Charlemagne

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Charlemagne The Carolingian Renaissance Feudalism
The Vikings Cluny Monastic Reform The Inquisition
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• Charlemagne (reigned 769 814) was the son of
  Pepin the Short (741-767) who inherited the
  Carolingian kingdom and unified most of Western
  Europe under one Christian empire.
• A devout man, he drew from canon law for his
  civic legislation.
• He caused decrees of synods and councils to be
  lawfully binding.
• He appointed Church officials to civil posts,
  attempted to reform the clergy, and stayed
  informed on civil and religious life throughout
  the empire.

Charlemagne
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• He also observed prayer and fasting, and
  practiced devout Catholicism.
• In 800, on Christmas day in St. Peters Basilica,
  Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope St. Leo
  III
• The Carolingian Renaissance consisted of his
  battle against intellectual collapse in the West,
  through emphasis on the importance of education
  and artistic excellence in his political vision
  where every monastery and parish had a school,
  the clergy were better instructed, and enthusiasm
  for the Catholic Faith was renewed.

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• Alcuin was a scholar of the Carolingian
  Renaissance who lived all over Europe including
  Charlemagnes court, Alcuin made great scholarly
  contributions in Latin grammar, mathematics, and
  theological texts.

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The Rise of Feudalism

• Charlemagne died in 814 and his son, Louis the
  Pious, although well intentioned, lacked the
  political talent and strength of his father.
• When he died, he left the kingdom to his three
  sons who fought each other for power.
• They signed the Treaty of Verdun in 843 that
  divided the kingdom into As the Carolingian
  authority collapsed, a new system of organization

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• Three groups that threatened western Europe
  during the ninth century were the Muslims from
  the south, the Vikings from the north and the
  Slavs and Magyars from the east.
• The Vikings sought wealth in the form of precious
  metals and soon learned that the monasteries,
  particularly in Ireland and England and the areas
  along the major rivers in Germany and France,
  contained the wealth of Carolingian society.

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Cluny

• It was founded around 910 when William the
  Pious, Duke of Aquitane, donated land to the
  small town of Cluny in Burgundy, France, for the
  founding of a new monastery. St. Berno was its
  founder and the first abbot.
• The monastic reform at Cluny emphasized both the
  ideal of a universal Church within a political
  framework and the inherent dignity of the human
  person.
• Cluniac monks were different in that they renewed
  commitment to the rule of St. Benedict. Each
  Church did not have its own abbot, but rather was
  overseen by the abbot at Cluny.

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• In 1016, Pope Benedict VIII granted the
  privilegium to Cluny. Thus, Cluny answered
  directly to the popes and not to kings, bishops
  or nobles. This freed Cluny of nepotism (no
  favouritism for family) and simony (buying
  ecclesiastical preferment bribery).
• Four important Cluniac monks were Hugh of Cluny
  (1049-1109), Cardinal Humbert, Frederick of
  Lorraine who became Pope Stephen X, and Otto of
  Lagery who became Pope Bl. Urban II, the first to
  preach the Crusades.
• St. Peter Damian (1007 1072) was also a
  renowned theologian of his day.

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• Two mendicant orders (living on alms) were the
  Franciscans and the Dominicans who were founded
  by St. Francis and St. Dominic.
• They did not live cloistered but they operated in
  the outside world. They were forbidden to own
  property and had three vows of poverty, chastity,
  and obedience.
• St. Francis dreamed of going off to the crusades
  as a knight in battle. As a young man, he
  enjoyed revelry, festivals, and the finer things
  in life.
• He organized the common life of his followers by
  listing all the passages in the Gospel where
  Jesus asks his followers to give away all they
  own and to live a life of poverty dedicated to
  God.

St. Francis
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• St. Thomas Aquinas largest work was the Summa
  Theologiae and it dealt with the existence of God
  and the divinity of Christ.
• Until St. Thomas Aquinas, Plato, the ancient
  Greek philosopher had given the philosophical
  framework within which Christianity usually
  operated.
• Much of Aristotles work had been lost over the
  previous thousand years in Europe. Fortunately,
  the Muslims and Jews had preserved it in the
  East.
• St. Thomas mainly showed how Aristotelian
  philosophy was compatible with Christianity in
  order to avoid a crisis of Faith. He
  accomplished this through the use of
  Scholasticism.

St. Thomas Aquinas
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• Averroes and Avicenna were the best known
  philosophers in the Muslim world.
• In Aristotles philosopical system, it is god who
  is the prime mover and set creation into
  motion.
• After his mystical experience in Naples, St.
  Thomas Aquinas said Everything I have written
  seems like straw by comparison to what I have
  seen and what has been revealed to me.
• St. Thomas work is so valuable to Christian
  tradition because it offered a thorough
  theological and philosophical understanding of
  God.
• Bl. John Duns Scotus negotiated Augustines
  neo-Platonism and St. Thomas Scholasticism when
  he argued that there are limits to reason and
  logic when it came to understanding the nature of
  God.

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• The Inquisition was a special ecclesiastical
  tribunal concerned with finding and prosecuting
  heresy in the Middle Ages.
• The Fransicans and the Dominicans were placed in
  charge of the Inquisition.
• The Albigensians in southern France were their
  initial target.
• The five methods of extracting a confession from
  an accused person were fear of death,
  confinement, visits of tried men, torture, and
  the gaining of evidence.
• The civil authorities carried out the sentences
  of the guilty.
• The Spanish Inquisition was different in that it
  was used as a tool to unit Spain after the
  reconquista by Ferdinand and Isabella, while
  expelling the Moors (Islamic peoples from
  Northern Africa.)

The Inquisition
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REFERENCES http//images.google.ca/images?hlenq
AlcuinbtnGSearchImagesgbv2 (picture slide
4) Religion 11 text The History of the Church,
Armenio, 2005