Like we are today at lecture 19, the early Middle Ages, the second 500 years, so far we have studied the first 500 years of the history of Christianity. And we're going to study now the second 500 years really much more briefly than the first 500 years because even though this is not an unimportant time, it is not nearly so important as the history of the early church. I'd like to use a prayer that comes from just about the year 500 since we're moving from the first 500 years to the second 500 years. We'll use a prayer from the Galatian sacramentary named for Pope Galatius who died in the year 496 and wrote liturgies for the church, including this prayer. Let us pray. O thou who has taught us that we are most truly free when we lose our wills and dine. Help us to gain that liberty by continual surrender unto thee that we may walk in the way which thou hast prepared for us. And in doing thy will may find our life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. This lecture today is going to be a kind of wide angle picture I want to talk about all that whole period of the second 500 years of Christianity. The first 500 years of a thousand year period that we can call the Middle Ages. We have 500 years we call that usually the early church and now the Middle Ages thousand years. We'll study the Middle Ages for the rest of this course but today I want us to look more precisely at the first 500 of that thousand year period. And then later we'll have another lecture on the third 500 years of Christianity and that will bring us to the end of the course. The fourth 500 years is the whole of Reformation in modern church history which brings us right down to the present. The expression Middle Ages became common during the time of the Renaissance to refer to the period between the ancient world and the modern world. Of course the people in the Middle Ages were not aware that they were living in the Middle Ages. They thought they were living in the modern world but as we look back on it we think of that long period of time at least some people do. Most people do I suppose as the Middle Ages because there is the classical world or the Christian world of Greece and Rome. And then there is the modern world that comes out of the Renaissance and the Reformation and the Enlightenment. And between those two worlds there is this world of the Middle Ages. Sometimes people have been accustomed to call this period the dark ages. I don't think that's the best term for it. For one thing even though there were times of comparative darkness there were also great times of light and progress and learning. And it's not accurate or appropriate to label the whole period the dark ages although there were some dark times during that thousand year period. I think if we wanted to use the expression the dark ages for any part of this thousand years we would use it for the last century before the year 1000. Perhaps that is the true period of the dark ages, the 10th century from about 900 to about year 1000. People began to worry a bit about the idea that they were coming to the year 1000. What's going to happen? Well they did worry about computers and things like that because they didn't have those but they worried about a lot of things because there seemed to be something rather ominous about the year 1000. Well the year 1000 came and went without much difference in the life of people. Same sins, the same turmoil, the same controversies in the new millennium as in the old millennium. But that's at the end of this 500 year period and we will look at it a little later. And for now the 500 year period between the end of the early church if we could call it that and the real dark ages. In this period we have a kind of new map of Europe. We can't look at a map now and see the Roman Empire. What we see now is a Europe divided among many barbarian tribes, busy goss and astragoss and Franks and Saxons and many others. Because as we know Rome finally fell, took a long time. It was a gradual fall and those people during the time that Rome was falling did not know that Rome was falling, although they knew that there were some serious problems. So throughout the 5th century Rome gradually collapsed and we saw the great writing of St. Augustine in the city of God which tries to put that important event, that cataclysmic event in perspective for Christians. And so we no longer have the Roman Empire but we no longer have we don't yet have modern Europe either. You don't see England and Italy and France and Germany on that map. We have a Europe divided into these barbarian kingdoms. These barbarians were no match that tended to wander about. And as they moved they of course encroached on somebody else's territory and forced those people to move, generally down into the Roman Empire which was a kind of attractive thing anyway because there were great buildings and schools and learning and books and all kinds of interesting things down there. There are the Roman Empire that the barbarians coveted. They really did not want to destroy Rome. They just wanted to gather for themselves some of the benefits of what Rome had produced. All of these movements were prompted by the movement of a great Asianic tribe called the Huns. Very warlike people. The Huns pressed into Europe and upset everybody who then began to move so that for some time we have great mass migrations of people prompted by the invasion of the Huns. The most famous of the leaders of the barbarians was Attila the Hun. You've heard about him. He's not a very attractive character. Very well a barbarian in their true sense of the word and somebody who got things done but with a rather strong hand. Some time ago there was a book that came out called The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. It's not a book I particularly recommend for pastors at least. You do better