Admiration

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• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  87 • Little is known of Clement’s life. Born in Athens, he became a student of the Platonic philosopher Pantaenus in Alexandria. In the late 2 nd century, he became head of the Christian catechetical school in that city. The only other biographical fact we know about Clement is that he fled from persecution in 202. • Clement forged a “thinking person’s” version of Christianity. He sought a middle way between the extreme elitism of Gnosticism and the ignorance of simple believers. He thought in terms of a “Christian Gnosticism” that was orthodox and connected to the larger tradition. He affirmed the lines of the developing rule of faith and despised the compositions of Valentinus and Basilides. • Clement’s project took the form of a three-stage presentation using the forms of ancient Greek rhetoric and philosophy. o The Protrepticus (“Exhortation”) is a classic call to conversion, such as was issued by Greco-Roman philosophers. We see an example in Lucian of Samosata’s Nigrinus, which castigates false philosophers and calls for adherence to the teaching of Nigrinus. Clement similarly attacks pagan errors—especially in religious matters—and argues for the truth of Christianity. o The Paidogogos (“Instructor”) in Greek education was the one who taught young children their morals and manners. Clement’s book by this title offers an extensive catalogue of Christian moral behavior. o Clement’s most ambitious work, the Didaskalos (“Teacher”), was never completed; however, the compilation of notes for that work, the Stromateis (“Fragments”), itself constitutes a major and deeply learned statement on Christianity’s use of Scripture and its relationship to philosophy. • Clement’s work represents a much more ambitious and systematic effort than Justin’s not only to render Christianity as reasonable but to make it a serious contender in ancient philosophical discourse.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  influence of the Cluniac sensibility. Three monks of Cluny were even elected bishops of Rome. • The influence of Cluny remained strong until the early 12th century and even at that date produced a final remarkable leader in Peter the Venerable (c. 1094–1156). Peter was elected abbot in 1122 and defended Cluny’s commitment to scholarship against another famous monastic reformer, Bernard of Clairvaux. The Abbey of Cîteaux • Bernard began as a monk of the second great reforming monastery, the Abbey of Cîteaux, founded in 1098. The Cistercian monks sought a more rigorous observance of the Rule of Benedict than was practiced in communities associated with Cluny. Like Cluny, Cîteaux established an order that exercised control o over the reform in its daughter houses. At the start of the 13th century, there were some 500 monasteries associated with Cîteaux across Europe and even in the Latin East. The ideal of Cîteaux was to locate communities in isolated o places. The mother-house abbey church was begun in 1140 and completed in 1193; the dukes of Burgundy were generous benefactors of Cîteaux. The most marked feature of the reform was the embrace of o manual labor as an ideal, returning to the balance between work and prayer that the Rule had first envisaged. By locating in remote areas, the Cistercians sought to ensure that agricultural labor—not labors of the mind—would remain at the center of the monastic labora. In this sense, it was a reform in the direction of the primitive. • The most well-known alumnus of Cîteaux was the Cistercian monk Saint Bernard (1090–1153), who became the most famous—and, in some respects, contentious—of the reformers in the Benedictine tradition. Bernard left the monastery of Cîteaux in 1115 to found his own monastery at Clairvaux and become its first abbot. 213

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  237 Universities and Theology Lecture 33 O ne of the most impressive signs of a mature Christian culture in the High Middle Ages was the development of universities. As we have seen, the desire for higher learning within Christianity was never completely lost, even during the most chaotic periods of life in the West. Universities, though, were a new invention in the West; they emerged when they did because of the convergence of a number of factors. In a flash, over the span of some 80 years, four great universities were founded in Europe that quickly became important centers of learning and eventually contributed heavily to social change: Bologna in 1119, Paris in 1150, Oxford in 1167, and Cambridge in 1200. Context for the Emergence of Universities • The convergence of a number of factors set the stage for the emergence of universities in the 12 th and 13 th centuries. We have already noted the increased wealth and security in Europe based on predictably good weather, steady crops, and successful trade—all these, plus population growth in urban areas, set the context for leisure as the basis of culture. Of considerable significance also was the production of manuscripts in monastery scriptoria, which reached a point of sufficient dissemination to enable shared learning at a higher level. • The development of a professional clergy, as in the Franciscans and Dominicans, as well as the development of a professional diplomatic corps, demanded higher levels of education. The ordinary clergy would remain woefully undereducated within Catholicism until the Counter-Reformation of the 16 th century, but both monks and mendicants represented the most learned people of the medieval world.