The Romans left Britain at the end of the 4th century, but left there adequate people, institutions and cognition to make the island a starting point for the renewal of European culture. For respective centuries the island has not touched the Germanic civilizational regression caused by the expansion, especially cultural ones – says Prof. Tomasz Panfil in an interview with PCh24.pl.
Dear Professor, Britain is an island that the Romans have never full captured. How did Christendom get there?
The Romans captured Britain, but did not conquer Caledonia, or part of present-day Scotland. On the Roman side of the Hadrian Wall remained 2/3 of the island – with modern Edinburgh and Glasgow – the independent remained northern 1/3. Many British cities with London at the head are cities founded by the Romans. erstwhile the power of Rome began to shrink in the 4th century, the metropolis first liquidated its farthest peaks and peripheral provinces. The Romans left Britain at the end of the 4th century, but left there adequate people, institutions and cognition to make the island a starting point for the renewal of European culture. due to the fact that for respective centuries the island did not contact the resultant expansion of the Germanic civilization regression, and especially cultural.
This is simply a very simplified version, of course. Between the 5th and seventh centuries, Britain forgot that the Romans were conquerors, but remembered that they were the ancestors of cultural elites and creators of social systems. Britain's past until the 11th century is so complicated that it's easy to get entangled in a layering thread...
In any case, the Roman local tribes either latinized and raised to a much higher cultural and civilizational level, or – how mysteriously adequate the Picts and the militant Caledonians – dispelled north beyond the Hadrian Wall and – briefly – even further, beyond the Antonin Wall. The heart of later Britain or English culture was Latinized Wales.
Wales inactive proudly refers to its Roman origin. Dafydd Ivan wrote the thrilling unofficial anthem of Wales, fantastically sung in Welsh by football supporters. This hymn mentions Macsen, Magnus Maximus, the emperor from 383 to 388, who set out to regulation the empire just from Wales. And—notice—he was a zealous Catholic rather fiercely fighting again—after defeat at the good Council—a increasing arian heresy.
But the Sarmatites besides said they were descendants of the Romans...
Only the Welsh are right. They are indeed – of course, in some, genetically understood thing, parts – descendants of the Romans. They were surely cultural descendants, even if we are not talking about genetics, but culturally Wales, the heart of early medieval British culture, has Roman roots.
If the Romans didn't get Scotland, where did the monks come from?
There's a mix-up here again...
How did Christianity end up in Scotland erstwhile Scotland is unattainable?
Hold on, Mr. Editor. First things first should be straightened out. Back then, Scotland was called Ireland. And then the Christian Scots of Ireland began to influence the English island and settle the pagan north of the island. And this part of the northern English island began to be called Scotland Minor, and then Ireland began to be called Hibernia, and Scotland insignificant became Scotland.
Is that clear now?
I guess so, but just in case, I'm not...
Yeah. It is hard to describe in a brief summary the phenomena that have occurred for centuries in large areas. By the strength of things, we must apply simplification, and we hazard missing something important, which will lead to a chain of causes and effects that will be incomprehensible, or that will be confounded.
The Iraqis are truly Irish, Christianized Irs who settled Scotland.
For these first “Scots” are, as said, the Caledonians and Picts, who have already been pushed all the way to the north of the island.
So Christendom reached the island in many waves, and in many directions. There was no single act of Christianity of the British islands. Missionaries came from different directions, carried out Christianity – or died by orders of local authorities and priests. St. Patrick was a Roman Welsh - or Welsh Roman - christianized Ireland in the 5th century and exterminated all snakes on the occasion.
I hear bells, but I don't know which church... Ireland is the only part of Europe where snakes are dead?
Yes, and everyone wondered how it was possible and Ah! What a beautiful green island, there are no snakes here. Miracle! So the killing of all the Serpents of Saint Patrick's prayer was attributed. The snakes were hesitating loudly and hindered him from praying, so St. Patrick made a prayer to God to halt disturbing him. And this is how there are no snakes in Ireland, but there are many monasteries. A akin legend besides exists in England, only that there the hermit in meditation was disturbed by singing larks. We already know the punch line.
In the 3rd and 4th centuries, the Western Empire is plunged into crises, under force from interior enemies, and due to interior disorders begins to weaken and shrink. The process of folding the empire starts with the periphery. The center lasts the longest.
The slow rotation of imperial power may besides have affirmative aspects, due to the fact that if the process of change is not violent, only gradual, then yes: state institutions and army structures evacuate, but there stay local elites, preserving Roman and Christian culture. And it was on the British periphery that the Christian monasteries continued to pray to God and to prescribe liturgical, hagiographic, and yearbook texts.
Christianity reached the British islands early and firmly rooted, but then German pagans reached the British islands. The elites of the fresh power were pagan again, but they were Christianized rather quickly: either by missionaries or simply by taking over a higher culture of local communities.
But in order not to confuse ourselves again and not to make this chronological-denominational translation, we can presume that the final christianization of the island - but in the northern reaches of the 7th century, which is influenced by monasteries from Ireland.
In 529 the first order of the world, or Benedictine, was created. little than 70 years later, St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury...
