Regino of Prüm, 'On Ecclesiastical Discipline'

Ok, so I thought I'd share this.





Regino of Prüm worked for the Archbishop of Mainz. In 906, he produced 'On Ecclesiastical Discipline'. This wasn't some long flowing theological text. No, it was basically a HR checklist. When he was wandering about the bishopric investigating the local parishes, he was supposed to ask these questions of the priest:


•Does it have a sound roof?
•Are there birds nesting there and causing a nuisance?
•Is anyone using it as a barn?
•Is the altar properly equipped for services?
•Does it have the right service books? Enough lighting?
•Does it have a good strong door?

Fun, eh? The fact that he needed to ask these questions is indicative of the fact that

1. These must have been at least fairly common occurences
2. The Church wasn't seen as this 'Holy House of God', rather, it was a building that was part of a rural agricultural community. (As well as where the tithes were paid to.)

It gets better though. My favourites are the ones the archbishop was supposed to ask the parishoners:


•Does he live in a place of ill repute?
•What are his relations with the women of his parish? Does he bring women into his house?
•Does he charge illicit fees for religious services?
•Is he drunk? Quarrelsome?
•Does he visit taverns?
•Does he hunt with hawks and hounds?
•Does he carry weapons?
•Has he pawned the church plate?
•Does he wear layman’s clothing?

•Does he neglect to baptise children?
•Does he carry out his religious duties?
•Does he understand Christian teaching, and the mass?
•Can he recite the mass clearly?
•Can he read the Bible out loud and explain its literal meaning?
•Did he obtain his position by bribery?

Again, that he needed to ask these questions is very telling. In a world where pastors bring guns to Church and there is a huge controversy over sexual deviancy in the RCC, can we really say religion has advanced hugely since then?

(It would be a mistake to suggest that medieval Europeans weren't deeply religious; they certainly were. I don't really have the time to go into how Religion was percieved in the Middle Ages, so I'll save that for another post.)

In the period 800-1200, the Roman Catholic Church quietly but steadily gained responsibility for the major events in a person's life: Baptism, Confirmation, Penance ,Marriage (from 12th century), Anointing the dying. The legacy of this is still with us today - especially the idea that marriage is a religious ceremony, - but also as it is a part of a wider struggle in contemporary times to separate temporal and spiritual power, secular and religious power; a separation of Church and State.

I'll close with the different ways different groups responded to this moral crisis in the Church.
Romuald of Ravenna (d. 1027) wanted “to turn the whole world into a hermitage”, to make society ultra-religious and pious. This evolved into what we can see today in the US; Megachurches, creationists and the use of Bible passages by Texan juries when handing out death sentences.

The other responce came from people like the ‘Heretics’ of Arras (1024/5): they rejected the sacraments, refused to accept saints as intercessors and “denied the authority of the church”. (For which of course they burned.) But I would argue that this is important because even then people realised that Organised Religion was primarily a social, political and economic structure and a way of keeping people in line. We can trace the evolution of this realisation that actually the Church isn't all knowing and all powerful to the Protestsant Reformation, the Englightenment and the Age of Reason, and to the First Amendment.