Recent stories in the news here in the UK – such as banning prayers in local councils and government ministers calling for a strengthening of ‘Christian Britain’ – show how crucial Roger Mitchell’s analysis in Church, Gospel & Empire really is. Already in our tour through the book we have seen how the historian Eusebius and the Roman Emperor Constantine managed to tie both church and empire together is such a way as key imperial principles were subsumed by the church. The consequence was a redefining of who Christ was in terms of Old Testament theology about sovereignty and hierarchy and the self-giving Jesus of the Gospels was moved to one side.

Pope Innocent III and the Crusades

This process developed further in the middle-ages under the leadership of Pope Innocent III, who came to power in 1198. The world was a different place compared to Eusebius’s day. The empire had been divided into a number of states and Islam had made military inroads into the ‘holy land’. Church leaders – the pope especially – had also become far more concerned about territory as political leaders fought to control land.

Taking the cross

Innocent’s particular concern was the defence and retention of the Papal States – a political entity under the control of the pope that had emerged after the break-up of the empire. And Innocent was very prepared to use military force to ensure success. It was to justify such violence that he developed a theology of ‘taking the cross’ – a theology that was particularly emphasised during the Crusades. Taking up arms for the sake of the faith (‘taking the cross’) was seen by Innocent as a sacred act by which the sins of crusaders would be fully remitted if confessed. Under Eusebius military action was seen as the physical deed of clearing the land of political enemies which followed the church’s liturgical action in the spiritual realm. But under Innocent both military and liturgical actions were seen as one and the same. As Mitchell puts it, ‘The act of taking up arms was now itself given liturgical and soteriological significance. By associating the atonement with the military recovery of territorial sovereignty, Innocent added saintly virtue to the act of crusading.’

The unplanned-for consequence of this, however, was that the political/military powers could now receive their ‘divine affirmation’ directly from God without any recourse to the church. If all I have to do to gain God’s approval is to fight in a crusade then why would I bow to the church? In time this would lead to a struggle of supremacy between church and state.

This post forms a series on Roger Mitchell’s book Church, Gospel & Empire. See previous post here.


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