Despite his characterization of the medieval system as “Constantinian,” Yoder recognizes that “the risk of caricature is great,” and he offers this balanced assessment:
“the church in the Middle Ages retained a more than vestigial consciousness of its distinctness from the world. The higher level of morality asked of the clergy, the international character of the hierarchy, the visibility of the hierarchy in opposition to the princes, the gradual moral education of barbarians into monogamy and legality, foreign missions, apocalypticism and mysticism - all of these preserved an awareness, however distorted and polluted, of the strangeness of God’s people in a rebellious world.”
Among other things, this suggests that the clergy’s efforts to distinguish itself from the laity, however pernicious, was perhaps motivated by an entirely legitimate desire to maintain what O’Donovan calls a vis-a-vis over against political powers.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
More from History
Continue reading related articles
Realness of Things Past
Greg Anderson began thinking about the thesis of his Realness of Things Past while working on a book on the “state” in classical Greece. He discovered there was no such thing as an Athenian “state,” and that conclusion led him to question the way historians do history. Instead of running…
The Power of the Margins
David Martin (1929-2019) was a secularization skeptic. He acknowledged that modern societies typically undergo a process of "differentiation," in which various sectors of social and political life free themselves from the oversight of religious authority. He acknowledged that in many modern societies religious institutions and values are "marginalized." But he…
Zwinglian Symbolism
Nathan Mitchell (writing in the Oxford History of Christian Worship , 324) denies that Zwingli taught a "mere symbolist" according to which the Supper "simply served to remind believers of the great benefits bestowed on them through Christ's passion and death." Zwingli wasn't a symbolist "in any modern sense." Mitchell…
In Medias Res
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.