Imprint of Tyranny - part 2

Today’s devout are not immediate victims of that tyranny, but they carry the imprint of it.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - The innocuous role played by intellectuals in Spain contributed to the knowledge and disenchantment with the Church by secular Lords who objected to the Church’s desire to strip them of their Divine Right to a shared apostolic and religious authority based on Caesaropapism.

Following the death of Constantine, Rome systematically and persistently assumed for itself, the role of Primate for all of Christendom.

In the 7th Century it led to the schism from Eastern Orthodoxy. Having set its course, it was inevitable that Rome would eventually test Caesaropapism’s validity and the Right of Lords of wealthy domains to exercise a Right the Church felt should be its alone; namely, the ordination of bishops. The Lords chose to defend their Right as Monarchs of the realm.

As trade routes expanded, traders, bankers, Lords and individuals, acquired enormous wealth that the Church was determined to match. It succeeded, but in the process the Institution became corrupt, and the misconduct of Renaissance popes is legendary.

So discordant did the situation become that at one time no less than three popes served concurrently. Clement V moved the papacy to Avignon, [known as the Babylonian Captivity - 1303-1377] after which Pope Gregory XI returned the papacy to Rome, but he died the following year. Urban VI was unpopular and his election declared invalid by the French-dominated College of Cardinals who elected Clement VII, a Frenchman. Urban VI had not stepped aside, so now there were two popes.

In 1409 a Third Pope was elected, a Spaniard. The schism ended in 1417 with the election of Martin V after the others had supposedly been deposed, but the last refused to go and pretended to serve until he died - “Patience” is a Christian by-word. [History of Europe 1500-1848, by Charles A. Endress, Barnes & Noble Books, a Division of Harper & Row, Publishers; New York, London, San Francisco. ©1975. Pp.12, 13].

Christian Humanists [scholars of the cloth] wanted the hierarchy to recognize the error of its ways, and the Church to return to the purity of its beginning. The Church responded by refusing to admit it was capable of error. As a result, Erasmus, by means of his incisive, In Praise of Folly, added his voice to the growing number of Humanist-Intellectual-Reformers whose disappointment with the corruption, impiety, and impurity of their faith, could no longer be restrained.

In 1525 Martin Luther hatched the egg that Erasmus [1466-1536] laid; Luther promulgated his doctrine of Justification by Faith. Contrary to the doctrine espoused by the Church, an authority perpetuated by those who contended it should flow from the top down, Luther recognized that the real Nature of God's Holy Community resided in the fact each part was essential to the whole.

Each member of the Community was saved by recognizing his essential contribution to the whole, knowing his place within it, and having faith both in the structure and the leadership that Luther continued to believe was instituted by God. It was less important for members to subject themselves to the reinforcing rituals of the Church than it was for them to live as decent and contributing partners in God's Holy Community.

Moreover, the Church hierarchy could not, because it did not have the right or the power, sell that which others already possessed; namely, Grace. It was unthinkable that priests [as they did] should hawk dispensation [an official document authorizing a religious exemption - even from purgatory] to raise money for themselves and Church.

Without intending to do so, Luther contributed to reformation. The concept of equality expressed in his Justification by Faith, was preface to the ideal of democracy. Convinced of the correctness of his position, Luther would not be moved. And the Church found itself facing a rapidly expanding advocacy of Luther's point of view.

The Reformation movement increased, but the hierarchy refused to be reformed. Instead, it created a Counter-Reformation movement, not to reconcile differences, but to force dissidents once again to conform to Church dictates.

Every desperate tactic used by the Catholics was adopted and used in turn by the Protestants against Catholics. Each justified the severity of their methods by contending that the other was practicing, because they were subject to, their own brand of witchcraft as described in the Malleus Maleficarum.

Christianity for its first three hundred years, was a small religion competing with others for recognition. One of its attractions was its refusal to believe in what the Canon Episcopi referred to as "supernatural beliefs commonly held," describing them as mere illusions. Heretics were not considered to be witches; nor sorcery a crime unless manifest heresy was involved.

So long as individuals avoided the invocation of spirits [magic] that was the exclusive prerogative of the Church - they were not felt to be a threat to Christian authority. Yet, almost from its beginning, and for a thousand years thereafter, more than one-hundred heresies were suppressed, some requiring no less than the force of a crusade to reduce them to obedience or annihilation. Most were begun by men of the cloth; priests who did not entirely agree with the ritual or its meaning. The Church reviled them as conductors of a Black Mass, and it began to reassess its position.

