Book Reflection: The Rise of Western Christendom

Triumph and Diversity, 200 - 1000 AD

I saw this book recommended a while ago in something I was reading from Pope Benedict. The subtitle of the book intrigued me: “Triumph and Diversity, 200 - 1000 AD.” Diversity is a hot buzzword today not usually associated with the history of Western Christendom. The Hibernian and the Syrian of the 3rd century had almost nothing in common. Let alone the Frank, Berber, or Roman. The fact that we consider Caesar, Clovis, and Columbanus all universally ‘Western’ should give hope to people today asking how a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society can exist and thrive. and This book took me a while to get through, and I took some breaks to read other things, but here are some miscellaneous recollections.

The book does an excellent job exploring the relationship religious belief had with all the other social, economic, military, cultural and demographic trends of the time. While 200-1000 may seem ancient history (and in a sense it is), some of these relationships carry forward into the present day. For example, even during the Roman empire, the church in France (called Gaul back then) was closely allied with the aristocracy. This closeness of clergy and aristocracy continued for centuries and played a significant role in the French Revolution of the 18th century. Ireland on the other hand, was evangelized British slaves brought back by Irish pirates (St. Patrick being the most famous example). This relationship of Catholicism with the common people of Ireland played an important role in Irish nationalism and Independence through the 20th century. In a third example, the ‘old Saxons’ of Germany were converted by force when Charlemagne invaded in the 8th century — they would be the first to apostatize in the 16th century.

Another interesting anecdote about politics and religion was the conversion of Clovis I, the Frankish king, from paganism to Christianity at the beginning of the 6th century. While the Roman empire of the time was Catholic, the majority of Germanic tribes were followers of the Arian Heresy (A belief that Jesus was subordinate to God rather than God himself — it started in Egypt). Despite this difference in belief, the Romans were allied with some of these other Germanic followers of Arius. When Clovis converted to Catholicism, the book insinuates that regardless of what his personal beliefs were, it had the added political benefit of a Roman alliance against these other competing barbarian kings. Many histories I read subscribe to the Marxist ‘opiate of the masses’ view of religion (they think religion is just a tool of oppression), but that theory wouldn’t explain why the Romans would choose radically change their diplomatic strategy on one man’s (and it was really one man — not all Clovis’ men converted with him) conversion. This can only be explained by the fact that, even in the cold calculating halls of Roman power, some flicker of true belief existed even there.

Another point made clear in this book took me several chapters to wrap my head around. For the better part of a millennia, the center of the Christian world was not Rome, nor was it anywhere in Western Europe. The center of the Christian world was the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. Even today, Catholics all over the world say the Nicene Creed every Sunday. Nicea is a city in what is now Turkey, and the Nicene Creed was written in the 4th century. Many of the Church fathers lived in Egypt, what is now Syria, Jerusalem, etc.

I always liked the Mark Twain quote, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Towards the end of the Merovingian dynasty in France, Saint Columbanus came from Ireland to ‘re-evangelize’ the Franks in a sense — heterodox beliefs had seeped back in from the pagan past. Similarly, today people like Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea are re-evangelizing western Catholicism from our own lukewarm, halfhearted pursuit of God.

The book discusses the semi-democratic process of succession and its fragility in what was Visigothic Spain. The lack of a clear heir often left openings for foreign powers to not just intervene, but also conquer. This happened first with the Byzantine Empire and then with the Umayyad Caliphate. (By the way, why is the Muslim conquest of the Christian Middle East, North Africa, and Spain never discussed in our culture? For some reason the current obsession with ‘indigenous people’ and ‘genocide’ has a blind spot for non-European empires). Similarly in our own democracy, we’ve seen the USSR unsuccessfully try to co-opt the civil rights movement to support communism, and more recently, state run CCP media has produced work in English promoting racial division¹. Many incursions and invasions were initially invited in by natives looking for an upper hand in civil disputes. Frankish lords invited Vikings into France, and Dermont MacMorrogh invited the English into Ireland. Similarly, today in America Mark Milley secretly worked in conjunction with the Chicoms after a contentious election here. As students of history, we should learn that whatever differences we have with our countrymen, they pale in comparison to those we have with and evil dictatorship like the Chinese Communist Party (or Strongbow for that matter).

I liked the section on the Byzantine Iconoclasm. While some consider icons to be idolatrous and/or superstitious, the motivations behind the Byzantine Iconoclasm turned out to be superstitious in themselves. I.E. ‘if we destroy these icons, God will grant us victory in war.’

Another interesting tidbit is the decentralized nature of the Holy Roman Empire. Although Charlemagne was particular about Christian Orthodoxy, he permitted secular laws were to vary by region. This federalist system of laws continued through the 18th century. Benjamin Franklin travelled through the Holy Roman Empire and was inspired to borrow some of these ideas in the American federalist system. The fact that I’m only learning this now through my own hobby of reading shows how little Eurocentrism really is in our education system.

