Williams (eds.)
Chapter 4: The Ministry in the Middle Ages, by Roland H. Bainton
[Roland H. Bainton joined the faculty of the Yale Divinity School in 1920 and remained there until his retirement as Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History in 1962. He was author of thirty-two books, including Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, The Church of Our Fathers, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, Early Christianity, and The Medieval Church.]
No more compact summary of the results of the previous chapter is to be found in the contemporary literature than Chrysostom's tract On the Priesthood1 from which some quotations already have been given. It was written to justify the decision to remain a monk rather than to undertake the more onerous tasks of a parish minister. What a reversal of values comes here to light! At first monasticism was deemed the most rugged form of the Christian life, the very successor to martyrdom.
Now the priesthood had come to be regarded as more arduous and monasticism was defended as the safest way to heaven, for though here one might not rise so high, neither could one fall so low. Chrysostom proceeds in his tract to enumerate the many features of the stupendous office.
The priest first of all, said he, has sacramental functions. He stands;
before the altar bringing down not fire from heaven but the Holy Spirit.
At his hands the Lord is again sacrificed upon the altar and the people empurpled with that precious blood. Only by eating of the flesh of the Lord and drinking of his blood can man escape the fires of hell. How tremendous then is the office of the priest through whose hands alone this saving rite can be administered! Vastly greater is he than an earthly parent who generates only unto earthly life, whereas the priest
regenerates unto life eternal. To him has been given an authority exceeding that of angels and archangels.
He has likewise a disciplinary function, for he must excommunicate the unworthy, and whatsoever he shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. He is to serve likewise as a judge, and much of his time will be consumed in adjudicating the disputes of his flock. He is also an
administrator of the property of the Church which is to be used for the entertainment of strangers and the care of the sick.
He is the instructor of his people through the pulpit; a skilled theologian, he must be able to refute the heretics and the pagans. As a preacher he will have to compete with tragedies and musical entertainments. He has a pastoral function and must be able to mingle with men in all walks of life. If he does not make a round of visits every day, unspeakable
offense will ensue. He must distribute his smiles with utter impartiality and not beam inordinately upon anyone in particular. The virgins are under his care, and he must endeavor to confine them to their homes, save for inexorable necessity. The widows will try his patience, since they are garrulous and querulous. The married women he must visit when sick, comfort when sorrowful and reprove when idle, and in all of this scrupulously guard himself, recognizing that chaste women may be even more upsetting than the wanton.
Thus far Chrysostom. His picture is comprehensive and illuminating. It leaves out much which was to accrue to the priesthood in a later time.
The distinction between the clergy and the laity is implied but is not spelled out. Already it had been made clear. Although Constantine as a
layman was accorded a large share in the calling and direction of councils, yet when his son Constantius undertook to enforce decisions contrary to Nicene orthodoxy, he was roundly reproved by Bishop Hosius on the ground that emperors may not burn incense.2 And the Emperor Theodosius was twice reproved by Ambrose, once when after the massacre of Thessalonica he approached the church; secondly when, already absolved for the bloodshed, he ventured to go beyond the
chancel and take his place among the priests.3 Constantine had
conferred special immunities upon the clergy, subsequently curtailed when they precipitated too great a rush for holy orders.4 Still the clergy remained a caste.
Their functions and deportment differed from those of the laity. Not only the monk but also the minister had a code. Priests should not meddle in business and if they did, were to be shunned as the plague.5 The bishop of course was responsible as an agent for the goods of the Church and the Church, even before Constantine, held property as a corporation. The goods were not vested in the bishop personally-and for himself he must abstain from all private commercial transactions. Again he must not be a magistrate, and when Paul of Samosata, in the late third century, became a Ducenarius of Zenobia of Palmyra the very pronunciation of his title evoked a shiver of disapprobation.6 The objection arose largely from the fear that the magistrate might have' to pass sentence of death or torture. Consequently, to deter the mob from making him a bishop, Ambrose, at that time a Pretorian prefect, held an impromptu court and passed a severe sentence to show that one who so acted according to the law was disqualified for the service of the
gospel.7 The throng as a matter of fact was not deterred, and that in itself was a step toward the Middle Ages. Above all, the minister should never be a soldier. Ambrose was quite clear on that score, although he did not condemn soldiers and even exhorted the emperor to a campaign and almost a crusade against the Arian barbarians.8 The minister then should not be a merchant, a magistrate, or a militiaman.
The monk, whose role appeared to Chrysostom relatively easier, was, however, acquiring enlarged functions which blurred the differentiation.
By St. Jerome scholarship and monasticism were combined and the role of the Benedictines was thus foreshadowed. Likewise after the sack of Rome, when refugees streamed into the East, Jerome's monastery became a hostel. He tells us also of high-born Roman matrons, who having embraced the religious life, dedicated themselves to ministering in hospitals to sufferers from the most loathsome diseases.9 The cell had
thus become expanded to encompass the study, the hostel, and the hospital.
