1. The Fresh Rise of Piety.

The Monastery of Clugny, founded in the tenth century, became the centre of the great reform which the Church in the West passed through in the eleventh century.⁶⁶The following partly corresponds with my Lecture on Monachism (3rd ed. 1886, p. 43 ff.). Two sources appear in the tenth century from which the religious awakening proceeded, the Monastery of Clugny, and the Saxon dynasty. We cannot attach too much importance to the influence of Matilda (cf. in general the Essay by Lamprecht, Das deutsche Geistesleben unter den Ottonen in the deutsche Zeitschrift f. Geschichtswissensch. Vol. VII., part 1, p. i. ff.). It extended to Henry II., and even, indeed, to the third Henry; v. Nitzsch, Gesch. des deutschen Volkes I., p. 318 f. For the history of the world the ecclesiastical sympathies of the dynasty, and the spirit of ascetic piety that emanated from the saintly devotee in the Quedlinburg Convent were of as great importance as the reformed monachism of Clugny. The history of mediæval Germanic piety may be said to have begun with Matilda. Charlemagne is still in many respects a Christian of the type of Constantius and Theodosius. Instituted by monks, it was at first supported against the secularised monachism, priesthood (Episcopate),⁷⁷From Hauck (K.-Gesch. Deutschlands III., p. 342 ff.) and the work of Sackur, Die Cluniacenser in ihrer Kirchl. und allgemeingesch. Wirksamkeit bis zur Mitte des 11. Jahrh. (2 vols., 1892-1894) we learn that the reform of Clugny had for centuries to contend with the same difficulties against the secularised Church and the secularised, but also more independent monachism (see also Hauck, “Zur Erklärung von Ekkeh. Cas. s. Galli “ c. 87 in the Festschrift f. Luthardt, p. 107 ff.) as had the old monachism formerly on its introduction about 400 into Gaul and Spain (and as had the Minorites at a later time). It is instructive to notice the attitude of the laity in connection with these three great reforms of the Church. Towards the first they were substantially indifferent, in the second they took a share from the outset (against the secularised clergy), the third (the Minorite) was simply carried out by them. and papacy by pious and prudent princes and bishops, above all, by the Emperor, the representative of God on earth, until the great Hildebrand laid hold of it, and, as Cardinal and successor of Peter, set it in 4opposition to the princes, the secularised clergy, and the Emperor. What the West obtained in it was a monastic reform of the Church, that rested on the idea of a view of the world that made everything alike, and that consequently favoured the universal supremacy of Rome over the Church. What were the aims of this new movement which took hold of the entire Church in the second half of the eleventh century? In the first instance, and chiefly, the restoration in the monasteries themselves of the “old” discipline, of the true abnegation of the world, and piety; but then, also, first, the monastic training of the whole secular clergy, second, the supremacy of the monastically trained clergy over the lay world, over princes and nations; third, the reduction of national churches, with their pride and secularity, in favour of the uniform supremacy of Rome.⁸⁸Sackur (II., p. 464 f.) characterises this French monastic reform thus: “The movement of Clugny did not start with announcing a programme: it was the product of a view of the world. It had no other aim than to oppose the coarse materialism of those days by reviving those institutions that admitted of an existence in sympathy with evangelical injunctions, even in the midst of a barbarised society. It was a formation of autonomous associations, such as usually arise in disorganised States under a weak central government, and serve to supplement by self-help the great social unions of, e.g., State and Church. From this there resulted the design of influencing from these institutions those around, and winning them for religion. The restored monasteries increased in number, the task became always greater; but it became in no way different. The winning of souls was, and continued to be, the real end. Connections became extended; we have seen how ready the princes were to support the efforts of the monks. Very soon every family of mark had its family monastery. . . . Monachism found its way to the courts . . . by means of a conspicuous social activity monachism gained hold of the masses. . . . Not a few bishops, especially in the South, were carried away by the current, friends of the movement came to occupy the Episcopal Sees. What followed was a spiritual transformation (but no transformation of any consequence of a literary and scientific kind. See what Sackur has stated, II., p. 327 ff.), giving pain to those who had previously built their house out of the ruins of the Carlovingian order of society, giving annoyance especially to a part of the Episcopate. . . . With this the opposition also was given. The ascetic Romanic movement issuing from the South mastered in the end the French North, captured the new Capetian dynasty, and here found itself confronted with an Episcopate which defended itself, in some cases, with desperation, against the assaults of a monachism that set out from the idea of a view of the world that made all things alike, from the thought of the universal Romanism, and that had no understanding for the independent pride of national churches. . . . The strict organisation of the German Imperial Church, its close union with the monarchy, the morality of the clergy (of a higher character as compared with the West-Frankian Church), still kept back the movement (at first) from the borders of Germany. It was only the process of ecclesiastical and civil dissolution, which began tinder Henry IV., that opened the breaches through which the monastic Romanic spirit could penetrate into the organism of the German State.” — On Clugny and Rome, see Sackur II., p. 441 ff.