to get your leadership secrets from the Bible but Attila did get things done and he moved his people into Europe and conquered vast areas of central Europe. We come to a map like this with barbarian tribes and smaller units gradually develop within those tribes or within those areas. This is the time that we call the time of feudalism in which larger areas, tribal areas were subdivided into small areas and even into smaller areas with the Lord and his vassals or a great estate and balloons surrounding it and people servants on that estate, people loyal to the Lord or the estate, whatever the leader of that estate was called. The most important figures here were farmers and soldiers, not really scholars now. The period of scholarship is going to be hindered for a while although as we'll see later scholarship still existed but in the Celtic fringe and the monasteries of Ireland and in other places but not so much in the central life of the people. This was a period of farmers and soldiers. It's a period of King Arthur and his famous Knights of the Round Table and you know all the legend and lore and grandeur and glory of that history. This is not exactly how it worked but Knights went out to fight for their Lord and to try to win glory and fame for themselves but also to protect themselves against the neighboring kingdom whatever it was. So you need farmers to have food, you need soldiers to protect yourself and there wasn't much time left over for scholarship and for learning and so for some time now we won't have great names like Augustine and Jerome and Chrysostom and some of these other figures that we have studied in the last number of lectures. In all of this, after the fall of Rome and all of this there was just one unifying factor. We have all of these competing tribes and all of these little feudal units also competing with each other. The only thing that held this great mosaic together was Christianity. We'll come to this topic again later but just in time Christianity spread beyond the cultural bounds of the Roman Empire into barbarian Europe so that when Rome fell Christianity did not fall with it. It was already the religion of many of the barbarians who were invading the Roman Empire. Kenneth Clark in his book Civilization said if you had asked the average man of the time to what country he belonged he would not have understood you. He would not say I'm English or I'm French, not have any meaning to him. But if you would ask the average man or woman of that time what country do you belong to would know but he would have known what bishopric he belonged to. He would have known the bishop and that was the unifying factor in all of this confusion that we call the Middle Ages. There were some great popes during this period. Not all of the popes are great in this second 500 year period but some are great and you know which popes are great because they're called a great. Like Leo the Great, Gregory the Great. Not every pope is called a great only if you are and when you have a pope with the great after his name you know there is something significant about that pope. He did not call himself that but either contemporaries or more often successors noted the greatness of his achievement. And I think as we come to the second 500 period we can really talk now about the Roman Catholic Church. I've resisted up until this point to identify the first 500 year period precisely with the Roman Catholic Church. There are some things there that lead into Catholicism, Roman Catholicism and there are some things that could lead the other way in the earlier period of Christianity. But by the time we come to the year 500 we can accurately I think speak of the Roman Catholic Church and these are popes now. Popes who believe that they are successors of Peter that the Lord gave his authority to Peter to plant the church and the keys of the kingdom are given to Peter and that the pope represents Peter and speaks for not only Peter but actually forgot himself. In what he says and in what he does Leo the great is a great pope of the fifth century and I think with Leo we have a very strong statement of Roman Catholicism. What I just said Leo said I am Peter. I have the authority that Christ gave to Peter because I'm Bishop Pope of the Church of Rome so Leo the great concentrated and elevated and glorified the power of the Roman Catholic Church. Leo the great of the fifth century, Gregory the great of the sixth century. If Leo elevated the power of the Roman Catholic Church, Gregory is remembered for his concern to extend the limits of the church. He is the great missionary pope. Later popes will take their names as they are made Pope they take a new name and that name always signals something of what they hope to do during their pontificate. When a Pope when a later Pope says I'm going to be Gregory in a certain number after that that almost always means that Pope is going to put emphasis on missions. The extension of the church because Gregory the great was the great missionary pope and almost the first example since the days of Paul of a carefully planned and calculated mission. He was a missionary strategist in Saint Augustine to England this is not Saint Augustine of Kippel this is Saint Augustine of Canterbury and Gregory promoted the spread of Christianity in the continent of Europe. Rome was a great center of Christianity during the second 500 year period the other great center of Christianity was of course Constantinople which had become the second great center the second Rome as it was sometimes called. Constantinople became a powerful city when Constantin moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in the fourth century. Eventually the Roman Empire was divided into an eastern part and a western part although both parts were ruled by the emperor in Constantinople. We have then a