The Christian Origins of Social Revolt

William Dale Morris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000424041
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book, first published in 1949, analyses the thread of Christian anti-authority thought that runs through protests and revolts from the first days of Christianity to modern times. It examines social protests of the Middle Ages, through to the Reformation and the Peasant War of Germany, the English Civil War, Christian Socialists and fascism and bolshevism. It presents a clear case for the role of Christianity in social unorthodoxies, protests and revolts.

CHAPTER 1

Social Heresies of The Middle Ages

He hath put down the mighty from their scats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Luke. I, 52 and 53.

The Cenobites

Like all mass movements Christianity had many sources, and many currents flowed to make it a social force. In the first century large numbers of slaves and poor handworkers became converts to the new faith because it satisfied their thirst for social justice and freedom from oppression. Others were attracted to Christianity because it served their spiritual needs. The old religions and philosophies had largely lost their meaning, and educated Hellenes, Romans and Jews were seeking some new belief. Because of their education and superior social status these converts tended to become the teachers and leaders of the movement, just as middle-class intellectuals such as Marx and Lenin have been the main architects of Socialist theory.*

Until the middle of the second century the constitution of the Christian communities was democratic and equalitarian. The whole of the members, in so far as they possessed the necessary qualifications, were eligible for the priestly office. They were called Elders (Presbyteroi, whence priests), and the most prominent members of the Elders were called Overseers (Episkopoi, whence bishop). Moreover, no distinction was made between clergy and laity; and it was only with the numerical growth of the Church, and the elaboration of the simple Christian teachings into a theological system that the clergy became a special class invested with ever greater powers as the Church won a position of importance and influence in the state. Then

the primitive Christian presbyters transformed themselves into a sacred oligarchy with privileges and special attributes: the small and persecuted community of poor fishermen and handworkers, practising piety and renunciation, became a powerful and affluent State Church. (Social Struggles in the Middle Ages, M. Beer, pp. 70-71.)

*“The theory of Socialism ... grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modern scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia”.

What is to be Done, Lenin.

Christianity (like modern Socialism) became more and more popular and respectable, and by the third century Christians were to be found in every walk of life—in the army and in government positions, at court, and among scholars, students and business men. For a time intermittent persecutions tended to purge the Church of insincere elements,

but the storms soon passed, and the secularization of Christianity went ahead to the great grief of the old comrades and the pious ones who lived in the traditions of primitive Christianity. (Social Struggles in the Middle Ages, M. Beer, p. 74.)

Even in the latter half of the third century, before the Church made its alliance with the Emperor Constantine, there were many Christians who became dissatisfied with the worldliness of the Church, and who withdrew from the world, renouncing all earthly goods in order to pass their lives in solitude and contemplation. Prominent among these anchorites was Saint Anthony, who, about the year 276, gave away his possessions and went to live in the Egyptian desert. Some years later, probably in 320, his disciple, Pachomius, united the anchorites, and founded the first cloistral-communistic colony, or cenoby,* on the Nile island of Tabenna, laying down strict rules for its regulation. These rules included the renunciation of private property.

After Christianity made its peace with the Roman Empire (in the first quarter of the fourth century) it assumed to an ever increasing degree, the character of an organized state religion, and more and more Christians who were disturbed by this development, sought escape in monasticism. Others embraced various heresies.

In some ways these early monastic communities resembled the communist colonies of modern times, for in both cases the members cut themselves off from the rest of society, and tried to create self-contained communities where they would be free to put their social and ethical ideas into practice.

During the first centuries of monastic history, monks and nuns were not counted among the clergy but belonged to the laity. They were at liberty to return to the world, and many of them lived in the married state.

*Cenoby from the Greek Koinobion (literally “place where people live in common”), from koinos—”shared in common,” and bios—life.

The cloisters were then merely pious, communistic settlements .... Even in the sixth century, married life was not a rare phenomenon among the cenobites. It was not until later that celibacy became an absolute rule of monasticism. The high value which was placed on asceticism, as well as the danger of cleavage to which communistic institutions would be exposed by increases in families, eventually led to celibacy being imposed as a rule. (Social Struggles in the Middle Ages, M. Beer, p. 77.)

