The Founders of the Latin West

1. The Founders of the Latin West

2. The founders of the Latin West • The founders of the Latin West are Christian intellectuals of the Late Antiquity who largely influenced the culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance between 6-15th century. • They were: Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Gregory the Great (they are the Latin Fathers of the Church in the 4th-6th centuries), Boethius, the philosopher, the bibliophile Cassiodorus and Saint Benedict, the founder of Benedictine order in the 6th century AD.

3. Latin Fathers

4. Classical culture and Christianity 1. • The early Christian churchmetthe Greco-Roman culture. • The Roman Empire as a social, political, and economic force gradually disintegrated in the Late Antiquity. • But Classicalculture, however, survived. In Greek philosophy, art, and architecture, in Roman law, literature, education, and engineering, the legacy of a great civilization continued. • The Christian religion had begun and spread within this intellectual and psychological milieu. • What was to be the attitude of Christians to the Greco-Roman world of ideas? 

5. Classical culture and Christianity 2. • As Saint Paul wrote, "The wisdom of the world is foolishness, we preach Christ crucified." • Tertullian(ca 160-220), an influential African church father and writer, condemned/refusedall secular literature as foolishness in the eyes of God. • "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem," he demanded, "the Academy with the Church?We have no need for curiosity since Jesus Christ, nor for inquiry since the gospel." • Tertullian insisted that Christians would find in the Bible all the wisdom they needed. 

6. Classical culture and Christianity 3. • But other theological perspectives seemedto be more influential in later centuries. • Some Christian theologians were convinced that pagan cultures which hadn’t had chance to know Christ, could be valuable. • The Christian churchfathersspoke about so-called logoi spermatikoi, semina verbi – the seeds of truth– which can be found in every culture before Christ. • For example Platowas the Athenian Moses because he had been able to understand the truth of philosophical monotheism without direct knowledge of divinerevelation.

7. Classical culture and Christianity 4. • This open-minded concept onthe values of the ancient pagan world was the mainstream of thinking about relationship between the Christianity and Classical Antiquity in the ancient Christian Church. • AlthoughSaint Jerome had a formidable dream when Jesus Christ appeared and said to him: „You believe in Cicero and not in Jesus Christ”, • butJerome translated the Bible to Latin languagein simple and beautiful Classical style which became the most widespread text of the Middle Ages. • It has symbolic meaning when he wanted to go to the desert to live ascetic life, it was very difficult decision for him to leave his library at home.

8. Classical culture and Christianity 5. • The Christian acceptance/receptionof Classical culture and education was the reason why the ancient texts remained for later centuries and for us. • So we can speak about the history of premodern European civilization as some periods of the Renaissances which can be interpreted as waves of reception of the Classical Greek-Roman culture and education in a Christian framework. • This is the reason why we can speak about a fertile tension between Classical and Christian components during the history of European civilization.

9. Saint Augustine 1. • The emblematic figure of the Christian Late Antiquity was Saint Augustine with his theology and philosophy. • He was the most influential representative of the ancient Christianity. • His works summarized and unified the Classical and Christian education with the dominance of the Christian principles, and gave a solid ground for later centuries. • Saint Augustine is called as a father/founderof the Latin West. • He was born in the age of the imperial stabilization after Constantine in the middle of the 4th century, which was a flourishing ageof the late Roman society, he died in the age ofGerman migrations in the first part of the 5th century.

10. Saint Augustine 2. • Saint Augustine iscalled Saint Augustine of Hippo. • His original Latin name was Aurelius Augustinus. • He was born in 354, Tagaste, died in430, Hippo Regius. • He was the bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430. • One of the Latin Fathers of the Church, • One of the Doctors of the Church, • The most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul.

11. Saint Augustine 3. • Augustine’s adaptation/concept of classical philosophywith Christian teaching created a theological system of great power and lasting influence. • His distinctive theological style shaped Latin Christianity. • His numerous written works, the most important of which are Confessionsand TheCity of God. • He contributed to the foundation of the practice of biblical exegesis and helped lay the foundation of medieval and modern Christian theology and philosophy.

