The History of the Christian Church

The title of this episode of Communio Santorum is A Glimmer of Reform .I assume most listening to this are students of history, or—why would you be listening? Some like history in general. Others find a fascination with certain eras or moments of the past. Whatever your interest, every student recognizes that as time passes, things change. Sometimes that change is merely incidental to the thing ch...

This episode is titled “Meanwhile, Back in the East” because before we dive into the next phase of church history in Europe, we need to catch up on what's happening to the East. The Mongol Empire of the 13 th and 14 th Cs occupied the largest contiguous land empire in history. Rising originally from the steppes of Central Asia and stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan; from Siberia in...

This episode is titled The Mystics and looks at the Mysticism of the Western Church during the Late Middle Ages. Alongside the Scholastics we spent a couple episodes on, was another movement within Medieval Christianity in Europe led by a group known as “The Mystics.”Don’t let that title mislead you. They weren’t wizards with black, long-sleeved robes and tall pointed hats embellished with moons a...

In this, the 70 th Episode of CS , we take a look at Sacramentalism; a mindset that dominated the religious landscape of late Medieval Christianity. The question that consumed Europeans of the Middle Ages was, “How can I be saved? What must I believe and do that will preserve my soul from the torments of hell?”Rome answered that with what’s called Sacramentalism .Now, let me be clear; the basic an...

The title of this episode of CS is The Not-So Great After All Schism .At the end of our last episode, a Frenchman, the Archbishop of Bordeaux was elected by the College of Cardinals in 1305 as Pope Clement . But Clement never set foot in Rome, because the locus of political power had shifted to France and her King, Philip .  This marks the beginning of what’s called the Babylonian Captivity of the...

The title of this episode of is Of Popes and Princes. As far as the Church in the West was concerned, the 14 th C opened on what seemed a strong note. Early in 1300, Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed a Year of Jubilee, a new event on the Church calendar. The Pope’s decree announced a blanket pardon of all sins for all who visited the churches of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s in Rome over the next 10 mont...

This episode of CS is titled, “No Dunce Here.”The Franciscans had an answer to the Dominican Scholastic we looked at in the previous episode. In fact, Aquinas’ Franciscan counterpart lived at the same time. His name was John Bonaventure .Born in Tuscany in 1221 as John Fidanza , he became known as Bonaventura when he had a miraculous recovery from a grave illness as a child of four. Upon regaining...

This Episode is titled “ God’s Ox .”I begin with a thanks to those who’ve given a review of CS on the iTunes store where many subscribe to the podcast. While iTunes is just one outlet for the podcast world, it turns out to be THE MAJOR venue for rating and promoting podcasts. Look, what we’re doing here is ultra-amateur. CS is a labor of love and makes no claim at being a scholarly review of histo...

The title of this episode is Scholasticism One of the most important questions faced by philosophers and theologians throughout the centuries has been the interplay between Faith and Reason. Are they enemies or allies? Is the Christian faith reasonable , or a blind leap into an irrational darkness? A major advance in answering this came with the emergence of a group of medieval theologians known a...

This episode is titled “ The Eucharistic Controversy .”As we round out the Middle Ages in Europe, we have several topics we need to cover before we launch into the Era of Scholasticism . Last time we took a brief look at the Investiture Controversy and an even briefer look at a doctrinal error that had a long lifespan and several flavors – Adoptionism .Now we’ll consider another controversy that r...

This 63 rd episode is titled Invested We’ve just concluded a series on medieval monasticism and return to the narrative of the Church during the Middle Ages in Europe. Before we do, let’s remember the story of Church History is much bigger than just what happened in Europe. Until recently, church history spent most its time on the Western Church and only touched other places as it related TO the W...

This 62 nd episode of CS is the 5 th and final in our look at monasticism in the Middle Ages. To a lesser extent for the Dominicans but a bit more for the Franciscans, monastic orders were an attempt to bring reform to the Western Church which during the Middle Ages had fallen far from the Apostolic ideal. The institutional Church had become little more than one more political body, with vast trac...

This episode is titled, Dominic and continues our look on monastic life. In our last episode, we considered Francis of Assisi and the monastic order that followed him, the Franciscans. In this installment, we take a look at the other great order that developed at that time; the Dominicans . Dominic was born in the region of Castile, Spain in 1170. He excelled as a student at an early age. A priest...

