St. Ambrose of Milan (339-397 AD) by Chris White

“..Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.”  Rev. 1:5

If you are at Rome live in the Roman style; if you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.   –Ambrose of Milan

Ambrose was born to a powerful Roman family (strongly Christian) and was destined for a career in public service.  Highly educated and charismatic, before age 30 he was governing most of Italy’s northern provinces and was well respected by his superiors and subordinates alike.

When the bishop of Milan died, Ambrose went to the meeting where a successor was being selected.  He was there to give public support but before the meeting was over, he was elected as the new bishop by acclamation.  Ambrose felt a bit awkward about his election since, even though he was a Christian, he had neglected to go through catechism and baptism.  After several attempts to get out of this commitment failed he finally agreed to serve as bishop and did so with great zeal.

As a well-educated man and being very knowledgeable in Greek, Ambrose became famous for being a dynamic preacher and writer.  He wrote many books on theological doctrines which are still read and considered important today.  One person Ambrose was to greatly influence was a young skeptic who had recently moved to Milan and came to hear him preach because he was so eloquent.  That person was St. Augustine of Hippo who is himself a huge theological influence for Roman Catholics and Protestants.

One of Ambrose’s most remembered quotes is “when in Rome do as the Romans do”.  This has been taken to mean that when in Rome you are free to indulge in the debauchery of the Romans (sort of like “what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas”).  The true meaning of the saying has its source believers in his church who were concerned that the worship services in Rome’s churches were different from theirs.  Ambrose knew that customs on Sunday morning differ from church to church and that believers should not question them or correct them, but be good guests and fit in with the Christians in that locale.

But the biggest contribution of Ambrose was neither his preaching, writing or wise guidance. It was his discipline of the Roman Emperor Theodosius.  Theodosius I (his name means worshipper of God) was a strong Christian and was the person who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  One day in a fit of rage over some riots in Thessalonica, Theodosius ordered the mass execution of nearly 7000 people.  Such a thing was as horrible then as it would be now, but it was something an emperor could pull off especially one as powerful as Theodosius.

When Ambrose heard the news he wrote a letter to the Emperor forbidding him to attend worship or receive communion until he had repented and prostrated himself at the altar out of sorrows for his grievous sin.  Because  Theodosius greatly respected the authority of Ambrose and knew that he did this out of love and spiritual concern, he did the unthinkable and repented publicly for this great sin.

While this was a one-time event it established a precedent that was to be followed for the next thousand years.  Kings have secular authority but are still under the authority of God by being under the authority of the Church.  This authority of accountability over monarchs by the church was to profoundly affect Western Civilization and because of this Bishop Ambrose of Milan is considered one of the important shapers of the Christian Church.

Pope Gregory VII : A Bright Flame in a Dark Time by Chris White

Wax Burial Effigy of Gregory VII (Hildebrand)

High position tends to favor the well-positioned in this world and this has often been true of the papacy.  But even as Christ Jesus taught us, greatness in the kingdom of God is found in being the servant of all (Mk.10:43).  Such is the story of Pope Gregory VII (1015-1085) a man of very humble beginnings who became a monk in Rome but through his gifts, both spiritual and natural, rose to become the leader of Christendom, and arguably a man with few peers among those who have ever sat on the throne of St. Peter.

His birth name was Hildebrand (“a bright flame”) which was quite appropriate for the son of the town blacksmith and his wife.  Growing up in southern Tuscany, Hildebrand Bonizi lived as neither a peasant or a prince, but as an ordinary commoner of his day.  As a teenager, Hildebrand was able to go to Rome and study under the tutelage of his maternal uncle who was both a scholar and abbot of a Benedictine monastery.  In the Middle-Ages, monastic life was often considered a special opportunity for young men as in some places it was the only means to getting higher education and it provided a structure that was conducive to learning and innovation.  It is also not an exaggeration to say that those who were well-educated in the Medieval era were very often put in the service of the church.