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  • The churches of San Vitale and Sant’Apollinare in the imperial city of Ravenna in Italy, as well as the Great Palace in Constantinople, display magnificent frescoes and mosaics in honor of God and the imperial family. • Under Justinian, the literary arts of history and poetry flourished. But the emperor’s whim also led to the state closure of the neoplatonic Academy in Athens in 529. It had been a real and symbolic center of Greek culture for almost 1,000 years. The Pandidakterion (sometimes called a “university”) of o Constantinople was founded in 425 under Theodosius II; Justinian used its resources in his architectural and legal initiatives. The school had 31 chairs for such subjects as arithmetic, o geometry, law, medicine, music, and rhetoric; 16 chairs teaching in Greek; and 15 chairs teaching in Latin. It flourished as a shining example of higher learning until the 9th century and survived in diminished form for hundreds more years. Efforts at Religious Unity • In religious matters, Justinian was a staunch defender of the Nicene Creed and made real if unsuccessful efforts to achieve unity within the empire in matters of doctrine. • As part of his policy of embracing the western part of the empire and seeking to restore it as part of a unified state, Justinian recognized the primacy of the bishop of Rome in 528 and maintained the doctrinal definition of Chalcedon, reversing the monophysite position that had dominated the empire since 483. • At the same time, he sought to placate the strong monophysite advocates in Constantinople—not least Theodora—tendencies that he also increasingly shared. In the Theopaschite controversy (the term refers to a member o of the Trinity suffering on the cross), Justinian adopted this 161

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  197 Pastoral Regulations, Moralia in Job, sermons, letters, and the Dialogues) were widely read and studied in the Middle Ages. He richly deserved the title “the Great.” • Other notable popes of the early medieval period helped secure the Catholic character of the West, as well as the real independence of Roman-led Catholicism from the hegemony of Byzantium. Four highly capable popes who ruled for some 60 years across a single century deserve at least a mention. o Gregory II (715–731) supported the missionary work of Boniface, excommunicated the Byzantine emperor Leo III the Isaurian for his support of iconoclasm, and denied the right of the emperor to interfere with the church in matters of doctrine. o Pope Zachary (741–752)—the last Greek pope—had good relations with the Franks and also supported Boniface; he, too, condemned iconoclasm in the East. o Hadrian I (772–795) strengthened the city of Rome by his building and administration; he had good relations with Charlemagne, who helped the papacy by conquering the Lombards in Italy, though differing with him on the iconoclasm issue (Charlemagne supported it). Hadrian sent the Gregorian Sacramentary to Charlemagne between 785 and 795, which the king then used to unify liturgical observance throughout his dominions. o The link between the Merovingians and the papacy grew even stronger because Leo III (795–816) needed Charlemagne’s support against opponents of his papacy; in turn, he crowned Charlemagne emperor on Christmas Day, 800. Missionary Monks • The careers of two great monk-missionaries reveal the complex dynamics of the relationships we have been sketching. These missionaries were the ones who risked their lives, and spent their lives, in the most arduous sort of efforts for the gospel. Their work

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  242 ygoloehT dna seitisrevinU :33 erutceL doctorate in Paris and became a master there in 1305 before his life ended in Cologne. Dying even younger than Thomas (at 42), his main work is o his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, as well as a set of commentaries on the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Porphyry. Scotus, known as the “Subtle Doctor,” sought a middle o ground between Aristotelianism and Augustinian thought, distinguishing himself from Thomas in a number of important ways. Overall, he placed more emphasis on the human will and its freedom than he did on the intellect. Scotus placed particular emphasis on the Incarnation of Christ, o arguing that it would have happened even if humans had fallen into sin. His thought was influential particularly within the Franciscan order. The Divine Comedy • The suffusion of Christian theology in all the arts is illustrated brilliantly by the magnificent poem The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321); its