The Promise of Early Christianity: Dismantled in Two Major Stages

In 1381, when the Lollard priest, John Ball, got the crowds of the Peasant Revolt chanting, "When Adam delved and Eve spun, who was then the better one!" it was a slogan born of a central tenet stemming from centuries-long frustrations endured by the human spirit in Medieval Christendom, and which had came to a head in the socially-shocking wake of the Black Death (bubonic plague): did not God intend that all people should be free and equal? Indeed, this is what the earliest Christian communities believed. The hundreds of Christian congregations that arose so quickly all over the Mediterranean World and its depending regions, even though they alone were a banned sect out of literally scores of choices for possible spiritual paths, were built upon this very notion. How else could the Early Church have grown so quickly, and why else would it have consisted so overwhelmingly in those nascent times mostly of women, slaves, artisans, simple merchants and educated people of altruistic bent? Early Christian bishops called for the humane treatment of slaves, arguing that their souls were valued no less in God's eyes than those of their masters, and perhaps more. In the Early Church, women could be religious leaders (Greek: diakona). Social equality reigned in the congregations, and those in want, need or sickness were aided by their fellow members. The Church consisted equally of the laity and the clergy in complementary roles. This aspect of social liberation was very attractive to a world spiritually weary of the soulless exploitation of women, slaves and plebeians (common folk). Decade by decade, century by century, despite state-sponsored terrorism against the outlawed sect, Christianity stubbornly, defiantly grew. At last the Empire recognized the wisdom of using what had become a significant (and firmly united) portion of the population as a political tool by at first legalizing this sect, and then shortly thereafter making it the official (and exclusive) state religion. When this occurred in the fourth century, CE, many of the very traits that had made it such a powerfully attractive faith were undermined. Rome, if nothing else, had been highly hierarchically-minded, and women were definitely to be subordinated. In switching from their brand of paganism to Christianity, the Roman Imperial authorities would impose a strict order of patriarchal and socioeconomic-based stratification. There would be no more women priests, and there would be no more congregations of collective economy. The traditional order of the Roman State would not be threatened by the example of an alternative form of doing things. The Church leaders were so grateful to be not only free and clear of ever being oppressed again but also the very masters of the religious destiny of the Empire, that they were quite willing to give up much of the egalitarian spirit that had been its source of former strength. For a time, this was as far as the compromise went, which was quite a loss in terms of its repercussions to the vulnerable people of society. And then, seven hundred years later, in the eleventh century, came the Gregorian Reforms of Pope Gregory VII. Up until that point in Western Catholic Christianity, priests had been allowed to marry, with their male children usually growing up to be priests in their turn. Also during this interval of centuries, women had found alternative paths in order to play an important role in the Church by becoming nuns or abbesses. Those who rose to the rank of abbess had been given access to the best education and played advisory political roles in cultural, reformist and educational affairs of state and diocese (e.g., Hroswitha of Gandersheim). The laity had also retained some of the egalitarian power of the Early Church, by acting in equal partnership with the priesthood in decisions of how parishes and dioceses should be led and nourished. The Gregorian Reforms struck two significant blows in the name of cleansing the Church of "corruption". The first was that women were declared vessels of filth, and therefore those seeking ordination as priests would also have to take monkish vows of celibacy on top of their priestly vows of pastoral service. Women's roles in the Church both from the laity and the monastic world were denigrated in value, though some, like Abbess Hildegard von Bingen would, in the succeeding century, use their brilliance to belie the presumptions of the Gregorian Reform and prove once again the vital importance of the female gender in the affairs of Christendom. The other highly significant act of the Gregorian Reform was to demote the power of the lay congregation to that of humble servants to the priesthood. In short, "The Church" was only the clergy. On the other hand, the people were the unclean children of fallen Adam. This "reform" more than anything else would lead to the sundering of Christianity, step by step, "heresy" by "heresy", to the Reformation, whose protestant sects made equalization between clerics and the people in the pews a tantamount concern. In the aftermath of the Gregorian Reform, it was inevitable that the human spirit would seek to rectify the imbalance by creating such Medieval separatist sects as the Cathars, the Waldensians, the Bogomils, the Beguines and the Lollards. It is inevitable that every human being born has opportunities to recognize by their own lights that they each are a child of God, no less than people of the most worldly power or fabulous wealth. It is interesting to find that another response to the Gregorian Reform is that religious artists began creating beautifully sympathetic images of Jesus and Mary as recognizable people like themselves. The human spirit craved a faith that was about compassion and dignity for all, rather than the abject subordination of one's being before a cold and scathing authority.