The attempt to control the life of the whole clergy by monastic rules had already begun in the Carlovingian period; but in part it had failed, in part the Chapters had only become thoroughly secularised. Now, however, it was undertaken anew and with greater efficiency. In the Cluniacensian reform Western monachism raised for the first time the decided claim to apply, and find recognition for, itself as the Christian order of life for all Christians of full age — the priests. This Western monachism could not withdraw from the. task of serving the Church and urging itself upon it, i.e., upon the clergy of the day, as Christianity. The Christian freedom which it strove for was for it, with all wavering, not only a freedom from the world, but the freedom of Christendom for unrestricted preparation for the life beyond, and for the service of God in this world. But no man can serve two masters.

Herewith there was given also its relation to the laity, with the position of the latter. If the mature confessors of Christianity must be trained according to monastic rules, then the immature — and these are the laity — must leave an entirely free course to the former, and must at least pay respect to their majesty, that it may be possible to stand approved in the coming judgment. If Clugny and its great Popes required the strict observance of celibacy, the estrangement of the priests from secular life, and especially the extirpation of all “simony,” then this last demand of itself involved, under the then existing distribution of power and property, the subjection of the laity, inclusive of the civil power, to the Church. But what was the Church’s dominion over the world to mean, side by side with the renunciation of the world exacted of all priests? How does that power over the earth harmonise with exclusive concern for the soul’s salvation in the world beyond? How can the same man who exclaims to his brother who thinks of leaving him all the patrimonial property, “What an unjust division, — for thee, heaven, and for me, the earth,” and who then himself enters a monastery — how 6can this same man bring himself to contend from within the monastery for dominion over the world? Now in a certain sense this dominion is something substitutionary, so long as and because the true, universal Christianising has not been carried out. As long as all are not genuine Christians, the obstinate world and the half-developed Christendom must be governed and educated, for otherwise the gospel would be captured by the powers hostile to it, and would not be in the position to fulfil its mission. But the dominion is certainly not merely something substitutionary. Christianity is asceticism and the City of God. All earthly relations must be moulded by the transcendent and universal idea of God’s kingdom, and all national political forms of life must be brought under control in accordance therewith. But the kingdom of God has its existence on this side of things in the Church. The States, therefore, must become subject to the divine ends of the Church; they must merge themselves in the kingdom of righteousness and of the victorious Christ, which is a truly heavenly kingdom, because it has its source in heaven, and is ruled by Christ’s representative. Thus out of the programme of renunciation of the world and out of the supra-mundane world that was to permeate this world, out of the Augustinian idea of the city of God and out of the idea of the one Roman world-empire, an idea that had never disappeared, but that had reached its glorification in the papal supremacy, there developed itself the claim to world-dominion, though the ruin of many an individual monk might be involved in making it. With sullied consciences and broken courage many monks, whose only desire was to seek after God, yielded to the plans of the great monastic Popes, and became subservient to their aims. And those whom they summoned from the retirement of the cloisters were just those who wished to think least of the world. They knew very well that it was only the monk who fled from the world, and would be rid of it, that could give help in subduing the world. Abandonment of the world in the service of the world-ruling Church, dominion over the world in the service of renunciation of the world, — this was the problem, and the ideal of the Middle Ages! What an innocent simplicity, what a wealth of illusions, was involved in 7believing that this ideal could be realised, and in working for it! What a childlike reverence for the Church was necessary for developing that paradoxical flight from the world,” which at one and the same moment could join the fight and pray, utter cursing and blessing, exercise dominion and do penance! What a spirit of romance filled those souls, which at a single view could see in nature and all sensuous life an enchantment of the devil, and could behold in it at the same time, as illumined by the Church, the reflection of the world beyond What kind of men were they, who abandoned the world and gladsome life, and then took back from the hand of the Church the good things of earth, love-making, combat and victory, speculating and money-making, feasting, and the joys of sense! Of course, with a slight turn of the kaleidoscope, all these things were in ruins; there must be fasting and repentance; but again a slight turn, and everything was back again which the world could afford — but glorified with the light of the Church and of the world beyond.

