Table Of ContentThe Medieval Church
The Medieval Church: A Brief History argues for the pervasiveness of the Church
in every aspect of life in medieval Europe. It shows how the institution of the
Church attempted to control the lives and behaviour of medieval people, for
example, through canon law, while at the same time being influenced by popular
movements like the friars and heresy.
This fully updated and illustrated second edition offers a new introductory
chapter on ‘the basics of Christianity’, for students who might be unfamiliar with
this territory. The book now has new material on some of the key individuals in
Church history – Benedict of Nursia, Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux
and Francis of Assisi – as well as a more comprehensive study throughout of the
role of women in the medieval Church.
Lynch and Adamo seek to explain the history of the Church as an institution, and
to explore its all-pervasive role in medieval life. In the course of the thousand
years covered in this book, we see the members and leaders of the western Church
struggle with questions that are still relevant today: What is the nature of God?
How does a Church keep beliefs from becoming diluted in a diverse society?
What role should the state play in religion?
The book is now accompanied by a website (www.routledge.com/cw/lynch) with
textual, visual and musical primary sources making it a fantastic resource for
students of medieval history.
Joseph H. Lynch earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1971. He was the
Joe & Elizabeth Engle Chair in the History of Christianity at The Ohio State
University, where he taught from 1976 until 2008. Throughout his career, he
earned many teaching awards, held numerous distinguished fellowships, and
authored several books on Church history.
Phillip C. Adamo studied medieval history under Joseph Lynch at The Ohio
State University. He earned his Ph.D. in 2000. Adamo is currently Associate
Professor of History and Director of Medieval Studies at Augsburg College in
Minneapolis. In 2006, he was awarded Augsburg’s Teaching Award for
Outstanding Contributions to Teaching and Learning.
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The Medieval Church
A Brief History
2nd Edition
Joseph H. Lynch
Phillip C. Adamo
Second edition published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 Joseph H. Lynch and Phillip C. Adamo
The rights of Joseph H. Lynch and Phillip C. Adamo to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted by
them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Longman 1992
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-415-73685-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-582-77298-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73522-1 (ebk)
Typeset in 11/13pt Legacy Serif ITC Std
by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Contents
List of figures vi
List of maps vii
Preface to the first edition viii
Preface to the second edition xii
Publisher’s acknowledgements xiv
Glossary xv
Chapter 1: The basics of Christianity 1
Chapter 2: Ancient Christianity 12
Chapter 3: Beginnings of the medieval church 32
Chapter 4: The conversion of the west (350–700) 52
Chapter 5: The Papal-Frankish Alliance 72
Chapter 6: The church in the Carolingian Empire 85
Chapter 7: The Carolingian Renaissance 105
Chapter 8: The collapse of the Carolingian world 118
Chapter 9: The church in the year 1000 137
Chapter 10: The eleventh-century reforms 156
Chapter 11: The rise of Christendom 171
Chapter 12: The age of the papacy 189
Chapter 13: The New Testament revival 205
Chapter 14: Monastic life in the twelfth century 219
Chapter 15: The heretics 241
Chapter 16: The friars 255
Chapter 17: The schools 267
Chapter 18: The sacramental life 284
Chapter 19: Crisis and calamity 308
Chapter 20: The church in the fifteenth century 329
Chapter 21: Epilogue 347
Index 352
List of figures
1 Eve and Mary 8
2 Constantine at Nicaea 23
3 Pope Gregory I, the Great 38
4 Baptism of Clovis 60
5 Martyrdom of Boniface 76
6 Charlemagne with Popes Gelasius and Gregory 96
7 Charlemagne and Alcuin 109
8 Viking animal-head post 121
9 Coronation of Otto III 142
10 Encounter at Canossa 163
11 The Psalter Map 178
12 The pope promulgating the law 190
13 Suffering Christ 210
14 Bernard of Clairvaux preaching 226
15 Expulsion of the Albigensian heretics 251
16 Saint Francis of Assisi 257
17 A medieval classroom 281
18 The seven sacraments 285
19 The dance of death 312
20 Jan Hus 337
List of maps
1 Germanic kingdoms, c.534 39
2 Christianity and paganism in western Europe, c.350–750 75
3 The empire of Charlemagne, 768–814 89
4 The routes of the First Crusade 181
5 Important monasteries of medieval Europe 222
6 The mendicants 264
7 The universities of medieval Europe 276
8 The Papal Schism, 1378–1417 326
Preface to the first edition
Christianity is a religion in which historical events (or what are believed to be
historical events) are important. One source of that conviction was the Old
Testament, which told of God’s dealings with humanity and with his chosen
people, the Jews. A second source was the deeply held conviction, which
Catholic Christians defended against Gnostic Christians, that Jesus had
