ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Some Medieval Popes

Leo I "The Great" (440-61)

Gelasius I (492-496)
Gregory I "The Great" (590-604)
Zacharias (741-52)
Stephen II (752-57)
Paul I (757-67)
Stephen III (767-72)
Adrian I (772-95)
Leo III (795-816)
Stephen IV (816-17)
Paschal I (817-24)
Eugenius II (824-27)
Valentine (827)
Gregory IV (827-44)
Sergius II (844-47)
Leo IV (847-55)
Benedict III (855-58)
Nicholas I (858-67)
Adrian II (867-72)
John VIII (872-82)
Marinus I (882-84)
Adrian III (884-85)
Stephen V (885-91)
Formosus (891-96)
Boniface VI (896)
Stephen VI (896-97)
Romanus (897)
Theodore II (897)
John IX (898-900)
Benedict IV (900-03)
Leo V (903)
*Christopher (903-04)
Sergius III (904-11)
Anastasius III (911-13)
Lando (913-14)
John X (914-28)
Leo VI (928)
Stephen VII (928-31)
John XI (931-35)
Leo VII (936-39)
Stephen VIII (939-42)
Marinus II (942-46)
Agapitus II (946-55)
John XII (955-64)
Leo VIII (963-65)
Benedict V (964-66)
John XIII (965-72)
Benedict VI (973-74)
*Boniface VII (974)
Benedict VII (974-83)
*Boniface VII (984-85)
John XIV (983-84)
John XV (985-96)
Gregory V (996-99)
*John XVI (997-98)
Sylvester II (999-1003)
John XVII (1003)
John XVIII (1004-09)
Sergius IV (1009-12)
Benedict VIII (1012-24)
*Gregory (1012)
John XIX (1024-32)
Benedict IX (1045)
Gregory VI (1045-46)
Clement II (1046-47)
Benedict IX (1047-48)
Damasus II (1048)
Leo IX (1049-54)
Victor II (1055-57)
Stephen IX (X) (1057-58)
*Benedict X (1058-59)
Nicholas II (1059-61)
Alexander II (1061-73)
*Honorius II (1061-71)
Gregory VII (1073-85)
*Clement III (1080, 1084-1100)
Victor III (1086-87)
Urban II (1088-99)
Paschal II (1099-1118)
*Theodoric (1100)
*Albert (1102)
*Sylvester IV (1105-1111)
Gelasius II (1118-19)
*Gregory VIII (1118-21)
Calixtus II (1119-1124)
Honorius II (124-30)
*Celestine II (1124)
Innocent II (1130-43)
*Anacletus II (1130-38)
*Victor IV (1138)
Celestine II (1143-44)
Lucius II (1144-45)
Eugenius III (1145-53)
Anastasius IV (1153-54)
Adrian IV (1154-59)
Alexander III (1159-81)
*Victor IV (1159-64)
*Pascal III (1164-68)
*Calixtus III (1168-78)
*Innocent III (1179-80)
Lucius III (1181-85)
Urban III (1185-87)
Gregory VIII (1187)
Clement III (1187-91)
Celestine IV (1191-98)
Innocent III (1198-1216
Honorius III (1216-27)
Gregory IX (1227-41)
Celestine IV (1241)
Interregnum (1241-43)
Innocent IV (1243-54)
Alexander IV (1254-61)
Urban IV (1261-64)
Clement IV (1265-68)
Gregory X (1272-1276)
Innocent V (1276)
Adrian V (1276)
John XXI (1276-77)
Nicholas III (1277-80)
Martin IV (1281-85)
Honorius IV (1285-87)
Nicholas IV 1288-92)
Interregnum (1292-94)
Celestine V (July-December 1294)
Boniface VIII (1294-1303)
Benedict XI (1303-04)
Clement V (1305-14)
Interregnum (1314-16)
John XXII (1316-1334)
Benedict XII (1334-42)
Clement VI (1342-52)
Innocent VI (1352-62)
Urban V (1362-70)
Gregory XI (1370-78)

The Great Schism
Roman Line
Urban VI (1378-89)
Boniface IX (1389-1404)
Innocent VII (1404-06)
Gregory XII (1406-15)

Avignonese Line
*Clement VII (1378-94)
*Benedict XIII (1394-1423)
*Clement VIII (1423-29)
*Benedict XIV (1425-30?)

