[Music] on april 25th 799 pope leo iii was leading a prayer walk through the streets of rome the city had recently been plagued by severe crop failure so people were out in the streets asking for god's blessing on their fields and on the harvest and suddenly as the procession turned a corner these armed men came out of the shadows and rushed to the pope and pulled him off his horse after nearly putting out his eyes they kidnapped him and took him off to a monastery several miles away the kidnappers were supporters of the previous pope adrian the first and they were trying to mount a coup d'etat against leo and to give their coup a veneer of legitimacy they charged him with perjury and adultery armed men were able to rescue leo from where he was being held and bring him back to saint peter's under cover of darkness over the next few days though in in rome fighting broke out in the streets between supporters of leo and people who supported the insurgents and this prompted leo to flee the city he actually fled across the alps and took shelter at the court of the most powerful man in europe uh who was charlemagne king of the franks his empire recovered much of what is now france and germany and he ruled over a people that the papacy had increasingly come to depend upon uh over the previous 50 years in the summer of 800 king charlemagne marched into rome to vindicate pope leo of the charges leveled against him he held a trial leo put his hand on the bible and swore that he wasn't guilty of any of the charges against him and charlemagne acquitted him after the trial was over uh he lingered in rome for several more months because the winter months were approaching and he was waiting for better weather before going back across the alps on christmas day of 800 charlemagne attended a mass at st peter's cathedral and he knelt to pray in front of the tomb of saint peter and pope leo had something special hidden up his sleeve as charlemagne rose from prayer the pope walked up to him and in the words of an eyewitness crowned him with a most precious crown of crown of pure gold the congregation which had kind of been prepped beforehand rose to its feet as one man and cried out to charles augustus crowned by god great and peace-giving emperor of the romans life and victory more than 300 years after the fall of rome pope leo by this action had just revived the roman empire in the west and i say in the west because the empire had never ended in the east uh where the successors of constantine would continue to rule in constantinople until the that city fell to the turks in 1453. so with this revival of empire the west found new power and renewed unity uh but it also created invisible fault lines uh that eventually produced major earthquakes whose aftershocks can actually still be felt in some ways uh today the roman empire had officially ended in the west in the year 476 but it kept exerting a strong hold on the european imagination for a long time afterward and during the barbarian invasions that followed the fall of rome many europeans actually grew nostalgic for its return after the muslims nearly conquered constantinople in the 7th century the pope started looking around for a stronger ally than the eastern empire who could protect the western church and out of all the nations of europe none were more powerful than the franks and they had actually become a catholic nation in 496 under king clovis and so that made them a natural ally for the pope in rome after the frankish warrior king charles martel the hammer stopped the muslim invasion of western europe in its tracks in 732 pope gregory iii formed an alliance with the franks that would bear fruit for several centuries to come a generation after the hammer the hammer's son pepin saved rome from a lombard invasion and after that war he carved out a large land grant for the pope in central italy which became known as the donation of pepin and that made the pope one of the kings of europe a ruler in his own sovereign state and the pope would actually continue to rule that state until 1870 when the italian city-states finally united and became one nation and uh and and they took most of the pope's land away from him there's just a tiny piece of that land that still remains uh which is the sovereign state of vatican city in the heart of rome uh which is still an independent nation today it's the all that remains today of the papal states anyway to express his gratitude for pepin's generosity uh the pope crowned pepin king of the franks and patrician of the romans when pepin's son charles the great or charlemagne became king in 768 he inherited this special relationship with the pope charlemagne was a dutiful catholic he saw himself as a son of the church and he expanded the church's influence greatly because he united most of the peoples of europe under one rule and he also converted many of them to christianity uh by force over two decades he conquered the saxons to his north and east the lombards to his south and part of spain to his west by 800 he was master over more of europe than anyone since emperor theodosius in the late 4th century charlemagne believed that the church was the soul of the society just as the state was the body and as such in all the lands that charlemagne conquered he showed the church special favor he gave it land and money he built churches and monasteries and he protected the popes from their local rivals so when pope leo's enemies tried to overthrow him it was only natural for him to turn to charlemagne for help and when charlemagne rescued pope leo and pope leo crowned charlemagne the roman emperor it marked the first time since the fall of rome in 476 that western europe had had a universal empire to go along with a universal church and this new synthesis between the roman catholic church and a revived roman empire ruled ironically by the germans who had conquered rome a few centuries earlier brought a new harmony to the sacred and secular spheres of european life while this this harmony is often known as christendom while christendom had its benefits it also created two new fault lines in chris in the christian world that would eventually produce earthquakes first the news that charlemagne had become the new roman emperor was not music uh in the ears of the old roman emperor in constantinople in constantinople both emperor charlemagne and pope leo were seen as overstepping the proper bounds of their authority charlemagne's coronation created a political and theological wedge between east and west that would eventually result in the great schism of 1054. second charlemagne's coronation