← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · FadeTheButcher
Thread ID: 13955 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2004-05-29
2004-05-29 18:53 | User Profile
Is this 'traditional Christianity'?
On the last day of the year 999, according to an ancient chronicle, the old basilica of St. Peter's at Rome was thronged with a mass of weeping and trembling worshipers awaiting the end of the world. This was the dreaded eve of the millennium, the Day of Wrath when the earth would dissolve into ashes. Many of those present had given away all their possessions to the poor - lands, homes, and household goods - in order to assure for themselves forgiveness for their trespasses at the Last Judgment and a good place in heaven near the footstool of the Almighty. Many poor sinners - and who among them was without sin? - had entered the church in sackcloth and ashes, having already spent weeks and months doing penance and mortifying their flesh.
At the altar the Holy Father, Pope Sylvester II, in full papal regalia, was celebrating the midnight mass, elevating the host for all to see. Many did not dare to look, lying face down on the multicoloured marble floor, their arms spread out in the shape of a cross. A few were seized by holy ecstasy, waiting to be united with Christ. As the few minutes passed and the fateful hour was about to strike, a deadly silence filled the venerable basilica. Only the voice of the pope was heard intoning the hallowed phrases, and, at the words ite missa est, the great bell began to ring.
The crowd remained rooted, motionless, transfixed, barely daring to breathe, "not a few dying from fright, giving up their ghosts then and there." This description was written from hearsay, and things might not have happened just that way, but it gives a good idea of the all-pervading dread of the apocalypse that held humankind in its grip. Legends set the period against an apocalyptic background and associate the end of the first millennium with some vague terror of judgment day. The historical truth is that not only the year 999, but the whole century that preceded it was a period of obscurity during which people, "blinded with blood, groped their way fearfully through a quagmire of filth."
This is not to say that everybody believed in the impending doom. Many did not. Prelates and abbots inveighed against the belief that the earth was about to burn up. But the common people, the lower nobles, village priests, and peasants, took it as an absolute truth that the "nightfall of the universe was at hand."
Some were certain that the Second Coming of Christ would fall on the last day of the year 999, at the very stroke of midnight. Others were equally convinced that Armageddon would happen a little earlier, on the eve of the nativity when "the Children of Light would join in battle with Gog's army of hellish fiends." Some fixed the date on the day of the summer or winter solstice in the thousandth year after our Lord's passion.
In France and Lorraine wise men scoffed at the idea. They had it on good authority that the end would come when the Feast of the Annunciation fell on a Good Friday "when darkness will cover the earth and the stars fall upon it." Though people quarreled about the exact day and hour, they all agreed, in the words of Raoul Glaber, that "Satan will soon be unleashed because the thousand years have been completed."
This Raoul, author of Tales and known by the nickname of Baldpate or Glaber, was very much of his time. He was a ruthless, insufferable monk whom no abbot could keep within his rule and who all his life jumped from one monastery to another. A semivisionary, ever haunted by superstitious fears, he "saw the Devil at every turn of the road."
Many expected the Last Judgment to be held at Jerusalem, and, throughout the year 999, the number of pilgrims converging upon that Holy City were compared to an immense, desolating army. Often these pious wayfarers had also sold their worldly possessions to finance their pilgrimage.
As Glaber described it: "On the threshold of the aforesaid thousandth year, so innumerable a multitude began to flock from all parts of the worldd to the Sepulchre or our Saviour at Jerusalem, as no man could before have expected; for the lower orders of men led the way, and after them came those of middle rank, and then all the greatest kings, counts and bishops, and lastly many noble ladies and poor women. For many purposed and wished to die in the Holy City . . .Many who had studied the matter, being asked about the significance of this great wandering to Jerusalem, answered with some caution that it portended the advent of Antichrist, whose appearance at the end of this world is prophesied in Holy Scripture."
And so the pilgrims thronged the miserable roads. On foot, in carts, riding horseback, and singing psalms, they fearfully scanned the sky, which they full expected to be rent asunder at any moment.
