Welcome back. In the previous part of this episode on the spiritual transformation of the world, I discussed ways in which the Church sought to transform Christendom’s understanding of time by introducing a Christian measure of time, both in a cyclical sense, measuring daily and weekly and annual cycles of time, and also in a linear sense, with the development of the now well-known system of measuring time year by year from the Incarnation: AD, and before the Incarnation, BC.

In this final part of the episode, I would like to look at what can be called the spiritual transformation of space: the ways in which the Church tried to create a sanctified space or topography in Christendom. This, too, as with chronology, grew out of the Church’s traditional understanding of cosmology. We can start by looking, as we did with chronology, at the influence of paganism in the organization of space in the ancient world.

The Jews themselves, of course, set a precedent for Christians with the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, but that Temple had been destroyed in the year 70. Pagans continued to build temples, and the ancient world in which the early Church arose was a world filled with pagan temples. For many pagans, these temples had the effect of literally sanctifying the world in which they lived, filling it with supernatural power and experience. One pagan poet, for instance, addressed the city of Rome by declaring, “Your temples bring heaven near.”

And beyond just the typical pagan temples were the temples of the emperors. The cult of the emperors was all-pervasive in the first centuries of the history of the Church. Constantine, when he converted to Christianity, of course had been motivated to establish a specifically Christian capital that would be free of pagan temples, and this was one of the reasons why he selected Constantinople as a brand-new city with a Christian identity. Once freed by the conversion of the emperor, and the policies of emperors to support the Church, Church leaders set about to sanctify the world by sanctifying its places, its topography. And they were guided by traditional Christian cosmology.

We can get a sense of what this cosmology was by reflecting again on the Scriptures. Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, space was often sanctified; objects were made holy. For instance, ground was sanctified in a number of ways in the Old Testament. In Exodus 3, for instance, Moses is told famously, when he approaches the burning bush, to take off his sandals, for, as God puts it, “this is holy ground.” This is holy ground. There was ground that was not holy, and there was ground that was holy, and Moses was told what was what.

Also on Mount Sinai the presence of God in the delivering of the Ten Commandments with the smoke and the clouds that surrounded the mountain, made that mountain, the physical part of the world, holy—so holy that the Jews were told not even to dare to touch the mountain lest they fall over dead from coming into contact with God’s holiness through that physical mountain.

And of course the tabernacle that the Jews were ordered to construct in order to worship the one true God: the tabernacle and later Temple had its holy of holies, a holy place within that tabernacle that was more holy than any others within it, and in fact more holy than any other place on earth, into which only the high priest would dare to venture once a year.

In addition to holy ground, the Scripture revealed the presence of holy objects, given by God to the world. For instance, there’s the case of the ark of the covenant. The ark of the covenant was the most holy object probably in all ancient Israel, so holy that Uzzah, a man who sought to correct it when it almost fell over, himself fell dead when he touched it. This is all related in 2 Kingdoms (or, in the Western naming of the Old Testament, 2 Samuel 6:6-7).

Furthermore, water was made holy in the Old Testament. There’s the account of Naaman coming and being cleansed in the water of the Jordan River in 4 Kingdoms (or 2 Kings, depending on one’s edition of the Old Testament). In the New Testament, the book of Acts relates how St. Paul used handkerchiefs for healing people. Handkerchiefs or napkins that he sent off to people, some kind of cloth, was used to heal them, because it possessed miracle-working powers. This, anyway, is what Acts 19:11-12 describes.

And back in the Old Testament itself, one of the most remarkable features of the sanctification of matter that becomes a characteristic feature of traditional Christianity around the presence of saints’ relics, this is all foreseen in the Old Testament in 4 Kingdoms (or, in the Western naming of the Old Testament, 2 Kings 13:20-21) when the relics, the bodily remains, of the Prophet Elisha are accidentally touched by a corpse, or rather, someone actually brings a corpse into contact with those relics, the bodily remains of the dead Elisha, and through that contact with Elisha’s relics, the corpse springs back to life. It’s right there in the Old Testament.

Perhaps most powerfully and most cosmologically is the case of Jesus himself in the New Testament, in the Gospel of John specifically, when he heals a blind man, not just proclaiming him healed with words, but by taking clay and applying it with his own spittle and the dirt of the ground, making it into clay and applying it to the eyes of this man and then telling him to go wash in water. Jesus himself used the physical creation to heal people. He used the very cosmos that he himself had created to heal people, to bring life to people.

So we can see, then, in the Scriptures a kind of cosmological vision in which space, the physical universe, the physical part of the cosmos, in addition to time, which we explored last time—space also is sanctified. It’s spiritually transformed by the presence of God. We can speak likewise here of a liturgification of space: the way space came into contact with the Church’s liturgical life at an early date. For instance, very early on in the life of the Church, well before the time of Constantine, the Church followed the practice of conducting the eucharistic rites at the sites, the places where martyrs had been buried, in contact, often, with their very relics. The Church saw the martyrs and their bodily remains and the places where they were killed—they were called martyria, or martyriums—this is the very place where the Church conducted her liturgical life in many cases in the early Church.