Pisan Line
*Alexander V (1409-10)
*John XXIII (1410-1415)

Martin V (1417-31)
Eugenius IV (1431-47)
*Felix V (Antipope) (1439-49)
Nicholas V (1447-55)
Calixtus III (1455-58)
Pius II (1458-64)
Paul II (1464-71)
Sixtus IV (1471-84)
Innocent VIII (1484-92)
Alexander VI (1492-1503)



Important Church Councils

Nicaea I (325)
Emperor Constantine presided. The Nicene Creed was adopted. The teachings of Arius of Alexandria were condemned. The mode for the determination of Easter was set. An administrative decree accorded jurisdictional authority to the metropolitan bishops (those in diocesan capitals).

Sardica (344)
attended mostly by Western bishops. The council declared the jurisdictional supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. This council was not accepted by the Eastern churches.

Constantinople I (381)
Emperor Theodosius I presided. Attended only by Eastern bishops. Arianism was again condemned. The Roman bishop was accorded only "preeminence." Constantinople (the New Rome) was accorded second place to Rome.

Ephesus I (431)
The Nicene creed was definitively approved. The teachings of Nestorius were condemned.

*Ephesus II (449)* (the "robber council")
Dioscorus, Patriarch of Alexandria presided. The council was convoked and then dissolved quickly before Dioscorus's opponents could arrive. The council affirmed Monophysitism and deposed Dioscorus's opponent, Flavian, the Patriarch of Constantinople. This council was not accepted by many Churches in the East nor by any of the Western Churches.

Chalcedon (451)
The monophysitist teachings of Dioscorus and Eutyches were condemned. The decrees of the "robber council" of 449 were annulled and Dioscorus was deposed.

Constantinople II (553)
This council attempted to craft a compromise with the monophysites. The "three chapters" (writings by Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyr, and Ibas of Edessa -- all critics of Cyril who was a favorite of the monophysites) which had been approved by the Council of Chalcedon, were condemned. The compromise did not work.

Constantinople III (680)
Monotheletism, another attempt at compromise with the monophysites in which the dual nature of Christ was acknowledged, but said to operate under a single will ("mono-theles"), was condemned. Attempts at compromise with the monophysites on christological issues were effectively abandoned. The issue was rendered moot by the conquest of much of the Near-East by the Moslems.

Nicaea II (787)
Iconoclasm was condemned. The council approved the depiction of Christ and the "veneration", though not the "worship" of images. The council issued canons regulating monastic life and the election of bishops.

Constantinople IV (869-70)


Lateran I (1123)
Pope Calixtus II presided. Essentially, this council produced a series of canons to implement and further define the relationship between church & state to implement the separation agreed to in the Concordat of Worms (1122).

Lateran II (1139)
Pope Innocent II presided. This Council followed on a smaller Council held in Pisa in 1135 and was primarily taken up with fighting a schismatic (and heretical) group associated with the Antipope, Anacletus II. Anacletus and Innocent were both elected by factions of the Cardinals in 1130. The Council also produced a series of Canons on a variety of reform issues including enforcing the "Truce of God," further regulating aspects of church-discipline, and further articulating the terms of secular-ecclesiastical interaction in accord with the Concordat of Worms (1122).

Lateran III (1179)
Pope Alexander III presided. The council reformed Pope Nicholas II's decree on papal elections by adding the requirement that a two-thirds majority of the cardinals was required to elect. The cathar heresy was condemned various administrative reforms were passed, including standards for promotion to the episcopacy.

Lateran IV (1215)
Pope Innocent III presided. The council made preparations for a crusade, defined various doctrinal issues including transsubstantiation, and banned clerical participation in ordeals. A number of restrictions were imposed on the Jews. Various reforms were also enacted regarding episcopal courts and

Lyons I (1245)
Pope Innocent IV presided. The Emperor Frederick II was deposed from all his offices. Arrangements were made for defense against and contact with the Mongols. Various reforms of canon law were enacted.

Lyons II (1274)
Pope Gregory X presided. The council made some preparations for a crusade. Procedures for papal elections were defined in some detail to limit the chances of a long interregnum.

Vienne (1311-12)
Pope Clement V presided. The Templars were condemned and dissolved. "Super cathedram," Pope Boniface VIII's compromise on the privileges of the mendicant friars was re-enacted verbatim through the canon, "Dudum a Bonifacio." The council also enacted legislation against the Beghards and Beguines.