The Church throughout the Empire had acquired a high degree of universality and centralization which served as a model to be surpassed in the high Middle Ages, but only after a long period of obscuration.
The bishop of Rome enjoyed a certain presidency of love. His church was regarded as the purest custodian of the primitive tradition because founded by the two pillar apostles, Peter and Paul. The bishop of Rome by the middle of the fourth century was deemed to have been the
successor of Peter, not simply as the founder but as himself the first bishop of Rome. His successor in the see wielded the power of the keys to him committed. Actually the early ecumenical councils were not summoned by the bishops of Rome nor did they attend. At the same time Rome exerted a preponderant influence upon their decisions and when the orthodox were intimidated or persecuted they looked to Rome as their protector and asylum.
After the barbarian invasions in the West great changes ensued. The traditional functions of the priest described by Chrysostom all continued but the once forbidden tasks also were added to his portfolio. In
consequence, although in a formal way the line between the laity and the clergy was accentuated, in function the two more nearly
approximated each other, doubly so because the laity assumed a larger role in the founding, supplying, and reforming of churches. The monks likewise extended their functions when many became priests. In the meantime, priests became celibate and thus the regular and secular clergy were less to be distinguished. The term "regular" was applied to the monastics because they followed the regula or rule, the term
"secular" to the parish clergy because they served in saeculo, in the world. The word had not yet acquired the connotation of secular in the sense of worldly.
These great changes were occasioned by a vast alteration in the social structure as a result of the barbarian inroads.10 Centralization and public order broke down. The invasions menaced goods and life. After the main incursions subsided sporadic raids of pillaging Norsemen
continued and even major thrusts from the Danes in the West and the Magyars in the East. When the barbarian kingdoms became established they warred upon one another and within them barons preyed upon barons. Security had to be sought on some walled promontory in the company of bellowing and offensive herds. The disorders interfered
with commerce. A further and even more serious setback was occasioned by the Mohammedan invasion commencing in the sixth century which made of the Mediterranean an Islamic sea.11 The decline of commerce meant also that there was a decline of cities and a
reversion to an agricultural economy with exchange in kind rather than in coin.
The invaders were either Arian Christians or pagans, in neither case orthodox subscribers to the Nicene creed. This meant that they did not accept the leadership of Peter's successors. The Arians had no
centralizing focus comparable to Rome and their missionaries had attached themselves in the north to the tribes. When these were
converted to the Nicene faith they still retained or tended to retain the decentralized organization. An assertion of authority on the part of the Roman church was all the more difficult because the city of Rome geographically was no longer at the ccnter of the Christian world, as in the days when the extremities were Spain and Syria. After the
Mediterranean was lost to Islam, Rome came to be on the periphery of the new world of the West. The center was at Metz in Germany and the other extremity at Hadrian's wall in Scotland.
The task of converting and Christianizing the northern peoples was stupendous in view of the disorder, hampered communication, and nonviable currency. New methods were imperative, and new functions, imperceptibly at first but inevitably, accrued to the Church and to the clergy. Rome could commission missionaries to the North but thereafter they were on their own. No missionary boards could finance them with bank drafts or postal money orders. They would have to be self-
sustaining and there was only one way by which they could support themselves in a rural society and that was on the land. They acquired ground already domesticated or themselves undertook to fell the forests or drain the swamps. No agency of the Church was so well adapted to this task as the monastery and it can be no accident that whereas Christianity went into Ireland under episcopal auspices, when the curtain rises for the second scene, the form disclosed is monastic.
Groups of monks could form a community and establish a self-sufficient life with their own fields, vineyards, granaries, fish ponds, rabbitries, and orchards. As late as the high Middle Ages the Cistercians
profoundly affected the economic life of Europe by their projects of reclamation. Waters were gathered behind dikes into ponds stocked with fish, bogs were transformed into "golden meadows," greenhouses
introduced new plantings, and forests were discriminately cut with an
eye to conservation.12
In all of this one sees much that was new in the functions of the clergy.
Chrysostom had not enumerated among the ministerial cares the maintenance of a suitable temperature in a greenhouse. The three
activities which the Early Church had forbidden to the clergy came to be appropriated. The first was business. To be sure, in the first centuries the bishop was the administrator of the Church's goods but in the Middle Ages he was more, and the Church's business was so enlarged, so
intricate, and so geared into all of the property and commercial activities that the difference at this point between the cleric and the lay was no more than that the former was more successful.
The bishop of Rome became a great business administrator. In the days of Gregory I (590-604) vast possessions not overrun by the Lombards were still in the hands of the Church, timber and grain lands in Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria, and northern Italy. We find the bishop of Rome
sending the churches lumber and lead, supplying the populace of Rome with grain, panem if not circensem, and supporting a great concourse of nuns presumably refugees in the city. In order to manage these huge estates an imposing bureaucracy had been developed with a whole hierarchy of managers, rectores patrimonii.13 The letters of Gregory afford a striking contrast to those of Augustine who was concerned with the cure of souls rather than with the care of estates. The epistles of Gregory read like the correspondence of a dean. Every letter renders a decision.