At the close of this period (about 1200) the Church was victorious. If ever ideals were carried out in the world and gained dominion over souls it happened then. “It was as if the world had cast aside its old garment and clothed itself in the white robe of the Church.”⁹⁹ The Cluniacensian monk, Rudolph Glaber, Hist. lib. III., 4. Negation of the world and rule of the world by the Church appeared to men identical. That age bore in its culture “the pained look of world-renunciation on the one hand, and the look of strong character suggesting world-conquest on the other.”¹⁰¹⁰v. Eicken, l.c., p. 155 f. If the early Church had had this latter characteristic expressed in its piety, it would inevitably have developed into Islam, or rather would have been crushed by the Roman world-empire. But the Mediæval Church from its origin (period of the migration of the nations) had absorbed into itself the Roman world-empire as an idea and as a force, and stood face to face with uncivilised nations; hence its aggressive character, which, moreover, it only developed after Charlemagne had shown it how the vicarius Christi on earth must rule. Nicolas I. learned from Charles I., the Gregorian popes from Otto I., Henry II., and Henry III., how the rector ecclesiæ must administer his office. But in the period we are reviewing the development, which had to cancel itself when it seemed to have come near its completion, was still in process. Much was still to be done in the way of excavating secularised Christendom 8from its rough surroundings. And the masses were really changed in temper and set on fire — set on fire to contend against

the secularised clergy and against simonistic princes in the whole of Europe. A new enthusiasm of a religious kind stirred the nations of the West, especially the Romanic. The ardour of the Crusades was the direct fruit of the monastic papal reform movement of the eleventh century. In them most vividly the religious revival which had passed over the West revealed itself in its specific character. The supremacy of the Church must be given effect to on earth. It was the ideas of the world-ruling monk of Clugny that guided the Crusaders on their path. The Holy Land and Jerusalem were parts of heaven on earth. They must be conquered. The dreadful and affecting scenes at the taking of the sacred city illustrate the spirit of mediæval piety.

Christianity is ascetism and the City of God — but the Church, which really fired souls for these ideas, lit also thereby the flame of religious individualism; it awakened the power which was ultimately strong enough to burst through the strict bonds of system and sever the chain. But it was long before things went so far as this. The Cluniacensian reform, if I see aright, produced as yet no religious individualism at all, in the sense of manifold expressions of piety. The enthusiastic religious spirit of the eleventh century was quite of the same kind in individual cases. Among the numerous founders of orders during this period, there still prevailed the greatest uniformity: spiritual need, flight from the world, contemplation — all of them are expressed in similar forms and by the same means.¹¹¹¹See Neander, K.-Gesch. V., 1, pp. 449-564. An appeal must not be made to the Sectaries, already numerous in this century; they stood in scarcely any connection with the ecclesiastical revival, and had as yet no influence upon it.¹²¹²Their doctrines were imported from the East — from Bulgaria; that old remnants of sects survived in the West itself (Priscillians) is not impossible. But spontaneous developments also must be recognised, such as have arisen in all ages of the Church’s history, from reading Scripture and the Fathers, and from old reminiscences. In the twelfth century, heresy became an organised power, frightfully dangerous to the Church, in some regions — indeed, superior to it; see Reuter I., p. 153 f., and Döllinger’s work, Beiträge zur Sectengesch. des Mittelalters, 2 Thl., München 1890, in which the Paulicians, Bogomili, Apostolic Brethren and Catharists are described.

