The Church And The World The Church Created. Augustine To Aquinas

478 Pages·2009·29.75 MB·English

by  Philip Hughes

A History of the Church
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A History
of the Church
Philip Hughes
Volume two
The Church and the World
the Church Created
Sheed and Ward
London
Copyright © 1935 and 1948 by Philip Hughes. First published 1935,
revised edition 1948. This edition 1979, third impression 1993.
ISBN 0 7220 7982 6. All rights reserved. Nihil obstat Edward Mahoney
STD, Censor. Imprimatur E. Morrogh Bernard, Vicar General,
Westminster, 21 October 1947. Printed and bound in Great Britain for
Sheed & Ward Ltd, 14 Coopers Row, London EC3N 2BH by Biddies Ltd,
Guildford and King's Lynn.
INTRODUCTION
THE WORLD THE CHURCH CREATED
When, several years ago now, the idea of writing an intro-
ductory survey of the history of the Church first came to me,
and the problem arose how to order the vast detail, the triple
division of The Church and the World in which the Church was
founded, The Church and the World the Church created, The Church
and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World, seemed to
offer a formula that was not only simple but substantially true.
It is only as such a formula, a working hypothesis, that it is
retained; and I should like to say this with especial reference to
this second volume of the series. For the book is not written to
prove any such thesis as that Medieval Civilisation had the
Catholic Church for its sole creator: it is not indeed written to
prove any thesis at all. But it still seems to me—after the labour
of re-examination which the writing of this book has entailed—
that the events which fill the eight or nine centuries separating
St. Augustine from St. Thomas Aquinas, warrant the book's sub-
title. It is, I submit, substantially true to call the world that is
the sum of those facts the world the Church created, and I should
like briefly to say why I think so.
The Church was born into a world society in whose organisation
it had no share. The principles on which that society or civilisation
was organised—theories of man's nature, his origin and destiny;
theories of man's relation to the world and to his fellows; theories
of moral values—in no way derived from the Church, to which
in time that civilisation was precedent. From its first moment of
corporate life, however, the Church put forth new principles on
all these fundamental matters. But before, in the West at least,
those principles had begun to command the general assent, the
old political body began to disintegrate and to pass under the
control either of pagans of a more primitive culture or else of
heretics, of minds imperfectly Christianised. An old world was
ending, a new world in process of formation upon its ruins. In
that transition there is one all-present, unceasingly active insti-
tution, which continuously exercises an influence upon all those
who, consciously or unconsciously, are guiding mankind through
the transition, upon the generals and their advisers, upon the
administrators, the shapers of laws, the new barbarian kings—
even when these are heretics. That institution is the hierarchically
organised Catholic Church.
V
VI INTRODUCTION
What has this institution to offer ? What is the sphere of its real
influence ? In the first place it maintains definite theories about
man's nature, origin and destiny; about his relations to the world,
to other men and to God; and about God, Catholicism has a
definite coherent body of doctrine. By the Catholic Church is
here meant first of all the corps of bishops throughout the empire,
united to each other by a common faith and by their common
subordination to, and recognition of the primacy of, the Bishop
of Rome. It is through the leading churchmen that Catholicism
produces its effect.
But of more consequence than the men, or than the organisa-
tion, is that for the sake of which the organisation exists, namely
the divinely revealed message taught through the organisation and,
thereby, safeguarded from error. This it is which primarily
matters: the Catholic Church supplying the new world, as it
forms, with its fundamental principles, with a revealed doctrine
taught without chance of error, with a whole system of religious
rites which, relating ordinary life to the supernatural, can bring
it to its own perfection.
This is the Church's gift of itself. The Church does not, how-
ever, do this only. Incidentally, it provides the disintegratin
world with the helpful spectacle of its own unity; a unity whic
survives all the shocks of political disaster and social revolution;
a unity which is a constant and most fruitful reminder of what
once has been and may yet be again. It provides that world with
a corps of administrators, and with a technique of administration,
in which is embodied the tradition of a fast disappearing culture.
Here the Church is a powerful agent in the preservation of elements
of a civilisation that is older than herself. In the new civilisation
now forming there will, indeed, be elements that are not of the
Church's fashioning, but it is not without importance that only
through the Church are very many of those elements preserved.
The Catholic episcopate, which played so influential a part in
that transformation of the very bases of society, was not, of course,
an organ devised in, or for, that transitional time. But the increas-
ing chaos of life did have its share in the formation of one of the
