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0:48You got the king, our emperor. Holy Roman Empire is emperor. Britain, France is a king. And then below that, you have nobility, you got dukes, you got nobles, all that. And then below them, you have the knights, and below them, you have a few town people, and below them, you have over 95% of the people, which are serfs. Okay, not even peasants yet. They're serfs, lowest of the low. They don't own any land. They're bound to the land. They have to work. And basically. Everything belongs to the nobles and the kings up above them. Now, look at the medieval church. What do you have at the top? Bam.

1:39You have the Pope. And what's the equivalent to the nobility? Huh? The dukes. You got archbishops. Then you got the bishops. And who would be the knights? The priests. And then who's going to be the serfs? The laity. That's the ordinary folks. And, of course, they want just like the serfs in the real world, they can't read or write either, right? Okay, it's because of the same thing. So it's a very hierarchical church. And we left off last time talking about the big, another very basic problem you have in medieval Christianity is 95% of the people cannot read or write. Christianity is based on the Bible. And the Bible, of course, requires literacy. So how do you Christianize this incredible mass of people who are illiterate? And we talked a little bit last time that they did Bible stories, oral retellings of Bible stories. And I also mentioned last time, probably the medieval person knew more Bible stories than ordinary Americans do. I mean, you walk out on the streets in parts of America today and they know nothing about the Bible. Pretty much all medievals would know because. You know, you talk about how you go in those churches and they had those visual images in the windows, you know, and that'd be their special effects of that day, you know. And you know, remember, if you've never seen special effects before, stained glass window is pretty wild. All right, you know, I mean, color and light, you know, no action, but you know, you can imagine the action. They had probably a better imagination back then as well. But anyway, so we got this, you know, medieval, and we talked about, of course, the problems.

3:33Now, one thing would focus people on the eternal back then a lot more than what we have today. Because remember the life expectancy? Guys? 32? Ladies? 25? Would that tend to focus you a little bit more? Perhaps. And by the way, that also, if you ever had a class in medieval literature, it is astonishing how young those people were when they wrote that stuff. And it's incredible stuff. Of course, that's one of your most creative periods of time, you know, teenage, early 20s. You know, creativity seems to be flourishing at its greatest during those time periods. So that was something a little bit different, too. Okay, so, and remember, we also cover the fact the church really doesn't care too much about, well, not so much the church, but the power. That be do not really care that much about education because if you educate the masses, are they going to be satisfied with being serfs? Probably not. And so that's yet another. So, the doctrinal portions of the scripture, the church is reluctant to teach because they're having people breathe down their necks, say, don't teach that. That will cause troubles for the political authorities. You also have trouble, too, because as we're going to see in the medieval period, the church is diverging from original Christianity. And if you start reading those doctrinal books, read the book of Romans especially, people are going to start noticing that the Roman Catholic Church is teaching things that no longer line up with Scripture. And so that's going to be a big problem as well. All right, so how do you get across basic teachings of Christianity without a book? We've covered how they did Bible stories. Another thing they did, they set up the so-called sacramental system. Now, we're Baptists, so we don't do sacraments, we do ordinances. And there's quite a bit of difference between a sacramental system and an ordinance system. For one thing, they got seven of them, and we have two.

5:43We Baptists are a little more simple. Okay, and by the way, here's the difference: we believe you're saved by grace through faith and not by works, lest any man should boast. Well, in medieval Catholicism, they believe in grace plus works, which is contrary to. Contradictory, why? If there's any works, it's not grace. Okay, so you got a basic problem right there, but part of the works is keeping the seven sacraments, right? And they believe the seven sacraments infer grace to the individual who keeps them. Of course, that's, in my view, work salvation. You know, that's a basic problem. But I will say this: it's a genius system in that the church is present in every person's life, even if he's a serf, at a very significant moment of their life. And that's one of the genius things about the sacramental system in that respect. Problem with it is, I don't see it as being scriptural. You know, it was a little bit of a problem, I would say, big problem, really. But let's go through the seven sacraments. You're going to have a Baptist teaching seven sacraments here. First off, is baptism. And of course, the Catholic view is supposed to cleanse you from the taint of original sin, initiate you into the fellowship of the church, and that's baptism. Basically, the Catholic view is baptize everybody and let God separate them out in the final judgment. Just because you're baptized doesn't necessarily mean you're saved, but it initiates you into the church. You're a Catholic, you're a Christian by definition, and you know, but that's so much for that. Then, at the age of puberty, right? I mean, when you're born, they have baptism for you. When you reach puberty, which is a significant moment in most folks' lives, you know, that's when the little pimples come popping out and all kinds of little changes start taking place. You know, guys go, talking like this, like this, you know, just all kinds of significant things. At puberty, what do they offer? Confirmation. And confirmation, I will say this about medieval civilization that I think was great. At confirmation, you're now an adult. I mean, no question, you're an adult. Nothing like what we have today where you've got these 40, 50-year-old people that are still living with mama and they're still not grown up yet.

