Posted on 11/30/2005 5:58:13 AM PST by HarleyD
I want to speak to you this morning about the Goose that became a swan. But before I do I want to put your mind at ease. I am not going to tell you a fairy tale or a fable or a parable or anything like that.
No, I am going to tell you a true story…or at least a story that is mostly true. But doing that, I am also going to tell you a sad story…or at least a story that’s partly sad.
Still… it’s a great story.
It’s a story about a man whose name was “Goose.” Honestly, that was really his name. He often referred to himself in his notes and letters to his friends as “the Goose.” Now this man, was a man that thousands of people came to despise….he became a man whose name was rarely spoken out loud in mixed company…a man whose name was most often spoken in whispers, in the darkness of shadows. His name came to represent all things evil, all things forbidden, all things black and foul.
Now the way the story goes is that this man, this man named “Goose” was eventually arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed because of faith and his ideas and, in a very real sense, simply because he would not shut up. But his story is complicated. He lived in complicated times. Still I don’t want to excuse the way he was treated or to make his story other than what it was. His arrest was the cunning and foul work of cunning and foul men. His arrest was marked by unbelievable treachery and deceit. It was a reprehensible act.
Now, that part of his story is true and it’s not just true; it is undeniably and unquestionably true, and it is something that even his enemies admitted and bragged about. The men, who arrested him, some of them quite famous and powerful, broke their written and public promise of safe passage in order to get their hands on him and when they did they turned on him like wild dogs, like vicious wolves and tore him to pieces.
But they weren’t content just to kill him. That is what makes his story so remarkable.
They weren’t content just to burn his body and dump his ashes into the Rhine River. No, they wanted to destroy the very thought of him. They wanted to destroy his reputation. They wanted to destroy people’s memory of him. They wanted to destroy whatever impact he had made on his followers. They wanted to destroy the very idea of him. So they tortured him and mistreated him and misrepresented him. They did their best to turn his memory into something monstrous. They slandered him and told terrible lies about him even after they had already killed him and for a while it looked as if their efforts were going to be mostly successful. For a while, as a result of their slanders and vilification…men and women…men and women that knew him and knew better…came to speak of him as something of a medieval boogeyman. Men and women and boys and girls came to be fearful to whisper his name on dark and rainy nights. Moms and dads frightened their disobedient children with his name. They even warned their children that if they persisted in their disobedience the same fate awaited them that overtook the goose.
Anyway, the powerful men that hated him…burned his books. They burned his friends. They even burned him.
But geese are noisy birds. They are almost impossible to herd. They are obstinate and untamable. They’re hard to cook.
At least, that’s the way it was with this particular goose.
Over time his enemies learned that they simply could not make his incessant cackling go away. They learned that his voice, his singing still echoed in the hills and countryside surrounding the city of Prague. They learned that his voice and his preaching still echoed in his beloved Bethlehem Chapel and in the corridors of the University of Prague. They were yet to learn that his martyrdom, stemming from his shameful, deceitful, senseless murder, would turn into a dreadful, festering wound…would take two hundred years to heal and would eventually lead to a terrible war and to a deep and abiding hatred between the Czechs and the Germans that still exists somewhat even to this day. They were yet to learn that his murder would galvanize three generations of Czechs to hate and loath the Germans and three generations of Germans to hate and loath the Czechs.
Still that is what happened but that is not all that happened.
It is perhaps one of the great ironies of providence that a hundred years after his death, the Goose’s name came to be associated most closely with a German…a particular German.
Now it is strange that that would happen.
It is strange because at the time the Germans and the Czechs hated each other. It is stranger still because the German that came to be associated with the Goose was not even born until 68 years after the Goose had been murdered. In fact, the German that came to be associated with the Goose was an obscure monk, in an obscure German town, in an obscure part of rural Germany a full hundred and two years after the Goose’s death until he nailed a piece of paper to a church door to complain about indulgences and then people began to make the connection almost immediately, “He’s just like the Goose.”
The German’s name was Martin Luther.
The Goose’s name was John Huss.
You see in the Czech language Huss means “goose”.
Now because of that association…that is, because of his association with Martin Luther…John Huss wound up becoming one of the principle characters…one of the principal heroes of the Protestant Reformation and that is true even though he had been dead a hundred years when Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door at Wittenberg.
Now because of that many scholars scoff at the account I am about to read to you. You remember that I said earlier that most of John Huss’ story was true. Well the part I am about to read to you is the part about which there is some doubt. You see many scholars doubt that John Huss ever said the words I am about to read to you. It’s not that they don’t want them to be true. It’s just that they do not see how they could be true. That is, they do not see how this man, this man named “Goose” could have said what he was supposed to have said at his martyrdom.
Are you interested? Alright then here is the disputed part…as far as I know the only disputed part of John Huss’ story.