To the north in Gaul and later in Germany the secular clergy came in surprisingly short order to be endowed with fantastic estates, as much as one-third or one-half of the land in the kingdom. Frequent
expropriations by rulers like Charles Martel were speedily recouped by fresh donations. These gifts were now vested not in the Church as a corporation but personally in the bishop or the abbot.14 Of course, he still thought of himself as acting for the Church. In any case, immense amounts of his time would have to be devoted to oversight and
collection.
The fate of the monasteries was not different. The Benedictines began with a regime of manual labor for each of the brothers, but when lands were given with the laborers thrown in the monks did not drive them off in order to do the work themselves but accepted the serfs with the soil.
The monk then became a squire or, if his tastes so dictated, perchance a
scholar with a lily hand. In the high Middle Ages, when the new monastic orders produced wine, wool, and grain beyond their needs, they began to dispose of the surplus in the channels of trade, outfitted convoys on the roads, and flotillas on the rivers. Altogether they were the most enterprising businessmen of their day.15
Functions of government devolved upon churchmen. There was no conspiracy for power, simply the discharge of a job to be done. In Italy the popes reluctantly took over the role of the Caesars. By reason of the invasions any control in Italy, even in the areas still free of the invaders, was but tenuous when exercised from Constantinople or even Ravenna.
Gregory I, precisely because of his immense resources, found himself doing what formerly government had undertaken. The debilitating practice of feeding the Roman populace went back to the days when rival contestants for office distributed largesses of food to the public. In the end the Empire was feeding the citizens. When then the sovereign at Constantinople could no longer function in this way, the Church of Rome wafted the wheat from the plains of Africa. If Roman citizens were captured by the barbarians who had the gold for their ransom if not the bishop of Rome? And if he thus dealt with the barbarians, how
inevitable that he should make agreements and even treaties with their rulers? Little wonder that Pippin, the king of the Franks in 754,
recognized the actual conditions when he conferred upon the pope the keys of ten cities that over them he might exercise civil rule. This date is commonly taken to mark the beginning of the estates of the Church Over which the pope was temporal lord until 1870. His authority was restored in 1929 over the diminished area of Vatican City.
In the north churchmen likewise assumed functions of government.
Since the clergy were the only literate class the kings of the Franks drafted them as civil servants. The precedent was thereby laid for many a subsequent figure who combined the role of a high ecclesiastic and a prime minister or chancellor of the realm, men like Sully, Ximenes, Woolsey, and Richelieu. The amazement of Henry II can well be
divined when his favorite Thomas à Becket refused to conform. Bishops and abbots became rulers in their own domains when the feudal system became established and taxes, military levies, and the administration of justice devolved upon the holders of land. So long as churchmen held vast estates they could not escape obedience and service to their overlords nor responsibilities and protection for the underlings. They had become prince-bishops and prince-abbots.
Under such circumstances they could scarcely obviate involvement in war. In the days of the invasions even abbots as well as bishops donned armor over their cassocks to repel raiders. Monasteries were begirt with walls. Sometimes even nuns entered the fray and in the conflict of baron with baron the churchman behaved like his neighbor. In the days of Henry II in Germany, for example, a robber baron so devastated the archdiocese of Treves that the archbishop fled. The Emperor thereupon selected a hardfisted young noble, raced him through the grades of the hierarchy until he was made the archbishop of Treves. He promptly distributed the goods of the Church to knights who formed a small standing army and repulsed the marauder.16
Such behavior at least prior to the year 1000 was looked upon as a defection from the Christian ideal. The view that the soldier could himself be esteemed as a servant of the Church, that the knight should be inducted with a religious ceremony and that churchmen might even participate in conflict with the sword as well as with the cross, was the outcome of a great peace crusade. In the first half of the eleventh century churchmen sponsored the Truce of God and the Peace of God whereby the time for active hostilities was so restricted that warfare became a summer sport and the number of combatants so reduced as to make of it an aristocratic pastime. This was the intent, but many barons took the oath and did not keep it. Then churchmen raised a disciplinary army of enforcement, a peace militia. Here was the notion of the holy war, under the auspices of the Church in order to suppress war. This concept was basic for the Crusades. Urban II began his famous exordium with a plea for peace. "Let Christians," he urged, "stop shearing each other and go against the common enemy of the faith!"
And all the assembly shouted, "Dieu le veult!" 17
The prohibition of clerical participation broke down. An example is given in the case of a priest in the Frankish army on the first crusade. At Constantinople quarrels with the Greeks led to a skirmish between vessels in the Bosphorus. Anna, the daughter of the Greek emperor, relates with horror that a priest from the bow of his ship hurled missiles against her father's admiral till even stones were exhausted. When the Frankish vessel was captured this priest, severely wounded, embraced the opposing commander saying that with better weapons he would have won, then expired and went to hell, according to Anna, because as a priest he had taken weapons.18 The West, however, did not condemn him. Even before the crusade Leo X led his forces against the Normans.
The aversion even of monasticism to war collapsed with the founding of