8:17Some of y'all know what I'm talking about. Maybe you got somebody in the family that's in that situation. I mean, when you hit confirmation, you're now treated as an adult. That's the reason they had ambassadors at age 15. I mean, you're expected to act like one, too. But it reaffirms your membership in the church. It's supposed to grant additional grace of confidence to deal with the problems of adulthood. Okay? And so, you know, you have confirmation. Some cultures have vestiges of this still, particularly the Hispanic culture. Hit 16, young ladies, what do you have? 15. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, Kinsey. How can I say that? Yeah, Kinsey Eddie. But you know what I'm talking about. I'm thinking sweet 16 in Anglo culture. All right, but anyway, yeah, Kinseyetta. So that's, and then they would have, you know, celebrations like that. Okay, so you got confirmation. All right, the next major point after that for most folks. Confirmation in my Catholic upbringing. Found out in later years it's not always exactly the same. It was a real emphasis on the receiving of the Holy Spirit. Right. Yeah. Okay, thank you. And you got marriage.

9:38All right, some of our famous, famous movie that we all can relate to. Mileich. Right? Okay, so matrimony. And, of course, this is a sacrament. Therefore, you cannot get unmarried. Catholics do not recognize divorce. And I would say it's kind of admirable that they are so tough on that. You know, Protestants are a little bit too lax on that. But unfortunately, the reason for it is not necessarily good. You know, that's a sacrament. And so, you know, this they take very, very seriously. And then if you don't get married, you can marry the church. In fact, some of the ola nun orders would actually have a wedding service where they. Marry the church, you know, and take on holy orders.

10:36Right. Well, yeah. But you have this wedding. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I'm trying to go too fast here. I'm sorry. All right, but you have married to the church, don't I? Okay, take on the sacraments. And holy orders throughout the life of European, they could receive release from guilt and sin by going to the priest, confession, but confession is not actually the sacrament. What is the sacrament? What follows confession? Penance. Okay, so penance. And by the way, in medieval society, it kind of depends upon the priest. If you got a good priest, I'll put it like this: petty crimes probably not, is going to be a lot more reduced. Because it's probably not a fair comparison to say, but nowadays, if you have what we call petty crimes, who takes care of that?

11:44You know, like you drive too fast. Who's that going to go to? Huh? Police. Well, JP. Oh, okay. Lois judge, right? Back in those days, those sorts of things would also go to the priest. And he would enact. Penance. Let's say you steal somebody's candlesticks. Are you going to go to jail for it? You go confess to the priest. How's he going to handle that? You got to return the candlesticks. You got to apologize. Then he's probably going to make you work for that person to show that you really are truly sorry for it. And that's something which, you know, I think it's a little bit missing with Protestants. We, oh, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. We take it kind of tritely. I will say this about the medieval period. Penance, you had to demonstrate true sorrow for having done this wrong, and you would be responsible, which, by the way, as Protestants, if we did something wrong, we were supposed to make it right to our best ability, right? And not that that's going to get you forgiveness, but you should, you know, show true sorrow and demonstrate that and try to make the wrong right. And if you had a good priest, he would enact that. Nowadays, penance usually involves what?

13:05What's usually penance now? I don't know how. Well, I would say do so many Hail Marys or pray the Rosary or something like that when you say you know that normally a set of prayers. Yeah. Okay, that's what it would be most times now. So anyway, and of course, also, everyone is expected. And of course, this develops kind of slowly. Though, kind of evolves over time to take part in the Eucharist. Being good Baptists, we would say, Lord's Supper, right? The Eucharist. And part of the medieval period of time, you're allowed to take the bread, but not take the wine at one point. Also, you know, they do it behind a screen.

13:57That has changed over time. And of course, eventually they come up with this doctrine called transubstantiation, which actually develops much later in the medieval period, transubstantiation. And transubstantiation, you know, during the Mass, the priest performs these rituals, and the bread is literally supposed to become the living flesh of Christ. And the wine is supposed to become the actual blood of Christ. And that's why at the end of a service, Eucharistic service in Catholic Church, if you arranged behind, if there's remaining wine, what has to happen with that wine? It has to be drunk. The priest has to drink it. Or some of the altarbury.