second great center of Christianity there are other great centers too but at this time no city can compete with Rome in the west and Constantinople in the east. The patriarch of Constantinople was the counterpart to the pope of Rome and we'll see in a later lecture that the two parts of the church gradually pull apart and finally break in the year 1054. Partly over who's going to be in control the pope or the patriarch but there are a lot of other issues too that we'll look at later. But during this 500 year period even though there are strains and stresses between the east and the west the two parts of the church are still united. In the east it's not so much the patriarchs who are great as some of the emperors and one of the great emperors is Justinian. He lived in the sixth century he was a great emperor because he tried to reconquer some of the land in the west that had been lost to the barbarians and succeeded in doing that at least temporarily to extend again the boundaries of the Roman Empire. He was a great emperor because he was a man who set forth laws in the Princeton University Chapel. There is a window devoted to the great lawyers, the great lawmakers of history and Justinian is one of those. As is a Princeton University graduate James Madison the writer, the primary writer of the American Constitution and a student of John Witherspoon at the Old Princeton College. Justinian is also great because he built many great buildings, unified and expanded the city of Constantinople and the greatest of the buildings was the great church of Holy Wisdom, Sancta, Sophia, which for many years until the Muslim invasion and conquest was the greatest of the churches. The history of the Eastern Empire and perhaps the greatest Christian church of all. It was called Sancta, Sophia, Holy Wisdom that was dedicated in the year 537. When Justinian, according to tradition, walked in and saw the final product of that great soaring church with its huge circular sanctuary. He is supposed to have said, O Solomon, I have outdone you greater than the temple of Israel. Well, the second 500 years that I've been talking about will also be a time of the expansion of Christianity and we will look at this in more detail. There was great expansion in Europe with Gregory's mission sending St. Augustine to the pagan English. Earlier than that even there was the expansion of Christianity beyond the limits of the Old Roman Empire into Aralan. From Aralan into Scotland through the mission of St. Patrick from England to Aralan and St. Colomba from Aralan to Scotland and we'll look at that in more detail as well. And then later around the year 1000 a very significant event in the history of Christianity was the expansion of the Christian faith into the land of Russia, the spread of Christianity not in its Western form but in its Eastern form into Russia. So that even today the Russian Orthodox Church is by far the largest of the Orthodox churches in the world and will come to that later as well. I think we could say as we think of that second 500 year period that two men affected the course of that history more than anybody else. One was Charlemagne. One was Mohammed. Charlemagne was the first great political leader in the West since the collapse of Rome. Popes were great but not political leaders in the West. The emperor was in the East in Constantinople. But Charlemagne and Central Europe was able to put together a great kingdom and a great Christian kingdom which meant that Europe was almost completely Christianized eventually through the efforts of people like Charlemagne and through the missionaries that we will study later. Christmas Day in the year 800 Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope, Holy Roman Emperor. This is the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire that will last almost a thousand years in one form or another. Somebody has said that the only problem with the name Holy Roman Empire was that it was not Holy, it was not Roman, it was not an Empire. Well, it certainly was not Holy in the sense of consistent, godly living many brutal and awful things take place under the name of the Holy Roman Empire and even under the name of Christianity. And it is true, it was not really Roman, it was German. But it was an Empire, maybe not as big as the Roman Empire but certainly a significant kingdom that embraced part of France, modern France and part of Germany and part of northern Italy. Charlemagne's court, as we will see, was a center of learning and evangelism and it was there on the continent that Christianity not only survived but was able to spread to surrounding kingdoms just as Christianity also survived and spread from the monasteries of distant Ireland. While the Western world was struggling then to get over the fall of the Roman Empire and to organize itself and to preserve itself after the fall of Rome, while all that was going on in the north, a new anti-Christian force was beginning in the south and that was Islam. Really the strongest and most determined enemy that Christianity would have in the next 500 years and in the next 500 years and perhaps even in the next 500 years, the religion that we call Islam. Mohamed died in the year 632 in the 100 years after the death of Mohamed Islam as his religion was called spread with great force and great speed. It spread all the way across North Africa, wiping out those Christian centers, the strongest concentration of Christians in the world perhaps except for Asia or modern Turkey in a few generations gone except for the church in Egypt. And quickly Islam also wiped out and controlled the areas of Christianity's birthplace, the land of Palestine and the Roman province, the old Roman province of Asia or modern day Turkey. Finally Islam was defeated in Europe, if Islam had not been defeated in Europe, the second 500 years