With this understanding of a growing cosmological sense of the value and importance of space and bringing men into contact, into communion with God, we can review and reflect on some places that were ultimately and subsequently Christianized through the influence of traditional Christianity. One place to start would be the reliquaries, the places where saints’ relics were kept, and other holy objects were kept, for people to venerate and to come into contact with. This was a very ancient practice in the early Church, to preserve the relics of martyrs in particular.

One account of this is given in the earliest—in fact, the very earliest account we have of a martyrdom outside of the book of Acts which describes the martyrdom of St. Stephen. But the very first book, or work, rather, we have after the New Testament describing a martyrdom is the Martyrdom of Polycarp of Smyrna. Polycarp, who was martyred just about the year 100. In other words, just within a century after the resurrection. And what is said in the Martyrdom of Polycarp at the very end, after describing how the martyr was arrested and tried and put to death… After he is put to death, this is what the author of this work says:

We afterwards took up his bones as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels and more purified than gold, and deposited them in a fitting place, whither, being gathered together as opportunity has allowed us, with joy and rejoicing, the Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom.

The annual commemoration of his martyrdom: in other words, not only the liturgification of time, but the liturgification of space.

This became more and more customary in the Church of Byzantium, both in the East and in the West. Local space, local places—towns and cities—more and more became associated with saints’ relics, especially saints who had been natives to those cities or had somehow come into contact with those cities. More and more the very physical geographical local space in which Christians lived became associated with the relics, the physical remains, of the martyrs and other saints. I can quote here a bishop from the fourth century, the 300s, in the Italian city of Turin on the importance of locality, of physical locality. This is what this fourth-century bishop of Turin in Italy said, speaking to his people about the value of having local saints.

Though we should celebrate, brothers, (he said) the anniversaries of all the martyrs with great devotion, yet we ought to put our whole veneration into observing the festivals especially of those who poured out their blood in our own hometown. Though all the saints are everywhere present and aid everyone, those who suffered for us intervene for us especially. For when a martyr suffers, he suffers not only for himself but for his fellow citizens. So all the martyrs should be most devoutly honored, yet especially those whose relics we possess here. For the former assist us with their prayer, but the latter also with their suffering. With these we have a sort of familiarity. They are always with us. They live among us. [Maximus of Turin, Sermo 12]

What a powerful way that bishop had of bringing the experience of sanctity, of the very presence of the saints, something I explored in describing the eucharistic assembly as an experience of paradise in the previous episode, of bringing the presence of those saints—not only of God himself, but of his saints—into contact, into the very environment, the local environment, of people living at all the different places, within all the different spaces of Christendom.

So churches were built often, and more and more frequently, with altars that contained within them saints’ relics. St. Ambrose of Milan is a good example of this. In 386, he built a church in Milan, specifically bringing saints’ relics, the relics of martyrs, to it and placing much emphasis on his people on the value of having those saints’ relics there in that physical space, that church, that temple. And so an interesting process began by which the pagan topography of the ancient world—something I described earlier by describing all those pagan temples, some of them to the emperors themselves, being spread throughout the Roman Empire—the process by which that pagan topography gave rise to a Christian topography.

And to quote an excellent scholar on the history of Christendom at this period, someone named Robert Markus, who wrote a really fascinating book called The End of Ancient Christianity, according to him, it was kind of like a battle taking place between the pagan shrines and the Christian shrines, a battle which was won ultimately by the saints of God who, as he put it, “surrounded cities such as Rome like a huge besieging force.” And more and more, the pagan temples of Rome were abandoned, and Christian temples, churches, were erected in which the saints’ relics were housed in reliquaries.

Now, in addition to reliquaries and the deposition of actual relics of saints which sanctified the space of Christendom at this time, there was the construction of churches themselves, famous churches. Some of the most famous churches of Christendom were built during the period before the Great Schism, the eleventh-century Great Schism, both East and West. Without getting into too much detail here, it might be worthwhile just to kind of list a few of the most famous.