14:40Yeah, but anyway, needless to say, you can imagine some of the problems that leads to. But anyway, and they take this very, very serious because you do not pour the blood of Christ down a drain is their view of it. Of course, with Baptist, we do not see this magical transportation transformation taking place. See it as symbolic. And even to the point that we don't even necessarily have wine, do we, as Baptists? Matter of fact, as Baptist, you better not have wine. Okay, you've got to be Welsh's grape juice. All right. So, anyway, quite a different view there. And then they're there for you when you die. You know, extreme unction, the last rites is there. And notice these seven sacraments.

15:27Well, I think you can see how it can easily become sort of a deal that if you keep these seven things, then you got a good chance into making it into heaven. Problem with that, that really does take away, I think, to a certain degree, the idea of grace. All right, so we've already covered that. But there was never the Lord left out of it. You didn't get the Lord out of any of that. No, of course not. And the Mass, for example, the Mass is full of Scripture, and they do different readings. And there's much within Roman Catholicism that is very Christian. But there's also the problem that they believe these sacraments confer grace upon you. And I don't see where you get that from Scripture. Yeah, that's my main beef with the seven sacraments. And it is a sacramental system. They do not view them as ordinances.

16:18And like we have two ordinances, which is baptism. We see this as symbolic. Christ has done the work. We're not doing it. And it is symbolic of dying to sin, being raised. A new life in Christ, and we do it because our Lord told us to do it, you know, and but he didn't say do this in order to be saved, you know. Yes, extreme function is last rites, okay, okay, yes, anytime anybody is sick, he can call the priest for an anointing with oil, which is what it says in Paul. Yes, and people say that the person often gets well, gets better for a time, okay, but it's it's the power of Christ through those things that it's supposed to be.

17:12Yeah, yeah, well, I went through Catholicism when I was looking through the whole baptism and everything, and it was, yes, the focus Christ was always in it, but it was my work. It was never saved by grace. I was always dependent upon my work and whether or not I was doing it. It is a false doctrine, it is an evil doctrine, and we need to really speak against it because it is sending people hell dependent upon a work of their own, a doctrine of name, and it is false.

17:50All right, so now another big problem with that, folks, let me do emphasize this. I don't mean Be bashing Catholics. I just want to point out some areas I think they're in error. On the other hand, they are preserving Scripture. Problem is, they're not letting anybody read it. They're preserving a lot of stuff that is going to be very beneficial for the future, but there are problems. And there's problems with Baptists, too, by the way. Okay, but definitely they had some really serious divergences from Scripture. Yes.

18:30Oh, yeah. She's saying there's a big difference between Catholicism of the medieval period and Catholicism of today. And as far as that goes, there's a big difference between Catholicism in America and Catholicism, say, in Latin America. Quite a big difference, you know, in terms of. Yeah. Yeah. But, for example, in Latin America, you also have the problem where some of the saints are actually representatives of Indian gods. You know, you have that dualism going on. And, you know, I don't even want to touch Haiti, you know, some of the stuff going on there. But anyway, going on, biblical scholarship. One of the great ironies of the medieval period is that, on one hand, Catholicism, and I'm talking now Roman Catholicism, is growing in prestige and power. Basically, if you're a Western European, you're a Roman Catholic. And that's the nominus they believe of being a Christian, to be a Roman Catholic, to be a Western European. Born a Christian, pretty much, after baptism. At the same time, they're producing some of the most fantastic scholars in Western civilization, just popping out of my heads, Thomas Aquinas, for example. And yet, at the same time, the scholarship of the medieval period pretty much is ignoring actual scriptures. They're studying the saints, they're studying Christian history, but they're studying a lot of the pagan scholarship, especially Aristotle. And particularly, I think one of the biggest problems with Aquinas is he's so trying to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity that this syncretism leads to some real problems because Aristotelianism is pagan at its base. And so that leads to, and that's where some problems that I would say Western philosophy originate and continue to plague us to this day. But now, having said that, Aristotle is a very smart guy, had some very great ideas and things, but to try to make him over into almost a Christian, which some of the medieval scholars do. In fact, you almost get the impression they'd like to raise him up to sainthood if they could have, you know, is a real problem. Now, of course, this all goes back again to the fact that.

21:00If you allow large numbers of people to start reading the Bible, it's going to threaten the foundation of the Catholic Church. It's also going to threaten the very foundations of the politics of the day, the feudal order. So that's one of the problems. Now, despite this, in terms of art, the medieval period is truly amazing because it's from this period you're already having the beginnings of what's going to blossom forth into the Renaissance, which is incredible art. And you have starting the beginnings of this, I would see, with the Romanesque, about 1050, 1200. And notice this church, this is in England. And even though it's obviously not Gothic yet, maybe perhaps you can see it's heading that direction, which is truly amazing. Now, that's the interior of a Romanesque church in Pisa. And Romanesque is, you know, it's way back there, 1063, is this church.

