Prepare to be transported through time as we uncover the historical tapestry of church and state separation. Our episode may kick off with a chuckle over tortillas and feline antics, but the conversation soon picks up where we left off in our previous episode and sails into the profound ocean of the past, where the power struggles and political intricacies that led to the modern-day relationship between church and state unravel. Fr. Stephen guides us from the era of the French crown's defiance against Papal authority to the religious upheavals that heralded the rise of denominations.
The journey doesn't stop there, as we navigate through the tumultuous waters of the Western Schism and the historic resolutions borne from the Council of Constance. The Renaissance, sparked by the influx of Byzantine Christians into the West, brought forth an intellectual reawakening that reshaped the very fabric of society. We traverse the philosophical and cultural shifts that arose from this pivotal moment in history, exploring how the recognition of individual dignity challenged the medieval societal structures and influenced the modern Western world. This episode is a feast for the mind, layered with tales of ecclesiastical authority, schisms, and the quest for unity that continues to influence the church and state dynamic to this day.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Prepare to be transported through time as we uncover the historical tapestry of church and state separation. Our episode may kick off with a chuckle over tortillas and feline antics, but the conversation soon picks up where we left off in our previous episode and sails into the profound ocean of the past, where the power struggles and political intricacies that led to the modern-day relationship between church and state unravel. Fr. Stephen guides us from the era of the French crown's defiance against Papal authority to the religious upheavals that heralded the rise of denominations.
The journey doesn't stop there, as we navigate through the tumultuous waters of the Western Schism and the historic resolutions borne from the Council of Constance. The Renaissance, sparked by the influx of Byzantine Christians into the West, brought forth an intellectual reawakening that reshaped the very fabric of society. We traverse the philosophical and cultural shifts that arose from this pivotal moment in history, exploring how the recognition of individual dignity challenged the medieval societal structures and influenced the modern Western world. This episode is a feast for the mind, layered with tales of ecclesiastical authority, schisms, and the quest for unity that continues to influence the church and state dynamic to this day.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Welcome to our podcast friends. Thank you so much for listening. If you like our podcast and want to support us, please subscribe or follow us, and please don't forget to click the notification bell so you will be notified when new episodes release. Thank you and God bless.
Speaker 2:Which cat is that Thing? I was boogie. Too many cats, this whole pot. Let's just change our podcast to be about the cats. I think that probably people or you know what. Let's drop the podcast.
Speaker 1:Are they good or are they evil?
Speaker 2:Both. So let's drop the podcast and just do funny cat videos online.
Speaker 1:That will work you get like six billion views.
Speaker 2:Right. Father Jorge's like how'd you bring in so much money? Funny cat videos. That's all we do. Alright, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me and my friend, the friar Father Stephen Sanchez, a discalced Carmelite Priest. Discalced Good morning. No, good afternoon, it's not morning anymore, it's afternoon. John, good afternoon. Where is the day go? Have you had a good morning? I know it's past morning, but you seem like you're full of energy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was good. Had lords and I heated some tamales for breakfast. For the boys we had tamales and coffee for breakfast and then they went off to mass and then I went off to the 11 o'clock Spanish mass. We had so many people we almost ran out of hosts. The suboria both suboria were packed. Yikes, it sounds like.
Speaker 2:Where'd you say mess at?
Speaker 1:Same area of Carmel, the parish that we administer here in the west side.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Dallas, forgotten Dallas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good Cool. It's good, it's me and some mollies. Do you know how to? Have you ever mastered the art of rolling out tortillas?
Speaker 1:Not like my dad. No, my dad used to do it like perfect, perfect round tortillas. Yeah, I think Mine always come out like a different state in the United States. Kind of looks like Massachusetts but I can still eat it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just thinking, one of these days you ought to come over, because since I've got that big old griddle thing in the back it's just like a giant Kamal man Practice making tortillas. Yeah, we'll just have a couple beers and we'll just roll them out and when they're all ready, or we can do some corn ones too. I've got the press so that'll work for the corn ones and we can just.
