All right, so we're looking at England to begin with here, and we're backing up a ways, because the last we talked about it, I talked about the Danes coming in, which were Vikings, and some influence that they had. They're not bringing Christianity, obviously. They were bringing their pagan religion. They were halted, the Danish invasion was halted by Alfred, King Alfred, who was the king of Wessex. At that time, England was broken up into little pieces, little different kingdoms. So that was one reason why they were somewhat easily defeated by the Vikings slash the Danish when they were coming in. But Alfred was able to stop them and he was able to force a peace with them. And one of the agreements he made was that the Danish leader and his people would be baptized. And so he thought that would maybe have a good influence on them. So it's kind of hard to tell. where Alfred was spiritually. We see good things about him, but that kind of thing where he's just thinking being baptized might help him out a lot, don't know about that. But anyway, he's the only king of England that is known as the Great, and he stands out as a big-time leader in England like Charlemagne was in France. But unlike Charlemagne in France, Alfred had a very high moral life. So that's kind of on the side, well, maybe he was a true believer. And he had lots of documents, lots of literature translated from the Latin into English. Now, we wouldn't be able to read this English today because it's the old stuff. Brian, you probably are familiar with old English, and you look at it and you go, I don't understand a thing out of it. You can find some words that you can maybe... Yeah, and you think, oh, hey, this is what it means, and you find out, no, it's not that at all. So anyway, but we see that he is translating into their regular language there. So that's a good thing. So one of the things were the first 50 Psalms and also Augustine's writings. So there were some good things that were being done there. And he felt like he was a spiritual leader of England as well as a political leader. So he felt like he needed to spend about half his time emphasizing spiritual things. And like I said, he's the only king of England ever to be known as the great. So he sets the stage then four years later for men like John Whitcliffe to come onto the scene. And his grandson, King Athelstead, makes all of Britain, even the Danish part, become more united politically and spiritually in some senses. So now we'll shift a little bit to France because it ties into England as well. So the Norsemen took over, they invaded into France as well, and they end up taking the very northern part of France, what we know as France today. And over time, the Frenchmen started calling the Norsemen Normans. And so that's why that area is known as Normandy today. So if you think about where in World War II where our troops landed, Normandy Beach, that's the area. Over time, the Norsemen adopted Christianity to some degree, Roman Catholic style. And they also conquered Southern Italy. At that time, it was part of the Byzantine Empire, and that pleased the Catholic Church. And they drove Muslims out of Sicily, also making the Catholic Church glad about that as well. Then they invaded in England. Now, in England, now we're moving on in time here, England had a king named Edward the Confessor. And again, here's a man who, he's called the Confessor because he confesses Christ. And he, he leads in all, encourages all kinds of things that we would probably look on as pretty good happening in England at the time. But he dies without an heir. He does not have a son. So it becomes really unclear who's gonna be the next king. And there's actually four men that claim to have the right to the throne. So first off, Harold Goodwinson, And he is there as, he's right there. He's one of the king's advisors. So he's got to kind of look at it as the best chance of actually happening. And he claims that Edward actually promised him the throne. Oh, by the way, he's Edward's brother-in-law. So he has some pretty good in there. Then there's a guy in what we now call Norway that claims to have the throne, Harald Hardrada, and he has no relationship, he just has, hey, we used to control Vikings used to control that area, so I think I should be king. And strangely enough, he has Harold Goodwinson's brother's backing. So there was not a very good relationship between brother and brother there, because he wants somebody else to be king. And then there's Edgar Athling, and lots of textbooks actually skip this guy altogether. He's the nephew of Edward. He's the closest living relative. He's actually really, really young at the time, too. And perhaps Edward had promised him that he would be king someday because that would continue Anglo-Saxon rule. And then the fourth man is William. And he's no relation to Edward. He's a Norman. But early on in Edward's life, before he was king, he had to escape England area for his life because there were all kinds of people who wanted to kill him. And William befriended him and took care of him and enabled him to regain and go back to England. So because of that, Edward had promised him the throne too. So there's three guys that claim, hey, Edward promised me the throne. So, and William is now the king of the Normans. So, and aside, I'm a