Download DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN MISSIOLOGY

To begin this month’s newsletter I first would like to say a heartfelt thank you to the
members of our congregation. I really appreciated the card that everyone signed for Pastor
Appreciation month recently. I am also very thankful that the members of St. Matthew have
supported me so strongly thus far in my ministry and have volunteered their time to fill church
positions so that our congregation can run smoothly. In case I don’t say it often enough: thank
you all for this.
Now on to the article. In November’s newsletter I discussed the Early Middle Ages (c.
500–1000 a.d.), or the ‘Dark Ages,’ with you. This month I would like to look at some of the
struggles for power between the various popes and emperors in the Holy Roman Empire,
especially in the High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1300). Much of my discussion will be based on
notes from a history class taught by Dr. Lawrence Rast (who is now the president of the
seminary in Ft. Wayne).
In 476 a.d. Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Emprie, was
deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain. Soon after this we have the slow rise of the Holy
Roman Empire. Clovis (c. 466–511) was a pagan Frankish king who was converted to
Christianity in 496. After Clovis various weak kings, sometimes called ‘Mayors of the Palace,’
ruled various territories in the West. Gregory the Great (540–604) is who Dr. Rast considers as
the first pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregory called himself the ‘Servant of the
Servants’ of the church and as pope exercised some political authority as he dealt with the
surrounding barbarians. In the Carolingian Renaissance (which I discussed in a previous
newsletter) Charlemagne was crowned the first emperor of the Holy Roman Emperor by Pope
Leo III in 800, thus rejecting the claim of the Byzantine emperor in the East to authority over the
West. Also at about this time a (fake) document referred to as ‘The Donation of Constantine’
appeared which claimed to be written by Emperor Constantine (who died centuries before, in the
fourth century). Without getting into all of the details of this document, a couple of significant
implications of it was that it reaffirmed the pope’s authority in certain matters relating to the
emperor, it gave a new civil authority of the pope over his own land in Italy as well as authority
over vast other regions, and it increased the pope’s authority over the church.
After the Donation of Constantine the power of the pope continued to increase. For
example, Pope Gregory VII (c. 1021–1085), the first pope to call himself the ‘Vicar of Christ,’
although he sought to reform certain abuses in the church, nevertheless forbade ‘lay investiture’
(that is, allowing laypeople to be involved in calling their pastors). On one occasion Emperor
Henry IV attempted to depose Pope Gregory, but Gregory then excommunicated him and told
his priests not to do any pastoral work for Henry’s subjects. Henry eventually had to stand
outside in the snow for three days begging Gregory before Gregory finally forgave him. Another
example: Pope Innocent III (1160–1216), who was no longer the “Vicar of Christ” but rather the
“Vicar of God.” During his papal reign, “For a brief time, the papacy ruled the world.” In his
papal bull Venerabilem (a bull is a special, authoritative decree of a pope) Innocent decreed that
a pope has the divine right to examine any potential emperor chosen by the imperial electors and
that only the pope can finally choose the emperor. Innocent in 1212 also removed the king of
England from his office and encouraged France to invade, which resulted in the Magna Carta
being signed between the king of England the people of England. He also called the Fourth
Lateran Council in 1215 to try to rally support for the pope as the universal authority in the
1
empire. Finally, Dr. Rast calls pope Boniface VIII (1234–1303) the last gasp of (secular) papal
power. Boniface had two important bulls where he 1) reaffirmed the secular authority of the
pope, and 2) said that outside of the church there is no salvation in such a way that denial of the
primacy of the pope places one outside of the church.
Finally, a potential lesson for today. Nowadays the pope does not have the direct political
power that he did in the High Middle Ages. That in my opinion is a very good thing. As the
saying goes, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Over the last few
centuries much though has been devoted to the nature of churchly power and how it should be
distributed. For me, the answer to the abuses in the Roman Catholic Church in the Medieval Era
is not to vilify church power in itself. This has often been the path of the Radical Reformers and
their modern descendents. Ironically, the Protestant vilification of the Roman Catholic Church
often let to Protestant abuses of civil power—for example, consider Calvin’s Geneva and the
burning of heretics performed there. Rather than glory in secular power and rather than glorying
in resisting any power of the church, we do well to think about the proper nature and use of
power. In church we have to have some sort of political power. It is good that the church and its
members own property, for example. But the true power of the church lies in its witness to the
Gospel. This includes using our possessions to serve our families, churches, and society at large.
But in all of this, we use our powers ultimately to reach the point where we confess that the
power of Jesus’ cross and the resurrection that flows from it is what truly saves us.
2