While Christianity was spreading in the Greco-Roman world, that world was
itself undergoing revolutionary changes. The reasons for the decline and
eventually collapse of the Roman Empire were numerous, and no single
explanation is adequate. Internally, the empire never solved the problem of a
stable, peaceful succession of competent leaders. Emperors usually appointed
their successors, but some proved incompetent, emotionally imbalanced, or evil.
From the beginning, the rule of force was established as superior to the rule
of law, allowing many generals to contest the succession, often successfully;
the result was a series of devastating civil wars and sometimes frequent
changes in leadership. The simple technology of the day placed limitations on
the empire's growth; for example, a peaceful society allowed for increased
trade and greater prosperity, which produced larger cities, but the unsanitary
conditions of the larger cities also stimulated disease, which the improved
transportation systems spread empire-wide. Thus the empire suffered from
several serious plagues in the first and second centuries.
Externally, the empire faced enemies close and far. Along the eastern
border the Persian Empire revived under the Sassanian dynasty in the mid third
century and became a serious threat; Romans and Persians fought many wars, and
as the frontier shifted back and forth Mesopotamia and Syria were devastated.
Along the northern border, the tribes of northern and central Europe came in
contact with Roman civilization, adopted aspects of it, and consequently became
increasingly civilized and powerful. Increasingly, emperors had to be good
generals, and had less time to devote to the development of the empire's cities
or the maintenance of its roads and bridges. Eventually the empire had to be
split into eastern and western halves so that there were two emperors to handle
the two major frontiers.
Throughout the second, third, and fourth centuries Roman military spending
rose, forcing taxes upward and weakening the empire's economy. When enough tax
revenue could not be raised the emperors ordered the gold and silver content of
the coins to be decreased, in order to mint more coins using the same amount of
precious metal; but this debased the currency and caused inflation, further
damaging the economy.
In Central Asia, the movement of peoples out of what is today Mongolia
triggered a domino effect, displacing tribe after tribe westward; by the third
and fourth centuries the frontiers no longer could hold them out, and Germanic
and Slavic tribes began to pour into the empire, either to settle peacefully or
to conquer and destroy sections of it. The eastern Empire, with its higher
population density and older civilization, survived fairly well; relatively few
of the major cities were destroyed. But after the 630s the Eastern Roman or
Byzantine Empire faced a new and much more powerful enemy: Islam, which quickly
conquered all of Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and North Africa. Islamic armies
steadily advanced on the Byzantines, finally capturing Constantinople itself in
1453.
The western empire collapsed under the pressure of the migratory tribes.
Rome was sacked in 410 and 455 and was besieged three times in the sixth
century; its population, nearly a million in the first and second centuries,
declined to less than fifty thousand by the end of the sixth century. By the
eleventh century it was only thirty thousand. In Britain urban life was
completely swept away by the tribes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who were
entering, conquering, and settling. Latin became extinct as a spoken language
in Britain, and the Celtic peoples were assimilated or driven into the hills of
Wales and Cornwall. Gaul was overrun by various tribes, among them the Franks,
for whom the country was renamed; urban life there collapsed as well. Spain
and Portugal were overrun by the Goths.
One result of the invasions was a steady shrinkage of Christendom. In the
north, Britain was completely lost, any gains in Germany were eliminated, and
even in France and Spain Christianity was imperiled. The invasion of the
Bulgars and southern Slavs swept away Christianiy in parts of the Balkans; then
the Magyars occupied Hungary, destroying Christianity there. But the worst
blow to Christendom was undoubtedly the spread of Islam, which ultimately
eliminated or drastically weakened Christianity in half of the former Roman
Empire (the eastern and southern half). It would be hundreds of years before
these losses were reversed, primarily through conversion of the Germanic and
Slavic peoples north of the former Roman Empire.
As the roads became unsafe for commerce the towns that survived had to be
concentrated along waterways. But with the rise of Islam the Byzantine navy
could no longer control pirates and maritime commerce ceased. In the north,
the Vikings began their raids about 900, snuffing out whatever peaceful trade
that had begun to develop along the North Sea and Atlantic Coast. Towns became
the targets of organized looting by both Saracens and Vikings, causing urban
life largely to cease. With it went the merchant and aristocratic classes, the
theatres and libraries, most knowledge of reading and writing, and most
familiarity with the accumulated wisdom of the ancient Mediterranean
civilizations. With the virtually cessation of trade, life became purely
local; all food had to be raised locally and thus land became the principal
source of wealth. Even coins largely disappeared from circulation and any
trade that did occur had to be conducted by barter.
