1st Century of the Church
46: Paul begins planting Gentile churches to the West of Israel
47: Thomas begins planting churches to the East of Israel
48: Christian leaders meet for the Council of Jerusalem and decide that Gentile Christians do not need to follow most of the Old Testament Law
49: Emperor Claudius orders Jews to stop holding religious services in Rome, due to the ongoing debate and “public disturbance” between Jews and Christians
58: Paul is arrested in Jerusalem
64: Roman Emperor Nero begins persecuting Christians. A month later, the Great Fire of Rome begins, and to direct suspicion away from himself, young Emperor Nero blames the city's Christians. A persecution followed in which Christians were (among other punishments) burned alive. Persecution continued off and on, with Roman emperors blaming Christians for Rome’s failures. Their reasoning was that because the Christians did not worship the Roman gods, the gods were not blessing Rome
65: Nero orders Peter and Paul executed, along with many other Christians. Peter insists on being crucified upside down, and Paul is beheaded
66-73: Israel revolts against Rome
68: Nero commits suicide
70: Roman troops, sent by Emperor Vespasian to put down the Jewish rebellion, break through the walls of Jerusalem and destroy the Temple. Some said that the event occurred on the same day of the year as the earlier destruction of Solomon's temple by the Babylonians
Notable Writers and Works: New Testament authors, Barnabas, Didache, Ignatius, Odes of Solomon, Shepherd of Hermas
2nd Century of the Church
101: Clement of Rome dies. According to spurious legend, he was tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea. Considered "the first apostolic father," his letter to the church of Corinth was regarded as Scripture by many Christians in the third and fourth centuries. He was also credited with the Apostolic Constitutions, the largest collection of Christian ecclesiastical law (though scholars now consider them to have been written in Syria around 380).
108: Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, is martyred. Ignatius wrote seven letters under armed guard on his way to Rome—some asking that the church not interfere with his "true sacrifice"
110: Emperor Trajan asks Pliny the Younger to investigate a new superstition, "Christianity." Pliny's report of a relatively harmless though widespread cult led to moderate persecution—and the first official recognition that Christians were distinct from Jews
135: Final Jewish-Roman War; Israel is removed as a nation; the region becomes known as Palestine
140: Marcion founds Gnosticism, claiming the Creator God of the Old Testament is not the same as the Redemptive God of the New Testament and contrasts the flesh as evil while the spirit can be pure
155: Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, is martyred. Reportedly a disciple of the Apostle John, at age 86 he was taken to be burned at the stake. "You try to frighten me with fire that burns for an hour and forget the fire of hell that never burns out," he said. The flames, legend says, would not touch him, and when he was run through with a sword, his blood put the fire out
165: Justin, an early Christian apologist, is beheaded with
his disciples for their faith. "If we are punished for the sake of our
Lord Jesus Christ, we hope to be saved," he said just before his death.
Christians soon named him Justin Martyr
172: Montanus and two female companions claim to be prophets, but their New Prophecy is rejected because it sometimes contradicts the sayings of Jesus and others writings of the New Testament
195: Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (France) and one of the most important Christian writers of the second century, dies. He argued that tradition is key in sustaining orthodoxy, and he was instrumental in raising the authority of the Roman bishop. He was also the first to add the four Gospels to a list of apostolic writings, calling them "Scripture" with the Old Testament. Many consider him the first theologian of the Christian church, since others were more apologists than theologians
Notable Writers and Works: Acts of John, Acts of Paul, Acts of Peter, Apocalypse of Peter, Aristides, Athenagoras, Christian Sibyl, Epistles of the Apostles, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Mathetes, Melito, Papias, Polycarp, Tatian, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Theophilus of Antioch
3rd Century of the Church
202: Emperor Severus forbids anyone in the Roman Empire converting to Christianity; persecution continues off and on for the next hundred years
203: Perpetua, a Christian about 22 years old, her slave Felicitas, and several others are martyred at the arena in Carthage. They were flogged, attacked by hungry leopards, and finally beheaded
240: Paul of Thebes becomes the first Christian hermit; he lived in the Egyptian desert from age 13 to his death at 113 years old
250: Fabian, bishop of Rome, is the first martyr under Emperor Decius, the emperor who initiated Empire wide persecution of Christians. After Fabian's death, Decius is reported to have said, "I would far rather receive news of a rival to the throne than of another bishop of Rome"
256: North African bishops vote unanimously that Christians who had lapsed under persecution must be rebaptized upon reentering the church. The vote led to a battle between Cyprian, one of the North African bishops, and Stephen, bishop of Rome, who disagreed with the vote. Cyprian yielded, precipitating a longstanding argument for the Roman bishop's supremacy in the early church
270: Valentine, a priest in Rome during the reign of Claudius II, is beheaded. One explanation for Valentine's subsequent relationship to the romantic holiday is this: Claudius, seeking to more easily recruit soldiers, removed family ties by forbidding marriage. Valentine ignored the order and performed secret marriages—an act that led to his arrest and execution.
270: Gregory Thaumaturgus, a well-loved bishop in Pontus and the author of the first Christian biography (on Origen) dies. Gregory of Nyssa, writing a generation later, tells how John the Evangelist and the Virgin Mary appeared to Gregory Thaumaturgus and explained the Christian faith to him
Notable Writers and Works: Apocalypse of Elijah, Arnobius, Clement of Alexandria, Commodianus, Cyprian, Hippolytus, Novatian, Origen, Sextus, Teaching of the Apostles, Tertullian
4th Century of the Church
303: Emperor Diocletian begins his "Great Persecution," issuing edicts that call for church buildings to be destroyed, sacred writings burned, Christians to lose civil rights, and clergy to be imprisoned and forced to sacrifice to the gods. The following year he went even further, ordering all people to sacrifice on pain of death
304: Euplius, a Christian deacon from Sicily, is martyred for owning the Scriptures and proclaiming himself a Christian (loudly and repeatedly). Martyrdom was so common under Emperor Diocletian that many Christians expected it and some, like Euplius, actively sought it out
312: Emperor Constantine converts to Christianity after seeing a vision of a cross and hearing the words, “Under this sign, conquer” the night before a battle
312: Donatus teaches that Christian clergyman must be sinless for their prayers and sacraments to be valid
313: Constantine issues the Edict of Milan, legalizing Christianity in the Empire
314: The Council of Arles rules against Donatism
315: Cyril becomes Bishop of Jerusalem. Best known for his series of discourses given during Lent for those to be baptized on Easter, he early on advocated the veneration of relics and argued for transubstantiation—the doctrine that the bread and wine of Communion become the actual body and blood of Christ.
321: Constantine declares Sunday to be a day of rest
325: Constantine calls the First Council of Nicea to discuss the doctrine of God the Son. The result is the Nicene Creed, which states God the Son is co-eternal with God the Father. This is in opposition to Arianism, the belief that the Son of God was made at some point in time by the Father. Deacon (later Bishop) Athanasius was the most vocal opponent of Arius. Though the Council of Nicea ruled against Arianism, the debate continued for decades, with the empire flip-flopping on which side was to be considered correct and which leaders were to be exiled at any one time
The Nicene Creed (original):
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which be in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion — all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.
Summary of the Nicene Canons:
1. No one can be clergy if they’ve castrated themselves
2. People should not become clergy too soon after their baptism
3. Clergy are not to live with any woman who is not their relative
4. All bishops in a province, but at least three, should be present when ordaining a new bishop. All appointments are subject to the approval of the Metropolitan
5. Bishops may not accept into fellowship people whom other bishops have excommunicated
6. The custom stands of the Bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome having jurisdiction over larger areas
7. The Bishop of Jerusalem is to be honored second to his Metropolitan
8. Clergy from heretical Christians sects converting to orthodox Christianity may remain clergy after agreeing to the orthodox faith. They may be demoted in their clerical office to serve under existing orthodox bishops because there cannot be two bishops in one city
9. Clergy cannot have committed a crime
10. Lapsed Christians cannot be clergy
11. Lapsed Christians can take Communion again only after 12 years of repentance
12. Christians who left their military career but then went back to it may take Communion only after 10 years of repentance and being examined by the bishop
13. A bishop is to examine anyone who is dying and give them Communion, regardless of whether they’ve completed a time of preparation or repentance
14. Catechumens who have lapsed may become catechumens again only after three years of repentance
15. Clergy are not to move from city to city but stay in the city where they were ordained
16. Clergy who will not remain in their own churches are to be excommunicated. Clergy who ordain someone without the permission of their bishop are to be removed from office
17. Clergy who charge interest are to be removed from office
18. Deacons are not to serve Communion, nor touch it before the bishops and presbyters. Deacons are not to sit with presbyters
19. Heretics converting to the orthodox faith must be rebaptized. Their clergy are to be examined and then re-ordained by the presiding orthodox bishop
20. People should pray standing, not kneeling, from Easter to Pentecost
330: Constantine relocates the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium and renames it Constantinople
337: Constantius II, Son of Constantine the Great, becomes Emperor. During his lifetime, he outlawed pagan sacrifice. But Constantius II was also a devout Arian and strongly opposed Athanasius
339: Eusebius dies at age 74. Author of the 10-volume Ecclesiastical History, he is called the father of church history. In his day, though, he was as much a maker of history as a recorder. At the Council of Nicea, he argued for peace between the heretical Arians and Orthodox leaders like Athanasius. When Arianism became hugely popular after the Council, Eusebius was one of the people to depose Athanasius. Though he wasn't an Arian himself, he strongly opposed anti-Arianism
345: Nicholas, bishop of Myra—and Santa Claus' namesake—dies.
356: Antony of Egypt, regarded as the founder of Christian monasticism, dies at age 105. Committed to a life of solitude and absolute poverty, he took two companions with him into the desert when he knew his death was near. They were ordered to bury him without a marker so that his body would never become an object of reverence
367: Bishop Athanasius writes a letter listing the New Testament books in its current form. Over time, his list would be accepted by the majority of the Church
379: Basil the Great dies. Founder and financial supporter of a monastery in Annessi, which became a complex of hospitals, hostels, and schools, he also succeeded Eusebius as bishop of Caesarea. He is also known for his theological work explaining the Trinity. His monastic rule remains the basis of the Rule followed by the Eastern Orthodox religious today.
380: Roman emperor Theodosius I makes Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. "It is our will," he decreed, "that all the peoples we rule shall practice that religion that Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans"
381: Theodosius I calls the First Council of Constantinople, the result of which was affirming Jesus had a human soul, not simply a human body inhabited by a Divine soul; He was both human and God in every way. The Council also made the Bishop of Constantinople second in power to the Bishop of Rome, because Constantinople was the New Rome
387: Augustine of Hippo converts to Christianity. He writes in his autobiographical Confessions, "We were baptized and all anxiety for our past life vanished away." The 33-year-old had been a teacher of rhetoric and pagan philosophies at some of the Roman Empire's finest schools, but after great influence by his mother, Monica, and the famous bishop Ambrose, he turned to Christianity. His baptism by Ambrose, on Easter Sunday, marked his entrance into the church
Notable Writers: Ambrose of Milan, Athanasius, Augustine, Basil the Great, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Lactantius
5th Century of the Church
405: Jerome publishes the Vulgate, a translation of the Bible in Latin
410: Alaric and the Goths sack Rome. Pagans blamed pacifist Christians and their God for the defeat. Augustine, in his massive book City of God, repudiated this claim and blamed Rome's corruption instead
417: Pelagius, a British monk, is excommunicated for heresy. He was condemned for denying original sin and claiming that men could become righteous purely by the exercise of free will. It was a heresy teaching that man can take the initial and fundamental steps towards salvation by his own efforts, apart from divine grace
417: Pope Innocent I dies. His claims for the Roman see's supremacy went farther than any of his predecessors, as he asserted Rome's reach extended to the whole church
418: Roman Emperor Honorius issues a decree against Pelagianism
428: Nestorius becomes Bishop of Constantinople. Almost immediately, Nestorius began attacking the term "Theotokos" (God-bearer) to describe the Virgin Mary. "It is impossible that God should be born of a woman," he said, suggesting Christotokos (Christ-bearer) instead. He did not deny Jesus' nature as God but simply felt that the term challenged the reality of Christ's human nature
431: Emperor Theodosius II calls for the Council of Ephesus, reaffirming Jesus is God and so Mary may be called “Mother of God.” The Council also condemns Pelagianism
451: The Council of Chalcedon opens to deal with the Eutychians, who believed Jesus could not have two natures. His divinity, they believed, swallowed up his humanity "like a drop of wine in the sea." The council condemned the teaching as heresy and ratified the statement of faith now known as the Definition of Chalcedon. The council also elevated the Bishop of Constantinople over the Bishop of Rome, saying that since the imperial capital had moved to "New Rome" (Constantinople), that city deserved the benefits Rome once enjoyed. Leo of Rome protested, and this event was one of many leading up to the East-West schism of 1054
Summary of the Chalcedonian Canons:
1. Canons of the previous synods will be obeyed
2. No one will buy or sell ordinations to church offices
3. Clergy should not manage secular dormitories. They are allowed to manage secular orphanages or widows’ homes if made to under law or by permission of their bishop
4. The establishment of monasteries are subject to approval of the bishop. Monks are under the authority of the bishop. Slaves cannot become monks without permission of their owner
5. People who move from one city to another are still subject to canon law
6. No one can be ordained within a monastery
7. Clergy and monks are not to join the military or hold public office
8. Clergymen living in an almshouse or monastery are under the authority of the bishop
9. Clergy are not to take their bishop to secular court but are to bring the case to the synod. Bishops are to take cases against their Metropolitan to Constantinople
10. Clergy cannot be registered in two cities at the same time. They can transfer to another city but then must not have any dealings in the affairs of the former city
11. Poor people are to be given letters of recommendation for churches to help them if they are in good standing
12. Clergy are not to divide their provinces geographically
13. Clergy need a letter of recommendation to be accepted in another city
14. A clergyman who was married and had children before converting to the orthodox faith can bring his children to Communion as long as the children have been baptized
15. Deaconesses must be 40 years old and unmarried
16. Monks and nuns are to be excommunicated if they get married
17. Cities and towns under the jurisdiction of clergy will follow the organization of the civic government
18. Clergy and monks who conspire against their bishop will lose their rank
19. Synods will meet twice a year at a place designated by the Metropolitan
20. If a bishop receives a clergyman from another city without proper recommendation from the clergyman’s home city, both the receiving bishop and the clergyman will be excommunicated
21. Clergy or laymen rashly accusing their bishop of wrongdoing will not receive a hearing
22. If any clergyman seizes the belongings of a deceased bishop, they will lose their ordination
23. If a clergyman or monks spends time in Constantinople against the will of their bishop, and stirs up seditions among the clergy, they will be cast out of the city
24. Monasteries cannot be moved once the bishop has given approval for their establishment
25. A new bishop is to be ordained within three months of the previous bishop leaving his post for any reason
26. The steward of a church is to be a member of the clergy chosen by the bishop
27. Clergymen who elope with a woman are to be excommunicated
28. The Bishop of Constantinople is equal in power to the Bishop of Rome because Constantinople is the capital of the Roman empire
29. A bishop is not to be demoted to presbyter. If the bishop has committed a crime, he is to lose his ordination completely
30. Churches are not to be blamed for refraining from action in the absence of an Archbishop
459: After spending 36 years on top of a pillar praying, fasting, and occasionally preaching, Simeon Stylites dies. At first, he sat on a nine-foot pillar, but he gradually replaced it with higher and higher ones; the last was more than 50 feet tall. After his death, the Syrian ascetic—who had won the respect of both Pope and emperor—inspired many imitators
461: Patrick, missionary to Ireland and that country's patron saint, dies. Irish raiders captured Patrick, a Romanized Briton, and enslaved him as a youth. He escaped to Gaul (modern France) but returned to Ireland after experiencing a vision calling him back to preach. Patrick enjoyed great success there as a missionary, and only the far south remained predominantly pagan when he died
476: Rome falls to barbarian invaders
Notable Writers and Works: Cyril of Alexandria, Jerome, Leo the Great, Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret
6th Century of the Church
523: John I is consecrated Pope. Shortly after his appointment, John became the first Pope to leave Italy—with unfortunate results. He traveled to Constantinople, the center of Eastern Christianity, but on his return was imprisoned by the Arian king of Italy, Theodoric, who suspected John of conspiring with the king's Byzantine antagonists
526: Justinian I is crowned Roman Emperor in Constantinople's magnificent cathedral, the Santa Sophia. Attempting to restore political and religious unity in the eastern and western empires, he ruthlessly attacked pagans and heretics and created the Code of Justinian, a massive restructuring of law (including much regarding the relationship of church and state) that would be the basis of legislation for nearly a millennium.
529: The Synod of Orange convenes in southern France. Led by a forceful Augustinian, Caesarius of Arles, the synod upheld Augustine's doctrines of grace and free will while condemning the views of Semi-Pelagians (including John Cassian and Faustus of Riez), who believed the human will and God's grace work together
547: Italian monk Benedict, author of the Benedictine rule (which established the pattern for European monastic life through the Middle Ages), dies
548: The date for celebrating Christmas in the Western Church changes from January 6 to December 25
553: Emperor Justinian calls the Second Council of Constantinople to rule on various teachings popular at the time.
Canons of the Second Council of Constantinople
If anyone shall not confess that the nature or essence of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is one, as also the force and the power; [if anyone does not confess] a consubstantial Trinity, one Godhead to be worshipped in three subsistences or Persons: let him be anathema. For there is but one God even the Father of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things, and one Holy Spirit in whom are all things.
If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God has two nativities, the one from all eternity of the Father, without time and without body; the other in these last days, coming down from heaven and being made flesh of the holy and glorious Mary, Mother of God and always a virgin, and born of her: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that the wonder-working Word of God is one [Person] and the Christ that suffered another; or shall say that God the Word was with the woman-born Christ, or was in him as one person in another, but that he was not one and the same our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, incarnate and made man, and that his miracles and the sufferings which of his own will he endured in the flesh were not of the same [Person]: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that the union of the Word of God to man was only according to grace or energy, or dignity, or equality of honour, or authority, or relation, or effect, or power, or according to good pleasure in this sense that God the Word was pleased with a man, that is to say, that he loved him for his own sake, as says the senseless Theodorus, or [if anyone pretends that this union exists only] so far as likeness of name is concerned, as the Nestorians understand, who call also the Word of God Jesus and Christ, and even accord to the man the names of Christ and of Son, speaking thus clearly of two persons, and only designating disingenuously one Person and one Christ when the reference is to his honour, or his dignity, or his worship; if anyone shall not acknowledge as the Holy Fathers teach, that the union of God the Word is made with the flesh animated by a reasonable and living soul, and that such union is made synthetically and hypostatically, and that therefore there is only one Person, to wit: our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Holy Trinity: let him be anathema. As a matter of fact the word "union" (τῆς ἑνώςεως) has many meanings, and the partisans of Apollinaris and Eutyches have affirmed that these natures are confounded inter se, and have asserted a union produced by the mixture of both. On the other hand the followers of Theodorus and of Nestorius rejoicing in the division of the natures, have taught only a relative union. Meanwhile the Holy Church of God, condemning equally the impiety of both sorts of heresies, recognises the union of God the Word with the flesh synthetically, that is to say, hypostatically. For in the mystery of Christ the synthetical union not only preserves unconfusedly the natures which are united, but also allows no separation.
If anyone understands the expression "one only Person of our Lord Jesus Christ" in this sense, that it is the union of many hypostases, and if he attempts thus to introduce into the mystery of Christ two hypostases, or two Persons, and, after having introduced two persons, speaks of one Person only out of dignity, honour or worship, as both Theodorus and Nestorius insanely have written; if anyone shall calumniate the holy Council of Chalcedon, pretending that it made use of this expression [one hypostasis] in this impious sense, and if he will not recognize rather that the Word of God is united with the flesh hypostatically, and that therefore there is but one hypostasis or one only Person, and that the holy Council of Chalcedon has professed in this sense the one Person of our Lord Jesus Christ: let him be anathema. For since one of the Holy Trinity has been made man, viz.: God the Word, the Holy Trinity has not been increased by the addition of another person or hypostasis.
If anyone shall not call in a true acceptation, but only in a false acceptation, the holy, glorious, and ever-virgin Mary, the Mother of God, or shall call her so only in a relative sense, believing that she bare only a simple man and that God the word was not incarnate of her, but that the incarnation of God the Word resulted only from the fact that he united himself to that man who was born [of her]; if he shall calumniate the Holy Synod of Chalcedon as though it had asserted the Virgin to be Mother of God according to the impious sense of Theodore; or if anyone shall call her the mother of a man (ἀνθρωποτόκον) or the Mother of Christ (Χριστοτόκον), as if Christ were not God, and shall not confess that she is exactly and truly the Mother of God, because that God the Word who before all ages was begotten of the Father was in these last days made flesh and born of her, and if anyone shall not confess that in this sense the holy Synod of Chalcedon acknowledged her to be the Mother of God: let him be anathema.
