Church and Empire
Today, liberals love to talk about the “separation of church and state”
as being something great, something which ended religious wars in the
western world and which they take sole credit for. The more atheistic
liberals think this is good because it prevents the state being
dominated by organized religion and the religious liberals like it
because it prevents the churches from being dominated by the government.
In this regard, the religious liberals have a powerful arsenal to
defend their case by pointing to the state churches of northern Europe
which preach a pale, so watered down as to barely qualify as Christian
form of Christianity and which practically no one attends as opposed to
the United States where, while still rapidly declining, church
attendance is comparatively robust. However, the problem with both
arguments, though the atheistic liberals in particular, is that no
separation of church and state really exists in the western world, even
in America. To go even further, such a thing has rarely existed even
from the beginnings of Christianity.
In virtually every major religion, church and state have almost always
been very closely linked if not, in some cases, one and the same. This
is true in Confucianism, Shinto in Japan, Buddhism in places from
Mongolia and Tibet to Thailand and of course it is also true in Islam.
Traditionally, it was true of Judaism, in a way even more so than in
Islam as it was a religion, a way of life and a people. For Christianity
the proponents of the separation of church and state usually point to
Christ’s command to, “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s
and to God the things that are God’s” as some sort of “proof” that
Christianity uniquely requires a separation of church and state. Of
course, that is both silly and nonsensical as religion tends to be about
setting standards for what is right and wrong, what is good and evil
and obviously no one is going to be okay with thinking that the way they
do things is good but that the way the government does things is evil.
In historical terms, Christianity did not remain separate from the state
in the slightest for very long at all.
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Emperor Constantine the Great |
Christianity first became a legal religion, recognized and tolerated by
the state, when Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan
in 318AD. One only had to wait until 380AD for Christianity to become
the official state religion of the Roman Empire by the order of Emperor
Theodosius I. Yet, even before that happened and to be a Roman was to be
a Christian, church and state were not kept separate at all. Emperor
Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, saw Church
“interference” in the state with the Emperor changing Roman laws to
reflect Christian morality such as by abolishing death by crucifixion,
ending gladiatorial games and making Sunday a day of rest. Likewise, the
Emperor also intervened in religious matters, most significantly by
calling the First Council of Nicaea which famously produced the Nicene
Creed which provided a simple definition of what Christianity was and
what all Christians were expected to believe. It is also important to
remember that all of this was done well before Emperor Constantine had
actually been baptized as a Christian himself (something he waited to do
until he was on his deathbed).
It is evidence of how far modern Christianity has drifted from its
original, traditional, roots that all of this is mostly unknown to
modern Christians but the Roman emperor was seen as an extremely
significant, even essential, figure for the Christian religion. The
early Christians and Medieval Christians certainly understood this which
is proven by the long tradition, today almost completely unknown, of
prophecies, visions and other miraculous events concerning the Roman
emperors. Regular readers will know as I have talked about these before
such as the Emperor Augustus being revealed a vision of the birth of
Christ, the Emperor Tiberius being moved to forbid any persecution of
the Christians or the Emperor Marcus Aurelius putting a halt to such
persecutions after witnessing a miracle in battle called down by
Christians within his army. There was even a legend in the Middle Ages
that Pope St Gregory the Great had momentarily resurrected Emperor
Trajan in order to baptize him and spare this model ruler from the
torments of Hell.
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Emperor Basil I |
As I have said before, whether one believes these stories or not is
irrelevant to the central point. If you do believe them, obviously the
Roman emperors had a spiritual significance for Christians from the very
beginning, of both the Roman Empire and the Christian religion.
However, even if you do not believe them and think they were invented
later, that they were invented still shows just how significant the
Christians of the early Church and Middle Ages considered the imperial
line to be. The emperors were not seen as purely secular figures with no
connection to religious matters. It is worth remembering that, after
the Council of Jerusalem, the first seven Ecumenical Councils of the
Church were called not by the Pope or some eminent Patriarch but by the
Roman Emperor, indeed, all seven were called by the Eastern Roman
Emperor. Likewise, the eighth Ecumenical Council was called by Emperor
Basil I as well as the Pope, the ninth (Lateran I), called by the Pope
after the “Investiture Dispute”, dealt with the imperial role in
appointing bishops so that, even when church-state relations had been
bad, there was still no getting around the fact that the emperors were
major figures in the Christian religion. Lateran I was also attended by
the King of France whose position, likewise, was inseparable from the
faith of his country.
