Alexander Clarence Flick

“ A dreadful pestilence had swept away thousands, among them the Pope himself. In a letter, Gregory compared the Roman See to an old shattered ship, letting in the waves on all sides, tossed by daily storms, its planks rotten and gnawed by rats—almost a wreck! [187:1] An imperial organisation was needed to give Latin-Teutonic Europe the highest type of an organised, Christian civilisation under one law and one faith, and thus to preserve for future generations the best that was in old Greece and Rome, as well as the best that was in the Germans. ”

“ His life is hallowed by countless miracles and it is not always easy to separate myth from truth. But a careful study of his career reveals the fact that he felt the unity of the universe in God and preached it to man in love and charity as a genuine religious philosopher. With an unparalleled ardour and spiritual industry, he taught every one that the salvation of a human soul comes through self-sacrifice. He and his followers aimed to realise the simplicity of Christ and his apostles. "No human creature since Christ has more fully incarnated the ideal of Christianity than Francis." ”

“ Christianity, inherently, was opposed to the whole governmental, social, and religious systems of Rome in the most offensive and uncompromising manner. It advocated one God for all men, one universal kingdom, one brotherhood of all men, and one plan of salvation. It was world-wide, above the Emperor, and advocated a non-Roman unity. The Christians were subjects of God's kingdom first, and the Emperor's next; and when Rome spurned this secondary allegiance they ceased to feel themselves Romans at all. ”

“ Working side by side with the priests were the countless monks and nuns fairly swarming over western Europe, who also came into intimate touch with the masses. They were the teachers and preachers of the common people. In the hands of these priests and monks rested almost entirely the humane and charitable institutions of the Middle Ages. The true religion of Jesus was likewise in their hands rather than in the hands of the higher clergy.
At the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid were the laity, who by the twelfth century included all the people of western Europe, except a portion of Spain. ”

“ The young heir to the honours and burdens of the German crown and to the imperial throne likewise had his mind filled with the glorious history of Greece and the Eastern Empire by his Grecian mother. John the Greek inspired within him a love for the classics. Bernard, a German monk, gave him a monastic education which showed itself during the remainder of his life. Gerbert, a Clugniac monk, the greatest scholar of his day, taught him history, literature, rhetoric, and science, and fired him with a holy, ascetic zeal to become a great, just Christian Emperor. ”

“ The effort to save pure Christianity from the secularised state-Church by carrying it to the desert or shutting it up in a monastery, produced the first great reform movement within the Christian Church. "It was always the monks who saved the Church when sinking, emancipated her when becoming enslaved to the world, defended her when assailed." [221:1] Monasticism was, therefore, a realisation of the ideal in Christianity. ”

“ During all this time the Italian priesthood, and none more conspicuously than the Roman pontiffs, set at naught all ecclesiastical law and authority. The people sold their suffrages for money to the highest bidder; the clergy, moved and seduced by avarice and ambition, bought and sold the sacred rights of ordination, and carried on a gigantic traffic with the gifts of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ These early monasteries were like swarming bees in planting monastic societies in every part of western Europe. The passion grew until it became a veritable madness which seized the pious and lawless alike. Popes like Gregory I. praised the institution and promoted its interest in every possible way. Even kings like Carloman of the Franks, Rochis of the Lombards, great statesmen like Cassiodorus, and others voluntarily became monks. Louis the Pious, the Roman Emperor, was prevented from that course only by his nobles. ”

“ What an opportunity to cut Germany loose from the [409] Empire and make her the greatest power in Europe! The Polish monarchy was falling to pieces; Hungary was rent by the pagan and Christian parties; Canute's northern empire had broken down; Italy, chronically subdivided, was awaiting a master; and the young king was also Duke of Bavaria, Franconia, and Swabia. Hindesheim, a contemporary, declared that no one in the Empire mourned the loss of Conrad because such better things were expected of his son, one of the most highly cultured young men of the age. ”

“ Among the most noteworthy exceptions to-day are the United States, Italy, and, but recently, France. He founded the Byzantine Empire and bears the same relation to the East that Charles the Great does to the West. He gave the Church its first unity in organisation, its first universal council, and its first written creed. He stamped his own character on his age and made it greater and happier. He has continued to live through succeeding centuries by reason of what he was and what he did. For all these reasons, judged by achievement, the world unites in calling him "the Great." ”

“ Innocent III. as head of the great Church easily outranked every ruler of his day and stands high among the greatest leaders of the Middle Ages and of all ages. A contemporary describes him as "A man of wonderful fortitude and wisdom—one who had no equal in his own day; whereby he had been able to do acts of miraculous power and greatness." If Hildebrand was the Julius, Innocent was the Augustus of the Papal Empire. ”

“ He was not highly cultured, yet he spoke Latin with ease and knew some Greek. When an old man, he learned to write and deserves great credit for the manner in which he encouraged education. He cultivated the society of the most cultured men in Europe and from them imbibed much. At meals he had read the heroic deeds of his ancestors, or some work of the Church Fathers like Augustine's City of God. As a warrior and statesman, only Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, and Constantine before his day can be compared with him. ”

“ In the origin of the civilisation of Western Europe three cities have been conspicuous for their contributions—Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. Jerusalem, the sacred city, gave Christianity to the West and through the West to the world. Athens, the city of culture, bequeathed philosophy, [150] art, ideals, and science to the Romans, and through them to the Celts, Teutons, and all peoples. Rome, the city of power, overthrew Jerusalem, took Athens captive, received the contributions of both as her right, and on the ruins of both built up her universal sovereignty. ”

