Henri Bourassa, in a beautiful discourse given in
Montréal in 1918, spoke — among other things — about the “civilizing task” of
French-Canadian Catholics.[1]
In speaking about the civilizing task which belongs to French-Canadians, he was
urging his compatriots to make their own a task which the Church has worked at
in many times and places. Under this rubric of ‘the Church’s civilizing task,’
I intend to discuss several historical examples from Western Europe in the
Middle Ages.
One of the major long-term efforts of the Church during
the Middle Ages was to civilize the Germanic peoples who invaded and carved up
the western Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. This task
encompassed secular or worldly elements of civilization as well as moral
improvement and religious practice. In other words, in civilizing these
barbarians the Church used Her influence and assets for both their temporal and
eternal benefit. It should also be noticed that, although non-Christian peoples
and states have, without the help of the Church, attained many of the benefits
of civilization — things proper to ‘life in cities,’ as the word denotes, such
as literacy and writing, ease of long-distance travel and communication, access
to surpluses of wealth and leisure, sewage systems, etc. — the Church still
possessed, towards those peoples, a kind of ‘civilizing’ task, from the
Christian point of view, involving their moral improvement, formation in the
true religion, and most importantly their initiation into the state of grace
through the Sacraments. Thus the Church worked for the improvement and
salvation of the highly civilized society of the Roman Empire in the first four
centuries of the Christian era. During the early Middle Ages in Western Europe,
however, the Church preserved, re-built, and ultimately extended the remnants
of Roman civilization among the barbarians, even while She laboured for the
more important moral and spiritual priorities.
The anti-Christian outlook on history typically blames
the Church for exactly those faults of the European peoples which the Church
has laboured most persistently, often effectively, to correct. A good example
is the treatment of women, and particularly a double standard in sexual
morality permitting male infidelity while setting female fidelity as a strict
norm. The Franks, for example — the Germanic people who took over the Roman
provinces of Gaul in the fifth century, and eventually constructed the kingdom
of France — commonly practised polygyny. In other words, Frankish men,
especially high-ranking warriors and kings, would marry multiple wives. They
likewise commonly practised concubinage, keeping live-in mistresses alongside their
legitimate wives. Charlemagne, according to his biographer Einhard, although he
only had one wife at a time, had concubines and illegitimate children from
them, whom he provided for while excluding from the monarchy.[2]
He had about eighteen children in all, probably six or seven from concubines.
This was all open and acknowledged. The Church opposed both polygyny and
concubinage, “upholding
instead a Christian ideal of life-long monogamous marriage with fidelity of both
partners to the marriage vows.”[3]
This is, simply
put, the Christian standard of sexual morality, and nothing else — as St
Antoninus, archbishop of Florence, wrote around 1450: “Although the world’s
laws do not punish husbands who have intercourse with unmarried women in the
same way they punish adulterous women; nevertheless the law of God and the
Church punishes them equally.”[4]
I can easily multiply examples of ecclesiastical writers in the Middle Ages
upholding this strictly equal standard. Gratian, around 1140, wrote (in the
most influential textbook of canon law ever written): “nor is it lawful for
anyone, by their example [i.e. of Abraham or Jacob], to seek fruitfulness in
anyone, apart from the conjugal debt.”[5]
In support of this he quotes the Church Father St Ambrose (fourth-century
bishop of Milan): “Let none coax himself with the laws of men. Every debauchery
is an adultery, nor is anything lawful to the husband which is not lawful to
the wife. The same chastity is due from both husband and wife.”[6]
To those following this law — so severe according to the world’s standards — St
Antoninus applies the blessing contained in Psalm 127: Blessed are all they
that fear the Lord: that walk in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labours of
thy hands: blessed art thou, and it shall be well with thee. Thy wife as a
fruitful vine, on the sides of thy house. Thy children as olive plants, round
about thy table.[7]
In addition to
the blessings of obeying “the law of God and the Church,” the Church’s efforts
to modify standards of behaviour had beneficial social consequences. For
example, some historians argue that it encouraged the greater diffusion of
property (as opposed to vast estates consolidated within one family), and that
“the Church’s regulations encouraged a more equitable distribution of women in
the society; if elite males retained numerous women in their households then
obviously other men would have less chance of finding a wife.”[8]
Perhaps, indeed, these are part of God’s blessing given to they that fear
the Lord.
This is not to say
that the Church succeeded in eliminating adultery. Surely not, nor indeed
should this be expected, since the Church embraces the good and the bad, the
wheat and the tares; and, of course, the Church offers forgiveness of sins and
salvation even to those who commit mortal sin after baptism, through the
Sacrament of Penance. But, although we cannot realistically produce a numerical
graph of adultery rates — for example pre- and post-800 AD — historians recognize
that the Church’s centuries-long teaching effort and moral authority did modify
standards of behaviour. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while a man
might have affairs or visit prostitutes, he would have only one lawful wife,
and would not keep a group of concubines in the castle, as Charlemagne and
other earlier Frankish kings were accustomed to do.[9]
This was no longer publicly acceptable. As Ambrose himself said (quoted by
Gratian): “It is more tolerable if the fault lies hidden, than if guilt is
incurred as if by right.”[10]
This is just a
single example of the Church’s civilizing task and the good fruit it has borne
through history. When modern would-be defenders of women point to the Church
and blame Her for a double standard in expectations of conjugal fidelity, they
are actually condemning a ‘secular’ element of the society in which the Church
is operating. This secular element may be a holdover of the traditional morals
of a pagan society, as in the Germanic barbarians of the early Middle Ages; or
it may result from a formerly Christian society throwing off Christ’s yoke, as
in twentieth-century Europe and America. Either way, the Church rejects it, and
stands as the guardian and advocate of the law of God and the Church: “The same
chastity is due from both husband and wife.”
[1] “Les Canadiens français, leur tâche civilisatrice,” ch. 7 in Henri
Bourassa, La Langue, gardienne de la Foi (Montréal: Bibliothèque
de l’Action Française, 1918). https://archive.org/details/bourassalalanguegardiennedelafoi
[2] Einhard, Life of Charlemagne,
ch. 18–20, in Early Lives of Charlemagne by Eginhard and the Monk of St Gall,
ed. and trans. A. J. Grant, The King’s Classics (London: Chatto and Windus,
1907), 32–36. https://archive.org/details/earlylivesofchar00einh
[3] Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter, Western
Europe in the Middle Ages: 300–1475, 6th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1999),
169. Italics theirs.
[4] “Licet enim leges saeculi non puniant
ita maritos cum solutis se miscentes, sicut adulteras mulieres; tamen lex Dei
et ecclesiae aequaliter punit.” Antoninus Florentinus, Summa, 3.1.1.4,
in Sancti Antonini archiepiscopi Florentini ordinis praedicatorum Summa
theologica in quattuor partes distributa ..., ed. Pietro Ballerini (Verona,
1740), 3:17.
[5] Gratian, Decretum, C. 32 q. 4 c. 2
d.a., in Gratian: The Concord of Discordant Canons and the Ordinary Gloss,
trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
forthcoming).
[6] Ambrose, On Abraham, book 1 c.
4, quoted from Gratian, Decretum (trans. Silano), C. 32 q. 4 c. 4.
[7] Ps 127.1–3, trans.
Douay-Rheims. http://www.drbo.org/drl/chapter/21127.htm
Likewise,
the Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215 under Pope Innocent III, stated in its
first canon: “Not only virgins and those practicing chastity, but also those
united in marriage, through the right faith and through works pleasing to God,
can merit eternal salvation.” Lateran IV (1215), c. 4, in H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary
Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary (St
Louis: B. Herder, 1937). https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran4.asp
[8] Tierney and Painter, Western
Europe in the Middle Ages, 170.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ambrose, On Abraham, book 1 c.
7, quoted from Gratian, Decretum (trans. Silano), C. 32 q. 4 c. 4.
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