BAH111 Medieval Church History - Vander Pol

MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY
AD 500-1500
BAH/MAH111
Mints International Seminary
Lectures by David Calhoun, Ph.D.

Edited by Allen Vander Pol, D.Min.
Used with permission from

Covenant Theological Seminary
St. Louis, MO U.S.A.
Mints received permission to distribute this material;

however, MINTS may not charge students
for this material except for the cost of producing copies.
MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

Medieval Church History 2 INTRODUCTION
MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY

AD 500-1500
PREFACE
COURSE INTRODUCTION
JUSTIFICATION
OBJECTIVES
REQUIREMENTS
BENEFITS
CLASS RECORD
LESSON ONE: EARLY MIDDLE AGES; MEDIEVAL MISSIONS
LESSON TWO: CHRISTIANIZATION OF GREAT BRITAIN; MEDIEVAL LEARNING; THE

EASTERN CHURCH
LESSON THREE: THE LATE MIDDLE AGES; MEDIEVAL MONASTICISM
LESSON FOUR: THE CRUSADES AND MISSIONS; THE WALDENSIANS
LESSON FIVE: SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY; THOMAS AQUINAS
LESSON SIX: THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM; CHURCH AND STATE
LESSON SEVEN: WYCLIFFE AND HUS; REFORM IN ITALY
LESSON EIGHT: MYSTICISM AND THE MODERN DEVOTION; THE WANING OF THE
MIDDLE AGES
COORDINATOR’S MANUAL

Ancient Church History 3 INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
MINTS offers this course with the permission of Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis,
MO. The eight lessons which follow all come from lectures nineteen through thirty-five of
Dr. David Calhoun on Ancient and Medieval Church History. Covenant Theological Seminary
has made them available to the public on its website. 1 Covenant has granted MINTS
permission to use these lectures for study centers outside North America provided MINTS
charges students no more than the cost of copying the materials. Though MINTS Study
Centers reserve the right to charge tuition to cover other expenses for their management,
MINTS and its study centers will not receive money for these materials except for the cost
of copying them.
To serve the format of a MINTS course, we have slightly edited Dr. Calhoun’s
lectures. We have shortened the length of most of the lectures in the following ways. First
we have removed most sections which give illustrations from North American life. We did
this to relate to our cross-cultural audience. Second, to shorten the lecture transcripts, we
have removed Dr. Calhoun’s usual way of introducing a lecture: he gives introductory
comments about a notable Christian’s prayer; then, he offers that prayer with his students
in class. Though this approach to opening a class lecture seems effective, we regarded it as
subordinate to the purpose of our course. Finally, sometimes we occasionally removed
sentences or paragraphs which we did not regard as essential to Dr. Calhoun’s line of
thought. Whenever we removed even a word from Dr. Calhoun’s lectures, we indicated this
with the customary ellipsis ( . . . ), three periods inside the text which indicate that we have
omitted something of the original wording.
Though all of the words which appear in this course come from Dr. Calhoun’s
lectures, we would like to add two clarifications. First, we indicate in square brackets
where a new page in Dr. Calhoun’s lecture begins. So, for example, we have inserted “[page
2]” between the last word of page 1 and the first word of page 2 in every lecture which we
have included. Since all of the lessons of this course include at least two Calhoun lectures,
students will find “[page 2]” at least twice in each lesson. This will help a student give
complete citation if a student wishes to quote Dr. Calhoun when he writes an essay.
Second, on rare occasions we have added editorial comments to assist students who
live outside North American to understand expressions which Dr. Calhoun uses.
Sometimes Dr. Calhoun himself adds clarifications when he quotes someone else.
Therefore, the reader should understand how to distinguish our clarifications from Dr.
Calhoun’s. His clarifications appear as comments inside square brackets. However, the
MINTS editor also inserts clarifying comments. The addition of “- Ed.” at the end of the
inserted comments indicates that Dr. Calhoun did not add this clarification. Rather, the
editor of the MINTS course added it.
1
Covenant Theological Seminary, Ancient and Medieval Church History 30 July 2014
<http://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/courses/ancient-medieval-church-history/>.

Ancient Church History 4 INTRODUCTION
We believe that we have not changed the meaning of Dr. Calhoun’s lectures.
However, we have made the changes which we mention here to enhance understanding for
our international students and to adapt Dr. Calhoun’s lectures to the MINTS format.
May the Lord use this course to bring glory to His name throughout the church of
Jesus Christ.

COURSE INTRODUCTION
JUSTIFICATION
Everyone who wishes to study theology well ought to study the history of the church. It
took time for the church to arrive at the methods of exegesis which it presently uses.
Furthermore, biblical doctrine, which Systematic Theology studies, has a history which
profoundly affects how we express doctrinal convictions today. We need to know the past
in order to understand the present church and our roles in it.
We also need to stress the special importance of studying the medieval church. Many
Protestants understand how the Protestant Reformation shaped the present church. But
few understand that the Reformation responded to the medieval church. For example, the
medieval church put into practice some assumptions about how the church and state
should interact. Protestant reformers responded to this when spoke about the relationship
between church and state. Knowing the medieval period of the church will help us
understand more fully why the Protestant reformers spoke on some issues and what they
meant in much of their teaching.
Therefore, a course on Medieval Church History will assist MINTS students in all of their
theological studies.
OBJECTIVES
1. Students will learn the major theological issues which the medieval church
discussed and the conclusions which the church reached.
2. Students will learn how many medieval Christians sought to express their
Christian faith and their place in the world.
3. Students will learn about the crusades and how they have affected the
presently relationship between Christians and Muslims.
4. Students will become familiar with significant church leaders of the medieval
church and the impact they had.
5. Students will learn the historical developments in the medieval church which
still shape Roman Catholicism today.
REQUIREMENTS
1. Attendance (15%)
Students will attend at least 15 hours of class.
2. Class Homework (20%)

Students must answer the homework questions. These questions pertain to
the transcripts of Dr. Calhoun’s lectures. When possible, students must use
complete sentences when they write their answers.

3. Reading (25%)
Students must read 300 pages for B.A. or 600 pages for M. A. studies. They
must read on the medieval church and related subjects and write a report of
the reading. The report must have a length of one page for every 100 pages
of reading. We recommend that students read books on the history of the
medieval church for at least half of their assignment. They may consider
related subjects for up to half of the assignment. The list below suggests
what students may read.
HISTORY
Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Medieval World: from the conversion of
Constantine to the First Crusade. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2010. This book focuses on history in general and includes parts of
church history. If includes history of China and India. This book helps
the student who needs to understand the historical context which
surrounds medieval church history. (669 pages)
Gonzalez, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought: Vol. II: From Augustine to

the Eve of the Reformation. Rev. Ed. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987.
This work summarizes the theology of medieval theologians. (314
pages)
Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity: Vol. I: The Early Church to the
Dawn of the Reformation. Rev. and Updated. New York:
HarperCollins, 2010. This book belongs to a much-admired two-
volume work on church History. Pages 263-446 cover medieval
church history. (184 pages)
Moffett, Samuel H. A History of Christianity in Asia. San Francisco, CA:

HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. Dr. Calhoun refers to this book very
favorably when he summarizes church history in Asia.
Shelley, Bruce. Church History in Plain English. 4th ed. Nashville: Thomas
Nelson, 2013. Written in non-scholarly English this book reports the
basic movements of church history. Pages 171-244 cover the
medieval church. (73 pages)
RELATED SUBJECTS
Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish Saved Civilization. New York: Bantam
Doubleday, 1995. This presents the amazing story concerning Irish
monasteries which preserved learning when much of Europe had
resorted to superstition. (234 pages)

Stark, Rodney. God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades. Paperback Ed.
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010. Stark reviews the reasons
for and events of the crusades. (248 pages)
4. Project (20%)
Content: 1) BA students must compile a list of the 15 most influential leaders
in the Medieval Church (based on how students evaluate these leaders). 2)
They must list the leaders in chronological order, at least according to the
century of the peak of each leader’s career; if a student cannot determine that
point in a leader’s life, he should list a leader according to the century of his
death. 3) For each leader, students must state the region where the leader
lived and the contribution each leader made to the theology or life of the
church.
MA students must compile a list of the 20 most influential leaders of the

Ancient church. They must give the same information which this course
assigns BA students to provide.
Students must write their content in paragraph-form.
Elements: The project of a BA student must include a title page, 8 pages of

content, and a correctly-written Bibliography of all sources which the
student used. The projects of MA students must include the same elements;
however their content must have the length of at least 15 pages.
Each entry in this chronological list may take the following form:
A line which lists: Century. Name. Region of the person’s ministry.

A paragraph which describes 1) the issue(s) in which the leader
became involved, 2) the position(s) which the leader took, and 3) the
effect of his life and ministry.
5. Final Exam (20%)

Students will take a final exam.
BENEFITS
1. Students will learn to see evidence of the Lord’s guidance in the History of
the Medieval Church.
2. Students will learn that they belong to a flow of church History over which
Jesus Christ reigns.
3. Students will learn about individuals who influenced the theology of the
church.
4. Students will gain both caution and confidence in their own theological work.

CLASS RECORD
Student’s Level Attendance Homework Reading Project Exam Final

Name of (15%) (20%) (25%) (20%) 20% Grade
Study (100%)

Medieval Church History 9 LESSON ONE
LESSON ONE:
EARLY MIDDLE AGES; MEDIEVAL MISSIONS
A. THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES2
. . . This lesson provides a wide angle picture. . . . The first 500 years of Christianity we
usually call the early church. The next 1,000 years are known as the Middle Ages. . . . I want
to focus more specifically on the first 500 of that 1,000-year period. Later I will lecture on
the third 500 years of Christianity, which will bring us to the end of this course. The fourth
500 years is the whole of the Reformation and modern church history, which brings us to
the present.
The expression “Middle Ages” became common during the time of the Renaissance to refer
to the period between the ancient world and the modern world. Of course, the people of the
Middle Ages were not aware that they were living in the Middle Ages. They thought they
were living in the modern world. As we look back on it, however, most people think of that
long period of time as the Middle Ages. There was the classical world, or the Christian
world, of Greece and Rome, and then there was the modern world that came out of the
Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. Between those two worlds there was the
world of the Middle Ages.
Sometimes people have called the period the “Dark Ages.” I do not think that is the best
term for it. . . . [W]hile there were times of comparative darkness, there were also great
times of light, progress, and learning. . . . If we want to use the expression “Dark Ages.” . . .
we might use it for the last century before the year 1,000. That might be the true period of
the Dark Ages, the tenth century. People began to worry about the idea that they were
coming to the year 1,000. They wondered what was going to happen. It seemed to them
there was something ominous about the year 1,000. That year came and went, however,
without much difference in the lives of people. . . .
I will come to the tenth century later in the course. For now I will begin covering the 500-
year period between the end of the early church and the real “Dark Ages.” In that period
there was a new map of Europe that emerged. It was no longer a map of the Roman Empire.
Europe was divided among many barbarian tribes—Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Saxons,
and many others. As we know, Rome finally fell. It took a long time, and it was a gradual fall.
Most people during the time that Rome was falling did not know that Rome was falling,
although they knew there were some serious problems. Throughout the fifth century, Rome
gradually collapsed. The great writing of Saint Augustine, The City of God, tried to put that
great, cataclysmic event in perspective for Christians. [page 2]
2
David Calhoun, “The Early Middle Ages,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis,
15 March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/
CH310_T_191.pdf>. The document which forms the first half of this lesson appears as Lesson 19 in Dr.
Calhoun’s course on Ancient and Medieval Church History.

While the Roman Empire no longer existed, modern Europe had not yet emerged either.
England, Italy, France, and Germany were not on the map yet. Europe was divided into
barbarian kingdoms. The barbarians were nomads. As they moved, they encroached on
someone else’s territory and in turn forced those people to move. Generally those people
were forced down into the Roman Empire. That was sometimes attractive to people,
because Rome had great buildings, schools, learning, and books. The barbarians coveted
those interesting things. They did not want to destroy Rome. They simply wanted to gather
for themselves some of the benefits that Rome had produced.
All of those movements were prompted by the movement of a great Asiatic tribe called the
Huns. They were a very warlike people. The Huns pressed into Europe and upset
everybody there, who then began to move and migrate around Europe. Most of the mass
migrations throughout Europe at the time were prompted by the Huns. The most famous of
the leaders of the barbarians was Attila the Hun. He was somebody who got things done,
but with a rather strong hand. Some time ago a book came out called The Leadership
Secrets of Attila the Hun. It is not a book I particularly recommend, at least not for pastors.
You would do better to get your leadership secrets from the Bible. Attila moved his people
into Europe and conquered vast areas of central Europe.
Within the larger areas controlled by various barbarian peoples, smaller units gradually
developed. This is described as the time of feudalism. Larger tribal areas were subdivided
into small areas, and even smaller areas, with a lord and his vassals. A great estate and the
land surrounding it would be occupied by servants loyal to a particular lord. The most
important figures of that system of feudalism were farmers and soldiers. Scholars were not
as important. The period of scholarship was hindered for a while. Although, as I will
describe later, scholarship still existed, . . . it was in the Celtic fringe, in the monasteries of
Ireland, and in other places, but it was not much in the central life of the people. It was a
period of farmers and soldiers. It was the period of King Arthur and his famous knights of
the round table. Knights went out to fight for their lord. They went to win honor and glory
for themselves, but also to protect themselves from the neighboring kingdom. Farmers
were needed to provide food. Soldiers were needed for protection. There was not much
time left for scholarship or learning. For some time, there would not arise any great names
such as Augustine, Jerome, or Chrysostom.
In all of this, after the fall of Rome, there was one unifying factor. There were then many
competing tribes and feudal units. The only thing that held society together was
Christianity. Christianity had spread beyond the cultural bounds of the Roman Empire into
barbarian Europe just in time so that when Rome fell, Christianity did not fall with it.
Christianity was already the religion of many of the barbarians who were invading the
Roman Empire. Kenneth Clark said in his book Civilization, “If you had asked the average
man of the time to what country he belonged, he would not have understood you. But he
would have known what bishopric [church district – Ed.] he belonged to.” The idea of
belonging to England or France or Germany would not have been a thought of someone of
that time. The unifying factor in all of the confusion of the Middle Ages was Christianity.

There were some great popes during the period, although not all of the popes of the period
were great. . . . If you have a pope with “the Great” after his name, you know there is
something significant about that pope. A pope did not call himself that, but either a
contemporary or, more often successors, noted the greatness of his achievement.
As we look at the second 500 years of the history of Christianity, we can begin to talk about
the Roman Catholic Church. Up until this point, I have resisted precisely identifying the first
500 year period with [page 3] the Roman Catholic Church. There were some factors during
that period that led to Roman Catholicism. Yet there were some things that could have led a
different way. By the time of the year 500, however, we can accurately speak of the Roman
Catholic Church.
The bishops in Rome by that time were popes in the modern sense of the word. They
believed they were successors of Peter. They believed that the Lord gave His authority to
Peter to plant the church. They believed that the keys of the kingdom were given to Peter
and that the pope represented Peter and speaks for, not only Peter, but also for God
Himself, in both what the pope says and does. Leo the Great was a great pope of the fifth
century. It was he who made the connection between the office of the pope and the
authority of Peter. In Leo we see a very strong statement of Roman Catholicism. Leo the
Great concentrated, elevated, and glorified the power of the Roman Catholic Church.
Gregory the Great was of the sixth century.
If Leo elevated the power of the Roman Catholic Church, Gregory was concerned to extend
the limits of the church. He was the great missionary pope. When a new pope takes office
he takes a new name. That name always signals something of what he hopes to do during
his pontificate. When later popes took the name Gregory, that usually meant that pope was
going to put an emphasis on missions and the extension of the church. That is because
Gregory the Great was the great missionary pope. He was one of the first examples since
the days of Paul of someone who had a carefully planned and calculated mission. He was a
missionary strategist. He sent Saint Augustine to England. That is not Saint Augustine of
Hippo, but rather Saint Augustine of Canterbury. Gregory promoted the spread of
Christianity in the continent of Europe.
Rome was a great center of Christianity during this second 500-year period. The other
great center of Christianity was Constantinople. It became known as the “second Rome.”
Constantinople became a great city when the emperor Constantine moved the capital to
that city in the fourth century. Eventually the Roman Empire was divided into an eastern
part and a western part, although both parts were ruled by an emperor in Constantinople.
There were other great centers of Christianity, but at that time no other cities could
compete with Rome in the West and Constantinople in the East.
The patriarch in Constantinople was the counterpart to the pope in Rome. I will describe in
a later lecture that the two parts of the church gradually pulled apart and finally broke in
1054. The division was partly over who would have more control, the pope or the
patriarch. There were other issues, too. During this 500-year period, even though there

were strains and stresses, the two parts of the church in the East and West were still
united.
In the East it was not so much the patriarchs who were great as some of the emperors. One
of the great emperors was Justinian. He lived in the sixth century. He was a great emperor
because he tried to reconquer some of the areas in the West that had been lost to the
barbarians. He succeeded in doing that, at least temporarily. He extended again the
boundaries of the Roman Empire. He was a great emperor because he was a man who set
forth laws. . . . He beautified and expanded the city of Constantinople. The greatest of the
buildings was the great Church of Holy Wisdom, Santa Sofia. For many years, until the
Muslim invasion and conquest, it was the greatest of the churches of the Eastern empire,
and perhaps the greatest Christian church of all. The church was dedicated in the year 537.
According to tradition, when Justinian walked into the church and saw the final product,
that great soaring church with its huge circular sanctuary, he supposedly said, “O Solomon,
I have outdone you.” He meant that the church was greater than the temple of Israel. [page
4]
This second 500 years that I have been talking about was also a time of the expansion of
Christianity. There was great expansion in Europe with Gregory’s mission. Gregory sent
Saint Augustine of Canterbury to the pagan English. Earlier than that, there was the
expansion of Christianity beyond the limits of the old Roman Empire into Ireland. Then
there was expansion from Ireland into Scotland through the mission of Saint Patrick. There
had been expansion from England to Ireland through Saint Columba.
Later, around the year 1,000, a very significant event in the history of the Christian church
was the expansion of the faith into Russia. The spread of Christianity occurred not in its
Western form but in its Eastern form into Russia. Even today, the Russian Orthodox Church
is by far the largest of the Orthodox churches in the world.
As we think of that second 500-year period, it is appropriate to say that two men affected
the course of that history more than anybody else. One was Charlemagne, and the other
was Mohammed. Charlemagne was the first great political leader in the West since the
collapse of Rome. Popes had been great, but they were not political leaders in the West. The
emperors were in the East in Constantinople. Charlemagne, in central Europe, was able to
put together a great kingdom. It was nominally a Christian kingdom, which meant that
Europe was almost completely Christianized eventually through the efforts of people like
Charlemagne and the missionaries whom I will describe later.
On Christmas day in 800, Charlemagne was crowned by the pope as “Holy Roman
Emperor.” That was the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted almost 1,000
years in one form or another. Somebody has said that the only problem with the name
“Holy Roman Empire” is that it was not holy, not Roman, and it was not an empire. It was
certainly not holy in the sense of consistent godly living. Many brutal and awful things took
place under the name of the Holy Roman Empire, and even under the name of Christianity.
It is also true that it was not really Roman. It was German. But it was an empire. It was not
as big as the Roman Empire, but it was certainly a significant kingdom that embraced part

of France, part of Germany, and part of northern Italy. Charlemagne’s court was a center of
learning and evangelism. It was there on the continent that Christianity not only survived
but was also able to spread to surrounding kingdoms, just as Christianity survived and
spread from the monasteries of distant Ireland.
While the northern part of the Western world was struggling to get over the fall of the
Roman Empire and to organize and preserve itself, a new anti-Christian force was arising in
the south. That force was Islam. It was the strongest and most determined enemy that
Christianity would have for the next 500 years, and the 500 years after that, and perhaps
even the 500 years after that. Mohammed died in 632. In the 100 years after the death of
Mohammed, Islam, as his religion was called, spread with great force and speed. It spread
all the way across North Africa, wiping out the Christian centers that were the strongest
concentration of Christians in the world except for the part of Asia that is modern-day
Turkey. In a few generations, those Christian centers were gone, except for the church in
Egypt. Islam also quickly wiped out and controlled the areas of Christianity’s birthplace, the
land of Palestine and the old Roman province of Asia, which is modern-day Europe.
Islam was finally defeated in Europe. If Islam had not been defeated in Europe, the second
500 years of Europe would have been the story of Islam and not the story of Christianity. In
732, Muslims were finally turned back when they were defeated at the Battle of Tours in
France. They already controlled Spain at the time, and they were driven back into Spain,
which remained Muslim, or Moorish, for several more centuries, almost to the time of the
Reformation. The Muslims were also defeated in the [page 5] East. They were not able to
conquer Constantinople and were defeated in 718. There had been almost 100 years of fast
and vigorous movement, and then there was a temporary setback. Constantinople
eventually did fall to the Turks and then to the Muslims. Islam then moved up into eastern
Europe. Muslims controlled areas from the borders of Spain, across North Africa, and up to
the Black Sea. Christians controlled areas from Scotland down through Italy and east, west,
and central Europe.
During this rapid survey of the second 500 years of Christianity, it is also important to
consider Asia and Africa. I do not want to leave out what happened in those two great
continents. Roman Asia was lost to Islam. Those were the Asian lands around the
Mediterranean, the lands of the old Roman Empire. There was already a strong church in
Persia at the time. It was a Nestorian church, which did not accept the Council of Chalcedon,
although as I said before, it may have been more of a matter of theological
misunderstanding. It was a church outside the bounds of the old Roman Empire that
centered in Persia. It was a church that was greatly persecuted, and it produced many
martyrs during its history. When the Muslims entered Persia, the modern countries of Iraq
and Iran, Islam began to dominate that area. But Christianity was not wiped out. It survived
in Persia. In the second 500 years, Christianity not only survived in Persia, but it also
spread vigorously all the way from Persia to China. By 635 Persian missionaries had
reached the capital of the T’ang dynasty in China, which they considered the end of the
world. We need to be aware that Christianity, and churches, were in China—and great
churches were built there—before the days of the modern missionary movement.

The other significant place in Asia . . . [where] Christianity existed in the first 500 years was
India. It was founded perhaps by Thomas. It also received the Alexandrian scholar and
missionary Pantaenus. The Mar Thoma Church in India, which is still there today, was able
to survive in the second 500 years as a tiny community in a vast non-Christian sea. It was
surrounded by Hindus, Buddhists, and eventually Muslims as well.
By the end of the second 500-year period, in the ninth and tenth centuries, Christianity
experienced some drastic setbacks in Asia. By the year 800 it looked as though Christianity
would spread throughout Asia, and that many people in Asia would become Christians even
as people in Europe were becoming Christians. Dr. John M. L. Young, a missionary to Japan,
wrote in his book By Foot to China that “by the year 800 there were more Christians east of
Damascus than west of that city.” That is a remarkable thought. The first time I read that I
thought it was preposterous. I wondered if it was true then why have we not heard of all
those Christians. I have found there are two answers to that question. First, most church
histories that we study are written by Westerners, and they take a Western orientation and
mainly ignore developments in Asia. There has been a provincialism in the writing of
church history that has described the flow of events in the movement of Christianity from
the Roman Empire up into Europe, then to England, then to Scotland, then to New England,
and that becomes the end of the story. Church history, however, is much broader than that,
and we need to have a global perspective on the history of the church. The best answer to a
narrow focus on church history is to read about Christianity in Asia. Some of the best
resources are Dr. Samuel Moffett’s books, A History of Christianity in Asia, volumes one and
two. The other reason we do not know much about Christianity in Asia is that it practically
disappeared during the second 500-year period. The church was growing, and then
suddenly it was gone. It was not like Europe where there was a continuity of Christianity
from the apostolic period down to the present. By the year 850, Dr. Moffett said, “The
church was wounded, perhaps fatally, and declining.”
Why did Christianity suffer such a great setback in Asia? Was it persecution? Was it
oppression? It is certain that Christians in Asia suffered more persecution, or suffered
persecution longer, than Christians in any other part of the world. Persecution can take its
toll. The Bible teaches us, however, that there is no force in the world that can destroy the
church. The church has survived through persecution in other [page 6] times and places.
Dr. Moffett believes that persecution alone cannot be the answer to why the church in Asia
disappeared. There were many complex factors involved. One idea is that the church in
some places became too closely identified with the state. Christianity in China became
identified with the T’ang dynasty, and when the T’ang dynasty fell, the church fell with it.
The church had not penetrated beyond the power and support of the T’ang dynasty as it
had penetrated beyond the power and support of the old Roman Empire in the West. Dr.
Moffett also suggests that the comment of a Persian Christian from the ninth century is
another factor to explain the turn of events in Asia. That ninth century Persian Christian
said, “The monks are no longer missionaries.” The church began to retreat into monastic
mode, into survival mode, and it was not reaching out as it had for so long.
There is also a history of Christianity in Africa in the second 500 years. I already explained
how Christianity was destroyed in North Africa, in the old Roman Africa. North Africa today

is solidly Muslim and fiercely anti-Christian. Until this second 500 years, many of the
prominent figures of early Christianity came from North Africa, like Augustine and
Tertullian. Today, however, there are very few Christians in North Africa. There may not be
any place in the world that is more fiercely anti-Christian than the Islamic countries of
North Africa. The only exception was Egypt. Egypt had a strong Christian church. Even
though Islam dominated Egypt, as it did the rest of North Africa, it did not completely
obliterate the Coptic Church. The Coptic Church is the Egyptian church that was there long
before Islam was there, and it continues today as a vigorous Christian community. In Nubia,
the land south of Egypt, which is modern-day Sudan, Christianity not only survived, but it
also grew vigorously during the second 500-year period. Unfortunately, during the third
500-year period, Christianity practically disappeared from Nubia, and it was not to return
until the modern missionary movement. During the second 500-year period, however,
Christianity continued to grow there. Then in Ethiopia, which is further south near the
present-day country of Ethiopia, was the most vital expression of African Christianity. It is
important to stress this because Ethiopian Christianity was there long before Islam. There
are some who say that Christianity is a Western importation into Africa. Those people need
to be reminded that before Islam reached Africa there was a vigorous, strong Christian
church in Ethiopia. That church continued during the second 500-year period, and also
during the third 500-year period, and down to the present. The church in Ethiopia
remained a vigorous expression of Christianity.
B. MEDIEVAL MISSIONS3
. . . Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette has referred to the nineteenth century as “the great
century of missions.” That was the title he used for three of his books in his famous seven-
volume history of the expansion of Christianity. It is certainly true that the nineteenth
century was the great century of missions. The medieval church was involved in missions
as well. In this lesson and the next I will present the activity of the medieval church in
missions. I will introduce people such as Ulfilas, Patrick, Saint Augustine of Canterbury,
Boniface, and a host of others. Some will be known to you but many will be unknown. They
faithfully took the Gospel into the world during that period of the Middle Ages.
. . . As we think of the spread of the Gospel to the limits of the Roman Empire and beyond
the bounds of the Roman Empire, we do not know most of the missionaries. Most of the
missionaries of that earlier period are unnamed and unknown. At least they are unknown
to us, although certainly not to God. They were men and women who went out with the
Gospel. As they went for various purposes—business, the military, or something else—they
faithfully took the Gospel with them. In that way, the Gospel went to the limits of the
Roman Empire and even beyond. John of Damascus spoke of “unarmed, poor, unlettered,
persecuted, tormented, done-to-death men [and women]” who were the missionaries. As
they went forth, God blessed their efforts. By the power of His Spirit others were brought
into the Christian faith. Because of the work of those people, when the barbarians began to
3
David Calhoun, “Medieval Missions,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/CH310
_T_ 201. pdf>. The document which forms the second half of this lesson appears as Lesson 20 in Dr. Calhoun’s
course on Ancient and Medieval Church History.

enter the Roman Empire, they had already heard of Christ. The missionaries had gone
beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, and so when the barbarians attacked Rome, if they
were not already Christians, they had at least been evangelized.
In the later period, from the fourth century through the Middle Ages, we know many of the
names of the great missionaries. For example, we know the name of Ulfilas. He was a
fourth-century missionary who was instrumental in the conversion of the Goths, one of the
barbarian groups north of the Danube [River. The second longest river in Europe which
flows from Germany to the Black Sea – Ed.] Ulfilas has a Gothic name, which means “little
wolf.” Yet his ancestry was not Gothic, it was Greek. Ulfilas’ grandparents had lived in
Cappadocia, in Asia, the land of the church fathers, the great Cappadocians. His
grandparents had been captured by the Goths in a raid that the Goths made into that
territory. The Goths took some slaves back with them to the north. Those grandparents
were Christian people, and their grandson Ulfilas, as he was called by the Goths, was
appointed bishop of all the Goths north of the Danube.
One of the great things he did was to translate the Bible into the Gothic language. It is the
oldest literary work in any German language. His work of translation is an interesting story,
because he translated all of the books of the Bible into Gothic except 1 Kings and 2 Kings.
He said the Goths did not need 1 [page 2] Kings and 2 Kings because they knew how to fight
already. He thought if they read those books it would encourage them more in their warlike
nature. So Ulfilas omitted those books from his translation.
While Ulfilas was a great missionary, unfortunately he was an Arian. He had learned
Arianism, and many people of the fourth century were Arians until orthodoxy prevailed in
the Roman Empire after the Council of Nicea in 325. As Ulfilas went back to his homeland,
north of the Danube, he took with him and preached there the Arian creed. He taught that
there is only one God, and that God has only one Son, who is the maker of all creation, and
there is no one else like Him, but He is not homoousios with the Father. That message
appealed to the Goths. One reason it appealed to them was that it was very simple. There is
one God and that God has a Son and that Son is next to God in importance and the Holy
Spirit is next to those two in importance. That was a very simple message that they could
understand. The Goths also liked the idea of Christ the Son as a kind of hero, a super-man,
like a military leader. Thus Arian Christology was the basic form of Christianity that was
preached to the Goths. Arianism spread from the Goths throughout the Germanic tribes and
down into the Roman world. The result was that 200 years after the Council of Nicea the
old Roman Empire was theologically divided. There was Catholic territory, in the east, west,
and north, but in other areas, such as in Italy and North Africa, Arianism was prevalent. . . .
The fact that Arianism did not finally prevail everywhere was due largely to the conversion
of another barbarian group called the Franks. The Franks were converted directly to
orthodox Christianity. The story of the conversion of the Franks, which took place around
500, has to do with a queen named Clotilde . . . . Clotilde was an orthodox Christian. She
married the king of the Franks, Clovis, and she began right away to try to convert him to
Christianity. It was not easy, but she eventually prevailed. Clovis became a Christian in 496,
and when he became a Christian all the Franks became Christians. In those days, when the

king made a choice about a religious allegiance, the people were forced to join him,
whether they wanted to or not. The idea of individual conversion was not as prevalent as
that of group conversion. So the king, Clovis, and the people of the Franks, were converted
in 496.
There is a story about the baptism of the Franks. They were a warlike people. All of the
barbarian tribes were warlike. It was what they were good at. At the baptism of the Franks,
a mass baptism of the Frankish army and people, as the soldiers were being baptized, they
held up their right hands. It was not a salute to the Lord, but rather it was so that their right
hands would not be baptized as the water fell on them. They wanted to continue to fight. So
even though they were baptized, they tried to remain not totally baptized so that their right
hands could continue to do what they did best, which was fight. In the providence of God,
even that worked out for good. The Franks helped to convert the Arian tribes to orthodoxy.
It was somewhat by persuasion, but mainly by the sword. So the Arians gradually
disappeared, and western Europe became entirely orthodox in its theology.
The missionary movement during the second 500 years of Christianity had four centers.
One center was Rome. Rome was primarily sending missionaries to the north. The most
important of those missions was that sent by Gregory the Great to England. The missionary
was Saint Augustine of Canterbury. By the time Saint Augustine arrived in England, there
was already an important missionary-sending area, which was Ireland. That is surprising
because Ireland was considered to be on the fringe of the European world. Patrick went
from England to Ireland. Then missionaries such as Saint Columba and Columbanus went
from Ireland to Scotland to England and then down to the continent of Europe. So Rome
was a center of missionary activity. Ireland and England were centers. Persia, in the East,
became a center as [page 3] Persian monk missionaries traveled the old Silk Road all the
way to China. They established the Nestorian church in China in the seventh century. The
fourth great center of missionary activity in the medieval period was Constantinople, with
missionaries going north to the Slavs and north and east into Ukraine and Russia. So there
were four distinct centers of missionary impetus. There were other minor centers, but the
four significant centers of missionary activity were Rome, England and Ireland, Persia, and
Constantinople. The entirety of the next lesson will cover the Christianization of Great
Britain.
I want to focus now on providing some detail about the Persian, Nestorian missionary
efforts to China in the seventh century. . . . I will focus on it . . . because it is something we
should not ignore. Missionary expansion was not only to the north. It also went to the Far
East, to the nomads of central Asia, and then all the way to China. The Old Silk Road went
all the way from the Roman world to China. It was one of the several routes that merchants
took in order to travel to China to get silk to bring back to the West. People were constantly
on the move on that Old Silk Road, including missionaries. The road provided a route for
the missionaries to China, just as the old Roman roads had provided routes for Paul and the
other early missionaries to travel throughout the Roman Empire.
The Persian missionary Alopen reached Chang-an, the capital of China, in 635. Chang-an
was the largest city in the world at that time. It was one of the most prosperous and

advanced cultures. So as the missionaries went to China they were not going to a backward
place. They were going to a cosmopolitan world capital. It was a place much more advanced
in arts and sciences than the European capitals of that time. When Alopen arrived in Chang-
an in 635 it was the time of the T’ang dynasty, which is one of the most famous of the ruling
dynasties of China.
The first Christian church was built in Chang-an in 638. So only three years after the first
missionary arrived, there was already a Christian church in the largest city in the world, the
capitol of one of the most advanced cultures in the world. Despite persecution from
Buddhists, Christianity grew. It seemed that China would become a great center for
Christianity, as Constantinople and Rome had become. The Nestorian church almost totally
disappeared, however, in the ninth century. After such a promising beginning, with high
hopes that Christianity would have a strong Eastern base, the church in China virtually
disappeared.
Scholars have debated the reasons for the disappearance of the church in China. Some have
pointed to persecution. Certainly there was persecution, particularly after Buddhism was
declared the state religion in 698. Others have thought that it was theological compromise.
There was some syncretism in the Nestorian church. Overall, however, it seems that the
church maintained its orthodoxy. In the interests of contextualizing Christianity to Chinese
culture, the church may have at times passed over the line from contextualization to
syncretism. That is easy to do. Another factor that is brought up is the foreign orientation of
the church. It was originally a Syrian church that had found its base in China and had then
been transported to China. As people have looked at the records of that Nestorian church in
China, however, those writings were not in Syriac—the official language of the Persian
church, as Latin was of the Roman church—but rather the writings were in Chinese. It
seems that the Nestorian church was not totally viewed as a foreign church.
Many people have agreed that the real problem for the church in China was that it had
allied itself very closely with the T’ang dynasty. That Chinese noble imperial house that
ruled China for some time had become the promoter and protector of Christianity. There
were, however, other houses and other forces at work in China. Eventually those forces
brought about the fall of the T’ang dynasty in 907. It appears that Christianity fell with it.
Thus we may point to the main reason for the fall of the church in China, [page 4] that it
was viewed as an arm of that imperial house, something like a department of religion of
that house. When the T’ang dynasty fell, the church fell too. It is not the only time in church
history that we see that dependence upon the government for the survival of the church is
a very dangerous thing. It provides an uncertain foundation. A discouraged Nestorian monk
living in Baghdad in 987 said, “There is not a single Christian left in China.” He may have
been right, or he may have been wrong, but there was not a church left in China. When
missionaries returned to China centuries later, they knew nothing about the earlier
Christian church that had existed there.
About the time that Christianity was disappearing in China it was beginning to take new life
in the other end of Asia, in Russia, Ukraine, and among the Slavic peoples of Europe.
Missionaries were pressing from Constantinople up into the north among the Slavic people.