This brings me to my next point of the often misunderstood separation of Church and state. In the pre-Christian age, Church and state were joined by one man — the Roman emperor — who exercised his will as a murderous tyrant. Similarly, in the post-Christian age, Church and state were joined again in in one particular person I.E. Robespierre, Napoleon. These men once again exercised their wills as murderous tyrants (the ‘secular’ conquest of the Napoleonic wars were the bloodiest in world history at that point with the exception of the Mongol conquest). Similarly, Hitler, Lenin, and other secular leaders would join Church and state in order to commit and justify acts of mass murder. Some think that the totalitarianism of the 20th century isn’t religious, but these ideologies of Naziism and Communism are more than just secular. Gramsci said “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity.” Hegel (his ideology was the precursor to Naziism) said, “The march of God in the world, that is what the state is.” (Marx himself was a Hegelian btw) Hitler’s favorite philosopher, Nietzsche famously described Christianity as a lower, “slave morality.” By contrast, when Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope on Christmas, there was a distinct separation of Church and state. Charlemagne had the political authority and military power, but moral authority rested with the Church. Much of the middle ages was defined by conflict rather than unity between the political and religious authorities. In the cultural madness of our current times, I see people projecting more and more religious beliefs onto the state. The inability to separate the moral from the political has led people into thinking everything good should be mandatory, and everything bad should be illegal. Sometimes this religious instinct manifests when we treat certain politicians and/or unelected bureaucrats with messianic reverence, or treating ‘secular’ laws as moral guidance. Other times it manifests as a religious reverence towards the American political system itself and/or the ‘free’ market (how free it is is debatable). The Franks wrongly thought that their Empire was chosen by God above all others at the end of history — some Americans seem to think that as well. Don’t get me wrong. I love America, I love the history, and I am grateful for what I’ve inherited — I just make a point not to elevate it to religion.

There’s more I wanted to touch on, but I will wrap up with this quote and my reflection on it:

“Throughout Charlemagne’s empire, entire populations had, for centuries, been loyal to a largely oral version of Christianity. Christianity was their traditional religion, and Christianity for them was, in effect, the practice of their region. They often derived their instruction from local priests and from monasteries with few books to their name. The highlights of their Christian life consisted in the excitement of pilgrimages to great shrines, where, in ‘Roman’ areas, the hearers would be bathed in a Latin liturgy.”

To the author’s credit, after reading this 500 page book, I don’t know even if he’s Christian or not. I love this quote about Christianity as a “practice,” an action, something physical. From the sign of the cross, to rosary beads, to the sacraments, to beautiful churches, to the incarnation, Christianity has always been a physical, religion to be acted out, not only read about and discussed. A friend recently joked with me, “Maybe I can be Catholic too, I’ve just got to know when to sit, stand, and kneel.” The joke contains the truth that what we do with our bodies is important — not only what we believe in our hearts. When I was taking grad courses towards a teaching cert, I had a professor mock the ceremony of the Catholic Mass. “Empty rituals are for people who are religious one day a week.” This professor, who claimed to be a musician should have known better. Every musician implicitly understands the value of ritual every time they warm up. Can you play a gig without warming up? Maybe. Will it be as good as a gig where you skip warming up? Probably not. I’ve been informed by some of my drum bros that Alan Dawson’s famous warm up is literally called ‘the ritual.’ Similarly, not all masses have impressive liturgical components. During Cromwell’s repression of the Irish, people would have to sneak off into the wilderness to go to mass using a simple stone as an altar. I’ve also read accounts of priests saying mass inside Soviet Gulags² to (primarily Polish) prisoners in secret with a scrap of bread (constant through even these is the physical presence of God and the people — you can’t get through zoom). In some other reading about liturgical matters, I’ve come to understand that everything from the intervallic content of a sung reading, to what part of the Church a reading is performed from serves a liturgical function of teaching the truth of the Gospel through not just words, but actions, sound, and images. The book chronicles how a delegation of Kievan Rus (Scandinavians that settled around Kiev) converted to Orthodoxy after attending mass in the Hagia Sophia specifically commenting on the beauty of it.

I’m reminded of a saying “There are more peasants than theologians in Heaven” — it is the doing, not necessarily the thinking that helps one end up there. As a child, I remember going to the Church I was baptized in in Ireland. It was much older and more beautiful than the Church I attended at the time, which is now a bank (ironically looking up the construction date, this Irish Church was built more recently than many Churches here on the East Coast). Not so differently from the peasants described here, I remember hearing certain prayers said in Latin, the art and text that adorned the walls, and the acoustics (every reverb unit has a ‘cathedral’ preset ha) without having a full understanding of what was going on. Like a great work of art, a well said liturgy draws the attention of everyone from the youngest child to the most learned expert. In one of his books, Pope John Paul II describes going to a particularly beautiful cathedral and he says “It helped my prayer.” All the liturgical details are an office of piety, a reality that is sensed with all one’s senses. The people hear the music, sees the art, smell the incense, feel the motions of the mass, and finally taste the Eucharist. This so-called ‘empty ritual’ is all akin to a warm up for a spiritual activity not unlike John Coltrane scales and patterns before stepping on stage to play Love Supreme.

1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/05/us-injustice-protests-china-condemnation-cynical/#cookie_message_anchor

2. Ciszek, Walter J., and Daniel L. Flaherty. With God in Russia. Ignatius Press, 1997.