I’ve already spoken of the Church of the Resurrection, or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in Jerusalem. In addition to it, St. Helen and Constantine built the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Bethlehem, and other churches in the Holy Land. In Rome itself, the four so-called major basilicas of Rome were all built during this time. St. Peter’s Basilica was built by Constantine on the site of Peter’s very burial. And then there were other churches as well, famous ones that are still to this day at the very center of Christian piety, especially Roman Catholic piety, in Rome. St. Paul-outside-the-walls, as the church is known, was built by Constantine on the site of Paul’s burial. The third of the so-called four major basilicas, St. Mary Maggiori, was built in the aftermath of the Council of Ephesus. Listeners might recall that the Council of Ephesus dealt with the question of the Virgin Mary having the title “Birthgiver of God, Theotokos,” a title which was defended not only by St. Cyril of Alexandria but by the very empress, Pulcheria, herself, who, having taken a vow of celibacy, had sought to imitate the ever-virginity of the Virgin Mary, and it was during her reign and beyond, especially, that we begin to see the expansion of, the development of, a kind of piety in the Church that publicly and openly celebrates the memory of the Virgin Mary, and this temple is such an example of that. Finally, of the four major basilicas in Rome, is St. John Lateran, built on the site of the former Lateran Palace that had been donated by Constantine to the bishop of Rome and ultimately dedicated as a cathedral church.

So that’s Rome, and then Constantinople. It’s worth remembering that this new Christian capital was a city in which only Christian temples were built; there were no pagan temples whatsoever in Constantinople. The most important in Constantine’s time was the Church of the Holy Apostles, to which were brought the relics of many of the apostles, and Constantine himself and other emperors after him were buried there. And then there was the even more famous Hagia Sophia, which in Constantine’s time was not the great structure and edifice that it became; that occurred under Justinian. But under Justinian, in the sixth century, after it had been burned and damaged in a fire, Justinian ordered its complete reconstruction, and that’s how it looks today. And even to this day, that edifice built by Justinian with its huge central dome stands in what was once known as Constantinople and today is called Istanbul.

Finally, not only churches or temples but monasteries were established in this sanctification of the world. Here we could think, for instance, about the famous Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, at the base of Mt. Sinai. This monastery was the site of hermits and monks as far back as the time of Egeria herself, whom I described in the first part of this episode as a woman who had traveled to the Holy Land in the late fourth century. Some of her travelogue actually describes conditions of monastic life around Mt. Sinai in that early time. But it was again Justinian, Emperor Justinian, ruling, by many accounts, according to that principle of symphony, who, having rebuilt Hagia Sophia with its central dome, also established the Monastery of St. Catherine, in what became called St. Catherine Monastery, at the base of Mt. Sinai. It’s still there today, functioning as an Orthodox Christian monastery. We actually have here at St. Katherine College a monk visit us—it was a wonderful blessing for the college—and speak to us from St. Catherine Monastery last year.

Many different places, then, are built, many temples and monasteries are built, to manifest God’s presence in this world through the spiritual transformation of space within Christendom. So this space, these places, then, became sites of pilgrimages such as that undertaken by Egeria in the fourth century. Now, not everyone was very positive of the practice that grew up now around these holy places with their sanctification of time, especially their liturgical services within them.

Not everyone was very positive about the practice of going on pilgrimages. There are in fact some notable critics in the early Church, especially the fourth century, such as Gregory of Nyssa, who observed in a letter he wrote that the Gospel, the beatitudes in particular, did not say, “Blessed is he who goes on a pilgrimage,” but “Blessed is he who is pure in heart,” and things like that. He called the undertaking of pilgrimages into question, especially if it would in any way destabilize the discipline, the monastic discipline, of a given monk. St. Jerome also was critical of pilgrimages during this period of time. In fact, I can quote some words of Jerome himself, relating to the cross and how the cross is something one carries within himself; it’s not something one has to go somewhere to find in the world, for instance, by undertaking a pilgrimage to the true cross at the Church of the Resurrection or the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Jerome wrote the following in a letter of instruction.

By the cross (Jerome writes) I mean not the wood but the Passion (the event of the Passion). That cross is in Britain, in India, in the whole world. Happy is he who carries in his own heart the cross, the resurrection, the place of the nativity of Christ, and of his ascension.

In other words, all these famous and holy places that were being established throughout Christendom were no substitute for the spiritual reality that they were simply an image or a manifestation of the resurrection of Christ, the passion of Christ, and so forth.

Well, despite these criticisms from such holy men as Gregory of Nyssa in the East and Jerome in the West, there was a growing tide of pilgrimages in the period of Byzantium before the Great Schism that we’re discussing now. And these pilgrimages were motivated by the real experience that by undertaking a pilgrimage to a holy place, a place that had been sanctified according to the cosmology of traditional Christianity, a place in which took place the divine services, the eucharistic assembly, and according to the sanctification of time I described in the last part of this episode—by undertaking this, one truly and immediately and experientially tasted of the kingdom of heaven. This can be found in a variety of works that were written during the period that we’re discussing now, and it’s often been commented on by modern scholars.

