Greek Gods- Rome- Middle Ages- England

BISHOP, HOLDING THE CROZIER, ON A THRONE

Of course, all this organization did not spring up at once, ready made. Great things grow slowly; and it was only slowly that this organization grew. Sometimes disputes arose as to the amount of power the priests should have over the "laymen," as those who were priests were called; and sometimes there were disputes among the "clergy" or churchmen, themselves. Sometimes these disputes were about power, and lands, and things of that sort; for now the Church had become wealthy and powerful, through gifts made to it by rulers and pious laymen. More often the questions to be settled had to do with the belief of the Church,—that is, with the exact meaning of the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, as they are recorded in the Bible and in the writings of the early Christian teachers. Many of the questions which were discussed seem strange to us; but men were very much in earnest about them then. And at times, when a hard question arose concerning the belief of the Church, men would travel hundreds of miles to the great Church Councils or meetings where the matter was to be decided, and undergo hardships and sufferings without number, to see that the question was decided as they thought was right.

One of the questions which caused most trouble was brought forward by an Egyptian priest named Arius. He claimed that Christ the Son was not equal in power and glory to God the Father. Another Egyptian priest named Athanasius thought this was a wrong belief, or "heresy"; so he combated the belief of Arius in every way that he could. Soon the whole Christian world rang with the controversy. To settle the dispute the first great Council of the Church was called by the Emperor Constantine in the year 325 A.D.It met at Nicaea, a city in Asia Minor. There "Arianism" was condemned, and the teaching of Athanasius was declared to be the true belief of the Church. But this did not end the struggle. The followers of Arius would not give up, and for a while they were stronger than their opponents. Five times Athanasius was driven from his position of archbishop in Egypt, and for twenty years he was forced to live an exile from his native land But he never faltered, and never ceased to write, preach, and argue for the belief which the Council had declared to be the true one. Even after Arius and Athanasius were both dead, the quarrel still went on. Indeed, it was nearly two hundred years before the last of the "Arians" gave up their view of the matter; but in the end the teachings of Athanasius became the belief of the whole Church.

One consequence of this dispute about Arianism was that the churches in the East and West began to drift apart. The Western churches followed the lead of the bishop of Rome and supported Athanasius in the struggle, while the Eastern churches for a time supported Arius. Even after Arianism had been given up, a quarrel still existed concerning the relation of the Holy Ghost to the Father and Son. As time went on, still other disputes arose between the East and West. The Roman clergy shaved their faces and were not permitted to marry, while the Greek clergy let their beards grow, and married and had children. Moreover Rome and Constantinople could not agree as to whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Lord's Supper. Still less could the great bishop of Constantinople, where the Emperor held his court, admit that the power of the bishop of Rome was above his own. Each side looked with contempt and distrust upon the other; for the one were Greeks and the other Latins, and the differences of race and language made it difficult for them to understand one another.

Gradually the breach grew wider and wider. At last, after many, many years of ill feeling, the two churches broke off all relations. After that there was always a Greek Catholic Church (which exists to this day) as well as a Roman one; and the power of the Pope was acknowledged only by the churches in the Western or Latin half of the world.

The Church, of course, was as much changed by the conquests of the Germans as was the rest of the Roman world. The barbarians who settled in the lands of the Empire had already become Christians, for the most part, before the conquest, but they were still ignorant barbarians. Worst of all, the views which they had been taught at first were those held by the Arians; and this made them more feared and hated by the Roman Christians. Among the citizens of the Empire, as well as among the barbarians, there was also much wickedness, oppression, and unfair dealing.

"The world is full of confusion," wrote one holy man. "No one trusts any one; each man is afraid of his neighbor. Many are the fleeces beneath which are concealed innumerable wolves, so that one might live more safely among enemies than among those who appear to be friends."

The result of this was that man began to turn from the world to God. Many went out into the deserts of Egypt, and other waste and solitary places, and became hermits. There they lived, clothed in rags or the skins of wild beasts, and eating the coarsest food, in order that they might escape from the temptations of the world. The more they punished their bodies, the more they thought it helped their souls; so all sorts of strange deeds were performed by them. Perhaps the strangest case of all was that of a man named Simeon, who was called "Stylites," from the way in which he lived. For thirty years,—day and night, summer and winter,—he dwelt on the top of a high pillar, so narrow that there was barely room for him to lie down. There for hours at a time he would stand praying, with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross; or else he would pass hours bowing his wasted body rapidly from his forehead to his feet, until at times the people who stood by counted a thousand bows without a single stop.

A MONK.

Such things as these happened more frequently in the Eastern than they did in the Western Church. In the West, men were more practical, and when they wished to flee from the world, they went into waste places and founded "monasteries," where the "monks," as they were called, dwelt together under the rule of an abbot.

In the West, too, the power of the bishop of Rome became much greater than that possessed in the East by the bishop of Constantinople. It was because the Pope was already the leading man in Rome that Leo went out to meet the Huns and the Vandals, and tried to save Rome from them. About one hundred and forty years later, Pope Gregory the Great occupied even a higher position. He not only had charge of the churches near Rome, and was looked up to by the churches of Gaul, Spain and Africa more than Leo had been; but he also ruled the land about Rome much as an emperor or king ruled his kingdom.