Constantinople was at the time the center of the Eastern part of the church, even though
the church was not officially divided between the Eastern and Western halves until 1054.
The differences were there long before 1054. We can begin to think of Eastern Orthodoxy
when we think of the church in Constantinople even in the tenth century. The missionaries
from Constantinople were restricted in their movement to the east and the south by Islam,
which was pressing in on the very borders of Constantinople at the time. Missionaries from
the Eastern part of the church were restricted in their movement west by Roman
Catholicism. Thus the natural direction for the movement of Christian missionaries from
Constantinople was to the north.
Two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, were sent by the emperor in 862 to preach in
Moravia, which is modern-day Austria. These two missionaries who moved to Austria
produced an alphabet and translated the Bible into Slavonic. They also translated liturgies,
or a service book, into Slavonic. This was quite different from the missionary strategy of
Rome. The missionaries of Rome took Latin with them and taught the people to read the
Latin Bible, and they conducted Mass in Latin. The Eastern missionaries, however, did not
usually use Greek, but rather they translated the Bible and the liturgy into the language of
the people to whom they were ministering.
One other missionary in the north is worth mentioning. His name was Ansgar. He was not
from Constantinople. He was from the Roman church. He was appointed bishop in
Hamburg in Germany. His ordination or appointment was actually focused on Denmark.
The Scandinavian area was not yet Christian. The church began to look for ways to reach
Scandinavia. Ansgar planted several churches in Denmark in the ninth century. When he
died in 865, however, those churches disappeared. Nothing came of his work. In my view
he is worth mentioning because sometimes we do not have great stories to tell. A
missionary can be faithful and do the work he is supposed to do and yet not have any great
results from it. That was the case of the first mission to Denmark. Stephen Neil said it well
in his book, A History of Christian Missions, “Ansgar pushed against a door that was not yet
ready to open.” Eventually that door would open, but it was not ready at that time. I believe
that in the providence of God it was important that this missionary bishop push against
that door even though it did not open at that time. We do not know how his pushing against
that door may have contributed to the eventual evangelization of the Scandinavian people.
If that door into Scandinavia was not yet ready to open, there was a very large door that
was opening as Ansgar was pushing against the door that would not open into Denmark.
The large door that was opening at that time was Russia and Ukraine. The history of
Christianity in Ukraine and Russia is traced back to a decision that Prince Vladimir in Kiev
made in 988. Once again it was an example of a prince making a decision and his decision
becoming that of the people. According to the legend, Prince Vladimir wanted to find a new
religion for his people. So he sent emissaries to check out Islam, Roman Catholicism, and
Greek Christianity centered in Constantinople. Of course, they all came back with various
reports. Vladimir turned down Islam. He considered Roman Catholicism. Yet he liked what
he [page 5] heard about Greek Orthodoxy. Partly this was because when the emissaries
from Kiev arrived in Constantinople and saw the Hagia Sofia they were overwhelmed by
the beauty of it, as well as by the liturgy. They came back to Vladimir and said when they

went to church they did not know whether they were still on earth or whether they had
gone to heaven. Vladimir thought that sounded like a good religion to have. Thus according
to that legend, he adopted Eastern Orthodoxy.
In reality, there is more to the story than that. There were missionaries going out from
Constantinople. They preached the Eastern version of the Gospel, which was much like the
Western versions, only with certain differences that I will describe later. The vast area of
Russia and Ukraine then converted to the Orthodox faith. One Orthodox writer said, “The
decision to embrace the Eastern form of Christianity determined the destiny of Russia. The
whole Russian mind and heart was shaped by this Eastern Christian mold.” The best way to
get a feel and picture of all of that is to read the novels by Dostoevsky. In them you will see
what Christianity in its Orthodox form has done to shape the Russian mind and soul.
I want to turn to describing some of the reasons that people were converting to Christianity
in the medieval period. Andrew Walls has said there was a “slow, painful, and far from
satisfactory spread of Christian allegiance.” You should not have the idea that people
became Christians and were mature, faithful Christians from the first day. You can tell by
the way that I have told some of these stories that things did not happen that way.
Some people became Christians because they were forced to become Christians. There
were Franks forcing Arians into Orthodoxy. There were kings and princes who made
decisions that were then required to be followed by all of the people. I read one story about
the conversion of the people in the Orkney Islands, which is part of modern Scotland, but
was originally part of Norway. Those Scandinavian countries did eventually become
Christian, although it was not through Ansgar’s ministry. King Olaf of Norway, who became
a Christian, wrote to Earl of Orkney, which was a vassal kingdom of Norway at that time.
Olaf said, “I want you and all your subjects to be baptized. If you refuse, I will have you
killed on the spot. And I swear that I will ravage every island with fire and steel.” That was
Olaf’s evangelistic message to the Orkneys. So Earl of Orkney and all of the people of
Orkney were baptized. They got the message. You can understand why that sort of
conversion of an entire nation would require much work in the future. It would be
necessary for those islanders to be converted again in a more serious and real way.
Some people were converted because of perceived advantages. Sometimes those

advantages were spiritual. The Gospel really does meet the inner needs of human beings.
People saw that and found relief from sin through conversion. Sometimes, however, they
perceived that there were physical, material advantages to conversion. When Christianity
was supported by the T’ang dynasty in China, it was important for people to take advantage
of the status that came with being Christian in that kingdom. That was also true in places in
Europe.
Sometimes people were also converted by what we now call a “power encounter.” One of
the real concerns that people had in the medieval period was which god they should be
allied with in order to take advantage of that god’s power. One wanted to be in connection
with the power of an earthly lord who had strength. In spiritual matters, the same idea
followed. People wanted to know which god was the strongest. Missionaries realized that

people were asking that question. The question was not so much “What is true?” or “What
does the Bible say?” The question was “Is this God of the Bible stronger than the gods we
have been worshiping?” “Is it better to be allied with Him than these other gods?” So the
Gospel was sometimes presented in the context of this power encounter. [page 6]
Saint Patrick did that in Ireland, the land of the Druids. Patrick was often talking about the
“strong name of the Trinity.” His message was that the trinitarian God had a name that was
stronger than the pagan gods of Ireland. Saint Boniface, who went from England to
Germany, found it difficult to found a Christian church in Germany until he cut down a large
oak tree that was dedicated to the worship of the god Thor. It was believed that if anyone
damaged that tree then terrible things would happen to that person. When Boniface found
he was not making much progress, he had the idea to take an axe and cut the tree down. It
was a sensational event that everyone watched while they expected him to be struck dead
immediately. Yet once he cut it down, nothing happened to him, so everyone became
Christian. They believed they had found a God stronger than the god Thor. I have
personally seen instances of power encounters in my travels and work in Haiti. People
there are concerned about the voodoo gods and whether the Christian God is superior in
power and might to the gods of voodoo.
With all of those reasons for conversion to Christianity, there were obviously people who
were not truly converted to real faith. The Bible says the message of the Gospel is the
power of God unto salvation. The message was going forth. Sometimes the message was
obscured, and sometimes it was not presented in the best way possible. Still there was the
message that God saves sinners through Christ as we receive the gift of salvation by faith.
Somehow that message was going forth. People heard it and were converted.
In all of that, God’s providence was at work. The Roman Empire was able to be used as a
wonderful instrument in God’s providence. In the early church a vast area of relative peace
and ease of travel allowed the Gospel to move quickly and easily from one end of the
empire to another. Even the barbarian raids, which one would not normally believe God
would use as missionary instruments, were part of God’s providence. The grandparents of
Ulfilas were captured and taken back to the land of the Goths so that little boy was raised
speaking the language of the people and knowing their culture. Patrick was captured by
Irish raiders and taken back to Ireland as a slave, and God used that to bring the Gospel to
Ireland. There was the Old Silk Road. People thought that it was there so that silk could go
to the West, but God used it to take the Gospel to the East. As Calvinists we can say that in
all of these circumstances God had His people and He used His acts of providence and the
faithfulness of His missionaries to take His message to those people. The Venerable Bede,
the monk who became the historian of the English church, ascribed the conversion of King
Edwin of Northumbria to predestination. There are some interesting stories surrounding
the conversion of Northumbria that I will tell in another lesson. The Venerable Bede was
making an important point in saying that in all of this God has His people.
Age number one in the history of Christianity is the period of Jewish Christianity. It was
centered in Jerusalem. Christians were Jewish people. They were struggling to know
whether to take the Gospel to the Gentiles or not. We know that history from the New

Testament. Finally they did, and we might say it was in the nick of time, because the Jewish
nation collapsed. If Christianity had been part of that, and part of that only, Christianity
would have collapsed with it as it collapsed in China with the fall of the T’ang dynasty.
By the time the Jewish nation collapsed and was destroyed by the Romans, Christianity had
moved across a cultural frontier and was transmitted to the Greco-Roman world. It made a
home in the Roman Empire, which was age number two of Christian history. That is what I
have been talking about for much of this course. Eventually the Roman Empire also
collapsed. Christianity did not collapse with it, because by the time it happened Christianity
had moved beyond the borders of that cultural, political entity of the Greco-Roman world,
into northern Europe, temporarily into China, and it was already in Persia. Christianity had
found new centers of influence in the formerly pagan countries of northern [page 7]
Europe. Such movements have happened a number of times in the flow of Christian history.
It is still happening today. We see the transmission of the Gospel from its more recent
centers of influence in Europe and North America into the southern hemisphere in Africa
and Latin America, and then Asia. It appears that those will become the next centers of the
Christian faith as the old centers either fall or Christianity is lost or weakened in those old
centers. Age number three of Christian history is the story of the faith in lands beyond the
old Roman Empire. The remaining lessons of this course will be concerned with this third
age of Christian history. . . .
LESSON ONE QUESTIONS
1. What time period do we call the Middle Ages?
2. Why does the author say that in the second 500 years of Christianity we can begin to
speak of the Roman Catholic Church?
3. The author says that two men had the greatest effect on the church during its
second 500 years. Who were they, and they did they do?
4. What reasons have some church historians given for the decline of Christianity in
Asia during the church’s second 500 years?
5. Where in Africa did the church become strong during the church’s second 500
years?
6. Summarize the missionary work of Ulfilas among the Goths. (List at least 3
important facts.)
7. Name the four major centers for Christian missions and the areas where their
missionaries worked.
8. Summarize the missionary work of Alopen in China. (List at least 3 important facts.)

9. How did missionaries from Rome differ from missionaries from Constantinople in
their use of languages?
10. The author says that some people became Christians as the result of “power
encounters.” Explain what the author means by “power encounters” and an
example.

Medieval Church History 24 LESSON TWO
LESSON TWO:
CHRISTIANIZATION OF GREAT BRITAIN;
MEDIEVAL LEARNING; THE EASTERN CHURCH
A. THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF GREAT BRITAIN4
During the Roman period in British history, the first through fourth centuries, the people of
Britain were Christianized. Many converted, or at least heard the Gospel, from the soldiers
who came from Rome, from merchants, from women, and from others who traveled up
from the Roman Empire to settle in Britain. When the Romans withdrew and the empire
began to shrink and fall apart in the fourth century, it left a vacuum in Britain. That vacuum
was filled by Germanic invaders, called Anglo-Saxons. The Angles and the Saxons began to
pour in. Those people were not Christians. They were still pagans. The old Romanized,
Christianized Britons were then pushed into the corners of the country, mainly into Wales,
Cornwall, and into the north.
The Christian Britons understandably, but sadly, did not try to evangelize the invaders.
That would have been a difficult thing, to preach the Gospel to someone who was taking
your land and pushing you away from the place where you had always lived. . . . The
Venerable Bede, the church historian of England, whom I will talk more about later, said,
“God in His goodness did not utterly abandon the people whom He had chosen.” That is,
God did not abandon the Christian Britons despite their lack of missionary response to the
pagan invaders. Neither did God forget the invaders. They too were converted in due time.
Before those Anglo-Saxon tribes were converted, something else happened in the history of
those islands, which was quite amazing. We would not have been able to predict what
happened. On the fringe of Europe was a large island called Ireland. It was to Ireland that
the Gospel went, and it was from Ireland that the Gospel returned to England and even to
the continent.
Ireland . . . was outside the bounds of the Roman Empire and never was part of it, just as the
northern part of Scotland was never part of the Roman Empire. Ireland was a land in which
people worshiped spirits and practiced human sacrifices. It was just about as dismal a place
as one could find in Europe at that time. Amazingly, over about a century, it was
transformed from that dark and dismal place to an island of saints and scholars.
In God’s providence the person used to bring that about was a man named Patrick. Even
though Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, and Irish people love and respect Patrick, he
was not actually Irish. Rather he was English, or maybe even Scottish. He was born on the
coast closest to Ireland, not far from the beautiful lake district of England. He grew up as
4
David Calhoun, “The Christianization of Great Britain,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological
Seminary, St. Louis, 15 March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/
uploads/sites/ 5/2014/12/CH310_T_211.pdf>. The document which forms the beginning section of this
lesson appears as Lesson 21 in Dr. Calhoun’s course on Ancient and Medieval Church History.

part of a Christian family. It was one of the Romanized, Christianized British families. It is
interesting to think that, when Patrick was growing up in that part of England, a Romanized
African was living in North Africa—Augustine.
Young Patrick was captured by Irish raiders who periodically came over from Ireland in
order to steal what they could and take slaves if they could. Patrick was taken to Ireland as
a slave. He was sold in a slave market in Ireland, and he became a shepherd for his master.
He spent six years as a shepherd. In his writings he said that he was not very religious until
that point, when he started praying. He said he prayed 100 prayers per day and as many at
night. He realized that he was in a desperate situation and [page 2] needed some help.
Eventually he got some help, and he was able to escape from Ireland. He went to the
continent via a ship that was taking some Irish hounds there. Eventually, a couple of years
later, he made it [back] home to Britain. So this still young British man who had been a
slave in Ireland and then escaped was hoping that he would never see Ireland again.
One night, however, he had a dream or a vision. In the dream, an Irish man came to Patrick
and gave him a number of letters. He took the letters in the dream and began to read them.
One of the letters began by saying, “The voice of the Irish—we beg you to come and walk
with us once more.” He had that dream, and in it he had an invitation to return to Ireland
where he had been a slave. He said he was stabbed in the heart by that letter and was
unable to read further. He tried to forget it, but he could not put it out of his mind.
Eventually he realized that it was more than a dream, and he thought it was also more than
the voice of the Irish. It was the voice of the Lord calling him to go back to Ireland. He heard
the voice of Christ saying, “He who gave His life for you, He it is who speaks within you.” So
with that rather dramatic call, Patrick went back to Ireland and spent the rest of his life
there.
He preached a new message to the Irish, which was the good news of the God of the “three
faces.” That was the phrase He used, which was a reference to the Trinity. It is not the best
way to refer to the Trinity. You can sometimes find pictures of one person with three faces,
although that is not the proper way to depict the Trinity. It was Patrick’s way of setting
forth for very simple people an understanding of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. . . . He not
only told them about a new God, but also a new message. It was not a message from an
angry Celtic god who demanded human sacrifices, but rather a message from a loving God
who Himself provided the sacrifice that was needed for the sins of people. Soon that
message began to be heard all throughout Ireland. Patrick said, “We preached it
everywhere. We preached it all the way across Ireland until we reached the ocean and we
could not go any farther.” So in Patrick’s time, through this man and his followers, the
Gospel came to Ireland and converted many of the Irish to Christianity.
We do not have a large amount of writing from Saint Patrick. He tells us that he was a
relatively uneducated person. He felt that very keenly. He wished that he had a better
education when he became a great preacher and leader of the church in Ireland. He did the
best that he could, however, so he wrote slowly and with difficulty. We do have his
testimony, his autobiography, and also the lovely work, Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, as it is
sometimes called. Sometimes Saint Patrick’s Breastplate is called A Morning Prayer, and

sometimes it is called The Cry of the Deer. The reason it is called Saint Patrick’s Breastplate
is that it was the protection that Patrick put upon himself. His faith was his breastplate, and
he was able to protect himself from the pagan gods and goddesses of Ireland by calling on
what he called “the strong name of the Trinity.”
The most familiar part of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate begins [by] saying, “Christ be with me,
Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me.” That
is the famous prayer from Saint Patrick. A modern adaptation of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate
is sung in the hymn Be Thou my Vision, which begins, “Be Thou my vision, O, Lord of my
heart. Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by
night, waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.” Someone was inspired to take those
words by Patrick and write that hymn. The third verse of that modern adaptation is a very
interesting one, which is “Be Thou my battle shield, sword for the fight. Be Thou my dignity,
Thou my delight, Thou my soul’s shelter, Thou my high tower. Raise me to heavenward, O,
Power of my Power.” In an earlier lesson I mentioned the “power encounter” concept,
which is certainly in the writings of Patrick and in the preaching of the Gospel in Ireland.
[page 3] Patrick began many monasteries. The church in Ireland was organized around
monasteries and abbots. It was not like the church in the rest of Europe, with a structure of
the pope, archbishops, and bishops. Rather it had monasteries and abbots. When the Irish
wrote to the pope in Rome, they wrote to him as the “abbot” in Rome. The monasteries in
Ireland often had a high tower, like the one mentioned in the hymn, which was necessary in
order to keep a lookout for enemies and danger. When Patrick prays, “Be Thou my high
tower,” it is the equivalent of Luther referring to God as a “mighty fortress.”
One of the enduring treasures of the coming of Christianity to Ireland was the
establishment in the monasteries of centers for the copying of books, particularly the
Scripture. As the Dark Ages began to descend on the continent, the light of learning was
kept alive in Ireland by the monks who sat in their small places each day and copied
Scripture. They produced some of the most beautiful and significant copies of the
Scriptures. For instance, the Book of Kells, which is now kept at Trinity College in Dublin, is
one of the great treasures of Christianity. The Irish scribes did not merely copy the Bible,
but they also did it beautifully with amazing depictions and illuminations of the letters.
The monks evangelized Ireland. They copied the Bible and other books, thereby preserving
learning for future generations, as Thomas Cahill reminds us in his book, How the Irish
Saved Civilization. That is an impressive title, but it is probably not an exaggeration because
the Irish did play that role. They were the saviors of European civilization during the Dark
Ages. Not only did they accomplish all of that, but soon the Irish also sent missionaries out
to England, to Scotland, and then even to the continent [Europe]. They preached the Gospel
to places where the Gospel had once been known but had been lost for one reason or
another. The Irish church became almost at once a missionary church. It was very much
like the Korean church in our day. When the Korean church came into existence, it was not
long before they began sending out missionaries. The Irish church did the same thing.
The closest land to Ireland was Scotland. Scotland was not evangelized except partially by
Ninian, who came in the fifth and sixth century. He was a British missionary trained in

Rome, who worked among the people of southern Scotland, called the Picts. That was the
Roman name for those people; it meant “painted people,” because they fought with their
faces painted in grotesque colors. Ninian was able to come up from Rome through England
and into the southern part of Scotland to preach the Gospel to those people. The Gospel also
came more permanently to a larger part of Scotland through the preaching of Columba.
Columba was one of the Irish monks. His first name was something like Fox, but Columba
means “dove.” We do not know exactly what happened to him in Ireland, but he got into
some sort of trouble. It may have been with the church, or with the state, or with both. He
was exiled, or he may have exiled himself, from Ireland because of the trouble that he
caused. Apparently, leaving Ireland was considered the worst possible fate for an Irishman.
Columba was not happy about leaving, but he did not go far. He only went a few miles from
Ireland to a Scottish island called Iona. He settled there and built a monastery, very much
like a monastery in Ireland. Sometime later he wrote, “Thou to the meek and lowly, Thy
secrets dost unfold. O God, Thou doest all things, all things both new and old. I walk secure
and blest in every clime or coast, in the name of God the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost.”
So this man learned to be happy wherever he was, because he could be there in the blessing
and with the presence of God.
It was from Iona that Columba and his disciples began to evangelize further into Scotland.
The Picts were indigenous to Scotland. Interestingly it was the Irish colonists who had
come over to Scotland to settle who were called the Scots. So the Scottish people came from
Ireland and settled in the land of the Picts. Later Scots would go back to Ireland, and we
know those people as Scotch-Irish. There was a [page 4] certain interchange between those
two lands, which were very close together and were both part of the Celtic fringe of Europe.
That tiny island of Iona became the source of missionaries who were going throughout the
length and breadth of Scotland. They also went into northern England where they
evangelized the Angles of Northumbria. A missionary from Iona who went to England was
named Aidan. Out of his work came the famous monastery at Lindisfarne, or the “Holy Isle,”
which still exists today as a monastery, although it is more intended for tourists now. You
can only get there when the tide is low, because when the tide is high the road is covered. It
is an island part of the day and not an island the rest of the time. Lindisfarne was another
place where the Bible was copied with beautiful script. It was the beginning of the
“Lindisfarne Gospels,” as they are called, which are now in the British Library.
Even from Iona, missionaries went further afield, out to the continent of Europe. Columban,
or Columbanus, as he was called in Latin, was not the same man as Columba, but he was
also from Iona, and he went into the heart of the European continent. He was part of the
first wave of Irish, Scottish, and English monks who left their homelands to cross the
channel over the following two centuries to do missionary work on the continent. . . . We
know where those Irish and Ionan missionaries went because almost everywhere they
went we can find an “Iona Cross.” It is a cross that has a circle, which stands for eternity.
The cross is God’s eternal plan for the salvation of those who believe. That type of cross is
found everywhere in Ireland and Scotland. And these crosses were built throughout the
continent, and they can be found in Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. They are often found
with pictures carved into the cross itself, illustrating the passion of our Lord.

By this time the Gospel had come from the Romans to the Britons. The Anglo-Saxons then
came into Britain and pushed the Britons into the extremities of Wales and the west. The
Anglo-Saxons were pagans. In the meantime, a Christian Briton went to Ireland, and Ireland
was evangelized. Then Ireland sent missionaries to Scotland, England, and down to the
continent. But the pagan Anglo-Saxon invaders created a new pagan civilization. So, a land
that had been Christian again became pagan. Just because a country is evangelized, that
does not mean it is going to stay Christian. It can revert to paganism or become something
else. Because of the power of the Anglo-Saxons in the heart of England, Christianity was
pushed to the west and north, and their access to the continent of Europe was blocked. All
of that was eventually changed. The mission that evangelized the Anglo-Saxons did not
come from the British Christians. Neither did it come primarily from Iona. It came from
Rome. It came from a mission that Pope Gregory the Great established by sending Saint
Augustine from Rome to England.
Before I talk about that, however, I should mention a man named Bede. We usually call him
the Venerable Bede. This man is important because so much of what I am going to describe
I would not know, and nobody would know, if it were not for the Venerable Bede. He was
the father of English history and particularly of English church history. The Venerable Bede
lived in the north of England. He spent his life there writing commentaries and writing
history. He was kind of like a medieval Luke. He chronicled the progress of the kingdom of
God as it spread throughout the British islands. His books cover the years between 597,
when Augustine arrived in England, until 731. Bede died just a few years after that. He was
thus able to write about the seventh and early eighth centuries. The themes of his books of
history are providence and predestination. God has prepared the way, and God has His
people that He has chosen. Yet mixed with a formal Augustinianism was a very Roman
Catholic sounding emphasis on the merit of good works. It was not unusual in that period
to give lip service to Augustine. Then when it came to describing salvation, however, they
tended to sound much more Pelagian, or at least semi-Pelagian, in their theological
convictions. [page 5] Bede tells the story of people like Augustine. Do not confuse
Augustine of Hippo and Augustine of Canterbury. They are two different people. Augustine
of Canterbury was sent to England by Gregory the Great, one of the famous missionary
popes of the middle ages. Augustine was a prior [a monk with much authority] in a
monastery in Rome. Gregory believed that somebody needed to go to England to evangelize
the Angles and the Saxons, so he chose Augustine to do that. Augustine set off with some of
his companions. It is interesting to read the correspondence between Augustine as he
traveled to England and Gregory, because Augustine was not sure he wanted to go. It may
not sound bad to us to go to England. Back in those days, however, it was a rough place. For
a person from a civilized city like Rome to think of spending the rest of his life among
savage people whose language he did not know, and without knowing how he would be
treated when he got there, it was fearful. He had the trepidation that many missionaries
have when they realize they are on the way and they will have to learn the language and
live in a new culture. Gregory, back in Rome, sustained Augustine with a steady stream of
correspondence. Gregory did not give Augustine a chance to back out. He encouraged
Augustine and told him how important his work was. Gregory should be given much credit
for getting Augustine all the way to Canterbury.

Canterbury was one of the old centers of religious life in southeastern England. Augustine
reached Canterbury in 597. I cannot describe everything that happened next, although
some wonderful things did happen. Some kings were converted through the preaching of
Augustine and the others who went with him. King Ethelbert of Kent was converted in 601.
Later, after Augustine died, King Edwin of Northumbria was converted in 627. Those two
very strong kings who represented both the south and the north of the Anglo-Saxon
England were converted to become Christians.
When the Anglo-Saxons became Christians it meant that there were two Christian
churches, or two Catholic churches, in England. They were not on very good terms with
each other. The older British had their church established by the Romans, and it was made
up of the British people who were mostly in the north and in Wales and Cornwall. And
there was the newer Anglo-Saxon church, established by Saint Augustine and Gregory the
Great. There was much tension between those two churches. The issues that divided them
might not seem important to us, such as the date of Easter and how monks should cut their
hair. Those issues did separate the two churches and cause much distrust. Many people,
both in England and in Rome, wanted to see the two churches brought together. It took a
long time because there was so much suspicion. Finally at the famous Synod of Whitby in
663, the Roman and the old English Christians were at last reconciled, and all England came
under the control of Rome.
Before ending this story I want to emphasize one more important point, which is the
English mission to the continent. There was the Irish mission, which included Patrick going
to Ireland, Columba going to Iona, missionaries from Iona going to Lindisfarne, and finally
Ionan and Irish missionaries going into the heart of central Europe, planting their Iona
Crosses and preaching the Gospel. Then from Rome came Saint Augustine to Canterbury,
and from Canterbury the Gospel was preached to the Anglo-Saxons in the heart of England.
Among those Anglo-Saxons who were converted, some of them became missionaries to the
Netherlands and to Germany.
It is interesting how quickly those new churches became missionary churches. The British
missions to the continent included famous missionaries such as Wilfrid and Willibrord,
who went to the Frisians in what is now modern Belgium and Holland. The most famous
missionary was Wynfrith, or his more usual name, Boniface, who went to Germany. He is
called the “apostle to Germany.” He was the man who cut down the oak tree in order to
demonstrate to the Germans that the God of Christianity was stronger and mightier than
Thor, the god that the Germans worshiped. [page 6] It is interesting and even a little
amusing to think of those missionaries and great leaders of the church. Patrick is identified
with Ireland, but he was actually English. Columba is a great hero of Scotland, but he was
actually Irish. Boniface the apostle of Germany was actually English. That is probably the
way it should be. God sends His people into the entire world. National boundaries are not
very important in the sight of God when planting and establishing His church.

B. ETERNAL WISDOM, LEARNING AND THEOLOGY5
. . . We are now in the second 500 years of the history of Christianity. . . . In this lesson I will
focus on learning and theology. You will soon be aware when I start talking about people
like Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, and John Scotus Eriugena that this was not the great day
of theology. It was not the period of Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, and Chrysostom. The
people I will refer to from this period do have some significance and importance. We ought
to understand what was going on in the realm of learning and theology during a period that
most people refer to as the Dark Ages. I will focus first on learning and then on theology.
Those two things flow together in the Middle Ages. There is little difference between them.
All learning had to do with theology, and all theology had to do with learning at that time.
For the sake of convenience, I am dividing the lesson into two points: first, great scholars,
and second, great theologians.
The first of the great scholars of the period was a man who lived in the late fifth and early
sixth century. His name was Boethius. Boethius came from a prominent Roman family. By
his time, however, Rome had fallen, so Rome was no longer the city that it had been earlier.
It was ruled by Ostrogothic kings, barbarian kings. Those kings often made use of people
from the prominent families from Rome in their service. Boethius was one of the leaders of
the state under Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king. Something happened to Boethius through
which he fell out of favor with that king, and he was put in prison. We are not sure of all of
the circumstances.
Boethius wrote a number of books, both before and while he was in prison. His fame rests
upon those books. One book in particular that he wrote in prison, called The Consolation of
Philosophy, was very famous. . . . What Boethius set out to do in The Consolation of
Philosophy was to examine the misfortune that had befallen him. He attempted to come to
some resolution of that misfortune. He had been a good man, doing what was right. Then
much trouble came upon him. Interestingly, he tried to do that without reference to God or
the afterlife. People have puzzled over that, because Boethius was a professed Christian.
Yet he wrote about trouble purely from the standpoint of philosophy. He tried to find some
consolation in philosophy itself.
. . . He tried by simple rational processes and philosophical reflection to come up with some
view by which he could be consoled by philosophy. I am not sure why he did not bring up
God. Perhaps he believed that if he wrote it that way he could help others who were not
Christians. Perhaps it was some other reason.
. . .[H]e wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, and through it Boethius became a major
channel through which Aristotle and the Greek philosophers entered the Middle Ages.
There were only a few of those channels. Without Boethius and a few others, Aristotle and
the other Greek philosophers may have been lost to the Christian West. That was very
5
David Calhoun, “Eternal Learning, Wisdom and Theology,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological
Seminary, St. Louis, 15 March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/
uploads/sites/ 5/2014/12/CH310_T_221.pdf>. The document which forms the middle section of this lesson
appears as Lesson 22 in Dr. Calhoun’s course on Ancient and Medieval Church History.

important because the preservation and rediscovery of Aristotle was essential for the
development of the scholastic method, which is so important for the study of medieval
theology.
Another famous man of the time was Isidore of Seville [a city in southern Spain – ed.]. He
wrote a book of sentences and origins, or etymologies. The Book of Sentences became the
theological text of the middle ages until the twelfth century. After the Book of Sentences
from Isidore came the Book of Sentences from Peter Lombard, and later there was Thomas
Aquinas. Isidore began the progression of medieval theology. The Book of Sentences was his
way of trying to arrange a systematic theology. He collected ideas from Augustine and the
church fathers and put them together in a systematic way. Origins, or Etymologies, is
Isidore’s expansion of his writing to include secular learning. So the importance of Isidore
is that in one man we find theology and almost everything else. He wrote both a systematic
theology and an encyclopedia. Origins, or Etymologies, became the principle source of
knowledge of antiquity for the Middle Ages. These two people, Boethius from Rome and
Isidore from Seville, were important educators and scholars who tried to capture
something of the knowledge of the past, put it into written form, and preserve it for the
future.
The third scholar was quite different. His name was Dionysius the Areopagite. Today he is
known as Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. That might seem to be a rather odd name for a
scholar. He used the name Dionysius the Areopagite in his writings. Dionysius was the man
that Paul met in Athens, which was recorded in Acts 17. By tradition, Dionysius was the
first bishop of Athens. When the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite were first found,
many people thought that they were from Paul’s disciple who was traditionally viewed as
the first pastor or bishop of the church in Athens. It was much later that scholars applied
textual criticism to this writing and discovered that it could not be written by a first
century Greek. It was probably written by someone from Syria in the fifth or sixth century.
Thus Dionysius the Areopagite became known as Dionysius the Pseudo, or false,
Areopagite.
In Dionysius we find a blend of Christian and Neo-Platonic ideas. Much of the school of Neo-
Platonism came into some expressions of Christianity through the writings of Dionysius.
His significance can be summarized in two ways. First, Dionysius stressed that the negative
is the way to do theology. That means that what should be stressed is what we do not
know. Theologians often talk about what we do know about God, but Dionysius spent his
time talking about what we do not know about God. That is called apophatic, or negative,
theology. The Orthodox mainstream maintained the abiding mystery of God. Augustine and
the others never said that we could completely understand God or that we could exhaust
the meaning of God. Yet the Orthodox mainstream believed that there was true revelation,
true knowledge. They affirmed that what we do know, we know truly, but that we do not
know God exhaustively. Dionysius stressed more the side of our lack of knowledge, our
ignorance, or the darkness. His negative theology became an important factor in both the
East and the West. Charles Williams said in his book, The Descent of the Dove, “The theology
of Dionysius soars into the great darkness, lit [page 3] faintly by the very phrases it rejects.”
That is a good attempt by Williams to summarize what it feels like to read Dionysius.

Dionysius continually rejected the knowledge he was talking about. Yet there is some faint
lighting of his understanding through the very phrases that he rejected.
The importance of Dionysius was twofold. For mystics everywhere, East and West, they
drew heavily from Dionysius. Mysticism would move away from a rational approach to
theology to a personal encounter, to an experience. Second, the influence of Dionysius is
particularly prevalent in the Eastern churches. The Eastern Orthodox Church and other
eastern churches drew upon Dionysius for mystery. I will describe later that the Eastern
Orthodox Church always thinks that the Western church is too rational. We are always
trying to explain things, understand things, and write books of systematic theology. It does
not matter whether we are Catholic or Protestant in the West; we all have the same fault
according to the Eastern church. The Eastern church, which drew heavily upon Dionysius,
went in the direction of mystery and the negative way to God.
The other thing that Dionysius is remembered for is his celestial and ecclesiastical
hierarchy. It is probably the case that the word “hierarchy” was invented by Dionysius. He
wrote two works. One was called Celestial Hierarchy, in which he arranged the angels into
three orders of three each. It is a long book about the angels in which there are nine orders
of angels. In Celestial Hierarchy Dionysius set forth a Neo-Platonic theory of the great chain
of being. The Neo-Platonic philosophy had a way of looking at God at the top and man at the
bottom with many intermediary beings between them. The angels form that ladder in
Dionysian theology, a hierarchy of spiritual creatures, rank upon rank, up and down the
ladder of heaven. John Calvin occasionally referred to Dionysius in his Institutes. Calvin did
not think much of him. He said, “If you read that man’s book, you would think a man fallen
from heaven recounted, not what he learned, but what he had seen with his own eyes.”
Calvin said that because Dionysius was so precise and exact in the way he created the
orders of the angels. It is rather curious that someone who so much emphasized a negative
view of God could know so much about angels. . . .
The importance of Celestial Hierarchy was its link to a second book called Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy. In the Middle Ages it was often believed that things on earth reflected things in
heaven. Thus, if in heaven there was a well-graded celestial hierarchy, so also on earth it
must follow that there is the same well-graded ecclesiastical hierarchy with the pope,
cardinals, arch-bishops, bishops, and so on down the line. In the eyes of the bishops and
other church authorities it did not harm his cause at all that he wrote the Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy after the Celestial Hierarchy and that he traced parallels between the celestial
hierarchy and the church on earth. The church was already moving in that direction, and
Dionysius’ work was another step in the direction of the evolution of the Roman Catholic
Church with its great stress on hierarchy.
On the topic of learning I have talked about Boethius and Isidore. They were people
through whom the learning of the past was passed on through the Middle Ages. I talked
about Dionysius, an Eastern theologian who was very influential. His name will come up
again later in the course. There were two great movements of education or learning in this
second 500-year period of Christianity. One was Celtic Christianity. In a previous lesson I
talked about Saint Patrick and the influence of the Celtic church in Ireland and from

Ireland. Celtic Christianity had its heyday in the sixth and seventh centuries. Their impact
was celebrated in a book by Thomas Cahill called How the Irish Saved Civilization, in which
their story is told in a lively and interesting style.
The other movement of education occurred on the continent. We call it the Carolingian
Renaissance. It had its heyday in the eighth and ninth centuries. Carolingian refers to the
reign of Charlemagne, the [page 4] Holy Roman Emperor who was crowned in 800.
Charlemagne, although he was not a great scholar himself—he was anything but a great
scholar—had a great appreciation for learning. He tried to create in his capital at Aachen a
center for study and learning. He was able to do that. Thus in the Carolingian Renaissance,
as Steven Osmet said, “We have a true shaft of light within the relative cultural darkness of
the early Middle Ages.” One of the great teachers in Aachen was an Englishman. People
from England and Ireland were going to the continent at this time in order to teach and
take the Gospel to areas it had never gone before, or to areas in which it had been lost.
Alcuin of York was a scholar and a Benedictine monk, and he was the head of
Charlemagne’s palace school in Aachen. It was an important school, and Alcuin was an
important teacher because people from all over the continent came to that school, and they
were taught by Alcuin and the other scholars there. Then they went out and attended
monastic and cathedral schools in other parts of Europe. It was not yet the time of the
universities. But these monastic and cathedral schools were the beginnings of that trend.
After the palace schools the universities would be the next step, such as Oxford and Milan.
Scholars in those schools, and particularly at Aachen, studied and wrote. We do not have
evidence of great books coming out of those schools. Rather they were copying the books of
antiquity. The scribes of Alcuin created beautiful and effective texts that were copies of the
Bible and other books.
Moving on from the general topic of learning to the specific area of theology, I want to
mention John Scotus Eriugena. He was a theologian of the ninth century. The name John
Scotus meant “John the Scot,” which meant that he was an Irishman, because that is where
the word was originally used. He was a scholar who, like Alcuin before him, taught in
Carolingian Europe. He was an impressive scholar with extensive knowledge of Greek. He
attempted something like Dionysius, reconciling Neo-Platonic philosophy with Christian
ideas. John Scotus Eriugena always seemed to walk on the edge of things. He walked very
closely to pantheism at times, and even perhaps falling into pantheism at times.
The important debate of the ninth century was over the Lord’s Supper. There were two
theologians involved in the debates. Both were associated with the celebrated monastery of
Corbie, one of the most important Carolingian theological schools. One was Radbertus, and
the other was Ratramnus. They debated the nature of the body of Christ in the Lord’s
Supper. They discussed what it meant for Christ to say, “This is My body.” They dealt with
the question of what we actually partake of in the Lord’s Supper. That also became a huge
debate later during the Reformation period. The first important debate on this topic,
however, was during the ninth century between Radbertus and Ratramnus.
Radbertus held to the view called “real presence.” It is the view that became the Catholic
doctrine. In this view the wine and the bread are actually transformed into the body and

blood of Christ. It is no longer wine and bread but now body and blood. Ratramnus
answered Radbertus by holding the view of the “spiritual presence” of Christ in the Lord’s
Supper. This view sounds much more like the Reformed doctrine of Zwingli or Calvin than
anything else we can identify it with. . . . The church considered the two views, and the
debate took place before there was a view set in stone by the church. But in 1050 the
church decided to take a stand, and the view of Radbertus became known as the Catholic
view. Transubstantiation was then fixed as dogma by the Lateran Council in 1215. That
meant that after 1215, if you were a Catholic, it was necessary for you to believe that you
partake of the actual body and blood of Christ.
The other debate of the period is that over predestination. That debate took place during
the time of Gottschalk and Florus of Lyon. Before describing this debate, I want to go back
and talk about what has happened to the doctrine of grace and the doctrine of
predestination since the time of Augustine. During the Pelagian controversy, Augustine
rescued the biblical view of grace from obscurity or neglect and brought it back to center
stage in his theology. What happened to grace since Augustine? The Council of [page 5]
Orange met in 529, and it taught a view that some people think is totally true to Augustine
and some people think is almost true to Augustine. I identify the Council of Orange as
almost Augustinian, but not quite. Irresistible grace was omitted, although the Council of
Orange did make a strong statement that prevenient grace is necessary. Reprobation was
not included in the statement of the Council of Orange. Some people argue that reprobation
is not included in Augustine either. In my view, the implications of Augustine’s teaching
clearly lead in that direction. Thus after Augustine there was a struggle in the church with
the semi-Pelagians, including John Cassian. Even during Augustine’s own lifetime he was
fighting that battle. He had fought the battle with the Pelagians. Then he fought the battle
with the semi-Pelagians. Then the Council of Orange came along and seemed to place the
church on the side of Augustine in this debate. The semi-Pelagianism expressed in the
writings of John Cassian, however, such as his book The Conferences, began to influence and
undermine Augustinianism and the decree of the Council of Orange. By the time of the
Middle Ages, pure Augustinianism was very scarce. It was practically unknown in the
church.
One man who did stand for what Augustine also stood for was Gottschalk. He was the son
of a Saxon count. It was not the last time that a Saxon would raise his voice in defense of
this doctrine. Gottschalk was a Benedictine monk. He was a scholar who had studied under
Ratramnus at Corbie. Mainly he read Augustine. By actually reading Augustine, not
commentaries on Augustine, nor the semi-Pelagian writings, Gottschalk absorbed the
teaching of Saint Augustine. Augustine was very much honored in the church, but he was
not much followed by the church on this point of his theology.
Gottschalk wrote sentences such as “God, prior to the creation of the world, unchangeably
predestined all His elect to eternal life, and all of the rejected who shall be condemned to
eternal death for their evil deeds on judgment day according to His justice and as they
deserve.” That is a well thought-through sentence, and it is balanced in different ways. It is
certainly double predestination. The words “double predestination” came first from Isidore

of Seville, who apparently also held that view. The teaching of double predestination is also
a logical inference from Augustine’s teaching. It is certainly present in Gottschalk.
Florus of Lyon was a defender of Gottschalk. He wrote, “None of the elect can perish
because of the hardness and impenitence of their hearts. None of the reprobate can be
saved.” Both Gottschalk and Florus spoke of the fact that the chosen are predestined to
heaven and others to hell, though not to sin. Neither of them wanted to say that God
predestines people to sin. People sin because of their own choice. Double predestination,
irresistible grace, and limited atonement are present in the writings of these two
theologians in the Middle Ages.
That kind of teaching fell like a bombshell on Carolingian Europe. The church would not
countenance it. Gottschalk was defrocked. Not only that, but he was also severely beaten.
And not only that, but he was also put in prison, where he spent the last 20 years of his life.
He continued to study and write, but his writings were little known and little used until the
time of the Reformation when people began to rediscover this medieval Augustinian.
Interestingly, he was also a religious poet of high order. It is not common for a theologian
such as Gottschalk to be able to write sensitive and beautiful poetry.
The difference between Augustinianism and Pelagianism and the various views in between
came up often in church history. One might characterize it this way: Pelagius would say to a
new convert, “Congratulations, you did it. You have cleaned up your life, became a
Christian, and you did what was required of you.” Augustine, upon meeting a new convert,
would say, “Thank God, you have been saved by grace.” Others, especially during the Middle
Ages, would try to say something in between the two, such as, “Thank God, and
congratulations. This was a cooperative effort. Praise is due all around.” That [page 6] is
what I call “percentage theology.” The Middle Ages struggled with how to set the
percentage. They wondered how much God does and how much we are required to do.
Almost everybody during that period viewed salvation as some sort of cooperative effort
between God and us. With very few exceptions, such as Gottschalk and Florus of Lyon, and
later Thomas Bradwardine, John Wycliffe, and John Hus, that was the predominant view. In
my view, Pelagianism is the persistent heresy in church history. There may be more than
one persistent heresy in church history, but Pelagianism is certainly one of them.
In the flow of church history, one can think of grace on one side and works on the other. As
you go through church history, the doctrines of grace in the Old Testament were lost. That
led to the works of Pharisaism. Then the doctrines of grace were recovered in the New
Testament. Then they fell away into Pelagianism. Grace was brought back from its biblical
foundations in Augustine. Then in the period of the Middle Ages, semi-Pelagianism brought
back works. During the time of the Reformation the church was brought back to the grace
side. Then rationalism during the post-Reformation period went in the opposite direction.
The revivals of Whitfield and Edwards during the first Great Awakening emphasized grace
again. Then liberalism took the church back to the side of works. As you think of church
history you can consider how that one doctrine has been treated in different epochs. . . .