Through the Crusades this became changed. The primitive Christian intuitions were restored. The sacred places stirred the imagination, and led it to the Christ of the Gospels. Piety was quickened by the most vivid view of the suffering and dying Redeemer; He must be followed through all the stages of His path of sorrow! Negative asceticism thus obtained a positive form, and a new and more certain aim. The notes of the Christ-Mysticism, which Augustine had struck only singly and with uncertainty,¹³¹³ See Vol. V., p. 124 f. became a ravishing melody. Beside the sacramental Christ the image of the historical took its place¹⁴¹⁴Bernh., Sermo LXII. 7, in cant. cantic: “quid enim tam efficax ad curanda conscientise vulnera nec non ad purgandam mentis aciem quam Christi vulnerum sedula meditatio?” — majesty in humility, innocence in penal suffering, life in death. That dialectic of piety without dialectic, that combined spectacle of suffering and of glory, that living picture of the true communicatio idiomatum (communication of attributes) developed itself, before which mankind stood worshipping, adoring with equal reverence the sublimity and the abasement. The sensuous and the spiritual, the earthly and the heavenly, shame and honour, renunciation and fulness of life were no longer tumultuously intermingled: they were united in serene majesty in the “Ecce homo.” And so this piety broke forth into the solemn hymn: “Salve caput cruentatum” (“O Lamb of God once wounded”). We cannot measure the effects which this newly-tempered piety produced, nor can we calculate the manifold types it assumed, and the multitude of images it drew within its range. We need only recall the picture — new, and certainly only derived from the cross — of the mother and child, the God in the cradle, omnipotence in weakness. Where this piety appears without dogmatic formule, without fancifulness, without subtlety, or studied calculation, it is the simple expression, now brought back again, of the Christian religion itself; for in reverence for the suffering Christ, and in the power which proceeds from His image, all the forces of religion are embraced. But even where it does not appear in its purity, where there is intermingled with it the trivial — down even to the heart-of-Jesus-worship¹⁵¹⁵This certainly is also very old, and that, too, in had forms; it is not otherwise with the limb-worship of Mary. In the Vitt. Fratrum of Gerard de Frachet (about 1260), published in the Monum. Ord. Fratr. Prædic. Hist. I. (Louvain, 1896) the following is related of a brother: “Consueverat venerari beatam virginem, cor ejus, quo in Christum credidit et ipsum amavit, uterum, quo eum portavit, ubera, quibus eum lactavit, manus ejus tornatiles, quibus ei servivit, et pectus ejus, in quo recubuit, virtutum omnium apothecam specialiter venerans, ad singula faciens frequenter singulas venias cum totidem Ave Maria, adaptando illi virtutes, quibus meruit fled mater dei,” etc. — the 10over-refined and studied, it can still be salutary and worthy of honour, more salutary and worthy of honour, at least, than the strivings of a purely negative asceticism governed by no living conception. Even, indeed, where it manifestly degenerates into paganism, there will still remain some remnant of that liberating message, that the divine is to be found in humility and in patient suffering, and that the innocent suffers that the guilty may have peace.

In the period under review, this newly attuned piety, born of the Crusades, and nurtured on Augustine as now understood, was still in process of growth. But we have already alluded to the man who stood at the beginning, though he was himself no initiator, Saint Bernard.¹⁶¹⁶See the Monograph by Neander, new edit. (edited by Deutsch, 1889); Hüffer, Der hl. Bernard von Clairvaux, vol. I., 1886. Bernard is the religious genius of the twelfth century, and therefore also the leading spirit of the age. Above all, in him the Augustinian contemplation was revived. Too much is not asserted when it is said that he was Augustinus redivivus, that he moulded himself entirely on the pattern of the great African,¹⁷¹⁷This is true to a much greater extent than Neander has shown. and that from him what lay at the foundation of his pious contemplations was derived. So far as Bernard furnishes a system of contemplation, and describes the development of love,¹⁸¹⁸Caritas and humilitas are the fundamental conceptions in Bernard’s Ethics. on to its fourth and highest stage, at which man, rising above self-love, is wholly absorbed in the love of God, and experiences that momentary ecstasy in which he becomes one with God — so far Bernard has simply experienced anew what Augustine experienced before him. Even his language indeed is to a very large extent dependent on the language of the Confessions.¹⁹¹⁹v. the Treatise De diligendo deo. But Bernard has also learned his relation to 11 Jesus Christ from the great leader. Like the latter²⁰²⁰v. the numerous passages in the Confessions. he writes: “Dry is all food of the soul if it is not sprinkled with the oil of Christ. When thou writest, promise me nothing, unless I read Jesus in it. When thou conversest with me on religious themes, promise me nothing if I hear not Jesus’ voice. Jesus — honey to the taste, melody to the ear, gladness to the soul.”