three parts (the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso) encompassed the entire medieval worldview. • Inspired by a Florentine woman (his “Beatrice”), Dante dedicated to her “a poem such as had been Born in Florence, Dante sided written for no lady before” and with antipapal forces within Italy spent the years from her death in and then with Emperor Henry VII, and his opposition to the papacy 1290 to his own in 1321 in the led to several exiles from his completion of his masterpiece. native city. .kcotsknihT/otohpkcotSi © The poem is an impressive fusion of classical and Christian o cultures; both the descent to the underworld and the ascent to heaven are classical themes, but Dante combines them with the distinctive Christian understanding of purgatory as the place of postmortem purification. Combining political commentary and religious pathos in a o structure as impressive as Thomas’s Summa, Dante imagines a world in which human freedom and divine love intertwine in a drama that extends from the coldness of alienation from the divine to the ecstatic bliss of the vision of God. As much as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Dante’s poetry o reveals the essence of the High Middle Ages in its synthesis of unity and beauty, of classical and Christian themes, and in the organization of all reality as a movement toward God. Suggested Reading Evans, ed., The Medieval Theologians. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris. Questions to Consider 1. Compare and contrast the spirit and structure of the medieval and contemporary universities. 2. How did Scholastic theology provide an overarching view of reality that made sense of all other learning? 243

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  86 Lecture 12: The Beginnings of Christian Philosophy Justin Martyr • Both the symbolic and the real birth of Christian philosophy in the proper sense are represented by Justin Martyr (c. 100–165). • Born as a pagan in Samaria, Justin passed through a series of philosophical schools, seeking the perfect one. He thought he found it in Platonism but then was converted to Christianity. • In Antioch, he met and engaged in a lengthy controversy with a Jew named Trypho shortly after the final devastation of Jerusalem following the Bar Kochba revolt (135 C.E.). He later opened a Christian school in Rome, where Tatian (the apologist and leader of the Encratites) was one of his students. • Denounced as a Christian by the Cynic philosopher Crescens, Justin refused to offer sacrifice to the gods and was beheaded. • Justin’s works reveal a lively intellectual engagement with the larger world. o The Dialogue with Trypho reports the last sustained debate between a Christian and Jew concerning their respective claims that is carried out with at least the appearance of civility and equality. The tone is that of competing philosophers, as Trypho and Justin debate whether Jesus fulfilled messianic prophecies and which version of Scripture (the Hebrew or the Greek) was better. o In his First Apology , Justin defends Christians against the charges made against them but goes further in a sweeping assessment of pagan religion (negative) and pagan philosophy (positive), especially Platonism, representing Christianity as the endpoint of the human quest for wisdom. Clement of Alexandria • Clement of Alexandria (150–c. 215) took significant steps beyond Justin in establishing a genuinely philosophical form of Christianity.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Although, like all military families, we moved a lot—by the fifth grade my older brother, sister, and I had attended four different elementary schools, and we had lived in Florida, Puerto Rico, California, Tokyo, and Washington, twice—our parents, especially my mother, kept life as secure, warm, and constant as possible. My brother was the eldest and the steadiest of the three of us children and my staunch ally, despite the three-year difference in our ages. I idolized him growing up and often trailed along after him, trying very hard to be inconspicuous, when he and his friends would wander off to play baseball or cruise the neighborhood. He was smart, fair, and self-confident, and I always felt that there was a bit of extra protection coming my way whenever he was around. My relationship with my sister, who was only thirteen months older than me, was more complicated. She was the truly beautiful one in the family, with dark hair and wonderful eyes, who from the earliest times was almost painfully aware of everything around her. She had a charismatic way, a fierce temper, very black and passing moods, and little tolerance for the conservative military lifestyle that she felt imprisoned us all. She led her own life, defiant, and broke out with abandon whenever and wherever she could. She hated high school and, when we were living in Washington, frequently skipped classes to go to the Smithsonian or the Army Medical Museum or just to smoke and drink beer with her friends. She resented me, feeling that I was, as she mockingly put it, “the fair-haired one”—a sister, she thought, to whom friends and schoolwork came too easily—passing far too effortlessly through life, protected from reality by an absurdly optimistic view of people and life. Sandwiched between my brother, who was a natural athlete and who never seemed to see less-than-perfect marks on his college and graduate admission examinations, and me, who basically loved school and was vigorously involved in sports and friends and class activities, she stood out as the member of the family who fought back and rebelled against what she saw as a harsh and difficult world. She hated military life, hated the constant upheaval and the need to make new friends, and felt the family politeness was hypocrisy.