really been born of a woman, had really lived as a human being, had really
died on a cross and had really risen from the dead. From the first generation,
Christians understood themselves in a historical way. The presentation of
Jesus’s life and teachings was not in philosophical treatises (as it might well
have been) but in narratives – the gospels – that included place, time, circum-
stances and other elements of history. The history of the movement that
claimed Jesus as its founder – church history proper – was already being
written in the late first century with Luke’s Acts of the Apostles. Luke had no
immediate successors. No church writer in the second or third century com-
posed a history in the strict sense of that term, but many of them recorded
historical details, including the successions of bishops, the disputes within
the group over belief, the spread of their religion and the persecutions by
the Roman authorities. Church history received its first full expression in the
Ecclesiastical History of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (c.260–339), who was
aware that he was a pioneer in his effort to record the historical growth of the
church.1
Eusebius had several successors in the fourth and fifth centuries, including
Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret and Evagrius, all of whom wrote in Greek.2
Between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries church histories of many kinds
– those of monasteries, bishoprics, the papacy, religious orders – proliferated.
Those historians did not think of themselves as living in what we classify as
‘the Middle Ages’. Usually, they thought they lived in the sixth and final age
of human history, which was connected by God’s plan to earlier ages and was
moving more or less rapidly toward the end of time.3
It was in the fifteenth century, when Renaissance humanists divided
European history into three parts – ancient, middle and modern – that a
history of the church in its middle or medieval age (media aetas) could be con-
ceptualised. The humanists’ notion of a middle age was generally a negative
Preface to the first edition ix
one. They saw the media aetas as a period of darkness and barbarism separat-
ing them from their beloved Rome and Greece. The church of that barbaric
age shared, in their view, in the crudeness and corruption of the times. The
debate over the character of the church in the middle period grew hotter
during the sixteenth century as Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans
and others quarrelled about the nature of the church and used historical
arguments to support their respective views.
The study of the medieval church was born in the sixteenth century and
has been an enterprise of huge proportions and long duration. It has always
been and continues to be a multilingual pursuit: the main language of
intellectual life and religion in the medieval west was Latin and that of the
Christian east was Greek. Modern scholarship of high quality is produced in
virtually every European language and some non-European languages as well.
In an annual bibliography published by the Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, there
has been an average of 7,524 entries for the last five years, about 40 per cent
of which touch on the medieval church.
In view of the mountains of sources and modern scholarship, it may be
thought presumptuous to write a history of the medieval church in a single
medium-sized volume. The chief justification I can offer is that I have experi-
enced the need for such a work in my own teaching. Also, I am often asked by
interested people for something both reliable and manageable to read on the
medieval church. This book is intended to be an introduction for beginners
and, to be frank, beginners with neither Latin nor extensive knowledge of
modern foreign languages. With considerable regret, I have purposely restricted
footnotes and suggested reading almost entirely to works in English, since I
wanted to provide interested students with sources and secondary works that
they could read with profit. In almost every instance, I chose to cite works that
would be useful to a beginner who wished to pursue a particular topic. If
students were to read what I included in the ‘Suggested Reading’ and in the
notes, they would learn a great deal about the medieval church. Some readers
will miss a more extensive treatment of eastern Christianity or of important
historical figures. I understand their view, but I had to be selective in my
choice of topics. I have concentrated on the western church and I have empha-
sised ideas and trends over personalities.
For readers who want different treatments of the history of the medieval
church, there is no shortage of choices in all sorts of formats and approaches.
I shall suggest only a few. Williston Walker, Richard Norris, David W. Lotz and
Robert T. Handy, A History of the Christian Church, 4th edn (New York, 1985),
cover the entire history of the church in about 750 densely printed pages, of
which about 200 pages cover the Middle Ages. Generations of students have
profited from Margaret Deanesly’s The Medieval Church, 590–1500, originally
published in 1925 and reissued in a ninth edition, reprinted with corrections