²¹²¹Jesus mel in ore, in aure melos, in corde jubilus. In cantic. cantic. XV. 6. But here Bernard has taken a step beyond Augustine. “Reverence for what is beneath us” dawned upon him, as it had never dawned upon any Christian of the older world (not even upon Augustine); for these earlier Christians, while revering asceticism as the means of escape from the body, still, as men of the ancient world, were unable to see in suffering and shame, in the cross and death, the form of the divine. The study of the Song of Songs (under the direction of Ambrose), and the spirit enkindled by the Crusades, led him before the image of the crucified Saviour as the bridegoom of the soul. In this picture he became absorbed. From the features of the suffering Christ there shone forth upon him truth and love. In a literal sense He hangs on His lips and gazes on His limbs: “My beloved, saith the Spouse, is white and ruddy: in this we see both the white light of truth and the ruddy glow of love” (in hoc nobis et candet veritas et rubet caritas), says Gilbert in the spirit of Bernard.²²²²How the cross of Christ is for Bernard the sum and substance of all reflection and all wisdom, see Sermo XLIII.; on loftiness in abasement see XXVIII. and XLII.; de osculo pedis, manus et oris domini III.; de triplici profectu animæ, qui fit per osculum pedis, manus et oris domini IV.; de spiritu, qui est deus, et quomodo misericordia et judicium dicantur pedes domini VI.; de uberibus sponsi, i.e., Christi IX.; de duplice humilitate, una vid. quam parit veritas et altera quam inflammat caritas XLII., etc. etc. The basis for this Christ-contemplation — the wounds of Christ as the clearest token of His love — was laid by Ambrose and Augustine (Christ, mediator as man), and the image of the soul’s bridegroom goes back to Origen and Valentinus (cf. also Ignatius); but Bernard was the first to give to the pious spirit its historic Christian intuitions; he united the Neoplatonic self-discipline for rising to God with contemplation of the suffering 12and dying Redeemer, and released the subjectivity of the Christ-Mysticism and the Christ-Lyricism.²³²³See the Poems of Bernard and the 86 Sermons on the Song of Songs, which determined the character of the piety of the following generations. These sermons became the source of the Catholic Christ-mysticism. Ritschl, however, (Lesefrüchte aus dem hl. Bernhard, Stud. u. Krit. 1879, pp. 317-335) has noted (see Neander, 1.c. p. 116), that in these sermons true evangelical thoughts also find expression. “The cause of that I was constrained to see in this, that the preacher did not handle his doctrinal material in the historical order which dogmatic theology adheres to among both Catholics and Evangelicals — an order according to which the doctrines treated first are dealt with without regard to those that follow. We can see rather, without difficulty, that the preacher uses the points of doctrine as they present themselves in the practical circle of vision.” Ritschl points to the following passages (see also Wolff, Die Entw. d. einen christl. K. 1889, p. 165 ff.): Sermo LXIX. 3 (the gravity of original sin: the degree of injury is determined by regeneration); Sermo LXXII. 8 (significance of death: among the redeemed “propter quos omnia fiunt,” it must be regarded as an expression, not of God’s wrath, but of His mercy, as the act of redemption from the conflict between the law in the members and the sanctified will); Sermo XXII. 7-11 (righteousness by faith; it is not equivalent to power given for good works, but “unde vera justitia nisi de Christi misericordia? . . .soli justi qui de ejus misericordia veniam peccatorum consecuti sunt . . .quia non modo justus sed et beatus, cui non imputabit deus peccatum”); Sermo XX. 2; XI. 3; VI. 3 (redemptive work of Christ: the work of love [“non in omni mundi fabrica tantum fatigationis auctor assumpsit”], of which the modus is the exinanitio of God, its fruit nostri de illo repletio, and which is divine, because Christ here kept in view the way of acting which is God’s way, who makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good. The communicatio idiomatum is not understood here in the Greek sense, but is exhibited in the motives of Christ; VI. 3: “dum in carne et per carnem facit opera, non carnis sed dei . . .manifeste ipsum se esse judicat, per quem eadem et ante fiebant, quando fiebant. In carne, inquam, et per carnem potenter et patienter operatus mira, locutus salubria, passus indigna evidentur ostendit, quia ipse sit, qui potenter sed invisibiliter sæcula condidisset, sapienter regeret, benigne protegeret. Denique dum evangelizat ingratis, signa præbet infidelibus, pro suis crucifixoribus orat, nonne liquido ipsum se esse declarat, qui cum patre suo quotidie oriri facit solem super bonos et malos, pluit super justos et injustos?” ): Sermo XXI. 6, 7; LXXXV. 5 (the restored image of God in man); Sermo LXVIII. 4; LXXI. 11 (the founding of the Church as the aim of redemption); LXXVIII. 3 (Church and predestination); Sermo VIII. 2, XII. 11, XLVI. 4, LI. 5 (conception and marks of the historic Church, where the rigidly juristic view is quite absent: in XII. 11, it is said that no individual may declare himself the bride of Christ; the members of the Church only share in the honour which belongs to the Church as bride). Cf. also Ritschl, Gesch. des Pietismus I., p. 46 ff., and Rechtfert. u. Versöhn, I.2 p. 109 ff., where it is shown how for Bernard the thought of grace controls everything.