Not yet a saint. The founder was Augustine, who later became a saint, and his name later became associated with the most crucial Benedictine abbey of Canterbury, or in Durovernum, for specified a Latin name was besides used. A fewer 100 years later, in the 12th and 13th centuries, Templars, Dominicans, and Franciscans established their facilities in Canterbury. It is besides worth noting that Canterbury was besides the capital of the kingdom of Kent: St Augustine first baptized King Etelbert, and then with the aid of the ruler – about this kind of cooperation, essential for the success of the foundation, we already talked – founded a monastery (597). Originally, the abbey was under the call of Saints Peter and Paul.
70 years is simply a lot in this case? I don't think... Rome is falling, communication is what it is, coming to Britain is not specified a simple thing...
On the occasion of 1 of the erstwhile talks, I expressed my skepticism towards your assertion of the fall of the Roman Empire. Now again, Mr. Editor, I repeat: The Roman Empire has not fallen. It continued. It continued in the mentality of people. It didn't fall. It just changed.
Rome is still... Sure, the centre of power is no longer in Rome, due to the fact that the emperors had already moved from Rome to Ravenna and then to Croatia, and then to Constantinople, or the migration of the centre of power and its capital. But the capital is the seat of the ruler of Rome, or the capital of the Roman Empire is in Ravenna, the capital of Rome is in Split, the capital of Rome is in Constantinople, but it remains Rome, it remains the same state, it remains the same ideas that make them up, culture and civilization continue. The Roman roads be to this day, we can see fragments of Hadrian's wall. Although we cannot take a bath in the thermal baths in Rome, we could organize a performance of 3 tenors. Opera, rock, italo disco and volleyball matches are inactive held in the amphitheater in Verona.
We are going to talk about culture, so we are going to request the thought here, especially since we are going to talk about Christian culture, for which Plato's doctrine is simply a methodological foundation. So: in Plato's and Saint Augustine's idealistic philosophy, the thought is the most crucial being, not the existing things. Plato and his supporters doubted the reality of things. For Plato and his followers, the being contained in ideas, these ideas were real, and the material planet and reality were only light reflections of ideas. Example: Humanity and the value of a human individual are determined by an immortal, perfect soul, not a defective, susceptible body.
Thus, Rome is besides specified an idea. The fact that he in his material form is experiencing crises, seemingly even falling, is nothing. The essence is the thought of the Roman Empire. The thought of which the most crucial elements are Pax Romana – Roman peace – and Roman law based on “Ius” and “Lex”, that is, natural, inalienable and established laws.
All these concepts make an thought that is alive. The fact that the state is politically falling, shrinking, experiencing crises, sharing, that is the destiny of matter, is crucial what happens to immortal ideas.
Let us return to your questions... 70 years isn't as much as it sounds.
The flow of information is as fast as the wandering people...
Benedictine, they traveled all over Europe, founded their monasteries promoting a new, attractive kind of piety, inevitably they besides had to scope Britain. Remember, the roads built by Rome inactive exist. What has for centuries provided communication within the Roman Empire, or wonderful paved Roman roads, they inactive be in good condition at the age of VI. They can drive, wander, move. Of course, it can be dangerous for them to deficiency legions guarding order, but the roads are expensive, so the velocity of moving concepts, ideas, cultural patterns is not much smaller than in the time of imperial Rome.
Although wandering philosophers or monks surely do not march at a rate of 30 kilometres a day, as the legionaries marched. Nevertheless, they are inactive able to travel respective twelve kilometres a day. So what is it to get from Ravenna to Milan or Paris? Especially since you can join any merchant caravan. While skilled infantry goes faster than oxen in the yoke, they are more durable. Although there is inactive a channel between Normandy and Britain, as we can conclude from the frequency of the journey, it is not a large problem to sail it. The Romans have traveled over these little than 40 kilometres back and forth, why should they not be able to swim through the early mediate Ages?
Why in Canterbury did Augustine decide to establish a monastery, establish an abbey?
I have already mentioned the favour of the local ruler. It's a prerequisite.
It is not that 1 man in habit himself or even in the company of respective fellow believers undertakes a foundation work. No, it is absolutely essential that the local ruler's favour and material support be given.
The abbey in Canterbury was most likely due to the fact that the wife of the local king was a Christian and so the ruler surrounded the care of these visitors, gave them land, gave them the right to build a church, granted them the right to preach teachings, etc. The same happened in Poland 350 years later: the pagan ruler, the Christian Duchess of the spouse, the first monks, the first chapel, the first teachings. Goods and Mieszko I. The process of inception of Christian religion, and especially the creation of church structures took place in cooperation with secular power. Examples of specified events can be found much more. 2 spheres of power, spiritual and secular, cannot be separated. After all, monarchs are anointed, like bishops.
On the contrary, erstwhile a lay ruler resents a local bishop or a pope, it is actually a clash, a civilization clash, even a giant one, specified as at the age of XIII, erstwhile Emperor Frederick II had a long, multi-threaded dispute with Pope Gregory. The only accident in past erstwhile the pope officially not only excommunicates the emperor, but inactive calls him Antichrist... That was rather an event.
And erstwhile local power works with monks, with the church, it's all harmonious.
One more small journey around, Professor. due to what you said about the dispute between Emperor Frederick and Pope Gregory... If we went to the times of Innocent III, it would turn out that the popes could throw emperors and kings off the thrones...
Of course I do... and vice versa.
So where's the harmony between spiritual power and secular power?