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Perhaps because my own violent struggles with black moods did not occur until I was older, I was given a longer time to inhabit a more benign, less threatening, and, indeed to me, a quite wonderful world of high adventure. This world, I think, was one my sister had never known. The long and important years of childhood and early adolescence were, for the most part, very happy ones for me, and they afforded me a solid base of warmth, friendship, and confidence. They were to be an extremely powerful amulet, a potent and positive countervailing force against future unhappiness. My sister had no such years, no such amulets. Not surprisingly, perhaps, when both she and I had to deal with our respective demons, my sister saw the darkness as being within and part of herself, the family, and the world. I, instead, saw it as a stranger; however lodged within my mind and soul the darkness became, it almost always seemed an outside force that was at war with my natural self. My sister, like my father, could be vastly charming: fresh, original, and devastatingly witty, she also was blessed with an extraordinary sense of aesthetic design. She was not an easy or untroubled person, and as she grew older her troubles grew with her, but she had an enormous artistic imagination and soul. She also could break your heart and then provoke your temper beyond any reasonable level of endurance. Still, I always felt a bit like pieces of earth to my sister’s fire and flames. For his part, my father, when involved, was often magically involved: ebullient, funny, curious about almost everything, and able to describe with delight and originality the beauties and phenomena of the natural world. A snowflake was never just a snowflake, nor a cloud just a cloud. They became events and characters, and part of a lively and oddly ordered universe. When times were good and his moods were at high tide, his infectious enthusiasm would touch everything. Music would fill the house, wonderful new pieces of jewelry would appear—a moonstone ring, a delicate bracelet of cabochon rubies, a pendant fashioned from a moody sea-green stone set in a swirl of gold—and we’d all settle into our listening mode, for we knew that soon we would be hearing a very great deal about whatever new enthusiasm had taken him over. Sometimes it would be a discourse based on a passionate conviction that the future and salvation of the world was to be found in windmills; sometimes it was that the three of us children simply had to take Russian lessons because Russian poetry was so inexpressibly beautiful in the original.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  The Troubled Helix [image file=image_rsrcW1.jpg] Seated in a chair, with quick access to escape through the back door of the conference room, Jim Watson was twitching, peering, scanning, squinting, and yawning. His fingers, linked together on the top of his head, were tapping restlessly, and he alternately was paying avid, if fleeting, attention to the data being presented, snatching a look at his New York Times, and drifting off into his own version of planetary wanderings. Jim is not good at looking interested when he is bored, and it was impossible to know if he really was thinking about the science at hand—the genetics and molecular biology of manic-depressive illness—or was instead mulling about politics, gossip, love, potential financial donors for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, architecture, tennis, or whatever other heated and passionate enthusiasm occupied his mind and heart at the moment. An intense and exceedingly blunt man, he is not someone who tends to bring out the dispassionate side of people. For myself, I find him fascinating and very wonderful. Jim is genuinely independent and, in an increasingly bland world, a true zebra among horses. While it could be argued that it is relatively easy to be independent and unpredictable if you have won the Nobel Prize for your contributions to discovering the structure of life, it is also clear that the same underlying temperament—intense, competitive, imaginative, and iconoclastic—helped propel his initial pursuit for the structure of DNA. Jim’s palpably high energy level is also very appealing; his pace, whether intellectual or physical, can be exhausting, and trying to keep up with him, in discussions across the dinner table or walking the grounds of