In 596 A.D., the history of England changed (and consequently U.S. as well as much of earth's history). The moment was not eye-catching. The world did  not take notice. Nor did the change complete itself in one moment. But some ragged monks, with less than their whole heart in the act, had traveled across the land of the Franks, made the channel-crossing, and in the open air, Abbot Augustine talked about religion with an Anglo-Saxon warlord named Ethelbert.
The Latin-type met the Germanic,  Christians met pagans, the weak bowed before brute power. The power looked down and said, more or less, "You are free to live here -- I'll give you land for a church in my capital, Canterbury -- and you are at liberty to practice and preach Christianity, but none of us may compel people to convert." [Bede, EH 1:25-26]
Liberty. Freedom. These were the words Ethelbert used. Conversion, Ethelbert emphasized, must be free of coercion. [Bede, EH 1:26] This most valued ethic of freedom is worth learning more about, since we are free to do so!
A state-established church is still the situation in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury still heads the Church of England. Free? Some historical background and context: The essay by John Acton, "The History of Freedom in Christianity," begins with these three paragraphs on Constantine, similar to Ethelbert's situation:
When Constantine the Great carried the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople, he set up in the marketplace of the new capital a porphyry pillar, which had come by raft and rail from Egypt, and of which a strange tale is told. In a vault beneath he secretly buried the seven sacred emblems of the Roman State, which were guarded by the virgins in the temple of Vesta, with the fire that might never be quenched. On the summit, he raised a statue of Apollo, representing himself, and enclosing a fragment of the Cross; and he crowned it with a diadem of rays consisting of the nails employed at the Crucifixion, which his mother was believed to have found at Jerusalem.
The pillar still stands, the most significant monument that exists of the converted empire; for the notion that the nails which had pierced the body of Christ became a fit ornament for a heathen idol as soon as it was called by the name of a living emperor, indicates the position designed for Christianity in the imperial structure of Constantine. Diocletian's attempt to transform the Roman government into a despotism of the Eastern type had brought on the last and most serious persecution of the Christians; and Constantine, in adopting their faith intended neither to abandon his predecessor's scheme of policy, nor to renounce the fascinations of arbitrary authority, but to strengthen his throne with the support of a religion which had astonished the world by its power of resistance; and to obtain that support absolutely and without a drawback he fixed the seat of his government in the East, with a patriarch of his own creation.
Nobody warned him that by promoting the Christian religion he was tying one of his hands, and surrendering the prerogative of the Caesars. As the acknowledged author of the liberty and superiority of the Church, he was appealed to as the guardian of her unity. He admitted the obligation; he accepted the trust; and the divisions that prevailed among the Christians supplied his successors with many opportunities of extending that protectorate, and preventing any reduction of the claims or of the resources of imperialism. |
The last paragraph is pregnant with meaning. Hands tied? One might think that state control of religion leads to greater state-control overall, and often that is the case. What was Acton thinking? Among other things, one thought of Acton emerges: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." In another essay, The History of Freedom in Antiquity, Acton wrote:
But when Christ said: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," those words, spoken on His last visit to the Temple, three days before His death, gave to the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed, and bounds it had never acknowledged; and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of Freedom.
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Acton is saying that Christianity on the one hand blessed the state's power with sanctity, and with the other hand, took away the state's claim to absolute power over the individual. Further, as Constantine and Ethelbert helped to establish then guard the Christian Church, the state was actually establishing and guarding the church -- the one entity that resists the state's claim to absolute power!
Ironic.
Assuming Acton is right for a moment, then why did this unique reality of freedom not appear in all places (and times) that Christianity and state met? Why not in Byzantium and Czarist Russia, or modern Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy -- each with a clear history that exemplifies little freedom along with a subservient Christian church? In other words, why is freedom, both in its individual form as well as in the form of civil liberties, only a creation of medieval, western civilization? Acton's answer from "The History of Freedom in Christianity" --
In the days of the Conquest, when the Normans destroyed the liberties of England, the rude institutions which had come with the Saxons, the Goths, and the Franks from the forests of Germany were suffering decay, and the new element of popular government afterwards supplied by the rise of towns and the formation of a middle class, was not yet active. The only influence capable of resisting the feudal hierarchy was the ecclesiastical hierarchy; and they came into collision ...
To that conflict of four hundred years we owe the rise of civil liberty. If the Church had continued to buttress the thrones of the Kings whom it anointed, or if the struggle had terminated speedily in an undivided victory, all Europe would have sunk down under a Byzantine or Muscovite despotism. For the aim of both contending parties was absolute authority. But although liberty was not the end for which they strove, it was the means by which the temporal and the spiritual power called the nations to their aid .... the oath of fidelity itself attested that it was conditional, and should be kept only during good behaviour; and it was in conformity with the public law to which all monarchs were held subject, that King John was declared a rebel against the barons; and that the men who raised Edward III to the throne from which they had deposed his father, invoked the maxim Vox populi Vox Dei.
And this doctrine of the Divine Right of the people to raise up and pull down princes, after obtaining the sanctions of religion, was made to stand on broader grounds, and was strong enough to resist both Church and King. |
For Acton, as well as many other historians who have studied and written  on the topic of the origins and progress of 'freedom', the combination of:
1.) an innate Germanic liberty;
2.) combined with Christianity's concepts of freeing an individual in redemption;
3.) along with the separation of Caesar's domain from Christ's domain;
4.) medieval practices of representation
5.) a lingering dose of the Classical antidote to tyranny from Solon who empowered the individual Athenian through Herodotos who gloried in the amazing achievement of citizen-engagement over the tyrant to Pericles who completed democracy (but, without restraint)
6.) Hebrew reliance on God, Scripture and Prophets to restrain human absolutist excesses
7.) the Christian's "citizenship in heaven" resulted in a church (true church being a Christian people, or a majority of them, or a strong minority of them) ready to defend their liberty against the state, or even defend freedom against a corrupt church. This often required great sacrifice from leaders, like Pope Gregory VII, Thomas Becket, Paulinus and, where this webpage started, Augustine of Canterbury. Unsung in history, followers also sacrificed much, as did the monks who accompanied Augustine, as did those who joined this tenuous Christian movement.