Since we just left the monastery for Monte Cassino, I will remind you that Emperor Frederick II has robbed Monte Cassino due to the fact that he wanted to show the Pope that he is stronger. Earlier, behind Gregory VII, Rome had been stripped of Germany and fighting the imperial Normans.
That is why I said that the clashing of these 2 top powers – due to the fact that for many 100 years and the empire and papacy were the world's top powers – has always caused civilization shocks. Civilization then wobbled in jobs, and suffered more resistant to political perturbations.
After all, we have many specified clashes, specified crises. The period of the conflict for primacy in Europe, as historians call it, was respective 100 years, and 1 of the points of the conflict for primacy was what is most frequently taught in schools, that is, the alleged dispute over investment. 1 forgets to add that the dispute over investment was only specified a tiny component in the conflict for primacy. The fight for the primacy was much broader than just a dispute over investment, that is, it introduces bishops to the capital, the koga depend on whose bishop the estates are, who gives to whom and on what principle.
Would the abbey have been created if it had not been for Pope Gregory I, a Benedictine child?
It would most likely be, due to the fact that I don't think there's much to be attached to names and names, rather, we identify cultural currents with which circumstantial people connect.
An thought is spreading, and what's his name, or what's his name, which is her current and temporal promoter, advocate, is little important. If not one, the other. The strength of Benedictine was very strong, and on the British islands it met precisely this earlier Christian tradition, the 1 from the end of the 4th, early 5th century, the tradition of Christian Rome and Saint Patrick and his apostolic missionary action.
Because England is not a virgin's land. It is not a common phenomenon that Christian missionaries begin to evangelize countries of Christendom that do not know how the X - century State lives, and in later centuries the interiors of Africa or the islands of Japan. The British Isles already knew Christianity, and that's good. That's where the king's wife came from, isn't it? Welsh Macsen- Emperor Magnus grew up in Britain in a Christian home. Which means that erstwhile Augustine arrives with his mission, Christianity has been known there for centuries. And most importantly, it is not Christianity characteristic of the first 2 centuries, or religion of slaves and mediocre people.
The believer of Christ is the wife of the king. So it is already a valued religion and Christians are not discriminated against in any way. They're powerful people. And we have the success of this mission or re-emission, or the establishment of a monastery in Canterbury. Although Pope Gregory was delighted with Augustine and his 40 companions' missionary successes, he wrote about the miracles worthy of the apostles when, under the influence of Augustine, tens of thousands of Angolans converted, but there is no uncertainty that Benedictines are active in an environment that already knows Christian religion and favorably. The Iro-Scottish retention monasteries, and it is very meticulously, the acquisitions of the late antique are the centers of culture and cognition on the island, including this useful...
Where did they get it?
What do you mean? It's the 4th century.
But what do you mean by prey? Is it the thought, the idea, or any books, icons, or another artifacts?
Everything, Mr. Editor, everything. The concepts and reflections, observations and theories contained in manuscripts, and even the method of writing them down. For example, in the 4th century, the Empire has a beautiful, clear code letter, alleged an ounce. And this is the ounce utilized by monks who founded monasteries in Ireland and later Scotland in the 4th and 5th centuries. They are cut off from what is happening on the continent, not subject to the barbarisation of culture then, but keep what they learned. They give it to the next adepts, the oblates, the novices in monastery scripts. The Iro-Scottish monks compose beautifully, carefully and all the same.
The planet of that time – i.e. the defragmentable Empire is subject to constant shocks associated with political disturbances, as you say, with the process of the collapse of the Roman Empire. In the Iro-Scottian monasteries, it's like time stopped. The monks invariably sit in their scriptors and prescribe beautiful uncial old texts. And not only do they rewrite texts, they besides illuminate them.
Miniatures in these manuscripts, manuscripts and roscottian manuscripts are beautiful, but interestingly, they are subject to akin rules as later Orthodox icons. They don't change. For decades and centuries there is the same ornamentation, the same colors, the same painting techniques, the same iconographic patterns, etc.
Continental Europe changes patterns and techniques – not necessarily for the better. There are fresh perspectives, fresh perspectives, and everything is going on with the Irochots, and it's good luck for us, due to the fact that those changes on the continent were not necessarily changes for the better. It is for products of this period that the word barbaric imitations apply.
For example, since we are writing: since the 6th century, continental Europe has been basking more and more. This is simply a period of alleged strain magazines. Of course, there are no strains, as the anthropology of present understands them, but that is the name taken. The strain letters mean that the Merovings compose in their own way, the Longobards compose in their own way, the Roman Curia, the Papal Curia, and so on. And everyone's writing little and little clearly. That's most likely the hardest to read. And after all, the task of Benedictine, this mission which Saint Benedict invented, is to preserve the achievements of erstwhile centuries. The monks are to pray and work, but they are besides to keep the level of culture by prescribing, distributing and renewing.
Here's another digression. The fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth centuries on the continent are centuries erstwhile Christianity is already strong, very strong. And Christianity, of course, does not respect the writings of pagan authors. On the another hand, ancient parchment is very important. So what do monks do to compose new, not the highest, theological or philosophical texts?
They lure the texts of Cicero and another Roman or Greek philosophers. They remove the old text from the parchment, in their opinion worthless, pagan, or inferior, and place a fresh text, frequently of small value on theological consideration. And thanks to that, to our time, thanks to this work monks survived the lyrics of Cicero, including the most crucial De Re Public. This work survived in the form of the alleged palimpsest, or scratched parchment card. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been. Thanks to technology, palimpsesta can be read.
