Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History

by Annie Besant

CENTURY IX.

Christendom, during this century, as during the preceding one, was threatened and harassed by the inroads of Mahommedan powers, and the first gleams of returning light began to penetrate its thick darkness—light proceeding from the Arabians and the Saracens, the restorers of knowledge and of science. It is not here our duty to trace that marvellous work of the revival of thought—thought which Christianity had slain, but which, revived by Mahommedanism, was destined to issue in the new birth of heretic philosophy. While this work was proceeding among the Saracens, the Arabians, and the Moors, Christendom went on its way, degraded, vicious, and superstitious; only here and there an effort at learning was made, and some few went to the Arabian schools, and returned with some tincture of knowledge. John Scotus Erigena, a subtle and acute thinker, left behind him works which have made some regard him as the founder of the Realist school of the middle ages, the school which followed Aristotle, in opposition to the Nominalists, who held with Zeno and the Stoics. Erigena taught that the soul would be re-absorbed into the divine spirit, from which it had originally emanated; from God all things had come—to Him would they ultimately return; God alone was eternal, and in the end nothing but God would exist. Some of Erigena's works naturally fell under the displeasure of the Church, and were duly burned: he was a philosopher, and therefore dangerous.

While this slight effort at thought was thus frowned upon, vice made its way unchecked and unrebuked by the authorities. "The impiety and licentiousness of the greater part of the clergy arose, at this time, to an enormous height, and stand upon record in the unanimous complaints of the most candid and impartial writers of this century. In the East, tumult, discord, conspiracies, and treason reigned uncontrolled, and all things were carried by violence and force. These abuses appeared in many things, but particularly in the election of the Patriarchs of Constantinople.... In the western provinces, the bishops were become voluptuous and effeminate to a very high degree. They passed their lives amidst the splendour of courts, and the pleasures of a luxurious indolence, which corrupted their taste, extinguished their zeal, and rendered them incapable of performing the solemn duties of their function; while the inferior clergy were sunk in licentiousness, minded nothing but sensual gratifications, and infected with the most heinous vices the flock whom it was the very business of their ministry to preserve, or to deliver from the contagion of iniquity. Besides, the ignorance of the sacred order was, in many places, so deplorable that few of them could either read or write, and still fewer were capable of expressing their wretched notions with any degree of method or perspicuity" (p. 193). "Many other causes also contributed to dishonour the Church, by introducing into it a corrupt ministry. A nobleman who, through want of talents, activity, or courage, was rendered incapable of appearing with dignity in the cabinet, or with honour in the field, immediately turned his views towards the Church, aimed at a distinguished place among its chiefs and rulers, and became, in consequence, a contagious example of stupidity and vice to the inferior clergy. The patrons of churches, in whom resided the right of election, unwilling to submit their disorderly conduct to the keen censure of zealous and upright pastors, industriously looked for the most abject, ignorant, and worthless ecclesiastics, to whom they committed the cure of souls" (p. 193). Of the Roman pontiffs, Mosheim says: "The greatest part of them are only known by the flagitious actions that have transmitted their names with infamy to our times" (p. 194). And "the enormous vices that must have covered so many pontiffs with infamy in the judgment of the wise, formed not the least obstacle to their ambition in these memorable times, nor hindered them from extending their influence and augmenting their authority both in church and state" (p. 195). Among the vast mass of forgeries which gradually built up the supremacy of the Roman see, the famous Isidorian Decretals deserve a word of notice. They were issued about A.D. 845, and consisted of "about one hundred pretended decrees of the early Popes, together with certain spurious writings of other church dignitaries and acts of synods. This forgery produced an immense extension of the papal power. It displaced the old system of church government, divesting it of the republican attributes it had possessed, and transforming it into an absolute monarchy. It brought the bishops into subjection to Rome, and made the pontiff the supreme judge of the clergy of the whole Christian world. It prepared the way for the great attempt, subsequently made by Hildebrand, to convert the states of Europe into a theocratic priest kingdom, with the Pope at its head" (Draper's "Conflict of Religion and Science," p. 271). We note during this century a remarkable growth of saints. Everyone wanted a saint through whom to approach God, and the supply kept pace with the demand. "This preposterous multiplication of saints was a new source of abuses and frauds. It was thought necessary to write the lives of these celestial patrons, in order to procure for them the veneration and confidence of a deluded multitude; and here lying wonders were invented, and all the resources of forgery and fable exhausted to celebrate exploits which had never been performed, and to perpetuate the memory of holy persons who had never existed" (p. 200). The contest on images still raged furiously, success being now on the one side, now on the other; various councils were called by either party, until, in A.D. 879, a council at Constantinople, reckoned by the Greeks as the eighth general council, sanctioned the worship of images, which thereafter triumphed in the East. In the West, the opposition to image-worship gradually died away. The Filioque contest also continued hotly and widened the breach between East and West yet more. The final separation was not long delayed. The ever-increasing jealousy between Rome and Constantinople had at last reached a height which made even nominal union impossible, and the smouldering fire burst into sudden flame. In A.D. 858 Photius was made Patriarch of Constantinople, by the Emperor Michael, in the room of Ignatius, deprived and banished by that prince. A council, held at Constantinople in A.D. 861, endorsed the appointment of the emperor; but Ignatius appealed to Rome, and Pope Nicholas I. readily took up his quarrel. A council was held at Rome, in A.D. 862, in which the pontiff excommunicated Photius and his adherents. It was answered by one at Constantinople, in A.D. 866, wherein Nicholas was pronounced unworthy of his office and outside the pale of Christian communion. Yet another council of Constantinople, A.D. 869, approved the action of Basilius, the new emperor, who recalled Ignatius, and imprisoned Photius. When Ignatius died, Photius was reinstated (A.D. 878), and he was acknowledged by the Roman pontiff, John VIII., at another council of Constantinople, A.D. 879, on the understanding that the jurisdiction over Bulgaria, claimed both by Pope and Patriarch, should be definitely yielded to Rome. This, however, was not done; and the Pope sent a legate to Constantinople, recalling his declaration in favour of Photius. The legate, Marinus, was cast into prison; and when he was later raised to the pontificate, he remembered the outrage, and anew excommunicated Photius. A.D. 886 saw the fall and imprisonment of Photius, and union might have been maintained but for the extravagant demands of the Roman pontiff, who required the degradation of all priests and bishops ordained by Photius. The Greeks indignantly refused, and at last the great schism took place, which severed from each other entirely the Eastern and the Western Churches.

