A Gesture With Multiple Levels of Meaning

Crozier of Pope Saint
Gregory the Great  

Interesting news today from Rome—nothing overly dramatic but an important symbolic moment.  The Holy See has loaned to the Church of England for a convocation of Anglican prelates, the ornamental head of the crozier of Pope Saint Gregory I.  The connection is that it was Pope Saint Gregory who sent Augustine of Canterbury to England as a Missionary to the peoples of Southern England. 

Christianity existed in England before Augustine’s mission in the year 597.  The Christian faith had come to England with the Romans, certainly as early as the second century and probably even the end of the first century.  While the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries had driven much of the surviving native Christian population out to the wilds of western Britain and the moors of the north, the faith had survived.  Contact with Rome had long been lost, however, and the British Church was independent with many unique customs, including a different calendar for Easter.  (Much of this is handled in more detail in my series on the history of the Anglican Church.)  It was only with the Synod of Whitby in 664 that the native British Church of the North and West, the Ecclesia Anglicana,  was reconciled with the Rome-leaning Church of the South-east, headquartered at Canterbury.  The English Church always stood in a somewhat unique relationship with the papacy—loyal but quasi-independent—until the break under Henry VIII in the 1530’s. 

Today the Anglican Communion has become quite a fragile union as the Anglican Churches of the Northern hemisphere and the Anglican Churches of the Global South are in great tension about many issues including the ordination of women bishops (and in some cases, priests) and the place of gays in the Church.  There are a variety of non-theological points of tension as well as some of the Southern Primates seem to want to replace Canterbury as the nexus of the Communion.  The next Lambeth Conference—a meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world—which would normally be held in 2018 has not yet been announced and it is rumored (actually more than rumored) that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has no intention of calling such a potentially divisive meeting until the various primates (heads of the various national or regional Anglican Churches) can agree on a structure that won’t break apart under the strain.  The primates are expected to meet this month and it is to this meeting that Pope Saint Gregory’s crozier is being sent.  It is a lovely gesture of course, but also a subtle reminder to the Church of England of its long-time-ago ties to Rome and the papacy.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church V