Pisa (1409)

Constance (1414-18)

Basle/Lausanne (1431-49), Ferrara/Florence (1438-39)

Early Christian Heresies

Donatism: began in fourth-century North Africa. During Diocletian's persecution of 303-05, some Christian leaders decided to cooperate minimally with Roman authorities by handing over some sacred texts (along with many which were not) for destruction. The Roman authorities assured the Christians who cooperated that no further action would be taken against them. Some Christians argued, however, that any cooperation with the Roman authorities, even though it might forestall more serious persecution, was a betrayal of Christ. When Christianity was legalized and began to assume a formal organization, a question emerged as to whether those who cooperated with the Roman authorities could serve as clergy, hold church offices, or administer sacraments efficaciously. Donatus, who became bishop of Carthage (313-47) advocated the position that "unworthy" men could not administer the sacraments efficaciously.

Of course, this theory was a profound threat to the development of any institutional authority within the Church. It placed the believer in the position of having to judge whether his priest (or the bishop who conferred holy orders upon that priest) was worthy at the crucial moment. If not, any sacrament which the priest might administer would be utterly worthless.

Among the Donatists' most important opponents was Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (d.430) who wrote and preached voluminously against their beliefs. Although Donatism did not spread much beyond North Africa, Donatist ideas recurred in the Later Middle Ages when the clergy in Western Europe was viewed as massively corrupt.


Pelagianism: was a heresy taught by a wandering theologian named Pelagius (d.418 or later). Pelagius taught that man could achieve grace and salvation through his own works. He claimed that the sacraments of the Church were beneficial, but not necessary. To Pelagius, the key to salvation lay in man's free will.

Of course, Pelagius's ideas were a threat to the Church's role as the mediator of salvation and were opposed by all orthodox theologians. Augustine of Hippo also wrote and preached against Pelagius's teaching. Nevertheless, Pelagius's ideas did leave a lasting imprint upon Orthodox Catholic theology. Pelagius himself disappears from the historical record in 418. In that year, Pelagius's teachings were condemned at a regional council at Carthage.


Arianism: was a heresy most important during the fourth century. Arianism along with Nestorianism and Monophysitism concerned the nature of Christ. According to orthodox teaching, Jesus Christ was both God and Man. He possessed both a human and a divine nature: but he was, nevertheless, one person. According to orthodox theology, this was necessary for salvation. Christ had to suffer and die as a human being in order to redeem the human race. He also needed to establish a church which could turn the human race away from sin and make it acceptable to God. That institution required a divine foundation and thus Christ had to be God as well as Man. These principles of orthodox Christian faith did not fit comfortably with certain principles of Greek philosophy. Around 318, an Alexandrine priest, Arius, offered a Christology which was more in harmony with Greek philosophical thought. According to Arius, Christ was not God, but the created instrument of God; he was th first created being, a being of cosmic power and intelligence, but not God. Although Arius's ideas were condemned by the first general council of the Church at Nicaea in 325, for the next fifty years Arianism prospered. A number of Emperors in the fourth century were convinced Arians. They promoted the Arianism and facilitated the persecution of its opponents by civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

Arianism's most important opponent was Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria (d.373), who tirelessly fought against the Arian teachings and was exiled several times for his efforts. During these years, the monastic movement remained staunchly orthodox. The monks were the most vigorous force within the fourth-century church and came to dominate theological thinking. Thus, when the orthodox emperor Theodosius I called the council of Constantinople in 381, he found more than enough support to condemn and neutralize the Arian heresy. Arianism continued among a number of Germanic tribes who had been nominally converted to Christianity in the fourth century. The Goths, Suevi, and Burgundians were gradually converted to orthodoxy by the sixth century.


Nestorianism: was a heresy which emerged in the wake of the defeat of Arianism at the end of the fourth century. Greek philosophical thinking found it difficult to accept that Christ could be both man and God. Arianism responded to this problem by asserting that Christ was not God, but a created being, albeit endowed with cosmic power and intelligence. When Arianism was definitively rejected, Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople (d.after 451) proposed a different solution. He claimed that Christ had two separate natures and personalities, one human the other divine. Nestorius thought of Christ as a dual-entity and attributed all Christ's experiences to either the divine or human side; in particular, Nestorius attributed the suffering to the human side. This teaching was opposed because it depreciated the meaning of Christ's sacrifice. Nestorius's teaching was condemned at the First Council of Ephesus in 431. There the theologian Cyril of Alexandria enunciated the orthodox position that Christ had indeed two natures but that these were combined in only one person. Cyril's theology was proposed in a critique of Nestorius's teaching rather than an affirmative explanation and was open to considerable interpretation. One heretical interpretation of Cyril's theology was to prove more serious and more enduring than Nestorianism.