Speaker 1:So Betty can make a pot of beans and we'll make tortillas, and, and that's it Beer, tortillas and beer. What else do you need? Yeah, beans, beer, beans, beer, tortillas. That sounds like it's a life. Oh yeah, we would need some salsa.
Speaker 2:Hot sauce. Yeah, okay, yeah, before we get too far off topic, okay, we're back denominations. A little historical shallow, deep dive.
Speaker 1:A shallow deep dive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and where we left off last time is very specifically how the separation of churches. Well, there was no separation of church and state.
Speaker 1:But the development of nations led to the separation of church and state. So again a little bit about the fact that again, it was a Catholic world. There was no such thing as church and state. Everything was part of the church and you had the two arms of the body of Christ.
Speaker 2:You had the regnum and you had the sacerdotium, so you had the priest and the politic side, right, yeah, I mean, you're literally a part of the church or you were not part of the church. That was the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you weren't part of the church, you're probably a barbarian. And so, yes, heathens, yeah. So again, we talked a little bit about the different contributing factors, we talked a little bit about the split between the Eastern church and the Western church, we talked a little about what led up to the revolt, some of the problems in early middle ages, all the different contributing things, and we got to the point where we're going to talk a little bit about the Church of France, which has always been called the elder daughter.
Speaker 1:I don't know why, but they call France the elder daughter, I guess probably one of the first nations then to In Europe to convert. Yeah, so a little bit about how this contributes to, again, the idea of denominations and the rebellion of the certain segments of the community, specifically Luther and the Protestant rebellion. So some historical things again and again, it's all part of the church, it's all part of again, it's all together it's a big mess. So in 1291, the Latin King Nimo, jerusalem fell with the fall of Acre in 1291. And so that was a huge blow that Europe had lost its foothold. They had gone with crusades and established the Latin Kingdom, and it was also part of the way in which they were in contact with the Eastern church, because they were there in the Middle East. And then all of a sudden, with Salahadin, you have the fall of the Latin Kingdom. Okay, 1291.
Speaker 1:So between the fall of Acre, or the fall of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291, and before the Avignon Papacy, which was in 1309 to 1378, the French crown, which was involved in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. So the French crown began to feel its own power and started to confront the Papacy, or the Holy See, with its continual desire to tax the clergy and church properties in France to help the king of France in their continual wars. There's wars in France, there's wars outside of France, there's the forever war between England and France. And so a lot of the kings started feeling their power. They forgot or they began to move away from this whole idea of the fact that there's supposed to be images or echoes of Christ, the king right, the benign king, the king that takes care of everybody, and peace and love and all that. So they began to feel their power and their independence and kind of, like we'd say in this part of the country, they began to bow up, you know, you bow up on dad. So they began to this taxing, and so it was something that the monarchs could do, but they always asked permission from the Holy See first. If they could begin to tax the churches, right, if it was for a just cause.
Speaker 1:So, since France was at a continual war with England over disputed territories, and that goes back to Eleanor of Aquitaine and Edward II, so that's a whole other very interesting segment of English history. So there was this war between France and England over disputed territories, and so France needed revenues to maintain its armies for the war. So the French crown, seeing all the possible revenue from church properties that would finance the war with England, imposed taxes upon church properties without papal permission. So later, several hundred years later, henry VIII will come to the same conclusion, and that's when he the dissolution of all the monasteries right, so you can get all the gold and all the properties and all that, so that becomes part of English history as well. So both the English and French crowns, needing money for their war against each other, reacted against the Holy See. Because the Holy See sent out a proclamation that monarchs were not allowed to tax churches or clergy without permission, made it official right.
Speaker 1:So, then the tensions flared to the point that the French king, philip IV, attacked. He sends an army to the Holy See in an attempt to depose Pope Boniface the eighth, who was elected in 1294, and the ambassador, or the knight that Philip IV sent, actually beat the Pope Boniface and arrested him. He eventually gets. This caused a huge uproar in Europe and pressure and everything. So they actually let Boniface out of jail where they had arrested him and beaten him and he dies shortly afterwards. He dies in 1303. So Boniface the eighth was the last pope to actually confront the secular power we'd call secular power right.
