Page 195 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

Pope Gregory I. Pope Gregory the Great became one of the most important popes of the early Middle Ages. As a result of his numerous writings, he is considered the last of the Latin fathers of the church. This ninth-century manuscript illustration shows Gregory working on a manuscript, assisted by a monk. Above Gregory’s head is a dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit, which is providing divine inspiration for what he is writing.
papal authority over the Christian church in the West, although few people in Europe at this time looked to the pope as the church’s ruler. He intervened in ecclesi- astical conflicts throughout Italy and corresponded with the Frankish rulers, urging them to reform the church in Gaul. He successfully initiated the efforts of missionaries to convert England to Christianity and was especially active in converting the pagan peoples of Germanic Europe. His primary instrument was the mo- nastic movement.
The Monks and Their Missions
A monk (Latin monachus, meaning “someone who lives alone”) was a person who sought to live a life divorced from the world, cut off from ordinary human society,
in order to pursue an ideal of godliness or total dedica- tion to the will of God. Christian monasticism was initially based on the model of the solitary hermit who forsakes all civilized society to pursue spirituality. Saint Anthony (ca. 250–350) was a prosperous Egyptian peasant who decided to follow Jesus’s injunction in the Gospel of Mark: “Go your way, sell whatsoever you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.” Anthony gave away his three hundred acres of land to the poor and went into the desert to pursue his ideal of holiness. Others did likewise, often to extremes. Saint Simeon the Stylite lived for three deca- des in a basket atop a pillar more than sixty feet high. These spiritual gymnastics established a new ideal for Christianity. Whereas the early Christian model had been the martyr who died for the faith and achieved eternal life in the process, the new ideal was the monk who died to the world and achieved spiritual life through denial, asceticism, and mystical experience of God. These early monks, however, soon found them- selves unable to live in solitude. Their feats of holi- ness attracted followers on a wide scale, and as the monastic ideal spread throughout the East, a new form of monasticism based on communal life soon became the dominant form. Monastic communities came to be seen as the ideal Christian society that could provide a moral example to the wider society around them.
BENEDICTINE MONASTICISM Saint Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–ca. 543), who founded a monastic house for which he wrote a set of rules in the 520s, established the fun- damental form of monastic life in the western Chris- tian church. The Benedictine rule came to be used by other monastic groups and was crucial to the growth of monasticism in the western Christian world.
Benedict’s rule favored an ideal of moderation. In Chapter 40 of the rule, on the amount a monk should drink, this sense of moderation becomes apparent:
“Every man has his proper gift from God, one after this manner, another after that.” And therefore it is with some misgiving that we determine the amount of food for someone else. Still, having regard for the weakness of some brothers, we believe that a hemina of wine [a quar- ter liter] per day will suffice for all. Let those, however, to whom God gives the gift of abstinence, know that they shall have their proper reward. But if either the circum- stances of the place, the work, or the heat of summer necessitates more, let it lie in the discretion of the abbot to grant it. But let him take care in all things lest satiety or drunkenness supervene.3
Development of the Christian Church 157
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Stiftsbibliothek/St. Gallen/Switzerland//De Agostini Picture Library/The Bridgeman Art Library