Hostile ethnic groups which had invaded, looted, and ravished the countryside—barbarians, Vikings, Magyars, and Turks—were subjugated, assimilated, converted, or at least held at bay. And all of this was engineered not by some centralized, coordinating secular state power, but largely by bishops, monks, priests, nuns, and ordinary Christians.
Before proceeding, it may be worthwhile to consider the map on Page 21, which will give a sense of the geographic shape of Europe at the dawn of the Middle Ages. Note the Roman Empire lingering on in the East, stretching from Greece in the northwest through modern-day Turkey and Palestine, all the way to Egypt in the south, with its capital at Constantinople (later Byzantium) on the Black Sea.
Note also the various Germanic, barbarian kingdoms covering North Africa, Spain, France, Britain, and Germany. Within two centuries, Spain, North Africa, Egypt, and modern-day Palestine and much of Turkey would be transformed into Muslim caliphates, and Viking (Norman) incursions would reshape much of the northern coasts of Western Europe. But this, more or less, is the region in which medieval Christianity took shape.
The Missionary Work of the Church
Many Christians in the fourth-century Roman Empire could boast that the command of Christ to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19) had been fulfilled in their own day, which many of them called “our Christian times” (tempora Christiana). After all, the vast majority of the population—from the emperor down to the lowest servants—were professing Christians. Yet the tumultuous period of the Early Middle Ages would flip this situation upside down, as Christians often found themselves as small minorities being ruled by new, non-Christian populations such as Goths or Muslims. Additionally, deep disagreements over theology meant that even some purportedly Christian populations were somewhat less than orthodox—the Arians, Monophysites, Albigensians, and many others.
The work of proclaiming the Gospel to these populations was another central task of the Middle Ages. But the work of missionaries was only the beginning. It had to be followed up with the task of catechizing the converts, forming them in the faith and establishing permanent pastoral structures—parishes, dioceses, seminaries, monasteries, and so forth—to guarantee that the faith would be passed on effectively and in its entirety. The hard work of theological debate and apologetics was necessary to bring back into the fold heterodox and wayward believers.
As Christian populations expanded, Church structures had to grow more centralized and coordinated—witness, for example, the unprecedented work of the medieval papacy in coordinating the growth of the medieval Church. These structures themselves, of course, were not immune from corruption and abuse, necessitating constant work on the part of Church reformers. Even more, political rulers were always eager to manipulate the Church and her structures for their own ends, requiring clear safeguards to maintain the purity of the Church’s spiritual mission.
The Pursuit of the Glory of God
Aside from these urgent tasks necessitated by the changed social conditions of the Middle Ages, we should not forget the most central goal of the Church, “that in everything God may be glorified” (1 Pt 4:11)—the regular work of prayer, contemplation, and worship that must go on in any and all historical conditions. While rarely registering on the radar of historians, this work was clearly at the very heart of medieval Christianity, as all of the sources bear witness. The tireless and unceasing prayer of Christians in chapels and shrines, the journeys of pilgrims, the chanting of the Divine Office in the monasteries, the solemn meditation of contemplatives and hermits, and the daily Eucharistic sacrifice formed and crowned it all.
The fervency and sincerity of medieval piety is proven by the great monastic movements that flourished in this period (the Benedictine, Franciscan, and Dominican orders, for example), the soaring architectural achievement of medieval cathedrals, and the unparalleled intellectual accomplishments of the medieval scholars such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm.
The cultivation of knowledge and love of God was not just an extraneous hobby of the medieval world: it was its beating heart.
The Scope and Purpose of This Book
I am convinced that many of the challenges that Christians face today are not new, and not terribly different from the challenges that Christians faced in the Middle Ages. Medieval Christians also faced an often hostile and secularizing culture, the tensions of religious pluralism, an aggressive state eager to usurp the religious liberty of the Church, the scandal caused by immoral and worldly clergy, and many other issues. In that era, Christians rose to these challenges in heroic, intelligent, creative, and dynamic ways, and I am convinced that their responses can inspire and prepare us to face the similar challenges of our own times.
It may seem odd to some that I view the Middle Ages as relevant at all. After all, the popular culture has reduced the medieval Church to a crude caricature—a primitive, superstitious, ignorant, violent, and backward lot that we would all do better to shove under the carpet: irrelevant at best, and embarrassing at worst. As a matter of fact, the very term medieval was an invention of fifteenth-century Renaissance scholars who wished to denigrate this historical “valley” between the twin cultural peaks of ancient and modern civilizations.
But in my ten years of teaching Church history, I have witnessed time and time again—and these times are among my favorite moments as a teacher—that my students, after picking up and reading medieval literature firsthand, are captivated by its relevance. Contrary to the typical narrative peddled by the contemporary secular culture, sources reveal medieval Christianity to be intellectually inquisitive, spiritually vibrant, dynamic and world-affirming, sincerely held, and culturally diverse.
This is why, as a writer and a teacher, I have always preferred to use primary texts from the historical period in question, rather than substituting modern scholarship. In other words, I would a thousand times prefer that a young reader actually pick up Augustine’s Confessions and hear this wonderful saint tell his own life story than resort to a textbook on Augustine purchased at a bookstore. I have found that the lives of men and women from the past come to life when we read about them in their own words. This is even more true of the saints, whose writings seem to exude a sanctity all to themselves, which often gets lost when it is reduced to a paragraph summary in a contemporary textbook.
Even more, I have found that history works best when its focus is on concrete individuals, real personalities, rather than a broad survey of dates, events, and vague generalizations. This is why I have chosen to structure this book not so much chronologically or thematically, but around the lives of real persons—the lives of the saints.
The faithful men and women of the Middle Ages—those who passed on the Faith so heroically and at such great cost—still retain their power to inspire, to capture imaginations, and to teach those willing to learn.
Who Are the Medieval Saints?
Narrowing down the list of candidates for inclusion in this book was nothing short of agonizing. Every name crossed off the list, to my mind, represented a piece of the brilliant mosaic of medieval Christianity. Numerous readers will groan to find their favorite figure excluded and can take consolation that I groaned twice as loudly. Allow me to share a few brief considerations that I took into account.
First, not all the figures in this book are canonized saints. It was not until the year 1234 that the Catholic Church developed a centralized, organized procedure for declaring people saints. Until that time sainthood functioned more informally: if enough people began to treat someone as a saint—recalling her virtues, for example, or preserving her relics, visiting her tomb, praying to her, saying Masses in her honor—and if this pattern continued for long enough and spread widely enough, the person began to be called a saint, and that was that.