Thus the pope’s first weapon in bringing peasants and princes to their knees was the threat of excommunication. He could pronounce their anathema and they would be “set apart” from the church, deprived of the grace essential for salvation. After some bishop read the solemn sentence of excommunication, a bell rang as for a funeral, a book was closed, and a candle was extinguished, all to symbolize the cutting off of the guilty man. If he entered a church during mass he was expelled or the mass was halted.
Pagan converts brought with them into the church their superstitions and behavior.
This is evident in many instances, starting with Clovis himself. Jesus was for him a tribal war-god. The Franks especially admired St. Peter, whose noblest exploit in their eyes was his eagerness to wield his sword to protect the Lord Jesus and to slice off the ear of the high priest’s servant. This admiration for militant religion is also reflected in St. George, a military saint who became the patron of England, and St. James, the patron saint of Christian Spain in the struggle against Islam.
0-30p: Kontrollü okuyucu 📖
40-70p: Hafif bağımlı 👀
80p+: Geçmiş olsun, kitaplar seni ele geçirmiş 😅
Long before the arrival of the delegation from Rome, Attila had probably made up his mind about further military thrusts. Epidemics in his army along with widespread famine were forcing him to break off the advance. But nobody knew it. So he willingly granted an interview to the imperial envoy, and in the course of it, he granted the bishop’s plea that the capital be spared. He even promised to withdraw from Italy, and he kept his word. The bishop of Rome had assumed a new role and staked a fresh claim on the future.
Ambrose refused the emperor communion until he had confessed his sin. For a while Theodosius stayed away from church, but in the end he accepted Ambrose’s terms. In front of a crowded congregation, he took off his splendid imperial robes and asked pardon for his sins. He had to do so on several occasions until, at last, on Christmas Day, Ambrose gave him the sacrament.
'Pressure makes us, though. You start off as coal and the pressure makes you a diamond.
She didn't correct his knowledge of diamonds. She didn't tell him that while coal and diamonds are both carbon, coal is too impure to be able, under whatever pressure, to become a diamond.
According to science, you start off as coal and you end up as coal.
Maybe that was the real life lesson.
every universalism sets off responses to itself ... these
responses are in some sense determined by the nature of the
reigning universalism(s)
