The Catholic Populist

The Knights Templar Were a Different Kind of Monk

Throughout most of the Middle Ages, from a military perspective Christian Europe was on life support.  The Franks — the original Germanic tribe that had converted to orthodox Christianity instead of Arianism — slowly (over centuries) cobbled together a feudal society that clawed its way to victory against the 3 most deadly enemies of Europe — the arrow-shooting and horse-riding Magyars (related to the Huns and the Turks), the Islamist Moors, and the sea-raiding Vikings.  The Magyars and the Vikings ultimately converted to the faith after centuries of war.  The Moors were not so easy.  Their attempt to conquer Europe through Spain was turned back at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.  The Christians launched a Crusade to reconquer Spain that was not successful until 1492.  The Reconquista was arguably the longest successful military campaign in human history.

The Byzantine Empire was mighty — the true heir to the Roman Empire.  But in 634, Islamist Arabs conquered the Holy Land and subjected the Christians and Jews there to the dhimmi second-class status proscribed by Islamist law for infidels.  In 867, after weathering an Arab offensive, the Byzantine Empire went on an offensive determined to reconquer the Holy Land and free the Christians there.  They began a systematic campaign like that waged in Spain to do just that with similar gradual success.  However, while they fought the Byzantines, the Arab Islamists subjected the Turks and Persians to a bloody conversion process.  In 1071, arrow-shooting, horse-riding Turkish Islamists rode from the East and subjected the Byzantine Army to a shattering defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.  This opened the Byzantine Empire to imminent conquest by the Islamist Turks.

As Western Christianity was clawing its way from the ashes and Eastern Christianity felt secure in the might of the Empire, Eastern Christianity remained nationalist.  Although Arianism was by now dead, and both churches were soundly orthodox, there was a significant territorial struggle between the Emperor (via the Patriarch of Constantinople) and the Pope.  In 1054, a dispute involving jurisdiction and a theological technicality (called the filioque dispute) caused both churches to excommunicate each other (declare each other outside of their Church) and enter into the Great Schism.  These excommunications were not lifted until 1965.  The Catholic-Orthodox schism remains to this day.

Needless to say the Battle of Manzikert changed everyone’s perspective.

Suddenly, the once-mighty Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church it sheltered were on their knees just as the Christian West emerged militarily strong.  Emperor Alexios I begged Pope Urban II to come to the aid of the Empire and the Orthodox Christians.  Urban called the Crusades with the help of the charismatic monk St Bernard of Clairveaux.

The Turkish Islamists were at this point heading straight for the throat of the Empire.  The Pope and the Emperor believed that, strategically, the Turks had to be drawn into another front in the war that would spread them out too thin and allow the Byzantines to regroup.  The Holy Land was just such a target.  Furthermore, the Catholics believed that they could demonstrate magnanimity to any newly-freed Orthodox Christians there.  The Catholics also chose the Holy Land because it was a holy pilgrimage site.  There was also some aspect of self-interest.  The Catholics were under no illusion that — were the Byzantine Empire to fall — the Turks would then leave the Catholics alone.

In 1099, the First Crusade — after having completed the long overland trek through Constantinople and across the desert — made the ultimately fatal mistake of ignoring the strategically essential city of Damascus and instead directly captured Jerusalem in a terrible bloody affair typical of the warfare of that time.  The Turks proved to be no match for the heavily-armored Catholic Knights.  However, once Jerusalem was captured, most of the knights celebrated and went home — leaving a skeletal force to defend the Holy Land.

The Pope commissioned three military monastic orders (warrior knight-monks) to serve as the primary defenders of the Holy Land — the Knights Hospitaller (who also invented hospitals), the Knights Templar (famous for banking and valor), and the Teutonic Knights (commissioned so late they almost missed the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem altogether).

These knight-monks were extremely ascetic (the Templars only ate 3 meals a week).  They were extremely committed to valor (the Templars were under oath not to leave the field of battle until every Templar flag had fallen).  And they were true monks.  However, their work required a great deal more sword-wielding than most monks.  The military orders had as their charism protecting Christians in the Holy Land.  As necessitated by Christian doctrine, they never attempted to convert Muslims by force.

Ultimately, the radically inadequate strategy the Crusaders put in place failed them.  The Islamists surrounded and outnumbered the Crusaders and fought them slowly back into the sea.  The Second and Third Crusades failed in their military objectives.  The Third Crusade ended with Richard the Lionheart of England essentially surrendering to Saladin.