Now to approach the question, the center-piece: Ask students early in a history-intro course about the state promoting morals or religion and most say it ought not be done. By the end of the course, some turn to questioning, rather than asserting, answers. In this course, we began with the more obvious assertion that Christianity's contribution to early Medieval life actually was a helpful set of morals that tended to improve a primitive and chaotic situation through ethics like 'Not to murder' and 'Learn to read' and 'Love God and your neighbor'. Can we agree that these Christian ethics are better than burn, rape, kill, maim, steal, starve, destroy, enslave, die early and horribly?
Here, then, is the particular historical question: Was Acton right? Given all the above-and-below expansion on that simple question, what was he right and/or wrong about, specifically? What evidence and reasoning moves you in this or that direction? Here, too, is that question's application which can feed back helpfully to our thinking-things-through: Are there morals inherent in Christianity that need attention today in order to solve problems current and looming? In other words: Do Acton's ideas hold solutions to Modernity's problems -- problems moral and political, internal and international?
Feel free to immerse yourself in Acton's ideas, critiques of them, your own Sic et Non -- your own thinking. Acton's ideas are not mainstream today. Some historians, while agreeing to the positive influence of Christianity upon barbaric life, see it as an artificial stepping stone toward a modern, Enlightened, secular society. Others see alternatives to Christianity as the antidote to problems -- the Classical conception of Protagoras (Man is the measure of all things) or Socrates (keep asking questions) or Plato (order under the educated philosopher) as the answer. Still others see the civilizing influence of Christianity actually as negative (Rousseau) or see it as needing a straightjacket because there are limits to the benefits, and so to promote Christianity when there is no need to 'civilize', then that promotion becomes wrongful coercion, prejudice, etc.
Beyond this, some historians see Acton caught in Butterfield's "Whig Interpretation" fallacy, while too many scholars are simply blasé as long as they 'get theirs'.
If history has relevance beyond a love of learning for its own sake (J.H. Newman), then it resides in: 1.) learning for one's own sake (learning improves individuals in many ways but not including monetarily for the obvious reasons of becoming enslaved); 2.) learning can improve society (Lord Acton among many others); 3.) learning to inquire well may turn up new answers (Socratic); 4.) __________ (fill in the blank).
A warning: partisanship here will kill debate. To approach this debate with answers already in place will kill inquiry. Necessarily. We are dealing with both religion AND politics -- volatile subjects, and in an election year! Remember Sic & Non. The civility and scholarship of an Acton can be a good example to us no matter where the evidence leads. From Bede to Dante, from 'them to us', debates about freedom versus order continually appear.
They often appears as balance vs out-of-balance, but seldom as one or the other....
It is clear that there are myriads of questions related to evaluating Acton's thesis of freedom's origin in medieval Christianity. Rather than let those questions and issues creep up on us as we critique Acton's ideas, I thought it would serve us better to get the more contentious on the table.
As it is, much of Acton's argument draws from history beyond the Middle Ages -- from the Reformation and Early Modern eras which are beyond the scope of this class. Still, Modernity is always with us.
Little did Ethelbert realize that 1400 years after him, we would debate his action and debate its application.
Links to Acton's essays on freedom in Christianity & in Antiquity; Bio.
Besides the above, some 'proof texts' from Bede in support of Acton's thesis:
Bede 2:1
Ad cuius pietatis et iustitiae opus pertinet etiam hoc, quod nostram gentem per praedicatores, quos huc direxit, de dentibus antiqui hostis eripiens aeternae libertatis fecit esse participem; as paragraph above quotation from Job: ‘quod liberassem pauperem’ or freed the poor
3:24 revolt against Penda in terms of recovering their own ‘liberty and lands’ and became ‘free under their own king’: Sed idem Peada proximo uere multum nefarie peremtus est, proditione, ut dicunt, coniugis suae in ipso tempore festi paschalis. Conpletis autem tribus annis post interfectionem Pendan regis, rebellarunt aduersus regem Osuiu duces gentis Merciorum, Immin, et Eafa, et Eadberct, leuato in regem Uulfhere filio eiusdem Pendan adulescente, quem occultum seruauerant, et eiectis principibus regis non proprii, fines suos fortiter simul et libertatem receperunt; sicque cum suo rege liberi, Christo uero regi pro sempiterno in caelis regno seruire gaudebant. Praefuit autem rex idem genti Merciorum annis X et VII, habuitque primum episcopum Trumheri, de quo supra diximus, secundum Iaruman, tertium Ceaddan, quartum Uynfridum. Omnes hi per ordinem sibimet succedentes sub rege Uulfhere, gentis Merciorum episcopatu sunt functi.
4:13 Wilfrid freed them from paganism and slavery: Et quoniam illi rex cum praefata loci possessione omnes, qui ibidem erant, facultates cum agris et hominibus donauit, omnes fide Christi institutos, unda baptismatis abluit; inter quos, seruos et ancillas ducentos quinquaginta; quos omnes ut baptizando a seruitute daemonica saluauit, etiam libertate donando humanae iugo seruitutis absoluit.
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