Assessing faith in Jesus Christ from the first century CE onward

The synoptic Gospels, that is Mark, Matthew and Luke, permanently give testimony of Jesus teaching his disciples to understand that he is the Son of Man, the Messiah, the Lord. The process of the disciples to grasp the identity and mission of Jesus as Messiah is full of misunderstandings, disbelief and errors. Two thirds into the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus and the Twelve were on ”their way through Galilee”, …, Jesus “was instructing his disciples; he was telling them, ‘The Son of man will be delivered into the power of men; they will put him to death; and three days after he has been put to death he will rise again.’ But they did not understand what he said and were afraid to ask him” (Mark 9, 30-32). Instead of asking Jesus for an explanation, the Twelve went on “arguing which of them was the greatest” (Mark 9, 34). The same prophecy of the Passion and Resurrection in Matthew leaves the disciples in a “very sad” condition (Matthew 17, 22-23). After the same prophecy, Luke attests that the disciples “did not understand what he said; it was hidden from them so that they should not see the meaning of it, and they were afraid to ask him about it” (Luke 9, 45).

It was a long way for Peter, the fisherman at the Lake of Gennesaret, from leaving his boat and “everything” and following Jesus, to Peter’s address to the crowd in Jerusalem at Pentecost proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Lord (Acts 3, 11-26). A few chapters later, Luke makes Peter confess to the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who was stationed in Caesarea (Acts 10, 1), what the exegetes identified as the oldest creed in the New Testament, “God had anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and because God was with him, Jesus went about doing good and curing all who had fallen into the power of the devil” (Acts, 10, 38).

As soon as the disciples started to believe and preached Jesus Christ, the Messiah, whom “God had been anointed with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 10, 38), the unity of the faith of the disciples permanently had to be assessed, sustained, repaired, and again assessed. The Gospel of John is very conscientious of the importance of the unity of the believers in Jesus Christ. At the center of Farewell discourses Jesus prays the Father for his disciples and for all believers “I pray not only for these but also for those who through their teaching will come to believe in me. May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me” (John 17, 20-21).

When in the late forties and fifties of the first century CE, the Apostle Paul founded on his mission trips in Asia Minor and Greece Christian communities, maintaining unity of doctrine, moral discipline, social coherence and solidarity within the Christian community were consuming much of his energies. In his letters we find testimony over testimony how Paul patiently and sometimes impatiently argues the case of Jesus Christ and tries to build with his words consensus and peace. In the First Letter to the Corinthians he argues for example, “As long as there are jealousy and rivalry among you, that surely means that you are still living by your natural inclinations and by merely human principles. While there is one that says, ‘I belong to Paul’ and another says, ‘I belong to Apollos’ are you not being only too human?” (1 Corinthians 3, 3b-4). Paul turned to the mission of Hellenistic pagans, because most of the Jewish people rejected the recognition of Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Paul turned to the Jewish diaspora and started his mission by preaching in the synagogues. The Jewish synagogal communities hosted Hellenistic pagans who were interested in the Jewish religion and the Jews called them the “God-fearing”. These “God-fearing” pagans were the first Paul convinced to belief in Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected, the “God-fearing” constituted the first pagan Christian communities. When Paul baptized Hellenistic pagans, it was clear to him that the confession of Jesus Christ as Messiah makes circumcision and Jewish religious laws concerning food, ritual, etc. obsolete. Around the year 48 CE the issue concerning the circumcision of non-Jewish Christians arose in the Christian community of Antioch. The community decided “that Paul and Barnabas and others of the church should go up to Jerusalem and discuss the question with the apostles and elders” (Acts 15, 2b). “The Apostles and Elders of Jerusalem accepted Titus “uncircumcised”, thus recognizing the validity of Paul’s proclamation concerning the freedom of grace. The Assembly confirmed the main leaders of the Church and recognized the missionary vocation of Peter for the circumcised and that of Paul for the uncircumcised. As a matter of fact, a sort of partitioning of the missionary field occurred: James, Kephas and John were directed towards the Jews, while Paul and Barnabas were sent to preach to the pagans” (Papal Basilica - Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls (vatican.va). We read of this consensus finding in community among equals at an official Vatican homepage. We know, the alliance of empire and church ended this kind of peaceful discussions between Christians of different views on religious matters. In 2024 CE heretics and schismatics are not any more killed at the demand of Church authorities, but they are still excluded from the Roman Catholic Church, or they lose their jobs in church institutions. Pope Francis instituted with his synodal way a method of first listening to the claims of equal dignity, freedoms and rights of the women, men and queer faithful in the Roman Catholic Church, then ignoring their claims and demanding again submission to his papal authority as absolutist monarch of the Roman Catholic Church. It is much easier for authorities, especially when they are very old and weakened by sickness or when they are still young and unexperienced in social skills, to simply use their power to maintain the order of unity, instead of using arguments that generate consensus and peace. The communicative practice of the discourses at the so-called Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem since centuries has been replaced by the organization of the Roman Catholic Church as an absolutist monarchy.