"Every phenomenon of nature filled them with alarm. A thunderstorm sent them all upon their knees in mid-march. It was the opinion that thunder was the voice of God announcing the Day of Judgment."
Signs and prodigies prompted faith in the apocalypse. If one is to believe contemporary chronicles, many such signs appeared. One early scribe told of the sky splitting open, letting fall down to earth a gigantic torch, which left behind it a long trail of light like a lightning bolt. Its thunderclap frightened not only people surprised in the open fields but also those who at the moment were safely indoors. The gap in the sky closed again, but then the shape of dragon with blue feet appeared, its head continuing to grow until it filled the horizon from end to end.
In England a meteor caused such fear and trembling. A fiery lumen appeared in the month of September. It shone so brightly that it turned night into day. It vanished at cock's crow, but whether this light came from God or from the devil the people did not know. French nuns saw "fiery armies in the sky." They started a procession and said many prayers to ward off the dreaded ultimate ruin.
In Aquitaine, the sky rained blood, spattering people's clothing with crimson spots that could not be expunged. This caused apprehension that great wars and bloodshed were about to occur - a surefire prophecy in an age of uninterrupted violence and warfare. Not only the victims of soldierly brutality but also the soldiers themselves took fright in the face of such omens. In 968, the men of emperor Otto I, marching against the Saracens of Calabria, panicked when an eclipse darkened the sky. They dove head first into empty wine barrels and supply chests or crawled underneath their carts. "Frantic preachers kept up the flame of terror. Every shooting star furnished occasion for a sermon, in which the sublimity of the approaching Judgment was the principal topic."
Many signs and omens were seen in Italy, not surprisingly, as many people believed that the dissolution of the world would begin at Rome and spread out from there until all of the earth should be consumed. Raoul Glaber took note of this: "For in the seventh year before that date A.D. 1000, Mount Vesuvius, which is also called Vulcan's cauldron, gaped far more often than its wont and vomited forth numberless vast stones mingled with sulphurous flames which feel to a distance of three miles around; and thus by the stench of its breath, like the stench of hell, made all the surrounding province uninhabitable. . .
" . . . It befall at the same time that most of the cities of Italy and Gaul were ravaged by flames of fire, and that even the greatest part of Rome itself was devoured by a conflagration. The flames caught the beams of St. Peter's church and began to creep up to the bronze tiles and likc the carpenter's work. When this became known to the watching multitude, being quite helpless to avert the disaster, they turned with one accord, and crying with a terrible voice, hastened to crowd before the timage of the Chief of the Apostles, crying upon him with curses that, if he watched not over his own, nor defended his own church, many throughout the world would abandon the faith and fall back into paganism. Whereupon the devouring flames at once left the wooden roofbeams and died away."
Among lesser signs mentioned was an image of Christ that wept crimson tears and a wolf who crept into the church to adore it. The pious beast seized the bellrope between its teeth and rang the church bell, which caused great unease among all who heard it. Also, in the castle of Joigny, belonging to a certain Sir Arlebaud, it rained stones of different sizes for three long years. Eleven sons and grandsons of Arlebaud died during that dismal time, which surprised nobody; had it not rained stones?
Near Chalons, a man called Leutard dreamed that a swarm of bees had entered his body and emerged through his mouth. Leutard claimed that the dream was real, and he showed many bee stings to prove it. The bees had revealed to him that he was to do things that were impossible for ordinary men. He went to the nearest church and trampled underfoot a cross and an image of Christ, claiming at the same time that it was sinful and ungodly to pay tithes and taxes. He was subdued and killed, but his behaviour was explained as still another sign of coming calamities.
Another madman was suddenly possessed by a fiend who made him plunge a lance between the ribs of the saintly Père Abbon of Fleury. The murderer had his hands cut off and was burned. This too was a bad omen, as the assassin had no discernable motive.
