ROMAN CATHOLICISM, HISTORY OF

history of the church from its beginnings with the Apostle Peter's identification with Rome. As both its critics and its champions would probably agree, Roman Catholicism has been the decisive spiritual force in the history of Western civilization. There are more Roman Catholics in the world than there are believers of any other religious traditionnot merely more Roman Catholics than all other Christians combined, but more Roman Catholics than all Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus. The papacy is the oldest continuing absolute monarchy in the world. To millions the pope is the infallible interpreter of divine revelation and the vicar of Christ; to others he is the fulfillment of the biblical prophecies about the coming of the Antichrist. These incontestable statistical and historical facts suggest that some understanding of Roman Catholicismits history, its institutional structures, its beliefs and practices, and its place in the worldis an indispensable component of cultural literacy, regardless of how one may individually answer the ultimate questions of life and death and faith. Without a grasp of what Roman Catholicism stands for, it is difficult to make political sense of the settlement of the Germanic tribes in Europe at the end of the Roman Empire, or intellectual sense of Thomas Aquinas, or literary sense of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, or artistic sense of the Gothic cathedrals, or musical sense of many of the compositions of Haydn or Mozart. At one level, of course, the interpretation of Roman Catholicism is closely related to the interpretation of Christianity as such. For by its own reading of history, Roman Catholicism began with the very beginnings of the Christian movement. An essential component of the definition of any one of the other branches of Christendom, moreover, is the examination of its relation to Roman Catholicism: How did Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism come into schism? Was the break between the Church of England and Rome inevitable? Conversely, such questions are essential to the definition of Roman Catholicism itself, even to a definition that adheres strictly to the official view, according to which the Roman Catholic Church has maintained an unbroken continuity since the days of the Apostles, while all other denominations, from the ancient Copts to the latest storefront church, are deviations from it. Like any intricate and ancient phenomenon, Roman Catholicism can be described and interpreted from a variety of perspectives and by one or more of several methodologies. Thus the Roman Catholic Church is itself a complex institution, for which the usual diagram of a pyramid, extending from the pope at the apex to the believers in the pew, is vastly oversimplified; within that institution, moreover, sacred congregations, archdioceses and dioceses, provinces, religious orders and societies, seminaries and colleges, parishes and confraternities, and countless other institutions all invite the social scientist to the consideration of power relations, leadership roles, social dynamics, and other sociological connections that it uniquely represents. As a world religion among world religions, Roman Catholicism in its belief and practice manifests, somewhere within the range of its multicoloured life, some of the features of every religion of the human race; thus only the methodology of comparative religion can encompass them all. Furthermore, because of the normative role of Scholasticism in the formulation of Roman Catholic dogma, a philosophical analysis of its system of doctrine is indispensable even for grasping its theological vocabulary. Nevertheless, the historical method is especially appropriate to this task, not only because two millennia of history are represented in the Roman Catholic Church, but because the heart of its understanding of itself is the hypothesis of continuity and because the centre of its definition of authority is the embodiment of divine truth in that historical continuity. For a more detailed treatment of the early church, see Christianity, history of. The present article concentrates on identifying those historical forces that worked to transform the primitive Christian movement into a church that was recognizably catholic, namely, a church that had begun to possess identifiable norms of doctrine and life, fixed structures of church authority, and, at least in principle, a universality (which is what catholic meant) that extended to all of humanity. Additional reading The Latin Church in the West (10001517) The only large-scale work covering the entire period (except for the century 12741378) is Augustin Fliche and Victor Martin (eds.), Histoire de l'glise depuis les origines jusqu' nos jours, vol. 810, 1214 (194064). Another classic is Albert Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, 9th ed., 5 vol. in 6 (1958), which covers most of continental Europe to 1437. A shorter history is David Knowles and Dimitri Obolensky, The Middle Ages (1968, reissued 1983), with a bibliography. For a perceptive introduction, see R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (1970, reprinted 1985). See also R.W. Carlyle and A.J. Carlyle, A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, 6 vol. (192836, reprinted 1970), especially vol. 35. Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955, reprinted 1980), is a masterly summary with full bibliography; David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 9401216, 2nd ed. (1963, reprinted 1966), also covers part of Europe. Other recommended studies include Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages: Its Organization and Operation (1954, reissued 1969), 8 chapters from the author's original 1887 3-vol. work; Guillaume Mollat, The Popes at Avignon, 13051378 (1963, reprinted 1965; originally published in French, 9th ed. 1949); and Schafer Williams (ed.), The Gregorian Epoch: Reformation, Revolution, Reaction? (1964), a useful collection of studies by early and more recent authorities. The late Middle Ages Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (1979, reissued 1985); and Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform (12501550): An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (1980), both cover the period with sound judgment. See also W.A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (1955, reissued 1980); Roger Aubenas and Robert Ricard, L'glise et la Renaissance (14491517) (1951); E. de Moreau, Pierre Jourda, and Pierre Janelle, La Crise religieuse du XVIe sicle (1950, reprinted 1956); and L. Cristiani, L'glise l'poque du concile de Trente (1948). Georges de Lagarde, La Naissance de l'esprit laque, au dclin du Moyen ge, 3rd ed., 5 vol. (195670), studies the lay movement in the Middle Ages. Joseph Lortz, History of the Church, 2nd ed. (1939, reprinted 1948; originally published in German, 5th6th ed., 1937), analyzes the history of the church from the point of view of the history of ideas. Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism, 3rd ed. (1983), looks at the theology of the late Middle Ages in its entirety, with special emphasis on Nominalism. See also Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contributions of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (1955, reprinted 1968). Reformation and Counter-Reformation Conrad Bergendoff, The Church of the Lutheran Reformation: A Historical Survey of Lutheranism (1967), provides a study of Reformation history from its beginnings to the 20th century. Commission Internationale d'Histoire Ecclsiastique Compare, Bibliographie de la Rforme, 14501648, vol. 17 (195870), is a reference work on the history of the Reformation. An important resource is The New Cambridge Modern History: vol. 1, G.R. Potter (ed.), The Renaissance, 14931520 (1957); and vol. 2, G.R. Elton (ed.), The Reformation, 15201559 (1958). A.G. Dickens, Reformation and Society in Sixteenth-Century Europe (1966, reprinted 1979), is an account of the sociological relationships in the 16th century. Harold John Grimm, The Reformation Era, 15001650, 2nd ed. (1973), presents a study of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Also useful is Hubert Jedin (ed.), Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte: vol. 3, pt. 1, Die mittelalterliche Kirche (1966); vol. 3, pt. 2, Vom kirchlichen Hochmittelalter bis zum Vorabend der Reformation (1968); and vol. 4, Reformation, katholische Reform und Gegenreformation (1967). See also G.R. Elton, Reformation Europe, 15171559 (1963, reissued 1967); Philip Hughes, The Reformation in England, 5th rev. ed., 3 vol. in 1 (1963); and Joseph Lortz, How the Reformation Came (1964; originally published in German, 3rd ed., 1955), on the causes of the Reformation in England, and The Reformation in Germany, 2 vol. (1968; originally published in German, 2 vol., 193940), a standard work on the history of the Reformation. Jaroslav Pelikan, Obedient Rebels: Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle in Luther's Reformation (1964), is an investigation of Luther's thought. Other scholarly works include Maurice Powicke, The Reformation in England (1941, reissued 1973); Golo Mann and August Nitschke (eds.), Propylen Weltgeschichte: Eine Universalgeschichte, vol. 7, Von der Reformation zur Revolution (1964, reissued 1976); and Herbert Maynard Smith, Henry VIII and the Reformation (1948, reprinted 1964). Georges Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation (1962), is a synoptic presentation of the left wing of the Reformation. Ernst Walter Zeeden, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen (1965), discusses the formation of various confessions of faith at the time of the development of different denominations, and Das Zeitalter der Gegenreformation (1967) covers the battle for the reorganization of the Roman Church. Roman Catholicism outside Europe in modern times The standard work on church history is Karl Bihlmeyer, Church History, rev. by Hermann Tchle, 3 vol. (195866, reprinted 196668; originally published in German, 13th ed., 3 vol., 195256). The documents of Roman Catholicism are assembled in Henricus (Heinrich) Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum: Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, 36th ed. (1976). Roland H. Bainton, The Horizon History of Christianity (1964, reissued with the title Christianity, 1985), is a well-written, beautifully illustrated, comprehensive introduction to Western Christianity through the centuries and includes references to modern Catholicism worldwide. Much more extensive and valuable, especially because of the excellent bibliography, is Kenneth Scott Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: A History of Christianity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 5 vol. (195862, reissued 1973); vol. 1, 3, and 5 concentrate on Roman Catholic themes. August Franzen, A History of the Church, rev. and ed. by John P. Dolan (1969; originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1968), is a convenient brief introduction that includes some modern materials. E.E.Y. Hales, The Catholic Church in the Modern World: A Survey from the French Revolution to the Present, new rev. ed. (1960), concentrates on Europe and America. Stephen Neill, Colonialism and Christian Missions (1966), and A History of Christian Missions, 2nd ed. rev. by Owen Chadwick (1986), provide brief and generally fair comments on Catholic ventures. A much more conservative Protestant bias is present in the standard work by Robert Hall Glover, The Progress of World-Wide Missions, rev. and enl. by J. Herbert Kane (1960). Robert L. Delavignette, Christianity and Colonialism (1964; originally published