22:03And it's pretty impressive, but you notice it's kind of dark. Why? Well, let's strip it to the bare essentials of what's Romanesque here. See, very thick walls. Very, very thick walls. Therefore, usually there's any light coming in, it's up those upper stories. And so the Romanesque churches can be kind of dark and dingy. But on the other hand, if you decorate them, boy, they can be pretty magnificent. And remember, in the medieval period, there's great emphasis on the churches because, you know, they thought that their creativity, their art should glorify God. And I think that's a concept we're somewhat losing a little bit nowadays. But that part I can see. The trouble is they go overboard, I would also say. You go to St. Peter's, that's almost, it's gaudy. You know, it is just overkill.

23:01But these churches were really incredible. Every community is very proud of their church and would try to outdo the other in terms of building the biggest church and also building the tallest towers. And so here you have this incredible Gothic cathedral, Salisbury, England. And, you know, it's suffused with light, you know, which is something that's quite incredible. And the windows, oh, my goodness, just absolutely incredible. And we talked about that these windows actually serve not just an artistic function, but educational purpose. They're telling the story of the Bible, which is true. I mean, we've already been through these. You've got all the Bible stories, and the priests will bring the little keys, seal them down, they'd point to that picture, and then they'd tell them the Bible story. Okay, now you may be surprised to know, though, that some of the teachings of the medieval church aren't actually medieval, that we've taken. What I mean is, there's some teachings of the Catholic Church that we want to think of as being medieval, and they're actually much more recent. And one of the examples of this is the Immaculate Conception, right? And the concept of the Immaculate Conception, you know, Mary is the mother of God and Mary is sinless, that idea, okay, which is not scriptural.

24:25That idea doesn't actually get officially initiated until as late as 1870. That's when that. Now, there are some in the Catholic Church teaching that idea going way, way back, but it's not actually official Catholic doctrine until quite late. And this is also about the same time the Pope declares that he has, what do you call it? When he speaks ex cathedra, that his speech is equal to scripture, basically. All right, and that's also a very late development. Okay. What are you saying about the Immaculate Conception? Huh? What are you saying about the Immaculate Conception? Well, they come, Immaculate Conception that Mary is sinless, as I understand it. Born of man? Born of man.

25:14I don't know what the exact formulation is. Immaculate Conception, I was always taught in Catholic schools, and all my training was that Jesus was the Immaculate Conception. No, no. You go check that out. This is all over the place. Place that. It was back a generation back to Mary's birth that she her conception was meant to. Therefore, it allowed for Jesus' conception to happen. No. No, you go read the actual doctrine. It can't be overall if I wasn't taught yet. It can't be the overall.

25:48Well, I mean, if you go and read the official Catholic, it flat out states that. It's okay. No, no, I can go show you the documents. You know, I'll have to bring you that. But that's definitely a teaching of the Catholic Church, the idea of the Immaculate Conception. All right. So, fact, if I have a, what's his name's document? He has the actual official Catholic positions, and that's very prominently mentioned in there. Okay, so anyway, so that is something which is, needs to say, very controversial. And let's now move on to the, I guess you would call this the reform movements in the Catholic Church. And some of these were actually quite beneficial. You got, of course, starting in the 1200s, Benedictine monasticism, and it originally was founded by Saint Benedict in the 500s as a protest against the sex excesses and inadequacies of earlier monasticism. And the Benedictines, of course, eventually, remember, I told you all these monastic movements, you'd have these cycles. They start out real gung-ho. They'd be real strict on their diet. They'd be real strict about reading scripture and everything, you know, getting rid of worldly possessions. And then eventually, over time, because they were admired by everyone, set such great examples, they would be given all these gifts to the monastery, not to the monks themselves. And eventually, the monasteries just start out being very austere, very sparse in furniture. Pretty soon, you know, they're almost like palaces, very nice places to be. And of course, at that point, people start wanting to join the monastery for the wrong reason. And then you, of course, have the Cistercian movement, which is a very, very important movement as well. But the one I really want to get to is the clinaic movement. They rejected a subservience of the clergy to secular authorities. This was a big dispute going in throughout the medieval period.