But in spite of all quickening of the imagination, and in spite of his most ardent devotion to the person of Christ, even Bernard was obliged to pay the heavy tribute that is exacted of 13every mystic, — the mood of abandonment after the blessed feeling of union, and the exchange of the historic Christ for the dissolving picture of the ideal. With him the latter is specially remarkable. It might have been expected that for one who became so absorbed in the picture of the suffering Christ, it would have been impossible to repeat the direction given by Origen and Augustine, that we must rise from the word of scripture, and from the Incarnate Word, to the “Spirit.” And yet this final and most questionable direction of mysticism, which nullifies historical Christianity and leads on to pantheism, was most distinctly repeated by Bernard. No doubt what he has written in ep. 106, on the uselessness of the study of Scripture, as compared with practical devotion to Christ,²⁴²⁴“Why dost thou seek in the Word for the Word that already stands before thine eyes as Incarnate? Iie that hath ears to hear, let him hear Him crying in the temple, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. . . . O, if thou only once tastedst of the rich marrow of the grain with which the heavenly Jerusalem is satisfied, how willingly wouldst thou leave the Jewish scribes to gnaw at their bread-crusts. . . . Experto crede, aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt, quod a magistris audire non possis.” may still be interpreted in the light of the thought, that Christianity must be experienced, not known. But there is no ambiguity in the ex-positions in the twentieth sermon on the Song of Songs. Here the love to Christ that is stirred by what Christ did or offered in the flesh is described as still to some extent fleshly. It is no doubt a valuable circumstance that Bernard does not regard the distress and anguish awakened by the picture of the man Jesus as the highest thing, that he rather sees in it a portion of the fleshly love. But he then goes on to say, that in true spiritual love we must rise altogether from the picture of the historic Christ to the Christ κατὰ πνεῦμα (after the spirit), and for this he appeals to John VI. and 2 Cor. V. 16. All the mysticism of after times retained this feature. It learned from Bernard the Christ-contemplation;²⁵²⁵Bernard was reverenced as an apostle and prophet “among all nations of Gaul and Germany.” The lament of Odo of Morimond (see Hüffer, l.c. p. 21 ff.) is very touching, and proves at the same time the incomparable influence of his personality. Since Augustine, no such man had been given to the Church. “Vivit Bernardus et nardus ejus dedit odorem suum etiam in morte.” “His life is hid with Christ in God,” with this the disciple comforted himself at the grave. “Verba ejus spiritus et vita erant.” The recollection of the days when Bernard wandered as a preacher of the cross through the districts of Germany long survived; for the Germans had never heard such a preacher. See the Historia miraculorum in itinere Germanico patratorum in Migne CLXXXV.; Hüffer, p. 70 ff. (who certainly is remarkably credulous). The correspondence of Bernard stands alone in the twelfth century as regards importance and extent. Almost 500 letters by himself are extant. but, at the same time, it adopted the pantheistic 14tendency of the Neoplatonists and Augustine.²⁶²⁶The “excedere et cum Christo esse” (S. LXXXV.) was understood even by Bernard as meaning, that the soul loses itself, and in the embraces of the bridegroom ceases to be a proper ego. But where the soul is merged in the Godhead, the Godhead becomes resolved into the All-One. In the second half of the twelfth century the new piety was already a powerful force in the Church.²⁷²⁷Follow Christ became the watchword; it broke through the restrictions which dogmatic had drawn, and turned to the Lord Himself. For all relations of life, the suffering, humble, and patient Saviour was presented as an example. What a quickening was the result! But from this point it was possible that a familiarity of feeling should develop itself, which conflicts with reverence for the Redeemer, and because the value of Christ was seen, in a one-sided way, in His example, other sides necessarily suffered neglect. With Bernard that was not yet the case; but already in him it is astonishing how the Greek dogmatic scheme of Christology had to give place in praxi to a scheme quite different. After he has shown in the 16th sermon that the rapid spread of