The ancient heresy of the Paulicians had not yet died out, spite of having suffered much persecution at Catholic hands, and under the Emperors Michael and Leo, a fierce attack upon these unfortunate beings took place. They were hunted down and executed without mercy, and at last they turned upon their persecutors, and revenged themselves by murdering the bishop, magistrates, and judges in Armenia, after which they fled to the countries under Saracen rule. After a while, they gradually returned to the Greek empire; but when the Empress Theodora was regent, during her son's minority, she issued a stern decree against them. "The decree was severe, but the cruelty with which it was put in execution, by those who were sent into Armenia for that purpose, was horrible beyond expression; for these ministers of wrath, after confiscating the goods of above a hundred thousand of that miserable people, put their possessors to death in the most barbarous manner, and made them expire slowly in a variety of the most exquisite tortures" (p. 212).

In addition to the heresies inherited from the previous centuries, three new ones, important in their issues, arose to divide yet more the divided indivisible Church. A monk, named Pascasius Radbert, wrote a treatise (A.D. 831 and 845), in which he maintained that, at the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine became changed, by consecration, into the body and blood of Christ, and that this body "was the same body that was born of the Virgin, that suffered upon the cross, and was raised from the dead" (p. 205). Charles the Bald bade Erigena and Ratramn (or Bertramn) draw up the true doctrine of the Church, and the long controversy began which is continued even in the present day. The second great dispute arose on the question of predestination and divine grace. Godeschalcus, an eminent Saxon monk, returning from Rome in A.D. 847, resided for a space in Verona, where he spoke much on predestination, affirming that God had, from all eternity, predestined some to heaven and others to hell. He was condemned at a council held in Mayence, A.D. 848, and in the following year, at another council, he was again condemned, and was flogged until he burned, with his own hand, the apology for his opinions he had presented at Mayence. The third great controversy regarded the manner of Christ's birth, and monks furiously disputed whether or no Christ was born after the fashion of other infants. The details of this dispute need not here be entered into.