Thus, darkness is indeed falling on the continent. It's not darkness, it's darkness. We will not now discuss for as long as centuries to the eighth were dark, for how dark, for surely the full darkness did not fall, for it was lit up by the burning in the monasteries of kaganka or candles. Thanks to Christianity, any lights were burning in this pagan-German darkness...
But you erstwhile pointed out that the ruling kingdom of Franconia, the Merovings, can neither read nor write...
And possibly the Carolinas too, like Charles the Great...
There's a dispute in past whether Charles the large could compose or not. He mastered the signature, that is, we know from the papers of Emperor Charles a very decorative monogram, which he put on the papers as the authentication of the provisions (disposal), but just learned this authentication calligraphy. He most likely could read. He couldn't write, but he could read.
The Merovingians are the most powerful dynasty in Europe at the time, but they are like Germanie – 1 must remember that the Franks are Germanie – they are mainly occupied by war and power. The parchments are not peculiarly curious in them, due to the fact that they can't even light it in a fireplace or fire during a war expedition. And if they're inactive messed up, the more irrelevant they are in their eyes. They care more about their beautiful long hair, the symbol of royalty than their knowledge.
Europe is plunged into numerous, local but continuous wars, wars, and beyond that, it faces an expanding threat, first arabian and later Muslim. And as always: the common enemy unites. The threat from the east makes the west unite, but let's leave politics.
Charles is an highly interesting figure, due to the fact that although he had no education, he had large respect for science, rightly recognizing in it the tool of power and the binder of the state.
Charles felt that discipline was crucial and needed for effective governance, but in order to reconstruct discipline to a part of its erstwhile brilliance, he had to work with the Church as a depository of erstwhile knowledge, he had to work with Benedictines and he besides worked with Irochots, i.e. visitors from the British Isles who scope Europe and discover to his amazement that they retained this erstwhile advanced culture, and continental Europe degraded.
This, what we call the Karolin Renaissance, is mostly by clergymen arriving in the Kingdom of Franks from the British Isles. And here he returns to the phase abbey in Canterbury, although not one, due to the fact that there are many more akin centres. Alcuin, the closest associate of Charles the large with the abbey in Canterbury had nothing to do with it, or Beda Venerabilis, or Beda Venerabilis, or Beda Venerable was not of Canterbury either. There is simply a complex made up of many South British monasteries that begin to radiate to the continent.
In Canterbury, discipline was stored at a good, advanced level. The Canterbury Monastery Foundation of course included a scriptorium, it included a good monastery school. The education strategy was built then on the basis of monasteries, due to the fact that there are people who can write, read and teach, so gradually communities centered around monastic centers besides master the ability to read, compose and account.
From these classy scriptors, schools grow up, then the concept of systemic education is taken over by the states. Alcuin, a close associate of Charles founded a school not a monastery, not a cathedral, but a palace at the seat of Emperor Charles in Aachen. due to the patronage of the state and the imperial patron, we are talking about the Karolin Renaissance, not e.g. the Benedictine Renaissance, or the Iro-Scottish Renaissance, although of course besides Benedictine, and Iro-Scotts had a large influence on this Renaissance.
And back to the writing that became an crucial origin in the dissemination of knowledge. specified an anecdote showing how beautiful, how readable, how classical in its form was kept in monasteries an uncial writing, and then a karolin semi-uncial writing. erstwhile this palace school in Aachen began operating, another version of the semi-uncle was developed there, which is called the Carolina minuscule.
The minute refers to classical patterns, but thanks to the codex, it is even nicer. If we look at the Old Roman cursive, we'll see an almost illegible text, like the chicken's clawing. Curriculum was not very beautiful in its form.
Uncial and later semiuncial are a highest accomplishment in the improvement of ancient writings. It was so beautiful in its character, in proportions, in the education, writing that erstwhile people of the next Renaissance wanted to renew antique patterns in the 16th century, they discovered writings from the time of Charles the large and said, this is the most beautiful example of the ancient culture. This is what the people of the antique wrote, so we will make a fresh magazine on the basis of these classical – as they thought – texts.
And they did not know very much that in creating a fresh writing, alleged humanist antiquity, they were reaching not at all to the antiquity of the ancients, but to the writing of the “dark ages” of the mediate Ages, which they despised, and of this Carolinian one. So the antiquake of the humanities, the writing of the Renaissance period, which besides became a print magazine, due to the fact that the fonts were in the form of an antiquake of the humanities, actually referred to the karolinian minuscule. And so the Renaissance, assuming it reaches to ancient patterns, reached to medieval patterns. And it's not the only case, the past of technology knows many.
Are you suggesting that if it wasn't for Canterbury, there wouldn't be a counter-revolution, a renewal of Cluna Church? I can see that all these are just the vessels connected and the past of long-lasting...
Jacques Le Goff, a French historian who observed the existence and functioning of social structures, created the concept of "history of long duration". Although Jacques Legoff, Marc Bloch Ferdinand Braudel and Annales' full school were overly focused on structures, forgetting a small about people, or, as it were, pushing people away. They were curious in the continuation of structures, which, of course, in the case of the Church, is rather good method, due to the fact that it was the structures of the Church and the people of the Church operating within them that ensured the endurance of cultural patterns, ideas or even techniques.
