SOUL TRAIVAILING BIBLE INSTITUTE

STUDENT NO STBM/21/OO11

COURSE CODE CHHIST 115

COURSE CHURCH HISTORY

INSTRUCTOR PASTOR RIGHTEOUSNESS

YEAR FIRST

DATE 30 JUNE 2022

1 FOR THE PERIOD 100AD-312AD OF THE UNIVERSAL CATHOLIC CHURCH

a. What are the reasons for intense persecution of the Christian?

From the supremacy of Emperor Nero (A.D.54-68) to Emperor Diocletian
(A.D.284-305) Christians suffered intermittent maltreatments, frequently on a
local level. It was under Emperor Diocletian that the most merciless
persecutions occurred. Emperor Diocletian was ruthless in his dealings with
Christians, he ordered the destruction of church buildings, the burning of the
scriptures, the closing of church meetings, and the imprisonment of
Christians. He made the rejection to sacrifice to the gods a capital crime.
(Eckman, 2002, p.24). Diocletian stoked the fire of persecution to different
levels of intensity until 313 when Emperor Constantine decreed freedom of
worship in the empire. Christians were persecuted for various reasons inter
alia, a decree to adore the emperor, dead or alive.

Christians viewed this as a blasphemy and disobeyed the majestic

proclamation. Failure by Christians to revere the emperors was a stern
political crime that d attracts severe consequences Roman authorities.
Christians were diversely suspected of involved in flesh-eating or spoiling in
incestuous associations. (Young, 2003, p.115). Christians were also charged
with the offence of involved in witchcraft or belonging to top-secret cults and
were chastised even nevertheless there was no valid source for the
allegations. They were persecuted for fear of rebellion. The risk was
considered factual as the Christians would refer themselves as “soldiers of
Christ” (Boer, 2003, p.47).

Christianity become discrete from Judaism, and were omitted from the Jewish
indulgence permitted to exercise their faith and that was regarded as unsafe
innovations. Uniqueness in religion was abomination and hostile to the
Romans, Moreso, they refused to sacrifice to the emperor. Christianity was
rising at such a rate that it was intimidating. Polytheism was a communal
belief, and Christians practiced their creed outside the community. There was
no separation of church and state, so the Christians acted in contradiction of
the state by not involved in the public religion. Christians refused to worship
the Roman gods, among whom were the consecrated rulers. Christians were
made liable for every natural disaster that occurred as was written by
Tertullian, an early church father. Christians were blamed of disrupting the
peace of the Roman gods. An episode of persecution happened in 177AD
where some churches in Gaul were attacked because of an eruption of
plague. Tertullian says that the call to throw Christians to lions arises at every
disaster. Christians were willing to die in front of great crowds as witnesses for
Christ. Romans tried to embarrass and kill Christians, but it only made
Christianity stronger. The martyrs were the heroes of the early church and
Martyrdom have a lot of staying power within Christianity. it is due to the glory
of the martyrs that Christians increasingly turned to asceticism as a method of
self-persecution, so that they could live as their heroes had.

Trajan’s rescript left Christians with an awful choice of death or apostasy

through either by renouncing their faith or offered sacrifice to the gods of
which they defended their faith which resulted in persecution. The reign of
Emperor Septimus Severus (AD 193-211) was characterized by warfare,
Severus prohibited baptism and circumcision of which the Christians ignored
and it triggered persecution. Emperor Decius, who reigned for three years,
beginning AD 249, began an empire-wide persecution of Christians in a bid to
strengthen the empire, he destroyed Christians, who called for ultimate
allegiance to Christ, not to the state. Emperor Valerian issued a rescript
AD257 forbidding Christians from meeting in public places and from
celebrating the Eucharist in the catacombs; and another in AD 258 calling for
the arrest of all bishops, priests, and deacons. Persecution arises as a result
that Christians did not succumb to the demands written in the script.

The Fourth Edict resulted in the deaths of more Christians who declined to
offer pagan sacrifice. Diocletian’s edicts prohibited all Christian worship and
commanded those churches and Christian book to be destroyed and the
Christians refused to give up on their faith and this gave way to persecution.
 b. Write various focus of Gnosticism/why were these heresies dangerous?

The word Gnosticism originates from the Greek word gnostikos, which described as
possessing knowledge. Gnosticism is not a religion on itself, but a name for a great
number of sacred philosophies and beliefs. It appeared amid first and the second era
AD. In its first advent, Gnosticism started to spread all over the Mediterranean region
of Europe, but over the centuries it suffered several impacts by the early Christianity.
Today, we mostly know Modern Gnosticism by the name of Neo-Gnosticism, then it
slowly changed into esoterics, integrating itself into The New Age drive, and
becoming part of the modern spirituality. Gnosticism and its beliefs and practices are
still being practiced today, though it suffered transformations. Many supporters of
these viewpoints don’t know that they are ensuing Gnostic beliefs, due to its
revolutions over the centuries. The analysis of Gnosticism was analytically
developed by Clément’s older contemporary, St. Irenaeus of Lyon, in his
voluminous Against Heresies. Although disputing the Valentinian dualism that
announced, that the spirit was good and matter evil. The discourse makes clear the
church’s growing reliance on its creed or rule of faith, on the New Testament canon,
and on the succession of bishops as the supporters of the accurate apostolic
practice. Irenaeus was also a productive theologian, clarifying concepts about God
as Creator, about the Son and the Spirit as his two hands, about Christ as the New
Adam who reunites fallen humanity with God, and about the worldwide church with
its apostolic faith and ministry, a concept that theology was later to take up eagerly.

The Physical World is Imperfect -several religions sustained similar views, and the
focus was that the world is full of sufferings both the earth and all of God’s
formations are imperfect even the physical world is faulty. Gnostics believed that
God fashioned the entire universe that way and that it is not flawed because of them
and the other creations.

The Gnostic God -Gnosticism and Modern Gnosticism, emphasis that there is one
definitive God who created the complete universe, not from nothing, but from
Himself. Hence, all around us and ourselves remain portion of God. Gnosticism
mighty be said to be monotheistic then, but it is not, because Gnosticism has some
transitional Divinities. called Aeons, who are amongst God and humanity and they
are to help God by undertaking certain tasks.

The Divine Spark Within Us -as was mentioned above, God created Gnostic from
Himself and hence, all are part of God. The motivation was all possessed God’s
spark. That was also known as the Divine Spark. Even though everyone bears the
spark, not all of them knew it save for those who are destined for liberation. The
implication was just a disguise and they started paying more attention to the spiritual
aspect of their lives.

Gnosis is Salvation -the focus was that every person on earth should pay more
devote to their spiritual health. They ought all to pursue or concentrate on salvation
or Gnosis since it was only through salvation that one was able to become one with
God. There are two important things about Gnosis that was Gnosis was within every
human being, though it doesn’t mean that everyone would find salvation. Secondly,
one has to work on salvation and kindle it and that only through spiritual wisdom,
would one be able to comprehend the clear path to salvation. The motivation was
that God sent them plentiful Heralds of Light who teach them on how to pursue
salvation.

Gnosticism Has No Rules -Gnostics rejected rules and they believed that a person
doesn’t require guidelines to attain salvation and It was to come from within through
distinct individual practice. Although Gnosticism has no rules, it still holds and
inspires certain attitudes, such as non-attachment, respect for freedom and others.
The focus was that every Gnostic should have his/her own individual practice to
obtain salvation.

The Destiny of Humankind-Each person on earth has a destiny and has to

discover Gnosis before dying, otherwise, there were only two options. Firstly, they
might be ensnared in the dominions of the Demiurge (equivalent to hell). Or,
secondly, they might be compulsorily be regenerated to a new life and chance to
find salvation and Spiritual Growth. The enthusiasm on the other hand, for those who
seek salvation in time, would reach the final reunification.

why were these heresies dangerous?

The existing hoopla over early Christian Gnosticism has led to many misleading
claims and was very dangerous to the faith of the Christians then. It is imperative for
Christians to appreciate the Gnostic activities precisely as both for the sake of
grasping the truths of the second-century church and for our own religious reflection.
Gnosticism appealed to people then because it presented new, often creative,
responses to the major questions of existence, buttressed by claims of secret,
special revelation. In today's religious climate, suppressed literature offering an
alternative to established orthodox tradition has an enticing request. These old
writings also seem to resonate with some people's spiritual quests. Gnosticism is a
modern term (first used in 1669) to describe a multifaceted movement in the ancient
church. People who belonged to these sects believed they possessed secret
knowledge. That thinking discriminated others that is why it was termed heresy. In
conclusion, Contemporary Gnosticism might seem hard to understand, but it had
numerous famous followers over the years, who tried to understand philosophies
and teachings.
 c. Write notes on the apologist and what they stood for?

Apologist, any of the Christian writers, primarily in the 2nd century, who attempted to
provide a defense of Christianity and criticisms of paganism and other aspects of
Greco-Roman culture. The apologists are a group who defend and explain the
Christian faith. Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, speaking in defense) is the
religious discipline of defending religious principles through orderly argument and
discourse. Many of their texts were addressed to Roman emperors, and it is credible
that the literatures were actually sent to government secretaries who were
authorized to accept or reject them. Some of the apologies assumed the form of
instructions written to preserve Christians against the allegations in the 2nd century,
particularly the charges that their conviction was novel or godless or that they
engaged in immoral cultic practices.

The patristic literature of the Apologists tends to have a clearly defensive or

polemical colouring as they involved in battle on two fronts. There was hostility
and criticism of pagan culture, as for its detachment, the Christian church was
commonly alleged of hiding all kinds of immoralities and therefore threatens the
established order. Christianity, as it became better known, was being progressively
visible to intellectual attack at the highest level. The physician Galen of
Pergamum (129–c. 199) and the Platonist thinker Celsus were amongst numerous
cultured despisers. On the other hand, Orthodoxy had to take issue with distorting
tendencies within, whether these took the form of Gnosticism or other heresies, such
as the claim of Montanus to be the vehicle of a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Christianity also had to explain precisely where it stood relative to Hellenistic culture
and Judaism.
To address the common charges that their religion was novel or godless, the
Apologists usually tried to prove the ancient times of their religion by highlighting it
was the fulfilment of Hebrew Bible prediction, they argued that their adversaries were
really godless because they worshipped the gods of mythology, and they insisted on
the moral nature of their own faith as well as its high ethical teaching. They had little
difficulty in disproving the false charges prevalently brought against Christians,
including atheism, cannibalism, and promiscuity, or in mounting a counterattack
against the debasements of paganism.

Certainly, they struggled to justify the Christian understanding of God and

specific principles such as the divinity of Christ and the resurrection of the body of
christ. In so doing, most of them exploited current logical conceptions, in particular
that of the Logos (the Word), or rational principle underlying and permeating reality,
which they regarded as the divine reason become incarnate in Jesus. They have
been accused of Hellenising Christianity (making it Greek in form and method), but
they were in fact endeavouring to express it in friendly logical groupings. In fact, they
were the first Christian theologians. The major Greek Apologists include St.
Quadratus, Aristides, St. Justin Martyr, Tatian, Apollinaris (bishop of
Hierapolis), Melito, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, and St. Clement of
Alexandria. Notable Latin Apologists in the 2nd century include Marcus Minucius
Felix, Tertullian, and Rome. The few early scripts of the works of the early Apologists
that have endured owe their survival mainly to Byzantine intellectuals. In
914 Arethas, bishop of Caesarea Cappadociae, had a collection of early apologies
copied for his library.

Many of the future texts were copied in the 16th century, when the Council of
Trent was debating the nature of custom. The sincere literatures of the Apologists
were virtually unidentified, however, until the 16th century. The origin of this group
was St. Quadratus, who addressed an apology for the faith to the
emperor Hadrian about 124; apart from a single fragment, it is now lost. Other early
Apologists who are mere titles known to scholars are Aristo of Pella, the first to make
an apology to counter Jewish protests, and Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis, said to
be the writer of several apologetic works and also of a critique of Montanism. An
early apology that has subsisted completely is that of Aristides, addressed about 140
to the emperor Antoninus Pius; after being completely lost, the text, Apology for the
Christian Faith, was revived in the 19th century.

The Apologists Tatian (c. 110-172 A.D.) was an Assyrian scholar who studied under
Justin Martyr at Rome. Around 160 A.D. he wrote an “Address to the Greeks” in
which he denounced Greek Philosophy as pagan. He also wrote the earliest
harmony of the Gospels called the Diatessaron which was widely used in the Syrian
Church. The most famous Apologist was St. Justin Martyr, who was renewed to
Christianity after trying countless philosophical schools, paid long visits to Rome, and
was martyred there (c. 165). Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 A.D.) was the most prominent
Christian apologist of the 2nd Century. He was born in Samaria and studied Greek
philosophy. An old man led him to the Lord by showing him that the true philosophy
of life was found in the Scripture. Later he founded a Christian school in Rome and
wrote his First Apology around 150 A.D. which was directed to the Roman Emperor.
Justin in his writings: defended the morality of Christians,claimed that Christians
were innocent of the slanderous charges against them, wrote that Christianity was
the genuine expression of Greek philosophy and truth, defended Christ as the divine
eternal “Logos” or reason which the Greeks sought. He may have also undermined
the personhood of Jesus as Logos and suggested from the Scriptures that
Christianity held the way of truth for all men - Jews, Greeks and Romans. Justin
Martyr was tried by the Romans for being a Christian and was beheaded for his
beliefs Justin’s two Apologies were skillful presentations of the Christian situation to
the pagan opponents, written to the emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.
His Discussion with Trypho was an elaborate defense of Christianity against
Judaism. Justin’s attitude to pagan philosophy was positive, but his
pupil Tatian could see nothing but wickedness in the Greco-Roman development.
Indeed, Tatian’s Discourse to the Greeks is less a positive vindication of Christianity
than a sharp attack on paganism.

His contemporary Athenagoras of Athens, author of the apologetic work Embassy

for the Christians and a treatise On the Resurrection of the Dead, is as friendly as
Justin to Greek culture and philosophy. Two others who deserve mention
are Theophilus of Antioch, a prolific publicist whose only surviving work is To
Autolycus, prepared for his pagan friend Autolycus; and the anonymous author of
the Letter to Diognetus, an attractive and persuasive exposition of the Christian way
of life that is often included among the works of the Fathers. As the 2nd century
advanced, a more confident, aggressive spirit came over Christian Apologists, and
their intellectual and literary stature increased greatly. St. Clement of Alexandria, for
example, while insisting on the supremacy of faith, freely drew
on Platonism and Stoicism to clarify Christian teaching. In
his Protreptikos (Exhortation) and Paidagōgos (Instructor), he urged pagans to
abandon their futile beliefs, accept the Logos as guide, and allow their souls to be
trained by him. In interpreting Scripture, he used an allegorizing method derived from
the Jewish philosopher Philo, and against Gnosticism he argued that the baptized
believer who studies the Scriptures is the true gnostic, faith being at once superior to
knowledge and the beginning of knowledge.

Tertullian (160-220 A.D.) was the leading Apologist/ Polemicist of the Western Latin
Church. He was born in Carthage (Tunis) and was a leading lawyer educated in both
Greek and Latin. His Apology was directed to the Roman governor and argued that it
was wrong for the Romans to blame everything including natural disaster on
Christians. His writings in Latin included many of the theological terms that would
later be debated in Church Councils. He became a Montanist but also developed an
early statement of the Trinity and wrote about the Lord’s prayer and baptism. His
careful work, brilliant arguments and theology brought him the title of “Father of Latin
Theology”. The Polemicists like the Apologists were trying to contend for
Christianity, combat heathenism,and confirm doctrinal beliefs. The following 3 men
exemplify the movement: Irenaeus (late 2nd Century) was born in Smyrna and
studied under Polycarp. Around 175-185 A.D. he became bishop of Lyons in Gaul
(France).

Perhaps his most famous work was Against Heresies which soundly denounced
Gnosticism. He wrote a very well-developed theology which emphasized that :Christ
was fully God and fully man who did perfectly what the first Adam failed to do, a
form of apostolic succession at least as far as Christian beliefs were concerned
which had been handed down through Apostolic churches, a rule (Canon) of truth in
the Church which was the key to interpreting Scripture, New Testament Scriptures
as on an equal basis with the Old Testament, a four Gospel Canon, the unity of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit and God’s eternal plan of history unfolded in Christ. Men
such as Irenaeus had begun to do “systematic theology”. Origen (c. 185-254 A.D.)
was from Alexandria where he studied in the theological school of Clement of
Alexander and succeeded him as its head. Origen was perhaps the greatest
Christian writer, scholar and thinker of this era.

Origen produced the Hexapla, a Bible with different texts in parallel columns. He
advocated a three-level system of biblical interpretation – literal, moral and
allegorical (or spiritual) which applied to the mysteries of the faith. As an advocate of
allegorical interpretation (finding hidden, obscure, spiritual meaning in the text) he
did a great disservice to Christianity, for he read into the text what was never
intended. He also wrote a massive theology called First Principles and
Commentaries on the Bible. It was in his attempt to make Greek philosophy and
Christianity compatible that he had his downfall. He taught the pre-existence of the
soul and a form of universal salvation which were both rejected by the Church.
Origen died a martyr at the hand of Rome. He is perhaps the Father of Systematic
Theology. Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (200-258 A.D.)

Cyprian did much to exalt the office of Bishop and promote the false doctrine of
Apostolic succession. He believed that as bishop he alone had the right to decide
whether or not to take back into the Church those Christians who had worshipped
Caesar. He taught that salvation was only available through the Church and he was
its spokesman! He also promoted a universal Catholic Church of which the Church at
Rome was the most important as the “Mother Church”. Authority was vested in the
bishops of the churches. Cyprian paved the way for apostolic succession in the
Roman Catholic Church and the Pope as final authority.

Primary impact of the era on the Christian Church in history What happened from
100 A.D. - 312 A.D. unfortunately laid the foundation for the next 1200 years of
Church History. Persecution continued to cause the Church to spread as Christianity
became illegal. And Martyrdom was the fate of those who stayed true to the faith.
Spiritual emphasis in worship gave way to more formality and ritual. The Lord’s
Supper and Baptism were corrupted into grace-giving “saving sacraments”. Authority
shifted from the Church members to the bishop and salvation by faith in Christ was
replaced by salvation through Church sacraments.

Ecclesiastical organization took the place of spiritual vitality in the Church and the
Church became a religious organization not a spiritual organism. Opposition from
pagan societies caused the writing of Apologies (defenses of the faith) and heresy
within the Church caused leaders to begin to write out doctrine in a systematic way.
The era paved the way for the Roman Catholic Church, the great Church Councils
and Creeds. And the development of orthodox theology.

2. FOR THE PERIOD 312AD- 590AD.THE ERA OF CHRISTIAN ROMAN EMPIRE.

a) Write on the Conversation and the role of Constantine to the Church

In 310, Constantine decided he was going to take Rome. He led a small army to
the Alps for an important battle outside Rome on the Tiber River against his rival
Maxentius, the emperor of Rome. Constantine (A.D. 312-37) is usually identified
as the first Christian emperor. The story of his incredible conversion is told by
his biographer, Eusebius. When he became sole emperor in 324 AD, he rewrote
his own history with the help of Christian authors. He actively promoted the
Christian Church, though he was baptised into the faith only on his death bed.
Subsequent to the death of Galerius, Constantine and Maxentius fought to
regulate the Roman Empire. In AD 312, Maxentius fled to Rome as Constantine
advanced with his army. Constantine experienced a dream of a cross and saw
the words, in this sign, conquer before the battle, he placed a cross on his
standard and ordered his soldiers to write the Chiron on their shields.

The next morning at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, on October 28, 312AD, he scored a
victory against great odds, Maxentius, whose forces were swept into the Tiber,
where Maxentius drowned. One year after the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine
issued the Edict of Milan, permitting Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, he
ascribed his victories to God, and not to himself. The truth of this story has been
doubted by some historians; but that Constantine observed Christianity completely
different from his predecessors, and that he was confirmed associate to the Christian
church, and cannot be denied. His mother, Helena, was a Christian, and his father,
Constantius, had opposed the maltreatment of Diocletian and Galerius. He had
himself, while he was ruler in only the West, issued a proclamation of toleration (A.D.
313) to the Christians in his own provinces. Constantine was a perfect rationalist and
a politician. It is clear that after he was changed to Christianity, he was still devoted
to other divinities. Constantine became a remarkable supporter of Christianity. He
legitimized it as a protected belief of the empire and patronized it. The rule of Caesar
become legitimized and undergirded by the rule of God, and that was a significant
turning point in the history of Christianity. Throughout his life he also acknowledged
Sol Invictus, the 'Unconquered Sun', as a god, he used the Church as a strong
unifying force. The imaginary watershed in history was the conversion of the
emperor Constantine to Christianity in, 312 AD. Emperors had historically been
hostile or indifferent to Christianity and his ‘conversion’ poses problems for the
historians. Although he immediately declared that Christians and pagans should be
allowed to worship freely, and restored property confiscated during persecutions and
other lost privileges to the Christians, these measures did not mark a complete shift
to a Christian style of rule as many of his actions seemed resolutely pagan.
Constantine founded a new city named after himself Constantinople. Christian
writers played up the idea that this was to be a 'new Rome', a fitting Christian capital
for a newly Christian empire. But they had to find ways to explain the embarrassing
fact that in this new, supposedly Christian city, Constantine had erected pagan
temples and statues

Upon coming to power Constantine unilaterally ended all persecution in his

territories, even providing for restitution. His personal devotions, however, he
offered first to Mars and then increasingly to Apollo, reverenced as Sol Invictus.
The differing but related accounts of his miraculous conversion suggest some
basic spiritual experience which he interpreted as related to Christianity. His
understanding of Christianity was, at the stage of his conversion, unsophisticated.
He may not have understood the implications of converting to a religion which
expected its members to devote themselves exclusively to it. However, the early
fourth century established the phenomenon of an emperor adopting and favouring
a particular cult, of which Constantine’s ‘conversion’ was merely the Christ cult to
 which he turned into, whereas previous emperors had sought the support of
pagan gods and heroes from Jove to Hercules. Constantine attributed his military
victory to the Christian faith and entered Rome with Maxentius's head on a pike.
He erected the triumphal Arch of Constantine in Rome and took control of the
western half of the Roman Empire. Maxentius had been the strongest member of
the Tetrarchy. By 323, Constantine had unified the Roman Empire and brought it
under his control by defeating another rival, the eastern co-emperor
Licinius.Lactantius, whom Constantine appointed tutor of his son Crispus and who
therefore must have been close to the imperial family, reports that during the night
before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge Constantine was commanded in a dream to
place the sign of Christ on the shields of his soldiers.
Constantine's profession of Christianity was a matter of political expediency more
than of religious conviction; upon closer examination this view cannot be sustained.
Constantine did not receive baptism until shortly before his death and he signals a
kind of compromise that was reached between the church as a force to be reckoned
with in imperial society and the Roman state. Constantine was a historical point man
with respect to the relation of the Roman state to the growing Christian movement as
an institutional force in late antique society. . Constantine’s role in church history was
three-fold, historical, political, and spiritual and in many ways, his role matches both
the three-fold process of ‘spiritual status’ in Church membership, catechumens,
baptized member, and glorified saint, and the three-fold process of deification:
purification, illumination and perfection. There was an imperial underwriting of
pilgrimage and pilgrimage sites, and so a lot of money goes to refurbishing those
pilgrimage sites that exist and making them bigger and better and even greater and
grander attractions, and creating pilgrimage sites where none existed previously.
Christianity becomes another kind of institutional force after this détente. Constantine
made Christianity the state religion stating there was "No distinction between realm
of Caesar and the realm of God. Under Constantine, pagan temples were
expropriated, their treasuries were used to build churches and support clergy, and
laws were adjusted for Christian ethics.

Christians practiced their faith openly under Constantine, he went on a church

building spree, constructing churches from Jerusalem to Rome and his
outstanding church was the original St. Peters which was destroyed by fire.
Christianity was accepted as the religion of the people and of the state and a
large part of the empire was already Christian, and the recognition of the new
religion gave stability to the new government. Constantine, however, in accepting
Christianity as the state religion, did not go to the extreme of trying to uproot
paganism. The pagan worship was still tolerated, and it was not until many years
after this time that it was proscribed by the Christian emperors. For the purpose of
settling the disputes between the different Christian sects, Constantine called
(A.D. 325) a large council of the clergy at Nice (Nicaea), which decided what
should thereafter be regarded as the orthodox belief. His profession of Christianity
was not an unmixed blessing to the church and used the church as an instrument
of imperial policy, imposed upon it his imperial ideology, and thus deprived the
independence which it had previously enjoyed and Constantine became like a
Pope. He called the first general ecumenical council, in Nicaea in A.D. 325, to
settle questions about the doctrine. The adoption of Nicene creed was an
important decision, the assertion that the denial of Christ's divinity was a heresy. It
became the basis of all church doctrine from that time forward and anyone who
departed from the creed was branded a heretic. During Constantine reign,
Christians who deviated from official church doctrine were branded as heretics,
given no support, punished with penalties and ordered to stop meeting.
Constantine, as an emperor, persecuted other Christians targeting the Gnostic
Christians, other dualist Christians and Christians who don't have the Old
Testament as part of their canon. There was an internal purge of the church as
one emperor ruling one empire tries to have this single church as part of the
religious musculature of the vision of a renewed Rome. Constantine having a
theological vision, assisted the bishops to iron out a unitary policy of what a true
Christian believes, interestingly, turns his attention to Jerusalem, and rebuilds
Jerusalem just as a righteous king should do. Constantine took the city, which
was something of a backwater, and he begins to build beautiful basilicas and
architecturally ambitious projects in the city itself. The sacred space of the Temple
Mount he abandons and was not reclaimable, also he religiously relocates the
centre of gravity of the city around the places where Christ had suffered, buried,
and risen. In the great basilicas that he built, Constantine has a new Jerusalem,
that's splendid and beautiful, his reputation as an imperial architect resonates with
 great figures in biblical history like David and Solomon. Logically, Constantine was
a non-apocalyptic Messiah for the church.

