed so there were some major additions to the creed in the in the format we have it today we use here in the west by 1054 the patriarch of god santa noble and the pope in rome became openly critical of each other and the pope's ambassador was a cardinal named humbert humbert of silva candida humber of silver candida discussions between him and the church leaders in constantinople failed and humbert insisted on papal supremacy he demanded that the byzantines submit to the latin cannons and in july of 15 or 10 40. cardinal humber marched into the big famous church of hagia sophia hagia safiya means holy wisdom and when he marched in there he took with him a writ or a bull of excommunication excommunicating the patriarch of constantinople not only did he excommunicate the archbishop and patriarch but anybody who supported them the greeks refused to submit to any such authority from rome and when the pope called for a crusade at 1095 he helped to regain papal jurisdiction over the green church you see the military situation for the eastern capital of constantinople poor and getting worse with every day and by by 1095 once again it looked like the situation was hopeless the only thing that could save the city they said was a mammoth military operation coming from the west to save the east which proves that in the long run that too wasn't going to work because there was such an intervention in fact there were several of them collectively we call them the crusades the councils had become very bold in their demands to share papacy supremacy with the papacy and even in the west there were outspoken leaders who denounced the whole practice of papal supremacy in anything but religious affairs but the popes had become secular rulers rulers over territory in italy and they continued to be so for some time

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there was a fifth letter in council you can call it that convenient 1512 it condemned the conciliar theory of church government outright and rejected appeals for a representative type of government or put in other words simple words should the catholic church be a monarchy or republic should it be a monarchy or the pope is absolute king or should it be a republic where all the bishops of the church meet together in council and they decide things by majority vote so should the church then be monarchy or should it be a republic well the catholic church in spite of all these problems did survive and it does not it survived in part because it had a very well organized internal structure when it was her name is really the only well-organized such government any place in europe let's take a look at that church that is operating in the middle high middle ages first of all there was a bureaucracy and it was an extensive bureaucracy composed of certain officials one official was known as the chancellery well the chancellor actually was a bureaucratic agency and its responsibility was to copy and publish papal documents then there was the camera and this handled finances very important and that the penitentiary administered discipline for offenses and arranged dispensations from canada law and uh standing over and above all the features of the papal bureaucracy was the supreme court the supreme court was known as rota rota and the rota could overturn and overrule any of the other agencies if they got out of line in the 14th century the church expanded its authority and it talked there was talk about the power of reservation the power of reservation this pertained to the papacy's right to reserve to itself rights usually held by the church on the local level now i'll give you an example a church office was known as a benefice and there are all kinds of church offices the bishops were members of that body and the papacy to reserve to itself usually held power is held by local level churches it could now be taken by the pope and even sold for itself his own prophet he could issue provisions of a of benefits creating a new church office he could collect a substantial sum of money for the honor and privilege a document of provision would be sold to a designated person when the office became vacant and so sometimes we now we don't have clear evidence of this sometimes the office became vacant through violence that is that a very ambitious person wanted that office and the income the office would provide and therefore arrange for the murder of the current occupant that actually did happen [Music] by about 1350 most of the offices had been filled by local election but they they had lost that control and the pope appointed himself as that effect to make the determination bishops were in principle still often elected by kings but what it really means is they were nominated by kings and then the nomination sent to rome for approval or disapproval so the pope did have the final say but who filled a particular office and then another scandalous corruption in the church was the practice of pluralism plurality pluralism and pluralism meant that a man of great ambition might be able to hold two or three or more church offices concurrently and each would have a substantial amount of revenue to to be received and so a person might be a bishop of one diocese archbishop of another diocese or some other official or a lower level but in every case then the possession of numerous offices concurrently was made to order for financial corruption and so that shows you how the church was urgently in need of reform but instead of reform getting more deeply involved in corruption then to raise finances the church collected fees from every office holder in the church and all the church clergymen common priests on the parish level right up through march missions all of them were to be tithers to pay the tithe and the scythe was collected from the clergy and it was it was the clergyman had to pay one tenth of his debt income from every office he held so this was for the enrichment of the pope no doubt about it then there were annual fees fees paid by bishops to rome they were called headaches because of the latin term autumn which means a year and so they were payments that every bishop owed to the pope and then sometimes when the papal revenues were getting slim and the pump was in urgent need of more money he would appeal directly for a gift he would send oh i get a letter of appeal to the clergy and all over the catholic world asking for a donor dona which is our word donation and so da donut a gift that the clergy voted to send to rome and sometimes the refuge the request for a donut was something the popes they were unable to collect there was a refusal this was that was the local churches that requested it to the central church yes the papacy in other words sent an appeal to every diocese of the church or in some cases to every parish in the church asking for financial help to to meet this current crisis but really it was just the stuff the the uh the cash register i guess i'd say with the money for the pope church state uh controversies and political nature continued well all of this was going on inside the church when the popes were in avignon they taxed the regional churches very heavily and they tolerated no failures to pay in 1328 john 22 excommunicated 30 bishops and 46 monastic habits why did he excommunicate them because they had defaulted on paying the taxes the pope said where is jew the avid young popes lived in a palatial splendor exceeding even the style of kings so we can see as we're moving toward the cure of the protestant reformation that there was more than substantial reason to indict the church for abuses and corruptions and this led to the publication of scholarly material from well-known and highly respected theologians in the church theologians and even some canon lawyers in one case a very noteworthy layman these were the good the critics of the pope's temporal power they were not calling for the elimination of the papacy but they were calling for a correction of the abuses and corruptions which had given the papacy such a bad reputation

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now look at me on your syllabus for my page nine at the top critics of temporal power papal temporal power now in the roman church to the present day there are officers who hold the title canon lawyers canon is a papal declaration or a declaration of a church council the canon lawyers are specialists in that vast body of legislation we know as canon law and canon lawyers in the middle ages sometimes argued that the advocates of the conciliar government were completely out of order because the pope possesses here's the term plantatudo protesta which in english is fullness of power the pope holds the fullness of power and therefore the pope is supreme in temporal affairs as well as in religious ones the critics of the papacy included people who were very disgusted with the obvious corruption among them there was an offshoot of the franciscan order of friars calling itself spiritual franciscans they they claimed that they had they were following the spirit of saint francis who was anything but a corrupt church leader just the opposite he made reverse great poverty the great virtue of the christian life and he urged kevoks and kings and others to honor that and just follow that example in 1322 pope john 22 declared that the spiritual franciscans were seriously in error and the next year he decreed that they were heretics there were three professors at the university of paris each of whom came under the indictment of heresy for claiming her complaining about the corruption of the church these three were Marsilio of Padua and William of Ockham and Jean of Chandon that's john g e a n in french chandona c-h-a-n-d-o-n or j-a-n-d-u-n either way now all three of these men put themselves in great danger when they exposed corruption and complained about it at paris the member of paris was the premier of all catholic universities and so to denounce the papal program at paris was to put one's self in great danger all three of these men realized they were in danger it says they fled from paris they went to the court of the holy roman emperor where they wrote in favor of the imperial supremacy and against the papal supremacy Marsilio wrote a book entitled defensor apocas defensor pockets means defender of the peace defender of the peace Marsilio as his name shows us was italian by birth he came from the city of padua and panama had a university of its own it was duly famous for the teaching of law both civil law and canon law and it issued a degree lld if i just don't once in a while see that at that degree lld one l stands for civil law the second stands for church law or canon law and then d means doctor so a person would be a doctor or teacher of civil law and candid law and some would specialize between those two his native city had experienced a great deal of turmoil because of papal interference in local italian affairs he agreed with the famous literary author dante that the political papacy political activity of the papacy was a curse to italy Marsilio agreed that the political sovereignty should resist with the people who delegated to the state now stop right there for a minute whenever you see a person holding political authority or seeking political authority and he promises to do something for the people stop him right there and demand a definition which people they never meet everybody they mean themselves and their own people who support their own interests that's what they mean well Marsilio believes that the peacekeeping role of the state is all important god created the civil government to keep the peace and to punish evil doers so the state then is opposed to papal authority that's imposing itself against the state Marsilio attacked the idea that the church is the body of the clergy no the church is not the body of the clergy the laity are part and parcel of the church alongside the clergy all genuine christians as they would understand the term all genuine christians compose the church and ecclesiastical sovereignty lies with the body of the church working together through a general council so here you have an articulate and rather renowned scholar defending the conciliar theory of church government the church should not be a monarchy but should be a republic and be separate from the state and supportive of the state at times the general counsel would it would deal with the correct interpretation of scripture and Marsilio said that the papacy is only a human agency it therefore has only earthly functions and is not an arm of god necessarily Marsilio saw the clergy as exercising only spiritual influence and that never by compulsion keep in mind since the reign of innocent third the application of compulsion and spiritual matters has become very common he says that the clergy must not impose penalties only the secular power may impose penalties so he would have deprived the church of the right of excommunication and interdict this was a radical proposal the church would lose its authority to excommunicate individual offenders and would lose its authority to play place interdict against the whole community

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second to Marsilio of padua was william of occam weave of occam was known far and wide as a philosopher theologian with the emphasis upon philosophy more than theology occam ii wrote against papal supremacy in earthly affairs or heavenly affairs he wrote a work entitled eight questions on authority he wrote eight questions on authority that he had great a great appeal to fellow intellectuals since he was a philosopher theologian occam was critical of the other scholastic theologians of the time he said they were making too many concessions to the rationalism which they derived from their study of aristotle the scholastics created a synthesis of theology and aristotelian logic occam held that reason is not competent to prove or disprove the truths of revelation that faith alone enables a person to understand divine revelation he stressed the incomprehensibility of god no no human creature you know a creature of any kind can have a comprehensive knowledge of god the only one who can possess such knowledge is god himself and his creatures will have as much information as god discloses to them and no more Ockham taught philosophy at oxford university for a while his followers were said to compose what was called the via moderna in philosophy the modern way the problem of how to deal with a pope who became heretical was discussed by many evil candid lawyers one of them was gration or gratianas in latin from the university of bologna in italy another university celebrated for the teaching of law and rationa's migration compiled a collection of documents and put them forward as the foundation for canada law in other words he codified candidate law it was a rather helpful skeletal arrangement before he created a systematic uh reversion of cannon law and the issue arose then among such people about who could impose a pope if a pope became heretical well ratiana said that if a book does in fact become heretical he therefore really condemns himself he cannot be a true catholic and therefore cannot be a valid pope Ockham concluded that a heretical pope if he is truly heretical that ipso facto and by law divine as well as human the pope is deposed you can see how heated these discussions must have been Ockham awarded the right to judge the pope to other bishops or even to the emperor hockham wrote this a heretical pope is not superior to any bishop because eddie heretic is inferior to any catholic occam's position represented the thinking of only a minority within the church and a minority within the franciscan movement another franciscan movement itself was divided there were the ordinary franciscans who had deviated far and wide from the teaching of francis and there were the spiritual franciscans who tried to make a serious effort to to revive and maintain the teaching of francis were these [were these guys considered spiritual franciscans then yes these theologians yeah they supported they were actually members of the spiritual transit schedule yes yes within the roman catholic church how do they account for the possibility of like a heretical pope or a [Music] an immoral pope when they believe that the pope is the you know spiritual successor of peter who has the ability to speak infallibly yes today there's not much argument about that the reason is that in 1870 as vatican council number one in response to the pope’s request the council issued and declared the infallibility of the book now that doesn't mean the poke can pick the kentucky derby or whether or not it doesn't mean that he's infallible when as the chief pastor of all christians he teaches on the subject of faith or morality which is interesting in itself because the current pope has said some very generous things about homosexuals and there are people in the roman church who regard this pope as a heretic because there's not enough of them they don't hold the right positions of influence to implement anything about that but uh in those days today we're talking about in the late middle ages the uh the Ockhamist like it's been called Ockham and his disciples said that the cardinals could depose a heretical pope since the pope was heretic he was no longer republic in fact not even any longer a catholic saudis so i guess they were trying to say well no we've maintained the churches like the magisterium's integrity because the cardinals still have the authority of peter because the pope made them bishops like i did keep keep in mind that in this era of time the atmosphere was electric with controversy about these issues and the papacy was trying to defend its traditional position in the face of loud complaints about the corruption for which the folks were responsible in fact they participated in the corruption so uh i don't doubt that that advocates of each side issued their own art i would argue this back and forth but the corrupt conditions of the papacy is really undeniable and but since the decree for infallibility had not yet occurred it would not occur for years such centuries that uh that being the case it wasn't so embarrassing to argue this way you know his foul little boat became a hurricane what's the irresistible conclusion he was not infallible yeah did vatican one uh kind of like posthumously say that all of the previous popes were also infallible are only hey from now from 1860 or whatever now all the folks are infallible as i remember you know i haven't dealt with this subject for years but as i remember from previous study that vatican one did pretty well ignored the past and just said that the pope is infallible and people can draw from that an extension of the idea back into history or forward into the future yeah but keep this in mind too that the concept or the power of papal infallibility the folks have rarely rarely ever used but i can't think when the last time it was it wasn't it was a long time ago [Music] but they still have the right to invoke infallibility but today the invocation of infallibility would probably create a storm a protest inside the church because the character of the roman church has become progressively more liberal and this folk who is a franciscan who knows he's a jesuit he's a jesuit the jesuits in the days of the promise of reformation were the arch enemies of the protestants and they were organized in a military fashion for war to the death of protestant heresy] okay well occam's position then represented only a minority within the church and a widow at a minority within the franciscan movement he denied that any level of hierarchy in the church was infallible arkham did not recognize the general counsel as infallible either he appears to have been leaning toward the right of private judgment and so he was not a consistent supporter of the conciliar movement but he was a consistent critic of temporal power for the papacy

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now that brings us to dante alighieri you probably wouldn't think of him as a theologian but in a sense he was - not a professional theologian but he did there was a less dabble in theology you know him as the author of what the defiant commentator the divine comedy what was so funny about the divine comedies nothing happened no laughing matter well there are three component parts in the divine comedy you know what they are inferno you got it yeah so heaven and purgatory and when he wrote that he was well informed about the corrupt condition of the papacy and the outrageous claims the popes were making and so he did not hesitate when he described purgatorio as a place where many previous popes are languishing in flames right now because they were so evil and he even said that the people for example who uh who persecuted john hus and people of his character that those folks were rightfully in inferno they were in hell where they belonged to be so he exonerated huss of heresy at the same time condemned the pope the emperor and a pope and anybody else who had declared us a uh hurricane [was dante ever declared heretical by the church yes there were many accusations of heresy but he had support from the holy roman because emperor holy roman emperor was outraged by the claims of the papacy i don't know that he was formally excommunicated [Music] uh he he wrote the divine comedy in such a way as to make it very interesting reading and he wrote beautifully the magnificent literary author but he could always claim if if the inquisition came after him for example he could always say well oh you misunderstand me i don't mean that literally this is the divine comedy this is for your entertainment oh yeah that's just kidding [Laughter] that's what yiddish people would call khutzba that is means unmitigated goal i didn't mean it just kidding wrote this to entertain you

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okay what else do we have here i might say something to about another critic of the papacy who suffered with the loss of his life and this was uh Savanarola was a dominican friar he was a staunch believer in supernatural revelation continuing well after biblical times in fact he thought he had received prophetic inspiration and it was empowered to perform miracles he lived in florence for some time and he while he was in florence he was overly critical of corrupt preachers priests bishops and so forth and he thought that lorenzo de medici was the ruling dictator of florence at the time famous domenici family the wealthiest family in the world at the time we had a system of international banks from here to everywhere was really where i'm sorry you know i said he had an international string of international banks that extended from here to everywhere but he was ruling in which country really what the medici in florence governed florence the vanishing dukes did not hold office officially they put stooges in their place but they held the strings behind the scenes and they pulled the strings and then whatever direction they wanted to go lorenzo de medici was particularly embarrassed for the teachings of Savanarola and he employed another friar to attack savanna rolla and to criticize him from a pulpit but that didn't fail it made it made him really more popular than ever people were applauding Savanarola when lorenzo divinity was gravely ill he did an amazing thing he asked Savanarola to visit his sick bed and when he did he asked Savanarola to hear his confession and dread him absolution savanna rolla refused he went he refused to restore or to do registers like exempt [Music] that's not to worry either Savanarola roller let me know how you walked out of i'm selling on joe biden [Music] i'm going to trip down the stairs thank god good elected president oh forgive me sometimes anymore it's hard for me to put words together anyhow he left the dictator dying and refused to grant him absolution his influence was very great in the year four year period from 1494 to 98 when the french armies of the north swoop down into italy and occupied the city-state of florence at this time the pope was one of the meanest most despicable and corrupt popes of all time alexander is sixth john 12th was just as bad and alexander sixth are not to be denied and uh after he actually communicated seven or older thinking that would silence him it did not it made him bolder than ever and he claimed that satan had inspired the the work of of the de Medicis Savanarola attacked alexander six and declared he was a false pope he had a lot of visions from time to time and they inflamed his zeal and he charmed his audiences by rehearsing that experience for them he saw no conflict between his visions and the authority of the bible he wrote this i preached the regeneration of the church taking the scriptures as my soul guide again i preach the veneration regeneration of the church taking the scriptures as my sole guide but he wasn't doing any such thing he certainly knew the scriptures knew that rather well but he he believed in personal extra biblical revelation that he is receiving and he regarded himself as a prophet a prophet who received revelation and then could convey that revelation to others he saw himself himself as a preacher and prophet and a writer he composed a book entitled manual of revelations manual of revelations then he wrote a second book a dialogue concerning truth and prophecy manual of revelations and a dialogue concerning truth and prophet prophecy in the days of the counter-reformation 16th century the roman church placed several of the books of Savanarola on the index of forbidden literature the by this time the franciscans has faded into the background they were still in attack but they no longer commanded the attention they once did but the jesuits did they were the new order and the jesuits were headhunters were for heretics in one sermon Savanarola reportedly had experienced a vision of paradise and angels took him on a tour of paradise and they stopped at the throne of the virgin mary and the virgin mary promised that florence would enjoy an era of great prosperity followed by a period of bitter sorrow alexander sixth accused Savanarola of being a false prophet in his manual of revelations Savanarola defended himself he cited the fulfillment of his predictions as evidence of the legitimacy of his of those predictions he was a man of great preaching ability that's for sure although his first efforts at preaching seemed to be failures he was unable to attract people to attendance he was about 25 years of age at the time and he was not yet in florence he was in brescia brescia and while he was in Brescia he began expounding on the apocalypse the book of the revelation and when that became public knowledge it excited a lot of interest and then large large numbers of people began to flock to his sermons and he told them about the evil in the church and the vices of the city of brescia and he said before going back to florence he said that the vices of the city were colossal and God was going to prepare a great punishment for peskia and then later for florence he was very powerful in indicting sin wherever he found it in fact he his whole outlook and career and his actions and this type of preaching bear a striking resemblance to john the baptist john wasn't afraid of man or beast and neither was this man he wanted to reform the city of florence in the matter of the old testament prophets he denounced evil and called people to repentance at times throngs of people as large as ten thousand ten thousand people gathered to hear him assail other clergymen and here is a statement that comes from the writing of Savanarola read it to you” in these days bishops and preachers are chained to the earth by the love of earthly things the cure of souls is no longer their concern they are content with the receipt of revenue the preachers preach to please the princes and are praised by them they have done worse they have not only destroyed the church of god they built up a new church after their own pattern go to rome and see in the mansions of the great bishops there is no concern for poetry and or rhetorical art for a dark concern except for poetry and oratorical art go there and see you shall find them all with the books of the humanities in their hands telling one another that they can guide men's souls by the teachings of virgil horace and cicero ancient pagan writers the province of former days had fewer gold miters and chalices and what few they had were broken up and given to relieve the needs of the poor but our bishops for the sake of obtaining chalices will rob the poor of their soul beings of support do you not know what i would tell you what do you what do you what you would do oh lord our lord rise come deliver thy church from the hands of devils in the hands of tyrants from the hands of iniquitous prelates and bishops” and he made an interesting prediction he said if the people of florence did not mend their ways that god was going to deal with them so forcefully that they might never recover from the blows and it seemed to me for a moment that that was going to happen because so the visionaries held the french king king of france as the second Charlemage Savanarola convinced most florentines that king charles of france was an instrument of god for the punishment of the wicked in florence Savanarola was a combination dominican domestic theologian and it was self-styled apocalyptus israel he was the most powerful preach creature of the late middle ages now there are a lot of featu`res in the writing of samuel rolla to which we could relate positively and gratefully his main error was claiming the gift of prophecy for himself which of course is almost always the beginning of sorrows but once that's people agree to that and the sky is the limit and people of unscrupulous character was very well very quickly you see an opportunity here to enrich themselves by making such claims but he was a very rigorously moral man very brave man didn't hesitate to expose himself to the loss of life and limb