And after all, writing is simply a technique, so the concept of long duration, that is, the method of examining the functioning of structures and ideas, is simply a useful method. Of course, we do not forget about people either, due to the fact that I said at the beginning of our conversation that if it wasn't for Grzegorz, then possibly it would be individual else, if it wasn't for Benedict, then most likely individual else. But this is most likely due to the fact that in fact it was precisely Benedict and in reality it was Grzegorz.
There are of course certain ideas, cultural currents, concepts that must come true, regardless of who will implement them. specified an example is, for example, what is present called the Copernican Revolution. In fact, it was not a revolution, a sudden, unexpected intellectual eruption. Copernicus was only – or until – the last man in a number of large researchers, wise men, philosophers of nature, who in turn discovered different features of reality, qualities of nature. Copernicus didn't find anything. Copernicus only gave earlier philosophical concepts a mathematical form.
Neither Copernicus put the Sun in the center, nor let the Earth move, due to the fact that this has been known before. The Copernicus just put it in mathematical form, so there's no revolution. It is simply a lasting fewer 100 years evolution of views, discovering step by step the structure of reality.
Of course, I will not say that we can delete Copernicus, that he was not important, due to the fact that he was the 1 who topped the crucial thread of centuries-old reflection on the world. However, from Copernicus's findings contained in the "De revolutionibus orbium celestium", very small remains. You could hazard saying he was a much better economist than an astronomer. possibly a better doctor than an astronomer, especially since he was educated as an economist and as a doctor, and astronomy was an extra-professional passion.
From the full “discovery” of Copernicus until today, it was only that his work “About the rotations of the celestial spheres” came to the Index of Forbidden Books and so on. Nobody cares that Copernicus made mistakes in his work today...
Oh, my God!
For example, that the Sun is the "center of the Universe"...
Indeed, the heliocentric strategy was known much earlier. Saint Albert, though he claimed the same thing straight before Copernicus, being a bishop and no 1 sentenced him to anything. Copernicus disagreed with reality due to the fact that Copernicus accepted that planets have circular orbits, while present we know that they are elliptical.
When Copernicus assumes that orbits are circular, trying to figure out these circular orbits, he cannot hit what is actually happening in the sky, due to the fact that for his calculations Mars should be “here” and he is not. Venus should be “in this place”, and she is not, due to the fact that it all runs in different orbits than Copernicus accepted. The explanation doesn't fit the empire.
So Copernicus introduced the first – which does not mean that the real – hypotheses, namely circumstantial “loops” he added, due to the fact that if the planet were going around in circular orbit, it should already be in the place where our fromborese canon looks and is not there. So Copernicus assumes she's inactive making specified a tiny loop on the way, which is why she's late.
Today it seems rather funny, but the essence of the communicative of Copernicus is the message that this heliocentric thought has matured for respective centuries. People, philosophers, added more bricks to the knowing of the image of the world, and this explanation simply had to manifest itself, whatever the name of the 1 who took another step in the way of learning the universe. cognition of reality develops through a common effort of many prominent minds, and successors benefit from the achievements of predecessors. Men of the mediate Ages frequently think of themselves as dwarfs erstwhile compared to predecessors, but boldly climb on the shoulders of these giants and do not hesitate to criticize them. It's not a revolution, it's evolution.
After all, the revolution is to destruct the old 1 to effort – usually unsuccessful – to build. New. It was not that Copernicus said, “Listen, it is not that the planet has a disk that is located on the ridges of the 4 elephants that stand on the turtle shell and together flow through the ocean of ether, only the Earth revolves around the Sun!”. It would be a revolution. But Copernicus never said anything like that. Copernicus only calculated what philosophers already knew before, or that Earth and another planets orbit around the Sun.
And what happens to the Sun in the Universe is another century of evolutionary perception and knowing of the Universe.
That's a very interesting point, but let's go back to Canterbury. Why did the abbey fall into specified terrible debts in the 13th century?
Because the monks at Canterbury were just crazy...
Anyone can go into debt if he lives above his means, right? So you spend more than you have income. The abbey in Canterbury had a large income all the time, just started spending a small more, wanting to show greatness, wanting to rise prestige and its own, and the kingdom.
I don't think Pope Francis would like that. Raising prestige... Spending money... The Church is expected to be poor...
Above all, the Church is to proclaim the glory of God and to remind us constantly of the sacrifice of Christ.
The saints could walk in the humblest clothes, but at Mass they always dressed the most beautiful ornate, always took the most beautiful liturgical vessels.
They bathed themselves and did not skimp on the Church whose Christ is the Head.
Saving for the praise of God – even sounds strange.
It was about the modesty and humility of the people of the Church, not about the impoverishment of churches, not about the depleting of what people themselves wanted and so far they wanted. People want their church to be beautiful, to be beautifully decorated, to have their bell ringing better than the bell from the neighbouring parish, etc.
People never spared on the Lord God. It was only essential to improvement and Protestants with their totally harsh and even sometimes distorted view of religion and Christianity to accomplish what I call the Holocaust of Church Art.
Strong terms...