I am reading now from the letter of Poggius Florentini to his friend Leonhard Nikolai. Poggius, was a Roman Catholic priest and an observer at Huss’ martyrdom. He came to be known in history as Poggius the Papist. He was an official church observer and not a friend or admirer of Huss at all prior to his trial. Anyway, in his letter, Poggius describes the scene where they were Huss was being taken to the stake to be burned alive. This is what he says: Then Hus sang in verse, with an elated voice, like the psalmist in the thirty-first psalm, reading from a paper in his hands:
With such Christian prayers, Hus arrived at the stake, looking at it without fear. He climbed upon it, after two assistants of the hangman had torn his clothes from him and had clad him into a shirt drenched with pitch. At that moment, one of the electors, Prince Ludwig of the Palatinate, rode up and pleaded with Hus to recant, so that he might be spared a death in the flames. But Hus replied: “Today you will roast a lean goose, but hundred years from now you will hear a swan sing, whom you will leave unroasted and no trap or net will catch him for you.” Full of pity and filled with much admiration, the Prince turned away.1
Now that same story…that exact same story is repeated in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
When the chain was put about him at the stake, he said, with a smiling countenance, “My Lord Jesus Christ was bound with a harder chain than this for my sake, and why then should I be ashamed of this rusty one?” When the fagots were piled up to his very neck, the duke of Bavaria was so officious as to desire him to abjure. “No, (said Huss;) I never preached any doctrine of an evil tendency; and what I taught with my lips I now seal with my blood.” He then said to the executioner, “You are now going to burn a goose, (Huss signifying goose in the Bohemian language:) but in a century you will have a swan which you can neither roast nor boil.” If he were prophetic, he must have meant Martin Luther, who shone about a hundred years after…2
Now you can see there are two variants.
Poggius has Huss say what he says to a prince. Foxe has Huss say what he says to an executioner. It’s hard to know whether one of the two is true or whether either one is true but I am not too concerned about that…we have an official transcript of his trial and even his death…so we know the basic facts and the basic story.
What I want to talk about this morning is why anyone saw a connection between Huss and Luther and why Foxe thought this cryptic phrase, “but in a century you will have a swan which you can neither roast nor boil” might possibly have been applied to Martin Luther.
The first reason and really the simplest is that Luther’s Coat of Arms bore the image of a swan. That is, Luther’s family crest bore the image of a swan. So in that time and culture the common people would have picked up on the idea of a goose and a swan. In much the same way that people in our day and time use the letter “W” to refer to a specific person.
The second they connected them is that both men got into trouble over the issue of indulgences. Now we talked at length last week about indulgences, what they were and why they were vile. Both men got into trouble over indulgences. The third is that both men attracted the popular sentiment of the masses. Both men spoke out against what everyone already knew to be wicked and sinful. It is just that both men were brave…or obstinate depending upon your point of view. In fact, Luther’s enemies noted the similarities and often charged him with being a Hussite, a follower of Huss. They sometimes called Luther the Saxon Huss. No one is exactly sure of the year John Huss was born. It was probably between 1369 and 1371. It is remarkable to me but not even Huss was never sure how old he was. He was born in the little town of Hussinetz, whose name meant something like “Gooseville” and from which he later took his name. His parents were very poor and Huss’ father died at an early age. Huss first started school when he was thirteen. He loved learning and learned quickly and soon decided on a life of ministry not because he was particularly religious but rather because it was a vocation open to someone that poor like he was and because it was vocation in which he could continue to study and learn.
Eventually Huss was ordained as a priest by the Roman Catholic Church. He both taught and the University of Prague and preached at Bethlehem Chapel on Sundays. The church where Huss preached, Bethelehem Chapel, was unusual in that it required its minister to preach in the naïve language of the people. So Huss preached to the people of Bethlehem Chapel in Czech. That was unusual because in that day almost all services were in Latin.
Early on, Huss came under the influence of the English Reformer John Wycliffe. At first that was true because Wycliffe was an able philosopher. Wycliffe was a professor at Oxford University in England and both a philosopher as well as a wonderful theologian. Because Huss taught philosophy he enjoyed reading Wycliffe’s books and reading Wycliffe he also picked up some of Wycliffe’s theology. Anyway the Holy Roman Emperor’s sister married the King of England, Richard II and one of the results was that a great many students traveled to England to study at Oxford and when they did they came under the influence of Wycliffe. Huss too was impacted by Wycliffe’s radical ideas and later read and incorporated into his teaching many of Wycliffe’s ideas.
Some of Huss’s most radical ideas were:
…that the church was made up of all the predestined believers of all ages. During the time of Wycliffe and Huss the official position of the church was that the true church consisted of the Pope and the cardinals his bishops and priests and that common lay people were not real members but only communed with the church as they received communion, which was limited to bread.
…that the authority of the Bible was higher than the authority of the church. That was a radical idea in his day and it was an idea derived from Wycliffe. This particular point is principally what got him killed and it is interesting that his words regarding the authority of Scripture were later to be repeated almost word for word by Luther.
