Alright, well, good morning. Welcome to Christian Life Academy. This is the third Sunday of the month, so we are once again exploring church history. And we are going to go back and briefly review the 11th century before we dive into the 12th century. I want to open this morning with these words of Christ as he is being interviewed by Pontius Pilate. And he says, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight. Well, apparently the church didn't get that message in the 11th and 12th century as we saw last month as we looked at the conflict that arose in the 11th century due to the Crusades. And so we saw the beginning of the Crusades as the church rallied Western Christianity to go into the East and to try and take back the Holy Land from Islam. And what we saw was that that actually resulted in intensification of the animosity between the Eastern and the Western Church, because the Crusaders, as they went into the East, didn't just fight Islam, they ended up committing atrocities against those in the East who also claimed to be Christians. And so this caused a lot of animosity and conflict between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church and we're going to see that this spills over into the 12th century. Another thing that we might remember from a century or two ago was the Clunic revival that happened in Europe. The revival that began at the monastery in Cluny and it spread across Europe. The monks there at Cluny wanted to set aside the wealth of this world and the cares of this world and really focus on being poor in spirit but also poor in pocket. But that didn't last long. As the Clunic revival spread across Europe and more and more monasteries became associated with that order, they were endorsed by many of the nobles across Europe who were looking for monks who had been brought up in that order to then appoint as bishops and we saw that in the investiture controversy that the nobles were doing this. But in doing so, the nobles began to shower wealth on the Clunic order in order to get the bishops that they wanted to appoint as civic leaders as well as church leaders. And so the Clunic order gained a lot of wealth and they sort of lost the elements that began the Clunic revival. In 1098, right there at the beginning of the 12th century, 21 monks at Cluny decided that they were going to get back to sort of the basics of what had begun the Clunic revival and they adopted a code of poverty and labor and they became known as the Cisterian order and named after the town in France where they were at And they became known for their distinctive garb. Their robes were white as opposed to the brown robes or the black robes that most other orders wore. The reason their robes were white is they refused to spend money on dye. So their robes were woven from white cotton and that was just the color that they were. or whatever white fiber it was. So they began this new order, the Cisterian order, there in France in 1098. By 1112, so 14 years later, they were considering closing the order because their their structure had become so strict and so aesthetic, getting rid of wealth and all the trappings of this world that nobody was joining the order. It was just too strict. Nobody wanted to be a part of it. But as they were processing this and trying to make the decision whether or not to close the monastery, there came a knock at the gate and when they opened it, there were 31 men standing there wanting to join. One of them was a 22-year-old younger son of a French noble and his name was Bernard. He was joining to become a monk. He fully embraced the order of the Cisterian monks. poverty and humility and he was very serious about it. He was not a hypocrite in any way and this made him very popular with the common people, with the peasants who saw his piety as genuine. He was also very impassioned for Christ and in his preaching and that sort of inspired others, other monks and priests and to some extent intimidated popes and bishops. In 1115, three years after Bernard joined the order, he left with 12 other monks to go found a new monastery in another area of France. It was founded in what was known as the Valley of Wormwood, which Bernard renamed the Valley of Light. in French that translated into the word Clairvaux and so this is Bernard of Clairvaux. This new order of the Cisterian monks led by Bernard spread throughout Europe. By the time of his death there were 338 monasteries following his example. He became known as Dr. Honeytongue because he was such an impassioned preacher. In fact, I'll share a quote concerning his preaching. In his sermons, Bernard is superior to all the teachers, even to Augustine himself, because he preaches Christ so excellently. Those words were spoken by Martin Luther, who we know does not lavish praise easily on people. Bernard was quite an incredible preacher by all accounts. He was also He did not consider himself a great intellect, but he loved Christ, he loved the Lord, and he was very passionate in his preaching. He set himself in opposition to the leading intellectual of the 12th century, Peter Abelard. Abelard was one of the leading thinkers of his day. It got him into some trouble with the church because some of his opinions that he took were not entirely orthodox, but he wanted the freedom to think freely and to arrive at his own conclusions. Bernard said that Abelard joined Arius in his views of the Trinity, Nestorius in his view of Christ, and Pelagius in his views of grace and free will. Bernard obviously did not have good things to say about Peter Abelard. In fact, he said, the only thing Abelard does not know are the words, I do not know. So Bernard opposed Abelard and his influence on the church. He thought it was a bad influence. Bernard became so influential in the medieval