Spanning four vivid centuries, from 1000 to 1473, CHM issue #127 takes an in-depth look at the lives of notable medieval mystics, especially those who were not ordained clergy.

By the twelfth century devout women, monks and hermits came out of seclusion to preach and minister to others, proclaiming the gospel in local languages so that common people could understand it. They called on both fellow laypeople and clergy to repent and enter a genuine relationship with Christ. This spiritual process, culminating in an inner, mystical union became known as mysticism.

Scholars agree, that around the twelfth century, a variety of forces led to a cultural and spiritual renewal among those living outside formal religious institutions and traditions. First by thousands, then by the tens of thousands, common people responded to the gospel. Thirsty for a vital Christian life, they fostered devotional lifestyles, joining various movements of piety and service to others that offered opportunities to grow spiritually.

Three centuries before the Reformation, scholars began to also translate the Bible into local languages. Outdoor preaching became common and itinerant preachers traveled across Europe calling people to a life of repentance. This led to 300 years of repeated revival movements and waves of spiritual renewal across Western Europe leading up to the Reformation, which began around 1500.

“People from these movements penned timeless devotional classics, many still popular, writing of their desire to reach a mystical oneness with the Christ they loved,” said the managing editor of Christian History, Jennifer Woodruff Tait. “Here, I think, is the point where we can connect their lives with ours. We both desire to learn how to be more devoted to Jesus.”

CH issue #127, contains 7 features and 4 shorter side-bar articles; a chronology time-line; an archive of rare art-work & photos; a ‘letter to the editor’ section and an extensive reading list compiled by the CHM editorial staff. The magazine is available on-line and can be conveniently read, on screen at: www.christianhistorymagazine.org.

The entire CHM archive of 127 issues can be searched, along with related books, videos and study-guides, using the website’s search engine feature. A magazine subscription, combined with its accompanying website, is offered at no-cost as a study resource for home & homeschoolers, church libraries, middle/high schools, as well as to colleges & universities. It is the mission of CHI donors and staff to make this resource as widely and freely available as possible (donations gratefully accepted).

The following articles can be accessed on-line at: What’s Inside?

A spiritual awakening for the laity by Glenn E. Myers
For 300 years, renewal swept Europe.

The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message

Part One: The Medieval Prologue & the Remapping of the World  

This article is part of The Gospel in History series by Woodrow Walton.
Image: The Books of Kells by way of Wikimedia Commons.

In Retrospect

By looking backwards to the beginning of the spread of the Gospel that Jesus is both Lord and Christ and considering the results of both the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the message that Peter spoke at the Feast of the Pentecost, we are struck by the Power of the Holy Spirit to change lives and change the course of history and why, no matter the opposition and oppression, that gospel continued to spread. Other things factor in. The first factor is that of those who heard.

Those who heard Jesus were the Jews of the circle of the Gentiles (Galilee), the Jews of Judaea, and a mixture of peoples, Jew, Greek, Syro-Phoenician, and Samaritans to begin with, and a centurion or two within the Roman military system and stationed within Galilee and Judaea. There was a mixture of peoples and a mixture of social classes ranging from shepherds, to high status people, including a rich young ruler. The Gospel reached from those at the bottom to those at the top and officials as tax-gatherers. The news spread horizontally and vertically from among those who heard.

The visitors who were present when the Church began returned home and told of what they heard. When Peter, John, Philip the Deacon, and later Paul, started their missionary journeys, they were simply following up where these visitors came from: The Mediterranean world and its northern, southern, southeastern shorelines, up the Nile and the Gulf of Suez as well as northeast to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and following their courses toward the Arabian Sea. The significance of this spread west and east is in the mode of travel. The early Christians traveled the waterways more so than by way of roads which were few and dangerous to travel. Even the Roman-built roads were not all that good across Anatolia [Asia Minor/modern Turkey], going from Antioch to Ephesus facing the Aegean Sea.

Rodney Stark, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome.

Most travelers went by ship, boat, or along the shores of rivers. As a result, most Christian communities were found in port cities such as Antioch, Caesarea, Troas, Ephesus, Corinth, Alexandria going west in the Mediterranean. The Roman military road from Capernaum and the upper shore line of the Sea of Galilee took one up to Damascus, Dura-Europos, and the towns along the Euphrates-Tigris waterways. Seldom were Christian churches found in the hinterlands. Most were found in shoreline cities. It was Wayne Meeks who first noticed that the earliest Christian churches were in urban areas; then it was Rodney Stark who wrote of how Christianity became an urban movement in his Cities of God (Harper San Francisco, 2006).

This was the situation of the resurgence of the gospel throughout the following centuries when persecution or invasions occurred. The Christians took to the sea or the waterways to spread the gospel to more distant lands. When persecution broke out in Jerusalem, Acts 8: 25-49 tells of Philip the Deacon’s ministry with a Treasurer of the Candace of Ethiopia (Roman name for modern Sudan). The roadway he traveled goes along the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Nile river and then up the Nile to the city of Meroe, the capital of Ethiopia. The Angel of the Lord then turned Philip around and had him introduce the gospel along the Eastern Coast of the Mediterranean from Azotus to Caesarea, a major port for ships from Rome and the Aegean Sea. Acts 11:19 to 30 informs the reader that Christians from the Island of Cyprus and from Cyrene, the main port city of what is now Modern Libya in Northern Africa, were among the forerunners of the church in Antioch (modern Antakya), another major port city. This is but the start of the story.