produced a conflict between the pope and the emperor according to one of charlemagne's most trusted diplomats einhard charlemagne actually didn't even want the title emperor in the first place as einhard put it he would not have set foot in the church that day that they were conferred if he could have foreseen the design of the pope and that is probably true for charlemagne being crowned by the pope implied that the pope was his superior although charlemagne never renounced the title of emperor once the pope gave it to him he did make sure that his son's coronation took place far away from rome and that the pope was not invited to the party because he didn't want anyone to get the idea that the pope had the authority to appoint kings and so the question of whether the pope or the emperor had supremacy would go unanswered for the next several centuries following the vision that had been laid out by augustine in the city of god christians of the day reasoned that the kingdom of god had two arms it had a spiritual arm which was responsible for men's souls and was presided over by the pope and it had a temporal arm which was responsible for men's physical well-being and was presided over by the emperor in theory those two arms were supposed to work hand in hand in reality however the line between them and where one person's authority ended and the others began was always blurry during charlemagne's lifetime since he was such a powerful leader the state had the upper hand after charlemagne died however his empire collapsed because his sons were not as competent or as as powerful as he was and the state became weak and almost non-existent in the lives of many europeans and the state of affairs that that created uh kind of put the question of the conflict between the emperor and the pope to bed for about 150 years but it would re-emerge about 150 years later but the state of affairs that this collapse of government created is known as feudalism and we'll talk about that more in our next lesson [Music] the reign of charlemagne was the high point of the early middle ages charlemagne united and christianized most of western europe and he also set up a competent administrative system to govern all of those different territories he had personal representatives uh who called misi dominici or envoys of the lord who would do surprise visits and to local rulers to make sure that they were governing fairly and competently and uh even though charlemagne himself could barely read he brought in the best scholars of the day uh to found schools and teach the people in his empire and uh so under charlemagne europe actually had a brief renaissance of learning known as the carolingian renaissance when charlemagne was crowned emperor by the pope in 800 the church and the state were united in western europe and it looked like a golden age was about to begin but as it turned out that golden age would actually have to wait for a while charlemagne's son louis the pious divided the empire among his three sons the first son inherited what is now france the second son inherited what is now germany and then the third son inherited a strip of territory in between france and germany that the french and the germans were still fighting over as late as the 1930s and each of charlemagne's grandsons was relatively weak as such when the vikings who were barbarian invaders from scandinavia began sweeping down on the coasts and the rivers of europe in their longboats europe was virtually defenseless it didn't have strong government anywhere to resist them uh the vikings were able to burn and rape and pillage and murder and enslave with such impunity that a new prayer was actually added in liturgy to the liturgy and church services all across europe from the fury of the north men o lord deliver us the collapse of law and order in europe brought the economy of europe to a virtual standstill and since muslim navies dominated the mediterranean sea trade between europe and the rest of the world was severely restricted as well and as a result the only real source of wealth in europe at this time was land and many europeans willingly surrendered their lands and their persons to powerful nobles in exchange for protection from the vikings this led to a system called feudalism which is a system in which political power is exercised locally by individuals rather than by a centralized government and under feudalism european society essentially became an enormous pyramid at the top were the large landowners called lords and they owned virtually everything and uh presided over large land units called manners lords would lease parts of their land to vassals who were in the middle of the pyramid uh in exchange for services knights would pay for their land with military service and priests or bishops would receive land in exchange for performing religious services and vassals usually were not able to perform their duties to the lord and farm their land at the same time so they would sublet their land to peasants called serfs who would farm the land in exchange for protection and a share of the crop and under feudalism european society became divided essentially into three groups there were those who produced the serfs there were those who protected the knights and the and the the lords and then there were those who prayed uh the priests and bishops during the feudal era the church became increasingly corrupt since land was the primary source of wealth and the church owned a tremendous amount of land thanks to large land grants from kings and nobles the bishops who administered these church lands became increasingly powerful and it became common for european nobles to rig local elections in order to ensure that the bishops were people that they could control and over time this practice filled church leadership with really worldly men who cared nothing for the things of god and since the pope was the most powerful bishop of them all the papacy became the greatest prize of all four ambitious men and intrigue and murder became common in rome as pope succeeded pope in rapid succession in 897 pope stephen vi who needed to discredit his predecessor to secure his own claim to papal power held what is known as the cadaver synod uh he had his predecessor formosus exhumed clothed in full regalia and then seated on his throne so that stephen could formally charge him with perjury and illegal accession to the papacy uh he s stephen laid the charges out before formosus's cadaver and formosus predictably exercised his right to silence in response to the charges and then stephen uh condemned him uh screaming uh the condemnation at