church that the Pope eventually went with Bernard's opinion. He condemned Abelard to confinement and silence at the monastery in Cluny. He was not even to speak so that he could not influence anyone else with his teaching. He died two years later in that monastery. In 1134, just to show you the extent of Bernard's influence in the medieval church, the cardinals in Rome could not agree on who ought to be the next pope, and so they elected two rival popes, Innocent II and Anacletus II. There was rivalry between these two popes. The church couldn't decide. Bernard interviewed the two men and declared that he believed Innocent II ought to be the pope, and that settled it. Innocent II was then taken into Rome and installed as the pope in the papal palace. Bernard was quite an interesting character. He refused to be promoted in the church. He was the abbot of the monastery there in Clairvaux and that was all he wanted to be. He refused every promotion that the popes offered him. quite frequently offered to promote him to bishop or cardinal. He refused. But at the same time, kings and emperors, princes and popes all sought his opinion on many, many topics. He also was not afraid to differ with the church. He didn't consider himself a leading thinker the way Abelard had been, and he obviously opposed Abelard when he thought Abelard was wrong, but he was willing to oppose the church when he thought the church was wrong, too. It was not yet a settled doctrine, and Roman Catholicism at the time, but it was widely accepted that Mary had been immaculately conceived without sin, and Bernard thought that was utterly ridiculous, and so he opposed such doctrines. But in the midst of the rise of Bernard, another event happened that caused him to become involved in politics, which maybe he shouldn't have, but in 1144, on Christmas Eve, Turks captured the Latin kingdom of Edessa. there in Palestine. That was one of the Latin kingdoms that had been established after the First Crusade. King Louis VII of France had been in the midst of planning a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the instruction of the Pope in order to pay penance for some recent massacres that he had carried out in order to secure his throne there in France. He conferred with the Pope because of this new event and said, how about instead of me going to Jerusalem to pay penance, how about we launch another crusade and retake this kingdom of Edessa? And the Pope agreed, and then he contacted Bernard and asked Bernard to become the publicist for this crusade. And so Bernard did. He began to preach around Europe to stir up the nobleman to go and participate, and he preached certain victory. This is God's church going to defend God's holy land, and so he persuaded the Holy Roman Emperor in Saxony, his name was Conrad, to join up with this second crusade. This is what Bernard said, and you'll see that as great a pious and Christ-loving preacher as he was, he was also a man of his times. He said, pagans must not be slain if they may by other means be prevented from oppressing the faithful. However, it is better they should be put to death than that the rod of the wicked should rest on the lot of the righteous. The righteous fear no sin in killing the enemy of Christ. Christ's soldier can securely kill and more safely die. When he dies, it profits him. When he slays, it profits Christ. Bernard was a man of his times. He was caught up in this idea of Christendom, of the kingdom here on earth, and when the church really was the state at that time, which we will see shortly as we discuss the work of Pope Innocent III. So Bernard stirs up most of northern Europe to go participate in this second crusade. Conrad, the Holy Roman Emperor in Saxony, gathers his army and he marches to Constantinople. He gets there first. He gets there before the French or the Italians and they promptly ferry him over into Asia Minor where he marches on the Turks and is soundly defeated. He retreats then to Nicaea to await the arrival of the French army. When the French get there, the combined armies of the French and the Germans march towards Antioch. When they get to Antioch, The French queen, who is traveling with them, has an illicit affair with the ruler of the city in Antioch, who also happens to be her uncle. Louis is not happy about this, and so Louis decides to abandon the crusade. I'm not going to Edessa. I'm just going to go to Jerusalem on my pilgrimage and be done with it. And so he takes the French troops and heads towards Jerusalem. Conrad follows him. And as they're headed south toward Jerusalem, they come to Damascus, and Conrad convinces Louis that, hey, there's some Muslims here, we ought to attack them. Now, never mind that the Muslims in Damascus were Arabs. The Muslims that had captured Edessa were Turks, and the Arabs and the Turks did not get along. They were at war with each other, and the Muslims in Damascus were actually allies with the Christians against the Turks, but the crusaders either couldn't tell the difference or just didn't care. So they laid siege to Damascus and began to fight the Arabs there. After several weeks of losses, they gave up and just went home, went back to Europe, and the Second Crusade ended in defeat. In 1187, though, a Kurdish Muslim by the name of Saladin began to rally Islam. He conquered Jerusalem. But, as we've seen in the past with some of the Muslims, he didn't loot or kill when he conquered Jerusalem. In fact, he allowed Christians to buy their freedom for a fairly inexpensive tax. But the Pope, regardless, proclaimed a third crusade to go and liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims. Now this third crusade is the most famous of the crusades. It is the one that we are familiar with from the Robin Hood legends. It was the participants