28:09You have the powerful monarchs would try to appoint the clergy in their country. They would try to appoint the bishops, for example, even archbishops. And gradually over time, a lot of this is due to the clinaic reform movement. The church would insist, no, the church. Has the authority to appoint church officials, not secular officials, and this leads to a big, big fight within the church and the secular officials. And eventually, you know, the Pope will come out being the winner in all this in terms of he will have the power to appoint officials in most cases. In some cases, they had to come to a compromise where both the pope and the local ruler would have to agree on the person that they're going to appoint. The Climaic movement would wind up with large numbers of priories and monasteries, and you've got almost 1,500 cloisters there. Some of these were quite elaborate, they almost looked like little mini towns. You know, and of course, you always would have the scriptorium, you have the library. Oftentimes, they'd have their own monastic schools. Sometimes the local folks could even be admitted to these schools. And they're always looking out for the brightest. In medieval time, nowadays, the scientists or the engineers are the directions that some of the smartest and the brightest head to. In the medieval period, the smartest and the brightest were always in the church, which helps to explain in some ways the church was so successful. All right, so now, Cluny, of course, We've already talked about the Simone. That was the selling of church offices.

30:05They also were against clerical marriage. This is very controversial in Catholicism. Where did this idea that priests cannot marry come from? Because in Eastern Orthodoxy, priests can marry. Although, even in Eastern Orthodoxy, if you're going to be a bishop, you can't be married. But the priests can marry. But in the West, eventually the Roman Catholic Church is going to come around to the view that you cannot marry, period. Now, this is not everywhere all at once, though. For example, in England, when those Irish monks that were descendants from St. Patrick were Christianizing northern England, and they meet up with the Roman Catholic missionaries that were sent there from Europe, and they have this big council meeting. One of the big disputes that was a holdback for the Irish to join Roman Catholicism is that the Irish, who were more like the Eastern Orthodox, they were allowing their priests to marry in Ireland. And in fact, even after the Council Whitby there in England, you still had quite a few English clergy that would marry. And we're going to see as late as the time of Protestant Reformation, you have some of the early Protestant leaders who were sons of priests, and the reason for that was they had this form of. Marriage that they had different levels of marriage, and they had what they call concubinage, which weren't a full-fledged official marriage, but it was considered to be legal. And you have some of these priests that were still marrying quite late. In fact, it's after the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent that is fully once and for all established that Roman Catholic clergy cannot marry. But it starts way back with the Clunaic movement when they start really emphasizing this. And I would argue, from what I've been able to see, is that this idea really, they have a few verses where, you know, Paul, at a time where church is under great persecution, said, you know, it'd be better not to marry, but then he turns right around and says, if you know, this is going to cause big problems, you should marry. They have a few verses like that that they pull out of context, I would argue. But I think the major emphasis for this non-marriage really comes out of old Greek Stoicism. Stoicism taught basically that sex was evil, and this will take away from your spiritual ability to grow, and so don't get married. And Stoicism, which was for pagans, a pretty high ethical teaching, I can see how that would bleed into. Medieval Catholicism. You also have coming out of the colinaic movement these reformed popes, and they're trying to purify the church. They're trying to get rid of these corrupt secular influences, particularly the politicians. And some of them actually become pope, some of these colunaic, such as Pope Gregory VII, who really takes this to a climactic point when he excommunicates a Holy Roman Emperor, Ferth Simone. And this was a big shock at the time. And excommunication is a very powerful weapon because if you excommunicate a king, what does that mean?

33:46What? Well, he's kicked out of the church. And you understand, medieval period, if you're not under the protection of the church, anybody can kill you and they will not be held responsible for doing it. I mean, you receive basically legal protection of the law if you become excommunicate. And so the emperor at the time is Henry IV, German, and he knows he's in a very, very bad situation here. So he goes to Canossa, stands barefoot in the snow, doing Penance, right? And this actually turns the tables on the Pope because if someone begs forgiveness and does penance, what is a cleric supposed to do at that point?