If anyone using the expression, "in two natures," does not confess that our one Lord Jesus Christ has been revealed in the divinity and in the humanity, so as to designate by that expression a difference of the natures of which an ineffable union is unconfusedly made, [a union] in which neither the nature of the Word was changed into that of the flesh, nor that of the flesh into that of the Word, for each remained that it was by nature, the union being hypostatic; but shall take the expression with regard to the mystery of Christ in a sense so as to divide the parties, or recognising the two natures in the only Lord Jesus, God the Word made man, does not content himself with taking in a theoretical manner the difference of the natures which compose him, which difference is not destroyed by the union between them, for one is composed of the two and the two are in one, but shall make use of the number [two] to divide the natures or to make of them Persons properly so called: let him be anathema.
If anyone uses the expression "of two natures," confessing that a union was made of the Godhead and of the humanity, or the expression "the one nature made flesh of God the Word," and shall not so understand those expressions as the holy Fathers have taught, to wit: that of the divine and human nature there was made an hypostatic union, whereof is one Christ; but from these expressions shall try to introduce one nature or substance [made by a mixture] of the Godhead and manhood of Christ; let him be anathema. For in teaching that the only-begotten Word was united hypostatically [to humanity] we do not mean to say that there was made a mutual confusion of natures, but rather each [nature] remaining what it was, we understand that the Word was united to the flesh. Wherefore there is one Christ, both God and man, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood. Therefore they are equally condemned and anathematized by the Church of God, who divide or part the mystery of the divine dispensation of Christ, or who introduce confusion into that mystery.
If anyone shall take the expression, Christ ought to be worshipped in his two natures, in the sense that he wishes to introduce thus two adorations, the one in special relation to God the Word and the other as pertaining to the man; or if anyone to get rid of the flesh, [that is of the humanity of Christ,] or to mix together the divinity and the humanity, shall speak monstrously of one only nature or essence (φύσιν ἤγουν οὐσίαν) of the united (natures), and so worship Christ, and does not venerate, by one adoration, God the Word made man, together with his flesh, as the Holy Church has taught from the beginning: let him be anathema.
If anyone does not confess that our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified in the flesh is true God and the Lord of Glory and one of the Holy Trinity: let him be anathema.
If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, as well as their impious writings, as also all other heretics already condemned and anathematized by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and by the aforesaid four Holy Synods and [if anyone does not equally anathematize] all those who have held and hold or who in their impiety persist in holding to the end the same opinion as those heretics just mentioned: let him be anathema.
If anyone defends the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia, who has said that the Word of God is one person, but that another person is Christ, vexed by the sufferings of the soul and the desires of the flesh, and separated little by little above that which is inferior, and become better by the progress in good works and irreproachable in his manner of life, as a mere man was baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and obtained by this baptism the grace of the Holy Spirit, and became worthy of Sonship, and to be worshipped out of regard to the Person of God the Word (just as one worships the image of an emperor) and that he has become, after the resurrection, unchangeable in his thoughts and altogether without sin. And, again, this same impious Theodore has also said that the union of God the Word with Christ is like to that which, according to the doctrine of the Apostle, exists between a man and his wife, "They two shall be in one flesh." The same [Theodore] has dared, among numerous other blasphemies, to say that when after the resurrection the Lord breathed upon his disciples, saying, "Receive the Holy Ghost," he did not really give them the Holy Spirit, but that he breathed upon them only as a sign. He likewise has said that the profession of faith made by Thomas when he had, after the resurrection, touched the hands and the side of the Lord, viz.: "My Lord and my God," was not said in reference to Christ, but that Thomas, filled with wonder at the miracle of the resurrection, thus thanked God who had raised up Christ. And moreover (which is still more scandalous) this same Theodore in his Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles compares Christ to Plato, Manichæus, Epicurus and Marcion, and says that as each of these men having discovered his own doctrine, had given his name to his disciples, who were called Platonists, Manicheans, Epicureans and Marcionites, just so Christ, having discovered his doctrine, had given the name Christians to his disciples. If, then, anyone shall defend this most impious Theodore and his impious writings, in which he vomits the blasphemies mentioned above, and countless others besides against our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and if anyone does not anathematize him or his impious writings, as well as all those who protect or defend him, or who assert that his exegesis is orthodox, or who write in favour of him and of his impious works, or those who share the same opinions, or those who have shared them and still continue unto the end in this heresy: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall defend the impious writings of Theodoret, directed against the true faith and against the first holy Synod of Ephesus and against St. Cyril and his XII. Anathemas, and [defends] that which he has written in defense of the impious Theodore and Nestorius, and of others having the same opinions as the aforesaid Theodore and Nestorius, if anyone admits them or their impiety, or shall give the name of impious to the doctors of the Church who profess the hypostatic union of God the Word; and if anyone does not anathematize these impious writings and those who have held or who hold these sentiments, and all those who have written contrary to the true faith or against St. Cyril and his XII. Chapters, and who die in their impiety: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall defend that letter which Ibas is said to have written to Maris the Persian, in which he denies that the Word of God incarnate of Mary, the Holy Mother of God and ever-virgin, was made man, but says that a mere man was born of her, whom he styles a Temple, as though the Word of God was one Person and the man another person; in which letter also he reprehends St. Cyril as a heretic, when he teaches the right faith of Christians, and charges him with writing things like to the wicked Apollinaris. In addition to this he vituperates the First Holy Council of Ephesus, affirming that it deposed Nestorius without discrimination and without examination. The aforesaid impious epistle styles the XII. Chapters of Cyril of blessed memory, impious and contrary to the right faith and defends Theodore and Nestorius and their impious teachings and writings. If anyone therefore shall defend the aforementioned epistle and shall not anathematize it and those who defend it and say that it is right or that a part of it is right, or if anyone shall defend those who have written or shall write in its favour, or in defense of the impieties which are contained in it, as well as those who shall presume to defend it or the impieties which it contains in the name of the Holy Fathers or of the Holy Synod of Chalcedon, and shall remain in these offenses unto the end: let him be anathema.
The Anathemas Against Origen
If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that the creation (τὴυ παραγωγὴν) of all reasonable things includes only intelligences (νόας) without bodies and altogether immaterial, having neither number nor name, so that there is unity between them all by identity of substance, force and energy, and by their union with and knowledge of God the Word; but that no longer desiring the sight of God, they gave themselves over to worse things, each one following his own inclinations, and that they have taken bodies more or less subtle, and have received names, for among the heavenly Powers there is a difference of names as there is also a difference of bodies; and thence some became and are called Cherubims, others Seraphims, and Principalities, and Powers, and Dominations, and Thrones, and Angels, and as many other heavenly orders as there may be: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that the sun, the moon and the stars are also reasonable beings, and that they have only become what they are because they turned towards evil: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that the reasonable creatures in whom the divine love had grown cold have been hidden in gross bodies such as ours, and have been called men, while those who have attained the lowest degree of wickedness have shared cold and obscure bodies and have become and called demons and evil spirits: let him be anathema,.
If anyone shall say that a psychic (ψυχικὴν) condition has come from an angelic or archangelic state, and moreover that a demoniac and a human condition has come from a psychic condition, and that from a human state they may become again angels and demons, and that each order of heavenly virtues is either all from those below or from those above, or from those above and below: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that there is a twofold race of demons, of which the one includes the souls of men and the other the superior spirits who fell to this, and that of all the number of reasonable beings there is but one which has remained unshaken in the love and contemplation of God, and that that spirit has become Christ and the king of all reasonable beings, and that he has created all the bodies which exist in heaven, on earth, and between heaven and earth; and that the world which has in itself elements more ancient than itself, and which exists by themselves, viz.: dryness, damp, heat and cold, and the image (ιδέαν) to which it was formed, was so formed, and that the most holy and consubstantial Trinity did not create the world, but that it was created by the working intelligence (Ν οῦς δημιρυργός) which is more ancient than the world, and which communicates to it its being: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that Christ, of whom it is said that he appeared in the form of God, and that he was united before all time with God the Word, and humbled himself in these last days even to humanity, had (according to their expression) pity upon the various falls which had appeared in the spirits united in the same unity (of which he himself is part), and that to restore them he passed through various classes, had different bodies and different names, became all to all, an Angel among Angels, a Power among Powers, has clothed himself in the different classes of reasonable beings with a form corresponding to that class, and finally has taken flesh and blood like ours and has become man for men; [if anyone says all this] and does not profess that God the Word humbled himself and became man: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall not acknowledge that God the Word, of the same substance with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and who was made flesh and became man, one of the Trinity, is Christ in every sense of the word, but [shall affirm] that he is so only in an inaccurate manner, and because of the abasement (κενώσαντα), as they call it, of the intelligence (νοῦς); if anyone shall affirm that this intelligence united (συνημμένον) to God the Word, is the Christ in the true sense of the word, while the Logos is only called Christ because of this union with the intelligence, and e converso that the intelligence is only called God because of the Logos: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that it was not the Divine Logos made man by taking an animated body with a ψυχὴ῾ λογικὴ and νοερὰ, that he descended into hell and ascended into heaven, but shall pretend that it is the Ν οῦς which has done this, that Ν οῦς of which they say (in an impious fashion) he is Christ properly so called, and that he has become so by the knowledge of the Monad: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that after the resurrection the body of the Lord was ethereal, having the form of a sphere, and that such shall be the bodies of all after the resurrection; and that after the Lord himself shall have rejected his true body and after the others who rise shall have rejected theirs, the nature of their bodies shall be annihilated: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that the future judgment signifies the destruction of the body and that the end of the story will be an immaterial ψύσις, and that thereafter there will no longer be any matter, but only spirit νοῦς): let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that the heavenly Powers and all men and the Devil and evil spirits are united with the Word of God in all respects, as the Ν οῦς which is by them called Christ and which is in the form of God, and which humbled itself as they say; and [if anyone shall say] that the Kingdom of Christ shall have an end: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that Christ [i.e., the Ν οῦς] is in no wise different from other reasonable beings, neither substantially nor by wisdom nor by his power and might over all things but that all will be placed at the right hand of God, as well as he that is called by them Christ [the Ν οῦς], as also they were in the feigned pre-existence of all things: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that all reasonable beings will one day be united in one, when the hypostases as well as the numbers and the bodies shall have disappeared, and that the knowledge of the world to come will carry with it the ruin of the worlds, and the rejection of bodies as also the abolition of [all] names, and that there shall be finally an identity of the γνῶσις and of the hypostasis; moreover, that in this pretended apocatastasis, spirits only will continue to exist, as it was in the feigned pre-existence: let him be anathema.
If anyone shall say that the life of the spirits (νοῶν) shall be like to the life which was in the beginning while as yet the spirits had not come down or fallen, so that the end and the beginning shall be alike, and that the end shall be the true measure of the beginning: let him be anathema.
The Anathemas of the Emperor Justinian Against Origen
Whoever says or thinks that human souls pre-existed, i.e., that they had previously been spirits and holy powers, but that, satiated with the vision of God, they had turned to evil, and in this way the divine love in them had died out (ἀπψυγείσας) and they had therefore become souls (ψυχάς) and had been condemned to punishment in bodies, shall be anathema.
If anyone says or thinks that the soul of the Lord pre-existed and was united with God the Word before the Incarnation and Conception of the Virgin, let him be anathema.
If anyone says or thinks that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was first formed in the womb of the holy Virgin and that afterwards there was united with it God the Word and the pre-existing soul, let him be anathema.
If anyone says or thinks that the Word of God has become like to all heavenly orders, so that for the cherubim he was a cherub, for the seraphim a seraph: in short, like all the superior powers, let him be anathema.
If anyone says or thinks that, at the resurrection, human bodies will rise spherical in form and unlike our present form, let him be anathema.
If anyone says that the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the waters that are above heavens, have souls, and are reasonable beings, let him be anathema.
If anyone says or thinks that Christ the Lord in a future time will be crucified for demons as he was for men, let him be anathema.
If anyone says or thinks that the power of God is limited, and that he created as much as he was able to compass, let him be anathema.
If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration (ἀποκατάστασις) will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema.
Anathema to Origen and to that Adamantius, who set forth these opinions together with his nefarious and execrable and wicked doctrine and to whomsoever there is who thinks thus, or defends these opinions, or in any way hereafter at any time shall presume to protect them.
565: Celtic missionary and abbot Columba reportedly confronts the Loch Ness Monster and becomes the first recorded observer of the creature. "At the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified," wrote his biographer, "and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes"
590: Gregory I ("the Great") is consecrated Pope. Historians remember him as the father of the medieval papacy and last of four Latin "Doctors of the Church." He was the first Pope to aspire to secular power, the man for whom Gregorian Chant is named, and one of the main organizers of Roman liturgy and its music. He was also one of the prime promoters of monasticism
Notable Writers and Works: Boethius, Caesarius of Arles, Cassiodorus, Gregory I
7th Century of the Church
622: Muhammad founds Islam
636: Isidore, Spanish scholar and archbishop of Seville dies. His most extensive and famous work was his Etymologiae (Etymologies), an extensive encyclopedia of early medieval knowledge that, unlike other such works, used liberal arts and secular learning as the foundation of Christian education. Isidore did remark, however, that it would be better to be without the knowledge of heretics than to be misled by their comments
662: Maximus Confessor, the Eastern leader in the fight against Monothelitism (the heresy that Christ had divine, but no human, will), dies after being tortured for his beliefs
663: At the Synod of Whitby, Celtic Christians agreed to abide by Roman traditions. "Peter is guardian of the gates of heaven, and I shall not contradict him," said the Celtic King Oswy
681: The Third Council of Constantinople adjourns, having settled the Monothelite controversy in the Eastern Church. The Council, which proclaimed the orthodox belief of two wills in Christ: divine and human, condemned as heretics, the Monothelites, who believed Christ had only "one will"
687: Dome of the Rock built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem
692: The Quinisext Council Meets
Summary of the Quinisext Council Canons:
1. Ratified the canons of previous synods
2. Ratified the Apostolic Canons, which are included below:
3. Clergy are not to marry. If they have taken a wife after their ordination, they are to divorce them. If a man has been married twice or taken a concubine after his baptism, he can never be clergy.
4. If any bishop, presbyter, deacon, subdeacon, lector, cantor, or doorkeeper has had intercourse with a woman dedicated to God, let him be deposed, as one who has corrupted a spouse of Christ, but if a layman let him be cut off.
5. Let none of those who are on the priestly list possess any woman or maid servant, beyond those who are enumerated in the canon as being persons free from suspicion, preserving himself hereby from being implicated in any blame. But if anyone transgresses our decree let him be deposed. And let eunuchs also observe the same rule, that by foresight they may be free of censure. But those who transgress, let them be deposed, if indeed they are clerics; but if laymen let them be excommunicated.
6. Since it is declared in the apostolic canons that of those who are advanced to the clergy unmarried, only lectors and cantors are able to marry; we also, maintaining this, determine that henceforth it is in nowise lawful for any subdeacon, deacon or presbyter after his ordination to contract matrimony but if he shall have dared to do so, let him be deposed. And if any of those who enter the clergy, wishes to be joined to a wife in lawful marriage before he is ordained subdeacon, deacon, or presbyter, let it be done.
7. Since we have learned that in some churches deacons hold ecclesiastical offices, and that hereby some of them with arrogancy and license sit daringly before the presbyters: we have determined that a deacon, even if in an office of dignity, that is to say, in whatever ecclesiastical office he may be, is not to have his seat before a presbyter, except he is acting as representative of his own patriarch or metropolitan in another city under another superior, for then he shall be honoured as filling his place. But if anyone, possessed with a tyrannical audacity, shall have dared to do such a thing, let him be ejected from his peculiar rank and be last of all of the order in whose list he is in his own church; our Lord admonishing us that we are not to delight in taking the chief seats, according to the doctrine which is found in the holy Evangelist Luke, as put forth by our Lord and God himself. For to those who were called he taught this parable: "When you are bidden by anyone to a marriage sit not down in the highest place lest a more honourable man than you shall have been bidden by him; and he who bade you and him come and say to you: Give this man place, and you begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are bidden, sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who bade you comes he may say to you, Friend go up higher: then you shall have honor in the presence of those who sit with you. For whosoever exalts himself shall be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted." But the same thing also shall be observed in the remaining sacred orders; seeing that we know that spiritual things are to be preferred to worldly dignity.
8. Since we desire that in every point the things which have been decreed by our holy fathers may also be established and confirmed, we hereby renew the canon which orders that synods of the bishops of each province be held every year where the bishop of the metropolis shall deem best. But since on account of the incursions of barbarians and certain other incidental causes, those who preside over the churches cannot hold synods twice a year, it seems right that by all means once a year — on account of ecclesiastical questions which are likely to arise — a synod of the aforesaid bishops should be holden in every province, between the holy feast of Easter and October, as has been said above, in the place which the Metropolitan shall have deemed most fitting. And let such bishops as do not attend, when they are at home in their own cities and are in good health, and free from all unavoidable and necessary business, be fraternally reproved.
9. Let no cleric be permitted to keep a "public house." For if it be not permitted to enter a tavern, much more is it forbidden to serve others in it and to carry on a trade which is unlawful for him. But if he shall have done any such thing, either let him desist or be deposed.
10. A bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who receives usury, or what is called hecatostæ, let him desist or be deposed.
11. Let no one in the priestly order nor any layman eat the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar intercourse with them, nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor bathe with them; but if anyone shall take in hand to do so, if he is a cleric, let him be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off.
12. Moreover this also has come to our knowledge, that in Africa and Libya and in other places the most God-beloved bishops in those parts do not refuse to live with their wives, even after consecration, thereby giving scandal and offense to the people. Since, therefore, it is our particular care that all things tend to the good of the flock placed in our hands and committed to us — it has seemed good that henceforth nothing of the kind shall in any way occur. And we say this, not to abolish and overthrow what things were established of old by Apostolic authority, but as caring for the health of the people and their advance to better things, and lest the ecclesiastical state should suffer any reproach. For the divine Apostle says: "Do all to the glory of God, give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Greeks, nor to the Church of God, even as I please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me even as I also am of Christ." But if any shall have been observed to do such a thing, let him be deposed.
13. Since we know it to be handed down as a rule of the Roman Church that those who are deemed worthy to be advanced to the diaconate or presbyterate should promise no longer to cohabit with their wives, we, preserving the ancient rule and apostolic perfection and order, will that the lawful marriages of men who are in holy orders be from this time forward firm, by no means dissolving their union with their wives nor depriving them of their mutual intercourse at a convenient time. Wherefore, if anyone shall have been found worthy to be ordained subdeacon, or deacon, or presbyter, he is by no means to be prohibited from admittance to such a rank, even if he shall live with a lawful wife. Nor shall it be demanded of him at the time of his ordination that he promise to abstain from lawful intercourse with his wife: lest we should affect injuriously marriage constituted by God and blessed by his presence, as the Gospel says: "What God has joined together let no man put asunder;" and the Apostle says, "Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled;" and again, "Are you bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed." But we know, as they who assembled at Carthage (with a care for the honest life of the clergy) said, that subdeacons, who handle the Holy Mysteries, and deacons, and presbyters should abstain from their consorts according to their own course [of ministration]. So that what has been handed down through the Apostles and preserved by ancient custom, we too likewise maintain, knowing that there is a time for all things and especially for fasting and prayer. For it is meet that they who assist at the divine altar should be absolutely continent when they are handling holy things, in order that they may be able to obtain from God what they ask in sincerity.
If therefore anyone shall have dared, contrary to the Apostolic Canons, to deprive any of those who are in holy orders, presbyter, or deacon, or subdeacon of cohabitation and intercourse with his lawful wife, let him be deposed. In like manner also if any presbyter or deacon on pretence of piety has dismissed his wife, let him be excluded from communion; and if he persevere in this let him be deposed.
14. Let the canon of our holy God-bearing Fathers be confirmed in this particular also; that a presbyter be not ordained before he is thirty years of age, even if he be a very worthy man, but let him be kept back. For our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized and began to teach when he was thirty. In like manner let no deacon be ordained before he is twenty-five, nor a deaconess before she is forty.
15. A subdeacon is not to be ordained under twenty years of age. And if any one in any grade of the priesthood shall have been ordained contrary to the prescribed time let him be deposed.
16. Since the book of the Acts tells us that seven deacons were appointed by the Apostles, and the synod of Neocæsarea in the canons which it put forth determined that there ought to be canonically only seven deacons, even if the city be very large, in accordance with the book of the Acts; we, having fitted the mind of the fathers to the Apostles' words, find that they spoke not of those men who ministered at the Mysteries but in the administration which pertains to the serving of tables. For the book of the Acts reads as follows: "In those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring dissension of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministrations. And the Twelve called the multitude of the disciples with them and said, It is not meet for us to leave the word of God and serve tables. Look out therefore, brethren, from among you seven men of good report full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually unto prayer and unto the ministry of the word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: whom they set before the Apostles."
John Chrysostom, a Doctor of the Church, interpreting these words, proceeds thus: "It is a remarkable fact that the multitude was not divided in its choice of the men, and that the Apostles were not rejected by them. But we must learn what sort of rank they had, and what ordination they received. Was it that of deacons? But this office did not yet exist in the churches. But was it the dispensation of a presbyter? But there was not as yet any bishop, but only Apostles, whence I think it is clear and manifest that neither of deacons nor of presbyters was there then the name."