Answer 143

all right we're going to make a comparative study of francis and dominic and therefore comparative study of the two religious orders from which they were the founders this takes us to the latter half of the 12th century when there occurred a decline in the relative influence of traditional monastic orders now the monastic orders go back to well well beyond this of course the in the latin church the roman church you want to call it in the latin church the most influential author producing a guidebook for monastic living was benedict of nursia so it became known as the rule of saint benedict and it was adopted and modified by numerous other religious movements and so each individual religious order had its own order organization its own discipline its own literature and its own objectives in the east and the greek church that was not the case there has never been more than one order of monks in the east and saint basil was the one who drafted the document that provided the official organization for eastern monasticism but anyhow we're going to give our attention to the west today to dominic and francis the the influence of the clergy and the influence of of the aristocracy in europe in the 12th century showed that there was a great deal of corruption in both church and state and

Answer 144

so there was an urgent need for reform and both the franciscans and dominicans committed themselves to seeking that type of reform the church seemed had failed in keeping pace with the growing population as a result there was inadequate pastoral care and in the cities as well as in the countryside the older monastic movements sought seclusion but these movements were in the public eye all the time trying to make helpful changes in the situation of a very weak and even hostile church [Music] there's a lot of resentment against the wealthy and worldly secular clergy and sometimes there were deviations into heresy as well but on the borders from borders of eastern europe where they sometimes made penetrating thrust to the west were the muslims the muslims constituted not just a religious challenge but a very dangerous situation because the muslims were bent upon conquest and so there's an ever-present military danger to the latin christian world but at the same time the coming of the muslims toward the west provided the latin church with an opportunity for missionary work which had not been theirs before and into this situation of christian discontent and muslim challenge stepped the last of the great monastic reform movements the friars the brothers as i call it now in contrast to the worldliness of the secular clergy the briar the friars set an example of poverty and piety if there was danger of heresy then the new monks were ready to meet it head-on stop defenders of catholic orthodoxy and they proposed to do so through public preaching preaching had fallen into much disuse in europe by this time as a rule the ordinary parish priest was not competent to preach he knew very little about the scriptures probably never had a complete copy of the bible in his possession and he had only those sections that the bishop would distribute from time to time telling the priest to preach on this text at a particular time liturgical calendar you might call it well by the 13th century a growing conviction was becoming evident in the west that there must be a better way to reach the muslims than by means of crusades and there had been several crusades to the east all of which were failures in the end and so now some people were getting wise and realizing that's not the way to win converts that's the way to make enemies and cause bloodshed and so now the two groups of friars were adamantly opposed to any form of compulsion and they were eager to start a concentrated effort to bring the muslims to the gospel as the church understood at the time so the task of defending the catholic religion against heresy and promoting its revival in europe as well as that of carrying it to those outside the christian christian circles the belief now fell to the new for orders of friars the franciscans and dominicans here's a quote from a commentator indeed the friars like the earlier orders were instituted to do a special work and not merely to save their own souls theirs it was to minister to the outcast seek to downtrodden and afflict it and in fact to supplement the work of the parish clergy so the purpose then was to correct a very unfortunate situation a time when the pastoral ministry of the ordinary clergy was terribly terribly inadequate and sometimes downright foolish and so these friars then propose to change the situation through the means of preaching

Answer 145

so we're going to now compare the lives and beliefs of dominic and francis first of all we'll look at the period of time prior to their own religious conversions and both of them did claim to have experienced a religious conversion in the case of francis that would be quite remarkable because his family was not at all religious but dominic was quite religious and so was his family at the outside set of this comparison there are clearly observable differences in the religious atmosphere of the home into which these men were born looking at dominic first although their father was a knight two oh and two older brothers were already preparing for the priesthood when dominic was born at seven years of age his parents sent him to live with an uncle the uncle was a priest a priest with a regular parish priest with a church very close to a famous uh famous shrine this is the shrine of santiago de compostela saint james santiago would be saint james saint james of copaczela and according to one author he was probably here at his uncle's fireside that dominic's missionary vocation was born this is where he first heard the cry o pagan millions who had never heard about god when he turned age 14 dominic enrolled at the university of valencia v-a-l-e-n-c-i-a university of valencia age 14. that seems like very very young for us today that wouldn't only be about the age of a of a uh elementary school graduate eighth grader but no in those days it was quite different and so while he was there he divided his time rather well between the life of prayer and devotion on one hand and the life of intense and extensive intense of the next steps of prayer on the other side dominic's ordination to the priesthood took place somewhere about the year 1195 years of discipline spiritual and intellectual preparation preceded his embarkation upon his public ministry

Answer 146

the early years of francis were very different indeed his family name was bernard doan b-e-r-n-a-r-d-o-n-e father's name was pietro the intro to bernardone the intro would be peter and his father was a highly successful merchant a man of considerable wealth such wealth that he could provide for himself and his family almost every comfort that money could buy at the time his biographers relate that francis was a vain young man given to flamboyant and whimsical ways that he had a fondness for the display of his talents and possessions and this appeared in an interesting way when francis decided to become a knight the life of a knight seemed to be glamorous and exciting and so he therefore i thought it would be a good vocation for him he had a strong desire to be a knight and to realize that desire he joined with a higher ranking nobleman the count gentilly or gentile when you say in the count gentilly who is fighting for the pope against the enemies of the pope in southern italy after he returned from the battle francis continued his carefree life of parties rebels and festivities throwing money about freely and constantly looking for new forms of entertainment not a religious man at all the picture which emerges from francis youth then is that of a com thoroughly worldly and highly uh materialistic young man and his father seemed to approve of his lifestyle he showed no fondness for intellectual pursuits at all but he was often quite generous particularly in helping the poor he seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for poor people and from his very ample allowance he sometimes distributed funds to those in great need but there was very little in the pre-conversion life of francis which would incline anybody to believe that he one day would adopt the religious life and become a monk it seemed to be completely out of the question

Answer 147

but then came the conversion experiences of dominic and francis bowden dominic's con conversion was hardly true it was not at all dramatic he it does not contain any elements of drama and he was already an ordained servant of the church when he received what he said was his call to the ministry to a special ministry and this call was not sudden it was not miraculous and was not altogether unusual his cause it was a gradual unfolding of god's will he thought in his own behalf so gradual acceptance of what he called his god-given vocation minus all the fanfare and drama that we usually often connect with the term call upon accompanying a bishop to to toulouse and france dominic observed firsthand the heresy that we know as the cathars otherwise the albigenseis he saw those people and understood their practices and was very disturbed so there it was that he decided he was going to launch himself on a career to become a staunchly catholic defender of the faith against the heresy of the cathars or any other heresies that he might encounter so he proceeded to organize the order of preachers and the order of creatures that has his first assignments to come that combat the heresies dominic's first dominic's vocational summons then was not in the nature of a dramatic visitation of a heavenly celebrity remember in the middle ages it was not terribly unusual for people to claim visions from the other world but there's none of that in the case of dominate he seems to have considered the recognition of his acute need within christendom and a burning personal conviction that he must do something to meet that need so he was ready to go ready to serve wherever he could what is evident about dominic's personality is religious training at home and his formal education it seems almost natural to find him assuming the role of defender of the catholic religion

Answer 148

francis of assisi on the other hand presents us with a very different picture since his background and developed mode of living were not those of a person who would ordinarily move toward adopting a religious vocation one may may look for a conversion experience in the life of francis much more dramatic than that of dominic and that's exactly what happened francis claimed he received a number of visions these apparitions began when francis fell very seriously ill and while he was on the sick bed he claims to have heard a voice which said to which he replied lord what do you wish me to do lord what do you wish me to do a second so-called visitation of the lord stopped him in his tracks he was engaged in one of his escapades into revelry with his friends doing a great deal of drinking for example but while he was on this in this escapade escapade he received he said a vision from the lord now other revelations occurred in the an old building which had once been the church of saint damian but had fallen into disrepair it was now in a ruined condition but for some reason francis was attracted to go there and meditate and that's what he did and this experience drove deeply into his mind a sense of personal obligation soon thereafter while he was attending catholic mass the words of jesus which he heard at the mass that day were these heal the sick cleanse the lepers raise the dead cast out devils provide these with gold nor silver nor brass in your purses nor script for your money for your journey these are two coats these are shoes dorian stains for the workman is worthy of his support matthew 10 8 8 through 10. so now he had come in contact with a personal experience with the word of god and he allowed it to have a powerful influence upon his thinking in contrast with dominic's was simply responding to what he perceives to be a great need francis had all i'd seen the need all around him for a long time and done very little to make any improvement in the situation it required the what he believed was an ecstatic and direct revelation from god from heaven and it's once he had that experience he then proceeded to embrace his vocation with great energy and commitment and his life thereafter was radically changed as we shall see now so

Answer 149

so far we looked at the things in which dominic and france is different now that doesn't mean however they had nothing in common in fact they did have a good deal in common and they were close personal friends as we'll see much and they have much in common both in the way of beliefs and practices and looking at a few incidents in the lives of these men will bring their similarities into focus while their differences will remain evident let's look for example now at the way in which they use the bible they were both lovers of holy scripture and most of them gave evidence of having a great deal of fondness for the works of the apostle paul especially the epistle to the romans but dominic urged his own disciples that whenever they traveled they should have a copy of the gospels and the the pauline epistles to take with them this would make them fit with armor for the warriors of god he said so that that's all they would need francis sue relied heavily upon the writings of paul especially the book of romans from which he quoted greek frequently it appears that romans provided an abundance of material for dominic the dogmatist with his zeal for theology and supplied adequate fuel for the fires of mysticism within francis so the two men adopted the religious life both were now loyal servants of the catholic church both of them were prepared to travel far and wide proclaiming their message but note this carefully dominic was a brilliant scholar and he organized his movement so that every member would have a academic contribution to make he wanted his his friars to be so well informed and educated that they could debate with their heretic at any time any place and come out the winners that was his objective francis was not that way francis didn't have any love for advanced learning at all in fact at times he seemed to be suspicious of advanced learning now today the franciscan movement is deeply involved in higher education the st john's university in new york city which is a major franciscan organization and there are many others as well in various parts of the country steubenville ohio has one there too anyhow the the dominicans would go on to establish themselves as university professors even during the lifetime of the founder dominic francis however wanted nothing like that and i suspect that francis came back from the grave and saw how many educational institutions are connected with his order he would be more than a little bit annoyed he didn't trust higher learning because he's afraid it would lead to heresy francis set himself to the task of living by the letter of the new testament just as closely as he could when jesus said take no thought for tomorrow francis took that literally take no thought from tomorrow and one interesting episode will illustrate that as they traveled about people often gave them gifts because they had no income they took the vow of poverty very seriously so they had nothing of their own on one occasion somebody gave them a pot full of dried beans and the bunk whose idiot was to provide the meals took the mug the took the beans and poured water over them he said i will soften the beans and make them edible for the next day francis rebuked him sternly took the pot dump it on the ground said we'll have none of that we are committed to the life of poverty for that alone is true to the example that jesus set for us so in contrast with dominic's systematic use of the bible to defend catholic orthodoxy it appears as though francis sometimes employed scripture in an almost superstitious manner and i'd say almost superstitious forgive an example a young man came to him and said he was seriously attracted to the life of a monk and he wanted to know if he could be admitted to the order of saint francis when that happened francis took the young fellow to the local priest who happened to have a full bible and he asked the priest to open the bible three times at any random place and see what the texts tell us about about what this young man should do so he did that he opened the bible three times and lo and behold each of the texts in which he pointed emphasized the life of self-denial and that was what the dominicans were committed to the franciscans were committed to pursue the life of self-denial in a very rigorous way so francis then became convinced that this man is named bernard that bernard was ready to renounce the world and become a friar and so indeed he did well you and i can see the fallacy of using the bible in that fashion but francis did not see the difficulty at all so their views of scripture were uncritical in both cases both bernard both dominic and francis accepted the bible as the word of god and the hesitation in doing that but the way in which they used the bible and understood the bible very considerably because of their perspective now how about poverty the two groups of friars require every candidate who sought admission to the movement to take a solemn vow of poverty now that was not new in the early days of monasticism in egypt and palestine for example the monks there did take vows of poverty but as the time passed they became less and less faithful to that those valves and as a consequence they began accepting money or even selling items that they produced to get money and in the eyes of the benedict who wrote the first rule for monastics domestic living they would have been he would have been very very distressed to see what happened and it really was a major deviation from the avowed principle that was to be the bedrock for the whole monastic world well by the time we get to dominic and francis the traditional movement such as the benedictines named for saint benedict and several other movements they all had lapsed into worldliness and monasteries it used to be very plain and very uncomfortable places for the practice of self-denial they were giving way down to monasteries that resembled hotels and so there was comfortable living available and one wanted to become a mug but he'd have to take the vow which would contradict the comfortable living and vice versa of course and so in the case of dominic he never married and he he but he did not make poverty and end in itself francis did almost francis once astonished his friends by informing them he was getting married what you're getting married who's the lucky lady and his answer was lady poverty with capital l and the capital p lady of poverty and then that was when he announced to his worldly friends he was going to say goodbye to them and he was going to become a monk his first concern for for friars for his friars was to follow the example of jesus boxes have holes birds of the air have nests the son of man has no place to lay his head and so if jesus was born then the only truly christian style of life is one of poverty bernard dominic however was different dominic's first concern was to organize his friars through devotion and study and preaching and consequently his order was somewhat less attached to begging it was out of the franciscans but nevertheless both men were serious about the violent poverty at least in their own judgment they had times violated that vow in any way francis would not permit either the friars or the order as a whole to own any physical property at all you would never have agreed to the acquisition of a convent from the pope here's what happened dominic was being a scholar came to the attention of the pope who needed the scholar to defend his cause so he invited dominic to rome and there in rome he became a resident theologian at the vatican the pope there was honorius iii this is the early 13th century and so the pope gave dominic and his people a convent to be used for his nuns by this time women had joined these movements and they were nuns and they were living in convents and so the pope gave the order a house in rome to be used as a convent both men were eager to maintain poverty in their orders that is evident once dominic upon discovering a building project in progress to give his order a new monastery at bologna italy when he saw what they were doing and how comfortable they had designed to make it he was expressed as severe displeasure and the project was interrupted and was not presumed during dominic's lifetime now one more stone was laid the same story told of france and this same story has been told of francis francis beyond construction of a franciscan house at bologna and so was unhappy about it and he came over to stay with the dominicans and he said he found their house more to his taste than his own one as other people were constructing francis in a way then went almost to the limit of making poverty a personality he considered money to be the equivalent of done practiced an advocated poverty but his sense of poverty was tempered by his desire to encourage study so the two men had similar but not identical views of poverty how about their and their view of scripture same way similar but not identical

Answer 150

now we come to their views on formal learning one may best ascertain the diversion points of view held by dominic and francis regarding the subject of scholarship if he looks initially at the subject matter of their preaching they were both very vigorous preachers dominic's sermons were always based upon careful examination of scripture and church history francis was not equipped to do that francis was witnessing dominic was a theologian francis was an evangelist and that that's not that those terms are exclusive you're not b jared is a 20th century author who wrote a biography of dominique listen what he said it's in the biography of dominic it deals with francis branches of assisi is stated to have preached penance now penance is another term for repentance but it usually signifies a sacramental experience of confessing one's sins to a priest fighting absolution as an ordained preacher without any prolonged study of the sacred sciences and with the very deepest love of god in his heart francis put away his discourses away from his francis put away from his discourses any doctrinal exposition of the creed and limited himself to praising god loving him and turning from sin to serve him so the message of francis was very simple but dominic was capable of more elaborate and deeper expositions for his own message according to b jared dominic was precisely the exposition of the deepest mysteries of the kingdom of god that he meant to be the exact purpose of his own admission and that of his children so you can see a rather sharp and deep difference of opinion here about what constitutes the best of the christian life francis in general was a man of only one book and that is the bible he said that was the only book he needed to inspire him to perform the work of an evangelist his reference for scripture subsisted side by side with a deep personal mysticism featuring long periods of searching introspection francis then would use the bible but in addition to the bible he relied upon mystical experience to confirm what he was learning so it's then had an obvious aversion to scholarship now perhaps this is the reason why francis wrote to cardinal ugalino cardinal hugolino was a papal official he said to this to the cardinal god made known to me that i was to behave with a madness that the world knew nothing of and such madness was to be all the learning we as the friars were to have may god confound you cardinal your learning and your wisdom may he send evil spirits to punish you and you shall return to your place whether you will or not and curses shall be upon you i take it francis didn't like him i think we can safely conclude he really didn't like the cardinal at all see the cardinal was part of the problem that the hierarchy of the church was very very wealthy bishops in those days lived like princes and palaces they had servants to do their bidding every luxury that they could expect was theirs to enjoy and so the cardinal fits that picture and francis said that picture is disgusting and he insisted upon literal adherence to poverty now this is different from the views of dominic dominic was an advocate of scholarship as a tool for the defense of the faith while in rome enjoying the the favor of pope honorarius iii dominic received the title master of the sacred palace master of the sacred palace the puppy stirred that upon him it really means excuse me it really signifies that he he was the resident theologian at the vatican a very influential position but he maintained his commitment to poverty even while being living as a vatican as he gets to the pope in his rule for the order of preachers dominic stated that every convent or monastery must have a professor to occupy the chair of theology so every dominican convent or monastery was to be an institute of learning and high quality learning it was at that so it's no surprise that when namek had his people ready to go out as missionaries he did not send them to the beggars and the lepers as francis would do but he went sent them to the intellectual center of europe which was the university of paris well the ways in which dominic and francis could be compared are many far too numerous for us to discover entirely by way of summary though as well to indicate that both men said they had visions both were fervently devoted to the virgin mary both of them used the crucifix extensely as an important religious symbol and for which of them was the crucifix more significant i would say for francis because francis eventually said if he reported that this was god doing this to him god inflicted him with the stigma remember what that is marks of christ of the crucifixion yes and so that for after that experience for the rest of his life francis had scars on his body where the wounds of christ at calvary were transposed to the body of francis now of course that is a bizarre thing to even consider but still it happened as i told you before i think that the stigmata has continued into modern times there are still some people in the world who wear the stigmata how to explain it i don't have a clue it's psychosomatic maybe so i don't know but i'm not going to be a nervous wreck over that because i i'm saved by the crucified son of god who then rose triumphant from the grave and lives forevermore because he lives i too shall live francis claimed that an angel appeared one day while he was meditating before the crucifix and after the angel left then he looked at his own body and found the stigmata francis says very little about his words but many people saw them so it's not a myth enough evidence to say it actually occurred he had a friend in the movement brother leo and one of brother leo's responsibilities was to bandage the wounds of francis when they would lead i don't know whether this was the case with francis or not but some of the people who've had this thing about it claim that the wounds never entirely heal they they'll bleed for a little while and then form scabs and it'll dry up only to reappear later again i said what that signifies i have no way of knowing either but anyhow leo would manage the wounds of francis and on friday which is the traditional day for the crucifixion he would often bleed on friday but not on other days he had a sister named claire c-l-a-r-e claire and claire joined the franciscan movement as a nun and she said she saw the stigmata and pope alexander iv likewise said he saw the stigmata francis though dearly didn't like to talk about it at all it was a very private matter for him but it became something of a public sensation where people began claiming they had seen it although both of the reformers we studied were zealous for their work they were thwarted in their hopes to undertake extensive foreign missionary endeavors they really were were excited with the prospect of sending their brothers all over the world into remote regions where pagans lived or among the muslims it didn't matter they really wanted to do that but they were not able to do it in the lifetime of the founders the franciscans and dominicans later became the chief support of the roman catholic church and they did send missionaries far and wide now regarding the benefits which accrued to the catholic church because of the labors of dominic and francis and their fellow founders historian robert hoyt hoy team has offered this conclusion the immediate effect was to stimulate the bishops to reform the local clergy and improve their own work the friars performed the greatest of their many services and refined in reviving the influence of the church where it was in greatest danger in towns where anti-clerical criticism was strongest and in areas where heresy was right okay that takes care of the the friars