…that Jesus Christ Himself was the head of the church and that reprehensible lives disqualified men from their positions of authority in ministry. He believed that Jesus was the head of the church and that reprobate leaders were disqualified from leading the church.
Now all those things seem so simple to us but in Huss’ day they were radical ideas and fearful ideas to monarchs and religious leaders alike. Early on Huss found himself being accused of being a follower of Wycliffe and you know what, he was. He had several volumes of Wycliffe which he copied with his own hand. Now originally there was so much political and ecclesiastical turmoil in the empire that Huss managed not only to survive but to prosper. He was a popular preacher in Prague, principally because he preached in the language of the people. He was a popular preacher and a respected seminary professor. Still, he was considered something of a radical and his radicalism was see both in the fact that taught the views held by Wycliffe and because he administered both the bread and the cup to his parishioners. Probably he survived as long as he did because he was such a popular preacher.
Now to understand why John Huss was burned at the stake, it is important to understand something of the religious conflict of his day.
The first thing that you need to understand is that in Huss’ day there was more than one pope. Do you find that surprising?
If you look instance at this map you can see that there are principally two different colors dividing up western Europe. The lighter cream color represents those areas under the domain of the King of France and the golden color represents the domain of the Holy Romans Empire. You can see that not even Italy was exempt from division.
Now let me take just a moment or two to explain how that came to be. Now what happened originally is that in 1305 the King of France forced a number of bishops to appoint a pope. When they did the King changed the pope’s residence to Avignon in France. That meant that over a period of the next seventy years or so, the papacy moved from Rome to Avignon. How that happened and why it was permitted are important but that is not our subject this morning. What is important is that the King of France for all practical purposes hijacked the papacy and kept it under his dominion in Avignon. This period became known to the Italians, who had lost their pope, as the Babylonian Captivity of the Church…presumably because like the Babylonian Captivity of Israel it lasted for about 70 years.
Luther, as some of you already know, later wrote a book called the Babylonian Captivity of the Church…but his book was about the sacraments and not about Avignon. Still the people of his day would have had this particular event in mind.
French Popes Ruling from Avignon-Starting in 1305 seven Popes ruled from Avignon
Now here is the list but for our discussion this morning their names are not very important. The one that is important is Gregory XI. Here’s why. Over the seventy years or so of the Babylonian Captivity seven popes ruled from Avignon. Finally one of the popes Gregory XI decided to return to Rome. The Italians were ecstatic. Rome had fallen on terrible times without the Pope there to protect there to guide the city and to draw pilgrims. Still Gregory did not intend to stay. He enjoyed the climate of southern France much more than the climate of southern Italy. He intended to return to Avignon. But before he could, he died. Now the cardinals that attended the Pope were almost all French and their intention was to leave Italy and to return to Avignon. But when the Italians found out Gregory had died and that the cardinals were about to return to France they were filled with rage. They stormed the Vatican. Let me let David Schaaf describe the scene.
The French cardinals were unable to agree upon a candidate from their own number. But the Italian mob outside the Vatican influenced them. A scene of wild and unrestrained turbulence prevailed in the square of St. Peter’s. The crowd pressed its way into the very spaces of the Vatican, and with difficulty a clearing was made for the entrance of all the cardinals. To prevent the exit of the cardinals, the captains of the thirteen districts into which Rome was divided, had taken possession of the city and closed the gates. The mob, determined to keep the papacy on the Tiber River, filled the air with angry shouts and threats, “We will have a Roman for pope or at least an Italian.” On the first night soldiers clashed their spears in the room underneath the chamber where the conclave was met, and even thrust them through the ceiling. A fire of combustibles was lighted under the window. The next morning as their excellencies were praying the mass of the Holy Spirit and engaged in other devotions, the noises became louder and more menacing. One cardinal, “better elect the devil than die” here in Rome.3
So they appointed an Italian as Pope.
His name was Urban the VI.
Now after his appointment and installation, the French cardinals escaped the city and returned to Avignon. They resented, as you might suspect, having been forced to appoint a pope. They also resented the thought, perhaps even more, that the papacy was going to return to Italy. So that same group of cardinals decided to elect another pope who was in their mind the real pope. His name was Clement VII.
French Popes Ruling from Avignon
Italian Popes Ruling from Rome
Now over the next thirty years or so, the church endured two popes…one in Rome and one in Avignon and they fought it out both trying to gain the upper hand. Now if you ever want to read a really interesting portion of church history this is a good place to start. The two popes threatened each other and even anathematized each other…they excommunicated and anathematized whole regions and whole countries trying to gain support and control…still neither one was able to gain the upper hand.