The bishops were terribly appreciative for the imperial attention that was not the
western Middle Ages and the power lines that were unambiguous. Constantine
was undeniably the basis of authority and that was unquestionable. The bishops
benefited from Constantine's mood and his curious intellectual interest in things
like Christology and the Trinity and Church organization. They had bibles copied
at public expense and finally able to have public Christian architecture and big
churches. Accordingly, there was a relaxed mutual relationship between the
empire and the church, that defined the cultural powerhouse of Europe and the
West. After Constantine died in 337, the Roman Empire was divided up among
his sons. Christianity spread gradually but inevitably through the Roman Empire
and beyond its borders. Paganism was banned at the end of 4th century and
restrictions were placed on Judaism. The power and the wealth of the church
grew quickly with the help of faithful Christians who donated their land and other
possessions. By the beginning of the 6th century Christianity had 34 million
followers that made up half of the Roman Empire.

b) What necessitated the call of the church between 325AD- 397AD? What
were the decisions adopted at these councils?
The council was convened primarily to address two controversies , the proper date
for the celebration of Easter and The Arian Controversy. Of these two, the latter was
the most significant. Christian bishops met at the city of Nicaea in the Roman
Province of Bithynia in May and June of A.D. 325, at the initiation and direction of
Constantine I, The Great to discuss matters which were disturbing the Church, and
thus Constantine's empire. He had been instrumental in making Christianity a lawful
religion in A.D. 313 (Edict of Milan). When Constantine called, he chaired over, and
helped to enforce the decisions of the Council. The bishop of Rome did not attend
personally, but sent two deacons as his delegates. Apparently, Hosius, bishop of
Cordova in Spain presided. In July 4, 325AD, was a memorable day about three
hundred Christian bishops and deacons from the eastern half of the Roman Empire
come to Nicea, a little town near the Bosporus Straits flowing between the Black Sea
and the Mediterranean. In the conference hall where they waited there was an open
copy of the Gospels laid on the table.
The emperor, Constantine the Great, entered the hall in his imperial, jewel-
encrusted, multi-coloured brocades, but out of respect for the Christian leaders,
without his customary train of soldiers. Constantine spoke briefly and told the
churchmen that they had to come to some agreement on the crucial questions
dividing them. Division in the church, he said, was worse than war. The bishops and
deacons were extremely impressed in that after three centuries of intermittent
tortures initiated by some Roman emperor, were actually gathered before one, not
as enemies but as associates. Some of them carried scars of the imperial lash, one
pastor from Egypt was missing an eye, another was crippled both hands as a result
of red-hot irons. Constantine had dropped the sword of persecution in order to take
up the cross and just before a critical battle in 312, he had converted to
Christianity.Nicea symbolized a new day for Christianity and the maltreated followers
of the Savior dressed in linen become the esteemed advisers of emperors
apparelled in purple. The once-despised religion become the state religion, the
spiritual cement of a single society in which public and private life were united under
the control of Christian doctrine. Christianity had to hold one faith in order to serve as
the cement of the Empire, hence, the emperors called for church councils.
Approximately 190AD, a furious argument as to the date at which the feast of Easter
should be kept, shook the whole Church, and the pope, St. Victor I, sent orders to
the places most troubled that the bishops should meet and report to him their
findings. Controversies concerning the different methods of calculating the Paschal
moon, until in the 6th century the computations of Dionysius Exiguous were
generally accepted in the West. The Celtic Church, however, did not accept this
method until the 7th century and there were some difficulties in Gaul in the 8th
century. Eusebius of Nicomedia, a church bishop who was the key proponent of
Arianism ,the doctrine that stated that Jesus Christ was not of the same substance
as God. Eusebius refused to recognize Christ as being of the same
substance(homoousion) with the Father, hence, at the first ecumenical Council of
Nicaea, in 325AD, he led the opposition against the Homousians.

According to its opponents, especially the bishop St. Athanasius, Arius’s teaching

reduced the Son to a demigod, reintroduced polytheism (since worship of the Son
was not abandoned), and undermined the Christian concept of redemption, since
only he who was truly God could be deemed to have reconciled humanity to the
Godhead. Until the early 20th century, it was universally assumed that the Niceno-
Constantinopolitan Creed (the more accurate term) was an enlarged version of
the Creed of Nicaea, which was promulgated at the Council of Nicaea (325AD). It
was further assumed that this enlargement had been carried out at the Council of
Constantinople (381) with the object of bringing the Creed of Nicaea up to date in
regard to heresies about the Incarnation and the Holy Spirit that had arisen since the
Council of Nicaea.Eustathius was bishop of Beroea (c. 320) and became bishop of
Antioch shortly before the Council of Nicaea (325AD). The intrigues of the pro-Arian
Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea led to Eustathius’ deposition by a synod at Antioch
(327/330AD) and banishment to Thrace by the Roman emperor Constantine the
Great. The resistance of his followers in Antioch created a Eustachian faction
(surviving until c. 485AD) that developed into the Meletian Schism, a split in the
Eastern Church over the doctrine of the Trinity.
Decisions Adopted
Between 250AD and 318AD bishops from all across the Empire and even outside its
borders gathered, after hearing the cause of the Arians, championed primarily by
Eusebius of Nicomedia, the council decided universally on the side of Alexander.
Arius and all who supported him were condemned as heretics, and Constantine
levied a penalty of exile on any who would not agree to the faith as adopted in a
creed drafted by the bishops at Nicaea, the Nicaean Creed. Arius, and a small
number of bishops were deposed and sent into exile which they did not reject

Nicaea Council
Homoousios, in Christianity, the key term of the Christological doctrine formulated at
the first ecumenical council, held at Nicaea in 325AD, to affirm that God the Son and
God the Father are of the same substance. The first ecumenical council of the
Christian church, meeting in ancient Nicaea (now İznik, Turkey) was called by the
emperor Constantine I, an unbaptized catechumen, who presided over the opening
session and took part in the discussions. He hoped a general council of the church
would solve the problem created in the Eastern church by Arianism, a heresy first
proposed by Arius of Alexandria that affirmed that Christ is not divine but a created
being. Pope Sylvester I did not attend the council but was represented by envoys
The First Council of Nicaea, presided over by the emperor Constantine,
was convened to resolve the controversy within the church over the relationship
between the persons of the Trinity. The council condemned Arius and, with
reluctance on the part of some, incorporated the non-scriptural word homoousias (of
one substance) into a creed to signify the absolute equality of the Son with the
Father. The emperor then exiled Arius, an act that, while manifesting a solidarity
of church and state, underscored the importance of secular patronage
in ecclesiastical affairs. The council condemned Arianism, which taught that Christ
was more than human but not fully divine. The use of homoousias’ (Greek: “of one
substance”) in the creed produced at the council was meant to put an end to the
controversy, although the influence of Arianism persisted in the church for centuries.
In 381AD Emperor Theodosius I beckoned the second ecumenical council, the First
Council of Constantinople, which developed and affirmed the earlier creed. The
resulting Nicene Creed also contained the word homoousias and became
the ultimate declaration of orthodox belief. The council attempted but failed to
establish a uniform date for Easter. It issued decrees on many other matters,
including the proper method of consecrating bishops, a condemnation of lending
money at interest by clerics, and a refusal to allow bishops, priests, and deacons to
move from one church to another. It also confirmed the primacy
of Alexandria and Jerusalem over other sees in their respective areas. Socrates
Scholasticus, a 5th-century Byzantine historian, said that the council intended to
make a canon enforcing celibacy of the clergy, but it failed to do so when some
objected.Arius,born c. 250AD,Libya,died336AD, Constantinople now
Istanbul,Turkey,Christian priest whose teachings gave rise to a theological doctrine
known as Arianism. Arianism affirmed a created, finite nature of Christ rather than
equal divinity with God the Father and was denounced by the early church as a
major heresy. An ascetical moral leader of a Christian community in the area
of Alexandria, Arius attracted a large following through a
message integrating Neoplatonism, which accented the absolute oneness of the
Divinity as the highest perfection, with a literal, rationalist approach to the New
Testament texts. This point of view was publicized about 323AD through the poetic
verse of his major work, Thalia (“Banquet”), and was widely spread by popular songs
written for labourers and travellers. The First Council of Nicaea held in 325AD
presents two landmarks in the development of the church and Western history. It
represents the first “ecumenical” council – a council represented by representatives
from across the vast majority of the Christian world, and secondly it marks the first
time when a civil penalty was used to enforce Christian orthodoxy.
The Council of Nicaea was convened to settle the controversy. The council convicted
Arius as a heretic and issued a creed to safeguard orthodox Christian belief. The
creed states that the son is homoousion to Patri (of one substance with the father),
thus declaring him to be all that the father is, he is completely divine. In fact,
however, this was only the beginning of a long-protracted dispute. At a church
council held at Antioch (341AD), an affirmation of faith that omitted the homoousion
clause was issued. Another church council was held at Sardica (modern Sofia) in
342, but little was achieved by either council. In 350 Constantius became solitary
ruler of the empire, and under his leadership the Nicene party was chiefly crushed.
The extreme Arians then declared that the son was unlike (anomoios) the father.
Those anomoeans succeeded in having their views sanctioned at Sirmium in 357AD,
but their extremism inspired the moderates, who proclaimed that the Son was of
similar substance (homoousias) with the Father. Constantius at first supported
those homoiousians but soon shifted his support to the Homoeans, led by Acacius,
who confirmed that the Son was “like” (homoios) the Father. Their opinions were
accepted in 360AD at Constantinople, where all previous creeds were rejected; the
term ousia (substance or stuff) was rejected; and a statement of faith was issued
stating that the Son was like the Father who begot him.
After Constantius’s death (361), the non-Arian Christian majority in the West largely
consolidated its position. The persecution of non-Arian Christians conducted by the
Arian emperor Valens (364–378) in the East and the success of the teaching of St.
Basil the Great of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory of Nazianzus led
the homoiousian majority in the East to a fundamental agreement with the Nicene
party. When the emperors Gratian (367–383) and Theodosius I (379–395) took up
the defense of non-Arian theology, Arianism collapsed. In 381 the
second ecumenical council met at Constantinople. Arianism was proscribed, and a
statement of faith, the Nicene Creed, was approved. That did not, however, end
Arianism as a viable force in the empire.
It maintained favour among some groups, most notably some of the Germanic tribes,
to the end of the 7th century. The Polish and Transylvanian Socinians of the 16th
and 17th centuries propounded Christological arguments that were similar to those
of Arius and his followers. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Unitarians in England
and America were reluctant either to diminish Christ to a simple human being or
to quality  him a divine nature equal with the Father. The Council of Nicaea, in May
325, declared Arius a heretic after he refused to sign the formula of faith stating that
Christ was of the same divine nature as God. Influential support from colleagues
in Asia Minor and from Constantia, the sister of Emperor Constantine I, succeeded in
effecting Arius’s return from exile and his readmission into the church after
consenting to a compromise formula. Shortly before he was to be reconciled,
however, Arius collapsed and died while walking through the streets of
Constantinople.
Constantinople council 381
After Maximus had been condemned, Meletius, bishop of Antioch, appointed
Gregory of Nazianzus as the lawful bishop of Constantinople and at first presided
over the council. Then on Meletius's sudden death, Gregory took responsibility of the
council up to the arrival of Acholius, who was to table Pope Damasus's demands that
Maximus should be expelled as an interloper, and that the conversion of bishops
should be avoided. When Timothy, bishop of Alexandria, arrived he did not approve
Gregory's appointment. Gregory resigned the episcopacy and Nectarius, after
baptism and dedication, was installed as bishop and presided over the council until
its closure. No copy of the council's doctrinal decisions, entitled tomos kai
anathematismos engraphos (record of the tome and anathemas), has survived. So
what was presented was the synodical letter of the synod of Constantinople held in
382, which expounded these doctrinal decisions, as the fathers witness, along the
lines defined by the council of Nicaea, the consubstantiality and coeternity of the
three divine persons against the Sabellians, Anomoeans, Arians and
Pneumatomachi, who thought that the divinity was divided into several natures; and
the enanthropesis (taking of humanity) of the Word, against those who envisage that
the Word had in no way taken a human soul.
All these matters were in close agreement with the tome that Pope Damasus and a
Roman council, held in 378, had sent to the East. Scholars find difficulties with the
creed ascribed to the council of Constantinople and was said to have authorized the
faith of Nicaea, with a few additions on the holy Spirit to disprove the
Pneumatomachian heresy. Lebon said that the Nicene creed, was adapted to be
used at baptism, and was endorsed at the council of Constantinople and developed
by additions concerning the holy Spirit. All the forms, altered, were described by a
common title as "the Nicene faith". Then the council of Chalcedon cited the council of
Constantinople as the immediate basis of one of them, marked it out by a special
name "the faith of the 150 fathers", which from that time onwards became its widely
known title, and quoted it alongside the original simple form of the Nicene creed. The
Greek text of the Constantinopolitan creed, which is printed below, is taken from the
acts of the council of Chalcedon. The council of Constantinople enacted four
disciplinary canons: against the Arian heresy and its sects (canon. 1), on limiting the
power of bishops within fixed boundaries (canon. 2), on ranking the see of
Constantinople second to Rome in honour and dignity (canon. 3), on the
condemnation of Maximus and his followers (canon. 4). Canons 2-4 were intended to
put a stop to aggrandisement on the part of the see of Alexandria. The two following
canons, 5 and 6, were framed at the synod which met in Constantinople in 382. The
7th canon is an extract from a letter which the church of Constantinople sent to
Martyrius of Antioch. The council ended on 9 July 381, and on 30 July of the same
year, at the request of the council fathers, the emperor Theodosius ratified its
decrees by edict.
Already from 382 onwards, in the synodical letter of the synod which met at
Constantinople, the council of Constantinople was given the title of "ecumenical".
The word denotes a general and plenary council. But the council of Constantinople
was criticised and censured by Gregory of Nazianzus. In subsequent years it was
hardly ever mentioned. In the end it achieved its special status when the council of
Chalcedon, at its second session and in its definition of the faith, linked the form of
the creed read out at Constantinople with the Nicene form, as being a completely
reliable witness of the authentic faith. The fathers of Chalcedon acknowledged the
authority of the canons -- at least as far as the eastern church was concerned -- at
their sixteenth session. The council's dogmatic authority in the western church was
made clear by words of Pope Gregory I "I confess that I accept and venerate the four
councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon) in the same way as I do
the four books of the holy Gospel. " The bishop of Rome's approval was not
extended to the canons, because they were never brought "to the knowledge of the
apostolic see''. Dionysius Exiguus knew only of the first four the ones to be found in
the western collections. Pope Nicholas, I wrote of the sixth canon to Emperor
Michael III.
Jamnia Council
The Council of Jamnia (presumably Yavneh in the Holy Land) was a council
purportedly held late in the 1st century CE to finalize the canon of the Hebrew Bible.
The Catholic canon was set at the Council of Rome (382).
Hippo Council
The Synod of Hippo refers to the synod of 393 which was hosted in Hippo Regius in
northern Africa during the early Christian Church. Additional synods were held in 394
and 397.The council also reaffirmed the apostolic origin of the requirement of clerical
continence and reasserted it as a requirement for all the ordained, in addition
requiring that all members of a person's household must be Christian before that
person can be ordained.
Council of Carthage
The council was called the third by Denzinger, met on 28 August 397. It reaffirmed
the canons of Hippo from 393, and issued its own. One of these gives a canon of the
Bible.

3 FOR THE PERIOD 590AD-800AD ERA OF MEDIEVAL CHURCH

a Write on the rise of Islam
In 610 CE A man named Muhammad was outside of a cave meditating and
began hearing voices saying give birth to a religion called Islam. Islam began to
spread faster than any other religion though other religions disagreed because
they didn’t want to believe that Islam was bigger and better than their religion.
After about 140 years, many followers of Islam had created an empire that ruled
the Middle East and spread across to North Africa to Europe. With over 1.5
billion followers in over 232 countries, Islam became the world’s largest
religions. Many Muslims live in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The growth
and spread of Islam began when the Prophet Muhammad began sharing his
divine revelations and spreading messages he received from Allah (god). He
and his followers were persecuted and had to flee to the neighbouring city of
Medina in 622. There he and his followers were welcomed and the faith grew.
After much conflict they were able to return to Mecca in the year 630 and it
became the center of Islam. After Muhammad’s death in 632, the teachings of
Islam spread rapidly to many people and places in the Middle East.
The period following Muhammad’s death was known as the Rashidun Caliphate
that lasted from 610-750. During this empire a Muslim administration and
government was established and ruled the Middle East. The Caliphate was
governed by The Righteous Caliphs, or spiritual leaders. By 644, these four
leaders helped Islam spread and grow far and beyond the Middle East through
conquests of major cities like Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. North and
Western parts of Africa were also conquered effectively taking control over
much of the Byzantine and Persian territory. The third Caliph Uthman created a
version of the Quran that became standardized and widely used throughout the
Islamic world in newly conventional schools that taught the Arabic language and
Islamic studies. This was also a period in which hundreds of mosques were built
throughout the empire. After the death of the last caliph in 661, the Umayyad
Caliphate took control of the empire and ruled until 750. Historians regard this
caliphate as the most powerful and expansive of the caliphs. The Umayyad
Caliphate grew the Islamic Empire to its peak and expanded its control from the
Middle East to parts of Asia, India, Northern Africa and parts of Europe. The
growth of Islam in these areas helped unite nomadic people into a more unified
culture by creating common currency, making Arabic the official language, and
standardizing measurements. This led to a “Golden Age” during the Abbasid
Dynasty which came to power by overthrowing the Umayyad in 750. During this
period science, math, astronomy, medicine and literature flourished. Libraries
and schools were built and arts and architecture thrived. This period lasted to
1258.
There are many reasons why Islam spread so fast, however the main three
reasons were trade, winning battles, and treaties. Trade Routes was significant
for Islam fast growing. From document A, it shows the map of all the trade
routes leading to and from Mecca. First, they had crossroads of profitable trade.
They would trade perfumes, precious metals, incense, and silk filed through
their town, headed North to coastal town. When they would trade overseas to
the Arabian Peninsula, they traded spices, textiles, and spices from Asia. Mecca
was rich due to travel connects to Europe, Asia and Africa. Trade became such
a big thing in Islam. In document C, it shows us something like the real treaty
would have said. The treaty allowed the Christians and the Jews of Spain to
keep their king and their religions, however there was a price for this. They had
to pay in taxes, such as one dinar each year, four measures of wheat, four
measures of barley, four liquid measures of vinegar, four of honey, and four of
olive oil, however slaves had to pay half of this amount. Their churches were
allowed to stand still, they would not separate from family and friends, and they
will not be killed, nor taken as prisoner as long as they follow the rules laid out
for them. Around the time that this treaty was made it was much better than
other cities.

Islam entered various countries due to repeated invasions by Islamic countries.

Many Muslim invaders settled and colonized large parts of non-Muslim
countries.
Muhammad generally converted people to Islam forcibly. He justified his actions
by falsely claiming that he was instructed to do so by God. He killed all the
Jewish men of Arabia for not accepting Islam (after making false accusations
against them). He enslaved Jewish women and children and stole their assets.
Likewise, Muhammad frequently offered pagans and Christians the choice to
accept Islam or face the sword (apart from death, their women and children
would be enslaved and their assets would be stolen). After conquest of Makkah,
Muhammad told the pagans to accept Islam or leave their native city (and their
properties) permanently, people of Makkah accepted Islam under duress. If
there was no military conquest Islam would have never necessarily spread out
of the Arabian Peninsula. Muhammad’s legacy had been kept alive by Muslims
to this day by forcibly converting non-Muslims to Islam. Those who resist were
killed. Most people in South Asia (also other countries of the world) embraced
Islam to escape the sword. Those who did not convert were exposed to death
and rape of family girls. Many people embraced Islam under coercion. Many
criminals were acquitted if they incorporate Islam. People who couldn't pay tax
including non-Muslim religious tax jaziya were offered conversion to Islam in lieu
of confiscating their assets.

Prisoners of war were given the choice of embracing Islam or enslavement.

Some covetous Hindus and other non-Muslims embraced Islam for gaining
powerful positions or property. High positions during Islamic rule were set aside
for Muslims. During 1947 partition of India, lakhs of Hindus and Sikhs especially
women were forcibly converted to Islam. Muslims also breed without control
resulting in plenty of children and have also several wives and each produce
large brood. Love Jihad was an important factor where Muslim men regularly
marry non-Muslim girls and convert them to Islam. A few people embraced
Islam based on belief. All these factors have caused the spread of Islam.
Attracted to Islam’s message of equality and social reform, people of different
backgrounds converted and followed the Five Pillars of Islam and Pilgrimages to
Ka’ba that were dedicated to Allah became one of the five pillars of Islam which
were confession of belief, prayer five times a day, Ramadan, giving alms to the
poor and pilgrimage to Mecca. After Muhammad died in 632, there was
confusion. There were two Islamic Golden Ages. The first Golden Age lasting
about two centuries from the 7th century to the 9th century. In the first Golden
Age, society is being integrated in political, social, and moral dimensions in
Islam (Lapidus 14).
The second Golden Age lasted about five centuries from the 9th century to the
14th century. During the second Golden Age the state and religious institutions
were separate, leaving the political and religious elites divided (Lapidus 13). The
major source of the rapid spread of Islam was ideological, not military. Islam,
distinctively, preaches the equality of all men under Allah and his prophet
Muhammad. This message resonated with the poor and downtrodden of the
medieval Middle East (and the current Middle East, Indonesia, Central Asia,
American Prisons), in a way that previous religions had not, in which powerful
and wealthy political figures were inexorably connected to the religion.
Essentially, in Pre-Abrahamic religions, if you were wealthy in life, you would be
the same in the afterlife.

Consequently, in summary, Islam spread as rapidly because was the religion of

the multitudes and the poor and as its leaders aggressively sought to spread the
impact and did not hesitate doing it by the sword. Also, after gaining a foothold
in some of the richest cities in Arabia, Mecca and Medina, wealthy powerful
leaders had conferred interest in seeing its inspiration spread because it also
signified their influence. Being a believer opened markets and opportunity to all
under its banner and those on the edges, but 'no one' (as far as we know) was
forcefully converted. It had the perfect combination of philosophical and
 ideological draw for the public (soft power), as well as military and economic
pressure for the powerful (hard power).

c) Write on the missions in England, Scotland, Ireland. Europe, Germany,

Holland and Spain.

Missions in England
In 596 A.D. Pope Gregory sent St. Augustine of Canterbury, a Benedictine Monk, to
England along with 40 missionaries to evangelize the lost. By 664 A.D., at the Synod
of Whitby, Roman Catholic Christianity was declared to be the religion of England.
From England in 729 A.D., a British monk named Winfrid (Boniface) whose loyalty to
the Pope was unquestioned, was sent by Gregory II to evangelize Germany. This
paved the way for the later union of the Frankish Empire and the Pope of Rome.
Boniface was martyred in 754 A.D. while on a mission endeavour to the Netherlands.
Missions in Ireland
A Christian from England named Patrick was captured by an Irish raiding party.
Patrick escaped and went to France where he studied in a monastery. From there in
the early fifth century, he returned to evangelize Ireland which was inhabited by
Celtic peoples.
Missions in Scotland
An Irish monk named Columba helped evangelize Scotland in the late 5th century.
Missions in Europe
Largely through the efforts of Celtic monks from England and Ireland, the Gospel
was spread to many parts of Europe during this time, including Germany, France,
Switzerland and Northern Italy. The leading missionary monk was Columbanus (543-
615 A.D.)
• While these missionary monks helped spread the Gospel, they also built up a
strong network of support for Roman Catholicism and allegiance to the Pope.
• In addition, many helped copy and preserve valuable manuscripts of the Bible
during this time.
• In the British Isles, the Celtic brand of Christianity and the Roman Catholic variety
were bound to clash, and they still do.
Missions in Germany
• As indicated earlier, Boniface (Winfrid 680-754A.D.) spread the Gospel to most of
modern-day Germany.
Missions in Holland
Wilfrid (634-709 A.D.), a churchman from England, evangelized parts of the
Netherlands and was soon followed by Willibrord (658-679 A.D.).
Missions in Spain
The main threat in Spain was Arian Christianity which was renounced at the Council
of Toledo in 589 A.D. This Council established orthodox (Roman Catholic)
Christianity in Spain. It also modified the Nicene Creed to indicate the double
procession of the Holy Spirit, i.e. From the “Son” as well as the father. The Eastern
Orthodox churches use the earlier form (single procession of the Spirit from the
Father) and the Western
Catholic and Protestant Churches the modified form.

Religious developments in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire around

Constantinople centred on resisting the Muslim invaders, and very little missionary
work was accomplished. The Eastern churches were significantly weakened by the
Muslim influence. The North African Church disappeared. Egypt was lost to Islam,
The Holy Land was lost to Islam, Counter missionary efforts to the Muslims were few
and largely ineffective. Very little teaching and training of Church members was
done.
• The rival bishops of the main churches in the East lost power, and no single bishop
was able to speak for the “Church”.
• Only Constantinople remained strong during this period.
• The last (seventh) General Council was held at Nicea in 787 A.D. and dealt
primarily with the “iconoclastic controversy” and the issue of whether or not it was
proper to use icons (religious images) in worship. The Council said yes, that pictorial
representations of Christ and others were lawful for “veneration” (to highly honorand
respect) purposes, but the controversy continued for some time. “Icon” means
image.
Major doctrinal disputes, heresies, and religious practices• Perhaps the major
doctrinal dispute of the era which affected both East and West was the iconoclastic
controversy. The real issue had to do with “idolatry” as the Muslims accused the
Eastern Church Christians of worshipping pictures, statues, and images (icons) in
the Church. In both the Western and Eastern Churches, the practice of using
pictures and statues of Christ and the saints had developed over the years. Although
intended for teaching and “veneration”, these icons themselves were soon
worshipped as religious relics or symbols.
It seems clear that idolatry was being practiced. The Iconoclasts opposed the use of
all images in worship, and Emperor Leo III in 730 A.D. issued an order against the
use of icons, which were removed from the Eastern Churches. The reason given
was that they promoted idolatry which was condemned by the Bible. The prohibition
order was bitterly opposed by the monks. The Church in the West, under Pope
Gregory II (715-771 A.D.), favoured the use of icons. His successor Gregory III (731-
741 A.D.) excommunicated anyone who removed, destroyed, or damaged any
images of Christ, Mary, or the Saints. Emperor Charlemagne (800-814 A.D.) in the
West favoured the use of images as ornaments but not for worship. The decision of
the Nicean Council of 787 A.D. did not settle the issue until Theodora (842-867 A.D.)
ordered icons restored and iconoclasts persecuted. The Eastern Churches, however,
permitted only paintings and mosaics. The Western Churches allowed full use of
icons, and the practice grew to the point of idol worship of statues and all sort of
other religious relics. The real issue at stake was whether objects or people were
sufficiently holy or sacred to be worshipped. Both the Church and the Government
had encouraged icon-making and the veneration or honouring of holy men.