descendant of William the Conqueror. And when I first heard that, I thought, hey, I can claim the throne too. And then I saw a list of 10 people who have more descendants on earth than anybody else, and William's on that list. So there's lots of us around. Yeah, yeah. And it turns out my wife is also a descendant of William. So my son maybe has more claim than anybody because he's a double one. So maybe Lane has claim to the throne. Anyway, I used to tell people as soon as Elizabeth dies, then I'm going to make my claim. So I tell my students that. None of them believe me anyway. So Edward dies. And almost immediately, Harold says, OK, I'm king now and has the ceremony really, really quick. And that was unusual at the time. Normally, there would be a drawn out period of mourning and so on. But he makes it really, really quick because he knows these other guys are also claiming to the throne. Harald Hadrada, that's the guy in what's now Norway, he comes with an army across the sea there and lands in some kind of York area and Harald comes up with an army and actually defeats him. William is poised across the English Channel by the way the French don't call it the English Channel if you ever wonder they call it the sleeve but he's ready there but the winds aren't right to take him across so he's waiting and waiting it's weeks and weeks that he's waiting to go across and finally he gets a chance and goes across and actually works to his advantage because Harold has moved is further north and he has to come back down in a hurry to meet William when William finally does get across the English Channel. And William has less of an army than Harold does. So if you just looked at it, you'd say, Harold should be able to win this and keep his crown. But in the battle, William sends forth some guys and they actually turn and retreat. And when they do that, instead of holding their position, Harold's men begin to chase them and that runs them right into the rest of William's army and they get defeated. So it's not really known, was that a trick to begin with or did it just work out that way? A lot of people think it just worked out that way. Anyway, in the battle then, Harold gets killed, and William claims the throne. So he becomes known as William the Conqueror. And this really changes England because it makes French the official language of England for a long time. Are you familiar with this, Brian? No. So Parliament's conducted in French for 400 years. after that. But lots of the common people don't change to English. It's just the nobles and all the, the nobles, William's nobles get to be now the people that own all this land. And that's why we have like two different words for all kinds of things. So like on the hoof, those are cattle. But on the plate, it's beef. And beef comes from the French word. So the nobles called it beef because there it is. They didn't have to deal with them on the hook. I didn't know that, but there was a hierarchy of words used. So our language gets changed. We also have a shift in the vowel sounds because of this. So it affects our language quite a bit. William, of course, is really strong with the Catholic Church. And so that ties England stronger with the Catholic Church for a while. So that's a little bit on England. The good thing here is that the stage is set for a lot of people. And again, a lot of those common people, they're not really affected all that much by the Normans taking over. And so we still see God working through and eventually bringing up men like Wycliffe to come along. Okay, now we're gonna turn to the papacy. And again, we're backing up a little bit, but not a lot. So Otto II, he was a Holy Roman Emperor. This may have been mentioned another time, but the Holy Roman Empire, that is a terrible name because it's not holy, it's not Roman, and it's not really an empire. So if we look at it today, it's about where Germany is. And they got that title because the popes wanted that, kind of that, that was their their new region to be Roman in a sense, and to have an emperor and so on. But it had lots of little, it wasn't really an empire because it had all these little principalities and duchies and kingdoms, and somebody, the pope would eventually name somebody to be the emperor over it all, but they probably didn't really listen to him all that much anyway. But Otto II was a Holy Roman Emperor at the turn of the century there, you see. And he actually named some of the popes. He named a couple of the popes. The first one he names is a cousin. The cousin takes the name of Gregory V, and he was only 23 years old at the time, but he only lived three more years, so he didn't live very long. So Otto gets to name another one before he's no longer the emperor, and he names his French scholar. whose name was Sylvester II. And this guy is really, really smart because he revives a lot of work in mathematics, in the monasteries. He also invents, supposedly at least, we believe he invented the first mechanical clock. And he did some other things that we would say, this is a pretty good deal. He worked to get rid of simony in the church. And simony is where people paid to have a church position. And it comes from the term in the scriptures where Simon tries to buy from the apostles. He tries to buy his salvation and power. So that's where it comes