The extent of the changes to Western European culture is measurable in
many of the words that entered the Latin language or changed their meanings.
Domus, Latin for house, disappeared from the Latin spoken in France,
Italy, and the Iberian peninsula; in all those areas except France it was
replaced by the word casa, which originally meant "cottage." The Latin
word for city, civitas, was swept away in France and replaced by the
word ville, from the Latin word villa; this suggests that most
cities were destroyed, and settled life mostly survived around the villas of
powerful noblemen. The Latin laborare, "to work," was replaced in
French, Portuguese, and Spanish by a word from which we get travail, "strenuous
exertion; toil; tribulation or agony; anguish." From Italy to the Atlantic,
the Latin word bellum, "war," was replaced by words of German origin.
Such changes bespeak of the decline of living standards and social
order.
In the rising tide of chaos one institution stood out as a source of hope:
the church. Not only did the church come to represent the City of God and the
hope for humanity's future, but it was blessed by many able leaders who were
able to use the church's size and prestige to preserve what civilization
remained. Bishops often were able to persuade barbarian chiefs not to sack
their cities; in Rome, the Popes largely ran the city, organizing the
collection and distribution of food and other essentials. Gregory the Great
(c. 540 - 604) was the most distinguished example of leadership. Son of a
Roman senator, in 590 he was force to abandon a monastic life of prayer when he
was unanimously elected Pope. He used the church's estates in southern Italy
and Sicily to grow food for Rome's poor. He appointed governors to run other
Italian cities. He negotiated a peace treaty with the Lombards, a German tribe
then occupying northern Italy. He sent missionaries to England to reestablish
Christianity there (the German invasion had destroyed it two centuries
earlier). He also help bring about the conversion of many barbarian tribes to
cathnolicism from Arianism, a rival form of Christianity. His efforts to
missionize pagan areas of western Europe strengthened the claim of the bishop
of Rome to primacy over the church in western Europe. This greatly fostered
the development of the papacy.
Monasteries also developed as the focal points of civilization.
Monasticism as a tendency in Christianity can be traced back to the first
century (Mt ). First Timothy (a letter attributed to Paul, though written in
the early second century) speak of an orders of widows, presumably the
forerunner of nuns. In the late third century, Antony of Egypt (251-356) began
to organize the Christian hermits living in the desert into a monastic
community. Possibly gnosticism influenced the strong monastic tendency that
developed in Egypt; indeed, the so called "gnostic gospels" found in southern
Egypt in the 1940s are thought to represent the gnostic library of a ruined
monastery nearby, which were probably buried as a result of an order that
monasteries destroy all heretical works.
Jerome was one of the earlier monks in the western Roman empire, having
been a hermit in the Syrian desert for five years. Augustine established a
monastery in North Africa. As Christianity went from a religion of a small
minority to the dominant form of religion in the Roman Empire the dedication of
the mass of its followers declined somewhat, and monasticism provided a new
outlet for zealous Christians to pursue a religious life different from their
contemporaries. Thus its influence steadily grew in the fourth and fifth
centuries.
The collapse of the western empire also made monastic life increasing
attractive. It provided some measure of safety, since few monasteries were
destroyed. Because monasteries were usually self-sufficient, they had a
reliable food supply, and the brothers or sisters took care of their own when
they were sick or old. Celibacy meant that family responsibilities would not
be a distraction. Learning was prized, so monks had the time to learn Latin
and sometimes even Greek, to read and study--not just the Bible, but the old
philosophical and literary classics--and to write. Under the circumstances of
the times, what Mediterranean and Christian civilization that survived was
mostly to be found in the monasteries. The monasteries also initiated
educational programs to teach Christianity to the masses, which had been
partially de-Christianized by the empire's collapse. The rural areas of the
western Empire had never been completely Christianized anyway; the monks
completed the job.
Ironically, one of the great powerhouses of monasticism was Ireland.
Because of its isolation Ireland never suffered barbarian invasions, until the
Vikings in the tenth century. Christianity arrived in Ireland about 600 under
Saint Patrick and quickly conquered the island. Irish Christianity was
initially monastic; monks went into virgin territory, established a new
monastery, and from it converted the population. Initially Ireland had no
dioceses and parishes, just monasteries; the local abbot, not the local bishop,
was powerful. Working with Rome, in the eigth and nineth centuries hundreds,
if not thousands, of Irish monks spread out over Gaul, Germany, even northern
Italy, founding monasteries. Usually thirteen monks traveled together to found
a new monastery, in imitation of Christ and his twelve disciples.