In 960, a preacher from Thuringia, named Bernhard, told an assembly of bishops and laymen at Würzburg that God had appeared to him in the flesh, revealing to him the exact day and hour in which the world an all who lived on it would be obliterated. He insisted that the hour was at hand. At first his listeners were frightened, but when the false prophet began drooling, capering, and making faces, they saw that he was just a fool, and the crowd mocked him, pelting the poor wretch with offal. Often such madmen were tortured - not to punish them, but merely to torment and drive out the indwelling demons, thereby a kindness to the bedeviled victim.
The tenth century has been called the Century of Lead and Iron. The barbarian invasions were not yet finished; Europe was still besieged, with horde after horde continuing to fling themselves against its walls. Western Europe was beset on all sides by fanatic Saracens, Spanish Moors, Thor-worshiping Vikings, pagan Bulgars, and fierce Magyar horsemen - the proverbial Scourges of God. Christian barons slaughtered each other with a vengeance over a piece of land, killing their enemies' serfs - men, women, and children to weaken them economically - burning villages and crops, and cutting down fruit trees for good measure.
In Rome, rival Popes imprisoned, starved, mutilated, castrated, blinded, and assassinated each other. Sons murdered fathers, husbands killed wives, sisters fought brothers for possession of castle or manor. As early as 909, at the Council of Trosly, Hervèe, archbishop of Rheims, lamented, "The cities lie in ruins, the monasteries are burned or destroyed, the country far and wide reduced to a lifeless desert. Like hte first people of earth, men live without law and fear of punishment, abandoning themselves to their passions. Everyone does as he pleases, defying the laws divine and human, as well as the orders of their bishops. The strong oppress the weak. Everywhere there is violence against the poor who are helpless to resist - and equally helpless the churches and cloisters who cannot defend what is theirs. And we ourselves, bishops, shepherds of the people, we who should correct, protect, do not fulfill our task. We neglect to preach, see our flock abandoning God and wallow in vice without speaking to them, advising them, offering them our hands. They tell us that the burdens we lay upon them are too heavy, that we do not even offer them our little finger. And therefore the flock, our Lord's sheep, perish by our silence. In the the meantime we think only of our own well-being. But the moment approaches when we must give account. Soon we shall see approach the day, majestic and terrible, when we, together with our flock, shall stand before the Great Shepherd of all."
Such warnings occurred again and again throughou the century. Glaber wrote, "Close to a thousand years after the Vigin gave her son to the world mankind threw itself into the most fatal errors. The people were bound for evil from childhood, like a dog returning to its own vomit, sinning again and again like a swine that was washed wallowing once more in the muck. They waxed fat and proud, and kicked against God's laws. For even princes and bishops had their hearts set on ill-gotten riches, turning to theft and greed. And the lower sort of people followed the example of the higher so that never before hand there been such base crimes of incests, adulteries and fornications between close kindred, such immorality and keeping of concubines."
Elsewhere he lamented, "A mixture of frivolity and infamy corrupts our way of life; therefore our minds have lost their taste for what is serious and dwell upon what is shameful. Honour and justice cannot be had now at any prince. Women walk about in shortened dresses, moving wantonly. Among men, degeneracy gives way to effeminacy. Fraud, violence and every imaginable vice vie with each other for dominance. Not even the ravages of the sword, famines and pestilences can keep men from sinning and if the goodness of the Almighty had not suspended His anger, hell had already swallowed up mankind in its bottomless pit. Such is the power of crime that the more evil one commits, the less one fears repeating it and the more one doubts the Last Judgment."
Richard Erdoes, A.D. 1000: Living on the Brink of Apocalypse, (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1995), pp.1-6
2004-05-29 18:59 | User Profile
Here is an interesting excerpt from a book I am reading. Can this be considered traditional Christianity?
"Of Adelbert of Bremen and Bruno of Cologne, later Pope Gregory V, it is said with special praise that they were very saintly men because they eschewed the pleasures of the bath. The church looked with disfavour on bath houses on account of their supposed immorality. Public baths, in which men and women bathed naked, were already - quite unsuccessfully - forbidden in 745 by St. Boniface. A proverb said that the public bath "was a great place for a woman to get with child." The medieval words for bath - bagnio and bordello - eventually came to mean houses of prostitution.