from. And he also worked to have priests no longer taking concubines. At the death of Otto, though, another family, powerful, powerful family, gets control of who gets to name the pope. And they picked a 15-year-old, and he takes the name of Benedict IX. And so this is not a very good thing for the church at this point. And he later gives up the papacy when he's offered a bunch of money. And he's offered a bunch of money by the guy who becomes Pope next, Gregory VI. And Gregory, we would look at it, He bought the position, but he's going, wow, I don't like what's going on here. I can change the church for good. And so when he becomes the pope, he tries to make a lot of reforms. And he writes letters, he holds councils, and tries to make the church so it's not political. so political becomes a spiritual leader in a lot of ways. But he met lots and lots of opposition because a lot of the people he's trying to change or replace are put in there politically. We don't really know why he died so young. That's a good question. He was only 26. Then Benedict IX decides, you know what? I kind of enjoyed being Pope. So he claims that he's Pope again. And then the family decides that they're going to name another person Pope instead. And he takes the title Sylvester III. So at this point, we have three guys claiming to be Pope. So the king of Germany, Henry III, decides this is crazy. We need to change or decide who should be pope. And he calls a council. He calls a council. It's known as the Senate of Sutri in December of 1046. And in the council then, they interview Benedict. They interview Sylvester. And they decide these guys should not be pope. And they're removed immediately. And they like lots of the things that Gregory was doing. They liked lots of these reforms, but they said, how can you make these reforms when you bought the papacy to begin with? So they decided he had to go. And he agreed to leave, which is another good credit to his name that he didn't just fight his way and so on. He stepped aside then. and they named a new pope, and he took the name Clement II. And he also tried to end a lot of the corruptions, especially simony. But unfortunately, Clement died in a few months, and Henry picked another man to be pope, and that man's name was Bruno. This is what his name was before he became pope. But Bruno said, hey, I don't think that's the right way to become Pope. I shouldn't become Pope because some king appointed me that. I should become Pope if the people of Rome say I should be Pope. So he said, I'm going to walk to Rome, and if the people there say, yes, this is the man, then I will become the Pope. And so we could probably say that we could admire that sort of thing. And he takes off for Rome, and he takes several men with him, including a couple of guys, one named Hildebrand and one Humbert. And they journeyed to Rome. Now, as he's going to Rome with his friends here, he goes in as a pilgrim rather than a conqueror. And he comes barefoot to show that he's just the average guy that he's coming in that way. And as he's traveling this journey, people line the roads and cheer for him. If you can imagine, maybe he did set out to be, hey, I'm just this humble guy who wants to do things right. But all those people cheering him on and so on, I think he began to think of himself differently than he did to begin with. So he enters Rome. People say, yes, he should be pope. And he takes the name of Leo. He becomes Leo IX. And he puts on all the garb. So he's no longer this barefoot guy. He's got all the trappings on. And he does work at two things. Now, when I first was reading about this in the chapter in the, I use these two books here, but talked about this is going to be a time of reform, and then I read that He's getting rid of simony, that's a good thing. But then he promotes clerical celibacy. And I'm like, hmm, why would they do that? And the two reforms are actually tied together in his mind. So because lots of these church offices had been sold to the rich and powerful. And if you make it so they aren't sold to them and you have to be celibate, then that's going to take a lot of people out of it that want to have these church offices and bishops and so on. And it would stop them from being able to make it an heir thing where they'd hand it down to their children too. So we can, at least for me, I can go, oh, okay, there's the logic behind the celibacy thing. Because then you no longer, it could no longer be just, hey, my kid gets it now. Okay, so to sell these things, he does something a lot of popes didn't do at the time. He actually leaves Rome and he takes, he goes into Germany and he tries to enforce Rome's, his reforms there. And he actually has some success in Germany. But as he's traveling to France, the French leadership says, we don't even want you showing up here. They felt like they needed to keep things the way they were. They'd gotten their power this way. They didn't want reforms. But he went into France anyway, but didn't have very much success. Now, there's two things that Leo did that he probably, if we'd be able to interview him now, he'd probably say he'd rather do it differently. And this first thing is probably something you wouldn't imagine a Pope doing, but he led an army into Southern France to remove the Norsemen there. Now, originally, the