12. Saint Augustine 4. • Augustine is remarkable for what he did and extraordinary for what he wrote. • If none of his written works had survived, he would still have been an emblematic person of the Christianity in the Late Antiquity. • However, more than five million words of his writings survive with the exceptional power to attract and hold the attention of readers in both his days and ours.

13. Saint Augustine 5. • Intellectually, Augustine represents the most influential adaptation of the ancient Platonic tradition with Christian ideas that ever occurred in the Latin Christian world. • Augustine received the Platonic philosphyin a far more limited way than did his Greek-speaking contemporaries, but his writings were so widely read and imitated throughout Latin Christendom that his particular synthesis of Christian, Roman, and Platonic traditions defined the terms for later tradition and debate. • Differing from Saint Thomas scholasticism – it was another mainstream of the Christian philosophy and theology which incorporated Aristotle’s philosophy – Saint Augustine adapted the Platonic tradition.

14. Saint Augustine 6. • Both modern Roman Catholic and ProtestantChristianityowe much to Augustine, although in some ways each community has at times been embarrassed to realize the contradictoryelements in his thought. • Augustine has been cited as both a champion of human freedom and an articulate defender of divine predestination. • For example the Protestants cited Augustine speaking about the predestination in the 16th century.

15. Saint Augustine 7. • Augustine was born in Tagaste, a modest Roman community in a river valley 40 miles (64 km) from the North African coast. It laysjust a few miles from the point where the influence of Roman civilization gradually disappearedin the highlands of Numidia. • Augustine’s parents were of the respectable middle-class of Roman society, free to live on the work of others, but they weren’t rich persons. • His father was a pagan; his mother, Monica, an enthusiastic Christian. They managed, sometimes on borrowed money, to acquire a first-class education for Augustine

16. Tagaste

17. Saint Augustine 8. • Augustinestudied first in Tagaste, then in the nearby university town of Madauros, and finally at Carthage, the great city of Roman Africa. • By modern and even medieval standards, that education was extremely narrow: the textual study of the writings of the poet Virgil, the orator-politician Cicero, the historian Sallust, and the playwright Terence. • But later Augustine learned rhetoric which was more complex study. • After a brief period of teaching in Tagaste, he returned to Carthage to teach rhetoric, the premier science for the Roman gentleman, and he was evidently very good at it.

18. Gozzoli – The School of Tagaste

19. Saint Augustine 9. • At the age of 28, restless and ambitious, Augustine left Africa in 383 to make his career in Rome. • He taught there briefly before getting an appointment as imperial professor of rhetoric at Milan. The customary residence of the emperor at the time, Milan was the de facto capital of the Western Roman Empire and the place where careers were best made. • Augustine tells us that he, and the many family members with him, expected no less than a provincial governorship as a reward for his merits.

20. Saint Augustine 10. • In his young age the Manicheism – it was a form of religious dualism/dualistic religion – had strong impact on the mind of the young Augustine. • The goodness and the evil had the same importance, and they were equally essential principles in the world according to the concept of Manicheism. • Later Augustine would work out a counter-argument against the Manicheism saying that the evil is only the lack of the goodness, and it is not an autonomous principle of the real world.

21. Saint Augustine 11. • In his twenties Augustine began to approach to Plato and Cicero, and gradually left the Manicheism. • Plato’s and Cicero’sbooks were about the problem of the highest goodness which was already a precondition and an antecedent for Augustine’s conversion to Christianity. • Although his mother was Christian Augustine wasn’t originally interested in Christian religion in his young age. • In Milan the influential bishop, Ambrose had strong impact on Augustine. The great bishop interpreted theOld Testamentas a preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ in an allegoric way.

22. Saint Augustine 12. • Ambrose’sexegetical approach gave a chance to Augustine to understand the Bible much better. Earlier he had refused the Christianity because he did not understand the character of the cruel God in the Old Testament. • It was the last impediment he had to surpasse, and at turn of his 20s and 30s he converted. • His spiritual route was a step by step process from Manicheism through Platonism to the Bible with unexpected revelations.

23. Saint Augustine 13. • Augustine’s career hasbeen completely changed in Milan. After only two years there, he resigned from his teaching post and, made his way back to his native town of Tagaste. • Thistransformation was not entirely surprising. The collapse of his career at Milan was associated with an intensification of his religiosity. • All his writings from that time are in connection with a form of Christianity both orthodox Catholic andintellectual. • His friends in North Africa accepted his distinctive style with some difficulty, and Augustine wantedto associate himself with the “official” branchof Christianity approved by emperors.