Eventually Hildebrand’s uncle was elevated to the papacy and took the name Gregory VI.  His was a short papacy that was troubled with many false accusations and eventually ended with his abdication and replacement at a church council.  Hildebrand followed his uncle into exile but eventually returned to Rome and in 1053 was made a cardinal bishop.  Cardinal bishops were seen in this time as the new senate of Rome.  For the next 20 years Hildebrand served 5 popes in various capacities.  In many regards this is a very tumultuous period for the papacy with some popes engaging in or being taken down by great scandals.  One of the great sins of this period was the buying and selling of church offices.  This practice, called Simony after the sin of Simon Magus (Acts 8) who sought to buy spiritual power from the Apostles and was very publicly cursed by St. Peter, was growing more and more common.  In some regards there was a sociological context for this that makes this somewhat less evil than it sounds today, but that aside, it truly had the effect of the rich and powerful, especially in Rome, turning this spiritual office into a means of leveraging power.  This problem was met head on when Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII in 1073.

In taking the name Gregory VII, Hildebrand was signaling the legitimacy of his uncle’s reign that had ended poorly but also that he was going to follow in his footsteps as a reformer.  One of the biggest reforms that Hildebrand put into place was papal elections by the cardinals.  Although all the elaborate election procedures that we see today such as being locked in the Sistine Chapel and burning ballots to signal the people are later accretions, they are built upon Hildebrand’s reform which removed the politically powerful and well-placed from interfering, and made the election of the highest bishop the responsibility of the church’s highest leadership.  While not solving the problem of power grabbing or simony completely, this step at least set the stage for its eventual correction.  This is not without a bit of irony though.  While Hildebrand is the father of papal elections, he himself was never officially elected but rather simply acclaimed.  He had so much a part the papal court, when the position became vacant everyone was agreed: “Let Hildebrand be pope!”

Though the tradition of priestly celibacy has ancient roots, it was a tradition that was not uniformly practiced or enforced.  Gregory VII, himself a monastic, changed that and enforced celibacy as the norm for the Roman Catholic priesthood.  This has always been one of the questionable practices of the Catholic Church not because celibacy (singleness without sexual partners) is without any biblical warrant, but that Jesus taught that only some have that gift and one of the most notable figures in the church that didn’t have that gift was St. Peter himself believed by Catholics to be the first pope!  To uniformly enforce a practice that is contrary to the natural makeup of most humans is to invite sin and scandal in the first place, but also unneeded disgrace when a church could be well-served by a priest with a lawfully wedded wife and family.  Ill-advised as this policy is (from my perspective at least) it did have a context in Gregory’s day where bishops had secret wives and families and would often seek to hand down a diocese as an inheritance.  In eliminating heirs through the enforcement of celibacy throughout the church, Gregory VII was also consolidating the role of the papacy in appointing and approving bishops worldwide.

The most important reform of Gregory VII was standing against what is called “lay investiture”.  Even if these terms seem foreign to you, you’ll easily see their significance even in the modern world of today.  If the church is God’s communion and instrument on earth, should clergy and particularly church leadership be appointed by the secular government or the church itself?  Many kings in Europe held the idea that they were appointed by God to rule and therefore the churches in their realms were under their jurisdiction and that included their bishops.  Gregory VII took the opposite view and asserted that the pope alone is the Lord’s vice-ruler here on earth and as such not only has the right to bestow the offices of the church, but also has authority over secular kings with the right to depose them or absolve their subjects of their obligation to obey them.

In taking this stand it would be inaccurate to say Gregory VII won a certain and final victory.  He most famously engaged King Henry IV of Germany in this controversy and even excommunicated him for a time until he repented from appointing his own bishops.  But after three years, King Henry repented of his repenting and led a successful effort to depose Gregory VII as pope, electing his own pope in the person of Clement III.

