Or she gave all personal possessions to the communiry and adopted the simple robes and sandals of the order. An initiate, or new member, commonly went through a period of trial, called a novitiate, before taking the final vows. The novitiate helped people make sure that the rigors of monastic life were what they really wanted. Once initiates had passed through the novitiate and taken their final vows, they wore the symbols of their order. Men shaved their heads, leaving only a ring of hair on the top called a tonsure. Women donned a distinctive veil.
Within the religious community, responsibilities were assigned according to the skills of its members. Some administered the monastery, while others copied and illuminated (decorated) manuscripts, educated children, worked in the kitchens and barns, or became priests. Everyone said prayers seven times a day. Recognizing the difEculty of waking up before sunrise to pray, the Rule asked that brothers gently encourage one another to do so. Their simple diet consisted of cheese, fish, bread, beans, and a good measure of wine every day. The young, sick, and elderly were also encouraged to eat some meat for strength. The residents of the monastery lived in dormitories supervised by the oldermonks. Other monastic buildings included a large kitchen, storage areas, bams, a chapterhouse for meetings, a chapel, a scriptorium for writing and keeping books, and a cloister for meditation and growing medicinal herbs. The monk’s life was simple, orderly, and dedicated to prayer, learning, and service to the poor.
The Benedictine Rule was very popular, and soon many new monasteries were founded. Among the early adherents was a young man who would become Pope Gregory the Great. Gregory, like Benedict, came from a noble Roman family but preferred the monastic life. When he was selected as pope, he tried to hide from those who sought him out. Nevertheless, he was able to preserve and increase the power of the pope. He made peace with the Lombards and carefully administered the Churches’ estates around Rome, which gave him the resources to defend the papacy against the Lombards. He also wrote a life of Benedict and a number of works on relics and the
Justinian was the last of the emperors to try to unite the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire. In addition to many military campaigns, he sponsored the codification of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, and many building projects. The diadem he wears indicates the shift from Roman to more eastern traditions.
Demonic temptations that plagued even saintly people. But his lasting achievement was the use of Benedictine missionaries to extend Christianity to the peoples who had setded on the fringes of the old empire.
One story told about Gregory held that he saw some beautiful, fair-skinned children for sale as slaves in the Roman market. He asked where they had come from and was told that they were Angles, people who had settled in the old Roman province of Britain. Gregory commented that they were not Angles but Angels. He then set about converting them to Christianity.
The conversion of England was in part the result of Gregory’s missionary efforts, but was also facilitated by a line of remarkable women. Clotilda, who had helped Christianize Clovis and had earned the title of saint, had a granddaughter named Clodoswinde. She became queen of the Lombards and tried to convert her hnsband, Alboin. Clotilda’s great-granddaughter, Bertha, married King Aethelbert ofKent. After their wedding, he agreed that she could bring along a Christian priest, even though Aethelbert intended to continue to practice
One of the oldest surviving copies of The Venerable Bede’s History of the English Church and People was printed in southern England in the early eighth century. Bede’s history included the fanciful and miraculous lives of Anglo-Saxon saints, such as St. Cuthbert, but when he wrote about historical events, he carefully named the sources he used or the people he talked to in order to write an accurate account.
The religion of his ancestors. Gregory sent her a bishop who became known as St. Augustine of Canterbury because he succeeded in converting Aethelbert and his followers. Bertha’s daughter, Ethelberga, married the king of Northumbria and converted him as well.
The north of England posed a particular problem for the Church. While the area was already Christian, the religious practices of the people there differed markedly from Roman traditions. For instance, they calculated the date of Easter differently, and their monks tonsured their heads from ear to ear instead of in a circle. The Synod (council) of Whitby in 664, presided over by the abbess of that great monastery that included both men and women, was called on to reconcile local practices with Roman traditions. The Northumbrian king declared that he found aU the theological arguments for Roman practice confusing. He finally asked if both sides accepted that Peter founded the church of Rome. Because they both agreed, he decided in favor of Roman practice.
The combination of Benedictine mo-nasticism and the strong traditions the English had inherited from Irish Christianity created a vibrant culture that would influence learning and missionary activities for several centuries. The most famous author of the period was the Venerable Bede (672—735), a Benedictine monk who spent his life at the monasteries of Wearmouth andjarrow. The most learned man of his day, he digested all of the manuscripts available in their remarkable libraries. His writings present a summary of the learning of his time. Among his books is the History of the English Church and People, which recounts the Synod of Whitby, various political events, and the lives of kings, queens, abbots, abbesses, and saints.
By the middle of the seventh century, separate kingdoms had begun to emerge in the western part of the former Roman Empire. The Anglo-Saxons, divided into several kingdoms, occupied England; the Franks had settled much of France; the Visigoths controlled Spain; the Lombards had taken over Italy; and the papacy, with its estates, was established in Rome and the surrounding countryside. Only the vast region of modem Germany had yet to be Christianized.
In the eastern half of the Roman Empire, however, the fifth and sixth centuries brought both great victories and major defeats. The eastern empire was able to preserve its territory partly through a policy ofencouraging the Germanic tribes to move into the west and partly through diplomacy and bribes to the new tribes that appeared on its borders. Through these efforts, the wealthy crescent of territory around the eastern Mediterranean retained its rich, urban-centered culture.
Justinian (reigned 527—565) was the last of the Roman emperors to attempt to control the whole ofthe empire once again. Justinian was a colorful figure who surrounded himself with equally dramatic people. Because he had a keen sense of history, he hired a historian, Procopius, to write an official account of his reign. Although Procopius enjoyed this patronage and dutifully wrote two books about Justinian’s wars and buildings, he also wrote a secret history containing all of the court gossip. Procopius particularly wanted to discredit the Empress Theodora, Justinian’s wife, whom he maintained had an earlier career as a pornographic entertainer and courtesan in Constantinople. Rather than seeing the rise of this intelligent, beautiful woman to the position of empress as a heartwarming rags-to-riches story, he con-
The plan for the Benedictine monastery at Canterbury shows Canterbury Cathedral at the top. The two squares are the cloisters with their open, arched corridors shown as a scalloped border. The center cloister has an herb garden. At the bottom is the necessanum or latrines for the monks. To the left is a chapel and infirmary; the dormitory abuts the cloister.
A historian during the reign of emperor Justinian, Procopius lived between 500 and 554. While writing his official histories for Justinian, he composed another book, in which he reviled the emperor and his wife, Theodora. Of Theodora, he wrote: “To her body she gave greater care than was necessary, if less than she thought desirable. For early she entered the bath and late she left it; having bathed, went to breakfast. After breakfast she rested. At dinner and supper she
Partook of every kind of food and drink; and many hours she devoted to sleep, by day till nightfall, by night till the rising of the sun. Though she wasted her hours thus intemperately, what time of day remained she deemed ample for managing the Roman Empire.”
Procopius was equally scathing in his descriptions ofjustinian: “Now in physique he was neither tall nor short, but of average height; not thin, but moderately plump; his face was round and
Not bad looking, for he had good color, even when he fasted for two days.... Now such was Justinian in appearance; but his character was something I could not fuUy describe. For he was at once villainous and amenable; as people say colloquially, a moron. He was never tmthful with anyone, but always guileful in what he said and did, yet easily hoodwinked by any who wanted to deceive him. His nature was an unnatural mixture of foUy and wickedness.”
This mosaic of Theodora, wife ofjustinian, appears opposite his in Ravenna. The magnificence of court clothing and jewels indicate the wealth of the Byzantine Empire.
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