The Story of Christianity: Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation by Justo L. Gonzalez

Author:Justo L. Gonzalez [Gonzalez, Justo L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 2014-11-24T16:00:00+00:00

Germanic and Christian traditions were combined. On this money box there are scenes of the magi and of the Germanic hero Wieland.

After the conversion of Recared, the church played the role of legislator for the Visigothic kingdom. In this it provided a measure of order, although in reading the decrees of its councils one cannot but cringe at the injustice and the inequalities that reigned. For instance, a council gathered at Toledo in 633 decreed that priests could only marry with their bishops’ permission, and that if any disobeyed, the priest was to be condemned to “do penance for some time,” while his wife was to be taken away and sold by the bishop.

The legislation regarding Jews was similar. The same council—whose president was Isidore of Seville, the most enlightened man of his time—decreed that Jews should not be forced to convert to Christianity, but that those who had been forcibly converted earlier would not be allowed to return to the faith of their ancestors, for this would be blasphemy. Furthermore, such converts were forbidden any dealings with Jews who retained their ancient faith, even if they were their closest relatives. And if any of them were found to be observing some of their traditional practices, particularly “the abominable circumcisions,” their children were to be taken away from them. Furthermore, any Jew who was found to be married to a Christian woman had to choose between conversion and leaving his wife and children. If the case was reversed, and the wife was Jewish and refused conversion, the marriage was void, and she had to leave the children with the father.

Even after the conversion of Recared, and in spite of the efforts of the church, the Visigothic kingdom continued to be politically unstable and plagued with violence and arbitrariness. King Recesvinth (649–672), for instance, killed seven hundred of his enemies, and distributed their wives and children among his friends. Finally, under King Roderick (710–711), the Muslims invaded Spain and put an end to Visigothic rule. By then, however, Christianity had become so rooted in the country, that it became the rallying point in the long struggle to re-conquer the peninsula from the Muslim Moors.

During most of the fifth century, Gaul was divided between two invading groups: the Burgundians, who were Arians, and the Franks, who were still pagans. The Burgundians, however, did not persecute the Catholics, as did the Vandals in North Africa. On the contrary, they imitated their customs, and soon many Burgundians had accepted the Nicene faith of their Catholic subjects. In 516, King Sigismund was converted to orthodox trinitarian doctrine, and soon the rest of the kingdom followed suit.

The Franks (whose country came to be known as “France”) were at first an unruly alliance of independent tribes, until a measure of unity was brought by the Merovingian dynasty named after its founder, Meroveus. Clovis, Meroveus’s grandson and the greatest of the Merovingian line, was married to a Christian Burgundian princess, and on the eve of a battle promised that he would be converted if his wife’s God gave him victory.

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