Experts think that in the last two decades of the first century CE, the letter First Clement from Christians in Rome was sent to their fellow believers in Corinth (Holmes, Michael, W., editor and translator. 2007. The Apostolic Fathers. 33. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic). Leaders of the Roman Christian community were distressed by the news of a breach of proper conduct and order by some of the younger members of the community, who apparently had revolted against the leadership of their church. The community in Rome wrote the long letter First Clement imploring the Corinthians to restore humility and harmony in their community, and Rome even dispatched mediators to Corinth (ibid. 33-35). We do not know how the Corinthians reacted to the letter, but “later Christian writers held it in high regard” (ibid. 38). 

The arrest of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria, left his church leaderless and vulnerable (ibid. 166). Ignatius was sent to Rome to be executed (ibid. 167). We do not learn from the letters when Ignatius was martyred. The experts fix the possible timeframe of his execution from the reign of Trajan (98-117 CE) to the reign of Hadrian (117-138 CE) (ibid. 170). On his way to Rome Ignatius wrote 6 letters to Christian communities and one letter to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna. “Three concerns were uppermost in Ignatius’ mind at this time: (1) the struggle against false teachers within the church; (2) the unity and structure of churches; and (3) his own impending death.” For Ignatius the bishop is constitutive of the church, not the ministry of deacons and presbyters. Ignatius bases authority and place of the bishop on the theological rationale that “just as Christians are united with God spiritually in heaven, so it is their duty to be in communion or harmony with their bishop on earth”. His near contemporary Clement of Rome simply based the authority of the bishop upon the concept of “apostolic succession” (ibid. 167-168).

The Apostles, presbyters and bishops of the first three Christian centuries had no power at hand to force the Christian communities under the order of orthodox teaching, discipline and harmony. The bishops were appointed with the consensus of the whole community, and they had to try to convince their fellow Christians with arguments, with references to the Scriptures and through community prayers.

Things changed dramatically for the Catholic Church in 313 CE when the emperors Constantine and his brother-in-law Licinius granted religious tolerance to all religions including Christianity in the Roman Empire. In the way of the fourth century, Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, the era of Christianity as state church had begun in the Roman Empire. The Christianization of the Eastern Roman Empire signified the passage from antiquity’s polytheism to monotheism. The European Middle Ages were monotheistic, Christianism constituting a major part of monotheist believers, Jewish communities existed, and Islam progressed from the periphery from east to west, and to the Balkans in the north (Borgolte, Michael, 2007. “Die Anfänge des mittelalterlichen Europa, oder Europas Anfänge im Mittelalter?“. 205-219. 210.In Zeitschrift für Geisteswissenschaft 55 (2007)).

The Christian emperors in the East profited from the veneration of the Christians, but the Christians paid for their privileges with a loss of inner autonomy of the Church, the emperor pushed through what the Christians had to believe (ibid.). Church structures and organization depended on the emperor’s consent and there was no central religious authority in the Roman Empire that would have been able to coordinate assemblies and synods of bishops to find consensus on regularly emerging theological dissent on the Christian faith. Therefore, the Roman Emperors convoked the first seven ecumenical councils, that decided on doctrine, administrative and discipline matters. The decisions of these councils were enforced by the Roman Emperors in the state church of the Roman Empire. In the 4th and 5th century CE the Byzantine Emperor influenced the development of the Christian dogma, especially the conflicts about the relation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ (ibid.). Religion and faith became a major player in politics (ibid.). The decisions of the first seven ecumenical councils -325 Nicaea, Constantinople 381, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451, etc. -, were accepted by most Churches in the West and in the East.

For the acting Emperor it was practical to reign over the Church and not having to fear any opposition from the Patriarch in Constantinople and the bishops in the Empire. In the long run the incapacity of the patriarchs and bishops to maintain and guarantee unity of the Christian faith helped disintegrate the whole Byzantine Empire. The failure of the Christians to generate and maintain unity and a basic common understanding of their faith within their communities and theologies prepared an easy takeover of the Christian Byzantine Empire by emerging Islam.