An icon of Christ even appeared on the reverse side of some Imperial coins! Even
those opposed to icons (the iconoclasts) wanted to replace pictures and statues with
the cross and the Bible as “legitimate icons. “The theological defense of the use of
icons was based on the work of John of Damascus (675-749 A.D.), a monk from
Palestine. He was a great theologian and perhaps the last of the Church Fathers.
John’s theological argument was that:
• an icon was only an imitation, copy or reminder of the original.
• Christ was an “icon” of God the Father (see Col. 1:15)
• it was wrong to worship an icon, but it could serve as a good teaching tool and
reminder just like the Bible or the cross. John’s arguments won out.
In theory this theological position seemed fine, but in practice it promoted idolatry
and violated Scripture. God alone deserves worship. The decision of the Council of
Nicea in 787 A.D. was unfortunate and paved the way for image/relic worship which
would be especially prominent in the Roman Catholic.

4 FOR THE PERIOD 800AD-1054AD ERA OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

a) What factors brought about the Great schism the first great Church
Split?
The definition of a schism is a split of a group into different sections as a result of a
difference in beliefs. East-West Schism, also called Schism of 1054, event that
triggered the final separation between the Eastern Christian churches (led by the
patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius) and the Western church (led by
Pope Leo IX). The shared excommunications by the pope and the patriarch in 1054
became a crisis in church history. The excommunications were not lifted until 1965,
when Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I, following their historic meeting in
Jerusalem in 1964, presided over concurrent ceremonies that rescinded the
excommunication decrees. The relation of the Byzantine church to the Roman was
defined as one of rising estrangement from the 5th to the 11th century. In the early
church three bishops stood forth prominently, mainly from the political reputation of
the cities in which they ruled, the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. The
transfer of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople and the later eclipse of
Alexandria and Antioch as battlegrounds of Islam and Christianity promoted the
importance of Constantinople. Concurrently, the theological calmness of the West, in
contrast to the often-violent theological disputes that troubled the Eastern
patriarchates, strengthened the position of the Roman popes, who made increasing
claims to pre-eminence. But this pre-eminence, or rather the Roman idea of what
was involved in it, was never acknowledged in the East.

To press it upon the Eastern patriarchs was to prepare the way for separation; to
insist upon it in times of irritation was to cause a schism. The primary causes of the
Schism were disputes over papal authority, the Pope claimed he held authority over
the four Eastern Greek-speaking patriarchs, and over the insertion of the filioque
clause into the Nicene Creed. These disputes were over conflicting claims of
jurisdiction, the use of images in the church, over papal authority—Pope Leo IX
claimed he held authority over the four Eastern patriarchs and over the insertion of
the Filioque clause into the Nicene Creed by the Western patriarch in 1014AD. The
Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church split because of religious
icons. Many Christians in medieval times used images of Jesus, Mary, and saints.
But the people in the east believed that the eastern were wrongly worshipping the
icons and Leo III banned the use of these icons. The Great Schism came about due
to a complex mix of religious disagreements and political conflicts. Disagreement
over who was the head of the church and lack of communication due to language
and civil wars Many religious disagreements between the western (Roman) and
eastern (Byzantine) branches of the church had to do with whether or not it was
acceptable to use unleavened bread for the sacrament of communion.
Charlemagne’s crowning made the Byzantine Emperor redundant, and relations
between the East and the West deteriorated until an official split happened in
1054AD.The greatest schism in church history occurred between the church of
Constantinople and the church of Rome. The major effect of the Great Schism was
that it created two separate churches: the Eastern Orthodox Church which was
located in Constantinople and the Western Catholic Church. While 1054 is the
symbolic date of the separation, the painful detachment was six centuries in the
making and the result of several different issues. The schism between the Catholic
Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church began with the Byzantine emperor Leo III
prohibiting the use of icons. This ended up being detrimental to the relationship
between the two churches, leading finally to the mutual excommunication of both
church leaders by the other. The eastern church was allowed to marry, Greek was
the language of the eastern church and they believed that the patriarch is a leader
only of an area. The west says the pope is the leader of all Christians. These
differences led to the great schism. The major difference between the Eastern and
Western churches led to their schism was the inclusion of Pope as the religious head
of Christianity. Western churches believed in the authority of a religious leader called
Pope who will issue orders. Eastern churches functioned without Pope and a group
took decisions.

The culture and political differences between the eastern and western Roman
Empire weakened the unity of the Christian Church and led to its division. An Italian
was elected pope, it indicated that the pope had more power than monarchs and the
pope was ruling the Holy Roman Empire. Therefore, the Catholic Church is the
oldest of all. The Orthodox represents the original Christian Church because they
trace their bishops back to the five early patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria,
Jerusalem, Constantinople and Antioch. The mutual distrust shown in the time of
Photius erupted again in the middle of the 11th century after papal enforcement of
Latin customs. The theological genius of the East was different from that of the West.
The Eastern theology had its roots in Greek philosophy, whereas a great deal of
Western theology was based on Roman law. This contributed to the rise of
misunderstandings and at last led to two widely separate ways of regarding and
defining one important doctrine the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father or
from the Father and the Son. The Roman churches, without consulting the East,
added “and from the Son” (Latin: Filioque) to the Nicene Creed. Also, the Eastern
churches resented the Roman enforcement of clerical celibacy, the limitation of the
right of confirmation to the bishop, and the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist.

There had been mutual excommunications before, but they had not resulted in
permanent schisms. At the time there seemed possibilities of reconciliation, but the
rift grew wider; in particular, the Greeks were bitterly antagonized by such events as
the Latin capture of Constantinople in 1204. Western pleas for reunion (on Western
terms), such as those at the Council of Lyon (1274AD) and the Council of Ferrara-
Florence (1439AD), were rejected by the Byzantines. The schism has never healed,
though relations between the churches improved following the Second Vatican
Council (1962–65AD), which recognized the validity of the sacraments in the Eastern
churches. In 1979 the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue
Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church was established by the Holy
See and 14 autocephalous churches to further foster ecumenism. Dialogue and
improved relations continued into the early 21st century. From 1378AD until 1417AD,
the Great Schism divided the Church and the Catechism, Catholic Church, official
handbook of teaching, describes schism explicitly in terms of papal authority, as “the
refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of
the Church subject to him.

During this time, both popes claimed power over all Christians. Each
excommunicated the other’s followers. The split greatly weakened the Church. The
schism was finally resolved when the Pisan pope John XXIII called the Council of
Constance (1414–1418AD). The Council arranged the abdication of both the Roman
pope Gregory XII and the Pisan pope John XXIII, excommunicated the Avignon pope
Benedict XIII, and elected Martin V as the new pope reigning from Rome.

5. FOR THE PERIOD 1640AD- 1789AD ERA OF RATIONALISM AND REVIVAL

a. WRITE THE FOLLOWING REVIVAL IN ENGLAND

i. Church in England 1648-1789AD
Conditions Prior to the Revival
England, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was in a moral quagmire and a
spiritual cesspool. The spiritual condition in England was said to have been
disgraceful, corrupt, a drain. The formal and ritualistic Church of England at the time
was referred to as being spiritually dead, and the evangelical gospel of salvation by
grace through faith was not preached, nor believed by the majority of the Anglican
priests, as the majority of them embraced deism. From listening to sermons, it was
impossible to determine if the priests were followers of Confucius, Mohammed, or
Jesus. Alcohol abuse was rampant, with every sixth house being a grogshop (a
cheap bar where customers could get drunk on the equivalent of one penny). Gangs
roamed the streets terrorizing anybody out after dark. They would disfigure people’s
faces with knives, stab people in the legs with swords, sexually assault women, and
even commit murder. Law enforcement was failing, and criminals multiplied and the
slavery trade was widespread. Thomas Carlyle described the country's condition as
"Stomach well alive, soul extinct." Deism was rampant, and weak, logical morality
was standard fare in the churches. Sir William Blackstone visited the church of every
major clergyman in London, but "did not hear a single discourse which had more
Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero."

In most sermons he heard, it would have been impossible to tell just from listening
whether the preacher was a follower of Confucius, Mohammed, or Christ. Ethically,
the country was becoming increasingly corrupt. Drunkenness was rampant;
gambling was so extensive that one historian described England as "one vast
casino." Newborns were exposed in the streets; 97% of the infant poor in the
workhouses died as children. Bear baiting and cock fighting were accepted sports,
and tickets were sold to public executions as to a theatre. The slave trade brought
material gain to many while further degrading their souls. Bishop Berkeley wrote that
morality and religion in Britain had collapsed "to a degree that was never known in
any Christian country. About the same time, George Whitefield, an ordained
Anglican clergyman, was converted and in 1737AD began preaching in London and
Bristol. In order to reach the many non-church-goers, Whitefield spoke in the open
fields, and large crowds began gathering to hear the message of salvation.
Whitefield became an itinerant preacher, or "one of God's runabouts," as he called
himself, traveling extensively in his wide-ranging ministry. In his day, itinerant
preachers were often criticized as interfering with or undermining the role of the
parish priest. Whitefield countered that many of the established clergy could not
bring life to their people since they themselves were spiritually dead. One such
spiritually dead clergyman was John Wesley.

The Extraordinary Prayer Fetter Lane Watch Night Prayer

Due to all these happening, an extraordinary Prayer Fetter Lane Watch Night Prayer
meeting was launched as a revival to the church. The Moravians in England (Peter
Boehler) had established the Fetter Lane Society at No. 33 Fetter Lane in London.
This society’s purpose was to provide discipleship and accountability. It was with this
group that John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and a number of other
young men joined to conduct a Watch Night Service on December 31, 1738AD.The
Moravians in Germany, following the early church, had a custom of fellowshipping at
a common meal, or a “love feast,” prior to taking communion. On this New Year’s
Eve, this meal and communion service was conducted. Following the meal and
communion, and as the new year arrived, the 60 young men that had gathered
continued with their praying and worshipping the Lord when, according to the journal
of John Wesley, dated January 1, 1739AD.Mr. Hall, Hinching, Ingham, Whitefield,
Hutching, and Charles his brother were present at the love feast in Fetter Lane with
about 60 brethren. About three in the morning, as they were continued earnestly in
prayer, the power of God came mightily upon them in so much that many cried out
for exceeding joy and many fell to the ground.

As soon as they were recovering a little from that wonder and admiration at the
presence of His majesty, they broke out with one voice, ‘We praise Thee, O God, we
acknowledge Thee to be the Lord. The renowned evangelist George Whitefield, who
was present at the love feast, said that it was a Pentecostal season indeed, as
complete nights spent in prayer. More often they have been filled as with new wine,
and often been overwhelmed with the Divine Presence, and cry out, “Will God,
indeed, dwell with men on earth, and thus how revival came in England church. The
outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Fetter Lane was so powerful, and what those young
men experienced so real, that it set an anchor in their souls they had experienced
something they would never forget. Within a few months of that Watch Night service,
George Whitefield and the Wesleys were preaching in the fields and moving the
hearts of tens of thousands toward Christ. These young men eventually became
pillars of the Church and their ministries gave moral stability, guidance, and direction
to England for years. George Whitefield preached in an open field resulted in the
conversion to christ of about 1.25 million people between 1738 and 1791AD.The
outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the Fetter Lane Watch Night Service on
December 31, 1738 – January 1, 1739AD, was the spiritual inauguration for the
public ministry of the Wesleys and the beginning of the Methodist Church.
Historians believed that with the prayer meeting at Fetter Lane, and the subsequent
spiritual awakening throughout England, the nation was saved from being sucked
into something like the French Revolution and its bloody “Reign of Terror.”

ii. The Quarter Movement 1624-1691

George Fox – Quakers - (1624-1691)

George Fox is the first real prophet of the English Reformation. Rufus Jones.
George Fox was born in Leicestershire, England in July 1624. The son of an English
weaver, he was raised in the religion of his parents, Anglicanism, the official
Protestant religion of England. Unhappy with the creed he declared, he did not feel
the presence of God during worship, nor did he see a future in any other belief. In
search of a new way of communicating his faith, he had a "vision," in which the
divine will specified the way to spread the belief that God communicated directly with
the spirit of man. "There is one, the same Christ Jesus, who can speak with thy
condition." This discovery of Christ as a present reality converted George Fox from
an unsatisfied seeker to joyful discoverer and originated a great Christian awakening
in England. At 23 years old George Fox was already an opponent of his culture.
When human counsellors could not fill his spiritual emptiness, he resorted to Bible
reading and prayer. In 1647 he began to preach, travelling and working as a
travelling shoemaker. His ministry was centred in Mansfield and Nottinghamshire.

In 1652 he met Margaret Fell of Swarthmore Hall and she was converted. After the
death of her husband, Judge Fell, in 1658, she married George in 1669. Margaret
Fell became the principal organizer of the Society of Friends. Much influenced by
Anglicanism, the fulfilment of the Quakers´ mission began in the north of England
with massive adherence. In 1652 the Society of Friends was positively established.
Soon the crusade spread swiftly from the north of the country to Bristol and London,
carried by numerous Quaker ministers. The Friends would be dressed in black; they
had a formal way of collaborating, and extreme fervor also identified them. They
were called Quakers: "those who tremble before God. “In 1660, with more than
40,000 members, George Fox and his Society commenced to face complications
with the Official Church by opposing it with his concept of faith. He was also
opposing the State by advocating freedom of worship and spreading the idea to
members that one was not obligated to perform military service nor swear allegiance
to the King.

The persecutions were persistent, often the Quakers held their services in the streets
after having their meeting places locked. Many Groups did not escape death and
others took refuge in the American colonies. The Quaker Exodus to America lasted
two years, from 1656 to 1658. The Families who remained in England, about 50,000,
knew some peace when in 1689 the Law of Tolerance was passed.
Even as a boy, Fox was extraordinarily sensitive to God, having been well taught by
devout parents. He recalled having experienced the "purity" of the divine presence at
the age of 11. This view of the world as God intended contrasted sharply with the
world of political violence and ecclesiastical hypocrisy which he experienced as a
young man. George Fox worked first as a shoemaker and later as a partner with a
wool and cattle dealer. His integrity brought him viable accomplishment. But spiritual
conflict raged furiously inside him until his experience of Christ brought peace.
The legacy he left and Fox's influence in the Friendship Society were incredible, and
his beliefs were largely carried forward by this group. Perhaps its most substantial
achievement, in addition to its prime impact in the initial movement, was its
leadership in overcoming the twin challenges of the post-Restoration government's
prosecution and internal disputes that threatened its firmness over the same period.

George Fox's name is often invoked by traditionalist friends who dislike modern
liberal attitudes toward the Christian origins of the Society. At the same time, the
Quakers and others may relate to Fox's religious experience, and even those who
disagree with many of his ideas see him as an inventor. George Fox died in London
on January 13, 1691

iii. Wesley revival in England: The Holy Club: 1729

John Wesley was a spiritually dead clergyman, who later became the founder of
Methodism (although he never intended to form a separate church). The twenty-two-
year-old Charles Wesley, who was attending the University of Oxford, started a Bible
study. This group were extremely regimental in Christian disciplines, and the student
body mockingly called their Bible study “The Holy Club.” Charles’ brother John
Wesley (the founder of the Methodist Church) later became the leader of the Holy
Club. The members of the Holy Club were some of those that attended the Watch
Night Prayer Meeting on December 31, 1738 – January 1, 1739.John Wesley was
greatly blessed with administrative skills. He was able to organize the widespread
planting of churches and the installation of pastors, and at the same time keep up an
itinerary on horseback that staggers the mind. Wesley had gone to Georgia with
James Oglethorpe to work as a missionary to the Indians. He soon returned to
England in despair and wrote, "I went to America to convert the Indians; but O who
will convert me!" On the ship going to Georgia, Wesley had met some Moravian
immigrants and was impressed by their spiritual strength and joy in the Lord. Back in
England, as Wesley struggled with his own sinfulness and need of salvation, he
received spiritual counsel from the Moravian Peter Boehler. On May 24, 1738, during
a meeting at Aldersgate, Wesley experienced God's saving grace and wrote, "I felt
my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and
an assurance was given to me that he had taken away my sins."From George
Whitefield, Wesley learned the importance of preaching in the open air to reach the
masses. At first, he could not imagine souls being saved unless they were in Church,
but Jesus' "open-air preaching" of the Sermon on the Mount convinced him it was
okay.

Wesley was not welcomed in many of the Church of England churches. He was
looked down upon as one of the contemptible religious "enthusiasts." Maybe this
was a blessing in disguise, as it permitted him to minister to the poor in prisons,
hospitals, workhouses, and at the mine pit heads. Excessive taunts, verbal abuse,
and even occasional physical violence could not deter Wesley. He travelled over
250,000 miles in the cause of the gospel. In his preaching he talked continually of
Christ and emphasized repentance, faith, and holiness. He said that repentance was
like the porch of religion; conviction of sin always came before faith. Faith was the
door of religion. Faith was "not only to believe that the Holy Scriptures and the
articles of our faith are true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence to be saved
from everlasting damnation through Christ." Holiness was religion itself, "the loving
God with all our heart, and our neighbours as ourselves, and in that love abstaining
from all evil, and doing all possible good to all men." As Wesley preached, multitudes
responded. He noted in his journal that "the Word of God ran as fire among the
stubble; it was glorified more and more; multitudes crying out, 'What must I do to be
saved?' and afterwards witnessing, 'By grace we are saved through faith. Wesley
supervised the education of lay preachers to educate the people in small cell groups
where discipline and faithfulness were learned. These preachers also distributed and
sold Christian books to the people, helping provide them with spiritual food. Wesley
pioneered the monthly magazine and edited Christian Living, a selection of
theological and devotional literature for the lay person. He also was the first to print
and use religious tracts extensively. Wesley used all the profits from his literary
works for charitable purposes, and he encouraged Christians to become active in
social reform. He himself spoke out strongly against the slave trade and encouraged
William Wilberforce in his antislavery crusade. Numerous agencies promoting
Christian work arose as a result of the eighteenth-century revival in England.
Antislavery societies, prison reform groups, and relief agencies for the poor were
started. Numerous missionary societies were formed; the Religious Tract Society
was organized; and the British Foreign Bible Society was established. Hospitals and
schools multiplied.

The revival cut across denominational lines and touched every class of society.
England itself was transformed by the revival. In 1928 Archbishop Davidson wrote
that "Wesley practically changed the outlook and even the character of the English
nation. He travelled over 4,000 miles annually and preached around 40,000 sermons
during his lifetime. At the time of his death, Wesley’s followers in England were 294
preachers, 71,668 members, and 19 missionaries. His followers in the United States
numbered 198 preachers and 43,265 members. The subsequent spreading revival
cut across denominational lines and involved every segment of society. Some
historians have maintained that the revival so altered the course of English history
saved England from the kind of revolution that took place in France.

iv.The Great Awakening in America

The First Great Awakening was a period when spirituality and religious dedication
were rejuvenated. The Great Awakening of 1720-1745 was a period of intense
religious revivalism that spread throughout the American colonies. The movement
deemphasized the higher authority of church doctrine and instead put greater
importance on the individual and his or her spiritual experience. The Great
Awakening arose at a time when people in Europe and the American colonies were
questioning the role of the individual in religion and society. It began at the same
time as the Enlightenment which emphasized logic and reason and stressed the
power of the individual to understand the universe based on scientific laws. Similarly,
individuals grew to rely more on a personal approach to salvation than church
dogma and doctrine. There was a feeling among believers that established religion
had become complacent. This new movement emphasized an emotional, spiritual,
and personal relationship with God. The feeling swept through the American colonies
between the 1730s and 1770s. The revival of Protestant beliefs was part of a much
broader movement that was taking place in England, Scotland, and Germany at that
time. The First Great Awakening began in the 1730s and persisted up to 1740AD,
though pockets of revivalism happened in prior years especially amongst the ministry
of Solomon Stoddard, Jonathan Edwards' grandfather.

The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English colonies in
America during the 1730s and 1740s. The movement came at a time when the idea
of secular rationalism was being stressed, and desire for religion had grown sour.
Revivals contributed to the coming Revolution in a significant ideological,
sociological, and religious ways. The revivals crushed the social order of church
hierarchy, declining the prevailing control structures of the day and focusing instead
on the individual. The Great Awakening movement divided longstanding
denominations such as the Congregational and Presbyterian churches and created
an opening for new evangelical strength in Baptists and Methodists. That began with
a series of revival sermons from preachers who were either not associated with
mainstream churches, or who were diverging from those churches. Great
Awakening, religious revival in the British American colonies mainly between about
1720 and the 1740s. It was a part of the religious ferment that swept western Europe
in the latter part of the 17th century and early 18th century, referred to as Pietism
and Quietism in continental Europe among Protestants and Roman Catholics and as
Evangelicalism in England under the leadership of John Wesley (1703–91). The
Puritan fervour of the American colonies waned toward the end of the 17th century,
but the Great Awakening, under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards, George
Whitefield, and others, served to revitalize religion in the region.

The Great Awakening represented a reaction against the growing secularization of

society and against the corporate and materialistic nature of the principal churches of
American society. A number of conditions in the colonies contributed to the revival a
parched rationalism in New England, formalism in liturgical practices, as among the
Dutch Reformed in the Middle Colonies, and the neglect of pastoral supervision in
the South. The revival took place primarily among the Dutch Reformed,
Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and some Anglicans, almost all of whom
were Calvinists. By making conversion the primary step on the road to salvation and
by opening the conversion experience to all who recognized their own sinfulness, the
ministers of the Great Awakening, some deliberately and others unintentionally,
democratized Calvinist theology. The Great Awakening has been seen, therefore, as
a development toward an evangelical Calvinism. Indeed, the evangelical styles of
religious worship promoted by the revival helped make the religious doctrines of
many of the insurgent church denominations particularly those of the Baptists and
the Methodists more accessible to a wider cross section of the American population.
The part played by religion in the shaping of the American mind, while sometimes
overstated, remains crucial.

The revival preachers emphasized the “terrors of the law” to sinners, the unmerited
grace of God, and the “new birth” in Jesus Christ. They frequently sought to inspire
in their listeners a fear of the consequences of their sinful lives and a respect for the
omnipotence of God. This sense of the ferocity of God was often tempered by the
implied promise that a rejection of worldliness and a return to faith would result in a
return to grace and an avoidance of the horrible punishments of an angry God.
There was a certain contradictory quality about Great Awakening theology, however.
Predestination, one of the principal tenets of the Calvinist theology of most of the
ministers of the Great Awakening, was ultimately incompatible with the promise that
humans could, by a voluntary act of faith, achieve salvation by their own efforts.
One of the great figures of the movement was George Whitefield, an Anglican priest
who was influenced by John Wesley but was himself a Calvinist. Visiting America in
1739–40AD, he preached up and down the colonies to vast crowds in open fields,
because no church building would hold the throngs he attracted. Although he gained
many converts, he was attacked, as were other revival clergy, for criticizing the
religious experience of others, for stimulating emotional excesses and dangerous
religious delusions, and for breaking into and preaching in settled parishes without
proper invitation by ecclesiastical authorities. These early revivals in the northern
colonies inspired some converts to become missionaries to the American South. In
the late 1740s, Presbyterian preachers from New York and New Jersey began
proselytizing in the Virginia Piedmont; and by the 1750s, some members of a group
known as the Separate Baptists moved from New England to central North Carolina
and quickly extended their influence to surrounding colonies. By the eve of the
American Revolution, their evangelical converts accounted for about ten percent of
all southern churchgoers.

Jonathan Edwards was the great academician and apologist of the Great
Awakening. A Congregational pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, he preached
justification by faith alone with remarkable effectiveness. He also attempted to
redefine the psychology of religious experience and to help those involved in the
revival to discern what were true works of the Holy Spirit. Although the call for a
return to complete faith and the emphasis on the omnipotence of God can be seen
as the very antithesis of Enlightenment thought, which called for a greater
questioning of faith and a diminishing role for God in the daily affairs of humankind,
Edwards explicitly drew on the thought of men such as John Locke and Isaac
Newton in an attempt to make religion rational. His chief opponent was Charles
Chauncy, a liberal pastor of the First Church in Boston, who wrote and preached
against the revival, which he considered an outbreak of extravagant emotion.

The Great Awakening stemmed the tide of Enlightenment rationalism among a great
many people in the colonies. One of its results was division within denominations, for
some members supported the revival and others rejected it. The revival stimulated
the growth of several educational institutions, including Princeton, Brown, and
Rutgers universities and Dartmouth College. The increase of dissent from the
established churches during this period led to a broader toleration of religious
diversity, and the democratization of the religious experience fed the fervour that
resulted in the American Revolution. Edwards maintained that the Holy Spirit
withdrew from Northampton in the 1740s, and some supporters found that the revival
came to an end in that decade. Subsequently, the first Great Awakening left
colonials sharply polarized along religious lines. Anglicans and Quakers gained new
members among those who disapproved of the revival’s excesses, while the Baptists
(and, in the 1770s, the Methodists) made even more handsome gains from the ranks
of radical evangelical converts. The largest single group of churchgoing Americans
remained within the Congregationalist and Presbyterian denominations, but they
divided internally between advocates and opponents of the Awakening, known
respectively as “New Lights” and “Old Lights.” Inevitably, civil governments were
drawn into the fray. In colonies where one denomination received state support,
other churches lobbied legislatures for disestablishment, an end to the favoured
status of Congregationalism in Connecticut and Massachusetts and of Anglicanism
in the southern colonies.

A revival known as the Second Great Awakening began in New England in the
1790s. Generally, less emotional than the Great Awakening, the Second Great
Awakening led to the founding of colleges and seminaries and to the organization of
mission societies. Kentucky was also influenced by a revival during this period. The
custom of camp-meeting revivals developed out of the Kentucky revival and was an
influence on the American frontier during the 19th century.

6.FOR THE PERIOD 1517AD-1691AD ERA OF REFORMED

a) What factors contributed to reformation? Era of the Reformation 1517–
1648 A.D.
The era of the Reformation changed the face of Christianity in the world and
profoundly impacted the Church. The Reformation brought a major schism and
breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church by Protestants. The
reformation era led to the formation of four major new religious traditions of
Protestantism namely, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist and Anglican. The
expansion of evangelical, orthodox Protestant theology, civil wars between
Catholic powers and Protestant princes gave rise to the emergence of Spain,
France and England as major national powers. The Counter reformation/ revival
within the Roman Catholic Church directed by the Jesuit Society and the
permanent divisions of Catholic and Protestant religious societies marked the
beginning of denominational churches. The Reformation led to the
establishment of Christianity in America.