St. Augustine, speaking for the Church in the fourth century, only years after it received the patronage of Emperor Constantine, boldly declared that "the whole world outside the Christian Church is a society of wicked men and wicked angels;" and in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas echoed St. Augustine by adding:

“Attempts to communicate with the demons is an apostasy from the Christian faith;" - and - “there are among men other servants of the Devil, more subtle, and more dangerous than the heretics - the witches" [defined as both heretic and apostate]. Nicolas Eymeric, a Spaniard and Inquisitor General of Aragon (c.1369), prior to Spain’s unification, defined heresy as:

"Anything that approximates the ceremony of the Church, but which is performed outside its express authority” [Black Mass defined]. Moreover, “heresy is present in any divination which involves the cult of the demons" [any worship outside the Church]. The concept became the moving force of the Roman Inquisitions.

But what of the Canon Episcopi, that doctrine of the Church that denied the realty of supernatural beliefs? In the hands of German Inquisitors, and with the consent of Pope Innocent VIII, the Malleus Maleficarum [the Inquisitors legal guide book] supplanted the Canon Episcopi to stem the hemorrhage of dissenters from Catholicism’s ranks.

The Church combined the elements of heresy, apostasy and sorcery to create a new and overriding definition of sub-humanity and supernatural illusion, the witch.

Thereafter, non-belief in witches became a mortal sin, and anything short of absolute conformity became suspect. Each member was required anew, via the Edict of Faith, to pledge allegiance to the Church, and under pain of excommunication, etc., to report any and all deviants immediately to the Holy Office. The witch-hunt was on, and it is estimated that ten million persons were eliminated, many by burning, over a period of the next three hundred years.

The Auto da Fe [Act of Faith], was the most awful and effective instrument of persuasion. People were arrested and imprisoned for years, then paraded, ridiculed, disgraced, and the “witches” burned at the stake for the faithful, and others, to see and wonder.

The spectacle was intended to reinforce the sense of self-righteousness of the masses, and to strengthen the hold of the Church upon them. Those who persisted in their denial of what they considered an improper subordination of man's intellect to a common morality paid the price in flames.

Prior to burning, priests pleaded with victims to relent and re-embrace the faith. Those who recanted were garroted before being burned, and those who committed suicide to avoid the flames, were tossed to the flames and cremated anyway - the fate of evil ones referred to by Isaiah.

The [symbolic] flames were more important than how one died. The impression on spectators was immense, especially when members of the Royal Family magnified the occasion by volunteering to light the faggots.

The most disgusting aspects of the tyranny was that vindictive persons could use it against their enemies, and the chance of being a spectator or a victim was fragile at best. Consequently, one did what was necessary to survive.

Protestations of allegiance to Catholicism were loud and clear. But, hypocrisy, besides being dangerous [one slip and all could be lost] created an intolerable state of mind that contributed to a curious anomaly - exceedingly important to families then, and to later generations.

Wanting to avoid the consequence, if insincerity was discovered, and to preserve one’s sanity, lip-service led to taught-belief of entire families under any and all circumstances. The need to convince was so great that eventually belief was no longer a defense but a reality, and the decision to conform became a personal commitment. The more strenuously a family expressed its conviction the more committed it became.

Parents mandated that no one should ever question what they were told. All were to accept vigorously what generally is believed to be true "in silence,” no question asked, and to proclaim their faith loudly. The result was “imprinting,” what Montaigne described as ‘custom’ [necessarily, or voluntarily, imposed]:

“For truly custom is a violent and deceiving schoolmistress. She little by little, and as it were by stealth, establisheth the fact of her authority in us; by which mild and gentle beginning, if once by the aid of time, it have settled and planted the same in us, it will soon discover a furious and tyrannical countenance unto us, against which we have no more the liberty to lift so much as our eyes.”

The imprint of tyranny, even today, is passed from one generation to the next in the form of givens [presumed truths] that because they are passed to us by those we love and respect, carry with them the weight of veracity we are not inclined to question and do not dare to doubt.

Today’s devout are not immediate victims of that tyranny, but they carry the imprint of it [encouraged by Evangelists for reasons of their own.] It is evident in the sense that what is claimed to be true is, in every reasonable sense of the word, unbelievable; an untested, but felt, dedication of present-day descendants to the imposed religious demands of their forebears.

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Kenneth G. Ramey was a 79-year old "writer without a Website" who is generating excellent, provocative articles on the subject of religion and world affairs. We are pleased that Ken's "lone wolf" presence as a writer in the world has been replaced by a spot on our team of writers at Salem-News.com. Raised in Minnesota and California during the dark years of the Great American Depression, Ken is well suited to talk about the powerful forces in the world that give all of us hope and tragedy and everything in between. You can write to Ken at: kgramey@sbcglobal.net