Answer 151

the bottom of page 10 the sacramental system of the roman church this is a case where the teaching in the middle ages has made a permanent impression upon the catholic church the roman church said this in fact roman and catholic i hope you realize are really contradictory terms rome is a city in italy often called the eternal city but it's not really that what people call it that it is a city in italy with distinctive geographic boundaries the catholic church is universal it's worldwide it's not limited to any one city or country or language family or anything else and so the seven sacraments we're going to talk about are the ceremonial performances which the church regards as means of grace here's an ancient summary crisp summary definition of a sacrament the sacrament is an outward sign the sacrament is an outward sign instituted by christ to give grace to our souls the sacrament is an outward sign instituted by christ to give grace to our souls that's still a useful summary of romanist teaching on the subject now we're working lately in the 12th and 13th centuries and we'll confine most of our study today to that period

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the work of scholastic theologians in the 12th and 13th centuries gradually produced an agreement within the roman church about the number of sacraments and the significance of the ones that were chosen there are the most influential scholars in leading the church to adopt seven sacraments these most influential scholars were hugo of saint victor peter the lombard alexander of hayes and of course thomas aquinas again peter the lombard victor hugo of saint victor alexander of hails and thomas aquinas hugo really laid the foundation for a scholastic formulation and aquinas then summarized and clarified the contributions of hugo and others

Answer 153

the council of florence is 1439 i agreed on seven sacraments and ever since that time that's been the official teaching of the roman church in 1560 which was after the protestant reformation had taken a heavy toll against the roman church the church brought her leaders together in the council of trent in 1560 and ratified the scholastic teaching about the sacraments so ferrara made the sacraments a doctrine of the church and the council of trent ratified that and emphatically stressed the ndc to maintain the race to proceed with defending all seven

Answer 154

now earlier church leaders had been quite unsure about how to regard the sacraments they were unsure because for one thing they weren't clear on their definition and second they weren't sure how many ceremonies of a church satisfied the requirements of that declaration give you an example we've dealt somewhat with bernard of claremo the great hymn writer and monastic preacher of the middle ages but bernard of clairvaux had a whole list of religious activities he thought were sacraments that included foot washing and the investiture of bishops and abbots now earlier church leaders had been quite unsure about how to regard the sacraments they were unsure because for one thing they weren't clear on their definition and second they weren't sure how many ceremonies of a church satisfied the requirements of that declaration give you an example we've dealt somewhat with bernard of claremo the great hymn writer and monastic preacher of the middle ages but bernard of clairvaux had a whole list of religious activities he thought were sacraments that included foot washing and the investiture of bishops and abbots later hugo wrote a book on the subject entitled the sacramentos concerning the sacraments and there he listed 30 different ceremonies and they included the use of holy water ashes on the head of a believer on ash wednesday of lent and so you can see there's a lot of uncertainty and confusion even among the most influential leaders of the church about how to define a sacrament and how many ceremonies qualified for recognition as sacraments

Answer 155

now the term sacrament in general means something sacred but it doesn't have to be a religious something in fact the term was in use in the roman government and the roman army at the time the empire was still intact the relish took an oath or a pledge of loyalty to the emperor and in the vulgate bible in the latin bible sacrament is translated as wisterian mystery that's a greek word as well and in ephesians there are three references to the mysterion from which we get the word mystery it doesn't necessarily mean something that is secret and cannot be known but it does mean it's something that is supernatural in origin and signifies the way in which god works on behalf of his people the christian usage of the term emerged gradually as the scholastic theologians quarreled among themselves about it and eventually they agreed in general and we slowly but surely became the practice across the whole church to recognize the seven sacraments as as they are practiced today even so if you're dealing with a roman catholic and bearing witness to him one thing you could do is to direct his attention to the sacramental system and ask him to consider what is what do you know about the seventh sacraments what do you know about the history of them what does the term sacrament mean put them on the spot quiz them that way you might the lord might bless that with that impression that the person needs to have well gradually the leaders of the church realize that the sacraments are in the sacraments

Answer 156

christ signifies and seals the promises of the gospel so as to promote sanctification of its recipients so the sacraments then enable people to enjoy spiritual strength provided by the sacrament and therefore they pursue the sanctified life the christian life the life of morality and devotion in the days of the reformation the late reformation the puritans of england and scotland produce the westminster standards and the shorter catechism has this definition of the sacrament a holy ordinance instituted by christ wherein by sensible signs christ and the benefits of the new covenant are represented sealed and applied to believers that's question number 92 so if you haven't memorized that you can find it and do so notice this almost everybody who wrote about the sacraments catholics and protestants alike almost every one of them referred to the sacrament as instituted by christ that would come back to haunt them somewhat because as we're going to proceed in the 7 one by one we learned that not all of them were instituted by christ personally and so that can be an embarrassment that the people who are so insistent on that

Answer 157

they will all seem to believe too that the sacraments are channels of grace but the sacraments themselves do not perform the grace but they simply confer it in an instrumental sense the holy spirit attends both the proclamation of the word of god and the sacraments and the sacraments then proclaim the word of god very well the same as the scripture which proclaims the word of god now when i've had the privilege of administering the lord's supper i've always tried to remind people of that that what we're doing with the reception of the lord's supper is not radical it's not new in fact it's very very ancient and we do it in obedience to the commandment of christ we don't believe the sacraments save anybody but we do believe that people saved by grace will nourish that faith they have on the through the means of the sacraments so this saint augustine helps us there he said in the sacrament we have the word of god displayed in a visible manner preaching proclaims the word of god to the ears the sacraments proclaim it to the eyes but it's the same word of god

Answer 158

so the holy spirit makes the sacraments effectual the term sacrament sacrament then was gradually ident identified and defined so it is common now to refer to those seven religious rights as sacraments but the number of number of seven has a number it has great significance in many times at the bible you know that for sure and then biblical references to seven probably influenced the church leaders a great deal in settling on that number seven sacraments no more no fewer the sacraments then began with augustine's view that a sacrament is an outward sign of an invisible grace but they went further than augustine by affirming that the sacraments both contain and confer grace continerae and conference contain and confer grace so the sacraments have an inherent value something like medicine hugo saint victor likened god to the great physician who administers his healing through the sacrament of medicine or the medicinal sacraments saint bonaventure taught the same alexander of hails and thomas aquinas used the term ex operati operato exoperay operato this teaches that the sacraments make sinners righteous due to the inherent power within them this can occur only when faith is present no not so this can occur even when faith is not present because god is not confirmed confined by the lack of human faith the coin is distinguished between god as the origin of grace and the sacraments as instrumental means of grace means by which god does confer the benefits of the atonement of unbelievers who receive the sacraments in faith well who are the usual ministers of the sacraments priests priests that's right yes priests are there any exceptions believe it or not there is one commandment each new baptism that's right baptism particularly if a person who is seeking baptism may be very ill and close to death and a priest is not available a layman in that case can put more water over the head of a dying person and grant him the grace of baptism for entrance into the next world but yes that's the one exception it occurs mainly though with babies with babies who are born unhealthy and in danger of dying often after priests if a priest is available he'll rush to the hospital to baptize the baby because of the belief that baptism is necessary for salvation well teaching them with baptism is essential for salvation

Answer 159

and the sacrament of the eucharist of the lord's supper contains christ himself communicated to the recipients christ himself communicated to the recipients baptism holy orders and confirmation make indelible marks upon the souls of those who receive them again baptism holy orders as ordination and confirmation make indelible marks upon the soul and cannot be repeated the scholastics were uncertain as i said about the precise number of the sacraments and so the origin of the seven is not quite clear but thomas aquinas said christ personally instituted all seven of the sacraments now he knew darn well it was that's not literally the case but he nevertheless said well we do not have a biblical authorization for some of the sacraments nevertheless if the church mandates them the church is exercising her rightful authority and the authority of the church is not limited to the authority of scripture the church is the correct interpreter of scripture at all times but it's not not quite the same the sacramento system did invest genuine and terrific authority in the priesthood authority which could control the means of salvation

Answer 160

when martin luther broke with the roman church first over indulgences and then from there about other matters he in the year 1520 wrote a treatise about the sacraments it's entitled the babylonian captivity of the church and he said that the roman church the papal church has now forfeited its right to be known as the church and has been now it has lapsed under the control of evil forces and so he likened that condition of the roman church to the babylonian captivity

Answer 161

now let's go through the seven one at a time beginning of course where it almost always does begin at baptism baptism always was and still is intended as an initiation into the visible church baptism is necessary said the authorities then and now baptism is necessary because human beings by nature are sinful and they need the grace of regeneration to make them acceptable to god and god in his great kindness bestows that grace of regeneration upon the recipients when they are baptized baptismal regeneration is a teaching now take for example john chapter 3 verse 3. jesus said to nicodemus you must be born again the elaborate must be born of what speak more of john chapter 3 no water and the spirit yeah you must be born of water and the spirit and the fact that he put water first seemed to assign greater importance to baptism than it did to the work of the holy spirit anyhow this is how the benefits of the atonement received are received in the lives of believers now how would you answer somebody who said well there it is in the words of jesus himself you must be baptized in order to be saved unless you're born of this water baptism and the spirit you cannot enter the kingdom of god how would you answer that you wouldn't answer it at all baptism is a sign not the actual burden yes but was he even talking about baptism i don't think he was right i don't think he was talking about baptism at all the text doesn't say that i don't know of anything else in the scripture that would lead to that conclusion well then what's the water there if it's not baptism referring to the fact that we must be cleansed and born again well cleansed the ice because with what kind of water washing off the word i'm leading you on for a purpose now think about for a moment there's a lady about to ready to give birth she gives birth to a very beautiful little child and she right and she and her husband as soon as they can rush down to the local church and get the passion of more water over the head of the baby while saying i baptize you in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit well if they're mistaken and considering the water of baptism there's another water that everybody has experienced have you know what amniotic fluid is what is it 95 percent enough of it is water isn't it yeah when his father is ready to deliver a child the amniotic sac will rupture and what comes out a gush of water and so jesus that was contrasting two forms of birth a physical birth of water and a spiritual birth of the spirit it's a very simple understanding nobody can claim it's not true to the text it certainly is and so i i think that can eliminate a lot of confusion if people would just think about that instead of jumping to the conclusion that jesus spent baptism now jesus did authorize baptism indeed he commanded it we're going to all the world to reach the gospel baptizing them in the name of the father son and holy spirit so it's not a slur in baptism by any means but to be literally faithful to the sex there's no mention of perhaps isn't there all right but the medieval church concluded that the water and the words of jesus is baptismal water listen to this from the pen of thomas aquinas here well i'm going to give you i'll translate it for you from latin it's a book by this title or essay baptismas quia este regueneratio albinus in vitam spiritualem baptism is that which regenerates the human in spiritual life so baptism then according to aquinas and others removes the guilt of original sin and all other sins committed before baptism say an adult at 50 years of age seeks baptism in the roman church and the priests will tell them that this baptism will wash away first of all the sin of adam which is part of this human nature and secondly it will wash away the guilt of any sins committed prior to baptism and so that led some people in the ancient church to postpone baptism don't have it too soon let's have some fun first because there was that really atrocious attitude sometimes the super that's oh you know the most renowned or simple recipient of that kind of baptism was the emperor charlemagne you know the emperor constantine yes yeah constantine waited until he was on his deathbed to receive baptism and he wasn't the only one but his example led lots of other people to do the same thing so they were investing baptism with some supernatural power that it really does not possess what do they this might be a little hair splitting but what would a catholic say to someone who sins while being baptized while being baptized they have a sinful thought while they're being baptized oh i don't know is that before or after or does that invalidate the baptism no it wouldn't invalidate the baptism baptism is for sinners the universe were babies maybe sad the sin of adam and so still that wouldn't reapply there but a sinful thought during the baptism you stopped the professor i don't know that never occurred to me i think i i've studied roman catholicism rather extensively i don't think i've discovered anybody who argued that point well the priest as we said is the ordinary minister of baptism but if no priest is available any adult may do it too children must be baptized because they bear adam's guilt aquinas and most of the scholastics held that children should be baptized only but with the agreement of their parents but duns scotus called for the baptism of people even by compulsion he was rather anti-semitic in his attitude he didn't trust the jews but he wanted them all to convert and so he said that if the jews were not willing to be baptized christians should baptize them anyhow for their own good unbaptized people even infants cannot go to heaven although scotus allowed that prenatal babies of mothers who become martyrs will be saved so that the lady a christian lady is put to death by the enemies of the church the time of persecution the baby inside her womb would be taken to heaven along with his mother because martyrdom means for one of a better word automatic salvation yes is there a time limit for them on like how long after baptism like is there a grace period in order to i mean if you die like three minutes after you're born the mother hasn't had time to sit up and slap a baptism on is that baby straight to hell down in that that's where i want to leave you next okay not to help i'm not going to lead you to hell [Music] what do you say i will not be guilty of that

Answer 162

the greek orthodox church has an interesting perspective on baptism it's called trine immersion immersing the candidate three times in the name of the father name of the son name of the holy spirit it corresponds of course to the requirements of the great commission but beyond that in 1391 a synod of bishops proved the immersion the shrine immersion of infants the infants now as well as adults ever since 1391 even infants were subject to baptism by immersion i'm not going to deal with a mode of baptism you do that you're in your uh ecclesiology classes

Answer 163

but anyhow yes some allowance has been made for babies who died in infancy and were not no one was able to reach them with baptism the only sin they have committed as far as anybody knows is the sin of adam imputed to them by the power of god that all the sons and daughters of adam have a sinful nature and baptism then would wash away that sinful nature but some people who otherwise would have been happy to be baptized never lived long enough to be baptized and nobody did them the favor of baptizing them and there's now a belief called limbo l-i-m-b-o l-i-n-b-o and limbo is a belief that there's a third place where they go not heaven not hell because after all they're not bad enough for hell and after all they're not good enough for heaven so there must be some place where they can get a room for the night all right and that is called limbo nobody seems to know much about linbo of course nobody is going there to come back but uh do you have to go under a bar to get there the fact there are two compartments in limbo according to the thinking of some scholars in one compartment are all the faithful christian believers of the old testament who died before the coming of christ they couldn't go to heaven because the gates of heaven were locked and would not be opened until christ came and died at calvary and made an atonement for sin so until the atonement all those people were detained now there's no evidence ever detained in a state of misery nothing nothing like that they were detained but not in the torment of any kind are just waiting waiting waiting for the atonement and when jesus died on the cross remember he said it is finished and when he did that that opened the gates of heaven so to speak and allowed old testament believers to enter in and that's why they're there today in heaven that's one place of limbo the other is a place for unbaptized infants so that they would be in a separate compartment once again they would not be in any misery but they would be detained until the coming of christ and if they have not been baptized even as the coming of christ then of course they will remain in limbo forever dr mcgolder the confession makes some statements about the unbaptized and about those who are i don't know i'm trying to remember the term but essentially those who are either mentally handicapped or that type of thing yeah was any of that included yes the roman catholic church would say people who are physically or mentally incapable of being baptized will be received in glory just the same because they're in that conditions for no fault of their own okay so you see how they they theorize in this matter we don't have any of the bible about that we don't know i i like to believe that because one of god's great characteristics is mercy and he would take pity upon such people and welcome them into heaven now i would like to believe that but if you ask for chapter and verse sorry charlie i don't have it can't make it

Answer 164

well the completion of baptism leads to the next sacrament and that is confirmation confirming the baptism the usual practice throughout the roman world is to baptize infants within seven or eight days after birth then to submit them to confirmation when they're about 10 to 12 years of age the idea is when they were baptized as children they were too young to understand what they were doing now they're older and they have a developed understanding and so they should be back not baptized but confirmed their baptism through this sacrament ultim consomatio baptism confirmation is that which confirms baptism that comes from thomas aquinas thomas held that christ indicated this sacrament when he promised the coming of the holy spirit and he did that in john chapter 16 verse 7. you might note that and look at the reference the ordinary minister of baptism is a priest who is the ordinary minister of confirmation a priest yes but a special kind of priest bishop bishop exactly right yet the bishops are for one of a better term the princes of the catholic church the pope's the king and the bishops or the princes and when the ordination of a priest takes place it is a bishop who confirms that man in the reichs of the ordained clergy well in this case a bishop then administers confirmation this is part of the theory that the apostle peter was the first pope in rome and every pup since then has been descended from peter in a line of petrine succession petrine succession beyond that how about the other 11 apostles what happened to them they became bishops of the church and so the current bishops of the church are descendants of the other apostles while the pope is a descendant of peter and when the ceremony occurs the bishop will have a candidate kneeling before him and the sage is a person being confirmed i confirm thee with a chrism of salvation in the name of the father son and holy spirit at that point the bishop will place oil on the head of the person oil is a symbol of the holy spirit and it's applied in the sign of a cross and then the bishop does an interesting thing he slaps the person on the cheek i'm not he doesn't break his dentures or anything there's a gentle slap on the cheek to remind that person that it may be necessary for him or her to suffer for god at some future time and so be ready at any time to demonstrate the strength of your confirmation like if necessary giving your life for the cause of christ confirmation signifies the relationship of believers with bishops the bishop is the guarantor and servant of the unit of catalytic catholicity and the apostle must receive the church sometimes we'll repeat that confirmation signifies the relationship of believers with bishop the bishop is the guarantor and servant of the unity catholicity and apostolicity of the church now you'll find that in the catechism of the catholic church look at numbers 1302 to 1305. take a look at it with you just quickly did you all have the caddy because i know i think it's online for free you got it free i think the catholics have it on their website oh go get it that's the scott smithy light good one you don't want to miss it 1302 well incidentally with the use of catholic catechism if you're documenting from it don't document page numbers item numbers or question numbers yes usually the question numbers but don't don't use the page numbers here we go finally what do does it say who can receive this sacrament well it says in 1307 the latin tradition gives the age of discretion as a reference point for receiving confirmation but the danger the danger of children dying should be confirmed even if they have not attained the age of discretion they may be confirmed while the confirmation is sometimes called the sacrament of christian maturity we must not confuse adults faith with the adult age of natural growth nor forget that baptismal grace is the grace of free unmerited election and does not need ratification to become effective that's interesting these eternal elections catholics don't use that term much at all they shy away from it you know they won't come out and say it's not not in bible and anybody can show them it is all right i say