The theologians and bishops were not capable finding compromises on their surprisingly pluralist ideas. The Christians wanted to demonstrate the pagan philosophers that their faith was not another mythology but could be defended by reasonable arguments. The reigning philosophy of Hellenistic culture at the time was Neo-Platonism. The Christian theologians started elaborating the concepts and ideas of the relation of Go’d the Father, to the son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit following the platonic mindset. The Christian concepts of “Trinity” and “Christology” were elaborated in the Schools of Antioch, the School of Alexandria, by the Cappadocian fathers, and in the monasteries of Palestine.  Alexandria had been a cultural and economic Hellenistic center for centuries. The Jewish sage and philosopher Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, who had demonstrated the compatibility of the Jewish religion with Hellenistic culture, was a role model for the Christian theologians. Philo worked with concepts of Greek philosophy and especially with Plato’s way of thinking according to preexistent ideal ideas. The Christian theologians that elaborated Christology over four centuries, were not only influenced by elements of Greek philosophy, platonic and stoic, but also by the mystical and ordinary experience of the life of the monks, and by the elites of power and education. The doctoral thesis of Peter Gerlitz was on non-Christian cultural influences on the development of the concept of Trinity (Marburg 1960). He shows that there were ancient mythologies that picture the triad of a Father God, a son of God and a God mother that influenced the development of the concepts of “Trinity” and “Christology”. He observes that in Egypt, Mesopotamia and in India as in the Far East we find triads of Gods that are grouped in a family or some sort of hierarchical order. The picture of ‘God father’ taken from the Hebrew tradition of Monotheism reminds of the picture of creator gods in other cultures like Marduk, Jupiter or Ptah.

The Byzantine-Sasanian War of 602-628 was fought throughout the Middle East, the Aegean Sea, and before the walls of Constantinople itself. The Arab militias, that the Byzantine Emperor called to help him defend his Empire against the invading Persians, learned to conquer on their own and Egypt and Syria by 640 CE were lost to the Muslims. Christian theology in Alexandria, Palestine and Antioch suffered the fate of decline. Islam was incredibly fast spreading over the Green Crescent. The Eastern Roman Empire that was able to recapture territory in Italy, Asia Minor and Syria for some time, but in the end could not resist the Arab conquest (Borgolte, 2006, 354). 

The expansion of Islam by military force produced a durable effect at the peripheries of the Roman Empires of the East and the West. By 600 CE the shores of the Mediterranean were not any more part of a Christian Roman Empire, North Africa had become Muslim (Borgolte, 2007. 210). Over the course of the rest of the 7th century, Muslim armies swiftly conquered the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Caucasus, Egypt and North Africa. In the eight century Islam expanded under Arab leadership in the West at the Iberic peninsula till the Douro and Ebro in the North, Islam’s conquest reached the lower Indus and Transoxania in the East (ibid. 247). In the ninth century Islam had conquered Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Taranto, Sardinia and Corsica and crossed the Pyrenees. In 871 the Christian Emperor retook Bari and Taranto. In 1246 the Muslims lost Sicily and all influence in Calabria. 1492 the Spanish Reconquista had been completed, the Jews had to leave Spain in the same year (Borgolte, 2006. 330).

As soon as the Catholic Church entered the alliance with the Roman emperor in Constantinople, the bishops could not resist the temptations of the use of power, suppression and censorship when being confronted with heretic arguments and schismatic movements. Most of the bishops were interested in getting near the imperial court in Constantinople for mingling in political intrigues. The bishops invested in luxury court robes, golden bishop’s staffs, insignia of power like bishop thrones and a protocol of submissive rituals and reverences.  Most of the bishops did not invest in the spiritual care and well-being for the faithful but preferred to demonstrate their honors wearing gold embroidered miters. The eastern half of the Roman Empire was called the Byzantine Empire, after the western half of the Roman Empire had crumbled into various feudal kingdoms. Until the 7th century the population of the Eastern Roman empire acted and thought as Romans. After that time state and society differed markedly from earlier forms, therefore the name Byzantine Empire for the Roman Empire in medieval times. The empire’s administrative and intellectual life concentrated in Byzantium, which was refounded as “new Rome” by the Emperor Constantine I in 330 CE and named by him Constantinople, city of Constantine. “Bitter ethnic and religious hostility marked the history of the empire’s later centuries, weakening Byzantium in the face of new enemies descending upon it from east and west” (Byzantine Empire | History, Geography, Maps, & Facts | Britannica).   In the end, the Byzantine Empire lost more and more territory, survived for a surprising thousand years, but finally fell to the Ottoman Turkish army in 1453 CE.