Finally, around the 1409…just about the time Huss came on the scene the political leaders, that is the Holy Roman Empire and the French King, decided to put an end to the conflict and appoint a conciliar commission to depose the other two popes and to select a third pope agreeable to everyone. The only problem was that when they elected their new conciliar pope, Alexander V, neither one of the other two men was willing to step down. The result, of course, was that there were no longer two popes. Instead, there were now three.
French Popes Ruling from Avignon
Italian Popes Ruling from Rome
Conciliatory Popes
To make matters worse, Alexander V did not live very long and when he died he was replaced by a vile human toad named Baldasarre Cossa, John XXIII. John XXIII was, however, a man of action. He had been a famous soldier, probably I ought to say infamous soldier, and when he was elected pope he took Rome by force and caused Gregory XII to flee for his life.
However, the King of Naples hated John XXIII and when he discovered that he had taken Rome by force, he marched up to Rome and forced John XXIII to flee. When that happened John XXIII was infuriated and he began to raise money to put together a massive army to take Rome back. But he didn’t have any money. Now I want you to guess how he intended to raise the money to pay for the army to drive the King of Naples out of Rome.
He intended to raise the money by selling indulgences. Now you can see, I think, how Huss and Luther became connected. And when John Huss caught wind of that he went crazy. He began to preach against indulgences. He began to preach against the sinful folly of men like John XXIII. He began to preach that the church was not made up of the Pope and his cardinals, obviously if it were then there were at least three separate churches, but was made up of the elect of all the ages. Now when that happened Huss became the mortal enemy of all three popes. Huss fell under the ire of the Holy Roman Emperor, and at least two of the three popes. He was excommunicated but he would not stop preaching. Finally, the City of Prague was placed under an interdict, which meant that all the people of the City were excommunicated and were going to die in their sins unless they expelled Huss. That meant that if a person died while the city was an interdict they went to hell. A person could not be married. No Priests could be ordained. No person could receive communion. When a city was placed under an interdict, the people became so spiritually discouraged that they often forced their leaders to comply with the wish of the pope. Anyway, to spare the city Huss left the city and went into exile. Still, he would not shut up and plans were hatched to lure him to a Council and deal wit him once and for all.
Now you might think it strange that Huss became the focus of anger of both the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor…you might think it strange that he became the focus of so much anger and hatred. But the problem for them was that Huss had the hearts of the people and to let him go…to let him have his head they knew was a danger that could lead to the revolt of the everyday citizens. So they lured him to a town of Constance under the promise of resolving their conflict. They offered him safe conduct to and from the city. Now the point is terribly important because 120 years later they were going to offer safe conduct to Luther as well. Only Luther knew the story of Huss and knew that such men could not be trusted. When Huss arrived in Constance they promptly put him in chains and put him in prison and they did that in violation of their promise to give him safe conduct. They began the process of putting him to death.
Finally they decided to kill him. On July 6, 1415 they stripped him of his priestly office and placed a large paper cone or dunce hat on his head. The hat contained the image of dancing devils and bore the word “Chief of the Heretics”. John Huss was paraded through the city in chains wearing this ridiculous dunce cap with devil on it and still he carried himself in a noble and manly way, head up…shoulders back with an air of dignity and refinement. He had been in prison for almost six months at the time…he had almost died several times from disease and exposure and hunger. He was terribly gaunt and pale and emaciated yet he possessed extraordinary courage and bearing as he marched to the place where he was to be burned alive.
I though I might just read you an account of his execution. This is from John Hus by Matthew Spinka. I think Spinka is a Czech and it seems to me that he holds Huss and Huss’ memory in deep reverence. I think you feel Spinka’s pride in writing of his countryman.
When the sad procession, accompanied by “almost all the inhabitants of that city,” was passing the cemetery, where his books which could be found in Constance were being burned, Huss smiled. On the way he exhorted the crowd not to believe that he was guilty of heresy. When they reached the place of execution, he knelt and prayed that God might have mercy on him. The crowd of onlookers was impressed and uttered their amazement at his prayer. Some thought that he should be allowed to confess his sins but the officials disagreed, noting it was not appropriate for a heretic.
While he was praying, the paper crown fell from his head. Some soldiers exclaimed: “Put it on him again, so that he might be burned with the devils, his masters.“ Huss then rose and said clearly that lie was willing to bear most patiently and humbly the dreadful death. They disrobed him down to his shirt and tied him, with his hands behind his back, to the stake. He faced east…but some bystanders objected because facing east was only permitted to those hoping in the resurrection. They untied him, turned him around and made him face west. Then bound by the neck to the stake with a rusty chain, he commented with a smile that his Savior had been bound by a heavier chain. Thereupon, the executioners placed wood interspersed with straw all the way up to his chin.
Before the order to apply the torch was given, the imperial marshal and Duke Louis approached and once more exhorted Huss to recant to save his life; but even in this supreme moment of decision, Huss remained firm. Thereupon the two men clapped their hands as a signal to the executioner to proceed with his grim task.