The Fourth Crusade was arguably the worst managed expedition in history.  It involved Venetian merchants upset about unpaid debts, two rivals for the Emperor’s throne in Constantinople, Catholic outrage at a 22-year old Orthodox massacre of Catholics, a Crusader army capturing Constantinople in 1204, everyone involved being excommunicated by the Pope, the Crusaders ill-fated 60-year establishment of a “Latin Empire” in Constantinople, and an utter dearth of any Islamists being fought.

The Crusades undoubtedly ended with a shockingly immoral and mismanaged whimper that has provided centuries of animosity between Orthodox and Catholic Christians.

But the Crusades (both in Spain and in the Holy Land) prevented the fall of Christianity to Islamist Moors and Turks.  The Turks took centuries to recover from the Crusades and did not capture Constantinople until 1453.  The Moors were slowly driven out of Europe.

At that point, the monastic military orders were needed to defend Christendom.

Sometimes peaceful monks alone are just simply not enough.  Sometimes history demands monks with swords and spears wearing heavy armour and riding on horseback into battle.

Anthony of the Desert

The interesting thing about the history of Catholicism, as GK Chesterton so wisely pointed out, is the Catholic Church in history tended to virtually die over and over again.  In the early Christian Church, its Popes and Bishops were repeatedly killed.  When it died, the conventional wisdom tended to build a tomb for it, stick a rock on top, and hope that no more trouble would come of it.  Then, it rose again.  And again.

In 312, Constantine the Great saw a Christian vision promising him victory in the Battle of Milvian Bridge, a battle for control of the Empire.  Upon his victory and rise to Emperor, he decided that he would need to do some pretty ruthless things for the sake of Christianity, so he held off on Baptism.  However, in 313, he released the Edict of Milan, which proclaimed religious liberty in the Empire and spelled an end to Christian persecution.  In 330, he moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium, which was forthwith renamed Constantinople.  He was baptized by a heretical Arian bishop and died in 337.

His reign changed the course of history.

Christianity instantly became mainstream.  The elites at the court began to convert — some genuinely and some not.  The Emperor began to have enormous influence over the appointment of Bishops — particularly in the Greek speaking East of the Empire, which eventually came to be called the Byzantine Empire.  However, the elites were not entirely comfortable with the new religion.  Certainly, it was fashionable.  But wasn’t it just a little extreme to say that Jesus, a carpenter’s son, was one person in the Triune godhead?  Fortunately, a priest named Arius began to teach that Jesus was the Son of God but not equal with the Father.  Of course not!  The Arian heresy became quickly ascendant.  Soon, most Bishops (most of whom were in the East) and most of the Emperors were Arians.  The Popes and their allies (such as Athanasius) waged ceaseless war against Arianism.

However, not everyone thought that the new high levels of cooperation between so many Bishops and the Empire were a good thing.  One such man was the hermit Anthony of the Desert.  He believed that since martyrdom had become defunct in 313 (two years after he himself had aggressively put himself in a near occasion of martyrdom), Christians had to die to themselves in another way.  He began the movement towards Eastern Christian monasticism.  Under his tutelage, monks (and nuns separately) began to build communities with each other.  Most monks were not priests but a few priests ministered to each monastery.  They prayed and worked constantly to achieve sanctification.  Monasteries (over the next several centuries) invented hospitals, community schools, and charities for the poor as their method of service.  Their evangelization was part of a populist campaign against Arianism.  They were critical to protecting the true faith in the East.

Benedict of Nursia two centuries later introduced the Rule of Saint Benedict to the West.  In the West, the monastery served a different purpose.  Taking advantage of the power vacuum opened up in Rome by the removal of the Capital to Constantinople, waves of Germanic people who had been part of the Roman Army advanced into Rome.  Most of these had become Arian under the influence of the Roman establishment.  Alaric the Goth (an Arian) conquered Rome in 410.  The monks of the West sought sanctification in prayer and work.  However, the Middle Ages were a ceaseless period of invasions — the Saxons, the Goths, the Vandals, the Huns, the Vikings, the Magyars, the Moors, and others — and monasteries offered the communities built around them the service of some protection.  The monasteries in the West preserved the Bible as well as other precious documents to preserve the learning that would be critical to the next wave of evangelization.

The western Church was repeatedly almost obliterated by barbarian hordes.  The eastern Church was repeatedly almost co-opted by Arianism — the greatest heresy in history.

Through it all, the monks (and nuns) chanted, worked, prayed, built strong walls, served as a rock in the midst of a historical tempest, held fast to the true faith, preserved the truths of the early Church and the learning of antiquity, practiced charity to the poor, educated the people, scoffed at heretical bishops, and served as the rock of the Church.

The monks perfected a new form of martyrdom — death to self.

And the Church held strong.