Answer 165

all right we've come now to the eucharist and the eucharist is both a sacrament and a sacrifice therein lies the wide gap of this difference between catholics and promises we conclude yes the eucharist is a sacrament no it is not a sacrifice and what's at stake here the gospel yes but everybody would say that happened sufficiency of christ's sufficiency of christ the death of christ exactly the sufficiency of christ and his sacrifice right it's once and for ever is forever satisfies the requirements of god all right this is how the scholastic philosophers describe it a sacrament and a sacrifice albertus mondius you numbered him the teacher of thomas aquinas albertus vanish and aquinas himself wrote extensively about the set the subject of the eucharist incidentally eucharist means what thanksgiving greek thanksgiving thanksgiving that's right yes so we celebrate thanksgiving we're celebrating a eucharist that's right sure so there's no reason why protestants can't use the term eucharist and some of them do use it but it's not common i guess they shy away from it because it seems to imply the roman's position which we don't endorse well these uh thomas or alvarez monas and thomas aquinas wrote about this subject and the fourth letter in council 1215 decreed the doctrine now called transubstantiation scholastic theologians explicated and defended this as a dogma keep in mind a dogma means mandatory belief to deny a dogma is heresy doctrine is teaching all dogmas are doctrines not all doctrines are dogma for example limbo is not a dogma it is a teaching it's a doctrine but it's not a document the consecration of the bread and wine formed the most solemn part of medieval worship and is still the most solemn part of romans worship today saw it there is no clear biblical support for transubstantiation but the authority of the church declared it correctly just the same so that here's one evidence that in the roman catholic church a teaching which lacks biblical support is not thereby rendered false the church has the authority to authorize that that practice even without biblical war so in roman catholic's catholic belief the highest authority is not scripture not sola scriptura but the church and its traditions come first theologian cited the words of jesus when he instituted the eucharist he met with his disciples remember in the upper room and he took bread they took wine this is my body given for you this is my wine this is my blood drink all of it and remember it's so big and so this is a supporting doctrine in scripture so the claim is these passages however do not estate that categorically there are three other terms or two other terms in addition to sacrifice three terms sacrifice communion and the atticum b-i-a-t-i-c-u-n sacrifice communion and viaticum these appear in the scholastic literature and they're used to identify the sacrament of the eucharist it's a sacrifice because it reenacts calvary see that it re-enacts calvary it's a communion because it signifies the unity of christ and the church it's scatticum because it's heavenly manna for christians traveling on the road to heaven viaticus refers to use in scripture referring to a journey and so life is a journey traveling towards a celestial city to quote john budion which the romanist did not do to their shame the medieval theologians often like to refer to augustine for support and they look to him for support on the question of the eucharist to what extent is jesus christ literally present body and blood in the sacrament well unfortunately for the roman catholics the great saint augustine wasn't sure anything but clear on the subject in fact here's a bit of a hint that might serve you well someday if you're studying uh augustine read him backwards here's what i mean regis later works first because his later works express his fully developed and mature thinking on the subject some of the earlier ones you can see he's groping his way trying to clarify his understanding and not always having success but the late augustine is the real the real mccoy now he's nice to really gustan all right mccoy was he scottish they were shooting mountain boys all right the medieval theologians cited augustine to support the concept of a real presence of christ into sacrament but his own early works are ambiguous that can be used to verify even conflicting points of view yet the teacher of augustine ambrose of milan was explicit about the presence he said is the actual body born of the virgin mary is present in the sacrament of the lord's supper but the fathers of the church were anything but unanimous in their views of this subject in fact they don't see it so much anymore but for in older catholic books often when there's a controversial point to be decided the author will go back and point to some one of the fathers of the church ambrose augustine or somebody else and say this shows us we have the unanimous consent of the fathers well that's nonsense anybody who spends a half hour reading the fathers will know they were anything but unanimous now during the mass and the middle ages as a rule only clerics and nuns received the eucharist frequently layman were to view the wafer and the chalice and to endure the consecrated elements but not to actually participate in them you might want to know too that the roman church to this day serves communion wine white wine and not red now if the plot if the wine is to symbolize the blood of christ i i hope uh i'm not one of those who's filled with white voile i like wine but not white and blood looked red to me anyhow the wine is used as white because it's so expensive union wine is of the highest quality church pays a high price to get it and if somebody were to spill that blind maybe on the floor or on the garments of the priest who was serving it then that stain might never come out that would ruin the garment you require the expense to buy another one or have to tear the carpet out on the floor and destroy it because the blood of christ was there you see how extreme some people will go in their misunderstanding later the church indicated that when a believer receives the eucharist of the lord's supper he or she receives the whole christ body soul and divinity and these are never separated whether in heaven or on the altar some scholastics maintain that jesus ate his own body and drank his own blood with as he sat with his disciples at the last supper can you imagine anything so disgusting eating his own flesh drinking his own blood well maybe the best way to look at the romanest error is the roman church presents its understanding as a repetition of calvary but by the grace of god we know that there's no need to repeat near what happened to calvary it is sufficient now sufficient forever and ever and so but this is a prominent teaching abundance galaxy peter lombard distinguished between the work of christ on the cross and his presence in the eucharist but peter regardeth the eucharist as a sacrifice anyhow alexander hayes hails and some other people said the eucharist is one unbloody but real sacrifice when the priest represents christ the altar represents the cross and as a sacrifice the eucharist removes the eternal penalty from sin so if people are trying to work their way to heaven they can do themselves a great service by attending the mass frequently and participating in the eucharist which is now open to all believers and the credit for that in heaven would be substantial believing as it as they do the romanest priests in particular defend the idea that christ was righteous and performed at calvary is worthy of repetition and it provides a meritorious way to gain rewards from god to the adoration of the wafer in the 12th century that book pope minorius and iii 1217 ordered that people knew before the wafer at the consecration and soon thereafter the church adopted a special holy day called the feast of corpus christi peace of corpus christi body of christ i know you thought it was a city in texas now you know better the Pope aureus third declared that it was the feast of corpus christi after a nun named juliana reported a vision in which god complained to her that the church was neglecting to honor the real presence of christ adequately pope irvin iv ordered a festival to take place beginning in 1264 the pope directed thomas aquinas to prepare a liturgy for the festival liturgy of corpus christi thomas aquinas produced it well denying the cup to the laity began in the 13th century and continuing well into the 20th century for that long period of time people who wanted to receive the sacrament received the bread only but the church said they really received the whole christ anyhow because the whole christ is present in both elements of bread and wine in fact he's not only present in those elements but those elements have become the body blood soul and divinity of jesus christ the council of trent confirmed that position and the moderate roman church maintained remains true to the medieval tradition here's a statement from a 20th century catholic textbook the mass is a continuation of the incarnation and the renewal of the sacrifice of calvary once again the mass is the continuation of the incarnation and the removal the renewal of the sacrifice of calvary i want to look with you at the catechism again here's what i'll do i won't read all these but i'll give you some numbers you can put the numbers down and look at the catechism when you have a moment number 368 to 396. that whole section 368 to 396. and especially 1330 1366 1367 1371 1377 1378 the relationship of word and sacrament appears in let me go back and check that once let's see what it says 1408 [Music] [Music] oh here we are finally of 1407 and 1408. the eucharist is the heart and summit of the church's life read it christ associates his church and all her members with his sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving offered once for all on the cross to his father by this sacrifice he pours out the graces of salvation on his body which is the church the eucharistic celebration always includes the proclamation of the word of god thanksgiving to god the father for all his benefits above all the gifts of his son the consecration of great and wine and participation in the liturgical banquet by receiving the lord's body and blood these elements constitute one single act of worship the eucharist is the memorial of christ's passover that is of the work of salvation accomplished by his death resurrection of christ a work made and resurrection of christ a work made present by liturgical action well if it's a memorial to this work of salvation christ has already performed why are his so-called people performing it again and again and again embarrassing questions for some people

Answer 166

let's move on down and thank you give us a little attention here to the sacramental system of the romney catholic church we jumped last time with baptism and a confirmation in the lord's supper or eucharist today we're going to begin with penance which now means oral recitation of of church members sins to a priest the alleged basis for this in the new testament and the churches is in the new testament and in fathers of the ancient church john chapter 20 verse 23 jesus said to his disciples whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven for sins you shall retain they are retained and the roman church has taken this to me that hurt priests are invested with a special authority to declare forgiveness or to withhold forgiveness depending upon the attitude of the sinner if you had a roman catholic edition of the bible an old one you find out that it was based primarily not on the hebrew and greek texts but on the latin text latin text is called the vulgate today roman catholic biblical scholars don't use that procedure they know better they know that the only way to deal intelligently with a biblical text is in the biblical languages of hebrew and greek and not a translation such as the vulgate but anyhow the whatever translation in use in the in the uh vulgate translation it says there's a word here entitled and that's the word we usually treat translated as penises penises or repentance but when the translators of the vulgate did their work they rendered that greek term as penitential penitential agitate do penis and so in that frame of reference the sacrament of penance it deals with a person's willingness to do good works do penance not receive penance but two pennies and this has encouraged the belief that it's a meritorious exercise which would obtain forgiveness of sins if performed in the presence of a priest in the early christian confession in the early christian church the confession was usually a matter of public and public confession of sin rather than private the practice of private confession where a person enters into a booth and on the other side of the screen is a priest that you don't ever look at each other or know anything about each other necessarily and as a consequence that that is a way of preserving people from the embarrassment of making public their own offenses the idea of private confession appears to have begun in the 6th century in ireland irish monks introduced it the medieval developments of predators feature the insistence that one must confess to a priest no one else has the power to grant absolution peter the lombard did not regard this as necessary but he held that direct confession to god is sufficient he indicated that theologians disagreed about this matter in his day and had been disagreeing about that matter for a long time before that alexander of hales is a very the influential theologian theologian of the catholic church won the faculty at the famous university of paris he wrote a book entitled a system of universal theology a system of universal theology so it was hails's effort then at producing a handbook or catholic doctrine he became the major formulator of the roman catholic practice appendage to a priest and thomas aquinas soon accepted the teaching of hails the medicine consisted of four elements contrition confession satisfaction and absolution i wasn't saying this again the four constituent elements of a proper penance contrition which means sorrow from sin confession to a priest satisfaction and absolution so contrition entails sincere sorrow for sin and a promise to sin no more hails has got distinguished between perfect contrition which originates in a love for god and imperfect confession contrition which comes from fear of punishment now both forms of contrition are valid in the roman church the preferred one of course is the one that comes first but that would be known as perfect contribution nutrition based upon a person's love for god and fear of offending him thank you trition for you the sorrow for the sins committed and sometimes in this imperfect contrition it would be that a fear of punishment rather than a love for god and motives that continuated the confession but either one brings con forgiveness of sins if a person performs the other steps required for absolution the confession goes back at least to the fourth century fourth century a.d but it really became prominent in the middle ages and especially after the council of latter the fourth ladder in council of the year 1215. this made annual confession a requirement and it declared that it was heresy for anyone to deny the need for absolution in the middle ages the penalty that a priest assigns to the confessing center include prayers of course fasting pilgrimages and even monetary fines so you can see where it was almost made to order for corruption particularly on the financial end of it at times the priest would allow a confessing penitent to employ someone else to make his satisfaction now suppose the priest said to a businessman you have sinned seriously i sentence you therefore to visit the holy shrine of saint james in spain and santiago to cultistla but you're a businessman and santiago is hundreds of miles away how can i ever get there and if i did get there i'd be bankrupt my business would be finished and so the freaks is saying very well i'll take mercy upon you and allow you to hire someone else to make the pilgrimage for you that's someone else i have nothing whatever to do with the offense but would serve as a surrogate or to make satisfaction with a person who had the means to pay thomas aquinas justified that by appealing to to bear one another to notice thomas aquinas justified this practice by appealing to this galatians 6 2 where believers are told bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of christ in an absolution absolution would be a formal declaration that forgiveness has been graded and in doing that the priest was exercising the power of the keys now go back in your memory not very far we talked about the power of the keys the keys are the keys to the kingdom of heaven and there are plural keys two not one but two and the definition of this uh practice included the belief that the church through her priesthood could decree forgiveness and provide absolution as a formal declaration of forgiveness the key said will be the keys to the kingdom of heaven one in fact to the church the other to the state but together the keys to the kingdom of heaven and according to medieval catholic teaching which is still in effect this practice of absolution removes the eternal punishment for sin but not necessarily temporal punishment for sin therefore would be earthly punishment god sometimes has smitten people with grave illness or even struck them dead as a consequence of their sin and that would be a case of temporal punishment which is not removed by the absolution but the absolution does remove the eternal artificial said the last major theologian of the middle ages to regard penance as the preached authority to declare forgiveness rather than absolve sinners was peter the lombard peter the lumbar author of the famous sentences of theology highly influential theologian in his day now he said that jesus authorized his disciples to declare forgiveness of absolution to truly penance and sinners declared not conferring or not convey it but just to declare it because this would be god himself working with the sinner and enabling the center to obtain absolution for his offenses alexander of hails made it a judicial pronouncement of sacrificial authority this attributable authority means priestly authority sasudas means priest aquinas upheld this same rule he wrote this i absolve thee in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit amen well that became the universal practice among priests who were dealing with penises sinners when they appeared in the confession box and the priest was satisfied they had made a good confession they'll make the sign of the cross like this and say i absolve you in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit amen the priests could remit the temporal punishment that is earthly punishment or purgatorial punishment they could remit that people had had to fulfill all requirements of perfect contrition and very few people do so so most of the people who go to confession do not come away assured that they've escaped all of the eternal consequences of sin they have only only an imperfect confession as between them and god and if they're honest they would ask the priest for assistance

Answer 167

now about the remission of temporal punishments this became available through the practice of what we call indulgences indulgences fell out of favor about 20 or 25 years ago but recently they've made a comeback and indulgence is a decision of church authority usually the pope himself granting to catholic believers not only forgiveness of their sins but likewise enabling them to bank monetary fines pay monetary funds that would clear their reputation in heaven the payments could relieve a person as i said of going on a pilgrimage or even on a crusade hails was the first theologian to define the doctrine of indulgences and aquinas and others followed him documents from the middle ages refer to a relaxation or remission from the imposed penalty relaxation or remission from the enclosed penalty a lot of scandals ensued for this practice and the fourth ladder in council placed some restrictions upon it various popes promised to shorten the time of purgatory for people who served the church in one some major capacity or paid a very heavy contribution to the church financially speaking this of course supports the document or the doctrine rather that all christian people have an obligation to do moratorious good works not that they can save themselves by their good works that's not the roman catholic teaching never has been they can't save themselves by good works but if they don't perform good works they're under suspicion of being lacking in perfect in any condition for sin really the indulgences might shorten the person's time in purgatory and that's usually the way they are applied now so catholic for example could lose a member of his family say his father died and he took pity upon us departed father and therefore he began earning indulgences so that he could credit them to his father's account and that would release his father from the the the the danger of eternal damnation pope clement vi gave official approval to the sale and practice of indulgences but he maintained that indulgences would not be effective without contrition and confession the application of indulgences to souls already in purgatory became very popular again with the support of hails in england in the late middle ages there was a popular practice among wealthy people of creating an endowment an endowment called a chantry the chantry was often a building a little chapel attached to a larger church and people could go into that chapel and pray there and seek credit in heaven for themselves and for their departed loved ones the application of the indulgences then would be made available at endowed chapels where the priests would pray and recite masses for the benefit of deceased souls now that does still go on today in roman catholic circles in 1476 sixes the fourth was boom and he went to the limit of decree that indulgences could be transferred to souls and purgatory and living people could purchase indulgences for the benefit of deceased loved ones i don't know whether they still do this or not but i can remember seeing what are called mass cards mascara is about a four by six card printed with the official insignia of the church about it and the mascot means that in return for a contribution to the church the priest will give that person a mass card guaranteeing the recipient would have a would obtain a very beneficial indulgence indulgence for himself or for a loved one dead or alive the bottom of the modern roman catholic practice end continues in large part the same teaching as a church of the middle ages although the roman church has eliminated most of the abuses of the penitential practice now i brought with me again the catholic encyclopedia and the catechism of the catholic church and i'm going to read to you a few items here and i'll give you some additional numbers so you can find them in your copy of the catechism when you have the time to do so fourteen twenty eight christ's conversion called the call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of christians a second conversion is an uninterrupted uninterrupted task for the whole church who clasping the center of bosom is at once holy and always in need of purification and it follows constantly the path of penance and renewal this endeavor of conversion is not just a human work it is a movement of a contrite heart drawn by grace and to respond to the mercy of the love of god who loves us first then 14 30. interior penance jesus calls to conversion and penance like that of the prophets before him he does not aim at first and outward works such as sacrals and ashes fasting and mortification but the conversion of the heart interior conversion without this such penances sterile however interior confession versus expression invisible signs gestures and works of penance interior repentance is a radical reorientation of the whole life a return a conversion to god with all one's heart and an ending of sin it revolves at turning away from evil with republicans toward evil actions at the same time the desire and resolution to change one's life with hope in god's mercy and trust with the help of his grace this conversion of heart is accompanied by salutary pain and sadness which this father is called affliction of spirit and repentance of the heart all right look at later when you have time at 1432 1437 1447 at 1449. 1447 has something of a brief history of the doctrine of indulgences um [Music] oh i said you read on your own it's much too long for me to take the time to read it now but get your copy of it read it 1447. so indulgences are still in effect in the roman church and very devout people often beguile themselves into thinking they are buying tickets to heaven for themselves or their loved ones now that was exactly the heresy that confronted martin luther many years later than we were studying through the 15th 16th century and luther was outraged at the sale of indulgences which was a woeful corruption in church and society now he at first did not call for the abolition of indulgences but a correction of the abuses connected with a sale that's what really offended him but later he came to realize that scripture does not support the practice of indulgences and it was a sorry sorry mistake the roman church did allow the effortless allow this to happen any questions about this uh matter then of uh edits during the time that um getting sent on these pilgrimages was popular was there uh and i'm just thinking in modern terms there would be a company that would do that for you and was there people that set up shop and like offered to go on pokemon yes they did okay travel agency yeah oh yeah they did that okay yeah there's a lot of traffic going back and forth to the shrine of saint james said james the culprit stale yeah i my husband did the camino del santiago the way of saint james and he has a certificate of indulgence from the catholic church [Music] i can remember receiving mass cards in the mail when my parents died and you know nobody met mascara for anybody for jews protestants i guess pagans but they they invest those little cards with a superstition's reference and an assumed power which a piece of paper of course cannot contain anything else okay well we'll stop there for today then and we'll go to extreme ocean the next time and that is sometimes called the uh sacrament for the dying because it usually is administered to people on their deathbed although it's not restricted to that

Answer 168

they did what rejected the sacramental nature of the church yes there were some of them were wild crazy heretics from the east such as the Bogomils and the Paulicians who influenced the cathars all of them non-heretical people they're the most extreme examples of it within the church itself there were people of good intention who could see that the church was drifting away from salvation by grace alone and substituting for that a heavy reliance upon the sacraments as though the sacraments themselves could impart salvation baptismal regeneration for example is a is a good case in point the new testament does not teach that the apostles did not teach that but nevertheless that slowly became the belief because in judaism there was a sacramental system and of which there was some baptism believe it or not many people don't know that but tamila hebrew word tavila signifies a baptism with water and it was applied when gentiles converted when they were taken into judaism one of the conditions was they had to make a public break with their previous religion and the baptism gave them that opportunity so from several directions there were people moving away from the orthodox teaching then for a while the influence of saint augustine put the breaks on it and augustine was so emphatic and so influential that people respected him highly and he was very successful in thwarting the pelagians for example and the donatists other ancient groups and so the church was in a healthier condition as long as he lived but after he died stable problems were still there and they heard their ugly heads again and so this teaching has made a comeback Pelagianism for example came back in the form of semi-politicianism not quite as far out as Pelagius in the raw but nevertheless error um were there was there a group that rejected the sacrificial nature of the eucharist after the fourth lettering council after what the fourth lettering council went to the fourth ladder of castle uh that would be the hussites some of them outsides were not completely united on doctrine those who were faithful to justice teaching did not deny baptismal regeneration worried eucharistic for real presence so some of the hussites were more orthodox than us himself yes i'd say that's true but probably only a minor stream but probably so yeah but the thing that united at the high sites was mutual disgust with the corrupt condition of the church financial corruption idolatrous corruption solitary totalitarian corruption all those things really aggravated a lot of tension and a lot of people were willing to deal with that even though it was dangerous to do so because once they did so then they could be exposed to the wrath of the inquisition which would accuse them of heresy when there was no real heresy but because they embarrassed the hierarchy of the church the accusation would be made]

Answer 169

okay now we have a extreme unction holy orders and matrimony to consider see how far we get the basis for unction is in scripture itself james chapter 5 verses 14 and 15. let's take a look at that james 514. here it is is anyone sick among you let him call for elders of the church and let them pray over him anoint him with oil in the name of the lord and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and the lord will raise him up and if he has committed sins they will be forgiven now in this situation then we have what appears to be a promise of healing and maybe even a healing from a person's deathbed in the new american bible which is a catholic translation the term here rendered as priest he renders as presbyteries presbyters the old duet version from the latin cites priests rather than elders that have said for the priest of the church but this exodus says let him send for the presbyters of the church or the elders of the church and it asserts this about the ocean the anointing any controversy against its institution would be against the expressed words of sacred scripture that's what they claim now as the catholic church is defending its position about the sacramental character of the eucharist of the holy extreme ocean scholastic theologians claim that this sacrament has apostolic origin and thomas aquinas held the christ institute at the sacrament even though there's no mention of it in the gospels the council of trent agreed with that assumption and since healing appears to have been miraculous the prophets and protesters have often concluded that this anointing was appropriate only in the apostolic age this much is sure in the first century before the completion of the new testament canon that the gift of miraculous performances was not uncommon we have evidence of it elsewhere but particularly here in the book of james well the particular illness in question here appears to be illness which is of a nature of a temporal judgment that is that god himself afflicted somebody with an illness as earthly punishment for his man behavior his sin the ceremonial practice in the roman church and the greek church involves the use of oil which has been blessed by a bishop and for the priest i've often concluded that the anointing no protestant secluded anointing was only for the apostolic age if a person is conscious when the priest comes that person will confess his sins to that priest and receive the eucharist if he is able to swallow it the anointing was part of penance in earlier times but by the 12th century extreme unction was recognized as a separate sacrament but remember the catholic definition is a sacrament is an outward sign instituted by christ to give grace to our souls there's absolutely no biblical mention of christ instituting this sacrament not at all so the roman church violates its own definition at an earlier day everyone who requested this every sick person could receive the sacrament but in the 13th century the church restricted it to people who believed to be dying and hence it became the custom to refer to extreme unction or last function as the uh as the last rights of the church last rites of the church and here when this anointing takes place this is what the priest will say to the sick person through this holy unction and out of his most tender mercy may the lord forgive you whatever sins you have committed and the modern practice continues this tradition but vatican council number two 1965 and following that council restored the older practice of making this sacrament available to any sick person who requested does not have to be a person on his or her that's bad any questions about extra emotion how many times can be how many times can it be administered it can be administered any number of times but if a person made a habit of it i think the priest would get suspicious because he has so much other work he has to do and can't be distracted by running to that person's home it didn't again and again because somebody could said every tuesday thursday or saturday who knows so theoretically that could happen in practice it's not going to happen