in this event were the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Philip of France, and of course Richard the Lionheart of England. Once again, the Germans arrived first and again suffered for it. They were ferried into Asia Minor and as they traveled across Asia Minor, They were subject to a drought that was going on. They became hungry and thirsty and tired. I won't tell you some of the disgusting things that they ate and drank. But as they traveled, in 1190, they came to a river near Tarsus. And Frederick was so happy to see the water that he dove in headfirst and promptly drowned. His soldiers fished his body out of the river and preserved it in a barrel of vinegar. so that they could take it back for his burial in Germany. But the army was not thrilled about being led into battle by a pickle and so most of them decided to turn around and go home. But the French and the English arrived and Richard the Lionheart managed to capture the port city of Acre north of Jerusalem and that was as far as they got. They never did actually even attack Jerusalem despite what some of the movies might portray. But in 1192, Richard signed a treaty with Saladin that granted Christians freedom of access to Jerusalem for their pilgrimage without taxation. And thus ended the Third Crusade. And we're going to spill over just a little bit into the 13th century just to talk about the Fourth Crusade. In 1202, the Fourth Crusade was declared. This one was entirely French. The Pope's idea was they were going to attack Egypt and conquer Egypt because it was the weakest of the Muslim nations and then from there they would go north into the Holy Land and retake it for Christianity. But they needed to transport the French army down to England somehow and so they cut a deal with some Venetian merchants to use their ships to transport this French army and they were supposed to pay the Venetians in gold. Now, the French army got there. They didn't have enough gold with them to pay the agreed-upon fee, so the Venetians made a deal with them. We'll go ahead and ferry you down to Egypt for your crusade, but what we would like in exchange is for you to go conquer the city of Zara. Now, Zara was a city that had formerly been part of the Venetian Empire, so to speak, but it was a Christian city in what is now modern-day Croatia. The Pope was not happy about this, but the Crusaders agreed to it anyway, and so they went and attacked this Christian city of Zara. The Pope excommunicated the Crusaders, and he imposed an interdict on France and Venice, and we'll talk about what that is here in a few minutes. The Pope is unhappy, so now the Crusaders are on crusade and they've been excommunicated by the Pope. Their country has been put under an interdict because of this, and they're trying to figure out what to do. In this state of mind, they are approached by Prince Alexis Angelus, who was the son of a deposed Byzantine emperor. He thinks that his family still ought to sit on the throne in Constantinople. And so he offers them a large sum of money in exchange for securing the throne for him in Constantinople. So the Crusaders march on the capital city of the Eastern Empire. The Pope hears of this and he forbids it. The Crusaders ignored him. Well, of course they would. He had excommunicated them. They weren't even technically part of his church anymore. So they arrive in Constantinople, they defeat the city, and they place Alexius on the throne, and then he doesn't pay up. So the Crusaders decided to sack the city. They raped, they looted, they stripped the gold from the Orthodox churches, and they installed a French nobleman as the king of a new Latin kingdom headquartered in Constantinople. This is the Fourth Crusade. never even attacked the Muslims. They attacked other Christians the entire time. Interestingly, this new Latin kingdom, headquartered in Constantinople by a French noble, lasted until 1261, before the Byzantine Orthodox retook Constantinople for the Eastern Empire. There are other Crusades that happened, but these were the four major ones. The results of the Crusades were immediate and long-lasting. One of the results of the Crusades that is perhaps the most important was that it elevated the prestige of the Pope as the champion of Christendom throughout most of the Western world. It also led to a rise in the use of indulgences. Indulgences were offered to those who went on crusade, they were excused from almost any sin that they could commit while they were on crusade by indulgence from the Pope, and other indulgences were sold back home in order to finance the crusades. It also established this idea that religious war was an acceptable means of destroying the enemies of the Roman Catholic Church. And we will see in the coming centuries that this idea was then turned, not just used against Muslims, but was turned against those in Europe who disagreed with the Church. And we'll see that idea worked out in the coming inquisitions that we will encounter in the next couple of centuries. It also the Crusades developed a very strong national monarchies in Europe. Previously they had had this idea of the Holy Roman Empire but now the Crusades were causing local noblemen to raise armies and go on crusade and those noblemen began to gather more and more authority and power for themselves and so we see sort of the rise of Germany and France and and these different national monarchies throughout Europe. The long-lasting consequences of the Crusades are a legacy of conflict between the Eastern and the Western Churches. Obviously, the Eastern Church developed quite a bit of bitterness towards the Western Christians because of their atrocities. And it also left a legacy of conflict between Christianity and Islam as well. But over the course of the 12th century, there were