But on this account therefore we also announce that the aforesaid seven deacons are not to be understood as deacons who served at the Mysteries, according to the teaching before set forth, but that they were those to whom a dispensation was entrusted for the common benefit of those that were gathered together, who to us in this also were a type of philanthropy and zeal towards those who are in need.
17. Since clerics of different churches have left their own churches in which they were ordained and betaken themselves to other bishops, and without the consent of their own bishop have been settled in other churches, and thus they have proved themselves to be insolent and disobedient; we decree that from the month of January of the past IVth Indiction no cleric, of whatsoever grade he be, shall have power, without letters dimissory of his own bishop, to be registered in the clergy list of another church. Whoever in future shall not have observed this rule, but shall have brought disgrace upon himself as well as on the bishop who ordained him, let him be deposed together with him who also received him.
18. Those clerics who in consequence of a barbaric incursion or on account of any other circumstance have gone abroad, we order to return again to their churches after the cause has passed away, or when the incursion of the barbarians is at an end. Nor are they to leave them for long without cause. If anyone shall not have returned according to the direction of this present canon — let him be cut off until he shall return to his own church. And the same shall be the punishment of the bishop who received him.
19. It behooves those who preside over the churches, every day but especially on Lord's days, to teach all the clergy and people words of piety and of right religion, gathering out of holy Scripture meditations and determinations of the truth, and not going beyond the limits now fixed, nor varying from the tradition of the God-bearing fathers. And if any controversy in regard to Scripture shall have been raised, let them not interpret it otherwise than as the lights and doctors of the church in their writings have expounded it, and in those let them glory rather than in composing things out of their own heads, lest through their lack of skill they may have departed from what was fitting. For through the doctrine of the aforesaid fathers, the people coming to the knowledge of what is good and desirable, as well as what is useless and to be rejected, will remodel their life for the better, and not be led by ignorance, but applying their minds to the doctrine, they will take heed that no evil befall them and work out their salvation in fear of impending punishment.
20. It shall not be lawful for a bishop to teach publicly in any city which does not belong to him. If any shall have been observed doing this, let him cease from his episcopate, but let him discharge the office of a presbyter.
21. Those who have become guilty of crimes against the canons, and on this account subject to complete and perpetual deposition, are degraded to the condition of layman. If, however, keeping conversion continually before their eyes, they willingly deplore the sin on account of which they fell from grace, and made themselves aliens therefrom, they may still cut their hair after the manner of clerics. But if they are not willing to submit themselves to this canon, they must wear their hair as laymen, as being those who have preferred the communion of the world to the celestial life.
22. Those who are ordained for money, whether bishops or of any rank whatever, and not by examination and choice of life, we order to be deposed as well as those also who ordained them.
23. That no one, whether bishop, presbyter, or deacon, when giving the immaculate Communion, shall exact from him who communicates fees of any kind. For grace is not to be sold, nor do we give the sanctification of the Holy Spirit for money; but to those who are worthy of the gift it is to be communicated in all simplicity. But if any of those enrolled among the clergy make demands on those he communicates let him be deposed, as an imitator of the error and wickedness of Simon.
24. No one who is on the priestly catalogue nor any monk is allowed to take part in horse-races or to assist at theatrical representations. But if any clergyman be called to a marriage, as soon as the games begin let him rise up and go out, for so it is ordered by the doctrine of our fathers. And if any one shall be convicted of such an offense let him cease therefrom or be deposed.
25. Moreover we renew the canon which orders that country (ἀγροικικὰς) parishes and those which are in the provinces (ἐ γχωρίους) shall remain subject to the bishops who had possession of them; especially if for thirty years they had administered them without opposition. But if within thirty years there had been or should be any controversy on the point, it is lawful for those who think themselves injured to refer the matter to the provincial synod.
26. If a presbyter has through ignorance contracted an illegal marriage, while he still retains the right to his place, as we have defined in the sacred canons, yet he must abstain from all sacerdotal work. For it is sufficient if to such an one indulgence is granted. For he is unfit to bless another who needs to take care of his own wounds, for blessing is the imparting of sanctification. But how can he impart this to another who does not possess it himself through a sin of ignorance? Neither then in public nor in private can he bless nor distribute to others the body of Christ, [nor perform any other ministry]; but being content with his seat of honour let him lament to the Lord that his sin of ignorance may be remitted. For it is manifest that the nefarious marriage must be dissolved, neither can the man have any intercourse with her on account of whom he is deprived of the execution of his priesthood.
27. None of those who are in the catalogue of the clergy shall wear clothes unsuited to them, either while still living in town or when on a journey: but they shall wear such clothes as are assigned to those who belong to the clergy. And if any one shall violate this canon, he shall be cut off for one week.
28. Since we understand that in several churches grapes are brought to the altar, according to a custom which has long prevailed, and the ministers joined this with the unbloody sacrifice of the oblation, and distributed both to the people at the same time, we decree that no priest shall do this for the future, but shall administer the oblation alone to the people for the quickening of their souls and for the remission of their sins. But with regard to the offering of grapes as first fruits, the priests may bless them apart [from the offering of the oblation] and distribute them to such as seek them as an act of thanksgiving to him who is the Giver of the fruits by which our bodies are increased and fed according to his divine decree. And if any cleric shall violate this decree let him be deposed.
29. A canon of the Synod of Carthage says that the holy mysteries of the altar are not to be performed but by men who are fasting, except on one day in the year on which the Supper of the Lord is celebrated. At that time, on account perhaps of certain occasions in those places useful to the Church, even the holy Fathers themselves made use of this dispensation. But since nothing leads us to abandon exact observance, we decree that the Apostolic and Patristic tradition shall be followed; and define that it is not right to break the fast on the fifth feria of the last week of Lent, and thus to do dishonour to the whole of Lent.
30. Willing to do all things for the edification of the Church, we have determined to take care even of priests who are in barbarian churches. Wherefore if they think that they ought to exceed the Apostolic Canon concerning the not putting away of a wife on the pretext of piety and religion, and to do beyond that which is commanded, and therefore abstain by agreement with their wives from cohabitation, we decree they ought no longer to live with them in any way, so that hereby they may afford us a perfect demonstration of their promise. But we have conceded this to them on no other ground than their narrowness, and foreign and unsettled manners.
31. Clerics who in oratories which are in houses offer the Holy Mysteries or baptize, we decree ought to do this with the consent of the bishop of the place. Wherefore if any cleric shall not have so done, let him be deposed.
32. Since it has come to our knowledge that in the region of Armenia they offer wine only on the Holy Table, those who celebrate the unbloody sacrifice not mixing water with it, adducing, as authority thereof, John Chrysostom, a doctor of the Church, who says in his interpretation of the Gospel according to St. Matthew:
"And wherefore did he not drink water after he was risen again, but wine? To pluck up by the roots another wicked heresy. For since there are certain who use water in the Mysteries to show that both when he delivered the mysteries he had given wine and that when he had risen and was setting before them a mere meal without mysteries, he used wine, 'of the fruit,' says he, 'of the vine.' But a vine produces wine, not water." And from this they think the doctor overthrows the admixture of water in the holy sacrifice. Now, lest on the point from this time forward they be held in ignorance, we open out the orthodox opinion of the Father. For since there was an ancient and wicked heresy of the Hydroparastatæ (i.e., of those who offered water), who instead of wine used water in their sacrifice, this divine, confuting the detestable teaching of such a heresy, and showing that it is directly opposed to Apostolic tradition, asserted that which has just been quoted. For to his own church, where the pastoral administration had been given him, he ordered that water mixed with wine should be used at the unbloody sacrifice, so as to show forth the mingling of the blood and water which for the life of the whole world and for the redemption of its sins, was poured forth from the precious side of Christ our Redeemer; and moreover in every church where spiritual light has shined this divinely given order is observed.
For also James, the brother, according to the flesh, of Christ our God, to whom the throne of the church of Jerusalem first was entrusted, and Basil, the Archbishop of the Church of Cæsarea, whose glory has spread through all the world, when they delivered to us directions for the mystical sacrifice in writing, declared that the holy chalice is consecrated in the Divine Liturgy with water and wine. And the holy Fathers who assembled at Carthage provided in these express terms: "That in the holy Mysteries nothing besides the body and blood of the Lord be offered, as the Lord himself laid down, that is bread and wine mixed with water." Therefore if any bishop or presbyter shall not perform the holy action according to what has been handed down by the Apostles, and shall not offer the sacrifice with wine mixed with water, let him be deposed, as imperfectly showing forth the mystery and innovating on the things which have been handed down.
33. Since we know that, in the region of the Armenians, only those are appointed to the clerical orders who are of priestly descent (following in this Jewish customs); and some of those who are even untonsured are appointed to succeed cantors and readers of the divine law, we decree that henceforth it shall not be lawful for those who wish to bring any one into the clergy, to pay regard to the descent of him who is to be ordained; but let them examine whether they are worthy (according to the decrees set forth in the holy canons) to be placed on the list of the clergy, so that they may be ecclesiastically promoted, whether they are of priestly descent or not; moreover, let them not permit any one at all to read in the ambo, according to the order of those enrolled in the clergy, unless such an one have received the priestly tonsure and the canonical benediction of his own pastor; but if any one shall have been observed to act contrary to these directions, let him be cut off.
34. But in future, since the priestly canon openly sets this forth, that the crime of conspiracy or secret society is forbidden by external laws, but much more ought it to be prohibited in the Church; we also hasten to observe that if any clerics or monks are found either conspiring or entering secret societies, or devising anything against bishops or clergymen, they shall be altogether deprived of their rank.
35. It shall be lawful for no Metropolitan on the death of a bishop of his province to appropriate or sell the private property of the deceased, or that of the widowed church: but these are to be in the custody of the clergy of the diocese over which he presided until the election of another bishop, unless in the said church there are no clergymen left. For then the Metropolitan shall protect the property without diminution, handing over everything to the bishop when he is appointed.
36. Renewing the enactments by the 150 Fathers assembled at the God-protected and imperial city, and those of the 630 who met at Chalcedon; we decree that the see of Constantinople shall have equal privileges with the see of Old Rome, and shall be highly regarded in ecclesiastical matters as that is, and shall be second after it. After Constantinople shall be ranked the See of Alexandria, then that of Antioch, and afterwards the See of Jerusalem.
37. Since at different times there have been invasions of barbarians, and therefore very many cities have been subjected to the infidels, so that the bishop of a city may not be able, after he has been ordained, to take possession of his see, and to be settled in it in sacerdotal order, and so to perform and manage for it the ordinations and all things which by custom appertain to the bishop: we, preserving honour and veneration for the priesthood, and in no wise wishing to employ the Gentile injury to the ruin of ecclesiastical rights, have decreed that those who have been ordained thus, and on account of the aforesaid cause have not been settled in their sees, without any prejudice from this thing may be kept [in good standing] and that they may canonically perform the ordination of the different clerics and use the authority of their office according to the defined limits, and that whatever administration proceeds from them may be valid and legitimate. For the exercise of his office shall not be circumscribed by a season of necessity when the exact observance of law is circumscribed.
38. The canon which was made by the Fathers we also observe, which thus decreed: If any city be renewed by imperial authority, or shall have been renewed, let the order of things ecclesiastical follow the civil and public models.
39. Since our brother and fellow-worker, John, bishop of the island of Cyprus, together with his people in the province of the Hellespont, both on account of barbarian incursions, and that they may be freed from servitude of the heathen, and may be subject alone to the sceptres of most Christian rule, have emigrated from the said island, by the providence of the philanthropic God, and the labour of our Christ-loving and pious Empress; we determine that the privileges which were conceded by the divine fathers who first at Ephesus assembled, are to be preserved without any innovations, viz.: that new Justinianopolis shall have the rights of Constantinople and whoever is constituted the pious and most religious bishop thereof shall take precedence of all the bishops of the province of the Hellespont, and be elected [?] by his own bishops according to ancient custom. For the customs which obtain in each church our divine Fathers also took pains should be maintained, the existing bishop of the city of Cyzicus being subject to the metropolitan of the aforesaid Justinianopolis, for the imitation of all the rest of the bishops who are under the aforesaid beloved of God metropolitan John, by whom, as custom demands, even the bishop of the very city of Cyzicus shall be ordained.
40. Since to cleave to God by retiring from the noise and turmoil of life is very beneficial, it behooves us not without examination to admit before the proper time those who choose the monastic life, but to observe respecting them the limit handed down by our fathers, in order that we may then admit a profession of the life according to God as for ever firm, and the result of knowledge and judgment after years of discretion have been reached. He therefore who is about to submit to the yoke of monastic life should not be less than ten years of age, the examination of the matter depending on the decision of the bishop, whether he considers a longer time more conducive for his entrance and establishment in the monastic life. For although the great Basil in his holy canons decreed that she who willingly offers to God and embraces virginity, if she has completed her seventeenth year, is to be entered in the order of virgins: nevertheless, having followed the example respecting widows and deaconesses, analogy and proportion being considered, we have admitted at the said time those who have chosen the monastic life. For it is written in the divine Apostle that a widow is to be elected in the church at sixty years old: but the sacred canons have decreed that a deaconess shall be ordained at forty, since they saw that the Church by divine grace had gone forth more powerful and robust and was advancing still further, and they saw the firmness and stability of the faithful in observing the divine commandments. Wherefore we also, since we most rightly comprehend the matter, appoint the benediction of grace to him who is about to enter the struggle according to God, even as impressing speedily a certain seal upon him, hereupon introducing him to the not-long-to-be-hesitated-over and declined, or rather inciting him even to the choice and determination of good.
41. Those who in town or in villages wish to go away into cloisters, and take heed for themselves apart, before they enter a monastery and practise the anchorite's life, should for the space of three years in the fear of God submit to the Superior of the house, and fulfil obedience in all things, as is right, thus showing forth their choice of this life and that they embrace it willingly and with their whole hearts; they are then to be examined by the superior (προέδρος) of the place; and then to bear bravely outside the cloister one year more, so that their purpose may be fully manifested. For by this they will show fully and perfectly that they are not catching at vain glory, but that they are pursuing the life of solitude because of its inherent beauty and honour. After the completion of such a period, if they remain in the same intention in their choice of the life, they are to be enclosed, and no longer is it lawful for them to go out of such a house when they so desire, unless they be induced to do so for the common advantage, or other pressing necessity urging on to death; and then only with the blessing of the bishop of that place.
And those who, without the above-mentioned causes, venture forth of their convents, are first of all to be shut up in the said convent even against their wills, and then are to cure themselves with fasting and other afflictions, knowing how it is written that "no one who has put his hand to the plough and has looked back, is fit for the kingdom of heaven."
42. Those who are called Eremites and are clothed in black robes, and with long hair go about cities and associate with the worldly both men and women and bring odium upon their profession — we decree that if they will receive the habit of other monks and wear their hair cut short, they may be shut up in a monastery and numbered among the brothers; but if they do not choose to do this, they are to be expelled from the cities and forced to live in the desert (ἐρήμους) from whence also they derive their name.
43. It is lawful for every Christian to choose the life of religious discipline, and setting aside the troublous surgings of the affairs of this life to enter a monastery, and to be shaven in the fashion of a monk, without regard to what faults he may have previously committed. For God our Saviour says: "Whose comes to me, I will in no wise cast out."
As therefore the monastic method of life engraves upon us as on a tablet the life of penitence, we receive whoever approaches it sincerely; nor is any custom to be allowed to hinder him from fulfilling his intention.
44. A monk convicted of fornication, or who takes a wife for the communion of matrimony and for society, is to be subjected to the penalties of fornicators, according to the canons.
45. Whereas we understand that in some monasteries of women those who are about to be clothed with the sacred habit are first adorned in silks and garments of all kinds, and also with gold and jewels, by those who bring them there, and that they thus approach the altar and are there stripped of such a display of wealth, and that immediately thereafter the blessing of their habit takes place, and they are clothed with the black robe; we decree that henceforth this shall not be done. For it is not lawful for her who has already of her own free will put away every delight of life, and has embraced that method of life which is according to God, and has confirmed it with strong and stable reasons, and so has come to the monastery, to recall to memory the things which they had already forgotten, things of this world which perishes and passes away. For thus they raise in themselves doubts, and are disturbed in their souls, like the tossing waves, turning hither and there. Moreover, they should not give bodily evidence of heaviness of heart by weeping, but if a few tears drop from their eyes, as is like enough to be the case, they may be supposed by those who see them to have flowed μὴ μᾶλλον on account of their affection (διαθέσεως, affectionem) for the ascetic struggle rather than (ἢ) because they are quitting the world and worldly things.
46. Those women who choose the ascetic life and are settled in monasteries may by no means go forth of them. If, however, any inexorable necessity compels them, let them do so with the blessing and permission of her who is mother superior; and even then they must not go forth alone, but with some old women who are eminent in the monastery, and at the command of the lady superior. But it is not at all permitted that they should stop outside.
And men also who follow the monastic life let them on urgent necessity go forth with the blessing of him to whom the rule is entrusted.
Wherefore, those who transgress that which is now decreed by us, whether they be men or women, are to be subjected to suitable punishments.
47. No woman may sleep in a monastery of men, nor any man in a monastery of women. For it behooves the faithful to be without offense and to give no scandal, and to order their lives decorously and honestly and acceptably to God. But if any one shall have done this, whether he be cleric or layman, let him be cut off.
48. The wife of him who is advanced to the Episcopal dignity, shall be separated from her husband by their mutual consent, and after his ordination and consecration to the episcopate she shall enter a monastery situated at a distance from the abode of the bishop, and there let her enjoy the bishop's provision. And if she is deemed worthy she may be advanced to the dignity of a deaconess.
49. Renewing also the holy canon, we decree that the monasteries which have been once consecrated by the Episcopal will, are always to remain monasteries, and the things which belong to them are to be preserved to the monastery, and they cannot any more be secular abodes nor be given by any one to seculars. But if anything of this kind has been done already, we declare it to be null; and those who hereafter attempt to do so are to be subjected to canonical penalties.
50. No one at all, whether cleric or layman, is from this time forward to play at dice. And if any one hereafter shall be found doing so, if he be a cleric he is to be deposed, if a layman let him be cut off.
51. This holy and ecumenical synod altogether forbids those who are called "players," and their "spectacles," as well as the exhibition of hunts, and the theatrical dances. If any one despises the present canon, and gives himself to any of the things which are forbidden, if he be a cleric he shall be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off.
52. On all days of the holy fast of Lent, except on the Sabbath, the Lord's day and the holy day of the Annunciation, the Liturgy of the Presanctified is to be said.
53. Whereas the spiritual relationship is greater than fleshly affinity; and since it has come to our knowledge that in some places certain persons who become sponsors to children in holy salvation-bearing baptism, afterwards contract matrimony with their mothers (being widows), we decree that for the future nothing of this sort is to be done. But if any, after the present canon, shall be observed to do this, they must, in the first place, desist from this unlawful marriage, and then be subjected to the penalties of fornicators.
54. The divine scriptures plainly teach us as follows, "You shall not approach to any that is near of kin to you to uncover their nakedness." Basil, the bearer-of-God, has enumerated in his canons some marriages which are prohibited and has passed over the greater part in silence, and in both these ways has done us good service. For by avoiding a number of disgraceful names (lest by such words he should pollute his discourse) he included impurities under general terms, by which course he showed to us in a general way the marriages which are forbidden. But since by such silence, and because of the difficulty of understanding what marriages are prohibited, the matter has become confused; it seemed good to us to set it forth a little more clearly, decreeing that from this time forth he who shall marry the daughter of his father's brother; or a father or son with a mother and daughter; or a father and son with two girls who are sisters; or a mother and daughter with two brothers; or two brothers with two sisters, fall under the canon of seven years, provided they openly separate from this unlawful union.
55. Since we understand that in the city of the Romans, in the holy fast of Lent they fast on the Saturdays, contrary to the ecclesiastical observance which is traditional, it seemed good to the holy synod that also in the Church of the Romans the canon shall immovably stands fast which says: "If any cleric shall be found to fast on a Sunday or Saturday (except on one occasion only) he is to be deposed; and if he is a layman he shall be cut off."
56. We have likewise learned that in the regions of Armenia and in other places certain people eat eggs and cheese on the Sabbaths and Lord's days of the holy lent. It seems good therefore that the whole Church of God which is in all the world should follow one rule and keep the fast perfectly, and as they abstain from everything which is killed, so also should they from eggs and cheese, which are the fruit and produce of those animals from which we abstain. But if any shall not observe this law, if they be clerics, let them be deposed; but if laymen, let them be cut off.
57. It is not right to offer honey and milk on the altar.
58. None of those who are in the order of laymen may distribute the Divine Mysteries to himself if a bishop, presbyter, or deacon be present. But whoever shall dare to do such a thing, as acting contrary to what has been determined shall be cut off for a week and thenceforth let him learn not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.
59. Baptism is by no means to be administered in an oratory which is within a house; but they who are about to be held worthy of the spotless illumination are to go to a Catholic Church and there to enjoy this gift. But if any one shall be convicted of not observing what we have determined, if he be a cleric let him be deposed, if a layman let him be cut off.