C. Eastern Orthodoxy6
. . . For the first 1,000 years of Christianity, the time period we have covered so far, when I
have referred to the “Eastern church” I have meant the Eastern part of the one Catholic
Church. There was not a separate Eastern church until 1054. In this lesson I will describe
the events that led up to the separation of Eastern Orthodoxy from the Roman Catholic
Church and some of the repercussions that resulted from that separation. In the second
1,000 years of Christianity the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church
have been separate churches. . . .
As we think of the pulling apart of the two parts of the Christian church, there was much
cultural influence at work there. The Western church became increasingly Latin speaking.
The Eastern church remained Greek speaking. Thus even in the use of two different
languages there were certain differences that came to bear upon the two parts of the
Christian church. . . .
The Eastern church has always taken great pride in the fact that it is the church of the
seven councils. The Western church also believed and held to the teachings of the seven
ecumenical councils. . . . The first council was Nicea in 325. The second was Constantinople
in 381. One word that could be used to summarize those first two councils is “Trinity.” They
both dealt with the doctrine of the Trinity. The next four councils—Ephesus, Chalcedon,
Constantinople II, and Constantinople III—all dealt with the doctrine of Christ. The seventh
ecumenical council was Nicea II, which met in 787, and it dealt with the controversy over
icons. . . .Those councils were important for both Eastern and Western church history.
All of those councils met in the East, as you can observe from the cities, which are all in
modern Turkey. The Eastern church views those councils as particularly the possession
and treasure of the Eastern church. . . .The Eastern church has been very concerned not to
change anything that the church fathers wrote in the documents of those seven ecumenical
councils. John of Damascus, the greatest of the Eastern Orthodox theologians, wrote, “We
do not change the everlasting boundaries which our fathers have set, but we keep the
traditions just as we have received them.” One thing will become plain as you study Eastern
Orthodoxy—it does not change. Its theology does not change. At least, that is what the
Eastern Orthodox Church claims. . . .[page 2]
. . . This lesson will focus on some of the important names of the East. The East and the
West shared the early church fathers. Until about the time of Augustine, both churches
claimed the same tradition. Augustine was a transition, however, because Augustine
belongs to the West. The Eastern church does not like Augustine much because they think
he is the beginning of the problem. Before Augustine there is a shared tradition.
Increasingly the West developed its own theological history and tradition with Ambrose,
Jerome, and preeminently Augustine, and also Gregory the Great, down to Thomas Aquinas,
6
David Calhoun, “Eastern Orthodoxy,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wpcontent/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/CH310_
T_231.pdf>. This third section of this lesson appears as Lesson 23 in Dr. Calhoun’s course on Ancient and
Medieval Church History.

and into the Reformation. The East had its own particular favorites, who were people that
the West honored as well. They were people like Athanasius, the Great Cappadocians, and
John Chrysostom. Those were Eastern theologians. . . .
There are some other names that we should know. John Climacus lived in the sixth and
seventh centuries. He was an abbot of a monastery in Sinai. He wrote a book called Ladder
of Divine Ascent. It was one of the most widely read manuals of monastic and mystical
spirituality during the time. He set the book up as 30 steps up a ladder, representing the 30
years of the life of Christ. It included prayer, meditation, and various other things to do and
think and pray as the soul slowly, and with difficulty, ascends the ladder. The ladder
became a strong image in both the Eastern church and in Western mysticism.
There was also Maximus the Confesssor, who lived mainly in the seventh century. He is
considered by many to be the father of Eastern Orthodoxy. He was an opponent of
Monothelitism [the view that Jesus had two natures but only one will – Ed.], which I have
not talked about before. Monothelitism is an offshoot of Monophysitism [the view that the
incarnate Christ had one nature, not two – Ed.]. Maximus held to Chalcedonianism against
any attempts to merge the two natures of Christ. He lived a very ascetical lifestyle, as many
Eastern theologians practiced. He was also very liturgical in his writings. As you read the
Eastern theologians, liturgy tends to merge with theology, more so than it does in the West.
. . . The Eastern mind tends to think that the West is too concerned to separate worship
from theology and therefore is tempted to become too rational in its understanding of
theology. The East rejects that sort of rationality, particularly as it was developed in the
medieval scholastic theology of the Western Catholic Church.
The most important of all the Eastern theologians may have been John of Damascus. He
was from a distinguished family. By the time John came along, living in Syria, that part of
the Eastern church was under the control of the Muslims. So John grew up in a
distinguished Christian family, but in a Muslim-controlled country. He served in the
government of that country. He was remarkably bold enough to write a treatise against
Islam, which he called the “Ishmaelite heresy.” He did not lose his life because of it. John of
Damascus retired from public office and entered the great monastery of Mar Saba, and
there he began to write on theology. His most important book is The Orthodox Faith.
Someone has called it Orthodoxy’s “first, most important, and by some accounts, only
systematic theology.” Thus John of Damascus is important to remember for the Eastern
church as a parallel to Thomas Aquinas, who was the great theologian of the medieval
Western church. John of Damascus also wrote hymns such as “The Day of Resurrection”
and “Come, ye Faithful.”
Much of the theology of the Eastern church was shared with the West. Yet there were
certain distinctive emphases in Eastern Orthodox thinking, which are still present in that
church. Those emphases can be summarized under four points. In the West there were
emphases on sin, grace, justification, salvation, [page 3] and the sacraments. The list of
emphases in the East, however, is apophaticism, tradition, theosis, and icons. Simply in
making those two lists it is evident that theology was moving in different directions or at
least assuming different emphases. . . .

Apophaticism is simply the use of negative theology, such as Dionysius the Pseudo-
Areopagite created. It involves an emphasis on the mystery of God, focusing on the shadow
and the darkness rather than the light. There is light, but there is also darkness. There is
revelation, but there is also mystery. The Eastern church emphasizes, celebrates, loves, and
adores the mystery. In the Western church, we are always trying to solve the problems and
understand the mystery. The Eastern church does not really try to solve the problems. It
does not try to understand much. It simply adores and worships, rather than trying to
explain.
The second emphasis in the Eastern church is on tradition. These are relative emphases.
The Western church preserves mystery, too—to some extent. Yet the Eastern church revels
in it. Both the Eastern church and the Western church have a role for tradition. The
Western church has so much emphasis on tradition that the Reformers thought it had gone
too far. . . . In the Eastern church, however, there has never been a check on the high
estimate and value placed upon tradition. In the Eastern church, tradition is the witness of
the Spirit. The Spirit spoke the Word and spoke in the ecumenical creeds, and the Spirit
speaks now in the tradition. . . . Despite the confusions in those councils, and the presence
of people who were not worthy people, still the miracle of Pentecost repeated and the Holy
Spirit spoke and the words of the council became the words of the Spirit. With a view such
as that, the ecumenical councils rose almost to the level of Scripture. In some expressions of
Eastern Orthodox thought, the councils are the same as Scripture, which is why they do not
abide any tampering with the words of the councils, for it would be the same as tampering
with Scripture. The Eastern Orthodox mind does not think that God promised to speak only
in the Scripture. Therefore they do not have the idea of Scripture alone, but rather the idea
of Scripture plus the continuing revelation of God through the church. They do not believe
in revelation through the pope, since they do not have a pope. The revelation is through the
community, the whole church, which grows into the truth as God speaks continually in the
church.
A third emphasis in Eastern Orthodoxy is theosis. That Greek word means “deification” and
refers to the deification of humanity. That word sums up salvation in the Eastern church. . . .
The idea is that we are changed so that we become like God. The Eastern theologians will
say it even more strongly. Athanasius said, “God became man, that man might become God.”
. . . In the Eastern expression of theosis, it is stated so strongly that most Western thinkers
pull back from that because it sounds like a heresy of some sort. A closer examination of the
Eastern idea of theosis will reveal that the Eastern theology does not go over the line,
although it uses language that Western Christians would want to avoid. In the West there
are people who pick up on that idea—these are the mystics, but they were [page 4]
constantly being accused of pantheism. To the Western mind, that kind of language and
expression goes too far because it tends to blur the distinction between God and His
creation.
Finally, the fourth great point of emphasis in Eastern theology is the use of icons. They are
the images of Christ and of the saints. When a Protestant goes into an Eastern Orthodox
Church, the first things he notices are the icons. They are all over the place. The central icon

is usually an image or a painting of Christ. The Western church was more likely to picture
Christ suffering on the cross, so the crucifix became important in Western piety. The
Eastern church often depicts Christ as the king and the judge. He is not usually pictured as
the suffering Christ but as the almighty Christ. Icons were important in the Eastern church,
but their use caused a controversy. There was a century of controversy over whether it was
appropriate or not. It was known as the “iconoclastic controversy.” The iconoclasts were
people who wanted to destroy the images. The church struggled for a long time over that,
and I will later describe that controversy in more detail.
First I want to describe the conflict between the East and the West, the “primacy conflict.”
The iconoclastic controversy took place in the East, but the primacy conflict was between
the two parts of the undivided church. Some of the ecumenical councils, particularly
Constantinople and Chalcedon, had not only dealt with issues of Trinity and Christology,
but also some other points as well. One point was the relative significance of the two major
churches or cities that existed, Rome and Constantinople. Those ecumenical councils
acknowledged Constantinople as “the new Rome, with equal privileges and equal rank in
ecclesiastical matters with Rome.” So the unchangeable church councils had said that Rome
had great authority and so did Constantinople. The problem was that the Roman popes
never quite accepted those statements. The Roman popes believed that Rome had the
ascendance and that Rome was the number one place and the number one church. . . . The
Orthodox Church was willing to acknowledge the “primacy of Peter,” which was the term
that was used. Peter was the leader of the apostolic band and the first bishop or pope in
Rome. In a personal sense, they could acknowledge his supremacy, as a first among equals,
as a place of honor. They could not acknowledge, however, the supremacy of Peter, and
likewise of Rome, in power or authority in an institutional sense. In other words, the
Eastern church would acknowledge Rome as first in an honorary sense, but not in a real
sense.
The Roman Catholic Church became increasingly monarchial [referring to the pope as the
only ruler of the church – Ed.] through the Middle Ages. Authority was vested in the pope. . .
. The Eastern church became conciliar, which meant it was a church of councils. It was not a
church with authority vested in one leader. The patriarch of Constantinople has an
honorary position among the patriarchs of the various Eastern churches. Yet those
churches remain independent. They are autocephalous, meaning they have their own head.
There is a church of Russia, a church of Ukraine, and various churches in Europe, such as
the Greek Orthodox Church, and each one has its own head. There is no one like the pope in
the Eastern church, even today.
Beside the primacy conflict, another problem was the filioque controversy. It became a
major issue with debates and books and all kinds of arguments in all kinds of language over
that one word. . . . The word filioque is a Latin word that means “and the Son.” The Nicene
Creed had said, [page 5] “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.” Eventually, however,
the Western church added “filioque” to its Latin version of the Nicene Creed. So their
version would say, “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.” That is called
“double procession.” From about the time of Augustine on, the Western church used the

Creed that way. Officially, the word was added to the Creed by Pope Benedict VIII in 1014,
but long before 1014 and Benedict VII the filioque was part of the Nicene Creed in the West.
The East objected to that addition. . . . They believed that nothing could be added to the
creeds, just as nothing could be added to the Bible. The Eastern church was greatly
offended because the Creed was authoritative and fixed, and it was not right, nor even
possible, to the Eastern mind to change the Creed. . . . Thus, on one ground, the East
objected simply because the West changed the creed.
There was also a doctrinal issue involved. In the Eastern view of the Trinity, the Father
begets the Son and the Father breathes the Spirit. The Father is the one source of divinity.
He is the one principle of the Godhead within the Trinity. Thus they would argue there
must be a particular emphasis on the role of the Father, which would safeguard the unity of
the Trinity. The favorite text in the East on this issue is John 15:26, which says, “When the
Counselor comes, whom I will send to you, from the Father.” Thus the Holy Spirit comes
from the Father. The East does add “through the Son,” because the Son sends Him, but He is
from the Father, not from the Son. The emphasis is on the unity based out of the role of the
Father as the source of divinity or the principle of the Godhead.
The West, after Augustine, viewed the doctrine of the Trinity in a different way. In their
view the Father begets the Son, and the Father and the Son are the two who breathe the
Spirit. That emphasis safeguards the equality of the Father and the Son. The text that was
often used in the West was John 20:22, which says, “Jesus breathed on the disciples and
said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” In that text Jesus seems to be the source of the
Spirit. . . .Much debate has occurred over that issue. It is an important issue, and it was the
key issue that separated the Eastern church from the Western church. . . .
I want to return now to describe the iconoclastic controversy. It was a 100-year struggle in
the East, and it did have repercussions in the West. Charlemagne in the West, the Holy
Roman Emperor, carried on a tirade against the icons[usually, religious paintings – Ed.]. It
was mainly an attack on the Eastern church because Charlemagne had designs to increase
his power in the East, and the Eastern church was an obstacle to that. . . . [page 6] In the
East, however, there was a violent reaction against the veneration of icons. . . . Icons had
been used throughout the Eastern church, and their use was prevalent in worship. The use
was extreme in many ways. For example, they sometimes added flecks of paint from the
icons into the Eucharistic wine, as though it would increase the efficacy of the Eucharist. . . .
Suddenly, however, there was a reaction to that practice. There are different explanations
that have been given for why some people in the East spoke up to say that the practice was
not right. One explanation is that the emperors in the East, who were in Constantinople and
were the successors of the emperors of Rome, believed that too much power resided in the
monasteries. The monasteries were the places that the icons were drawn up, painted,
venerated, and promoted. So in order to put down the power of the monasteries that
threatened the authority of the emperors in the East, there were a number of emperors
who tore down the icons. The emperors sent their soldiers out to destroy the icons, which
often created riots because the monks and the people would try to defend the icons and
they would be killed in the process. A second reason that may have influenced the reaction

against the icons was the rise of the Muslim period. Much of the area of the Mediterranean,
where the Eastern Orthodox churches were, was controlled by the Muslims. The Muslims
are very committed against any kind of image in worship. As a protection against Muslim
criticism that the Eastern Christians were idolaters, there may have been a reaction against
the use of icons. Third, it may be that some people simply decided the use of icons was
theologically wrong.
After a long period of dispute, the controversy was finally settled at the Second Council of
Nicea, the last of the seven ecumenical councils, in 787. At that council the icons were
defended. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, that was a great moment. It is still called the
Feast of Orthodoxy. Once per year the Eastern Orthodox churches will celebrate the Second
Council of Nicea when the icons were defended and supported. The argument for the icons
was that they were of equal benefit with the written word. The church has revelation from
the written word and it has revelation from the pictures. They are mutually revelatory.
There is the Gospel by word and the Gospel by color. In order to understand icons, you
need to see their color. Thus icons are a way of receiving truth by a picture, and that picture
can reveal something to you about the Gospel. Another stress at the Second Council of
Nicea was that if the incarnation is genuine, if Christ is really a man, then He can be
depicted as any other man can be depicted. Thus the use of icons became a defense of the
real humanity of Christ. Those who attacked the icons were accused of not believing that
Christ was really human, which would have been a case of doceticism. The council at Nicea
also said that the use of icons promotes sanctification. They helped people grow in their
love for Christ and the church. Not only did the Second Council of Nicea defend the icons,
but so also did John of Damascus in many of his writings.
The actual practice of people using the icons was also clarified. The Eastern church, the
council at Nicea, and John of Damascus all made a distinction between the absolute worship
that is to be given to God alone and the relative worship, or veneration, or respect, that can
be given to any number of things, such as the Bible. In the Eastern church it is often a
practice for people to kiss the Bible as sign of respect. Such veneration then is also given to
Mary, to the saints, and of course also to Christ. To a Western Christian, such practice may
look like idolatry. It does not look like that at all, however, to an Eastern Christian. At least
it does not look like idolatry to an Eastern theologian. . . . Eastern theologians make a
distinction between veneration of icons and the worship of Christ. One of the Cappadocians
said, “The honor given to the image passes over to the prototype and then it becomes
worship.” So honor is given to the image, but not worship. . . . Yet somehow that act is
transformed into worship, not of the image, but into the worship of Christ. The outward
form of veneration can look the same as absolute worship, but the inward intention is very
[page 7] different. It may look like worship, but it is not. It is veneration. . . .
In my view, the attempt to establish patristic [from the church fathers – Ed.] authority for
icons has not succeeded. One certainly cannot establish biblical authority for the
veneration of icons. There are not many biblical texts quoted on the Eastern side of the
debate. Even the church fathers of the first 300 years did not lend much credence to this
practice. There is not a single unambiguous text that mandated icon veneration in the first

three centuries of Christian literature. There is an almost unbroken succession of early

writers who equated the use of external images with paganism. . . .
While we do not know what will happen in the future, there has been a “permanent”
division, from 1054 until the present time, of the Eastern and the Western churches. There
was a temporary division in the ninth century called the Photian schism. The mutual
anathemas [condemnations – Ed.] of 1054, however, marked the official break within the
church. The pope excommunicated the patriarch and Eastern Christians. The patriarch
responded in kind by excommunicating the pope and Western Christians. . . . Those
anathemas were actually revoked by both churches in 1965. It took a long time for the
anathemas to be removed, and the schism still exists. The final blow was the attack on
Constantinople in 1204 by Catholic crusaders. Rather than going on to the holy land to fight
the Muslims, the Catholics from the West settled down and fought the Eastern Christians in
Constantinople and stole many of the Eastern Orthodox treasures and moved them to
places like Venice. That certainly did not help the relationship between the two parts of the
church. There is still that division today.
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever” (Isaiah
40:8).
LESSON TWO QUESTIONS
1. Summarize the missionary work of Patrick in Ireland. (List as least three important
facts.)
2. How did the Gospel first reach Scotland?
3. How did the author demonstrate that different parts of the church planted the
church in other places?
4. What were the most important effects which Boethius, Isidore and Dionysius had on
future theology in the church?
5. What views did Radbertus and Ratramnus each have on the Lord’s Supper?
6. What view did Gottschalk and Florus have on the question of predestination?
7. What were the most important contributions of John of Damascus on the church?
8. How did the Eastern church view church tradition?
9. Explain the difference of views in the filioque dispute and explain why the Eastern
church opposed the view.
10. Explain the iconoclastic controversy: why it arose, what the Eastern church clamed
to do when it used icons, and how the controversy ended in the Eastern church.


Medieval Church History 44 LESSON THREE
LESSON THREE
THE LATE MIDDLE AGES; MEDIEVAL MONASTICISM
A. THE LATE MIDDLE AGES7
. . . It is now time for me to present an overview of the third 500 years. I will cover this
period in more detail for the remainder of the course. I want to use this lesson to present
an overview of the entire period and introduce some of the important things that I will
describe in more detail in later lessons. . . .
In this survey I am going to talk first about Christianity in Africa and Asia. Then I will give a
brief glimpse at Eastern Orthodoxy, and then I will turn to Roman Catholicism in the West.
Christianity in Africa from the years 1000 through 1500 could be described by the term
survival. The Christian church in Egypt, the Coptic Church, survived despite great
disadvantages under Muslim rule. That has been the fate of that ancient Egyptian church
ever since the Muslim conquest. Yet the church was not obliterated as it was in other parts
of North Africa. It continued to live on. Sometimes it lived with vigor and sometimes in
decline. Nevertheless, it survived, as it has done to the present.
I have also talked about Nubian Christianity, which is Christianity south of Egypt, in
present-day Sudan. That early African church reached its peak of greatness during this
time. The greatest expression of Nubian Christianity came during the third 500 years. As
Mark Shaw said, however, in his book, The Kingdom of God in Africa, “The moment of
greatness was like the flash of a comet across the night sky.” Nubian Christianity not only
reached its moment of greatness during that time, but it also faced its decline and collapse.
After 1500 we do not hear any more of Nubian Christianity. There was no longer a church
in that part of Africa until the modern missionary movement. Nubian Christianity, which
was so [page 2] strong for so many years, suddenly collapsed in part due to factors we have
noticed elsewhere. Nubian Christianity was very dependent upon a favorable government.
As long as that government was in power, the church in Nubia enjoyed prosperity. When
that government collapsed, however, that church did as well. There was another reason
why Nubian Christianity failed to live on. The Christians in that area were not able to
effectively reach out in evangelism to their neighbors. For one thing, the Nubians had made
themselves unpopular with their neighbors by engaging in a slave trade. They took Africans
from other countries to sell them as slaves in Egypt in order to pay for various treaty
obligations that the Nubians had with the Egyptians. . . . For at least those two reasons, and
perhaps others, Nubian Christianity disappeared. It reached a high point during the
thirteenth century. Then a couple hundred years later it was gone from the face of the
earth.
7
David Calhoun, “The Late Middle Ages,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/
CH310 _T_241.pdf>. The document which forms the first half of this lesson appears as Lesson 24 in Dr.

The third center of African Christianity was Ethiopia. Ethiopian Christianity survived. It not
only survived, but it also became almost a legend that inspired many African religions and
cultural and political movements in the twentieth century. Ethiopia in the Middle Ages
bears eloquent testimony to the fact that Christianity is deeply rooted in African history
and culture. There were some ups and downs in the history of Africa. The situation in
Ethiopia, however, remains the primary example of the success of the Gospel in Africa. By
the fifteenth century, under King Zara Yaqob, the Ethiopian church reached the pinnacle of
its cultural, literary, and spiritual attainments.
That was a brief overview of Christianity in Africa. Now I will turn to a brief overview of
Christianity in Asia. This will be a look at the third 500-year period in Asian Christianity.
The word that I used for Christianity in Africa during that time was “survival.” The several
words that I would use to describe Christianity in Asia are “growth,” “decline,” and “almost
eclipsed.” It was not a great period of Christianity in Asia.
At the end of my survey of the previous 500 years of Christianity I described how
Christianity expanded greatly in China during the time of the Nestorian missions in T’ang,
China. By the tenth century, however, Christianity had all but disappeared. As the T’ang
dynasty fell, Christianity fell with it. Yet that was not the end of Christianity in China.
Christianity returned in Mongol China. That was during the period of the fabled Kublai
Kahn in the thirteenth century, the greatest of the Mongol rulers of China. Undoubtedly he
was the most powerful man in the world at his time. His empire stretched from Korea to
Burma and over to the Euphrates, which indicates something of the extent of his great
empire. Kublai Kahn, who was not a Christian, was nonetheless a friend of Christians. Thus
during the reign of this Mongol ruler in China and elsewhere throughout the Orient,
Christianity faced an opportunity that it tried to move into. There was widespread
Christian presence at the Mongol court. We know that from the visit of Marco Polo, who
went from the West and discovered Christians in the thirteenth century in China. So
Christianity prospered during the T’ang dynasty. Then it was almost obliterated. Then it
recovered and returned during the reign of Kublai Kahn in the thirteenth century. Again,
however, it was the same story repeated with the death of this friend of Christians in 1294.
Christianity radically declined when Kublai Kahn, the protector of the church in China, died.
Soon there was the second disappearance of the church in China. When John of
Montecorvino, an Italian missionary and the greatest of the Roman Catholic missionaries of
the era, reached China shortly after the death of Kublai Kahn, he was still able to receive a
warm welcome. He became the first Catholic archbishop in China. He was also the last until
the modern period.
With the fall of the Mongol dynasty the Chinese Christian churches disappeared for the
second time. For the next 300 years the new China would be isolationist and nationalist
and orthodox Confucian. It would be ruled by a completely China-centered dynasty called
the Ming dynasty. That meant that very few [page 3] Christians were left in China by 1500.
While some great things took place in China, and two strong Christian movements had
existed—including one in this period—by the end of the third 500-year period almost
nothing of Chinese Christianity was left.

You might wonder what was happening to the ancient church in Persia. That church
reached its prime in the thirteenth century. Then, however, much like the church in Nubia,
its prime was followed soon by decline and collapse. By the end of the fourteenth century,
Persian Christianity was clearly in decline. Why did that happen? It was not because the
church became syncretistic. Christians in Persia sharply distinguished themselves from
Muslims. It was not because it was a foreign movement. The Persian Christian culture that
expressed itself in the church was ancient. Rather, a failure of intellect, doctrine, and study
led to the decline of the church in Persia. There was also the same story of too much
dependence upon the government. Christians had to learn not to put their trust in princes.
And they have had to learn that repeatedly. When the Mongol ruler of Persia converted to
Islam in 1295, the year after the death of Kublai Kahn, it marked the final blow to the
church in Persia. That church survived, but only in small numbers and under difficult
circumstances.
In central Asia the victories of the religiously tolerant Genghis Kahn of the thirteenth
century opened the opportunity for the spread of the Gospel. The empire of Genghis Kahn
extended from the Yellow Sea to the Black Sea. Christian missionaries began to move into
those areas. A second wave of Mongol conquest in the fourteenth century, however, came
from the fiercely Muslim ruler, Tamerlane. He is often called “the scourge of God and the
terror of the world.” He certainly had no love for Christians. Thus the momentary
opportunity in central Asia soon disappeared with unparalleled destruction of churches.
Central Asia by that time was turning hostile.
By the end of the third 500-year period, Christianity had received some major setbacks in
Asia. There were still Christian churches and communities of Christians in central Asia,
what we would call the Middle East. Byzantine Orthodox Christians, Syrian Jacobites,
Nestorians, and others were all under Muslim rule. There were also some ancient Thomas
Christians in India who survived, and even thrived in some ways. Yet they were relatively
limited in numbers and quite isolated from the rest of the Christian world.
That was a quick overview of 500 years of Christianity in Asia. You can read much more
about it in Sam Moffett’s A History of Christianity in Asia. Now I will move to Eastern
Orthodoxy. I already presented one lesson on how Eastern Orthodoxy developed as a
separate church. That division from the West took place in 1054, at the beginning of the
third 500-year period. We can use two dates for Eastern Orthodoxy as we think about the
third 500-year period. The whole period can be summarized by the terms “gain” and “loss.”
There were some gains and there were some losses for Eastern Orthodoxy during that
time.
The greatest gain, which was a major event in the history of Eastern Orthodoxy, was the
conversion of Russia. The traditional date for that event is 988. Near the year 1000, Russia
became Christian. They became Christian in the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity.
That greatly expanded Orthodoxy, which could not move to the West because of Roman
Catholicism, it could not move to the south because of Islam, and it could not move to the
East because of Islam. It could, however, move to the north, and it did, mainly through the

conversion of Russia in 988. That was the high point, at the beginning of the third 500-year
period.
The low point in Eastern Orthodoxy during that 500-year period was the fall of
Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks at the end of the period, in the year 1453.
Constantinople was the great capital of the [page 4] Roman Empire after Rome, which had
flourished for 1,000 years. Yet it fell to the onslaught of the Muslims in 1453.
Further west the history of the Roman Catholic Church was unfolding. By the third 500-
year period of Christianity, it could properly be called the Roman Catholic Church. The way
to summarize that 500- year period is to speak about the consolidation of Christianity in
the West. It was a period in the West that we can characterize by the word “Christendom,”
which is a union of church and state and culture. There was not only the consolidation in
that 500-year period of Christianity and culture under the concept of Christendom, but
there was also by the end of the period the breakup of that concept.
I will present some sketches of ideas regarding the period, some of which I will cover in
more detail in later lessons. This will help give you an overview of the period. First of all,
think of the diversity of Roman Catholicism. Sometimes we have the idea that Catholicism
was very unified, or monolithic. Yet there were all sorts of people with all sorts of ideas
during the period. . . .
The next topic I need to mention from that period is the struggle with Islam. That struggle
had been going on since the seventh century. Islam had moved into Europe and had been
defeated at the Battle of Tours. Yet it still controlled Spain. It more greatly grieved Western
Christians that Islam still controlled the Holy Land. During that 500-year period, Christians
in the West decided to do something about Islam. They decided to engage in the Crusades.
Thus it was a disastrous period for Western Christianity. For about a century-and-a-half,
churches in the West were engaged in one crusade after another. They were military
adventures into the East in order to attempt to defeat the Muslims’ militarily and to
reconquer Jerusalem and other sites dear to the hearts of Western Christians. All of that did
nothing to strengthen Christianity, but it did much to heighten the antagonism of Muslims
toward the Christian faith.
Another struggle that took place during that 500-year period was what is often called the
Investiture Controversy. It is a way to talk about the relationship between church and state.
In Europe during that time there were two interacting authorities. One was the church. The
other was the state, or the various states that made up Western Europe. The question was
who had ultimate authority. The investiture controversy relates to the problem of who was
going to appoint bishops and church officials in countries such as France or England. Would
the pope do that? Could the king do it? Of course, the kings claimed they should do it, and
the popes claimed they should do it. Each claimed authority over the other. I will describe
in some detail that struggle within Christendom, which had been going on since the days of
Constantine, between church and state, or pope and emperor.

There were some great achievements during that period. It was a great period for books,
theology, and many things that were created or developed and have lived on. . . . Other
things were done, too, during that period. It was a great period of theology. If the second
500-year period did not produce much theology of note, then the third 500-year period
certainly did. It culminated in one of the greatest books of systematic theology ever written,
the Summa of Thomas Aquinas.
It was also a great period of piety. Monastic orders were revived, and new orders were
created. Literature of devotion and piety came from the Benedictines, Cistercians,
Franciscans, and Dominicans, which were the great medieval orders of the time. The
popular piety of the people also increased, yet it [page 5] went in some unfortunate
directions. The veneration of saints and prayers to the Virgin Mary increased. Piety was
often expressed in crass and mechanical ways.
In general culture it was also a great period. It was the time of the rise of universities, by
the twelfth century. The first schools tended to be operated by the monasteries. Education
was preserved in the monasteries. The fathers and brothers and nuns in the monasteries
taught in the schools. From monastic schools there was the development of cathedral
schools, which were schools in the great towns where there were large cathedrals. Then
out of the cathedral schools the universities developed. There were universities in Milan,
Cologne, Paris, Oxford, and other places.
It was also a period of the building of churches, great churches, and cathedrals. There were
churches such as those at Chartres and throughout Europe. The style of church architecture
shifted from the heavy, dark Romanesque to the style we call Gothic, which had flying
buttresses supporting the weight of the walls and rooms. That allowed, for the first time,
great areas for windows, stained glass, and light. The look of the great churches shifted
from the older Romanesque to the more modern Gothic.
It was also a wonderful time for literature. People began to write, not only in theology but
also in many other areas. Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in the fourteenth century. At the
same time Chaucer was producing his Canterbury Tales in England.
It was also in that 500-year period that many people became aware that all was not right
with the Roman Catholic Church. It was a period of reform. As the period progressed, the
need for reform became more evident. Some of that reform came from the papacy itself.
There was the Gregorian reform, named for Pope Gregory VII. Gregory wanted to
strengthen, invigorate, and clean up the church. He wanted to set it on a better foundation.
The reforms during his reign were notable. He tried to do away with some of the financial
and moral corruption in the church. Gregory insisted on clerical celibacy. It was the first
time that practice became a requirement rather than a recommendation. Due to so much of
the corruption that Gregory found in the church, he believed that the solution was to insist
that every priest be celibate.
There was also the famous Lateran Council of 1215. It was an attempt before the
Reformation to get the church back on track. That council, which met in Rome, had some

important doctrinal elements. One was the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was made
official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. Earlier there had been a famous debate
between Radbertus and Ratramnus over this issue. The church had been moving toward
transubstantiation for quite some time as its official and only view. At the Fourth Lateran of
1215 that position was taken. The Fourth Lateran also said that every Catholic should go to
confession once per year. By making annual confession a requirement it probably indicated
how lax many people were about the matter of confession.
The period was also a great period for the development of the orders. The old orders, going
back to Saint Benedict and the Benedictines, experienced a number of revivals and
renewals. The most famous took place under Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the
Cistercians. In the thirteenth century two great new orders were established, the
Dominicans and the Franciscans. I will describe those two orders in some detail in a later
lesson.
From the standpoint of the official church, particularly as the end of that 500-year period
approached, it was a time of heresy. Heresies began to arise. There were the Cathari, or
Cathars, in southern France. They presented a serious challenge to the church in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. We would say it was a real heresy. It was dualistic, Gnostic-like,
Manichaean-style religious expression that dominated a [page 6] large part of southern
France and Lombardy, or northern Italy. The church did everything it could to put it down,
largely due to the use of force. The word “heretic” in the thirteenth century almost always
applied to the Cathars.
There were other people, however, who were called heretics with whom we generally find
ourselves in line. I will describe those so-called heretics in more detail. There was the
movement of the Waldensians in Italy. It was a reformation before the Reformation. So
much of what was later established by Protestant Reformers was put into practice by those
Italian reformers 500 years before what the Waldensians call the second reformation. In
England Wycliffe and his Lollards were preaching grace and translating the Bible. They
were also suffering persecution. That message spread to Bohemia and John Hus. He was a
preacher in Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. Hus was finally taken to the Council of Constance,
where he hoped to only defend himself but also present the true Gospel. He was not
allowed to do that. He was condemned to death and burned at the stake in 1415. As the
fifteenth century moved on, down in Florence, in Italy, Girolamo Savonarola was preaching
and reforming the church of the city of Florence. He died, burned at the stake as well, in
1498. With the death of Savonarola, the third 500- year period was almost at an end. In
1498 Martin Luther was a boy of 15 living in Germany, although he was not yet thinking
anything about 95 theses or a Protestant Reformation. But the church was very close to the
beginning of a new period. . . .
Another important topic to mention is the preaching during the third 500-year period. Did
the preaching emphasize grace? I wish that I could say that the Gospel of salvation by grace
was preached, but it was not. The church had that message, and then largely lost it, or it
went underground. The message was recovered by Augustine. But then the church lost it
again. It was not until Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers that we read a clear

expression of salvation by grace. There were a few places along the way, including
Gottschalk, Wycliffe, and Hus. Yet those people were viewed as heretics in the Western
church. Most of the preaching of that period, from the standpoint of the Reformers, was
quite defective. I will later describe the sacramental system, which relates to how the
common person of the medieval period conceived of salvation. Even though the
messengers often got the message wrong, with the emphasis in the wrong place, they did
preach the Bible. They used the Bible. God has a way of working through very defective
means to get His message across. We cannot say that nobody was saved for 1,000 years.
Some people take that very hard-line view, but I do not believe that is the way it happened.
It may be that there were many people, whom we do not know about, who were preaching
a purer Gospel. We primarily know about what the theologians, patriarchs, popes, and
leaders of the church produced. Yet much of the message of that time was spread by
common people. Of course, the message coming to them was from their leaders. I believe,
however, that there could have been a purer message preached. Sometimes theologians can
get it wrong and the people can get it right.
B. MEDIEVAL MONASTICISM8
In the last lesson I presented an overview of the last 500 years of the ancient and medieval
period of church history. In this lesson I will begin to describe some of the important events
that took place during that time. . . .
It has been some time since I have mentioned monasticism in the West. It all goes back to
Saint Benedict of Nursia, who lived in the fifth and sixth centuries. From that point on, from
the seventh century to the tenth century, we can speak of that period as the “Benedictine
centuries.” Monasticism began and flourished. Communities continued to be created in
different places in Europe, which were all following the Benedictine Rule. According to
Benedict, each monastery was to be a self-contained unit under the direction of its own
abbot. Benedict did not envision great orders, highly organized and centralized. . . . In due
time in the West, however, a more centralized approach to the monasteries developed,
particularly during the tenth and eleventh centuries. That was not true in the East. . . .
Monasticism in the East, which continued to be an important part of the Orthodox Church,
never developed the centralized structures that it did in the West.
Benedict had envisioned the monastic life as a group of laypeople coming together to pray
and work with their hands and to serve God as a community. That pattern has largely
continued in the East. More often in the West, however, the monks became priests. . . . The
monasteries were colleges of priests. In the West . . . there would be an order for men, with
many priests and perhaps some laypeople, and then a second order for women, and
sometimes a third order for laypeople. In the West there were often those three orders.
8
David Calhoun, “Medieval Monasticism,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis,
15 March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wpcontent/uploads/sites/5/2014/12
/CH310 _T_251.pdf>. The document which forms the second half of this lesson appears as Lesson 25 in Dr.

There were three main duties for a person living at the monastery. The first was prayer and
worship. . . . [F]or three or four hours each day the monks were engaged in prayer and
worship. It was generally communal prayer and worship. They would read through the
Scriptures together. They sang the Psalms together. Then some of that time would be in
private prayer. Then for five hours their time would be spent in study. They preferred to
call it “spiritual reading.” Their study was always of a devotional nature. They read the
church fathers, and they read the Scriptures with the purpose of developing their own love
for God and knowledge of Him. Then for six or seven hours each day they worked, doing
manual labor. They took care of the building, farmed to produce food for the monastery,
and went out into the community to carry out works of charity.
. . . In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries France became the [page 2] great center of
monastic life and reform in the Catholic Church. First came the establishment of the Cluniac
order, which was a reform movement based on the Benedictine Rule. During the tenth and
eleventh centuries, Cluny represented almost everything that was vital and progressive in
Western Christianity. The greatest figure in the Cluniac movement was Bernard of Cluny.
He lived in the twelfth century. He wrote a great poem called “De Contemptu Mundi,” which
means “Contempt for the World.” It was a 3,000 line poem that satirized contemporary
monastic corruption. . . . The poem contrasts monastic corruption and the transient
pleasures of this life with the glories of heaven. So much of the poem is about heaven. It has
served as the base of several hymns, including “Jerusalem the Golden.” A line from that
hymn says, “O sweet and blessed country, the home of God’s elect; O sweet and blessed
country, that eager hearts expect; Jesus in mercy bring us to that dear land of rest, who art
with God the Father and Spirit ever blessed.” . . .
A rather dreary pattern can be observed throughout the history of monastic movements.
They begin with high ideals, but they will soon decline. Then something else will have to
come along to reform that movement, which itself was a reform of monasticism or the
church. The Cluniacs built a great abbey at Cluny. It was the greatest church in Europe. It
was destroyed in the nineteenth century, [y]et in its heyday, it was greater than any church
anywhere in the world. . . . It was a church of great splendor and magnificence. It seems
strange that a monastery would produce a building of such grandeur, but that is what
happened at Cluny. The order of Cluny came to an end in 1790 during the upheavals
connected with the French revolution. It has not continued to the present.
Cluny eventually fell into a worldly spirit. It produced great and splendid churches, but it
no longer maintained its zeal for the monastic ideal. Thus another order was formed, not
too far from Cluny. It was called the Cistercian order. A new order is sometimes referred to
as a reform of the reform. Cluny was a reform of the Benedictine movement. Then the
Cistercians were a reform of the Cluniac movement. It was started in Citeaux. Its leader was
another Bernard, Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard of Clairvaux was one of the major figures of
the Middle Ages. He is sometimes called the “last of the church fathers,” because of his
importance as a church leader. He is also sometimes called the “uncrowned emperor” of
Europe. He seemed to have more influence than any king or emperor, and often more than
the pope. Justo Gonzalez has said that Bernard’s personality dominated his time.