in French, 1960), is written by a Roman Catholic and concentrates on Catholic experience, but in too narrow a scope. Two works that make aspects of the American Catholic experience readily available to readers are John Tracy Ellis, American Catholicism, 2nd ed. rev. (1969); and the somewhat less adequate Theodore Maynard, The Story of American Catholicism (1941, reprinted 1960). Gustavo Gutirrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (1973; originally published in Spanish, 1972), is a provocative introduction to Roman Catholicism in the Third World. The papacy Of the general histories, Johannes Haller, Das Papsttum: Idee und Wirklichkeit, rev. and enl. ed., 5 vol. (195053, reissued 1965), is a classic. A chronological listing of the popes and antipopes, with concise biographical information, is found in J.N.D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (1986). Useful largely for reference is Horace K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, 18 vol. (190232), which covers the period to 1304; it is continued for the period to 1800 by Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes: From the Close of the Middle Ages, various editions, 40 vol. (18911953; originally published in German, various editions, 16 vol. in 21, 18661938). Joseph Schmidlin, Papst-geschichte der neuesten Zeit, 4 vol. (193339), discusses history to 1939. The standard collection of documents is Carl Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des rmischen Katholizismus, 6th ed. rev. by Kurt Aland (1967). An excellent brief introduction to papal history up to the Reformation, including a good bibliography, is Geoffrey Barraclough, The Medieval Papacy (1968, reissued 1979). For the development of medieval papal claims, see W. Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages: A Study in the Ideological Relation of Clerical to Lay Power, 3rd ed. (1970). For the subsequent crisis of papal authority, see Francis Oakley, Council over Pope? Towards a Provisional Ecclesiology (1969). Edward Cuthbert Butler, The Vatican Council, 186970: Based on Bishop Ullathorne's Letters, new ed. edited by Christopher Butler (1962), is a history of the first Vatican Council; see also James J. Hennesey, The First Council of the Vatican: The American Experience (1963). Walter M. Abbott (ed.), The Documents of Vatican II (1966, reissued 1982), is an introduction to the achievement of the second council, including commentaries and responses by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox scholars.Works on the papacy from the theological perspective include Paul C. Empie and T. Austin Murphy (eds.), Papal Primacy and the Universal Church (1974), an ecumenical dialogue; and Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Church in the New Testament (1965, reissued 1974; originally published in German, 1961), which presents the results of 20th-century Roman Catholic biblical scholarship. Raymond Brown, Karl P. Donfried, and John Reumann (eds.), Peter in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars (1973), considers the biblical problems in the Petrine question. Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger, The Episcopate and the Primacy (1962; originally published in German, 1961), is an analysis of the popebishop relationship; and Hans Kng, Infallible? An Inquiry (1971, reissued 1983; originally published in German, 1970), The Church (1967, reissued 1976; originally published in German, 1967), and Structures of the Church (1964, reissued 1982; originally published in German, 1962), are basic to an understanding of contemporary liberal Roman Catholic thinking on the papacy. For Eastern Orthodox views on the papal primacy, see Francis Dvornik, Byzantium and the Roman Primacy (1966, reprinted 1979; originally published in French, 1964); and J. Meyendorff et al., The Primacy of Peter, 2nd ed. (1973; originally published in French, 1960). The age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation The spectre of many national churches supplanting a unitary Catholic Church became a grim reality during the age of the Reformation. What neither heresy nor schism had been able to do beforeto divide Western Christendom permanently and irreversiblywas done by a movement that confessed a loyalty to the orthodox creeds of Christendom and professed an abhorrence for schism. By the time the Reformation was over, Roman Catholicism had become something different from what it had been in the early centuries or even in the later Middle Ages. Roman Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation Whatever its nonreligious causes may have been, the Protestant Reformation arose within Roman Catholicism; there both its positive accomplishments and its negative effects had their roots. The standing of the church within the political order and the class structure of western Europe had been irrevocably altered in the course of the later Middle Ages. Thus the most extravagant claims put forward for the political authority of the church and the papacy, as formulated by Pope Boniface VIII (reigned 12941303), had come just at the time when such authority was in fact rapidly declining. By the time Protestantism arose to challenge the spiritual authority of the papacy, therefore, there was no longer any way to invoke that political authority against the challenge. The medieval class structure, too, had undergone fundamental and drastic changes with the rise of the bourgeoisie throughout western Europe; it is not a coincidence that in northern Europe and Britain the middle class was to become the principal bulwark of the Protestant opposition to Roman Catholicism. The traditional Roman Catholic prohibition of any lending of money at interest as usury, the monastic glorification of poverty as an ascetic ideal, and the Roman Catholic system of holidays as times when no work was to be done were all seen