This Episode of CS is titled, Francis and continues our look at the mendicant orders. Though we call him Francis of Assisi , his original name was Francesco Bernardone . Born in 1182, his given name was Giovanni (Latin of John). His father Pietro nicknamed him Francesco which is what everyone called him. Pietro was a wealthy dealer in textiles imported from France to their hometown of Assisi in ce...

This episode is titled – Monk Business Part 2In the early 13 th C a couple new monastic orders of preaching monks sprang up known as the Mendicants . They were the Franciscans and Dominicans .The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi . They concentrated on preaching to ordinary Christians, seeking to renew basic, Spirit-led discipleship. The mission of the Dominicans aimed at confronting h...

This 58 th Episode of CS is titled – Monk Business Part 1 and is the first of several episodes in which we’ll take a look at monastic movements in Church History. I realize that may not sound terribly exciting to some. The prospect of digging into this part of the story didn’t hold much interest for me either, until I realized how rich it is. You see, being a bit of a fan for the work of J. Edwin...

This is part 4 of our series on the Crusades. The plan for this episode, the last in our look at the Crusades, is to give a brief review of the 5 th thru 7 th Crusades, then a bit of analysis of the Crusades as a whole. The date set for the start of the 5 th Crusade was June 1 st , 1217. It was Pope Innocent III’s long dream to reconquer Jerusalem. He died before the Crusade set off, but his succe...

This episode of CS is part 3 of our series on The Crusades. A major result of the First Crusade was a further alienation of the Eastern and Western Churches. The help provided Byzantium by the crusaders were not what The Eastern Emperor Alexius was hoping for. It also resulted in an even greater alienation of the Muslims than had been in place before. 200 years of crusading rampages across the Eas...

Episode 55 – The Crusades, Part 2As Bruce Shelly aptly states in in his excellent book Church History in Plain Language , for the past 700 years Christians have tried to forget the Crusades, though neither Jews nor Muslims will let them. Modern Christians want to dismiss that era of Church History as the insane bigotry of the illiterate and superstitious. But to do so is to show our own kind of bi...

Episode 54 – The Crusades – Part 1 In the first episode of Communio Sanctorum , we took a look at the various ways history has been studied over time. In the Ancient world, history was more often than not, propaganda. The old adage that “History is written by the winners” was certainly true for the ancients. With the implementation of the Scientific Method in the Modern Era, the researching and re...

This episode of CS is, “ Crazy Stuff ” because . . . we’ll you’ll see as we get into it. A short while back, we took at look at the Iconoclast Controversy that took place in the Eastern, Greek Orthodox church during the 8 th & 9 th Cs. While we understand the basic point of controversy between the icon-smashers, called iconoclasts , and the icon-supporters, the iconodules ; the theology the ic...

This episode of Communio Sanctorum is titled, “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” In our study of the History of the Church, we get to examine some periods when the followers of Jesus did some amazing, God-honoring, Christ-exalting, people-blessing things. In future episodes, we’ll take a longer look at how the Gospel has impacted history and world civilization for the better. But, we have to be honest a...

This episode is titled Icons .Those with a rough outline of history know we’re coming up on that moment when the Eastern and Western branches of the Church split. The break wasn’t some incidental accident that happened without a lot of preparation. Things had been going sour for a long time. One of the contributing factors was the Iconoclast Controversy that split the Byzantine church in the 8 th...

The title of this episode is “ What a Mess!” As is often the case, we start by backing up & reviewing material we’ve already covered so we can launch into the next leg of our journey in Church History. Anglo-Saxon missionaries to Germany had received the support of Charles Martel , a founder of the Carolin­gian dynasty. Martel supported these missions because of his desire to expand his rule e...

Welcome to the 49 th installment of CS . This episode is titled “ Charlemagne Pt. 2 .”After his coronation on Christmas Day AD 800, Charlemagne said he didn’t know it had been planned by Pope Leo III. If setting the crown of a new Holy Roman Empire on his head was a surprise, he got over the shock right quick. He quickly shot off dispatches to the lands under his control to inform them he was larg...