Well, calmly, without emotion and 1 by one: during the 16th century, 1 3rd of Europe is converted to Protestantism. And in 1 3rd of Europe, spiritual art is destroyed. Sculptures are thrown out of churches and monasteries taken over by Protestants, paintings are thrown away, art crafts are thrown out and processed: monstrations, relics, chalices etc. Sculptures and paintings burn at the stakes. Part of France, Switzerland, England, half of Germany, a crucial part of Poland, Hungary, the full of Scandinavia – there were temples and monasteries everywhere before, in which works of art from a wonderful, creative, fruitful period, or Gothic and pre-Romanism, served the glory of God, told the Holy past and the past of the saints. The monastic scriptors and libraries kept manuscripts carefully prescribed by monks over centuries and perfectly illuminated. And that's what Protestants destroy. We'll never know how many unique manuscripts were destroyed. Art, works of genius and imagination, as well as incunabulas – testimonies of thought and genius – are gone. No return.
We can't even imagine the scale of this Doom. 1 3rd of what the profoundly devout Europe of the mediate Ages has created is destroyed in decades. So what do you call it?
Could Britain have avoided reformation?
And so we returned to the fascinating questions about the function of individuals in human history. While I am inclined to think that if Martin Luther had come down from this world, for example, in 1515, there would shortly be another – possibly even more extremist – heresian. That was then – as is said present – mental. Rome became besides secular, there was besides much corruption in it – the reaction had to happen. If not in 1517 in Germany, then in 1519 in France, or a year later in Denmark. The more the water boils, the more the steam, the more the force is needed to press the lid and the greater the explosive force at the end. However, erstwhile it comes to accepting Lutheranism or another forms of Protestantism, the monarchs played a crucial role. Let me just remind you that in the monarchy strategy the king is the origin of the law. Each of the ruling individually answered in his heart the question about the limits of the monarchial authority, the place of the contact of human and divine rights. Sigismund August answered beautifully: “I am not king of human consciences.” Henry VIII's answer was not equally worthy and noble: “I want a fresh wife, due to the fact that I must at all costs father a male heir, so I abandon religion and force my subjects to do the same.”
Henry VIII for writing a treaty criticizing the discipline of Marcin Luther Assertio Sept. Sacramentorum in 1521 received the title of "defensor of faith" from the Pope Fidei Defensor. What happened to the man who joined the Reformation?
Senses won with reason. The lusts upon which the king could not or did not want to regulation revealed the shallowness of his faith. It turned out that in his case royal piety was simply a appearance and pose, a observance of outward forms, not a belief from the soul and head in God, in his love for the human race, in that free will is the top gift—and the top burden simultaneously—God for man. In the case of King Henry, spiritual pride and fleshly lust prevailed.
Is it actual that a akin solution, or announcement of the king as head of the Church, was besides wanted to be applied in Poland in the 16th century?
And – unlike in England – the promoter of the concept of the creation of the Polish national church was the Primate Jakub Uchanski, while on the side of Catholicism, despite the strong reasons for this, King Sigismund II August spoke.
Still?
Sigismund Augustus in 1564 is in a worse situation than Henry VIII in 1534. Henry wants to divorce Catherine Aragonska, due to the fact that first she wants a male heir – she has a daughter Maria – secondly, she wants to make another her lover, Anna Boleyn, a wife and queen.
Sigmund August has no heir, and he has no chance due to the fact that he had him with his current, 3rd wife, Catherine of Habsburn. And apart from the fact that it was most likely Sigismund Augustus who was infertile, even the hopes of extending the dynasty do not prompt the Polish king to break the matrimony oath and this even more crucial oath made to God. He humbly endures in connection with the unloved, severely sick and most likely besides infertile wife, who leaves Poland in 1566 until Catherine's death in February 1572. Only then does he begin his efforts for another matrimony – he is under 52 – which interrupts his death in July 1572.
Breaking up with the Catholic Church? specified an act of unfaithfulness of the reigning monarch is unthinkable in Catholic Poland. King Sigismund II knows very well, the king breaking the oath ceases to be credible. And the incredible king, as the origin of the law, relativizes the law, which is, as we know from reflection of reality, the way to anarchy.
Why was the Reformation in England so bloody? After all, Henry VIII “only” declared obedience to the Pope, not to the Lord God... Why was the blood persecution of Catholics decided?
Of course he broke his oath to God. After all, he swore that he would care not only for the welfare of lords, townsmen and kmies, but besides that he would obey the laws of God, that he would be faithful to one, holy, apostolic and universal Church. The Act of Supremacy, in which the King of England declared himself head of the Church in England, was the demolition of the unity and universality of the Church. erstwhile you break up with God, there is emptiness. Eschatological void, axiological void. specified emptiness after breaking up with God and his law must be fulfilled, so it is fulfilled by man and his rights.
In Poland the 16th century there is simply a regulation that the state does not deal with the execution of judgments of church courts. Thus the sinners of the lesser and greater are condemned to ecclesiastical punishments: curse, excommunication. So there is no danger of apostates from the faith, for they have excluded themselves from the Church. Baptism in any another rite is equivalent to apostasy. However, in England, by virtue of the first and even more second supremacy act, an oath is required to the king (or queen) as the head of the church – a de facto breakup with Rome.
The Catholic, faithful to the Church must refuse specified an oath, then the English state enters in and declares it an act of betrayal of the King. The King's betrayal is punishable by death. The situation is identical to that of Nero or Diocletian: state power enters the sphere of privacy, into the sphere of religion, subjecting it to itself by the authority of power (which besides has a sacral element) and state coercion, which is an immanent component of all power, always and everywhere.