Catholic Church liked the Norsemen there, but maybe they weren't doing things the way he really thought they should. So he leads an army into there. They lose, and he gets captured. It says here Italy, Southern Italy. I'm sorry. What did I say? Okay, Southern Italy is right. So Southern Italy, if we turn back the time there, it was part of the Ottoman Empire, the Norsemen took it away, and now he's trying to make it more part of the Papal States, really, is what he was trying to do. The second thing that maybe, and I forgot the T on, Humbert there. He appointed him to be the ambassador to Constantinople. But Humbert is not a very flexible man. He's not very much to go in and talk things through and try to reason. He just was a bull in a china shop. And he goes, this is the way it has to be. And that ends up leading to the schism of 1054 where they really split. Okay, a new pope was elected by the Romans after Leo's time, but in agreement, it had to be somebody that was German, not somebody, so the Romans picked somebody, the people of Rome, but they actually picked somebody who's a German, and it's Victor, he takes the term of Victor II, and he continues the same kind of reforms that Leo had done. The next time somebody's going to pick pope, it's going to be because of the Second Lutheran Council. They determined the popes would be elected by the cardinals, and that's the way it is today. So this is when that starts to happen, that the cardinals pick it. And the first pope that they pick is Alexander II, Also a reformer. So it takes a long time and obviously they're not going to get it all done to overcome the selling of these church offices. So then the next person who becomes Pope is this one of these people who traveled to Bruno who became Leo. to Rome years and years before. And he's been serving popes all this time. Now he finally gets picked pope, and he takes the title of Gregory VII. And you might think, well, this may be a good thing. But we start to see some of the things that happens now. So he wanted to unite all the Christian world under the papacy. And he said, one flock, one shepherd. And he also said the Bible could no longer be translated into other languages, that the teaching and interpretation of the Bible should be in the hands of the leadership of Rome. So what language were they using? Latin, yeah. vulgar latin which sounds awful but it just means common yeah when it was translated it was a common people's book or common people's language and then it becomes nobody understands it and that's the way we want it well when you say vulgar that sounds like it's awful instead of just common so he also plans to take a military offensive against islam which is going to lay the the groundwork for a pope later on to call the first crusade. And his reforms were particularly unpopular in France, but William the Conqueror in England likes the new system. So England then gets shut out or Officially, they're gonna just be strong with Roman Catholicism and they're gonna not have the Bible in English as Alfred had done earlier, or at least parts of it. So now we get to another major thing and that's the investiture controversy. And that's, that is, yes? Sure. The Bible in Latin, was that specifically to unite the church? You thought that that would unite the church? I think he thought that and then he would be able to control the teaching and you wouldn't have this group over here teaching one thing and this group over there. Did he not consider a downside to that? Yeah, you would think I guess you could see his argument that, hey, we're going to make sure we don't have heresy. But it also really just puts it in a few, and we can see it going the wrong way for sure after that. So I think he was a very controlling person, too. were heavily influenced by the Abbot at Clooney. And that's where all of that, I mean, that's by the Abbot at Clooney that I talked about a few weeks ago where they began those reforms. And these were three of the individuals that were probably the spearhead of those reforms and that's why. That's probably why that Abbot is so significant in the history of the church is that it actually Good point, thank you. Okay, on the investiture controversy, that's who gets to appoint. the bishops and the other leadership. So Henry IV was the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire at the time and he believed he needed to be able to appoint those bishops. Thought that that was something that really should be in his power and within his domain if he's the Holy Roman Emperor he should be able to do that. And the Pope obviously as we see through here that very controlling person he definitely and feels like those are spiritual appointments that it should be his job instead. Now there's a lot of back and forth on this and I've left out lots of the details on it but at one point Henry gets excommunicated and he he is forced, because he doesn't really have the backing of some of the leadership around him, he decides, okay, I've gotta ask for forgiveness. So he goes to the Pope, and at that point, the Pope is actually not in Rome, he's in Italy, but he's in a high castle, and there's snow on the ground, and he makes Henry wait for three days out in the snow before he allows him to come in, and then and beg for forgiveness. But later on, Henry