When the fire was lit, Huss began to sing: “Christ, Thou Son of the living God, have mercy on us” ; and then “Christ, Thou son of the living God, have mercy on me.’’ In the third place he prayed, “Thou, Who art born of Mary the Virgin” but he did not finish it, for the wind blew the flame into his face and snuffed out his voice. He continued to pray silently, until he died a short time later, “about the time one could quickly recite Our Father’ two or three times.’’
When the pyre died down and the ropes were burned, the remains of the body stood erect, hanging by the chain placed at his neck. The executioners pulled down the body with the stake and adding more wood, burned it, breaking the bones and the skull that they might be incinerated even faster. When they found the heart, they impaled it on a sharpened stick so they could burn it separately. The clothing also was thrown into the fire at the order of the marshal, who remarked that otherwise the Czechs might venerate it as a relic. He promised the executioners, who otherwise would have divided the garments among themselves, to pay them for what they worth...only to burn them. Finally, loading the ashes into carts, the executioners dumped them into the Rhine. The faithful Czechs did not need any relics; they carried the memory of their great champion of truth in their hearts. They still do.4
John Huss died because he resisted the selling of indulgences. A hundred and two years later when Luther nailed the Ninety Five Theses on the door at Wittenberg, the immediate charge was that he was a Hussite. They said, “He’s just like John Huss!” And the expectation was what had happened to Huss would also happen to Luther but we’ll talk about that more next week. I do want to read one other thing to you though this morning. It was something written by Luther himself, something that I found in my private reading of Luther…something I never realized he said, until just a couple of months ago.
This is from Luther’s Commentary on the Imperial Edict. It was written in 1531. I love this. Luther writes:
That’s the story. The story of how a goose turned into a swan. It’s a great story. It’s our story as people of the Reformation.
Let’s pray.
True, -- our correspondent did not describe anything but his Castles and Dragons imagination. Thank you for the correction.
Such "types" of history are not convincing to the "fence-sitter", nor are they conducive to any sort of ecumenical movement. They merely entrench the Protestant in their division - a work of the devil, as Paul would say.
Regards
Precisely because history is important, it is a good idea not to post such garbage as Browning's.
I have no idea where the quote you retrieved came from, but here is the text of Unam Sanctum:
UNAM SANCTAM (Promulgated November 18, 1302)Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the Spouse in the Canticles [Sgs 6:8] proclaims: 'One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one, the chosen of her who bore her,' and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God [1 Cor 11:3]. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Eph 4:5]. There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed.
We venerate this Church as one, the Lord having said by the mouth of the prophet: 'Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword and my only one from the hand of the dog.' [Ps 21:20] He has prayed for his soul, that is for himself, heart and body; and this body, that is to say, the Church, He has called one because of the unity of the Spouse, of the faith, of the sacraments, and of the charity of the Church. This is the tunic of the Lord, the seamless tunic, which was not rent but which was cast by lot [Jn 19:23-24]. Therefore, of the one and only Church there is one body and one head, not two heads like a monster; that is, Christ and the Vicar of Christ, Peter and the successor of Peter, since the Lord speaking to Peter Himself said: 'Feed my sheep' [Jn 21:17], meaning, my sheep in general, not these, nor those in particular, whence we understand that He entrusted all to him [Peter]. Therefore, if the Greeks or others should say that they are not confided to Peter and to his successors, they must confess not being the sheep of Christ, since Our Lord says in John 'there is one sheepfold and one shepherd.' We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: 'Behold, here are two swords' [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: 'Put up thy sword into thy scabbard' [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.
However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: 'There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God' [Rom 13:1-2], but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other.
For, according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is a law of the divinity that the lowest things reach the highest place by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back to order equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior. Hence we must recognize the more clearly that spiritual power surpasses in dignity and in nobility any temporal power whatever, as spiritual things surpass the temporal. This we see very clearly also by the payment, benediction, and consecration of the tithes, but the acceptance of power itself and by the government even of things. For with truth as our witness, it belongs to spiritual power to establish the terrestrial power and to pass judgement if it has not been good. Thus is accomplished the prophecy of Jeremias concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power: 'Behold to-day I have placed you over nations, and over kingdoms' and the rest. Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man, according to the testimony of the Apostle: 'The spiritual man judgeth of all things and he himself is judged by no man' [1 Cor 2:15]. This authority, however, (though it has been given to man and is exercised by man), is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him (Peter) and his successors by the One Whom Peter confessed, the Lord saying to Peter himself, 'Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven' etc., [Mt 16:19]. Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God [Rom 13:2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings, which is false and judged by us heretical, since according to the testimony of Moses, it is not in the beginnings but in the beginning that God created heaven and earth [Gen 1:1]. Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
I daresay the world today would be a lot better off if the temporal leaders of today would recognize that they have spiritual accountability for their temporal actions.