Can it be said that the English Reformation and the “eye in the head” of Marxists? There are many attempts in historiography to explain the English Reformation by economical factors and class struggle, for example, in specified a way that the earliest social layer, specified as bourgeoisie or social class, was created there, so it was essential to leave feudalism faster than in another countries, and yet the Church is the refuge of feudalism.
We're talking about 2 completely different processes. One: Henry wants to break up with his legally married wife and realize his mistress. He besides wants to repair the vault. His and his supporters, so he confiscates indeed immense ecclesiastical assets. It is simply a process of creating an English kingdom “from this world” based on lust and money (which is frequently one) moving in the 16th century. And the second English Revolution, the "revolutionary" bourgeois revolution, that is, according to the terminology of English historiography "Glorious Revolution". These are complex economic, social, legal processes and, unfortunately, spiritual processes occurring in the last 4th of the 17th century culminating in the reign of James II Stuart. The Protestants' violent reaction to Jacob's awkward actions – spiritual tolerance and arrests of Anglican bishops cannot be introduced at the same time.
The "Glorious Revolution" and the enthronment of the English throne by Wilhelm Orański actually closed the strategy in which the state dominates the church. Again, the act of supremacy, introduced in 1559 by Elizabeth I, was applied. The problem – of course for Marxist methodology – is that the "Glorious Revolution" was, among another things, glorious that it was practically bloodless. Of course, Jacobic and Oran soldiers were killed, but it's average to fight for power, and mercenaries die. Society is not overran by an iron plough of revolution, there is no extermination of full social groups. specified revolutions will only be seen later: at the end of the 18th century in France and in the 20th century in Russia and in another unfortunate countries to which Bolsheviks carrying torches and spheres of enlightenment will arrive.
Why have attempts to rehabilitate England during the reign of Mary and Tudor failed?
All 3 attempts to recatolize failed. The first 1 left Canterbury immediately after the death of Henry VIII, whose heir and heir was insignificant Edward VI, the sick boy of Henry and Jane Seymour, the 3rd wife of Tudor. On Edward's behalf, the Regency Council ruled, in which various factions associated with many Tudor lines fought for power. Edward was the first truly Protestant king of England, raised to hatred Catholicism. Moreover, in his last words spoken on his deathbed – and he died at the age of little than 16 – he called on God to defend England from Papals. It was in Edward's day that the mass executions of Catholics sentenced to burn at the stake began. So erstwhile the news spread in early 1553 that the king was severely ill, it was in Canterbury that efforts were started to reconstruct Catholicism, or at least to defend Catholics from persecution.
The second effort to reconstruct Catholicism is to consider the actions of Queen Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, who sat on the throne from 1553 to 1558. And the 3rd effort was the days of James II, although his father Charles II had already secretly passed to Catholicism. And the answer to the question "why?" may be multivolume, which we cannot afford. So briefly, money and power. What were the material consequences of the formation of the Anglican Church: The Crown confiscated the church's estates. After all, we know that the Church in all European countries – besides in England – was a large landowner. The vast wealth taken from the parishes, bishops and abbeys was strengthened first by the state. Secondly, these priests, who agreed to break up with Rome, with Thomas Cranmer, the sinister advisor to Henry VIII, who became Archbishop of Canterbury and the first head of the Anglican Church. Finally, from the property of the Church, Henry rewards those worldly masters who stand by him and silences the voices of their consciences during many royal faiths and scandals. So the fresh order is supported by state power, subjected to its church and large feudalists. It's hard to number on success in fighting specified a coalition. And 1 more thing: Catholicism is opposed by any of its supporters: Queen Mary I responds with cruelty to the atrocities of the Anglicans, which only in the eyes of many Protestantized English confirms the the thesis of anti-Catholic propaganda.
What effect did the promulgation of the English Reformation have in April 1570 by Pope Pius V bulli Regnans in Excelsis, in which the Pope excommunicated both Elizabeth and anyone subject to her who dared to follow her orders?
The Roman mills grind slowly. Unfortunately. 36 years have passed since the supremacy act, a fresh generation has grown and grown, and even 2 of them have been procreative. 2 generations raised first in Anglicanism, second in hatred of the Papals who effort to invade England, flush off the leash of bloodthirsty Inquisitors, burn all free and Anglican Englishmen, impose old taxes again. So in the name of profit, in the desire for wealth and their consequence – power, opposition is born against attempts to reconstruct Catholic religion. opposition anchored primarily in the structures and people forming them, due to the fact that where there is simply a place for free and spontaneous reflection on the condition of the planet and man, Catholicism preserves its attractiveness for the next centuries. For he offers more than temporal benefits to man.
Was the thought of Canterbury Abbey inactive alive?
Despite the formation of an Anglican church closely linked to the throne, Canterbury remained a symbol and material evidence of Catholic Christianity (Catholic Greek means “universal”), uncontaminated by particularities, divisions, politics. This is why Henry VIII and Cranmer chose Canterbury – although it is simply a tiny town – to be the seat of the Archbishop, head of the Anglican Church. This shows that St Augustine's mission, his cooperation with Queen Kent and King in the creation of the abbey, the heart of Christian England, inactive mattered that Canterbury even for the early ones – or inactive not very far from Catholicism – the Anglicans remained the spiritual capital of England. Also, remember that cultural processes in large communities match the circles formed on the water after throwing stone into it: they spread from the center to the periphery and this process takes time. Chrystianization of the Island was slow, sometimes even retreating: He described that the 2 Saxon kings Sighere and Sebi had abandoned Christian religion and returned to paganism under the influence of the plague, which they thought was evidence of the weakness of Christian Christ. So besides Anglicanism spread from the centre, or royal court, through feudal courtans, Londoners down the social pyramid. The vast crowds stay Catholic for a long time – due to the fact that they are not required to curse to the king-head of the church – and Canterbury is for them the spiritual center of worship and religion.