Major factors contributing to the Reformation

While the abrupt triggering cause of the start of the Reformation was religious
(Luther’s protest over the Roman Church’s sale of indulgence) many other
factors contributed to this remarkable period of breaking away from the Roman
Catholic Church and the forming of four major new religious traditions.
Political factors
The new rising national powers of Europe bitterly opposed the claims of the
Roman Church to have universal authority over both religious and civil matters
and perhaps saw in the Reformation an opportunity to break free of the “civil
power” of the Roman Church.
Economic factors
The large land holdings of the Roman Church both contributed to a division of
sovereign power between Church and State and appealed to the Kings of
Nation-States as sources of wealth and income. Burdensome taxes imposed by
the Church on rulers and subjects alike were greatly resented. The exemption of
the clergy from State taxes further alienated the political leaders. The greed and
money-grabbing schemes of the Church to raise money through the sale of
indulgences was both an economic and religious factor. The national kings had
to find ways to fund their rapidly expanding middle class development and
blossoming commerce.
Cultural factors
The Protestant (Teutonic) nations that came out of the Reformation did not have
the same cultural background as the Latins of the old Holy Roman Empire. The
people of the Protestant nations favored independence and individualism while
the Latins depended on universal institutions and rule of the Church/State. The
rising power and wealth of the middle class in the Nation-States stood in sharp
contrast to the hierarchy of wealthy and common people in the Latin speaking
countries.
Intellectual factors
The Renaissance had served to promote a new humanistic/ secular outlook on
life which was very critical of the “mindless” religious ritual and practices of the
Roman Catholic Church. The movement to return to the sources of civilization
which included the Bible made it clear that intellectually the Roman Church had
deceived the people.
Religious/moral factors
Open, flagrant moral failure in the clergy and violation of their own standards
offended those who now saw the standards of morality in the New Testament.
Corruption through the sale of Church offices, Church courts where justice was
often purchased, sale of indulgences and the adoration of religious relics
caused great distrust of the Church. Preaching and ministry were neglected by
the clergy who had become content to rehearse the mass instead of edify and
minister to the needs of their members. The constant plea for money by the
Church fell on the deaf ears of those who desperately needed physical and
spiritual help. The Church, in fact, was squeezing the very life out of the people
and offering nothing of spiritual value in return.
Religious factors
Perhaps none was more substantial than the failure of the Roman Church to
reform itself in the areas of doctrine and practice. Roman Catholic Theology and
practice as expounded by Thomas Aquinas did not match up to the biblical
theology of the New Testament nor to the teachings of great Church Fathers
like Augustine. The Roman Church had gotten off track and refused to correct
itself, continuing to blindly insist on the authority and tradition of the Church (as
exemplified in the Pope) being of equal or greater value than Scripture.
Salvation through the sacraments as administered by the clergy. The
institutional Church had replaced Christ and the Scriptures. The Reformers
would counter with sola scriptura, the authority of the Bible alone and sola fide,
salvation by faith alone. It was the teachings of the New Testament and the
theology of Augustine versus the teachings of the Roman Church and the
theology of Aquinas. There was no real possibility of compromise or peaceful
coexistence. The reformation was not seen from the same perspective by all
people. There are four major views of the Reformation:
1. Catholic view - that it was a revolt against the universal Roman Church by
Protestants such as Martin Luther who was a heretic with ulterior motives
(wanted to marry)
2. Protestant view - that it was a return to religious and Church life based on
the teachings of the New Testament (salvation by faith and the Bible as
authority)
3. Religious view - it was a contest between the theology of Thomas Aquinas
Augustine man is not totally bad – man is totally sinful – saved by faith plus
saved by grace through grace in the sacrament’s faith alone.
4. Secular view - it was a revolution against the economic and political powers
of the Church and its representative the Pope by the developing Nation-States
of Europe (Northern Teutonic nations vs. Latin Nations). Thus, the Reformation
was only a small part of the larger Renaissance movement. Certainly, there is a
great deal of truth in views 2, 3 and 4 and perhaps some truth in view 1. The
Reformation was clearly a complex social, political and economic movement but
most of all it was a religious revolution in the Church as can be seen by the
results.

Major political/historical/cultural background

The political scene at the start of the Reformation was important to see as
background for the religious developments.
Spain was the strongest political Nation-State during the Reformation and it
was staunchly Roman Catholic. In 1516 A.D. Charles I (the grandson of
Ferdinand and Isabella) became King of Spain and by 1519 A.D, he had
become Charles V (1500-1558 A.D.) the Holy Roman Emperor ruling over
Germany as well. Some reform of the Roman Church had taken place in Spain
and Charles V was strongly opposed to the Lutheran Reformation in Germany.
He wanted to suppress the Reformation and return the Catholic Church to its
purity and power. The threatened invasion of Europe by the Turks who had
captured Constantinople in 1453 A.D. and who were moving westward toward
Europe required much of Charles V’s attention during the critical period of the
German Lutheran Reformation.
France by this time had a strong central government but spent most of its time
fighting and feuding with Spain for supremacy. Francis I (1515-1547 A.D.) was
King of France during most of the Reformation and did not support it. His
fighting with Spain caused Charles V to remain occupied with France rather
than Luther and the Reformation.
In England Henry VII (1485-1509 A.D.) had unified England after a period of
feuding between nobles. His son Henry VIII (1509-1547 A.D.) was the English
king during the Reformation. He violently opposed the protests of Luther initially
but broke with the Roman Church in 1534 for political and personal reasons
related to papal interference in royal marriages. Doctrinally Henry VIII was still
closely allied with Rome but his revolt against papal authority paved the way for
later English Reforms.
In Germany (Holy Roman Empire) Charles V of Spain had become Emperor
after the last of the Hapsburg rulers, Maximillian I (1493-1519 A.D.). The Holy
Roman Emperor however had little real control over the loose confederation of
German states headed by powerful sovereign princes. Some of these German
rulers were secular and some ecclesiastical. The prince (“elector”) of Saxony,
(one of the German states) would act as personal protector to Martin Luther
against both the Pope (religious power) and the emperor (political power).
In Italy with Rome as the seat of Papal power, Italy was largely untouched by
the Protestant Reformation. It would, however, be impacted greatly by the
Catholic Counter Reformation. Russia was becoming a strong political force
but was largely unaffected by the Reformation. Russia in 1589 A.D. declared
the Russian Greek Orthodox Church to be the national Church of Russia.
Spain, France and England emerged as major Nation -States and world
powers contending for control of the Western Hemisphere, including America. –
Portuguese colonies were established in Brazil, along the West Coast of Africa
and in India as major new trade routes were opened to the Far East between
1520–1522 A.D. Portuguese ships led by Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the
world. Spanish colonies were founded in Mexico, the Southwest United States,
 Florida, Central America, the West Indies and South America. English Colonies
were founded along the Eastern Coast of the United States. The Protestant
Reformation was the beginning of the end for a unified Church-State
political/religious base and the power and for the influence of the Pope in the
political affairs of nations. Bitter civil/religious wars between Protestant and
Catholic rulers led to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 A.D. which granted
religious toleration to Lutherans. Fighting in France between Catholic forces
and Calvinists led to the French Huguenots fleeing by the hundreds of
thousands to other countries. Religious wars led to political division in Scotland
and Ireland. The Puritan and Congregational/Separatist movements in England
led to a balance of political power between the King and Parliament. The Thirty
Years’ War (1618-1648 A.D.) fought for political and religious reasons reflected
the bloody dispute brought about by the Protestant Reformation and the
Catholic Counter-Reformation. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) not only
granted religious recognition to Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists but helped
to shape the form of the powers of modern Europe. The Political and religious
movements were hopelessly intertwined during the period. It was perhaps the
last era in which it was impossible to separate the two. The political power of
kings was firmly established at the expense of religious leaders such as the
Popeuring the period. It was perhaps the last era in which it was impossible to
separate the two. The political power of kings was firmly established at the
expense of religious leaders such as the Pope.

b) Write on the Lutheran Reformation in German

The medieval church was ripe for reforms and that calls for reforms antedates the
protest of Luther and other reformers in the sixteenth century. The contemporary
ecclesiastical historians got into a multifaceted historical analysis on the causation
and political forces that made the Reformation inevitable. Some scholars concluded
that "The church was corrupt". To others, especially within the Roman Catholic
Church, Martin Luther was arrogant and rebellious. Luther himself blamed the events
to the sinful and depraved nature of papal leadership of that time. It was his
considered opinion that the pope was corrupt, immoral and oppressive. The Roman
Curia and most of their supporters viewed Luther as a troublemaker who exalted his
personal opinions over and above the collective wisdom of the ages. Luther's exit
from the Catholic Church was interpreted as his inability to control his passion. His
marriage with a former nun was seen as a proof of his psychological and emotional
instability. Carl Gustavson (1955: 54) said that in the heat of conflict, people are
always tempted to ascribe malignant characters and purposes to their enemies and
that even when there may be some element of truth there is always the danger and
temptation to either oversimplify, or overemphasize the facts.Gustavson went on to
say that leaders of popular social movements cannot ignore the prevailing ideas,
values and pressure groups that surround them: “No man in a public movement is a
free agent or can act entirely according to his own free will. Although he seeks
certain objectives and will strive toward them, he must take into consideration other
forces or speedily come to an impasse” (1955:54).

The argument of Gustavson was plain and simple. It is poor historical thinking to
attribute a major and complex historical development to one single cause. It is a
typical rudimentary historical thinking to overrate one single social force at the
expense of other factors. Gustavson elucidates further: “Very often the immediate
cause whether seen in terms of a person, or of an event receives greater emphasis
than it deserves\The more remote causes in history establish the particular situation
which makes the whole historical sequence possible. No single cause ever
adequately explains ahistorical episode” (1955:55). To Luther, and the majority of his
early followers, Reformation as a movement was a rebellion against abuses in the
Catholic Church. It was reported that some clergymen obtained their positions
through irregular and fraudulent means. Some clergymen led immoral and
scandalous lives. Commenting on some of the abuses, Edward Burns (1973:399)
notes that while some of the popes and bishops were living in opulence, the lower
cadre of the priesthood occasionally sought to survive through “the incomes from
their parishes by keeping taverns, gaming houses, or other establishments for profit.
Not only did some monks habitually ignore their vows of chastity, but a few
indifferent members of the clergy surmounted the hardships of the rule of celibacy by
keeping mistresses”.
It is on record that Pope Innocent VIII, who ruled the Roman Catholic Church for
twenty-five years before the Reformation, had eight illegitimate children, some born
before his election by the College of Cardinals (Burns 1973:399-400). There were
also the scandalous practices of selling ecclesiastical offices to the highest bidder.
Pope Leo X generated more than a million dollars in one year from the sale of more
than 2000 ecclesiastical offices. Burns (1973:400) observes that: “This abuse was
rendered more serious by the fact that the men who bought these positions were
under a strong temptation to make up for their investment by levying high fees for
their services”. Luther for his part was harsher in his judgment of Zwingli. He
regarded Zwingli as a Schwärmer, a fanatic, because of his rejection of the bodily
presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Luther linked Zwingli with other fanatics such as
Andreas Carlstadt, his former colleague at Wittenberg, who, while Luther was holed
up in the Wartburg Castle, radicalized Luther’s Reformation by throwing out the
Mass, destroying images, removing his clerical garb, donning the peasant’s
sombrero and demanding to be addressed as Bruder Andreas.

When Luther returned to Wittenberg, he put an end to the revolution set in motion by
Carlstadt and other like-minded prophets, and would eventually drive them out and
brand them as rebellious spirits and false prophets who were instruments of the
devil. Because of Zwingli’s rejection of the real bodily presence of Christ in the
Supper, Luther would place Zwingli in the same camp. Although Luther attacked the
medieval Catholic doctrine of trans substantiation (which holds that the bread and
the wine are changed into the very body and blood of Christ), he continued to
maintain that the body and blood are present “in, with and under” the bread and the
wine, a view called later “consubstantiation.” Luther rests his argument on a literal
reading of the words of institution: “This is my body. The starting point for Luther’s
Reformation was his own inner struggle for salvation as a monk. Luther entered the
monastery in 1505 at Erfurt against the wishes of his father who wanted him to
become a successful lawyer. As a monk Luther tried the path of ascetical works—
prayer, fasting, self-beatings, but he found that he could never be sure whether he
had enough of them or the right ones. He said that if a monk ever had gotten to
heaven through monkery, it would have been he, for he was a most dutiful and
obedient monk. He also tried the route of the sacraments, but again he could not be
certain, when he made confession or took communion, that he had truly been
cleansed of his sins.

But Luther, however much he tried, did not see himself making any progress along
the route toward salvation. Rather than sensing that he loved God above all things,
he said he hated a God who demanded that, in order to be saved, we love him with
whole heart and mind, but who did not provide the ability to do so. It was in the midst
of this spiritual anguish and struggle that he experienced his so-called
“breakthrough” as he was reading Paul’s letter to the Romans. “For in it (the Gospel)
the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The
righteous shall live by faith.’ ” (Romans 1:17). He came to the realization that the
righteousness of God is not the active righteousness by which God judges and
punishes miserable sinners, but is rather God’s passive righteousness by which he
mercifully justifies sinners through faith. It is not the righteousness on the basis of
which God condemns sinners but the righteousness given in the Gospel and
received in faith on the basis of which he forgives sinners. With this new
understanding, Luther “felt myself straightway born afresh and to have entered
through the open gates into paradise itself.” At last, he found joy and release.
c) Write on the Reformation of Zwingli and Calvin in Switzerland

Reformation of Zwingli and Calvin in Switzerland Lutheranism would soon have

a number of rivals in Protestantism, beginning with movements in Switzerland.
Politically, Switzerland had developed as a democratic confederation of
independent Cantons, each of which was a self-governing republic. Some of
these Cantons were in rural areas with small populations and others in cities
with larger populations. By the 16th Century there were 13 Cantons in
Switzerland, each of which had one vote in the national Diet or Congress.
Significantly, each Canton was free to establish its own form of religion. The
Reformation, then, in Switzerland took place as the result of the action of
independent local government in particular Cantons. Switzerland had been
greatly influenced by the Renaissance emphasis on culture, arts, education,
and humanism. Large important universities (such as at Basel, where Erasmus
had worked) were located in Switzerland. In the North, the German-speaking
Cantons followed the reforms of Zwingli, who was centred in Zurich. In the
South, the French-speaking Cantons followed Calvin, who was in Geneva. The
Anabaptists were a radical reforming wing of Zwingli which broke off and
spread to Germany and Holland as well as to the rest of Switzerland. Within 35
years, the Zwingli movement had been swallowed up in the Calvinistic reform.
The Zwingli Reform Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531 A.D.) was educated at Vienna
and the University of Basel where he was greatly influenced by the humanism
and teaching of Erasmus which led him to pursue study of and appreciation for
the Scriptures.
Zwingli Reformation
Zwingli served as a parish priest and in 1519 was appointed a chief preacher
at the Minister Cathedral in Zurich. Based on the teachings of Scripture, Zwingli
began to oppose many of the Roman Catholic Church’s theology and practices,
especially indulgences and transubstantiation. Zwingli was aware of, and
clearly influenced by, the writings of Luther in the early stages of the Reform in
Switzerland which developed over the same rough time period as the Lutheran
Reform in Germany. Late in 1529 Luther and Zwingli would meet and discuss
theology at the “Marburg Colloquy”. Out of 15 statements they agreed on 14.
 The point of disagreement came over the “presence” of Christ in the Lord’s
Supper. Zwingli believed communion was only a memorial and Christ’s
presence was in spiritual union with the partaker. Luther maintained that
Christ’s presence was real (physical) around the elements of bread and wine
but the substance of the elements was not changed. Luther and Zwingli would
never join forces. Zwingli had come to Christ in 1519 after being ill with the
plague and coming in contact with Luther’s writings. His reform movement took
place through:
i. Preaching public sermons refuting the teachings of the Roman Church based
on the Scriptures.
ii. Public debates with Catholic advocates which Zwingli won. These debates
were decided by vote of the town Council which gave legal status to Zwingli’s
theology in Zurich. The cities of Bern and Basel were also won to Zwingli’s
position. Zwingli’s Sixty-Seven Articles in 1523 set forth his major reformation
teachings as: salvation by faith, authority of the Bible, restoration of the
Church to the scriptural pattern, Church History Survey 176, Christ as Head of
the Church, approval of clergy marriage, Christ’s memorial/spiritual presence
in the Lord’s Supper, opposition to most Roman Catholic theology and
practices, including purgatory, sacraments and indulgences.
iii. Eventually, the Zurich Reform led to; abolition of fees for baptisms and
burials, allowance of marriage for monks and nuns, abolition of the mass,
retention of infant baptism as identification with Christ but not for salvation.

Conservative Evangelical Christianity can best trace its basic tenets to Zwingli
rather than Luther. The difference in the two can be seen in this comparison:
Luther Zwingli allowed whatever the Bible rejected whatever the Bible did not
prohibit did not specifically allow. Puritanism in England would follow Zwingli’s
approach. But the retention of infant baptism led to the development of splinter
groups within his own ranks led by Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz who insisted
on abolition of infant baptism in order to follow the biblical pattern. Zwingli tried to
unite all of the 13 Cantons but could never do so, and Switzerland was divided
with at least 5 strongly pro-Catholic Cantons. When Luther and Zwingli could not
agree on the Lord’s Supper issue, all hope of an alliance was gone. In 1531 the
five Catholic Cantons fielded an army, and Catholic versus Protestant battles
followed in which Zwingli was killed. His successor, Henry Bullinger, was capable
but restricted his reform to his own Canton. By 1549 the remnants of Zwingli’s
reform had consolidated in Switzerland with the Calvinistic Reform movement
and were absorbed into it

Huldrych Zwingli or Ulrich Zwingli (1 January 1484 – 11 October 1531AD) was

a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland, born during a time of emerging
Swiss patriotism and increasing criticism of the Swiss mercenary system.

The Reformation in Switzerland involved various centres and reformers. A

major role was played by Ulrich Zwingli, who was active from 1523 in Zurich,
and John Calvin, who from 1536 transformed Geneva into what was called the
Protestant Rome. Ulrich Zwingli came from a rich Toggenburg (eastern
Switzerland) farming family. His parents had enough money to provide Ulrich
with an excellent education. He had a gift for languages and could read the
Bible in both the Greek and the Hebrew original. After he had survived the
catastrophe of Marignano and the plague, and regarded the Bible as being the
most important measure of religious matters, he carried out a reform of the
church in Zurich from 1519 which led to the establishment of the Reformed
Church.
Zwingli preached against the worship of images, of relics and of the saints, and
also opposed celibacy and the Eucharist. He tried to spread his Reformation
throughout Switzerland, and as a politician he dreamed of a strengthened
confederation of the Reformed faith. One of his major successes was the
introduction of the new faith in his hometown of Zurich in 1528. At that time,
Zurich was on the side of the Franco-German coalition against the Habsburgs
and the Pope and the introduction of the Reformation can also be viewed from
this political aspect. Zurich’s example was later followed by Basel,
Schaffhausen and St. Gallen as well as Bern. The introduction of the
Reformation was largely successful in Appenzell, Glarus and the Three
Leagues and also in Thurgau, in the Rhine Valley and the Abbey of St. Gall.
Ulrich Zwingli was the father of the Reformed Reformation in Switzerland but he
was the least well remembered of the first-generation reformers. He has always
been overshadowed by Luther. And the fact that he died in battle has left many
unanswered questions about Zwingli’s career. Zwingli hoped first to establish a
church in the Canton of Zurich which would serve as the model for a Swiss
National Protestant Church.

Once this had been done, he planned to spread his doctrine of reform
throughout Europe, so that an international Protestant church would be set up
which would preserve the best of the traditions of the universal church of the
Middle Ages but, at the same time, would be free of the worst abuses of the old
church and no longer be governed by the Pope and his corrupt court at Rome.
The European-wide reformed catholic church which Zwingli envisaged was
never founded. Zwingli did succeed, however, in introducing his conception of
the proper reformation of the church into the major Urban Cantons, the Cantons
dominated by cities of German Switzerland. At Berne, Basel, Shafthausen, and
Zurich, Zwingli’s conception of how the church should be reformed was
followed. For Zwingli this was, of course, only the first step, and for a while it did
seem that Zwingli’s program would be effective elsewhere in Switzerland.

The peace in Kappel in 1529 left the Protestants free to spread their doctrine in
the areas of the Swiss Confederacy jointly administered by the original
members of the Confederacy. It was left up to the individual congregations of
these regions to decide whether or not to accept the Reformation. In theory, the
same freedom was to be extended to the congregations of the Forest or
Mountain Cantons of the Confederacy. November 10, 1983 was the 500th
anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther. During the 500th anniversary year
Luther made quite a splash in the media with full length articles in Time,
Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, and National Geographic. An
abundance of church celebrations and scholarly conferences took place. There
were pilgrimages by Lutherans and other Protestants to East Germany to visit
the sites of his living and working. Not nearly as well-known is the fact that
January 1, 1984 was the 500th birthday of another Protestant Reformer, Ulrich
Zwingli, of Zurich. Except for Zurich and its environs, Zwingli did not receive
nearly the same amount of attention during his 500th anniversary year as
Luther. It was Zwingli’s fate to have been cut down in mid-career at the battle of
Kappel in 1531 and to have been cast in the shadow of Luther’s gigantic
stature. But he is an important figure in his own right. He was the father of the
Reformed tradition which spread out in many directions across Switzerland and
southern Germany, to France among the Huguenots, Holland, England and
Scotland among the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, across to the New
World among the Congregationalists of New England and the Presbyterian,
Dutch and German Reformed Churches of the Middle Colonies.

Although Zwingli is the originator of this tradition, his role in the shaping of it has
been eclipsed by that of John Calvin, the second-generation Reformer who, at
Geneva on the other side of what is now modern Switzerland, took over the
chief leadership of this Reformed tradition a few years after Zwingli’s death.
German Swiss scholars, in particular, would want to qualify this judgment by
insisting that Zwingli’s successor at Zurich, Henry Bullinger, also played an
important role in molding this tradition.
He said: “Out of one hundred, nay out of one thousand, there is scarcely one
chaste priest.” At the earliest opportunity, he sought out a wife when he came to
Zurich, although he kept their marriage secret for a while. On behalf of eleven
other priests and himself, Zwingli would draft a petition to the Bishop of
Constance “to allow priests to marry or to at least wink at their marriage.”Rather
than a monk concerned for his own salvation, Zwingli was a parish pastor and
Swiss patriot who was concerned for the salvation of his own people. His fear
was not for his personal plight, but for the plight of his people.From the
beginning he had a deep love for his native Switzerland with its towering
mountains and beautiful valleys. His surroundings shaped his speech and his
translation of the Scriptures. Green pastures in Psalm 23 became lovely Alpine
meadows. In schoner Alp weidet er mich (“In the beautiful Alps he tends me”).
He compared the Word of God to the Rhine River: “For God’s sake do not put
yourself at odds with the Word of God. For truly, it will persist as surely as the
Rhine follows its course. One can perhaps dam it up for a while, but it is
impossible to stop it.”
He likewise was a strong partisan of Swiss independence.

The Swiss states, Cantons as they were and are stilled called, gradually bound
themselves together in a confederacy in order to get freedom from their
Hapsburg overlords. Because of their fierce love of liberty and individualism and
because of their valor as soldiers, the Swiss were successful in wresting their
independence from these rulers of Austria and much of Germany. Zwingli
remembered that already as a child he was a zealous patriot: “Even as a child,
if anyone teased us Confederates and upbraided or slandered us, I resisted
them and even ran into danger on that account; for anyone who dishonours the
Confederation also dishonours me.”As a pastor he took his duties seriously. He
writes in 1523 about his attitude as a young pastor: “Though I was young,
ecclesiastical duties inspired in me more fear than joy, because I knew, and I
remain convinced, that I would give account of the blood of the sheep which
would perish as consequence of my carelessness.”

He showed himself to be a courageous pastor when he gave no thought to his

own safety as he ministered to victims of the plague that hit Zurich shortly after
he began his ministry there. He himself was smitten and nearly died. This
experience, no doubt, led to a maturing in his religious development. While in
the grip of this illness, he wrote the Song of the Plague in which he shows a
sturdy faith in the all sufficiency of divine grace in Christ.He would agree
completely with Luther about the matter of justification by faith. But his
reflections during his illness went beyond himself and his own misery. They
included also his people. He compared his own mortal illness with the sickness
of his people which could lead to spiritual death. Conversely, Zwingli compared
his recovery to the reformation of Church and society. Zwingli’s patriotic
convictions and his pastoral concern for his people are manifest in his attitude
toward mercenary service. He had become increasingly disturbed by the
involvement of many of the Swiss in this profession. The Swiss were excellent
soldiers who would hire themselves out to the highest bidders among the kings
and princes of other nations. While he was a pastor at Glarus, Zwingli began to
deplore the spilling of Swiss blood on foreign soil under the command of foreign
generals.

At first, oddly enough, he was opposed not to mercenary service as such, but
only to service under the king of France. It was all right for the Swiss to hire
themselves out to the Pope. Undoubtedly influenced in part by Erasmus’
pacifism, he would eventually turn entirely against the mercenary system, even
though, because Switzerland was a poor country, foreign service had been for
a long time an important source of revenue for the country. He criticized not
only the waste of young manhood through senseless violence, but also the
corruption of men’s souls through avarice and pride and the pillaging of
helpless civilians. He saw the entire country as having deteriorated spiritually
and morally under the lure of the gold from foreign princes. He had himself
once accompanied the troops from Glarus down to Italy and knew whereof he
spoke.

His outspoken preaching against this lucrative profession would cost him his
pulpit in Glarus. Fortunate for Zwingli, he was able to secure other pulpits first
at the village of Einsiedeln and then in the big city of Zurich at the Great
Cathedral where under his preaching the Reformation was introduced and
where he continued to preach against mercenary service so powerfully and
convincingly that he was able to persuade the City Council to put an end to it in
Zurich.