For the correct, in context, reading of the "spiritual power judging the temporal power" phrase, I suggest you look at the paragraph beginning with For, according to the Blessed Dionysius. In the correct context, the meaning is significantly different.
And, btw, Wyclif was excommunicated for his rabid denial of the reality of transubstantiation. Huss was excommunicated for subscribing to the heretical Wycliffite doctrine.
I agree with what you are saying. I have one addition which I find interesting.
Remember the Scripture in which God, through Peter, executes the couple who withheld their money? Hmmm. Not many people like to talk about that, but clearly, there it is... I am not saying that the Church SHOULD execute anyone. But it is interesting, nonetheless that this is God's Word.
Regards
Harley, you know I agree with that statement! But where is that in the post? Where do we see the legitimate development of the Sacrament of Penance from the Church Fathers? No. All we see is the idiotic Church making things up as we go to raise money for the Crusades or to build a church in Rome. This is insulting to those who take the development of doctrine seriously, who realize that the Sacrament has developed over the millenium, but existed from the beginning of Christianity.
Regards
If you say so. I can imagine that things would be a whole lot different (and far better) if your supposition was a fact, rather than a fantasy.
The actual process for heretics was that the Church had an ecclesial trial. If found guilty of heresy, the heretic would be given an opportunity to recant his heresy and to confess. If not, the heretic would be excommunicated. Once excommunicated, the Church has washed her hands of the person unless and until that person repents. Therefore, the Church provides no protection to that person against the state executing its power.
BTW, excommunicated literally means out of communion. It is the most severe penalty that the Church can impose. Essentially, it means that, until the problem that caused the excommunications is cleared, repented of, etc., the Church washes its hands of the individual.
As St. Paul said to Titus:
Tit 3:10-11, After a first and second warning, break off contact with a heretic, realizing that such a person is perverted and sinful and stands self-condemned.
The ultimate goal of breaking contact, or excommunicating, is tough love, as stated in the following:
I Ti 1:19b-20, Some, by rejecting conscience, have made a shipwreck of their faith, among them Hymenaeus 11 and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.
Hopefully that helps your understanding.
You simply do not know what you are writing about. Slavery in the ancient world usually resulted from being captured in war. Even then a slave could not simply be treated as mere property, though it often came close to that. Some slaves in the ancient world did enter slave status by their own free will, being forced to do so out of poverty etc. They had fewer rights as slaves than did medieval serfs.
We don't know much about the origins of serfdom. It seems that some, perhaps many, early medieval serfs voluntarily entered into a subject relationship because the time were horribly dangerous and it was better to be an unfree dependent of a powerful military lord than to be responsible for defending yourself and your family.
Some certainly entered serfdom because of poverty, perhaps because illness had reduced them to poverty, or because invading terrorists had destroyed their homes and property or because some powerful lord forced them into it--the origins are certainly quite varied. But we do have documents showing that people did voluntarily enter into serf relationships with great lords in the early Middle Ages.
The status was hereditary. It was a contract. In the contract the serf preserved some rights. The contract was not written because no contracts were written. Ancient custom governed the relationship--after several generations the original voluntary subordination continued, obviously now involuntary but the lord was restricted by law (custom law, the Common Law--books of laws were called "customaries") in what he could and could not do. The lord had obligations. He could not deprive the serf of the land he worked. He owed the serf a means of feeding himself and his family. He was obligated under law to defend the serf and his family and his goods from the lord's enemies. I could go on.
Did all lords fulfil their obligations? No, no more than all employers fulfill theirs, all government officials fulfill theirs, all parents fulfill theirs today. But the serf had recourse under law for redress of violations of his rights. Did he always get redress? No. There were unjust judges then as there are now. But property of the lord the serf was not.
Many medieval serfs were set free by the 1200s--the market forces of an expanding economy and new land brought under cultivation meant that an enterprising lord who needed peasants to bring forested or swampy land in Poland or eastern Germany under cultivation could offer as an incentive personal freedom to serfs if they'd leave the more settled west and join him in the east. It was illegal but serfs simply picked up an left. Or, in order to keep them, the lord back home had to counter with an offer of freedom. The peasant remained on the land he had always had a right to but now he was a free man. By the late Middle Ages, the time of Huss and Wyclif, serfdom had nearly entirely disappeared from Europe because the labor shortage after the Great Plague of the 1350s meant the serfs had far greater bargaining power--their labor was in great demand and they could insist on being granted freedom and other privileges. They started working on a wage basis for the lord, yet he could not turn them off the land they worked for him--they had a guaranteed source of a living. Now, more money was often to be made in the towns which were growing, so freed serfs might leave for town. The lord could not stop them and in the end, he had to pay higher and higher wages or grant concessions while the rents the peasants owed him for being able to work his land stayed the same because they were fixed by "ancient custom." The lords had no concept of inflation-indexing and they got squeezed and squeezed badly. Wycliff's and Huss's movement were in part associated with social unrest resulting from an increasingly impoverished lower nobility, an increasingly uppity peasantry, and increasingly powerful towns, often allied with kings and near-royal dukes who were trying to crush the nobles's power.