in Europe would have been the story of Islam and not the story of Christianity. But in the year 732, the Muslims were finally turned back because they were defeated in a battle, the battle of tours in France, by this time control Spain and moving right into the parkland of central Europe, but 732, they were turned back into Spain which remained Muslim or Mourish for the rest of the world. Another many centuries almost until the time of the Reformation and the Muslims were also defeated in the east, they were not able to conquer Constantinople, they were defeated in the year 718, so about 100 years of fast and vigorous movement and then setback, at least a temporary setback. I like to think of it this way, the symbol of Christianity of course is the cross, symbol that's often used of Islam is the crescent, the moon. In fact I was wearing my South Carolina cap the other day and somebody said well isn't that a Muslim cap, they didn't realize that was the South Carolina state flag on my cap but it has a crescent and a palmetitry. Well the crescent is a symbol of Islam but it's also a symbol of South Carolina and it's important to keep those two things separate. Constantinople eventually did fall to the Turks and to the Muslims and then Islam moved on up into eastern Europe into some of the countries that are experiencing such turmoil and warfare today, you have strong Muslim populations. But the Muslim crescent from the borders of Spain all the way through North Africa and up to the Black Sea, the Christian cross from Scotland down through Italy and east and west in central Europe. Now let me talk some before we finish today this rapid survey of the second 500 years of Christianity about Asia and Africa. Because I have been very concerned in this class not to leave out what is happening in those two great continents. We'll talk first about Asia. Roman Asia was lost to Islam for the most part that means the lands around the Mediterranean, the lands of the old Roman Empire. But there was already we know a strong Christian church in Persia, a Nestorian church. Church that did not accept the council of Calcedon although as we said earlier perhaps misunderstood theologically but a church outside the balance of the old Roman Empire that centered in Persia. A church that had been much persecuted and many martyrs produced during its history. When the Muslims came into Persia modern day countries of Iraq and Iran of course Islam began to dominate that area. But Christianity was not wiped out. It survived in Persia and in the second 500 years we have not only Christianity surviving in Persia but spreading vigorously from Persia all the way to China by the year 635 Persian missionaries had reached the capital of the Tang Dynasty in China which they considered the end of the world. That's an amazing story that we will look at in more detail later. We need to be aware that Christianity and churches were planted. Great churches were built and there were many Christians in China long before the days of the modern missionary movement. The other place, significant place where Christianity existed in the first 500 years was India. And in the second 500 years that Indian church founded perhaps by Thomas also received the Alexandria scholar and missionary pantinas that marked Thomas church which is still there today in the second 500 years. It was able to survive a tiny community and a vast non-Christian sea surrounded by Hindus and Buddhists and eventually Muslims as well. But as we come to the end of this 500 year period, so come to the 9th century and into the 10th century Christianity receives some drastic setbacks in Asia. The year 800, if looked as though Christianity would spread throughout Asia and that many people in Asia would become Christians as many people in Europe were becoming Christians. In fact, Dr. John Emil Young, missionary to Japan, who taught in Covenant College for a number of years, wrote in a book called By Foot to China, The Sunnets. By the year 800, there were more Christians east of Damascus in Syria than west of that city. I think of that year 800, more Christians east of Damascus than west of Damascus. I remember the first time I read that, I thought that was preposterous, couldn't be. And if that was true, then why haven't we heard of all these Christians in the east? Well, there are two answers to that question. The first is that most church histories that we study are written by Westerners and take a Western orientation and pretty much ignore developments in Asia. There has been a kind of provincialism in the writing of church history, moved from Roman Empire up to Europe, to England, to Scotland, to New England, and that's about it. By church history is much broader than that than we need to have a global perspective on the history of the church. The best answer to a NARA focus on church history is to read about Christianity in Asia. Unfortunately, we can do that now with Dr. Samuel Moffitt's first volume of the history of Christianity in Asia from the Atastolic period to the year 1500. Dr. Moffitt is very busy at work on volume two. He says he's in the 20th century and he thinks he's going to make it. He's 80 years old but he goes to Princeton, Spear Library every day and works on that history. The Cullidate Seminary Group that was touring Princeton last week had supper with Dr. Mrs. Moffitt at the Nassau Club in Princeton on Thursday night. And really, they were our sponsors. We could not have gone to that club because it's a private club unless someone who is a member will sponsor you. And so, the Moffitt's very kindly sponsored us and we had a delightful evening with him. Dr. Moffitt took me into one of the rooms of the Nassau Club. The club, the Nassau Club, part of that building was the home of Samuel Miller, the second teacher at Princeton and I'd never been in the