Gregory the Great
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Two
The Carolingian Epoch
Chapter I
The Church
2. The Monks and the Papacy
I really hoped to skip this section, alas! I do need to summarize the contents. This section covers the rise of the Papacy under Gregory the Great (590-604) who, apparently,
p62...was concerned... with drawing the moral consequences from the dogmas, with organizing the Christian life in respect of its aim -- in respect of "last things" which were summed up in the terrifying dilemma of Heaven and Hell. His vision... was fixed upon the Beyond, and the pictures which he drew of the life to come were enormously effective in helping to give medieval religiosity that gloomy and agonized cast, that preoccupation with terror, that obsession with eternal torments, which found their immortal expression in the "Divine Comedy." The Church being the instrument of eternal salvation, its power over men's souls must be augmented in order that they might be saved from the abyss. And here, in Gregory, as in other great mystics -- in St. Bernard, for example, and Loyola -- that practical genius revealed itself, which, in order to attain the supraterrestrial end that it had proposed to itself, excelled in organizing the affairs of the pressing world which it held in disdain... [His letters] show him at work restoring the patrimony of St. Peter -- that is, the enormous domains of the Roman Church -- scattered all over Italy and the coast of Illyria and Sicily... In a few years the task... was completed. The Papacy found itself in possession of a regular income and abundant resources. It had become the first financial power of its time.
p63 ...He perceived very clearly what an ascendancy the Papacy would acquire from those monasteries which were scattered all over Europe by constituting itself their protector...
p64 It was... to the monks directed and organized by him that Gregory confided the great achievement of his pontificate, the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxons... [596-655]
...
p65 The conversion of England marks a decisive stage in the history of the Papacy. The direct foundation of the Pope, the Anglo-Saxon Church, was subject from the beginning to the immediate control and direction of Rome. It was in no sense a national Church; it was apostolic in the full meaning of the term. And the trans-Rhenian Church which it proceeded to organize was given the same character. It is easy to understand what additional strength and glory the prestige and authority of the Papacy won thereby. While in Rome itself the Popes were still regarded by the Emperor of Byzantium and Exarchs of Ravenna as Patriarchs of the Empire, and were still obliged to apply to them for the ratification of their election, the new Christians of the North revered in the Popes the Vicars of Christ, the representatives of God on earth. Thus the Papacy had made a position for itself which was henceforth incompatible with the state of subordination to the Emperor in which it had hitherto existed. Sooner or later it would break the traditional tie between itself and the Emperor, which... was merely a burden, a humiliation and an embarrassment...
In the Byzantine milieu, torn by theological passion, a new heresy had just emerged: Iconoclasm. The Emperor Leo III not only proposed it (726), but attempted to force it on Rome. This was too much: the Pope refused to submit himself to the will of a master who expected to find him as complaisant as the Patriarchs of Constantinople or Antioch... [Gregory II (715-731) needs a protector] There was only one such man and he himself was seeking an ally capable of legitimately conveying the crown to him: the Mayor of the palace of the Merovingian kings.
It's interesting to look forward almost a thousand years to the great division of the Church, which seems to have been on the lines just described. Protestantism was strongest in the areas that were originally most loyal to the Papacy. Coincidence? A thousand years is a very long time, after all. Or did this history make the Church in those areas particularly susceptible to the later failings in Rome.
And how did the Protestant view of the final things differ from the Catholic view? Was this anti-Creation attitude stronger than in Latin Europe? Did the people change in these areas colonized by the Papacy or did the Church change and the people restored the focus of Gregory? I have no idea. And Pirenne may not have gotten far enough into this history (before he was set free by the end of the Great War) to cover this... so I may be in for the long haul.
Pirenne's tone, while covering Christianity, is as inoffensive (to me) as Gibbon's, though he lacks the witty footnotes. Perhaps they would have come with a second draft. I would love to know if Pirenne had read Dostoevsky. It seems he would have, he might even have read him in Russian while learning the language during the war. It isn't necessary, of course. He could simply be covering the same ground Ivan covered in the early meeting with Father Zosima because these are obvious Christian -- and Russian Orthodox vs Roman -- topics. And how could you cover Medieval Europe without covering this Church history.
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