History Conclusion: Medieval trajectories
(Chadwick, Chapters 17 and 18), Junius testimony

Church History I: Medieval Trajectories (451 – c. 750)

1. The Confusion of Church and State
1. In the 5^th c. the church continued to spread in the West while the political authority of the western emperor retracted. Bishops were consecrated in nearly all Roman territories at almost the same time that the Roman legions were leaving them. The deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 merely formalized a state of affairs that have existed for decades.
2. Mutually hostile barbarian kingdoms benefited for a time from Roman infrastructure. They were able to go on collecting taxes and living in Roman-style buildings and most quickly became Christian. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, even built a magnificent palace church in Ravenna with Christian artwork. But over time the political fragmentation had irrevocable social consequences. Communications broke down, the monetary system nearly disappeared, and violence became endemic between largely de-urbanized populations. The church remained the only viable international organization, though it shared in the weaknesses of the states.
3. Roman aristocrats such as Caesarius of Arles and Avitus of Vienne became bishops and took on the roles, and powers, of secular civic leaders. Monasteries became repositories of wealth as well as of learning. However, the papacy would not emerge as the centralized authority of the western medieval church until the 11^th c.
4. In the East powerful Christian emperors continued to reign. Justinian (r. 527-565) re-conquered much of the western Mediterranean including all of Italy between 535 and 555. Much of this was then lost to the Lombards in 568. The short-lived and violent re-conquest of the West by Greek-speaking troops widened the division between the two parts of the classical Empire and encouraged the papacy to continue formulating its own policy outside of the jurisdiction of emperors. At Constantinople, ecumenical councils held in 553, 680, and 787 were all heavily influenced by imperial politics.
2. The Importance of the Tangible Holy
1. Holy men and women, both living and dead, became centers of social, political, and supernatural power in late antiquity and the middle ages.
2. Pauline language of the sainthood of all believers gave way to the belief that martyrs and ascetics were a different class of Christian. These were people who had direct access to God through their demonstrated holiness. An ascetic living on top of a pillar or in a cave could both heal the sick and arbitrate legal disputes. The bones of the martyr Polycarp were “more precious than gold” and continued to manifest the powers of a living saint to those who paid proper reverence.
3. In the Roman legal and social system one did not ask the provincial governor directly for help. An intermediary was needed, someone approachable but with influence at higher levels.
4. In a world with few measures available to enforce laws, oaths sworn over relics were rarely broken.
3. The Shift Northwards
1. Unease between the eastern and western halves of Christendom combined with the explosion of Islam into the Levant and the North African coast permanently fractured the classical unity of the Mediterranean in the 7^th c.
2. Roman political authority had always stopped short of the lands north of the Danube or east of the Rhine and never made it to Ireland. With Christianity this was not the case.
3. Though most of the invading tribes converted to Arianism, the Franks under Clovis were the first to become Catholic in about 496. Patrick’s efforts in Ireland led to the conversion of that nation and its sending of missionaries throughout northern Europe. The conversion of many Germanic tribes in the 6^th to the 8^th centuries that had never been a part of the Roman Empire was part of a joint effort by the Franks and the papacy. When the Carolingians started to form large state structures in the west again in the 8^th c. they made their capital at Arles in northern France rather than at Rome.

An Argument for Conversion

Our source is Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People 2.13. Bede (c. 673 – 735) was an Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar who composed our principle source for the early English church. He chronicled the missions sent by Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540 – 604) that led to the conversion of England. In 625 the missionary Paulinus came to King Edwin of Northumbria to preach the gospel. In 627 Edwin assembled his council to consider Christianity and Bede records the following speech by an unnamed councilor.

“Your majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thegns and councilors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly through one door of the hall and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintery world from which he came. Even so, man on earth appears for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.”