34:46I mean, we all know basically, this is one thing, even in the medieval period, people understand Christians are supposed to forgive, right? And so the Pope has to forgive him, the Aricanosa, 1077. And the trouble with this is you're not always sure somebody's truly sorry for what they're doing. In this case, he's sorry he got in this situation. But as soon as he's restored to the church, Henry goes back to Germany, puts down all the rebellions against him because of him being excommunicated, puts himself in an extraordinarily strong position, marches on the Pope, and he tries to excommunicate him this time. It doesn't work. He chases the Pope off his papal throne. And, of course, you know, eventually the Pope dies of old age, but he's, you know, it's a real bad situation. And eventually they had to come up with this concordat of verms, spell worms, but verms. And it's not worms. But anyway, this treaty, basically, they come to this compromise where both the emperor and the pope will have to be in agreement on a person being designated archbishop or bishop, something like that. You're going to have a similar situation happen in England as well. Okay, so Concordat of Worms. That resolved the investiture controversy, at least in most of Europe, okay, not all of Europe. All right, now, probably there's, you know, there's so many popes in the medieval period, there's no way we can go through them. So I'm just selectively picking one. And if you're going to pick one, obviously that should be Innocent III, who's not so innocent. But anyway, Innocent III is probably the hype of medieval papal power. He's going to enhance the idea of papal monarchy. The papacy is a secular power as well as a spiritual power and is the economic giant of the day. You got to understand by this time the papacy is well organized. Revenues are flowing into the papacy from all parts of Europe. And the Pope's not only one of the most powerful, he's also one of the richest persons in the medieval period. It's also during the time of Innocent that you have the Abigensian heresy spring up, which he's going to crush, calling a crusade against them. And he's also the Pope in which the Inquisition is going to be established. And by the way, the Inquisition, as bad and as terrible as it was, more recently. Scholarship is actually going through the numbers and find out as not as many people were killed by the Inquisition as was once assumed. For example, the entire Spanish Inquisition, which is a later Inquisition lasting a little over 100 years, you had a grand total of 2,000. I just mentioned this because during the Enlightenment period, 1700s, one of the things they will bash all Christians with is the Inquisition. They don't care where you're Protestants who were not part of the, well, they were the victims of the Inquisition, but they weren't the initiators of it. But, you know, Christianity bashed causes Inquisition. Let me just point out that when you have somebody like Mao Z tongue massacring anywhere from 40 to 80 million people, I think 2,000 is pretty small in comparison, although that's horrible to think that that was done in the name of Christ. But I mean, let's have a sense of proportion here. When people try to say, well, you shouldn't be a Christian because Christians did the Inquisition. We say, well, do you know what secular people have done? Let's just take one guy and, you know, just to give a sense of proportion there. Okay, so you also have the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent. This is one of the great big. There's very few church councils in Western Europe after the collapse of the Eastern Church. Remember, you'd always have a church council to decide matters of dispute. Does anyone know why the Western church? Has so few church councils compared to the Eastern Church, who literally had hundreds of them.

39:07Well, in the West, who becomes the all-powerful power? The Pope. What's the one and only thing that questions the authority of a pope or can question as higher authority, a church council? So, popes didn't want to have very many church councils. You had to be a very powerful pope, assured of your control of the council in order to have one. And obviously, he was not worried about it. He had control of all the people there. And that's where transubstantiation is officially sanctioned 1215. See, that's actually pretty late in medieval history, 1215, transubstantiation. And then you got, of course, it's under, to his credit, that two of the, I would argue, better monastic orders are going to develop. And these are a total departure from previous monastic orders. We'll say more about them later. That of the Dominicans and the Franciscans. And that's because these are mendicant orders. Instead of hiding behind cloistered walls, trying to separate themselves from the rest of the world, they're going to go out into the world and take, definitely with the Franciscans, actual gospel to the people. And so you have that. And he's also the Pope at the time of the awful, terrible event of the Fourth Crusade. Fourth Crusade, which was supposed to go to fight the Muslims, you know, take back the Holy Land, and instead, they go and attack their Eastern brethren, you know, the Byzantines, and they sack Constantinople, pillage the churches, and drag them back to their churches in the West. You know, you want to see some of the best Byzantine art go to Venice. Okay, all right, so, you know, that's so much for that. Now, as I mentioned before, you have these cycles in medieval Christianity, you have these reform movements, and then you know, complacency sets in, corruption, materialism sets in, and certainly, really, it's about the time of Innocent that you have this reaching sort of a high point, low point, whatever you want to call it. And whenever you have the church not doing what it's supposed to be doing, you're going to see people going off in wrong directions. And so, it's at this stage of development that you have the appearance of some of the first major heresies, medieval heresies, arise. And let me just simply try to reduce this down to two things. In medieval heresy, I see two types. And the first one's kind of a contradiction in terminology. One is what I call Christian heresy, which is contradiction in terms, but let me explain what I'm talking about. These are folks who'd be viewed as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church, but they really aren't. Okay? They're Nicene. They would agree with the Nicene Creed. And let me, for example, if I could take all of y'all, put you in a time machine, and shoot you back to the time period of Pope Innocent III, what would you immediately be declared? Heretics. Heretics. Why?