24. Saint Augustine 14. • Made a “presbyter” roughly, a priest at Hippo in 391, Augustine became bishop there in 395 or 396 and spent the rest of his life in that office. • Hippo was a trading city, without the wealth and culture of Carthage or Rome, and Augustine was never entirely at home there. He would travel to Carthage for several months of the year to manage ecclesiastical business in a milieu more welcoming to his talents than that of his adopted home city (Hippo). • Augustine’s educational background and cultural milieu trained him for the art of rhetoric: declaring the power of his individual through speech that convinced the crowd to follow his views.

25. Hippo, Africa

26. Saint Augustine 15. • Augustine's autobiography, Confessions, is a literary masterpiece and one of the most influential books in the history of Europe. • Written in the form of a prayer, the Confessions describes Augustine's moral struggle, the conflict between his spiritual and intellectual aspirations and his sensual and materialindividual. • The Confessions reveals the change and development of a human mind and personality together with the philosophy and culture of the ancient world.

27. Saint Augustine 16. • Many Greek and Roman philosophers had supposed that knowledge and virtue are the same: a person who really knows what is right will do what is right. • Augustine rejected this idea. He believed that a person may know what is right but fail to act righteously because of the innate weakness of the human will. • People do not always act on the basis of rational knowledge. Here Augustine made a profound contribution to the understanding of human nature: he demonstrated that a learned person can also be corrupt and evil.

28. Saint Augustine 17. • The Confessions, written in the rhetorical style and language of the late Roman antiquity, marks the synthesis of Greco-Roman forms and Christian thought.  • Augustine firstly spoke about thedevelopment of the human personality which had been unknown for ancient historians who rather depicted unchanged/changeless characters with perfect morality. • The Confessions became the beginning of the description of the development process of human personality, and the psychological self-analysisin the history of European culture.

29. Saint Augustine 18. • Augustine's ideas on sin, grace, and redemption became the foundation of all subsequent Christian theology, Protestant as well as Catholic. • He wrote that the basic or dynamic force in any individual is the will. When Adam ate the fruit forbidden by God in the Garden of Eden, he committed the original sin which corrupted the will. Because Adam disobeyed God and fell, so all human beings have an innate tendency to sin: their will is weak. • But according to Augustine, God restores/supports the strength of the will through his grace, which is transmitted through the sacraments. 

30. Saint Augustine 19. • When the Visigothic chieftain Alaric conquered Rome in 410, horrified pagans blamed the disaster on the Christians. • In response, Augustine wrote TheCity of God. This profoundly original work contrasts Christianity with the secular society in which it existed. • The City of God presents a moral interpretation of the Roman government – in fact, of all history. Filled with references and examples to ancient history and mythology, it remained for centuries the standard statement of the Christian philosophy of history (and political philosophy). 

31. Saint Augustine 20. • According to Augustine, history is enumeration of the deedsofGod acting in time. • Human history reveals that there are two kinds of people: those who live according to the sin in the City of Babylonand those who live according to the spirit in the City of God. • The former will live in eternal hellfire; the latter enjoy eternal happiness. 

32. Saint Augustine 21. • Augustine maintained that states came into existence as the result of Adam's fall and people's inclination to sin. • The state is a necessary evil, but it can work for the good by providing the peace, justice. The particular form of government whether monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy – is basically irrelevant. • Any civil governments that fail to provide justice is no more than a band of gangsters.  • The state results from moral lapse – from sin – neither is the church (the visible Christian community) entirely free from sin.

33. Saint Augustine 22. • The visible church is certainly not equivalent to the City of God. • But the church, which is concerned with salvation, is responsible for everyone, including Christian rulers. • Church in the Middle Ages used Augustine's theory to defend their belief in the ultimate superiority of the spiritual power over the secular power. • This remained the dominant political theory until the late thirteenth century. Opposing to so-called Renaissance Machiavellism which was only about rude political interests, Augustine’s political philosophy wanted to follow a high-level morality which never can’t be implemented perfectly but we have to try it permanently.