him so for moses his corpse was then stripped uh his fingers of blessing were cut off and formosus was uh dumped into the tiber river unceremoniously so with the church in such a lamentable state it was clear to a lot of people at the time that there was a serious need for spiritual renewal in the year 910 a man named william of aquitaine who was a french nobleman concerned about corruption in the church donated his favorite hunting lodge in the small village of clooney to be a monastery william believed that the two greatest corrupting influences on the church were government interference and worldly entanglements and as a result he wrote his monks a charter that gave them complete freedom to choose their own leaders and he also stipulated in the charter that the monastery leader would answer to no one but the pope and the monks responded to this by electing the holiest and most inspiring men among them to be leaders the monastery at clooney and the other monasteries schools and missionaries it sent out which became known as the cluniak movement became a bright light in a very dark time it also became a leading voice for reform in the church cloniac monks called for the abolition of simony which is the practice of buying and selling church offices the word comes from the story of simon magus in acts chapter 8 who tried to buy the power of the holy spirit with money so they wanted to abolish simony they also wanted to abolish nepotism which is showing favoritism to relatives in church appointments they wanted the church to require priestly celibacy the idea was that if church leaders couldn't get married they would have fewer worldly entanglements and be more devoted to the church the most important reform the cluniak movement supported though was insisting that the church be free from any secular control and so as a result the cluniak movement opposed what is known as lay investiture lay investiture is the appointment of bishops by secular rulers rather than by the pope and this last reform uh encountered strong opposition from secular rulers because at the time bishops were not just church leaders they were also powerful nobles who presided over huge tracts of land and so kings always had a strong interest to appoint bishops who were loyal to them because bishops were so powerful so the struggle over who got to appoint the bishops would eventually become a major bone of contention between the church and the state at the time that the clooney movement emerged charlemagne's old empire was still weak and divided in the year 919 however the frankish tribes reunited in response to simultaneous invasions of europe by the hungarians vikings and slavs and they elected a man named henry the fowler to be their king and over the next two generations henry and his son otto the great waged a long campaign but they managed to drive all of the invaders out of europe and in 962 otto became the first king since charlemagne to be crowned holy roman emperor by the pope so the empire was finding its groove again as the empire found its groove however its resurgence re-aggravated the two fault lines the two conflicts that charlemagne's coronation had created way back in 800. first it raised again the old question of whether the emperor was superior to the pope or the pope was superior to the emperor and in the next lesson we'll get to how that conflict uh came to a head i should say in the next course because we won't talk about it until church history too but it also reaggravated the old rivalry between the eastern and western branches of the church because remember the eastern emperor in constantinople still thought of himself as the only legitimate roman emperor and so it eventually led to the great schism of 1054 and that will be the subject of our next and our last lesson so see you then [Music] okay so if you've made it this far you're almost done we are on our last lesson of church history one we're almost through a thousand years of church history and uh in this last lesson we're going to talk about the great schism that split the eastern and western churches apart so we need to talk about a little background first to the great schism the seeds for the schism were sown way back in the year 330 when constantine moved the capital of the roman empire from rome to constantinople in the east as the empire went into decline the capital constantinople proved to be a lot easier for the romans to defend than the western provinces and so the west was eventually overrun by barbarians and when that happened the bishop of rome became powerful in ways in which eastern bishops who were still living in the emperor's shadow simply were not able to be it has been said that emperors were almost popes in the east and popes were almost emperors in the west uh over time the bishop of rome who became more and more powerful began to see himself as destined as the descendant of saint peter to become first uh not first among equals as the eastern bishops saw him but first without equal he saw himself as the universal bishop the vicar or representative of christ on earth at the same time the west was also growing more politically powerful than the east as we've already seen the pope eventually hitched the western church to the franks and the frank's political fortunes were rising whereas the eastern empire was increasingly under intense pressure from islam and was often hanging on by a thread during much of this time so this context helps us to understand why when the pope unilaterally approved a relatively minor change to the nicene creed he changed it to say that the holy spirit proceeds from the son as well as from the father a change known as the filioque way why that was such a big deal to easterners it wasn't just that easterners disagreed with the pope theologically though they did it was also the fact that he didn't consult them and given that he was also becoming much more politically powerful than they were he really didn't even need to consult them and that wounded the pride of the eastern bishops and in the year 1054 these differences finally came to a head the previous year a man named michael cyrillarius had become the patriarch of constantinople and it was a tradition at the time for whoever became patriarch to write a letter to the pope in rome affirming his commitment to orthodoxy uh but when michael became patriarch he chose to snub the pope instead pope leo the ninth and he didn't even write him the letter instead he wrote an article blasting the western church for modifying the nicene creed one of the church's foundational statements of faith uh without consulting the