Popes 'n Avignon

I have to admit defeat in this instance. It turns out that I know nothing about the pope, despite having seen him live and in person. I planned this to be a short little post about the Avignon popes but as I delve into this, I realize that there is so much about the history of the church that I had no clue about. I sat in Starbucks for hours wading through wikipedia articles on the history of the church (and the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire and various saints) before I gave up trying to understand the bigger picture on my own. As a high point in my research, I stumbled across this amusing summary of the history of the western world- warning: coarse language. It was a pretty pleasant couple of hours, though, because I got a chance to listen to Bec Sandridge. She's quite good and you should all go give her a listen- she's on iTunes as well- as she was one of my roommates at the hostel in Glasgow and she's a bit phenomenal.

But, despite my procrastination (I am so good at that- I should have minored in that, maybe even majored in it), I did manage to ascertain some facts that I shall now present to you. Things to know about the popes (mostly taken from the well-annotated wiki article):

1) Pope is the title of the Bishop of Rome, who's now seen as the spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church.
2) Peter is generally considered to be the first pope, though he didn't use the title. In fact, the title of pope wasn't given exclusively to the bishop of Rome until centuries after the apostles lived and died.
3) After the fall of the Roman empire, popes took over care of the city of Rome and began to negotiate treaties with rulers of the other powers around them.
4) In 800 AD, Leo II crowned Charlemagne and officially set up the policy that emperors had to be anoited by the pope. Now you've got all sorts of political power invested in the pope and the papacy isn't exactly the thing we think of today, though it got cleaned up starting around 1049 by Leo IX.
5) In 1054, the church split into East and West halves. Kinda a big deal.
6) During the Middle Ages, you've got Western popes vying for power with the monarchs of Europe. (If you think of the Pardoner's Tale, you're probably on the right track. Also the scene with the pope in Doctor Faustus.)
6a) The pope actually moved his court to Avignon from 1309-1377. The popes in this time were French and allied with the French king. They had quite the set up in Avignon, as can be seen by the papal palace there. You've got luxury to the max, and, according to the wiki, it Avignon Papacy was known for greed and corruption.

And a palace.

7) For a while there, you've got Popes and Anti-popes and the papacy changed back to Rome, though there might still be a rival pope set up in Avignon.
8) All this begins to end as a response to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The church responds to the reformers' criticisms and in the end of it all, you end up with the dynamics we see today- a church already split East-West and now split Protestant-Catholic, not to mention all the other various branches that have come off of the main church as a part of the growing of a religion.
9) The First Vatican Council, coming around in 1870, declared that when the pope speaks ex cathedra (from the chair [of Peter]) he's saying something infallible.

From this chair, in fact.

This has only been used once since it was set out, in 1950, to declare the Assumption of Mary as dogma.
10) In 1962 you've got the Second Vatican Council, which started some of the reforms and changes we can see in Catholic churches today.

Of course, this is a minor sprinkling of events throughout a long and complex history of the church (but now you know why no one ever tries to teach you church history in Sunday school- it's a bit too involved for the hour between services) and I've definitely left out all of the thought behind the actions of all of the parties in the church. All this is to say that the Avignon Papacy is just one stage in a long, long history of the popes and the leaders of the church in Rome. I almost feel bad, looking at all of this as an outsider, because I sometimes think that I should feel like this church is my church. I can't pretend there isn't centuries of history between the apostles, the church fathers and then the Protestant Reformation, and in those centuries, the church was the Church. It's the traditions out of which we all grew.

And of course, it's easy to denounce the popes in Avignon (and in Rome- have you seen the Vatican?) as having been extravagant but, then again, it's not like many Christian leaders today are jumping into vows of poverty. Well, I should probably clarify that I'm talking about mainstream Christian leaders in America. Because if there's one thing that I can learn from being in Avignon, beyond the fact that the French like big golden statues

 and dancing on bridges that can't handle it,

it's that I don't know much even about Western church traditions, much less the state of Christians worldwide today. It's a big and varied place, our Church. Bit of a ponderous thing to see, really.

Church History (as retold by me)

It has also occurred to me that the different styles of churches and a little (tiny, absolutely miniscule) bit of church history might be new for some people (i.e., me, a lot. We need church history in Sunday school. I heard the parable of the woman and the lost coin sixty times, but I had no idea who Constantine was or why he was important to Christianity). So here's a couple of things you should know.