The transfer of the capital of the empire from Rome to the “new Rome” by the Emperor Constantine I to Constantinople in 330 CE, signified a disempowerment of the old Rome that produced in the Western Roman Empire a power vacuum that had to be filled again. The pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the bishop of Rome, played a central role in this process (Borgolte, Michael, 2007. “Die Anfänge des mittelalterlichen Europa, oder Europas Anfänge im Mittelalter?“. 205-219. 210. In Zeitschrift für Geisteswissenschaft 55 (2007)).

In the time of migration of peoples in Europe and after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the pope in Rome was an important person to stabilize society, procure peace and welfare for Rome and take care for the needs of the population. The emperor was too weak to protect Rome from Attila and the Huns, so Pope Leo the Great (440-461) treated with Attila (Borgolte. Michael. 2006. Siedler Geschichte Europas Christen, Juden, Muselmanen die Erben der Antike und der Aufstieg des Abendlandes 300 bis 1400 nach Christus. 302. München: Siedler-Verlag).

Leo the Great took over the title Pontifex Maximus, that is supreme bridge builder in religious matters, from the Roman Emperors of the East. Cesar was apparently the first to take this title from the highest-ranking priest in Rome. Cesar was determined to take care of sacral matters and religion in the Empire himself. Constantine regularly used the title of supreme builder of the bridge from men and women to God. From the Roman high priest to the emperor, back from the emperor to Leo the Great, the bishop of Rome, that was the journey of the title.

Leo I. was the first who claimed primate of the Roman See on the principle of being deputy of the Apostle Peter. Pope Gelasius deducted from this primate the equal legitimacy of papal and imperial powers and the primacy of the bishops’ pastoral responsibilities over secular power (ibid. 429). The claim of the bishop of Rome being deputy of the Apostle Peter served the pope as pretext to get rid of the paternalism of the emperor in Constantinople. Christianity was still unified, but the long process of emancipation of the pope from the emperor in Constantinople lead to a deep and unbridgeable alienation between East and West (ibid. 432). The final separation between the Eastern Christian churches and the Western churches was inevitable. “The mutual excommunications by the pope and the patriarch in 1054 became a watershed in church history. The excommunications were not lifted until 1965, when Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I, following their historic meeting in Jerusalem in 1964, presided over simultaneous ceremonies that revoked the excommunication decrees … The schism has never healed, though relations between the churches improved following the Second Vatican Council” (1962–65) (East-West Schism | Summary, History, & Effects | Britannica).

A conflict with the Emperor and Patriarch in Constantinople made the bishop of Rome Gelasius (492-496) claim the primate of jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome over any synod and church (ibid. 330). In the West, the further rise of the Patriarch of Rome, the pope, was enabled by the decision of the Frank king Chlovis to convert to Christianity and get baptized with his people in 498 (ibid. 379). The time of baptism as a social choice of the individual was over, if the king got baptized, his people had to convert too. Clovis had united all Franks under one ruler, founded the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Frankish kingdom for the next two centuries. Chlovis was a Roman Catholic, and the Franc kingdoms he had defeated before his baptism turned away from Arianism to Catholic universalism. After baptism he continued his expansion defeating the Aleman’s in 506 and the West Goths in 507. His sons subjected Burgundy, Thuringians, and the Bavarians. The Saxons remained free, as did the Slavs. The king of the Franks Charlemagne, in modern English Charles the Great, defeated and baptized the Saxons and in 774 conquered the kingdom of the Longobards in Italy. From 791 on, Charles fought some crusades against the Avarians. In 800 Charles the Great got coronated emperor by the pope in Rome and then obliged his reign to obey the teachings of the Catholic Church. He organized the administration of his reign and built the feudal society of the medieval age (ibid. 369-70). The sons of Charles the Great were not able to keep his reign together. There are three nation states that evolved and exist to our days, Gaule, Germany and Italy. The king of the Saxons in the Eastern Reign of the Franks, in 962 got coronated emperor in Rome as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, that would last until 1806. By that time Rome was the undisputed center of the Roman Catholic Church and the pope reigned as absolutist monarch with all juridical, governmental and teaching powers.

Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) “began the process that was to lead to the increasingly centralist role that the Roman church would exercise in the administration of church affairs in Western Europe. In many respects Gregory the Great is the last pope of the ancient world, and the first of the medieval period” (Mursell, Gordon, general editor. 2001. The story of Christian Spirituality. 72. Lion Publishing: Sandy Lane West, Oxford, England). He “left the papacy in a position of holding an incredibly enhanced position” (ibid.). He “stressed the clergy’s duty of effective preaching and laid out an influential guide to a biblical style of teaching” (ibid.). “His Pastoral Rule was used as practical guide to Christian leadership by bishops and kings” (ibid. 81). It was his work making Western Christianity read, study and pray the biblical text and “reformed Protestantism restated his biblicism in the late medieval period” (ibid.). “He was concerned to enhance the authority and confidence of all the many bishops to whom he wrote”, concerning mission activity “the most important thing was that there was to be no compulsion, nor were pagan shrines to be destroyed automatically; instead, they were to be transformed into Christian churches” (ibid.). “His spiritual writings” did much “to mold Western monasticism over many hundreds of years” (ibid.).

For much of Great Britain, Northern and Central Europe Gregory accounts for a so-called “second Christianization”. From 450 to the end of the 5th century the Angles and Saxons invaded Britannia. Most remnants of the Roman civilization, cultural and religious, disappeared. By the 4th century the Roman province of Britannia was converted to Christianity, in 410 the Roman legions withdrew from Britannia. In 597 Gregory sent forty missionaries to Kent. This was for missionary reasons in respect to religion, but also for cultural reasons. Gregory wanted to educate the Germanic tribes and Celtic population, he wanted to transmit Latin and Greek culture. Gregory was a Roman aristocrat who became a monk. “He sent the prior of his own monastery in Rome to lead the mission to England” and “gave Augustine precise guidance as to how he should proceed in the conversion of the English” (ibid.). Gregory prepared the way for the mission by soliciting aid from the Frankish rulers along Augustine's route. A second group of monks and clergy was dispatched in 601 bearing Latin and Greek codices and precious manuscripts. After having successfully established the pastoral mission, the cultural education followed.

In the 6th and 7th centuries Gaelic missionaries originating from Ireland spread Celtic Christianity in Scotland, Wales, England and Merovingian France. Catholic Christianity spread first within Ireland. “By the 6th century the Irish church had become a brilliant center of Christian culture and monastic spirituality” (ibid. 77). Columbanus (c. 543-615) left “Ireland for the continent with some companions, and founded famous monasteries at Luxeuil in France, and at Bobbio in Italy” (ibid.). He “was a poet, teacher and scholar, and in touch with Pope Gregory the Great” (ibid.). “In the eight century the church of the Anglo-Saxons continued the tradition by sending a steady stream of missionaries to the Low Countries and Germany” (ibid. 85). It is a kind of euphemism to assess that Columbanus as other missionaries stayed in touch with the pope. The pope in Rome, beginning with Gregory the Great, carefully kept an eye on the monasteries that had been established and were established on the continent. Rome tried to uniform the rules and organization of the monasteries and did not hesitate to intervene if Roman instructions were not heard. This Roman grip on the local churches and monasteries intensified over time.

“Throughout the early Middle Ages, the travel of Irish monks took them far and wide across Europe, and their diligence did much to disseminate Christian and classical learning” (ibid. 78). The monasteries became important centers of learning and art, the monks copied manuscripts and codices, they taught the population agricultural techniques and procured hospices and medical treatment for the sick. At the beginning of the Middle Ages Western Europe still suffered a kind of cultural minority complex regarding Byzantine, the cultured successor to Greek and Latin antiquity. Byzantine enjoyed libraries with thousands of manuscripts, codices, and study centers for Greek literature. The monasteries in the West took pride in acquiring precious Byzantine codices and are proud to our days exhibiting their collections of manuscripts and books. Most of the monasteries were Benedictine, and with the passing of time they “sometimes seemed to suffer from their own success” (ibid. 94). “If the latter is regarded in worldly terms, one can point to too much wealth, too close an identification with rulers and aristocrats (who were often the founders of their monasteries), too comfortable a regime” (ibid.). One of the great reforming popes was Gregory VII, who reigned the Catholic Church and the Papal States from 1073 to 1085. He initiated the Gregorian Reform and in the Investiture Controversy with Emperor Henry IV he established the primacy of papal authority.  He reformed Canon Law, introduced a policy of obligatory celibacy for the clergy, and fought the practice of simony, that is the selling church offices. Beginning in the 11th century, various reform monasteries and movements arose in Burgundy and Italy, such as the Cistercian Order, the Franciscans and the Order of Preachers.