building so I wanted to see the house that Samuel Miller built, which has been expanded now and is the Nassau Club. Dr. Moffitt took me into the main part, the reading room where people read newspapers and smoke cigars and drink cherry and that sort of thing before dinner and showed me a portrait on the wall of Woodrow Wilson, a very nice, large, handsome portrait of Woodrow Wilson who was the president of Princeton University, later became Governor of New Jersey and then President of the United States. But the interesting thing about this portrait is the little inscription below the frame said nothing about all of that. Woodrow Wilson, president of the Nassau Club. Well, I don't know how I got into Princeton history from Asia but oh yeah, Sam Moffitt. And we might pray for Dr. Moffitt, he's a warm-hearted evangelical missionary spent years in China and in Korea and I do want to see the second volume finished. I need it. I told him that he had taught me a lot about Asia and very generously he said well not as much as you've taught me about Princeton so we like each other. The other reason we don't know much about Christianity in Asia is that it practically disappeared in the second 500 year period. So the church was growing and then suddenly it was golden. It was not like Europe where we have a continuity of Christianity from the apostolic period down to the present. By the year 850 Dr. Moffitt says the church was wounded perhaps fatally and declining. Why did that happen? Why did Christianity suffer such a great setback in Asia? Was it oppression? Was it persecution? Certainly Christians in Asia suffered persecution, more persecution and persecution longer than Christians in any other part of the world. And persecution can take its toll but the Bible teaches us that there is no force in the world that can destroy the church and the church has survived through persecution in other places and other times. So Dr. Moffitt thinks that persecution alone cannot be the only answer to that but many complex answers. Some places the church was too identified with the state as Christianity in China became identified with the Tang Dynasty and when that dynasty fell Christianity fell with it. It had not penetrated beyond the support and power of the dynasty as it had in the west beyond the support and power of the Old Roman Empire. And then perhaps as Dr. Moffitt suggests the comment of a Persian Christian in the ninth century sets things in perspective. This ninth century Persian Christian sadly said the monks are no longer missionaries. The church began to retreat into a monastic mode into a survival mode and was not pressing out, not reaching out as it had for so long. Well let me talk briefly about Africa Christianity in Africa in the third in the second 500 years Christianity we've already said was destroyed in northern Africa in North Africa in the Old Roman Africa. North Africa today is solidly Muslim and fiercely anti-Christian. You know until this period so many of the people we've talked about came from North Africa like a guest in to tell you these were people that lived in North Africa but today they're very very few Christians in North Africa. It's probably not a place in the world more fiercely anti-Christian than the Islamic countries of northern Africa. The only exception was Egypt. Egypt had a strong Christian church and even though Islam dominated Egypt as it did the rest of North Africa it did not completely obliterate the Coptic church. Coptic church is the Egyptian church that was there long before Islam was there and continues today as a vigorous Christian community. Just a couple of weeks ago I asked Father Cedric at the St. Louis Coptic church of St. Mary and St. Abram, if there was persecution of the cops in Egypt today and he said there's always been persecution of the cops. Today perhaps not as much as in the past probably not nearly as much as in the past but then he added that persecution is good for us. Well God has preserved that church and it is still present today in Egypt. In Newvia the land south of Egypt modern day Sudan in what we call black Africa Christianity not only survived but grew vigorously during the second 500 year period. When we come to the third 500 year period we will be disappointed to learn that Christianity practically disappeared in Newvia not to be reestablished until the modern missionary period but that was not yet during the second 500 year period Christianity continued to grow. And Ethiopia further south near the present land of Ethiopia we had the most vital of all expressions of African Christianity and I think it's important to stress this because Ethiopian Christianity goes back long before Islam. People that say that Christianity is a Western importation into Africa need to be reminded that before Islam reached Africa there was a vigorous strong Christian church in Ethiopia and that church continued throughout the second 500 year period. Throughout the third 500 year period then down to the present the church in Ethiopia remain a vigorous expression of Christianity. Here is Ethiopian art from the medieval period it is a depiction of some of the figures of biblical history starting up on the top on the right inoc below him as dross these were two riders of apocryphal works but on the left at the bottom a lasha. Holding the cloak of his master Elijah and at the top Elijah the prophet riding to heaven on a horse this comes from a manuscript in one of the monasteries of medieval Africa. And so that is a kind of overview of this 500 year period we're going to go back in the next few lectures and concentrate on some of the themes that I've talked about but this will give you a hope a kind of wide angle picture of some of the important things that happen during that time. The griest withers flower fades but the word of our God will stand forever.