I. House Churches
Before Christianity was legal, Christians would worship in synagogues (since most of the early Christians were Jews) and meet in houses. Thus, for the first oh, say, three centuries of Christianity, you didn't have church buildings. People would meet, share a meal, maybe listen to a letter or word of encouragement, and fellowship, none of which required a church building. Most of these aren't around- they've either fallen down, or early churches were built on top of them.

II. Constantine! and Basilicas
Constantine (the Roman Emperor, not Keanu Reeves) converted to Christianity purportedly after the Battle of Milivian Bridge in 312. The guy he was fighting, who I think also wanted to be emperor, Maxentius, was drowned in the river Tiber during the course of the battle, which shows what cheering for the Christian God can do for you. Christianity was made legal and a favored religion and church building started happening like crazy. The first churches were modeled after Roman basilicas, which were meeting places. They had a big open areas (nave) and side aisles, separated by columns from the nave. The east end with the apse was where a statue of the emperor and the magistrates sat to hold court, but this was replaces with the altar and the place where the bishops sat in the early church.You see the basilica structure in other forms as well.

III. Latin and Roman crosses
Life progressed and things started to be added to churches as the liturgy required. The cross-bar of the church made a division of the space and enabled processions to happen more easily. Eventually, a split happened between the eastern and western sections of the church. There's the Great Schism of 1054, when the church really split into what would become the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, but even before that, church architecture was reflecting the differences with western churches (mostly) following the Latin cross (short cross bar, long nave) and eastern churches having a Greek cross (with equal arms). From these two branches we get the terms Romanesque and Byzantine (after the Byzantium Empire, ruled from Constantinople). The Romanesque church was spread to western Europe by St. Benedict (who is the patron saint of Europe and students, according to wikipedia) when he went a-monasterying, spreading monastic cheer to all of Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries. This style was spread to Britain with the Norman Conquest which started in 1066 (Battle of Hastings, anyone?). Byzantium architecture is preserved in the Hagia Sophia (sigh) which has influenced other churches throughout the world.

V. Gothic
Gothic churches got going in the 12th century when construction methods had gotten far enough along that they didn't need big heavy columns and walls to support the high ceilings they wanted. In a Gothic church, you'll see larger windows, lighter vaulting and most noticeably, pointed arches. There's also the fancy things like flying buttresses and stained glass windows. I kinda really love Gothic churches. But it could just be that I fell in love with Notre Dame de Paris and decided that I'd have to make that my type.

Preeety. The facade of St. Vitus.

VI. Renaissance
There was a rebirth of Roman architecture during the Renaissance. This is when Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome was planned. All the styles go through their own rebirths at different times, but since this happened in during the actual Renaissance, it gets its own name.

VII. Baroque
After the Renaissance was done happening, people decided that they could bend the rules. The word baroque actually comes from "imperfect pearl" which I think is beautiful. But holy goodness, baroque churches are crazy. I don't have a good definition of the style, other than "Let's cram as many shiny and distracting things as possible into the church and hope it looks good."

Wow. Just wow.

VIII. Printing Press and Reformation
Many things changed with the invention of the printing press. People could get bibles in their own languages instead of that pesky latin, which kinda got rid of the need for the Poor Man's Bible- scripture told through statues and stained glass windows. All those statues of Moses and the crucifixion and people going to heaven and hell with angels and demons and animals were ways of telling the Bible before people could read the Bible. Then, this guy named Martin Luther comes around in the 16th century and starts changing up things. There was also a Catholic counter-reformation, so while the Protestants were throwing out stone altars in favor of tables for the Lord's Supper and moving their pulpits to center-scene, the Catholic church was adding statues and stained glass to make mass an emotional, spiritual experience for everyone, including the people not familiar with the liturgy.

IX. Modernist and Post-modernist
Like everything else, church architecture had a modernist phase. Churches we see today are built in these styles or based off of these styles or are built to suit the needs of the congregation. My home church is modernist- it has the chancel surrounded on three sides by the congregation. My church in Chapel Hill is more Romanesque- it's got a nave and a chancel set back into an apse where the choir sits, with the organ up in the balcony and high windows meant to let in light (Bam! I knew I'd get to work in clerestory somehow!). And, also like everything else, there's a post-modernist movement back to the way things used to look.

So there. Now you know everything I know. PS- this was really more for me. I learn more by expounding than I do by reading. Sorry for the boredom. I'll add pictures of others as I get them.