Apr 27, 2021

The Papal-Carolingian alliance evoked arguments from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to speak of life as a hierarchically-organized Pilgrimage to God led by Emperor and Bishops. Dr. John Rao discusses the character and tensions of this early medieval vision of order.

Apr 27, 2021

Popes, bishops, monks, and secular clergy all fell prey to simony and barbarism by the late 800's, to a large degree due to the failure of the attempt to restore the Empire through the Carolingians. Dr. John Rao talks here of the tragic--though temporary--collapse of the dream of Christianizing and Romanizing the...

Apr 27, 2021

Dr. John Rao discusses the recognition of the need to rebuild political, religious, and social order out of the feudal chaos of the late 800's and 900's. This rebuilding would require taming the Vikings, Saracens, and Magyars; calming the wild soldiery inside Christendom; restoring order in Germany, France, and Italy;...

Apr 27, 2021

Differing visions of how to reorder the "pilgrimage to God" competed in the 900's and 1000's. Dr. John Rao discusses three of these: one that saw the problem as that of rebuilding the Empire through the German and French Kings; another involving bishops who roused their dioceses to war versus unruly counts...

Apr 27, 2021

The monks of Cluny and others like them saw two groups that had to be "transformed" before all others: the soldiers and the clergy. In order to do this work properly, they needed a reformed Papacy on their side. Dr. John Rao shows how the Papacy, by the time of Pope Gregory VII, had been so transformed that it actually...