This article is part of The Gospel in History series by Woodrow Walton.
Image: The Books of Kells by way of Wikimedia Commons.

What transpired from the time of the Gothic and Vandal invasions of Eastern and Western Europe between A.D. 400 and 1452 is little different from what is occurring in our 21^st century world. We complain about the threat of ISIS and the troubles of our global society, including the troubles of the United States of America. Yet those basic troubles are the same as what was experienced for a thousand years between A.D. 400 and 1452. Christians were as troubled then as we are today, but the Church survived then and it will survive this.

As the invasions forced Christians to flee from the Mediterranean world, which included all of North Africa and the Near East, into the frontiers of northern Europe, the British Isles, the Sahel belt, the northern mountains of Africa, and the further northeastern and eastern extremities of Eurasia, so are we witnessing the extension of the Church in southern and central Africa, South America, and the Far East by way of exiles. Orthodox Christians native to western and central Asia are coming into the United States of America and are welcomed in by such organizations as Solidarity with the Persecuted Church, BarnabasAid, and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. As renewal arose from the frontiers so are we finding renewal by displacements of populations.

The Church in those years, between A.D. 400 and 1452, went through a restructuring process with both positive and negative effects upon the life of the Church. One of the most puzzling features was the relationship between the Christian community and the political order. The Roman system of government in western Europe crumbled under the Gothic tribes, the Vandals, and Lombards but the Church had the structure to withstand the onslaughts. When the Arabs spread throughout northern Africa, the churches re-located themselves in the British Isles. There were two after-effects. Since the Church had the organization it re-read Augustine’s magnum opus, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), written at the time of the Vandal Invasions of Mauritius, Lybia, and the African coast and took a triumphalist approach where the Church had a hand in influencing the political order. The Church in the East suffering from the over-reaching powers of the emperors at Constantinople saw in Augustine’s City of God, a spiritual authority apart from the political order. There were positive results from both approaches but there were negative ones as one. The West institutionalized the Church alongside that of the new political orders which took the place of Rome. Even when the Reformation took place in the 1500’s, Church and State stood side by side insuring the safety of each. Not so in Greece, Eastern Europe, and Western Asia. The Orthodox had no central structure. In each country, the Orthodox conducted their concerns through conciliar means but within the context of patriarch who had a pastoral oversight within each individual country. Rather than a pope, the patriarchs had to contend with the new political entities as best they could. Those in the Near East, Western Asia, and the West Coast of India maintained their identities but had a dhimmi status and were considered as second-class citizens within the Moslem and Indian worlds.

Charlemagne’s palace chapel was completed in 805 CE and later incorporated into the Aachen Cathedral, the oldest cathedral in northern Europe.
Image: Tobias Helfrich / Wikimedia Commons

Conundrum is a strange adjective, yet it is appropriate when one considers the state of the Christian message from AD 385/400 to 1452. The Edict of Milan (AD 313) ended the persecution of Christians and brought an era of peace for the Church. A tenuous relationship between the Christians and the ruling empire emerged. From AD 350 until 378, the year of the Battle of Adrianople, an increasing flood of invaders from Eurasia and from north of the Danube poured into the Mediterranean world. Some of the newer peoples integrated with existing populations and served in both the Roman and Byzantine armies. Some did not.

Increasingly, the Roman system destabilized and the only stability that existed was furnished by the diocesan system of the Christian Church. By the time of Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, Germanic peoples had crossed both the Danube and a frozen Rhine river. Those who crossed the Danube went southward into the Balkans and eastern Italy. Those crossing the Rhine swept westward into Gaul, the Iberian peninsula, and south into northwestern Italy all the way to Rome. Vandals and Alans crossed over the straits of Gibraltar into Northern Africa and moved westward to capture Carthage. The unsettled conditions, in large part, prompted Augustine to compose his masterful Civitate Dei (The City of God).

Further muddying the waters of Christianity was the rise of Islam from the teachings of Mohammed in the seventh century. Islam armies swarmed out of the Arabian deserts, invading Persia to the northeast, Syria to the north, Byzantine areas northwest, and west across North Africa from the Sinai to what is now Morocco, and north into southern Spain. The armies devastated churches and massacred whole populations. The massacres prompted Christian leaders in Europe to strike back against the invaders who were sweeping into the Iberian peninsula and thrusting northward into the land of the Franks. This defensive movement, since known as the Crusades, had the purpose of driving the marauding Islamic forces out of southern France, out of the western Mediterranean, and out of the Holy Land. Among the supporters was Bernard of Clairvaux, an eminent Christian monastic scholar. It was a long, drawn out effort that lasted from the eighth century into the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Crusades were, by no means, an offensive action as some scholars have interpreted them from John Julian Norwich to the present. Only recently, under the pains-taking scholarship of Rodney Stark, have the Crusades come to be seen as a defensive reaction.