Arms of the See
of Canterburby,
showing the pallium

Avery Dulles, the Jesuit theologian who was honored later in his life by being made a Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in recognition of his contribution to Catholic thought wrote that the first thousand years of the papacy were characterized by witness; the second thousand by power; the third thousand will be characterized by service.  I think the style of Pope Francis tells us that this third millennium has begun.  But let’s look back to that first thousand years of “witness.” 
The greater number of the Popes of the fifth through the mid-ninth centuries were very anxious to spread the gospel to lands that had yet to be evangelized.  Missionaries went out from Rome into what is now Ireland, France, Germany, and Switzerland.  From there a second generation of missionaries would spread to Scotland, northern Britain, what are today the Netherlands, Austria, and Scandinavia.  The Thessalonian brothers, Cyril and Methodius, represent a joint effort of the Sees of Constantinople and Rome to spread the gospel into the Slavic lands that are today The Czech Republic and Slovakia, as well as Hungary.  Missionaries would eventually bring the faith as practiced by Rome to Poland and Prussia.    These missionary efforts originating from Rome would weave the western Church into a patriarchate led by the Bishop of Rome, even as the Eastern Slavs would follow Constantinople, the Syriac and Palestinian peoples, Antioch, and the Egyptian and Ethiopian peoples Alexandria.  Along with a fifth Patriarchate designed from the honors due its antiquity and place in the scriptures, Jerusalem, these five patriarchal sees would comprise the pentarchy. 
The Irish Church, though it eventually fell under the sway of the Roman Patriarchate, seems to have had its origins in a more oriental Christianity.  Despite the stories of Saint Patrick, the faith seems to have been originally brought to Ireland by monks, perhaps from Egypt, going to the finis terrae (the end of the earth).  Ireland was, after all, the westernmost part of the then known world.  Patrick seems to have belonged to a second or even third generation of missionary effort sent to secure this Irish Church in the orbit of Roman influence.  One cannot say that he was particularly successful.  The Irish Church had some very distinctly different customs than the Roman Church when it came to the date for Easter and styles of monastic life.  Its isolation from the Roman world—remember Ireland had never been part of the old Empire—confirmed it in its idiosyncrasies.   Consequently the Christianity brought to Scotland and northern Britain by Irish missionary monks in the fifth and sixth centuries stamped the British Church with customs that differed from Rome.
But while Northern Britain took its Christianity from sources other than Rome, the Roman See was about  missionary work and while the Irish worked in northern Britain, it was to Rome that King Aethelbert turned for missionaries to bring the Christian faith to his subjects in the southern kingdom of Kent.  Aethelbert was married to Bertha, the daughter of King Charibert, the Merovingian King of the Franks.  The Franks practiced Roman Christianity and so it was only to be expected that Aethelbert and his Frankish Queen would turn to Rome for missionaries.  Pope Gregory I sent forty monks from his own abbey of Saint Andrew on the Aventine under the leadership of their prior, Augustine, to help in the Christianization of the Kentish people.  Arriving at the capital, Canterbury (Kent-burgh) in 597 the missionaries had considerable success because of the royal patronage. In 601 Pope Gregory sent the pallium—the sign of an Archbishop’s dignity—to Augustine and the palium even today comprises part of the armorial bearings of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
In 603 Augustine summoned the bishops from the north of Britain to meet him.  The bishops were used to their autonomy and reluctant to give up the unique rites and practices of the Church which they had learned from the Irish Missionaries.  They were ambivalent about the meeting and the devised a strategy.  If when they entered the meeting, Augustine rose to meet them as a brother they would submit to his authority.  If he remained seated like a Lord with his subjects, they would reject his authority.  Augustine, unfortunately, remained seated and his authority went unacknowledged in the North of England for some decades more.  And it was not only Augustine’s authority that went unacknowledged, but the authority of the Pope who sent him.  The English Church, while technically in communion with the Church of Rome, insisted on its independence.  The Kentish Church and its daughter sees of Winchester and Rochester acknowledged the Roman primacy but it would take time of the Ecclesia Anglicana to surrender its independence. The process of the Ecclesia Anglicana coming under the Roman umbrella would take some centuries.    