Answer 170

the next one is holy orders which means sorry simply ordained to the priestly ministry and this reflects a rapidly growing and deeply held view of the clergy laity dichotomy that the clergy are in one spiritual class the higher class and in the lower class are the laity and the roman interpretation of the new testament maintains that the elders of the new testament were all priests and they belonged to a special order of officials who would then be assisted by minor orders of the clergy priests were in the major orders below them were minor orders give you an example there is an office called sub deacon one called acolyte one called reader these uh are not always prominent but they they can be employed at times and they sometimes are especially because candidates for the priesthood are getting harder and harder to find a few years ago in the archdiocese of chicago 400 priests left the priesthood in a single year to marry 400 and so this reliance on sub-deacons and other minor orders has increased somewhat like baptism and confirmation holy orders may not be repeated it's so to speak makes an indelible mark on the soul of the person being ordained and it can never be repeated the priesthood entails receiving special power from the holy spirit bishops ordained the men who are coming into the ministry and the roman church still insists that males alone are eligible for ordination to find a biblical basis for this concept of priesthood the romanists argue that the book of hebrews in the new testament in particular lends a lot of support to the roman contention that the old testament priesthood has given place to the new testament priesthood and the new testament priesthood then is a valid sacrament but even that is is not very convincing they say the old testament priests are prefigured the new testament priesthood christ is a perfect priest and his pastors of his churches are ministerial priests who serve the common priesthood of all believers so there's a priesthood of christ the priesthood of the church and in the common priesthood of all believers yes the roman church does have a concept weakly held and seldom proclaimed about the priesthood of all believers thomas aquinas wrote this christ is the source of all priesthood the priest of the old laws the old testament was a figure of christ and the priest of the new law or new testament acts in the person of christ that's catechism question 15 48 now through that sacrament the priests by the anointing of the holy spirit are signed with a special character and are configured to christ the priest in such a way they are called upon to act in the person of christ their head question 15 63 for this is up-to-date official dogmatic teaching of the roman church questions about the ordination yes sir uh you mentioned that the catholic church and their continued stance on only men being ordained with the current popes waffling on things like homosexuality as the church as a whole begun to have any movement towards allowing women into the into the priesthood though there has been a movement for years and years but it never gets anywhere without stern support from the legacy is not going to go most of the bishops who are the executive officers of the of the pope most of them are old-timers but as the old-timers retire and the pope replaces them with younger men that's where the change might occur someday because many of the younger men have been influenced heavily heavily heavy and heavy and heavily they've been influenced heavily by feminism and there is a strong feminist movement in the catholic church but it can't get very far without the support of the bishops who would then put pressure on the pope okay and what would it take for that to take place given their years of teaching and tradition and their views about the tradition of the church what would kind of an accurate take for him to say we've been wrong for 2000 years well the church has not issued a dogmatic and formal pronouncement affirming the males alone made will say it many times but remember papal declaration does not become law until it is accepted as dogma usually that's done by the pope in conjunction with a general council of the church vatican ii was a very important change it put the prayer the roman church on the pathway to what the leaders themselves call modernization it's time for the church to modernize catch up with the culture otherwise it's going to be completely left behind that's like protestant liberals they're doing the same stupid thing and they signed their own death war and doing it but instead enabling the church to grow stronger it saps a church of energy that searches weaker people leave the church and discuss people who grew up as i did in what they call trident time catholicism nomadic pronouncers from the council of trent people who grew up in that atmosphere in the catholic church if they're sincere about their faith have to be very suspicious about the changes since vatican too there's a french archbishop named marcel or marcel marceau i think is his full name and he has be he became so disgusted with the church that he threatened to leave it and start a rival church true to the catholic tradition i think he died before he could do it he could accomplish that his successors are still hanging on but today's pope presents them with something of an enigma because he's so liberal and so socialistic in his worldview that they they're worried about him going too far and if he does go too far they then probably would leave the roman church but they still in the back of their minds have that old fear outside the roman church is what their salvation yeah so people who deliberately willfully leave the road the church and never return will be lost forever that's the penalty for apostasy but see when a church tries to be too authoritarian and teach you on every subject under the sun illness invites criticism and contention and so the roman church today is approximately the same condition the liberal protestant bodies were in the first half of the 20th century about 75 years difference yeah okay anything else

Answer 171

all right let's go to the final one matrimony never again the statement of jesus marriage holy matrimony is an institution created by christ to give grace to our souls well is there a grace available to people when they marry well let's see the origin of this sacrament appears in the book of ephesians chapter 5 31-32 so listen up there ephesians 5 31. for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh this is a great mystery but i am speaking with reference to christ and the church nevertheless let each individual among you love his own wife as he even as himself let the wife see to it that she respect her husband that's really a reading from the new inner new american standard bible in the evolving translation of the bible it reads this is a great sacrament rather than a great mystery now the greek word from mystery we've taken into english stock lock stock and barrel mysterion mystery yeah so to be faithful in the translation we have to insist that the correct translation is not sacrament at all it is a mystery and something which is a sacred mystery is not necessarily a sacramental status standing alexandra hales albertus monas and thomas aquinas all influenced the roman church in affirming marriage is a sacrament earlier augustine had called it a sacrament but he had no defined understanding of the sacrament he survives as many different things foot washing for example fasting could be regarded as sacraments but there's no reason to believe that that the new testament teaches that but that thinking became prominent in the 11th century and later councils of the church decreed that matrimony in fact is a sacrament the council of florence issued that pronouncement in 1445 and the infamous council of trent in 1563 they decreed that marriage is a sacrament because it portrays the union between christ and his church and it confers a sanctifying grace upon the partners in this union and the grace bestowed leads the american couple to love god more and to fulfill the duties of the marriage state according to roman teaching only baptized persons may marry other only baptized verses can marry in a sacramental union so that if say a catholic as a protestant wanted to marry the church might allow that or would certainly discourage it might allow it but there could not be a sacramental marriage because that would be bringing together a believer and a non-believer and that was forbidden is just out of curiosity if you had that situation um is there any case in which the church would say that the one that was a believer would still benefit in terms of grace from the marriage or well i guess there's a vague hope that that would take place but uh i don't think any pronouncement to that effect and uh the roman church has grown lacks in its requirements too requirements are on the books but they're not always enforced now for example for a long long time if a catholic wanted to marry a non-catholic he or she would have to get a special dispensation from her jerk reese and the reef would submit the case to the bishop and the bishop approved briefly informed the couple they could marry they could not marry in the church building they could not have a mass in connection with the marriage but they could marry in the priest directory or some other place and a priest could perform the ceremony but here's one of the catches in it when the couple agreed to do that they at the same time signed the promise that the children to the marriage would all be reared in catholicism and the protestant person promised not to interfere with that and beyond that the catholic party and the marriage promised to seek the conversion of the non-catholic so they could if people enforce that the church enforced it and the people adhered to it catholic protestant marriages could be furious places i wouldn't want to get caught in the crossfire

Answer 172

so eventually over the years from the new testament forward the canon law regulations were added to the roman catholic doctrine on marriage give an example in 1075 when gregory vii was pulled he issued a declaration forbidding the clergy to marry so that all priests all nuns all members of the clerical establishment had to remain single the justified justification for it was that they were first and foremost dedicated to god and it's god's church and they should not be distracted by the requirements of the married life and for a long time that was the policy today there are even relaxations of that for example suppose an episcopal minister minister in the episcopal church converts to catholicism but he's already married as what's he going to do he can't be accepted as a priest county the answer is yes he can the bishop would give him a particular would you call it dispensation particular dispensation relief releasing him from the prohibition against marriage now that has happened here and there elsewhere but not to have any conversions to from the rowing for the episcopals of the roman jury stick but that's another case of relaxation

Answer 173

in the eastern church i think this gets gets a little sticky i say the eastern church i didn't say greek church i could have included the greek church and in fact i will i would in general except on this issue when the greek church and the latin church sever severed connections in 1054 and have not reunited even to the present day that left some catholics in the east geographically they were in the east but their loyalty was still to rome and they did not approve of the break of 1054 and so they declared themselves to be here's the word uni eight churches u n i a t e u n i a t e union churches union churches are churches which have retained their traditional identity as members of the papal fold and they conduct services in their own languages and their clergy are permitted to marry that is ordinary parish priests may marry but uh the marriage is not permissible for members of the higher clergy in the east that's the bishops archbishops and patriarchs so it's a very mixed bag as far as that goes

Answer 174

and the church he contends that there's no such thing as divorce if a person has a civil divorce anyhow he or she may not marry while the former spouse is living once again that's the law once again there are exceptions and the roman church has become addicted to making exceptions when the situation seems to require it well one of the consequences of the sacramental developments in the roman roman church especially first of all i say roman sacramentalism has existed and does exist because of a inadequate sense of sin the medieval church held that all of adam's posterity have inherited adam's original sin and guilt and to deny that is heresy abelard did deny it it was excommunicated for doing it the scholastics however rejected now tradition isn't is that word that means well let's put it this way when a child comes into this world deceived in mother's womb and more into this world when does that child become sinful moment of conception that's a mother's conception do you have a biblical support for that uh psalm 51 yes psalm 51 right tell us about it i was born in iniquity all right i was conceived in iniquity and behold i was born in yeah that's right and so david was aware of his own sinful condition and said he was sinful from the moment of his mother's birth so traditionalism teaches exactly that that we're all born sinners in need of forgiveness in need of regeneration and that comes through the baptism in the roman catholic church but there's an inadequate conception of sin in this case and human nature according to roman teaching while it was conceived in a person's nature was conceived in sin that nature is sinful but it is not entirely depraved martin luther wrote his greatest book the bondage of the will and which really was a frontal assault on roman catholic beliefs of this kind and the roman catholic church then maintains that we are all sinners from birth but our nature is not utterly depraved it still retains genuine freedom to cooperate with the grace of god so that's the first problem with roman sacramentalism inadequate conception of sin the second objection to it is an inadequate conception of grace because of his underestimation of depravity medieval theologians failed to appreciate fully the work of grace in salvation they often use the language of augustine but they inclined really toward semi-pelagianism and the semi-pelegian character of the roman church became more and more evident with the passage of time yet here's again strange reality according to roman catholic doctrine both Pelagianism and some epilegianism have been refuted as heresies yet if you quiz almost any roman catholic what he believes about original sin he will deny traditionism and he will deny total depravity so the legislation is on the books but nobody's reading the books i saw a seems anyhow there's inadequate conception of sin and inadequate conception of grace aquinas thought that god's grace is necessary for salvation and he insisted that humans can acquire no merit with god apart from a preceding grace so god must take the initiative but human beings retain the ability to cooperate with god in his grace the ability to persevere in faith is a gift of grace god bestows upon his elect thomas said that

Answer 175

thomas nevertheless assigned great importance to human merit and he wrote about congruent and condyne merit congruent c-o-n g-r-u-e-n-t and con-9 c-o-n-d-i-g-n congruent merit comes from the rightful employment of a person's natural gifts conditioned merit comes from the gifts of grace and since the fall humans require grace to perform good works of merit but the issue goes only back to north africa to tertullian in the early 3rd century he talked about an infusion of grace that gave people spiritual power and ability to accomplish works of merit now thomas may not have intended to magnify the role of merit but his influence had that effect just the same and a popular belief continues today that infused grace enables works of merit in some sense salvation is a reward for works now be fair with the roman catholics don't ever accuse them of saying you believe in salvation by works alone that's not true but they could if they're informed argue that they believe in a previous infusion of grace which makes it possible to perform works of merit according to stress the death of christ as a redeeming sacrifice but he failed to distinguish adequately between justification and sanctification justification as i think we all know is a declaratory act of god he makes it once and that's all in the life of an individual it's the grace that accomplishes our conversion to be justified through grace by faith through this in christ alone sanctification on the other hand takes up where justification leaves off it is a continuous process whereas justification is a declaratory act once and for ever sanctification is a lifelong process whereby justified people actually become righteous to a degree through their obedience to the commandments of god

Answer 176

thomas held that there are four steps necessary to justify sinners here they are make sure you get all four of them number one infusion of grace number two free will act of faith number three free will rejection of sin free will rejection of sin and number four remission of sin the sacraments are the major means for the infusion of grace and by them god imparts unmerited aid to native people and then

Answer 177

how about the influence of medieval sacramentalism on the modern roman church the Thomistic view of salvation a large measure has prevailed in roman circles although his strong emphasis upon election has practically disappeared to find somebody at all intelligible about election and able to discuss it well you'd have to look far and wide in the roman church although the catechism does refer to it but once again it's in the book but who reads the book look at the number in 1987. it was a very good year reminds me one time my wife and i were having dinner at a restaurant and a couple sat across from us and there was no ketchup bottle on their table i think they would look around for catching a sign that's what they were doing so i grabbed the bottle of ketchup i wrapped it in a white napkin i delivered it to him and i said 57 it was a really great year they had fun with that one all right where are we [Music] yeah here it is i think i may have called this year's answer before justification is not only the remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man so that's the failure to distinguish justification and sanctification and keep this in mind if we don't consider justification as a declaratory act of god then it becomes the beginning of sanctification one continuous process and we can never know for sure that the process is going to go on to completion so we can the assurance of salvation is out of the question in such teaching we can never be sure we have required enough merit that's a sad situation it certainly diminishes the role of christ in our lives this says that justification is converted in baptism the sacrament of faith justification entails the sanctification of a person's whole being that's 1995. and the next uh several questions or half a dozen questions on grace are very very significant and i urge you to read them carefully i have them well marked in my copy of this now since thomas aquinas thought the intellect had escaped the effects of the fall when he talked about a person's individual faith he thereby meant as a latin has it a census intellectus as census intellectus intellectual ascent now let's illustrate it in a silly way oh look down the street there was a dreadful accident there and 14 and a half people are dead what 14 and a half people are dead you believe that oh yes i believe that you want to get down and look no well what we're getting at is we can intellectually ascend to almost anything and intellectual asset cost us nothing but to ascent in faith to the claims of god and his son jesus christ requires much more than just intellectual assent it requires personal commitment personal commitment to the lordship and savior hood of christ himself now thomas seemed to miss that point and so he talked a lot about the intellectual aspects of the christian faith and why people should believe them and not deny them he did not grasp the adequate understanding of justification by grace through faith in christ emphasize if you have a conversation with a catholic emphasize those three pronouns salvation by grace through faith in christ by through it the council of trent followed thomas aquinas in this regard and so the very sad conclusion of all this study is very a very simple but heartbreaking statement roman catholicism proclaims christ as the savior who does not actually save roman catholic is not entitled to say i am saved and christ saved me that's heresy you can say i am a christian and i hope to be saved by obeying the commandments of god now that i have received the grace of baptism so it's a pathetic situation really

Answer 178

all right look with me on your syllabus please we are now on page 12 problem number 11. item number and we'll work down that whole section as far as we can get and this will deal with the militant interaction between muslims and so-called christians i guess i should say so-called muslims against so-called christians anyhow let's take a look at this and unless you have any questions about what we've covered recently do you think okay uh look on the back with me for a moment now i want you to look at spain on the southwestern edge of europe as you can see it there i've sought great references to that shrine santiago de compestela that's according to legend the burial place of saint james the problem is which saint james and we're not even sure there's anything in that tomb nobody's wanted to look but for many centuries it's been a popular pilgrim site and even to this late days in history with all the advances of secularism there are still deeply religious people who go to shrines and hope to obtain indulgences by doing so and this remains one of the principal attractions of that nature all right

Answer 179

now to understand what was happening here need to first of all say something about the victories of muslims over victories over the muslims in italy sicily and spain people sometimes seem to think that there is no military conflict between the east and the west until the coming of the crusades that's a quite a serious error there are plenty of god confrontations many bloody battles one of the most famous is the battle of tour in 732 by that time the muslims from the east had spread toward the west in very large numbers especially along the rim of north africa and then on this on the ocean they they proved to be fine semen and so as a consequence they launched naval attacks and put troops ashore and in one case of the battle of tour it looked like the muslims were going to sweep the field but they didn't charles martell and the franks led the way in blunting that advance and saving europe for what might have been a one massive imposition of islam because the muslims involved in that were very committed to spreading their message by force if necessary and they wanted converts of course and they didn't mind obtaining them through compulsion the papacy of course is located in italy it has been for most of its history the pope was the own lock stock and barrel a good section of central italy called now the papal states sometimes called the patrimony of saint peter and it's the same place as papal states where the pope is the civil ruler as well as the preeminent religious authority when the pope got into difficulty with these enemies be they european enemies or muslim enemies when the pope got into trouble with his enemies he often looked for allies who would give him military protection when he needed it and in particular to protect the papal states because the mineral deposits in the papal states are substantial it's the most productive part of italy in terms of mineral wealth and so there's a very strong interest in for the pope and keeping his control there on one occasion he entered into an alliance with the normans i understand who the normans are norman d is on the coastline of france it's a place where vikings settled in early christian centuries and they were very powerful people the vikings were bloody people as you probably know just consider the names of some of their chieftains harold luddacks nice guy huh harold bloodaxe there's another one somebody bluetooth i know you thought that was something else but anyhow these people were not at least been hesitant at slaughtering people they perceive to be their enemies or people obstructing their ambitions well the pope recognized that the normans who had been so to speak christianized and we used that with a term in a regarded way but they claim to be Christians anyhow and since they weren't making claims of that nature and they had a reputation for ferocity the papacy found it useful to recruit them to fight the pope's battles in italy and they did and as some measured they were quite successful the problem is instead of returning all the liberated land back to the pope they kept a whole lot of it for themselves and therefore much of southern italy was now taken into what we might loosely call an italian feudal system because the pope distributed titles to the leaders of the movement and that those leaders then constituted the aristocracy of the region

Answer 180

whether when we think of the crusades properly we almost always focus on the year 1095 where between 1095 and 1270 much of europe was engaged in efforts to defeat the muslims and this time the east the west rather took the offensive and marched to the east and by marching to the east they of course conquered lands that belonged to jews and to christians as well as fighting the muslims

Answer 181

as late as 1492 christopher columbus promised that he would donate the profits from his voyages to revive the war against the turks and he wanted to be part and parcel of the effort to liberate the shrines in palestine palestine was known as the holy s say jerusalem the holy city and palestine the holy land and so ambitious and courageous leaders such as columbus were eager to do what they could to defeat the muslims and liberate the shrines in the holy land so that christian pilgrims could visit them without fear

Answer 182

priests and books as well as soldiers became warriors give you an example archbishop baldwin of canterbury he lived until 1190 we don't know his date of birth but archbishop baldwin of canterbury organized the body of 200 knights and then 300 commoners 500 warriors all together and he led them into battle the archbishop himself right on the battlefield sword in hand urging his soldiers on now the popes did not go on crusades in person that they supported efforts and urged the efforts and urged others to fight and it became common when a person put himself at the service of the crusades he was what they said taking the cross crusade means pertaining to the cross so taking the cross well where did they take it well they took the cross on their uniforms their cloth uniforms and those that had arbor painted it on the armor and often this the saw the things who went on horseback had it likewise a sign hanging on the saddle of a cross so these were people who called themselves soldiers of the cross and therefore they had a holy mission to perform

