Western Civilization

papal authority over the Christian church in the West,

although few people in Europe at this time looked to

the pope as the church’s ruler. He intervened in ecclesi-

astical conflicts throughout Italy and corresponded

with the Frankish rulers, urging them to reform the

church in Gaul. He successfully initiated the efforts of

missionaries to convert England to Christianity and

was especially active in converting the pagan peoples of

Germanic Europe. His primary instrument was the mo-

nastic movement.

The Monks and Their Missions

Amonk(Latinmonachus, meaning “someone who lives

alone”) was a person who sought to live a life divorced

from the world, cut off from ordinary human society,

in order to pursue an ideal of godliness or total dedica-

tion to the will of God. Christianmonasticismwas

initially based on the model of the solitary hermit who

forsakes all civilized society to pursue spirituality. Saint

Anthony (ca. 250–350) was a prosperous Egyptian

peasant who decided to follow Jesus’s injunction in the

Gospel of Mark: “Go your way, sell whatsoever you

have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure

in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow

me.” Anthony gave away his three hundred acres of

land to the poor and went into the desert to pursue

his ideal of holiness. Others did likewise, often to

extremes. Saint Simeon the Stylite lived for three deca-

des in a basket atop a pillar more than sixty feet high.

These spiritual gymnastics established a new ideal for

Christianity. Whereas the early Christian model had

been the martyr who died for the faith and achieved

eternal life in the process, the new ideal was the monk

who died to the world and achieved spiritual life

through denial, asceticism, and mystical experience of

God. These early monks, however, soon found them-

selves unable to live in solitude. Their feats of holi-

ness attracted followers on a wide scale, and as the

monastic ideal spread throughout the East, a new

form of monasticism based on communal life soon

became the dominant form. Monastic communities

came to be seen as the ideal Christian society that

could provide a moral example to the wider society

around them.

BENEDICTINE MONASTICISM Saint Benedict of Nursia (ca.

480–ca. 543), who founded a monastic house for which

he wrote a set of rules in the 520s, established the fun-

damental form of monastic life in the western Chris-

tian church. The Benedictine rule came to be used by

other monastic groups and was crucial to the growth of

monasticism in the western Christian world.

Benedict’s rule favored an ideal of moderation. In

Chapter 40 of the rule, on the amount a monk should

drink, this sense of moderation becomes apparent:

“Every man has his proper gift from God, one after this

manner, another after that.” And therefore it is with some

misgiving that we determine the amount of food for

someone else. Still, having regard for the weakness of

some brothers, we believe that a hemina of wine [a quar-

ter liter] per day will suffice for all. Let those, however, to

whom God gives the gift of abstinence, know that they

shall have their proper reward. But if either the circum-

stances of the place, the work, or the heat of summer

necessitates more, let it lie in the discretion of the abbot

to grant it. But let him take care in all things lest satiety

or drunkenness supervene.^3

Pope Gregory I.Pope Gregory the Great became one of the

most important popes of the early Middle Ages. As a result of

his numerous writings, he is considered the last of the Latin

fathers of the church. This ninth-century manuscript illustration

shows Gregory working on a manuscript, assisted by a monk.

Above Gregory’s head is a dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit,

which is providing divine inspiration for what he is writing.

Stiftsbibliothek/St. Gallen/Switzerland//De Agostini Picture Library/The Bridgeman Art Library

Development of the Christian Church 157

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