other developments that are worth considering besides just these Crusades. In 1163, in the middle of the 12th century, construction began on a new church building in Notre Dame, France. It was completed in 1235, so it took a while to build the Cathedral of Notre Dame. During that same time period, there were over 500 what they called Gothic great churches constructed in France alone. So there were these massive building projects that were happening during the 12th century where they were building these churches with new construction methods where they could rise up higher and higher. Some of them were as high as what we would now look at as a 40-story skyscraper. So they were very, very high. Now they didn't always last very long. Sometimes those towers would collapse. But there was this concerted effort to build churches that would sort of present a transcendent view of God and of worship. At the same time, the papacy was reaching for great heights itself, not just in its building projects, but in its measure of control over all of European society. Europe had become these now nation-states rather than an empire, and so the popes began to see themselves as sort of the emperor of Christendom, uniting all of these nations together in one spiritual empire. All the bishops, over the course of the 12th century, the process developed where all the bishops throughout the Western Church were required to swear fealty to the Pope. Not to Christ, mind you, but to the Pope in Rome. No religious orders could be established without permission from the Pope. Pope Innocent III, at the end of the 12th century, said this. He said, the successor of Peter is the vicar of Christ. That word vicar, by the way, literally means substitute. The Pope is a substitute Christ. He has been established as a mediator between God and man. The scriptures say there's one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, but according to the Pope, he's the substitute for Christ and is a mediator between God and man. Below God, but above man. Less than God, but more than man. Who shall judge all and be judged by no one. This is what the Pope is declaring for himself as the leader of Christendom. And the Pope had two tools in his toolkit that he used to sort of enforce his authority on all of European society. The first was the idea of excommunication. Now, this is something that would be carried out against individuals, and we've seen it in the Crusades carried out against an entire army, but it applies to the individual. The individual is excommunicated, and when the individual is excommunicated in the 12th century, there was a whole sort of ceremony that took place to signify exactly what this meant. They rang the funeral bell, they would read the papal bull that excommunicated the individual, they would ring the funeral bell, they would ceremonially and very dramatically close a book to show that his name had been blotted out of the book, and then they would extinguish a candle. This person was dead as far as the church was concerned. He was not allowed a Christian burial. And furthermore, the Pope had such control over society that someone who had been excommunicated by the church could not serve as a judge, an attorney, a juror, or a witness in a court of law. And they could not be a guardian, an executor, or a party to a civil contract. Basically, you couldn't buy and sell, you couldn't run a business, you couldn't participate in societal life at all if you had been excommunicated by the church. Now, when it came to nations, the Pope had a different tool at his disposal. It was this idea of the interdict. The interdict was applied to a nation, and what this meant was basically the Pope cut that entire nation off from the life of the church. It was usually a temporary thing until the leader of that nation had been brought to heel, but it meant that the Pope suspended all worship services within that nation, which meant no more sacraments. which meant no more grace, which meant worshippers in that nation were in danger of going to hell. So this brought people to be subject to the Pope. Now Pope Innocent III used the interdict 85 times, 85 times in a matter of 18 years. And it worked very well for him. In fact, in one incident, King John of England came into conflict with Innocent over the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. He didn't like Innocent's candidate. Innocent put England under an interdict. The barons rebelled against John because this meant that they were all in danger of going to hell and all of the peasants were stirred up and so the barons were rebelling against John and so John submitted himself to the Pope. He became a vassal to the Pope and he received England back from the Pope as a fiefdom and for the rest of his reign paid a pretty hefty annual tribute to the Pope. The Pope, quite literally, was becoming the ruler of all of Western civilization. During this same time, though, we see that there were some people who were thinking outside the bounds of what the church allowed. We've already seen Peter Abelard, but there were others as well. There was a woman named Hildegard who, beginning at the age of five, began to have mystic visions. And at the age of eight, she joined a convent. She became the abbess of that convent at age 38. In 1151, in the middle of the 12th century, she published her visions in a book entitled Know the Way. These were mystical visions she was having about Christ and Mary and others and that sort of thing. The Bishop of Mainz there in Saxony denounced her visions, appealed to the Pope. Hildegard was excommunicated along with her entire convent who backed her. And so we can see that the Pope was using these tools not only to control nations but to control the church as well. Now interestingly enough, this is