Volumes could be written about the church's, and particularly the monk's, attitude toward women and sex. Woman - the diabolic female principle - was considered the deadliest of all obstacles to the soul in search of salvation, womanly beauty a satanic distraction, a woman's charm the devil's snare to lure men into sin. It was seriously debated by learned scholars whether women had souls. It was, after all, "a single woman, Eve, through whom Adam was banished from Paradise, by which she brought about original sin and condemned Christ to suffer on the cross." Women were the accursed "daughters of Eve who, in league with the Serpent, tempted man to eat the forbidden fruit."
Some historians ascribed the idea of woman as the great temptress manipulated by satan to ensare poor, sinful man, [u]to Jewish biblical writings[/u], a general male fear of woman, and the guilt feelings of early ascetics and pious hermits.
In the words of William E.H. Lecky: "Woman was represented as the door of hell, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman. She should live in continual penance on account of the curses she has brought upon the world. She should be ashamed of her dress, for it is the memorial of her fall. She should be especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most potent instrument of the daemon."
Women were the "inferior sex," and "great was the peril and temptation they caused to men" - the "superior sex." It was said that "the badness of men was yet better than the goodness of women." Judicially, women had few rights. In certain places a seven-year-old son was given guardianship over his widowed mother. In most parts of Germany, a husband had the right to sell his wife. Men were exhorted to physically punish their wives, short of breaking bones and knocking out teeth, for nagging, talking back, or being disobedient. In the Nibelungen Saga, the hero, Siegfried, belabors his beloved Kriemhilde, daughter and sister of kings, with a stout club for annoying him with her chatter. The confessor of St. Elizabeth, not only a queen but eventually a saint, frequently chastised her by slapping her face.
To the Christian teachers, every sexual act ws inherently dangerous and sinful, because "the devil dwells below the girdle." The woman's sexual organs were galled the "gate of hell." Her very glances could kill. Proverbs of the time maintained that it was "better to go mad than give free reign to desire" and that "if a woman is chaste, it is only for lack of opportunity."
Odo of Cluny often enumerated to his monks the wiles of the daughters of Eve: "Their shinky shoes, but their very creaking, excite wanton eyes of feverish desire. Their hair falls down for a little, and is gathered up again. Neck and throat are casually bared by letting fall away their cloak, and are hastily covered again as though they had not meant them to be seen."
To resist the allure of sex was regarded as heroic virtue, and heroic were the means to avert it by fasting, bathing in icy streams, scourging oneself until the blood flowed, and other mortifications of the flesh. One dying ascetic, having separating from his wife forty years before, when she came to visit him, cried out, "Take the straw away, woman, begone! Thake the straw away, there is fire yet!"
Of St. Hugh of Grenoble, "a man of wonderous modesty and chastity," it was said that in all his life he knew only one woman by sight. Some prided themselves in their power to withstand carnal temptation. Ancelin, bishop of Beccy, boasted, "I for my part can look indifferently upon any woman whatsoever; because I instantly flay them all," by which he meant that in his imagination he stripped off their skin, contemplating with pious satisfaction "the foul corruption beneath it."
Richard Erdoes, A.D. 1000: Living on the Brink of Apocalypse (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1995), pp.19-20
2004-05-29 19:03 | User Profile
Hey Walter, do you consider Pope John XII to be a traditional Catholic Pope? :p
"After making a few nonentities pope, Alberic II died naming as his successor his son Octavian, who, in 955, at the age of sixteen, became Pope John XII. This was the worst of all pontiffs descended from Theophilact and Theodora.
