Francis A. Schaeffer - How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

Contents

Chapter Two

With the breakdown of Roman order and the invasions came a time of social, political, and intellectual turmoil. The artists of the Middle Ages forgot many technical things, such as the use of that type of perspective which the Romans employed in their paintings and mosaics. Roman painting had been full of life. In the early days Christian art was also full of life. One can think of the ).

Plate 4 Catacomb frescoes in Rome.... real people in a very real world. Photos by Mustafa Arshad.

A parallel can be drawn between the living quality of this early Christian art and the living Christianity of the early church. Leaders like Ambrose of Milan (339397) and Augustine (354430) strongly emphasized a true biblical Christianity. Later in the church there was an increasing distortion away from the biblical teaching, and there also came a change in art. Interesting examples of a carryover of the earlier, more living Christian art are the mosaics in the Arian Church of St. Lorenzo in Milan. These mosaics are probably from the mid-fifth century. The Christians portrayed in these mosaics were not symbols but real people.

). The Byzantine art became characterized by formalized, stylized, symbolic mosaics and icons. In one way there was something good herein that the artists made their mosaics and icons as a witness to the observer. Many of those who made these did so with devotion, and they were looking for more spiritual values. These were pluses. The minuses were that in the portrayal of their concept of spirituality they set aside nature and the importance of the humanity of people.

Plate 5 Typical Byzantine mosaics, detail of The Last Judgment , Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello, Italy. The last vestiges of realism were abandoned. Photo by Anderson.

Since AD 395 the Roman Empire had been divided into eastern and western portions. The Byzantine style developed in the east and gradually spread to the west. This art had a real beauty, but increasingly only religious themes were given importance, and people were depicted not as real people but as symbols. This came to its climax in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The portrayal of nature was largely abandoned, and even more unhappily, the living, human element was removed. This, we should stress once more, was in contrast to the early Christian catacomb paintings in which, though simply portrayed, real people lived in a real world which God had made.

Ravenna was a center of the Byzantine mosaics in the west, a center brought to its greatness by the eastern Emperor Justinian, though he never visited it. Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565, built many churches in the east, the most famous being Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which was consecrated in 537. These new churches of the east stressed the interior, placing an emphasis on light and color.

During this time there was a decline in learning in the west, though the growing monastic orders, gradually organized around the rule of Benedict (c. 480547), provided a depository for many of the things of the past. Benedict himself had built a monastery on Monte Cassino near the main road from Naples to Rome. In the monasteries the old manuscripts were copied and recopied. Thanks to the monks, the Bible was preservedalong with sections of Greek and Latin classics. The old music, too, was sometimes kept alive by constant repetition. Some of the music came from Ambrose, who had been bishop of Milan from 374 to 397 and who had introduced to his people antiphonal psalmody and the singing of hymns.

Nevertheless, the pristine Christianity set forth in the New Testament gradually became distorted. A humanistic element was added: increasingly, the authority of the church took precedence over the teaching of the Bible. And there was an ever-growing emphasis on salvation as resting on mans meriting the merit of Christ, instead of on Christs work alone. While such humanistic elements were somewhat different in content from the humanistic elements of the Renaissance, the concept was essentially the same in that it was man taking to himself that which belonged to God. Much of Christianity up until the sixteenth century was either reaction against or reaffirmation of these distortions of the original Christian, biblical teaching.

These distortions generated cultural elements which mark a clear alternative to what we could otherwise call a Christian or biblical culture. Part of the fascination of medieval studies is to trace the degree to which different aspects of the complex Western cultural inheritance were emphasized or deemphasized according to the moral and intellectual response of people to the Christian God they claimed to worship. It would be a mistake to suppose that the overall structure of thought and life was not Christian. Yet it would be equally mistaken to deny that into this structure were fitted alien or half-alien featuressome of Greek and Roman origin, others of local pagan ancestrywhich at times actually obscured the outlines of the Christianity underneath.

This was not and is not a peculiarly medieval problem. From the earliest days of the Christian church, when Christianity was a small minority movement, believers had struggled with their personal and corporate response to Christs prayer that they be in the world but not of it. On one level, this challenged Christians in their attitude toward material possessions and style of living. Not only in the time of Peter and Paul but for generations after, believers were noted for openhanded generosity. Even their enemies admitted it.

On another level, this raised the issue of Gods law as against the will of the state, especially when the two came into conflict. During the persecutions of the Christians under the Roman emperors, the action of the Roman military commander Maurice is a good example of a possible response. When he received an order to direct a persecution of Christians, he handed his insignia to his assistant in order to join the Christians and be killed as a fellow believer. This action took place in the Rhone valley in Switzerland about AD 286, against a giant cliff just under the peaks of the Dents du Midi. It is for him that the little town of St. Maurice is now named.

Finally, on the intellectual level, Christs prayer posed the problem of whether or not it was edifying to read or quote the non-Christian classical authors. Tertullian (160240) and Cyprian (c. 200258) decided not, but they proved to be in the minority. It is interesting that in the area of music a strict view did prevail. The reason for the disappearance of the traditions of Roman musical practices in the beginning of the Middle Ages was that the church looked with indignation on the social occasions and pagan religious exercises connected with them. And thus the old Roman musical traditions disappeared.

In the Middle Ages proper, which everyone defines his own way but which we will call the period from about 500 to 1400, we can trace in general terms the continuing response to these same issues. Concerning material possessions, the pendulum swung back and forth between utter disregard of the command to live modestly (caring for the poor, orphaned, and widowed) and a razor-sharp application of these same injunctions (the early monastic ideal to have no money). Thus, at one extreme one could have a papal court popularly rebuked for its material lust. The twelfth-century Gospel According to the Mark of Silver pictured the pope egging on his cardinals to fleece litigants at the papal court, using phrases deliberately mimicking Christs teachings: For I have given you an example, that ye also should take gifts, as I have taken them, and Blessed are the rich, for they shall be filled; blessed are they that have, for they shall not go away empty; blessed are the wealthy, for theirs is the Court of Rome. John of Salisbury (c. 11151180), friend of Thomas Becket and no enemy of the church hierarchy, told a pope to his face that people thought that