Monophysitism was a heresy of the fifth century and later, the third to emerge concerning the nature of Christ. In condemning Nestorianism at the Council of Ephesus (431), Cyril of Alexandria had asserted that Christ had two natures but that these were combined in only one person. The notion of a human and a divine nature coexisting in the same person was at odds with some concepts of classical philosophy. In the wake of the Council of Ephesus, some theologians argued that in Christ the human nature was overwhelmed and rendered meaningless by the divine nature. (A mathematical analogy: if one adds together 1 + Infinity, the result is still Infinity!) Thus for all practical purposes, Christ had only one nature, the divine nature ("mono physis", Greek for "one nature"). Of course, Orthodox theologians opposed this explanation because it all but denied the humanity of Christ, an essential principle of the logic of salvation. According to orthodox theology, Christ could only have redeemed humanity by living, suffering, and dying as a human.

The struggle between the Orthodox and the Monophysite Christians lasted for more than two centuries. The most effective advocate of Monophysitism in the mid-fifth century was Dioscorus, Patriarch of Alexandria. He had a large following among Eastern bishops and political allies in the Imperial court in Constantinople. In 446, Flavian the Patriarch of Constantinople condemned Dioscorus's teachings. But in 449, at a Council at Ephesus (called the "Robber Council" in Orthodox history), Dioscorus engineered Flavian's repudiation and deposition along with a confirmation of Monophysitism.


In 450, just after the death of the Emperor Theodosius II (a supporter of the monophysites), the Orthodox Emperor Marcian (450-57) came to the throne. In 451, he called the Council of Chalcedon at which Monophysitism was condemned and the orthodox position on the nature of Christ was carefully defined. For the next two centuries, the Byzantine Church was preoccupied with efforts at winning back the Monophysite Christians by compromise. This effort was never very successful. In 553, in an attempt to placate the monophysites, a council at Constantinople condemned the "three chapters", writings by Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyr, and Ibas of Edessa against Cyril of Alexandria, a favorite of the monophysites.

Iconoclasm was a heresy of the eighth century which accelerated the growing divisions between the Church in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Iconoclasm is the rejection of the use of images in religious devotion. The Iconoclast heresy began in 726 when the Byzantine Emperor Leo III (717-41) publicly expressed his disapproval of religious images. By this time, iconoclast sentiment in the East was quite strong in part because the Islamic faith was aniconic. A volcanis eruption following Leo's pronouncement was taken as divine sanction for his position. Leo himself ordered the destruction of a number of icons, including one at the Chalke Gate in Constantinople. A number of Byzantine bishops followed by promoting the destruction of representational religious art.

Although the iconoclast heresy was fundamentally an expression of the principle that the worship of images was idolatrous, iconoclast intellectuals devised ingenious arguments to claim that the use of such images was linked to other heretical beliefs. For eample, it was asserted that a painter depicting Christ could not possibly portray His Divine nature. Thus, any such painting could only be a portrayal of his human nature. Of course, the separation of the divine and human aspects of Christ was the basis for the Nestorian Heresy, therefore the use of images of Christ for worship was a form of Nestorianism, Q.E.D.

In 754, the Emperor Constantine V (741-75) held a council which authorized systematic iconoclasm and the emperor enforced the policy with vigor. After Constantine's death, the enforcement of iconclasm waned. Iconoclasm was repudiated at the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which authorized the veneration but not the worship of representational images. Iconoclasm boiled up again in the early ninth century, but it was only pursued with any vigor in 830's. The Iconoclast Heresy was an Eastern phenomenon; it never made inroads into the West. Iconoclasm did, however, affect political events in the West. At a time when central Italy was under pressure from the Lombards in the mid-eighth century, the Papacy was disinclined to seek military assistance from the Byzantines and turned instead to the Kingdom of the Franks. This resulted in the Frankish-Papal alliance which led to the re-establishment of Empire in the West in 800.

Adoptionism


 
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