Bernard, the Cistercian abbot of Clairvaux, and the whole reform movement “aimed at a restatement of monastic life in its primitive elements of solitude, poverty and simplicity” (ibid). The monasteries were built in the country with simplicity of architecture and ornament. “The admission of lay brothers enabled the illiterate, the vast majority of society as a whole, to become monks” (ibid.). “The Cistercian expansion took place all over Europe from Spain to Poland and Scandinavia to Italy” (ibid. 95). Deforestation opened living space and led to a rapidly rising population; marginal land was brought into cultivation and developing sheep-farming on a large scale produced for the economic need of the people (ibid.).  In 1133 one could already count 69 abbots, twenty years later “there were 343 abbeys, and they grew into a number of 647 until the middle of the 13th century, while it were 742 until the end of the Middle Ages. In addition to these numbers there existed 761 nunneries” (https://cistercium.info/en/history/the-century-of-cistercians). Yes, the Cistercians “aimed at following the Rule of Benedict to the letter” (Mursell, Gordon, general editor. 2001. 94). Looking at the Europe-wide expansion of the Order, one can speak but of a huge success. Was the poverty and simplicity of the Cistercians, their lifestyle and their politics really a much-needed church reform or just a restoration of the monastic life of Late Antiquity. The Rule of the Master is an anonymous sixth-century collection of monastic precepts from the East, and many experts think that it was possibly used by Saint Benedict (480-547) as source material for his own "Rule". 

Bernhard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) was born of Burgundian landowning aristocracy. He became monk and mystic, but he remained a feudal knight too. He wrote a eulogy of the new military order of the Knights Templar. “Pope Eugenius III and King Louis VII of France induced Bernard to promote the cause of a Second Crusade (1147–49) to quell the prospect of a great Muslim surge engulfing both Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians. The Crusade ended in failure because of Bernard’s inability to account for the quarrelsome nature of politics, peoples, dynasties, and adventurers” (St. Bernard of Clairvaux - Monasticism, Mysticism, Preaching | Britannica). “The Crusade was preached by St. Bernhard of Clairvaux in France and, with the aid of interpreters, even in Germany. Bernard revolutionized Crusade ideology, asserting that the Crusade was not merely an act of charity or a war to secure the holy places but a means of redemption” (Crusades - Holy Land, Jerusalem, Saladin | Britannica).  Bernhard’s rhetoric talents were excellent, but his message ignored the Christian commandment of love and service, of a nonviolent and peaceful life and of gratuity of redemption for the believer.

The Byzantine emperor did not want another crusade heading toward Constantinople. He had formed an alliance with Germany, Venice and the pope against the Normans and was interested to have a peaceful relationship with the Turkish Sultan of Rum. The Normans had conquered the Byzantine territories in Southern Italy - Calabria, the Basilicata, Puglia, and Campania -, and chased the Muslims out of Sicily, where they founded the Kingdom of Sicily. By the beginning of the 13th century Venice had conquered from Byzantium islands in the Aegean See and Crete.

The army of Emperor Conrad III of Germany was the first to get defeated. When it tried to reconquer Edessa, it got virtually destroyed by the Turks. In midwinter Conrad marched on with Louis to Antioch. The troops ran short of supplies and the Byzantine emperor Manuel had to defend his cities from hungry crusaders. The French lost more troops fighting Christians than Muslims. When the crusaders arrived in Jerusalem their appetite for gold was not saturated and they decided to conquer Damascus. They had to retreat blamefully from Damascus, because a strong Muslim army was advancing. “The Muslims were enormously encouraged by the collapse of the Second Crusade because they had confronted the danger of another major Western expedition and had triumphed” (ibid.). By the end of the 11th century the Byzantine territory in Asia Minor had passed to the Sultanate of Iconium and Rum.

The Christian knights were incapable and unwilling to find a peaceful solution to solve their conflicts with the Muslims. Bernhard of Clairvaux justified the crusaders’ war of aggression with a perverted religious ideology. Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) did not preach violence but peace and love. He wanted to live the gospel as closely as possible to the life of Jesus, in voluntary poverty, in sufferings, in the care of the sick, in preaching as layman to others the message of the gospel (Mursell, Gordon. 2001. 101). In 1219 he did go to Egypt as friar, while the Crusaders were besieging Damietta. He went into the Muslim camp and preached to the Sultan al-Kāmil, who was impressed by him and gave him permission to visit the sacred places in the Holy Land (St. Francis of Assisi - Poverty, Humility, Franciscan Rule | Britannica). Thanks to the peaceful and courageous encounter with the Sultan, Francis opened the way to a continuous Franciscan presence in Jerusalem that served for a thousand years the Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land.  In 1220 Francis resigned from ruling the order. His Franciscan brothers judged him incapable of governing a numerous and widely spread following and the pope wanted to change the order in a less radical direction (Mursell, Gordon 2001. 101). Christian-Muslim understanding can grow following the poor and peaceful Francis of Assisi. It took the Roman Catholic Church 800 years to encourage at the Second Vatican Council in the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate dialogue between Christians and Muslims in order to come to know each other (Nostra Aetate 3.2). The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 16 acknowledged the inclusion of the Muslims in Go’d’s universal salvation (Paul VI 1964, Lumen Gentium).

