Lecture 35: Corruption and the Beginnings of Reform
• Emerging first from a struggle simply to survive, Christianity grew
to shape significant cultural accomplishments.
o The way of life in monasteries and cathedral chapters
represented an ideal of human existence ordered to the worship
of God, in which “the love of learning and the desire for God”
were intricately connected.o Cathedrals and the arts employed within them provided a focus
for a religious form of art that has had enduring value.o The development of universities, with their study of law and
theology, united the life of faith and the use of reason in a
critical synthesis.• There is, finally, no question that Christianity during this period
provided the setting and stimulus for men and women of great
sanctity. The religious fervor involved in the Crusades, pilgrimages,
monastic vows, mendicant wanderings, mystical prayer, and so
on may not always have been pure but was nevertheless largely
genuine and astonishingly widespread.Structural Issues in Christianity
• Still, by the 14th century, it was becoming clear that the medieval
synthesis was badly in need of correction, not because of minor
faults or problems but because of major and structural issues.• The Scholastic theology that developed in the cathedral and
monastic schools and in the universities quickly became
“scholastic” in the negative sense; it was more philosophical and
academic—removed from the life of faith.
o Theology used Scripture as a repository of proof texts
more than as a set of compositions that could challenge or
energize thinking.o Doctrinal attention, in turn, both reflected and affected shifts
in piety. For some, the divinity of Christ was so greatly