Read God's Story: A Student Guide to Church History for Free Online Page B

obviously didn’t like). After arriving in Constantinople, and several minor skirmishes with the people of the city, the “Christian” Crusaders sacked the “Christian” Constantinople on Good Friday, 1204. They raped and killed innocent civilians, tore down Christian statues, and took over the city. All dreams of having the Western and Eastern Churches reunited were dashed to pieces, along with the rest of the city. Another reason that the Crusades have left a dark legacy on Christian history.
Transubstantiation
    While Innocent III’s rally for the Fourth Crusade fell on rocky ground, he would make a much more lasting contribution to the development of Roman Catholic worship. In 1215, Innocent called together the Fourth Lateran Council, which turned out to be the culminating event of his reign. Out of the many laws passed, three in particular were of great significance: (1) a lengthy explanation of the sacrament of Communion, (2) an affirmation of the primacy of the pope, and (3) the foundation of what would be called the “Inquisition,” a church-ordered tribunal concerned with detection and prosecution of theological heresy.
    While the second and third laws are self-explanatory, the first one became the standard expression of how the Roman Catholic Church understood the sacrament of Holy Communion. They said: “[Christ’s] body and blood are contained in the sacraments under the outward forms of bread and wine; the bread being transubstantiated by God’s power into the body, and the wine into the blood.”
    In other words—according to Roman Catholic theology—when you take the bread and wine in Communion, you actually take the physical body and blood of Christ even though the elements don’t look and taste like a real body and blood. This doctrine, called transubstantiation, has defined the central act of Roman Catholic worship ever since. In Latin, the final farewell of the Communion service is “ missa est ,” which means “Go forth.” Catholics then began calling their Communion service missa or Mass , which continues to this day.
Scholasticism
    “Scholasticism” is a big word, but describes a very important movement beginning in the late 11 th century that would last for several centuries. Scholastics (as they became known) took ancient and “authoritative” texts and found what seemed like contradictory statements. They then tried to prove—by the rules of simple logic—that these ancient texts were in fact not contradictory. Thus, they advanced the idea of an underlying agreement of the religious texts of the church. Scholasticism became the primary method of learning in schools and universities and lasted until the 16 th century!
    A number of influential theologians and philosophers developed aspects of the scholastic method. Anselm (1033-1109)—who became well-known for his argument for the existence of God—and Peter Abelard (1079-1142) both continued to develop various aspects of learning with the rules of logic.
    Scholastics believed that asking questions was the primary means of arriving at the truth. During the 13 th century, various schools across Europe began developing their own “brand” of Scholasticism. Peter Lombard’s (1100-1160) Sentences became a primary textbook for many of the schools across Europe and it was Lombard who gave to the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) the official list of seven sacraments that are still held by the RCC today (baptism, Eucharist, penance, confirmation, marriage, ordination, and last rights).
    While all of these men made significant contributions to the development of theology and thought, the most important theologian and philosopher of the scholastic period—and of the Middle Ages—was Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Aquinas’ watershed book on theology and philosophy, Summa Theologiae , is without question one of the most influential works of Western literature and served as a primary source for all of the main teachings of the RCC.
    Aquinas