would march, years later, Henry would march on Rome. and bring a big enough army that Gregory is forced to flee, and Henry ends up marching into Rome as the victor. So this whole thing, it's just a blemish, and I think you could see a point on one side, but certainly it became more power play than anything spiritual. The next elected pope was Urban II, And he's the one that calls for the first crusade. As we said, the groundwork had been laid by Gregory VII, because Gregory VII had talked about, hey, we need to take an offensive against Islam. But Christianity and Islam had not really clashed that much for several years. there were people actually that were Christian, at least Christian in name, that were living in the Holy Land at the time. People had been, for several years, gone into the Holy Land out of Europe on pilgrimages. But then the leadership of the Muslims changed to the Seljuk Turks. And they had come from Central Europe and took over the political area, politics, and they were in control. And they were making it life difficult for people who wanted to come in to visit Jerusalem. They were making it difficult for Christians who were living in the Holy Lands. And they also began to clash in what's now Turkey with the Byzantines. So the Byzantine emperor asked for military help, kind of a call, hey, we need some help here. And Urban II then decided to call for faithful Christians to take arms. and to march on Jerusalem. Another reason why he did this, too, was that at that time, knights were fighting each other from different little kingdoms and so on. And he goes, well, these are Christian people fighting Christian people. So if I change it and give them something to focus on other than fighting each other, then that would be a good thing. So he called for people to arm themselves and and go and take away the Holy Land from the Muslims. The first person who really organizes something to do that is a French priest who is known as Peter the Hermit. And he led what was known as the People's Crusade because these were just the average people the common people off the manors, and they said, let's do this, let's go to the Holy Land. Unfortunately, they committed a lot of atrocities along the way, especially against Jewish people. There were times that they actually massacred Jewish villages on the way there. Because, hey, they're pro-Christian, so they're going to wipe out everybody who's not. And they actually don't get anywhere near to the Holy Land. When they cross over into Asia, what we know as Turkey today, or Asia Minor, at the time it was known as Antolia, when they cross into what's now Byzantine territory, they get wiped out. So they're completely defeated. But the First Crusade also contains what's known as the Prince's Crusade, because these were the nobles and the kings and the princes that they organized. And these are going to be more like people that are knights, and they have some fighting experience. And they go in to what's known, like I said, Anatolia. Today we know it as Turkey. And they win some major battles there. And they keep going. And they end up in the Holy Land. They lay siege to Antioch. It's bloody, but they end up winning. And then they go on to Jerusalem. Unfortunately, they also, along the way, I talked about pockets of Christians. They didn't recognize them as Christians because, hey, they didn't dress right and they didn't talk right. They must be enemy too. So even though those people came out and said, hey, this is great you're here, they ended up killing them as well. So, and they were able to march on to Jerusalem and after several bloody encounters they took Jerusalem and established, they end up establishing four crusader kingdoms in the Holy Land. So as far as what their goals were, this was a successful crusade at the time. So. So I thought, OK, how could we look at these crusades, for one thing? And I found this on Ligonier Ministries' website. The Bible can be a dangerous book if misused and abused. In the history of the church, the misunderstanding of the Bible has led to many serious problems, ranging from false doctrine to legalistic customs and misdirected lives. One of the most blatant examples of this is the Crusades, a series of wars led by the Europeans in the name of Christ against Islamic states in the Near East during the Middle Ages. The ideas that Christians can use the sword to advance their cause might seem justified by the passage like the following, may all the kings fall down before him, all nations serve him. Psalm 72, 11. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Psalm 2, 8 through 9. And the Lord is your right hand. He will Shatter the kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs all over the earth. Psalm 110, five and six. To use these verses to justify violence on the behalf of Christianity, however, misuses the true meaning of these passages. Since in reality, they point to the spiritual extension of Christ's kingdom in history and to the final judgment at the end of history. Nonviolent message of Christ is clear for many passages Including this one from Romans bless those who persecute you bless and do not curse them Repay, no one for evil Pay, no one evil for evil if possible so far as depends on you live peaceably with all Beloved never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God And I put two more references there as well. So I don't think we can look at what they did as justified at all, and that it didn't advance the true kingdom at all. Do you think this was kind of like the Israeli kingdom with all the wicked kings? Do you think there was true Christianity in there, or is this just all Wow. The crusades seem to be all political, if you're talking about that. It's really difficult to tell on some of those popes that wanted reform, and you might go, some of those, they might have actually been true believers. But it's really difficult to tell. Yeah, I think the danger is, by this point, there's such a blurring mixture of the church and government I mean government has Authority to protect its citizens and do the kind of things that need to be done But for the church to be to be doing it in the name of Christ some senses You know, you don't know what their motives are if it's just power or whatever else so it just becomes a I think again confusion and So the reformer, that seems really good, but they're making a rule about somebody not marrying so that somebody wouldn't hand over the spiritual position to their son or their children when that's, if you go back to scripture, that's not how you get a spiritual position anyway, a church position. And the heart of the matter is you shouldn't be nepotistic or anything anyway. So it's like they're just adding rules on top of rules. So it seems good, but it's like when you start looking at why they're doing what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. And we can probably fall into that same trap at times, too, that make rules for life that make it seem like, well, if we follow those rules, then we're spiritual instead. Deborah. I have a question. Does that mean when people misuse the Bible, does it mean that Christians can misuse the Bible and non-Christians? It is. Well, we shouldn't misuse it, but it's certainly possible for us to misuse it. yeah that's what it means is that that people have used it in the wrong way so we gotta make sure that we divide the word correctly yeah long time and they're still castle remains in in the holy land today from from that crusade. And it seems like the crusades were political, but at the same time, pilgrimage was a key part of your walk with Christ. And the Turks come in, and they're preventing pilgrimage. Then suddenly, your walk with Christ is being affected by it. So I guess looking at today, what if our government said did something to affect our walk of Christ. How would we react to that? Would we react politically? Or would we suffer? I don't know. Well, do we? Do we react politically? Yeah. I mean, there are probably situations where people felt it is our responsibility to be active in the political sector because we We have a different system with democracy than they did at the time, so it's a little bit hard to compare. It becomes a little bit apples and oranges in comparison to our reaction. I think also we can say, well, if we're just acting politically, we don't really change things that much. We might make things for the better. I would say we shouldn't step back from that. But to think that that's going to solve our problems, that's where we've been. OK. When these people come on and they change their names, I'm assuming there's other people ahead of them, but there's been a Leo one, two, three. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. They choose a name that they liked ahead of them in the past. Right. The Gregory the 7th, he chose Gregory because he thought Gregory the 6th didn't get enough credit for the things that he did. So he thought, I'll take it. Yeah, and today's Pope chose a totally different name than Francis, and nobody had ever used that one before. So he made a statement by doing that too. Yeah, he was the first Pope to do that since, I can't remember the one in the 10th century. So he's Francis I. Yeah. But you also have to, if you go to look up these Popes by name, Sometimes the Eastern Church has leaders by the same name. So you have to make sure you're looking it up with regard to the Roman Church or the Eastern Church. John was a very popular name in the Eastern Church as well. Okay, that's a definite split between the East and the West. Yeah, they're not talking to each other after that. Tim kind of talked about that last week, but one thing that I don't know if he mentioned it or not is it kind of came down, part of it was to should priests wear beards or not. And the West said no, and the East said why not? So today, if you'll see somebody in the East North, a priest, especially a well-respected one, I'll have them here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Finally, something worth fighting for. All right. Well, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this time to look at this. And we must say that we don't really understand a lot of these things in a sense of where they were going spiritually. But you knew and you protected your true church through all this. And we marvel at how you were able to bring it through, even though there were so many attacks on it from different sides. And we thank you for that. And we thank you for protecting the gospel. Pray that this next hour would be one that we just clear our minds, and worship you. In Jesus' name, amen.