Cold Spring Harbor, is no mean task. His wife maintains she can tell whether or not Jim is in the house simply by the amount of energy she feels in the air. But however interesting he is as a person, Jim is first and foremost a scientific leader: director until only very recently of one of the foremost molecular biology laboratories in the world, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the first director of the National Center for Human Genome Research. In the past few years, he has turned his interest toward the search for the genes responsible for manic-depressive illness. Because the scientific understanding of manic-depressive illness is so ultimately beholden to the field of molecular biology, it is a world in which I have spent an increasing amount of time. It is an exotic world, one developed around an odd assortment of plants and animals—maize, fruit flies, yeast, worms, mice, humans, puffer fish—and it contains a somewhat strange, rapidly evolving, and occasionally quite poetic language system filled with marvelous terms like “orphan clones,” “plasmids,” and “high-density cosmids”; “triple helices,” “untethered DNA,” and “kamikaze reagents”; “chromosome walking,” “gene hunters,” and “gene mappers.” It is a field clearly in pursuit of the most fundamental of understandings, a search for the biological equivalent of quarks and leptons.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  They said farewell to Mrs. Claude Breakspeare, to Howard and Blakeney and the rest of their comrades. And Stephen knew, as indeed did they also, that a mighty event had slipped into the past, had gone from them into the realms of history — something terrible yet splendid, a oneness with life in its titanic struggle against death. Not a woman of them all but felt vaguely regretful in spite of the infinite blessing of peace, for none could know what the future might hold of trivial days filled with trivial actions. Great wars will be followed by great discontents — the pruning knife has been laid to the tree, and the urge to grow throbs through its mutilated branches. 3 Tue House in the Rue Jacob was en fête in honour of Stephen’s arrival. Pierre had rigged up an imposing flagstaff, from which waved a brand new tricolour commandeered by Pauline from the neighbouring baker; flowers had been placed in the study vases, while Adèle had contrived to produce the word ‘ welcome’ in immortelles, as the pièce de resistance, and had hung it above the doorway. Stephen shook hands with them all in turn, and she intro- duced Mary, who also shook hands. Then Adéle must start to gabble about Jean, who was quite safe although not a captain; THE WELL OF LONELINESS 339 and Pauline must interrupt her to tell of the neighbouring baker who had lost his four sons, and of one of her brothers who had lost his right leg — her face very dour and her voice very cheerful, as was always the way when she told of misfortunes. And pres- ently she must also deplore the long straight scar upon Stephen’s cheek: ‘ Oh, la pauvre! Pour une dame c’est un vrai désastre! ’ But Pierre must point to the green and red ribbon in Stephen’s lapel: “ C’est la Croix de Guerre!’ so that in the end they ail gathered round to admire that half-inch of honour and glory. Oh, yes, this home-coming was as friendly and happy as good will and warm Breton hearts could make it. Yet Stephen was oppressed by a sense of restraint when she took Mary up to the charming bedroom overlooking the garden, and she spoke abruptly. * This will be your room.’ “It’s beautiful, Stephen.’ After that they were silent, perhaps because there was so much that might not be spoken between them.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  193 for practicing charity in a community where people are committed to each other for life. o Benedict sees the common life as a time of preparation for the higher states of commitment, as in the life of the hermit. o For many who lived it, however, the life was sufficiently rigorous and demanding to require a lifetime of dedication to accomplish true obedience. o As monasteries became more prosperous, the “school” dimension came to the fore, and monasteries formed the basic source of both Christian discipleship and learning for centuries. The Legacy of Benedictinism • Pope Gregory I (“the Great”) was himself a Benedictine monk and wrote the biography of Benedict. He used Benedictine monks as the instruments for the restoration of the church in England. • In 596, Gregory sent Augustine, the prior of the monastery of Saint Andrew in Rome, together with other monks, to England and made him the archbishop of Canterbury. • Augustine converted King Ethelbert, whose wife, Bertha, was already Christian, and through the king, England rapidly became Catholic. • The Benedictine monasteries, which fit so well within the manorial system of medieval society, became places that exemplified and enabled a deeper commitment to the faith. English monks in particular were critical to the next stage of evangelization in Europe. • Perhaps the most remarkable testimony to the work of Benedict is that despite a long series of repressions and reforms, the way of life according to his Rule continues to be lived by men and women around the world to the present day. Not many 1,500-year-old books have worn as well. 194 Lecture 26: Benedictine Monasticism and Its Influence Casey and Tomlin, Introducing the Rule of Benedict. Knowles, Christian Monasticism. 1. How did the Rule of Benedict provide an accessible form of the “life of perfection” in a way earlier rules had not? 2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of understanding the path to God as mediated by “a Rule and an abbot”? Suggested Reading Questions to Consider