Let me summarize the life of Bernard of Clairvaux and emphasize his importance. He was a
great reformer. We know something of his concern for church reform from his book, On
Consideration. He wrote that book for one of his own monks who was being promoted to a
high office in the church. That monk was actually becoming the pope. So Bernard wrote a
book as a guide for him so he would know how to be a good pope. It is a very good book. He
told the new pope that “Lordship is forbidden. Ministry is bidden.” In other words, do not
rule over people. Serve people. Luther said that all popes should know that book by heart.
He believed, quite correctly, that most popes paid no attention to it, but that if they did,
things would have been very different in Rome. . . . [page 3]
As a reformer, Bernard may remind us of a medieval Puritan. He believed the church was
too rich, too extravagant, and too given over to pomp and ceremony. He wanted to see
things quite changed. Bernard once said, “We must not pass over in silence the decay in the
church. Better to provoke a scandal than to abandon the truth.” That is an interesting
comment from a medieval church leader. He did not want to cover over the things that
were going wrong. He thought it was better to create a scandal than to abandon the truth.
People did not follow that advice very often, until the sixteenth century when people such
as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox created a scandal. They divided the church because
they could not abandon truth. Bernard was an early reformer, working hard to bring the
church more into line with a Christian understanding of what the church ought to be.
He was also a great preacher. He was sometimes referred to as “Dr. Mellifluous,” which
meant the doctor whose words were like honey. He could preach with eloquence and
power. He often used for himself the motto pasce verbo, pasce vita, which means “feed with
the word, feed with the life.” A minister should feed people with the Word of God but also
demonstrate through living the truth of the Word of God. It should be our life as well as our
preaching that commends the Gospel and draws people to Christ.
Bernard was a great mystic, in the best sense of that word. I will describe medieval
mysticism in a later lesson. There are some things we can learn from the mystics. There are
also some errors that they fell into. For the most part, Bernard managed to stay on the good
side of mysticism. One of the great books of the Middle Ages is the book On Loving God. It is
a book that we can still read with a great deal of profit.
. . . In the midst of many semi-Pelagians and semi-Augustinians of the medieval church,

Bernard was a full Augustinian. Bernard of Clairvaux’s book On Grace and Free Choice is the
best book on grace between Saint Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Bradwardine of
Canterbury. That is a span of 900 years. I will describe Bradwardine in another lesson. For
almost a millennium, however, On Grace and Free Choice is the great work on grace. John
Calvin in his Institutes praised the book by saying, “Bernard agreed with Augustine when he
makes the church speak thus, ‘Draw me, however unwilling, to make me willing. Draw me,
slow-footed, to make me run.’” That indicates that Bernard covered irresistible grace,
election, the teaching of Augustine, and the Bible.
The Clairvaux community did not continue permanently. It was broken up, and the
property was confiscated by the state in 1790, during the French revolution when there

was so much anti-clerical activity in France. The house at Clairvaux still stands, but for the
last 200 years it has not served as a church but as a prison. . . .
So far I have been talking about a history of the Benedictines, as that movement spawned
certain developments at Cluny, Citeaux, and other places. Two entirely new movements
arose in the thirteenth century. The first was the Franciscans. Francis of Assisi, in Italy, was
born in 1181 and died in 1226. In that short life, Francis was able to impact the church of
his day and of successive centuries as well. Francis was a worldly young man who was
dramatically converted and then went on to a life of dedication to God. [page 4] . . . Francis
was a unique individual. There is nobody quite like him in the history of the church. He was
not a scholar. He did not write much. Except for a few prayers, some of which became
hymns, the only thing that he left was his testament. In that testimony he told in a few
pages why he did what he did. His testimony was written shortly before his death. It was
not long after his death that his followers produced a book called The Little Flowers of Saint
Francis. In that book are the stories, highly imaginative stories, about the life of Saint
Francis, which one writer has said “may not be totally untrue.” . . . In that book are all the
stories about Francis preaching. Francis was a preacher, and he often preached to the
animals that he would find as he wandered about in Italy. Francis not only preached to nice
animals, like birds, rabbits, and sheep, but according to The Little Flowers he also preached
to the bad animals such as the fierce wolf of Gubbio. That wolf was creating a great deal of
disturbance by eating things, including people, and the people of Gubbio sought out Francis
to do something about the terrible, fierce wolf. Francis went to Gubbio and met the wolf
and called out to it, “Come hither, brother wolf. I command you in the name of Christ Jesus
that you do no manner of evil either to me or to anyone else.” According to The Little
Flowers, immediately after Saint Francis made the sign of the cross, “The terrible wolf
closed his jaws, gave over running, and came meekly as any lamb and laid himself down at
the feet of Saint Francis.” There are many more stories from The Little Flowers, and they are
entertaining stories.
The life of Francis was a life of poverty and service. That was what Francis wanted to do. He
wanted to be poor, and he wanted to have people around him who believed as he did that
life is not made up of what we have but of what we can give. That was his principle to which
he was dedicated. Some people thought that he was unbalanced in his dedication to his
principle. He did not want to have anything. He continually refused to take anything. It is
not certain that a Franciscan could own a Bible. If you owned one book, The Bible, you
might want two books. If you owned two books, you might want three books. Soon you will
have a big library and you will be proud of it. Then you will begin to drift away from God.
Francis would say it was better not to start down that slippery slope.
Franciscans were not so much reformers as innovators. They created a new force in the
church to minister to spiritual and physical needs. Something new and different was
breaking forth in the church. Their movement was a contrast for the church, which boasted
the great church at Cluny and the splendor and pomp at Rome. Francis was a poor little
man wandering about who said none of that mattered. More than that, he said it was all
bad. He said that the only thing that matters is to love God and to love people. Francis

prayed a great prayer that we still use, “Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.” That
is what he wanted to be. He wanted to bring peace to this world.
His life was also filled with praise. The hymns that he wrote are all hymns of praise. The
most famous hymn he wrote is “The Canticle of Brother Sun.” . . . It is not a canticle “to
brother sun.” It is “The Canticle of Brother Sun.” He is calling on the sun to join with him
and join with all creation in the worship of God. There is a paraphrase of that canticle by
William H. Draper, which is a well-known hymn that says, “All creatures of our God and
King, lift up your voice and with us sing, Alleluia, Alleluia. Thou burning sun with golden
beam, thou silver moon with softer gleam, O praise Him, O praise Him, Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia. Amen.”. . .
The order that Francis created was called the Order of the Lesser Brothers. We usually
refer to them as Franciscans, but the official name is the Order of the Lesser Brothers, or
OFM, Ordo Friars Minores. If you see OFM after a person’s name, you know that person is a
Franciscan. . . . [page 5]
Even during the end of Francis’ life, there was a struggle within these orders to maintain
Francis’ rule of absolute poverty. It was difficult for his followers to really believe that he
meant what he said. These monastic orders, even the order of the Franciscans, could quite
quickly develop into wealthy orders. People admired the monks and wanted to give to
them. They wanted to give money and land and all sorts of things. Francis died in 1226. He
was canonized only two years later in 1228. That is a quick canonization. Almost
immediately, Francis’ followers began to build a great basilica in his honor. It is there in
Assisi today . . . . It became the richest church in Italy. It was a strange memorial to the poor,
little man, whose favorite saying was, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” I will not go into detail about the history
of the Franciscans, but some very bitter controversies developed among the Franciscans
because of the difficulty that Francis’ followers had in trying to decide what to do. Should
they become wealthy and prominent, as they had opportunity, or should they avoid those
things?
The last order I want to describe is the Dominicans. . . . Dominic was a Spanish monk, living
in Spain, in a monastery that was trying to follow the rule of Saint Augustine. He became
interested through a couple of journeys he made in thinking about how Catholics could
evangelize to both reach pagan people and reclaim heretics. The heretics that he
particularly had in mind were the Albigensians of southern France. They were a Gnostic,
Manichaean cult that controlled much of southern France. Dominic began to plan a new
order that would be a missionary order. . . . He established the Order of Preachers, which
we call the Dominicans, but their abbreviation, OP, stands for Order of Preachers.
They stressed teaching and preaching. They did not stress poverty, although the
Dominicans did take a vow of poverty. They did not, however, see poverty as essential to
their spirituality as Francis did. They did not put much emphasis on manual labor, as the
Benedictines did. They did not think they should spend most of their day cutting wood,
drawing water, and washing dishes. They even limited their times of prayer. They did not

pray for so long in the day as some of the other orders. They wanted to study. It was an
order that dedicated itself to books. Each order of the Catholic Church has its distinctives,
and the distinctive of the Dominicans is that they are an order of scholars. They are people
who are studying and planning to be teachers and preachers. . . . Some of the great
preachers of the medieval church were Dominicans. They punctuated their sermons by
rhyme or alliteration. They also used illustrations and even humor. The Dominican
sermons sound quite modern to us. They used those methods because they wanted to
communicate to people. They found that those were effective ways to make people hear
what they had to say.
They also became great scholars. They realized that it was important for them to enter the
universities and infiltrate them and become teachers. If they could teach then they could
persuade. Before long there were Dominicans teaching in Paris, Bologna, Cologne, and all
the universities. They also started schools down to the level of young children. The
Dominicans became the educators of Europe and of the Catholic Church. A movement like
this was able to produce great scholars. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican. His parents
wanted him to become a Benedictine, but he wanted to become a Dominican. He did
become a Dominican, and he became the great theologian of the High Middle Ages.
Interestingly, not only were there great scholars among the Domincans, but some of the
great mystics of the Middle Ages were also Dominicans. One of those was Meister Eckhart.
One other thing to say about [page 6] the Dominicans is that they became the inquisitors of
the Middle Ages. They were the people on the lookout for heresy. They developed schemes,
plans, and programs to identify and root out heretics. Their nickname was the “watchdogs
of the Lord.” Domini canus sounds like Dominican, or Dominic, but it was their nickname as
the “watchdogs of the Lord.” Soon Cathars and Waldensians, and later Protestants, would
feel that watchful eye of the Dominican inquisitors. As the great inquisitors of the Middle
Ages, they were followed later by a sixteenth century order called the Jesuits.
It is possible for Protestants to dismiss the history of monasticism as worthless. That would
be a false impression. It is possible for Catholics to glamorize it all as wonderful. That
would be a false impression as well. Nobody would accuse Robert Lewis Dabney, a
southern American Presbyterian, of being soft on Catholicism or on monasticism. He wrote
wisely, “Monastic life, with all its perversions, produced not a little of the moral heroism in
the Middle Ages.” By the time of the Reformation, much of that was lost. Monasticism was
not nearly as noble in the sixteenth century as it was in some earlier centuries. Like much
of church history, we try to see the good with the bad and learn from both.
I will end this lesson with the last verse of a song by Bernard of Clairvaux, which we know
as “Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts”: “O Jesus, ever with us stay. Make all our moments
calm and bright. Chase the dark night of sin away. Shed over the world Thy holy light.” . . .
LESSON THREE QUESTIONS
1. Summarize the condition of the church in Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia during the
church’s third 500 years.

2. How did the church in Persia develop during Christianity’s third 500 years?
3. What was the condition of the church in Asia at the end of the third 500 years?
4. Summarize the Eastern Orthodox Church’s gains and losses during the third 500
years of Christianity.
5. What do we mean by the “Investiture Controversy?”
6. What duties did people who lived in a Benedictine monastery need to fulfil?
7. Why were the Cluniac and Cistercian monastic movements founded?
8. The lesson mentions some of the characteristics of Bernard of Clairvaux’s life and
service. List and describe at least 3 of them.
9. What new monastic movements began in the 13 th century? What did each
emphasize?
10. What does the author mean when he said that the Dominicans were the inquisitors
on the Middle Ages?

Medieval Church History 57 LESSON FOUR
LESSON FOUR:
THE CRUSADES AND MISSIONS; THE WALDENSIANS
A. CRUSADES OR MISSIONS?9
. . . It is hurtful for me to have to talk about the crusades. There is not much good that I can
say about that event in church history. It is part of the record, however, and it is something
we need to know about. These things took place in the name of the Lord. Perhaps they were
not done by true Christians, but they were done in the name of the Lord, with the sign of
the cross. The crusades were a disastrous period. People went forth into battle not realizing
that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace and not the leader of a battle. There are times when
we encounter something like this in church history and our only response can be to study
and to forgive. There is not much that we can celebrate, although the second half of this
lesson will have brighter moments.
Before beginning to describe the crusades, I will offer a brief review of the interaction of
Christianity and Islam. . . . [T]he flight of Muhammad [was in the year 622 – Ed.], so we can
use 622 as the beginning of the period of Islam. It was not too many years later, in 638,
when Jerusalem, the holy city of the Christians, was conquered by the Muslims. Then the
Muslims spread quickly across North Africa, into Spain, and all the way up into France.
There they were turned back at the Battle of Tours in 732. For centuries after that, Islam
also threatened the great eastern Roman capital, Constantinople. In the eleventh century
the end of that great city appeared to be approaching.
That was the context of the crusades. The crusades were really an attempt to do something
about Islam. There were seven crusades. If you count the children’s Crusade, then there
were eight. It all began in 1095 when Pope Urban II began to preach the First Crusade. He
called upon Christian people in the West to leave their homes and to make the long journey
to Jerusalem to fight against the Muslims and to free that city from their control. Somehow
it became a popular notion. As Urban made his appeal the people began to respond by
saying, “Deus vult,” which means, “God wills it.” Soon that cry went out across Europe. . . .
For 200 years there was crusading activity. That time can be divided into three parts. First
was the attack of the Franks. The early leaders of the crusades were the Franks. That first
50-year period, in terms of military accomplishment, was the most successful. It was really
the only successful time in the period of the crusades. Those early crusaders did capture
Jerusalem, and they set up some Latin kingdoms there. That was much to the dismay of the
Eastern Byzantine emperor, who wanted any captured lands to be added to his empire. The
crusaders were from the West, however, and they were not going to give the Eastern
emperor what they had won. So for about 50 years there was some small success
9
David Calhoun, “Crusades or Missions?” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/
CH310_T_261.pdf>. The document which forms the first half of this lesson appears as Lesson 26 in Dr.
Calhoun’s course on Ancient and Medieval Church History

accomplished by the crusaders. Then Islam produced a great military leader named
Saladin. For the next 50 years [page 2] everything was the reverse of the first 50 years. The
Muslims re-conquered the territory they had lost. They defeated every crusading army they
fought. Then for the next 100 years a downward spiraling occurred. The people of Europe
tried to recover some of the early enthusiasm for the crusades. They launched other
crusades that hoped to accomplish what they had failed to do in the first 100 years. The
second 100 years, however, were even less successful than the first 100 years. The last
crusade was led by Louis IX of France, the man who is known as Saint Louis . . . . Saint Louis
was killed in an attack on Tunis in 1270, and that was essentially the end of the crusading
period.
Why did people do this? Why were Western Christians so intrigued and inspired by the
idea of the crusades? First was the concern to honor Christ. It was a very mistaken idea, but
the idea was that Christ had been insulted by the Muslims. So the thought was that any real
Christian would take up His cause and fight for His honor. That was the appeal that the
saintly Bernard of Clairvaux made when preaching the Second Crusade in 1147. It might
surprise you that Bernard of Clairvaux was the preacher of a crusade. Bernard wrote the
wonderful book, On Loving God, but he was also concerned that Christians go on a crusade.
Bernard said, “Our King Jesus is accused of treachery. It is said of Him by the Muslims that
He is not God, but that He falsely pretended to be something He was not. Any man among
you who is His vassal ought to rise up to defend his Lord from the infamous accusation of
treachery. He should go to the sure fight, where to win will be glorious and where to die
will be gain.”. . .
Another motive was the recovery of the Holy Land. It was important for Catholic Christians
at that time to make pilgrimages. They went on pilgrimages to sacred sites, particularly
Jerusalem. For many years preceding the First Crusade, it was not possible to do that. In the
early period after the Muslims had conquered Jerusalem, they did allow pilgrims to make
those journeys to the sacred sites of Christianity. . . . . Thus one concern for Christians was
to recapture Jerusalem and make it possible for Christians to again visit the Holy Land.
They were not merely tourists, because a visit to the Holy Land had great significance to
one’s spiritual status.
Another motive was to try to reunite the two halves of Christianity. . . . The idea for
crusades began when Alexius, the emperor in the East, sent a letter to the pope in Rome
asking for some help against the Muslims who were approaching his great city. . . . Alexius
got more than he bargained for. He thought he would receive a few hundred well-trained
soldiers whom he could have at his disposal to help his army against the Muslims. What
arrived, however, was a huge ragtag [disorganized – Ed.] company of people, most of whom
were not soldiers. Alexius did not know what to do about this group that he viewed as a
new barbarian invasion from Europe who had arrived on the doorstep of his capital. The
relationship between the East and West grew worse during the crusades. If the crusaders
could not find Muslims to fight, then they settled for Eastern Orthodox Christians. In 1204
the crusaders attacked and sacked the city of Constantinople, which was a greater city than
all the cities of Europe. It was also a city of great ecclesiastical treasures. Most of those

were taken to Venice. . . . So instead of helping reunite those two branches of Christianity,
the crusades actually made the situation far worse.
There was also the matter of personal salvation involved as a motive for the crusades. The
popes used every means to motivate people that they could. Pope Urban said at the
beginning, “The sins of those that set out thither, if they lose their lives shall be remitted in
that hour.” So sinners saw an opportunity [page 3] to go fight the Muslims, and if they died,
then automatically and immediately all their sins were forgiven. That was a tempting
offer. . . . Some perhaps even looked forward to being killed in battle and going straight to
heaven.
Mixed in among all those motives were ambition, a desire for adventure, and an
opportunity to do something different. The popes made no secret of the fact that European
Christians were spending too much time fighting one another in that hectic feudal period of
European life. The idea was that it was far better for them to refrain from fighting one
another and instead go fight the Turks and the Muslims. They could deflect some of their
military energy in that direction. . . .
One of the most curious events of that history is what is called the Children’s Crusade. That
took place in 1212. Perhaps as many as 30,000 children were involved. They may have
been teenagers. It is not certain what their ages were. A crusading spirit gripped all of
Europe with such fervor that thousands of young people decided they would go on a
crusade. There were different branches of that crusade. The first left from France, and
another left from Germany. . . . They went without arms. . . . It is not known what their
motive or goal was. Perhaps they intended to convert the Muslims. It may be that they did
not know themselves. They did not even know how they were going to get there. They went
as far as Marseille [a French city on France’s southern coast – Ed.], and then they found a
large sea before them. They could not walk any further, but that did not disturb them. They
believed that if God had made a dry path for Moses and the children of Israel, then He could
certainly do it again for them. They waited for a while, but nothing happened in the
Mediterranean. Some of them went home at that point. Others got on ships. There were
seven ships who claimed to be willing to take them where they wanted to go. Two of the
ships were lost at sea. The other ships met some Muslim ships in the Mediterranean and
then transferred all the children to the Muslim ships so they could be sold as slaves to the
Muslims. There were several episodes of that Children’s Crusade, but they all ended the
same way.
You might wonder whether anybody objected to the crusades at the time that they were
occurring. Some people did object. We do not know what the objections were precisely. Our
best evidence is the answers of churchmen to those who objected to the crusades. . . .
The crusades fell far short of achieving their goal. There was a brief success in the First
Crusade. Even the small Latin kingdoms that were set up in the Holy Land were soon lost.
Some new monastic orders were established in the Catholic Church, such as the Knights of
the Temple, the Teutonic Knights, and the Knights of Saint John. Those were military

orders. For the first time there were orders established that had the usual marks of
poverty, obedience, and chastity, but they also added military service. . . .
The real result of the crusades was a long legacy of bitterness. There was bitterness on the
part of Jews, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Muslims. Quite often the crusaders would
attack Jews along their way. They would sometimes wipe out whole communities of Jews in
Europe. The crusaders believed they were going to the Holy Land to liberate it from the
Muslims. Somehow they also had the idea that the [page 4] Jews, who were closer to them,
were responsible for the death of Christ anyway, so they thought it would be proper to
eliminate them as well on their way to the Holy Land.
The crusaders had little intention of converting the Muslims, even by force. The idea was to
defeat the Muslims, and generally to kill them, but not to convert them to Christianity.
There were a few people, however, who were thinking that the Lord sends us out to the
world not to kill people but to love them and bring the message of Christ’s redemption to
them. In the second part of this lesson, I will talk about missions during the time of the
crusades.
One example of a person who took a very different approach to the Muslims was the poor
little man of Italy, Francis of Assisi. Francis not only wandered about Italy preaching to the
animals and helping the poor and taking care of lepers, but he also made a journey to Egypt.
It was his own personal mission. He was able to meet Sultan al-Kamil. It is amazing that he
was able to simply wander in and have an audience with the sultan. Francis was guileless
[honest – Ed.] and had no weapons, and he looked very insignificant. The Muslims may
have thought he was slightly insane. Some of them had the idea that God speaks through
people like that. When he got there, he said, “I am not sent of man, but of God, to show you
the way of salvation.” He had many conversations with the sultan and with other Muslims
there. They were not converted to Christianity, but they were converted to Saint Francis.
They liked him. He preached to them, taught them, and expressed love to them. Sam Moffett
said in his book, A History of Christianity in Asia, that “a model of innocent faith, unarmed
witness, and a complete willingness to die for his Lord inspired the members of his order in
the same century and with the same utter disregard of their own safety to become the first
Europeans to preach to the Mongols and the Chinese.” So with Saint Francis and the
Franciscans was the beginning of a missions movement, not only to the Muslims, but also to
other lands.
The greatest of the missionaries of this period, and one of the greatest missionaries to
Islam in all of history, was a man named Raymund Lull. It is important for us to know about
him. He was born in Spain, on the island of Mallorca . . . . Like Francis, he was a worldly
young man. He had much ambition, and he was showy in dress and in life. He wrote love
poetry to various women. He enjoyed himself greatly. When he was converted he dedicated
himself to one singe goal for the rest of his life. As he grew up . . . [h]e was in a Muslim
context. Later the Muslims were driven out of Spain, but that did not happen until the
sixteenth century. Raymund Lull decided that God was calling him to be a missionary to the
Muslims. He was going to proclaim in the very home of Islam, in the speech of the people,
the Gospel of Christ. He wanted to go somewhere into a Muslim area, probably in North

Africa, and he wanted to be able to speak to them in Arabic and preach the Gospel. It took
him nine years to learn Arabic. He said it was an awful sounding language that sounded like
the grunts and groans of beasts. Yet he worked hard at it. Not only did he learn Arabic, but
he also wrote some books in Arabic. One book that he wrote in Arabic was his own spiritual
biography. He also traveled through Europe, talking to popes and whoever would listen to
him about his vision for missions to the Muslims. He started missionary colleges, where
people could study languages, apologetics, and how to preach in a Muslim setting.
Three times in his life he ventured down into Muslim countries. The first two times he
barely escaped with his life, and the last time he did not escape. As an old man of 85 he was
stoned to death in modern-day Tunisia as he attempted to preach to the Muslims. Lull did
not lack boldness. He would simply arrive, stand up and denounce Islam, and preach Christ
to whoever would listen to him. And he did not lack brilliance. He was a wonderful scholar
who wrote some intriguing books, which no one since that time has been able to fully
understand. He wrote other books, too, in which he set things forth more clearly. As a man
of boldness, brilliance, and scholarship, he would have benefited from adding tact. We
[page 5] can admire him as a person who knew what had to be done. Raymund Lull said
that if God would convert the Muslims, then it would be very easy for Him to convert the
rest of the world. He realized that the Muslims were a very resistant people. It would take a
great miracle of God to convert them. Not much has changed since the day of Lull. Among
his many books, he wrote on scholastic theology, mystic religion, allegory, apologetics, and
polemics. . . . One book of verse that he wrote was called The Hundred Names of God. In the
preface to that book, Lull says that in the Qur’an it says that there are 99 names of God and
that he who knows the hundredth name will know all things. . . .
One writer has said, without too much exaggeration, that over the next 500 years no human
voice proclaimed Christ publicly to the Muslims. . . .
B. THE WALDENSIANS10
The Waldensians liked to talk about what they call the first reformation. That took place
300 years before what we Protestants who are not Waldensians usually call the
Reformation of the 16th century of Luther and Calvin. . . .
Let us talk about how these people came into being and what they believed. Sometimes
scholars have argued that the Waldenwsians have their own particular heritage, their line
of descent, all the way back to the New Testament. They say there was an underground
church, secret church, or trail of blood that was separate from the Roman Catholic Church.
You can read some books in church history that argue that; I do not think they are
successful. . . . I think it is more accurate historically, as modern Waldensian scholars admit,
that the Waldensian movement was a movement that came out of the Catholic Church. It
did not have its own separate history back to the New Testament period. It began with a
10
David Calhoun, “The Waldensians,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
_T_271.pdf>. The document which forms the second half of this lesson appears as Lesson 27 in Dr. Calhoun’s

man named Waldo. He lived in the city of Lyon in France. He was a wealthy merchant. It is
interesting to see this emerging social class. They were neither the aristocracy, the elite,
nor the peasants, but a new class of merchants. They were of some means, and Waldo
represented this particular new class in society. He became convinced that God was calling
him to give away his money and take up preaching. He was not a priest, of course, he was a
layman. He followed that leading and was converted to a life of apostolic poverty. This
happened about the year 1170, which would have been about 10 years before Saint Francis
was born. So before Francis is doing something very similar down in Italy further south,
Waldo has adopted a lifestyle of poverty in Lyon. Pretty soon people began to be gathered
around him. He not only gave away his money to the poor, but he also memorized portions
of Scripture in the vernacular language of the people. He also memorized portions of some
of the writings of the church fathers such as Augustine. Waldo would go out and preach,
mainly reciting the Scripture and quoting the church fathers. People joined him in this
venture, called the Poor Men of Lyon. That was the first name that they used, not the
Waldensians but the Poor.
As the movement began to grow a little bit they did what every movement in the Middle
Ages eventually had to do. They sent somebody to Rome to tell the Pope about it and to get
papal permission to exist as a movement or an order within the Catholic Church. . . . The
pope was Alexander III. The popes were always quite reluctant to endorse a new
movement like this. Some movements got approval, like the Franciscans and the
Dominicans. Other movements were turned down because the popes did not want too
many movements like this around. This kind of movement could gather its own momentum
and actually challenge the authority of the church in some ways. So it was not automatic
that a movement like this would be approved by the pope. There would be some lengthy
questioning and examination of the views of the people who were proposing to begin a new
movement. We have a very interesting account of what happened when those Waldensians
arrived in Rome because different people were appointed to question them in the
delegation of the doctors and scholars of the Roman Catholic Church. It was one English
bishop whose name was Walter Map who was asked to question the Waldensians. Map
said, “I was actually quite nervous because this was my big chance to put down these
heretics and to establish my reputation as a theologian and an inquisitor.” So he wanted to
make the best impression that he could on everybody who was listening. So he said, “I
knew these people were very simple and illiterate.” They really were not; that was his
description of them. They had memorized large portions of Scripture, and they were using
those Scriptures in their preaching. But thinking them to be untutored, at least in the ways
of [page 3] theology in the church, he set out to question them. He said, “First I proposed
the very simplest question: Do you believe in God the Father?” They replied, “We believe.”
And then he said, “Do you believe in God the Son?” Again, “We believe.” “Do you believe in
the Holy Spirit?” “Yes, we believe.” “And do you believe in the mother of Christ?” And once
more they said, “We believe,” where upon everyone present broke out into a roar of
laughter. And they retired in confusion, as well they might. They had fallen into a trap.
Perhaps you can identify the trap that they fell into. “Do you believe in the mother of
Christ?” What would a good orthodox Roman Catholic answer to that question? “No, I
believe in the mother of God.” To say I believe in the mother of Christ indicated something

of the taint of the Nestorian heresy [a heresy which denied the union of Jesus’ divine and
human natures – Ed.]. . . .
So the Waldensians, according to Walter Map, with Map’s own brilliance in questioning
them in this way, failed the test. . . . [T]he pope did not permit them to carry on preaching.
That is really what they had come to Rome to ask permission to do. He said they could not
do that unless the local clergy would allow them to do that. So they went back home to
Lyon, disappointed in that verdict. But they did not hesitate to begin preaching again when
they got back to France. They believed that the authority to preach did not come from the
pope or from the bishops but from Christ. The local archbishop refused to give them
permission, but Waldo replied, “It is better to obey God than man.” He chose a very good
text for his answer because those were the words of Peter when he and the apostles in
Jerusalem were forbidden to preach. Waldo is later called Peter Waldo. We think that he
gets the name Peter because he often used this text. . . .
Waldo and his followers were then expelled from Lyon by the archbishop. Like those early
Christians in Jerusalem when they were scattered by persecution, they went everywhere
preaching the Gospel. It was not long before Waldensians were all over Europe. They had to
move and act in secrecy, but they turn up in many places. The English monk, Walter Map,
who had questioned them in Rome said, “Their beginnings are humble in the extreme for
they have not yet much of a following. But if we should leave them to their devices, they
will end by turning all of us out.” So the Roman church, even though this was a very small,
seemingly insignificant movement, had some fear that a movement like this could grow and
could become a very great movement. They feared it would oppose the teaching of the
Catholic Church.
Early in their history the Waldensians did not form a separate church. They did not build
their own church buildings until the middle of the 16th century. The first Waldensian
church building was in about 1555, we think. Formerly they were still part of the Catholic
Church. They had their children baptized in the Catholic Church. They took communion (or
mass) once a year in the Catholic Church, as was the custom of the time. Within the Catholic
Church in southern France and northern Italy, there were these groups of Bible-based
Christians who were led by people. They called the leaders Barbers; it is the Italian word
for “uncle.” Perhaps because the Catholic Church used “father” for their priests, the
Waldensians used “uncle” for their leaders. Little groups of people in different places, but
mainly in the mountains, in the Alps between France and Italy, were meeting with their
leaders. They met for the study of the Bible and for the discipline of their Christian lives.
The Waldensians were persecuted. Even though the Roman Catholic Church recognized
that the Waldensians had not formed a separate church, they realized that this was really a
church within a church. The Catholics did everything they could to exterminate these
Waldensian believers. As I have already said, they were not only able to survive by hiding
in the Alps and in the valleys there in northern [page 4] Italy and southern France, but they
also moved into Europe where they had great influence in preparing for the later
Reformation. We will study John Hus a little bit later. He was the reformer of Bohemia.
There is a 1558 confession of faith of the Bohemian brethren, and on the title page of that

1558 confession of faith, Hus’ followers are called Waldensians. They probably were not
really Waldensians, but they had come to view the Christian faith so much like the
Waldensians that the word “Waldensian” had become a general word for Christians or
evangelicals by the time we come to John Hus.
Now let us think a little bit about the theology of these people and their practice. What did
they really believe? There is some diversity in this movement, but we can summarize the
movement in a number of major points. One point is poverty, which I have already
mentioned. The Waldensians gave away their money in order to follow Christ. This was not
an unusual occurrence at this time. . . . Peter Waldo said, “We have decided to live by the
words of the Gospel, essentially that of the Sermon on the Mount and the commandments.
That is to live in poverty without concern for tomorrow. But we hold that also those who
continue to live their lives in the world doing good will be saved.” So Waldo does not say it
is necessary for everybody to give up everything like we have. People can continue to live
in the world—that is, without moving out into a special community or order like the
Waldensians—and can be saved as well. But the Waldensians felt called to give up their
possessions. They were described by Walter Map this way (and this was a common way
that the Waldensians were spoken of), “Naked, following the naked Christ.” Map did not use
that as a compliment for the Waldensians, but they viewed it as a testimony to their
faithfulness to Christ. That statement, “Naked, following the naked Christ,” a kind of
startling way of describing these people, probably had two meanings. One is that they were
materially poor. As Christ had nothing, so they had given away all that they had to follow
Him. But it can also mean, as it probably did, that they were stripped of religious trappings
and followed Jesus and Jesus alone.
The Waldensians focused their understanding of what it meant to be Christians on a very

strict and literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. And they attempted to put all
of that into practice in their everyday lives. And so that meant poverty, giving away what
they had. It meant a repudiation of violence in every form. The Waldensians were totally
opposed to the Crusades and would not support that movement at all. They would not take
oaths because they said that the Sermon on the Mount did not allow them to do this. So this
kind of lifestyle would have made them stand out as unusual in the area in which they lived.
There is a story about a man who was suspected of being a Waldensian. He was brought
before the bishop for a trial. In his defense, he said of himself that he was not a Waldensian.
He said, “Everybody here knows that I am not because I swear and lie and drink like any
good Catholic! I could not then be accused of being a Waldensian.”
Poverty, a literal following of the Sermon on the Mount, and the many statements of
Scripture . . . marks the Waldensian movement. A very strong commitment to the Bible
certainly is part of the Waldensian movement. The Waldensians turned directly to the
Bible, placed it in the hands of the people, translated it, and preached it in order that people
might hear it for salvation and discipleship. We know that one method that the early
Waldensians used in getting the Bible out was to go about as merchants. They sold things,
like precious jewels, books, or cloth, and this helped them make a living. But they really
were more concerned to distribute the Scriptures as they were traveling from town to town
as merchants selling their wares. . . . [page 5] . . .We know, too, that as the persecution came

to the valleys of the Waldensians . . . [m]any of the Waldensians were killed, and the
Scriptures were taken away from them. . . . According to this tradition, and I expect it is
true, Waldensians had memorized the entire Bible. Different families were responsible for
different books. So when they were stripped of all their Bibles, they would come together
again and recite the whole Bible. By memory as a community they had the Bible, and they
were able to write it again as a result of their having memorized it.
Another emphasis of the Waldensian movement, and you would expect this from their
history, was an emphasis on lay preaching. These people preached—all of them preached.
They were lay people, but they believed that every Christian should both know the Bible
and be able to preach it. So wherever they went they preached. They were simple sermons
but sermons that included the message of the Bible. The modern Waldensian movement in
Italy and South America, which we will talk about in a few minutes, is true to this heritage
in that it still allows lay people to preach and to administer the sacraments even though the
Waldensians have ordained clergy today.
Let us talk about the Waldensian view of the sacraments. That will bring us into some
understanding of how the Waldensians view salvation. The Waldensians rejected the
Roman Catholic sacramental theology. . . . Some sources indicate that the Waldensians held
to only two sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This would bring the Waldensian
movement right in line with later Protestant belief. It is probably true, as people have often
pointed out, that the 16th century reformation stressed more justification by faith that may
not have been as central to the Waldensians as their emphasis on the Bible alone. They
certainly wanted to stress the fact that it is the Bible—not the church and not tradition—
that is the source of our faith. You can find in reading Waldensian source documents some
emphasis, too, on justification by faith. For instance, one of the early Waldensian poems
puts it this way, “It is God alone who pardons and no one else.” If you take that in a very
strong sense as I think it was intended, then it is clear that salvation is not going to come
through the sacraments of the church. But it will come through God’s pardoning grace,
which is received by faith alone.
What did the Waldensians think about the church? We have already seen that early on this
group did not formerly break with the church. But with spirit and in temper the
Waldensians were far from being in accord with the contemporary standards and
understanding of the Catholic Church. I have a book written by a modern Waldensian called
A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. The
Waldensians opposed the idea of Constantinianism. They did not accept what was called
the donation of Constantine. . . . [O]ne of the popes, Pope Sylvester, is supposed to have
received from Constantine, the emperor, a document. The emperor, while in the process of
moving from Rome to the new capital in Constantinople, turned over the whole of Italy to
the pope and some other territory as well. That is called the Donation of Constantine.. . . .
[page 6] . . . In the 15th century that document was proven to be a forgery, but the
Waldensians did not know that in their earlier history. They rejected it anyway. They said,
“This is not the way a pope ought to act, to receive power and earthly dominion from an
earthly ruler. Sylvester’s acceptance of worldly political power is a denial of the humility

and poverty fundamental to obedient Christians who are followers of Christ and the
Apostles. We must reject all forms of compromise of the church with the world.”
So we have, created by God’s Spirit and power, a small group of faithful believers who
impact not only their time but later history as well. Before I end this lesson on the
Waldensians, let me trace that history briefly. At the time of the Reformation, the
Waldensians realized that what was going on in places like Geneva represented much of
what they had already accepted and believed. In 1532 representatives of the reformed part
of the Reformation, including William Farrell, went . . . to the Italian Alps and met with
Waldensian leaders. The Waldensian church then formerly became part of the Protestant
church, and particularly of the reformed Protestant church. From that time on the
Waldensians separated themselves from the Catholics. They built their own church
buildings and had their own life independent of the church of Rome. This did not introduce
a peaceful period. As you know the Reformation was followed by at least a century and a
half of what we call the Wars of Religion. As Catholics and Protestants fought each other
throughout Europe the Waldensians suffered greatly during this time. . . . The situation got
so bad that surviving Waldensians finally had to flee their beloved mountains and valleys.
They went for a few years to Geneva, where the Waldensian church was a church in exile.
In 1689 they returned in what is called a glorious return in Waldensian history. This is the
return of the few Waldensians who still existed from Geneva back to the valleys. The
church was able to exist there, not without persecution, but with some measure of peace
from time to time.
Like so many of the Protestant churches, during the time of the Enlightenment, the
Waldensians were influenced by liberal, rational thought. And then there was a period of
revival coming out of England through Geneva in the days of Robert and James Haldain. The
evangelical revival in Switzerland reached down into the valleys and renewed the old
Waldensian church and brought life to it once again.
Then in the 19th century, not so much due to religious persecution but to lack of economic
opportunities in the valleys, many Waldensians migrated to South America and to the
United States. The Waldensian church today that exists in Italy also has a strong part of that
church in Uruguay. The Waldensians settled along the river plate between Uruguay and
Argentina. That forms the province of the Waldensian church in South America. The
Waldensians who came to the United States settled in various places but have not
maintained a separate Waldensian church. Most of those Waldensians became
Presbyterians. There is a little town in North Carolina called Valdese, North Carolina. You
can tell from the name that Valdese is a Waldensian settlement. There is a Waldensian
Presbyterian church in Valdese and a museum of Waldensian history. . . . There is also a
settlement of Waldensians in Missouri in a town called Monett. And there are Waldensians
in other places as well.
The Waldensian church in Italy in 1979 merged with the Italian Methodist Church. That did
not help the Waldensians much because the Methodists did not represent the reformed
history and theology of the, [page 7] Waldensian movement. They also brought in much

more of an emphasis on social activity as the core and heart of Waldensian life in Italy. But
within that ancient church there are still Bible believing people.
In some ways I have simplified the Waldensian theology for the sake of the lecture. I have
tried to make it accurate. But you can probably get different expressions of theology as you
read Waldensians. Some are going to sound more Catholic, some are going to sound more
Protestant. The weight, I think, is toward the later Protestant position. . . .
LESSON FOUR QUESTIONS
1. How did Islam treat Christianity before the crusades?
2. What motives did Christians have for joining the crusades?
3. What results came from the crusades?
4. What did Francis of Assisi do to promote missions?
5. What did Raymond Lull do to promote missions?
6. What kind of people became Waldensians?
7. Why did people call Waldo “Peter Waldo?”
8. What did the Waldensians do when they faced persecution?
9. List some of the things which the Waldensians emphasized.
10. What did Waldensians say about the sacraments?

Medieval Church History 68 LESSON FIVE
LESSON FIVE:
SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY; THOMAS AQUINAS
A. SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY11
. . . The question that we want to start with is, “What is scholastic theology?” A simple
answer is that scholastic theology was the way that theology was done in the Middle Ages.
It was the approved method, the standard approach to theology. Theology had not always
been done this way, in fact this is a creation of the Middle Ages. It would have great impact,
not only on its own time, but all the way down throughout the rest of church history. Let us
try to understand what it is, first of all. Then we will talk about some famous scholastic
theologians.
When we get into the matter of scholastic theology, we have to get into the whole matter of
philosophy. . . . Philosophy was viewed as a valuable asset to Christian theology in a couple
of ways. One, it could demonstrate the reasonableness of faith and thus defend the
Christian faith against non-Christian critics. By using philosophy, theologians hoped to be
able to show that Christianity really had some rationality to it. It made sense; it was not
ridiculous. It could answer these questions, and it could answer them in terms of the
philosophical system that was being employed. Another reason that Christians wanted to
use philosophy was that it enabled theologians to systematically arrange and order their
theology. When you are going to write theology you have to have some sort of order, some
kind of outline. The Bible does not give us that. To make a systematic theology, there has to
be some way of putting it all together in a coherent and organized form. Philosophy seemed
to offer some help in enabling Christian theologians to systematize their writings. Their
purpose in all of this was to set forth theology in a systematic, orderly way so that
Christians could better understand it. Philosophy was viewed as an ally. . . . The problem, of
course, was which philosophy?
Early on the teaching of Plato appealed to theologians, and Plato was often used in some
way as a philosophical background or context for the teaching of Christian theology. The
appeal of Plato for Christian theologians is clearly seen in the very first sentence under
Plato in the New Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. The first sentence under Plato says
this, “Plato was a preeminent Greek philosopher whose chief contribution consists in his
conception of the observable world as an imperfect image of a realm of unobservable and
unchanging forms. And his conception of the best life has one centered on the love of these
divine objects.” I will not take time to exegete that sentence, but I think you can see in my
reading it how Christian theology would find some sort of affinity with the philosophy of
Plato. [page 2]
11
David Calhoun, “Scholastic Theology,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wpcontent/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/CH310
_T_281.pdf>. The document which forms the first half of this lesson appears as Lesson 28 in Dr. Calhoun’s course
on Ancient and Medieval Church History.

