Christian Doctrine

The major points of Christian doctrine were ratified in a series of church councils or synods, of which the major ones were:

I Nicaea (325): codified the doctrine of the Trinity.

I Constantinople (381): Christological doctrine (humanity of Christ.)

Ephesus (431): condemned the Nestorians, who denied unity of human and divine in Christ)

I Chalcedon (451): confirmed earlier councils.

Synod of Orange (529): settled questions about predestination (condemned "double predestination").

II Constantinople (553): codified a definition of orthodoxy.

III Constantinople (680): condemned Monothelitism, which denied presence of two wills, human and divine, in Christ.

II Nicaea (787): ended the Iconoclasm controversy.

Rome (1074): condemned the practice simony (paying for ecclesiastical office).

I Lateran (1123): ended the Investiture controversy.

II Lateran (1139): ended the Papal schism.

III Lateran (1179); regularized Papal elections.

IV Lateran (1215): ratified the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and also established minimum requirements for confession and communion.

All Councils: a listing in the Medieval Source Book.

The Holy Trinity

The Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was the doctrinal formulation of the nature of the Godhead. All persons of the Trinity operated in each action of the Trinity, but the three Persons were distinct under one Divine Nature--the Father-Creator, the Son-Redeemer, the Holy Spirit--Divine Wisdom and Comforter.

Creation:

For Christians, the world is created by God alone and ex nihilo (out of nothing). The world, having been created, could not exist eternally. The latter idea was one of the major points of conflict between classical and Christian cosmology.

The Saints:

Christians of exemplary piety and courage, especially the martyrs, have always been honored by the church. Each country has its favorite saints, but there are some whose veneration was universal in the medieval period.

Pre-eminent was the Virgin Mary, to whom many poems, some of which are hard to distinguish from secular love poetry were addressed, as well as some of the most poetic hymns of the liturgy. Some hymns and poems refer to her simply as "Our Lady." She is also named the "Mother of God" in western Christianity or "Theotokos" (the "God-Bearer") in Eastern Orthodox Christianity; poems and hymns often use the paradoxes inherent in these titles. Dante's invocation to the Virgin in his Paradiso "Madre, figlia del tuo Figlio" ("Mother, daughter of thy Son") is one of the more elegant paradoxical apostrophes. In the later medieval period, special doctrinal distinctions were made--not without initial Scholastic controversy--such as Mary's Immaculate Conception (conceived without original sin), which not the same as the Virgin Birth (childbirth after the Divine conception of Christ).

Other special saints were the Apostles, especially Peter and Paul, and the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Eventually, there was also considerable folk, and to some extent official, veneration of Mary Magdalene. The veneration of the saints had a strong influence on the art derived, as much as it was, from Christian iconography.

Updated August 5, 2007