Donatism Aftermath

Although Donatus Magnus' appeal at the Council of Arles failed, and he was exiled to Gaul until his death, Donatism did not die out. After all, it had become the dominant church in parts of North Africa. Rome and a succession of popes would have liked to bring the Donarists of North Africa back "into the fold," but there was opposition.

Donatism also had its own internal problems, some of which came from the Circumcellions. The name was derived from Latin circum cellas euntes ("those going around larders") The larder in this case referred to a cool place for food storage, from which we get the word "cellar." The meaning behind the label was because the Circumcellions lived off of food from others whom they tried to convert to their cause. The called themselves Agonistici ("fighters" [for Christ]). They first appeared in 317 from the lower strata of society, fiercely anti-Roman and desiring social reform.

A bishop in Numidia, Optatus, remembered for his writing against Donatism, said that in 340 they started attacking officials such as creditors and landlords. Those killed during the violence were considered martyrs. In fact, martyrdom became the primary Christian virtue, as opposed to chastity, charity, humility, etc. In fact, they would sometimes attack Roman legionnaires with wooden clubs, knowing they were outmatched, so that they could be martyred. 

Augustine of Hippo (pictured here) spoke out against them, writing:

And those men also belong to this same heresy [i.e.of the Donatists] in Africa who are called circumcelliones, a rough and primitive type of men most notorious for their outrages—not just for the savage crimes that they perpetrate against others, but also because in their insane fury they do not spare even themselves. For they are accustomed to killing themselves by various kinds of deaths, but especially by throwing themselves off heights, by drowning, or byself-immolation. And they seduce others whom they can, of either sex, to join them in this same mad behavior.

They would also disrupt courts of law to produce the same outcome. The punishment for contempt of court was, in fact, execution. The Donatists did not necessarily want the alliance mentioned by Augustine.

Right up through the 15th and 16th centuries, attempts at church reform that declared priests in the wrong were slammed with accusation of the heresy of Donatism, including John Wycliffe and Jan Hus.

I want to get back to the Council of Arles in which Donatism was rejected a second time. It was the first of many at Arles, and dealt with much more than Donatism. Stay tuned.

Dealing with Pagans

The Council of Constance (illustrated here) in 1414 has been mentioned before—or, at least, its outcomes. It was at this, the 16th ecumenical council recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, that Jan Hus and John Wycliffe were both condemned as heretics. There was more to the Council than that, however.

It also dealt with the Three Popes Controversy, forcing the ouster of antipopes John XXIII, Gregory XII, and Benedict XIII; they elected Pope Martin V.

One of the largest debates at the Council took place over the subject of how to deal with pagans. A few years earlier, the Teutonic Knights had fought against Poland and Lithuania; an uneasy and oft-broken peace existed between the players in that conflict, turning into another war in 1414. The Council of Constance was chosen as the place to decide the matter between the groups. The debate blossomed into a larger issue than where the borders should be: did the Teutonic Knights have a right to start the war in 1411? They had done so as a Crusade against the pagan inhabitants of those regions, intending to force them to convert to Christianity.

A doctor of canon law named Paulus Vladimir delivered an essay called Tractatus de potestate papa et imperatoris respect infidelium [Treatise on the power of the pope and emperor respecting infidels], in which he argued that a forced conversion was a violation of the right of free will granted by God. Free will was necessary for a true conversion. He claimed the Teutonic Knights could only wage a war if the enemy had done something to violate natural rights of Christians.

The opposing view said that the pope had every right to condemn pagans simply for being non-Christians. The loudest proponent of this view, John of Falkenburg, was condemned and imprisoned for his views, and for calling the Polish king a "mad dog."

The Council could not come to a conclusion, however. They established a diocese in Poland so that Christianity could be introduced more peacefully. The Polish-Teutonic wars resumed, on and off, for another century.

Funeral Practices

[In memoriam: William Shaw, 1917 - 2012]

Have modern funerary practices always been in place? Were there different methods (and reasons) for disposing of the deceased over the ages?

The 9th century Oseberg ship

Burials of pre-historic human beings have been found, showing that the practice of interment has been around for tens of thousands of years. We have not found tens of thousands of burials, however. It is entirely possible that time and shifting geography has simply eradicated traces of huge numbers of burials. It is also possible that nomadic peoples might have pushed a body into a river, or piled up some stones, and moved on.

The Judaic tradition was clearly for burial. Deuteronomy 34:6 tells us, of Moses, that "God buried him in the depression in the land of Moab opposite Beth Peor. No man knows the place that he was buried, even to this day." Early Christians favored burial over cremation or any other disposal. Tertullian (160-225 CE) discusses Christian funeral practices, and Christ's placement in the tomb reinforces the idea of keeping the body intact in preparation for resurrection.

