Religion 101 (11 page)

As the apostles celebrated the Jewish Feast of Weeks (
Pentecost
in Greek), the Holy Spirit came among them, and the apostle Peter announced the resurrection to a huge crowd, claiming it had been predicted in the Old Testament. He told the people there assembled to go forth and baptize in the name of the Holy Spirit. So in about
A.D
. 33, more than 3,000 people were baptized, an event celebrated by some Christians during Pentecost.

EARLY CHRISTIANS

Spreading the Good News

After the crucifixion of Jesus, the twelve apostles were puzzled and afraid. Jesus, they believed, was the Messiah, whose coming had been foretold by prophets and who would free them from Roman rule. Yet now he was dead, and they were not free.

Once, however, they concluded that Jesus had been resurrected, they underwent a radical change. Now Jesus was not just the Jewish Messiah but a savior for all mankind. His death thus became a means by which he redeemed man from Original Sin and promised a glorious new life. The apostles began to preach and spread this good news.

The Gospels

The four gospels that bring to us the news of Jesus Christ’s life and teachings are the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. The four Gospels recount the same story, but each author concentrates on different aspects and a different message:

• The Gospel of Mark (
  A.D.
  65–70) focuses on Jesus’ suffering, with which persecuted Christians could identify.
  
• The Gospel of Matthew (
  A.D.
  80–100) explains how Jesus, as the Messiah, fulfills Jewish prophecies.
  
• The Gospel of Luke (
  A.D.
  85) points out how Jesus, as Savior, does not discriminate on the basis of race or class.
  
• The Gospel of John (circa
  A.D.
  90) formulates the difficult notion of Jesus as a divine being.
  

What’s It Mean?

The word
gospel
means “good news.” Along with the four gospels that are included in the New Testament, there are many others, though they are not accepted as canonical. They include:

• The Gospel of Thomas
  
• The Gospel of Marcion
  
• The Gospel of Mary
  
• The Gospel of Judas
  
• The Gospel of the Four Heavenly Realms
  

Tests of Faith: The Martyrs

The Roman emperors did not appreciate the new religion that rejected their almost-divine status, all other Roman deities, and their religious holidays. (Celebrating these holidays was supposed to bring the gods’ favor to Rome, and it was considered patriotic duty; rejection of the gods was therefore considered treason.)

Still, Christians lived in Rome with relative peace until
A.D.
64, when a terrible fire swept the city’s cramped streets. The causes of the fire remain unknown, but the Emperor Nero blamed the Christians and reprisals followed. Christianity was proclaimed anti-Roman and outlawed around the year 100.

Practicing or preaching Christianity was punishable by death, and yet many early Christians chose to stand behind their beliefs. They preferred to die as martyrs rather than renounce their faith. Their courage and willingness to cling to their faith despite everything impressed the people of Rome. Christianity continued to attract converts and to spread.

The First Martyr

Tradition names Stephen as the first Christian martyr. One year after the Crucifixion, Stephen was preaching to the crowd in Jerusalem. Stephen’s speech was so inflammatory — he also accused his listeners of not keeping the law given them by the angels — that he was dragged outside Jerusalem and stoned to death. Later, he was canonized by the Church and became a saint.

The apostles Peter and Paul met their deaths under the Romans. Peter, who had established a Christian community in Rome, was arrested there and sentenced to crucifixion. According to one story, Peter requested to be crucified upside down, so that his death would not reflect that of his Lord.

Why Crucifixion?

Rome adopted crucifixion as a form of punishment from the Persians and used it in the repression of its subjugated peoples. We know from the Roman writer Cicero (106–43
B.C.
) that crucifixion was used against slaves and non-Roman citizens, particularly against those who had fomented rebellion or committed other treasonous acts.

Rome Embraces Christianity

For its first 300 years, Christianity was viewed with great suspicion. Christian communities grew, but people joined them at great personal peril. Believers worshiped in secret. Christians were harassed and persecuted throughout the Roman Empire; they had no political power. The empire itself was under stress from without and within. Roman territories were under barbarian attack, while at home the Roman aristocracy was growing weak and corrupt. Under siege and without great leaders, Rome was falling apart.

In 312, the Roman army stationed in Britain elected Constantine (c. 272–337) the next Roman emperor. He returned to Rome, knowing that he would have to fight for his position when he got there. As Constantine prepared for battle at the Milvian Bridge on the River Tiber near Rome, he had a vision of a cross. He took this as a sign and ordered his soldiers to paint the Greek letters for the word “Christ” on their shields. Constantine defeated his rival and entered Rome victorious, as the new emperor. Although he did not convert to Christianity until shortly before his death many years later, both he and Rome officially supported Christianity.

Constantine was the author of the Edict of Milan, which allowed Christians the freedom to worship openly and freely.

Another Roman emperor, Theodosius the Great (346–395), the last emperor to rule both the eastern and western Roman empires, tolerated pagan practices early in his reign. Toward the end of his life, he became much stricter, slowly eroding pagan power and rights to worship, until he passed an edict that outlawed pagan practices altogether.

Theodosius also streamlined the church by suppressing several important heresies, Arianism and Manichaeism, in Constantinople.

What Is a Heresy?

A heresy is a challenge to an accepted belief. Two heresies that arose during the fourth century were Arianism and Manichaeism. Arianism, taught by an Alexandrian priest named Arius, denied Jesus’ divinity. According to Arius, Jesus was made by God and is therefore subordinate to God. Manichaeism, a synthesis of different religious systems, taught that one god created good and another evil, and that mortals were not responsible for their sins. Although Arianism was declared heretical and eventually disappeared, for a time a majority of Christians were probably Arians.