The cenobite system, or the establishment of cloister-communistic settlements flourished most rapidly in North Africa: thence it spread to Palestine, Syria, Armenia, Cappadocia, and throughout the Eastern Empire, and people thronged to the cloisters in such numbers that the Emperor Valens (375-378) tried to check the movement, but without success.

Christians of all classes joined the cenobite settlements, but at the time of Saint Augustine (354-430) it was the working class, the unfree and manumitted peasants, handworkers and the like, who furnished the greatest number of recruits.

Later, the monastic system spread to the West, where Benedict of Nursia (480-543), founded the Benedictine Order. He established a monastery on Mount Cassino, in the Italian Campania, and in the year 529 furnished it with a set of rules. These not only laid it down that the cenoby should endeavour to provide all the means of life by its own common labour: they also insisted upon chastity, and prohibited members from leaving the monastery once they had definitely embraced the monastic life.

The discipline and common labour of the monks proved superior both to the slave economy of the Roman Empire and to the feudal economy which took its place. The monastic orders spread rapidly throughout Christendom, and grew wealthy and powerful. As they did so

Worldliness penetrated into the cloister. ... The ascetic features of early monasticism became rarer. ... The cloisters were no longer filled with persons from the labouring and oppressed classes, but filled with scions of the nobility and the higher classes generally. (Social Struggles in the Middle Ages, p. 83.)

Attempts at reform were made, but how far short of success these fell is evidenced by the ordinances of the Paris Synod of the year 1212, which were directed to the moral improvement of the cloisters. Among these ordinances we find the declaration that no monk may have property; the bishops must brick up all suspicious doors and rooms in the cloisters; no monk may have his bedroom situated outside the general dormitory; all visits of female persons are forbidden, as are games, hawking, hunting, etc.; and no two monks may sleep in one bed, but each in his own bed, and in the prescribed clothing.

Heretical-Social Movements of The Middle Ages

Long before Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517 there had been heretical movements which frequently combined the teaching and practice of communistic ideas with a denunciation of the Church for its laxity of morals and its love of wealth and temporal power. During the Middle Ages these heretical-social movements appeared at one time or another throughout Western and Central Europe. In the main they arose in the towns among poor handworkers— weavers, carpenters, cobblers, masons, and the like—who found themselves oppressed by the rising bourgeoisie, and turned to the traditions of primitive Christianity in their longing for a more just social order. “At the turn of the 12th century”, says Max Beer (Social Struggles in the Middle Ages, p. 124),

the towns of Western and Central Europe were honeycombed by heretical sects. The Balkan Peninsula, North and Central Italy, France, Spain, the whole Rhine Valley from Alsace to the Netherlands, a wide tract of Central Germany from Cologne to Goslar, were agitated by sectarian movements, which adopted an antagonistic attitude towards the Church. ... The sects were known by the general name of Cathari (from the Greek katharoi— pure). From the beginning of the 11 th century we read of decisions of various ecclesiastical synods and sentences of condemnation against the Cathari, who were then known by numerous other appellations, such as Piphilians, textores (weavers), Paterenians, the Poor of Lombardy, Paulicians, the Poor of Lyons, Leonists, Waldensians, Albigensians, Bogumilians, Bulgarians, Arnoldists, Passengers, the Humble, Communiati. ... Later their numbers were swelled by the Beguines and the Beghards, who were not heretics originally. These appellations are partly of local, partly of personal origin. The individual heretical movements or organisations were named after the locality where they had their headquarters, or after their most prominent leader, or after their character.

From the time of the episcopal synod of Orleans, in 1022, (where thirteen heretics were accused of “free love”, and eleven were condemned to be burned) prosecutions are continuous until at the end of the Middle Ages. In 1025 heretics were summoned before the Synod of Arras because they had asserted that the essence of religion is the performance of good works, and that life should be supported by manual labour, and that whoever puts these principles into practice needs neither church nor sacrament. Again, in 1030, heretics were charged at Montforte, in Turin, with having rejected the ecclesiastical mode of life, and having advocated celibacy, community of earthly possessions, and the prohibition of animal slaughter; and in 1052 heretics were burnt at Goslar because they were opposed to war and the killing of living creatures, including the slaughter of animals.