Finally, as a tax-serf in the state-capitalist empire of the United States today you have less freedom and less liberty and pay more of your income in taxes to the Leviathon state than did most medieval serfs, certainly more than did serfs at the time of Huss. So get off your high horse about "subjugation." You are the one who is really subjugated and you are helpless to prevent it.
And yes, subordination is the same as subjection. Modern English gives the words different connotations but the fundamental meanings are the same. A subject is under the authority of someone (sub-iectus]. A subordinate is under the authority of another [sub-ordinatus, sub-ordinated, sub-ordered]. You confuse the condition of being under someone with the manner by which one comes under subjection.
All of us today are subject to someone else. Even the CEO of a Fortune 500 company is sub-iectus to the board of directors; the three branches of our government are mutually sub-jecti, a teacher is sub-jectus to his principal who is sub-jectus to his superintendant who is sub-iectus to his school board and they are all sub-iecti to the laws of the state and nation. The president of the US is subject to the law, subject to God, subject to the voters, subject to his wife (and she to him) if he's married.
You Protestants read medieval history through the jaundiced eyes of the modern bourgeois attack on kingship and hierarchy. The hypocrisy of modern people who so arrogantly point at medieval people as being totally oppressed and crushed and abused compared to modern people who are free and independent--it's arrant nonsense. The bourgeois revolutions (and the Protestant Reformation) replaced one set of authorities and hierarchies with another set. The Protestant Reformers threw off the authority of bishops and replaced it with that of university-educated theologian/pastors. The bourgeois revolutions threw off the authority of kings and replaced it with the rule of constitutions, which, for a time in the US meant a fairly widespread rule of the people but as we all know because the Constitution was misinterpreted and abandoned in practice, has resulted in subjection to an oligarchy of nine supplemented by the arbitrary and crushing rule of bureaucrats.
And in between this situation and the MIddle Ages lay the worst ever period of autocratic rule, that of absolute kings who consolidated all power in themselves, something medieval kings could only imagine in their dreams. And the Protestant states and city-state pioneered this union of all rule, both church and state, under the state. Catholics learned it from them and never enshrined it into law, merely did it de facto.
If you actually took time to study the Catholic Middle Ages you'd discover it alllowed more individual liberty than at any time in the ancient world or anytime between 1500 and 1776.
But then that would require you actually to do some study instead of waving propaganda at us.
I did not veer off into corporations and government. If you knew the least bit about the origins of the very idea of a corporation as a legal person, you'd know that this concept was pioneered by medieval church lawyers and in doing this they created one of the buildings blocks of our commercial structures to this day. It also laid the basis for the universities as well as the artisans guilds as well as the status of the church.
A man named Ananias, however, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property. He retained for himself, with his wife's knowledge, some of the purchase price, took the remainder, and put it at the feet of the apostles. But Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart so that you lied to the holy Spirit and retained part of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain yours? And when it was sold, was it not still under your control? Why did you contrive this deed? You have lied not to human beings, but to God."When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last, and great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young men came and wrapped him up, then carried him out and buried him.
After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, unaware of what had happened. Peter said to her, "Tell me, did you sell the land for this amount?" She answered, "Yes, for that amount."
Then Peter said to her, "Why did you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen, the footsteps of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out."
At once, she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men entered they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.
St. Peter predicted Sapphira's death, but he took no action to cause either.
Frankly, had he done so, it would be a really scary precedent, because it would provide authority for the Church to take a person's life. As it stands, those actions were always accomplished by the State.
But, yes, again that provides another proof of the scriptural conduct of the Church in these matters...thanks!
Total nonsense. No historian, secular, Marxist, Protestant or Catholic would defend this. The understanding of government was that all power came from an omnipotent God who granted some to the temporal ruler (king, prince, lord) and some to the spiritual ruler (bishop, pope). They were to work together, the secular ruler listening to the admonition of the spiritual ruler about what he should do but in his own name and authority issuing laws and enforcing them to make for a stable and just society in which God could be worshiped and the Church could flourish.
The Church needed the physical protection of the temporal ruler; the temporal ruler needed the spiritual leadership and guidance (pastoring) of the Church if he was to get to heaven. Because the soul is higher than the body and ultimately it's far more important that we get to heaven that that we amass wealth or power on earth, the spiritual authority was higher than the temporal authority but the spiritual authority did not rule the temporal temporally, only spiritually, and vice versa.