The Rise of the Papacy in Rome

In the fourth century, the power of the popes in Rome continued to grow. Pope Damasus I (366–383) as well as those who followed him made the Church more powerful and established the idea that when they spoke a papal utterance, they were speaking through the mouth of Peter. After Rome fell in 410, during the papacy of Innocent I (died 417), the office of the pope moved in to fill the vacuum of leadership.

These popes all wrote about the glory of the Church in Rome, and this is where the formal title, Holy Roman Catholic Church, comes from.

The entire Catholic Church spread over the globe is the sole bridal chamber of Christ. The Church of Rome has been placed above all other churches not by virtue of conciliar decree, but by virtue of the words of the Lord: “Thou art Peter!”

— Damasus, fourth-century pope

MONKS AND MONASTERIES

The Love of Learning and the Desire for God

Right from the early years of Christianity, there were many Christians who wanted to worship in the way they believed Christ meant them to: reflectively, introspectively, with purity of body and mind — and so they did. In most cases, this meant relinquishing their belongings and renouncing their families and past existence for a life of isolation in a place that they felt would bring them spiritually closer to God and the true message of Christ.

Generally, a monk vowed:

1. To live a life of poverty
   
2. To lead a life of chastity
   
3. To be obedient to the authority of the monastic order and to God
   

Hermits

Some monks chose to live apart from society, dwelling in desert caves or other isolated spots. They were often highly educated and from well-born families, so their sacrifice was considerable.

Nuns

The first hermits were actually women, who were known in Latin as
nonnus
or nuns. Later their communities became known as convents. Women often joined convents for reasons other than religious ones: to avoid unwanted marriages, for instance, or to save their fathers the cost of expensive wedding dowries.

Life in a Monastery

Hermits in Western Europe gradually realized that living alone and in isolation might not be what God had in mind for them. They came together to form communities, or monasteries. These monks were known as
cenobites
. Hermits, or
anchorites
, remained a cultural element in Eastern Europe long after the practice had largely died away in the West.

Monks believed that by living simply, they were returning to the original state of grace in which mankind lived before the Fall of Adam and Eve. In a shared community, helping each other, they grew their own crops, tended their own animals, grew their own herbs to make medicines, and eventually even came to manufacture wine and cheese in order to support their way of life.

The Benedictine Rule

Over time, monasteries established various “Rules,” or sets of commandments for living within the monastery. Among the oldest and most influential of these is the Benedictine Rule, drawn up by St. Benedict (480–550), an Italian monk. Benedict’s rule was not considered to be a book of extremes in the same way other monastic living writings were, but taught a mellow way of living in true devotion to Christ. The rule sought to balance manual labor with study and ritual prayer, as well as mandating poverty, chastity, and obedience. By putting all this into a single manuscript, Benedict was able to outline what he considered the ideal form of monastic living. Benedictine orders of monks exist to this day and still live by the Rule.

Other Monastic Orders

Over the course of the Middle Ages, some devotees came to believe that the Benedictine Order (as those who lived according to the Benedictine Rule were known) had become corrupt. They founded their own orders. Among the most prominent were:

• The Cistercians
  
• The Carthusians
  
• The Dominicans
  
• The Franciscans
  

Often these orders differentiated from one another by the colors of their robes, or habits. Dominicans, for example, wore black habits, while Franciscans wore brown ones.

Daily Life in a Monastery

A monk’s day was regulated by services, or canonical hours. These were:

• Matins (2
  A.M.
  )
  
• Laudes (5
  A.M.
  )
  
• Prime (7
  A.M.
  )
  
• Terce (9
  A.M.
  )
  
• Sexte (noon)
  
• Nones (2
  P.M.
  )
  
• Vespers (4
  P.M.
  )
  
• Compline (6
  P.M.
  )
  

In between these services, the monks might be assigned to work in the garden, clean or repair the monastic buildings, accommodate visitors (monasteries were often treated as inns by travelers), or copy manuscripts in the monastery’s scriptorium.

Medieval Copyists

Monks in the Middle Ages spent a great deal of time copying manuscripts. Before the invention of the printing press, this was the only way of preserving texts, and the monks regarded it as a sacred charge to copy the gospels and other religious writings. They also copied many manuscripts containing works by ancient authors from Rome and Greece (though countless others were lost). The monks not only copied these works; they illustrated, or
illuminated
, them. Many illuminations were extremely rich in detail and skill and represent one of the major art forms of the Middle Ages. One of the greatest examples of monastic illumination is the Irish
Book of Kells
. You can see samples of it online at
www.digitalcollections.tcd.ie/home/index.php?DRIS_ID=MS58_003v
.

Although many monasteries were the targets of raids by the Northmen beginning in the ninth century, the institution survived, revived, and flourished in the High Middle Ages during the tenth through fourteenth centuries. Thanks to them, Western Europe inherited the rich religious traditions of early Christianity as well as much of the literature, philosophy, and other learning of ancient Greece and Rome.

THE REFORMATION

Christendom Transformed

The Reformation is the name given to a dramatic upheaval within the Catholic Church, which occurred between 1500 and 1625. These are only approximate dates, since there were various church reformers before 1500 and continued reform and conflict after 1625. As early as the fourteenth century, reformers such as John Wyclif (1330–1384) railed against the corruption of the church leadership in Rome. After his death, some of his followers, known as Lollards, continued to spread his message.

The most influential reformer was Martin Luther (1483–1546), which whom the Reformation is most associated. Luther attended the university at Erfurt, aspiring to become a lawyer. However, in 1505 he had a terrifying experience. While traveling from Mansfield to Erfurt, Luther was struck by lightning. As he lay in the road, he prayed to St. Anna, promising that if she helped him survive, he would become a monk. He did survive, and true to his word he entered an Augustinian monastery in Erfurt.