“ This period of zealous missionary endeavour among the Celtic and Teutonic tribes was a great pioneer movement. Far too little attention has been paid to it by historians and, consequently, comparatively small credit has been granted to it as a force in the evolution of our institutions to-day. It is impossible to conceive what would have been the history of Europe and the civilisation she has planted around the earth had not Christianity entered at this epoch to lay the foundations. Every institution would have developed differently and the world would certainly not be what it is to-day. ”

“ A man of heart, power, and lofty purpose—a ruler who saw the opportunity and need of the Christian Church in Western Europe, who felt her new impulses, and who could guide her through a crucial period to a great and useful career—such a man the Roman senate, clergy, and people believed that they had found in the monk Gregory. He alone could save them from Teutonic anarchy, on the one hand, and from Roman decay on the other.
Although elected Pope unanimously by the senate, clergy, and people of Rome, Gregory did not want the office. ”

“ It is generally realised now that the historian, whether he deals with the state, the Church, society, education, or industry, is working an important part of the field of general history. A knowledge of each one of these institutions is necessary to supplement and explain any or all of the others.
This institutional interdependence seems to be generally recognised now. "The web of history," said Professor Hatch in beginning his great work at Oxford, "is woven of one piece; it reflects the unity of human life, of which it is the record. ”

“ Under powerful rulers like Otto the Great the Papacy was subjected to the Empire more absolutely than in the day of Charles the Great. Under the great German Emperors much was done to reform the Church and to advance its interests and influence in the world. Each Emperor took a coronation oath to defend and protect the Church against heretics, schismatics, infidels, pagans, and all other enemies, and that obligation was as a rule faithfully and loyally kept. But all things considered was the Papacy stronger or weaker, better or worse, for the creation of the Holy Roman Empire? ”

“ Gregory was captured at last and forcibly consecrated Supreme Pontiff. He was the best qualified man in all Christendom for the place. He represented the best in Rome and the best in Christianity. His comprehensive policy, his grasp of fundamental issues, his political training, his capacity for details, made him the man for the hour. He merged the office of Roman Emperor and Christian bishop into essentially one and thus became the real founder of the mediæval Papacy. His pontificate, therefore, was an era in the history of the Church. ”

“ The people at this time might be called more religious than moral. A little piety would cover a multitude of sins in the eyes of even the best. A whole life of wickedness and evil-doing was all wiped out and a home in heaven assured by the building of a church, monastery, shrine, or hospital, or by deeding property to the Church, or by doing some pious deed. ”

“ A veritable crusade of peace swept over Europe, and denounced war as anti-Christian. Brotherhoods of the Peace of God were formed to curb the militant feudal barons and to protect commerce, agriculture, women, children, travellers, strangers, and holy clerks. When the whole ecclesiastical machinery of the Church, with its power to withhold salvation gained through the holy sacraments and with its mighty weapons of excommunication and interdict, was wielded in behalf of peace, it was a force that could not easily be resisted. ”

“ This ideal he sought to realise in every particular. The clergy, according to his theory, were wholly dependent upon the Pope's will and must be absolutely free from every vice and worldly influence in order that they might labour only to save men's souls. Hence, he believed in the great need of reformation and in the correction of all abuses. The laity, from Emperor to slave, were entirely subjected to the Pope and his clergy in both temporal and spiritual matters, and therefore must render absolute obedience to the commands of the Church. ”

“ Indeed it was practically impossible for the masses who came to march under the cross in those days to conceive of a Church without some relation to the state. To-day to a modern man's eyes appears only the antagonism between the Church and state.
There was a most striking contrast, from the standpoint of political science, between the Roman and Christian religions. The Roman Emperor identified religion with the state; Christianity separated God from Cæsar. The Roman religion was restricted to earth; Christianity made the world to come the most important part of life. ”

“ The Church Militant 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. There was little that could not be dared or done by the commander of such a force, whose orders were listened to as oracles of God, from Portugal to Palestine and from Sicily to Iceland. ”

“ The manifold corruptions of the tenth century and the first part of the eleventh produced a clergy that had almost forfeited its spiritual character. Religion was a cloak for immorality, for licentious self-indulgence, and for corruption and venality which can scarcely be equalled in the entire history of the Christian Church. ”

“ The gods were ideal Greeks with virtues and vices magnified. They were born, had passions, senses, and bodies like men, but never died. They committed crimes, had troubles, and were given to wrath, hatred, lust, cruelty, perjury, deception, and adultery, yet were omnipotent and omniscient. [43:3] While the conception of Zeus, as the father of the gods, ruled by fate, had a vague idea of monotheism in it, still the Greek religion lacked the Christian conception of sin and righteousness, for with the Greeks sin was only a folly of the understanding—even the gods sinned. ”

“ This idea once accepted led inevitably to the mediæval Papacy. The priesthood came, in consequence, to assume all the powers of the great Founder. The Mosaic forms, as well as the Roman Empire, suggested convenient models and authoritative examples for the new structure. It is not difficult to detect in the oligarchical Church polity of the fourth and fifth centuries a yearning for unity. It was but natural, therefore, that Rome should boldly take the remedy into her own hands and pose as the authorised representative of the visible unity demanded by the Christian world. ”