very greatest of Catholic inventions—the life according to the
rule of St. Benedict. This was certainly, in time, a product of the
first age of the transition. Its intended objective was purely
spiritual, its intended effect purely religious. But, accidentally, it
became a social force of the first magnitude. Accidentally, too,
the Church's own administrators, the bishops, became civil rulers
—a development not wholly profitable to the Church. The
Church's schools were, soon, almost the only schools; and, by
another accidental happening, without any design or deliberation,
INTRODUCTION Vii
it came about ultimately that whatever minds were trained were
trained by the Church—for other trainer there was, for a long
time, none. Again, as the barbarism increased, it was to the
Church, and to the Church-trained minds, that the new rulers
of what had been the Roman empire in the West had perforce to
turn for their administrators.
So the process went on until, in the end, the whole atmosphere
of life was ecclesiastical. Education, business, literature—all had
an ecclesiastical tinge, and the fortunes of the Church were
necessarily the great common concern of all men everywhere.
Not every element of this life was ecclesiastical in its origin.
Down to the tune of St. Gregory the Great there are many elements
of the old pagan culture that remain very much alive indeed. But
from that tune to the beginning of the eleventh century medieval
culture is almost purely ecclesiastical. Then, from the eleventh
century onward, new elements begin to affect it; the thought of
Greek antiquity, the morals of the pre-Christian East, and what
can be vaguely called Arab influences. The Church rejects the
second, and of the first and third assimilates what can be assimi-
lated and—a point that matters in discussions as to how far the
Church created the medieval world—it is the Church's assimilation
or rejection that determines the medieval culture's assimilation or
rejection of them.
Not every element of medieval culture is ecclesiastical, but all
those elements are so which affect most men, and the most
important of the elements which affect all the leaders of thought
and action. The real essence of the Church's achievement in the
Middle Ages, the proof of its hegemony, of its presidency over
the Christian commonwealth, is not the highly organised, quasi-
political, centralised papacy of, say, Innocent III or Innocent IV,
but the universal acceptance of an obligation to live according
to the Church's teaching on God, on Man and on Man's rights
and duties. In this, it seems to me, is to be found the justification
for calling the Medieval World The World the Church created.
For that world did not agree to these truths and to this way of
life as to a proved philosophy, but accepted them as a faith; and
that is a thing accepted from Authority as Authority itself received
it, is the essence of Catholicism. Catholic ideals did not by any
means always conquer, in the world the Church created. But
they never ceased to fight, and therein lies the true glory of these
centuries.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
The unexpected chance that this second volume of A History
of the Church needs to be re-set before it can be reprinted has
given me the very welcome opportunity of revising the text, of
correcting various errors of fact, of making some needed changes,
and of adding to the bibliographical notes. The most notable
changes are in chapters V and VI—the account of the schisms of
Photius and Cerularius, where the discoveries of experts in Byzan-
tine church history have revolutionised long-accepted versions of
the story. The other changes in the text are additional copy at
pages 23-25, 84-86, 210-212, 221, 224-225, 227, 232, 235, 250-
254, 331-333, 382, 412-414.
One error of fact that still remains is the statement (p. 338) that
the popes authorised a cultus of Joachim of Flore.
I gladly repeat the acknowledgment, made in the Preface to the
first edition, of my debt to the late Fr. Hugh Pope, O.P., S.T.M.,
D.S.S., who read the original sections on St. Augustine, and to Mr.
Christopher Dawson who read the whole original work. To their
kindly, informed criticism I was, and am, greatly indebted.
PHILIP HUGHES
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION PAGE
THE WORLD THE CHURCH CREATED V
CHAPTER I. THE CHURCH IN THE WEST DURING
THE LAST CENTURY OF THE IMPERIAL
UNITY, 313-430
i. THE DONATIST SCHISM, 311-39 1
ii. ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE DONATIST SCHISM 8
HI. ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE HERESY OF PELAGIUS 13
iv. THE INFLUENCE OF ST. AUGUSTIN 18
v. PRISCILLIAN 25
vi. THE ROMAN SEE AND THE WESTERN CHURCHES 29
CHAPTER II. THE CHURCH AND THE DISRUPTION
OF THE IMPERIAL UNITY, 395-537
i. THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SITUATION IN THE FOURTH
CENTURY : DIOCLETIAN TO THEODOSIUS, 284-395 38
ii. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGES DURING THE FIFTH
CENTURY 395-526 44
in. THE CHURCHES OF THE WEST DURING THE CRISIS:
SPAIN, AFRICA, GAUL 48
iv. THE ROMAN SEE AND ITALY 57
v. ST. PATRICK AND THE CONVERSION OF THE IRISH 68
vi. ST. BENEDICT AND THE HOLY R 73
CHAPTER III. ST. GREGORY THE GREAT AND
THE BEGINNINGS OF RESTORATION
i. ST. GREGORY, FOUNDER OF THE MIDDLE AGE 78
ii. ITALY, GAUL AND SPAIN IN THE CENTURY OF
ST. GREGORY 82
HI. THE CHURCH IN ROMAN BRITAIN: THE CONVERSION OF
THE ENGLISH, 313-735 95
ix