34. Western Monasticism 1. • The Late Antiquity was the age of the beginnings of the Christian Monasticism. • Christian Monasticism had its origin in Egypt/more exactly in the Egyptian desert in 2-3rd centuries AD. • It is difficult to give a simple explanation of the early appearance and rapid spread of Monasticism. • There are some religions – for example the Buddhism – where we encounter monks, so it does not belong only to Christianity but no doubt it became an organic part of Christian religion.

35. Western Monasticism 2. • Christian Monasticism can be interpreted as a radical answer to Jesus Christ’s call. • It is also important to understand that Christians were permanently waiting for the second coming or advent of Christ but this advent seemed to be postponed. • In the earlycenturies following the death of Jesus Christ, a culture of monasticism developed and prospered in the whole early Christian world. • There was a growing opinion among believers that the best way to serve Christ led through a life of simplicity, asceticism, and isolation from mainstream civilization.

36. Western Monasticism 3. • The emergence of Monasticism can be interpreted as an answerto the problem when Christianity gradually became a part of the political-social establishment in the 4thcentury AD. • There was a serious danger that Christianity can lose its radicalism, and a so-called social Christianity can emerge. • Monasticism was a strong counter-effect in the 4-5thcenturieswhich renewed the vitality of Christian radicalism and the autonomy of Christian life. • This is the reason why the 4-5th centuries were the first great age of the Christian monasticism.

37. Western Monasticism 4. • Monasticism began in Egypt in the 2-3rd century AD. • At first individuals and small groups withdrew themselves from cities and organized society to seek God through prayer in caves and shelters in the desert or mountains. • Gradually large colonies of monks emerged in the deserts of Upper Egypt. • They were called hermits, from the Greek word „eremos”, meaning „desert.” • Although monks (and nuns) led isolated lives and the monastic movement represented the antithesis of the ancient ideal of an urban social existence,average people soon recognized the monks and nuns as holy people and wanted to seek them as spiritual guides. 

38. Western Monasticism 5. • When monasticism spread to western Europe, several factors worked against the continuation of the eremitical form. • The cold, snow, ice, and fog that covered much of northern Europe for many months of the year discouraged isolated living. Dense forests filled with wild animals and wandering Germanic tribes presented obvious dangers. • Also, church leaders did not really approve of eremitical life. • Hermitssometimes claimed to have mystical experiences, direct communication with God. No one could verify these experiences. • If hermits could communicate directly with the Lord, what need had they for the priest and the institutional church?

39. Western Monasticism 6. • Saint Basil (329?-379), the scholarly bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia in Asia Minor, opposed the eremitical life on other grounds: the impossibility of material self-sufficiency; and thefact that the eremitical life did not provide the opportunity for the exercise of charity, the first virtue of any Christian. • The Egyptian ascetic Pachomius (290-346?) had organized communities of men and women at his coenobitic monastery at Tabennisi on the Upper Nile drawing thousands of recruits. • Saint Basil and the church hierarchy encouraged coenobitic monasticism (=communal living in monasteries). Communal living, they felt, provided an environment for training the young monk in the virtues of charity, poverty, and freedom from self-deception. 

40. Tabennisi

41. Western Monasticism 7. • In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria's Life of St. Anthony, the monk John Cassian's Conferences, which is based on his conversations with Egyptian monks, and other information about Egyptian monasticism came to the West. • The literature of the Egyptian monastic experience led to a lot of converts. Many experiments in communal monasticism were made in Gaul, Italy, Spain, England, and Ireland.

42. Western Monasticism 8. • After studying both eremitical and coenobitic monasticism in Egypt and Syria, John Cassian established two monasteries near Marseilles in Gaul around 415. One of his books, Conferences, discussed the dangers of the isolated hermit's life. • The abbey of Lérins on the Mediterranean Sea near Cannes (ca 410) also had significant contacts with monastic centers in western Asia and North Africa. • Lérinsencouraged the severely penitential and extremely ascetic behavior common in the East, such as long hours of prayer. • It was this tradition of harsh self-discipline that the Roman-British monk Saint Patrickcarried from Lérins to Ireland in the fifth century. 

