The Church in crisis
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Four
The War of Investitures and the Crusades
Chapter I
The Church
A lot here about the fall of the Papacy as it became the plaything of Italian noble families. But in other ways the Church was doing well,
p167 ...The influence of the abbeys was increased by the fact that many of the rural churches belonged to them, or were dependent upon them; and the monks officiated in them. The contemporary ideal of sanctity was the monastic ideal; the renunciation of worldly joys in order to save one's soul; the withdrawal from social activities, and even from all other virtues than those of renunciation, humility, and chastity. And it was to this ideal that the Church owed its renaissance: not to the bishops, whether they were semi-feudal as in France, or faithful to the Carolingian tradition, as in Germany. Their learning made no impression on this uncultivated public. The people wanted saints and workers of miracles.
p168 The feudal nobles, even more than the people, regarded the bishops as their enemies. They pillaged the monasteries, but they respected them...
We can judge of their feelings by the encouragement which they accorded to asceticism whenever this made itself conspicuous... Cluny... [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluny and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluniac_Reforms] founded in 910 by Duke Guillaume d'Auvergne... played a part whose importance might be compared with that of the Jesuits in the 16th century...The point at issue was the orientation of religious thought and feeling. I think we may say that the reform of Cluny monasticism set its stamp upon Western Christianity for centuries to come... For them [the Clunians] the world was the antechamber to Eternity. Everything had to be sacrificed to supra-terrestrial ends. The Salvation of the soul was everything, and it could be effected only by the Church; and the Church, in order to fulfill it's mission, must be absolutely innocent of temporal interests. Here there was no question of the alliance of Church and State, but only of the complete subordination, in the spiritual domain, of man and society to the Church, the intermediary between man and God... The priest belonged to the Church and the Church alone. He could have no seigneur, just as he could have no family. The marriage of priests, tolerated in practice, was an abomination which must disappear... In the domain of piety it [the tendency of Cluny] made for asceticism: in the political domain, for the complete liberty of the Church, and the breaking of ties that bound it to civil society...
p169 ...From the middle of the 10th century the reform spread through the whole of France, and into Italy, Flanders, and Lotharingia -- whence, at the beginning of the 11th century, it overflowed into Germany...
p170 The Church was regarded as a purely superhuman institution. Men lived in an atmosphere of wonder; miracles were matters of everyday experience. Every epidemic gave rise to miracles... The "peace of God" which interrupted the private wars on the occasion of the great annual feasts was one of the results of the extraordinary influence which the Church exerted over men's thoughts and feelings. But the riots which broke out in the 11th century to mark the popular disapproval of married priests were also the direct result of this influence...
p171 The power of the movement has left its traces to this day. It was then that the first great churches were built... The 11th century was an extraordinary period of church-building...
...A serf could not enter the nobility, but he could enter the Church. He had only to go to school and learn Latin...
In short, it was in the 10th and 11th centuries that the Church finally conquered the privileged situation that it retained until the end of the ancien regime...
p172 ...the Church, being the necessary medium of salvation, on concerning itself exclusively with the eschatological motives, obtained an ascendancy over men's souls which it had never before enjoyed... Lastly, its prestige brought it enormous wealth, in land, in alms, in privileges.
The whole movement evolved outside Rome and apart form the papacy. But it was bound to reach Rome...
Free Kool-aid
This is probably the best (or worst) time to insert this bit of fiction I've been sitting on.
(Cult representative at table on Market Street with large jug and paper cups.)
"Drink our Kool-aid! Free Kool-aid! Have faith in our Kool-aid!"
(Large, wordy, sign behind table.)
"We are still hashing out the details of what our God is all about, but be assured our religion will be a doozy. What we can tell you is that if you drink our Kool-aid you won't go to Hell -- Hell is exactly like an endless morning commute to a job you hate, where you are stuck in looping detours while all the people you hate the most pass you (honking and waving) in a nearly empty HOV lane."
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