60. Since the Apostle exclaims that he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit, it is clear that he who is intimate with his [i.e. the Lord's] enemy becomes one by his affinity with him. Therefore, those who pretend they are possessed by a devil and by their depravity of manners feign to manifest their form and appearance; it seems good by all means that they should be punished and that they should be subjected to afflictions and hardships of the same kind as those to which they who are truly demoniacally possessed are justly subjected with the intent of delivering them from the [work or rather] energy of the devil.
61. Those who give themselves up to soothsayers or to those who are called hecatontarchs or to any such, in order that they may learn from them what things they wish to have revealed to them, let all such, according to the decrees lately made by the Fathers concerning them, be subjected to the canon of six years. And to this [penalty] they also should be subjected who carry about she-bears or animals of the kind for the diversion and injury of the simple; as well as those who tell fortunes and fates, and genealogy, and a multitude of words of this kind from the nonsense of deceit and imposture. Also those who are called expellers of clouds, enchanters, amulet-givers, and soothsayers.
62. The so-called Calends, and what are called Bota and Brumalia, and the full assembly which takes place on the first of March, we wish to be abolished from the life of the faithful. And also the public dances of women, which may do much harm and mischief. Moreover we drive away from the life of Christians the dances given in the names of those falsely called gods by the Greeks whether of men or women, and which are performed after an ancient and un-Christian fashion; decreeing that no man from this time forth shall be dressed as a woman, nor any woman in the garb suitable to men. Nor shall he assume comic, satyric, or tragic masks; nor may men invoke the name of the execrable Bacchus when they squeeze out the wine in the presses; nor when pouring out wine into jars [to cause a laugh ], practising in ignorance and vanity the things which proceed from the deceit of insanity. Therefore those who in the future attempt any of these things which are written, having obtained a knowledge of them, if they be clerics we order them to be deposed, and if laymen to be cut off.
63. We forbid to be publicly read in Church, histories of the martyrs which have been falsely put together by the enemies of the truth, in order to dishonour the martyrs of Christ and induce unbelief among those who hear them, but we order that such books be given to the flames. But those who accept them or apply their mind to them as true we anathematize.
64. It does not befit a layman to dispute or teach publicly, thus claiming for himself authority to teach, but he should yield to the order appointed by the Lord, and to open his ears to those who have received the grace to teach, and be taught by them divine things; for in one Church God has made "different members," according to the word of the Apostle: and Gregory the Theologian, wisely interpreting this passage, commends the order in vogue with them saying: "This order brethren we revere, this we guard. Let this one be the ear; that one the tongue, the hand or any other member. Let this one teach, but let that one learn." And a little further on: "Learning in docility and abounding in cheerfulness, and ministering with alacrity, we shall not all be the tongue which is the more active member, not all of us Apostles, not all prophets, nor shall we all interpret." And again: "Why do you make yourself a shepherd when you are a sheep? Why become the head when you are a foot? Why do you try to be a commander when you are enrolled in the number of the soldiers?" And elsewhere: "Wisdom orders, Be not swift in words; nor compare yourself with the rich, being poor; nor seek to be wiser than the wise." But if any one be found weakening the present canon, he is to be cut off for forty days.
65. The fires which are lighted on the new moons by some before their shops and houses, upon which (according to a certain ancient custom) they are wont foolishly and crazily to leap, we order henceforth to cease. Therefore, whosoever shall do such a thing, if he be a cleric, let him be deposed; but if he be a layman, let him be cut off. For it is written in the Fourth Book of the Kings "And Manasses built an altar to the whole host of heaven, in the two courts of the Lord, and made his sons to pass through the fire, he used lots and augurs and divinations by birds and made ventriloquists [or pythons ] and multiplied diviners, that he might do evil before the Lord and provoke him to anger."
66. From the holy day of the Resurrection of Christ our God until the next Lord's day, for a whole week, in the holy churches the faithful ought to be free from labour, rejoicing in Christ with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; and celebrating the feast, and applying their minds to the reading of the holy Scriptures, and delighting in the Holy Mysteries; for thus shall we be exalted with Christ and together with him be raised up. Therefore, on the aforesaid days there must not be any horse races or any public spectacle.
67. The divine Scripture commands us to abstain from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication. Those therefore who on account of a dainty stomach prepare by any art for food the blood of any animal, and so eat it, we punish suitably. If anyone henceforth venture to eat in any way the blood of an animal, if he be a clergyman, let him be deposed; if a layman, let him be cut off.
68. It is unlawful for anyone to corrupt or cut up a book of the Old or New Testament or of our holy and approved preachers and teachers, or to give them up to the traders in books or to those who are called perfumers, or to hand it over for destruction to any other like persons: unless to be sure it has been rendered useless either by bookworms, or by water, or in some other way. He who henceforth shall be observed to do such a thing shall be cut off for one year. Likewise also he who buys such books (unless he keeps them for his own use, or gives them to another for his benefit to be preserved) and has attempted to corrupt them, let him be cut off.
69. It is not permitted to a layman to enter the sanctuary (Holy Altar, Gk.), though, in accordance with a certain ancient tradition, the imperial power and authority is by no means prohibited from this when he wishes to offer his gifts to the Creator.
70. Women are not permitted to speak at the time of the Divine Liturgy; but, according to the word of Paul the Apostle, "let them be silent. For it is not permitted to them to speak, but to be in subjection, as the law also says. But if they wish to learn anything let them ask their own husbands at home."
71. Those who are taught the civil laws must not adopt the customs of the Gentiles, nor be induced to go to the theatre, nor to keep what are called Cylestras, nor to wear clothing contrary to the general custom; and this holds good when they begin their training, when they reach its end, and, in short, all the time of its duration. If any one from this time shall dare to do contrary to this canon he is to be cut off.
72. An orthodox man is not permitted to marry an heretical woman, nor an orthodox woman to be joined to an heretical man. But if anything of this kind appear to have been done by any [we require them] to consider the marriage null, and that the marriage be dissolved. For it is not fitting to mingle together what should not be mingled, nor is it right that the sheep be joined with the wolf, nor the lot of sinners with the portion of Christ. But if any one shall transgress the things which we have decreed let him be cut off. But if any who up to this time are unbelievers and are not yet numbered in the flock of the orthodox have contracted lawful marriage between themselves, and if then, one choosing the right and coming to the light of truth and the other remaining still detained by the bond of error and not willing to behold with steady eye the divine rays, the unbelieving woman is pleased to cohabit with the believing man, or the unbelieving man with the believing woman, let them not be separated, according to the divine Apostle, "for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife by her husband."
73. Since the life-giving cross has shown to us Salvation, we should be careful that we render due honour to that by which we were saved from the ancient fall. Wherefore, in mind, in word, in feeling giving veneration (προσκύνησιν) to it, we command that the figure of the cross, which some have placed on the floor, be entirely removed therefrom, lest the trophy of the victory won for us be desecrated by the trampling under foot of those who walk over it. Therefore those who from this present represent on the pavement the sign of the cross, we decree are to be cut off.
74. It is not permitted to hold what are called Agapæ, that is love-feasts, in the Lord's houses or churches, nor to eat within the house, nor to spread couches. If any dare to do so let him cease therefrom or be cut off.
75. We will that those whose office it is to sing in the churches do not use undisciplined vociferations, nor force nature to shouting, nor adopt any of those modes which are incongruous and unsuitable for the church: but that they offer the psalmody to God, who is the observer of secrets, with great attention and compunction. For the Sacred Oracle taught that the Sons of Israel were to be pious.
76. It is not right that those who are responsible for reverence to churches should place within the sacred bounds an eating place, nor offer food there, nor make other sales. For God our Saviour teaching us when he was tabernacling in the flesh commanded not to make his Father's house a house of merchandize. He also poured out the small coins of the money-changers, and drove out all those who made common the temple. If, therefore, anyone shall be taken in the aforesaid fault let him be cut off.
77. It is not right that those who are dedicated to religion, whether clerics or ascetics, should wash in the bath with women, nor should any Christian man or layman do so. For this is severely condemned by the heathens. But if any one is caught in this thing, if he is a cleric let him be deposed; if a layman, let him be cut off.
78. It behooves those who are illuminated to learn the Creed by heart and to recite it to the bishop or presbyters on the Fifth Feria of the Week.
79. As we confess the divine birth of the Virgin to be without any childbed, since it came to pass without seed, and as we preach this to the entire flock, so we subject to correction those who through ignorance do anything which is inconsistent therewith. Wherefore since some on the day after the holy Nativity of Christ our God are seen cooking σεμίδαλῖν, and distributing it to each other, on pretext of doing honour to the puerperia of the spotless Virgin Maternity, we decree that henceforth nothing of the kind be done by the faithful. For this is not honouring the Virgin (who above thought and speech bare in the flesh the incomprehensible Word) when we define and describe, from ordinary things and from such as occur with ourselves, her ineffable parturition. If therefore anyone henceforth be discovered doing any such thing, if he be a cleric let him be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off.
80. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or any of those who are enumerated in the list of the clergy, or a layman, has no very grave necessity nor difficult business so as to keep him from church for a very long time, but being in town does not go to church on three consecutive Sundays — three weeks — if he is a cleric let him be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off.
81. Whereas we have heard that in some places in the hymn Trisagion there is added after "Holy and Immortal," "Who was crucified for us, have mercy upon us," and since this as being alien to piety was by the ancient and holy Fathers cast out of the hymn, as also the violent heretics who inserted these new words were cast out of the Church; we also, confirming the things which were formerly piously established by our holy Fathers, anathematize those who after this present decree allow in church this or any other addition to the most sacred hymn; but if indeed he who has transgressed is of the sacerdotal order, we command that he be deprived of his priestly dignity, but if he be a layman or monk let him be cut off.
82. In some pictures of the venerable icons, a lamb is painted to which the Precursor points his finger, which is received as a type of grace, indicating beforehand through the Law, our true Lamb, Christ our God. Embracing therefore the ancient types and shadows as symbols of the truth, and patterns given to the Church, we prefer "grace and truth," receiving it as the fulfilment of the Law. In order therefore that "that which is perfect" may be delineated to the eyes of all, at least in colored expression, we decree that the figure in human form of the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, Christ our God, be henceforth exhibited in images, instead of the ancient lamb, so that all may understand by means of it the depths of the humiliation of the Word of God, and that we may recall to our memory his conversation in the flesh, his passion and salutary death, and his redemption which was wrought for the whole world.
83. No one may give the Eucharist to the bodies of the dead; for it is written "Take and eat." But the bodies of the dead can neither "take" nor "eat."
84. Following the canonical laws of the Fathers, we decree concerning infants, as often as they are found without trusty witnesses who say that they are undoubtedly baptized; and as often as they are themselves unable on account of their age to answer satisfactorily in respect to the initiatory mystery given to them; that they ought without any offense to be baptized, lest such a doubt might deprive them of the sanctification of such a purification.
85. We have received from the Scriptures that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established. Therefore we decree that slaves who are manumitted by their masters in the presence of three witnesses shall enjoy that honour; for they being present at the time will add strength and stability to the liberty given, and they will bring it to pass that faith will be kept in those things which they now witness were done in their presence.
86. Those who to the destruction of their own souls procure and bring up harlots, if they be clerics, they are to be [cut off and] deposed, if laymen to be cut off.
87. She who has left her husband is an adulteress if she has come to another, according to the holy and divine Basil, who has gathered this most excellently from the prophet Jeremiah: "If a woman has become another man's, her husband shall not return to her, but being defiled she shall remain defiled;" and again, "He who has an adulteress is senseless and impious." If therefore she appears to have departed from her husband without reason, he is deserving of pardon and she of punishment. And pardon shall be given to him that he may be in communion with the Church. But he who leaves the wife lawfully given him, and shall take another is guilty of adultery by the sentence of the Lord. And it has been decreed by our Fathers that they who are such must be "weepers" for a year, "hearers" for two years, "prostrators" for three years, and in the seventh year to stand with the faithful and thus be counted worthy of the Oblation [if with tears they do penance].
88. No one may drive any beast into a church except perchance a traveller, urged thereto by the greatest necessity, in default of a shed or resting-place, may have turned aside into said church. For unless the beast had been taken inside, it would have perished, and he, by the loss of his beast of burden, and thus without means of continuing his journey, would be in peril of death. And we are taught that the Sabbath was made for man: wherefore also the safety and comfort of man are by all means to be placed first. But should anyone be detected without any necessity such as we have just mentioned, leading his beast into a church, if he be a cleric let him be deposed, and if a layman let him be cut off.
89. The faithful spending the days of the Salutatory Passion in fasting, praying and compunction of heart, ought to fast until the midnight of the Great Sabbath: since the divine Evangelists, Matthew and Luke, have shown us how late at night it was [that the resurrection took place], the one by using the words ὀΨὲ σαββάτων, and the other by the words ὄρθρου βαθέος .
90. We have received from our divine Fathers the canon law that in honour of Christ's resurrection, we are not to kneel on Sundays. Lest therefore we should ignore the fullness of this observance we make it plain to the faithful that after the priests have gone to the Altar for Vespers on Saturdays (according to the prevailing custom) no one shall kneel in prayer until the evening of Sunday, at which time after the entrance for compline, again with bended knees we offer our prayers to the Lord. For taking the night after the Sabbath, which was the forerunner of our Lord's resurrection, we begin from it to sing in the spirit hymns to God, leading our feast out of darkness into light, and thus during an entire day and night, we celebrate the Resurrection.
91. Those who give drugs for procuring abortion, and those who receive poisons to kill the fœtus, are subjected to the penalty of murder.
92. The holy synod decrees that those who in the name of marriage carry off women and those who in any way assist the ravishers, if they be clerics, they shall lose their rank, but if they be laymen they shall be anathematized.
93. If the wife of a man who has gone away and does not appear, cohabit with another before she is assured of the death of the first, she is an adulteress. The wives of soldiers who have married husbands who do not appear are in the same case; as are also they who on account of the wanderings of their husbands do not wait for their return. But the circumstance here has some excuse, in that the suspicion of his death becomes very great. But she who in ignorance has married a man who at the time was deserted by his wife, and then is dismissed because his first wife returns to him, has indeed committed fornication, but through ignorance; therefore she is not prevented from marrying, but it is better if she remain as she is. If a soldier shall return after a long time, and find his wife on account of his long absence has been united to another man, if he so wishes, he may receive his own wife [back again], pardon being extended in consideration of their ignorance both to her and to the man who took her home in second marriage.
94. The canon subjects to penalties those who take heathen oaths, and we decree to them excommunication.
95. Those who from the heretics come over to orthodoxy, and to the number of those who should be saved, we receive according to the following order and custom. Arians, Macedonians, Novatians, who call themselves Cathari, Aristeri, and Testareskaidecatitæ, or Tetraditæ, and Apollinarians, we receive on their presentation of certificates and on their anathematizing every heresy which does not hold as does the holy Apostolic Church of God: then first of all we anoint them with the holy chrism on their foreheads, eyes, nostrils, mouth and ears; and as we seal them we say — "The seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost."
But concerning the Paulianists it has been determined by the Catholic Church that they shall by all means be rebaptized. The Eunomeans also, who baptize with one immersion; and the Montanists, who here are called Phrygians; and the Sabellians, who consider the Son to be the same as the Father, and are guilty in certain other grave matters, and all the other heresies— for there are many heretics here, especially those who come from the region of the Galatians — all of their number who are desirous of coming to the Orthodox faith, we receive as Gentiles. And on the first day we make them Christians, on the second Catechumens, then on the third day we exorcise them, at the same time also breathing thrice upon their faces and ears; and thus we initiate them, and we make them spend time in church and hear the Scriptures; and then we baptize them.
And the Manichæans, and Valentinians and Marcionites and all of similar heresies must give certificates and anathematize each his own heresy, and also Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Severus, and the other chiefs of such heresies, and those who think with them, and all the aforesaid heresies; and so they become partakers of the holy Communion.
96. Those who by baptism have put on Christ have professed that they will copy his manner of life which he led in the flesh. Those therefore who adorn and arrange their hair to the detriment of those who see them, that is by cunningly devised intertwinings, and by this means put a bait in the way of unstable souls, we take in hand to cure paternally with a suitable punishment: training them and teaching them to live soberly, in order that having laid aside the deceit and vanity of material things, they may give their minds continually to a life which is blessed and free from mischief, and have their conversation in fear, pure, [and holy ]; and thus come as near as possible to God through their purity of life; and adorn the inner man rather than the outer, and that with virtues, and good and blameless manners, so that they leave in themselves no remains of the left-handedness of the adversary. But if any shall act contrary to the present canon let him be cut off.
97. Those who have commerce with a wife or in any other manner without regard thereto make sacred places common, and treat them with contempt and thus remain in them, we order all such to be expelled, even from the dwellings of the catechumens which are in the venerable temples. And if any one shall not observe these directions, if he be a cleric let him be deposed, but if a layman let him be cut off.
98. He who brings to the intercourse of marriage a woman who is betrothed to another man who is still alive, is to lie under the charge of adultery.
99. We have further learned that, in the regions of the Armenians, certain persons boil joints of meat within the sanctuary and offer portions to the priests, distributing it after the Jewish fashion. Wherefore, that we may keep the church undefiled, we decree that it is not lawful for any priest to seize the separate portions of flesh meat from those who offer them, but they are to be content with what he that offers pleases to give them; and further we decree that such offering be made outside the church. And if any one does not thus, let him be cut off.
100. "Let your eyes behold the thing which is right," orders Wisdom, "and keep your heart with all care." For the bodily senses easily bring their own impressions into the soul. Therefore we order that henceforth there shall in no way be made pictures, whether they are in paintings or in what way so ever, which attract the eye and corrupt the mind, and incite it to the enkindling of base pleasures. And if any one shall attempt to do this he is to be cut off.
101. The great and divine Apostle Paul with loud voice calls man created in the image of God, the body and temple of Christ. Excelling, therefore, every sensible creature, he who by the saving Passion has attained to the celestial dignity, eating and drinking Christ, is fitted in all respects for eternal life, sanctifying his soul and body by the participation of divine grace. Wherefore, if any one wishes to be a participator of the immaculate Body in the time of the Synaxis, and to offer himself for the communion, let him draw near, arranging his hands in the form of a cross, and so let him receive the communion of grace. But such as, instead of their hands, make vessels of gold or other materials for the reception of the divine gift, and by these receive the immaculate communion, we by no means allow to come, as preferring inanimate and inferior matter to the image of God. But if any one shall be found imparting the immaculate Communion to those who bring vessels of this kind, let him be cut off as well as the one who brings them.
102. It behooves those who have received from God the power to loose and bind, to consider the quality of the sin and the readiness of the sinner for conversion, and to apply medicine suitable for the disease, lest if he is injudicious in each of these respects he should fail in regard to the healing of the sick man. For the disease of sin is not simple, but various and multiform, and it germinates many mischievous offshoots, from which much evil is diffused, and it proceeds further until it is checked by the power of the physician. Wherefore he who professes the science of spiritual medicine ought first of all to consider the disposition of him who has sinned, and to see whether he tends to health or (on the contrary) provokes to himself disease by his own behaviour, and to look how he can care for his manner of life during the interval. And if he does not resist the physician, and if the ulcer of the soul is increased by the application of the imposed medicaments, then let him mete out mercy to him according as he is worthy of it. For the whole account is between God and him to whom the pastoral rule has been delivered, to lead back the wandering sheep and to cure that which is wounded by the serpent; and that he may neither cast them down into the precipices of despair, nor loosen the bridle towards dissolution or contempt of life; but in some way or other, either by means of sternness and astringency, or by greater softness and mild medicines, to resist this sickness and exert himself for the healing of the ulcer, now examining the fruits of his repentance and wisely managing the man who is called to higher illumination. For we ought to know two things, to wit, the things which belong to strictness and those which belong to custom, and to follow the traditional form in the case of those who are not fitted for the highest things, as holy Basil teaches us.
Apostolic Canons:
1. Let a bishop be ordained by two or three bishops.
2. A presbyter by one bishop, as also a deacon, and the rest of the clergy.
3. If any bishop or presbyter, otherwise than our Lord has ordained concerning the sacrifice, offer other things at the altar of God, as honey, milk, or strong beer instead of wine, any necessaries, or birds, or animals, or pulse, otherwise than is ordained, let him be removed from office; excepting grains of new grain, or ears of wheat, or bunches of grapes in their season.
4. For it is not lawful to offer anything besides these at the altar, and oil for the holy lamp, and incense in the time of the divine oblation.
5. But let all other fruits be sent to the house of the bishop, as first-fruits to him and to the presbyters, but not to the altar. Now it is plain that the bishop and presbyters are to divide them to the deacons and to the rest of the clergy.
6. Let not a bishop, a priest, or a deacon cast off his own wife under pretence of piety; but if he does cast her off, let him be suspended. If he go on in it, let him be removed from office.
7. Let not a bishop, a priest, or deacon undertake the cares of this world; but if he do, let him be removed from office.
8. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon shall celebrate the holiday of the passover before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be removed from office.
9. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or any one of the catalogue of the priesthood, when the oblation is over, does not take communion, let him give his reason; and if it be just, let him be forgiven; but if he does not do it, let him be suspended, as becoming the cause of damage to the people, and occasioning a suspicion against him that offered, as of one that did not rightly offer.
10. All those of the faithful that enter into the holy church of God, and hear the sacred Scriptures, but do not stay during prayer and the holy communion, must be suspended, as causing disorder in the church.
11. If any one, even in the house, prays with a person excommunicated, let him also be suspended.
12. If any clergyman prays with one removed from office as with a clergyman, let himself also be removed from office.
13. If any clergyman or layman who is suspended, or ought not to be received, goes away, and is received in another city without commendatory letters, let both those who received him and he that was received be suspended. But if he be already suspended, let his suspension be lengthened, as lying to and deceiving the Church of God.
14. A bishop ought not to leave his own parish and leap to another, although the multitude should compel him, unless there be some good reason forcing him to do this, as that he can contribute much greater profit to the people of the new parish by the word of piety; but this is not to be settled by himself, but by the judgment of many bishops, and very great supplication.
15. If any presbyter or deacon, or any one of the catalogue of the clergy, leaves his own parish and goes to another, and, entirely removing himself, continues in that other parish without the consent of his own bishop, him we command no longer to go on in his ministry, especially in case his bishop calls upon him to return, and he does not obey, but continues in his disorder. However, let him take communion there as a layman.
16. But if the bishop with whom they are undervalues the deprivation decreed against them, and receives them as clergymen, let him be suspended as a teacher of disorder.
17. He who has been twice married after his baptism, or has had a concubine, cannot be made a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or indeed any one of the sacerdotal catalogue.
18. He who has taken a widow, or a divorced woman, or an harlot, or a servant, or one belonging to the theatre, cannot be either a bishop, priest, or deacon, or indeed any one of the sacerdotal catalogue.
19. He who has married two sisters, or his brother's or sister's daughter, cannot be a clergyman.
20. Let a clergyman who becomes a surety be removed from office.
21. Let an eunuch, if he be such by the injury of men, or his virilia were taken away in the persecution, or he was born such, and yet is worthy of episcopacy, be made a bishop.
22. Let not him who has disabled himself be made a clergyman; for he is a self-murderer, and an enemy to the creation of God.
23. If any one who is of the clergy disables himself, let him be removed from office, for he is a murderer of himself.
24. Let a layman who disables himself be separated for three years, for he lays a snare for his own life.
25. Let a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who is taken in fornication, or perjury, or stealing, be removed from office, but not suspended; for the Scripture says: "You shall not avenge twice for the same crime by affliction."
26. In like manner also as to the rest of the clergy.
27. Of those who come into the clergy unmarried, we permit only the readers and singers, if they have a mind, to marry afterward.
28. We command that a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who strikes the faithful that offend, or the unbelievers who do wickedly, and thinks to terrify them by such means, be removed from office, for our Lord has nowhere taught us such things. On the contrary, "when Himself was stricken, He did not strike again; when He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not."
29. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who is removed from office justly for manifest crimes, does venture to meddle with that ministration which was once entrusted to him, let the same person be entirely cut off from the Church.
30. If any bishop obtains that dignity by money, or even a presbyter or deacon, let him and the person that ordained him be removed from office; and let him be entirely cut off from communion, as Simon Magus was by me Peter.
31. If any bishop makes use of the rulers of this world, and by their means obtains to be a bishop of a church, let him be removed from office and suspended, and all that take communion with him.
32. If any presbyter despises his own bishop, and assembles separately, and fixes another altar, when he has nothing to condemn in his bishop either as to piety or righteousness, let him be removed from office as an ambitious person; for he is a tyrant, and the rest of the clergy, whoever join themselves to him. And let the laity be suspended. But let these things be done after one, and a second, or even a third admonition from the bishop.
33. If any presbyter or deacon be put under suspension by his bishop, it is not lawful for any other to receive him, but for him only who put him under suspension, unless it happens that he who put him under suspension die.
34. Do not receive any stranger, whether bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, without commendatory letters; and when such are offered, let them be examined. And if they be preachers of piety, let them be received; but if not, supply their wants, but do not receive them to communion: for many things are done by surprise.
35. The bishops of every country ought to know who is the chief among them, and to esteem him as their head, and not to do any great thing without his consent; but every one to manage only the affairs that belong to his own parish, and the places subject to it. But let him not do anything without the consent of all; for it is by this means there will be unanimity, and God will be glorified by Christ, in the Holy Spirit.
36. A bishop must not venture to ordain out of his own bounds for cities or countries that are not subject to him. But if he be convicted of having done so without the consent of such as governed those cities or countries, let him be removed from office, both the bishop himself and those whom he has ordained.
37. If any bishop that is ordained does not undertake his office, nor take care of the people committed to him, let him be suspended until he do undertake it; and in the like manner a presbyter and a deacon. But if he goes, and is not received, not because of the want of his own consent, but because of the ill temper of the people, let him continue bishop; but let the clergy of that city be suspended, because they have not taught that disobedient people better.
38. Let a synod of bishops be held twice in the year, and let them ask one another the doctrines of piety; and let them determine the ecclesiastical disputes that happen — once in the fourth week of Pentecost, and again on the twelfth of the month Hyperberetæus.
39. Let the bishop have the care of ecclesiastical revenues, and administer them as in the presence of God. But it is not lawful for him to appropriate any part of them to himself, or to give the things of God to his own kindred. But if they be poor, let him support them as poor; but let him not, under such pretences, alienate the revenues of the Church.
40. Let not the presbyters and deacons do anything without the consent of the bishop, for it is he who is entrusted with the people of the Lord, and will be required to give an account of their souls. Let the proper goods of the bishop, if he has any, and those belonging to the Lord, be openly distinguished, that he may have power when he dies to leave his own goods as he pleases, and to whom he pleases; that, under pretence of the ecclesiastical revenues, the bishop's own may not come short, who sometimes has a wife and children, or kinsfolk, or servants. For this is just before God and men, that neither the Church suffer any loss by the not knowing which revenues are the bishop's own, nor his kindred, under pretence of the Church, be undone, or his relations fall into lawsuits, and so his death be liable to reproach.
41. We command that the bishop have power over the goods of the Church; for if he be entrusted with the precious souls of men, much more ought he to give directions about goods, that they all be distributed to those in want, according to his authority, by the presbyters and deacons, and be used for their support with the fear of God, and with all reverence. He is also to partake of those things he wants, if he does want them, for his necessary occasions, and those of the brethren who live with him, that they may not by any means be in straits: for the law of God appointed that those who waited at the altar should be maintained by the altar; since not so much as a soldier does at any time bear arms against the enemies at his own charges.
42. Let a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who indulges himself in dice or drinking, either leave off those practices, or let him be removed from office.
43. If a subdeacon, a reader, or a singer does the like, either let him leave off, or let him be suspended; and so for one of the laity.
44. Let a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who requires usury of those he lends to, either leave off to do so, or let him be removed from office.
45. Let a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who only prays with heretics, be suspended; but if he also permit them to perform any part of the office of a clergyman, let him be removed from office.
46. We command that a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who receives the baptism, or the sacrifice of heretics, be removed from office: "For what agreement is there between Christ and Belial? Or what part has a believer with an infidel?"
47. If a bishop or presbyter rebaptizes him who has had true baptism, or does not baptize him who is polluted by the ungodly, let him be removed from office, as ridiculing the cross and the death of the Lord, and not distinguishing between real priests and counterfeit ones.
48. If a layman divorces his own wife, and takes another, or one divorced by another, let him be suspended.
49. If any bishop or presbyter does not baptize according to the Lord's constitution, into the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, but into three beings without beginning, or into three Sons, or three Comforters, let him be removed from office.
50. If any bishop or presbyter does not perform the three immersions of the one admission, but one immersion, which is given into the death of Christ, let him be removed from office; for the Lord did not say, "Baptize into my death," but, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Therefore, O bishops, baptize thrice into one Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, according to the will of Christ, and our constitution by the Spirit.
51. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or indeed any one of the sacerdotal catalogue, abstains from marriage, flesh, and wine, not for his own exercise, but because he abominates these things, forgetting that "all things were very good," Genesis 1:31 and that "God made man male and female," Genesis 1:26 and blasphemously abuses the creation, either let him reform, or let him be removed from office, and be cast out of the Church; and the same for one of the laity.
52. If any bishop or presbyter does not receive him that returns from his sin, but rejects him, let him be removed from office; because he grieves Christ, who says, "There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents." Luke 15:7
53. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon does not on festival days partake of flesh or wine, let him be removed from office, as "having a seared conscience," 1 Timothy 4:2 and becoming a cause of scandal to many.
54. If any one of the clergy be taken eating in a tavern, let him be suspended, excepting when he is forced to bait at an inn upon the road.
55. If any one of the clergy abuses his bishop unjustly, let him be removed from office; for says the Scripture, "You shall not speak evil of the ruler of your people." Exodus 22:28
56. If any one of the clergy abuses a presbyter or a deacon, let him be separated.
57. If any one of the clergy mocks at a lame, a deaf, or a blind man, or at one maimed in his feet, let him be suspended; and the like for the laity.
58. Let a bishop or presbyter who takes no care of the clergy or people, and does not instruct them in piety, be separated; and if he continues in his negligence, let him be removed from office.
59. If any bishop or presbyter, when any one of the clergy is in want, does not supply his necessity, let him be suspended; and if he continues in it, let him be removed from office, as having killed his brother.
60. If any one publicly reads in the Church the spurious books of the ungodly, as if they were holy, to the destruction of the people and of the clergy, let him be removed from office.
61. If there be an accusation against a Christian for fornication, or adultery, or any other forbidden action, and he be convicted, let him not be promoted into the clergy.
62. If any one of the clergy for fear of men, as of a Jew, or a Gentile, or an heretic, shall deny the name of Christ, let him be suspended; but if he deny the name of a clergyman, let him be removed from office; but when he repents, let him be received as one of the laity.
63. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or indeed any one of the sacerdotal catalogue, eats flesh with the blood of its life, or that which is torn by beasts, or which died of itself, let him be removed from office; for this the law itself has forbidden. But if he be one of the laity, let him be suspended.
64. If any one of the clergy be found to fast on the Lord's day, or on the Sabbath day, excepting one only, let him be removed from office; but if he be one of the laity, let him be suspended.
65. If any one, either of the clergy or laity, enters into a synagogue of the Jews or heretics to pray, let him be removed from office and suspended.
66. If any one of the clergy strikes one in a quarrel, and kills him by that one stroke, let him be removed from office, on account of his rashness; but if he be one of the laity, let him be suspended.
67. If any one has offered violence to a virgin not betrothed, and keeps her, let him be suspended. But it is not lawful for him to take another to wife; but he must retain her whom he has chosen, although she be poor.
68. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, receives a second ordination from any one, let him be removed from office, and the person who ordained him, unless he can show that his former ordination was from the heretics; for those that are either baptized or ordained by such as these, can be neither Christians nor clergymen.
69. If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or reader, or singer, does not fast the fast of forty days, or the fourth day of the week, and the day of the Preparation, let him be removed from office, except he be hindered by weakness of body. But if he be one of the laity, let him be suspended.
70. If any bishop, or any other of the clergy, fasts with the Jews, or keeps the festivals with them, or accepts of the presents from their festivals, as unleavened bread or some such thing, let him be removed from office; but if he be one of the laity, let him be suspended.
71. If any Christian carries oil into an heathen temple, or into a synagogue of the Jews, or lights up lamps in their festivals, let him be suspended.
72. If any one, either of the clergy or laity, takes away from the holy Church an honeycomb, or oil, let him be suspended, and let him add the fifth part to that which he took away.
73. A vessel of silver, or gold, or linen, which is sanctified, let no one appropriate to his own use, for it is unjust; but if any one be caught, let him be punished with suspension.
74. If a bishop be accused of any crime by credible and faithful persons, it is necessary that he be cited by the bishops; and if he comes and makes his apology, and yet is convicted, let his punishment be determined. But if, when he is cited, he does not obey, let him be cited a second time, by two bishops sent to him. But if even then he despises them, and will not come, let the synod pass what sentence they please against him, that he may not appear to gain advantage by avoiding their judgment.
75. Do not receive an heretic in a testimony against a bishop; nor a Christian if he be single. For the law says, "In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established."
76. A bishop must not gratify his brother, or his son, or any other kinsman, with the episcopal dignity, or ordain whom he pleases; for it is not just to make heirs to episcopacy, and to gratify human affections in divine matters. For we must not put the Church of God under the laws of inheritance; but if any one shall do so, let his ordination be invalid, and let him be punished with suspension.
77. If any one be maimed in an eye, or lame of his leg, but is worthy of the episcopal dignity, let him be made a bishop; for it is not a blemish of the body that can defile him, but the pollution of the soul.
78. But if he be deaf and blind, let him not be made a bishop; not as being a defiled person, but that the ecclesiastical affairs may not be hindered.
79. If any one has a demon, let him not be made one of the clergy. Nay, let him not pray with the faithful; but when he is cleansed, let him be received; and if he be worthy, let him be ordained.
80. It is not right to ordain him bishop presently who is just come in from the Gentiles, and baptized; or from a wicked mode of life: for it is unjust that he who has not yet afforded any trial of himself should be a teacher of others, unless it anywhere happens by divine grace.
81. We have said that a bishop ought not to let himself into public administrations, but to attend on all opportunities upon the necessary affairs of the Church. Either therefore let him agree not to do so, or let him be removed from office. For, "no one can serve two masters," Matthew 6:24 according to the Lord's admonition.
82. We do not permit servants to be ordained into the clergy without their masters' consent; for this would grieve those that owned them. For such a practice would occasion the subversion of families. But if at any time a servant appears worthy to be ordained into an high office, such as our Onesimus appeared to be, and if his master allows of it, and gives him his freedom, and dismisses him from his house, let him be ordained.
83. Let a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, who goes to the army, and desires to retain both the Roman government and the sacerdotal administration, be removed from office. For "the things of Cæsar belong to Cæsar, and the things of God to God."
84. Whosoever shall abuse the king or the governor unjustly, let him suffer punishment; and if he be a clergyman, let him be removed from office; but if he be a layman, let him be suspended.
85. Let the following books be esteemed venerable and holy by you, both of the clergy and laity. Of the Old Covenant: the five books of Moses— Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; one of Joshua the Son of Nun, one of the Judges, one of Ruth, four of the Kings, two of the Chronicles, two of Ezra, one of Esther, one of Judith, three of the Maccabees, one of Job, one hundred and fifty psalms; three books of Solomon — Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs; sixteen prophets. And besides these, take care that your young persons learn the Wisdom of the very learned Sirach. But our sacred books, that is, those of the New Covenant, are these: the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the fourteen Epistles of Paul; two Epistles of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude; two Epistles of Clement; and the Constitutions dedicated to you the bishops by me Clement, in eight books; which it is not fit to publish before all, because of the mysteries contained in them; and the Acts of us the Apostles.
Notable Writers and Works: Isidore, John Climacus
8th Century of the Church
749: Greek Orthodox theologian and hymnographer John of Damascus dies near Jerusalem. One of the great theologians of the Eastern Orthodox Church, he wrote comprehensively on the theology of Eastern Christianity and fought against those who wanted to rid the church of icons
767: Alcuin, the academic who would later play a large role in establishing schools under Charlemagne, becomes headmaster of York Cathedral School, where he once studied. Alcuin's curriculum was built on the seven liberal arts: the elementary Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and the more advanced Quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy).
787: The Second Council of Nicea begins under Pope Hadrian I. The council ruled against getting rid of icons in the church
Notable Writers and Works: Bede, John of Damascus
9th Century of the Church
800: When Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne (Charles the Great) "Emperor of the Romans," the first Holy Roman Emperor, on Christmas Day, Charlemagne announced, "Our task [as secular ruler] is externally, with God's help, to defend with our arms the holy Church of Christ against attacks by the heathen from any side and against devastation by the infidels and, internally, to strengthen the Church by the recognition of the Catholic faith." Indeed, within his kingdom he was far more influential in church affairs than the Pope. Charles appointed and deposed bishops, directed a revision of the text of the Bible, instituted changes to the liturgy, set rules for life in the monasteries, and sent investigators to dismiss priests with insufficient learning or piety
843: Empress Theodora reinstates icons once and for all in the Eastern churches, effectively ending the medieval iconoclastic controversy. A council in 787 had allowed the veneration of icons, but opponents of images still controlled most of the government and much of the church leadership. The controversy continued, however, and was one of the reasons for the Great Schism between Catholics and the Orthodox in 1054
869: The Fourth Constantinople Council opens. During its six sessions, the council again ruled in favor of allowing icons in the church
899: Alfred the Great, ruler of Wessex, England, from 871, dies. His defeat of the Danes ensured Christianity's survival in England, but he is also known for his ecclesiastical reforms and his desire to revive learning in his country
10th Century of the Church
988: Rus' Grand Prince Vladimir orders his people to be baptized into the Orthodox Christian faith. He personally oversaw the baptism of the majority of the population of Kiev, the capital of his realm
993: Ulric, bishop of Augsburg from 923 to 973, is formally canonized by Pope John XV, the first recorded canonization by a Pope
11th Century of the Church
1000: Leif "the Lucky" Eriksson, who later evangelized Greenland, is reported to have been the first European to reach North America on this date
1030: Viking king Olaf Haraldsson, patron saint of Norway, dies in the battle of Stiklestad. Though limited in his ability to force his countrymen to convert during his reign, his death was later hailed as a miracle-filled martyrdom and, as his legend grew, it spurred on Christians converting the country. In time, Olaf became one of the most well-known saints of medieval Christendom, and his relics in Norway became one of Europe's most popular pilgrimage destinations
1054: Pope Leo IX dies. Because Leo refused the title of Ecumenical Patriarch to Michael Cerularius (Patriarch of Constantinople) and demanded recognition of the filioque clause (the Western addition to the Nicene Creed that asserts "the Holy Ghost . . . proceeds from the Father and the Son), he is usually assigned responsibility for the final break between Eastern and Western Christianity
1054: Church legates of the Roman Pope march into the church of Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and place a bull on the altar, excommunicating him. Cerularius then excommunicates Pope Leo IX and his followers
1066: William the Conqueror leads the Normans to victory over the English Saxons in the Battle of Hastings. William’s victory also had great religious impact. He spent significant effort combatting paganism and bringing English Christianity into stricter conformity with Rome (in part by outlawing English Bibles and liturgy), which lasted through the English Reformation
1076: Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV convenes the Synod of Worms to secure the deposition of Pope Gregory VII for asserting that the Pope is in a higher position than secular rulers. The Synod charged the Pope with serious crimes, called upon Rome to depose him, and issued other anti-papal statements. The Pope quickly excommunicated Henry. One year later, Henry traveled to Canossa, Italy, and stood three days in the snow in an attempt to gain Gregory's forgiveness. Gregory granted it, but the two men soon fought again, and Henry set up an anti-Pope in Gregory's place. Gregory then argued that only the College of Cardinals can elect a Pope
1079: Stanislaus, Polish bishop of Krakow, is martyred. Whether or not he attempted to overthrow King Boleslaw II (called Boleslaw the Cruel) is debatable; he certainly excommunicated the evil king. In return, Boleslaw deemed him a traitor and had Stanislaus murdered
1086: Canute IV, the king of Denmark, is killed by his subjects. Though Denmark was already nominally Christian when he became king, he went to great lengths to revitalize the faith. He built and restored churches and monasteries and created laws protecting the clergy. But his "new order," which included higher taxes and mandatory tithes, led to a revolt. Canute was reportedly killed in front of the altar of St. Alban’s Priory in Odense, and he was declared a martyr and saint in 1101
1088: Odo of Lagery is elected Pope and takes the name Urban II. Though he had some trouble taking his office (Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV supported an anti-Pope, Clement III), he made a name for himself by proclaiming the first Crusade in 1095. His phrase "God wills it" in that proclamation became the battle cry for Christendom
1093: Anselm, called "the founder of Scholasticism" and the greatest scholar between Augustine and Aquinas, is consecrated archbishop of Canterbury
1093: French monk Peter the Hermit returns from Jerusalem to Pope Urban II with a plea to do something to stop the Muslims from harassing Christian pilgrims. Two years later, Urban II pronounced the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. In between, Peter led a failed "pre-crusade" in which Muslims slaughtered his entire army of 20,000 peasants
1095: Pope Urban II opens the Council of Clermont to reform the Church and to plan the First Crusade. The goals were to defend Eastern Christians from Muslim aggression, make pilgrimages to Jerusalem safer, and recapture the Holy Sepulcher. The 200 bishops attending the council decreed that those traveling to Jerusalem would be granted a plenary indulgence, which would take the place of any time they would normally spend in purgatory. Peter the Hermit became one of the crusade's dominant preachers and joined the army himself
1099: The First Crusade captures Jerusalem, massacring thousands. "The city was filled with corpses and blood," wrote one chronicler. For more than a century afterwards, Christians controlled the Holy Land
Notable Writers and Works: Anselm of Canterbury, Berengar of Tours, Fulbert of Chartres, Lanfranc
12th Century of the Church
1115: Bernard founds a monastery at Clairvaux, France, that would soon become the center of the Cistercian religious order. The order had been established 17 years earlier to restore Benedictine monasticism to a more primitive and austere state, but it is Bernard who is most closely associated with it. He founded 70 Cistercian monasteries, which in turn founded another 100 in his lifetime
1139: In the bull "Omne Datum Optimum," Pope Innocent II grants the Templars "every best gift" and makes them an independent unit within the Church, created to protect pilgrims from bandits in the Holy Land
1146: At the urging of Bernard of Clairvaux, France's King Louis VII announces he will lead the Second Crusade to regain the crusader capital of Edessa
1148: Too weak to retake Edessa from the Muslims, the armies of the Second Crusade besiege Damascus. They blundered and were forced to retreat within five days. Believers throughout Christendom were shocked and devastated that a crusade preached by a moral exemplar (Bernard of Clairvaux) and led by royalty (King Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad III of Germany) would fail
1170: Banished earlier by king Henry II because he sided with the church against the crown, archbishop of Canterbury Thomas a Becket returns, electrifying all of England. Henry orders his former friend's execution, and Becket is slain by four knights while at vespers December 29. (T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral is a fascinating exploration of the event.)