Celibacy 2: Keeping Father from Being Dad

Pope Saint Gregory I
great-great grandson of Pope Felix III

Curiously enough, in the early centuries of the Church we have a number of instances where popes are the descendents of previous popes—all because even popes were—or had been—married.   As the Middle Ages dawned, however, it seems that few or no popes were married at the time of their papal ministry.   Felix III (pope from 483-492 ) was great-great grandfather of Pope St Gregory I; however we know that Felix was a widower when he became Pope.  Pope Saint Hormisdas (514-523) was the father of Pope Saint Silverius (pope from 536-537).  Silveius was born before Hormisdas received priestly ordination . Pope Damasus (366-384) was the son of a bishop; it is unclear whether or not his father had been in Orders at the time he was born.    
      Frankly, neither the legislation nor the actual practice regarding celibacy was standardized during the transitional period from late antiquity (4^th century) through the early Middle Ages (7^th century).  As we saw yesterday any number of regional synods had mandated celibacy for bishops and priests and sometimes for deacons, but the authority of these councils was limited and it seems that even where this authority held, the canons were not always enforced.  Certainly in this transitional period celibacy becomes the normal—but not universal—practice for bishops.  John Chrysostom was judge for the trial of one bishop, Antoninus of Ephesus, who was accused of having first separated from his wife but who, after being consecrated bishop, returned to cohabit with her.  The “Council in Trullo” (recognized in the East as an Ecumenical Council, but not in the West) legislated that the wife of man made a bishop should be veiled as a nun and sent to a convent.  That same Council, however, not only permitted priests, deacons and subdeacons to keep their wives but to maintain conjugal relations with them.  This pretty much became and remained the ecclesiastical discipline of the Eastern Churches. 
       The Western Church, on the other hand, continued to move towards mandatory celibacy for bishops, priests, and deacons.  In the ninth century various German synods mandated not only that priests had to abstain from conjugal relations with their wives, but they could  no longer cohabit. 
       As if the restriction on sexual relations with their wives did not impose sufficient burden on clergy, the restriction on cohabitation made life even more difficult for priests, especially in rural areas.  Wives had far more practical roles than sex partners.  Wives ran the household, prepared the meals, made the clothes, kept the fowl and animals that provided milk, eggs, and food.  (Even in town, people kept animals.)  Wives made the cheese, the beer, and the bread.  They smoked the meats and fish.  It was difficult for a man, even a priest, to live without a wife, so many of them did not.  The law was often ignored not for reasons of human concupiscence but for domestic economy.     
       Marriage in the early and central Middle Ages was often a somewhat informal arrangement.   While some, particularly the nobility, might have a marriage “blessed” with a religious ceremony, marriage was most usually celebrated according to varying local customs.  The husband might call on his intended at the home where she lived with her parents, present her with certain gifts, and then lead her back to his house.  Or the father of the woman might bring his daughter, veiled and dressed in her finest, to the house of her husband-to-be and place her hand in his.  A dinner following or a breakfast the next morning for family and friends would be more common a celebration than a ceremony in church.  Sometimes, often, people just began to cohabit with the understanding that they were husband and wife.  With these less than formal arrangements, no one much noticed should a clergyman take a wife.  
         There is a widely accepted view that in the Middle Ages priests were, if not highly promiscuous, then given to concubinage.  This is understandable given the references in the canons to clergy keeping concubines.  But I think it is a misperception.  What the canons call concubines we should probably think of as wives.  Yes, the clergy were not permitted to be married.  This meant both that a priest could not marry nor could a married man be ordained and continue to live conjugally with his wife.  That was the law.  But we should see that the majority of priests in the early and central Middle Ages (and later) were in fact married despite the laws.  The Church referred to their wives as “concubines” and to the marriages as “concubinage,” but they and the society in which they lived—the people around them, their parishioners and fellow priests if not their bishops—understood the relationship to be marriage.  We are not speaking, for the most part, of men who are serial monogamists, moving from one “mistress” to another, much less of men who are adulterers or otherwise promiscuous.  There were some who were adulterers or who were sexually active with a variety of partners, of course, but the majority seem to have been in stable relationships in which they begot and raised children as good and loving parents.  The lack of a formal Church Service to inaugurate the relationship would not have troubled people as most marriages in this period lacked formal liturgical blessing. What was needed for marriage in this period was mutual consent and offspring and that requirement was met.  What will be crucial is to see why the Church refused to recognize these marriages and the legitimacy of the offspring.  It won’t be about sexual purity; it will be about property.     

Gregory the Great and the rearrangment of Saint Peter's Basilica.

When Gregory the Great (Gregory I –Gregory VII is also referred to as Gregory the Great just to make a historian’s life difficult) became pope in 590, he determined a renovation of the shrine over the tomb of the Apostle.  He raised the floor level of the Apse four and a half feet and built two flights of stairs to either side of and perpendicular to a level space just before the altar—much like the arrangement of the altar seen here at Santa Maria in Trastevere.  He located his Episcopal chair (since this church was (and is) not a cathedral the chair is technically not the pope’s cathedra) in the traditional spot, against the wall of the apse and directly behind the altar.  In addition to raising the level of the apse and placing his chair and benches for the clergy in what was the traditional Roman position lining the wall of the apse, Gregory wanted to have an altar for the celebration of the Eucharist.  You may remember that in Constantine’s basilica, the marble and porphyry monument encasing the trophy of Gaius —the brick plastered “red wall” that had been built over the tomb of Peter c. 150 AD —which took the traditional place of the altar as the focal point of the basilica.  In raising the level of the floor of the apse almost five feet, Constantine’s monument was all but buried; enough remained above the floor level to become the altar of the basilica.  Thus the altar contained within itself the ancient monument over Peter’s grave. 