McGrath (2012:81) establishes that 'it is impossible to understand the career

and strategy of the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli without considering his
background within the Swiss Confederation'. In the late Middle Ages, what is
now Switzerland was a Confederacy of mostly self-governing territories,
surrounded by affiliated regions. Many of the territories were rural, but some
were city states with councils run by representatives of the guilds and the
highest standing families of the town. In contrast, the feudal system still had a
tight grip on Germany and most European countries. The Lords of a principality
made the decisions for their people. This was important in understanding how
the Swiss Reformation caught fire and spread. At the beginning of the 16th
century, there was a power struggle going on between France and the Holy
Roman Empire with its Habsburg emperor in Austria and the pope in Rome.
These powers were fighting for important trade routes through the Alps and
strategic territories. They made deals with the councilmen in Swiss regions for
the right to recruit mercenaries or foot soldiers for their wars.
Bribes and trade alliances were offered. So young boys and men of the Swiss
Confederacy were exported to foreign armies and ended up having to fight
against each other. The church was heavily involved in the mercenary system
and was making money from it. The wars were brutal. Whole villages were
massacred. The men came back traumatised. They drank and gambled.
Domestic violence was prevalent. At the same time, the plague kept sweeping
through, wiping out a fourth of the population each time. Life expectancy was
low. Death was ever-present. The church became susceptible to the influences
of the Holy Roman Empire and wanted to cement its own power and keep the
status quo (McGrath 2012:80-83). Bishops and priests were often corrupt. They
found it easy to keep the people in check by cultivating their fears. They painted
purgatory in the most graphic and grotesque way (McGrath 2012:2-10). They
claimed that buying a letter of indulgence would shorten your time in purgatory.
Ulrich Zwingli was born into this context. Stephens (1986:3) establishes that the
context of a person's writings does not account for them, but it helps to
illuminate them. This, undoubtedly, is what we see in Zwingli's contributions to
the Reformation. Zwingli’s theological views were picked up and taken further
by his successor, Heinrich Bullinger.

And though Bullinger had the unenviable task of mediating his mentor's
theology and legacy to an ever-changing early modern world, the young
preacher was up to the task. Not only Bullinger, but John Calvin also embraced
and took Zwingli's theological contributions further. Although deceased,
Zwingli's theology continued to give life, direction and inspiration to the Zurich
Church for generations. Several of Zwingli's key theological beliefs are
presently found in certain modern-day Presbyterian and Baptist traditions,
demonstrating his importance to the Protestant heritage. Zwingli died in 1531 in
a fight against Catholic soldiers from central Switzerland. Zwingli died before
his dreams were fulfilled, but his followers, especially Heinrich Bullinger, spread
his Reformed influence throughout Europe, to England, and eventually to
America.

CALVIN Reformation
John Calvin was born in 1509 A.D. in France, studied at the University of Paris,
and later received his Doctor of Law degree in 1532 at Orleans. Calvin’s father
wanted him to be a lawyer, but after his father’s death Calvin became a
wandering student who became acquainted with the Reform movement and
was converted. When extreme persecution broke out in France in 1534, Calvin
fled to Strasbourg and then to Basel. In 1536 at Basel, Calvin published the
Institutes of the Christian Religion which was dedicated to King Francis I of
France. While Calvin would revise and edit the Institutes over the years, this
was the finest expression of Protestant Reformed Theology and a true classic
of Christian Literature. Calvin’s reputation as a scholar/theologian grew rapidly.
After visiting in Italy and Paris, Calvin took a detour on his way to Strasbourg
and passed through Geneva, Switzerland. It was a step of great reputation. In
Geneva, Calvin met Guillaume Farel who had been working in the Reform
movement for years and was seeking someone like Calvin to take up the
cause. Farel convinced Calvin that it was God’s will for him to remain in Geneva
and help the Reformation work. It was a turning point in Calvin’s life. Calvin took
the position offered by the City Council of Professor of Sacred Scriptures. The
program Calvin initially developed was too strong in Church discipline and in
1538 Calvin and Farel were defeated and forced tol eave Geneva. Calvin
returned to Strasbourg where he married and pursued his theological writings
and development of his system while pastoring a church of French refugees.

By 1541 Calvin’s friends in Geneva had regained control and invited Calvin
back with freedom to put into practice all of his ideas. Although there was
opposition from time to time, Calvin’s system prevailed and from 1555 to
1564when he died. Calvinism reigned supreme in Geneva. Calvin sought to see
God’s will and Kingdom come on earth, particularly in the Church. Moral living
and good works were the natural by-product of genuine saving faith. Calvin’s
system of theology and his system of Church government count among his
lasting contributions to the Christian Church. Calvin’s Church government
(“Presbyterianism”) was built around a representative from where the Church
elected 12 lay members as elders who formed a board or consistory
(Presbytery) and who ruled the Church along with the ordained ministers. The
consistory was thus composed of lay elders and professional clergy.
• four Church officers
elders - to oversee Church discipline and morals of the community, pastors - to
preach, teachers - to teach, deacons - to administer works of charity.
• strong Church discipline which included excommunication.
• preaching of the Word.
• training of pastors and the religious education of all members.
• The Ecclesiastical Ordinance which outlined his system of Church government
• The State to carry out severe penalties against heretics, dissenters, and those
who violated Church standards.
The question of extreme Church discipline remained a problem. In 1553 with
Calvin’s consent, Michael Servetus, a Spanish heretic who questioned the
Trinity, was executed. It must be kept in mind that the early Reformers like
Luther and Calvin both believed, as did the Roman Church, in the right of the
Church/State to discipline severely and punish those who opposed the State
religion. And in the case of both Luther and Calvin they had simply replaced
Catholicism with Reformation theology as the “State”religion. Church and State
were still tied together, but the Church had been “reformed”. Calvin’s system of
theology focused on God’s irresistible electing grace in salvation. Hyper or strict
Calvinists held to a 5-point system of theology which came to be expressed by
the word TULIP: Total depravity of man - can’t save himself. Unconditional
election by God apart from human merit or God’s foreknowledge. Limited
atonement - Christ only died for the elect. Irresistible grace - God’s calling can’t
be resisted and faith is supplied by God. Perseverance of the saints - the saved
can never be finally lost.Calvin himself was not perhaps as Calvinistic as were
some of his followers. For Calvin admitted that election is God’s business (for
only God knows who the elect are), and evangelism is the believer’s business
(since God has commanded it).

Many evangelical Christians today are “moderate Calvinists”, rejecting only the
“L” (limited atonement) and upgrading the place of man’s responsibility of faith
in the process. Calvin first looked to the Scriptures and then to Augustine for
support of his theology. Calvin did retain the Lord’s Supper and Baptism,
holding views similar to Zwingli. Infant baptism was also allowed by Calvin. The
contributions of Calvin to Christianity are immense, regardless of whether one
agrees with all of his theology. Calvin
• stood on the authority of Scripture.
• systematized theology.
• refocused salvation on the work of God where it belonged.
• promoted religious education for Church members and Bible training for
clergy.
• developed a representative form of Church government which can be
supported in Scripture.
• refused to divorce theology from moral living.
Negatively, Calvin did not separate Church and State. Presbyterians,
Reformed, and Puritans would be greatly impacted by Calvin. Calvinism would
shortly take on international importance.

Jean Calvin was a Frenchman who came to Geneva in 1536 for the first time
after he had broken with the Roman Catholic Church. Geneva at the time was
not yet part of the Confederation, but had close relations with Bern and Zurich.
In 1538, Calvin left Geneva when the population revolted against his strict
moral standards. However, in 1541 his followers took him back and he
continued his work of reformation. Although his attitude had not changed, he
acted more effectively and he now succeeded in persuading the government of
his principles: Calvin advocated hard work and stated that wealth was a reward
from God.
This philosophy favoured the development of modern capitalism. Calvin
advocated a good education in science and art, and also promoted handcrafts
and trade, which led to Geneva becoming a thriving city.

Calvin's work had a great influence on Geneva. His attempt to transfer power to
the clergy left no one indifferent – some were enthusiastic while others found it
ridiculous. Geneva was even mockingly nicknamed "Hieropolis" (the holy city).
The character of Geneva changed considerably under Calvin, not only because
of the new form of government which he introduced, but also because of the
huge influx of refugees from countries such as France, Italy, the Netherlands
and England as the persecution of Protestants increased in Europe. These
newcomers tended to be supporters of Calvin, and as such caused resentment
among many native Genevans, who saw them as a threat to their own
influence. However, in 1555 an uprising against them by the established
Genevans was put down.

Some of the refugees were trained for the ministry, and spread Calvin's
teaching. They included John Knox, founder of the Church of Scotland.
Since the refugees included many printers and publishers, they made a great
contribution to the spread of Reformation thought. The "Académie de Genève"
(now a university) was founded in 1559. The academy, with its theological and
humanistic seminar, attracted many students to Geneva.The refugees who
came to Geneva during the Reformation also included many craftsmen,
bankers and other professionals who contributed much to the development of
the city.Duke Charles-Emmanuel I of Savoy made a final attempt to recover
Geneva in 1602, but a night-time attack on the city was foiled by the citizens.
The incident is known as the Escalade, after the ladders used by Savoyard
troops to scale the city walls.
Huldyrch Zwingli, the first Swiss reformer in Zurich, made significant
contributions to the 16th-century Reformation, yet he remains relatively
unknown, if not forgotten. He is generally overshadowed by other reformers,
such as Martin Luther and John Calvin. This article attempts to bring Zwingli to
the surface by examining some of his contributions in Zurich which impacted
the Reformation at large. This is especially significant because 2019 marks the
500th anniversary of Zwingli. The aim of the article is to provide an overview of
Zwingli's contributions to the Reformation and point out how his works, in given
areas such as faith and society, theology and sacraments, have stimulated
further developments and dialogues during the Reformation and beyond.
 7. FOR THE PERIOD 1305-1517AD ERA OF RENAISSANCE AND THE RISE
OF NATION STATES.

a) Write on the Babylonian captivity of the Church 1305 -1507AD and the
Papal Schism 1378-1416AD.
The Babylonian captivity was an important event in Jewish history. In the 6th century
BCE, the Jews were exiled to Babylon. They were forced to stay there for several
decades until a Persian king, Cyrus. In 1309, the Pope moved his court from Rome
to Avignon in France and remained there until 1376. Francesco Petrarch, an Italian
scholar, referred to this event as the Babylonian captivity. Petrarch believed the
popes during this time lost their spiritual integrity and became enslaved to the
ambitions of the king of France. In the Middle Ages, there were two people who
argued over who was the leader of all Christian people; the Pope and the Holy
Roman Emperor. Popes become imperative in secular ruling matters during the
Crusades beginning in the 11th century. However, in the 14th century, popes began
arguing regularly against royalty regarding their secular policies. Boniface VIII was
elected pope in 1294 and argued powerfully with the king of France (Philip IV) over
taxes that he wanted to impose on clerics. He expelled the king in 1303 and died
shortly after and Benedict XI became pope after Boniface.
He released the king of France from excommunication and for the next seven popes
who succeeded Benedict XI were heavily under the influence of the French ruler. In
1305, Clement V was designated to be a pope. Clement was French, and his first act
was to create nine French cardinals. Cardinals voted on who would be pope, so this
meant the next popes were more likely to be French. Clement's nationality and
appointment of French cardinals were unpopular in Rome. To escape the conflict,
Clement made the decision to move his residence and base of Catholicism to
Avignon, France. Apart from Clement V, there were six other popes in Avignon, who
were Pope John XXII from 1316-1334, Pope Benedict XII from 1334 to 1342, Pope
Clement VI from 1342 to 1352, Pope Innocent VI from 1352 to 1362, Pope Urban V
from 1362 to 1370 and Pope Gregory XI from 1370 to 1378 and Pope Gregory was
responsible for moving the Papal court back to Rome. The popes in Avignon were
known for being under the influence of the French ruler and one of the first example
was the suppression of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order that began to
protect Christians who travelled to Jerusalem. On October 13, 1307 (a Friday), King
Philip IV ordered the Knights Templar to be arrested. King Philip IV suppressed, and
ultimately executed, members of the Knights Templar. Hundreds were arrested and
tortured into confession of crimes and Friday the 13th was considered unlucky day.
In 1310, the king had many of the knights burned at the stake and threatened military
action against the Pope if he refused to join in destroying the order, and the Pope
finally had the order dispersed. As England and France began fighting over English
territories in France, each pope tried to arbitrate between the two. English rulers did
not trust the popes since they lived so close to the French kings, claiming they were
too heavily influenced by France to remain neutral. Still under the influence of
France, Pope Urban V supported the marriage of the French king's son to Margaret
of Flanders. Marriage to Margaret meant the power to rule over more territories. The
Pope's choice to support the French prince over an English prince was viewed as a
biased decision.
The Catholic church fell into a state of disunity, occasionally in chaos. The source
was one of the most peculiar episodes in late medieval European history the
Babylonian Captivity of the popes in the fourteenth century.

The term initially mentioned in the Biblical story of the Jews’ enslavement by the
Babylonian Empire in the sixth century BCE, but the late-medieval Babylonian
Captivity refers instead to the period during which the popes no longer lived in their
traditional dwelling in Rome. The context for this strange event was the state of the
Catholic church as of the early fourteenth century. The church was a very diverse,
and somewhat diffuse, society. Due to the simple geographical distance between
Rome and the kingdoms of Europe, the popes did not exercise much practical
authority over the various national churches, and high-level churchmen in European
kingdoms were often more closely associated with their individual kings than with
Rome. Likewise, there were many times during the Middle Ages when individual
popes were weak and ineffectual and could not even command obedience within the
church hierarchy itself. Over the centuries the papacy struggled, and often failed, to
assert its control over the church as an institution and to hold the pretensions of
kings in check. Those weaknesses were reflected in a simple fact, there had been a
number of times over the centuries in which there were rival popes, generally
appointed by compliant church officials who answered to kings. Obviously, having
rival popes undermined the central claim of the papacy to complete authority over
the Church itself and over Christian doctrine in the process (let alone the occasional
insistence by popes that their authority superseded that of kings.

The Babylonian Captivity began when Pope Boniface VIII issued a papal bull (formal
commandment) in 1303 to the effect that all kings had to acknowledge his authority
over even their own kingdoms, a challenge he issued in response to the taxes kings
levied on church property. Unfortunately for Boniface, he lacked both influence with
the monarchs of Europe and the ability to defend himself. Infuriated, the French king,
Philip IV, promptly had the pope arrested and thrown in prison; he was released
months later but promptly died. Philip supported the election of a new pope, Clement
V, in 1305. Clement was a Frenchman with strong ties to the French nobility. At the
time, Rome was a very dangerous city, with rival noble families literally fighting in the
streets over various disputes, so Clement moved himself and the papal office to the
French city of Avignon, which was much more peaceful. This created enormous
concern among non-French Church officials (most of them Italian), who feared that
the French king, then the most powerful ruler in Europe, would have undue influence
over the papacy. Their fears seemed confirmed when Clement started appointing
new cardinals, a pattern that ultimately saw 113 French cardinals out of the 134 who
were appointed in the following decades. From 1305 to 1378, the popes continued to
live and work in Avignon (despite the English invasions of the 100 Years’ War). They
were not directly controlled by the French king, as their opponents had feared, but
they were definitely influenced by French politics. They also came to accept bribes
and kickbacks for the appointment of Church officials and shady schemes with
Church lands. This situation was soon described as a new Babylonian Captivity by
clerics and publics comparable (especially in Italy), comparing the presence of the
papacy in France to the enslavement of the ancient Jews in Babylon.

In 1378, the new pope, Urban VI, announced his intention to move the papacy back
to Rome. As rival factions developed within the upper levels of the Church hierarchy,
a group of French cardinals elected another, French, pope (Clement VII), and
Europe thus was split between two rival popes, both of whom excommunicated each
other as a heretic and impostor (the term used at the time was “antipope.”) This led
to the Great Western Schism, a period from 1378 to 1417 during which there were
as many as three rival popes vying for power. For almost forty years, the church was
a battlefield between both rival popes and their respective followers, and
congregations and sovereigns alike were generally able to go about their business
with little fear of papal interference. The Great Western Schism finally ended after a
series of church councils, the Conciliar Movement, succeeded in launching the
authority a single pope in 1417. The movement elected a new pope, Martin V, and
made the claim that church councils could and should hold the ultimate authority
over papal appointments, this concept was known as the via consilii, the existence of
a great council with obligatory authority over the church’s leadership. This, however,
weakened the very concept of what the papacy was the Doctrine of the Keys held
that the pope’s authority was passed down directly from Christ, and that even if
councils could play a role in the practical maintenance of the church, the pope’s
authority was not based on their approval. Ultimately, an authoritative pope, Eugene
IV, reconfirmed the complete power of the papacy in 1431. Thus, this effort at reform
failed in the end, unconsciously set the phase for more radical criticisms of papal
power in the future.

The most important consequence of the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Western
Schism was simple: the moral and spiritual authority of the church hierarchy was
seriously undermined. While no one envisioned rejecting the authority of the church
altogether, many people regarded the church’s leadership as just another political
institution.The Great Schism of 1378–1417 resulted from the removal of the papacy
from Italy to France in 1309. Feuds among the Italian cardinals and their allies
among the Italian nobility led to Pope Clement V (1305–14) moving the papal
residence from Rome. The severest difficulties faced by the medieval church
involved the papacy. The most extreme and inflexible advocate of papal authority,
Boniface VIII, initiated a struggle with the French king, Philip IV, over Philip’s
attempts to tax and judge the clergy. After Boniface issued the bull Unam sanctam
(“One Holy”), which asserted the unity of the church and the authority of the pope
over kings, Philip rallied the people of France and accused Boniface of blasphemy,
murder, sodomy, and other crimes. In 1303, mercenaries in French pay and under
French leadership harassed and humiliated the pope with impunity, arresting
Boniface at his family palace in Anagni. Although freed by the people of the town,
Boniface never recovered from the shock and died shortly afterward. The aftermath
of this “outrage of Anagni” was the desertion of Rome by the popes and their long
residence (1309–77) at Avignon (now in France), a chapter in church history called
the “Babylonian Captivity” after the 70 years of Jewish exile in Babylon in the 6th
century BC.
The disputes among the Franciscans, which had crystallized finally upon the
teaching of the Spirituals that their absolute poverty was that of Christ, were harshly
settled (1322) by the irascible octogenarian Pope John XXII (reigned 1316–34), who
persecuted the Spirituals and declared belief in the absolute poverty of Jesus and
the Apostles heretical. Afterward a group of Franciscans led by Michael of Cesena,
minister-general of the order, and William of Ockham became bitter and formidable
critics of the papacy. With them for a time was the Italian political philosopher
Marsilius of Padua, a Paris master who in his Defensor pacis (1324; “Defender of the
Peace”) outlined a secular state in which the church was a government department,
the papacy and episcopate were human institutions, and the spiritual sanctions of
religion were relegated to a position of honourable nonentity. Between them,
Ockham and Marsilius used almost all the arguments against the papacy that have
ever been devised. Condemned more than once, Marsilius had little immediate effect
or influence, but during the Great Schism (1378–1417) and later, in the 16th century,
he and Ockham had their turn.
With the papacy “in captivity,” Europe and the church entered an epoch of disasters.
As the 14th century proceeded, the so-called medieval synthesis of the Scholastic
theologians was undone by the works of Ockham and John Duns Scotus, and
nominalism captured the universities. In England, John Wycliffe challenged the
papacy and the teachings of the church, prefiguring the attacks of the Protestant
Reformers of the 16th century. Although condemned by the church, Wycliffe
influenced the thought of Jan Hus and, especially, the Lollards of England. The
church also suffered from the destruction of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453)
between England and France and the devastation of the Black Death (1348–49),
which decimated the population of Europe and inspired both orthodox and heterodox
religious movements.

Despite this upheaval, the basic structures of Christian belief and practice changed
little during the first half of the 1th century. Many of the largest parish churches of
Europe date from this time, as do many popular devotions, prayers, hymns,
pilgrimages, and carols; also, many hospitals and alms houses were founded.
Although relations between the friars and the secular clergy had been canonically
settled, friction between the two groups continued. The friars came under wider
criticism for worldliness and immorality, but they remained popular. Although heresy
and ant sacerdotal (anticlerical) sentiment became almost endemic in the cities of
Belgium and the Netherlands in the 14th century, the same period produced some of
the greatest mystical writers of the church’s history: in the north, Johann Tauler and
Jan van Ruysbroeck; in Italy, Catherine of Siena; and in England, Walter Hilton and
the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. The Beguine Marguerite Porete,
another influential mystic, was burned as a heretic in 1310.Reformation of the church
and the papacy was what the advocates of a return of the papacy from Avignon to
Rome had in mind. In the pope’s absence both the ecclesiastical power and the
territorial integrity of the papacy had deteriorated within Italy, and the moral and
spiritual authority of the office was in jeopardy throughout Christian Europe.

This condition, so many believed, would continue and even worsen so long as the
papacy remained in Avignon. Pope Urban V (reigned 1362–70) attempted to re-
establish the papacy in Rome in 1367, but after a stay of only three years he
returned to Avignon and soon died. It was finally Gregory XI (reigned 1370–78) who,
in 1377, permanently moved the papal headquarters back to Rome, but he died only
a few months later. The immediate result of the return to Rome was not the
restoration of confidence and credibility that some had predicted but the very
opposite. During the papacy’s residence in Avignon, not only had the church come
under the political and religious domination of France but the College of Cardinals in
Rome had filled the administrative vacuum by developing a form of government that
can only be described as oligarchic. The powers that the cardinals had succeeded in
appropriating were difficult for the centralized authority of the papacy, whether in
Avignon or in Rome, to reclaim for itself.

Meeting in Rome for the first time in nearly a century, the College of Cardinals
elected Pope Urban VI (reigned 1378–89). But Urban’s desire to reassert the
monarchical powers of the papacy, as well as his evident mental illness, prompted
the cardinals to renege on their choice later in the same year. In his place they
elected Clement VII (reigned 1378–94), who soon took up residence back in
Avignon. (This Clement VII is officially listed as an antipope, and the name was later
taken by another pope, Clement VII, who reigned 1523–34.) The years from 1378 to
1417 were the time of the Great Schism, which divided the loyalties of Western
Christendom between two popes, each of whom excommunicated the other and all
the other’s followers. In the conflict between them, kingdoms, dioceses, religious
orders, parishes, and even families were split, and the pretensions of the church to
being, as the Nicene Creed said, “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” became a
mockery. No one could be absolutely certain about the validity of the sacraments if
the integrity and the very unity of the church, and therefore of the episcopate and
priesthood as well, were in doubt. Speaking for a broad consensus, the University of
Paris proposed three alternatives for resolving the crisis, which had now become, for
laity and clergy alike, a crisis of faith: resignation by both popes, with the election of
a single unchallenged successor; adjudication of the dispute between the two popes
by some independent tribunal; or appeal to an ecumenical council, which would
function as a supreme court with jurisdiction over both claimants.

The third of these of these options, the summoning of a general church council,
seemed to the theologians at Paris and to many others to be preferable. The first of
several reform councils was held at Pisa in 1409 to deal with the schism and with
many other problems of discipline and doctrine. Pisa elected Alexander V (reigned
1409–10) pope he was not accepted as pope, however, and is listed with the
antipopes in place of both incumbents. But, because neither of the other two would
acknowledge the authority of the council and resign, the immediate result was that
for a few years, as one cardinal said, the church was treated to “a simulacrum of the
Holy Trinity” the spectacle of three reigning popes. Although not well attended, the
Council of Pisa nonetheless had widespread support throughout Western
Christendom and established an important precedent for future councils.

The trinity of popes, and the Great Schism itself, came to an end through the work of
the Council of Constance (1414–18), which was called by Alexander V’s successor,
John XXIII (reigned 1410–15), under pressure from the Holy Roman emperor
Sigismund. John, who was subsequently considered an antipope, failed in his
attempt to undermine the council, and all three popes either resigned or were
deposed, whereupon the council elected Oddone Colonna, who took the name
Martin V (reigned 1417–31). In addition to settling the question of papal legitimacy,
the council enacted a variety of reform legislation, among which was a stipulation
that thenceforth, as a matter of church law, the church council would not be merely
an expedient to be resorted to in an emergency but a standing legislative body, a
kind of ecclesiastical senate that would meet at brief and regular intervals. The
decree of the Council of Constance justified this provision on the principle that the
authority of the ecumenical council as the true representative of the entire church
was superior to that of the pope, who could not make a similar claim for himself apart
from the council. This elevation of conciliar over papal authority was the central tenet
of the late medieval movement called conciliarism.

This action also helps to account for the ambiguous position of the Council of
Constance in the history of later Roman Catholic canon law, as the opinions of
canonists and historians differ to this day about which sessions of the council are
entitled to the status of a true ecumenical council. An ambiguity even more complex
attended the next reform council, which used to be known as the Council of Basel-
Ferrara-Florence but is now sometimes divided into two councils, that of Basel and
that of Ferrara-Florence, though the legitimacy of the Council of Basel is contested at
least in part. The council opened in 1431 at Basel, was transferred by the pope in
1438 to Ferrara (where discussions for reunion with the Eastern Orthodox church at
Constantinople began), moved in 1439 to Florence, and held its closing sessions in
1443–45 at Rome. While still at Basel, the council reaffirmed the conciliarist teaching
of the Council of Constance about the superiority of the council to the pope. The
council’s opposition to the pope, however, undermined its authority. Many of the
delegates, hoping to achieve reunion with Constantinople, left Basel when the pope
moved the council to Ferrara and then Florence. Those remaining in Basel took
extreme conciliarist positions and even formally deposed the reigning pope and
elected another. However, the deposition found little support and ultimately damaged
the credibility of the council in Basel, as well as the credibility of conciliarism itself, as
did the success of the council in Ferrara-Florence.

