基督教與西方文明 – 羅秉祥博士 Christianity & Western Civilization LO, Ping-cheung, Ph.D. 2009年 第一季成人主學專題

1. 1.8 中世紀初期：“黑暗時代”與修道院的亮光
1.15 中世紀鼎盛期：“士林學風”與大學的興起
1.22 中世紀鼎盛期：教宗對皇帝的限權
1.29 宗教改革：對社會與文明的廣泛影響
2.5 宗教改革結果：從彼此迫害到寬容 ，自由
民主的興起
2.12 宗教改革結果：資本主義 / 自然科學的興
起

2. A. The Fall of the Roman Empire
B. The “Dark Age”
C. How the Monks Saved Western
European Civilization
D. Non-Christian monasticism and other
Civilizations

3. 姚介厚 , 李鹏程 , 杨深著，《西歐文明》，頁
155-59 。
 經濟
 政治
 文化
 蠻族入侵

5.  “ 羅馬民族高昂、進取的道德精神已喪失殆盡
，社會道德風氣極為敗壞”
 “ 羅馬全年娛樂假日公元 1 世紀時為 66 天，
4 世紀時竟達 175 天，近半年時日沉湎于觀
看奴隸角鬥、鬥獸、海戰、戲劇等表演”（頁
157 ）

7.  匈奴人（ Huns ），日耳曼諸部落
（ Germanic tribes ）
 《西歐文明》，頁 158 。漢帝國與羅馬帝國
 3 次大入侵
 “vandalism”
 Hungary
 Germanic tribes – Angles, Saxons, Jutes
 Angles  Angland  England

9. 認識真正的中世紀
 閱讀：姚介厚、李鹏程、 杨深著，《西歐文
明》，頁 163-166 。（“如何認識西歐中世紀
文明”）
 早期中世紀（ Early Middle Ages ）
 鼎盛期中世紀（ High Middle Ages ）
 後期中世紀（ Late Middle Ages ）

10.  “ 從西羅馬帝國滅亡到約公元 1000 年的 500
餘年間，西歐由於日耳曼蠻族入侵和公元 9
世紀斯坎的納維亞半島蠻族南侵，確實兩番
出現了戰亂頻仍、經濟衰敗、政局混亂、古
希臘羅馬文化傳統慘遭破壞殆盡的滿目瘡痍
景象，看來是一種文明的大倒退，所謂中世
紀是‘黑暗時代’，主要是就此而言。”（姚介厚
、李鹏程、 杨深著，《西歐文明》，頁
164 ）

11.  Buildings in Rome crumbled
 Looting
 Highway robbers
 Highway police and customs guards
extort bribes
 Kidnapping and trafficking of children
 Enslavement of freemen and –women
 Burned libraries

12.  Homer and Virgil and all of classical poetry
 Herodotus and Tacitus and all of classical
history
 Demosthenes and Cicero and all of
classical oratory
 Plato and Aristotle and all of Greek
philosophy
 Plotinus and Porphyry and all the
subsequent commentary
 Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides （ really lost)

13. “ 西羅馬帝國滅於蠻族之手，主要是因為它自身已經
完全腐敗了，已無抵御強敵之力；羅馬文明向中世
紀文明的轉變也得靠蠻族的外部力量，因為衰落的
羅馬文明已完全失去自我革新的機制與活力。西歐
的這種階段性文明的轉變是極為痛苦、曲折的。羅
馬文明的輝煌成就慘遭毀滅性破壞，希臘羅馬的精
神瀕于滅絕，只在基督教內部以神學形式有所傳承
，又靠阿拉伯民族保存其文化遺產，直到中世紀盛
期和至文藝復興時期才得以重放光彩。西歐文明受
嚴重挫折，它走上封建化道路經歷了漫長的所謂‘
黑暗時期’，文明的轉型艱難地經歷了幾個世紀。

14. 與此相比較，古代中國從奴隸制向封建制的社
會轉型，雖然從戰國至秦漢也經歷了內戰，
但主要是通過中華文明（文化上主要是儒家
、法家、道家等）自身內部的變革機制實現
的，并非在外部蠻族力量毀滅性的打擊后才
完成自身的階段性文明轉型，古代中華文明
的這種轉型相對平和而有連續性。中世紀千
餘年中華文明比西歐中世紀文明更為優越、
繁盛，其主要原因之一，是它有自身變革的
機制與活力，保持了文明傳統的延續性。”（姚
介厚 , 李鹏程 , 杨深著，《西歐文明》，頁 159-160 。）
與五胡亂華比較

15. Catholic
Church
公教
Orthodox
Church
正教
Protestant
Church Byzantium
新教 拜占庭皇國

16.  Asceticism （禁慾主義，苦行 / 苦修主義）
 Self-denial (money, sex, power, comfort,
companions, etc)  union with God
 Solitary, or in community
 “monk” (monachos) – “lonely one”
 “monastery” (monasterion) – “house of
lone ones,” a community in which a
large number of lonely ones living
together

17. “A monk’s purpose in retiring
to a monastery was to
cultivate a more disciplined
spiritual life… The monks’
intention had not been to
perform great tasks for
European civilization, yet as
time went on, they came to
appreciate the task for
which the times seemed to
have called them.” (p.27)

18. “the monks taught metallurgy, introduced
new crops, copied ancient texts,
preserved literacy, pioneered in
technology, invented champagne,
improved the European landscape,
provided for wanderers of every stripe,
and looked after the lost and
shipwrecked.” (p.45)