Aristotle was not well known in the early Middle Ages. Plato was the philosopher. Aristotle
was, in many of his writings, unknown in the West. Those writings had not come over into
the West. They had not been translated into Latin. . . . It came into the West in a rather
strange way. Aristotle’s teaching, unknown to the West, was known to the Muslims who
had conquered much of the East. So the study of Aristotle was taking place in Persia when
Aristotle was not being studied in Rome and Paris and Oxford. As the Muslims conquered
other areas, they took their knowledge of Aristotle with them all the way to Spain. Muslim
philosophers in Spain became the preeminent channel by which the full understanding of
Aristotle was then brought into the Christian West. When people began to read Aristotle,
they discovered a different sort of philosophy at work. It was a rational, empirical, hard-
headed concentration on the data. It was a more scientific approach to philosophy as over
against Plato’s more mystical, subjective approach. Reality, according to Aristotle, is
explained by observation and by logic. It is not so much by meditation as by study of the
data. Many people in the West adopted Aristotle then. The Aristotelian system, particularly
Aristotelian logic, became very important for the expression of Christian theology for
presenting, organizing, and defending Christian truth. The problem with Aristotle, though,
was that Aristotle was not a Christian. Plato was not either, although some people tried to
get him very close if not into the kingdom of heaven because he was saying so many things
that seemed right to Christians. . . . But Aristotle is more of a problem because in Aristotle’s
teaching there is some very definitely, strongly stated non-Christian positions like the
eternity of the world. Aristotle believed in the eternity of the world, he seemed to believe in
the mortality of the soul. He does not have a high view, if any view at all, of providence. His
concentration on empirical, visible reality could be opposed to an acceptance of tradition
and authority in God and the Scripture. Christian theologians, as much as they could
Christianize Aristotle, took his system, tried to adjust his teaching, and overlooked some
things. But in terms of how to think, how to do philosophy, which in this period is the same
thing as doing theology, Aristotle became the philosopher. Not everybody was happy with
that. . . .
While all this was going on, we have the rise of the universities. At first there were no
universities. There were monastic schools where the monks taught groups of students. Out
of the monastic schools grew the cathedral schools in the large cathedral towns where
people would come and study. Out of those cathedral schools came the universities. By the
time we come to the high Middle Ages, which we are talking about now, the university is
part of the landscape of Europe. In the monastic schools, and somewhat in the cathedral
schools, the way of study could be described as devotional. It was like going to chapel all
the time and hearing the Word of God read, hearing devotional writings read. They studied
these things with a view to one’s own heart and the application of all of this to one’s life. . . .
The method that was used in the universities was the dialectical method. That was in large
[page 3] measure based on Aristotle’s way of doing philosophy and based on Aristotelian
logic. It was a certain prescribed method. If you wanted to do theology you did it this way.
You learned how to do it in the university this way. Books were written this way.
Everything was set up this way. It was a formal procedure in which a question was posed.
That question became the issue of debate. Theology really became a matter of debate. A
question is proposed like, “Is the world eternal?” Then answers would be given on both
sides of that issue. Of course Aristotle could be quoted on one side and the Bible could be

quoted on the other side. The authorities, philosophers, and theologians would be lined up
on the two sides of a question like that. Arguments would be given for and against those
positions. Finally there would be some sort of conclusion. If you were studying to be a
theologian in a university, this would be the way your classes would be conducted. . . State
the question, give the arguments on both sides, and come up with a conclusion. That was
the dialectical method. Not everybody thought that was a good idea, but it was the
prevalent approach to theological work in the Middle Ages. One Christian writer of the 11th
century said, “That which is from the argument of the dialecticians cannot easily be
adapted to the mysteries of divine power.” He was not sure that you could take what he
called the mysteries of the Word of God and fit it into that kind of straight jacket approach
of question, countering arguments and conclusion. But most theologians thought it could be
done that way, and they did it that way.
Who were those theologians? Let us start with Anselm. Anselm was an Italian monk who
went to the Abbey of Beck in Normandy [region in north France – ed.]. Then from
Normandy he became archbishop of Canterbury [British city – Ed.]. He can be considered
the first truly great theologian of the period. In some ways he is the greatest name between
Augustine and the Reformers. Anselm carried on the older devotional approach to
theology, but he combined it with the new scholastic approach. So with Anselm you get a
bridge from the older way of doing theology to the newer way. He wrote his theology in the
form of a prayer. That certainly reflects the older approach. He said, “I am not trying, oh
Lord, to penetrate Thy loftiness.” But then he goes on and seems to try to penetrate God’s
loftiness. So he has those two sides to him: the devotional side in which authority in the
Word is so prominent, but the scholastic side in which rationality and logic are becoming
more and more significant.
Anselm is known for two great contributions to theology. The first is found in his book
called Proslogion, in which his starting point is “I believe in order to know.” He did not
create that statement. Saint Augustine and many other theologians had said the same thing,
but you see what he is saying there. . . . He starts with faith, with belief, and then in the
context of faith and belief he moves to heaven and earth to use logic and rationality in
order to better understand what he already believes. From Proslogion we get the great
cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Those are arguments that move from the
creation to the Creator. Anselm was not the first person to think of all of this, but he
organized it and stated it in a very compelling way. You start with creation, with what is
here, and then you argue to the Creator. There are various ways to do that. For instance,
you can start with the idea of design. As we look around us things seem to have some
pattern, some organization, some design. It is not haphazard. It is exquisitely put together.
Then you can argue from that idea found in the created world to the fact that there must be
a designer, someone to put it all together. It could not have happened accidentally. Thomas
Aquinas will say the same thing. People had said this before and after Anselm, but Anselm
is famous for his emphasis on these arguments from creation to the Creator.
Anselm wanted to go further. He wanted to see if he could “prove” the existence of God by
just shutting his eyes and not looking out at the creation. From thought alone could he
prove that God exists? He thought he could. That is a famous argument from Anselm: from

thought to God. It is called the ontological argument. Sometimes it is called Anselm’s

argument. Anselm reflected on how self-evident [page 4] the idea of God had become for
him. It was just there in his thought. He wondered if he could move from the self-evidence
of that idea to some proof of the existence of God. He wanted to see what the implications
of the fact that God was self-evident to him would be. Crucially important to his argument
is his definition of God. “God is that then which nothing greater can be conceived.” He
thought starting with that definition he could prove the existence of God. . . . Book after
book has been written on the ontological argument of Anselm. What is important for our
purpose, however, is to note the method of Anselm’s theology, which applies reason to a
truth known by faith (that is the key) in order to understand it better. Anselm by faith
knows that God exists, and then he applies reason to what he knows in order to try to
understand better what he already believes.
There is another important contribution of Anselm to theology on quite a different level. It

comes out in the famous book that he wrote Cur deus Homo (Why the God-man). It deals
with the matter of atonement. Ideas of atonement in church history up to this point had
varied greatly, and after this point they vary greatly too. Cur deus Homo is a classic on
attempting to understand why God became man and how that is necessary for our
salvation. One of the older views was the ransom to the devil view. As far as the atonement
is concerned, there was a ransom paid to the devil, and that was the sacrifice of Christ on
the cross. So the devil would let people go who could then be redeemed through Christ.
Some of the church fathers held to that in a rather crude way. The more sophisticated
approach was the Cristus Victor approach. Christ simply overcomes by His power over the
forces of evil. He conquers hell and Satan and wins a great victory. Church fathers held that
too, and that view can be held in connection with other views of the atonement. I think
when we are finished studying Anselm we would say he has a very clear insight into what
the atonement means, but it means even more than this. So Cristus Victor and the
substitutionary concept of Anselm do not need to be held as opposites but as
complimentary views of the atonement.
I will talk about Abelard in a moment. Abelard came up with a moral influence view. He
said the atonement was simply a great example of Christ’s love which then passes onto us
and influences us to love God and man as well. But it is Anselm who makes crystal clear the
important biblical concept of Christ’s death as payment for our sin. Christ’s death is
payment to the Father for the people, the elect. That was not new. Others had said it before
Anselm, but Anselm put it together in a very compelling way. It is the classic formulation of
Christ’s death as a work of deliverance from the penalty of sin. Man must pay because man
is the sinner. But only God can really pay because He is sinless and infinite. So salvation
depends upon the God-man. Man has obligation but no ability. God has ability but no
obligation. So in Christ, who is the God-man, both obligation and ability come together.
Anselm sets forth wonderfully His perfect infinite sacrifice on the cross for His people. . . .
[page 5]
While Anselm is writing great books and teaching theology in Normandy and in
Canterbury, to read what was going on in Paris about this time makes one’s head spin. At
the center of it was the brilliant, enigmatic figure of Peter Abelard. He was the invincible

arguer, the magnetic teacher. Abelard was the star. Like a great prizefighter, he expressed
his contempt for anyone who met him in the ring of open discussion. He would win these
debates hands down. This was the most exciting show in town. People would turn out to
hear Abelard debate theology. The older medieval philosophers like Anselm said, “I must
believe in order that I may understand.” Abelard took the opposite course. He said, “I must
understand in order that I may believe.” He said by doubting, not by reciting, affirming or
quoting, but by doubting we come to questioning. And by questioning we perceive the
truth. You can see how Abelard has made a massive shift in the way theology was being
done. These are strange words to have been written in the year 1122. Of course they got
him into trouble. . . .
His book on theology has a strange name. It is called Sic et Non. It means “yes and no.” What
Abelard does in this book is follow the dialectical method of setting up questions and giving
lists of contradictory answers to those questions. But he does not try much to resolve it all.
He is better at setting up the questions and letting people wrestle with those questions. It is
probably a very modern idea, but certainly not an idea that was prevalent in the high
Middle Ages. The emphasis now is more on the fact that perhaps we cannot know. The
Bible contradicts itself, or it seems to. The church fathers contradict each other. What are
you going to do? . . . [H]e has moved it away from the realm of authority and moved it much
more into the realm of rationality. We have got to do the best we can to try to decide these
matters. Abelard’s purpose may have been to force deeper reflection and so greater
understanding. But it had the effect of prizing [forcing – Ed.] theology away from [church or
biblical – Ed.] authority and exposing it to the scrutiny of reason. All of this kept getting him
into trouble with other theologians and with the church. Personally, deep down he would
continually express his submission to the Bible, to the tradition, and to the church. In fact,
he wrote . . . “I would never be a philosopher if this is to speak against Saint Paul. I would
not be an Aristotle if this were to separate me from Christ.” But despite statements like that
he keeps on doing it. He finally died a rather friendless man and a rather sad man in a
Cluniac monastery in 1142.
Let me talk about a number of other important scholastic theologians just to get their
names before us. Another very important figure is Peter Lombard. His book of theology is
called Four Books of the Sentences. In it he divides theology into God, creation and Old
Testament, salvation through Christ, and sacraments and last things. Lombard simply
organizes theology this way: he collects a lot of references from a lot of sources and tries to
come up with some kind of understanding of theology through this approach. Alister
McGrath says that Four Books of Sentences is perhaps one of the most boring books that has
ever been written. . . . It may have been a very boring book, but at the same time it was a
pretty important book. Lombard became the standard theological text for the Middle Ages.
If you wanted to be a theologian, you had to master Lombard and you had to produce
something similar to Lombard. . . . Calvin in the [page 6] Institutes refers to Lombard at
least 100 times, but he does not quote Lombard the way he quotes Augustine. He quotes
Augustine hundreds of times, almost always favorably. Calvin says about Lombard, “When
Augustine says anything clearly, Lombard obscures it. And if there was anything slightly
contaminated in Augustine, Lombard corrupts it.”

Another medieval theologian was the Franciscan minister General Bonaventure. After the
death of Saint Francis, the Franciscan order fell into turmoil. This is because there were
different ideas as to how the order could and should continue. It was Bonaventure who led
in settling the internal dissensions of the order. He was a great Franciscan theologian,
faithful to the Augustinian-Anselmic tradition with some sympathy for the new Aristotelian
philosophy. Bonaventure’s greatest influence as a writer was as a spiritual writer. . . . One of
his most interesting books is Retracing the Arts to Theology. Like Augustine, like Anselm, he
begins with faith. His premise stated in his own words in this book is, “The manifold
wisdom of God, which is clearly revealed in sacred Scripture, lies hidden in all knowledge
and in all nature.” It is a rather striking and important sentence. You can find the same kind
of sentiment in the church fathers and in Saint Augustine. But when Bonaventure deals
with this in Retracing the Arts to Theology, he attempts to prove all of this with some pretty
hefty intellectual arguments.
Next is Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas is such a big name that I am going to skip him altogether
and dedicate the next lesson to him. I am not ignoring Aquinas but putting him off because
in so many ways he is the culmination of this whole process that I have been talking about.
I would like . . . to reflect with you for a few minutes on this whole matter of scholasticism.
Was it a good thing or a bad thing? People have argued about this for a long, long time. You
can get different views depending on how you look at scholasticism. Theology during the
scholastic period certainly was center stage. It was the queen of the sciences. . . . The
brightest and best minds of the period went into theological study. . . . About the same time
all of this is going on, there are people building all those wonderful cathedrals in Charte [in
France? – Ed.] and other places in Europe. Scholasticism is like a cathedral of the mind:
massive, impressive, and powerful. In many ways theology greatly benefited through all of
this—the attention of the best minds of the age on every conceivable question related to
the Bible and to theology and the production of precise, thorough, and detailed answers. Of
course, one of the problems is that much of this was in the service of a church that had
moved away from the authority of Scripture as its center and as its reason for existence.
If we can say some good things about scholasticism, there were also some problems. That is
that under the scientific, university-led, dialectical, scholastic method theology could move
away from the church. It could move away from the monastery. It could move away from
the common people and become a domain of the intellectuals. It could become, as it did,
academic and abstract. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Not really a
burning question that the average person wanted an answer to. It could well be that that
question was never debated in the universities, although some people think that maybe it
was. After all, it has to do with the whole idea of the immateriality of the angels in the
spiritual [page 7] world. . . . But if that question was never really raised or debated, there
were other questions that people spent a lot of time talking about. In fact, at the university
in Belgium in 1493 there was a debate over this question, “Do four five-minute prayers on
consecutive days stand a better chance of being answered than one 20-minute prayer?”
And some very great scholars spent eight weeks debating that issue! That was longer than
it took Christopher Columbus to sail to America the preceding year. All of this . . . all tended
to tie theology too much to philosophy and to rationality. In some ways it made it a game

and removed it from its service to the church and to the Gospel. There was one late
medieval thinker who compared the scholastics to physicians, who having learned their
trade then sit down and talk about it while people are dying of the plague. The plague was
the big problem during this time too.
Again, I am trying to balance this somewhat. There are some good things about it, but it
could easily lead to excesses and to problems. This was a great period of theology.
Unfortunately it was not a great period of preaching. I think that was the problem. The
theology stayed in the universities, in the textbooks, and in the academic circles. People
were beginning to become interested in preaching. There were some great preachers. Some
of the Dominicans and others, and great preachers were well respected and well known.
But there were not many of them, and the average person in his or her parish never heard a
sermon, at least not a very good one. And there were some questions about the theology,
too, because it was producing some wrong answers as well as many right answers. There
was no way for that theology to get to the people
B. THOMAS AQUINAS12
I would like to talk a little bit about the life of Thomas Aquinas, and then we will try to
understand something of the thought of Thomas. As we think about this man’s life, we need
to go back to a wealthy and prominent family in southern Italy. Thomas was born in the
town of Aquino, so the Aquinas part of his name simply refers to the town he came from.
That town was very close to the famous Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, and
Thomas grew up in that monastery. He was taken there by his parents so that he could
have first-class education. He studied there, but when he got a little older he decided to join
a new order. . . . The new order was the order of the Dominicans, and we have studied that
so you know something about the order of the preachers. This was new and untried, not
nearly so famous, but Thomas wanted to be a Dominican. His parents, who had a great deal
of desire that he excel in this world, . . . did not like that decision. They felt that Thomas was
consequently going to be unknown as part of a new, rather nondescript order in the
Catholic church. So they tried everything they could to keep him out of the order. In fact,
they arranged to kidnap him for a year. . . . But Thomas could not be dissuaded. . . . He was
determined to become a Dominican, which he did. He studied in Paris under the great
Dominican, Albert the Great of Germany. Then Thomas began his career as a Dominican
scholar and teacher. He taught in Paris, and he taught in Italy.
. . . If everybody could read Thomas, they would understand what systematic means in
“systematic theologian.” Of all the theologians that I ever look at, that word comes to mind
when I look at Thomas Aquinas. I read recently that a Lutheran said that Thomas Aquinas
and Martin Luther are arguably the greatest theologians in the history of Christianity. I
would like to expand that list a little bit; [but] . . . maybe we should just say anybody’s list
should have Thomas Aquinas. [page 2] Thomas wrote a lot of books, but the two that are
12
David Calhoun, “Thomas Aquinas,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
_T_291.pdf>. The document which forms the second half of this lesson appears as Lesson 29 in Dr. Calhoun’s

the most famous are the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae, the summa
against the Gentiles and the summa of theology. The word summa simply means
“summary,” so these are summaries. One of these summaries, the Summa Contra Gentiles, is
more of a work of apologetics. You might say that the emphasis in this summa is
philosophical and theological. The Summa Theologiae, the summary of theology, is a book
not primarily about apologetics but primarily about theology. The emphasis there is
theological and philosophical. You can see what I have done there. Thomas operates in a
similar manner in both books, but when he is writing a book of apologetics, the emphasis is
on philosophy and theology. When he is writing a book on theology, of course, the
emphasis is on theology and philosophy. There is the same cyclical pattern that is obvious
in both of these great works. A systematic theologian always has a kind of way of thinking
about theology. John Calvin begins the Institutes by saying it is knowledge of God and of
ourselves. That is what he is going to talk about. Whenever Thomas does theology, it is
always the going out from God; God is the origin of all things. He tries to show how
everything derives from God. Then there is the return to God. The cyclical principle is the
methodological principle that Thomas uses in his writing. It is the principle of departing
and returning, the issuing of all things from God and the return of all things to God. You
might say there are always two points in Thomas. One is God as origin of all things and the
other is God as the goal of all things.
Even though the general outline is the same for both of the summas, Thomas has quite a
different purpose in mind. When he wrote the Summa Contra Gentiles, he was really writing
a book that Christians could use to debate Christianity with opponents of Christianity. By
Gentiles, he had particularly in mind the Muslims, but also the Jews and heretical groups. In
this summa Thomas operated largely on the level of natural reason. This is because these
people would not accept the revelation of the Scripture. The Summa Theologiae is the
greater, more famous of the two great books. When I say these are two books, I do not
mean two single volumes. The Summa Theologiae is many volumes. One rough translation
of the title Summa Theologiae is “everything you ever wanted to know about theology” is
found in Thomas’ work. The thing that always amazes me as I stand before those books
somewhat staggered by the size and number of them is the fact that Thomas said he was
writing a book for beginners in theology. There are 512 questions. Thomas operates
according to the scholastic, dialectical style. He is the prince of the scholastics. He took
these 512 questions and answered them in more than 4,000 pages. I am thankful that Peter
Kreeft has recently written a book called The Summa of the Summa (the Summary of the
Summary). So with Peter Kreeft you can get a more manageable version of Thomas’
summa.
Let me talk a little bit about the first summa, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and then we will
come back to the second summa. Here Thomas sets forth the famous five arguments. He did
not invent these. We saw already that Anselm used these same five arguments, but Thomas
does go into this in some detail. He is famous for the five ways to argue for the existence of
God. You can find that in the Summa Contra Gentiles. The basic thought in these five
arguments is that creation mirrors the Creator. God, who made all things, stamped His
image in some way upon all these things that He made. So you have the five arguments. . . .
Things in this world are in motion, everybody admits that. So Thomas says that there must

be a cause for that motion, maybe a lot of causes. But there is a final cause, something that
gave it the first “push.” Things began to move, and the word that Thomas uses for that final
cause is the word “God.” Then he says effects have causes. Any effect has behind it a cause,
perhaps a series of causes. But there is an original cause that starts the whole thing.
Thomas calls that original cause God. Then he says we are contingent beings; we are not
necessary beings. It is not necessary in a philosophical sense that we are here. Why are we
here then? Contingent beings must have or must depend on a necessary being. There
cannot be contingent beings without a necessary being somewhere. That necessary being,
Thomas says, is God. He also talks about [page 3] values, human values, like truth, honesty,
integrity, nobility, and the like. Where do all these things come from? Thomas says they
come from an original truth or goodness. That, we call God. Then Thomas says as we look
around in the world we see traces of intelligent design. It does not appear that things are
made in an unintelligent way. Things work together; there is evidence of design. There
must be a designer. That designer we call God. You can see all five arguments are basically
the same. All five depend on taking a causal sequence back to its origin and identifying this
origin as God.
There have been, since Thomas’ time, many arguments against the arguments. People have
disagreed with Thomas that this can actually be done or should be done. From the medieval
period we will study Duns Scotus and the late medieval nominalists who opposed Thomas
on this point. They felt that reason could not be used in this way at all. Down to the present,
there have been many people who have not liked the so-called theistic arguments. Many
Christians feel that these are not worthy or useful. . . .
Thomas completed the Summa Theologiae in 1272. Most lists of important dates in church
history will have that date, 1272, the completion of the Summa Theologiae. . . . Let me try to
characterize the Summa Theologiae in three ways. I am not going to tell you Thomas’
theology but something about his methodology. First, it is true that Thomas attempted to
use both faith and knowledge, or reason. To do that, he depends a great deal on Aristotle.
Aristotle, according to Thomas, got a lot right. But he did not know everything. He started
along the way, but he did not go all the way. That is not the same thing as going the wrong
way, so Thomas can place a great deal of value in reading Aristotle. For example, it is not
wrong to say that Athens is in Europe. It is not particularly precise. People can do better
than that, but it is not wrong to say Athens is in Europe. Thomas would say that Aristotle
could make and did make some basic, true statements about how to understand things.
There are many questions about which the Bible and reason say exactly the same thing.
Here Thomas was quite willing to argue philosophically and to use the philosophers like
Aristotle to try to argue for the existence of God, His nature, His providence, the
immortality of souls, and certain ethical insights. Thomas was also aware that the
philosophers, even if they start along the right path, cannot go very far. Philosophy, reason,
does have its own authentic sphere, but so do faith and authority. The Bible tells us many
things that the philosophers could only dream about. They could not even imagine these
things. As Thomas works this way, he does have two separate spheres of authority and
knowledge. It is a two-story view, the lower story and the upper story. The one level you
can understand through reason, philosophy, and rationality. The other level you can only

understand through faith and through the revealed truth of the Bible. There are natural
truths and there are revealed supernatural truths such as the doctrine of the Trinity, the
incarnation, our first and last state, the Fall, redemption, and the like. Thomas saw this
second-level truth as beyond reason. It could not be proved rationally. We accept it on the
basis of the authority of the Bible. But all that is not irrational, and so it cannot be refuted
rationally.
I could sum up all of this briefly by saying that Thomas was struggling to have a place for
human learning, rationality, and philosophy. He wanted a real place for all of that but also
an essential and [page 4] dominant place for revelation and authority. It is philosophy and
theology. When you think of Thomas’ teaching, you need to stress both. They are not to be
separated since they speak of the same God. But they are to be distinguished because they
speak of that same God from different standpoints. They are to support each other. They
are compatible. They are both ultimately from God. I think I can sum this up by quoting
from Etienne Gilson, the famous Thomist philosopher who said, “In Thomas’ thought,
reason and revelation can neither contradict each other nor ignore each other nor be
confused with each other.” Not everybody would agree that Thomas was successful in this.
But a Thomist like Gilson praises Thomas for understanding the role of reason and the role
of revelation.
I will come back to that point in a few minutes as we look at some Protestant critiques of
Thomas, but let us move on to a second principle or characteristic of Thomas’ methodology.
The first principle is a great emphasis on both theology and philosophy. Second, Thomas
struggled with the problem of how we can talk about God at all. How is it possible for us to
use human language to say anything significant or meaningful about God? Someone once
said, “If human words are incapable of describing the aroma of coffee, how can we explain
anything really complicated?” It shows something of the problem that we have with
language. Philosophers and theologians are always struggling with this. Teachers struggle
with this, too. How can words communicate truly, particularly, when the subject is God?
Thomas developed and used what he called the principle of analogy. It is similar to John
Calvin’s use of the principle of accommodation. By “analogy,” Thomas meant that God can
and does reveal Himself in ways that we can understand by using analogous statements.
These are statements that tell us something about God, but statements that also have very
definite limitations as to what they tell us about God. For instance, God says that He is our
father. That tells us something about God that is very important, but it does not tell us
everything about God. And there are some things about fathers that would not be true
about God. Saying that God is like a father communicates to us in some way, but at the same
time it does not completely tell us who God is. God reveals Himself in images and ideas that
lie within our world, and yet we must not reduce God to that world. The principle of
analogy is always at work. This is important because we can understand these things. It is
also important because the way God puts it in the Scripture is memorable. For instance,
think of the expression, “The Lord is my Shepard.” That is an analogy. Think of how much
that communicates to us. We have to draw certain limits there, but it is so memorable. If
God had tried to describe Himself to us in more direct language, you can see how difficult it
would have been for us to grasp that language. It would not have been nearly so

memorable. If God had tried to speak to us in direct language it may have meant that the
Bible would have read much more like Thomas’ Summa.
A third methodological principle from Thomas is his love for and use for precise
definitions. Thomas loves to have headings and subheadings. He gives very clear, terse,
precise definitions. . . . He is concerned to speak very clearly, technically, and scientifically.
There is one rather amusing distinction that Thomas tries to make when he is deciding if
there is a difference between perfect obstinacy [stubbornness – Ed.] and ordinary
obstinacy. He works on those two concepts with definitions. He decides that perfect
obstinacy is found only in hell. That is where a person is totally and perfectly stubborn. But
there is an obstinacy in this life as well on the part of those who become so stubborn
against grace that they have hardly the slightest impulse to repent and turn to the good. I
do not know that it is a particularly significant distinction, but you can see that Thomas is
interested in definitions. Thomas and the Summa is a perfect example for the scientific
university theology that we have been talking about. It is scholastic theology. As you read
Thomas, you will get the impression that it is rather impersonal and monotone. You will
certainly think this as you compare Thomas to Luther and Calvin, and even as you compare
Thomas to Augustine earlier. It is scientific, it is academic, it is scholastic. It is [page 5] great
theology, but not much comes through in terms of a warm, living, personal faith. Luther
said that “Experience alone makes one a theologian.” He perceived in Thomas’ theology the
total absence of any experiential dimension. So Luther felt that Thomas was powerless to
speak to real spiritual needs. That aspect of his theology is so totally missing; it is almost
mathematical. It is dialectical and scientific in the way that it is set forth. It is interesting
that Luther, who could criticize Thomas’ theology this way, knew that Thomas in his own
life was a man who did experience the spiritual presence of God. Thomas tried to live that
out as best as he could.
Let us come to the next point: Thomas the Christian. Luther held up Thomas for his
students as a model of humility. Luther would often point out to his students that when
Thomas Aquinas heard himself praised as a great scholar or a great thinker or a great
theologian, he would secretly make the sign of the cross under his cowl in order to remind
himself of the sin of pride. Luther also spoke of the fact that, according to one of the stories
that was circulated, God said to Thomas, “You have written well concerning me, what will
you now have as a reward?” Thomas is supposed to have replied, “Only Yourself, Lord.”
This story about Thomas Luther told at least five times in a couple of years. He told about
how the great Thomas Aquinas at the time of his death felt that he could not hold out
against the devil until he said, picking up his Bible and holding it, “I believe what is written
in this book.” . . . For Luther, Thomas seems to have been an example of how a great person
can be seriously mistaken.
On December 6, 1272, after morning Mass, Thomas stopped writing the Summa. The
Summa is really not complete. He did not get through the third part; he stopped in the
middle of his discussion of the sacrament of penance. He was not yet 50 years old, yet he
had written many, many books. But he told a friend that he could not go on any longer, he
could not complete this book. “Why?” said the friend, “Why can you not write it? You must
write it.” Thomas said, “I can do no more, for all I have written seems to me like straw.” It

seemed worthless. So he stopped. He only lived another four months, but he did not write
another word of theology. . . .
Let me finish this up with some evaluations of Thomas. First we will discuss some Catholic
evaluations before we talk about Protestant evaluations. Of course, Catholics are going to
be very high on Thomas Aquinas. We can expect that. In 1567, about 300 years after his
death, Thomas was formerly elevated to the status of Teacher of the Church. Not too many
people have received that honor in the Catholic Church. . . . In the 20th century, Thomas has
become the Teacher of the Church. He is not one among several, but he is the preeminent
theologian of Catholicism, like John Calvin is the preeminent theologian of the Reformed
faith. Let me quote two modern Catholics on Thomas Aquinas. The first one is the short
story writer and novelist from Georgia, Flannery O’Conner. Flannery O’Conner wrote, “I
could not make any judgment on the Summa except to say this: I read it every night before I
go to bed.” That says something about Flannery O’Conner and her ability to grapple with
theological issues. . . .
Another Catholic evaluation is from Peter Kreeft in The Summa of the Summa. He says,
“Saint Thomas Aquinas is certainly one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. To my
mind he is the greatest for at least eight reasons: truth, common sense, practicality, clarity,
profundity, orthodoxy, medievalism, and modernity.” If you want to understand all that,
you can read The Summa of the Summa.
Now let me give a few comments on how the Protestants view Thomas Aquinas. We have
already seen that Luther admired the Christian but did not think much of the theologian.
John Calvin amazingly was able to pretty much ignore Thomas altogether, although some of
Calvin’s followers began to study and use Thomas. . . . One of the most famous evaluations
of Thomas Aquinas came in recent years from Francis Schaeffer. . . . In How Should We Then
Live, Schaeffer says, “Aquinas held that man had revolted against God and thus was fallen.
But Aquinas had an incomplete view of the Fall. He thought that the Fall did not affect man
as a whole but only in part. In his view the will was fallen or corrupted, but the intellect was
[not – ed.] affected. Thus people could rely on their own human wisdom, and this meant
that people were free to mix the teachings of the Bible with the teachings of the non-
Christian philosophers.” That is a pretty strong indictment against Thomas. Schaeffer was
saying that Thomas did not think that the will is affected so that reason can operate. We can
pull in truth from many sources and mix those statements of philosophy with the teachings
of the Bible. Schaeffer later said in How Should We Then Live, “Thomas’ view, [that – Ed.] the
will was fallen but the mind was not, eventually resulted in people believing they could
think out the answers to all the great questions beginning only from themselves.” This is an
even stronger indictment on Thomas. Schaeffer was saying that to follow Thomas will
eventually lead to people being able to answer the questions without the Bible, using only
their unfallen reason. Is this what Thomas really did? Did he fragment reality the way
Schaeffer said that he did? He certainly had an upper story and a lower story. But did this

result in Thomas mixing Christian and pagan ideas? . . . But be aware of Schaeffer’s critique
and of some others who feel that Schaeffer has not properly understood Thomas Aquinas. 13
Other conservative Protestants, Presbyterians even, view Thomas Aquinas as a hero. If

Thomas Aquinas was the problem to Francis Schaeffer, he was a hero to John Gerstner and
to R. C. Sproul. . . . John Gerstner wrote an article for Table Talk; it came out in 1994 before
Dr. Gersner died, and the title of the article was “Aquinas was a Protestant.” That struck a
lot of people as a surprising sort of thing for John Gerstner to be saying. This is what he
said, “Thomas taught the biblical doctrine of justification so that if the Roman church has
followed Aquinas, the Reformation would not have been absolutely necessary.” Others
disagreed rather vehemently with that assessment of Thomas Aquinas, particularly Robert
Raymond. He answered Gersner in an article that he wrote in the Westminster Theological
Journal entitled “Dr. John H. Gersner on Thomas Aquinas as a Protestant.” Raymond tried to
prove that Thomas was a long way from being a Protestant in his view of justification by
faith. [page 7]
What is my experience with Thomas? I am constantly surprised when I read Thomas on

election and grace, that he is so good. He teaches election, he says some wonderful things
about grace. And on many other things, Thomas is so good. But I am almost always
disappointed.
LESSON FIVE QUESTIONS
1. Why did Christians want to use philosophy?
2. How did the philosophy of Aristotle and the rise of universities encourage the rise of
Scholasticism?
3. In what two significant ways did Anselm influence Christian theology?
4. Describe briefly the theology of Peter Abelard.
5. How did Peter Lombard contribute significantly to the theology of his era?
6. Summarize the five arguments for God’s existence which Aquinas gives in Summa
Contra Gentiles.
7. The author describes thee general characteristics of Thomas’ thought in Summa

Theologiae. Summarize the first characteristic of Thomas’ theological writing.
8. Summarize the second characteristic of Aquinas’ theological writing.
9. Summarize the third characteristic of Aquinas’ theological writing.

13
The editor notes that Dr. Calhoun’s presentation of Aquinas’ convictions does not contradict
Schaeffer’s conclusions. Calhoun does not demonstrate in any part of this lecture that Aquinas believed that
sin affects, limits, or distorts the human intellect (cf. Romans 1:18-20).

10. What evidence did Luther rely on to respect Aquinas as a genuine Christian?

Medieval Church History 82 LESSON SIX
LESSON SIX
THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM; CHURCH AND STATE
A. THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM14
. . . . The main question of the medieval world was the old question of the Philippian jailor:
what must I do to be saved? There was no question that was more urgent, more pressing
upon medieval people than that question. . . . What I would like to do in this lesson is to
imagine a dialogue between a sincere layperson, a man or a woman in the medieval world,
in Europe, and a priest or a spiritual advisor. This person is asking his or her priest for help
to try and understand how to be saved. This person would say, “Tell me how I can be saved
from my sins.” The priest has a ready answer, “The church has the answer. Do not worry.”
Facere quod in ce est is the answer. It is Latin for “do what lies in you.” Or you could say do
your very best. . . . In plain language it means that God will help those who help themselves.
“What do I do to help myself? Please be specific about this because I am really concerned to
get the right answer and to know how to be saved from my sins and to go to heaven.” The
priest says, “The answer is easy. There is a system in place. It is called the sacramental
system. The church offers these sacraments to you, and as you make good use of them you
will work your way to heaven eventually.” “What are the sacraments, what are we talking
about when you say there are sacraments available for me?” The priest says, “The
sacraments are religious activities that the church has approved of. These activities are
things that you do, and as you do these God’s grace is conferred upon you.”
How many sacraments are there? There used to be a lot of sacraments; Saint Francis talked
about 30 or 40. But the great Peter Lombard was able to reduce that list to seven. So the
church now views the sacraments as seven. You know them. They are baptism,
confirmation, Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, marriage, and ordination. Those are the
seven means of grace that the church uses to confer God’s grace upon you so that you can
go to heaven. Of course, most people are going to experience only five, or, at the most, six of
those sacraments. The church views marriage as a sacrament, but not everybody is going to
be married. Ordination is also a sacrament, but a priest does not marry. So you cannot have
all seven sacraments, but can have at least six of them. You can have five sacraments,
whether you are ordained or married or not. As you use these five or six helps, this is going
to be the road to heaven for you.
“What do I do first, then? I certainly want to go to heaven. Tell me how to get started on this
road.” The priest says, “The first sacrament is not something that you do. It is something
that is done for you because the first sacrament is baptism. You were baptized as an infant.
Baptism is very important because it is necessary to remove original sin. You were born in
this world in a state of sin, and baptism is the sacrament that removes sin. It makes it
possible for you to eventually go to heaven if you do some [page 2] other things along the
14
David Calhoun, “The Sacramental System,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis,
15 March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/
12/CH310_T-301.pdf>. The document which forms the first half of this lesson appears as Lesson 30 in Dr.