Speaker 2:Did the the regnum? Yeah, did the church, because I think, like the Knights Templar and stuff, did the church have any kind of military or was it just the church and the states were unified as part of the same machine, so if someone was threatening, then just all the nations would rally together to push back?
Speaker 1:They used to. There was the papal states and there was a papal army, and so the Swiss Guard is the last remnant of the papal army, right? But you have all these different competing armies, and so a lot of the papal armies were made up of different nations who would send, like the UN army, different nations, right? So there was this whole thing, and so when France marches on Rome, it was completely unexpected and so basically like a surprise attack, right? So Boniface the eighth dies, and then there's an election a year later.
Speaker 1:It took the Cardinals a year to come to a decision on somebody else, and so they elected Benedict XI and XIII, but he dies only eight months after he's elected. So then there's another year of fighting in the Cardinal, the conclave between the Italian and French Cardinals, and it had to do. I think it had to do with the fact that the Philip IV, the French King, had attacked Rome. And so, like, the Italian and the Cardinals are going like we're not going to elect a French Cardinal, and the French Cardinals are like, yeah, we should elect a French Cardinal. Anyway, all that stuff, the human element, right?
Speaker 2:Politics right.
Speaker 1:Politics enters into that right. So eventually, through political machinations, a French pope was elected as Clement V, which then sets up the doorway for the Avignon Papacy. Because then Clement V begins to march on and move to France and he moves the Curia, all the bureaucracy, all the offices, he moves the Curia to France, he starts to settle in France in 1308, and by 1309, everything is settled in France. So basically, the papacy, the Holy See, is held captive by the French crowd.
Speaker 2:Is this when there's the whole three popes at the same time, kind of thing that's?
Speaker 1:after the Avignon Papacy.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:That's at the end of the Avignon Papacy, and that, again, this sets up for what they call the Western Schism, right? So? Okay, so that's another element that leads to the breakup, right? So again, the European continent had experienced 300 years of growth and wealth, from the 11th century to the 13th century, and it finds itself entering the 14th century, the 1300s, in a period of decline, and this decline would last 200 years. So you have the Black Plague, which destroyed a third of the total population between the years 1347, 1350. And at the same time that you have the Black Plague, you have the Hundred Years War going on between France and England.
Speaker 1:So you have all this stuff is happening, everybody's dying, you have wars, and it's because you have wars, there's nobody there to farm the land, and you have wars, so the land, everything, starts contributing to the demise of everything. Right, so okay, then getting to the point that you just brought up, the Western Schism. So, the Western Schism whichever way you pronounce it, according to what part of the country you live in so it occurred as an aftermath of the Avignon Papacy, which ran from 1309 to 1377. Now, mind you, at that time, the life expectancy was not that long.
Speaker 1:And for that's almost a whole lifetime of the papacy being in France, and so when they begin to move the papacy back to Rome, it caused a lot of uproar because it's always been here, it's always been this way, we've always done it this way. So the last Avignon, pope, gregory XI, moved the papacy and the curia back to Rome. That's in 1377.
Speaker 2:How many popes were there in France? Two, three, Oof no more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I forget. Maybe four, five. I forget. I'd have to look that up. Good question, somebody can Google that right now.
Speaker 2:Leave it in a comment on the YouTube version, or something.
Speaker 1:So then Gregory XI dies in March of 1378. So then the College of Cardinals elect Urban the 6th in April, a month later. So Urban was from Naples, he was in the Apolleton, but culturally French, so he had a French cultural outlook and he turned out to be authoritarian and he wanted to remove the power that the Cardinals had come to enjoy during the Avignon Papacy, because during the Avignon Papacy the Pope was in France and the Cardinals were in Rome, and so they were running a lot of the stuff in the church while the Pope was in France, right, kind of like a puppet Pope in France right.