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  158 ytinaitsirhC enitnazyB dna nainitsuJ fo truoC ehT :22 erutceL In effect, through his uncle and on his own, Justinian exercised imperial power for 47 years. He married a much younger woman named Theodora in 525. o Procopius claims she was a former prostitute, but given his general hostility toward her, the information must be taken with caution. She proved to be a formidable power at Justinian’s side. Justinian faced severe difficulties from the start of his reign: the o loss of the western empire, the threat of the Persian (Sassanid) Empire at his eastern borders, the revolt of city factions against him in 532, and being personally afflicted with the plague in 540. Yet his great energy and his ambition drove him to significant accomplishment. • Justinian’s ambition was nothing less than to restore the former greatness of the Roman Empire through conquest, organization, and adornment; his ambition was abetted by a willingness to exercise supreme rule and to concentrate all control in himself, as well as the personal traits that accompany political greatness. On the positive side, Justinian was brilliant, courageous, o tireless, tough, and bold. Examples include his marrying and sharing power with Theodora and his brilliant commissioning and efficient construction of the great church Hagia Sophia. On the negative side, he was ruthless and cruel. Witness the o slaughter of his foes in the Nika rebellion or the blinding of General Belisarius in later life out of jealousy. His religious disposition was sincere and grew stronger as he o aged; his commitment to Nicaean Christianity went hand in hand with the willingness to suppress other traditions. The Restoration of Roman Greatness • By concentrating all power in himself yet making use of superb generals and administrators, Justinian went a long way at the political level toward restoring the greatness of Rome.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  order of women known as the Poor Clares. Innocent III approved o Francis’s short rule for the friars in 1209, and Francis may have attended the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The itinerant lifestyle of the Franciscans made them flexible instruments for many ministries. The history of the early order o is extraordinarily complex, but out of Francis’s ideals arose thousands of men committed to evangelical The first of the mendicant poverty, the care of the poor, orders was founded by Francis and the saving of souls. of assisi around the year 1209. Almost inevitably, the order also gave rise to great theologians o and mystical teachers, including Duns Scotus (1265–1308) and Bonaventura (1217–1274). • Dominic de Guzmán (1170–1221) studied arts and theology, then sold his possessions during a famine to help the poor; he joined the canons regular in Osma and, after undertaking legations to northern Europe, conceived of the ideal of preaching the gospel to pagans. When he became engaged with the Albigensians, he and his companions founded the Order of Preachers (1208), which was approved by Innocent III in 1216 and fully recognized by Honorius III in 1218. From the Latin dominicani came the tag “dogs of the Lord” for o the fiery preaching and disciplined zeal of the new order. Despite his zeal to oppose heresy, it is doubtful that Dominic o himself led the inquisition (the papal-led interrogation of those 235 .kcotsknihT/otohpkcotSi © 236 noituloveR lapaP :23 erutceL suspected of heresy), but because of their great learning and dedication, both Dominicans and Franciscans were used by the papacy as agents of inquisition. Like the Franciscans, the Dominican order produced great o theologians, including Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), and great mystics, including Meister Eckhart (1260–1327), John Tauler (d. 1361), and Henry Suso (1295–1366). • Together, the two mendicant orders not only served as flexible instruments of papal policy, but they energized evangelization and the care of the poor. Their commitment to the intellectual life made them the leading figures in the development of the medieval universities. Suggested Reading Miller, Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict. Moore, Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216). Questions to Consider 1. Discuss the political (and moral!) implications of the forgery known as the Donation of Constantine. 2. What does the investiture conflict tell us about the increased confidence of secular rulers in the West?