way. By the way, the church considers this sacrament so important that it allows anybody
to baptize in an emergency. You know, in our world, many babies die at birth. And it is so
important for those babies to be baptized because without baptism there is no hope of
heaven. Therefore the church says that it is not necessary for a priest to be there to baptize
a dying baby. Anyone can do it; even a midwife can do it. The midwife should have clean
water available so that if the baby appears to be dying she can actually do the baptism. . . .
That baptism that you received as a baby put on you an indelible stamp. You are stamped
with that baptism. It is never to be repeated.” “Does it mean that I am going to heaven?
Does it mean that I am guaranteed heaven?” “Not exactly, but without it you would never
make it to heaven. With it, you have got a good chance. So thank God for your baptism; you
have made a start on the way to heaven.”
“What comes next?” “The next sacrament is confirmation.” “What is that?” “Confirmation is
a sacrament in which the child confirms the vows that were made for the child at
baptism. . . . [A]s you grow up you begin to understand something of what was involved in
your baptism. So there is a time of confirmation in which you are brought into the church,
asked some questions, and you take the vows yourself. Now it is you on your own
embracing those vows that were made by your father and your godparents.” “When should
I do this?” “You do it when you are about 3 years old, 6 years old, 9 years old, or maybe
even later. But you will probably never go through confirmation. There is a problem here.
This is because the Catholic Church teaches that only the bishop can confirm. And the
bishop does not come to this little town very often, so most people are never confirmed. It
is a sacrament of the church, but it is not very frequently practiced in our time. But do not
worry. There are some other sacraments.”
“There is the Eucharist. That is the Lord’s Supper or Communion.” “How does that help
me?” The priest says, “As food that you eat strengthens you and enables you to grow
physically, so the food that you eat in the Eucharist, the sacramental food of the bread and
the wine, strengthens you spiritually.” “How often should I do this?” “The Fourth Lateran
Council that met in 1215 said you had to do it once a year. Every Catholic, every believer,
should partake of the Eucharist once a year.” “That sounds rather strange because if it is
food, why do I eat it only once a year? I would not do very well if I ate physical food just
once a year. I need food more often than that.” “Let us not get into that. I am not quite sure
how to answer that, in fact. The church says once a year, so once a year it is.” This sincere
layperson said, “But there is something else that bothers me about the Eucharist. That is,
why the bread only? When people receive the Lord’s Supper, they never receive the wine.
They just receive the bread. It is the priest alone who drinks the wine. The people get the
bread only.” “You have touched on something very important here. You realize that when
the bread and the wine are consecrated, those elements actually become the body and
blood of Christ. They still look like bread and wine, but they are not really bread and wine
any longer. That is now the body and blood of Christ. It is an awesome thing that has taken
place. You can see why the church does not want to pass the cup among laypeople. This is
because some of you are rather clumsy and careless. It is possible to drop it or to spill some
of it. What you have done then is spill the blood of Christ. That would be an awful thing if
that would happen. So you are given the bread. Sometimes it is just put on your tongue.
That way you cannot lose even a fleck of it because that is the body of Christ. Do not worry

about that either, though. The church has a doctrine called con cobatens, which means that
if you receive either one of the consecrated elements you receive [page 3] them both. . . .
Actually it is enough just to watch all of this taking place. You do not really have to receive
the bread or the wine. The church says once a year you should, but it is just enough to see it
happen. It is enough to observe the consecrated host, the Lord lifted up. Years ago when the
priest would say the words that would make the bread and the wine into the body and
blood of Christ, some laypeople would shout out for him to hold it up high so they could see
it. That has become part of the Mass now, the priest will elevate the host and hold it up
high. You can see it. You can see the real body of Christ there. That is really all that you
need to do.” “It does seem strange to think that one could receive any good from just seeing
food and not eating it, but I will take your word for it.” . . .
The layperson says, “Tell me, what else is there? We have talked about baptism and the
Eucharist as well as confirmation. But there are other sacraments.” “Yes, there are other
sacraments. Let us talk now about penance.” “Why do I need penance?” “You need penance
because of your sin.” “But I thought my baptism took care of my sin.” “It did; it took care of
your original sin and any sin that you had committed up to the point that you were
baptized. But that is not the end of sinning. Actually baptism wipes away all those sins
before the sacrament, and it does give you some strength to resist future sins. But it does
not guarantee that you will not sin again. You have sinned many times since your
baptism. . . . [Penance] . . . is a way to get back on [a ship] when you fall off.” “How does
penance work?” “There are a number of parts to it. First, you have to feel sorry for your sin.
That is called contrition. You cannot just pretend to be sorry. You really have to feel sorry
for your sin and experience contrition. Then you must go and confess to a priest, telling him
what you have done. He will pronounce absolution or forgiveness on you. You will be
forgiven until the next time you sin, then you will have to do it all over again. But that is not
quite the whole story. Even though the priest pronounces absolution on you, which gives
you God’s forgiveness, because of your sin you have earned certain temporal punishments.
You have to make satisfaction for those. You have to do some things that the priest will tell
you to do. As he tells you what to do, then you can make satisfaction, you can make up for
those sins. You can remove the threat of punishment, or at least reduce it.”
Then the layperson responds, saying, “. . . What are some of the things that I will be
required to do to make satisfaction?” The priest says, “There are a number of things. First
you might be required to say some prayers, like the Lord’s Prayer, many times. There are
other prayers, too. Those are good things to do, and this will help to balance your account.
Or the priest may say that you should fast for a certain number of days. Probably he will say
it is necessary for you to give some alms (money) to the church or to the poor. He might
possibly say that you should go on a pilgrimage.” “That last one sounds sort of interesting. I
always like to travel, so where should I go? What is a pilgrimage?” “Pilgrimages are
available to many places. You have to go to a sacred place, to a shrine, to some place where
there is the name of a saint, the Virgin Mary, or even Christ Himself connected in some way.
The church believes that God answers prayer everywhere, and the saints help us with our
prayers. The saints can answer prayer, too, wherever you are. But the prayers of the saints
are more effective at their shrines. So if you [page 4] want to get greater credit for what you
are doing and a better chance of getting your prayers answered, it is necessary to go to the

very place where these saints are remembered. The most important places to go are
Jerusalem and Rome. You might not want to go to Jerusalem right now because the
Crusades are going on, and you know all about those. It is pretty risky. But you might want
to go because if you go to Jerusalem, especially with the Crusades going on, you have a
chance of getting a lot of blessing and a lot of credit. At least go to Rome. If you cannot go to
Rome, there are hundreds and hundreds of shrines much closer where you can go. By
visiting one of these places, two ideas are brought together. One is the need for penance for
sins, and pilgrimages are penitential acts. They require sacrifice of time and money. So
these are acts of penance. But the other good thing about going on a pilgrimage is that you
come in contact with the relics of the saints. People want to pray right at the place where
the bones of that saint are placed in often a very beautiful and great container. They are
made of gold and precious jewels. Sometimes not all the bones of a saint are there, but only
one bone is there. After all, everybody wanted relics, and there were not enough skeletons
to go around. So these bones were reverently taken apart. One bone would be given to one
church, and one bone would be given to another church. Some rather frivolous people have
said that as a result there are 13 heads of John the Baptist in different churches in Europe.
But do not pay any attention to them. It does not take the entire skeleton of the saint. Just
one bone will do to make that a holy place. Even something that is associated with that
saint can make it a holy place, like a garment, a piece of the cross that that saint was
crucified on, or part of the sword that was used to execute that saint.” The sincere seeker
says, “This is all getting pretty complicated and very difficult it seems. Is there not an easier
way to get to heaven than to do all of this?” The priest says, “God has not promised to make
salvation easy, my friend. The church is doing all it can to make it attainable. But you still
must do your part.”
The priest continues, “Have you heard of indulgences?” “Yes, I have heard of indulgences.
Everybody is talking about indulgences, but I am still not quite sure what they are talking
about. Tell me about the indulgences.” The priest says, “For about 100 years now the
church has taught the doctrine of the treasury of merit. Have you heard of that?” “Yes. The
treasury of merit.” “In this life, most people do not do enough good works for themselves.
Their bad works are greater than their good works, so their spiritual account is always in
the arrears [debt – Ed.]. But there are some people in this life who not only do enough good
works for themselves, but they do some extra good works.” “That is pretty impressive—
extra good works. Who are those people?” “They are the saints, whose relics you observe in
various places. They have done extra good works. Especially Mary, think of all the good
works of the Virgin Mary. They are far more than are required for her own salvation. Think
of the good works of Christ Himself. This produces a huge treasury in heaven. Thanks be to
God this heavenly treasury is available to the pope. He can draw on this heavenly bank
account. He can take some of those excess good works. Do not worry, there is so much in
that heavenly bank account that it will never be exhausted. He can take some of those good
works, and he can use them for people like you who do not have enough good works.” “That
is good news, indeed, that the pope is willing to do that for me. When is he going to do it?”
“He will not do it unless you buy an indulgence. You have to get an indulgence; you buy an
indulgence. When you buy this, this will enable the pope to pray that God will give you
some of the extra good works of Christ and Mary and the saints. Do not think you are
buying forgiveness because you are not. You are really giving alms. Most people I know

think that this is buying forgiveness. That is all right if they want to think that. But
technically you are giving alms. You are doing the good work of alms-giving when you buy
an indulgence.” “That is very interesting. Where does all this money go?” “It goes mainly to
Rome. It goes to the pope.” “What does he do with it?” “He builds big churches, and he gets
a great artist to decorate those churches. It is expensive to run a church, and we have to get
money somehow. This is a good way to bring in money. But do not worry about where the
money goes. What you have to worry about is where you are going. We are trying to get
you to heaven, so you leave it up to the church as to what it is going to do with all the
money it gets. You worry about your own soul’s salvation.” [page 5] The sincere layperson
says, “That is what I am worried about; that is why I am talking to you. I am trying to get
some help on this question. I am still confused, though. How much credit do I really need?
How can I know when I have done enough, when I have done enough good works, when I
have confessed enough, when I have bought enough indulgences? How can I know that?”
“That is not easy to say. It is very complicated. Theologians have worked on this, but you
probably would not understand. In fact, I do not really understand myself much of what
they have said. Let us just say this: the more the better. It is, of course, better to be safe than
sorry. By the way, we have touched on this, but you have a lot of help along the way. Do not
ignore it. Think of all the saints. The saints want you to get to heaven and so does Mary.
There are hundreds of saints. We have 55 special saints’ days in our calendar. We have an
All Saints Day on October 31st. Those are important days for you to pray to the saints.
There is a saint for almost every problem. There is even Saint Jude, who is the saint of last
resort. If you do not know who else to pray to, and you are at the end of your rope, pray to
Saint Jude. Saint Jude is used to hearing prayers from people at the end of their ropes. He
knows how to help. Do not forget Mary, too, because Mary is kind and compassionate. She
will take your prayers directly to God. She is always ready to help you.”
“Have we finished yet? We have talked a lot about these things. Is there anything else I need
to do?” “No, not really. There is one more sacrament, but it is not something you can do. It is
extreme unction. It is your last rights. It will be done for you, just like baptism, when you
are dying. Hopefully a priest will be there. He will anoint you with oil and pray for you. It is
the one last thing that can be done for your soul.” “Then what happens?” “Purgatory takes
place.” “Purgatory? You mean after all this I am going to end up in purgatory?” “Yes, I am
afraid so. Heaven is only for those who have made full and faithful use of the church’s
sacramental graces. Have you done that?” “No, I guess not.” “The wicked and the
excommunicated go directly to hell. Most of the rest, most of the baptized, go to purgatory.
They will eventually be cleansed of their remaining sins and then enter heaven. But there is
some recent good news on this front. The popes have decided that the indulgences assist
people not only in this life. In other words, you can buy an indulgence for yourself, and that
removes some of your sins. But the popes have said now, quite recently, that you can also
buy an indulgence for someone who is dead and in purgatory. Is that not good news? Rich
people have, for a long time, endowed continual masses for their souls. Their mass is going
on all the time. These are private masses for the souls of people. Money was left to a
monastery. That monastery takes that money and provides these masses. The mass is the
most powerful form of prayer. That helps those rich people who are in purgatory. But most
people, people like you, cannot afford that. This is really good news that after you are dead
a friend or a relative can buy an indulgence. Some are cheap, some are not so cheap. Even

the cheap ones help some. They can buy this indulgence, and that will reduce your time in
purgatory.”
Let us imagine that our sincere inquirer has one more question. He asks, “Where is God’s
grace in all of this? . . . .” “. . . Actually there are two views on this matter of how God’s grace
fits in with our works. Different theologians have presented this differently. You have heard
of Saint Thomas Aquinas, right? Let me show you how Thomas viewed this. Thomas
thought that this whole matter, this process of salvation, begins with grace. We cannot do
what is within us until God energizes us by His grace. So God comes first in grace and gives
us enough grace to enable us to add to that grace the merit of good works. Consequently
God’s grace plus our works will bring us to salvation. That is one way to see it. You
probably know that some of the theologians around now, like William Avacome, Duns
[page 6] Scotus, and Gabriel Biel are viewing things a little bit differently. They say that we
cannot think that we start with God’s grace and do what is within us in a state of grace. We
cannot add merit or works to grace to earn salvation. Instead they say we do what is within
us in our own natural ability. They say we start with works, and we do what we can. Then
God adds His grace. Either way, it is both grace and works. Whether we start with grace, as
Thomas said, and add works, or whether we start with works, as the nominalists say, and
add grace, it pretty much comes out to the same thing. . . .”
“I have one last question. Does everybody see it this way? Are there any other people who
see it another way?” “Yes, there are some who see it another way, but they are heretics.
There are some Waldensians around. They do not quite agree with the church on this
matter. Then there is that heretic John Wycliffe in England. His bones have been dug up and
burned because of the church’s horror at his teaching. His disciple, John Hus of Bohemia,
was burned alive at the Counsel of Constance in 1415, just a few years ago. So, you are
going to be better off if you avoid all of that and stick with what is clear and what is sure.”. .
Let us talk about marriage and ordination. These were viewed as sacraments, which meant
that grace flowed through them. The view was that marriage was an enablement toward
heaven. Ordination was also viewed this way. . . .
B. CHURCH AND STATE15
. . . There was no issue in the Middle Ages more vexing to people than the issue of authority.
Where does ultimate authority and power reside? Does it reside in the church or does it
reside in the state? . . . That struggle between the church and the state goes all the way back
to the time of Constantine. In the Middle Ages it has some very dramatic episodes. . . . There
were two views that were common in the Middle Ages. One view, which the pope would
advocate, is that God is above all things, but under God there is the pope. Under the pope is
the king, and under the king and the pope are the people. So the pope has authority not
15
David Calhoun, “Church and State,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
March 2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wpcontent/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/CH310_
T_311.pdf>. The document which forms the second half of this lesson appears as Lesson 31 in Dr. Calhoun’s

only in the church, but in the state as well. Not everybody agreed with that, namely the
kings. Another way of thinking about ultimate authority is that there is God, and under God
there is the king. Under the king are the pope and the church. Under both the king and the
pope are the people. So that sets up the conflict between church and state. . . . At times it
really did not matter. But when the policy of the king conflicted with the will of the pope,
there was a showdown and a conflict. This resulted in much struggle and unhappiness in
the whole period of the Middle Ages.
Let us illustrate that struggle from this episode in English history: Thomas Becket, the
archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry II, the king of England. For this we go back to the 12th
century. You can see the dates of Becket: 1120-1170. Thomas Becket at first was the
chancellor, the king’s right-hand man. He was a very good chancellor. King Henry and
Chancellor Becket were good friends. They liked each other, and they trusted each other.
Becket did everything he could to serve his king. For eight brilliant years he was the
chancellor under Henry II. . . . But in those days there was another important office. It was
even more important than chancellor. This more important office was archbishop of
Canterbury. It was the most important church office in England. When that office became
vacant, the king decided to appoint his trusted friend and chancellor, Thomas Becket, to
that post.
The problem was that Becket was not even a priest. He had not been ordained as a priest.
He had not been interested in a clerical life. He was quite happy serving in the state. But
Henry was so concerned to [page 2] get his man in that position that he appointed Becket.
That happened from time to time in the Middle Ages. It is called lay investiture. Rather than
the church, namely the pope, appointing someone like the archbishop, the king would. The
king was a layman. He made the appointment here despite the fact that the church claimed
that only the church could appoint an archbishop. But the king did it anyway. This created a
problem. Lay investiture had been a practice in England for a long time. The strong kings in
England and France and elsewhere would try to get their own people into these high
clerical offices. If they were really going to control the kingdom, they had to control these
offices. Issues would arise that made the king want this control. For example, when the king
wanted to raise taxes, he would levy taxes to raise money. Sometimes he would tax the
clergy. The pope said you cannot tax the clergy. Only the church can tax the clergy. So there
would be a conflict between the king and the pope over an issue like this. The king wanted
to have a sympathizer in an office like the archbishop of Canterbury in order to be able to
further his program in England. So he appointed Thomas Becket, thinking that Thomas
would serve him as archbishop just as he had served him as chancellor.
Something happened when Thomas became archbishop. He took it seriously as a church

office and not an office of the state. In fact, Thomas went to Rome and resigned as
archbishop of Canterbury so that he could receive that office back from the pope’s hands.
His hands were holier than the king’s hands. You can see now the scene is set for a clash
between these two friends. . . . We do not know why Thomas Becket made that dramatic
and sudden change. King Henry could never figure it out either. He felt that Thomas had let
him out. He kept hoping that Thomas would come to his senses and come back to his side.
But Thomas Becket never did. The scene was set for a clash between the archbishop and

the king. . . . [F]or eight years Thomas Becket was a hero chancellor. And for eight years he
was a hero archbishop. When he was chancellor, he did everything he could to promote the
cause of Henry. When he was archbishop, he did everything he could to oppose the policies
of Henry that he felt conflicted with the interests of the church. . . . In the year 1170 Thomas
Becket was murdered in the Canterbury Cathedral. He had been in France for some time.
He left England in order to escape the wrath of the king. He then felt at last he should
return to England to fill the office that he served as archbishop. He was murdered in the
cathedral by four zealous knights of Henry II. They had overheard Henry say, “I wish
somebody would get rid of that troublesome priest.” Henry probably did not mean it
exactly like that—he did not think anybody would take him literally. He should have known
better, though, because he was king. . . . [page 3] . . .
. . . The king himself did penance three days after he heard of the death of his former friend.
Henry stayed in his room, fasting and weeping. It is hard to know what was going on in
Henry’s heart. Is there genuine repentance here? Or is there frustration? Exactly what
happened? Eventually Henry went to Canterbury and stood before the shrine of Thomas
Becket and did public penance. Henry may genuinely have repented, but think of what
happened here. This is conflict between the church and the state. The church has some very
strong weapons. The king can kill the archbishop if he wants to. But the church can
retaliate, and Henry knew that the church could retaliate. One way the church could
retaliate was by excommunication. Henry could be excommunicated, which meant that he
would be cut off from the sacraments of the church. . . .
There was another method that the church had that was even more powerful. It was the
interdict. The pope could not only excommunicate the king, but he could also place the
whole kingdom under an interdict. This meant that no services could be held, none of the
sacraments could be performed, and nothing could take place in the churches. The
sacramental system would be stopped, and the whole kingdom would be shut off from the
means of salvation for as long as it took. When the people really believed that that was
happening, the king would not dare risk an interdict because it would create a popular
revolution. . . . The interdict was used frequently in the Middle Ages. Not only popes for
nations and bishops for smaller areas used it, but there were even frivolous uses of the
interdict. For instance, a bishop imposed an interdict on the people of a certain area in the
Holy Roman Empire because they would not permit a monastery to have the exclusive right
to make and sell beer in that area. People did not like the monastery’s product and wanted
to make their own. The bishop then pronounced an interdict upon the people of that town.
It was a powerful weapon, even if it was frivolously used. If you believe that salvation
comes from the exercise of the sacraments, and those sacraments are cut off, then salvation
is cut off. So King Henry may have been genuinely repentant, but he was also fearful, I am
sure, of the reprisals of the pope.
Thomas immediately became a hero. He was a martyr, hero, and saint. He was canonized
[officially declared a saint – Ed.] in 1173. He became a popular figure in the religious piety
of the people of England. We were talking in the last lesson about the importance of
pilgrimages. In England after 1173 the place to go was Canterbury. There was the pilgrim’s
way through the south of England. Occasionally people still use the pilgrim’s way to go to

Canterbury. Pilgrims went to Canterbury in order to visit the shrine and tomb of Thomas
Becket. . . .
I think there are two reasons why Thomas Becket became such a Christian hero to the
English people. First, he did not resist. He was not a saint before he died in one sense of the
word. He could be a very sharp-tongued person. He had his animosities and his bitterness.
But at the last moment he did not resist. He opened the door. Christ’s church should be
opened, even to its enemies. People remembered that. Second, when he died it was
discovered that under his robe he wore a hair shirt. That was a particular kind of garment
that some particularly pious people would wear in the Middle Ages. It made them become
more uncomfortable. Apparently it was a very uncomfortable thing. It scratched; it was not
something you would want to wear next to your skin. In order to afflict the flesh and suffer
somewhat, [page 4] some people wore hair shirts. When it was discovered that the
archbishop of Canterbury did that, it was viewed that he was a particularly holy man. . . .
Let us move on to 1294. Thomas Becket died in 1170. In 1294, an 80-year-old man became
pope. He took the name Boniface VIII. He reigned until 1303. Someone has written of him,
“He came in like a fox, he reigned like a king, and he died like a dog.” Perhaps this is not a
very complimentary or kind sentence to utter about Boniface VIII, but it does touch on
some elements of his life. Boniface had his battle too, not with the king of England but with
the king of France. . . . It was over some of the same issues that we talked about earlier in
England: taxation of the clergy, appointment of people to clerical offices, and a papal bull
called unum sanctum ecclesiam: One Holy Church. It is a classical formulation of the papal
claim to supremacy of the preceding centuries as well as of the following centuries. It sums
up the view that under God is the pope, then the king, and then the people. It is sometimes
described as the two swords. Boniface and popes before and after him would talk about the
two swords. The church has one sword and the state had one sword. But the church had
the superior sword. The sword of the church was superior to the sword of the state. The
bull, One Holy Church, says, “Since spiritual power exceeds the temporal in honor it may be
used against the temporal and it must be used if the temporal is in error.” If there is an
error in the state, . . . [the church] must correct the temporal power. If the spiritual power
errs, he or it will be judged by the supreme power, who is the pope. If there is a mistake, an
error, on the spiritual side at some lower level, the pope judges that. If the supreme power
errs, that is the pope, he can only be judged by God. He is responsible to no one but God . . . .
All of that was not new, but Boniface stated it with great force. Then he added something
that was new. He said salvation requires subjection to the papacy. The church had said for a
long time that there could be no salvation outside the church. Now this pope was saying
there could be no salvation without subjection to the papacy. It sounds strong, and it was
strong. It was a bit hollow, though.
By the time Boniface wrote these famous words the pope was not in much of a position to
enforce them. A new phenomenon had arisen in Europe. We have not talked about this yet
but eventually we will. We could describe it as nationalism. People were beginning to think
of themselves as English, French, and Spanish. They were no longer just part of the church.
Nationalism was going to favor the king and not the pope. Boniface VIII tried to suppress
Philip IV of France by this bull and by threats of excommunication and the interdict. But

with nationalism on the rise those threats were not as strong as they had been in the past.
Phillip simply responded by encouraging Italian and French nobility to raise an army. He
said they should go down to Rome and deal with the pope. The pope was attacked by this
coalition. He was made a prisoner and quite soon died in humiliation.
Then began a long line of popes, seven of them, who did not live in Rome. Instead they lived
in France. France took over the papacy and moved the location of the head of the church
from Rome, where it had been for centuries. It was moved to southern France, to
Avignon. . . . Seven popes lived in Avignon for about 70 years. That is why it is called the
Babylonian captivity of the church: for about 70 years the papacy was “captured” by the
French kings. There were seven popes and French colleges of cardinals. The papacy became
French at this point. It centered in unmistakable extravagance in Avignon until finally
Gregory XI, the last of the Avignon popes, reluctantly returned the papacy to Rome. He then
promptly died. This created an even bigger problem. Gregory XI went back to Rome and
died. The College of Cardinals met, and under pressure from the Roman people who
wanted a pope in Rome again, they elected an Italian to serve as pope. But as soon [page 5]
as most of these cardinals got out of town, they were sorry about what they did. They
annulled that election, and they elected someone else as pope. But that meant that there
were two popes. The pope in Rome stayed in Rome, the other pope went back to Avignon.
Now there were two popes. We call this the Great Schism in the history of the church from
1378-1417.
With all these problems, and these are huge problems, the people were beginning to think
that the church was not organized correctly. Something was wrong. One of the people who
came up with a new idea as to how church and state should be organized is the famous poet
of Florence, Dante. He wrote not only The Divine Comedy, but also On Monarchy. In it he set
forth ideas that we could diagram this way: neither the pope nor the king is head of the
other. Both are responsible to God. Under God is the pope, who is over the people as far as
the church is concerned. Under God there is also the king, who is over the people as far as
the state is concerned. That is a much more modern view. Dante felt that it was necessary
for the papacy to surrender its temporal claims. This would mean the papacy would
become simply a church. In the view of the popes, the papacy was both a state and a church.
It had its own tax, its own armies, and its own ambassadors just like any other state. Dante
said the church should be a church and the state should be a state. Both are responsible to
God and to God alone. . . .[page 6]
People were trying to determine how to solve the great problem that the church had gotten
itself into. One of the ways in which the church tried to solve the problem was through
counciliarism, the idea of the council. If the popes could not solve the problem of the
church, then a council could meet and solve the problems of the church. The problem was
that one pope would excommunicate the other pope and then place under interdict all the
people who were following that pope. This meant that eventually everybody in
Christendom was excommunicated.
Let us talk about how The Great Schism worked out. If you have two popes, you have to
decide which one to go with. There were lands giving allegiance to Avignon. You would

expect France to do that, as well as parts of Spain, the kingdom of Naples, and Scotland.
Scotland was linked with France in the old alliance. England was going to go the other way,
and whatever England did, Scotland did the opposite. There were lands giving allegiance to
Rome. This included part of Italy, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia. The Holy Roman
Empire and Portugal could not make up their minds as to which way to go. It was an
important decision. If you chose the wrong pope, you got an invalid sacramental system.
The system depended on the pope being the right pope and being able to guarantee the
efficacy of all the sacraments. We must attempt to imagine what it meant for people at that
time. It seems ludicrous to us, certainly unfortunate. It was a tragedy for the people in
Europe, for Christianity, and the people who were taking the church seriously.
The idea was to bring in a council. If the popes could not get it right, maybe a council could.
So a council was called at Pisa, Italy. It elected a new pope, opposing both the Roman pope
and the Avignon pope. Neither of those popes was impressed with the decision of the
Council of Pisa. Rather than ending up with one pope, they made the situation worse by not
resigning. The church was now divided among three popes. The Pisan pope, Alexander V,
soon died. He was succeeded by John XXIII. John XXIII was a very interesting character. He
was not an incompetent man, although he had a reputation that he brought with him to the
papacy. He had been a pirate! He ruled as the third pope. You might recall that Giuseppe
Roncalli, when he became a pope in 1958 . . . took the name John XXIII. For almost 500
years no pope had used the name John. Until the second Pisan pope there had been 22
popes named John. John is such a beloved name in Christian history. But no pope dared risk
the name John after John XXIII. There is a second John XXIII because the first John XXIII is
not considered the true pope by the Catholic Church today. This is because he was a Pisan
pope and not a Roman pope. When the modern John XXIII took that title, it said something
to people that his pontificate was going to be something unusual. He dared risk taking a
name that was honored but dishonored. His short reign of five years was very unusual.
Vatican II was called during that time with all the changes that it brought to the Catholic
Church. To go back to this period, there were now three popes. People talked about the
“cursed trinity” rather than the blessed trinity because there were three popes: Pisa,
Avignon, and Rome.
Finally another council was called. The Council of Constance was one of the most important
councils of the late Middle Ages. . . . The main point that I want to make now is that in the
Council of Constance, counciliarism triumphed. The council was able to force all three
popes to resign. They established the idea that the church would now be ruled by a council.
It would not be ruled by a pope. . . . The council would meet periodically in order to govern
the church. It started off well, but the new pope, Martin V elected at Constance, almost
immediately prohibited appeal from the pope to any other court. Before too many years
Pope Pious II prohibited any and all appeals to a council over a pope. When the popes were
weak and divided, the council was strong. When there was one single pope again, the
council became divided and weak. The [page 7] papacy was able to reestablish its
supremacy in the Roman Catholic Church, which has continued down to the present.
There was the Council of Trent in the 16th century. But that had to be ratified by the pope
before any decision could be accepted. There was Vatican I in the 19th century. That set

forth the dogma of papal infallibility. Once that was clearly in place, what was the role of a
council? The pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedral. There was Vatican II in the
1960s, but Vatican II was clearly a council called to advise the pope. It had no independent
authority.
Even though counciliarism failed in the Catholic Church, it was not without effect. We are
close to the Protestant Reformation. . . . Counciliarism viewed the church as a community of
believers. It set forth some idea of representative church government. It stressed the
importance of lay people. Even though those ideas failed in the Catholic Church, the
counciliar ideas would prevail in different forms in the Protestant churches of the 16th
century.
LESSON SIX QUESTIONS
1. According to Roman Catholicism, why do we need baptism?
2. Why did many Roman Catholics not go through confirmation during the Middle
Ages?
3. Why did worshippers receive only the wafer at the Mass?
4. What steps belong to the process of penance?
5. What did the Roman Catholic Church teach about the treasury of merit?
6. Summarize the events which led up to a conflict between Henry II and Thomas
Becket.
7. What was the interdict?
8. What was the Babylonian captivity and what brought it about?
9. What does the Great Schism refer to?
10. What did counciliarism promote?

Medieval Church History 94 LESSON SEVEN
LESSON SEVEN:
WYCLIFFE AND HUS; REFORM IN ITALY
A. WYCLIFFE AND HUS16
. . . As we think about Wycliffe, I would like to speak for a moment about England in the
14th century. What was England like during the lifetime of John Wycliffe? As we think of
the church in England during the 14th century we think of an institution in chaos and in
serious trouble. . . . The popes were not even in Rome anymore. They were in Avignon in
southern France. People spoke of that period of about 70 years as the Babylonian captivity
of the papacy. The papacy was now dominated largely by French kings. The Babylonian
Captivity ended not with improvement, but with the situation getting worse. In 1378 there
was the Great Schism, which meant there were two popes. There was a pope in France, and
there was a pope in Rome. You can image what kind of chaos that would produce in the
church, because various countries had to make choices between Rome and Avignon.
Not only was the church terribly disorganized because of the confusion at the head, but a
great deal of worldliness had filtered down. It came all the way down to the level of the
parish priests and the monks. Standards of conduct were abysmally low, not only in head,
but in members. In fact, a church council in 1215 ordered that all clergy be required to
wear distinctive dress. This was not to elevate them as more important people but to mark
them so that they could be seen if they were frequenting taverns and houses of
prostitution, etc. People would know they were clergy, so perhaps this would help them to
avoid some of those places. That indicates something of the level of conduct that marked
the clergy at this time. The greatest problem was the problem of the church’s teaching. As
we have seen when we studied the sacramental system, there was no clear message of
grace. A mechanical system was in place, [page 2] which brought to people no real comfort
and very little hope. It was a bleak period. I have painted it in rather dark colors, but I do
not think I have exaggerated the situation that we find in the church in England and
throughout Europe at this time.
As we think of England in the 14th century, it was not only a time when the church was
going through some very serious problems, but there was a great deal of suffering in the
nation as well. . . . Many crises, particularly three, were happening. It was the century of
plague and disease. The Black Death, as it was called, swept across England several times. It
produced many sudden deaths, a lot of suffering, and a lot of despair. It was also the
century of war. We talk about the Hundred Years War between England and France. It does
not mean that that war went on for 100 years without stopping. But for 100 years, more or
less, England and France were at war with each other. That produced great suffering and
the loss of many lives. It was also a century of domestic unrest. There were riots, rebellions,
and violence in the country. There was a brief peasant revolt in England. The poorer people
16
David Calhoun, “Wycliffe and Hus,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15
_T_321.pdf>. The document which forms the first half of this lesson appears as Lesson 32 in Dr. Calhoun’s

rose up because of their suffering. That revolt was put down, but it indicated the trouble
that faced England during this time. It was not a bright and happy period. But it was the
time of John Wycliffe.
Wycliffe was born during the 14th century and lived his life during that century. Most of
John Wycliffe's career was connected with Oxford. Wycliffe was a scholar and a very good
one. . . . He wrote in Latin, and many of his works have not been translated into English
right down to the present. As people work on Wycliffe today, they begin to realize that they
are dealing with a first-class mind. He was a man who thought deeply about many things.
Oxford was the leading university in Europe at this time. John Wycliffe was the leading
scholar of Oxford University. We are talking about a very prominent and important man. He
was called “the jewel of Oxford.” . . .
More important than that is the fact that . . . this man was saying some very different things
from what most churchmen of that time were saying. He was saying some very
controversial things. For instance, Wycliffe was saying, over and over again, that all
authority is a gift from God. It can be forfeited. He was talking about papal authority,
ecclesiastical authority, or secular authority. The king reigns, not because he is the king but
because God has made him the king. But he can lose that right to reign if he does not reign
wisely. The same thing in the church: the pope is the pope, but the pope is not really the
head of the church. The head of the church is Christ. The pope is the spiritual leader of the
church, but if he is to be the spiritual leader of the church, he must act like the spiritual
leader of the church. If he does not act like that, he is no longer Christ’s representative. He
is anti-Christ. It was not Luther and the Reformers who used the idea of anti-Christ first.
Wycliffe had already used it. In fact, the popes had used it themselves in denouncing the
other pope who was reigning during the days of the Great Schism. Wycliffe[‘s] . . . views,
understandably, created a great deal of concern in Avignon and later in Rome as well.
Another strong note from Wycliffe was the authority of the Bible. Wycliffe moved from his
earlier views in which church tradition had a high role along with the Bible. He came to
understand that it is the Scripture and not the church, not tradition, that is the preeminent
authority for every Christian. . . . As Wycliffe thought about that, he began to realize that it
is important for every Christian to be able to have a Bible and to read the Bible. This meant
that it must be translated into the language of the people, into English. The Catholic Church
had not promoted this. In fact, often the Catholic Church very much resisted the translation
of the Bible into vernacular [commonly spoken] languages of Europe. . . . [page 3] . . . Saint
Gerome [had] labored and translated the Bible from diverse tongues into Latin. People
could not read Hebrew and Greek, so the Latin vulgate was made by Gerome [spelled
“Jerome” today – Ed.]. Then it might afterward be translated into other tongues. [But] [t]he
Bible had been captured and frozen in the Latin vulgate. As far as the Catholic Church was
concerned, that was all that was needed. It really did not matter that the people could not
read it. The priest could read it, at least they were supposed to be able to read it. By this
time, though, many of the priests did not know Latin either. The Bible was a closed book.
But Wycliffe did all he could in England to make it possible for everyone . . . to read the
Bible in the English language. Wycliffe and his colleagues translated the Latin vulgate of
Gerome into the English language. Chaucer was living at this same time. Chaucer was one of

the great writers of English literature. It was Chaucer through his Canterbury Tales and
other writings and Wycliffe with his Bible that helped to form modern English. The
midlands English dialect of Oxford and London became standard English because of the
writings of Chaucer and the translation of Wycliffe. . . . .
Something else coming from Wycliffe was startling to many people. Wycliffe rejected the
Roman Catholic sacramental system that we talked about earlier. He denied
transubstantiation. This is the view that when the priest says the words, “Hoc est corpus
maum,” the bread is transubstantiated into the body of Christ. Wycliffe believed that the
bread and the wine remain unchanged. He believed that Christ was present in the bread,
but He was present with His power, not in His physical body. Wycliffe also believed that
faith was necessary to receive the sacrament. In notes like this, we are coming very close to
John Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper. We hear it first from John Wycliffe.
Another theme in John Wycliffe was his stress on preaching. Preaching had fallen onto bad
times in the medieval church. Sermons were infrequent and not very helpful. The liturgy,
the Mass, was the center of the service, and the sermon occupied a very small place in the
medieval service. With John Wycliffe, the sermon came into its own. Preaching became
once again a very important part of the life of the church. Wycliffe said, “Preaching the
Gospel exceeds prayer and administration of the sacraments to an infinite degree.” . . .
“Spreading the Gospel has far wider and more evident benefit. It is thus the most precious
activity of the church.” That is a new note; preaching was not widely practiced. But with
Wycliffe, we have the emphasis on proclamation of the Word of God in preaching.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of what Wycliffe was doing, teaching, and saying was
that, at last, we had an Augustinian. He was someone who understood the doctrine of
election and grace as taught by Saint Augustine. Augustine was still greatly honored in the
church, but he was not closely followed in his teaching on grace. As we think about
salvation by grace, which was the heart of the preaching by Wycliffe, we have to mention
another Englishman.
This man is a very important figure from whom Wycliffe received much of his information
in this area. This man is Thomas Bradwardine. He was called Dr. Profundus because he was
such a profound scholar and teacher. He wrote very influential books on physics and
mathematics. Far more important than all of that, this man, who became archbishop of
Canterbury, wrote a book on the grace of God. It is called On the Cause of God Against the
Pelagians. With Thomas Bradwardine, we have a high-ranking churchman taking up the
cause of grace. This is about the first time we have had someone do anything like this since
Gottschalk in the 9th century and Saint Augustine much earlier. Bradwardine said that he
[page 4] had accepted the common, semi-pelagian views until he himself was “visited” by
the grace of God. He was visited by God’s grace, and that transformed his understanding of
the nature of grace. He then held that grace is given freely, according to the will of God
apart from our works. That work of Bradwardine, On the Cause of God Against the
Pelagians, is a very important book. It is one that we honor because it helps to begin the
recovery of a full Augustinianism and a proper emphasis on God’s grace. This emphasis
would come to fruition not only in Wycliffe but also in the Protestant Reformers.

Bradwardine was archbishop of Canterbury only for 40 days. The Black Plague struck in
the middle of the century. The year 1349 was a very grave one; it was a disastrous year.
Many people died, including the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardine. Wycliffe
was 19 years old when Bradwardine died. You can see something of how clearly Wycliffe
embraced the doctrine of grace as taught by Bradwardine and Augustine in looking at his
Short Rule of Life. . . . He says, “At the end of the day, think about how you have offended
God.” . . .“[A]nd think how graciously God has saved you, not for your own desert, but for his
own mercy and goodness.” . . .
There were many people in England who heard the message of Wycliffe and rejoiced in it.
They began to follow this Oxford teacher. The followers of Wycliffe were called Lollards.
We are not actually sure how they got that name, but it stuck. We are not even sure what it
meant. Before long, these Lollards, Wycliffites, were throughout England. According to one
contemporary report, they were everywhere. “A man could scarcely meet two people on
the road, but one of them was a disciple of Wycliffe.” . . .
Wycliffe might be the jewel of Oxford, but to the pope he was the master of errors. The
pope issued numerous bulls [proclamations] against Wycliffe and even against the
chancellor of Oxford for allowing such a bold heretic to teach in his prestigious
university. . . . There was a lot of pressure coming from Avignon and later from Rome as
well on Oxford to do something about this daring priest. Wycliffe felt that pressure, and he
left Oxford in 1381. He moved to his parish church at Lutterworth, where he continued to
preach. He worked on his translation of the Bible there, too. The Catholic Church was able
to call a counsel the next year, in 1382, to condemn the teachings of Wycliffe. We know that
counsel in church history as the Earthquake Counsel. This is because about the time it met
there was a serious earthquake in southern England. Church steeples fell down and
buildings were destroyed. People had different views as to the significance of that. Some
who were opposed to Wycliffe felt it was God’s sign of judgment on Wycliffe. Those who
favored him, the Lollards and others, felt it was God’s sign of judgment on the counsel. But
Wycliffe was able to live on somewhat in peace. He died a natural death in 1384. England
had an anti-papal government at this time. And the Great Schism was deflecting the interest
and attention of the Catholic Church from the problem in England. Therefore Wycliffe died
without being executed by the church. The church, though, did what it could to try to
remove the influence of Wycliffe. His bones were dug up some years later, in 1428. The
bones were burned and the ashes were scattered in a nearby stream. . . . [page 5] . . .
The Counsel of Constance, which met in 1415, condemned Wycliffe’s teaching. They burned
one of the followers of John Wycliffe at the stake. His name was John Hus. Hus was not
English; he was from Bohemia in central Europe, which later became Czechoslovakia. He
was only 12 years old when Wycliffe died, but Czech students returning from Oxford to
Bohemia brought Wycliffe’s ideas, doctrines, and books back to that land. John Hus began
to read those books, and he was greatly influenced by the teaching of John Wycliffe. In
those days, Anne of Bohemia was married to King Richard II of England. As a result, there
was a steady movement between England and Bohemia, particularly with students going
from Prague to Oxford and then returning to Bohemia. Hus studied at the University of
Prague. He became a teacher there, then he quickly became rector of the university. He also

became a very popular pastor of a church called Bethlehem Chapel. The chapel had been
built by two wealthy people who wanted a place where the Word of God could be preached
in the language of the people. Fortunately they were able to secure John Hus as the
preacher. Hus preached great sermons at Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. He preached in the
Bohemian language to hundreds of people who would crowd into that church. Perhaps
1,000 to 2,000 people were able to hear John Hus preach at any given time in the chapel in
Prague.
On the major issues, John Hus perfectly agreed with John Wycliffe. At his trial at Constance,
John Hus said he did not agree with Wycliffe on the major issues because of Wycliffe’s
doctrine. He believed because it is Christ’s truth. One of the major themes of his sermons
was that Christ is the head of the church. Hus (and Wycliffe, too) said, “There is no other
such pontiff except the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, our pontiff. Christ is the only head of the
church, and Christ preserves His church during difficult and dangerous times so that, even
now, while there are three so-called papal head, she remains the one spouse of the
Lord.” . . . [A]fter [the Council of] Pisa there were three popes: the Avignon pope, the Roman
pope, and the Pisan pope. In Bohemia Hus said it did not matter how many popes there
were. Christ is still the head of the church. He preserves His church through all of these
times of disastrous problems.
Hus also in his preaching stressed the Bible alone, not tradition, and grace alone, not the
works that the Roman Catholic Church was insisting are required for salvation. It was the
time of the indulgences. . . , but not at Bethlehem Chapel. Hus said a man can receive the
pardon of his sins only through the power of God and by the merits of Christ. . . . The other
churches were selling the indulgences. “Let who will proclaim the contrary. Let the pope, or
a bishop, or a priest say, ‘I forgive thy sins; I absolve thee from their penalty. I free thee
from the pains of hell.’ It is all vain. It helps thee nothing. God alone, I repeat, God alone can
forgive sins through Christ. He pardons those who truly repent.” Great preaching was
taking place in that church. Of course it produced great problems.
Hus was excommunicated. Prague was placed under the interdict. That means that all
religious services had to cease. Nothing could transpire as long as a city was under the
interdict. Nothing could take place in terms of the sacraments or religious activities. This
was in order to try to bring pressure upon [page 6] someone like John Hus. Hus left the city
in order to free the people from that kind of pressure. He continued to preach, however, in
rural areas.
Then the great counsel was called at Constance. They tried to solve all of these problems
that were bedeviling the late medieval church. Hus was urged to come to the counsel. This
was to make his point of view known. Many of the friends of John Hus thought that he
should not go. They thought it was dangerous and risky to go to that counsel. He was going
to be surrounded by his enemies, not by his friends. The Holy Roman Emperor, who was a
friend of Hus’ and had promoted Hus in Prague, assured him that he would give him a safe
conduct. This meant that he could go to Constance and safely come back home regardless of
what happened there. Hus went; he wanted to go because he felt if he could only preach the
Gospel there in his defense, people would understand it and believe it. Hus did realize that

it was going to be a dangerous journey. He wrote to his friends in Bohemia, “Now that I
have started on my journey, I shall be opposed by more foes than our gracious Redeemer:
bishops, doctors, princes, secular and canons regular.” He was right. A real hearing never
took place. The church officials did not want Hus standing before the counsel and preaching
with the power and conviction that they knew he had. Hus finally appealed his case to
Christ and God alone. He said, “Not to the counsel or to the pope…” He offended both great
parties in the church: those who believed the counsel was the most important thing and
those who believed the pope was the most important person. Sigismund, the emperor,
under pressure from the Catholic Church, revoked his promise of safe conduct. The church
convinced Sigismund that you do not have to keep your word to a heretic. You can safely
revoke that promise. It was revoked, which meant that Hus then had no chance to return
home. He was condemned to death and died there at Constance in 1415. He was burned at
the stake. We have some wonderful letters . . . and some wonderful prayers from John Hus
toward the end of his life. He died singing on July 6, 1415. He was singing in Latin the
words, “Christ, Thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me.”
Over 100 years later, Martin Luther brought out an addition of letters of Hus. Luther said,
“Observe how firmly Hus clung in his writings and words to the doctrines of Christ. With
what courage he struggled against the agonies of death. With what patience and humility
he suffered every indignity. And with what greatness of soul he at last confronted a cruel
death in defense of the truth, doing all these things alone before an imposing assembly of
the great ones of the earth like a lamb in the midst of lions and wolves. If such a man is to
be regarded as a heretic, no person under the sun can be looked on as a true Christian.” . . .
Hus was executed, but the Hussite movement continued. Eventually it emerged in the post-
Reformation period as the Moravian church. That is a church that still exists today. . . . [page
7] . . .
Hus was very much in line with the Bohemian people and the Bohemian movement. The
Holy Roman Emperor was over a larger territory. Hus is a Bohemian—or today, a Czech—
hero. There is a statue of John Hus in Prague. People look upon Hus as one of their great
national heroes. For one thing, Hus insisted on using the local language. There were a lot of
other people, particularly Germans, who were dominating the scene in Bohemia. Hus was
very concerned to have a freedom for the local people. He wanted to promote them and
help them. They were somewhat pressed down during this time. So he is a local Czech hero
as well as a great man.
The church was not very helpful in response to the plague. Some of the things that were
said were right. Nobody quite knew what was going on there. One of the problems was that
the Jews, as often in the past, were blamed for it. A great deal of anti-Semitic activity took
place, and a lot of Jews were killed as a result of the plague. Some people today think that
the Jewish areas, the Jewish ghettoes, were apparently not struck as fiercely as other parts
of these European cities. Some modern scholars have said Jews had more cats, and the cats
killed the rats, and the fleas on the rats caused the Bubonic Plague. But nobody knew that
in those days. . . .