Speaker 1:So, because he was removing power from the Cardinals, the Cardinals rejected this reform, and so the Cardinals called another conclave, without the Pope, in Agnani, which is an Italian city, and they elected one of themselves as Pope, who is the first and anti-Pope, clement the 7th. And Clement the 7th went back to Avignon. So now you have Clement the 7th in Avignon and Urban the 6th in Rome. Thus we have two opposing Popes and all of the confusion that would bring to the European continent, like who's Pope? Which one is Pope? So, in an attempt to resolve this okay, so this is 1379, I guess.
Speaker 1:So in 1409, years later, because of all the conflict, they called the Council of Pisa, and it was convened, and the Council of Pisa, the Cardinals, declared the two Popes, clement the 7th, who was the French anti-Pope living in Rome, and Urban the 6th, who was rightfully elected. They declare them illegitimate and they elect a third Pope in Pisa, john the 23rd, who actually brought the issue to resolution. John the 23rd called the Council of Constance in 1414 and the Council arranged the renunciation of Urban the 6th, john the 23rd, and so they renounced, and then the Avignon Pope, which is now Benedict the 13th, because Clement the 7th died, was excommunicated, and so, then, pope Martin the 5th was elected to the Holy See. So all of this is happening right. So all this confusion, you have saints in the church, each one being faithful to a different Pope.
Speaker 2:So who called the Council of Pisa Like who or what? The Cardinals themselves?
Speaker 1:The Cardinals themselves were over. We need to resolve this. So they called like an emergency council right.
Speaker 2:And why is it? To resolve this for people who maybe don't quite understand. The Pope is not just like the elected guy in charge, so like why does it? Why does this matter so much?
Speaker 1:Apostolic succession. He is the sign of unity, he is the vicar of Christ, and so that's why it is so important that you have the office of Peter. Peter is the Petrine office, and so the apostolic succession, not just of the bishops, but the continuation of the Holy, see the office of Peter, right. That's why it's important.
Speaker 2:So yeah and it's. I guess it's kind of funny too. You can't, and I imagine there was probably with bringing all this to an end. There is probably a bunch of reform that was put into place to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again that we don't have time to like get into, but I can only imagine.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and again, any legislation happens. Why? Because there's been an abuse. And so once there's an abuse, you're like, yeah, we need to correct this. So then again you have legislation and you start setting up the guardrails right so that the bowling ball doesn't go off into the other lane. So that's part of what had to happen here too. Yeah, and that's really true, right?
Speaker 2:Because you have bishops in the first and second century, like you have. There's only two forms of writing. Either one, they're writing about something they love, right? I love the Eucharist, I love you know, Mary, I love whatever. Or they're writing to correct yes, and that's it. It's only one of the two right and and when they have councils where everybody's got to get together. It's not to celebrate something they love, it's because something's gone off the rails.
Speaker 1:Right. And so remember going back to the early, early, early church. You have all the heresies. You have the Arian heresy, the Dysotus heresy, the Nostra heresies, when the bishops had to come together to correct that. And so, in this situation, here Again, as another thing that has to be remembered is that all these different kings, they're becoming actual nations. This is again, this is the beginning of nations, the modern, you know, modern age, you would say. And so there's a lot of Tug, and again there's the rebellion of the, the kings against the church, and again it, psychologically speaking, it's something that happens, you know. People begin to individuate, people begin to grow up and you begin to test. It's like, it's like having teenagers. You know how that is it so?
Speaker 2:it's just Well, you test yeah, how what you can get away with man, and people think that the churches all messed up right now. Could you imagine?
Speaker 1:Oh, what it would have been like. Oh yeah, I hear people complain like man. This is nothing. This is this is nothing. This is this is first world problems, right? Yeah, back then we're talking about Wars, actual religious wars that were happening right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and did any of these popes Because urban, the six I've heard, I've heard some things that he's written Did any of the popes Try to teach what is it ex-cathedra right try to teach something that Was really controversial or changing? Or do you think that they were all trying to do a good job? It just everything was illegitimate.