42:31You reject the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, period. That's enough to make you a heretic. You understand? Now, you believe in the Trinity, you believe in the Nicene Creed, whether you know it or not, but that's not good enough for the Catholic medieval church because you reject the authority of the Catholic Church and the Pope. And that would make you a heretic. So you got Christian heresy. Then you have what I call non-Christian heresy, which this is an idea that is basically totally non-biblical, non-Christian. Although they might use Christian terminology, Christian words, it might be used in Christian scriptures, but they use it in a totally different way. And so just be aware of that. Now, despite the tight control of the church, you have, surprisingly, quite a few heresies in the medieval period. And we're going to start. With one that is a Christian heresy that's not really a Christian heresy, okay, and that is the Waldensian movement. The Waldensian movement actually starts out as a lay renewal movement. And when remember, laity, lay, that means ordinary folks like us. These are people that actually, somehow or another, came to a personal knowledge of Christ. They get excited about it and they start going out and witnessing on the streets and they start doing lay preaching. At first, the church was okay with that. But then, not too surprisingly, these people decide they want to know more about Christianity. And so they decide they want to get that Latin Vulgate and they want to do something that is a big no-no.

44:21They want to translate it into the language they speak. And so they start translating some little snatches of scripture. And then they start translating some of those, you know, epistles of Paul. And then they start, you know, looking about the qualifications to be an elder and to be a bishop. And they start looking at these verses about equality in Christ. All right. And they start looking at these bishops living in great big palaces. And, you know, how you should bow and scrape on your hands and knees to kiss the bishop's ring. And they begin questioning, you know, where is this in the Bible? Right? And the moment they start doing that, heretics, get them out of here. And so they're going to be hunted down. Some of the Waldensians ultimately will flee up into the Alps Mountains. And they will be hid out there in little isolated communities. And they're still there when the Protestant Reformation takes place. And they just, of course, join the Protestants. In some ways, I see the Waldensians as sort of proto-Protestants long before. Actually, they just returned to First Christian.

45:37This is the third. What I've always read about him, he's credited with killing more Christians than all the Roman Emperors combined. Well, actually, I was just, I've previously, there's re-evaluation of how many people were killed in the entire Grand Inquisition and Spanish Inquisition. And the numbers, for example, the official, you've got to remember, the Catholic Church, they did not see the Inquisition as a bad thing at the time. They kept, especially in Spain, the Spanish Inquisition, immaculate records. And people are now going through those records, and they have got an exact total of just slightly over 2,000 people that were killed. Now, that does not cover probably the 3,000, 4,05, 6,000 that died in prison awaiting trial. But still, those numbers are dramatically lower than the hundreds of thousands. Thousands of people that we thought were killed. You see what I'm saying? And I think that's actually good in that, you know, many of the Enlightenment folks and many atheists today, they'll say, you know, Christians, and of course they lump Protestants and Catholics in the same lump. And they'll, you know, you know, the Crusades, or they'll always mention the Inquisition as being one of the greatest periods of genocide, mass murder. Not compared to anything in the modern era. Far, far more people were killed, you know. But those figures on innocent, I can go check that out. But I do not believe that innocent, not that, well, I'll put it like this: I think he's innocent of that charge. I don't think that he probably killed more than the Turks did.

47:19But because you got to remember, when people say that, they're not thinking about the Eastern Christians that the Turks are killing. They killed a lot. You got entire cities. The city of Antioch was just totally massacred. You got cities in Armenia. You got the, you know, remember that crazy Eastern guy? Oh, gosh, it's terrible, King. Tamerlane? He almost just wiped out Armenia. You know, just stacked up bodies of the dead all over the place. And he was Muslim.

47:56Of course, he killed Muslims, too. That guy killed everybody, but he's one of the greatest massacre. Murders in history. But anyway, let's get to the non-Christian one here, and that is the Albigensians are the Cathari, the Pure Ones, is what they call themselves. They fuse two traditions together, protests against what they saw as worldliness in the Catholic Church, which they had a legitimate gripe there, the acquiring wealth and power. But they also combine that with this exotic Eastern theology. I don't know what it is about Westerners, but we've always kind of been attracted to Eastern theology in some ways. This particular form is probably more like Zoasternism. They recognize two gods, which is the same thing Zoastern does. You know, we've heard this with the Manichaeans as well. A good God, a bad one, which is, by the way, Jehovah. Jehovah is, he's almost like Satan.

48:53And then a good God, which is Jesus. And Jesus is spirit. He doesn't have human form, actually. This is where you get these stories of you're walking down two beaches, and it's quite different from the Christian view. You know, you got two people walking down, persons walking with Jesus, and then there's only one set of footsteps. And the Western conception of that is, well, that's because Jesus is carrying him. Okay, and the Eastern concept is because Jesus is not really body, and therefore the footprints are your footprints, because if he's walking beside you, he won't leave any footprints. Okay, are you with me? Okay, so anyway, and on top of that, And by the way, they see matter as evil. Most foods are evil. And so that has a very strict, strict diet. And since Jehovah is the God of creation, then that means he has to be bad because creation is evil. And what you want to do is achieve the spiritual, pure spiritual existence. And by the way, they also believe in reincarnation.