Both the Council of Constance and the Council of Ferrara-Florence have additional
importance in the history of late medieval reform in Roman Catholicism Constance
for dealing with the problem of heresy within the Western church, and Ferrara-
Florence for addressing itself to the relation of Western Roman Catholicism to
Eastern Christendom. A major item on the agenda of the Council of Constance was
the challenge posed to the authority of both contending parties, council as well as
pope, by the teachings of the Czech preacher Jan Hus. Although influenced by John
Wycliffe, Hus was not as radical as the English theologian, especially regarding
transubstantiation in the Eucharist (Wycliffe, though not Hus, held that the bread and
wine in the Eucharist retain their material substance). Hus was highly critical of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy and argued that its authority was only spiritual. He also
advanced an Augustinian definition of the church, according to which the earthly
church is made up of only the saved and the damned. Despite the accusations of his
critics, it seems clear that Hus did not draw from this premise the radical conclusion
that sacraments administered by a hypocritical priest or bishop or pope were invalid
in themselves; the priestly office and the sacraments retained their objective validity.
A prominent element of the Hussite demands, however, was a call for the
administration of Holy Communion to the laity “under both kinds” (sub utraque
specie), bread and wine; that is, they demanded the restoration of the chalice.
Accordingly, the followers of Hus emblazoned a chalice on their banners. The
Hussite movement of reform coalesced with the rising nationalism of the Czech
people, many of whom resented German domination of Bohemia.
In 1411 Hus was excommunicated by John XXIII. In keeping with the widespread
spirit of conciliarism, Hus appealed his case to an ecumenical council of the church.
Summoned to appear before the Council of Constance, he was promised safe-
conduct by Sigismund, the Holy Roman emperor. Once at the council, however, Hus
was arrested and imprisoned. He was tried for heresy (particularly because of his
doctrine of the church) and condemned, and on July 6, 1415, he was burned at the
stake. His main prosecutors, notably including Jean de Gerson, chancellor of the
University of Paris, were also the leaders of the reform movement at the Council of
Constance. The death of Hus was not the end of his movement. A civil war in
Bohemia soon led to the formation of an independent Bohemian Catholic church,
which was later absorbed by Rome. Remnants of the Hussite movement evolved
first into the Unitas Fratrum (a religious group that rejected transubstantiation and
advocated nonviolence and a strict biblical faith) and then into the Moravian Church.
In the emergence of churches independent of Rome, as well as in various specific
doctrinal and moral teachings, Hus anticipated the Protestant Reformation a century
later. In the 16th century his disciples joined with the Lutherans in their struggle
against the church and the emperor.

At Basel and then especially at Ferrara-Florence, there were extensive negotiations

and discussions over the newly revived proposals for effecting a reunion of the
Eastern Orthodox Church and Western Roman Catholicism. Earlier attempts at such
a reunion for example, at the Council of Lyon in 1274 had failed. But now the time
seemed ripe on both sides for a new effort at reconciliation. Christian Constantinople
was under increasing threat from the Turks and desired Western support, moral as
well as military. Leaders of the West, regardless of party, regarded the long-sought
rapprochement with the East as a means of restoring the prestige of both the papacy
and the ecumenical council, which could then be seen as having resolved both the
major schisms of Christian history, the Great Schism and the East-West Schism in
the space of one generation. The patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph II, and the
Byzantine emperor, John VIII Palaeologus, both came in person to the Council of
Ferrara-Florence for the theological negotiations toward reunion of the two churches.
In the doctrinal discussions between the Greeks and the Latins, all the major points
of difference that had historically separated the two churches received detailed
attention.

The Greeks acknowledged the primacy of the pope, and the Latins acknowledged
the right of the Greeks to ordain married men into the priesthood. The chief sticking
point, as always, was the doctrine of the Filioque: Did the Holy Spirit in the Trinity
proceed from the Father only, as the East taught, or “from the Father and the Son”
(ex Patre Filioque), as the Western addition to the text of the Nicene Creed affirmed?
Almost all those present at Ferrara-Florence came to an agreement that the dispute
over the Filioque was chiefly one of words, not of content, since it could be amply
documented that both versions of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit
had substantial attestation from the teachings of the Church Fathers in both
churches. Agreement on the Filioque and on all other points at issue led to the
adoption of a document of union, Laetentur coeli (“Rejoicing of heaven”),
promulgated on July 6, 1439 (and still commemorated in a plaque on the wall of the
Duomo in Florence). But the reunion came too late for both sides. It was repudiated
in the East in Constantinople, where the memory of Crusader violence persisted, as
well as in other Orthodox churches, notably the Church of Russia. Once again, as on
so many occasions throughout Christian history, the reunion of the Eastern and the
Western churches proved to be a dead letter and an unattainable goal. The transition
from the Middle Ages to the Reformation was gradual. One development that was
both a cause and an effect of that transition was the decline of Scholastic theology.
As practiced by its leading expositors, Aquinas and Bonaventure (who differed
greatly on many issues), Scholasticism was the systematization of the Roman
Catholic understanding of the relation between the claims of human reason and the
authority of divine revelation. To that end it had made use of philosophy, and
particularly the newly available works of Aristotle, to describe the powers and limits
of human ways to truth in order to enthrone Christian theology as the queen of the
sciences.

With good motive have historians seen the representation of purpose and revelation
the counterpart in the life of the mind to the plan of church and society set forth
earlier in the 13th century by Pope Innocent III. These historians draw a similar
correlation between the waning prestige of the papacy in the late Middle Ages and
the shattering of the Scholastic synthesis by philosophical theologians such as
William of Ockham. Some of the theological descendants of Bonaventure, less
confident of the powers of human reason than he, elevated the primacy of faith and
the authority of Scripture to an almost exclusive position as a way to truth, while
some of the philosophical descendants of Aquinas appeared, at least to their critics,
to be expanding the realm of what was knowable by natural means to the point that
the primacy of faith was threatened by an all-engulfing rationalism. All the varieties of
Scholastic teaching, moreover, were under attack from those leaders of late
medieval Roman Catholic piety who contended that the crisis of faith and of the
church called for a return to the authentic religious experience of the primitive church
as set forth in the New Testament. Late medieval spirituality cannot be dismissed as
merely a symptom of the general malaise in Roman Catholic Christendom; it must be
recognized as a dynamic force. One of its noblest monuments, the devotional
manual titled The Imitation of Christ (1441), became the second most widely
circulated book in Christian history, second only to the Bible itself.

The Imitation, though impeccably orthodox in its doctrinal emphases, takes the
reader beyond the authoritative structures of both church and dogma to the inner
meaning of the Gospels and the inner life of the believing heart, the Christ of the
creeds is above all the Christ of the Gospels, who summons his followers not only to
orthodoxy in their theology but to discipleship in their lives. The Imitation is
traditionally attributed to Thomas à Kempis. The author was a member of the
brethren of the Common Life, one of many lay communities, both female and male,
that sprang up during the 15th century as centres of the devotion modern, a religious
movement that stressed the inner spiritual life over ritual and works.

Other expressions of folk piety, too, were flourishing on the eve of the Reformation.
Partly as a continuing effect of the establishment of the orders of friars in the 12th
and 13th centuries, there was a revival of interest in preaching throughout Roman
Catholic Europe. Along with it developed a growing attention to the Bible, which for
the first time began to circulate widely, also in vernacular translations, as a
consequence of the invention of printing. The 15th century is also in many ways the
high point in the history of Roman Catholic devotion to the Virgin Mary. At the same
time, there is evidence of a tide of anticlericalism among the common people much
of it in reaction to the corruption of the church and the clergy and of a growing
skepticism among intellectuals and secular rulers, even about fundamental Roman
Catholic teachings.
At least some of this skepticism arose within the intellectual and literary milieu of
Renaissance humanism, whose relation to Roman Catholicism was far more
complex than has often been supposed. The efforts of 19th-century historians of the
Renaissance many of whom were themselves under the influence of both
anticlericalism and skepticism to interpret humanism as a neopagan revolt against
traditional Christian beliefs have been fundamentally recast by modern scholarship.
Not only were many of the popes of the 15th and 16th centuries themselves
devotees and patrons of Renaissance thought and art, but there were also
Renaissance figures such as Nicholas of Cusa, arguably the greatest mind in
Christendom East or West during the 15th century, who was at the same time a
metaphysician of astonishing boldness and creativity, an ecumenical theologian
looking for points of contact not only with other Christians but even with Islam, and a
reform cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

Thus, the humanists emerge as Christians who were working simultaneously for the
reform of the church and of literary culture. To achieve those ends, they urged a
return to the basics of Christian civilization—that is, to the Greek and Latin classics
and to the monuments of biblical and patristic literature. Lorenzo Valla in Italy and
Desiderius Erasmus in the north are by no means isolated cases of humanists
arguing for this blending of Christianity and Classical culture. Erasmus ridiculed the
Scholastics for their philosophical abstractions and for their bad Latin, and in his
anonymous satire Julius exclusus e coelis (“Julius Excluded from Heaven”) he
lampooned the efforts of Pope Julius II (reigned 1503–13) to get into heaven.
Erasmus also edited the writings of most of the major Church Fathers in both Latin
and Greek. His edition of the Greek New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum
(1516), was intended to stimulate a renewal of Christian faith and life, which he
himself called “the philosophy of Christ.” Significantly, this merciless critic of the
current state of Roman Catholicism nevertheless found it impossible to affiliate
himself with the Protestant Reformation when it arose, and he died a faithful, if
unappreciated, member of the Roman Catholic Church. On the eve of the
Reformation the relation of church and state shaped much of the history of Roman
Catholicism, as it had done since the time of the emperor Constantine. In most of the
states of Western Christendom, the 15th century was a time of awakening national
consciousness, whose particularity and regionalism often set it in opposition to the
universalism of a world church. In the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century,
such opposition between nation and church led to a break with Roman Catholicism
as such, but it is evident from the examples of 15th-century France and Spain that it
could also lead to a national Catholicism that remained in communion with Rome. As
the seat of the Avignon papacy and the stronghold of the conciliarism represented by
Jean de Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, and Pierre Cardinal d’Ailly,
15th-century France represented just such a definition of Catholicism; and in the
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges of July 7, 1438, the French clergy came out in
support of what were taken to be the historical rights of the Gallican church to
administer its own affairs independently of Rome while maintaining its ties of filial
loyalty and doctrinal compliance to the Holy See.

A few decades later, in 1469, the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of
Castile effected the union of Catholic Spain. In 1482 Ferdinand and Isabella
concluded a concordat with the Holy See, under whose terms the Spanish crown
retained the right to nominate candidates for the episcopate. Queen Isabella’s
confessor, the humanist educator, Roman Catholic primate of Spain, and grand
inquisitor Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, blended Spanish patriotism, Renaissance
scholarship, and a strictly orthodox Roman Catholicism in a form that was to
characterize the church in the Hispanic lands of both the Old and the New World for
centuries to come. Spain was not the only nation-state with which the papacy had to
contend. In 1516, after the French king Francis I defeated the allies of Pope Leo X
(reigned 1513–21), the pope signed a concordat granting the king the right to
nominate French bishops and higher church dignitaries, thus ending the election of
bishops by cathedral chapters and abbots by monastic chapters. The most traumatic
era in the entire history of Roman Catholicism, some have argued, was the period
from the middle of the 14th century to the middle of the 16th. This was the time when
Protestantism, through its definitive break with Roman Catholicism, arose to take its
place on the Christian map. It was also the period during which the Roman Catholic
Church, as an entity distinct from other “branches” of Christendom, even of Western
Christendom, came into being.
The spectre of many national churches supplanting a unitary Catholic church
became a grim reality during the age of the Reformation. What neither heresy nor
schism had been able to do before divide Western Christendom permanently and
irreversibly was done by a movement that confessed a loyalty to the orthodox creeds
of Christendom and professed an abhorrence for schism. By the time the
Reformation was over, a number of new Christian churches had emerged and the
Roman Catholic Church had come to define its place in the new order. The
nonreligious caused the Protestant Reformation to arise within Roman Catholicism;
there both its positive accomplishments and its negative effects had their roots. The
standing of the church within the political order and the class structure of western
Europe was irrevocably altered in the course of the later Middle Ages. Although
Boniface VIII’s extravagant claims for the political authority of the church and the
papacy were undermined by the Babylonian Captivity and the subsequent schism,
by the mid-15th century the papacy had recovered and triumphed over the conciliar
movement. By the time Protestantism arose to challenge the spiritual authority of
Rome, however, the papacy had squandered some of its recovered prestige in its
attempts to establish its pre-eminence in Italian politics. Indeed, the popes were so
involved in Italian cultural and political affairs that they had little appreciation of the
seriousness of the Protestant movement. The medieval political structure too had
undergone change, and nationalism had become a more important force; it is not a
coincidence that the Reformation first appeared in Germany, where animosity toward
Rome had long existed and memories of the papal-imperial conflict lingered.

Accompanying these socio-political forces in the crisis of late medieval Roman

Catholicism were spiritual and theological factors that also helped to bring about the
Protestant Reformation. By the end of the 15th century there was a widely held
impression that the papacy refused to reform itself, despite the relative success of
the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), which was called by Pope Julius II. The
papacy’s reputation had been damaged by the political and military machinations of
popes such as Julius, and the hierarchy’s greed and corruption were demonstrated
by Pope Leo X’s agreement (1514) to allow the sale of indulgences in the diocese of
Mainz. The church also was plagued by the perception that professional theologians
were more interested in scholastic debates than in the practical matters of everyday
Christian belief and practice.

b) Write on the Impact of Renaissance 1350 -1650AD on the World History

of the Church.

The Renaissance, roughly spanning the 14th to 17th centuries, marked a

time of cultural, intellectual and scientific advances. From European
discoveries of continents and shipping routes to new views of mathematics
and astronomy to the advent of the printing press, the period of "rebirth"
following the Middle Ages was marked by changing ideas, enduring
masterpieces of architecture, art and literature (it was the time of
Shakespeare, Galileo, da Vinci and Machiavelli and a movement toward
political and religious freedoms. The shift toward political and religious
freedom in turn, helped spawn the Reformation movement, which caused a
divide within the powerful Catholic Church, leading many Europeans to turn
to then-new Protestant faith. Martin Luther burned a Papal Bull Exsurge
Domine issued by Pope Leo X, c. 1520.
Stefania Tutino, a history professor at UCLA and intellectual and cultural
historian of post-Reformation Catholicism, says the Reformation and
Renaissance were two parallel but intertwined movements. “The former
concerned the theological nature and ecclesiological structure of the true
Church of Christ,” she says. “The latter concerned the renewal of some key
cultural, intellectual and artistic principles in light of the fact that what used
to make sense in the Middle Ages was now no longer appropriate or useful
or inspiring for a society that had seen many fundamental changes.”

According to Tutino, scientific advancements, including 15th- and 16th-

century alternatives to the traditional Aristotelian physics and cosmology,
and technological innovations such as the printing press, were important
factors of novelty. “Both Renaissance and Reformation were born out of the
realization that the 'old' Medieval order was no longer sustainable, and
scientific discoveries and technological innovations were some of the
elements that made it clear just how inadequate the old structures were,”
she says. The Renaissance included an intellectual movement known as
Humanism. Among its many principles, humanism promoted the idea that
humans are at the centre of their own universe and should embrace human
achievements in education, classical arts, literature and science. As part of
this philosophy, scholars, authors, political leaders and others sought to
revive the study of Greek and Latin classics. “Many humanists began
applying these principles to the study of the Bible and consequently to the
political, cultural, liturgical and theological principles according to which the
hierarchy of the Catholic Church governed its flock,” Tutino says. “In the
process, a few humanists found much to criticize, and some of their
criticisms echoed those of (Martin) Luther and other early Protestant
leaders.”

However, she adds, while the aims and goals of the Humanist and
Reformation movements were fundamentally different, “there were also
areas in which the two of them met.” According to Ada Palmer, associate
professor of early modern European history at the University of Chicago, the
Humanism movement broadened the palette of ideas people were thinking
about. “The movement began as an interest in reading the texts of ancient
Greece and Rome because Europe especially Italy had become so war-
torn, desperate and unstable that people really wanted a solution,” she says.
Because ancient Rome was powerful and stable with long periods of
strength and unity, Palmer adds, it was believed that reading ancient books
from that period might teach people how to replicate Rome's success. “So,
they started seeking ancient texts and translating, reading and copying
them, until having antiques became something that signalled political power
and political ambition,” she says. “Soon everyone who's anyone had to have
a classical library as a way of showcasing power. “But while the goal of
increasing stability failed, according to Palmer, one of the unintended effects
of the movement was a new demand for books, which led Gutenberg to
invent the printing press.

“It also meant there were a whole lot more ideas about big questions like
how the world works, how the world was made, what good and bad actions
are, how religion works, etc,” she says. “And it also meant they studied
Greek more and realized that their old translations of the Bible and other
texts had been wrong in a lot of places, and they started making new
translations and corrections. Palmer says the Reformation was a climax of
long, slow processes which had started before the Renaissance, including
the corruption of the Catholic Church. In her forthcoming book on the
Renaissance, she describes a “prisoner’s dilemma.” “Bribing the pope or
bishop was a huge advantage in politics,” she says. “Anyone who did so
would win in a conflict, so no one could afford to not bribe the pope because
if anyone else bribed the pope you were doomed. “Disillusioned by the
 bribery and other corruptions of the church, including indulgences, which
allowed citizens to buy absolution from sins, the German monk Martin
Luther wrote the 95 Theses in 1517, allegedly nailing them to the chapel
door at the University of Wittenberg in Saxony. The gradual accumulation of
corruption eventually meant that indulgences were the last straw that broke
the camel's back, Palmer says. The printing press allowed the theses to be
widely and quickly distributed throughout Europe, and although he was
labelled a heretic by the church and excommunicated by Pope Leo X in
1521, Luther’s words connected with many.

Luther hit the right moment to be the first pamphlet star preacher, like being
one of the first star bloggers, or star YouTubers, and he hit the right political
situation for the governments of the region he was in to see him as a great
excuse to do something they wanted to do anyway: get out of the giant
papal prisoner's dilemma, Palmer explains. In this way, Palmer says, the
intellectual movements of the Renaissance led to Reformation by
stimulating the demand for books and encouraging people to read more and
to think about how to reform the present. This included re-reading the Bible,
as Luther did.
Luther, who went on to found the Lutheran Church, translated the New
Testament into German. His translation played a part in initiating the split in
the Catholic Church into those loyal to the pope and Protestants and those
who protested the rules of the Catholic Church. At roughly the same time, in
1534, King Henry VIII caused further division within the Catholic Church
when he made himself head of the Church of England after Pope Clement
VII would not allow him to divorce Catherine of Aragon.

8 FOR THE PERIOD 1789-1914AD ERA OF LIBERALISM PROGRESS AND

MISSIONS
 a) Write the following great Welsh revival under the leadership of Evan
Rebert

The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Wales

Evan Roberts was a young man influenced by the stories and experiences that were
happening in New Quay and Blaenannerch. He decided to go to Newcastle Emlyn
for ministerial training, and arrived in the revival in south Ceredigion. The news of the
mass conversions in New Quay and Blaenannerch had already spread to Newcastle
Emlyn and were a distraction for a man who had been sent there to study. Seth
Joshua, another prominent leader of the revival, came to the area to hold meetings,
which Roberts attended eagerly. After his three months training at Newcastle Emlyn,
he was to return to Loughor to start his ministry. He claimed to have direct visions
from the Holy Spirit: very specific visions. As the revival unfolded Roberts was said
to have depended increasingly upon what he considered the guidance of the Holy
Spirit.

Roberts' ministry response was primarily very slow, but momentarily the crowds
turned out and the meetings were carried on until the early hours of the morning.
After the meeting at Loughor, Roberts assembled a team and went on a tour of the
South Wales valleys to spread the revival. Roberts did not take well the decline of
the revival, and the frustration of great expectations of a worldwide revival that had
arisen in his team, and afterwards fell into depression. Evan was then housed by a
friend in England at Leicester, and co-wrote a book with his friend's wife Jessie
Penn-Lewis, War on the Saints, believed by some to be heretical because of its use
of the term "possession" to describe demonic spirits' potential effect on believers,
from which he dissociated himself after he recovered from depression and the book
was severely criticised. In 1913, when Roberts's mother was dying, his brother Dan
tried to see him to ask him to visit his mother. Roberts refused contact. Eventually
"Awstin", the reporter of the revival, gained access. There were rumours that Roberts
was being held prisoner by the Penn-Lewises. Roberts spoke freely about how God
was preparing him for his next great work, and sent, via Awstin, God's message to
the churches of south Wales. Aberdare became a major centre of the revival and the
first area that Evan Roberts visited following his initial meetings at Loughor. In the
Aberdare area, the revival aroused alarm among ministers for the revolutionary,
even anarchistic, impact it had upon chapel congregations and denominational
organization. In particular, it was seen as drawing attention away from pulpit
preaching and the role of the minister. The local newspaper, the Aberdare Leader,
regarded the revival with suspicion from the outset, objecting to the 'abnormal heat'
which it engendered. Trecynon was particularly affected by the revival, and the
meetings held there were said to have aroused more emotion and excitement than
the more restrained meetings in Aberdare itself. The influence of the revival was
substantial in the short term, nonetheless in the longer term was fairly transient. For
the first time, the newspapers had a role in this revival. The Western Mail and the
South Wales Daily News, Wales' daily newspapers, spread news of conversions and
generated an air of excitement that helped to fuel the revival. The Western Mail in
particular gave extensive coverage to Roberts' meetings in Loughor. The articles
were gathered together and published as a series of seven pamphlets, including
copies of picture postcards of the revivalists that were printed at that time. The
contents of the final pamphlet were credited by some as killing the revival. Peter
Price, a minister from Dowlais, wrote a letter that was very critical of Evan Roberts.
Price wanted to distinguish between the genuine revival that he believed was going
on and a mock revival he associated with Evan Roberts. The pamphlet contains
many letters in support of Evan Roberts (the majority), and a few supporting Price.
Vyrynwy Morgan gives further letters supporting Price.

The Welsh revival has been described not as an isolated religious movement, but as
very much a part of Britain's modernisation. The revival began in late 1904 under the
leadership of Evan Roberts (1878–1951), a 26-year-old former collier and minister in
training. Begun as an effort to kindle non-denominational, non-sectarian spirituality,
the Welsh revival of 1904-05 coincided with the rise of the labour movement,
socialism, and a general disaffection with religion among the working class and
youths. Placed in context, the short-lived revival appears as both a climax for
Nonconformism and a flashpoint of change in Welsh religious life. The movement
spread to Scotland and England, with estimates that a million people were converted
in Britain. Missionaries subsequently carried the movement abroad; it was especially
influential on the Pentecostal movement emerging in California
Contrasting earlier religious revivals which were based on powerful preaching, the
revival of 1904–05 relied chiefly on music and on alleged supernatural phenomena
as exemplified by the visions of Evan Roberts. The intellectual emphasis of the
earlier revivals had left dearth of religious metaphors that the visions provided. The
visions also challenged the denial of the spiritual and miraculous element of
Scripture by opponents of the revival, who held liberal and critical theological
positions. The structure and content of the visions not only repeated those of
Scripture and earlier Christian mystical tradition but also illuminated the personal and
social tensions that the revival addressed by juxtaposing Biblical images with scenes
familiar to contemporary Welsh believers. The after-effects of the revival were
considered by Vyrynwy Morgan in the final chapter of his book, which gives the
figures for convictions for drunkenness in the county of Glamorgan for the years
1902 to 1907, supplied by the police.

The 1904–1905 Welsh revival was the largest Christian revival in Wales during the
20th century. It was one of the most dramatic in terms of its effect on the population,
and triggered revivals in several other countries. "The movement kept the churches
of Wales filled for many years to come, seats being placed in the aisles in Mount
Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea for twenty years or so, for example. Meanwhile,
the Awakening swept the rest of Britain, Scandinavia, parts of Europe, North
America, the mission fields of India and the Orient, Africa and Latin America. The
Revival storm that hit the hills and valleys of Wales in the autumn of 1904 soon
became a hurricane that affected the whole of the Principality. November 1904
witnessed the hand of God in the widely separated districts of Rhos in North Wales
and Loughor in South Wales. They independently and simultaneously knew powerful
convictions and wonderful conversions. The staggering success of the Gospel could
not be attributed to the instrumentality of one man; this was not the wisdom of man
but the power of God. Evan Roberts travelled around Wales taking meetings, often
accompanied by singers who had been touched by the Holy Spirit. Society was
influenced by these renewed, law-abiding individuals, with a puritanical honesty, a
positive work ethos and a personal life free of the personal addictions of the time.
They remained the spiritual stalwarts of churches and chapel for years. For them the
Revival of ‘04/’05 was ongoing. For two years between November 1904 and 1906
God anointed Evan Roberts to release a powerful movement of the Holy Spirit. The
result of this was 100,000 Christians who profoundly influenced the spiritual life of
Wales and the world.

Though Wales was a little-known country on the Celtic fringe of Europe when the
1904 Revival began, within a short time people were flocking to see and hear for
themselves what God was doing, and to share in the blessing. Newspaper reports of
the Revival spread the news of the awakening and visitors touched by the Spirit of
God took the flame to their home countries. The Revival spread, as ripples of water
on a pond, to Europe first, then America, and eventually to all five continents.
Missionaries from Wales inspired by the Revival, went to Madagascar, India, China
and Patagonia and promoted and confirmed the work the Revival. Colleges made a
great contribution the spread of the Revival by providing the personnel for overseas
mission and by creating a spirit of prayer for an awakening. The Revival importantly
produced a world-wide movement in the Apostolic Church. Each revival in time past
had God’s unique signature and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. For example, in the
Toronto outpouring in the nineties, the Father’s love and outpouring of joy
characterized the move of God. The Welsh Revival in 1904, similarly, had God’s
special imprint: the spontaneous outbreaks of singing, prayer, open repentance, and
confession.

The revival spread far and wide. Within a decade, in Korea and India, in France and
Madagascar, and in a dozen other countries, movements influenced by the revival in
Wales were touching many thousands. But in Wales the fires died down. Services
quickly reverted to sober respectability. Within two weeks the Welsh revival was
national news and before long, Roberts, his brother Dan, and his best friend Sidney
Evans were travelling the country conducting revival meetings. The four points of his
message were: Confess all known sin, receiving forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
The 1904–1905 Welsh revival was the largest Christian revival in Wales during the
20th century. It was one of the most dramatic in terms of its effect on the population,
and triggered revivals in several other countries. Pisgah Chapel was founded in 1895
by Mr. Evan Roberts where it was instituted as a Children’s Sunday School which
later became one of the focal points in the 1904 Welsh Revival. Pisgah Chapel was
where Mr Evan Roberts spent long periods in great intercession, prayer, and
preaching. It has witnessed countless conversions and penitence of sins among the
youths during the Welsh Revival between 1904-1906.