What happened in the late 17th century that the British authorities stopped the persecution of Catholics on a massive scale?
As I said above, the throne was occupied by James II Stuart, Catholic. Of course, he stopped persecution of Catholics, unfortunately he began repression of the Anglicans, alternatively than burying the chances of recatolization. The phenomenon that I mentioned above worked: the pond is already Anglican, the waves after the stone was thrown in – that is, recatolization – are weaker, the farther distant from the epicenter. The interests of the mighty are connected with the Anglican Church, and their reaction to Jacob’s actions is decisive.
How is it that, despite this situation, England has released many wonderful Catholics to the world? Gilbert Keith Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Cardinal John Henry Newman, Evelyn Waugh are just any examples...
These are – but Catholic from the beginning to the end – converts. People, raised in the summer, opportunistic atmosphere of the Anglican Church. There is no updated in all Mass of the Holy Sacrifice of Christ, there is simply a faint souvenir of the Last Supper, there is no reflection on himself, on the condition of his own soul and on the conversation with his conscience--because there is no confession, and on individual salvation is not determined not by evil or good deeds, but by the distant and enigmatic mercy of God resulting from his inconclusive grace.
The only thing worthy of treatment and effort is temporal success. large and pervasive minds, like Cardinal Newman or Chesterton, can't bear to be anything, so they turn to Catholicism. At the same time, he opposes the ludicrous humanitarianism that has been removed from the strategy of values, rejects the concept of equality of all faiths – brilliantly this attitude with the fresh power that Pope Francis preached, mocked Chesterton asking whether the well-born London society in the name of this equality would accept the cannibal rites performed in Trafalgar Square. For English Catholics, their religion is identical to the freedom of man as a kid of God, with consciousness incomparable to the participation in the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.
How is it that many large Anglicans did not convert to the sacred Catholic faith? I mean C.S. Lewis or T.S. Eliot. Why did they halt at the door of the Catholic Church but not enter?
That's a good question. Thomas S. Eliot was actually an American who naturalized himself in Britain. His poetry... I am not a literary scholar, so I can only talk as an amateur (and an amateur in Latin is simply a lover, lover) of poetry, including Eliot. 2 of my favourite poems, Eliot, seem to have the answer to your question. The poem “Hipopotam” ends with a scene in the sky of the ascendance of a hippopotamus, a fat eater of flesh, blood and bones, but bleached above snow, “while the actual Church remanis below/ Wrapt in the old city mist – erstwhile in the pulpit of old fog/True Church will be stuck down.”
How clear it is here that the Protestants have specified an aversion to the organization Church, the Church identified with hierarchy. And the second poem, "Hollow Man", means the Variation of People, People-Pauls. Here, in turn, we see the full of resignation pessimism – Luther has already revealed it in his allegory of God's mercy, where human nature is simply a hideous mud, only from the top covered with thin warped snow. In the final part of the "Various Men" the poet cites "The Shadow", which lies between intentions, plans and thoughts, and their implementation, "between power and existence". And the words “the Shadow lays down” and “Your Kingdom is yours.” And there is no further sequence, there is no words of power and glory for ever, for there is an highly pessimistic message that "This is how the planet ends, not with a crackle but with a whimper."
Lewis made a de facto Catholic confession of religion describing the scene of the sacrificial death of the lion Aslan, and then his resurrection, the powerful, vibrant roar and liberation of Narna from the surrounding winter. This is simply a scene based on ancient Christian legends, in which the lion is simply a symbol of Christ (the Lion of the tribe of Judah), in which the lion resurrects his offspring killed by the venom of the serpent roaring over him. The conversion to Catholicism Lewis yet did not make, he said he did not want to take this step as long as his wife lived, who out of love for him switched from Judaism to Anglicanism, and shortly after her death besides Lewis died.
I late read a survey saying that more than half of young English people under the age of 25 are considered atheists. Is it “the merit” of Anglicanism?
Englishism, as the large Chesterton stated, paves the way for modernism, in which religion ceases to be religion and becomes a spiritual experience. The Bible’s inspiration is then rejected in a naturalistic way. Then it is easy to admit the equality of all religions and to claim that religion is not important, and it is crucial to be a good man. Since on the way was rejected the Catholic strategy of values, with love, dignity and freedom as gifts of God, being a “good man” is simply a de facto declaration of agnosticism. And from agnosticism only a tiny step to complete atheism and putting man in the place of God: man is the measurement of all things.
Can England inactive convert to the sacred Catholic faith? If so, can the thought of Canterbury help?
There's nothing impossible for God. In 2024, in Britain, the Holy Baptism adopted a evidence number of adults. Like in France. People in an uncertain planet search stableness and certainty. And they are increasingly looking at the Catholic Church, which has lasted for over 2,000 years, and they begin to realize Christ’s words to Simon: “And I tell you that you are the rock, and on this stone I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
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