The Viking image of the funeral pyre on land, or the ship ablaze and pushed out to sea, was another medieval attitude to death. The Viking cultures believed in an afterlife, but they knew it could not be a corporeal life—that was over. They (like the Egyptians) honored their dead by surrounding them with accoutrements that would accompany them into that afterlife. Because they were a sea-faring people, using a ship as a bier was appropriate. When those cultures began to adopt Christianity, they changed their funerary practice but did not give up their cultural symbols: they buried their nobles, but chose to bury them in a boat—like the Oseberg ship pictured above—or a boat-shaped grave-mound.

Bound body being carried, from the Bayeux Tapestry

There were debates about the state of the body at the time of burial. The Christian desire to keep the body intact ran up against reality at time. It may have been the Crusades that started the practice of "de-fleshing" a body. When someone was killed far from home, and burial in his homeland was a long time coming, his comrades would boil the body to reduce it to a nice clean and non-putrefying skeleton. This skeleton was considered sufficient to transport home and bury. Not only was this a grisly sight, but Pope Boniface VIII (1253-1303) made the action of treating a body thusly worthy of excommunication. Furthermore, such remains were to be denied Christian burial.

The image of bodily resurrection had taken such a strong hold on Christian doctrine that interfering with the body deliberately seemed sacrilegious. Cremation was likewise considered inappropriate. Which leads me to a personal observation: if resurrection of a body that has decayed for centuries is possible, I do not see how resurrection of a body turned into ashes would be significantly more difficult. Still, this distinction in how bodies should be treated provided a strong visual image for cases when the Church wanted to make a point: it became common practice to throw the corpse of a heretic into the river to be washed away. You may remember the case of Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake and had his ashes thrown into the nearest river, and Jan's inspiration, John Wycliffe, who, although he died in 1384, was declared a heretic in 1415, and whose body was dug up in 1428 so that it could be burned and then thrown into the nearest river!

Defenestration

After Jan Hus was executed for heresy in 1415 (Jan Hus has been discussed here and here), his followers, called Hussites, continued to protest vehemently for the reform of the Church. A very popular Hussite priest of the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, Jan Zelivsky, led a procession to the Town Hall in Prague that gathered a large number of citizens. The protest was about the inequality between peasants and the nobility, and about the perceived corruption of the Church that had been successfully preached by Wycliffe. Preachers such as Zelivsky urged people to take up arms to combat their oppression.

After the procession reached Charles Square in the city, someone threw a stone at Zelivsky from a window of the Town Hall. This act caused his followers to enter the building en masse, seize the judge, the burgomaster (the Mayor of Prague), and thirteen members of the town council, and throw them all out a window. Those that did not die in the fall were finished off by the crowd.

This was called the Defenestration of Prague, from the Latin defenestrare, "to throw out a window."* Over a century later, it would be re-named "The First Defenestration of Prague," because the act was so useful that it became a pastime.

Later depiction of a Prague defenestration.

The Catholic Encyclopedia would have you believe that this event so disturbed King Wenceslas IV that he died shortly after due to shock. Perhaps someone should update that page. Wenceslas died over two weeks later, after suffering a heart attack while hunting in the woods around his castle. He had been sympathetic to non-conformists and to the idea of reform, and had been a supporter of Jan Hus. The Defenestration surely would not have pleased him, but a king in his 50s who had seen what Wenceslas had been through was used to controversy. Sadly, his death along with the Prague violence helped kick off the Hussite Wars.

The Defenestration of Prague took place 593 years ago today, in 1419. Consider how you might honor the event as you go through your day!


*Let us pause and reflect on the utility of Latin, to already have a word for this act! It was needed at least for the Latin Bible, so that Jezebel could be defenestrated in 2 Kings 9:33.

Jan Hus, Part 2 (of 2)

[The first part to this is here.]

Jan Hus (c.1369-6 July 1415) was enamored of the ideas of John Wycliffe, creating controversy for Bohemia when the church hierarchy decided that Wycliffe's ideas were heretical. King Wenceslaus IV—perhaps alarmed that Prague was becoming the center of church controversy—tried to reconcile the opposition with a synod in 1412. The synod was a failure: arguments persisted, and Hus and his followers refused to accept the absolute authority of the pope.

Hus, never one to lie low, wrote De Ecclesia (On the Church, much of which was lifted from Wycliffe's writings) in 1413, in which (among other things) he challenged the authority of the pope. (Somewhere, Wenceslaus IV was sighing; but he had worse ahead for him.)

