4. The Beginning of Decline.
However, in this
whole medieval order of things Christianity was
gravely entangled with the systems of the world, its
bishops, for example,
being great landholders and
feudal lords. Even if men in general had been
more
otherworldly, the conditions in the terrestrial sphere
itself
were bound to suffer changes as time went on.
Because even the
ecclesiastics (by the very character
of the situation) were not
sufficiently otherworldly, the
Church itself came under the operation of
some of the
laws which govern other religions—govern human
systems generally. In a sense it became the victim of
the remarkable
success that it had achieved in the
preceding period. To the upholders of
the existing
order of things, the changes that were brought about
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were
bound to appear as a
decline; and in certain respects
the medieval synthesis can be seen to be
breaking
down. But the story of religion—even the story of
the
state as essentially a “religious”
society—had by no
means come to its end. The downfall of the old
order
is difficult to disentangle from the interesting move-
ments that were reassembling the materials
and bring-
ing about the creation of a new one.
In some respects
the medieval period moved into what we call modern
times on its
own momentum, as a result of impulses
within itself. Amid much confusion,
we see deeper lines
of continuous development, as though the logic of
events were working itself out.
It was in the realm of thought—indeed, it was at
the heart of
scholasticism itself—that the most fateful
changes occurred. And
these changes were calculated
to affect the actual character of religion,
not merely
the relations between Christianity and the world. Saint
Thomas Aquinas, by his reexposition of Aristotelianism,
had provided
believers with a philosophy which ex-
plained
the cosmos and was crowned by a theology;
but the result had been to make
philosophy an autono-
mous affiar. Even while
he was at work there were
men who were more down-to-earth, more prepared
just
to hold their Aristotelianism neat; and perhaps a cer-
tain worldly-mindedness made them a danger not only
to an ecclesiastical system but also to religion itself.
Others who were
not worldly-minded or unbelieving
tended to argue their way behind the
tradition of
classical philosophy itself, and to question its
basis—to
doubt even the possibility of metaphysics. It
meant
denying the ability of the human mind to reach the
kind of
truths that were associated with “natural reli-
gion,” or to reason in any way about God.
Under the influence of William of Ockham a great
section of the academic
world went over to a system
which, without denying the revelation, cut away
the
forms of rationalization hitherto current, making reli-
gion a matter of pure fideistic acceptance. Even the
difference between right and wrong was removed from
the domain of
reason—it came to be held that a thing
was good because an
arbitrary God had decreed it so.
If scholasticism itself had emerged too
directly out of
a passion for logic, and had lost something by its devel-
opments in an abstract realm, too
remote from life and
from general culture, the fourteenth-century develop-
ments increased the gulf and helped
to make the whole
system curiously arid. Even the content of religious
thought came to be altered, for reflection was now
concentrated on the
absolute power of a God who was
beyond man's reason, and who, from a state
of uncon-
ditioned freedom, settled all
things by sheer arbitrary
decree. The will of God, the power of God,
became
the great theme, and the result was by no means the
same as
when the emphasis is placed on the thesis:
“God is
love.” Even in the discussion of human beings,
attention was
fixed on the role of man's will and that
of God's grace in the work of
salvation.
These preoccupations help to explain some of the
peculiar emphases and
developments in the sixteenth-
century
Reformation. In any case, the separation be-
tween faith and reason was bound to create difficulty—
belief itself now appearing more farfetched and more
unreal,
God himself more remote—a situation which
could encourage
secularism and religious indifference.
Perhaps more dramatic at the time, however, were
the changes in the
relationship between the Church
and the world, and even the appearance of a
tremen-
dous controversy concerning the
nature of the Church
itself.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century the
papacy both presumed too much
on the success that
it had achieved, and discovered what it had lost
by
the discomfiture of its chief rival, the empire in
Germany.
Henceforward, it had to confront the rising
national monarchies without the
powerful assistance
which, ideally, should have come from the ancient
partnership between pope and emperor. In the bull
Unam Sanctam of 1302, Pope Boniface VIII
(1294-1303), relying on the assertions and on the victories
of his
predecessors, issued too high a challenge to
monarchs—claiming
too boldly the right to direct and
judge them even in the exercise of their
temporal
power. The resulting conflict, in which the French
government
accused him of appalling crimes and
demanded his trial before a general
council of the
Church, brought him to humiliation in 1303 at the
hands
of a body of desperadoes, and he died within
a few weeks after he had been
released.
In 1305, an archbishop of Bordeaux who was elected
as Pope Clement V proved
to be a creature of the
French king; and, besides creating many French
cardi-
nals, he took up his residence at
Avignon, which was
then just outside the frontiers of France. Owing
partly
to the political confusion of Italy, a return of the
papacy to
Rome proved impracticable for a long time.
Gregory XI went back there in
1377, but he died in
the following year and then the cardinals in Rome
elected a pope, but another was elected in Avignon.
Now, therefore, the
system reached its reductio ad
absurdum, two
successors of Saint Peter making con-
current
claims and exercising concurrent power. Noth-
ing could have been more injurious to the Church and
more damaging
to prestige than the existence for over
thirty years of the Great
Schism—some parts of Europe
attaching themselves to a pope in
Avignon, others to
a pope in Rome, with the further complication of
overlappings here and there, so that a diocese might
not be sure which of
two rival claimants was its duly
appointed bishop. There now arose the
question: What
means of rescue were open to a Church that seemed
to
have been struck at its very heart?