The fact that the Investiture Dispute happened in the first place is
evidence of the fact that church and state were not separate and that no
one could imagine them fully being so. This occurred during the
imperial reign of the Salian Dynasty but was to come up again, in a way,
during the subsequent reign of the Hohenstaufen Dynasty. Emperor
Frederick I (Frederick Barbarossa), feeling himself affronted by Pope
Alexander III, earned the eternal wrath of the Catholic Church by taking
the side of Anti-Pope Victor IV against him. However, he had initially
tried to remain neutral, advised the bishops in his lands to do the same
and refused to recognize either papal claimant, calling for a council
to be summoned to decide the matter. When Alexander III refused on the
grounds that the pope cannot be subject to the decisions of a council
(and being rather unpopular likely fearful of the outcome), it was only
then that Emperor Frederick gave his support to Victor IV. He did this
because of the long history, again, going back to Constantine, of the
Emperor being so significant a figure in the Church. In his view, if the
Church could not sort out its own problems, the Emperor must step in to
decide the issue.
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The coronation of Charlemagne |
This was the root of the problem, however, as the popes did not wish to
be subject to a council or any other authority, nor did the emperors
wish to agree to the idea that they owed their crown to the pope who
could then take it from them if the pope so wished. Unfortunately but
not surprisingly, such disputes, were effectively political and not of a
religious nature really. In the earlier times when councils were called
by the Roman Emperor, and when even the popes were regarded by the
eastern emperors as being one of their subjects in secular terms, these
councils dealt with heresies or other questions of a religious nature.
For the Roman Pontiffs and the German monarchs of the “Holy Roman
Empire”, on the other hand, politics was usually at the root of the
issue. That being said, any political dispute could always be cast in a
religious light even if for no other reason than that it came down to a
question of authority and as the pope could always cite that the law of
God was above the law of man and that he was the sole arbiter of the law
of God, his ruling on any matter at all had to prevail and so he made
any issue a religious issue simply by being involved in it.
Although doctrinal disputes certainly exist, it is also true that a
major foundational reason for the very existence of two distinct
versions of the Christian religion, one eastern and one western, is due
to the fact that the Western Roman Emperor was eliminated and only the
Pope remained whereas, in the east, the Emperor carried on being the one
expected to maintain discipline in the Church, summon councils and so
on as had been the case before. When a new version of the empire was
revived in the west, with the coronation of Charlemagne, it was
initiated by the pope and later disputes arose because what the pope had
given, the pope felt entitled to take away, in addition to the fact
that he had gained land, subjects and political power and was thus a
political player for the first time. The popes, though they tried, could
never have the same sort of disputes with the eastern emperors given
that their reign extended back to the original Roman Empire, predated
the papacy and was not therefore in the gift of the pope to give or to
take away. What neither ever did was to presume you could have one or
the other and still have traditional Christianity as it had been handed
down to them.
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Emperor Justinian |
Even when Pope Gelasius I (492-6) first tried to define the limits of
the two powers, “which govern the world: the sacred authority of the
bishops and the imperial power” it was at a time when the western half
of the Church was displeased with the eastern half and while this was
later used in the Middle Ages to bolster the papal case against the
German rather than Byzantine emperors and could be considered a
prototype of the ‘separation of the church and state’ argument, the fact
which should be most obvious is that the pope was admitting that the
imperial authority was a given, that it had its limits as he saw them,
but it was there nonetheless and could not be denied or disregarded. Not
long after, the issue of imperial authority was at the root of one of
the earliest, if not the very first, contested papal elections with one
faction more loyal to the Emperor in Constantinople and wanting
reconciliation and the other more comfortable with the Gothic kings and
wishing to maintain their ground in the east-west dispute. Many of the
Roman/Italian nobility wanted to reconcile with the east while the lower
classes tended not to. This was all the more noticeable when the Latin
and westward-looking Justin came to the throne in 518, followed by his
nephew Justinian in 527, who brought back the flavor of the old Roman
Empire and served to highlight the Germanic origins and habits of the
Gothic kings.