The Christians of the West did not only fight the Muslims. They attacked and killed also their brothers and sisters in Constantinople. The Fourth Crusade was promulgated by Pope Innocent in 1198 and was a corrupted enterprise from the beginning. The crusaders attacked Christian settlements; a Byzantine prince offered the crusaders cash if they would put him on the throne of Constantinople. “In February 1204 the new emperor was murdered and replaced by courtier Alexius Ducas, who told the crusaders to leave. The crusaders responded by laying siege to Constantinople. A first assault on the city’s defenses was repelled with heavy losses, but on April 12 the crusaders were successful” …” For three days the army pillaged at will, and then the nobles imposed order and began a more systematic looting of the greatest city in Christendom” (Sack of Constantinople (1204) | Crusades, Description, & Significance | Britannica). The empire fragmented into four quarreling, scattered states, never to recover its former greatness (ibid.). Despite this political and economic weakness, Constantinople experienced a late intellectual bloom. The own Hellenistic tradition was cultured but Latin literature was studied also (Borgolte 2006. 540). 

The Arabs expanded militarily and politically and encountered knowledge and sciences they did not know. Since their conquering of Mesopotamia in 7th century they had access to the most important centers of Hellenistic natural sciences and philosophy. They learned from the Greeks, the Persians, the Syrians, and from the 8th century on also from the Indians and the Chinese. The Arabs had a talent for technical innovations and developed practical skills in the application of scientific insights. The Greeks rather preferred the theoretical aspects of science (ibid.)

The appropriation of Arab literature by the Latins, as the Arab appropriation of Greek literature, were realized by translations, summaries, systematization, addition and self-employed further development (ibid. 569). In the 10th century the Muslims translated the Greek philosophers in Spain and Sicily into Arab. A second strong period of Greek texts into Arab was the 13th century and Toledo was the center of this activity. From Arab Aristoteles got translated into Latin and reached the Christians in the West.  At first sight the Latin Christians used the translated Greek texts just as the Byzantines, Arabs and Jews had used them. Yet, in the 12th and 13th century a new form of scientific study of the texts of Antiquity evolved. A new form of science and scientists with a new mentality, was about to be developed. Past authors were treated as authorities and had to be used to legitimate arguments in discourse. Universities developed rules for their open discourses and scholars as magisters were trained and exercised these so-called disputations. The discourse of scientists and theologians who tried to defend with arguments their thesis enhanced scientific knowledge and theological innovation.

Schools in the cities replaced the Cathedral Schools in the Occident. Around 1200 the first universities were founded in Bologna and in Paris. Independent from monasteries, the church and the cathedrals, the universities formed masters of art. Universities experienced a real rush. Universities were funded by aristocratic families, royalty, or the church. For Catholic males the access to universities was unrestricted. Tolerance and liberty of religion were not possible, female emancipation at universities developed only 800 years later. For the male Catholic doctors, magisters and students there was freedom of speech, teaching and learning. Autonomous thinking entered society and the learned started changing the world (ibid. 573). Private schools like in Paris, Bologna, Oxford and at other cities in the Latin West existed also in Byzantium, in the Muslim cultures and in Judaism. These schools focused their education on the person of one teacher. Universities overcame this particularity and were organized as a collective enterprise of doctors, magisters and students, without abandoning their liberty of teaching and learning. The emperors or popes generally supported these new communities of teaching and studying. In case of authoritarian interventions by state or church, the universitas scholarium et magistrorum had to defend the autonomy of their university and they were successful (ibid. 579). An individual teacher was not capable any more of monopolizing scientific discourse and silencing adversaries. The mutual interaction between magisters and critical intellectuals could develop as characteristic feature of the universities in the Occident (ibid. 584).

Francis of Assisi did not study theology, and he was skeptical that his friars took long study periods at universities. He did not aspire to the priesthood. Extensively reflecting Christ, and his truly evangelical message and attitude were in no need of a theological formation. His deep perception of the passion of Christ went together with a love and respect of nature and the whole of creation, for whom he praised his Lord, as the Canticle of the Sun testifies (Mursell 2001.101). He was not intellectual; he was a mystic and a poet. The Canticle of the Sun demonstrates his creative intelligence, it was written in an Umbrian dialect of Italian that he had pioneered. It is the first work of literature in Italian by a known author. One could say, he created the language base for the many Italian poets, scientists and academics.