by the rising merchant class as obstacles to financial development. Accompanying these sociopolitical forces in the crisis of late medieval Roman Catholicism were spiritual and theological factors that also helped to bring on the Protestant Reformation. By the end of the 15th century there was a widely-held impression that the resources for church reform within Roman Catholicism had been tried and found wanting: the papacy refused to reform itself, the councils had not succeeded in bringing about lasting change, and the professional theologians were more interested in scholastic debates than in the nurture of genuine Christian faith and life. Such sentiments were often oversimplified and exaggerated, but their very currency made them a potent influence even when they were mistaken (and they were not always mistaken). The financial corruption and pagan immorality within Roman Catholicism, even at the highest levels, reminded critics of the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, and nothing short of a thoroughgoing reformation in head and members [in capite et membris] seemed to be called for. These demands were in themselves nothing new, but the Protestant Reformation took place when they coincided with, and found dramatic expression in, the highly personal struggle of one medieval Roman Catholic. Martin Luther asked an essentially medieval question: How do I obtain a God who is merciful to me? He also tried a medieval answer to that question by becoming a monk and by subjecting himself to fasting and disciplinebut all to no avail. The answer that he eventually did find, the conviction that God was merciful not because of anything that the sinner could do but because of a freely given grace that was received by faith alone (the doctrine of justification by faith), was not utterly without precedent in the Roman Catholic theological tradition; but in the form in which Luther stated it there appeared to be a fundamental threat to Catholic teaching and sacramental life. And in his treatise The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, issued in 1520, Luther denounced the entire system of medieval Christendom as an unwarranted human invention foisted on the church. Although Luther in his opposition to the practice of selling indulgences was unsparing in his attacks upon the moral, financial, and administrative abuses within Roman Catholicism, using his mastery of the German language to denounce them, he insisted throughout his life that the primary object of his critique was not the life but the doctrine of the church, not the corruption of the ecclesiastical structure but the distortion of the gospel. The late medieval mass was a dragon's tail, not because it was liturgically unsound but because the medieval definition of the mass as a sacrifice offered by the church to Godnot only, as Luther believed, as a means of grace granted by God to the churchjeopardized the uniqueness of the unrepeatable sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. The cult of the Virgin Mary and of the saints diminished the office of Christ as the sole mediator between God and the human race. Thus the pope was the Antichrist because he represented and enforced a substitute religion in which the true church, the bride of Christ, had been replaced byand identified withan external juridical institution that laid claim to the obedience due to God himself. When, after repeated warnings, Luther refused such obedience, he was excommunicated by Pope Leo X in 1521. Until his excommunication Luther had gone on regarding himself as a loyal Roman Catholic and had appealed from a poorly informed Pope to a Pope who ought to be better informed. He had, moreover, retained an orthodox Roman Catholic perspective on most of the corpus of Christian doctrine, not only the Trinity and the two natures in the person of Christ but baptismal regeneration and the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Many of the other Protestant Reformers who arose during the 16th century were considerably less conservative in their doctrinal stance, distancing themselves from Luther's position no less than from the Roman Catholic one. Thus Luther's Swiss opponent, Ulrich Zwingli, lumped Luther's sacramental teaching with the medieval one, and Luther in turn exclaimed: Better to hold with the papists than with you! John Calvin was considerably more moderate than Zwingli, but both sacramentally and liturgically he broke with the Roman Catholic tradition. The Anglican Reformation strove to retain the historical episcopate and, particularly under Queen Elizabeth I, steered a middle course, liturgically and even doctrinally, between Roman Catholicism and continental Protestantism. The polemical Roman Catholic accusationwhich the mainline Reformers vigorously deniedthat these various species of conservative Protestantism, with their orthodox dogmas and quasi-Catholic forms, were a pretext for the eventual rejection of most of traditional Christianity, seemed to be confirmed with the emergence of the radical Reformation. The Anabaptists, as their name indicated, were known for their practice of rebaptizing those who had received the sacrament of baptism as infants; this was, at its foundation, a redefinition of the nature of the church, which they saw not as the institution allied with the state and embracing good and wicked members but as the community of true believers who had accepted the cost of Christian discipleship by a free personal decision. Although the Anabaptists, in their doctrines of God and Christ, retained the historical orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed while rejecting the orthodox doctrines of church and sacraments, those Protestants who went on to repudiate orthodox Trinitarianism as part of their Reformation claimed to be carrying out, more consistently than either Luther and Calvin or the