A significant figure in the development of monasticism in Europe was
Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-547), an Italian monk who acquired a reputation as a
holy man and who consequently attracted many disciples. Benedict organized
many monasteries, and the experience he acquired culminated in the rule of
Saint Benedict, a document that sets the basic principles of monastic life.
Such a life is dominated by unconditional obedience to God's will and to the
exercise of humility; it views the abbot as central in a monk's spiritual
development; and it advocates a daily life that balances worship, prayer,
reading of scripture, and useful work. Benedict's rule was a synthesis of
existing monastic practices with Benedict's own insights. Upon it a monastic
order--the Benedictines--was founded. It was the first organized monastic
order in the Catholic church.
It is easy for Bahá'ís, aware of the Bahá'í
prohibition of monasticism, to view the development of Christian monasticism
with suspicion, but it is not clear that such suspicion is justified in the
context of those times. Christ may not have created monasticism, but He did
not forbid it either. In many ways, the creation of a clergy and a monastic
lifestyle were positive developments in early Christianity. A clergy, with its
sacramental powers, adapted Christianity to the folk religion of Greco-Roman
culture; monasticism allowed the religion to develop and spread under the
adverse social conditions after the collapse of the western Roman Empire. Thus
monasteries and clergy were effective responses to the needs of the
day.
The monastic spirituality that developed in the fourth and fifth centuries
represented a refinement and extension of the spiritual life expected of a
Christian layperson. That lifestyle started with baptism, which washed away
one's original sin. Confession of sins before a priest engaged the church's
power to forgive sins and allowed one to reduce one's time in purgatory (the
church claimed no power over hell, however). Taking the sacraments were a
means of obtaining God's grace and assisting in one's salvation. Confessing
one's sins on one's death bed completed the cycle. However, if one wanted to
be a good Christian, one became a monk; there was no definition of spirituality
for the laity. A celibate, cloistered, ascetic, prayer-filled life was seen as
superior and more "Christian" than the life of a married layperson.
By the late middle ages (1200-1500 C.E.) the redevelopment of an urban
culture put this system of salvation under strain. The growing strength of the
monarchies resulted in safer highways and sea routes. The Crusades
re-established trade with the Middle East, brought new ideas to Europe, and
created the conditions for a new prosperity. Towns became cities. A class of
artisans (craftsmen) and merchants arose that had not existed for hundreds of
years; this new "middle" class existed between the peasants, on the bottom, and
the nobility, on the top. A money economy spread for the first time since the
fall of Rome. The new "middle" class wanted economic and political power, and
saw religion in a new way as well. They yearned for a less monastic
spirituality; as a result the late middle ages saw the establishment of many
lay religious orders that permitted marriage and worldly employment, and that
promoted a new style of popular mysticism. The artisans and merchants often
disliked the idea that salvation was available through the mechanical process
of attending mass and confessing sins, and sought a more direct link to
God.
In the fifteenth century several major events changed European culture
forever. The European conquest of the civilizations of Central and South
America flooded Europe with unprecedented quantities of gold and silver,
causing inflation but greatly expanding investment capital. Cities expanded
even more. Movable type and the development of a process for making cheap
paper revolutionized book production. From 1450 to 1500, six million books
were printed--far more than monks and scribes had copied by hand in the
previous thousand years. Individuals, especially those in the new "middle"
class, could now purchase books. The development of a book market stimulated
writing books in the vernacular languages; use of Latin began to decline. The
expansion of the supply of books and the decrease in their cost fostered
learning and expanded literacy. Newspapers and pamphlets were produced in
large numbers, the latter extensively illustrated as a result of another
invention: the woodcut.
The growing powers of monarchies and the spread of vernacular publishing
accelerated the creation of national cultures, weakening Europe's cultural and
religious unity. The kings asserted the right to appoint bishops in their
kingdoms, thereby claiming control over their national churches. Just as the
"universal" church of the old Roman Empire faced a split as the Latin west
developed a Christianity distinct from the Greek east, so now the Catholic
church faced national tensions. Northern Europe--speaking Germanic languages,
more recently Christianized, and more recently urbanized than the older Latin
lands--developed cultural expressions and political institutions of its own as
it developed economically and socially.
The fifteenth century saw Bible translated and printed in most of Europe's
major languages. For the first time in the history of Christianity it became
available to large numbers of readers. As a result many Christians discovered
that masses, confession, and other central features of their religion were not
mentioned in the Bible at all, and other features--like the trinity and
priesthood--were only implied at best. The stage was set for a major reform of
Christianity throughout Europe. It is no coincidence that the phrase sola
scriptura--"only scripture"--was to become the rallying cry of the
Protestant Reformation.