Exhausted from a formidable schedule of meetings Evan Roberts suffered from

extreme overtiredness. He found refuge in the home of William and Jessie Penn-
Lewis in Leicestershire in the spring of 1906. By 1907 he had recovered his health
and became a prayer intercessor, spending up to 18 hours a day in prayer. His close
and constant communion with God gave him great authority when he was moved to
speak or counsel. In 1924 he moved to Brighton and then to Worthing. In 1930 Evan
Roberts returned to Wales and lived quietly in Cardiff. He worshipped at a Welsh
chapel there. He died on January 29th 1951 and was buried in the family grave
behind Moriah Chapel, Loughor.
b) Missionary Activities between 1789-1944AD
The French Revolution began in 1789 with the convocation of the Estates-
General in May. The first year of the Revolution witnessed members of the
Third Estate proclaiming the Tennis Court Oath in June, the Storming of the
Bastille in July. The two key events that marked the triumph of liberalism were
the Abolition of feudalism in France on the night of 4 August 1789, which
marked the collapse of feudal and old traditional rights and privileges and
restrictions, and the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen in August. Jefferson, the American ambassador to France, was
consulted in its drafting and there are striking similarities with the American
Declaration of Independence.
The next few years were dominated by tensions between various liberal
assemblies and a conservative monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. A
Republic was proclaimed in September 1792 and King Louis XVI was
executed the following year. However, conflict between rival political factions,
the Girondins and the Jacobins, culminated in the Reign of Terror, that was
marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution", with the death toll
reaching into the tens of thousands. Finally, Napoleon came to power in 1799,
ended any form of democracy with his dictatorship, ended internal civil wars,
made peace with the Catholic Church, and conquered much of Europe until
he went too far and was finally defeated in 1815. The rise of Napoleon as
dictator in 1799, heralded a reverse of many of the republican and democratic
gains. However, Napoleon did not restore the Ancien Régime, rather, he
maintained much of the liberal reforms and imposed a liberal legal code, the
Code Napoleon.

First page of Napoleon's Civil Code which removed inherited privilege and
allowed freedom of religion. During the Napoleonic Wars, the French brought
to Western Europe the liquidation of the feudal system, the liberalization of
property laws, the end of seigneurial dues, the abolition of guilds, the
legalization of divorce, the disintegration of Jewish ghettos, the collapse of the
Inquisition, the final end of the Holy Roman Empire, the elimination of church
courts and religious authority, the establishment of the metric system, and
equality under the law for all men. Napoleon wrote that "the peoples of
Germany, as of France, Italy and Spain, want equality and liberal ideas, with
some historians suggesting that he may have been the first person ever to
use the word "liberal" in a political sense. He also governed through a method
that one historian described as "civilian dictatorship", which "drew its
legitimacy from direct consultation with the people, in the form of a
plebiscite".Napoleon, however, did not always live up to the liberal ideals he
espoused.

Outside France the Revolution had a major impact and its ideas became
widespread. Furthermore, the French armies in the 1790s and 1800s directly
overthrew feudal remains in much of western Europe. They liberalised
property laws, ended seigneurial dues, abolished the guild of merchants and
craftsmen to facilitate entrepreneurship, legalised divorce, and closed the
Jewish ghettos. The Inquisition ended as did the Holy Roman Empire. The
power of church courts and religious authority was sharply reduced, and
equality under the law was proclaimed for all men. For nearly two decades the
Italians had the excellent codes of law, a fair system of taxation, a better
economic situation, and more religious and intellectual toleration than they
had known for centuries Everywhere old physical, economic, and intellectual
barriers had been thrown down and the Italians had begun to be aware of a
common nationality. Likewise in Switzerland the long-term impact of the
French Revolution has been assessed by Martin.

It proclaimed the equality of citizens before the law, equality of languages,

freedom of thought and faith; it created a Swiss citizenship, basis of our
modern nationality, and the separation of powers, of which the old regime had
no conception; it suppressed internal tariffs and other economic restraints; it
unified weights and measures, reformed civil and penal law, authorised mixed
marriages (between Catholics and Protestants), suppressed torture and
improved justice; it developed education and public works. His most lasting
achievement, the Civil Code, served as "an object of emulation all over the
globe, but it also perpetuated further discrimination against women under the
banner of the "natural order. This unprecedented period of chaos and
revolution had irreversibly introduced the world to a new movement and
ideology that would soon criss-cross the globe. For France, however, the
defeat of Napoleon brought about the restoration of the monarchy and an
ultra-conservative order was reimposed on the country.

The development into maturity of classical liberalism took place before and
after the French Revolution in Britain and was based on the following core
concepts, namely classical economics, free trade, laissez-faire government
with minimal intervention and taxation and a balanced budget. Classical
liberals were committed to individualism, liberty and equal rights. Writers such
as John Bright and Richard Cobden opposed both aristocratic privilege and
property, seeing them as an impediment to the development of a class of
yeoman farmers. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man was a manifesto for political
radicalism. The radical liberal movement began in the 1790s in England and
concentrated on parliamentary and electoral reform, emphasizing natural
rights and popular sovereignty. Radicals like Richard Price and Joseph
Priestley saw parliamentary reform as a first step toward dealing with their
many grievances, including the treatment of Protestant Dissenters, the slave
trade, high prices and high taxes

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791) provoked a response from Edmund

Burke, with his conservative essay Reflections on the Revolution in France.
The ensuing Revolution Controversy featured, among others, Mary
Wollstonecraft, who followed with an early feminist tract A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman. Radicals encouraged mass support for democratic reform
along with rejection of the monarchy, aristocracy and all forms of privilege.
Different strands of the movement developed, with middle-class reformers
aiming to widen the franchise to represent commercial and industrial interests
and towns without parliamentary representation while Popular Radicals drawn
from the middle class and from artisans agitated to assert wider rights
including relieving distress. The theoretical basis for electoral reform was
provided by Philosophical Radicals who followed the utilitarian philosophy of
Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported parliamentary reform, but were
generally hostile to the arguments and tactics of the Popular Radicals.

Improved economic conditions after 1821, improvements in economic and

criminal law and the abandoning of policies of repression led to decreasing
polarisation and a more consensual form of reform politics that was to
dominate in Britain for the next two centuries. In 1823, Jeremy Bentham co-
founded the Westminster Review with James Mill as a journal for
Philosophical Radicals, setting out the utilitarian philosophy.

The Reform Act 1832 was put through with the support of public outcry, mass
meetings of political unions and riots in some cities. This now enfranchised
the middle classes, but it failed to meet radical demands. Following the
Reform Act, the mainly aristocratic Whigs in the House of Commons were
joined by a small number of parliamentary Radicals as well as an increased
number of middle-class Whigs. By 1839, they were informally being called the
Liberal Party. The Liberals produced one of the greatest British Prime
Ministers William Ewart Gladstone, also known as the Grand Old Man, who
was the towering political figure of liberalism in the 19th century. Under
Gladstone, the Liberals reformed education, disestablished the Church of
Ireland and introduced the secret ballot for local and parliamentary elections.

Jeremy Bentham's philosophy counselled government to adopt policies that

could bestow the greatest possible social benefit. Commitment to laissez-faire
was not uniform. Some economists advocated state support of public works
and education. Classical liberals were also divided on free trade. David
Ricardo expressed doubt that the removal of grain tariffs would have any
general benefits. Most classical liberals also supported legislation to regulate
the number of hours that children were allowed to work and usually did not
oppose factory reform legislation. Despite the pragmatism of classical
economists, their views were expressed in dogmatic terms by such popular
writers as Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau. The strongest defender of
laissez-faire was The Economist founded by James Wilson in 1843. The
Economist criticised Ricardo for his lack of support for free trade and
expressed hostility to welfare, believing that the lower orders were responsible
for their economic circumstances. The Economist took the position that
regulation of factory hours was harmful to workers and also strongly opposed
state support for education, health, the provision of water and granting of
patents and copyrights.

Adam Smith argued for free trade and low levels of government regulation
The primary intellectual influences on 19th century liberal trends were those of
Adam Smith and the classical economists as well as Jeremy Bentham and
John Stuart Mill. Smith's The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was to
provide most of the ideas of economics, at least until the publication of Mill's
Principles in 1848.Smith addressed the motivation for economic activity, the
causes of prices and the distribution of wealth as well as the policies the state
should follow in order to maximise wealth.[61][incomplete short citation]
Smith's economics was carried into practice in the 19th century with the
lowering of tariffs in the 1820s, the repeal of the Poor Relief Act that had
restricted the mobility of labour in 1834 and the end of the rule of the East
India Company over India in 1858

In addition to Adam Smith's legacy, Say's law, Malthus theories of population

and Ricardo's iron law of wages became central doctrines of classical
economics. Jean Baptiste Say challenged Smith's labour theory of value,
believing that prices were determined by utility and also emphasised the
critical role of the entrepreneur in the economy. However, neither of those
observations became accepted by British economists at the time. Thomas
Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798 becoming a
major influence on classical liberalism

Utilitarianism provided the political justification for the implementation of

economic liberalism by British governments which was to dominate economic
policy from the 1830s. Although utilitarianism prompted legislative and
administrative reform and Mill's later writings on the subject foreshadowed the
welfare state, it was mainly used as a justification for laissez-faire. The central
concept of utilitarianism which was developed by Jeremy Bentham was that
public policy should seek to provide "the greatest happiness of the greatest
number". While this could be interpreted as a justification for state action to
reduce poverty, it was used by classical liberals to justify inaction with the
argument that the net benefit to all individuals would be higher. His philosophy
proved to be extremely influential on government policy and led to increased
Benthamite attempts at government social control, including Robert Peel's
Metropolitan Police, prison reforms, the workhouses and asylums for the
mentally ill.
John Stuart Mill's on Liberty greatly influenced the course of 19th century
liberalism. By the end of the 19th century, the principles of classical liberalism
were being increasingly challenged by downturns in economic growth, a
growing perception of the evils of poverty, unemployment and relative
deprivation present within modern industrial cities and the agitation of
organized labour. The ideal of the self-made individual, who through hard
work and talent could make his or her place in the world, seemed increasingly
implausible. A major political reaction against the changes introduced by
industrialisation and laissez-faire capitalism came from conservatives
concerned about social balance, although socialism later became a more
important force for change and reform. Some Victorian writers including
Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold became early
influential critics of social injustice. The New Liberalism or social liberalism
movement emerged about 1900 in Britain

John Stuart Mill contributed enormously to liberal thought by combining

elements of classical liberalism with what eventually became known as the
New Liberalism. Mill's 1859 On Liberty addressed the nature and limits of the
power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. He
gives an impassioned defence of free speech, arguing that free discourse is a
necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. Mill defined social
liberty as protection from "the tyranny of political rulers". He introduced a
number of different concepts of the form tyranny can take, referred to as
social tyranny and tyranny of the majority, respectively. Social liberty meant
limits on the ruler's power through obtaining recognition of political liberties or
rights and by the establishment of a system of constitutional checks.
Liberal philosopher Thomas Hill Green began to espouse a more
interventionist government approach. Green’s definition of liberty, influenced
by Joseph Priestley and Josiah Warren, was that the individual ought to be
free to do as he wishes unless he harms others. Mill was also an early
proponent of feminism. In his article "The Subjection of Women" (1861,
published 1869), Mill attempted to prove that the legal subjugation of women
is wrong and that it should give way to perfect equality. Although Mill's initial
economic philosophy supported free markets and argued that progressive
taxation penalised those who worked harder, he later altered his views toward
a more socialist bent, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in
defence of a socialist outlook and defending some socialist causes, including
the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a
co-operative wage system.

The Liberal Party led in Parliament by William Ewart Gladstone drew from
across the intellectual and social spectrum. On one hand, there were
progressive elites who sought to fuse the methods of science with liberal
political economy. For example, the anthropologist and MP Sir John Lubbock
followed the strategy of using cognitive science to challenge and shape public
policy. Lubbock famously applied this approach to parliamentary debates
relating to universal education, the preservation of monuments and the
introduction of Bank Holidays. On the other hand, the Liberal Party also had a
strong base in evangelical and nonconformist religious elements. At Balliol
College, Oxford, Thomas Hill Green argued that the state should foster and
protect the social, political and economic environments in which individuals
will have the best chance of acting according to their consciences.

The state should intervene only where there is a clear, proven and strong
tendency of a liberty to enslave the individual. Green regarded the national
state as legitimate only to the extent that it upholds a system of rights and
obligations that is most likely to foster individual self-realisation. The
Gladstonian liberals in 1891 adopted "the Newcastle Programme that included
home rule for Ireland, disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales
and Scotland, tighter controls on the sale of liquor, major extension of factory
regulation and various democratic political reforms. The Programme had a
strong appeal to the nonconformist middle-class Liberal element which felt
liberated by the departure of the aristocratic leaders of the Liberal Party.

The German savant Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) made a major

contribution to the development of liberalism by envisioning education as a
means of realizing individual possibility rather than a way of drilling traditional
ideas into youth to suit them for an already established occupation or social
role. Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), in Switzerland, refined the concept of
liberty, defining it as a condition of existence that allowed the individual to turn
away interference from the state or society. Abolitionist anti-slavery and
suffrage movements spread, along with representative and democratic ideals.
France established an enduring republic in the 1870s. Meanwhile, nationalism
also spread rapidly after 1815. A mixture of liberal and nationalist sentiment in
Italy and Germany brought about the unification of the two countries in the
late 19th century. A liberal regime came to power in Italy, and ended the
secular power of the popes. The Vatican, however, launched a counter
crusade against liberalism. Pope Pius IX issued the Syllabus of Errors in
1864, condemning liberalism in all its forms. In many countries, liberal forces
responded by expelling the Jesuit order.
Social democratic ideas influenced liberalism beginning in the second half of
the 19th century. This new form of liberalism was known by a variety of
names across the world, including Sozial-Liberalismus in German, New
Liberalism in Britain, solidarisme in France, regeneracionismo in Spain, the
Giolittian Era in Italy and the Progressive Movement in the United States.
Liberalism gained momentum in the beginning of the 20th century. The
bastion of autocracy, the Russian Tsar, was overthrown in the first phase of
the Russian Revolution in 1917, but liberalism lasted only a matter of months
before Bolshevism triumphed. The Allied victory in World War I and the
collapse of four empires seemed to mark the triumph of liberalism across the
European continent, including Germany and the newly created states of
Eastern Europe. Militarism, as typified by Germany, was defeated and
discredited. As Martin Blinkhorn argues, the liberal themes were ascendant in
terms of "cultural pluralism, religious and ethnic toleration, national self-
determination, free-market economics, representative and responsible
government, free trade, unionism, and the peaceful settlement of international
disputes through a new body, the League of Nations.

K. J. Ståhlberg (1865–1952), the first President of the Republic of Finland,

defined Finland's anchoring as a country defending liberal democracy
Stahlberg at his office in 1919.The worldwide Great Depression, starting in
1929, hastened the discrediting of liberal economics and strengthened calls
for state control over economic affairs. Economic woes prompted widespread
unrest in the European political world, leading to the strengthening of fascism
and communism. Their rise in 1939 culminated in World War II. The Allies,
which included most of the important liberal nations as well as communist
Russia, won World War II, defeating Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and
militarist Japan. After the war, there was a falling out between Russia and the
West, and the Cold War opened in 1947 between the Communist Eastern
Bloc and the liberal Western Alliance.

John Maynard Keynes was one of the most influential economists of modern
times whose ideas, which are still widely felt, formalized modern liberal
economic policy. Meanwhile, the definitive liberal response to the Great
Depression was given by the British economist John Maynard Keynes, who
had begun a theoretical work examining the relationship between
unemployment, money and prices back in the 1920s Keynes was deeply
critical of the British government's austerity measures during the Great
Depression. He believed that budget deficits were a good thing, a product of
recessions. He wrote, "For Government borrowing of one kind or another is
nature's remedy, so to speak, for preventing business losses from being, in so
severe a slump as to present one, so great as to bring production altogether
to a standstill.
At the height of the Great Depression in 1933, Keynes published The Means
to Prosperity, which contained specific policy recommendations for tackling
unemployment in a global recession, chiefly counter cyclical public spending.
The Means to Prosperity contains one of the first mentions of the multiplier
 effect Keynes's magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest
and Money was published in 1936 and served as a theoretical justification for
the interventionist policies Keynes favoured for tackling a recession. The Cold
War featured extensive ideological competition and several proxy wars, but
the widely feared Third World War between the Soviet Union and the United
States never occurred.
c) Write on the Great awakening and what were the results?
Great Awakening
The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English
colonies in America during the 1730s and 1740s. The movement came at a
time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion
for religion had grown stale. The First Great Awakening was a period when
spirituality and religious devotion were revived. This feeling swept through the
American colonies between the 1730s and 1770s. The revival of Protestant
beliefs was part of a much broader movement that was taking place in
England, Scotland, and Germany at that time. The First Great Awakening
began in the 1730s and lasted to about 1740, though pockets of revivalism
had occurred in years prior, especially amongst the ministry of Solomon
Stoddard, Jonathan Edwards' grandfather. Revivals did contribute to the
coming Revolution in important ideological, sociological, and religious ways.
The revivals crushed the social order of church hierarchy, rejecting the
existing power structures of the day and focusing instead on the individual.

Great Awakening, religious revival in the British American colonies mainly

between about 1720 and the 1740s. It was a part of the religious ferment that
swept western Europe in the latter part of the 17th century and early 18th
century, referred to as Pietism and Quietism in continental Europe among
Protestants and Roman Catholics and as Evangelicalism in England under
the leadership of John Wesley (1703–91). The Puritan fervour of the
American colonies waned toward the end of the 17th century, but the Great
Awakening, under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield,
and others, served to revitalize religion in the region. The Great Awakening
signified a reaction against the increasing secularization of society and
against the corporate and materialistic nature of the principal churches of
American society. A number of situations in the colonies contributed to the
revival: an arid rationalism in New England, formalism in liturgical practices,
as among the Dutch Reformed in the Middle Colonies, and the neglect of
pastoral supervision in the South. The revival took place primarily among the
Dutch Reformed, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and some
Anglicans, almost all of whom were Calvinists. By making variations the initial
step on the road to salvation and by opening the conversion experience to all
who recognized their own sinfulness, the ministers of the Great Awakening,
some intentionally and others unwittingly, democratized Calvinist theology.
The Great Awakening has been seen, therefore, as an advancement toward
an evangelical Calvinism. Indeed, the evangelical styles of religious worship
promoted by the revival helped make the religious doctrines of many of the
insurgent church denominations, particularly those of the Baptists and the
Methodists more accessible to a wider cross section of the American
population.

The part played by religion in the shaping of the American mind, while
sometimes overstated, remains crucial. The revival preachers emphasized the
“terrors of the law” to sinners, the unmerited grace of God, and the “new birth”
in Jesus Christ. They frequently sought to inspire in their listeners a fear of the
consequences of their sinful lives and a respect for the omnipotence of God.
This sense of the ferocity of God was often tempered by the implied promise
that a rejection of worldliness and a return to faith would result in a return to
grace and an avoidance of the horrible punishments of an angry God. There
was a certain contradictory quality about Great Awakening theology, however.
Predestination, one of the principal tenets of the Calvinist theology of most of
the ministers of the Great Awakening, was ultimately incompatible with the
promise that humans could, by a voluntary act of faith, achieve salvation by
their own efforts.

One of the great figures of the movement was George Whitefield, an Anglican
priest who was influenced by John Wesley but was himself a Calvinist.
Visiting America in 1739–40, he preached up and down the colonies to vast
crowds in open fields, because no church building would hold the throngs he
attracted. Although he gained many converts, he was attacked, as were other
revival clergy, for criticizing the religious experience of others, for stimulating
emotional excesses and dangerous religious delusions, and for breaking into
and preaching in settled parishes without proper invitation by ecclesiastical
authorities.

Jonathan Edwards was the great academician and apologist of the Great
Awakening. A Congregational pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, he
preached justification by faith alone with remarkable effectiveness. He also
attempted to redefine the psychology of religious experience and to help
those involved in the revival to discern what were true works of the Holy Spirit.
Although the call for a return to complete faith and the emphasis on the
omnipotence of God can be seen as the very antithesis of Enlightenment
thought, which called for a greater questioning of faith and a diminishing role
for God in the daily affairs of humankind, Edwards explicitly drew on the
thought of men such as John Locke and Isaac Newton in an attempt to make
religion rational. His chief opponent was Charles Chauncy, a liberal pastor of
the First Church in Boston, who wrote and preached against the revival, which
he considered an outbreak of extravagant emotion.

The Great Awakening stemmed the tide of Enlightenment rationalism among

a great many people in the colonies. One of its results was division within
denominations, for some members supported the revival and others rejected
it. The revival stimulated the growth of several educational institutions,
including Princeton, Brown, and Rutgers universities and Dartmouth College.
The increase of dissent from the established churches during this period led
to a broader toleration of religious diversity, and the democratization of the
religious experience fed the fervour that resulted in the American Revolution.

Edwards maintained that the Holy Spirit withdrew from Northampton in the
1740s, and some supporters found that the revival came to an end in that
decade. A revival known as the Second Great Awakening began in New
England in the 1790s. Generally, less emotional than the Great Awakening,
the Second Great Awakening led to the founding of colleges and seminaries
and to the organization of mission societies. Kentucky was also influenced by
a revival during this period. The custom of camp-meeting revivals developed
out of the Kentucky revival and was an influence on the American frontier
during the 19th century. In the Middle Colonies, Gilbert Tennent was an early
leader in the Awakening. His father William was a Presbyterian minister who
started the famous religious school known as Log College. Their graduates
would help to develop Princeton. Interestingly, the Awakening was a reaction
against rationalism, but it also led to the founding of a number of colleges.
The First Great Awakening was not the American Revolution, but it was an
American revolution.
The Significance of the Great Awakening
The First Great Awakening broke the monopoly of the Puritan church as
colonists began pursuing diverse religious affiliations and interpreting the
Bible for themselves. The Great Awakening had a major impact on
Protestantism, as a number of new offshoots grew out of that denomination,
but with an emphasis on individual piety and religious inquiry. The movement
also prompted a rise in evangelicalism, which united believers under the
umbrella of like-minded Christians, regardless of denomination, for whom the
path to salvation was the acknowledgment that Jesus Christ died for our sins.
While a great unifier among the people living in the American colonies, this
wave of religious revivalism did have its opponents. Traditional clergy
asserted that it fomented fanaticism and that the emphasis on
extemporaneous preaching would increase the number of uneducated
preachers and downright charlatans. It pushed individual religious experience
over established church doctrine, thereby decreasing the importance and
weight of the clergy and the church in many instances. New denominations
arose or grew in numbers as a result of the emphasis on individual faith and
salvation. It unified the American colonies as it spread through numerous
preachers and revivals. This unification was greater than had ever been
achieved previously in the colonies.

The Great Awakening brought various philosophies, ideas and doctrines to

the forefront of Christian faith. Some of the major themes included; all people
are born sinners, Sin without salvation will send a person to hell, all people
can be saved if they confess their sins to God, seek forgiveness and accept
God’s grace, all people can have a direct and emotional connection with God,
Religion shouldn’t be formal and institutionalized, but rather casual and
personal. Not everyone embraced the ideas of the Great Awakening. One of
the leading voices of opposition was Charles Chauncy, a minister in Boston.
Chauncy was especially critical of Whitefield’s preaching and instead
supported a more traditional, formal style of religion. By about 1742, debate
over the Great Awakening had split the New England clergy and many
colonists into two groups. Preachers and followers who adopted the new
ideas brought forth by the Great Awakening became known as “new lights.”
Those who embraced the old-fashioned, traditional church ways were called
“old lights.”

The Great Awakening came to an end sometime during the 1740s.In the
1790s, another religious revival, which became known as the Second Great
Awakening, began in New England. This movement is typically regarded as
less emotionally charged than the First Great Awakening. It led to the
founding of several colleges, seminaries and mission societies. A Third Great
Awakening was said to span from the late 1850s to the early 20th century.
Some scholars, however, disagree that this movement was ever a significant
event. The Great Awakening notably altered the religious climate in the
American colonies. Ordinary people were encouraged to make a personal
connection with God, instead of relying on a minister. Newer denominations,
such as Methodists and Baptists, grew quickly. Each of these "Great
Awakenings" was characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical
Protestant ministers, a sharp increase of interest in religion, a profound sense
of conviction and redemption on the part of those affected, an increase in
evangelical church membership, and the formation of new religious.
.
. While the movement unified the colonies and boosted church growth,
experts say it also caused division among those who supported it and those
who rejected it. Many historians claim that the Great Awakening influenced
the Revolutionary War by encouraging the notions of nationalism and
individual rights. The revival also led to the establishment of several renowned
educational institutions, including Princeton, Rutgers, Brown and Dartmouth
universities. The Great Awakening unquestionably had a significant impact on
Christianity. It reinvigorated religion in America at a time when it was steadily
declining and introduced ideas that would penetrate into American culture for
many years to come. Long term effects of the Great Awakening were the
decline of Quakers, Anglicans, and Congregationalists as the Presbyterians
and Baptists increased. It also caused an emergence in black Protestantism,
religious toleration, an emphasis on inner experience, and denominationalism.
.. The intellectual and philosophical movement called the Enlightenment is
indirectly responsible for increasing secularism in many communities. These
"Great Awakenings" happened between the 18th and late 20th century and
were generally led by Protestant Ministers. They would often travel between
towns and talk about the gospel, promoting Christianity and everything it
stands for. These movements happened as a response to secular rationalism
and the increasing staleness of religion. Many consider these Great
Awakenings to be of great importance for many branches of Christian Church
and American culture. Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that
dominated much of the world in Europe in the 1700s. Originating from
Renaissance humanism, it was a movement centred around the power of
reason, the power of science, and it also made religion appear less important.

It was around the 1720s that preachers started stressing the importance of
religion, faith, and holy scripture. Jonathan Edwards, a North American
philosopher, and theologian was one of the key figures of the First Great
Awakening. His work was rooted in Reformed theology, and for Edwards,
humans were sinners, and God was angry (ironically, that is also the name of
his sermon "Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God"). He was well accepted
due to his religious passion and being an inspiration for many conversions.
George Whitefield was another significant evangelist figure. Unlike Edwards,
who mainly preached in his home parish, Whitefield travelled to North
America, preaching more than 18,000 times, in a very theatrical and
controversial manner. He even managed to convince many English colonists
to join local churches and help re-invigorate the passion for religion.
Many people were inspired to make a connection with God by themselves
without the help of a preacher or a minister. Many academics also believed
that the Great Awakening affected the beginning of the Revolutionary War
due to empowering individuals with nationalistic ideologies and individualism.
Most of all, it rejuvenated Christianity in America when it was in a religious
decline.
the Great Awakening, the most important event in American religion during
the eighteenth century, was a series of emotional religious revivals that
spread across the American colonies in the late 1730s and 1740s. The mid-
eighteenth century witnessed a wave of evangelism without precedent in
America, England, Scotland, and Germany. In England, this wave would
culminate in the Methodist revivals led by John Wesley (1703-1791), while in
Germany, the revivals would give rise to a movement known as Pietism. In
colonial America, in contrast to England and Germany, the revivals tended to
cross class lines and to take place in urban as well as rural areas. In New
England, in particular, the Great Awakening represented a reaction against
the growing formality and the dampening of religious enthusiasm in the
Congregational churches. Elsewhere in the colonies, the Anglican church,
indeed no single church, was able to satisfy the population's spiritual and
emotional needs. The Great Awakening carried profound consequences for
the future. It was the first experience shared by large numbers of people
throughout all the American colonies, and therefore contributed to the growth
of a common American identity. It also produced a deepened consciousness
of sin within the existing social order and aroused a faith that Americans stood
within reach of Christ's second coming.