Speaker 1:Providentially, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, there has never been anything that has been taught that is contrary to the faith. But even when we had Borja popes, when we had People who should not have been ordained, should not have been on the Holy See, and so we've never had anything that was contrary to the faith, and that's sort of the grace of the Holy Spirit that even you had corrupt individuals, there was never nothing ever taught that was controversial, contrary to what had been handed on by the Apostles. And it's almost impossible, because one of the things too is for it to be promulgated. Ex-cathedra is like you say, you know from the, you know a? Has it happened in the apostolic succession? Is there something in scripture that we can basis on? Is there, you know? So? Is it in keeping with the scriptures and stuff? So that that's always part of the, the Testing of teachings and stuff, right? So, yeah, no, nothing has ever happened, praise God, and hopefully nothing will, but anyway, yeah, so, so we have that.
Speaker 1:We have all the stuff's going on in the church. We have the stuff going outside the church. You have the social, political collapse of, of civilization, you have the wars, you have nations that are coming to Feeling their power. So now the confused and confusing state of affairs of the time led to a reforming movement, and One of the first movements occurs in England and expresses itself in a revolutionary way in the proposals of John Wycliffe. And Wycliffe's ideas of reform Serve the political agenda of John of Gaunt, who was anti clerical, again going back to the whole idea of let's take money away and power away from the priests in the church so that we can do what we want. Right. So, mr Dawson. Christopher Dawson says, but that by the time of Wycliffe's death he had completely broken with Catholicism and had given his followers, the poor preachers, a store of heretical principles that were to develop still further in the years that followed.
Speaker 2:And when was when was John Wycliffe doing his stuff? 1100, 1130 to 1184 so 11 late 70s, 80s okay, so this gets like this is kind of percolating for a few hundred years. Yeah, yeah, right, so that's why cliff.
Speaker 1:So this is like a 1384, right. So what happens then is in Bohemia, which is like the Czech Republic, there was a priest, john Hus, who was also preaching reform. But he was preaching reform according to Czech Nationalist and again, the whole idea of the nation, right? Yeah? So John Hus, who lived from 1369 to 1415. He was excommunicated for his refusal to embrace Orthodox measures of reform. So the church was trying to reform and it wasn't reformed enough for John, right? So he was condemned as a heretic and sentenced to death. He was never killed, but he was sentenced to death by the general council of Constance.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you have the council of Constance trying to Deal with the Hussites, as they're called, that heresy and the variations in Bohemia, which is the Czech Republic that's there on the other side of the world, the Holy See is wrestling with a Turkish threat to the Mediterranean Area. So both the Eastern churches and the papacy wanted to achieve union so that, as one, they could face the Turkish Empire. So now you have Islam coming in right To add to the mix. So the desire to achieve this end resulted in the council of Florence in 1439, and this reunion of the Eastern and Western church was not as effective as hoped for, the Turks did conquer Constantinople in 1453 and the majority of the Byzantine Christians, including the emperor, rejected the union between the Eastern and Western churches that was signed at the council of Florence. So with the loss of the Eastern Empire to the Turks, the papacy that became more embroiled in Italian politics.
Speaker 1:So you have Venice and Milan. You have city-states that they're fighting Dutchies in Sicily. Okay, oh, everyone has their own king or their prince, or whatever, or their doge. It's like uh.
Speaker 2:So when you say the Byzantine Christians, were these bishops or were these people like the, just the laity?
Speaker 1:Lape person, the lay person, the lay people, pretty much the whole culture, and the whole culture kind of rejected the West, because it's the West, you know, it's like Southerners and Yankees, what. So kind of.
Speaker 2:And I guess they can't. Yeah, it's when they feel the way they do and they're used to for the last hundred years or so, which is these are generations now of people who think that they're thinking kind of like what are you saying? Where it's like in the, he's looking for Czech nationalist, kind of that's his agenda, right.
Speaker 2:And so the people feel like the church and the state should be taking care of them instead of getting over like old, outdated politics or agendas, right, so I can see like, yeah, you can't just kind of make that decision from the top and expect everything to work down with the peasantry?
Speaker 1:No, it can't. Yeah, they don't know what's going on. So, anyway, the Renaissance. So, as I said before I think we've talked about it before the fact is the fact that you had all these Byzantine Christians, priests, theologians, philosophers, that had come to Rome to work out this dialogue and this unification of the Eastern, the Western church, and I think I forgot the name of the bull, laetari, something or other, celli, or celli later, rejoice, heaven or something is the name of the bull. That was the reunification of the Eastern and the West. So you had all these people come and they're all there in Rome trying to get this worked out, and then the emperor, from the Byzantine emperor, he sends word that they need to renounce the document that they signed and if they don't renounce it when they come home, that they're going to be killed as traitors or thrown in prison, or so of course.
Speaker 2:So you have all these.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you have all these Greeks stay in Rome and praise God. And because they stayed in Rome, you have the Renaissance. All of a sudden, people are reading Aristotle and Plato and reading all the Greek classics, and so you have all this stuff and all this art, the Greek art and stuff, and so this is huge and okay. This is after Europe has gone down to the pits and it's coming back up, and it's coming back up. You have, all of a sudden, you have this whole cadre of Easterners come and bring culture and through with the monasteries in the West and the Eastern philosophers and pre-Synthelogens come together, you have this flowering of civilization again. So the Renaissance. So, as the Renaissance took a firm grasp of Italy, the nobility was no longer a power to contend with, since now the power lay in the cities themselves. Now you have the city like little city states, right, the cities extended their economic influence throughout the Mediterranean and the Aegean cities, and so when the Byzantine Empire falls to the Turks, it is these influential cities that the Eastern Christians flee. So all the people that are leaving the Muslim invasion in Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, they're all leaving because they're going to get killed for being Christian or Catholic right. So they all run to Europe, and so they settle in Rome, in Venice, in Florence. Okay, now there came a dawning awareness of equality between the nobles and the artisans. This new age began to flourish in Italy, while Northern Europe found itself in rural situations still dominated by titled nobility. So Northern Europe was culturally dependent on the Burgundian court, which is French, the Burgundy. Slowly, the ideals of the Renaissance man filtered into the Northern reaches of Europe, bringing with it the ideals, again, of religious reform, especially in the form of a community of lay persons dedicated to catechesis and the foundation of free schools. So this is a quote, then, from, again, christopher Dawson.
Speaker 1:In medieval society, as in the modern technocratic state, a man's position depended on his function. In the new Renaissance society, he was an individual who tried to assert the freedom of his personality and to realize every possibility of development, the dignity of the human person right. So the medieval corporative idea was undoubtedly more Christian and so far it was consciously inspired by the Pauline ideal of an organic unity. We all share everything, we all work together. It's the same body. Right Now, with the Renaissance ideology was inspired by the Christian ideal of the dignity of human nature and the greatness of the human soul. So now there is a great emphasis on the dignity of the human person. So I don't have all these serfs all contributing to the common good, which happened to be the common good of the prince or the king, right, and all of a sudden there's an awareness of the nobility of the human person that the Renaissance helped to focus on, right, the dignity that is ours through the fact that we're made of the image and likeness of Christ. Yeah, and this isn't a bad thing?
Speaker 2:No, it's not a bad thing, and it would not be a bad thing if you had a noble king who was trying to be, Christ-like. So the opposite would not have been a bad thing necessarily either. But, you know the pendulum, when it swings, it always swings too far right. We always over-correct in everything.
Speaker 2:And I would have to say, in the great grand scheme of timescales, I think we're still in that over-correcting phase. Oh, yeah, I agree. So I think this is a perfect place to stop this one before we jump into Germany. Yeah, and what happens next?
Speaker 1:And booster.
Speaker 2:So great man. I'm loving this. I'm telling you, it's so fascinating to me to see all the history, Because it all plays such a part. It's all part of the weave of the tapestry that is our faith.
Speaker 1:Right, and basically, this is all this like why are we doing this? Because this explains the situation that the United States finds itself now. Because it goes all the way back to the whole idea of a society of Christians and of one church. And so once there's a division, the seat of division that came with the major division with the Protestants, right here's that seat that continues to perpetuate itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, okay. Well, let's wrap this up. Thanks again. Thank you, god bless. We'll see you all next time. Bye, hasta later.
Speaker 1:Family first.