Anabaptists had done, the full implications of the rejection of Roman Catholicism, which they all had in common. The challenge of the Protestant Reformation became also the occasion for a resurgent Roman Catholicism to clarify and to reaffirm Roman Catholic principles; that endeavour had, in one sense, never been absent from the life and teaching of the church, but it came out now with new force. As the varieties of Protestantism proliferated, the apologists for Roman Catholicism pointed to the Protestant principle of the right of the private interpretation of Scripture as the source of this confusion. Against the Protestant elevation of the Scripture to the position of sole authority, they emphasized that Scripture and church tradition were inseparable and always had been. Pressing that point further, they denounced justification by faith alone and other cherished Protestant teachings as novelties without grounding in authentic church tradition. And they warned that the doctrine of faith alone, without works as taught by Luther would sever the moral nerve and remove all incentive for holy living. Yet these negative reactions to Protestantism were not by any means the only, perhaps not even the primary, form of participation by Roman Catholicism in the history of the Reformation. The emergence of the Protestant phenomenon did not exhaust the reformatory impulse within Roman Catholicism, nor can it be seen as the sole inspiration for Catholic reform. Rather, to a degree that has usually been overlooked by Protestant historians and that has often been ignored even by Roman Catholic historians, there was a distinct historical movement in the 16th century that can only be identified as the Roman Catholic Reformation. The church of the early and High Middle Ages The concept of Christendom By the 10th century the religious and cultural community that is called Christendom had come into being. In every European state the religion of the state was Roman Catholicism. Christendom fought back against Isl am in the Crusades (see below), which failed to repossess the lost territories but strengthened the unity of Christendom and rendered it conscious of its power. The Middle Ages saw the rise of the universities and of a Catholic learning, sparked, oddly enough, by the transmission of Aristotle through Arab scholars. Scholasticism, the highly formalized philosophical and theological systems developed by the medieval masters, dominated Roman Catholic thought into the 20th century and contributed to the formation of the European intellectual tradition. With the rise of the universities, the threefold level of the ruling classes of Christendom was established; imperium (political authority), sacerdotium (ecclesiastical authority), and studium (intellectual authority). The principle that each of these three was independent of the other two within its sphere of authority had enduring consequences in Europe. The same period saw the growth of monasticism. One may see in this withdrawal from the world a response to the essential conflict between Christianity and Roman civilization; those who refused to accept the prevailing compromise between the religious and secular spheres could find no place in the world of the early Middle Ages. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of monasticism was that this withdrawal did not take the form of heresy or schism. Monasticism found a way of refusing the compromise without departing from the church that had made the compromise. The Rev. John L. McKenzie The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica A period of decadence This period also revealed the possibilities of corruption within the Roman Catholic Church. Without the accumulated prestige and the precedents established by the 9th-century popes, the claim to primacy would have had difficulty in surviving the subsequent period of papal decadence. In the 870s the imperial government in Italy declined in influence, and the bishopric of Rome, along with other European bishoprics, was increasingly at the mercy of the local nobility, with spasmodic interventions by the 10th-century German emperors. German kingship entered upon a new epoch in the 10th century. Under Otto I, the Great, the bishops and greater abbots were drawn into royal service and enriched with estates and counties, for which they did feudal homage. Otto conquered northern Italy and extracted from the pope an imperial coronation (962). Both he and his grandson Otto III regarded the papal territory as part of their realm; they appointed and removed popes and presided at synods. Otto III, an enlightened ruler, appointed as pope his old tutor, Gerbert of Aurillacwho took the name Sylvester IIwhose brief reign (9991003) was a shaft of light between two periods in which Roman factions dominated the papacy. German protection, however, had its price. When the emperor Henry III descended into Italy in 1046, deposing three rival claimants to the papacy (Sylvester III, Gregory VI, and Benedict IX) and then appointing his own candidate, Clement II (and later several successors), the Roman Church was in grave danger of becoming an imperial proprietary church, similar to those multitudinous lower churches in Europe whose royal or aristocratic owners regarded them, in accordance with age-old custom, as their own private property to be disposed of at will. France during this period was fragmented into many feudal domains. This allowed the ecclesiastical hierarchy there a certain independence and cohesion, while the growth of the French reform-oriented monastery at Cluny prepared the country for its message of reform. In England there was a unique intermingling of ecclesiastical and royal administration that, in fact, left the church entirely free. On the fringes of ChristendomScandinavia, Scotland, Ireland, and northern Spainthere was little hierarchical development.