It is astonishing that the book of Mursell does not mention Francis’ relationship with Clare of Assisi (ca. 1194-1253). Francis and Clare were born and raised in Assisi, Italy. Francis was the son of a cloth merchant, part of the newly formed merchant class, but Clare was a member of the noble class. Her life was far more sheltered but like her mother, Clare was known throughout Assisi for her generosity to the poor. Clare was a dozen years younger than Francis. She was drawn to the teachings and lifestyle of Francis. She left her parents’ home and found her way to Francis and the brothers. Francis placed her in a covenant. “Like Francis, she cared for her followers, taught them by word and example, wrote for them a simple rule of life, and stood up to bishop and pope for the privilege of living the life to which she felt called” (St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi – The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia). “At San Damiano, Clare, in essence, was both a partner in Franciscan development and the keeper of Francis’ memory” (ibid.). She advised Francis not to become contemplative but to act in the world (ibid.). We dispose of four letters which Clare wrote to Agnes of Prague, daughter of the Bohemian king. Each of the letters describes a spiritual phase of her life. Agnes asked Clare for her encouragement, help and direction for the foundation of her covenant (Clare of Assisi: Letters – Franciscan Note). Clare was the first woman to write a rule for a religious order. Just as Francis, Clare wrote also in an Umbrian dialect of Italian.

Her letters give testimony to her spirituality, yes. Her letters mirror also Clare’s gift to communicate her experiences in a way that flatters her friend and sister Agnes and does not simply convince but motivates Agnes to have her own experiences and follow her way straightforwardly. Clare’s style of writing is soft, full of expressive and impressive beauty, and yet very clear in her chain of communicated convictions. In my eyes, nowadays Clare is not, or perhaps never has been, recognized and respected as a woman who had fought all her life for physical, psychic, social, economic, cultural and spiritual integrity. Her economy was characterized by poverty, and she fought for the privilege to “embrace poverty” with her sisters at San Damiano. She fought for her dignity, fighting through all conflicts of opposing the reigning suppressive patriarchism of her time, in the family, in the church and in society. She was not the weak disciple of Francis, and his self-sacrificing nurse. She fought for her dignity, for the liberty of self-determination and the right to do so. The relationship between Francis and Clare was a relationship with mutual respect as a relationship between equals who pursued their distinct projects. We must read her letters from the point of view of Clare’s experiences, of her time, and her determination to nurture her life by the energy, peace and love that she receives from praying and meditating the Gospel of Jesus. We are called today to pray and patiently learn to pray by daily exercise, that the Gospels of Jesus speak to us, we are called to meditate and receive spiritual experiences in our lives. We are not called to ridicule the spiritual experiences of women, men and queere who lived in times that have passed away. Worse than ridicule is the teaching of naïve identification with spiritualities of times and persons passed. The Roman Catholic institution will die if she tries to solve contemporary problems with solutions from the past.

In a time dominated by a perverse necessity to generate economic growth and material wealth, where there are a few rich and a mass of exploited and suppressed poor, there is certainly no work-life balance possible, that would allow us to cultivate one’s holistic integrity and dignity. Women, men, and queer need the courage to develop and live lifestyles that are compatible with integrity, equal dignity, freedom and rights.

Francis’ conversion was not a conversion to ideas or concepts, but conversion to the love of concrete women and men. Lepers during Francis’ time were relegated far from the view of the town’s residents. Francis was repulsed by the sight of lepers. “Therefore, it was quite a profound conversion for Francis when he encountered a leper on the road one day and, instead of turning away, reached out and embraced him. In the leper he suddenly saw Christ” (https://thedialog.org/catechetical-corner/encounter-st-francis-of-assisis-embracing-the-leper-moment-should-guide-us). (I do not want to get ironic or cynic, but it is a small leper moment for me to take the above citation from a website of Christian fundamentalists who embrace Donald Trump as savior of Christian values). University did not influence Francis of Assisi, but he influenced the teachings of universities. The Order of Francis produced many outstanding theologians, philosophers and scientists. These Franciscans warned philosophers and theologians to do much metaphysics with concepts that were merely theoretical and not empirical. They insisted on the worth and dignity of the individual woman and man, a claim that centuries later developed into the Human Right of the equal dignity, freedom and rights of all women and men. Trying to understand nature and creation, that Francis loved and respected so much, Franciscans developed empirical science, logical coherence as criteria for valid argumentation, and love as the first commandment of Jesus for getting along with each other peacefully on earth.