1173: Pope Alexander III canonizes Thomas a Becket three years after the Archbishop of Canterbury's martyrdom at the hands of King Henry II's knights
1179: Alexander III convokes the Third Lateran Council. Attended by 300 bishops, it gave the college of cardinals the exclusive right to elect the Pope (by a two-thirds majority)
1179: Hildegaard of Bingen, a German abbess, mystic, author, and preacher who received visions of God from the age of 5, dies at age 82
1187: Muslim general Saladin captures Jerusalem from the crusaders
1189: King Richard I "the Lion Hearted" leaves England on the Third Crusade to retake Jerusalem
1192: The Third Crusade ends with the signing of a treaty. Though Christians had not won back Jerusalem, Richard I negotiated access to the holy city
Notable Writers and Works: Anselm of Laon, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, Hugh of St Victor, Joachim of Fiore, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Thomas a Becket
13th Century of the Church
1204: The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople, an allied city. The attack virtually destroyed the Byzantine Empire and ruined any hope of reunifying eastern and western Christians
1208: Francis of Assisi experiences a vision in the church of Portunicula, Italy. Though not his first vision, it convinced him to begin a mission of preaching repentance, singing, caring for lepers, and aiding the peasants. Most notably, he and his followers renounced wealth and followed absolute poverty
1208: After England's irreligious King John opposed his choice for Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Innocent III places Britain under an interdict. Innocent had all religious services canceled, churches closed, and the dead were not given Christian burials until John surrendered. Soon after, the king signed the Magna Carta, in which the first article affirms "That the Church of England shall be free . . .”
1215: The Fourth Lateran Council opens. It officially confirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation—that the substance of Eucharistic bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, with only the accidents (appearances of bread and wine) remaining. The council also prescribed annual confession for all Christians
1216: Pope Honorius III officially approves the Dominican Order, which is dedicated "to preaching and the good of souls." Founded earlier that year by Dominic, the order has since been associated with study and scholarship
1220: Pope Honorius III crowns Frederick II Holy Roman Emperor in an attempt to reestablish relations between emperor and Pope. But Frederick's reign would become increasingly anti-papal, messianic, and eschatological. His supporters hailed him as a messiah; his enemies branded him Antichrist
1223: Pope Honorius III formally confirms the "Regula bullata," which organizes the Franciscan Order. The Franciscans are marked by complete poverty and a mission of itinerant preaching
1224: Francis of Assisi reportedly prays, "O Lord, I beg of you two graces before I die—to experience in myself in all possible fullness the pains of your cruel passion, and to feel for you the same love that made you sacrifice yourself for us." Soon his heart was filled with both joy and pity, and wounds appeared on his hands, feet, and side. He reportedly carried these scars (called stigmata) until his death in 1226
1228: Stephen Langton, greatest of the medieval archbishops of Canterbury, dies. He had formulated the original division of the Bible into chapters in the late 1100s, and his name appears on the Magna Carta as counselor to the king (though he supported the English barons in their pursuit for more freedoms)
1229: Having negotiated a treaty with Muslims for Christian access to Jerusalem, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (a reluctant participant in the sixth crusade) enters the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and crowns himself king. But his peace treaty was denounced by members of both faiths, and the same day the Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem pronounced an interdict on the city. Frederick was later excommunicated for making peace instead of war
1231: Anthony of Padua dies at age 36. His mentor, Francis of Assisi, wrote early in his ministry, "It pleases me that you teach sacred theology to the brothers, as long as—in the words of the Rule—you 'do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion' with study of this kind." With this blessing, Anthony went on to a life of teaching and preaching, becoming the most popular and effective preacher of his day. Attracting crowds of up to 30,000, Anthony earned the title "hammer of the heretics" for converting so many heretics to the true faith. "He is truly the Ark of the Covenant and the treasury of Holy Scripture," said Pope Gregory, who added that if all the Bibles of the world were lost, Anthony could surely rewrite them.
1232: Pope Gregory IX sends the first Inquisition team of Dominicans to Aragon (in present-day Spain) to root out heretical teaching
1249: Muslims take King Louis IX of France prisoner during the seventh crusade, which was supposed to overcome the Muslim political center in Egypt. After showing bravery in the face of torture, he was allowed to buy his freedom for a huge sum in gold—and the city of Damietta
1250: Frederick II, the messianic German Emperor (1212-1250) who fought repeatedly and heatedly with Popes, dies suddenly of dysentery at age 55. He called himself "lord of the world"; others either praised him as "stupor mundi" (wonder of the world) or damned him as Antichrist
1270: Louis IX, king of France since 1226, dies. Louis had been close to death 26 years earlier, and he vowed if he recovered from his bout with malaria, he would lead a crusade. In 1248 he kept his promise and led the Seventh Crusade in an unsuccessful attempt to crush the Muslim political center in Egypt. When he died, the holy king (who had spent much of his reign wearing hair shirts, collecting relics, and visiting hospitals—where he often emptied bedpans) was fighting in the northern Africa city of Tunis during the Eighth Crusade. Lying on a bed of ashes, his last words lamented the city he never won: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem"
1273: Following a tremendous mystical experience while conducting Mass, Thomas Aquinas suspends work on his Summa Theologica. "I can do no more," he told his servant. "Such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw. Now I await the end of my life.” He died a year later at age 48. Known for his adaptation of Aristotle's writings to Christianity, he became famous for his massive Summa Theologiae (or "A summation of theological knowledge"). In its early pages, he stated, "In sacred theology, all things are treated from the standpoint of God." Thomas proceeded to distinguish between philosophy and theology and between reason and revelation, though he emphasized that these did not contradict each other. Both are fountains of knowledge; both come from God
1274: The Second Council of Lyons convenes with the goal of reunifying the Roman and Greek churches. Orthodox delegates agreed to recognize the papal claims and recite the Creed with the filioque clause, but the union was fiercely rejected by the majority of Orthodox clergy, and laity fiercely rejected the union
1291: The last Christian territory taken by the Crusaders, Acre, falls to the Sultan of Egypt
1294: After issuing a constitution giving Popes the right to quit, Pope Celestine V shocks the world by resigning. An aged, nearly incoherent hermit when he was chosen to succeed Pope Nicholas IV, Celestine was desperately unsuited for the job and served only 15 weeks before Cardinal Gaetani, masquerading as a voice from heaven, convinced him to step down. Gaetani then became the infamous Pope Boniface VIII, and he imprisoned Celestine until the old man's death
Notable Writers and Works: Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, Angela of Foligno, Bonaventure, Dominic, Francis of Assisi, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas
14th Century of the Church
1302: On a trumped-up charge of hostility to the church and corrupt practices, Dante Alighieri is fined heavily and perpetually excluded from political office (he was a chief magistrate). Further condemned in March and driven out of Florence in April, Dante began writing The Divine Comedy, an epic poem in which he travels through hell, purgatory, and heaven. Pope Boniface VIII sentenced him to be burned to death for political reasons. He avoided the fate by living in exile, but he never saw his wife again
1302: Pope Boniface VIII publishes "Unam Sanctam," declaring there is "One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" outside of which there is "neither salvation nor remission of sins." Emphasizing the Pope's position as Supreme Head of the Church, it also demanded that temporal powers subjugate themselves to spiritual ones
1308: John Duns Scotus, the hard-to-follow Scottish theologian who first posited Mary's immaculate conception (that she herself was born without original sin), dies in Cologne, Germany. Mary's immaculate conception was declared dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854
1309: Pope Clement V moves the papacy to Avignon, France to escape political instability in Rome
1310: In Paris, 54 Knights Templar are burned alive. The Catholic Church created the Templars to protect Holy Land pilgrims from bandits, but the Knights' quick rise in power and wealth made them unpopular. Philip the Fair of France trumped up charges of blasphemy and homosexuality against them to convince Pope Clement to disband the order and persecute its members
1311: The Council of Vienne opens to decide if the Templars, a military order sworn to protect Christian pilgrims, are heretical and too wealthy. Pope Clement V decided to suppress the order. Its leader was burned and members' possessions taken by the Church. That decision was adamantly derided by the poet Dante and by later historians
1314: Thirty-nine Knights Templar are burned at the stake in Paris
1349: Pope Clement VI condemns self-flagellation, speaking out against a veritable flagellation frenzy. The practice, first taught by the Benedictine monk Peter Damian in the mid-eleventh century, gained popularity during the thirteenth-century Black Death scare and continues today in isolated incidents
1363: French ecclesiastical statesman and writer Jean Gerson is born. Eager to end the Great Schism of 1378-1414, he was influential in calling the Council of Pisa and the Council of Constance (which eventually ended the dual papacy). In defense of the Council of Pisa, Gerson wrote a tract promoting counciliar theory—the idea that a council can supersede the Pope
1377: Gregory XI moves the papal see from Avignon (where it had been for 72 years) back to Rome
1377: John Wycliffe stands trial in London's St. Paul's Cathedral for his criticism of the Church. He argued against the sale of indulgences, the worship of saints, the veneration of relics, the "emptiness" of some church traditions, and the indolence of clerics. In spite of five papal bulls ordering his arrest, he was never convicted as a heretic
1378: Bartolomeo Prignano is elected Pope Urban VI. Mired in political controversy even before his election (threats from masses of violent demonstrators helped drive his election), his violent demeanor did little to contradict rumors that he was insane. His electors conspired to leave Rome and name a new Pope (Clement VII), starting the Great Western Schism
Notable Writers and Works: Bridget of Birgitta, The Book of Privy Counseling, Catherine of Siena, The Cloud of Unknowing, Dante Alighieri, Duns Scotus, Geert Groote, Giles of Rome, Gregory of Palamas, Gregory of Rimini, Henry Suso, Jean Buridan, Jean Gerson, Johannes Tauler, John of Ruysbroeck, John Wycliffe, Julian of Norwich, Marsillus of Padua, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Lyra, Nicole of Oresme, Peter Auriol, Ramon Lull, Richard Rolle, Theologica Germanica, Thomas Bradwardine, Walter Hilton, William of Ockham
15th Century of the Church
1401: William Sawtrey, an English priest who followed the teachings of John Wycliffe, is burned for heresy, becoming the first "Lollard" (critic of the church) martyr in England
1409: The college of cardinals convokes the Council of Pisa to end the Great Schism, which had divided Western Christendom in 1378 by the election of rival Popes. Unfortunately, all the Council of Pisa did was to produce another candidate for the papacy, Alexander V
1414: Bohemian reformer Jan Hus appears before the Council of Constance. Instead of allowing him to state his beliefs, the council only permitted him to answer trumped-up charges of heresy. Hus was condemned and burned the following July
1414: The Council of Constance opens to end the Great Western Schism
1418: The Council of Constance ends, having finally ended the Great Western Schism. When the schism began nearly 40 years earlier, three men had reasonable claims to the papacy. The council deposed all three and elected Martin V. (Martin then turned around and rejected further councils' right to depose a Pope.) Though that part of the council is regarded as a triumph, the council also hastily condemned Jan Hus, a Bohemian preacher and forerunner of Protestantism, and sentenced him to execution by burning. And since his teachings were based on those of John Wycliffe, the council had Wycliffe’s body dug up, burned, and thrown into the Swift River
1429: Joan of Arc, who had experienced mystical visions and voices since childhood, enters the besieged French city of Orleans to lead a victory over the English. The next day, the English retreated, but, because it was a Sunday, Joan refused to allow any pursuit. On a sortie the next year, the English captured Joan and put her on trial for heresy
1431: French mystic and revolutionary Joan of Arc burns at the stake for heresy. Her last words were, "Jesus, Jesus"
1439: Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics sign the Decree of Union at the Council of Florence, creating an official union between the two churches. Popular sentiment in Constantinople opposed the decree, and when the Turks captured the city, the union ceased. However, the council's definition of doctrine and its principles of church union (unity of faith, diversity of rite) have proved useful in subsequent church talks
1441: At the Council of Florence, Pope Eugenius IV issues the bull "Etsi non dubitemus," declaring the Pope to be superior to church councils
1453: Constantinople, capital of Roman Empire (and late Byzantine Empire) since Constantine founded the city in 324, falls to the Turks under Mehmed II, ending the Byzantine Empire. Muslims later rename the city Istanbul.
1455: Johannes Gutenberg publishes the Bible, the first book ever printed on a press with movable type. He probably produced about 180 copies — 145 that were printed on handmade paper imported from Italy and the remainder on more luxurious and expensive vellum. Only four dozen Gutenberg Bibles remain, and of these only 21 are complete
1460: Pope Pius II assembles European leaders, then delivers a three-hour sermon to inspire them to launch a new crusade against the Turks. The speech works, but then another speaker, Cardinal Bessarion, adds a three-hour sermon of his own. After six hours of preaching, the European princes lose all interest in the cause; they never mount the called-for crusade
1464: Pope Pius II begins a crusade against the Turks. He died on the way to a rendezvous with his allies, and the crusading mentality died with him
1480: The Spanish Inquisition is activated
1484: Innocent VIII issues a papal bull giving two German inquisitors jurisdiction over witchcraft. He probably didn't mean for it to be a major change of policy, but the Germans used it to promote their book, Hammer of Witches. Its publication led to the (often-exaggerated) witch-hunting from the 1500s onward
1492: After the Inquisition failed to convert Spain's Jews, monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella sign an edict giving Jews three months to leave the country. An estimated 150,000 Jews fled, the last reportedly leaving August 2, the traditional anniversary of the destruction of the first and second temples. The next day, August 3, Christopher Columbus sailed the "Indies." Though the explorer was in part driven by a quest for gold and glory, he also saw himself as a missionary. He thought, if there were a shortcut to the East by sea, missionaries could be sent there faster, thus enabling Christians to meet the provision for world evangelization before the Lord could return
1493: In the bull "Inter caetera," Pope Alexander VI sets the boundary between Spanish and Portuguese lands in the New World
1498: Franciscan friars arrange an "ordeal by fire" in Florence to settle the dispute between reforming preacher Jerome Savonarola and Pope Alexander VI. Alexander had excommunicated Savonarola for preaching against papal corruption; Savonarola responded by calling for the Pope to step down. If Savonarola's friend Fra Domenico could walk safely between two walls of fire, God was supposedly on the Florentine city-manager's side. But Savonarola never sent Domenico out. The crowd rioted, Savonarola's power crumbled, and he was soon arrested, tortured, and executed. Girolamo Savonarola, who preached aggressively against the corruption of northern Italy's church and society, is hanged for heresy and his body burned. After gaining fame for successful prophecies, he sought to establish an ascetic Christian community. Scholars still debate whether he was a saintly prophet or a fanatic.
1498: Tomas de Torquemada, the first Spanish Inquisitor General, dies. He burned over 2,000 victims, tortured thousands more, and in some areas, immolated as many as 40 percent of those accused
Notable Writers and Works: Conrad Celtis, Denis the Carthusian, Desiderius Erasmus, Gabriel Biel, Girolamo Savonarola, Jacob Wimpfeling, Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, Jan Standonck, Johann Geiler, Johann Heynlin, Johann Reuchlin, Johann von Staupitz, John Colet, Nicholas of Clemanges, Nicholas of Cusa, Pierre d'Ailly, Rudolf Agricola, Thomas a Kempis, Ulrich von Hutten, Wessel Gansfort
16th Century of the Church
1501: Christianity's first vernacular hymnal is printed in Prague, containing 89 hymns in Czech
1505: While returning from a trip to visit his parents, Martin Luther (then a 21-year-old law student) was caught in a violent thunderstorm near Stotternheim, Germany. Fearing for his life, he cried, "Help me, St. Anne! I will become a monk!" Within two weeks, he made good on his promise
1506: Pope Julius II lays the foundation for the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome
1507: Martin Luther is ordained a priest in Erfurt, Germany. He celebrates his first mass (delayed by a month so his father could attend) as an ordained priest. Luther was so nervous that he nearly dropped the bread and cup. He became so terrified of the presence of Christ in the sacrament that he tried to run from the altar
1511: In Hispaniola, preacher Antonio des Montesinos counters the conquistador sentiment "Gunpowder against Indians is incense to the Lord" with a fiery sermon denouncing Spain's atrocities in the new world
1512: Martin Luther receives his Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Wittenberg
1512: After four years of work, Michelangelo Buonarroti unveils his 5,800-square-foot painting on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel
1513: Leo X is elected Pope. His eight-year tenure was marked by gross excesses and immorality
1517: Needing money to rebuild St. Peter's basilica, Pope Leo X announces a special sale of indulgences. A Dominican named Johann Tetzel led the way in promoting the sale in Germany and erroneously declared that indulgences would cover future sins (Leo's forgave all past sins). The teaching angered monk Martin Luther, who soon posted his 95 Theses in response
1518: Martin Luther undergoes an excruciating interview about his 95 Theses with Cardinal Thomas Cajetan in Augsburg. It was so nerve-wracking, Luther later recalled, that he could not even ride a horse because his bowels ran freely from morning to night
1518: Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli becomes "people's priest" at the Old Minster Church in Zurich, a position he held for the remaining 13 years of his life. After nearly dying from the plague, he began his reforming program almost immediately, persuading the city council to judge religious issues by Scripture alone
1519: At the Disputation of Leipzig, Martin Luther argues that church councils had been wrong and that the church did not have ultimate doctrinal authority
1520: In the papal encyclical "Exsurge Domine," Leo X condemns Martin Luther on 41 of counts of heresy, branding him an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. After the encyclical, Luther's works were burned in Rome. Martin Luther publicly burns Pope Leo X's bull "Exsurge Domine"
1521: Pope Leo X creates a bull of excommunication for Martin Luther that would have deprived him of civil rights and protection, but before its execution, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V allows Luther the opportunity to recant his beliefs at the Diet of Worms. In defending himself the next day, Luther said, "Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning . . . then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen!" When negotiations over the next few days failed to reach any compromise, Luther was condemned and he was put under the ban of the Holy Roman Emperor. Those who feared for his life then kidnapped Luther and hid him in Frederick’s Wartburg castle
1521: Leo X conferred the title "Fidei Defensor" (Defender of the Faith) upon England's Henry VIII for his tract "The Assertion of the Seven Sacraments," written against Martin Luther.