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  century through the work of the Briton Saint Ninian; the northern part of Scotland was evangelized by the Irish abbot Saint Columba (d. 597) over a period of 34 years. many legends surround Saint Patrick, but two authentic letters written by him are extant. © iStockphoto/Thinkstock. 156 Lecture 21: Expansion beyond the Boundaries of Empire Conclusions about the Expansion • Although the Roman Empire had attractions, Christianity succeeded in some places despite imperial power rather than because of it. This religion, in whatever form it appeared, clearly had the capacity to attract people on its own terms. • The “catholicity” (universal character) of the church included an ever greater diversity of populations, languages, and cultural forms, and although the more familiar forms of Christianity developed within the framework of an imperial heritage, the forms of Christian expression from North Africa to China in the years 400 to 800 testify to a remarkable cultural adaptability. • This survey confirms the point made earlier that what is called “orthodox” Christianity is, to a large extent, to be identified with imperial Christianity, while outside the empire, Christianity was most often Arian, Nestorian, or monophysite. • The powerful movement of peoples in the West and the evangelization of those tribal peoples would form the future cultural context for the Latin church. Bihlmeyer (Mills, trans.), Church History, pp. 216–240. Daniélou and Marrou, The First Six Hundred Years, (The Christian Centuries, vol. 1), pp. 281–375. 1. What does the success of Christianity among new peoples say about the inherent attractiveness of the religion? 2. Discuss the reasons that “orthodoxy” tends to be coterminous with the boundaries of empire. Suggested Reading Questions to Consider

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  87 • Little is known of Clement’s life. Born in Athens, he became a student of the Platonic philosopher Pantaenus in Alexandria. In the late 2 nd century, he became head of the Christian catechetical school in that city. The only other biographical fact we know about Clement is that he fled from persecution in 202. • Clement forged a “thinking person’s” version of Christianity. He sought a middle way between the extreme elitism of Gnosticism and the ignorance of simple believers. He thought in terms of a “Christian Gnosticism” that was orthodox and connected to the larger tradition. He affirmed the lines of the developing rule of faith and despised the compositions of Valentinus and Basilides. • Clement’s project took the form of a three-stage presentation using the forms of ancient Greek rhetoric and philosophy. o The Protrepticus (“Exhortation”) is a classic call to conversion, such as was issued by Greco-Roman philosophers. We see an example in Lucian of Samosata’s Nigrinus, which castigates false philosophers and calls for adherence to the teaching of Nigrinus. Clement similarly attacks pagan errors—especially in religious matters—and argues for the truth of Christianity. o The Paidogogos (“Instructor”) in Greek education was the one who taught young children their morals and manners. Clement’s book by this title offers an extensive catalogue of Christian moral behavior. o Clement’s most ambitious work, the Didaskalos (“Teacher”), was never completed; however, the compilation of notes for that work, the Stromateis (“Fragments”), itself constitutes a major and deeply learned statement on Christianity’s use of Scripture and its relationship to philosophy. • Clement’s work represents a much more ambitious and systematic effort than Justin’s not only to render Christianity as reasonable but to make it a serious contender in ancient philosophical discourse.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  Eastern Orthodoxy—Holy Tradition Lecture 24 After centuries of religious struggle, Christianity in the Byzantine Empire settled into a long period of stability. The conflict over the nature of Christ ended in a state of resolution fairly close to the Chalcedonian position, and the violent turmoil unleashed by iconoclasm finally ceased. The pressure exerted by external enemies made the Byzantine Empire more compact and inward-turning. Constantinople remained the greatest city in the world, but the age of imperial aggression and expansion was over. Eastern Orthodoxy, furthermore, experienced no great intellectual crises, such as the Reformation and Enlightenment. This lecture considers the expansion of Orthodoxy to the Slavic peoples and three signal elements in the Orthodox tradition: the liturgy, the role of monasticism, and spirituality. The Mission to the Slavic Peoples • An indication of the internal vibrancy of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire was the mission to the Slavic peoples in the 9th century. • The mission was initiated by two brothers from Thessalonika, Cyril (826–869)—earlier known as Constantine—and his older sibling, Methodius (815–885). They are rightly designated as “the apostles of the Slavs.” They were both highly educated, and both worked as part of o the vast and effective civil service established by Justinian that was a hallmark of the late empire; both then became monks but remained at the disposal of the emperor. In 860–861, the brothers went on a diplomatic mission to the o Khazars (north of the Caucasus) and, while there, learned the Slavic language, which as yet existed only in speech, not in writing. 173

