John Julius Norwich is one of those great writers of wonderful histories. I've read a number of his books and thank David Brewer for recommending this one to me. In his introduction, the author states that his "task has been simply to look at what is perhaps the most astonishing social, political, and spiritual institution ever created and to give as honest, as objective, and as accurate an account of it as I possibly can." There is little actual history to go on in the early centuries. For instance, if Peter was a rock upon which to build a church, there's no evidence of anything of the sort. The first real mover and shaker in the church was Constantine the Great who made Christianity official in the early 4th century. A century and a half later, by the time of Leo the Great, all temporal power had passed east. A vandalized Rome had but the Papacy left. Another century on, Gregory the Great was able to consolidate temporal and spiritual, affording the Church the opportunity to survive and prosper as the principal institution in the diminished west.
Early in the 7th century, Christianity was sundered. "The lands which had seen the origins of Christianity were all lost, never to be properly recovered. The eastern empire was hideously maimed. Perhaps, ..it was Mohammed who made Charlemagne possible." Charles Martel stopped the Arab invasion at Tours in France in 732. It would take another 7 centuries before they were evicted from Spain. The crowning, as Emperor, of Charlemagne by Leo III on Christmas day in 800 is one of the most significant events in European history. The west once again had an Emperor - and he had been crowned by the Pope. Soon thereafter, Charles's empire withered, but the Papacy prospered. By the turn of the millennium, a sequence of popes in loose partnership with the Holy Roman Emperors ( neither holy nor Roman, per Voltaire) expanded Christianity to Hungary, Poland and northern Germany. Unfortunately for a united Christendom, the east and west sanctioned the final Great Schism in 1054. Yet in the west, the Papacy was supreme in matters temporal and spiritual. In 1095, Urban II called for the Papacy's great foreign policy adventure in the middle East, the chance to save the Holy Lands from the infidel Saracens - the First Crusade. "On July 15, 1099, amid scenes of hideous carnage, the soldiers of Christ battered their way into Jerusalem, where they slaughtered all the Muslims in the city and burned all the Jews alive in the main synagogue." Thus, began Europe's two century dalliance in the Middle East.
The early centuries of the millennium were dominated by a test of wills, the interminable battle for titular control of Europe between the popes and the emperors. Endlessly, the German emperors would travel to Italy to supplicate themselves, to conquer, to dominate and select popes. The source of much of the conflict was investiture: the right to appoint bishops and abbots. This struggle was over power and wealth and would manifest itself in different places for a very long time. It led to the seven decade Avignon papacy in the 14th century. The next century brought the Renaissance, the loss of Constantinople, the Sistine Chapel, the Spanish Inquisition and the division of the New World between Spain and Portugal. The Reformation led by Martin Luther in 1517 further diminished the world of Roman Catholicism and led to a century and-a-half of war, now with religion as a disruptive cause. The Enlightenment opened the Church up to significant challenges, and it was followed by the severe anti-clericalism of the French Revolution and Napoleon's attempts to end the Papal States.
The Pope's role as temporal ruler was finally ended in 1871, hopefully putting behind the Holy See its history of war, dynastic intrigue, deception and conduct wholly unbecoming to its stated mission as Christ's vicar on earth. The 20th century opened and closed with two superb modern Popes. Leo XIII tried to find and articulate a role for the Church as a standard bearer for the common man worn out by the industrial revolution, and John Paul II, the first Polish pontiff, stood firm in the battle against communism.
All in all, this is a good read. I found it somewhat surprising that certain events of consequence, such as the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War or the Turks reaching the gates of Vienna are not mentioned as part of the background to this history. But, perhaps with hundreds of popes and endless fighting in Italy, there is not room for too much of the bigger picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment