From the 1600s, France, ruled by Louis XIV, became the leading Roman Catholic kingdom fulfilling a role previously held by Spain and Portugal.
Meanwhile, the ideas of the Enlightenment were at work in society and in the church. The philosophes, the intellectuals of the Enlightenment, while acknowledging the church's contribution in terms of morals, social order and care for the needy, also found much to criticise in terms of the church's intolerance, authoritarianism, dogmatism, attitudes towards celibacy, and its huge wealth. This generated a groundswell of anticlerical (anti-church, anti-priest) sentiment in society. A telling moment, indicative of the change of mood was the suppression, by the Pope in 1773, of the Jesuit monastic order considered too reactionary. Another telling incident came in 1781, Louis XVI allegedly rejected one candidate for bishop of Paris saying, "The Archbishop of Paris should at least believe in God!" It all culminated in the French Revolution, which was disastrous for the Roman Catholic church. In 1790, monasteries were closed down and Roman Catholic clergy required to pledge allegiance to the new regime ("Civil Constitution of the Clergy"). Some clergy complied while others did not, creating division. During the Revolutionary "Terror" in 1793 and 1794, when many were executed, there were attempts to "Deschristianise" France, replacing the old faith with the cult of reason. For example on 10 November 1793, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris hosted the Festival of Reason with an actress "playing" the role Reason. A second attempt was made in 1794 with the short-lived cult of the Supreme Being sponsored by revolutionary Robespierre.
However, after the ravages of the French Revolution, the Roman Catholic church experienced a resurgence in the 1800s ("Catholic Revival"). In 1801, Napoleon made an agreement ("Concordat") with the Roman Catholic Church, recognising it as the "religion of most Frenchmen". In 1802, the French intellectual Chateaubriand, rejecting the Enlightenment, penned "The Genius of Christianity", in which he praised Christian doctrine and ethics, as well as the literary and cultural heritage associated with it. The monastic movement revitalised and the Jesuit order was reinstated in 1814. The Roman Catholic church, in particular through its monastic orders, was active in education, social work and missionary outreach overseas. People returned to the church, and in some Protestant countries such as Britain there was a movement from Protestant Christianity to Roman Catholicism (e.g. John Henry Newman).
Two key popes at this time were Pius IX and and Pius X.
In 1854 Pope Pius IX issued a papal encyclical entitled, "Ineffabilis Deus" in which be proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Mary the God-Bearer. This means that Mary was allegedly conceived without the stain of original sin. Proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was an example of the a phenomenon known as "sensus fidelium" (the sense of the faithful), i.e. a dogma proclaimed as a result of a groundswell of conviction among the grass-roots. In the "Syllabus" of 1864, Pius IX published a long list of modern "errors": rationalism, indifferentism, socialism, communism, Free Masonry, separation of church and state, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, Bible societies, Protestant "churches" etc. The final item in the list of eighty items is the error that "the Roman pope can and should resign himself to progress, liberalism and modern civilisation". The most significant contribution of Pius IX was to proclaim the infallibility of the Pope. The declaration "Pastor Aeternus", accepted at the Vatican I council in 1870, states, "... the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra... is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and... such definitions of the Roman pontiff are... irreformable". The German scholar von Döllinger was a leading figure in the party of those opposed to this new dogma, which led to the formation of the Old Catholic church.
IN 1907, Pope Pius X condemned modernism (liberal theology in the Roman Catholic church) in his encyclical "Pascandi Domini gregis", and in 1910 an anti-modernist vow was introduced for priests.
During the course of the 1800s, with the support of popes, the veneration of the Virgin Mary grew in importance in Roman Catholicism. This had the support of popes, for example with official proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (see above), and was also reinforced with alleged "appearances" of the Virgin at places such as La Salette, Lourdes, Knock etc.
Another new development in the 1800s was the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Christ, which some claimed to have seen in visions as a symbol of Christ's sacrificial love manifested in his incarnation and suffering. This veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was expressed in prayers to the Sacred Heart, and to the idea of "reparations", namely prayers and other good deeds which can allegedly help atone for all the coldness and indifference that have long afflicted Jesus' Sacred Heart.
Meanwhile, most of the Eastern Orthodox church (Russia being the major exception) was living under the Turkish Muslim rule, and barely surviving. Patriarch Samuel I of Constantinople completed the process of centralising power in Orthodoxy under Constantinople. By 1776, the previously autocephalous (autonomous) patriarchates of Bulgaria and Serbia were discontinued. The Orthodox church under Islam continued to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, but there was little or no scope for evangelism or social work.
At the same time, Eastern Orthodoxy was heavily influenced by Roman Catholicism, in particular in terms of theology and education. The layman Eustratius Argenti (+1757) was the thinker behind a synthesis of the western Augustinian tradition and the Eastern Orthodox teaching on the believer's participation in the divine energies. This provided a theoretical basis for maintaining distance from the Roman Catholic church.
It was the monastic movement which became the seedbed for renewal of the Orthodox church.
A key Orthodox educational institution was Athoniada Academy on Mount Athos. One of the graduates from that institution, Cosmas of Athos (also known as Cosmas of Aetolia), became an itinerant preacher, obtaining the blessing from the Patriarch, and rather like John Wesley travelled to various places, completing three missionary journeys. He founded other educational institutions, and was concerned about knowledge of the Greek language and literacy. In 1779 he was martyred at the hands of the Turks.
On Mount Athos from 1754 a movement started which is known as the Philokalia revival (or, the Kollyvades movement). Leading figures of this movement were Macarius Notaras and Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain. The essence of the movement was rejection of western influence and a return to the tradition of the Eastern church fathers. Macarius and Nicodemus collected writings of the Eastern fathers dating from the 300s to the 1400s, and addressing topics such as hesychastic prayer. This collection was called the Philokalia and was published in 1782. This movement prompted a revival of Eastern Orthodoxy.
By this time, the Ottoman Empire was gradually weakening. The Eastern Orthodox church played its part in the struggle of the Balkan countries for national self-determination and independence. The uprising in Greece 1821 led to execution of the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople on Easter Sunday: he was hanged on the gates in front of his own cathedral. When offered the chance to escape from Constantinople this was his answer: "I sense, that the fishes of the Bosphorus will nibble at my body, but I shall die happy in the name of saving my nation." Over time, national churches emerged in Greece (1832), Serbia (1879) and Romania (1877).
In the Eastern Orthodox communion, spiritual and church issues are related to issues of national identity, and this sometimes causes tensions. In this connection the concept of "phyletism" denotes the sin of "nationalism" in a church context. At a council in 1872, this accusation was levelled at Bulgaria, since the church is and should be "universal" and not ethnically based.
Emigration from Greece and the Middle East to America and other countries created an Eastern Orthodox diaspora in western Europe, North and South America and Australia. In these places, the Eastern Orthodox churches retained their respective separate national identities (rather than having a single organisational structure for all the Orthodox in a given country).
Meanwhile, after the disaster of the church schism of 1666 ("Old Believers"), the Russian Empire, under Peter I and his successors, had transferred some of the power and influence of the Orthodox Church to the state ("Petrine secularisation"). For example, the Patriarch of Moscow was replaced with a Protestant-style church synod with a government official called "Oberprokuror" exercising state control over the church.
Monk and bishop Tikhon of Zadonsk (d. 1783) practised and encouraged an accessible and practical approach to Christian faith in contrast with the dry theory of the Theological Seminaries (known as the "spiritual school"). Tikhon was close to the Pietist movement in western Protestantism and read, valued, translated and distributed various works including "True Christianity" by Johann Ardnt. In his own spirituality, Tikhon shared the western emphasis on the physical sufferings of Christ and the mystical experience of the "dark night of the soul" of Juan de la Cruz.
From the end of the 1700s, Russian monasticism and church experienced a major revival. Paisius Velichovsky was a Russian monk on Mount Athos and later in Romania. On Mount Athos, Paisius had discovered the teaching of the Eastern Orthodox fathers and the practice of "elders". An elder is an older monk who, with the blessing of his superior, provides spiritual care for younger monks, and then for laypeople (rather like an experienced "consultant" on the spiritual life). It was through Paisius that the Philokalia, the Philokalia movement, and the practice of "elders" spread in Russia.
A leading figure of the revival of Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia was the elder Seraphim of Sarov (d. 1833). He spent 16 years at a monastery, and then 20 years as a hermit. From 1815, Seraphim began to receive visitors who sought his advice and instruction in spiritual matters. The most famous incident in his life was when Seraphim's disciple was unable to look into the face of his teacher because he was so transformed into the likeness of God (in line with Orthodox teaching on theosis). Here is quote from Seraphim of Sarov: "Acquire a peaceful spirit, and around you thousands will be saved."
The centre of the revival of Orthodoxy was the monastery at "Optina Pustinya". Major figures were Leonid, Macarius and Ambrose.
In 1813, following the failed invasion of Russia by Napoleonic France, Russian Emperor Alexander I founded the Russian Bible Society. The New Testament was translated and published in 1821. However, the Bible Society was closed down in 1825, and only reopened in 1858. The Synodal translation of the whole Bible into Russian came out in 1872.
Another interest group within Orthodoxy was the Slavophile movement. Slavophiles such as Khomiakov considered that Russia was wrong to follow the western path, and that Russia has its own special path of development and mission in the world, characterised, for example, by spiritual community ("sobornost").
On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, a number of atheists and Marxists (e.g. Sergey Bulgakov and Berdyaev) turned to Christ and the Eastern Orthodox Church (Bogoiskatelstvo).
A shining example of an Eastern Orthodox priest on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution would be John of Kronstadt (+1908).
Meanwhile, the ideas of the Enlightenment were at work in society and in the church. The philosophes, the intellectuals of the Enlightenment, while acknowledging the church's contribution in terms of morals, social order and care for the needy, also found much to criticise in terms of the church's intolerance, authoritarianism, dogmatism, attitudes towards celibacy, and its huge wealth. This generated a groundswell of anticlerical (anti-church, anti-priest) sentiment in society. A telling moment, indicative of the change of mood was the suppression, by the Pope in 1773, of the Jesuit monastic order considered too reactionary. Another telling incident came in 1781, Louis XVI allegedly rejected one candidate for bishop of Paris saying, "The Archbishop of Paris should at least believe in God!" It all culminated in the French Revolution, which was disastrous for the Roman Catholic church. In 1790, monasteries were closed down and Roman Catholic clergy required to pledge allegiance to the new regime ("Civil Constitution of the Clergy"). Some clergy complied while others did not, creating division. During the Revolutionary "Terror" in 1793 and 1794, when many were executed, there were attempts to "Deschristianise" France, replacing the old faith with the cult of reason. For example on 10 November 1793, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris hosted the Festival of Reason with an actress "playing" the role Reason. A second attempt was made in 1794 with the short-lived cult of the Supreme Being sponsored by revolutionary Robespierre.
However, after the ravages of the French Revolution, the Roman Catholic church experienced a resurgence in the 1800s ("Catholic Revival"). In 1801, Napoleon made an agreement ("Concordat") with the Roman Catholic Church, recognising it as the "religion of most Frenchmen". In 1802, the French intellectual Chateaubriand, rejecting the Enlightenment, penned "The Genius of Christianity", in which he praised Christian doctrine and ethics, as well as the literary and cultural heritage associated with it. The monastic movement revitalised and the Jesuit order was reinstated in 1814. The Roman Catholic church, in particular through its monastic orders, was active in education, social work and missionary outreach overseas. People returned to the church, and in some Protestant countries such as Britain there was a movement from Protestant Christianity to Roman Catholicism (e.g. John Henry Newman).
Two key popes at this time were Pius IX and and Pius X.
In 1854 Pope Pius IX issued a papal encyclical entitled, "Ineffabilis Deus" in which be proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Mary the God-Bearer. This means that Mary was allegedly conceived without the stain of original sin. Proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was an example of the a phenomenon known as "sensus fidelium" (the sense of the faithful), i.e. a dogma proclaimed as a result of a groundswell of conviction among the grass-roots. In the "Syllabus" of 1864, Pius IX published a long list of modern "errors": rationalism, indifferentism, socialism, communism, Free Masonry, separation of church and state, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, Bible societies, Protestant "churches" etc. The final item in the list of eighty items is the error that "the Roman pope can and should resign himself to progress, liberalism and modern civilisation". The most significant contribution of Pius IX was to proclaim the infallibility of the Pope. The declaration "Pastor Aeternus", accepted at the Vatican I council in 1870, states, "... the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra... is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and... such definitions of the Roman pontiff are... irreformable". The German scholar von Döllinger was a leading figure in the party of those opposed to this new dogma, which led to the formation of the Old Catholic church.
IN 1907, Pope Pius X condemned modernism (liberal theology in the Roman Catholic church) in his encyclical "Pascandi Domini gregis", and in 1910 an anti-modernist vow was introduced for priests.
During the course of the 1800s, with the support of popes, the veneration of the Virgin Mary grew in importance in Roman Catholicism. This had the support of popes, for example with official proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (see above), and was also reinforced with alleged "appearances" of the Virgin at places such as La Salette, Lourdes, Knock etc.
Another new development in the 1800s was the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Christ, which some claimed to have seen in visions as a symbol of Christ's sacrificial love manifested in his incarnation and suffering. This veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was expressed in prayers to the Sacred Heart, and to the idea of "reparations", namely prayers and other good deeds which can allegedly help atone for all the coldness and indifference that have long afflicted Jesus' Sacred Heart.
Meanwhile, most of the Eastern Orthodox church (Russia being the major exception) was living under the Turkish Muslim rule, and barely surviving. Patriarch Samuel I of Constantinople completed the process of centralising power in Orthodoxy under Constantinople. By 1776, the previously autocephalous (autonomous) patriarchates of Bulgaria and Serbia were discontinued. The Orthodox church under Islam continued to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, but there was little or no scope for evangelism or social work.
At the same time, Eastern Orthodoxy was heavily influenced by Roman Catholicism, in particular in terms of theology and education. The layman Eustratius Argenti (+1757) was the thinker behind a synthesis of the western Augustinian tradition and the Eastern Orthodox teaching on the believer's participation in the divine energies. This provided a theoretical basis for maintaining distance from the Roman Catholic church.
It was the monastic movement which became the seedbed for renewal of the Orthodox church.
A key Orthodox educational institution was Athoniada Academy on Mount Athos. One of the graduates from that institution, Cosmas of Athos (also known as Cosmas of Aetolia), became an itinerant preacher, obtaining the blessing from the Patriarch, and rather like John Wesley travelled to various places, completing three missionary journeys. He founded other educational institutions, and was concerned about knowledge of the Greek language and literacy. In 1779 he was martyred at the hands of the Turks.
On Mount Athos from 1754 a movement started which is known as the Philokalia revival (or, the Kollyvades movement). Leading figures of this movement were Macarius Notaras and Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain. The essence of the movement was rejection of western influence and a return to the tradition of the Eastern church fathers. Macarius and Nicodemus collected writings of the Eastern fathers dating from the 300s to the 1400s, and addressing topics such as hesychastic prayer. This collection was called the Philokalia and was published in 1782. This movement prompted a revival of Eastern Orthodoxy.
By this time, the Ottoman Empire was gradually weakening. The Eastern Orthodox church played its part in the struggle of the Balkan countries for national self-determination and independence. The uprising in Greece 1821 led to execution of the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople on Easter Sunday: he was hanged on the gates in front of his own cathedral. When offered the chance to escape from Constantinople this was his answer: "I sense, that the fishes of the Bosphorus will nibble at my body, but I shall die happy in the name of saving my nation." Over time, national churches emerged in Greece (1832), Serbia (1879) and Romania (1877).
In the Eastern Orthodox communion, spiritual and church issues are related to issues of national identity, and this sometimes causes tensions. In this connection the concept of "phyletism" denotes the sin of "nationalism" in a church context. At a council in 1872, this accusation was levelled at Bulgaria, since the church is and should be "universal" and not ethnically based.
Emigration from Greece and the Middle East to America and other countries created an Eastern Orthodox diaspora in western Europe, North and South America and Australia. In these places, the Eastern Orthodox churches retained their respective separate national identities (rather than having a single organisational structure for all the Orthodox in a given country).
Meanwhile, after the disaster of the church schism of 1666 ("Old Believers"), the Russian Empire, under Peter I and his successors, had transferred some of the power and influence of the Orthodox Church to the state ("Petrine secularisation"). For example, the Patriarch of Moscow was replaced with a Protestant-style church synod with a government official called "Oberprokuror" exercising state control over the church.
Monk and bishop Tikhon of Zadonsk (d. 1783) practised and encouraged an accessible and practical approach to Christian faith in contrast with the dry theory of the Theological Seminaries (known as the "spiritual school"). Tikhon was close to the Pietist movement in western Protestantism and read, valued, translated and distributed various works including "True Christianity" by Johann Ardnt. In his own spirituality, Tikhon shared the western emphasis on the physical sufferings of Christ and the mystical experience of the "dark night of the soul" of Juan de la Cruz.
From the end of the 1700s, Russian monasticism and church experienced a major revival. Paisius Velichovsky was a Russian monk on Mount Athos and later in Romania. On Mount Athos, Paisius had discovered the teaching of the Eastern Orthodox fathers and the practice of "elders". An elder is an older monk who, with the blessing of his superior, provides spiritual care for younger monks, and then for laypeople (rather like an experienced "consultant" on the spiritual life). It was through Paisius that the Philokalia, the Philokalia movement, and the practice of "elders" spread in Russia.
A leading figure of the revival of Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia was the elder Seraphim of Sarov (d. 1833). He spent 16 years at a monastery, and then 20 years as a hermit. From 1815, Seraphim began to receive visitors who sought his advice and instruction in spiritual matters. The most famous incident in his life was when Seraphim's disciple was unable to look into the face of his teacher because he was so transformed into the likeness of God (in line with Orthodox teaching on theosis). Here is quote from Seraphim of Sarov: "Acquire a peaceful spirit, and around you thousands will be saved."
The centre of the revival of Orthodoxy was the monastery at "Optina Pustinya". Major figures were Leonid, Macarius and Ambrose.
In 1813, following the failed invasion of Russia by Napoleonic France, Russian Emperor Alexander I founded the Russian Bible Society. The New Testament was translated and published in 1821. However, the Bible Society was closed down in 1825, and only reopened in 1858. The Synodal translation of the whole Bible into Russian came out in 1872.
Another interest group within Orthodoxy was the Slavophile movement. Slavophiles such as Khomiakov considered that Russia was wrong to follow the western path, and that Russia has its own special path of development and mission in the world, characterised, for example, by spiritual community ("sobornost").
On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, a number of atheists and Marxists (e.g. Sergey Bulgakov and Berdyaev) turned to Christ and the Eastern Orthodox Church (Bogoiskatelstvo).
A shining example of an Eastern Orthodox priest on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution would be John of Kronstadt (+1908).
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