The Catharian movement was split into sects which were as numerous and as sharply divided as the parties and groups and factions which make up the modern Socialist movement. But two main philosophic tendencies manifested themselves, that of Gnostic-Manichean dualism, and that of Amalrician pantheism. The former was inclined to asceticism and the subjugation of the flesh; the latter went to the other extreme, and those who embraced these tenets claimed to live as supermen, beyond good and evil. In the mass, however, the Catharian sectaries lived austere lives.

But whatever doctrinal differences might separate the various Catharian sects, they had certain basic ideas in common. All were opposed to the worldliness of the Church and the monastic orders, and all of them rejected most of the sacraments, dogmas and authorities of official Christianity. Most of them also advocated evangelical poverty and a communal life.

Many of the sects were divided into two classes, the “Perfect” and the “Faithful”. While the former strictly observed the tenets of their faith, and lived ascetic lives in poverty or in communism, the latter were content to separate themselves from the official Church, but otherwise lived normal lives, waiting and hoping for the day when all men would accept and practise their social ethics. In general all the Catharian sectaries were opposed to the use of force, and they even opposed the Crusades for this reason. Only in the last extremity when threatened by literal destruction, would they resort to arms.

Bernard Gui, an experienced inquisitor of the early 14th century, says of the Albigenses (in the Inquisitor’s Guide), that

they usually say of themselves that they are good Christians, who do not swear, or lie, or speak evil of others; that they do not kill any man or animal, or anything having the breath of life, and that they hold the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel as Christ and his apostles taught. ... Of baptism, they assert that water is material and corruptible, and is therefore the creation of the evil power and cannot sanctify the soul, but that the churchmen sell this water out of avarice, just as they sell earth for the burial of the dead, and oil to the sick when they anoint them, and as they sell the confession of sins as made to the priests.

Hence they claim that confession made to the priests of the Roman Church is useless, and that, since the priests may be sinners, they cannot loose nor bind, and, being unclean themselves, they cannot make others clean. They assert, moreover, that the cross of Christ should not be adored or venerated, because, as they urge, no man would venerate or adore the gallows upon which a father, relative, or friend had been hung. ... Moreover they read from the Gospels and the Epistles in the vulgar tongue, applying and expounding them in their favour and against the condition of the Roman Church.

For our knowledge of the Cathari we have to rely largely upon accounts such as these made by those who opposed and persecuted them. The inquisitors were chiefly concerned with the theological ideas of the heretics, and largely indifferent to their views on economics and their social aspirations. Thus, though the anti-Catharian writings contain detailed information concerning the religious heresies of the Cathari, they provide scanty information about their social-economic theories. Nevertheless, it is clear from a study of this anti-Catharian literature that the Cathari looked on private property as an evil and advocated communal property or evangelical poverty. Thus, the 12th century theologian, Alanus, who wrote a polemic against the Cathari, charged them with saying that the marriage tie is against the laws of nature which ordain that all things be in common: and the same accusation is contained in an indictment drawn up in Strassburg in the years 1210-1213 against about eighty Waldensians. Article 15 of this indictment reads: “So that their heresy might gain wider support, they have put all their goods into a common store”; and Article 16 accused them of “free love”. The leader of the accused, Johannes, repudiated the charge of unchastity, and sa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• 1. Social Heresies of the Middle Ages.
• 2. The Lollards.
• 3. The Medieval Church and the Peasant.
• 4. The Hussites.
• 5. The Protestant Reformation.
• 6. The Peasant War in Germany.
• 7. The Reign of the Saints.
• 8. The Levellers.
• 9. The Diggers.
• 10. The Quakers.
• 11. Christianity and the Industrial Revolution
• 12. The Christian Socialists (1848-1854).
• 13. The Rise of the Modern Socialist Movement in Britain.
• 14. Fascism, Bolshevism and Socialism.
• Bibliography
• Index