While Gregory VII and a later successor Innocent III brought papal power to supremacy in Europe as they exerted their will over other secular rulers, their viewpoint was a continual source of controversy.  Sovereign rulers had a difficult time with the idea that they derived their authority to rule as a gracious grant from the papacy and popes likewise only with difficulty could accept they were co-equal to temporal rulers, ruling over the souls rather than bodies of men.  Indeed the role of the church and government in God’s economy is still an issue for which the lines can be quickly blurred even today.  But for Gregory VII this was something for which he had absolute clarity.  It was he who declared rulers shall kiss his feet but he will kiss no layman's feet and that the church has never erred or will err in the future in its judgments.

While some of this may seem like a man on a quest for the absolute power that corrupts absolutely, we should understand Gregory VII in the context of his own time.  His exertions of power were in great part a correction of structural sins within the church.  On balance, he also lived in a Europe where everyone from the smallest to the greatest, owed allegiance to someone higher up the ladder.  It was the time of knights, kings, lords, landed commoners and un-landed peasants.  He put this together theologically and aimed at a union where kings and subjects would be in submission to the church and truly live as part of Christendom.  Gregory VII lead the way at the high tide of the church’s influence in Europe, this would later be taken to absurd heights by others and eventually falter, but in the 11^th century, the bright flame Hildebrand saw his path through the darkness around him and sought to take the church with him.

Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII was beatified in 1584 during another period of great Catholic reform following the Council of Trent.  In 1728 he was officially elevated to sainthood.

Roger Williams 1603-1683

Roger Williams was a puritan pastor who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the mid 17^th century. He had worked in the law profession in Old England and had witnessed first-hand people being publicly injured, executed, or incarcerated for religious dissidence. This greatly disturbed his conscience and when he found the same being practiced by the Puritans, the very same group routinely persecuted in the Old World, he was shocked and set out to change the law.

Williams central philosophy was thus: God gave the Ten Commandments on two tables. The first table of the Law dealt with laws concerning one’s relationship to God. Examples from the first table include Sabbath keeping and the prohibition of idolatry. The second table of the Ten Commandments contains God’s law concerning human relations. Some of its contents include the prohibition against murder, stealing, and coveting the wife of another man. Williams held that civil government was perfectly legitimate in enforcing and punishing violators of the second table, but only God had the legitimate right to judge a man for violations of the first table of the Law. He found confidence for this view from Paul’s letter to the Romans chapter 13. Further he was convinced that Christ taught that men would be drawn to Him as a result of conviction about the Gospel as opposed to any sort of legal compulsion to join the Church.

Williams soon became embroiled in a very public debate with a prominent Boston pastor named John Cotton. Cotton refuted this idea as a novelty, unfounded in scripture, and against the established authority of the Church and State. Our American forbears held the notion that the New England Puritans as a group were “God’s New Israel” and read the Old Testament directions to the nation of Israel and somehow their own. Or course Israel had special laws regarding religious purity because of their unique role in God’s plan and thereby giving a model of the state upholding religion and punishing any dissenters. Eventually Williams found himself banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and set out to find land where he could start a new colony based on his ideals. After peacefully negotiating with a local Indian tribe, Roger Williams was able to settle and start a colony called Providence Plantations in what is known today as the state of Rhode Island. Immediately religious dissenters and those disaffected by the Puritans began settling there. Williams traveled back to England to secure a charter for this new colony and became its first president. It was far from a perfect place to live and had it’s share of disagreements and public squabbles. But there in Providence, a person could believe and practice his faith or lack thereof, without fear of reprisal from the citizenry or the magistrate. As free men and citizens they had to cooperate and live together under the law. As sons of God they answered to no man but were accountable to God alone. This separation of the two tablets of the Ten Commandments would later be enshrined in the Bill of Rights as freedom of Religion and also the policy of separation between Church and State. The people, their churches, and their government all live side by side; each with their mission and their unique responsibilities to a common good. And so our great patrimony of religious freedom comes to us from the constitution via the contrarian opinion of Roger Williams and our most diminutive state Rhode Island.