Where the Apostles Preached and Died According to Tradition (Few Records Were Then Kept)

The two greatest institutions in human history are the Catholic Church (founded in 33 AD in Jerusalem) and the United States of America (founded on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia).  Together each strives to live up to the principles dictated by the two great truths about human nature — Catholicism and Populism respectively.  Although both have frequently fallen far short in their adherence to the principles they were founded upon, they have both been unparalleled in their positive impact upon the course of human history.

Of course, the Catholic Church is much, much older.  The United States is a mere 235 years old while the Catholic Church is 1,978 years old.  Unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church has overcome far more adversity in its history than the United States.  The Catholic Church has been shockingly resilient and dynamic in confronting the challenges of the different ages of history.  There is no reason to doubt that it will find itself just as resourceful in dealing with this one.  After all, Christ Himself said so: “You are Peter, and upon this Rock I shall build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against it.”  Jesus certainly did not seem to imply that the Gates of Hell were going to fail to prevail for lack of effort.

In confronting the present, it is certainly helpful to understand what the Catholic Church has already overcome.  In other words, what exactly have the Gates of Hell been up to for the preceding 1,978 years and how have Catholics responded?

The Early Church was incredibly different from what we have now.  There was no Bible.  The Roman Empire ruled much of the known world.  And the Roman Empire ceaselessly persecuted Christians — more than any other group in the Empire.

Why did the Roman Empire so aggressively persecute the Christians?

One reason is that the Christianity — like Judaism — rejected the relativism of paganism.  The Greek Myths (as one example of paganism) were — according to most anthropologists — built around the interactions of the gods of different cities (such as Athena, the goddess of Athens).  Pagans generally assumed that their god is real and the other god was also real.  And they probably interact .  When my city beats your city, what does that say about your god?  Christianity rejected this and declared that there was only one true God.

Then why were the Jews not persecuted as aggressively as the Christians?

The Jews were persecuted also (but less so).  Judaism — with its emphasis on being a son of Abraham — was far less evangelistic than Christianity.  So not only were the Christians telling the pagans that their gods were false but they were converting people.  Roman pagan theology was a form of imperialism (my god can whip your god) so this attack on the foundations of paganism was perceived as an attack on the legitimacy of the Empire.

Throughout the first 3 centuries of Christianity (longer than the entire existence of America), Christians sought to do fill three roles: those of priest, prophet, and king.  In their capacity as priests, Christians seek “deny yourself, take up your Cross, and follow Me”  and become “holy as your Heavenly Father is holy.”  In their capacity as prophets, Christians seek to “make disciples of all nations” and “watch out for false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves.” In their capacity as kings, Christians try to live the truth that “The Kings of the Gentiles lord it over them … But you are not to be like that.  Instead, the greatest among you like the youngest and the one who rules like the one who serves.”  As a result, the Church has throughout the ages adopted radically different strategies for sanctification, evangelization, and service.

In the first century, sanctification required one to very often literally imitate Christ — celebrating the Sacraments illegally (since they had been banned) and, as a result, accepting death at the hands of the Romans.  The Church wrote little down in this era which preceded the Bible.  Historical records are scarce and legends must to some extent be relied upon.  The first 31 Popes (starting with the Apostle Peter) were likely martyred.  All of the Apostles except for John were martyred across the Empire.  Many Church Fathers were martyred.  But “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church.”  The harder the Romans tried to put out the flame of the Church, the more converts were won.

The Church evangelization was always two-fold.  Christians sought to convert all nations to Christ and also refine their theology internally and repudiate heresy (theological error).   In the early Church, the most basic theological struggle was to define the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.  Peter believed that the Church had inherited the legacy of Abraham, Moses, and the Jewish Prophets and that therefore converts to Christianity had to be circumcised and abide by Judaic law.  However, Paul rejected this notion and believed that Moses and the Prophets were saints but that Jesus had fulfilled the Law and set up a New Covenant.  In the First Council of Jerusalem, Paul won.  Basic Christology and Trinitarian Theology was also defined and defended against early heresies.

The service provided by Christians to the world at large was limited due to their persecution.  But within their communities they exhibited extroardinary charity to each other: “All the believers were together and had everything in common.  They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

Throughout these developments, the Apostles and their Episcopal successors the Bishops were on the front lines of Catholicism.  They provided the sacraments.  They evangelized.  They corrected heresy.  They oversaw communal charity.  They were martyred.  Becoming a Bishop was widely viewed as a quickest of the many paths to martyrdom.  Which made these heroic men even more willing to undertake the responsibility.

For 280 years, the Church thus won souls across the Empire.

The Edict of Milan changed everything.