Answer 183

now not all of them were attracted to the crew to go on crusade because they had a desire for holiness not all of them some of them yes there were some of them who were sincere believers that by risking their lives on crusade god would be very pleased with them and would reward them substantially in the life to come they're plenty of sincere people got involved that way there were others who went for plunder they saw the opportunity of picking the the roadways clear of anything of value that they could carry back to europe with them there was a famous monk in fact by the name of peter now that's a common name we call him peter the hermit because his religious location was to live in a hermitage in a cave by himself but he came out of the cave lured out by the message of crusade and he became an articulate preacher raising soldiers to go on crusade and they went by the thousands another recruiter of soldiers was was bernard of clairvaux that very godly man who wrote some very beautiful hymns well he likewise raised soldiers from one of the crusades in england

Answer 184

the king himself became a crusader at one point his name is richard first he reigned from 1189 to 99. he's commonly known by a nickname you know what it was the lionheart yeah richard the lionheart and he loved that of course he wanted to be feared because he was such a strong leader and richard the lionhearted reported that some of his most ferocious soldiers were members of the clergy who wouldn't ordinarily think of people in the particularly in the monastic life taking on weapons and going into battle but they did

Answer 185

and some people were who went on crusade were just plain scoundrels they were there for the adventure and as i said to plunder part of the motivation for the crusades was revenge for earlier muslim attacks on the west

Answer 186

now when john the eighth was pope 872 to john the eighth the muslims devastated a good portion of italy and the pope promised salvation to everyone who fought against them but urban ii called for the first crusade in 1095 he told his warriors that going on crusade would be equivalent to to substituting for penance so in other words penance was the way of obtaining remission of sins and now they wouldn't need that any longer because they become soldiers of god one crusade

Answer 187

when pope innocent third was the pope he offered a huge indulgence to everyone who contributed to the crusade directly or indirectly now they could go on the crusade in person that would be directly they could supply ships or other materials or funds and that would be your indirect question to use your mic is on

Answer 188

the kings of france sometimes promised that if their knights and others would go on crusade that the king would pay all their debts and so it's clear that most of the people who went on crusade saw no conflict between the religious duty on one hand and their interest on the other

Answer 189

bernard claravo hoped to find peaceful means to save christian christendom from the muslims but he approves of warfare as necessary in this case he told his soldiers that death for them would profit their souls and the death of enemies would be pleasing to god

Answer 190

thomas aquinas thought that clerics should go to war in defense of the church

Answer 191

matthew of paris a well-known ecclesiastical leader rejoiced he said because a great multitude of nobles left their country to fight faithfully for christ he said that those who died in battle were martyrs

Answer 192

english king edward first and scottish king robert bruce asked that their hearts be buried in jerusalem and they were

Answer 193

the french really took the lead in the leading role in the crusades and most of the contemporary accounts of what happened on crusade were the work of french authors but forces from scotland to hungary and every place in between did participate

Answer 194

spain was an exception spain did not get involved in the the campaigns going to the east because spain had a homegrown muslim problem you may remember in the year 711 large muslim force in north africa crossed into spain you know the uh the opening of the mediterranean sea there is very narrow and rather easy to furry troops across there and they did and they were in the engaged with something the spanish was called la reconquista the reconquest spain had been a so-called christian nation in earlier christian centuries but the muslims moved in in large numbers in 711

Answer 195

and they eventually conquered about three quarters of the country the only places that were able to retain their identity separate identity were in the far north of spain there are three little states i won't call them kingdoms call them kinglets three little kinglets in the door it's either barcelona or the others barcelona was one that escapes me see what i told you a-g-e well anyhow the uh ray conquista took 400 years to complete those three little states in the north lyon was another one yeah lyon barcelona one more you might come to me to probably about two o'clock tomorrow morning i'll call you any now those three states in the north arm themselves to the teeth and began moving south raising a battle cry as they went god wishes it god wishes it that was their cry onward god wishes it (Navarre)

Answer 196

and they started winning some victories over the muslims they suffer some losses too some very bad losses but one way or another the momentum was south and that would mean to be conquering the country at the expense of the occupying muslims and it took 400 years to accomplish yes in 1492 columbus sailed the ocean blue well that was one thing that happened to 1492 the other was the completion of the reconquest in spain the only place that held out yet was a little enclave in the deep south and that one was uh granada granada was the last muslim stronghold wasn't had to give up for they were beaten badly about 400 years in order to achieve that so spain had her own version of the crusade right there in their homeland and did not march to the east but uh otherwise they spent the rig conquest that had all the appearances of a crusade and i don't have any hesitation referring to it as such

Answer 197

it's easy to justify the crusades because there were so many muslim attacks on on christian shipping for example in the mediterranean and there are christians on claims in north africa which the muslims gobbled up and then there was the invasion of france at the battle of tour 732 so there are enough offenses as the muslims committed that the western forces could claim that they were engaging in protection against malicious enemies easy to do that they declared that their purpose for the crusades was the protection of fellow christians and wherever they were and especially in the holy land we seem to have something of a magnetic effect attracting christian interests some crusaders declared an eagerness debate in the jordan river and some superstitious belief that since jesus was baptized in the jordan river all greek christians should go to the holy land and do the same others who were sincerely religious went on crusade because they believed in that way they could find sacred relics in the holy land and carry them back to europe which many of them did in fact if you go to france today the the mother of uh the virgin mary her name is ann and she is buried in a crypt in one of the french cathedrals the cathedral how about that that's ram huh that's why i say french language is impossible but people never get the whole thing out of their mouths they make sounds but i don't think they tell it they're intelligent words i'm i'm i bet my lawnmower didn't touch better than that i haven't had them [Music]

Answer 198

all right anyhow they they believed that they were doing god's work they wanted sacred relics they could take back home and one of them was they found the body of the virgin mary's mother carrying her back to iran and put a shrine in her honor there in the cathedral church for many centuries christians are going to palestine as pilgrims and the muslims did not interfere but they began interfering right about the beginning of the 10th century when the leading political figure a political and religious figure among the muslims with the khalif hakeem h a k i am hakeem khalif khalif means deputy and when muhammad died he left no designated heir to lead the movement but his closest companions as they were called selected a colleague a deputy and his name was this man's name was hakeem and hakeem began persecuting christians in the holy land in the year 1010. his atrocities were severe but they're a very short duration and you yet the europeans dare not forget them because they had treated christians very brutally

Answer 199

the pilgrims resumed their journeys after Hakeem died but the turks made them pay for admission to the holy land you can't get into holy land without a ticket you can't get a ticket without paying the fee and so the turks saw an opportunity to make a killing more ways than one and they began collecting funds as charges to enter the holy land in 1076 the turks occupied all of palestine and returned to the practice of persecuting christians and many pilgrims went on their journey to the east immersive at the ancient tribes never returned they lost their lives at the hands of muslims so the reports of oppression in the holy land spread toward the west and cause an upsurge of anger and fury who do these people think they are they're molesting our brothers and sisters and that must stop

Answer 200

but when the crusades began there were three ways of traveling the simplest way was overland but it's a long long walk some of them walked from france all the way to palestine on foot most of it someone horseback the most foot and that's a very arduous way a less arduous way was to go by sea to take ships and sail to the east but remember for a long time the muslims particularly the turkish muslims had naval control of the mediterranean and it's not possible to just ship people to palestine safely but when it was the opportunity offered itself some people did go by ship and then there were those who crossed over from the mediterranean to egypt and to use egypt as a base for moves into palestine along the land route supporters there maintained storehouses for food supplies and even hospitals in the same places the merchants traded in silt spice paper and other delicacies from the east the folks watched all of this with great interest in fact they first were fascinated by the reconquest in spain and with and they kept ambassadors in spain to keep the papacy informed the developments there the war against the muslims in in this area encouraged comparable efforts in the east so many people knew how successful the lake on was although it was very very very painfully slow nevertheless it was in the end successful and that convinced them when they hear about a a victory for the christian forces they say oh good now we can do the same thing in the east and so they tried

Answer 201

the papal office was big paper she was very very supportive of these religious crusades whether it be the ones in iberia or in the east iberia incidentally is a peninsula of which spain is the major power the secondary one is portugal spain and portugal at one time were one country but by this time in history they had divided and they remained divided ever since the byzantine power in the east declined in the face of muslim threats the eastern empire was still there on paper there was still a roman emperor an eastern or byzantine emperor as you call it and the folks use whatever opportunity they had to exert political as well as moral leadership of the east as well as the west

Answer 202

in 1071 though there was a major victory for the turks the battle of manzikert m-a-n-z-i-k-e-r-t 1071 the battle of man secured the victory went to the turks this time overwhelmingly and the byzantines began fleeing to the west because they were panic stricken about what had happened in the east by this time constantinople the capital of the eastern empire was in grave danger and because the danger was so great the reigning emperor in constantinople in stringing with panic now pleaded with the pope to help save the christian empire of the east he humiliated himself by asking the vatican for aid remember that in 1054 the east and west churches had separated and they've never rejoined although there were good terms today and so there was a humiliation for the emperor of the east to go hat in hand begging for help from the western pope but he did urban ii was the pope at the time and he was eager to unite all of europe under his leadership and he hoped indeed to use the crisis in the east as a springboard to accomplish that purpose and the pope went on record as encouraging others to to join them they correctly uh

Answer 203

during the war in the east peter the hermit an obscure french monk had been to palestine and he brought back living accounts vivid accounts of horrible persecution christians in palestine were suffering and he was a visionary he claimed he had revelatory dreams the books urban ii listened to the pleas of peter the hermit and the pope became convinced it was god's will that the exposition moved forward to save the eastern empire Urban’s's address he delivered to a gathering of church leaders at claremont in france claremont in 1095. and peter was very successful in energizing the pope and the pope was very successful in energizing thousands of would-be soldiers to save the east and particularly the holy land thousands of people swore to go on crusade many of them painted red crosses on their garments and their shields some went to the limit of branding their own bodies with a cross not tattoo but red hot iron bread yeah

Answer 204

raymond the count of Toulouse took a vow and became a very prominent leader and soon thousands more all across europe promised to fight and peter the hermit and other preachers went about had no difficulty raising armies for the job peter was a attractive person in some ways mainly because he was so odd looking he was a hermit by choice but he was a persuasive preacher just the same he dressed in ragged clothing and wrote on a donkey sometimes when he would be in a little town preaching for troops people who live there would go up to his donkey and pull hairs out of the donkey's tail and they consider that a holy relic holy relic came out of the donkey's tail hard to believe it did but they did it just the same the pope at that point was the most esteemed leader in the christian world and so his support made all the difference there were the preliminary attacks he began even before any formal organization was in place if they'd been under the leadership of skillful military commanders they would have known not to do what they did but they were not that they were driven by driven by what they call it they were driven by a religious conviction and they had little or no military experience in many cases and so they left for the holy land poorly organized poorly equipped and ill-prepared to fight but they somehow thought since they were doing the work of god he would give them everything they needed now in one case an army of crusaders marched into bulgaria now these were people with no military training there were about 15 000 of them to call them troops as quite an exaggeration they went through hungary into bulgaria and when they got into bulgaria they engaged the turkish army which slaughtered almost all of them only a handful of people relatively speaking ever reached constantinople a second force led by phillip by peter the hermit was much stronger still in numbers 40 000 soldiers this time some knights joined in the campaign and the king of hungary gave it his support where this so-called army entered bulgaria however a massacre occurred almost right away of the 40 000 who went his aim was to reach constantinople of the 40 000 only 7 000 completed the journey the others either were killed or they died from natural causes or they were defected and went back to their homes

Answer 205

a rumor spread that the turks had conquered the the other that the christians had conquered the turkish capital at nicaea same nice here earlier connected with the united stand creed yeah somebody started the rumor on a groundless rumor that the christians had beaten the turks badly and seized the turkish capitals at nicaea and so the army shifted their focus marched toward dicea where they expected to be welcomed as heroes not so when they got there the turks met them and destroyed almost the whole band this time peter the hermit fled from the battlefield he did get inside constantinople and he had protection while he was there but it was only a matter of time so constantinople itself would fall to the turks and when it did that was the end of crusading really there was all kinds of plans to for further crusades but in the end after the fall of constantinople it appeared hopeless

Answer 206

another episode of note occurred in germany when bands of irregular soldiers in the city of mainz did not wait to get to the east to fight right there in mainz and germany they turned against not the muslims but the jews there was a substantial jewish population there in the city of mainz and the crusading army moves along the rhine river and attacked not only mites but other cities along the way and eventually this force engaged regular turkish troops and it suffered a disaster thousands died in these campaigns which accomplished really nothing but bloodshed and that was about it

Answer 207

you might like to know too that when the turks conquered constantinople they when the church conquered it the christian forces were down to a handful of soldiers they were landing the walls of the walled city and they fortified the walls all the way around and proceeded to fight give them credit where credit is due they fought like lions they inflicted thousands and thousands of casualties upon the turkish assault but still they could not prevail and at the end when the turks broke through the gates of constantinople they at least 150 000 people had died and remember the population then was a lot smaller than it is today was the population at that time i don't have any statistics to offer you but you can be sure that the population was low compared to what it would be today i'm just curious what rough percentage of the population that 150 000 made up i don't know and that would be interesting yeah i probably probably could find out do i do a term paper on that one might be a little late for me to backtrack now okay that would be

Answer 208

the muslim attitude today toward toward the western world it sometimes resurrects the term crusaders they sometimes at the in fact when american forces conducted two wars in the middle east the first and second one some of the muslims complained that this is a case where the crusaders were misbehaving once again about 1900 there was a reaction against the decline of a turkish empire because the turks had joined the losing side in world war one they were allies to the germans and austrians against the british french and russians and eventually americans please close the door i thought a mouseketeer was somebody in disneyland crusades at disneyland okay about 1900 there was a reaction against the decline of a turkish power and the establishment of western colonial holdings in muslim lands after world war one the victors met at uh in france in paris and they drafted a series of treaties one for each of the other powers that had opposed them in the war and that included the turks so the turkish army the turkish empire then was dissolved the victors forced the turks to give it up and so they did and then the western powers took that territory as colonies of their own that's how the western powers got controlled in egypt jordan saudi arabia for a while and other places i can recommend a good book for you to read about the crusades if you're interested the author's name is rodney stark s-t-a-r-k rodney stark and the title of the book is god's battalions god's battalions published in 2009 by harper collins publishers it's a very interesting look stark is a professor at baylor university he's in the sociology department but he writes history as well and does an incredible job i think and is very competent writer

Answer 209

well by long before 1095 when the first crusade began the muslims have been attacking christian holdings in western asia and eastern europe these incursions were executed to spread islam and to obtain plunder and to subject non-muslims to high taxation as the byzantine empire became weaker the arabs first the turks later had opportunities to expand the reach of islam

Answer 210

way back in 636 arabs appeared in palestine and laid siege to jerusalem this led to the expulsion of jews from the city although the the muslims allow the christians to remain for the time being they came the conquests of north africa and in 711 the muslims invaded spain and sicily and some other islands of the mediterranean muslims from spain including italy and they plundered rome herself twice 843 and 846. they looted the city especially the city's churches because the churches in italy had immense wealth and so the muslims found great pleasure in plundering the churches and they forced the pope himself to pay a large financial tribute as the price of remaining in the country sicily and southern italy remained under muslim authority for about two centuries

Answer 211

when the muslims occupied new lands they treated non-muslims badly even though the quran forbids forced conversions that's one of the strange things it's very clear in the quran that allah does not want muslims engaging in forced conversions don't apply compulsion to gain conversions and in spite of that the muslims have done that and they've done that dozens of times in armenia muslims assembled a christian nobleman's in the church building and when they had them all inside the building they burned the building down with the nobleman inside the 11th century about 6 000 jews perished in morocco at the hands of muslims and about that many suffered execution in granada which was the last muslim stronghold in iberia and even more casualties christian catholics occurred on the island of cyprus when the muslims arrived there the alleged muslim policy of toleration then does not accord with the facts of the record europeans forget no europeans fought against the muslim addresses long before the crusades began as informal as formal after the pilgrimages to the holy land became popular muslims often persecuted christians going there when the muslims destroyed the church of the holy sepulchre in palestine in jerusalem a wave of anger swept across europe that was considered to be an outrage that should not go unchallenged but the holy sepulchre was destroyed that's the the structure erected over what we believe was the memorial place of jesus can't prove it but there's a strong tradition and that is it a later muslim leader allowed reconstruction of that church but in return for a price the christians had to surrender 5 000 prisoners held by the byzantine empire thereafter the muslim attacks upon pilgrims became ever more frequent and when the turks adopted islam they sought to rule the territories of conquered people rather than conduct occasional raids for plunder

Answer 212

by 1045 the turks had conquered persia and made baghdad the capital city i mentioned the passing already that sometimes when the crusading armies went to the east they traveled by sea this was is evidence of a very important development taking place at the time that was in the north of italy are three port cities venice genoa and pisa venice genoa and pisa and those three cities had earlier in the early history of major naval and maritime powers but as the so-called dark ages ensued they lost that distinction but now they were beginning to reclaim it they were rebuilding their naval forces launching out boldly on the ocean and contesting with the turks whenever they had an opportunity and they did win some very spectacular victories so they swept the western mediterranean clear of muslim pirates and then they turned their attention to go to east and do the same there and so the situation on the ocean was more promising for the crusaders than it was on land the normans sit were situated in the south of italy as indicated all the way down to the heel of the italian boot the italian boot in italy on the map roughly assumes the shape appears in the shape of a boot and the heel of the boot is the port city of barry b.a.r.i and as those northern cities moved against the muslims they deprived the muslims of control over corsica and sardinia both mediterranean islands off the coast of italy the western mediterranean was once again opened to commerce and the prosperity of those northern naval powers enabled them to become major maritime powers as well so they stood to gain a great deal of wealth and they did gain it indeed

Answer 213

meanwhile the recovery conquista in iberia was proceeding and muslim losses in the western mediterranean led to of losses in spain as well the muslims had their own government established in spain for quite a long time they called it the cordova caliphate where the city of cordova was the headquarters cordova caliphate it had achieved a high degree of culture but had not achieved political unity in the end the bliss the continuation of the muslim control in iberia was hindered very badly by disunity among the muslims themselves for every battle they fought against the christians they fought one among themselves and so that gravely weakened them in the end as the three states not mentioned were stronger that they were in a position to contest the muslim power and they did so quite well at times although it was a long argus conflict with many reverses and some victories

Answer 214

as early as 1031 there were clashes in italy or in spain between muslims and christians but the second half of the 11th century the reconquest seemed to gain gain momentum and it had the features of a holy war so that's why i say i have no hesitation regarding you know conquista as one of the crusades although historians have not done that in general but yes it had the features of the holy war and the battle cry was offered santiago santiago saint james saint james i think you're going to get the shrine back again the saint james and heaven is going to help them here on earth in 1492 the raycon conquistador was completed in spain it was completed in portugal in 1497. so as of 1497 the muslim power in iberia had been broken and was never again restored i want to show you another first one oh yeah okay sorry that gives you a good view of the crusading activity at least the early crusades anyway you've seen up in the north venice genoa and visa they had access to mediterranean on one side into the adriatic city on the other and the shipping lanes you can see indicated by the lines going from west to east

Answer 215

okay after the arabs conquered the holy land they gradually lost their earlier zeal expansionary field but persians berbers and turks took up the cause every time a muslim proof ethnic muslim group was lagging in enthusiasm there occurred the conversion of another ethnic group that took up the message of his love and carried the whole idea forward that's how the persians the berbers and the turks became muslims the turks eventually emerged as the single most powerful member of the muslim community the turks eventually took most of the arab and byzantine territories and when they threaten the city of constantinople their egyptian clients when they back up here when they threatened constantinople and their egyptian clients persecuted christians in palestine that's when the emperor appealed to the pope frantically asking for help the pope and the emperor brother was alexis the first alexis coleman as his name is known his daughter was a was quite a historian annika none of her name was and she wrote a history of her father's reign and did a very credible job and so even to this day students of that period of time and that region the jury often referred to her as a source of authority pope irving ii employed peter the hermit as we've seen to recruit soldiers for the first crusade proposals for war against muslims for the holy land had occurred long before 1095 and several earlier popes had dabbled with the idea but had not been able to organize anything substantial the pope had a vested interest in the crusades for a couple of reasons one was simple or simple for example religion the pope claimed to be the pastor of all christians