A passage below the floor of the apse and following its curve gave access to a recessed chapel directly beneath Gregory’s main altar and in this chapel it was possible to have access to the tomb of the apostle by lowering pieces of cloth to the tomb below and then withdrawing the cloth to keep as a relic.  Although Constantine’s basilica itself is gone—and Gregory’s apse with it—one can still walk this curved passageway today in the “grottoes” beneath the current Saint Peter’s and there enter the chapel, now called the Clementine Chapel after Pope Clement VIII who refurbished it at the very end of the sixteenth century.  Behind the altar there is a grille and through the grille one can see the marble and porphyry monument that Constantine had erected over the tomb of the apostle which served as the altar in Gregory’s day and which lies directly beneath the current papal altar of the new basilica; the altar was consecrated by Clement VIII June 5, 1594.  Until about ten years ago this passage was regularly open to pilgrims, but the series of chapels that line the ancient apse are now usually open only early in the morning when they are used for the dozens of masses visiting priests and Vatican regulars use to say mass.  The chapels have proved too difficult to protect in this age subject to terrorist threats and so they are sealed during the day.     

Gregory was not the only pope to make changes in the basilica.  Over the centuries there was a constant need for repair and addition to the basilica as well as for decoration.  In fact, popes often paid more attention to the decoration than to the maintenance of the fabric which is one of the reasons the basilica eventually would have to come down and be replaced in the sixteenth century.  The rich décor along with immense quantities of gold and silver votive offerings adorned with gems sometimes serve to tempt foes to sack the basilica.  Honorius I (pope 625-638) took the tiles from the Basilica of Maxentius (a secular building, not a worship site) in the Forum to re-roof St. Peters.  In 846 Saracen pirates sacked the basilica and took many valuable items with them.  Gregory IV (827-844) rebuilt the Atrium—the spacious colonnaded courtyard in front of the basilica proper.   In the middle of the eleventh century the building, at that point seven centuries old, was in danger of collapsing and a succession of popes, though largely unsuccessful in raising funds to carry out the work as properly as it should have been done, did what they could to strengthen the structure of the building.  Remember, however, that this was not the principal church of Rome at the time.  The Pope’s Cathedral was (and still is) the Basilica of Saint John Lateran and it was at the Lateran—not the Vatican—where the pope resided and normally carried out ceremonies. 

One ceremony that was carried out in Constantine’s Basilica of Saint Peter was the coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas day in the year 800.  Charlemagne’s family—the Pepinid dynasty—were the traditional protectors of the papacy. In fact they owed their legitimacy to the papacy as they had been “mayors of the palace” to the legitimate kings of the Franks—the Merovingian dynasty—and when the Merovingians proved too weak to protect France, much less the papacy, the Pepinids sought and received the papal blessing to overthrow the Merovingians and replace them.  As the Merovingians had been descended from Clovis—for whose baptismal and coronation anointings the Holy Spirit herself had supposedly sent from heaven a holy oil it would take at least a papal benediction to authorize a new dynasty on the throne.  When Pope Leo III had been threatened with being deposed by his clergy for various immoralities, Charlemagne came to Rome to adjucate the case himself.   When Leo proved his innocence to Charlemange’s satisfaction he then crowned Charlemagne emperor of a revived Roman Empire.  The idea did not catch on at once; the empire would more or less fall apart when upon his death Charlemagne divided his realms among his three sons. However his great great great grandson, Otto of Bavaria would revive it—but that leads us in another direction.  When receiving his crown, Charlemagne knelt on a circle of porphyry about 5 feet in diameter that was set before the altar of the basilica.  Porphyry was (and is) an exceptionally precious stone and its use was reserved for the emperor.  During the central Middle Ages it became a tradition that the emperors would kneel on this stone when being crowned in Rome.  That same stone can be found in the floor of today's basilica just inside the central doors leading from the modern atriun into the basilica proper.