B. REFORM IN ITALY17
. . . As we think about reform in Italy, coming toward the close of the Middle Ages, we need
to talk about the word “renaissance.” Renaissance is a word that means rebirth. It is a
movement that began in Italy in the 14th century. Then it was well established by the 15th
century. It began to move northward and influence northern Europe in the 16th century.
There were people in Italy in the 14th century and in the 15th century who began to look
back to the previous millennium, the previous 1,000 years. They saw that period of history
as a dark period. It was the period after the decline and fall of Rome until their own
time. . . . It separated their time from the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. So the idea of
the renaissance, or the rebirth, of learning comes into play. The Renaissance was
characterized by a renewed interest in the classics. In fact, the slogan ad fontes, which
means “to the source,” was used to describe the attention that the people of the
Renaissance began to pay to the ancient Greek and Roman classics. . . . Classics were the old
writings of the Greeks and Romans, including the writings of the Scriptures. These people
began to emphasize the classics, not the more recent writings of the scholastic theologians,
but the ancient writings, both Christian and non-Christian. They also emphasized the
importance of reading these writings in the original languages. So the study of Hebrew,
Greek, and ancient classical Latin, not modern church Latin, became very important to the
men of the Renaissance. It was said by 1500 in Europe and many places that a good Latin
teacher could find students, an average Greek teacher could find students, and even a
mediocre Hebrew teacher could find students. . . . These teachers were needed in order to
be able to read the classics, both pagan and the Scriptures, in the original languages.
It is from this interest in language that we get the word “humanities” and the word
“humanism.” The humanities refer to the study of languages. In Great Britain, even today,
the word humanity means the study of Latin. It is almost as though if you are really truly
going to be human, you need to know Latin. The humanities become more generally known
as what we now call the liberal arts.
The Renaissance was devoted to the study of the classics. That led to a new study of the text
of the classics. Not only is there interest in the original languages in which these great
books are written, but there is interest in the text itself. How accurate is it? How much can
we understand about the writing through the study of the text? Textual criticism, for the
first time in history in the West, became an important concept. The great name in that
regard is Lorenzo Valla. He lived in the 15th century. Lorenzo Valla subjected a number of
the famous writings to the scrutiny of textual criticism. He came up with some startling
ideas for people at that time. For instance, he said that the Apostles’ Creed was not [page 2]
written by the apostles. He was right; people had believed for a long time that the Apostles’
Creed was written by the apostles. It was also Lorenzo Valla who established that
Dionysius, the Areopagite who wrote various things that we studied earlier, could not have
17
David Calhoun, “Reform in Italy,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, 15 March
2016 <https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/CH310
_T_331. pdf>. The document which forms the second half of this lesson appears as Lesson 33 in Dr. Calhoun’s

been a 1st century Greek apostle or follower of the apostle Paul as was claimed by whoever
wrote the writings of Dionysius. Lorenzo Valla subjected that writing to some historical
textual study and established the fact that Dionysius, whoever he was, was not Paul’s
convert at Athens. Instead he was a much later writer who probably came from Syria. After
this, Dionysius became pseudo-Dionysius, a false Dionysius.
You may remember, too, the donation of Constantine. It was an alleged document that
stated that the pope was making a gift of Rome, the territory around Rome, and all
temporal power. It was actually the emperor who was making that as a gift to the pope.
Ever since then Rome had insisted on the validity and the importance of the donation of
Constantine to establish the fact that Rome had claim to the territory of Rome and the so-
called papal states. But as Lorenzo Valla studied that document, he studied, quite rightly,
that it could not have been a document from the 4th century written by a Roman emperor.
He said, “What have satraps got to do with the case? Do Caesars speak thus? Are Roman
decrees drafted thus? Who ever heard of satraps being mentioned in the counsels of the
Romans?” The word “satrap” was used in the Donation of Constantine. Lorenzo Valla
noticed that; it is a wonder others had not noticed it before. He said that Romans do not
write and speak like that. It had to come from another source and from a later date.
Perhaps the most significant thing that Lorenzo Valla did was to subject the vulgate Latin
translation of the Bible to some very careful attention. He pointed out that at many places
the Vulgate had mistranslated the Hebrew and the Greek. This caused great concern in the
Catholic Church, both then and later.
. . . There was another emphasis of the Renaissance, which was a stress on rhetoric. The
rhetoric, or eloquent speech, became important. In church history there are some very
eloquent speeches and books. For instance, Saint Augustine was a very eloquent writer. But
after Augustine, theology tends to be much more dry. The theology of the scholastics is
especially dry. The men of the Renaissance began to want to recover some of the strength,
power, and beauty of language. According to the Renaissance figure Petrarch, “Words can
sting and set a fire and urge toward love of virtue and hatred of vice.” . . . [T]he emphasis on
rhetoric came through in the Renaissance and would influence theology in times to come.
We will see this particularly as we come to The Institutes of John Calvin. We will see
rhetoric playing a very natural and wonderful role in theology. . . . [page 3]
. . . I would like . . .to lead into the second word. We have been talking about the
Renaissance, the new birth. It put special emphasis on the classics, rhetoric, new
expressions of art, and architecture. We can also speak of this period of history and of this
development as humanism. I think it is important for us today to define that clearly. We
tend to think of humanism as secular and atheistic humanism. Humanism in the 14th and
15th centuries was not necessarily anti-God or anti-Christian. At times it could seem to be
anti-institutional church, though.
There were other movements that were opposed to the institutional church as well. As we
think of humanism, we are to think of the Renaissance and the people of the Renaissance
who were coming up with some new emphases without rejecting the old emphases. There
were two new emphases that could and did eventually undermine the old emphases. One is

a this-worldliness, and the other is an emphasis on the greatness and essential goodness of
human nature. . . . Fifteenth century humanism did not reject or attack Christianity directly
or intentionally. Michelangelo was producing biblical themes . . . He tended to mix those
with mythological and classic figures . . . .
These two new emphases came through during the Renaissance. There was a this-
worldliness, a focus on the here and now, against the other-worldliness of much of
medieval life and thought. . . . One of the themes of medieval art is the picture of death
coming and taking people at all stages of life and at the most inopportune [badly timed]
moments. Death was very much in the mind of medieval men and women. But the
Renaissance . . . was a celebration of life. It was a new beginning, the rebirth. There is
potential for life in this world. That tended to move the emphasis and the interest away
from preparation for life in the next world.
One of the themes of humanism and the Renaissance is the goodness and greatness of
human beings. It is type of Pelagianism, although the people of the Renaissance did not
have interest in putting it in theological terms; they just knew that human beings have
great significance and importance. Let me illustrate that in three ways through three
different figures. The first is Petrarch, a man who lived in the 14th century. He was called
by Kenneth Clark the first modern man. Petrarch lived during the time of the Avignon
papacy. He was very concerned with the way the church was going, with scholasticism and
the scholastic theology. He was also, and more importantly, concerned with the worldliness
of the [page 4] Avignon papacy and the worldliness of the church in general. He said, “I am
now living in France, the Babylon of the West. The poor fishermen of Galilee have strangely
forgotten their origin. I am astounded as I recall their predecessors. To see these men,
loaded with gold and clad in purple, boasting in the spoils of princes and nations, to see
luxurious palaces and heights crowned with fortifications, does not look like the beginning
of Christianity.” It did not look like the disciples, the followers of Christ in Galilee, to see the
wealth and worldliness of the church as it centered in Avignon and France. Petrarch was
critical of scholasticism and of the worldliness of the church.
As we move to the next figure we get a much more humanistic emphasis. Leon Battista
Alberti is famous for a number of statements. He was a 15th century figure. He is often
quoted as having said “A man can do all things if he will.” That does not sound like
Augustine or even the medieval theologians. It is a new note of human potential and
possibility. Kenneth Clark said, “That statement of ‘man can do all things if he will’ could be
the motto of the early Renaissance.”
We have a portrait of Alberti; it is one of the first portraits that we have. The modern
portrait came into existence during the Renaissance. Before the Renaissance, it really did
not matter what people looked like. They could all look the same. . . . But with the
Renaissance there was a concern that the individual be depicted truly to express his or her
uniqueness, importance, and psychological complexity. So with Alberti and others’
portraits from this time, we have the modern man. It was the modern portrait depicting the
modern man.

Alberti addressed his fellow men by saying, “To you is given a body more graceful than
other animals, to you power of apt and various movements, to you most sharp and delicate
senses, to you wit, reason, and memory like an immortal god.” Kenneth Clark comments
that it is certainly incorrect to say that we are more graceful than other animals. We do not
feel much like immortal gods at the moment, but in 1400 the Florentines did (at least some
of them). This was the Renaissance; this was the springtime, the rebirth. The darkness of
the past was going to pass away. New light would come.
I will give one other illustration of this attitude from Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola. His
book was Oration on the Dignity of Man. Mirandola was a young man; he was very brilliant,
handsome, wealthy, and energetic. He had everything going for him. He seemed to know
everything; he seemed to learn everything. He came up with the plan and the idea to try to
combine Christianity, the ancient classics, and even Islam. It was a new synthesis of truth.
When he was 24 years old, he went to Rome and published 900 theses for debate. It was
not 25 [probably: 95 – Ed.] like Luther, but 900. He created something of a sensation and
the debate never came off. The pope said, “That young man is looking for someone to burn
him.” Pico decided it would be better not to stay in Rome much longer!
That gives you a sense of what was going on in one place, Florence, and some of the other
cities of northern Italy. Something else was going on in Florence, too. As we think of reform,
it is not only the Renaissance. We have to think of a very different type of reform that came
from the life and teaching of a Dominican monk whose name was Savonarola. He is the
fourth of our pre-Reformers: Waldo, Wycliffe, Hus, and Savonarola. . . . Savonarola was born
in 1452; he was born, not in Florence, but in the Italian city Ferrara. . . . His grandfather was
a famous doctor in Ferrara. For some reason the grandfather had a particular contact with
the little boy and responsibility for him; he brought him up and taught him along the way.
What he taught him was very much the truth of the Bible. This famous doctor had a small
notebook in which he wrote down different ideas that he came up with. He gave that
notebook to his [page 5] grandson. In the notebook there were statements like, “Neither
the pope nor their vicars have a right to teach anything contrary to the things instituted by
God. All that we need to know is found in the Word of God.” So Savonarola grew up hearing
that kind of teaching.
He had a disappointing love affair as a young man. He did what many young men of that
time did after disappointing love affairs: he became a monk. He was a Dominican monk at
the age of 23. Eventually he was brought to Florence by Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was
the virtual ruler of the city of Florence. The wealthy family of the Medici controlled the city
of Florence. Savonarola came to Florence in 1482, and he became friar of the famous
monastery of San Marco in 1491. . . . Savonarola worked away in his cell in the monastery of
San Marco. There is a drawing depicting him working in his cell. He is writing a book. It was
a book called On Christian Simplicity. . . . Florentines did not like him at first because they
felt he had a very bad accent. It was not from Florence, it was from Ferrara, which they
considered an inferior city. So he preached long sermons for about two hours. He shouted
those sermons in a very ungraceful accent. His friends urged him to go and hear another
preacher in town who was a very famous and eloquent speaker. He was the Augustinian
Fra Mariano who was filling Santo Spirito, the church across the Arno River. . . . When his

friends told Savonarola he should go hear Mariano, that he was a great preacher,
Savonarola replied that he had already heard Mariano. He said, “He preaches from Cicero
and the poets and not from the Holy Scripture.” He was a Renaissance figure who
emphasized the classics but not the Scripture. Savonarola said, “You reproach me for my
lack of style. What has style to do with it? Have something to say and say it as clearly as you
can. That is the secret of preaching.” . . .
The thing that is interesting is that Savonarola became a great preacher. We can be
encouraged. His Lentan sermons in the Duomo, in the cathedral in Florence, moved the
whole city. Not only did he have something to say because he was preaching the Gospel
instead of Cicero and the poets, but eventually he also developed a style that was moving
and powerful. One of the people who heard Savonarola preach in the Duomo was
Michelangelo, the artist. He said, “Oh, that voice, that voice. It can never be forgotten.” It is
interesting to read that when Michelangelo was doing the painting in the Sistine Chapel on
the ceiling, the painting of the Last Judgment, as he worked for five years on that painting
he had with him only one book. It was a book of Savonarola’s sermons. Somebody has said
that the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel is essentially a Sevonarolian sermon in color.
In the syllabus we have one example of Savonarola’s preaching in the sermon on the
ascension of Christ.
Not only did he become a great preacher, but Savonarola also became an important
reformer in the city of Florence. Florence became what we could call a Christian city with a
Christian constitution in 1494. The battle there was between Lorenzo and Savonarola. Each
tried to pull the city in a different direction. Savonarola preached, “Florence is a spiritual
wilderness, and it will be punished for worldliness and for the injustices inflicted on the
poor.” It was a sermon he was preaching week by week in Florence. Lorenzo said, “I do not
like to hear of anyone talking politics in the pulpit or anywhere else.” Lorenzo had his own
ideas about what he wanted to make the city of Florence. It was not in line with the vision
and dream of Savonarola. I will not go into the long, complicated history of the power
struggle between these two and others. The outcome of it all was that Savonarola
eventually became the leader of the city. He was not only the chief preacher of the city, but
he was also the political leader of the city as well. I [page 6] think that was probably a
mistake. It was not a mistake that the Reformers would make later. Luther never became a
political figure, nor did Calvin. People think Calvin was a type of autocrat of Geneva, but
that was not the case at all. John Knox was not a political figure either. They remained in
their calling as preachers and spiritual leaders. Savonarola won the people, and they made
him the leader of the city. He said, “Florence, Jesus Christ, who is the king of the universe,
stands before the door and He knocks. He wants to come in. He wills to become your king in
this very hour. Will you have Him as your king?” And the people shouted, “Yes, we will.”
They tried to create a theocracy, a Christ city, God’s city on earth, with Savonarola as the
leader of that city. One of the things that happened in Florence was what is called a burning
of the vanities. People brought all sorts of things into the main piazza of the city, and there
was a great bonfire. They threw into the bonfire cards, dice, jewelry, cosmetics, lewd books,
and pictures. Some of the paintings of Botticelli, for instance, were thrown into the fire.
Botticelli himself threw them in. He had been moved by what was going on in Florence, as
were Pico Della Mirandola and some of the other humanists whom we have talked about

already. Of course the burning of the vanities has not made Savonarola popular with art
students and artists through history. He was concerned that worldliness had captured the
city. He felt that something had to be done in order to bring Florence back to a place of
godly living.
. . . Savonarola made many enemies: the pope, the aristocrats, the Medici. Finally, through a
serious of miscalculations and misfortunes, the people lost confidence in him. He was
arrested, hanged, and burned with several fellow Dominican monks on May 23, 1498 in the
Piazza della Signoria in Florence.
When Savonarola died in the flames in Florence in 1498, there was another young man
growing up in a little town in Germany. Martin Luther was only 15 years old. . . . Luther said
about this Florentine martyr, “Whereas anti-Christ [Luther’s word for the pope] has
damned Savonarola, God has canonized him in our hearts.”
LESSON SEVEN QUESTIONS
1. What three problems troubled England in the 14th century?
2. What did Wycliffe teach about authority of the king and the pope?
3. How importance did Wycliffe say that preaching has?
4. What did Hus say about indulgences?
5. Who in the Protestant Reformation relied on the teaching and courage of Hus?
6. What general changes took place when the Renaissance began?
7. How did Lorenzo Valla represent another emphasis of the Renaissance? What did
he conclude?
8. How did the writing of theology differ during the Renaissance from the writing of
theology during the Scholastic period?
9. List and describe the two main emphases of the Renaissance period.
10. How did Savonarola influence Florence?

Medieval Church History 106 LESSON EIGHT
LESSON EIGHT:
MYSTICISM AND THE MODERN DEVOTION;
THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES
A. MYSTICISM AND THE MODERN DEVOTION18
There were various ways in which people attempted to live out their Christian faith in the
Middle Ages. One was the way of the scholastics. They did theology, trying to understand
the faith. Another was the way of the humanist that we talked about in the last lesson. They
were Christian but with emphases that were somewhat new and different. A third way was
the way of the mystics. That is what I want to talk about during this lesson. The humanists
put emphasis on the classics and on rhetoric, and the scholastics put emphasis on theology
and learning. The mystics put emphasis on love and virtue. It is not true that the other two
groups did not have any concern about love and virtue, but these are particular themes that
you find constantly emphasized in the mystics. . . . The Cloud of Unknowing, one of the great
books of the mystics, put it this way, “Smite upon the thick cloud of unknowing with a
sharp dart of longing love.” The writer is talking about God and theology. It is a thick cloud,
and how are you going to get through that cloud? Do not get through it with dialectics,
disputations, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or the classics, but with the sharp dart of longing love.
The emphasis on love was certainly central.
The interest and emphasis on virtue was also central. What good does it do you to know
things if you do not do those things? You could find this coming out again and again in the
famous book The Imitation of Christ that we will talk about. “What good does it do you to
speak learnedly about the Trinity if lacking humility you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is
not learning that makes man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God.”
There is concern, first and foremost, for love, conduct, good living, and virtue.
If you had to choose three points to summarize the emphases in the writings of the mystics,
it would be these three: union with God, love for Christ, and denial of self. Not every mystic
put equal emphasis on each of these. There are some mystics who were more into the
union with God theme. Others focused more on love for Christ, but all of them talked about
denial of self. I think the best way for us to understand the mystics is for me to describe
some of these mystics . . . to illustrate these points through the lives and work of some of
the famous mystics of the Middle Ages. [page 2]
Let us start with Johannes Meister Eckhart. He was a German, and like so many of the
mystics he was a monk. Eckhart was a Dominican monk. His book is simply called The
Sermons. . . . I have never been able to understand any of them! I came across this statement
once that made me feel a little better. Someone complained to Eckhart that no one could
18
David Calhoun, “Mysticism and the Modern Devotion,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological
Seminary, St. Louis, 15 March 2016
<https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/
CH310_T_341.pdf>. The document which forms the first half of this lesson appears as Lesson 34 in
Dr. Calhoun’s course on Ancient and Medieval Church History.

understand his sermons. He said, “To understand my preaching five things are needed. The
hearer must have conquered strife, he must be contemplating his highest good, he must be
satisfied to do God’s bidding, he must be a beginner among beginners, and deny himself. He
must be so a master of himself as to be incapable of anger.” Maybe that is why I do not
understand Eckhart’s sermons. You see the answer there is not that you need to
concentrate and figure out what I am saying. The answer is that you need to be a better
person to understand my sermons. . . . He says, “A flea to the extent that it is in God ranks
above the highest angel in his own right. Thus, in God, all things are equal and are God
Himself.” He is saying even that flea, to the extent that that flea is in God, is equal to man
and the angels. And the flea, man, and the angels are God Himself. This is not
uncharacteristic of how the mystics sounded. They were always pushing toward a union
with God in which the individual would be lost in being absorbed into the greatness and
wonder of God.
A lot of people said his union with God statements sounded like pantheism. Eckhart was
charged with heresy, and he was rebuked for this teaching. Eckhart admitted that he had
been extreme in some of his statements. He tried to modify his statements, but there is still
a very strong emphasis in Eckhart on being absorbed into God so that there is no
difference. I came across a statement very recently from Eckhart, which I did understand. It
seems rather profound and important to me. . . . “We are all meant to be mothers of God.
What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the Divine Son takes place unceasingly but does
not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not
also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to His Son if I do not
also give birth to Him in my time and culture? This then is the fullness of time, when the
Son of God is begotten in us.” . . . This does seem to emphasize something very central and
important for us to hear. Eckhart is usually known as the person who came very close to
becoming a pantheist. The church had to rebuke him for that teaching.
Another mystic is a man named Walter Hilton. He was an Augustinian monk and was
English. His book is called The Ladder of Perfection. The idea of a ladder is one that the
mystics liked. So many of the books of mysticism will have the idea of a ladder: start down
low and climb; as you climb you get higher and higher. Many of the books of mysticism will
give you steps in which you can move from the lowest level of spirituality to the highest
level of spirituality. That has some problems connected with it, which you can imagine. But
in Walter Hilton’s book there seems to be a lot of truth and a lot that can benefit us. He says
you start on a lower level, the level of knowledge of God by study. You want to know more
about God, so you study the Bible and the writings of the church fathers. . . . [H]e says at one
point in his Ladder of Perfection, “For one who has always been ardent of the knowledge of
God and of spiritual things it can sometimes seem that he increases after a certain point
relatively little in love for God.” So what he is saying is that you can be very ardent for the
knowledge of God but you find after a while that your love for God does not increase
correspondingly. He is concerned about that, as he should be. So he moves to the next level,
which is love for God. That goes through various steps. First, there is a transitory love, love
that comes and goes, increases and decreases. We might think that is the way our love for
God always is and always will be. But Walter Hilton wanted to advance to a subtle love for
[page 3] God. It was not so transitory. It could not be shaken, but it would be there in all

circumstances of life. Then he goes from knowledge of God, up through transitory love for
God and subtle love for God, and finally to the top level, which is both knowledge and love.
That is where he wants us to be because he did not demean knowledge. Sometimes the
mystics do, but Hilton did not. Knowledge is important. But love must keep up with the
knowledge. The final analysis, the perfection that we seek, is both to know God and to love
God.
Let us come to Julian of Norwich. Julian was an English Benedictine. She became what was
called an Anchorist. That was a person who no longer lived in community but lived alone in
a cell. Julian, after a time of illness, entered a cell that was built adjoining the church in
Norwich in England. There she had a window opening into the church to receive the
Eucharist and administrations of the priest. And she had a window opening out into the
street to receive people who would come. She was not just shutting herself off from life. She
could look one way into the church and another way into the street. But she lived in that
cell. The idea of an Anchorist was to be an anchor for people. She became an anchor by her
prayer, her meditation, and her teaching. As I have already mentioned, this woman was the
first woman to write a book in English. That book is called The Revelations of Divine Love.
The word “revelations” is important. When she was about 30 she experienced this life-
threatening illness. This was probably the occasion for her entering the cell as an Anchorist.
During a short period of some days or weeks, she received 16 revelations. She said God
revealed Himself and spoke to her directly in these 16 revelations. She meditated on those
revelations for about 15 years. Then she wrote the book Revelations of Divine Love. The two
words, “divine love,” are important as well. You might say the theme of all these revelations
is the divine love. Julian said, “I could see no sort of anger in God however long I looked.”
She is famous for that quote. There is no anger in God; there is no wrath in God. Everything
I see in God is love. That was quite different from medieval theology. This is not Cur Deus
Homo, where God’s wrath appears against sin and necessitates the coming of the God-man
to appease the wrath of God. Julian says, “There is no wrath in God, there is only love.” . . . [A
famous saying of Julian concerns a hazelnut in her hand.] She looks at it in her meditation,
and she says, “What is it?” The answer comes to her, “It is all that is made.” She said, “I
marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for
littleness.” It is so small, insignificant, and unimportant, it seems like it would just
disappear. But then she wrote, “And I was answered in my understanding. It lasts and ever
shall last because God loves it.” God loves the hazelnut, so that is what makes it last. That is
what gives it stability, significance, and importance. “So all thing hath the being by the love
of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is
that God loves it, the third is that God keeps it.” That is the theme of the revelation. God
made everything, God loves everything, and God keeps everything. “But what is to me
verily the maker, the keeper, and the lover.” He is my maker, He is my keeper, He is my
lover. “I cannot tell, for till I am substantially oned to Him I may never have full rest nor
very bliss.” There was a push and desire in Julian, just like in Meister Eckhart, to be
substantially one with God so that she could rest in bliss knowing Him as the maker, the
keeper, and the lover. . . . [page 4] . . .
Let us move on to Catherine of Siena. Siena is in Italy. Catherine was a member of an order.
She was a Dominican tertiary, the third order of the Dominican movement. There are two

things that are very striking about Catherine of Siena. She brought together mystical
rapture and active service. Most . . . [m]ystics withdrew and lived quiet lives of meditation
and prayer. But Catherine seemed to be able to do both. There are many stories about the
mystical rapture that Catherine claimed to have experienced. She referred to these times as
times of abstraction, times of prayer. She would not really know that she was in the world,
not know what was going on around her. These were times of abstraction in her devotional
life. The central theme of her writings is Christ crucified, especially His blood. . . . [ A]
rapture came as she contemplated the sufferings of Christ until she experienced these
times of abstraction. Strikingly, she was also very active. She was very involved in the care
of the sick and the poor. And she was preaching to sinners. She tried to convert them. On a
higher level, she even became a mediator between the warring cities of Italy. She is given
credit, not only for that work, but for the work of helping to persuade Pope Gregory XI to
transfer the papacy from Avignon back to Rome. It seems that her influence and her
persuasiveness was the crucial factor that made him make that move. As we know, that did
not solve the problem of the papacy but produced the papal schism. About that time
Catherine died. She was only 33 years old. Some have said that her heart was broken
because her efforts to reunite the church had not succeeded. She is a very important figure.
She was declared a doctor of the Catholic Church in 1970. When she was given that title,
she joined about 30 other people. . . .
Let us move on to Johannes Tauler. He is another 14th century mystic. He was also a
Dominican, but a German. . . . Of all the mystics, Tauler is my favorite. There is a lot of
spiritual blessing that can come from reading the sermons and conferences of John Tauler. I
started reading Tauler because Luther advised people to read Tauler. Luther brought out
several additions of the German theology with his own recommendation and introduction
to Tauler. Luther said, “The German theology of Tauler does not float on top like foam on
water. It is rather been fetched out of the rock bottom of Jordan by a true Israelite. Next to
the Bible and Saint Augustine, no book has ever come into my hands from which I have
learned more of what God and Christ and man and what all things are.” That is pretty high
praise for this German Dominican from a fellow German Augustinian and Reformer, Martin
Luther. I think what really appealed to Luther in Tauler was his humility and lowliness. He
was small, nothing before God, to whom all the honor belongs. Luther, who very much
disliked the proud and boastful scholastics who felt they had all the answers, returned
again and again to the quiet, humble teaching of Tauler. But Tauler was not perfect. Luther,
in a marginal note that he affixed to one of Tauler’s sermons, struck out the word “humility”
and put in the word “faith.” We are not justified by being humble; we are justified by faith.
It was not that Tauler did not come very close to saying that, but Luther wanted him to say
it even more explicitly. Justification is indeed by faith.
Then we finally come to the most famous of the medieval mystics and the most famous of
the books. We will now look at Thomas a’ Kempis and The Imitation of Christ. The Imitation
of Christ was the most widely read book of the Middle Ages. The writings of Thomas a’
Kempis and others collected in [page 5] The Imitation of Christ is what is called the modern
devotion. These are the writings of Thomas a’ Kempis and others from the Brothers of the
Common Life. That was a movement that began in the Netherlands and spread to various

places. It was like an order, but it was a lay movement. They were laymen and women.
They were not bound in the same way as the monks were by vows, but they were brothers
and sisters who came together to share with each other and to practice good works. In
particular, they set up schools. The Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life established
schools for the teaching of children in many places. One of these brothers was Thomas a’
Kempis. We know very little about his life. He had an uneventful life as brother in one of the
brother houses. When the plague struck down most of the members of the house, Thomas
had to pitch in and do different jobs to keep things running. He became the monastery
cook. Someone wrote of him, “He made the kitchen a house of prayer, for he knew that God
was everywhere.” . . .
. . . It is not the kind of book you pick up and read right through. It is more like reading the
book of Proverbs. You get short, pithy statements. They are often gems of expression and
extraordinarily fresh with some of the power and appeal of the Proverbs and other
portions of Scripture. . . . Note . . . [this], “Jesus says, ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the
Life.’ Without the Way there is no going, without the Truth there is no knowing, without the
Life there is no living.” That is the kind of thing you find in The Imitation of Christ. I think
this book, so widely read, was a book that allowed many people to understand at least
something of what was in the Bible. People were not able to read the Bible for themselves.
As you study The Imitation of Christ the title might seem to suggest that the book is going to
stress imitating Christ and trying to be like Christ. In some ways that is true. There is often
a real display of grace in The Imitation of Christ. It is not perfect; at times Thomas can lapse
into sacramentalism or even a works righteousness. But taken as a whole, The Imitation of
Christ is more Augustinian than semi-palagian. But people have differed on an analysis of
The Imitation of Christ. Rabbi John Duncan, a Scottish theologian, said of Thomas a’ Kempis,
“A fine fellow, but hazy and weak at times.”. . .
Let me come to a summing up of mysticism. I will do an evaluation: how do we look at this

medieval movement? There are some very good things about it and some problems. One of
the good things is stress on loving God. That is an emphasis that should always be there.
We cannot say that too much. One of the descriptions of mystical theology that comes from
the Middle Ages came from the chancellor of the University of Paris [who] . . . said, “As
honey requires honeycomb, so devotion needs to be structured by our learned and
orthodox mind. As honeycomb needs to be filled, so ideas of the mind must also warm the
heart and lead to activity in the world.” That just about says it all. You need the structure;
you need the honeycomb. You need the theology; you need the orthodoxy. But you also
need the honey; you need something to fill it and not only to enlighten the mind, but to
warm the heart. From an enlightened mind and a warm heart we can go out to activity in
the world. Not all the mystics got it right. Some demeaned learning; some were not very
active in the world. But this statement expresses mysticism at its best. It is a concern that
we not only understand, but that we love God and that we serve Him.
Another striking characteristic of the mystics is their concern for quietness and
humility. . . . [T]he Princeton theologian, a Presbyterian minister, J. W. Alexander, . . . wrote
this 150 years ago, but it applies to our time as well as to his. He said, “It seems to me that
in our day we take the pattern and measure of our religion too commonly from what is

popular, that is bustling outward and full of éclat [impressiveness]. [page 6] But it may
appear in another world that some of the mightiest influences have proceeded from souls
of great quiet.” Think about that—it is worth pondering.
There are two real problems with the mystics. One of the problems is individualism. This
may not be true of all the mystics. . . . As the German historian, Kurt Allan, puts it this way:
“To a certain extent the mystic lived in a glass jar from which the world was banished and
in which there was really nothing but a private conversation between God and the soul.”
You do not have a lot of development of a Christian world and life view. The mystic might
say, “It is about my relationship to God; even the church is not all that important.” It was a
very personalized, individual relationship to God that the mystics pursued. Not all of them
did this, but mysticism in general took that direction.
There was in mysticism, as there was in humanism and even in scholasticism, a tendency
toward self-righteousness and works righteousness. Richard Lovelace says, “The writings
of the mystics are full of nervous instructions to believers trying to cross the gap between
man and God on their own footpaths.” That is the old problem all over again. There is a way
that seems right to us, and we think by doing these things we can enter into favor with God.
Not all of the mystics went that way, but there was the tendency for them to do so. As I have
said, there are [also] glimpses of grace in the mystics. The Imitation of Christ and the
German theology of Tauler give us some of these glimpses. John Newton, who wrote
Amazing Grace, as a young sailor casually picked up a copy of The Imitation of Christ. He
was not interested in being a Christian. He was actually very much opposed to it. But he
carelessly read The Imitation. The more he read it, the more troubled he became, thinking
that it might indeed be true. If it was, he was in trouble. So it was through The Imitation of
Christ that the evangelical experience of John Newton was first developed.
I want to close this lesson with a prayer from Thomas a’ Kempis. I think it is a very
appropriate one because it is a prayer for all teachers and students. We are all students,
and in one sense we are all teachers here. So let me pray these words with you as we
conclude: “Grant, oh Lord, to all teachers and students to know what is worth knowing, to
love what is worth loving, to praise what pleases You most, and to dislike whatsoever is evil in
Your sight. Grant us with true judgment to distinguish things that differ and, above all, to
search out and do what is well pleasing to You, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
The term “modern devotion” is an expression that is used for the piety of the Brothers of
Common Life and for The Imitation of Christ. You could say it equals The Imitation of Christ. .
..
B. B. THE WANING MIDDLE AGES19
19
David Calhoun, “The Waning Middle Ages,” Summer 2006, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis,
15 March 2016 https://www.covenantseminary.edu/resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014
/12/CH310_T_351.pdf. The document which forms the second half of this lesson appears as Lesson 35 in Dr.
Calhoun’s course on Ancient and Medieval Church History

. . . I want to start with the idea of the medieval synthesis [mixture or blend]. I think one of
the most astounding things about the third 500 years of Christian years that we have been
studying is this synthesis. It is a coming together of Christ and culture, theology and
philosophy, faith and learning. It is a harmony of life that brought the sacred and the
secular together in culture in Europe. It is something we have not experienced in history
since then. It is hard for us to know exactly how it would have been to have lived in that
culture when we live in a culture that is so fractured. In the medieval period there was a
coming together, a synthesis. Let me illustrate it in three ways: a book of theology, a book of
poetry, and the example of the architecture of the cathedrals.
First let me talk about a book from theology. That has to be Thomas Aquinas and the
Summa Theologiae. It is the great summa of Thomas in which all learning is united to the
devotion of Christ and the presentation of His truth. You can think of the Summa as a great
building, a magnificent structure. It is like one of those wonderful gothic cathedrals rising
to the praise and glory of God.
As you move over into poetry, the great book is The Divine Comedy by Dante. It is a vision of
divine order and heavenly beauty. It incorporates everything on earth, in hell, in purgatory,
and in heaven. . . .
The third illustration is the glory of the cathedrals. . . . Stones seemed to take flight and rise
to heaven. The entire building, inside and out, was a book in which the mysteries of faith
and all creation were reflected.” . . . For instance, the cathedral in France at Chartres has its
twin towers pointing upward to heaven. This is certainly God-directed architecture in
contrast with the chapel in Florence, which is an indication of renaissance- or humanistic-
style of architecture. You enter the cathedral and your eyes and spirit are immediately
lifted up. The cathedral, like the Summa and like The Divine [page 2] Comedy, is a work in
which learning, understanding, theology, Old Testament, New Testament, and often many
other sources of knowledge are brought together. There are at least 1,000 separate statues
carved into Chartres Cathedral. You can see a few of those in the main west entrance with
its three portals representing the Trinity. Everything stands for something in a cathedral.
By walking through one of those cathedrals, you can be impressed with the significance of
this medieval synthesis. . . .
We are talking about the medieval synthesis. There is a . . .picture on the cover from
Christian History Magazine, Issue 49. This issue was called, “Everyday Faith in the Middle
Ages.” It shows the bishop blessing the Linden Fair in France. The bishop is in the church in
the center of everything. Life is surrounding the church: selling, people practicing various
crafts, couples getting together and sharing with one another, and all kinds of activity. Right
in the center of it all is the church. It is a coming together of life in the Middle Ages. That
was the 13th century. But it was not long before the synthesis began to break apart.
As we look at the very end of the Middle Ages, . . . we have to think of the breakup of the
medieval synthesis. The Reformation came, not at the point of the height of the medieval
world, but during the period called the waning of the Middle Ages. There are three
theologians of significance. The first one is a transitional figure who can belong to the

earlier period but transitions into the later period. Then there are two figures who are
clearly in the later period. They are late medieval theologians.
The first theologian is John Duns Scotus. He was a Scottish, Franciscan scholastic
theologian. He was in many ways like Thomas Aquinas, following the teaching of Aquinas.
In other ways he strikes out on his own. He lived in different places. On his tomb in
Cologne, Germany, are the words, “Scotland gave birth to me, England received me, France
taught me, Cologne retains me.” He was born in Scotland and died in Germany. His
contemporaries called him the Subtle Doctor. Once you have a great theologian like Thomas
Aquinas then about all you can do is refine some of the small points after Thomas. The
same thing happened after Calvin. The same thing happened after Karl Barth. Theologians
became more precise in attempting to refine and clarify the teachings of the master. Others,
particularly the later humanists who had very little sympathy or patience for scholasticism,
found the theology of Duns Scotus too subtle, too dense, and too obscure. It is interesting
that we get the word “dunce” from Duns. John Duns Scotus. He was not a dunce in the sense
that we use the word. He was very brilliant. He was so brilliant that people thought he was
stupid. They did not understand what he was saying. So that word comes into English
curiously from this brilliant man who was not at all a dunce.
William of Occam was a true late medieval theologian. He was an English Franciscan. He got
into a lot of trouble with the church because he was in the strict movement of the
Franciscans. The Franciscans had divided into Franciscans who felt it was appropriate for
the order to own property and Franciscans who insisted on the absolute rule of Francis,
which was not to own anything. William of Occam was of the belief not to own anything. He
faced the excommunication of the pope over that issue. William was not loath to criticize
the pope either. One of the famous things from William of Occam is what is called Occam’s
Razor. . . . It is a principle in [page 3] philosophy and theology that Occam expressed in
various ways. He said, “Whatever can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with
more.” If you can drop out some things, drop them out and do not add them. The way I
would translate that is “Keep it simple.” Just like a man shaves off his beard because it is not
needed, so the Occamist is shaving off all these principles, attitudes, and concepts that are
not needed. We will see in a few minutes what some of those were.
Gabriel Biel is called the last of the scholastics. He was German, a member of the Brothers
of Common Life, and a teacher of Luther. I wanted to get those three names before you.
Then we will talk about late medieval theology. It comes out of these late medieval
theologians.
Theology became divided into two types of theology. There was the via antiqua, the old
way, and the via moderna, the new way. By the time just before the Reformation, there
were theologians in both camps. There were old way theologians and there are new way
theologians. The turning point was in 1350. Paul Tilley calls it the turning point in the
history of Western thought. We will answer why it is so important and what happened by
looking at three points. We will look at volunteerism, nominalism, and how salvation was
understood.