43. Western Monasticism 9. • Around 540 the Roman senator Cassiodorus retired from public service and established a monastery, the Vivarium, on his estate in Italy. • Cassiodorus wanted the Vivarium to become an educational and cultural center and collected highly educated and sophisticated men for it. • He ordered the monks to copy both sacred and secular manuscripts, intending this to be their only occupation. • Cassiodorus started the association of monasticism with scholarship and learning. • That developed into a great tradition in the medieval and modern world. • But Cassiodorus's experiment did not become the most influential form of monasticism in European society.

44. Western Monasticism 10. • In 529 Benedict of Nursia (480-543), who had experimented with both the eremitical and the communal forms of monastic life, wrote a brief set of regulations for the monks who had gathered around him at Monte Cassino between Rome and Naples. • Recent research has shown that Benedict's Rule derives from a longer, repetitious, and sometimes abundant document called The Rule of the Master. • Benedict's guide for monastic life provedmore and more adaptable and slowly replaced all others. • The Rule of Saint Benedict has influenced all forms of organized religious life in the Roman church. From 9th to 12th centuries almostall monks lived under the Benedictien rule in the Latin West.  

45. Western Monasticism 11. • Saint Benedict established his Rule as a simple code for average men. • It outlined a monastic life of regularity, discipline, and moderation in an atmosphere of silence. • Each monk had enough food and sleep. • Self-destructive acts of mortification were forbidden. • The monk spent part of each day in formal prayer, which Benedict called the Opus Dei (Work of God) and Christians later called the divine office, the public prayer of themonastery. This consisted of chanting psalms and other prayers from the Bible. The rest of the day was passed in manual labor, study, and private prayer. • After a year of testing or probation, the novice (newcomer) made three vows. 

46. Western Monasticism 12. • First, he vowed stability: he promised to live his entire life in the monastery of his profession. The vow of stability was Saint Benedict's major contribution to Western monasticism; its purpose was to prevent thewandering/migratingso common in his days. • Second, the monk vowed conversion of manners – that is, to improve himself and to come closer to God. • Third, he promised obedience, the most difficult vow because it meant the complete surrender of his will to the abbot, or head of the monastery. 

47. Western Monasticism 13. • The concept of Benedictine monks’ community originally was a fine balance of everyday prayer and labour/work in constantly recurring rhythm. (Ora et labora!) • The common praise of God was in the center of their everyday life. Saint Benedict, the Italian man in the Late Antiquity inherited the Roman political and social tradition of a practically governed community where individual ascetic values didn’t have any importance. • The Benedictine monks wantedto remain the place, where they lived after entering the order, and didn’t change their location. It was the so-called principle of stabilitas loci while the Irish monks rather preferred continuous wandering/migration (Peregrinatio pro Christo).

48. Western Monasticism 14. • The Rule of Saint Benedict – represents the assimilation of the Roman spirit into Western monasticism. It reveals the logical mind of Saint Benedict and the Roman concern for order, organization, and respect for law. • Saint Benedict's Rule implies that a person who wants to become a monk or nun need have no previous ascetic experience or even a particularly strong inclination toward the religious life. • The Ruleallowedthe admission of newcomers with different backgrounds and personalities. This flexibility helps to explain the attractiveness of Benedictine monasticism throughout the centuries. 

49. Western Monasticism 15. • Why did the Benedictine form of monasticism eventually replace other forms of Western monasticism? • The answer lies partly in its spirit of flexibility and moderation and partly in the balanced life it provided. • Early Benedictine monks and nuns spent part of the day in prayer, part in study or some other forms of intellectual activity, and part in manual labor. • The monastic life as established by Saint Benedict did not lean too heavily in any one direction; it offered a balance between asceticism and activity. • Benedict's Rule contrasts sharply with Cassiodorus's narrow concept of the monastery as a place for aristocratic scholars and bibliophiles. 

50. Western Monasticism 16. • Benedictine monasticism also adapted the social circumstances of theearlymedieval society. The German invasions resulted in agrarization of the European life: the self-sufficientagrarian and ruralestate replaced the city as the basic unit of civilization. A monastery, too, had to be economically self-sufficient and an agrariancommunity. • Benedictine monasticism also succeeded partly because it was so materially successful. • Benedictinehouses made a significant contribution to the agricultural development of Europe.