An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 21

[Sidenote: Election of the bishops.]

The reforms of Gregory VII had resulted in placing the choice of the bishop in the hands of the cathedral _chapter_,[139] that is, the body of clergy connected with the cathedral church. But this did not prevent the king from suggesting the candidate, since the chapter did not venture to proceed to an election without procuring a license from the king. Otherwise he might have refused to invest the person they chose with the lands and political prerogatives attached to the office.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Canterbury Cathedral]

[Sidenote: The parish priest and his duties.]

The lowest division of the Church was the parish. This had definite limits, although the paris.h.i.+oners might vary in number from a few families to a considerable village or an important district of a town.

At the head of the parish was the parish priest, who conducted services in the parish church and absolved, baptized, married, and buried his paris.h.i.+oners. The priests were supposed to be supported by the lands belonging to the parish church and by the t.i.thes. But both of these sources of income were often in the hands of laymen or of a neighboring monastery, while the priest received the merest pittance, scarcely sufficient to keep soul and body together.

The parish church was the center of village life and the priest was the natural guardian of the community. It was his business, for example, to see that no undesirable persons lurked in the village,--heretics, sorcerers, or lepers. It will be observed that the priest, besides attending to the morals of his flock, was expected to see to their bodily welfare by preventing the presence of those afflicted with the only infectious disease against which precautions were taken in the Middle Ages.[140]

[Sidenote: Other sources of the Church's power.]

81. The unexampled authority of the mediaeval Church is, however, only partially explained by its wonderful organization. To understand the hold which it had upon mankind, we must consider the exalted position of the clergy and the teachings of the Church in regard to salvation, of which it claimed to be the exclusive agent.

[Sidenote: The exalted position of the clergy.]

The clergy were set apart from the laity in several ways. The higher orders--bishop, priest, deacon, and sub-deacon--were required to remain unmarried, and in this way were freed from the cares and interests of family life. The Church held, moreover, that the higher clergy, when they had been properly ordained, received through their ordination a mysterious imprint, the "indelible character," so that they could never become simple laymen again, even if they ceased to perform their duties altogether or were cast out of the Church for crime. Above all, the clergy alone could administer the _sacraments_ upon which the salvation of every individual soul depended.

[Sidenote: Peter Lombard's _Sentences_.]

Although the Church believed that all the sacraments were established by Christ, it was not until the middle of the twelfth century that they were clearly described. Peter Lombard (d. 1164), a teacher of theology at Paris, prepared a manual of the doctrines of the Church as he found them in the Scriptures and in the writings of the church fathers, especially Augustine. These _Sentences_ (Latin, _sententiae_, opinions) of Peter Lombard were very influential, for they appeared at a time when there was a new interest in theology, particularly at Paris, where a great university was growing up.[141]

[Sidenote: The seven sacraments.]

It was Peter Lombard who first distinctly formulated the doctrine of the seven sacraments. His teachings did not claim, of course, to be more than an orderly statement and reconciliation of the various opinions which he found in the Scriptures and the church fathers; but his interpretations and definitions const.i.tuted a new basis for mediaeval theology. Before his time the word _sacramentum_ (that is, something sacred, a mystery) was applied to a variety of sacred things, for example, baptism, the cross, Lent, holy water, etc. But Peter Lombard states that there are seven sacraments, to wit: baptism, confirmation, extreme unction, marriage, penance, ordination, and the Lord's Supper.

Through these sacraments all righteousness either has its beginning, or when begun is increased, or if lost is regained. They are essential to salvation, and no one can be saved except through them.[142]

[Sidenote: Baptism.]

[Sidenote: Confirmation.]

[Sidenote: Extreme unction.]

[Sidenote: Marriage.]

[Sidenote: Penance.]

[Sidenote: Ordination.]

[Sidenote: The Lord's Supper, or Holy Eucharist.]

By means of the sacraments the Church accompanied the faithful through life. By baptism all the sin due to Adam's fall was washed away; through that door alone could a soul enter the spiritual life. With the holy oil and the balsam, typifying the fragrance of righteousness, which were rubbed upon the forehead of the boy or girl at confirmation by the bishop, the young were strengthened so that they might boldly confess the name of the Lord. If the believer fell perilously ill, the priest anointed him with oil in the name of the Lord and by this sacrament of extreme unction expelled all vestiges of former sin and refreshed the spirit of the dying. Through the priest alone might marriage be sanctified; and when the bonds were once legally contracted they might never be sundered. If evil desire, which baptism lessened but did not remove, led the Christian into deadly sin, as it constantly did, the Church, through the sacrament of penance, reconciled him once more with G.o.d and saved him from the jaws of h.e.l.l. For the priest, through the sacrament of ordination, received the most exalted prerogative of forgiving sins. He enjoyed, too, the awful power and privilege of performing the miracle of the Ma.s.s,--of offering up Christ anew for the remission of the sinner's guilt.

[Sidenote: The sacrament of penance.]

82. The sacrament of penance is, with the Ma.s.s, of especial historical importance. When a bishop ordained a priest, he said to him: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven them: whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." In this way the priest was intrusted with the keys of the kingdom of heaven. There was no hope of salvation for one who had fallen into mortal sin unless he received--or at least desired and sought--the absolution of the priest.