Ultimately, the Council of Constance (1 November 1414) was assembled to deal with the ongoing papal schism and other issues. It was called by Wenceslaus' brother, Sigismund of Hungary. The debates began. After several weeks the rumor was spread that Hus intended to flee; in December he was imprisoned by the church. Sigismund was angry because he had promised Hus he would be safe, but the church officials convinced Sigismund that a promise to a heretic wasn't binding.

Hus was passed around, finally spending two and a half months in chains. His trials for heresy took place in June 1415, during which (as was customary) he was not allowed to have any defense. He offered to recant if he could be proven to be in error. Of the several points on which they demanded he recant, he asked that they not expect him to recant things he had never espoused; also, as a matter of conscience, he refused to recant points they said—but could not convince him—were errors.

On 6 July, 1415, Hus was led into the cathedral where, after a High Mass and a sermon on the need to eradicate heresy, he was condemned publicly and led outside, where he was clothed in his priestly vestments so that they could strip them from him. Still refusing to recant, he was burned at the stake and his ashes were thrown into the river.

Jan Hus, Part 1 (of 2)

Jan Hus (1369-6 July, 1415) was a pious child whose manners and performance while singing and serving in church in Prague distinguished him. He earned his baccalaureate at 24 and his master's at 27 from the University of Prague. He was ordained in 1400, and became rector of the university in 1402.

Hus was greatly influenced by the writings of Wycliffe. While Hus was rector, dozens of Wycliffe's ideas were branded heretical by the church authorities. That didn't frighten Hus away from Wycliffe's works, and he translated Wycliffe's Trialogus into Czech. The Trialogus was a conversation between three individuals: Alithia (Truth) and Pseudis (Falsehood), with Phronesis (Wisdom, the voice used by Wycliffe to present his answers to sticky doctrinal questions). Among the many points discussed in the work, Wycliffe challenged the church's teaching on transubstantiation (previously mentioned here), the idea that the consecrated bread and wine at Mass are converted to the body and blood of Christ. Wycliffe's disagreement with the church on this was based on his logic that bread and body must still both exist, and that they cannot simultaneously occupy the same place.*

It signifies, [...] one and the same - as though, for instance, he should make the person of Peter to be one with Paul... For if A is identical with B, then both of them remain; since a thing which is destroyed is not made identical, but is annihilated, or ceases to be. And if both of them remain, then they differ as much as at first, and differ consequently in number, and so are not, in the sense given, the same...

Hus shared these observations, and like Wycliffe began to preach against what he saw as the corruption and moral failings of the church hierarchy. In 1406, when some Bohemian students brought to Prague a eulogy for Wycliffe bearing the seal of Oxford University, Hus read it proudly from the pulpit. By this time, it was known that King Wenceslaus IV was tolerant of non-conformists. Pope Gregory XII, getting wind of all this, sent a stern warning about Wycliffe's heretical works and the king's attitude. The king and the University of Prague both stepped backed from the preaching of Wycliffe and Hus.

Statue of Hus in Prague.

In December 1409, Pope Alexander V issued a papal bull against Wycliffism. Hus appealed to Alexander in 1410, but in vain. All available works of Wycliffe were rounded up and burned, Hus and his followers were excommunicated. Bohemia sided with Hus against the Pope. (This was easier to do since Alexander was the third man currently considering himself a pope; but that's another story.) Like Wycliffe being supported by his friends and powerful political allies, Hus survived a few attacks by the church. Eventually, however, his luck and support would run out.

[to be continued]

*I blame all that Oxford education.

Nicholas of Cusa: Ecumenist

After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks, Nicholas of Cusa (c.1400-1464) wrote De pace fidei (On the Peace of Faith), in which he envisioned a conference in Heaven of representatives of all religions, including Islam and Hussites (the followers of Jan Hus were one of the first Christian Protestant movements, over a century before Luther).

The imaginary conference concluded that it was possible to have a single unified religion, even if it manifests in many different versions with separate practices. After all, the Roman Catholic Church had co-existed with the Eastern Church for centuries; the Eastern Church may not have recognized the authority of the Pope over the East, but the East and West did consider themselves two parts of the same faith.

Nicholas clearly prefers and exalts Christianity, but is willing to find accord with others. He had written Cribratio Alchorani (Sifting the Koran), which acknowledges that Islam and Judaism still possess seeds of the truth. Let me be clear: Nicholas doesn't treat Islam or Judaism as equals with Christianity—in 1451 he had used his authority as a bishop to require Jews in Arnhem to wear badges, and he had imposed other restrictions on Jews that were later lifted by Pope Nicholas V. The fact, however, that a well-known Catholic prelate and respected theologian could write on and publish such tolerant ideas was remarkable for the time.