in the middle of the 12th century. By 1400, the beginning of the 15th century, the excommunication had been lifted and Hildegard had actually been sainted by the church. So the popes are going back on their actions here. Another important group that arose in the 12th century that came into conflict with the church happened in the three-quarters of the way through the century in 1173. A man by the name of Peter Valdez heard a street preacher preaching Christ and encouraging people to sell all that they had and give to the poor and to become a preacher themselves. Peter is convicted by this. He is fairly wealthy, but he goes and he sells everything. He gives it away to the poor and he becomes a street preacher. He begins to study the scriptures and to preach. Other people begin to follow him, and he appeals to the Pope to begin a new religious order of mendicant street preachers, and the Pope refuses. He doesn't like the things that Peter is preaching. and so they are not allowed to organize themselves as a religious order. They do so anyway and Peter's name, Peter Valdez, he becomes better known as Peter Waldo and his followers are the Waldensians. In 1179, the Lateran Council forbid them to preach or to organize, but they continued to preach anyway. In 1184, the Waldensians were, as a group, ejected from the church by papal decree. They were scattered beyond France and at that point, unfortunately, they became more radical. Now, Waldo had come to some pretty good conclusions as he studied scripture. He studied the scriptures and he said, you know, there's two things that I don't see in here, the Pope or purgatory. So he rejected both ideas, which was good, but after they were rejected by the church, they began to allow women preachers and some more radical things. Obviously, we see that there were people that were beginning to think for themselves in the 12th century, beginning to come in conflict with the accepted teaching of the Church. And another thing that happened in the 12th century, because of the building projects that the Pope encouraged, these massive cathedral churches, there's now large grounds and large buildings that are available to the Church. So, some people decided to organize. At this point, throughout the Middle Ages, different trades had organized themselves into guilds in order to train apprentices and that sort of thing. So, in the 12th century, scholars began to organize themselves into guilds that they called universities. They began to train students rather than just one scholar taking on one apprentice. He would now have a handful of students. And so this gave rise to the idea of universities. Two of the first ones were the university in Oxford, England and the university in Paris, France. But a number of universities sprung up across Europe during the 12th century. And we'll lead into the 13th century when we will see some great thinkers in the church. But near the end of the 12th century, a very important thinker trained in the university, Peter Lombard, he began not only to read the scriptures as Waldo had done, but to read the early church fathers. And he began to find that there were writings in the early church fathers that seemed to contradict a lot of the things the church was teaching. And so he published a book of nothing but quotes from the church fathers on various topics. So if you've ever seen a book, I'm trying to think of the Book of Virtues that was published a number of years ago, it's just quotes from the founding fathers of the United States on various topics. That's what this is. It's just a compilation of quotes from early church fathers on a variety of doctrinal topics, a lot of them in conflict with what the church was teaching. And Peter Lombard's idea was to try to get people to think, to reason, to go back to the scriptures, to go back to what the early church had taught. This book was simply called The Sentences because that's what it contained, a bunch of sentences, just quotes from the church fathers. And this became a fairly standard textbook for many of the universities throughout Europe for the next couple of centuries as they would use this to train theology students. to think and to research. But we'll see in the 13th century the rise of canon law and that sort of thing. But in the 12th century we find that the Pope quite literally reached for the heavens with these building construction projects and also with his grasp for power over European society. But what he created was an earthly kingdom that was marked by corruption, by vice, and by violence. But in the process of him doing so, these cathedrals were built, which gave rise to the universities, which would later produce some great intellectual Christian thinkers, which would eventually lead to the Reformation. So, if the Pope had not done these things, would we have got the Reformation? Well, I'm sure that we probably still would have in God's providence, but this was the method that God used as he gave rise to this idea of the university and scholasticism, as we will see when we get to the 13th century and deal with the great thinker Thomas Aquinas. Really, Peter Lombard's idea of putting together this book of quotes called The Sentences was founded on a verse in Isaiah chapter one, verse 18, come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. And that was Lombard's idea, is that we could employ reason to think through our God. We didn't just have to accept blindly what the church told us, but that Christians could and should think logically about the scriptures and about their faith and arrive at their own conclusions. And so we'll see that continue to play out in the next couple of centuries, eventually resulting in men like Martin Luther giving rise to the Protestant Reformation. Let's close in a word of prayer.