The Foundation Of The Ecclesiast

In the period between the conversion of the Franks and the rise of the

dynasty of Charles Martel, or the period comprising the sixth and seventh

centuries, the foundation was laid for those ecclesiastical institutions

which are peculiar to the Middle Ages, and found in the mediaeval Church

their full embodiment. In the Church the Latin element was still more or

less dominant, and society was only slowly transformed by the Germanic< r />
elements. In the adjustment of Roman institutions to the new political

conditions in which Germanic factors were dominant, the Germanic and the

Roman elements are accordingly found in constantly varying proportions. In

the case of the diocesan and parochial organization, only very slowly

could the Church in the West attain that complete organization which had

long since been established in the East, and here Roman ideas were

profoundly modified by Germanic legal principles (§ 101). But at the same

time the Church's body of teaching and methods of moral training were made

clearly intelligible and more applicable to the new conditions of

Christian life. The teaching of Augustine was received only in part at the

Council of Orange, A. D. 529 (v. supra, § 85), and it was profoundly

modified by the moralistic type of theology traceable to Tertullian and

even further back (v. supra, § 39). It was, furthermore, completed by a

clearer and more precise statement of the doctrines of purgatory and the

sacrifice of the mass, and to the death of Christ was applied

unequivocally the doctrine of merit which had been developed in the West

in connection with the early penitential discipline, and which was seen to

throw a new light upon the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. These

conceptions served as a foundation for new discussions, and confirmed

tendencies already present in the Church (§ 102). Connected with this

theology was the penitential discipline, which, growing out of the ancient

discipline as modified by the earlier form of monastic life, especially in

Ireland, came under the influence of the Germanic legal conceptions (§

103). In the same period monasticism was organized upon a new rule by

Benedict of Nursia (§ 104), and the need of provision for the education of

the young and for the training of the clergy was felt and, to some extent,

provided for by monastery schools and other methods of education (§ 105).