49:58Now, it may shock you to know we've done some various polls, and I'm sometimes dubious of how accurate they are. I have a suspicion, sad to say, this one's probably fairly accurate. I think it's something like they did a poll of evangelicals, and like 30% of them believed in reincarnation. Do y'all see something wrong with that? I hope you do. Okay, I hope you're not among that number. But anyway, you know, now, the thing about this, you might think, well, how in the world do the Albigensians, you know, multiply and grow? Because ultimately, they even reject the notion of sex. You know, I mean, how are you going to even just practically, you know, replenish the earth if you're not going to have sex? Well, it's a graduated deal. And the vast majority of the Albigensians weren't calling themselves perfecti. That's just the very upper echelons, and they're, in effect, serving as their sort of like, you know, Hindu yogis, you know, priests.

51:00They're the perfecti, and they're the ones who might achieve this perfect spiritual perfection, next reincarnation. But for most folks, ordinary, they kind of, I don't know how, and this, yeah, it's sort of like, you know, we can pretty much live the way we want to, but before we die, we've got to take this sacrament they had called the palladium. And if you take that and don't sin any more after that, or as you're a few months from dying, you could take this palladium that's sort of like leapflogged you up to the next level, you know, type. And so, for whatever reason, the Albigensian heresy becomes huge in southern France, and this pops up about the same time as Leo, and this might be where you're getting those numbers from, by the way. Leo calls this crusade against the Albigensians, but I must say they ticked him off. He had two papal legates traveling through southern France, going to Spain, and the Albigensians, for whatever reason, and I never have figured out just what the reason was, they attack them and viciously kill them. And you don't do that with Leo. He's not a pope to mess with. Plus, he had already tried to peacefully convert them. That's where Saint Dominic gets his beginnings. He is sent to the Albigensians as a missionary, but he wasn't very successful converting them. Well, anyway, with this killing of these papal legates, Pope Innocent calls a crusade. Crusade against them, which is called the Albigensian Crusade, and it becomes very political. You see, the southern portion of France is one of the richest parts of France, and up north, who are very loyal Catholics, you have these northern Catholic nobility who are rather poor, and they were greedily eyeing the lands of these southern Frenchmen, and they go down there to attack them. Now, by the way, the Albigensian movement seemed to have a lot of success with nobility. Some scholars speculate, and this is just speculation, that the reason for this was if you become Albigensian, you no longer have to pay what?

53:13The tithe. Yeah. So some scholars think that the nobility in southern France were beginning to go Albigensian because it's their way of getting out of paying their tithe to the Catholic Church. And of course, where the nobleman is, that's what his subjects become, right? At least at that time. So, you have this all happening under Innocent III. And by the way, even Innocent was horrified. You know, he lost control over this crusade. You know, and you have massacres take place of certain Albigensian cities. But to be fair, though, the Albigensians committed some outrages as well. But they were outnumbered by the Catholics and they were totally wiped out. Okay, and of course, at the Conclusion of the Albigensian Crusade, you're going to have the Inquisition initiated. And the Inquisition, by Western standards today, you know, it's really indefensible. But let me just at least help you understand why they considered it to be very defensible at that time period. It's very easy to be living in this age looking back and judging them, but if you're living at the time they're living, you might would have a different perspective on it. Once again, I'm not trying to defend it, I'm just trying to help you understand it. And so, why would they do something like the Inquisition? And by the way, even Hollywood movies, when they talk about this, they generally put forth the impression that the ordinary folks were against the Inquisition. That's just not true. Ordinary folks were totally in favor of it, if you're Roman Catholic, at least. And let me explain why.

54:56And now, in the Inquisition, you have things that would be abhorrent by our standards today. For example, torture. Technically, the church doesn't do the torturing. Technically, the person is condemned for heresy. He's turned over to secular authorities and they do the torturing. Not always, but technically, that's what would often happen. And by the way, torture is perfectly legal with secular authorities. It was standard, expected even. And they would. Would thank the Lord Almighty if it was just waterboarding, by the way. We're talking real torture here. Okay, so the methods included secret testimony, witnesses that you don't know who your witnesses are testifying against you, which you can imagine all the false charges that can come about as a result of this. Denial, legal counsel, just all kinds of procedures that would not, and by the way, in this time, legal system, you're guilty until proven innocent. A total reverse of what we have today, where you're innocent until proven guilty. Okay, and now, why did it receive broad support? Well, you got to remember the church was a lot more back then than it is today. The church was the welfare system, such as there was. We're out of time. Okay. All right. Well, we'll pick up here. Why they were defending the Inquisition. Okay.