This period, specifically because it was so troubled, inadvertently
highlights the importance that the imperial monarchy had for the Church.
Whereas the Gothic west had largely fallen under the sway of the Arian
heresy, King Theodoric the Great being an Arian, the east remained more
solidly of the old faith. Pope John I, though old and frail, was
dispatched to Constantinople to persuade the Emperor to stop being so
harsh and discriminatory toward the Arians. Imagine that for a moment,
the Roman Catholic Pope went to the Byzantine Emperor to plead the case
of the Arian heresy! How successful he was seems to be somewhat in
dispute, some accounts saying he did get the Emperor to back off the
Arians somewhat, others saying Justinian committed to nothing
substantial and sent him home. In any event, it did Pope John little
good for King Theodoric had him arrested soon after returning, fearing
that he had been plotting with the Emperor against him to retake Italy
and the frail, old pope died in captivity. Nonetheless, there was some
balance, there was recourse if one side got out of line.
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Coronation of Emperor Otto the Great |
The benefits of this arrangement were certainly seen in the time leading
up to and around the year 1000 when the Church, certainly in the west,
had become infamous for its corruption and depravity, yet this was also
when great monarchs provided an impetus to change. It was the time of
High King Brian Boru of Ireland, King St Stephen of Hungary, Emperor
Otto the Great of Germany, St Vladimir the Great the Grand Prince of
Kiev who converted the Russians, King Canute the Great of Denmark and
King St Olaf II of Norway. At a time when the papacy had sunk to its
lowest point, it was the pressure of Emperor Otto III which brought a
pious and determined man to the Petrine Throne (Sylvester II, also the
first French pope). Had it been left solely up to the clerical
leadership of the time, Christendom would likely not have survived as so
many of them had become far too weak and corrupted. Some may, perhaps,
find something familiar about this situation.
I have said before and will go on saying that for the majority of
Christian history none of the faithful would have been able to imagine
having Christianity without an emperor as an integral part of the
picture. I am also firmly convinced that it is no coincidence that
Christianity is in such a sad state today when an emperor or even
anything of the sort has been absent for so long. The enemies of all I
hold dear about western civilization certainly recognized that taking
down the imperial power would aid in taking down the spiritual power as
well. This is not, however, to say that they are solely responsible. If
everything had been working as it should have been, I don’t think they
would have stood a chance. In the west, the papacy certainly did a great
deal of damage to the traditional hierarchy for the sake of politics
only to find that not long after the empire ceased to exist in any way
other than a name the papacy itself no longer had much real influence
either, having frittered it away by constantly shifting positions. Now
the spiritual authority of Christianity is, I think, in real danger of
being lost and there is no emperor to come to the rescue as in the days
of Otto III.
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Emperor Valentinian II |
Hopefully, the above will demonstrate one more reason why Christians
should take monarchy seriously and not see it as something set apart
from religion. Even if your monarch is far from the Christian ideal (as
most are these days), rest assured that this is nothing new. Even when
Julian “the Apostate” tried to restore Rome to paganism, it did not
cause Christians to abandon the idea of having an emperor. Christianity
was a product of the Roman Empire, Christ was born in the reign of
Augustus, died and was resurrected in the reign of Tiberius, and so it
went with His followers. St Paul preferred to appeal to Nero rather than
place his fate in the hands of the Jews and, according to Josephus at
least, Nero’s wife may have been a Christian. The religion won
recognition under Constantine and became the official religion of the
empire under Theodosius. For some, reading the funeral oration of St
Ambrose of Milan for Emperor Theodosius or Emperor Valentinian II may be
enough. We can see there and in numerous other ways that from the
beginning, Christianity, born of the empire, was seen as being
inseparable from it and the empire inseparable from the faith. If those
early Christians were right, it can only then mean that the majority
today are very wrong to say otherwise.
SOURCE
People have been brainwashed into believing democracy is the most superior form of government,but I'll bet few know that it's a communist concept.
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