Church History: The Medieval Catholic Church

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Lecture audio: The Medieval Catholic Church

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Lecture Notes Outline

Monastic revival – Cluny & the Cistercians

     - Bernard of Clairvaux

     - Hildegard of Bingen

Chasing down heretics – Waldensians, Albigensians, and the Inquisition

     - Expulsion of the Jews

A new form of monastic ministry – the Franciscans & Dominicans

     - Francis & Clare

Papal corruption & schism – “the Babylonian Captivity” in Avignon

     - Catherine of Siena

The Black Death & the Anglo-French wars

     - Julian of Norwich

Scholasticism

     - Thomas Aquinas

Art & architecture

Age of discovery begins

The Renaissance begins to bloom

Calls for Reformation

     - John Wyclif

     - Devotio Moderna

     - Jan Hus

Photo of the Week

Jesus, I am resting, resting 

in the joy of what Thou art;

I am finding out the greatness

of Thy loving heart.

Thou hast bid me gaze upon thee,

as Thy beauty fills my soul,

for by Thy transforming power,

Thou hast made me whole.

- from a hymn by Jean Sophia Pigott

Quote of the Week

"Do not be angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, 

since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."

- Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

A Prayer from Thomas Merton (abridged)

Let me use all things for one sole reason: to find my joy in giving you glory. Therefore, keep me, above all things, from sin. [...] Give me the strength that waits upon you in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens. And possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love. Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for you alone. Amen.

Church History: Schisms & Crusades

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Lecture audio: Schisms & Crusades (High Middle Ages)

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Lecture Notes Outline

A New Order: Turmoil & Consolidation

- The Vikings

- Rise of European monarchies

- East and West begin their final split

          - Photian schism (9th century)

          - The Papacy’s rising claims

          - The Great Schism (1054)

          - Sack of Constantinople (1204)

          - Eastern Orthodoxy flourishes amid Byzantine decline

          - Council of Florence (1430s-1440s)

The Crusades & Eastern Christendom

- The First Crusade & the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

- Military-Monastic Orders & the Second Crusade

- Saladin and the Third Crusade

- Crusades of the 1200s

- Fall of the Latin kingdoms in the Levant

- Mongol invasions & the fall of the Church of the East

- Northern European crusades

- End of the Byzantine Empire

- Reconquista in Spain

Photo of the Week

Rise, my soul, to watch and pray

to the Lord unceasing.

God protects you day by day,

strength and faith increasing.

so that still mind and will

shall unite to serve him

and forever love him.

- from a hymn by Johann Freystein

Quote of the Week

"God has a university. It's a small school. Few enroll; even fewer graduate. Very, very few indeed. God has this school because he does not have broken men and women. Instead, he has several other types of people. He has people who claim to have God's authority...and don't--people who claim to be broken...and aren't. And people who do have God's authority, but who are mad and unbroken. And he has, regretfully, a great mixture of everything in between. All of these he has in abundance, but broken men and women, hardly at all. In God's sacred school of submission and brokenness, why are there so few students? Because all students in this school must suffer much pain."

- Gene Edwards (from A Tale of Three Kings: A Study in Brokenness)