1522: The first edition of Martin Luther's German translation of the New Testament is published
January 29, 1523: Before an audience of more than 600 people gathered at the first Zurich Disputation, Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli successfully defends his 67 theses. He appealed only to Scripture and rejected the authority of the Pope, the sacrifice of the Mass, the invocation of saints, times and seasons of fasting, and clerical celibacy. The city council nevertheless declared "that Master Ulrich Zwingli (may) continue to preach the Holy Gospel and the true divine Scripture as he has done until now for as long a time and to such an extent until he be instructed differently"
1524: Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli marries Anna Reinhart for the second time—this time in public. In 1522, Zwingli (and 10 other priests) appealed to the bishop of Constance for permission to marry. When the bishop refused the petition, Zwingli married secretly and, later that year, resigned from the priesthood
1525: The Zurich City Council arranges a public debate on the subject of infant baptism, which Ulrich Zwingli mandated but Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz (among others) opposed on the grounds that baptism symbolizes a believer's commitment to Christ. Grebel and Manz were defeated and eventually killed for their views
1525: Conrad Grebel (Ulrich Zwingli's former protege) rebaptizes George Blaurock, a former monk, in a secret, illegal meeting of six men in Zurich. This meeting is now considered the birth of the Anabaptist movement
1527: Swiss Anabaptist reformer Felix Manz is drowned in punishment for preaching adult baptism, becoming the first Protestant martyred by other Protestants
1527: An army of barbarians who had been sent—but were no longer controlled—by Emperor Charles V sacks Rome. Many Protestants interpreted the attack as a divine rebuke, and some Catholics agreed: "We who should have been the salt of the earth decayed until we were good for nothing," wrote Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's adversary. "Everyone is convinced that all this has happened as a judgment of God on the great tyranny and disorders of the papal court”
1528: Balthasar Hubmaier, called by his enemies "head and most important of the Anabaptists," is burned at the stake in Vienna after being deemed a heretic by a Roman Catholic court. In addition to his writings against Lutherans and Zwinglians, he penned one of the earliest arguments for religious toleration. Though other Anabaptist leaders rejected his pleas for a tolerant Christian government and judicious use of the sword, they adopted his arguments for adult baptism, tolerance, and free will
1529: Spanish diplomat and writer Juan de Valdes publishes his "Dialogue on Christian Doctrine," which paved the way for Protestant ideas in Spain
1529: At the Diet of Speyer (Germany), princes and 14 cities draft a formal protest of Charles V's attempt to crush Lutheranism, defending religious freedom for religious minorities. From then on, the Reformers were known as "Protestants”
1529: The Colloquy of Marburg, which attempted to unify the followers of Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, begins. It would close in failure. While the Reformers agreed on 14 of the 15 articles, they remained divided over the Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist (consubstantiation). Thus Switzerland remained Reformed and Germany stayed Lutheran—and dreams of a united European front against Roman Catholicism died
1529: Thomas More becomes Lord Chancellor of England. Though he defended religious freedom in his book Utopia, he strongly opposed the Reformation and wrote against Luther, Tyndale, and others
1530: Pope Clement VII rejects Henry VIII's request to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Henry eventually responded by declaring himself supreme head of England's church
1530: Lutherans present their summary of faith, known as Confession of Augsburg, to Emperor Charles V. Philipp Melanchthon did most of the work preparing it, but it was not presented until it received Martin Luther's approval (see issue 39: Luther's Later Years).
1533: Thomas Cranmer is consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, England's highest religious post. Believing himself subject to the king, Henry VIII, he granted the monarch's annulment ending his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. This touched off the English Reformation, and Cranmer became its chief architect. He is also known for writing the first Book of Common Prayer
1533: Pope Clement VII excommunicates England's King Henry VIII for remarrying after his divorce (
1533: Harried by Catholic authorities, John Calvin flees Paris by lowering himself out a window with a bedsheet rope and disguising himself as a farmer, complete with a hoe over his shoulder. He spent three years as a fugitive before settling in Geneva
1534: Ignatius of Loyola founds "the company of Jesus," which he described as similar to a group of fur traders, only focused on God's will. In 1540 they gained the approval of the Pope, who named them the Society of Jesus. The vision and disciplines of the "Jesuits," as they came to be called, caught the imagination of Europe. Soon Jesuits flocked to Europe's major cities as well as the new world: Goa, Mexico City, Quebec, Buenos Aires, and Bogota. They opened hospices for the dying, sought financial support for the poor, founded orphanages, and opened schools
1534: The British Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy, officially making England Protestant and putting the English monarch at the head of the nation's church
1535: The French royal family, church officials, and many other dignitaries join in an immense torch-lit procession from the Louvre to Notre Dame—an attempt to purge Paris from the defilement caused by overzealous Protestants and their placards (a man named Feret had nailed one of the most inflammatory placards to the king's bedroom door months before). The day ended with six Protestants being hung from ropes and roasted
1535: A dozen Anabaptists run stark naked through the streets of Amsterdam. Such strange actions, usually by Melchoirite Anabaptists, led to the group's ridicule by Protestants and Catholics alike
1535: After holding Munster under siege for over a year, the army of the city's Roman Catholic bishop breaks in, capturing and killing the radical Anabaptists who had taken control. The Anabaptists had acted on the prophecy of Melchoir Hoffman (later modified by Jan Matthys) that Christ would soon return, and only Christians in Munster would survive. During the siege, Matthys and his followers became increasingly despotic and maniacal, enjoying excesses while the people starved and introducing wild innovations such as polygamy
1535: Sir Thomas More, who had recently resigned as Lord Chancellor of England, is executed for treason. He had sided with the Pope against Henry VIII in the matter of the king's divorce. He was sentenced to be hanged, but Henry commuted the sentence to beheading
1536: Catholic priest Menno Simons leaves the Roman Catholic church over his doubts about transubstantiation and converts to the Anabaptist movement, which he would soon lead
1536: Anabaptist Jakob Hutter is tortured, whipped, and immersed in freezing water (to mock baptismal practices), then doused with brandy and burned. King Ferdinand had ordered the persecution of all Anabaptists because of a few violent, millennialist revolutionaries in Munster, Germany—even though most Anabaptists were pacifists and renounced the Munsterite rebellion
1536: Swiss Protestants sign the First Helvetic Confession, the first uniform confession of faith for all German-speaking Switzerland and an important Reformation document.
1536: The General Assembly of Geneva officially adopts the Reformation and separates from the Roman Catholic diocese. John Calvin, who became forever associated with the Swiss city, arrives two months later
1536: Following Henry VIII's Declaration of Supremacy, English clergy draw up the Ten Articles of Religion, the first articles of the Anglican Church since its break from Roman Catholicism
1536: English reformer William Tyndale, who translated and published the first mechanically-printed New Testament in the English language (against the law at the time) is strangled to death. His body is then burned at the stake
1538: John Calvin and William Farel (whom Calvin was assisting) are banished from Geneva. The day before, Easter Sunday, both had refused to administer communion, saying the city was too full of vice to partake.
1541: A town meeting in Geneva ratifies John Calvin's plan to set up a church court that would meet weekly to judge offenders and maintain discipline
1541: On his thirty-fifth birthday, Francis Xavier, cofounder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, for Goa, India. The first Roman Catholic missionary there, he also traveled to Japan, Sri Lanka, and other countries in Asia. It is hard to say how many people Xavier, the Roman Catholic patron saint of all missions, converted
1543: British Parliament prohibits any "women or artificer's prentices, journeymen, servingmen of the degree of yeoman, or under, husbandmen or labourers to read the New Testament in English"
1543: Polish astronomer and cleric Nicolas Copernicus dies in Poland. His heliocentric (sun-centered) concept of the solar system was radical, though not unheard of before his time. Still, some theologians strongly criticized the theory. The Roman Catholic church never ordained Copernicus, but he participated in a religious community at the cathedral of Frauenburg
1545: The first session of the Counter- Reformation Council of Trent opens. Responding to the spread of Protestantism and the drastic need for moral and administrative reforms within the Roman Catholic church, it met on and off for 18 years. Ultimately the reforms were not comprehensive enough to satisfy the Protestants or even many Catholics, but it created a basis for a renewal of discipline and spiritual life within the Catholic Church
1546: After surrendering peacefully, George Wishart, an early leader of Scottish protestants and influential in the life of John Knox, who served in his personal body guard, is executed by Cardinal David Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews. In retaliation for the execution of George Wishart, Scottish Protestants murder Cardinal David Beaton in St. Andrews. John Knox, who was not part of the assassination plot, went on to lead the Scottish Reformation
1546: Protestant Anne Askew is condemned in England for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation (the idea that sacramental bread and wine turn into the body and blood of Christ). When asked by her accuser, "Sayest thou that priests cannot make the body of Christ?" she answered, "I have read that God made man; but that man can make God, I never yet read, nor, I suppose, shall ever read”
1548: Parliament orders the publication of the Book of Common Prayer. Though Thomas Cranmer is rightly credited with the final form of the BCP, he worked with a committee of scholars, including Reformer Martin Bucer, to shape his famous liturgy
1549: In the first of four Acts of Uniformity, the English Parliament requires all Anglican public services to exclusively use of The Book of Common Prayer.
1552: Matteo Ricci, the first Roman Catholic missionary to China, is born in Macareta, Italy. Other missionaries criticized his complete adoption of Chinese customs and alliance with Confucianism (which he believed merely a civil cult, unlike Buddhism and Taoism)
1553: Pope Julius III orders all copies of the Talmud to be confiscated and burned.
1554: Recently crowned Queen of England, Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII, restores Roman Catholicism to the country. Nearly 300 Protestants would be burned at the stake by "Bloody Mary," including Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley. Nearly 400 more died by imprisonment and starvation
1555: The Peace of Augsburg is signed after the defeat of Emperor Charles V's forces by Protestant princes in Germany (1552). The official recognition of the Lutheran church in Germany, the agreement signified the dissolution of both political unity in Germany and the medieval unity of Christendom
1556: After denying earlier forced recantations, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, a crucial figure in the English Reformation and author of the Book of Common Prayer, is burned at the stake by Queen Mary. He reportedly thrust his arm into the flames, saying the hand that had signed the recantations should be the first to burn
1559: John Knox, having spent several years on the Continent studying and writing, returns to Scotland to help lead the Reformation there
1559: The Act of Uniformity receives Queen Elizabeth I's royal assent, reinstating the forms of worship Henry VIII had ordered and mandating the use of the Book of Common Prayer (1552)
1560: The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Calvinistic "Scottish Confession," which had been drawn up in four days principally by John Knox, forbids the mass, and declares the Pope has no jurisdiction in Scotland. The
1562: At the Massacre of Vassy, French Protestants (called Huguenots) are killed by Roman Catholics. The action set off a series of eight religious wars that lasted 36 years
1563: The Heidelberg Catechism, soon accepted by nearly all European Reformed churches, is first published in Germany.
1566: Bartolome de las Casas, the first Spaniard ordained in the New World and "Father to the Indians," dies in Spain. He wrote several books detailing the horrors committed upon Native Americans by the Spanish settlers, and argued for the humanity of the Indians against many of his countrymen who had described them as children or subhuman
1570: Pope Pius V excommunicates England's Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, declaring her to be a usurper to the throne. It was the last time a Pope "deposed" a reigning monarch
1570: Spanish Jesuits, intent on converting the Native Americans, arrive in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. Six months later, Native Americans massacred the group, and the Jesuits ended their work in the region.
1572: Gregory XIII, who reformed the Julian calendar into the calendar used today and celebrated the killing of French Huguenots (Protestants) with a Te Deum (a Latin hymn), is named Pope
1572: Catherine de Medici sends her son, young King Charles IX of France, into a panic with threats of an imminent Huguenot (French Protestant) insurrection. Frenzied, he yelled, "Kill them all! Kill them all!" In response, Catholics in Paris butchered the Huguenots who had come to the city for a royal wedding. Between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants died in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
1576: Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, sends a letter to Queen Elizabeth protesting her order that he tell preachers throughout England to stop speaking so often. She felt three or four sermons per year were sufficient. Grindal's refusal to enforce her wishes earned him house arrest
1582: Gregory XIII issues a bull requiring all Catholic countries to follow October 4 with October 15 and replace the Julian calendar with the Gregorian (which we still use today). By 1582, the Julian calendar had drifted from the equinoxes by a full ten days
1587: Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded. Attempting to restore Catholicism to England, she began persecuting Protestants. But, largely thanks to the work of John Knox, her attempts failed
1593: King Henry IV of France, raised a Protestant, converts to Catholicism. Long considered a political move, the conversion is now thought to have been sincere, partially because of the king's statement that "religion is not changed as easily as a shirt." His conversion did not end his sympathy for Protestants, however, and in 1598 he promulgated the Edict of Nantes, giving Protestants freedom of worship and permitting them to garrison certain towns for security
1598: France's Henry IV signs the Edict of Nantes, granting extensive political rights to the Huguenots (a Protestant group he once belonged to)
Notable Writers and Works: Desiderius Erasmus, Francis Xavier, Francisco de Vitoria, Gustav Vasa, Hans Tausen, Heinrich Bullinger, Ignatius Loyola, Jacobus Arminius, John Calvin, John Jewel, John Knox, Martin Bucer, Martin Luther, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Teresa of Avila, Thomas Cranmer, Ulrich Zwingli
17th Century of the Church
1603: The University of Leiden appoints Jacob Arminius, Dutch founder of an anti-Calvinist Reformed theology, professor of theology
1603: James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England. Among his many acts affecting English religious life was the issuing of the Book of Sports, approving sports on Sunday
1604: Puritan John Rainolds suggests " . . . that there might bee a newe translation of the Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek." England's King James I granted his approval the following day, leading to the 1611 publication of the Authorized (King James) version of the Bible
1604: John Eliot, the "Apostle to American Indians," is baptized. He succeeded in converting over 3,600 Native American, publishing the Bay Psalm Book (the first book printed in America), and forming the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
1609: The Baptist Church is founded by John Smyth, due to objections to infant baptism and demands for church-state separation
1610: The Douay-Rheims Bible, the 1st Catholic English translation, is published
1616: Flemish mystic Antoinette Bourignon is born. A mystical writer whose works were included by John Wesley in his Christian Library, she soon found herself estranged from mainstream Christianity, especially when she declared herself the "woman clothed with the sun" of Revelation 12. Still, her ideas were so influential that, for 178 years, ministers of the Church of Scotland had to make an explicit denial of Bouringnonism before they could be ordained.
1618: Bohemian Protestant rebels storm the castle of Catholic Hapsburg king Ferdinand II and throw his governors out the window (and into a pile of manure). This act touched off Europe's Thirty Years War, which ended in 1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia
1618: The Dutch Reformed Church convenes the Synod of Dort to "discuss" the Arminian controversy. Of course, the synod's condemnation of Arminianism was a forgone conclusion—Arminians weren't even invited for another month. By April, 200 Arminian ministers (known as Remonstrants) were deposed by the Calvinist Synod, 15 were arrested, and one was beheaded for high treason
1620: Led by John Robinson, a group of English Separatists who had fled to Holland in 1607, sail for England, where they would board the Mayflower and sign the Mayflower Compact, a typical church covenant of the time. They landed at Massachusetts toward the end of the year
1622: The Roman Catholic church adopts January 1 as the beginning of the year, rather than March 25
1631: English clergyman Roger Williams arrives in America. After questioning Massachusetts' fusion of church and state, he was banished. He bought land from native Americans and founded Rhode Island, where he established America's first Baptist church in America. His writings on religious liberty were greatly influential in securing that freedom later in America
1633: Called to trial by the Inquisition, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome ready to explain his belief that the earth revolves around the sun. He was compelled to recant the view, and was placed under house arrest until his death in 1642
1633: Though Huguenots (French Protestants) had tried to colonize "New France" (Canada) for three decades, France declares only Roman Catholics are allowed to permanently settle there
1636: Massachusetts Puritans found Harvard College, America's first higher education institution, a mere six years after arriving from England. Two years after its founding, the college was named after John Harvard, a learned English Protestant minister who had emigrated to America and who helped to found the institution. On his deathbed Harvard bequeathed half his estate and his entire library (400 volumes!) to the fledgling college
1638: Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson is expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony. Questioned about her teachings on grace, she insisted she had received divine revelations. When her examiners asked how she knew these came from God, she replied, "How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the Sixth Commandment?" Although Hutchinson repented of her "errors," her questioners decided she was lying and banished her from the colony
1645: The controversial archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England, William Laud, is beheaded. An enemy and persecutor of the Puritans and a staunch defender of the "divine right of kings", he found himself on the wrong side of history when the Puritan revolution began in the 1640s
1646: The Massachusetts Bay Colony makes it a capital offense to deny that the Bible is the Word of God
1647: Massachusetts enacts a law forbidding any Jesuit or Roman Catholic priest from entering Puritan jurisdictions. Second-time offenders could face execution
1647: The Puritan British Parliament bans Christmas and other holidays
1648: The British Parliament approves the Westminster Larger and the Shorter Catechisms, now used by Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Baptist congregations.
1648: The Peace of Westphalia ends central Europe's Thirty Years War. Extending equal political rights to Catholics and Protestants (including religious minorities), the peace treaties also marked the first use of the term "secularization" (in discussing some church property that was to be distributed among the warring parties)
1648: George Fox founds the Quaker movement
1649: England's King Charles I, a devout Anglican with Catholic sympathies who staunchly defended the "divine right of kings" while oppressing the Puritans, is executed after being convicted of treason under a Puritan-influenced Parliament
1656: Barbados expatriates Ann Austin and Mary Fisher become the first Quakers to arrive in America. Officials promptly arrested them and deported them back to England five weeks later.
1660: England's King Charles II triumphantly enters London, marking the full restoration of the monarchy. Though he promised religious liberty, he cracked down on Dissenters (including John Bunyan) following a 1661 attempt by religious fanatics to overthrow him.
1661: Scottish Parliament passes the Rescissory Act, repealing all church-state legislation created since 1633 (Charles I's reign). In essence, the act restored the Anglican episcopacy to Scotland and quashed Presbyterianism, which had been the national church since 1638. In 1690 Parliament again established the Church of Scotland as Presbyterian
1663: Virginia colonist John Harlow is fined 50 pounds of tobacco for missing church
1672: Charles II issues his first declaration of indulgence, suspending Parliament's legislation against Catholic and Protestant dissenters. He was soon forced to rescind the declaration, however, and the following year issued the Test Act, which drove Catholics out of public office
1675: A Massachusetts law goes into effect requiring church doors to be locked during services. Officials enacted the law because too many people were leaving before sermons were over
1681: Charles II makes English Quaker William Penn sole proprietor of the colonial American territory known today as the state of Pennsylvania. Penn gave legal rights not only to Native Americans but also to persecuted Christians like the Mennonites
1685: French King Louis XIV issues the Edict of Fontainebleu, which revokes the Edict of Nantes and once again forbids Huguenots (French Protestants) from worshipping
1686: King Louis XIV of France, having already revoked the Protestant-tolerating Edict of Nantes, orders all Waldensian churches burned. The Waldensians, members of a pre-Reformation tradition that stressed love of Christ and his word and a life of poverty, were soon devastated: 2,000 killed, 2,000 "converted" to Catholicism, and 8,000 imprisoned
1687: James II issues a Declaration of Indulgence allowing full liberty of worship in England. The government allowed Nonconformists to meet (though justices of the peace had to be notified), forgave penalties for ecclesiastical offenses and no longer required oaths of supremacy and allegiance for those in royal service. Thus the declaration severely threatened Anglican control of church and state
1688: Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, issue America's first formal protest of slavery
1689: Parliament passes England's Toleration Act, granting freedom of worship to Dissenters (non-Anglican Protestants). but not to Catholics and atheists
1691: George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), dies. Fox left the Anglican church to rely on the "Inner Light of the Living Christ"
1692: Bridget Bishop becomes the first of 19 suspected witches hanged during the "Salem Witch Trials" in Massachusetts
1697: Massachusetts citizens observe a day of fasting and repentance for the Salem witch trials of 1692, in which 19 suspected witches were hanged and more than 150 imprisoned.
1698: British missionary Thomas Bray and four laymen found the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) "to advance the honor of God and the good of mankind by promoting Christian knowledge both at home and in the other parts of the world by the best methods that should offer”
Notable Writers and Works: Acta Sanctorum, Blaise Pascal, George Fox, James Ussher, John Bunyan, John Cotton, John Milton, Matthew Henry, Philipp Jakob Spener, Richard Hooker, Richard Sibbes, Roger Williams, Thomas Edwards
18th Century of the Church
1712: The colony of South Carolina requires "all persons whatsoever" to attend church each Sunday and refrain from skilled labor and travel. Violators of the "Sunday Law" could be fined 10 shillings or locked in the stocks for two hours
1727: Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, at age 27, organizes Bohemian Protestant refugees into the Moravian community of "Unitas Fratrum" (United Brotherhood) and begins a round-the-clock "prayer chain." Reportedly, at least one person in the community was praying every minute of the day—for more than a century
1735: John and Charles Wesley, cofounders of Methodism, set sail for ministry in America
1736: Methodism cofounders and brothers John and Charles Wesley arrive in Savannah, Georgia. They were to be missionaries to the native Americans, and John was to be pastor of the Savannah parish. Their efforts failed. "I went to America to convert the Indians; but O! who shall convert me?" he asked two years later
1738: English preacher George Whitefield, the most famous religious figure of the 1700s, arrives in America for his first of seven visits. In his lifetime, Whitefield preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million hearers
1738: Charles Wesley, who cofounded Methodism with his brother, experiences an evangelical conversion while sick with pleurisy. "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, arise and believe, and thou shalt be healed of thy infirmities," a mysterious voice told him in his sickbed. "I believe, I believe," he replied. One year later on this date, he wrote "O for a Thousand Tongues" to commemorate the event
1738: Father of Methodism John Wesley feels his "heart strangely warmed" when he hears a reading of the preface to Luther's commentary on Romans in a Moravian chapel on Aldersgate Street in London
1741: Colonial Congregational minister Jonathan Edwards preaches his classic sermon at Enfield, Connecticut: "You are thus in the hands of an angry God; 'tis nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction"
1744: David Brainerd, missionary to the New England Indians, is ordained by the Presbyterian Church. Within the next three years, he enjoyed success in his missionary efforts, but he died of tuberculosis at age 29 (see issue 77: Jonathan Edwards).