To one who scorned the priest's ministrations the most sincere and prayerful repentance could not by itself bring forgiveness in the eyes of the Church. Before the priest could utter the solemn "I absolve thee from thy sins," the sinner must have duly confessed his sins and have expressed his vehement detestation of them and his firm resolve never more to offend. It is clear that the priest could not p.r.o.nounce judgment unless he had been told the nature of the case. Nor would he be justified in absolving an offender who was not truly sorry for what he had done. Confession and penitence were, therefore, necessary preliminaries to absolution.[143]

[Sidenote: Penance and purgatory.]

Absolution did not free the contrite sinner from all the results of his sin. It cleared the soul of the deadly guilt which would otherwise have been punished by everlasting suffering, but did not exempt the penitent from temporal penalties. These might be imposed by the priest in this world or suffered after death in the fires of purgatory, which cleansed the soul and prepared it for heaven.

[Sidenote: Nature of penance.]

The punishment prescribed by the priest was called _penance_. This took a great variety of forms. It might consist in fasting, repeating prayers, visiting holy places, or abstaining from one's ordinary amus.e.m.e.nts. A journey to the Holy Land was regarded as taking the place of all penance. Instead, however, of requiring the penitent actually to perform the fasts, pilgrimages, or other sacrifices imposed as penance by the priest, the Church early permitted him to change his penance into a contribution, to be applied to some pious enterprise, like building a church or bridge, or caring for the poor and sick.

[Sidenote: The Ma.s.s.]

[Sidenote: Transubstantiation.]

The priest not only forgave sin; he was also empowered to perform the stupendous miracle of the Ma.s.s. The early Christians had celebrated the Lord's Supper or Holy Eucharist in various ways and entertained various conceptions of its nature and significance. Gradually the idea came to be universally accepted that by the consecration of the bread and the wine the whole substance of the bread was converted into the substance of the body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into his blood. This change was termed _transubstantiation_. The Church believed, further, that in this sacrament Christ was offered up anew, as he had been on the cross, as a sacrifice to G.o.d. This sacrifice might be performed for the sins of the absent as well as of the present, and for the dead as well as for the living. Moreover, Christ was to be wors.h.i.+ped under the form of the bread, or _host_ (Latin, _hostia_, sacrifice), with the highest form of adoration. The host was to be borne about in solemn procession when G.o.d was to be especially propitiated, as in the case of a famine or plague.

[Sidenote: Consequences of conceiving the Ma.s.s as a sacrifice.]

This conception of the Ma.s.s as a sacrifice had some important practical consequences. It became the most exalted of the functions of the priest and the very center of the Church's services. Besides the public ma.s.ses for the people, private ones were constantly celebrated for the benefit of individuals, especially of the dead. Foundations were created, the income of which went to support priests for the single purpose of saying daily ma.s.ses for the repose of the soul of the donor or those of the members of his family. It was also a common practice to bestow gifts upon churches and monasteries on condition that annual or more frequent ma.s.ses should be said for the giver.

[Sidenote: The dominant position of the clergy and the sources of their power.]

[Sidenote: Excommunication and interdict.]

83. The sublime prerogatives of the Church, together with its unrivaled organization and vast wealth, combined to make its officers, the clergy, the most powerful social cla.s.s of the Middle Ages. They held the keys of heaven and without their aid no one could hope to enter in. By excommunication they could not only cast an offender out of the Church, but also forbid his fellow-men to a.s.sociate with him, since he was accursed and consigned to Satan. By means of the _interdict_ they could suspend the consolations of religion in a whole city or country by closing the church doors and prohibiting all public services.[144]

[Sidenote: Their monopoly of the advantages of education.]

The influence of the clergy was greatly enhanced by the fact that they alone were educated. For six or seven centuries after the overthrow of the Roman government in the West, very few outside of the clergy ever dreamed of studying or even of learning to read and write. Even in the thirteenth century an offender who wished to prove that he belonged to the clergy, in order that he might be tried by a church court, had only to show that he could read a single line; for it was a.s.sumed by the judges that no one unconnected with the Church could read at all.[145]

It was therefore inevitable that almost all the books should be written by priests and monks and that the clergy should become the ruling power in all intellectual, artistic, and literary matters,--the chief guardians and promoters of civilization. Moreover, the civil government was forced to rely upon churchmen to write out the public doc.u.ments and proclamations. The priests and monks held the pen for the king.

Representatives of the clergy sat in the king's councils and acted as his ministers; in fact, the conduct of the government largely devolved upon them.[146]

[Sidenote: Offices in the Church open to all cla.s.ses.]

The offices in the Church were open to all ranks of men, and many of the popes themselves sprang from the humblest cla.s.ses. The Church thus constantly recruited its ranks with fresh blood. No one held an office simply because his father had held it before him, as was the case in the civil government.

[Sidenote: Lea's description of the mediaeval Church.]

The man who entered the service of the Church "was released from the distraction of family cares and the seduction of family ties. The Church was his country and his home and its interests were his own. The moral, intellectual, and physical forces, which throughout the laity were divided between the claims of patriotism, the selfish struggle for advancement, the provision for wife and children, were in the Church consecrated to a common end, in the success of which all might hope to share, while all were a.s.sured of the necessities of existence, and were relieved of anxiety as to the future." The Church was thus "an army encamped on the soil of Christendom, with its outposts everywhere, subject to the most efficient discipline, animated with a common purpose, every soldier panoplied with inviolability and armed with the tremendous weapons which slew the soul" (Lea).

General Reading.--CUTTS, _Parish Priests and their People_ (E. & J.B. Young, $3.00). PReVOST, _L'eglise et les Campagnes au Moyen age_ (Paris, $1.50).

CHAPTER XVII

HERESY AND THE FRIARS