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but in 1054 the eastern church went its separate way and has remained separate ever since and the dream of the popes in that period and never thereafter was to accomplish the reunion of the two churches under papal authority it has not happened yet whether it ever will or not i'm i'm a historian i'm not a prophet so i don't make predictions it's hard enough trying to explain the past without pretending to know the future all right so the pope hoped to regain the greek orthodox and other orthodox churches of the east the same pope that was involved in the same pope involved in that quarreled with the king of england henry forth about investiture we've seen that and there's no crusade to the east was going to be forthcoming yet there's some evidence that pope sylvester ii and sergey is two had prompted promoted such a project but they did so without success the pope was in a good position to entice people to join the crusade and the popes often offered inducements such as the forgiveness of sins the payment of debts and of course instant salvation for anybody who died in battle and in addition to that when the soldiers were away in combat the pope promised protection for their families and their properties and some people joined the crusade for spiritual benefits others for the lure of adventure or the prospect of plunder

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of course the first crusade militarily was the most the most successful the crusaders in fact did conquer jerusalem and there in and around the city of jerusalem they decreed that they had created a new entity called the kingdom of jerusalem but this was in defiance of the byzantine emperor remember they promised him they were going to liberate the territories held by the muslims but instead of doing that they well they did do that and then when they got the territories they kept it for themselves and established the latin kingdom of jerusalem the initial engagements in the first crusade were very discouraging at times famine disease desertions occurred after the crusaders conquered antioch a huge turkish army besieged the city and it looked as though the turks were going to win everything and massacre the christians however that did not happen an interesting episode seemed to turn the tide one of the crusaders went into a church a church in jerusalem and found a sword underneath the altar and there was a little statement there somehow saying that this little this sword was there by divine provision and it had earlier been used by christian soldiers and now he was ready for use again and so they displayed the sword told the story and that aroused the crusaders to a new energy and a new conquest when the crusades crusaders conquered jerusalem it was 1099 they did a reprehensible thing it's strange this was to be these were to be wars against muslims but sometimes they weren't against other people too particularly jews the jews after all were nobody's no benefit to anybody jews where the rotten no good jews they had crucified jesus they don't deserve our support but they do deserve our wrath so let's go get them i mean that was the attitude it really was so naked anti-semitism in all of its ugly cruelty there it was and they butchered jews along with turks they burned down synagogues with jews inside irvin ii the pope who launched the first crusade died after the conquest of jerusalem but he never learned about that victory the crusaders next established this latin kingdom that i mentioned and they declared that the highest ranking churchman in this kingdom of jerusalem would be the patriarch of jerusalem but he would be a latin patriarch subject to the authority of the pope and then other bishoprics began to appear in the conquered lands and they too were latin much to the irritation of the emperor and the greek orthodox church both the emperor and the orthodox church considered themselves betrayed by the by the people who were going to be their liberators and from time to time there were bitter contentions among the crusaders and the threat of a new turkish attack always created instability latin kingdom fell to the turks when saladin was their sultan saladin s a l a d i n 12th century south in 1187 he conquered and arrested took many many crusaders per prisoner but he treated them rather leniently but he made them pay for it so for in return for their liberty liberation they had to make substantial financial donations the first crusade militarily then was generally successful but it was not a lasting success one reason why the first crusade succeeded as far as it did was the turks had to fight the mongols at the same time and that's the nemesis that's the great disadvantage of any military engagement that has to be fought on two wars and currently anybody with any knowledge of military strategy and tactics will say avoid a two-front war no matter what it takes avoid avoided and so the first crusade succeeded mainly because the turks had to fight the Mongols at the same time

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bernard of clairvaux then entered the picture and his role was to raise soldiers recruits for the second crusade which was going to bail out the remnants of the first crusade at least that was the intention the effort to defeat the turks though failed and the byzantine forces and politicians got more and more hostile toward the west and had less confidence in western aid against the muslim enemy by 1187 the crusaders had lost jerusalem and dry as they would they could never regain it 1189 brought the crusade of kings these were three kings european kings each of which raised an army and marched to the east these three were philip ii king of france often called philip augustus he liked that the august one philip augustus philip ii the king of england richards first the lionhearted and then the german funeral king frederick barbarossa project barbaroach's nickname was frederick the redbeard he was a redheaded man and had a big bushy redhead red beard this alliance of the three kings didn't last very long for one thing the three monarchs did not trust one another not for a moment and they were out with they had their independent ambitions to satisfy and they weren't going to do anything unnecessary to aid the other kings frederick barbarossa disappeared first he was crossing a river in asia minor fell off his horse and drowned his heart straight to china 2. the king is about they both died there in the water that left richard of england and philip ii of france these two hated each other because they've been fighting each other in europe remember the year 1066 the year 1066 what happened in europe norman conquest that's right yes the norm is from france invaded england and conquered it and william the conqueror as he became known became the king of england well it shows us that england and france were not friends and the ruling factions of the two countries were particularly hostile to one another and finally when they tried to collaborate in the east that failed too philip got disgusted with richard he pulled his french forces out of the endeavor they turned around and marched home and that left solid and well that left richard to face saladin alone he was not successful except to the degree that salad in return for making the peace promised that he would not allow his forces to molest pilgrims going to the holy land other than that richard had nothing to show for his trouble

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let's get ahead to the fourth crusade 1204 but that's what occurred it's in response to a call from the pope of that year was innocent third and the city of venice the naval power of venice agreed to transport french troops to the east and to join the different states there the success of this game promised the venetians the name to get control of the trade of the eastern mediterranean and the eastern orthodox church would return to the authority of the pope the pope did not approve the scheme he said he had suspicions about it it proceeded anyway and when the byzantines did not deliver what they promised the crusaders and the venetians invaded constantinople they never got to palestine they made it god standing noble and they plundered it without mercy if you go to italy today particularly to venice you can see some very exquisitely beautiful artwork decorations stolen from santa double and they're on display now in italy the latin emperor at this time his name baldwin of flanders flanders is one of the provinces between france and the netherlands and he became the latin emperor of the east and then in addition to that there was a smaller stage created in a feudal pattern venice took most of the treasure and gained a monopoly on the ocean trade a latin patriarch of constantinople declared that the greek orthodox church was now and forever after to be subjected to the pope not everybody was happy with that decision the people who were listed in the crusade had to pay their own expenses and so wealthy nobles paid for themselves and sometimes pays for commodores to join with them the duke of normandy on one occasion pawned his entire duchy in order to get he he warned his whole touching to his brother robert the duke of normandy born his whole country to his brother who was king william ii of england he had to obtain money in which he could finance his own exposition and recruit and pay thousands of others to go with him sometimes noblemen from the west would risk everything by going to to the east and they ended up losing everything some of them had to suffer foreclosure on their european properties in order to pay their creditors only about 15 of the french knights joined the crusade most who did so were sincerely religious men the crusades did not deprive the muslims of freedom of religion that's interesting the sometimes the christian leaders coming from the west were surprisingly generous after defeating a group of muslims allow them to continue the practice of their own religion not all sometimes they were brutal suppression

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then in 1212 there was a crusade which is enough to make decent people weep called the children's crusade it's not hard using it to find episodes in history that will provide factual confirmation for what i'm going to say and here it is belief in extra biblical revelation is exceedingly harmful and should never be engaged in one of the principle features of christian belief is the sufficiency of divine revelation in scripture so that if we resort to extra biblical sources of revelation we're inviting chaos and sometimes extreme cruelty it's extreme cruelty here in the case of the crusaders the children's crusade of 1212. this was the work of two really just teenage boys who were visionaries they claimed to have visions and to receive direction from god in their visions or sometimes in their dreams and they claimed that god told them that the crusades had failed because the crusaders themselves were so so sinful therefore it would be far better to send innocent children to do the job because they would not be as evil as the adults and so that's exactly what happened the two visionaries were nicholas of cologne and stephen of vanduul nicholas of cologne they enlisted thousands of french and german children and they sent the children to liberate the holy land many people died on the journey the journey had to go through the alps mountains and unfortunately winter hit early that year as if more children were exposed to horrendous suffering because of the weather that some of them did get as far south as marseille in france and marseille is a major port and so the idea was if they got to marseille they would find ships that would be willing to transport them to the east unfortunately that's what happened they found sea captains well very willing to take them toward the east but after these ships got to see a couple of days it became evident they were not going east at all they were going directly south to north africa and to see captains when they got to north africa rounded up the surviving children sold them to pirates who of course then put them into slavery so it's a sad sad sale of what could happen when people abandoned the authority of god's word and claimed to have visions of their own

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and as you evaluate the crusades i call your attention first of all to the military situation the year was 1095. remember the pope urban second issued a call for the first crusade it seemed to be a very wholesome undertaking because the eastern empire the byzantine empire was in grave danger from turkish assault and turkish conquest and beyond that the holy land has fallen into the control of the muslims and in palestine as we know it today there was a great deal of injustice taking place mainly for the jewish population which was still hanging on there after the collapse of the roman empire well all things considered considered the first thing to say about the crusades is they were military failures they did not succeed in defeating the turks they did not succeed in receiving his end time empire or the holy land there were eight crusades all together if you do not count the one in spain i gave you my reasons for that that spain had all the characteristics of a holy war but it was in the extreme west was not in the east but anyhow there were eight in the east crusade city east and despite occasional victories in battle the end result was a colossal failure in 1291 at ocker that's acre anchor rocker this was the last latin possession in palestine it fell to the turks and the crusades at that point for practical purposes were finished although they didn't give up there was talk to talk about organizing new crusades as late as columbus and the end of the 15th century still arguing that it would be possible to accomplish the goal but it was nonsense it could not be accomplished so the crusades that came to an end but the in the end the city of constantinople surrendered to the turks after a heroic defense about 9 000 crusading soldiers and native byzantines that defended the walls of constantinople almost to the last man they fought like lions they inflicted huge cavities on the turks but the end was never in doubt 150 000 turks faced 9 000 defenders the outcome was issues with every table and so the militarily speaking crusades were failures

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1. but there were positive consequences too one was the resumption of international trade this was interesting because in the ancient world there's a great deal of trade in the mediterranean ships going back and forth between east and west and west to east and there was overland trade as well but then as a time passed the and the italians lost interest in crusading they could see it was gone it was getting to be a failure and rather than support it any longer they began defecting from that no matter what the pope would say and tried to recruit new soldiers for the crusade most people saw the problem and decided not to get involved but international trades had suffered during the period of the crusades until the period of the crusades but then when the armies from the west began moving to the east they carried merchants along with them who established trading posts on the land and then sea trade began particularly from the three north italian port cities of genoa pisa and venice venice proved to be the strongest of the three in this case the city of venice pursued trade the venetian navy was ready to fight the turks and did fight them successfully so there were battle victories in the struggle but not nothing that was going to be of really lasting effect to ensure the success of the crusade 2. Venice and the other two italian cities Genoa and pisa became prosperous and powerful and as a trade went along with the crusaders a good deal of wealth wealth passed from west to east and east to west and that wealth was going to have lasting consequences and would make italy for some time the wealthiest country in europe in fact if you visit venice today you can see all sorts of artistic treasures they were plundered from the east carried back to the west and the money lending went along with it too and as a consequence that brought prosperity so on the sea the venetians were quite successful but that wasn't sufficient to make the crusades themselves successful but there was a resumption of international trade both on the land and on the sea and that gave the italians sufficient wealth to become the earth place of the modern renaissance renaissance was born in italy and there was a consequence of the wealth one simple observation why did why was the birthplace of the renaissance in italy rather than someplace else well the answer is the italians could afford the renaissance the other nations other states and nations could not do so at the moment oh there is a theory that there is a 12th century renaissance in france there's a small number of unconventional scholars still argue that once in a while but i don't think it has any credibility of it at all so italy became the birthplace of the renaissance when we talk about renaissance we talk about our magnificent artist artistry magnificent artwork it's scripted in sculpture and in metallurgy and in painting both watercolors and oil painting and so all of that was very expensive the italians had the money to pay for it and so they launched the renaissance 3. another important note this kind of a positive nature was the resurgence of urban culture once the trade became established then cities and towns along the trade routes became sites of a great deal of commercial activity commerce could not flourish in an almost entirely euro a rural society no it was necessary that urban culture for agriculture to have strayed in cities and towns and commerce and city building had a reciprocal effect on each other so that where the cities flourish the trade flourished where the trade flourished the cities flourished and so this was a major breakthrough from the rather stagnant economy in the old feudal culture of medieval europe 4. then there was a case of the nobility and the old feudal culture society was rather rigidly divided between noblemen on one hand and commoners on the other hand and there were levels of nobility on the one hand not everybody had the same rank the king was the theoretical head of the funeral system below him were the princes the dukes the towns and the white house down eventually to the lowly knights the knights two were noblemen but they were not nearly so prestigious or wealthy as the higher ranking members of the feudal aristocracy but during the fighting of the crusades there were huge numbers of casualties on both sides and in particular on the western side as if depletion of the nobility was a remarkable effect of the crusade the sheer number of noblemen declined rapidly they were killed and so dead people can't make much contribution the urban middle classes became vital to the economy and they slowly gained as political supporters of kings against feudal reactionaries so the feudal nobility in general was opposed to the kings because the kings were ambitious to get rid of the feudal feudal structure and unify the whole country on a national basis so there would be a national government national monarchy with truly national vitality and since the the number of the nobles declined shortly that removed people who were usually hostile to the expansionary ideas of the kings so that there's a serious depletion of the nobility but there is a strengthening of the monarchy first of all in england and france later in spain and portugal now italy though the birthplace of the renaissance was not the birthplace of the modern nation you system on the contrary italy was the scene of hundreds of little principalities and duchies and you name it and it was a long time before italy would know the reality of a national government do you know when that was it would be 19th century in 19th century yes in the 19th century there was a political faction following the duke of sardinia which is one of the big islands there to the south or off the coast of italy and that brought about a strengthening of a monarchy elsewhere but not yet in italy so italy was culturally a magnificent story politically and dynamically not really much so but england and france were going to be leading the way to building nation states now a nation-state has to have a national government a national currency national armed forces none of those things were present in italy but they were present in france and england and later in spain and portugal then there was the papacy the papacy owned very valuable land right in the middle of italy we always call it the papal states he was also known as the patrimony of saint peter saint peter being recognized as the first pope and then all the others followed in line succeeding him

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the papacy was in difficult times to say the least for one thing the quality of popes was notoriously poor many of them were very corrupt politicians themselves grossly immoral and as a consequence they did not enjoy the prestige that one would expect for the papacy and there was a observable decline in papal prestige that continued throughout the period of the crusades and islam continued to flourish in the east and relations between the roman catholic and the eastern orthodox church were worse than ever eastern bishops sometimes called roman catholicism or heresy and beyond that they sometimes called the pope antichrist that wasn't every tuesday right there but they did call him antichrist at times and so since 1054 the eastern and western churches were separated and they still are separated today although they're no longer hostile the papacy sometimes asserted that the crusades were valuable means of dealing with heretics as well as with muslims remember the albergenzis in the south of france the albigensis known as cathars and in the french language cathari means pure ones they were the people that claimed to be the only pure christians on earth they were actually some of the worst heretics on earth but they didn't think so of course then there was anti-christian resentment among muslims that was struck strong and became ever more intense prior to the crusades there was a measure of grudging mutual toleration between christians and muslims grudging toleration but once the crusades got started that toleration evaporated and overwhelming hostility took its place so there was a decline in fabled prestige then there was an anti-christian resentment among muslims

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and now we need to introduce the subject of new religious orders the two new ones we've already considered the franciscans and the dominicans and i gave you some biographical information and they carried a comparison comparison and contrast of the two the crusading spirit was very evident and the papacy had been urging it ever since urban second in 1095. among the monks and several religious orders there was enthusiasm for getting involved directly in the crusade keep in mind though that under unusual circumstances the papal church would not have allowed ordained clergymen to participate in warfare now they could go along as a hospital corps and that type of thing they were allowed to take up arms that was rapidly changing now and some entirely new religious borders became very evident in the struggle against the enemy against the turkish searched muslims and several religious orders became militarily involved the most prominent of those those religious orders were the knights templar and the knights of saint john now the knights templars were called that because they announced their objective was to conquer the holy land jerusalem to be specific and to establish christian control over the holy shrines which had fallen into localism control and they said they wanted particularly to liberate the great temple well the great temple had been destroyed but on this site a muslim mosque had been erected and the crusaders talked about seizing that and restoring christian control the least of the site that was a dream that did not come true keep in mind that when monks went on crusade and took weapons that some of them did they had to pay their own expenses so they had to appeal to people of wealth to support them and often these were notable men who were excited by the prospect of fighting against the hated turks the duke of normandy in france for example pawned his whole duchy to his brother he was a king king william ii of england the brother of the duke of normandy and tonight he was to take the money through the pawn and use it to obey soldiers who would accompany him on crusade and they did sometimes people borrowed money recklessly and they were they were assuming that they could collect enough plunder while they were in the east to pay their debts back in the west sometimes that worked sometimes it did not really only about 15 of the french soldiers french noblemen went on crusade only by 15 they did so usually because they were sincerely religious and they sorted as a thought as a moral obligation to join the war not all of them of course were so noble-minded there were others who were very vigorous of blunder or for the excitement and so forth of a crusade

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i said there were two major groups of folks getting involved in knights templar the first one and the knights of saint john the second one the knights of saint john had a nickname knights of the hospital or hospitals the hospitals would have been the hospital corps traveling with the crusades to deal with the help help when proceeded with the sick and the wounded the dying and so these people in the knights of saint john had no intention originally of thinking of arms at all but once they got into the battle the excitement stimulated their interest many of them did that very thing picked up weapons and went into the fight when driven from palestine they moved out of the holy land and they moved to two or three islands in the mediterranean particularly the island of rhodes and from the island of roche they continued to launch attacks against the muslims who were still controlling palestine their enemies eventually force them to evacuate roads and they move to the island of malta malta if you're in italy and ghosts towards north africa you get about halfway and you find the island of malta and so when they could no longer use the island of roads they changed to the island of malta and therefore they became nicknamed knights of malta by subalta and they were actually licensed st john the headquarters of the knights of malta eventually moved to rome and from there the organization directed its activities charitable activities as well as military engagements the knights ruled Malta for a long time was not until the early 19th century that napoleon bonaparte conquered the island of Malta when he did he put the knights out of business at least temporarily they're back in business today believe it or not they're not at all a military organization of course but they are involved in catholic charities both in europe and abroad as well knights of malta in 1312 when pope clement fifth was on the throne of saint peter he dismanted the templars because he wanted to save the unity of the catholic church iv was plotting full control over the french church now since most of the noblemen who went on crusade were from france this is a serious matter philip fourth was nicknamed philip the fair don't get the wrong idea he's not just a nice guy he was a miserably cruel selfish brutal man and he was good looking that's why he's called philip the fair handsome fellow maybe the only thing worse than a wicked man is a good looking wicked man all right and so clement the fifth though in 1312 disbanded the knights templars because he saw them as threatening the unity of the catholic church and when philip forth was plotting to gain full control over the french church some templars joined left the movement and they joined other religious orders all of them all the assets of the templars then went to the hospitals so when the templars were no longer engaged in a crusade what they had left in the white resources went in hospitals it's interesting to make this note too that before the crusades began long before they began relations between christians or so-called christians and muslims were not usually cordial but they were not ordinarily hostile either there was a certain i said grudging neutrality or grudging toleration between the two once the crusades started no longer would there be any such generosity they would then fight and fight to the dead as many of them at one point on the first crusade the forces marching from the west did occupy jerusalem just temporarily though the dice would say they were going to protect christian pilgrims visiting the sacred shrines and so they would defend the holy land and especially the shrines pious people sometimes load large sums of money to the crusaders in the belief that first of all the people who borrowed the money would one day retain it with interest but at the same time they looked upon it as a religious responsibility for which they would earn credit in heaven by financing these wars on the earth the knights were the knights uh hospitals the likes of saint john and the knights templar were not actually ordained priests or even ordained monks they put themselves under the control of a monastic order and a monastic constitution and so forth but they were not really ordained clergymen but they were committed to the was in the in the east and in the case of uh philip forth the for king of france put map number 66 on these yeah see that area in blue there dark the darker blue nonsense and the struthotic knights when there were some cases where crusading units lost harp entirely because they were not winning the battle as easy as they expected they would and so some of them actually just left the battlefield went back to europe and many of them settled along the baltic coastline there in what is today germany and they thereafter were known as teutonic knights two tons were the pagan the germans uh pre-christian centuries the teutonic knights all right were they in order or just a particular group that was separated uh mostly groups rather than the official order but they and they plundered as they retreated so they did didn't come home empty-handed and when they got home as and became the two sonic knights they did something that good christians were forbidden to do loan money at a rate of interest mutually the church the roman church has forbidden her members from loaning money at a rate of interest if loan money for charity that's fine do not expect payment for it in the way of interest and so the uh the templars and and the hospitals then often arouse the jealousy of people back in the homeland and when they the crusaders there settled in that on the balsa coast they aroused the suspicion and even the anger of local bishops and local noblemen who had not gone on the crusade it's tutoring nights though were quite powerful at times one of the more powerful military forces in western europe but eventually philip affairs suppressed them he borrowed money heavily from them and agreed to pay a handsome rate of interest when it came time to pay the king of france realized he couldn't do it his resources were too slim he could not do it so if he couldn't pay the bank the next best thing was destroy the bank and the bank in this case were the business activities of the teutonic knights and in the case of france the king of france accused them of heresy there was no good basis for that that uh accusation but he made it just the same and he therefore justified executing large numbers of the templars and the hospitals so that's the templars mostly the hospitals were major rivals of the templars at times the hospitals promised to care for the sick and wounded that's why they have that name their proper name though is knights of saint john they were more a more resembled a military order than they did a religious order so i said they established headquarters on the isle of rhodes first and malta later long after the crusades were over the knights fought the turks and the moors now they they got involved with the turks and nemours the wars were in spain that's the name for the muslim population of spain remember muslim forces from north africa had crossed the straits of gibraltar in 711 they landed on spanish soil and they gradually conquered three quarters of the iberian peninsula only the extreme northern part survived independently templars and hospitals became rivals very jealous rivals for each other and sometimes they actually fought each other the loss of Acre as i mentioned to the turks was due in part to division between these orders instead of joining forces for mutual defense they insisted on fighting the emperor and the enemy separately and in doing that they gravely and reduce their ability to to fight the knights of saint john were mostly french the knights of the temple were of a composite composite character or membership they're not all the same all right any questions about the crusades you want to discuss before we go on all right