other bishops theologically as we've said this wasn't a huge deal it's not a huge modification to say that the spirit proceeds from the son as well as from the father but it's kind of like when an unhappy married couple goes off on each other at a denny's whatever they're arguing about is probably not really what they're arguing about and so that's kind of like the dispute between michael and leo eventually michael softened his tone a bit and he invited pope leo to come over to constantinople and work things out but leo who was probably offended chose not to go instead he sent a really obnoxious uh cardinal named cardinal humbert in his place instead and humbert was really bigoted against the east to begin with and he spent most of his time in constantinople doing things that intentionally offended the easterners he was made himself as obnoxious as possible and things finally came to a head on july 16th 1054. humbert and the easterners had been quarreling for quite some time and so humbert walked to the hagia sophia cathedral the enormous beautiful church in constantinople as michael was presiding over a service over the eucharist and humbert walked down to the front of the church and slammed a papal degree decree of excommunication down on the altar he excommunicated michael uh by the authority of the pope and michael wasn't going to be outdone and so he promptly called a synod a gathering of bishops and excommunicated the pope and all his minions right back and the irony was that though neither of these men knew it the pope in rome had already died and so the the decree of excommunication against michael was actually of no real validity but he the michael excommunicated the pope and all his people right back and kind of said take that at the time a few people seemed to realize that this would be a permanent break in the church the two sides had quarreled many times before there had actually been mutual excommunications before in church history but they'd always always been able to reconcile shortly thereafter this time however things would be different reconciliation wasn't really a priority for either side the west kind of had its own internal power struggles going on between the pope and the emperor and so it wasn't really worried about the east and with the in the east they were really just kind of worried about the muslims and kind of fighting to survive and so each of the sides had bigger fish to fry and uh reconciliation fell by the wayside so as a result the great schism of 1054 ended up becoming the first permanent break in the institutional unity of the church in history and the effects of that schism can still be seen today this to this day the roman catholic church and the eastern orthodox church are still distinct bodies they don't have institutional unity within them it actually wasn't until december 7th of 1965 that the so 911 years after the schism that the eastern and western churches formally canceled the mutual excommunication pope paul vi and patriarch athena goris the first met together to cancel uh the excommunications of michael and humbert and their joint declaration that they issued together is actually quite moving it quotes jesus's words in matthew chapter five at one point where jesus says if you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you leave your gift before the altar and first go be reconciled to your brother so we'll quote a little bit of this document together because it's actually a pretty beautiful statement of repentance and reconciliation pope paul vi and patriarch athena goris the first realized that this gesture of justice and mutual pardon is not sufficient to end both old and more recent differences between the roman catholic church and the orthodox church through the action of the holy spirit those differences will be overcome through cleansing of hearts through regret for historical wrongs and through an efficacious determination to arrive at a common understanding and expression of the faith of the apostles and its demands they hope nevertheless that this act will be pleasing to god who is prompt to pardon us when we pardon each other they hope that the whole christian world will appreciate this gesture as an expression of a sincere desire shared in common for reconciliation and as an invitation to follow out in a spirit of trust esteem and mutual charity the dialogue which with god's help will lead to living together again for the greater good of souls and the coming of the kingdom of god in that full communion of faith fraternal accord and sacramental life which existed among them during the first thousand years of the life of the church so they acknowledge that theological differences still exist between them and institutional unity still hasn't been fully achieved but they cancelled the excommunications and repented of the wrongs and committed to trying to work together for the good of the gospel so this is the end of church history one thank you for traveling with me through the first millennium of church history in the next course lord willing we'll continue on through the second millennium up to the present day some of you might be thinking that the great schism uh is a sad place to stop and i would agree but i'll remind you of the quote from kenneth scott la tourette that i read in the very first lesson where he said that the increase of jesus's influence upon the world has been like the incoming tide he remember he said like the tide it has moved forward in waves each major wave has been followed by a major recession but each major wave has set a new high water mark and each major recession has been less pronounced than its predecessor there's no question that the great schism and the period that surrounded it was a recession in the history of the church however it was preceded by several advancing waves over the first thousand years of church history the influence of jesus spread as far east as china and as far west as ireland as far south as ethiopia and as far north as russia the church survived three centuries of roman persecution and defended the most essential doctrines of the apostolic faith against powerful heretical movements it outlasted the roman empire and converted the barbarians who overran the roman empire it stopped an islamic invasion and created a distinctly christian civilization and as we'll see in the next course the great schism was also followed by new high water marks over the second millennium several waves would reform the church refine its doctrine and carry the gospel to the furthest reaches of the globe so until next time thank you for [Music] watching you