Innocent III made high claims for the superiority of the pastoral power of the bishop/pope in the 13th century but he did not claim temporal power or governance--he claimed the ultimate dominance of spiritual authority over the distinct temporal authority--he moved from two swords side-by-side to two swords with one subordinate to the other. Boniface VIII did make claims to a sort of temporal governance as an outgrowth of ultimate spiritual authority along the lines of Innocent in the early 1300s but in part because the growing power of the kings of France was making precisely the opposite overweening claims to control the Church in France. (Innocent made his claims in response to the effort by the German emperor, Frederick II, to totally control the Church.)
This battle the Church lost and probably should never have attempted it, certainly not in the form Boniface took--Innocent's claims are perhaps defensible but still, unwise viewed from hindsight. In the period you are talking about there was, in fact, a growing closeness of state-church rule but only because the state (for the first time we can even begin to talk about a "state" in France or England) was gaining the upper hand against the Church. The reason the conciliar movement at Constance (where Huss was tried under temporal authority--he was summoned to Constance by the emperor and executed under the emperor's authority) and Basel failed because the princes were interfering in the church's business at the council.
But there was no identity of church and state until Zwingli begged the state (city council of Zurich, which governed not just the city but a large block of rural territory) to take over the church. He want to throw off the rule of the bishop, wanted to be freed of having to answer to the bishop of Constance, so he developed the theory that the state should run the Church. That, my friend, is the first true state church and it took place in Reformed Protestant Switzerland.
The same state church model was adopted by Henry VIII in England in the 1530s. Luther too invited the state to take over the church because he believed the bishops were too corrupt to be entrusted with reform. However Luther differed from Zwingli: he thought that once the prince had set up a commission to draft a constitution for the reform of the church in his territory (a Kirchenordnung) then the church should resume self-government. In practice, once invited in, the state never got out of the business of interfering in the church, though in theory the church in Lutheran states had some degree of self-government.
Calvin was the closest to the medieval Catholic approach: both state government and church government should be independent but interrelated--they should work hand-in-glove, each to facilitate the other but without confusing the distinct role of each. In practice, Calvin's attempts to stand up to the city council repeatedly failed so in fact in Geneva the state ran the church more than Calvin wanted it to. In other Calvinist areas, e.g., Massachusetts Bay Colony, an official state church Calvinism grew up, so too in the Netherlands. So although Calvin's theory was much more like medieval Catholic practice, in practice, Calvinists had the state running the church just like Zwingli had done.
So what you asserted was true of late medieval Catholic Europe is untrue of that period and is in fact very true of your own miserable Protestant state church tyranny in the 1500s and following.
And that's what I mean by the falsehoods and distortions of the article HarelyD posted and on which you commented.
Huss was treated unjustly, not by the church but by Emperor Sigismund, who promised him safeconduct and then reneged. He also was a heretic and deserved excommunication His followers became vicious terrorist and burned monks alive, pillaged and raped up and down what is now Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria. His followers justified their viciousness because of what had happened to Hus. Two wrongs don't make a right. But what Sigismund did to Hus was unjust and deserves to be excoriated.
Hopefully I will get to the history of doctrinal development. I doubt many Catholics will agree with that as well.
My, my. You should read The Three Musketeers. It based upon the control and influence the Church had on the King of France.
**The sharp knives of the "unholy spirits" will be here soon, no doubt.**
We are not unholy spirits. We only want to publish the other side of the story. Fair and balanced, OK?
You cannot hold against the Church things that, by virtue of vicious custom, society universally held to be correct. It may have been wrong, but very few people living then recogized that. You cannot judge the medieval Catholic Church by the standards of a 21st-century Constitutional system that recognizes freedom of religion.
It is actually part of a summary of Unan Sanctum by Denzinger. And I must say it agrees fully with with the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia's summary:
Both swords are in the power of the Church; the spiritual is wielded in the Church by the hand of the clergy; the secular is to be employed for the Church by the hand of the civil authority, but under the direction of the spiritual power.
The one sword must be subordinate to the other: the earthly power must submit to the spiritual authority, as this has precedence of the secular on account of its greatness and sublimity; for the spiritual power has the right to establish and guide the secular power, and also to judge it when it does not act rightly. When, however, the earthly power goes astray, it is judged by the spiritual power; a lower spiritual power is judged by a higher, the highest spiritual power is judged by God.
This authority, although granted to man, and exercised by man, is not a human authority, but rather a Divine one, granted to Peter by Divine commission and confirmed in him and his successors. Consequently, whoever opposes this power ordained of God opposes the law of God and seems, like a Manichaean, to accept two principles.
I think the truth is a good thing. But it's a shame that the faithful from both sides of the aisle waste their time squabbling over misunderstandings (and slinging insults) when they could be working together.
Or at least watch the movie, if you cannot master the source.
This is a work of fiction. Do you not know the difference between historians and literary fiction? Moreover, if you read it carefully, you'd see that it actually is closer to my interprettation than yours. You don't know anything but modern Englishtenment Catholic bashing so when you read things you see tyranny and miss the precise limits on power that are in front of your face.
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