It was perhaps a little bit like the modern practice of going to very special places, like, for instance, in the 19th century there arose among the wealthy and the cultured of America what was called the Grand Tour of Europe, where people, often young adults before they were married or whatever, took on a profession, would tour Europe and its famous historical sites. This is, of course, very popular to this day. I had the blessing when I was younger of visiting Europe and some of these famous historical places where so many wonderful things took place in the history of our culture.  There’s a kind of experience one gets with coming into contact with history, with the place where culture is generated.

Well, perhaps that’s a little bit like what people experienced in Christendom, many centuries ago, during the history of Byzantium, as pilgrimage began more and more to expand in that culture. But that, of course, was an experience that related directly to eternal life and the kingdom of heaven. So people who undertook it often had the experience of passing from this world across the threshold of the very kingdom of heaven itself.

So why don’t I quote here again the scholar Robert Markus who talks about this in his book, The End of Ancient Christianity? Really, it remarks repeatedly about the rise of pilgrimages and the role of holy places in reshaping the culture of Christentdom during this period. This is what he writes about the transformative dynamic of pilgrimage in his book. This is what he writes.

What mattered was the departure, the movement away from home, away from the established ties. Stripped of one’s role in society, of status and property, the pilgrim’s way was a preparation for a new encounter, a marched prayer, a journey towards a place of holiness, where power was present, power to transform the pilgrim’s inner life and perhaps miraculously his outer bodily existence, certainly, a power to transform momentarily the social constraints of normal living into a state of weightlessness and spontaneity, which anticipated that community in which the pilgrim would, at the end, share in the full freedom of the life of the saints beyond these social necessities.

So much of what he writes there captures the spirit not only of pilgrimage here but of what I tried to describe as the eucharistic assembly in the previous episode. Markus continues:

The pilgrimage, along a particular route to a particular destination, was the reduced image and the symbol of the pilgrimage towards his final destination, which the Christian’s whole life was meant to be, and his arrival a foretaste of the final end of that journey.

So those are the words of Markus about the pilgrimage in this time in the history of Christendom as an experience of passing from this world into the kingdom of heaven itself.

What were some of the contemporary experiences of people who went on these? What did they see? Well, just a couple of examples. For instance, a sixth-century bishop spoke about a local church with the following words: “The heavenly Jerusalem, its walls and buildings made in heaven, are transferred to this spot,” by the construction of a holy temple to which pilgrims would come. And, furthermore, archaeological evidence supports this interpretation of the experience of pilgrims during this time. For instance, an inscription on the arch within the church leading to the very altar itself of St. Martin of Tours’ basilica—St. Martin was a famous early saint, establishing monasticism and the Christianization of the West during this period of time, and a basilica was built to St. Martin in Tours, in the town of Tours, and that arch read, as one stood before the arch looking into the very altar itself, it read, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate to heaven.”

That is some of the contemporary evidence we have of what the experience of these pilgrimages to paradise, to call them that, were in Byzantine Christendom. I might end this episode by quoting another excellent scholar on the history of early Western Christendom, and his name is Peter Brown. He’s written many different books on the history of Western Christendom in the period known as Late Antiquity, a kind of a term he actually helped coin to describe the establishment of a Christian civilization, especially in the West before the time of Charlemagne and before the Great Schism. Peter Brown, in a very large book, substantial book, entitled The Rise of Western Christendom, had the following to say about the case of Gregory of Tours who wrote a work documenting the experience of the Church. Gregory lived in the sixth century, the 500s, so a very long time ago during the period of Byzantium. And this is what Peter Brown has to say about the case of Gregory of Tours and his experience of Christendom in sixth-century Gaul (or France).

Relics (Peter Brown writes) brought paradise into the present. The churches of sixth-century Gaul made this plain. One only had to enter any shrine which housed a relic of the saints to find oneself in a fragment of paradise.

Here he’s quoting St. Gregory himself: “a fragment of paradise.”

To come to the tomb of a major saint, such as St. Martin of Tours, was to breathe in a little of the healing air of paradise. The fragrance of incense and of scented oil filled the sanctuary around St. Martin’s tomb, but that fragrance was only a symbol of the real healing breezes of paradise which wafted from the tomb. To be healed at such a place was to experience a sudden flowering of the body. When he described cures performed at the tomb of St. Martin, Gregory lingered in gripping detail as much on the physical rhythm of each cure as on its outcome. For the rhythm of the cure itself showed dry and ruined human flesh regaining the first exuberant good health associated with paradise and with the garden of Eden. A withered hand changed “like a sponge,” Gregory of Tours wrote, “intensely soaking up liquid… the skin became red as a rose.” “You might see his pale countenance become rose-red.” A child crippled by malnutrition “blossomed again.” He had been touched by a moment by the all-healing abundance of paradise, from which Adam had been cast out and in which St. Martin now lived.

Join me next time when I explore the spiritual transformation of society in the institutions of monasticism and marriage.