Middle Ages

B

4

Scholasticism

In subsequent centuries, scholars continued to use Abelard's method of setting contradictory texts next to one other. But instead of letting the readers or students decide the answers for themselves, these scholars added long and careful resolutions to each problem. These resolutions were based on the newly rediscovered philosophy of Aristotle as well as on contemporary Christian thinking. This school of thought is called Scholasticism.

The best-known scholastic is Saint Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas was born in Naples, in southern Italy, in 1225 and was educated in Cologne (in Germany) and Paris. He wrote important philosophical studies in Latin called summae (summaries). For example, Aquinas's Summa Theologica was a multivolume work on God and God's creation. Aquinas divided each topic into smaller ones, and then subdivided each of these further, treating each subdivision as a yes or no question. He presented texts first on one side, then on the other. He then gave his own answer and explained away the contradictions as best he could.

It may seem that the writings of the Scholastics had little to do with the concerns of ordinary people, but this is not so. Students flocked to the city schools because they found them exciting. They thought that logic was the key to knowing about life and about themselves. Ordinary townsmen, who did not go to school, were nevertheless keenly interested in what was taught there. They wanted to know, for example, if their own moneymaking and commerce would condemn them to hell or allow them into heaven. The Scholastics answered such questions. Thomas Aquinas himself taught how to reconcile moneymaking with a Christian life. Although townspeople could not read the writings of Aquinas directly, preachers, who could read Latin and then preach it in words understandable to ordinary folk, popularized his and other Scholastic teaching.

B

5

Other Centers of Learning

Not all learning went on in the city schools, and not all of the important scholars taught at universities. Other 12th-century centers of learning were the monasteries, most of which were out in the countryside. Many respected scholars came from these monasteries. For example, the Cistercian abbot Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote sermons and treatises on love, faith, mystical union with God, and Christian knighthood. His contemporary Hildegard of Bingen, abbess of a convent in Germany, wrote down visions that she had, composed music and chants for her nuns to sing, and wrote a play for them to act out. This play was called Ordo Virtutum (Play of Virtues, mid-12th century) and is one of the earliest known examples of a morality play—a musical story depicting the battle between good and evil.

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C

Development of the Papacy

The role of the papacy began to change drastically during the Central Middle Ages. During Late Antiquity the pope was a very important bishop, since he was the bishop of Rome, but he was not the head of the Christian church. He shared that honor with the eastern patriarchs and the Byzantine emperor. In the next few centuries, however, the papacy began to develop greater importance. At the end of the 6th century, Pope Gregory I, known as Gregory the Great, worked to increase the power of the papacy. He made the papacy a major landowner in Italy, kept law and order in the region around Rome, maintained good relations with the Franks, and sent missionaries to convert the English to Christianity. The popes of the 7th and 8th centuries built on Gregory's legacy. They created and ruled a papal state in central Italy, formed an alliance with the Carolingians to protect it, and declared independence from the Byzantine Empire. They even forged a document called the Donation of Constantine that allegedly gave the papacy the right to rule the entire western half of the Roman Empire.

C

1

Dependence on the Carolingians

The Carolingians put a temporary end to the growth of papal power. They supported the popes as models of piety and priestly behavior. Nevertheless, the Carolingians acted as the heads of the church. They appointed bishops and abbots. When the church needed reform, the Carolingians took on the job themselves. They opened schools for priests and made certain that the religious texts used in the churches were authentic and readily available. In short, they saw themselves as the heads of both church and state.

In France the end of the Carolingian dynasty in the late 10th century meant that churches came under the control of regional powers. To the east, however, Otto I and his successors continued many Carolingian practices, including using the imperial title first bestowed on Charlemagne in 800. They appointed bishops in Germany and Italy and used them as government officials. They also occasionally appointed and deposed popes. Like the Carolingians, they considered themselves responsible for church reform.

C

2

Calls for Change

In the 11th century, more and more churchmen, monks, and laymen began to feel the need to change the church. At first they concentrated on two abuses: clerical marriage and simony (paying money or giving gifts in return for a church office). Clerical celibacy, which demanded that priests and bishops abstain from sexual relations and therefore not marry, had been an ideal since Late Antiquity, but until the late 11th century it was almost never enforced. With the 11th-century reforms, priests and bishops were forced to renounce their wives if they were married; if they were single, they were required to abstain from marriage throughout life.

Unlike celibacy, simony was a new issue. Few people saw anything wrong with payments for church office before the 11th century. Until then, payments were understood to be a type of gift—tokens of friendship, support, and good relations. However, the commercial revolution made people aware of the potentially crass uses of money. They saw that goods had price tags and that gifts had easily calculated monetary value. They began to think of gifts and payments for church offices as crass cash purchases.

In the mid-11th century, Emperor Henry III, who ruled both Germany and Italy, took an active role in church reform. He refused to take money or gifts in exchange for appointing bishops to church offices, although he still considered it his right to appoint bishops, even the pope. The popes were beginning to disagree, however. They were coming to see themselves as the successors of Saint Peter, Jesus’ disciple and traditionally understood to have been the first bishop of Rome. Therefore, 11th-century popes felt that they were more than just ordinary bishops. Beginning in this period, the popes asserted their own leadership of the Christian church and their independence from the emperor.

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