1744: The first Methodist conference convenes in London. Leaders set standards for doctrine, liturgy, and discipline, giving an organizational framework to the "Evangelical Revival" touched off by John Wesley and George Whitfield in 1739
1748: John Newton, the captain of a slave ship, converts to Christianity during a huge storm at sea. He had been reading Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ, and was struck by a line about the "uncertain continuance of life." He eventually became an Anglican clergyman, the author of the famous hymn "Amazing Grace," and a zealous abolitionist
1750: Colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards is dismissed from his Massachusetts pastorate for pursuing tests for church membership
1752: The first English Bible published in America rolls off presses in Boston
1757: Jonathan Edwards, perhaps America's most brilliant theologian and a father of American revivalism, becomes president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). He served as president until his death in 1758
1759: The first American life insurance company is incorporated in Philadelphia—the "Corporation of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers."
1769: Spanish Franciscan friar Father Junipero Serra founds the San Diego de Alcala mission in California, the first permanent Spanish settlement on the west coast of America
1771: Francis Asbury, sent from England by John Wesley to oversee America's 600 (or so) Methodists, lands in Philadelphia. During his 45-year ministry in America, he traveled on horseback or in carriage an estimated 300,000 miles, delivering some 16,500 sermons. By his death, there were 200,000 Methodists in America
1775: America's first society to abolish slavery organizes in Philadelphia
1787: The Shakers, a millenarian communal society in New Lebanon, New York, experience a revival. The religious fervor continued throughout the frontier, crossing denominational barriers.
1789: Congress amends The U.S. Constitution to prohibit establishment of a state church or governmental interference with the free exercise of religion.
1790: The Society of Friends (Quakers) presents a petition to Congress calling for the abolition of slavery.
1792: Father of Modern Missions William Carey publishes his highly influential (though deplorably titled) book on the importance of evangelism, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to use means for the Conversion of the Heathens in which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the practicability of Further Undertakings, are Considered
1792: By order of revolutionaries, all houses of worship close in France.
1794: French revolutionaries replace Christianity with a deistic religion honoring a trinity of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." They renamed churches "Temples of Reason," and a new calendar announced a 10-Day week and holidays commemorating events of the revolution. The "reign of terror" followed, with some 1,400 people losing their heads. Napolean recognized the church again in 1804, then proceeded to imprison Pope Pius VII
1794: In a converted blacksmith's shop in Philadelphia, former slave Richard Allen assembles a group of black Christians who had faced discrimination in the local Methodist Episcopal Church. They formed the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, now known throughout the world
Notable Writers and Works: Ann Lee, August Hermann Francke, David Hallatz, Emanuel Swedenborg, Francis Asbury, George Whitefield, Charles Wesley, John Wesley, Johnathan Edwards, Robert Millar, Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, Thomas Coke, Valentin Ernst Löscher
19th Century of the Church
1801: The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church recognizes the new African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Blacks who were denied membership and/or recognition within white Methodist churches, particularly in Philadelphia and New York, formed the original AME
1801: Revival hits a Presbyterian camp meeting in Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Within a week, 25,000 were attending the revival services. It was the largest and most famous camp meeting of the Second Great Awakening
1802: In a letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson uses the famous metaphor, "a wall of separation between Church and State." A recent exhibit at the Library of Congress has sparked argument over whether Jefferson used the term merely for political reasons or whether he meant it to explain the First Amendment
1807: Robert Morrison sails from Britain to become the first Protestant missionary to China. By the time he died 27 years later, he had baptized only 10 Chinese, but his pioneering work (including a six-volume dictionary and a translation of the Bible) helped missionaries who came after him
1810: After resolute petitioning of college students from Williams College and Andover Seminary, the Congregationalists of Massachusetts organize the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, America's first foreign missions society
1811: Robert Raikes, founder of English Sunday schools in 1780, dies. Raikes built his Sunday schools not for respectable and well-mannered children of believers, but for (in one woman's description) "multitudes of wretches who, released on that day from employment, spend their day in noise and riot." In 4 years, 250,000 students were attending the schools, by Raikes's death, 500,000, and by 1831, 1.25 million
1816: Richard Allen and others organize the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. The next day he was named the denomination's first bishop, thereby becoming the first black bishop in the United States. A few years earlier, Allen and his colleagues had left the Methodist Episcopal Church when it removed blacks from "white" seats during prayer
1816: The American Bible Society (ABS) organizes in New York to distribute the Bible throughout the world. The organization has distributed hundreds of millions of Bibles in thousands of languages worldwide
1820: Eighty-six free black colonists sail from New York to Sierra Leone, Africa. Though white abolitionists initially supported such emigration efforts, most free blacks (and eventually more radical white abolitionists) denounced the effort as racist and ultimately proslavery
1821: Law student Charles Finney, 29, goes into the woods near his home to settle the question of his soul's salvation. That night, he experienced a dramatic conversion, full of what seemed "waves of liquid love throughout his body." Finney later became one of American history's most influential (and controversial) revivalists and purportedly converted of 500,000 people
1824: The Sunday and Adult Sunday School Union in Philadelphia establishes the American Sunday School Union. It purposed to use Sunday schools as a means to instill Christian and democratic values "wherever there is a population." In 1970 it changed its name to the American Missionary Society.
1825: The American Tract Society organizes in New York City. A leader in developing printing technology, the nondenominational organization was publishing 30 million tracts a year by its 70th yearl
1825: George Muller, who founded orphanages that would house more than 10,000 orphans by his death in 1898, converts to Christianity at a Moravian mission.
1826: The American Temperance Society (later renamed the American Temperance Union) is founded in Boston to promote total (but voluntary) abstinence from distilled liquor. Among the 16 founders were Protestant clergymen
1829: In the Emancipation Act, the English Parliament grants freedom of religion to Roman Catholics. Within three weeks, the first Catholic was elected to Parliament
1831: Evangelist Charles Finney concludes a six-month series of meetings in Rochester, New York. The meetings, which have been called "the world's greatest single revival campaign," led to the closing of the town's theater and taverns, a two-thirds drop in crime, and a reported 100,000 conversions
1833: Anglican clergyman John Keble preaches his famous sermon on national apostasy, marking the beginning of the Oxford Movement in England. Keble was joined by John Henry Newman and E.B. Pusey, who led this effort to purify and revitalize the Anglican Church by reviving the ideals and practices of the pre-Reformation English church
1833: Having abolished the slave trade in 1807, Britain's House of Commons bans slavery itself. When William Wilberforce, who had spent most of his life crusading against slavery, heard the news, he said, "Thank God I have lived to witness [this] day." He died three days later
1834: German theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher dies. He made religion a matter of the will, defining it as feeling an absolute dependence on God in works including On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
1834: William Carey, often called "the father of modern Protestant missions" dies, having spent 41 years in India without a furlough. His mission could count only about 700 converts, but he had laid a foundation of Bible translations, education, and social reform. He also inspired the missionary movement of the nineteenth century, especially with his cry, "Expect great things; attempt great things"
1841: Anglican clergyman John Henry Newman publishes Tract 90 (in a series begun in 1833), an argument for a catholic interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles. It was the pinnacle of the Oxford Movement, but the last straw for the bishop of Oxford and others. Newman was forced to resign his parish, and he converted to Roman Catholicism four years later when he became convinced that the Anglicans had lost their episcopal moorings and had wrongly severed themselves from apostolic succession.
1843: Isabella Baumfree, having received a vision of God telling her to "travel up an' down the land showin' the people their sins an' bein' a sign unto them," leaves New York and changes her name to Sojourner Truth. She became one of the most famous abolitionists and women's rights lecturers in American history
1844: William Miller's first proposed date of Christ's return—between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844—ends with little fanfare. Miller soon changed the date to October 22, 1844, but when that passed his followers became disillusioned and premillennialism experienced a massive setback. The Adventist churches grew from the Millerite movement
1844: English merchant George Williams founds the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) out of his London meetings for prayer and Bible reading
1846: Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti is named Pope Pius IX. Roman Catholics remember him for his 31-year pontificate—the longest in history—for his declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and for the First Vatican Council's declaration of the infallibility of the Pope
1848: More than 300 men and women assemble in the Wesleyan Chapel at Seneca Falls, New York, for the first formal convention to discuss "the social, civil and religious condition and the rights of women." The event has been called the birthplace of the women's rights movement
1852: Abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of famous Congregational minister Lyman Beecher, publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin (which had been serialized in an antislavery newspaper). The book sold one million copies and was so influential in arousing antislavery sentiment that Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said upon meeting Stowe in 1863: "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!"
1853: Antoinette Brown becomes the first female minister ordained in America
1857: Layman-turned-evangelist Jeremiah C. Lanphier holds a lunchtime prayer meeting for businessmen on Fulton Street in New York City. At first, no one shows up, but by the program's third week, the 40 participants requested daily meetings. Other cities begin similar programs, and a revival—sometimes called "The Third Great Awakening"—catches fire across America
1858: Waldensians, ancient "Protestants" from the Italian Alps who survived through persecution for 800 years, are finally guaranteed civil and religious rights. They began with the teaching of a wealthy merchant named Pater Waldo in the late 1100s; thus they are considered "the oldest evangelical Church"
1859: Militant messianic abolitionist John Brown leads a group of about 20 men in a raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Brown believed that only violent action would end slavery and that a massive slave uprising would bring God's judgment upon unrepentant American Southerners. Furthermore, he believed that God had anointed him as the cleansing agent for his country's sin. But when the slaves around Harper's Ferry failed to rally to Brown's cause, he was overpowered. He was arrested, tried, and hanged
1861: The Southern Congress approves a bill installing chaplains in Confederate armies. The American military did not normally employ chaplains, but they became a permanent fixture during and after the Civil War. Between 100,000 and 200,000 Union soldiers and approximately 150,000 Confederate troops converted to Christianity during wartime revivals
1862: Abraham Lincoln issues the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation after the costly Union victory at the battle of Antietam. The final proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863 and the 13th Amendment officially abolishing slavery was ratified by congress two years later on December 18, 1865
1864: The Christian Union, composed of Protestant congregations opposed to "political preaching" during the Civil War, is formed in Columbus, Ohio
1865: William Booth founds The Christian Mission to work among London's poor and unchurched. Later, he changed the mission's name to the Salvation Army
1866: Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples of Christ and the Church of Christ, dies. He sought desperately to get back to a "simple evangelical Christianity" founded on the Bible alone. Only this—not creeds or confessions or liturgy—could bring unity to Christians: "The testimony of the Apostles is the only and all-sufficient means of uniting Christians"
1870: The Vatican I Council votes 533 to 2 in favor of "papal infallibility" as defined that "the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church . . . is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his church should be endowed”
1871: Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder and first president of Dallas Theological Seminary, is born. His eight-volume Systematic Theology (1947) is one of the most detailed analyses of dispensational premillenial Protestant theology
1874: The Women's Christian Temperance Union is founded in Cleveland. Claiming the power of the Holy Spirit, Protestant members would march into saloons and demand they be closed. It was the largest temperance organization and the largest women's organization in the U.S. before 1900
1877: Residents of Minnesota observe a state-wide day of prayer, asking deliverance from a plague of grasshoppers that had ruined thousands of acres of crops. The plague ended during that summer
1884: Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel, founder of the science of genetics, dies
1889: Former White Stockings baseball player Billy Sunday preaches his first evangelistic sermon in Chicago. By the time he died in 1935, he had preached to an estimated 100 million people, and about 1 million "walked the sawdust trail" to become Christians at his invitation
1895: Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the first African-American to hold high political office, dies. After escaping to freedom in 1838, he became the most prominent black abolitionist. Critical of the "Christianity of this land," which accepted (or at least tolerated) slavery, he considered himself a devotee of "the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ"
1897: Charles C. Overton, a Sunday school superintendent at Brighton Chapel, Staten Island, spontaneously promotes the idea of a Christian flag. The Rally Day speaker hadn't shown up, so Overton gave an extemporaneous address on Christian meanings for the elements of the American flag. The red, white, and blue cross flag Overton later helped devise was first sewn around 1907 and continues to be used in some churches
1899: Pope Leo XIII warns James Cardinal Gibbons, senior hierarch of the Catholic church in America, against the "phantom heresy" of Americanism—the attempt to adapt the traditional doctrines and practices of the church to a more independent modern world
1899: Three traveling businessmen meet in a YMCA building and decide to form an organization to distribute Bibles. The Christian Commercial Men's Association of America, later renamed the Gideons, placed their first Bibles in a hotel nine years later.
1899: Evangelist Dwight L. Moody, the chief spokesman for the revivalist wing of American evangelicalism, dies
Notable Writers and Works: Richard Allen, Lyman Beecher, William Boardman, William Booth, Thomas Campbell, Peter Campbell, Alexander Campbell, Peter Cartwright, James Caughey, James Finley, Charles Grandison Finney, Claus Harms, Adolf von Harnack, John Keble, Wilhelm Emmanuel Freiherr von Ketteler, Soren Kierkegaard, William Miller, Dwight L. Moody, George Muller, Asahel Nettleton, John Henry Newman, Phoebe Palmer, Edward Payson, Albrecht Ritschl, Ira D. Sankey, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Priscilla Lydia Sellon, Albert Benjamin Simpson, Bernadette Soubirous, Charles Spurgeon, Barton W. Stone, Billy Sunday, James Brainerd Taylor, Leo Tolstoy
20th Century of the Church
1900: Charles Fox Parham opens Bethel Bible Institute in Topeka, Kansas, where Agnes Ozman and other students would speak in tongues and begin the Pentecostal movement
1906: Black itinerant evangelist William J. Seymour arrives in Los Angeles to lead a Holiness mission. The group grew larger as word spread of its revival meetings and speaking in tongues, and it eventually moved to a rundown building on Azusa Street. The church's revival is often cited as one of the birthplaces of Pentecostalism as minister William Seymour and several associates experience what they called the "baptism of the Spirit," marked by speaking in tongues. This launched the three-year "Azusa Street Revival," considered the first major public event of Pentecostalism
1909: Aimee Semple and her husband, Robert, are ordained by Chicago evangelist William H. Durham. Aimee, who married Harold McPherson after Robert died, would become the founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and one of America's most popular preachers of the twentieth century (see issue 58: Pentecostalism).
1913: Harriet Tubman, known as "Grandma Moses" for her work rescuing slaves and guiding them to the north on what was dubbed "the Underground Railroad," dies. Her 19 rescues (of about 300 slaves) were successful, she said, because God showed her the way. "'Twant me, 'twas the Lord," said the diminutive woman who herself escaped slavery. "I always told him, 'I trust to you. I don't know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,' and he always did"
1914: Three hundred Pentecostals meet at the Grand Opera House in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a ten-day conference. Though originally intended merely to organize annual conferences, by its close, the conference had birthed the Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism's largest denomination
1915: Henry McNeal Turner, the first black army chaplain in the United States, dies in Windsor, Ontario, embittered toward America for its racism. Many consider him to be the precursor of black theology for his statement, "God is a Negro”
1917: Three shepherd children report that the Virgin Mary appeared to them in Fatima, Portugal
1917: Bolsheviks confiscate all property of the Russian Orthodox Church and abolish religious instruction in the schools. Within two decades, at least 45,000 priests were reportedly martyred in the country
1920: Largely the result of Christian activists, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution goes into effect, prohibiting the sale of alcohol. Thirteen years later, Congress repeals the prohibition
1921: Pittsburgh radio station KDKA broadcasts the first religious program over the airwaves: a vesper service of Calvary Episcopal Church. The senior pastor, unimpressed by the landmark broadcast, didn't even participate in the service, leaving his junior associate to conduct it. The two KDKA engineers (one Jewish, the other Catholic), were asked to dress in choir robes to be less obtrusive. Today religious broadcasting is a multi-billion dollar industry
1921: C.I. Scofield, editor of the Scofield Reference Bible and defender of dispensational premillennialism, dies
1925: Austin Peay, governor of Tennessee, signs the "Butler Bill," prohibiting any teaching that contradicted the Genesis creation story. By July, John Scopes was on trial for violating the legislation and the "trial of the century" had begun
1925: Florida's House of Representatives passes a bill requiring schools to conduct daily Bible readings.
1925: The Texas State Text Book Board bans evolutionary theory from all its textbooks
1929: The Lateran Treaty is signed by Mussolini and the Holy See, recognizing Vatican City as a sovereign state. At a mere 109 acres, it became the smallest nation in the world
1933: Prohibition comes to an end as the twenty- first amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified. The ban on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages had been fervently sought by fundamentalist Christians in the social reform movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s
1934: The first synod of the Confessing Church at Barmen ends. Influenced by Karl Barth, the synod produced the Barmen Declaration and marks the formal establishment of the "Confessing Church," led by Karl Barth, Martin Niemoeller, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in opposition to the Nazi "German Christian" church
1934: American missionaries John and Betty Stam are beheaded by Chinese communists. The couple had met while attending Moody Bible Institute and married just the year before their death. Publication of their biography prompted hundreds to volunteer for missionary service
1937: Pope Pius XI issues an encyclical against the Nazi "cult": "Race, nation, state . . . all have an essential and honorable place within the secular order," he wrote. "To abstract them, however, from the earthly scale of values and make them the supreme norm of all values, including religious ones, and divinize them with an idolatrous cult, is to be guilty of perverting and falsifying the order of things created and commanded by God"
1937: Billy Graham gets his first opportunity to preach when his teacher John Minder unexpectedly assigns him the Easter evening sermon. Graham tried to get out of it, saying he was unprepared, but Minder persisted. Desperately nervous, Graham raced through four memorized sermons, originally 45 minutes each, in eight minutes
1942: William Cameron Townsend and Rev. L.L. Legters incorporate the Wycliffe Bible Translators in California
1944: The National Religious Broadcasters Association is founded in Columbus, Ohio, in order to represent and build the credibility of Evangelical Christian broadcasters after a set of regulations, proposed by the Federal Council of Churches, banned paid religious programming and limited broadcast personalities to denominationally approved individuals, effectively removing Evangelicals from the airwaves
1945: The Gestapo hangs German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, after discovering his involvement in a failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer's last recorded words were, "This is the end—for me, the beginning of life"
1947: The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered
1948: Israel becomes a sovereign nation
1948: The U.S. Supreme Court finds religious education in the public schools in violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution
1948: The "fellowship of churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior" (a.k.a. the World Council of Churches) is formally constituted in Amsterdam.
1950: Pope Pius XII releases his "Munificentissimus Deus," proclaiming the "Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary." The doctrine teaches that Mary was taken in body and soul into heaven at the end of her life. The belief was first propounded in Christian circles by Gregory of Tours in the late 500s
1959: Ninety days after his election to the papacy, Pope John XXIII announces his intention to hold an ecumenical church council. The Second Vatican Council opened October 11, 1962, and was the Catholic church's most searching self-examination ever
1960: Six months before John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, is elected president of the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention condemns the election of Catholics to public office. "When a public official is inescapably bound by the dogma and demands of the church," it declared, "he cannot consistently separate himself from these”
1964: Roman Catholic Pope Paul VI and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras meet in Jerusalem, the first meeting of the two offices since 1439, more than half a millennium before
1965: Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr., leads more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators on a march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. By the time they reached their destination four days later, the group had expanded to 25,000
1965: Paul VI becomes the first Pope to visit the United States and to address the United Nations
1965: Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lift mutual excommunications in place since the Great Schism of 1054
1966: The Archbishop of Canterbury meets at the Vatican with Pope Paul VI—the first such meeting between Anglican and Catholic leaders since Henry VIII broke with Rome more than 400 years before
1966: The Vatican announces that its "Index of Prohibited Books" (created in 1557 by the Congregation of the Inquisition under Pope Paul IV) no longer carried the force of ecclesiastical law. But the announcement made clear that the Index retains moral force
1968: Pope Paul VI publishes his encyclical "Humanae Vitae," which condemns artificial birth control methods
1973: The United States Supreme court legalizes abortion in its Roe v. Wade decision
1979: Pope John Paul II makes a return trip to his home country of Poland, the first visit by a Pope to a Communist country
1979: John Paul II attends an Eastern Orthodox service, the first Pope in 1,000 years to do so
1980: Catholic and Eastern Orthodox representatives meet officially for the first time since the Great Schism of 1054
1986: Pope John Paul II visits a Jewish synagogue in Rome, marking the first such visit by a Pope in recorded history
1987: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Louisiana law requiring public schools to teach creationism if they taught evolution
1989: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II meet at the Vatican, announcing an agreement to reestablish diplomatic ties. Gorbachev also denounced 70 years of religious oppression in his country
1992: The bells of the Ivan the Great Belltower in Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow peal on Easter for the first time in seven decades. Since the time of the Communist Revolution in1917, Russian Orthodox Christian experienced severe repression but churches remained open and continued to hold services despite government persecution
Notable Writers and Works: Karl Barth, Leonardo Boff, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie Ten Boom, Raymond E. Brown, Rudolf Bultmann, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Curran, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, The Fundamentals, Reginald H. Fuller, Billy Graham, Gustavo Gutierrez, Ken Ham, Heinrich Hansen, Carl F. H. Henry, E. Stanley Jones, Hans Kung, C. S. Lewis, Hal Lindsey, Heinrich Maier, Bruce Metzger, Aimee Semple McPherson, Jessie Penn-Lewis, John A. T. Robinson, E. P. Sanders, Roger Schutz, Albert Schweitzer
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