Volunteerism is the view that developed in the via moderna, the late medieval theology. It is
the view that the divine will take precedence over the divine intellect. The primary
characteristic of God that people used to think about was the divine intellect, what God
knows and how He knows. They focused on God’s rationality. In Thomas Aquinas you get a
theology that is based on the rationality of God. He gives us minds so that we can
understand Him. We cannot exhaust Him or understand Him completely, but there is a nice
fit between what God is and how He made people. There is a fit in how God acts and thinks
and how we can understand how God acts and thinks. That view was challenged by
volunteerism, which means that the divine will becomes primary. If you are going to think
about God, do not think first about God’s intellect. Think about God’s will, what He chooses
to do. That shift took place so that the divine will became the heart of theology over the
divine intellect. Then suddenly God appeared to be not so knowable as He was in the
theology of the via antiqua. There were theistic proofs and other ways in which we can
know God and understand Him. The old way said, “Can we prove by human reason that God
exists?” The answer was, yes, even by human reason we can prove that God exists. It makes
sense for us to believe that God exists. There are the five theistic arguments; there was the
ontological proof of Anselm.
The modern way, though, said that we cannot, by thinking, studying, and developing
arguments, prove that God exists. God is unknowable. That might seem to lead into
agnosticism, but it does not. The modern way said that we do know God, but we only know
Him by faith in the Bible. We do not know Him by anything that we can do by human
rationality. We can know a lot of other things: science, history. But we cannot know God.
There are two worlds: the world of rationality and the world of faith. Those two came
together in Thomas Aquinas in this great medieval synthesis. They were not the same, but
they supported each other. Now they are pulled apart. You have one world on one side,
which is the world you live in. It is science and history. Then there is the world of faith,
which you believe and accept on authority. Those two worlds do not touch. In Thomas
Aquinas, they not only touch, but they come close together even though they do not merge
completely.
The other point of volunteerism [referring to God’s decision – Ed.] is that God should be
defined as absolute power. This means God does anything He chooses to do. Why does God
do what He does? The old way would say that God wills something because that is right,
good, reasonable, and it makes sense. Cur deus homo. The incarnation comes because of
human sin and the necessity for a divine savior. So there has to be a God-man. The God-man
comes and He provides the atonement. Only God could provide this, but only man could pay
[page 4] it. You can see how that makes sense. But the new way said that God wills
something because He wills it. There is no reason for the divine will other than the divine
will. God did not have to save people through the incarnation of Christ. He chose to do it
what way, but He could have done it any way that He chose. There was not just one way;
there were an infinite number of ways.
Volunteerism in the via moderna taught that the divine will takes precedence over the
divine intellect. It undermined rational arguments of the knowledge of God. It is not that
God is hidden like the mystics said; it is that God is unpredictable. God can do anything He

chooses to do. All sorts of illustrations were brought forth to try to illustrate this point,
some absurd, some thoughtful. There was not complete confusion, though, because the via
moderna theologians were not heretics. They said they believed, but they believed on the
basis of sheer revelation and faith in the Bible. They could not understand or figure it out. It
is not faith seeking understanding. It is just faith believing. Understanding comes in the
other world; we understand science and other things. We can understand things there. We
do not understand anything with God; we just accept it and believe it. The result that you
see is a breech between faith and authority on the one hand and reason on the other hand.
You live in two worlds. In the time of the medieval synthesis, there was no division
between those two worlds. You could think and believe at the same time. Now you must
think rationally in one world, but in the other world you must accept and believe. The
result is that what we know and what we believe, those two worlds, are being pulled apart.
There was a secular-religious division. The via moderna theologians were not saying not to
be religious. They said how you can be religious and how you live the rest of your life.
Kenneth Clark, in the book Civilization, says, “Medieval man could see things very clearly,
but he believed that these appearances should be considered as nothing more than symbols
or tokens of an ideal order which was the only true reality.” That leads us into another
point, which is nominalism. Volunteerism, as we have talked about, is the view that the
divine will takes precedence over the divine intellect.
. . . The second emphasis of the via moderna was nominalism, to challenge the realism of
that quotation from Kenneth Clark. Realism puts an emphasis on the importance of
universals. There is a universal concept, and individual things adhere to that universal
concept. It is important to know the concept and to understand the concept. It is not so
important to study the individual things. They just make up the universals. Universals are
real; that is realism. It is ideas, universals, and ideal order. Nominalism would challenge
that. The nominalist and medieval theologians like Occam would say universals are just
words. They are just figures of speech. They are not real; they exist only in the human mind.
They are just names. Realism says these universal concepts are real. Nominalism says these
universal concepts are just names.
Let me illustrate that with pigs. There is a realist pig and a nominalist pig contemplating an
ear of corn. The realist pig sees the ear of corn, and he says, “That is part, just one
individual thing, but what really is important is the concept of corn. That is real.” The
nominalist pig says, “The word corn is just a name, and what is important is that individual
ear of corn.” The nominalist pig is just about ready to eat that corn! Realism affirms that
there is a universal concept that could be called “cornness” somewhere. A realist could
never quite decide where that concept resided, but it was somewhere. The important thing
was to grasp that idea. Nominalism said that the idea of “cornness” was not really
necessary. So Occam’s Razor comes in here: cut off these things that you do not need. You
do not need the idea of “cornness” to understand an individual ear of corn. What difference
does it make which way the corn is viewed? Strangely enough, it made a huge amount of
difference because the shift was from putting stress on categories and universals to
specifics and individuals. The medieval world was taken up with these universals.
Remember that Kenneth Clark said, “Medieval man could see things very clearly [he [page
5] could see corn and all kinds of things], but he believed that these appearances should be

considered as nothing more than symbols or tokens of an ideal order [what is really real
there is not the ear of corn, but the ideal order] which was the only true reality.” That is
going to mean that corporate experiences are central. This includes the idea of church,
state, an order, and community. Individuals are not so important. They are only part of that
which is important.
The nominalist turned that completely on its head. They said to do away with the
categories because they are not real. They do not make any difference, and we do not need
them. Let us concentrate on individuals: this person, this ear of corn. That is going to make
a difference, both in society and in science. People began empirically to study individual
things rather than theorizing about what holds these things together in some sort of
universal concept. Paul Tilley says, “Medieval realism maintains the powers of being which
transcend the individual. Medieval nominalism preserves [emphasizes] the value of the
individual.”
We have two big points. Volunteerism was a different way of thinking about God in
theology. Nominalism was a different way of thinking about the world and things in it. The
doctrine of salvation in both the via antiqua and the via moderna was a mixture of grace
and works. We have looked at that already. Both are meritorious and semi-pelagian. The
old way differed from the new way significantly at this one point, though. Thomas Aquinas
said of the old way that you must do something in order to be saved, but God starts the
process. It is God’s grace plus your cooperation that produces more grace and consequently
enables you to cooperate further with that added grace. The new way is more pelagian, not
less. This is because the new way says that you start the process with your own natural
ability. You do what lies within you, and added to your effort, feeble as it is, is God’s mighty
grace. This enables you to do something better, which produces more grace, and so on. In
both systems there is a percentage theology even though the old way is preferable to the
new way.
There was also, however, a modern Augustinian school that rejected both ways in terms of
theology. It went back to the teachings of Augustine. We have already noted that in Thomas
Bradwardine, who died in 1349, and Gregory of Rimini in Italy, who died in 1358. In the
14th century there was a renewed emphasis on the teaching of Augustine that salvation is
by grace alone and not through our human effort. In the 16th century was another mighty
Augustinian revival in the teaching of Luther and Calvin.
That is a description of the breakup of the medieval synthesis regarding its theology. The
church was breaking up, too. We have studied this, so I will note those points in passing.
There was the Babylonian Captivity of the papacy in the 14th century. There was the papal
schism of the late 14th and early 15th centuries. There was failure to reform in head and
members. This was an expression that was used constantly by the church. They were
saying that there was need to reform the church through and through, from the pope all the
way down to the least member of the church. There was much concern on the part of many,
many people. The church was breaking up and collapsing under its own ineptitude and
worldliness. Years of intrigue, infighting, and corruption had taken their toll on the papacy
and the church. The Italian poet Boccaccio told a story about a Jew who came to Rome and

embraced Christianity on the basis that any religion that could survive such iniquities of its
leaders must be the true faith. If Christianity could still exist after all of this, there is
something amazing about it. Reform was attempted, but it was too little and too late.
We now come to human life. As we come to the late medieval period, there are some great
crises in human life. You could say that is always true in every century, and it would be a
true statement. But seemingly on the eve of the Reformation, the troubles of human life
were greater than before. Steven Osment says, “As never before, not even during the
century of the Roman empire’s collapse, Western [page 6] people walked through the
valley of the shadow of death.” You can find crises and dangers, longing and despair,
illustrated in so many different ways, from the ancient Piers Plowman, the story of the
collapse of Christian culture, to the modern book by Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror,
The Calamitous 14th Century. In her book she says, “It is reassuring to know that the human
species has lived through worse before.” What she does in that big and intriguing book is
write a history of the 14th century and see that as a distant mirror. In this 20th century, we
can look back to the distant mirror and see that many of the same problems that our
culture faces today were problems that were faced in that calamitous 14th century.
. . . I . . . find this reassuring from Isaiah 40:7-8, “The grass withers and the flowers fall
because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass
withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God stands forever.”
LESSON EIGHT QUESTIONS
1. What three points summarize the writings of the mystics?
2. Which mystic emphasis did Johannes Meister Eckhart stress when he talked about a
flea? Explain.
3. Which mystic emphasis did Walter Hilton stress when he talked about going up the
ladder? Explain.
4. Which mystic emphasis in Johannes Tauler made Luther respect him so much?
Explain.
5. How does the lesson describe The Imitation of Christ?
6. What strengths and weaknesses does this lesson find in mysticism?
7. What synthesis did Christianity enjoy in its third 500 years?
8. What two types of theology developed near the end of the third 500 years? What
did each stress about God?
9. When the lesson refers to the breakup of the medieval synthesis, what broke apart
in the church? Find the answer from throughout the lesson.

10. Near the end of the lesson, it says that the end of the third 500 years resembles
Western culture in the 20th century. What similarities does it mention?

Medieval Church History 119 COORDINATOR’S MANUAL
COORDINATOR’S MANUAL
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Coordinators always need to use their personal judgment when they grade homework. We
encourage coordinators to require students to do thorough work when they answer these
questions. Yet, coordinators should not require more thorough answers than the lessons
give. Many of the questions require paragraph answers. We encourage coordinators to
require students to give answers in the form of sentences and paragraphs. We understand
that students will not always give answers as complete as those which we provide here.
However, if the suggested answer gives 3 or 4 points which the student’s answer could
include, we encourage the coordinator not to accept a one-word answer from the student.
LESSON ONE QUESTIONS
1. What time period do we call the Middle Ages?

Approximately the time between the years AD 500 and 1500.
2. Why does the author say that in the second 500 years of Christianity we can begin to
speak of the Roman Catholic Church?
The church began to regard the bishops of Rome (or pope) as the successors of Peter.
Popes claimed that they had the keys of the kingdom and that they represented Peter
and Christ.
3. The author says that two men had the greatest effect on the church during its
second 500 years. Who were they, and they did they do?
Charlemagne founded the Holy Roman Empire. The stability which it gave the church
enabled the church to survive during many conflicts in Europe. Mohammed founded
Islam. It destroyed much of the church in Northern Africa and threatened the survival
of the church in Europe. Eventually it also diminished the church in the East.
4. What reasons have some church historians given for the decline of Christianity in
Asia during the church’s second 500 years?
Possibly reasons include: 1) persecution; 2) the church’s close interaction with
government so that, when government fell, the church also fell; 3) the church stopped
doing missionary work.
5. Where in Africa did the church become strong during the church’s second 500
years?
The lesson mentioned Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia.
6. Summarize the missionary work of Ulfilas among the Goths. (List at least 3
important facts.)
1) The Goths enslaved his grandparents and made forced them to live in northern
Europe; so Ulfilas was a Christian whom God placed among the Goths. 2) He

translated the whole Bible into the Gothic language, except the books of 1 and 2 Kings;
he believed those books would encourage the Goths to continue in warfare; 3) he
taught the Arian understanding of Christianity; this included the idea that Jesus was
not fully divine.
7. Name the four major centers for Christian missions and the areas where their
missionaries worked.
1) Rome: sent missionaries into northern Europe, including England. 2) England &
Ireland: sent missionaries to Scotland and Europe. 3) Persia: sent missionaries to
China. 4) Constantinople: sent missionaries to the Slavs in the north and to Russia and
Ukraine.
8. Summarize the missionary work of Alopen in China. (List at least 3 important facts.)
1) Built the first Christian church in China in AD 638, three years after he began his
missionary work there. 2) Despite persecution from Buddhists, Christianity grew. 3)
Very quickly the church disappeared, possibly due to the church’s close connection to
Chinese rulers; maybe the church disappeared when the government fell.
9. How did missionaries from Rome differ from missionaries from Constantinople in
their use of languages?
Roman missionaries used Latin in their worship services; they taught their followers
how to read Latin. Eastern missionaries translated the Bible and their worship
services into the languages of the people whom they reached.
10. The author says that some people became Christians as the result of “power
encounters.” Explain what the author means by “power encounters” and an
example.
People understood “power encounters” to refer to amazing acts of God which prove
his power over other gods or powers. In Medieval times many people wanted to serve
the most powerful god. When Boniface went to Germany, he cut a tree down which
people had dedicated to Thor, the god whom local people worshipped. When no harm
came to Boniface, people concluded that his god must have more power than Thor did.
So they became Christians.
LESSON TWO QUESTIONS
1. Summarize the missionary work of Patrick in Ireland. (List as least three important
facts.)
1) He believed that, in a dream, God called him to become a missionary in Ireland. 2)
He preached about the triune God by referring to a three-faced God. 3) He preached
Christ’s sacrifice which we need as sinners. 4) He established many monasteries which
preserved the learning of Scripture while much of Europe neglected it.
2. How did the Gospel first reach Scotland?

1) Ninian became the first to preach the Gospel in Scotland. 2) Due to the influence of
ab Irish monk, Columba and Columban, the Gospel had more success. It entered
Scotland; then missionaries brought it to Europe.
3. How did the author demonstrate that different parts of the church planted the
church in other places?
An example of what the author said: The Englishman Patrick preached in Ireland;
Irishman Columbo preached in Scotland; Englishman Boniface preached in Germany.
4. What were the most important effects which Boethius, Isidore and Dionysius had on
future theology in the church?
Boethius relied on Greek philosophers; as a result of his referring to them, he
introduced the church to the Greeks. In future years medieval theologians depended
on Greek philosophy greatly. Isidore wrote a systematic theology; this encouraged
many theologians to write their own in future church history. Dionysius wrote to keep
God mysterious; in later years the Eastern Church relied on his writings when it
formed its theology about God. Dionysius also compared the hierarchy of angels with
the hierarchy which he believed should exist in the church; as the Roman church
developed its theology, it relied on Dionysius.
5. What views did Radbertus and Ratramnus each have on the Lord’s Supper?
Radbertus believed in Christ’s “real presence” in the Lord’s Supper; he meant that we
eat the physical body and drink the blood of Christ when we partake. Ratramnus
believed in Christ’s spiritual presence in the Lord’s Supper.
6. What view did Gottschalk and Florus have on the question of predestination?
Both taught double predestination. They did not say that God predestines people to
sin; yet they taught that God has predestined some to salvation and others to eternal
punishment.
7. What were the most important contributions of John of Damascus on the church?
1) He wrote against Islam as a heresy; 2) he wrote a systematic theology for the
Eastern church, called The Orthodox Faith; 3) he wrote hymns which the church has
used in its worship.
8. How did the Eastern church view church tradition?

The Eastern church viewed the decisions of church councils as inspired by the Holy
Spirit. The Spirit continues to give the church new revelation through the conclusions
of church councils.
9. Explain the difference of views in the filioque dispute and explain why the Eastern
church opposed the view.
1) The Nicene Creed says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Years later,
the Western church added “and the Son” so that its version of the Nicene Creed says
that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” 2) The Eastern church opposed
this change for at least two reasons: first, the changed altered an inspired creed; this

seemed the same to them as changing the word of God. Second, the Eastern church
viewed the Father as the source of divinity; to preserve the unity of God, they believed
that the Father alone sends the Son and Spirit.
10. Explain the iconoclastic controversy: why it arose, what the Eastern church clamed
to do when it used icons, and how the controversy ended in the Eastern church.
1) The issue arose because Charlemagne of the West wanted to take control of the
east. Since the Eastern church created an obstacle, he made the use of icons an issue
as an excuse to attack the East. People within the Easter church also opposed it. 2)
The Eastern church claimed that they did not worship the icons. They venerated them;
in that way they worshipped God. So they did not worship idols. 3) The Eastern church
approved the use of icons in the Second Council of Nicea in AD 787
LESSON THREE QUESTIONS
1. Summarize the condition of the church in Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia during the
church’s third 500 years.
1) The Coptic church in Egypt survived despite its great difficulties under Muslim rule.
2) The Nubian (Sudanese) church reached its peak of greatness and then disappeared.
The church collapsed when the government which protected it collapsed; also the
Nubia church could not conduct missions effectively because Nubia got involved in
slave trade. 3) The Ethiopian church survived, and in the 15 th century, Ethiopian
Christianity became an example of how Christianity can have much influence in
African society.
2. How did the church in Persia develop during Christianity’s third 500 years?
It reached a peak in the 13th century and collapsed by the end of the 14 century. At
least two reasons help explain this decline: 1) The church failed to develop its intellect,
doctrine and study; and 2) The church depended too much on friendly government,
whose leader eventually converted to Islam; then it survived in small numbers under
Muslim persecution.
3. What was the condition of the church in Asia at the end of the third 500 years?
1) At the middle of the third 500 years the Chinese and Mongol church prospered
under a government which allowed Christians to express their faith. (This resembles
what took place in the second 500 years also.) 2) When Islamic or Buddhist rulers
came to power, the church decreased significantly. 3) By the end of the third 500
years, suffered from major setbacks.
4. Summarize the Eastern Orthodox Church’s gains and losses during the third 500
years of Christianity.
1) Gain: The gospel spread to Russia and Ukraine. 2) Loss: Constantinople fell to
Muslim Ottoman Turks.
5. What do we mean by the “Investiture Controversy?”

The question in Roman Catholic Europe asked, Who had the right to appoint church
bishops? Political rulers believed they had this power over the church. The pope and
bishops said that they have the right to appoint church bishops.
6. What duties did people who lived in a Benedictine monastery need to fulfil?
Prayer and worship (3-4 hours each day), study (5 hours each day), manual work (6-7
hours each day).
7. Why were the Cluniac and Cistercian monastic movements founded?

Bernard of Clairvaux started the Cluniac movement to reform the monasticism of the
Benedictine movement which had declined. The Cistercian movement began to reform
the Cluniac monastic movement, which had become preoccupied with building large
churches and began to follow a worldly life. This pattern continued: new monastic
movement began to reform older movements which had become worldly.
8. The lesson mentions some of the characteristics of Bernard of Clairvaux’s life and
service. List and describe at least 3 of them.
1) Reformer: he formed a new monastic movement and wrote books on how a monk
should live and reform his life. 2) preacher: he preached effectively and stressed that
preachers much demonstrate with their lives that they know what they preach. 3)
Mystic: he wrote a book on loving God which people today still find helpful.
9. What new monastic movements began in the 13 th century? What did each
emphasize?
1) The Franciscans stressed poverty and service. 2) The Dominicans stressed teaching
and preaching.
10. What does the author mean when he said that the Dominicans were the inquisitors
on the Middle Ages?
As the most educated monks they looked for heresy on the church which needed
correction. They developed plans for finding and removing heretics from the church.
LESSON FOUR QUESTIONS
1. How did Islam treat Christianity before the crusades?

Already in AD 638 (12 years after flight of Mohammed) Islam conquered Jerusalem. It
spread across northern Africa and invaded Spain and France. In the 11 th century it
conquered Constantinople.
2. What motives did Christians have for joining the crusades?

1) People tried to honor Christ. If Muslims scorned Christ, Christians should fight for
Him. 2) They wanted to recover the Holy Land. Christians had made pilgrimages to
the Holy Land. When Islam overcame it, Christians no longer have freedom to visit
“holy places. They wanted to reclaim the Holy Land so they could travel there again.
3) They wanted to express unity with the eastern Church. The leader of the eastern
Church asked for help, so people from the western Church decided to respond. 4)

Popes promised immediate salvation to all who died on the crusades. 5) People
wanted adventure.
3. What results came from the crusades?

1) Militarily, the crusades did not achieve their purpose. 2) As a result of Christian
presence, Christians established some monastic orders in the Holy Land. 3) Most
basically, the crusades produced bitterness: of Jews against Christians, of Muslims
against Christians, and of eastern Christians against western Christians.
4. What did Francis of Assisi do to promote missions?

He travelled to Egypt and preached to the Islamic Sultan of Egypt. Many conversions
resulted.
5. What did Raymond Lull do to promote missions?

He decided that God called him to preach to Muslims. He travelled throughout the
Muslim world to preach the gospel. He learned Arabic to do this. He began missionary
colleges where people learned about preaching to Muslims. He died at age 85 while
preaching in Tunisia. He wrote books which aimed to reach Muslims.
6. What kind of people became Waldensians?

They were “neither the aristocracy, the elite, nor the peasants, but a new class of
merchants.” In seeking to obey the Sermon on the Mount, they gave up everything in
order to follow Christ in poverty.
7. Why did people call Waldo “Peter Waldo?”

After the Archbishop refused to let the Waldensians preach, Waldo quoted the Apostle
Peter who said, “It is better to obey God than man.”
8. What did the Waldensians do when they faced persecution?

The spread throughout Europe and preached the gospel. This helped prepare Europe
later for the Protestant Reformation.
9. List some of the things which the Waldensians emphasized.

They emphasized a literal obedience to the Sermon on the Mount. This obedience
included poverty and rejecting violence; therefore they opposed the crusades. They
also stressed lay preaching. They believed that God use the Bible to give salvation.
10. What did Waldensians say about the sacraments?

They probably accepted only Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments. They did
not believe that the sacraments save us. Their view probably resembled the Protestant
reformed position more than the Roman Catholic view.
LESSON FIVE QUESTIONS
1. Why did Christians want to use philosophy?

1) Christians thought it would help them show the reasonableness of Christianity to

people who argued against Christianity. 2) Christians thought it would help them
organize their presentation of Christianity into a systematic theology.
2. How did the philosophy of Aristotle and the rise of universities encourage the rise of
Scholasticism?
1) Aristotle said that we need to use logic to understand what really exists.
Scholasticism followed this and analyzed every theological question by using logic. 2)
Universities replaced monasteries as centers of learning. This removed the theology
which universities studied from the supervision of the church. As a result, universities
removed theology from church teaching. Another result: theology began to answer
theoretical questions instead of questions about how Christians should think and live.
3. In what two significant ways did Anselm influence Christian theology?

1) He wrote two proofs for the existence of God. The cosmological argument says that
God must exist because only that can explain how the universe came into existence.
The ontological argument says that God must exist because logic requires us to
conclude that he does. Though others had written similar “proofs” before, Anselm’s
“proofs” became the most famous. 2) Anselm wrote on the question, Why did God
become man? He answered that God the Son became man to take the sinner’s place; in
this way Christ could pay for our sins.
4. Describe briefly the theology of Peter Abelard.

Abelard turned every theological topic into questions which people could debate. He
seemed to stress more the process of debating them than the goal of finding helpful
answers. Since he knew how to turn debates into entertainment, Abelard became a
famous popular speaker.
5. How did Peter Lombard contribute significantly to the theology of his era?
In his Four Books of the Sentences he organized what many theologians had said
about specific theological topics. In this way he tried to arrange theological
quotations according to topics. The church relied on this for many years.
6. Summarize the five arguments for God’s existence which Aquinas gives in Summa
Contra Gentiles.
1) Since many things are in motion, there must be a first cause of motion; Thomas calls
that cause, God. 2) Many things occur as effects of previous causes. The first cause of
effects if God. 3) Many things are contingent; they depend on other things to exist.
Being which enables all other beings to exist is God. 4) Many things in human live
reflect the values of truth and goodness. The original truth or goodness is God. 5) The
creation gives evidence of its design. God designed everything.
7. The author describes thee general characteristics of Thomas’ thought in Summa

Theologiae. Summarize the first characteristic of Thomas’ theological writing.
Distinction between faith and reason. Thomas believed in two spheres of authority
and knowledge: 1) reason, and rationality—what philosophy studies, and 2) faith and

revealed truth of Scripture—what theology studies. Both come from God, and have
authority which is independent of the other. Yet they remain distinct from each other.
8. Summarize the second characteristic of Aquinas’ theological writing.

Analogy: Aquinas described how we can talk about God. He said that we can use
words to describe God, but human words have limitations. God surpasses what our
words can say. When the Bible calls God, Our Shepherd, it tells us the truth, but we
may not overly interpret this to mean that God literally guides us with a physical
shepherd staff. Psalm 23 speaks as an analogy. In fact, all the Bible’s descriptions of
God include an analogical feature.
9. Summarize the third characteristic of Aquinas’ theological writing.

Precision: He has uses headings many subheadings, precise definitions and
distinctions. He attempted to make absolutely clear what he taught.
10. What evidence did Luther rely on to respect Aquinas as a genuine Christian?
Luther said that Aquinas personally knew the presence of God. He also respected
Aquinas for his genuine humility. Luther also cited a story in which Aquinas referred
to the Lord as his only reward in heaven.
LESSON SIX QUESTIONS
1. According to Roman Catholicism, why do we need baptism?

Catholicism teaches that Baptism removes original sin. This makes is possible for a
person to receive salvation. Without baptism a person cannot be saved.
2. Why did many Roman Catholics not go through confirmation during the Middle
Ages?
Only the bishop could confirm young people. However, since the church did not have
enough bishops, they never visited smaller churches in small communities. Therefore
the people living there did not have confirmation.
3. Why did worshippers receive only the wafer at the Mass?

1) The worshipper did not need to receive wafer and wine because the church said
that, if one receives only one of them, he received both of them. 2) Due to the Roman
Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the church believed that the wafer and wine
became the body and blood of Christ. So they did not want the wine to spill on the
floor because what would spill Christ’s blood.
4. What steps belong to the process of penance?

1) Contrition: the person must experience genuine sorrow for his sins; 2) confession:
the person confesses this sin to the priest; 3) absolution: the priest announces God’s
forgiveness; 4) satisfaction: the person does what the priest tells him to do to make
satisfaction which pays for the temporal punishments which sin deserves.
5. What did the Roman Catholic Church teach about the treasury of merit?

The treasury of merit consists of the extra merits which the saints have accumulated
by their unusually meritorious lives. Since they do not need all of their merits to
receive eternal life, the pope can let less deserving believers benefit from the extra
merits. The pope grants them to people who buy indulgences.
6. Summarize the events which led up to a conflict between Henry II and Thomas
Becket.
1) Thomas Becket served King Henry II as the king’s chancellor. 2) When the office of
the Archbishop became vacant, Henry appointed Thomas to that position so that the
King cold influence the church. 3) Thomas made himself independent from the king
and placed himself under the pope. 4) The king’s soldiers murdered Thomas Becket in
Canterbury Cathedral. 5) Fearing the interdict, the king performed public penance to
keep himself in the pope’s good favor.
7. What was the interdict?

Popes and lower rulers in the church used the interdict to forbid the mass in a nation
or smaller region. This put pressure on the rulers there to submit to the pope because
people wanted the sacraments, which they believed they needed for their salvation.
8. What was the Babylonian captivity and what brought it about?

1) The Babylonian captivity refers to the 70 year period when popes lived the ruled
from Avignon, France. 2) This situation arose because pope Boniface VIII tried to force
the king of France to the pope. The pope declared that those who refuse to submit to
the people would lose their salvation. 3) French and Spanish nobles imprisoned the
pope. Then they set up Avignon as the place where popes ruled.
9. What does the Great Schism refer to?

The Great Schism refers to the time when different parts of the Roman Catholic Church
followed different popes. At one time three popes competed for the position, and each
had a part of the church following him.
10. What did counciliarism promote?

This movement believed that church government should represent the people. It also
attempted to replace the pope’s authority with authority of a church council. The
movement did not last long in the Roman Catholic Church. However, in later years,
Protestants used the counciliar idea of church government.
LESSON SEVEN QUESTIONS
1. What three problems troubled England in the 14th century?

a) The Black Death went across Europe; it caused many sudden deaths. b)The
Hundred Years War between England and France prolonged suffering and loss of life.
c) The Peasants Revolt in England arose because the peasants protested they
treatment which they received from nobles.
2. What did Wycliffe teach about authority of the king and the pope?

a) He said that each received authority as a gift from God. Each can lose his right to
authority if he does not serve others in accordance with their authority. b) He also
said that Christ is head of the church; the pope is not. The pope can lose his role of
spiritual leader if he does not act like the spiritual leader.
3. How importance did Wycliffe say that preaching has?

Wycliffe said that preaching had greater importance then prayer or the sacraments.
In other words, preaching formed the church’s most precious activity because it had
great influence in many places.
4. What did Hus say about indulgences?

He said indulgences have not power to win the forgiveness of sins. Indulgences formed
a useless human effort. Rather, we receive forgiveness only through the power of God
and by Christ’s merits.
5. Who in the Protestant Reformation relied on the teaching and courage of Hus?
Martin Luther.
6. What general changes took place when the Renaissance began?

“Renaissance” means new birth. With the Renaissance society rejected the approach
of scholasticism. The Renaissance encouraged people to go back to the sources (ad
fonts) of Christianity and to read the Ancient Greek and Roman classics—to the time
before the fall of the Roman empire. So interest also grew in the original languages of
the classics.
7. How did Lorenzo Valla represent another emphasis of the Renaissance? What did
he conclude?
Lorenzo Valla worked as a textual critic. This meant he tried to find what original
texts said. In this way he went back to the original sources. He made some
conclusions which surprised people in his time: that the apostles did not write the
Apostles’ Creed, that Dionysius was not a disciple of Paul, and that someone had forged
the Donation of Constantine.
8. How did the writing of theology differ during the Renaissance from the writing of
theology during the Scholastic period?
Renaissance theologians wrote their theology more interestingly. Readers enjoyed
reading it more than they enjoyed Scholastic theology. John Calvin’s Institutes form
an example of Renaissance theology.
9. List and describe the two main emphases of the Renaissance period.
Humanism: the stress on the goodness and greatness of man. It said that man can do
whatever he wants. This-worldliness: the Renaissance rejected the pre-occupation
with death which the scholastic period stressed. The Renaissance celebrated this life,
not the next life.
10. How did Savonarola influence Florence?

As a great preacher, he brought reform to the church. As a moral political leader, he

brought reform to the city. He tried to create a theocracy, God’s city on earth. Under
his influence people burned their books and pictures. But eventually, the people
turned against him. He was arrested, hanged and burned by fellow Dominican monks.
LESSON EIGHT QUESTIONS
1. What three points summarize the writings of the mystics?

1) Union with God, 2) love for Christ, 3) denial of self.
2. Which mystic emphasis did Johannes Meister Eckhart stress when he talked about a
flea? Explain.
1) He stressed union with God. 2) He said that a flea in God is equal to man and the
angels. In union with God that all are God himself.
3. Which mystic emphasis did Walter Hilton stress when he talked about going up the
ladder? Explain.
1) He stressed love for God (or Christ). 2) He said that after learning about God for a
while, you stop learning about Him. This happens when the learning does not love
God. Learning further depends on loving God.
4. Which mystic emphasis in Johannes Tauler made Luther respect him so much?
Explain.
1) He stressed denial of self. 2) Luther disliked proud and boastful scholastic scholars.
He found humility and lowliness in Tauler. Tauler considered himself small, nothing
before God, to Whom all honor belongs.
5. How does the lesson describe The Imitation of Christ?

Like the book of Proverbs it contains short sayings which seem full of meaning. It
reflects the theology of Augustinianism, the idea that we depend of grace to become
God’s friends. Some have said the book seems unclear and weak.
6. What strengths and weaknesses does this lesson find in mysticism?

1) Strengths: it stresses the need to love God, and it urges humility and quietness. 2)
Problems: it usually encourages individualism, and it often produces self-
righteousness.
7. What synthesis did Christianity enjoy in its third 500 years?

“Synthesis” refers to a blending or mixing together of at least two things. In this case,
the synthesis refers society’s blending of public life and church life into one way of life
throughout a community. The lesson refers to Aquinas and Dante who referred to
these two parts of life as though there was no conflict between the two. Also church
architecture included references both to God and to the activities of daily life.
8. What two types of theology developed near the end of the third 500 years? What
did each stress about God?

1) The via antiqua refers to the older way of doing theology. It stressed the central
importance of God’s intellect. It explained God’s actions in terms of what God logically
had to do. 2) The via moderna refers to the newer (modern) way of doing theology. It
stressed the central importance of God’s will. It explained God’s actions in terms of
what God chose to do.
9. When the lesson refers to the breakup of the medieval synthesis, what broke apart
in the church? Find the answer from throughout the lesson.
1) The church itself broke apart, especially when different popes claimed authority of
the whole church. Theology broke apart as different theologies stressed either God’s
intellect or His will. The church’s view of salvation broke apart as some stressed that
salvation begins with God’s act of grace and others stressed that it begins with man’s
act of obedience. Community life broke apart as some stressed the central importance
of the community; others stressed the central importance of the individual.
10. Near the end of the lesson, it says that the end of the third 500 years resembles
Western culture in the 20th century. What similarities does it mention?
In both situations, human suffering and discouragement increased. People began to
express a longing for solutions to the problems which everyone faced.

Exam – Medieval Church History

Choose only One Correct answer
Student’s Name ________________________________________________
____ 1. What time period do we call the Middle Ages?

a. Approximately between the years AD 500 and 1500.
b. AD 1000, which is in the middle of AD 500 and 1500.
c. Only the years of the crusades.
d. Primarily the years when pope Gregory lived.
____ 2. Where in Africa did the church become strong during the church’s second
500 years?
a. Primarily South Africa
b. Nigeria and the Congo
c. Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia
d. Throughout the entire continent
____ 3. How did missionaries from Rome differ from missionaries from
Constantinople in their use of languages?
a. Their practices did not differ.
b. Roman missionaries used Latin; missionaries from Constantinople
used Telugu.
c. Roman missionaries used Latin; missionaries from Constantinople
used the languages of the people whom they reached.
d. Roman missionaries used Greek; missionaries from Constantinople
used Latin.
____ 4. What views did Radbertus and Ratramnus each have on the Lord’s Supper?
a. Both believed in Christ’s “real presence” in the Lord’s Supper.
b. Both believed in Christ’s spiritual presence in the Lord’s Supper.
c. Only Radbertus believed the church should use the Lord’s Supper.
d. Radbertus believed in Christ’s “real presence” and Ratramnus
believed in Christ’s spiritual presence in the Lord’s supper.
____ 5. What does filioque mean and who accepted it?

a. It means “and the Son,” and the eastern church accepted it.
b It means “with the Son,” and the western church accepted it.
c. It means “and the Son,” and the western church accepted it.
d. It means “for the Son,” and the eastern church accepted it.

____ 6. Summarize the Eastern Orthodox Church’s gains and losses during the third
500 years of Christianity.
a. It gained Rome, but it lost Constantinople.
b. It evangelized England, but it lost Constantinople.
c. It evangelized Russia, but it lost Constantinople.
d. It evangelized Constantinople but lost Ukraine.
____ 7. What do we mean by the “Investiture Controversy?”

a. The dispute between the pope and kings over who had the right to
appoint church bishops.
b. The dispute between kings and their servants over where servants
should live.
c. The dispute between kings and queens over who had the right to
invest money.
d. The dispute between some kings and other kings over who had the
right to appoint the pope.
____ 8. What did the Franciscans emphasize?

a. Teaching and preaching
b. Poverty and preaching.
c. Teaching and service
d. Poverty and service.
____ 9. What motives did Christians have to join the crusades?

a. They wanted to recover the Holy Land.
b. They wanted to help Muslims control the Holy Land.
c. They wanted to destroy the Holy Land.
d. They wanted to make it easier to travel to India.
___ 10. What did Waldensians say about the sacraments?

a. They accepted the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.
b. They did not accept any of the sacraments.
c. They accepted only Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments.
d. They accepted Baptism but not the Lord’s Supper.
____ 11. What question did Anselm seek to answer?

a. Why did God create man?
b. Why did God become man?
c. Why did God punish man?
d. Why did God ignore man?

____ 12. What did Aquinas mean by analogy?

a. God does not know us completely.
b. We can use human words to talk about God, but God surpasses what
our words can say.
c. We can use mathematics to describe what God is like
d. We can best show what God is like when we look at paintings which
represent God.
____ 13. How do the writings of Aquinas exhibit precision?

a. He quotes the Bible precisely.
b. He gives precise definitions and uses many headings.
c. He uses short, precise sentences.
d. He expresses precisely how he feels about his writings.
____ 14. According to Roman Catholicism, why do we need baptism?

a. Baptism saves us.
b. Baptism removes original sin.
c. Baptism replaces the Lord’s Supper.
d. Baptism makes indulgences unnecessary.
____ 15. What did the Roman Catholic Church teach about the treasury of merit?
a. That only the saints can benefit from the treasury of merits.
b. That only the popes of the church can receive merits from the
treasury of merits.
c. That popes and saints help each other enter heaven.
d. That the saints have more merits than they need; the pope can give
these merits to people who buy indulgences.
____ 16. What did Wycliffe teach about the authority of kings and popes?
a. That God gave authority to kings but not to popes.
b. That they both receive their authority as gifts from God.
c. They God gave authority only to the common people.
d. God gave authority to popes but not to kings.
____ 17. Who in the Protestant Reformation relied on the teaching and courage of
Hus?
a. Martin Luther
b. John Wycliffe
c. Pope Gregory
d. John Knox
___ 18. What two main emphases did the Renaissance have?
a. Humanism and capitalism.
b. Humanism and paganism
c. Humanism and this-worldliness
d. Humanism and faith.

____ 19. What three points summarize the writings of the mystics?
a. Union with God, Union with self, and union with our fellow man.
b. Love for Christ, love for self, and love for nation.
c. Union with God, love for Christ, denial of self.
d. Union with man, love for Christ, denial of God.
____ 20. What synthesis did Christianity enjoy in its third 500 years?
a. A blending of word and spirit.
b. A blending of public life and church life.
c. A blending of palace and market
d. A blending of Aquinas and Dante

The exam can be administered in two ways:

1) As the multiple choice exam which we give on the pages before this one.
Each question has only one correct answer.
2) As an essay exam which requires students to write answers in the form of
sentences and paragraphs.
We give the answers below. For each question we show the answer in two ways
1) We give the letter of the correct answers for the multiple choice exam.
2) We give the lesson and homework question so that the coordinator can refer
to “Questions and Answers” which appears before the exam. Coordinators
can use the answers to grade written exam answers. We encourage
coordinators who choose this method of examination to expect reasonably
complete answers for students to receive full credit for their answers.
QUESTION LETTER LESSON AND QUESTION

1 B L 1, Q1
2 C L 1, Q 5
3 C L 1, Q 9
4 D L 2, Q 5
5 C L 2, Q 9
6 C L 3, Q 4
7 A L 4, Q 5
8 D L 3, Q 9
9 A L 4, Q 2
10 C L 4, Q 10
11 B L 5, Q3
12 B L 5, Q 8
13 B L 5, Q 9
14 B L 6, Q 1
15 D L 6, Q 5
16 B L 7, Q 2
17 A L 7, Q 5
18 C L 7, Q 9
19 C L 8, Q 1
20 B L 8, Q 7

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MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY

Lectures by David Calhoun, Ph.D.

Used with permission from

Mints received permission to distribute this material;

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MEDIEVAL CHURCH HISTORY

LESSON ONE: EARLY MIDDLE AGES; MEDIEVAL MISSIONS

LESSON TWO: CHRISTIANIZATION OF GREAT BRITAIN; MEDIEVAL LEARNING; THE

LESSON THREE: THE LATE MIDDLE AGES; MEDIEVAL MONASTICISM

LESSON FOUR: THE CRUSADES AND MISSIONS; THE WALDENSIANS

LESSON FIVE: SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY; THOMAS AQUINAS

LESSON SIX: THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM; CHURCH AND STATE

LESSON SEVEN: WYCLIFFE AND HUS; REFORM IN ITALY

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

2. Class Homework (20%)

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

Gonzalez, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought: Vol. II: From Augustine to

Moffett, Samuel H. A History of Christianity in Asia. San Francisco, CA:

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MA students must compile a list of the 20 most influential leaders of the

Students must write their content in paragraph-form.

Elements: The project of a BA student must include a title page, 8 pages of

A line which lists: Century. Name. Region of the person’s ministry.

5. Final Exam (20%)

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

Student’s Level Attendance Homework Reading Project Exam Final

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

Some people were converted because of perceived advantages. Sometimes those

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

LESSON ONE QUESTIONS

1. What time period do we call the Middle Ages?

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

A. THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF GREAT BRITAIN4

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MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

B. ETERNAL WISDOM, LEARNING AND THEOLOGY5

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu

MINTS 4401 Old Cutler Road, Miami, FL 33158 www.mints.edu