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how many more sessions do we have friday next wednesday next friday have three three yeah okay well i if you look with me on your syllabus i skipped over a couple of items which i wasn't sure we'd have time to to deal with them but uh i i think we do have time to deal with them i guess i didn't bring my sword shame one day well anyhow we'll take a look at those chris anti-christian heretical groups you've read a good deal about them in the frasetto book and i'll try to supplement that with some material on my own and meanwhile i want you to take note of a very interesting person who in the 15th century became a spectacular influence in what might have been regarded as a christian revival this man's name was Savanarolla a preacher of righteousness who in several ways greatly resembled john the baptist in other words he was afraid of nobody he was committed to telling the truth and exposing evil wherever he found him let the cost be what it may he was going to be committed to the reform of church and society in terms of belief was really a true catholic but a but a true catholic ending would have been somebody with augustinian beliefs augustine said there's no no salvation outside the catholic church and by catholic church we mean the universal church of course not the roman church but the universal church worldwide well doctrinally speaking savanna rolla was a good augustinian catholic he did not deny a single dogma of the medieval church but he was more deeply rooted in the fundamental teachings of christ than he was in ecclesiastical formulas as one commentator said Savanarolla demanded regeneration of the heart but he certainly did he held to all seven sacraments and on the eucharist he believed in transubstantiation however when it came to the matter of salvation sabotage exalted the reality of god's grace he was really a preacher of grace sola bratia grace alone and so therefore i think we can say comfortably without fear of contradiction that savanna rula should be recognized as a pre-reformation evangelical pre-reformation evangelical i'm going to read to you now one of the paragraphs out of one of his writings here's what Savanarolla is saying it is untrue that god's grace is obtained by pre-existing works of merit as the works and deserts were the cause of predestination on the contrary these are the results of predestination tell me peter tell me mary magdalene why are you in paradise confess that not by your own merits how you obtain salvation but by the goodness of god now do any of my presbyterian friends object to that i'm sure they never so despite some involvement in rather conspicuous errors at least conspicuous to us that he he nevertheless maintained a biblical view of sin and salvation like martin luther and john calvin both honored Savanarolla a great deal they referred to him several times in their writings always in a favorable light in fact luther wrote this christ canonizes Savanarolla through us even though popes and peace papers burst to pieces over it again christ canonizes sabon or allah so he should be known as saint salvador but the roman church didn't think so and his enemies guessed him of heresy and the hierarchy of the church ousted him from the ministry and commended and delivered him to the inquisition who executed him by death by burning he and two other companions who have been serving with him literally went up in flames rather than deny their fame so even though pope said papers burst the pieces over it luther said we are going to canonize zlatarola ourselves

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all right um i think i'll stop there for the day we're making a good time that's all right thank you we didn't get to the other other match together next time hold on wait a minute turn this on again let's see that's all that's what we've done here let's take a look at these [Music] all right there you have it the focus of that map is on the holy roman empire you remember the holy roman empire don't you what three things were wrong with it neither one of them what did the holy roman empire cease to exist you know that uh is it still around not good is it still a thing is it still is that the it's easier you know napoleon conquered germany or most of germany he forced the ruling ever to abandon that title and he became emperor of austria whether he was no longer emperor of the holy roman empire napoleon could see through the force of it and he had the strength to do it and so he did yeah but you can see here that that's right in the heart of europe into the north eastern europe in this direction and the people states so beyond france over on the western edge all right now let's take a look at the next one here you see where the maple states were the papal states remained on the map of well let me take that back it doesn't remain on the back of europe until no that's not true they're still there the papal states have shriveled to vatican city itself the vatican city is a independent sovereign little nation from which the pope administers a worldwide church but uh for a long time the people states were being plundered by the rook's enemies some of them is some of italians and it eventually got to the point where the boat was losing so much territory it became rather silly to talk about the capable states where people use the terminal it still appeared on the maps of europe and then in the 20th century 1922 to be exact the dictator of italy signed an agreement with the vatican recognizing the sovereignty of vatican city who was a dictator mussolini benito mussolini right yeah and he focused as a defender of catholicism he had no interesting catholicism he was a real dictator but anyhow you can see it right in the middle of italy and that was what was blocking national unification of the country that and the existence of republic of venice duchy of godina melania republic of siena all those all those independent states with their own army their own bureaucracy their own currency etc this will become evident in your your course on the reformation which unfortunately i won't be teaching anymore i'm sorry that's my specialty you can see that looking over here in spain and portugal castillo the owned are gone called centers of culture particularly the same france says adam jones where the folks were for about 70 years certainly i've been doing vacancy holy roman empire there i was marine poland teutonic knights though there were again scandinavia yeah all right there you go geography [Music] let there be light and [Music] thank you for tuning in to this production of greenville presbyterian theological seminary for more information please visit gpts.edu

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all right i direct your attention to chapter five who were the coalitions the question about the Paulicius is quite an interesting one nobody knows who the Paul was that gave his name to this movement there is true there was an ancient constantinople named paul of sabo sata but he was deposed for rema for maintaining unorthodox beliefs about the trinity and the person of christ so he became an early heretic but of course the politicians if he did found them became early heretics as well unity between christ and god was a unity of will only despite the long period that he lapsed between the death of paul of samasana and the first documented appearance of the polish insect the sec did maintain the same theology and christology as having espoused in the third century so paul savasana was a identifiable heretic and the movement that before the name of paul coming later it too was deeply involved in errors about the person and work of christ so there's no proof that the coalition's owned their origin to follow sam assad the time gap is so wide it's most unlikely in the days of the crusades some of the crusaders as they moved toward the east encountered the coalitions who were fairly numerous in bulgaria and what's today oh romania symbolsia anyhow that eastern european fringe close to turkey and closer to palestine the coalition's uh then has won some converts among the crusaders not very many but some the sect itself did suffer from defectors at times so it never became as numerically strong as it might have been now one of the criticisms of of my view and others who share my view and there are plenty of them we do one of the problems they say is that the only ancient material we have about the polishes comes from the roman catholic or greek orthodox critics who were bound to be hostile to the polishes and probably did not give them a fair treatment that argument had some credibility for some time but then in the 19th century some russian scholars found a book entitled the key of truth and the key of truth they were able to ascertain was a statement of politician doctrine compiled by leaders of the sect and discovered in 1828 because of this discovery scholars are now in a position to appraise the theological character of the politicians by means of an unimpeachable and unprejudiced source so the act the key of truth then verified the contentions against the succession issue all alone militias believe that christ became the son of god when he was adopted by the father and his baptism now you remember the biblical account jesus was baptized and the voice of the father spoke from heaven what did he say hello jesus down there this is my son listen to him yes this is my son [Music] and so therefore they say that was a formal adoption ceremony that jesus did not leave heaven and come down to earth he was a human being on earth adopted by the father as his son and so it was not a question of an incarnation and there's nothing more fundamental in christian belief than the incarnation if the incarnation never occurred christianity is one colossal force you in other words these people said the man jesus was somehow absorbed into the godhead as a reward for service is rendered the key of truth lord christ who is faithful to his creator as moses was in all his house now moses was a creature still is can't get rid of this creature it no matter what he does i don't think he even tries but jesus christ is not a creature he is the creator of creatures he is the word of god who became flesh and dwelt among us all things were made by him without him nothing was made which has been made first chapter of john now since the abolitionists were unorthodox or the person of christ it's no surprise that they had a heretical view on the work of christ as well they regarded jesus mainly as a teacher and to no one's surprise they maintained a heretical view about the work of christ the politicians viewed christ as a teacher and they gave priority to ethics of her doctrine they acknowledged that christ's death was a sacrifice but they denied it was an atonement for sin in other words he was a martyr in the moderate sacrifice his life for his principles for the scripture tells us he sacrificed his life for us a world of difference the key of truth offers a crisp summary of Paulician doctrine regarding christ here's a quote right from the key of truth he was in the season of jesus maturity and he received baptism and it was that it was he receives authority receives a high priesthood receives the kingdom and the office of shea shepherd moreover he was then chosen he then won lordship he then became savior of our sinners then he was filled with a godhead so here he was jesus there was one unusually what one uniquely magnificent human being of great virtue great wisdom great bravery but not the son of god not the savior your sacrifice himself for our sins so the politicians then cannot be reasonably or correctly identified as baptist in any sense of its own and we're going to come next to the bargain bills and in my book in texas

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chapter six i think yes chapter six the the Bogomils balkan baptist christian part well the answer is absolutely no they were not falcon baptists for one thing they had they maintained quite a number of heretical points of view remember if you're reading friends sada facetto he write that out quite well good book he agrees with me saying it's a great book they deny the time the catholic doctors transubstantiation and we might want to hurry to congratulate them for that but it does not mean they were orthodox christians in fact they had a lot in common with both the greek and latin churches but almost nothing in common with a modern baptist bogavel and his disciples were not merely critics of corruption in the church they assailed the very basis of christian belief by denying the unity of god as creator and ruler of the material universe

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here's where an ancient philosophy from persia made it made us impress impressed rather deeply i'm talking about the Manichees Manichee was the persian philosopher of the early third christian century and he was one who absorbed a great deal of greek pagan philosophy and that influence of pagan philosophy led him to deny fundamental principles on which christianity will stand or fall remember he had there was a teacher named cosmos cosmos scorned the veneration of the crucifix and all religious images and he ridiculed the refuted miracle powers of relics he argues that satanic power rather than divine power was being used to mislead the people that shows you that they were taking a frontal confrontational stand against greek orthodoxy and roman catholicism that's so much for that but here's what they said that those churches could not be part of a true church because they maintain belief in a material universe and the truth is in your material universe is only an illusion it's something like a mirage people see it they think it's real it's not real at all because god himself is not material and it could never be an incarnation because god would corrupt himself because human flesh is by its very nature evil everything material is evil now they got this from plato and socrates to some measure plato and socrates had a strong belief in what's called the theory of ideas that for every material object on earth there's a perfect ideal representing that object in heaven heaven is entirely spiritual in character and only the souls of believers go there not the souls of unbelievers of course there will be no resurrection of the body because in platonic terms the body is something akin to a prison of the soul and that souls who misbehaved badly found themselves thrust into your fleshly bodies as punishment for their offenses well if that is true that is that we have to reach the conclusion that it's a farce incarnation in fact he is a forest there never was such a thing because god would have ruined himself had he become a flesh and blood human being so like the coalitions the margarets had a very seriously mistaken view of christology since they had such content for the human body they denied that christ performed miracles of physical healing that christ was a good man and as a good man he wouldn't do anything like that he says evil greed physical bodies into being now there weren't they knew there were new testament accounts of physical miracles but they they said that these statements in the gospels were only symbolic ever not actual and that when there was a healing it was always a spiritual healing never a physical healing and the logic of their view about the human body is simple if the human body is evil and corrupt as all material objects must be evil and corrupt then the human body is evil and intelligent logical people would commit suicide to get rid of that body it would be the liberation the soul could escape from its prison this is really bizarre stuff and yet janet carroll and others of his frustration say the bogomils who were mostly in the balkan peninsula the balkan baptist after all i don't know but i realized that i don't want those ancestors they're not my kind of baptists right

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and then on page 57 you get one more spell try here this is the one that we became the most the largest most influential of all of the movements of the middle ages known as the cathari or cathars of english it comes from the greek word catharas which means pure and they like to advertise themselves as the only true and therefore the only pure christians proponents of baptist succession have assigned to place a special honor to the alpha jetses or cathars almost every conceivable effort has been expanded by authors of that persuasion to exonerate them of the charge of manichaeism loving by catholics and to portray them as a true church in the middle ages by the middle of the 12th century traveled between east and west which had diminished to a trickle during the so-called dark ages and resumed on a significant scale as a consequence of the first crusade to the holy land this parkanville this allowed bhagaville missionaries to spread their message to the west and particularly to southern france at first these cathars promoted what they called a mitigated dualism a dualistic worldview but not an entirely consistent dualistic worldview mitigated by some other factors they regarded satan as a fallen angel or as an alternative view a rebellious son of god but they eventually adopted the radical dualism which is typical of the mills and so they came to believe in two gods they were dealing with a problem of evil and i think we ought to be quite frank with ourselves first of all then we want another idea with unbelievers that when we examine the claims of christianity we really do not have a full satisfying explanation for the presence of evil in the world evil is real and we know it is real we have all experienced it and it said to our shame we have all participated in it it's real it's not a myth where does it come from well of course the quick off the cuff answers oh that was the work of satan and fallen angels all right suppose it was where is satan fallen angel's culture who created them another satan no afraid not instead it was god almighty who created them and for some reason allowed them to fall into disobedience and take the consequence and then they they became the tempters spreading their evil ideals to other people and as a consequence a vast human race developed all of them with sinful natures but these people said that that that's that explanation is not satisfactory it's not consistent we keep going back one step at a time and we still find ourselves empty-handed at the end of the search all right so we say we don't have an answer that god has not been pleased to give us a full answer to that and what the calvin teaches to do when the scripture is silent we shut our mouths say that's as far as we intend to go that's god's word anything else is speculation and probably wrong all right now it's evident that the roman church regards the catharsis as a threat of great magnitude a stronger menace than any other heresy of the high middle ages the heresy is to combat it be combative effectively a systematic means was needed for the detection punishment and suppression of those who promulgated the heresy in 18 1184 the pope ordered that heretics be remanded to secular authorities for punishment and the first unambiguously clear papal pronouncement for the execution of heretics came from pope gregory knight who founded the inquisition you can see how serious the threat was and for that reason when trying to win the cathars by argument and persuasion did very little good the the pope was very much distressed and very defensive and authorized the inquisition to strike out the heretics that's when that albigensian crusade occurred went to the south of france uh noblemen in france and some other countries brought troops to the scene and they slaughtered the albigenses in huge numbers it was one of their worst bloodbaths in the middle ages well that's gives some credibility credence rather some creedence to the trail of blood does it some of them did shed their blood in defense of their their their beliefs but a radical dualism became the hallmark of bhagavan's and cathars they denied carletorically as the bible doctrine of creation contends that the material world was produced by an evil whoa by an evil god yes see here's how they solve the problem of evil and the great saint augustine before his conversion man a brilliant mind an advanced education fell for this at one time he said yes he said i understand the problem of evil is resolvable in this way instead of one god there were two there's a good god responsible for all goodness and an evil god responsible for all evil well that does in fact logically solve the problem but in the process it utterly destroys christianity is hero is real the lord is our god the lord our god is echad one not not two but one and monotheism is an absolute bedrock of christianity and judaism as well interestingly i've run across arguments just lately for those who have left christianity for paganism no with that same argument that life is easier to explain when there's multiple gods yeah there's one yeah sure yes to the sword destroys that well see what those guys are doing is repudiating the authority of christ and the apostles and the authority of the scripture and if they will not submit to the authority of scripture there's no stopping where they're going to go you know the line will suck up any crazy idea that comes down the pipe and many of them have some of the activities of the guitars were really bizarre the doctrine of salvation was based on the beliefs that rebellious angels committed the first sin and their souls were infused into fleshly bodies as punishment salvation can be achieved only within the pure church of the cathars and if the authority cathars and the priesthood and the priest was offered to their congregations a sacramental means of eternal life and it was called console console momentum or consolation the consolation was a sacrament with the catharsis a spiritual baptism in contrast to the water baptism of the medieval church because the consulate was administered only to those who requested it it was a sort of believer's baptism if you like it those who pass from this life without being consoled would in guitar belief go through a chain of reincarnation until they've received the consolation at last so among all the possibilities of explaining these problems the one that really convinces me that the poetic effects of sin can lead a person to the most extreme ideas and i'm talking about reincarnation i have a friend who's now living in a retirement home and some of you may know that you and you know elwood cooley helmut cooley and his wife grace he had a nickname mitch cooley he was a he was a twin brother his swing brother was about six feet tall and mitch was about five four so they were not identical twins but mitch became a pastor and a very godly man very strong supporter of the seminary and a member of second presbyterian church downtown where i worship on a regular basis and they became very good friends with us now how do i get him involved with reincarnation i just jokingly his wife grace has her favorite color is red she has a red automobile rent dishwasher in the kitchen red toaster and this available red red she gets it so i years ago just to tease with them they said i said grace i understand now what do you understand i understand your your belief in reincarnation i don't believe that oh yes you do and in the previous life you were a and i'm going to call you comrade grace [Music] i still call her that vince has gone to glory where he's enjoying the truth face to face but grace will follow so will all of us thank god anyhow the priesthood on the albigensiians was known as the perfecting which means before a person could become a priest he had to demonstrate a perfect character perfect moral character morality as determined by the priesthood those who were of the of the perfecting those that reflected were the only ones that could be saved to all the people in the cult if they wanted to be saved eventually had to achieve the standards of the perfecting and then they would take it into paradise the documentary evidence shows cathar's used marriage and procreation as capital sins from which art can be obtained only in one for such chemical relationships and receive the consolation one of the critics medieval critics of the catharsis was rhinerus sancho f-a-c-c-h-o he had been at qatar perfecting himself but he defected from the movement and returned to the catholic church he reported that all catharine churches taught that carnal marriage is always a mortal sin and the future punishment of adultery and incest incest would not be greater than that of lawful natural money and would anyone among them be more severely punished the story goes on and on so these are the people who kept them back to stay alive

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all across the centuries following the trail of blood from one suffering persecution after another now if that is a major criteria that a genuine christian isn't the one who has been persecuted for his faith christians are not the only people who haven't persecuted for their faith jehovah's witnesses have been personally persecuted worldwide and yet we don't for a moment suggest that they were baptist or presbyterians or anything we regard them as as heretics but surely they are okay well i think i've covered enough on this subject with you anything you want to say before me as your okay well there will be a recruiter on campus next week for anybody who wants to join the albert chelseas just so you don't miss the opportunity you might be imperfect dr mcgolder yes i would like one of those books oh you want one of these books i will get it for you okay i will be sure to get it for you and of course to ten dollars thank you all right you're welcome you had mentioned that in that book there was a section on the hussites oh such yeah i could not find it can you direct it to me yeah oh i don't i didn't see anything in there but i thought oh maybe i just don't know i'll tell you why i didn't do it because many of the successionist authors don't cite the health sciences okay okay and the reason they don't is because one sites in some ways were very varied about good japanese hooks itself was never revolutionary i never said i dealt with that extensively and did a very good job right yeah essentially he made contributions for the government reformation i'm glad to recognize that he helps to keep alive and his passion to learn the truth that was very valuable okay well we'll adjourn for it down for the weekend thank you sir thank you very much thank you for tuning in to this production of greenville presbyterian theological seminary for more information please visit gpts.edu English (auto-generated)