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  148 Lecture 20: The Distinctive Issues of the Latin West o Strongly influenced by Ambrose in Milan, Augustine converted to Christianity in 386 and, despite his protests that he was ill- prepared, was ordained a priest in the North African city of Hippo in 391; he was elected bishop in 395. o After a lifetime of prodigious pastoral and literary effort, he died in 430 as the Vandals laid siege to the city of Hippo. o If Ambrose provided the political posture and Jerome the biblical learning that shaped the subsequent West, Augustine was the supreme source of its intellectual vision. Augustine’s Influence • Augustine’s Confessions is not only a classic account of conversion, but it also introduced a sense of interiority, of “self,” that was distinctive. His remarkable self-awareness is revealed, as well, in his Retractions, written shortly before his death, in which he reviewed, criticized, and amended each of his voluminous writings. • Augustine’s polemical and doctrinal works provided fundamental guidance for subsequent theology. o His anti-Manichaean works established a sense of the church and of the material order as positive. Despite his attraction to the ascetical life, he developed a principled defense of the created order: the goodness of the body, food, marriage, and children. o His work on the Trinity introduced a profound “psychological” model for understanding the inner life of the Christian God, suggesting that the path of introspection by one created in the image of God might plumb something of God’s inner life. o His writings against Donatism and Pelagianism asserted, on one side, the importance of the church as an inclusive body of sinners and, on the other side, the necessity of divine grace for any human goodness. On both sides, he emphasized the frailty of humans and the sovereignty and mercy of God. 149 • Augustine’s sermons and biblical commentaries brought both literal and allegorical methods into creative harmony, while his tractate On Christian Doctrine provided a framework for all subsequent medieval interpretation of the Bible. • His City of God, begun in 413 in response to the Visigoth sacking of Rome in 410 and the pagan charge that Christianity was responsible for the fall of the empire, provided a political theology that had a profound impact on medieval church and society. His vision of a society on earth that sought to embody and foreshadow the “city of God” in heaven was a vision that was distinctively Christian, owing little or nothing to classical antecedents. Brown, Augustine of Hippo. V on Campenhausen (Hoffman, trans.), The Fathers of the Latin Church. 1. How did the characteristic problems of Latin Christianity in the 4 th and 5th centuries differ from controversies in the East? 2. Discuss the distinctive political, literary, and theological contributions made respectively by the three doctors, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. Suggested Reading Questions to Consider

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  174 noitidarT yloH—yxodohtrO nretsaE :42 erutceL In 862, the emperor Michael III sent them to Moravia (a o territory east of the present Czech Republic), where they began to teach in the vernacular they had earlier learned. Cyril then invented the Glagolithic alphabet (Cyrillic), which o became the medium for the translation of the Bible into Slavic and the development of a substantial ecclesiastical literature in Slavic. • Christianity took a firm hold in the Ukraine and Russia through the grand prince Vladimir (d. 1015), who held sway over those lands. He came to the assistance of the emperor Basil II and then married into the imperial family by taking Basil’s sister as his wife in 989. Adopting Orthodoxy, he subsequently imposed it on the territories he had conquered. • Almost immediately after the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453, the Russian city of Moscow was declared by its propagandists to be the “New Rome” or the “Third Rome,” in the manner that Constantinople had inherited the mantle of the first Rome. Subsequent history shows how closely the relationship of the o Russian patriarch in Moscow and the czars (“Caesars”) mimed the dance of caesaropapism characteristic of Constantinople. Indeed, as the title of a recent study of Stalin suggests (The Court of the Red Czar), such influence continued even after the fall of the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, Orthodoxy was able both to survive and thrive o in this new geographical context and escaped eradication by Islam. The Liturgy of the Orthodox Tradition • Orthodoxy in Byzantium also had great internal energy. The most visible and, in many ways, the most impressive expression of faith within the Orthodox tradition is its public worship, or liturgy. Through the centuries, the liturgy has provided a powerful attraction to this version of Christianity.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  The Court of Justinian and Byzantine Christianity Lecture 22 The emperor Justinian I (b. 483–d. 565) can be considered as pivotal a figure in the history of the Roman Empire as Constantine, both as the last of the “Roman” emperors and as the shaper of the Byzantine Empire. A man of astonishing energy and vision, he accomplished magnificent things in his effort to restore the Roman Empire to its former glory. Although his efforts fell short because of various adverse forces, his accomplishments were sufficient to secure a form of civilization that endured for another 1,000 years and, during the years of European “dark ages,” represented to visitors and admirers a vision of ancient beauty and new possibility. The Life of Justinian • Justinian is rightly called “great” because his long life and distinctive gifts enabled him to shape both the present and the future. • We have unusually good information on his life because of Procopius of Caesarea, a secretary to Justinian’s general Belisarius. Procopius’s History of the Wars is an eyewitness account o of both eastern and western conquests, as he accompanied the general. His On the Buildings enumerates the great building projects o of the emperor. And the Secret History is a not-always- flattering account of the life and times of the court, including an unfavorable portrait of Justinian’s consort, Theodora, and a riveting account of the ravages of the plague in 541–543. • Born in Dalmatia (on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea) in 483, Justinian’s path to power came through his uncle and adoptive father, who became the emperor Justin in 518. Justinian functioned as a counselor and even co-ruler with o Justin between 518 and his own installation as emperor in 527. 157