"His palace was the scene of scandalous licence while his public acts were those of a tyrant. He desired to be both pope and prince, but utterly failed to be either." John XII converted the Lateran into a bawdy house, committed adultery on countless occasions, consorted with prostitutes, and was "a danger of every virgin and virtuous matron." It was said that respectable women of foreign nations "were afraid to go to Rome on pilgrimage on account of the lascivious advances of this depraved pope." He made his dead father's mistress his own, raped nuns, and was accused of incestuous relationships. He was "more addicted to horse-breeding and hunting with hound and falcon than to spiritual matters." He blessed and installed deacons in a horse stable. He sold the great offices of the church to the highest bidders, consecrating a ten-year-old boy bishop of Todi. He drank wine in honour of the devil, toasting the Prince of Darkness with raised cup, and he invoked Jupiter, Venus, and Mars while playing dice. He failed to celebrate matrins and the canonical hours and was never seen to bless himself with the cross. He was guilty of arson and ordered the eyes of his godfather, Pope Benedict, to be put out and caused the poor man's death. He had a Roman priest who dared to criticize him castrated, and he put a great number of his opponents to death."
More on traditional Catholicism here:
"The history of the papacy in the Century of Lead and Iron, or rather Pornocracy, as some called it, makes sorry reading. One particularly disgusting example of its degeneracy came when the corpse of Pope Formosus, who occupied the Chair of St. Peter from 891 to 896, was exhumed by his political enemy and successor, Pope Stephen V, who dressed the corpse in pontifical robes, placed it upon the papal throne, and solemnly put his dead predecessor on trial for having allowed himself to be made pope against canon law. To give the affair a semblance of legality, a deacon was appointed to please the corpse's case, which he did with much trembling and stammering and to no avail. The dead Formosus, who could please his own case but poorly, was pronounced guilty by Stephen, while the assembled crowd of church dignitaries cried aloud, "So be it!." Forthwith, his papal robes were torn away, and three fingers of his right hand, which the deceased had used to bless the Romans were hacked off. The decomposing remains were wrapped in sackcloth and thrown into the Tiber. Not long after, as the political climate changed, Stephen himself was thrown into prison by a Roman mob and there ws strangled by unknown assassins."
Ibid., p.56
2004-05-29 21:30 | User Profile
Just to finish the story, in 897 the second successor of Stephen had the body, which a monk had drawn from the Tiber, reinterred with full honours in St. Peter's. He furthermore annulled at a synod the decisions of the court of Stephen VI, and declared all orders conferred by Formosus valid.
There have been a handful of bad Popes over the centuries, but often even they have served the Church in remarkable ways, as by strong administration during very turbulent times, such as the Borgia years.
2004-05-31 03:14 | User Profile
First, I have read that most stories about mass hysteria at the end of the first millienium is largely a myth and was restricted to a few segments of society. Fade's source mentions the lower classes, yet they probally had no idea they were on the verge of the year 1000. Anyways, I will try to find sources and post them here.
Secondly, a Pope's infallibility is in theological matters not physical matters. Indeed the Church is a human institution and has flaws and indeed during what is commonly considered "the Dark Ages" the church was in disarray. I know that during this period it was often the Holy Roman Emperor who had to straighten things out in the church.
2004-05-31 14:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=FadeTheButcher]Here is an interesting excerpt from a book I am reading. Can this be considered traditional Christianity?
Some historians ascribed the idea of woman as the great temptress manipulated by satan to ensare poor, sinful man, [u]to Jewish biblical writings[/u], a general male fear of woman, and the guilt feelings of early ascetics and pious hermits.
Richard Erdoes, A.D. 1000: Living on the Brink of Apocalypse (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1995), pp.19-20 [/QUOTE] And some historians ascribe the idea of woman as the great temptress to the Greeks with that whole Pandora's box thing. If you look long enough, you can find some historians to ascribe just about anything to just about anyone you want. By the way, how did the Hindus come by their poor treatment of women (eh, the Suttee anyone?) since they were free of patriarchal, oppressive Christianity? Or the Muslims, for that matter?
One more thing -- isn't Richard Erdoes the well-known authority on ... American Indians?