Christianity was due simply to the preaching of the person of Jesus, that the image of Jesus had assuaged wrath, humbled pride, healed the wounds of envy, checked luxury, quenched lust, bridled avarice, and, in short, had driven out all the lower passions of men, he continues: Siquidem cum nomino Jesum, hominem mihi propono mitem et humilem corde, benignum, sobrium, castum, misericordem et omni denique honestate et sanctitate conspicuum eundemque ipsum deum omnipotentem, qui suo me et exemplo sanet et roboret adjutorio. Hæc omnia simul mihi sonant, cum insonuerit Jesus. Sumo itaque mihi exempla de homine et auxilium de potente.” Thus did one write, while in theory rejecting Adoptianism! This Bemardine Christology, of which the roots lie in Augustine, requires no two-nature doctrine; it excludes it. It is fully represented by the formula that Jesus is the sinless man, approved by suffering, to whom the divine grace by which He lives has lent such power that His image takes shape in other men, i.e., incites to counter love and imparts humility. Caritas and humilitas were practical Christianity, till St. Francis gave as much vividness of form to the latter in his demand for poverty as was to be exhibited by love in imitation of Christ in His course of suffering. All the ascetic treatises of the period speak of humility; see Petrus Comestor, Hist. evang. c. 133: “est debita humilitas subdere se majori propter deum, abundans (humilitas) subdere se pari, superabundans subdere se minori.” Note the distinction also, so important subsequently in the doctrine of the merit of Christ, between debita, abundans, and superabundans. The subjectivity of pious feeling was unfettered in the monasteries.²⁸²⁸It counterbalanced the legal righteousness and “meritoriousness” that lay close at hand from other sides. Ritschl remarks very correctly (Rechtf. und Versöhn. I.2, p. 117): “It is an erroneous view that the Latin Catholicism of the Middle Ages was summed up in the cultivation of legal righteousness and meritoriousness.” It has as its correlate the mysticism that sacrifices the personal ego, to which at one time a theologico-acosmistic, at another time a christologico-lyrical character is given. But the simple trust in God, who reveals His grace in Christ, with the confession: “Sufficit mihi ad omnem justitiam solum habere propitium, cui soli peccavi” (Bernh. serm. in cant. xxiii. 15), was certainly not wanting in individual cases. Here and there, but above all in view of death, it triumphed, both over the calculations of legal righteousness and over the vagueness of mysticism. Flacius and Chemnitz were right in seeking and collecting testimonies for the evangelical doctrine of justification from the Middle Ages, and as Augustine in his day could justly assert that his doctrine of grace had its tradition in the prayers of the Church, so Chemnitz also was entitled to affirm that the cardinal evangelical doctrine could produce evidence for itself from earlier times, “Non in declamatoriis rhetoricationibus nec in otiosis disputationibus, sed in seriis exercitiis pænitentiæ et fidei, quando conscientia in tentationibus cum sua indignitate vel coram ipso judicio dei vel in agone mortis luctatur. Hoc enim solo modo rectissime intelligi potest doctrina de justificatione, sicut in scriptura traditur.” But as the same man who, 15in the seclusion of his monastery, spoke a new language of adoration, preached flight from the world, and called to the Pope that he sat in Peter’s chair to serve and not to rule — as this man at the same time continued fettered by all the hierarchical prejudices of his age, and himself guided the policy of the world-ruling Church, even the pious in the Church in the twelfth century had not yet felt the contrast between Church and Christianity. The attachment of monachism to the Church was still of a naive kind; the contradiction between the actual form of the world-ruling Church and the gospel which it preached was felt, indeed, but always suppressed again.²⁹²⁹The “eternal gospel” of Joachim of Fiore belongs to the close of our period, and for a time remained latent; see Reuter, l.c. II., p. 198 ff. That great mendicant monk had not yet come on the scene whose appearing was to work the crisis in the fluctuating struggle between renunciation of the world and lordship over it. But already the Church was beset all around by the wrathful curses of the “heretics,” who saw in the Church’s powerful exercise of her dominion and in the alienation of her gifts of grace the features of the ancient Babylon.