From the time of the Reformation, scholars and philosophers in Europe

debated important issues of theology and faith. The Reformation had made a
big impact on society because it explored views beyond that of the Catholic
Church. One of the core beliefs of the Reformation was that scripture should
be the guide for one's life. Central to that belief is that the final interpretation of
Scripture is one's own interpretation, not a church father's or anyone else. Still
another core belief of Protestantism is that God's covenant (that is, the mutual
 promises between God and one who believes in him) is based on the consent
of that individual.
Tens of thousands of non-religious colonists were converted to Protestant
beliefs. This had a huge impact on church attendance, homes, workplaces,
entertainment, and colleges.

d) Write Azuza street revival 1906-1907AD birth of Pentecostalism

In Azusa Street Mission and Revival, Cecil M. Robeck Jr. brings to bear
expertise from decades of focused study in church history to reveal the
captivating story of the Apostolic Faith Mission in Los Angeles, which became
known as the Azusa Street Mission. The Azusa Street Revival was commonly
regarded as the beginning of the modern-day Pentecostal Movement. From
humble beginnings with few resources, this small, uniquely diverse, and
inclusive congregation led by William J. Seymour ignited a fire that quickly
grew into a blaze and spread across the world, giving rise to the global
Pentecostal movement. Sifting through newspaper reports and other written
accounts of the time as well as the mission's own publications, and through
personal interaction with some of those blessed to stand very near to the fire
that began at the mission, Cecil M. Robeck Jr. not only relates the historical
significance of the revival but also captures the movement of the Holy Spirit
that changed the face of modern Christianity.

Pentecostal Churches expansion, however, resulted from the Azusa Street

revival that began in 1906 at the Apostolic Faith Gospel Mission at 312 Azusa
Street in Los Angeles. Azusa was signified by the re-enactment of the
Apostle's experiences recorded in Acts 2. It was signified by the baptism of
the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues. The Azusa Street
Revival came to symbolise early Pentecostal's theological assumptions and
especially their eschatological hopes. William Joseph Seymour was born on
May 2, 1870, in Centerville, Louisiana. His parents were released slaves who
used to work on the cotton plantations in the south of the United States.
Seymour was raised in a Baptist church, but when he took up a job as a
waiter in Indianapolis, Indiana, he became a member of the Black Methodist
Episcopal Church. When he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, he joined the Evening
Light Saints church, which was in the holiness fold. Again, when he moved to
Houston, Texas, in pursuit of his family, he became associated with a Black
Holiness Church which had a woman, Lucy Farrow, as pastor (Lapoorta
1996:29).
William Joseph Seymour became a student at Parham's Bible School in
Houston. It was at this school where he was taught about the initial evidence
doctrine, by Parham. Although he did not experience the baptism of the Holy
Spirit in Houston, he firmly believed that it was a necessity for every believer
and those who spoke in tongues evidenced outward manifestation thereof
(see Lapoorta 1996:29). The twentieth century Pentecostal Movement in
America originated from the womb of Black religious experience. It was
through Azusa Street in Los Angeles in 1906 to the world that the Pentecostal
Movement has ushered in the era of the Holy Spirit (Lovett 1972:42). William
Seymour, a Black Holiness preacher and a student of Parham (a White man)
in Houston, carried the new message to Los Angeles and became one of the
key leaders in the Pentecostal revival, which occurred in a former African
Methodist Episcopal church in Azusa Street (McGee 1988:58). William
Seymour's religious experiences represent a consistent merging of African
and new world components which persisted in precisely those churches which
are closest to the Black masses. The central place of such experiences and
encounters is Azusa Street in Los Angeles (Poewe 1988:145).

He assured followers that if they prayed for weeks with sufficient earnestness,
God was ready to send a new Pentecost. Like the miraculous event described
in Acts, this latter-day outpouring of the Spirit would be demonstrated with
tongues of flame, healing, speaking in tongues, and other signs and wonders
(Cox 1995:37). At Azusa, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, and Europeans met and
worshiped together. They crossed formerly impossible cultural lines. Although
the success of the revival was short-lived, we still enjoy its fruits. Today,
Azusa remains a common word within God's household (Liardon 1996:125).
William Seymour endorsed tongues to be a sure sign of the baptism in the
Holy Spirit. He also found that speaking in tongues alone was an insufficient
sign. Seymour discovered that some White people could speak in tongues
and continue to treat people of colour as inferior to them (De Kock 2000:109).
While speaking in tongues could serve as evidence of the baptism in the Holy
Spirit even as initial evidence, it was not considered absolute evidence.
Seymour believed that tongues accompanied by the dissolution of racial
barriers were the indisputable sign of the Holy Spirit.

In the years between 1906 and 1909 the Azusa Street Mission became the
focus of attention of thousands of people around the world. Stories of what
was happening were carried in both secular and Christian press and much of
it not very complimentary. So, if anyone deserves the right to be recognised
as the founder of modern-day Pentecostalism it must be William Seymour. It
was his vision, leadership, teaching and drive which kept the movement on
track (Letson 2007:114). He summed up the evangelistic and missionary
focus and impact of his work during the first decade of its existence. He
viewed the purpose of the mission, indeed, of the 'Apostolic Faith' people as a
whole, as evangelisation of the entire world. During that decade (1906-1915),
Seymour had witnessed the teachings of the 'Apostolic Faith' including the call
to personal repentance and faith, the pursuit of personal and corporate
holiness, and the acceptance of power for ministry through the baptism in the
Holy Spirit (Robeck 2007:78).William Seymour preached a message which
highlighted the empowerment of Spirit baptism as the necessary force by
which a new type of community where race, gender and ethnicity would not
be categories of division (Klaus 2007:40). This multicultural perspective can
be summarised as focusing on a new community of justice and equity. The
anticipation and participation in this new community as a full member certainly
could be viewed as a liberating experience by any definition.

In addition, Afro-Pentecostal rituals permit and promote participation with

varieties of experiences, perceptions, movements, styles, roles, gifts and
talents. There is something for anyone and everyone to do (Leatherman
2008:918). The hesitant and insecure are most encouraged when they take
the risk to participate. Invitation to personal action, whether building a habitat
for humanity house or Afro-Pentecostal worship, encourages participation.
The name of William Seymour, an unlettered Black minister with vision in only
one eye, is central to the historic events of Azusa Street (Khathide 2010:61).
Azusa Street Revival is a Pentecostal revival meeting that happened in 1906,
United States of America, Los Angeles. The revival which was led by an
African American, William J Seymour was characterised by Spirit baptism with
the evidence of speaking in other tongues, miracles and other spiritual
experiences. The revival attracted people in the United States of America and
the world. Azusa Street Revival lasted for more than eight years from 1906
until 1915.
The Azusa Street Revival according to Omenyo (2006:247) was significant in
many respects: First, it was second to none in terms of its reach and the
depth of its influence both in the United States and abroad. This consequently
led to the emergence of several centres of Pentecostalism in cities throughout
the United States. It thus produced many Pentecostal denominations.
Second, and more significant, is the unprecedented number of missionaries
that the Azusa Street Revival produced. Within five months of the birth of this
movement, thirty-eight missionaries had gone out from Azusa. In only two
years it had spread to over fifty nations worldwide. The nations include China,
India, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa, the Middle East and Liberia.

Azusa Street Revival was anticipated for a long time Azusa Street. It claimed
to be the definitive formula and a sure beginning of the end-time revival.
Azusa Street fulfilled all revival hopes that were transmitted through the
missionary (Bergunder 2007:65). Azusa became the central mythic event for
early Pentecostals because they perceived it to be the location where God
initiated an eschatological plan for the restoration of the church (Creech
1996:407).
Azusa Street prayer meetings were begun and before long, wonderful scenes
took place. There were prostrations, strong crying unto God, weeping and
manifestations of joy. Most notable of all, those who were filled with the Holy
Spirit experienced physical manipulation of face and body and the final
exercise of speaking in tongues as the Spirit of God gave utterance
(McDonnell 1996:610). The Pentecostal experiences in Azusa are similar to
the ones in the book of Acts 2. These Pentecostals believed the cornerstone
of this restoration was the duplication of the first Pentecost. It was signified by
the baptism of the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues.

The Azusa Street Revival came to symbolise early Pentecostal's theological

assumptions and especially their eschatological hopes. As a symbolic point of
origin, Azusa offered theological and historical meaning for the Pentecostal
experience and the movement itself. Azusa Street went global from the very
start and began to channel their message through the vast international
evangelical and missionary network that was receptive to revivals. At Azusa
Street Mission a more symbolic correlation began to emerge alongside their
more inclusive understanding of the results of Spirit baptism. The ability to
speak in tongues was understood as an avenue of praise to God that
symbolised the heavenly praise that would soon be instituted in the rapture.
The idea of tongues as a private prayer language also began to emerge in
Apostolic Faith as a symbol of a direct communion with God reminiscent of
Parham's notion of 'the anointing that abides'. Speaking in tongues was
increasingly seen as an experience that in different ways symbolised the
many varied blessings and benefits of Spirit baptism testified to by people at
Azusa Street (Friesen 2009:52). The subsequent meetings that were held in
the former Methodist church at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles have
consequently come to be referred as Azusa Street Revivals (Machingura
2011:16). The Azusa Street Revival had two main characteristics, the
Pentecostal experiences and non-racialism.

Seymour's teaching, primarily because he had not yet experienced the

blessing about which he was preaching. Condemnation of his message also
came from the Holiness Church Association of Southern California with which
the church had affiliation. However, not all members of Hutchins' church
rejected Seymour's preaching.
9 FOR THE PERIOD OF 1054-1305AD ERA OF CRUSADE
a) Write on the causes and consequences of the Christian Crusades in
the Holy Land.

The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and

Muslims started mainly to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by
both groups. In all, eight major Crusade expeditions occurred between 1096
and 1291. The bloody, violent and often ruthless conflicts propelled the status
of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the
Middle East.
By the end of the 11th century, Western Europe had emerged as a significant
power in its own right, though it still lagged behind other Mediterranean
civilizations, such as that of the Byzantine Empire (formerly the eastern half of
the Roman Empire) and the Islamic Empire of the Middle East and North
Africa.
However, Byzantium had lost substantial ground to the invading Seljuk Turks.
After years of chaos and civil war, the general Alexius Comnenus seized the
Byzantine throne in 1081 and fused control over the outstanding empire as
Emperor Alexius I.In 1095, Alexius sent envoys to Pope Urban II asking for
mercenary troops from the West to help confront the Turkish threat. Though
relations between Christians in the East and West had long been awkward,
Alexius’s request came at a time when the situation was improving. In
November 1095, at the Council of Clermont in southern France, the Pope
called on Western Christians to take up arms to help the Byzantines and
retake the Holy Land from Muslim control. This marked the foundation of the
Crusades.
The Crusades End
In 1291, one of the only remaining Crusader cities, Acre, fell to the Muslim
Mamluks. Many historians believe this defeat marked the end of the Crusader
States and the Crusades themselves. Though the Church organized minor
Crusades with limited goals after 1291 largely military campaigns designed at
pushing Muslims from dominated territory, or conquering pagan regions
support for such efforts diminished in the 16th century, with the rise of the
Reformation and the corresponding decline of papal authority.
Effects of the Crusades cause
While the Crusades ultimately resulted in defeat for Europeans and a Muslim
victory, many claim that they successfully prolonged the reach of Christianity
and Western civilization. The Roman Catholic Church experienced an
increase in wealth, and the power of the Pope was raised after the Crusades
ended. Trade and transportation also enhanced throughout Europe as a result
of the Crusades. The wars created a persistent demand for supplies and
transportation, which resulted in ship-building and the manufacturing of
various supplies. After the Crusades, there was a heightened awareness in
travel and learning throughout Europe, which some historians believe may
have paved the way for the Renaissance.

Among followers of Islam, however, the Crusaders were regarded as immoral,

bloody and savage. The ruthless and widespread massacre of Muslims, Jews
and other non-Christians caused bitterness that continued for many years.
Even today, some Muslims sarcastically refer to the West’s involvement in the
Middle East as a “crusade. “There’s no question that the years of bloody
conflict brought by the Crusades had an impact on Middle East and Western
European nations for many years, and still influence political and cultural
views and opinions held today. Crusades, military expeditions, beginning in
the late 11th century, that were organized by western European Christians in
response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. The purpose was to
check the spread of Islam, to evoke control of the Holy Land in the eastern
Mediterranean, to conquer pagan areas, and to recapture formerly Christian
territories; they were seen by many of their participants as a means of
redemption and punishment for sins. Between 1095, when the First Crusade
was launched, and 1291, when the Latin Christians were finally expelled from
their kingdom in Syria, there were numerous expeditions to the Holy Land, to
Spain, and even to the Baltic; the Crusades continued for several centuries
after 1291. Crusading declined rapidly during the 16th century with the advent
of the Protestant Reformation and the decline of papal authority.

Approximately two-thirds of the ancient Christian world had been conquered

by Muslims by the end of the 11th century, including the important regions of
Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia. The Crusades, attempting to check this
advance, initially enjoyed success, founding a Christian state in Palestine and
Syria, but the continued growth of Islamic states ultimately reversed those
gains. By the 14th century the Ottoman Turks had established themselves in
the Balkans and would penetrate deeper into Europe despite repeated efforts
to repulse them. The Crusades constitute a controversial chapter in the
history of Christianity, and their excesses have been the subject of centuries
of historiography. The Crusades also played an integral role in the expansion
of medieval Europe.

The Crusades were also a development of popular religious life and feeling in
Europe, particularly in western Europe. The social effect of religious belief at
the time was complex, religion was moved by tales of signs and wonders, and
it attributed natural disasters to supernatural in
tervention. At the same time, laypersons were not indifferent to reform
movements, and on occasion they agitated against clergy whom they
regarded as unworthy. A peace movement also developed, especially in
France, under the leadership of certain bishops but with considerable popular
support. Religious leaders proclaimed the Peace of God and the Truce of
God, designed to halt or at least limit warfare and assaults during certain days
of the week and times of the year and to protect the lives of clergy, travellers,
women, and cattle and others unable to defend themselves against
brigandage. It is particularly interesting to note that the Council of Clermont, at
which Urban II called for the First Crusade (1095), renewed and generalized
the Peace of God.

It may seem paradoxical that a council both promulgated peace and officially
sanctioned war, but the peace movement was designed to protect those in
distress, and a strong element of the Crusade was the idea of giving aid to
fellow Christians in the East. Tied to this idea was the notion that war to
defend Christendom was not only a justifiable undertaking but a holy work and
therefore pleasing to God. Closely associated with this Western concept of
holy war was another popular religious practice, pilgrimage to a holy shrine.
Eleventh-century Europe abounded in local shrines housing relics of saints,
but three great centres of pilgrimage stood out above the others: Rome, with
the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul; Santiago de Compostela, in north-
western Spain; and Jerusalem, with the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus Christ’s
entombment. Pilgrimage, which had always been considered an act of
devotion, had also come to be regarded as a more formal expiation for
serious sin, even occasionally prescribed as an atonement for the sinner.

Yet another element in the popular religious consciousness of the 11th

century, one associated with both Crusade and pilgrimage, was the belief that
the end of the world was imminent (see also eschatology and millennialism).
Some scholars have discovered evidence of apocalyptic expectations around
the years 1000 and 1033 (the millennium of the birth and Passion of Jesus,
respectively), and others have emphasized the continuance of the idea
throughout the 11th century and beyond. Moreover, in certain late 11th-
century portrayals of the end of all things, the “last emperor,” now popularly
identified with the “king of the Franks,” the final successor of Charlemagne,
was to lead the faithful to Jerusalem to await the Second Coming of Christ.
Jerusalem, as the earthly symbol of the heavenly city, figured prominently in
Western Christian consciousness, and, as the number of pilgrimages to
Jerusalem increased in the 11th century, it turn out to be clear that any
interruption of access to the city would have serious impacts.
The turmoil of these years disrupted normal political life and made the
pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult and often impossible. Stories of dangers and
molestation reached the West and remained in the popular mind even after
conditions improved. Furthermore, informed authorities began to realize that
the power of the Muslim world now seriously menaced the West as well as the
East. It was this realization that led to the Crusades. Alexius’s appeal came at
a time when relations between the Eastern and Western branches of the
Christian world were improving. Difficulties between the two in the middle
years of the century had resulted in a de facto, though not formally
proclaimed, schism in 1054, and ecclesiastical disagreements had been
accentuated by Norman occupation of formerly Byzantine areas in southern
Italy. A campaign led by the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard against the
Greek mainland further embittered the Byzantines, and it was only after
Robert’s death in 1085 that conditions for a renewal of normal relations
between East and West were reasonably favourable. Envoys of Emperor
Alexius Comnenus thus arrived at the Council of Piacenza in 1095 at a
propitious moment, and it seems probable that Pope Urban II viewed military
aid as a means toward restoring ecclesiastical unity.

The Council of Clermont convoked by Urban on November 18, 1095, was

attended largely by bishops of southern France as well as a few
representatives from northern France and elsewhere. Much important
ecclesiastical business was transacted, which resulted in a series of canons,
among them one that renewed the Peace of God and another that granted a
plenary indulgence (the remission of all penance for sin) to those who
undertook to aid Christians in the East. Then in a great outdoor assembly the
pope, a Frenchman, addressed a large crowd. Pope Urban II presiding over
the Council of Clermont, 1095.
He apparently stressed the plight of Eastern Christians, the molestation of
pilgrims, and the desecration of the holy places. He urged those who were
guilty of disturbing the peace to turn their warlike energies toward a holy
cause and emphasized the need for penance along with the acceptance of
suffering and taught that no one should undertake this pilgrimage for any but
the most exalted of motives. The era of Clermont witnessed the concurrence
of three significant developments: first, there existed as never before a
popular religious fervour that was not without marked eschatological
tendencies in which the holy city of Jerusalem figured prominently; second,
war against the infidel had come to be regarded as a religious undertaking, a
work pleasing to God; and finally, western Europe now possessed the
ecclesiastical and secular institutional and organizational capacity to plan
such an enterprise and carry it through.

The results of the Crusades

The entire structure of European society changed during the 12th and 13th
centuries, and there was a time when this change was attributed largely to the
Crusades. Historians now, however, tend to view the Crusades as only one,
albeit significant, factor in Europe’s development. It is likely that the
disappearance of old families and the appearance of new ones can be traced
in part to the Crusades. It should, moreover, be remembered that, while some
Crusaders sold or mortgaged their property, usually to ecclesiastical
foundations, others bequeathed it to relatives. The loss of life was without
doubt considerable; many Crusaders, however, did return to their homes. The
sectors developed by burgeoning Italian cities in the Crusader states
permitted them to extend their trade with the Muslim world and led to the
launching of trade depots beyond the Crusade frontiers, some of which lasted
long after 1291.

The transportation they provided was significant in the development of

shipbuilding techniques. Italian banking facilities became indispensable to
popes and kings. Catalans and Provençals also profited, and, indirectly, so
did all of Europe. Moreover, returning Crusaders brought new tastes and
increased the demand for spices, Oriental textiles, and other exotic fare. But
such demands can also be attributed to changing lifestyles and commercial
growth in Europe itself.
The establishment of the Franciscan and Dominican friars in the East during
the 13th century made possible the promotion of missions within the Crusade
area and beyond. Papal bulls arranged special amenities to missionary
priests, and popes sent letters to Asian rulers lobbying approval for the friars
to carry on their work. Often the brethren accompanied or followed Italian
merchants, and, since the Mongols were generally tolerant of religious
propaganda, missions were established in Iran, the Asian interior, and even
China. But, since Islamic law rigidly prohibited propaganda and punished
apostasy with death, conversions from Islam were few. The Dominican
William of Tripoli had some success, presumably within the Crusaders’ area;
he and his colleague Riccoldo di Monte Croce both wrote perceptive treatises
on Islamic faith and law. Other missionaries usually failed, and many suffered
martyrdom. In the 14th century the Franciscans were finally permitted to
reside in Palestine as caretakers for the holy places but not as missionaries.

The Crusades, especially the Fourth, so embittered the Greeks that any real
reunion of the Eastern and Western churches was, as a result, out of the
question. Nonetheless, certain groups of Eastern Christians came to
recognize the authority of the pope, and they were usually permitted to retain
the use of their own liturgies. Although the majority of the missions that grew
out of the Crusades collapsed with the advance of the Ottoman Turks in the
Middle East in the mid-14th century, some of the contacts that the Western
church had made with its Eastern brethren remained. Unlike Sicily and Spain,
the Latin East did not, it seems, provide an avenue for the transmission of
Arabic science and philosophy to the West. But the Crusades did have a
marked impact on the development of Western historical literature. From the
beginning there was a proliferation of chronicles, eyewitness accounts, and
later more ambitious histories, in verse and in prose, in the vernacular as well
as in Latin.

There can be little doubt that the Crusades slowed the advance of Islamic
power, although how much was an open question. At the very least, they
bought Europe some much-needed time. Without centuries of Crusading
effort, it was difficult to see how western Europe could have escaped
conquest by Muslim armies, which had already captured the rest of the
Mediterranean world.
Crusade as metaphor
One of the most enduring though least-discussed results of the Crusades was
the development of the word crusade (which first appeared in its Latin form in
the late 12th or early 13th century) to denote any common endeavour in a
worthy cause. The transformation of the idea of the Crusades from religio-
military campaigns into modern metaphors for idealistic, zealous, and
demanding struggles to advance the good (“crusades for”) and to oppose
perceived evil (“crusades against”) occurred over several centuries and
represents the culmination of a movement that began in the late 11th century.
By the early 12th century, historiography was already contributing to the idea
of Crusade as armed pilgrimage or holy war, which Bernard of Clairvaux in
the mid-12th century and Pope Innocent III in the early 13th continued to
elaborate. Receptive to chivalric as well as Christian ideals, Crusade ideology
proved more durable than the stinging criticisms provoked by successive
military defeats, culminating in the loss of the Holy Land in 1291.

The intermittent continuation of the movement during the later Middle Ages
led to proposals for new Crusades. Some were grounded in strategic realities,
others in Utopian or prophetic aspirations, which emphasized certain moral or
political prerequisites as essential to regaining Jerusalem. European
intellectuals thus began to reinvent the Crusades. In the early 14th century,
Pierre Dubois devised a plan for the French king to seize control of
Christendom from the pope and lead a victorious Crusade. Christopher
Columbus imagined that a messianic Spanish ascendancy would reconquer
Constantinople, then Jerusalem. Viewed as a solution to the woes of Europe,
proposals for Crusades against the Ottoman Turks continued to be put
forward from the Reformation to the age of Louis XIV.

Continuing interest in the Crusades meant that they never disappeared from
public consciousness. During the Enlightenment, when medieval Crusading
was perceived as irrational fanaticism, and in the Romantic era, when the
Crusades were seen as an adornment of the faith and an embodiment of
chivalry, the Crusades never ceased to attract the attention of historians,
poets, novelists, composers, and encyclopaedists. Accordingly, the
emergence of the Crusade metaphor by the latter half of the 18th century
implies at least some knowledge of the historical Crusades. English
dictionaries were slow to register the change, however. Neither the Dictionary
of Samuel Johnson (1755) nor that of Noah Webster (1828, rev. 1845)
includes a metaphoric definition of crusade. Anticipating later lexicographers,
however, a future president of the United States was already using the
Crusade metaphor in 1786. Writing to jurist George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson
urged, “Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and
improve the law for educating the common people.” The source of Jefferson’s
positive use of the Crusade metaphor to which Americans have ever since
remained faithful remains uncertain. Although he had histories of the
Crusades by Louis Maimbourg (1682) and Voltaire (1756) in his well-stocked
library, Jefferson would not have been inspired by these works, because of
their undesirable attitude toward the Crusades.

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicholas de Caritat Condorcet’s progressivist

interpretation of the Crusades in his Esquisse d’un tableau historique des
progrès de l’esprit humain (1795; Sketch for a Historical Picture of the
Progress of the Human Mind) postdates Jefferson’s metaphor and cannot
have been the inspiration. Whatever the origin of Jefferson’s usage, the
Crusade metaphor had become so well established in American usage by
1861 that E.G., de Fontaine was able to arrange it ironically against his
enemies, the abolitionists, who, he scoffed, “invited all men to join in the holy
crusade” against suppression.

The titles of 20th-century English-language books demonstrate just how

popular Crusade metaphors would become, encompassing crusades against
tuberculosis, drink, crime, capital punishment, drug abuse, poverty, slavery,
and terrorism, along with crusades for justice, education, total freedom,
humanity, women’s rights, and the environment. The metaphor was used by
both sides in the Spanish Civil War and has also been applied to Billy
Graham’s campaign of evangelism. It also has been used to define various
U.S. government domestic and foreign policy ingenuities. But perhaps the
best-known use of the metaphor in the 20th century was by Dwight D.
Eisenhower, whose 1948 memoir of World War II, Crusade in Europe, applied
the term to the great struggle against the Nazis.

Metaphors permit language and thought; they also risk generalizing and
twisting historical truth and trivializing their subject through duplication.
Moreover, metaphors are culturally specific and often convey value verdicts.
While modern historians attempt to understand the Crusades by placing them
in the context of medieval religion, culture, and society, popular metaphoric
usage dehistoricizes the Crusades into ongoing, eternal, yet contemporary
conflicts of good versus evil against AIDS, drugs, poverty, terrorism, and so
on. American crusades have been exclusively metaphoric, and nearly always,
from Jefferson’s day to the present, they have carried positive implications.
For Arabs and Muslims, however, the Crusades have very negative
connotations of medieval Christian aggression and modern Western
imperialism and colonialism. In other words, the decisive power, significance,
and meaning of Crusade and its practicality as a metaphor depend, in the
end, on one’s cultural heritage and point of view.