19. Chapter 3: “The Monks of the
West and the Formation of the
Western Tradition,” pp.44-66.
中譯本，頁 40-67

20.  “the monastery was the most typical
cultural institution throughout the whole
period that extends from the decline of
classical civilization to the rise of the
European universities in the twelfth
century – upwards of seven hundred
years.” (Dawson, p.44)

21.  “In this new environment monasticism
inevitably tended to assume a role of
cultural leadership foreign to the original
spirit of the institution.
 The monks had to instruct their converts not
only in Christian doctrine but in the Latin
tongue…
 They had to teach reading and writing and
those arts and sciences which were
necessary for the maintenance of the
Church and liturgy,
 such as calligraphy, painting, music and,
above all, chronology and the knowledge
of the calendar…” (Dawson, p.51)

22. “Here [Ireland], far from the
barbarian despoliation [ 掠
奪 ] of the continent, monks
and scribes laboriously,
lovingly, even playfully
preserved the West’s
written treasury. With the
return of stability in Europe,
these Irish scholars were
instrumental in spreading
learning. Thus the Irish not
only were conservators of
civilization, but became
shapers of the medieval
mind, putting their unique
stamp on Western culture.”
(book description on back)

23. “Wherever they went the Irish brought with
them their books, many unseen in
Europe for centuries… Wherever they
went they brought their love of learning
and their skills in bookmaking. In the
bays and valleys of their exile, they
reestablished literacy and breathed new
life into the exhausted literary culture of
Europe. And that is how the Irish saved
civilization.” (Cahill, p.196)

24. “this new learning had to compete in
Ireland with a very ancient and
elaborate system of vernacular culture
and education, which had been
handed down for centuries by the
sacred order of seers and poets who
held a very important place in Irish
society.

25. “The representatives of the new culture could
only triumph by meeting their rivals on their
own ground, as men of learning and
masters of the word of power, and
therefore it was natural and inevitable that
Irish monasticism should acquire many of
the features of the old learned class and
that the monasteries should become not
only abodes of prayer and asceticism but
also schools and centres of learning.”
(Dawson, p.54)

26.  (NB: not the Benedict to be mentioned later)
 “on his repeated journeys to Rome and Gaul
he brought back to England a wealth of
manuscripts, paintings, relics and vestments, as
well as masons and glaziers and singers for the
adornment and service of the Church.”
 “Hence it was in Northumbria that Anglo-Saxon
culture, and perhaps the whole culture of
Western monasticism in the Dark Ages,
achieved their climax at the beginning of the
eighth century. (Dawson, p.60)

27.  c. 480 - c. 547
 1st sack of Rome: 410
 Constant wars as
barbarians kept
invading the Italian
peninsula
 Invited to be an
abbot
 Founded
monasteries
 Visited by a king

28. monastery
at Monte Cassino

29.  A work of only 73 short chapters.
 Its wisdom is of two kinds: spiritual (how to live a
Christocentric life on earth) and administrative
(how to run a monastery efficiently).
 More than half the chapters describe how to
be obedient and humble, and what to do
when a member of the community is not.
 About one-fourth regulate the worship of God
 One-tenth outline how, and by whom, the
monastery should be managed.
 And another tenth specifically describe the
abbot’s pastoral duties.
“Benedict of Nursia”
Wikipedia

30.  “Let all guests who arrive be received as
Christ, because He will say: ‘I was a stranger
and you took Me in’ (Mt 25:35).
 In the greeting let all humility be shown to
the guests, whether coming or going; with the
head bowed down or the whole body
prostrate on the ground, let Christ be adored
in them as He is also received.
 Let the greatest care be taken, especially in
the reception of the poor and travelers,
because Christ is received more specially in
them;”
http://www.kansasmonks.org/RuleOfStBenedict.html#ch53

31. “In fact, the Benedictine Abbey was a self-
contained economic organism, like the
villa of a Roman landowner, save that
the monks were themselves the workers
and the old classical contrast between
servile work and free leisure no longer
obtained.” (Dawson, p.48)

32.  “Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and
therefore the brethren ought to be
employed in manual labor at certain times,
at others, in devout reading….
 If, however, the needs of the place, or
poverty should require that they do the
work of gathering the harvest themselves,
let them not be downcast, for then are they
monks in truth, if they live by the work of
their hands, as did also our forefathers and
the Apostles.”

33. “By its sanctification of work and poverty it
revolutionized both the order of social
values which had dominated the slave-
owning society of the Empire and that
which was expressed in the aristocratic
warrior ethos of the barbarian conquerors,
so that the peasant, who for so long had
been the forgotten bearer of the whole
social structure, found his way of life
recognized and honoured by the highest
spiritual authority of the age.” (Dawson,
p.52)

34. “Silent men were observed about the
country, or discovered in the forest,
digging, clearing and building; and
other silent men, not seen, were sitting in
the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and
keeping their attention on the stretch,
while they painfully copied and
recopied the manuscripts which they
had saved.

35. “There was no one who contended or
cried out, or drew attention to what was
going on, but by degrees the woody
swamp became a hermitage, a religious
house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a
seminary, a school of learning and a
city.” (Dawson, pp.53-54)

36.  Pope Gregory I was elected as Pope in
590. He was the first monk to be so
elected, and popularized Benedictine
monasticism.
 Charlemagne (747-814) imposed the
Rule on all monasteries in the Holy
Roman Empire

37.  Other ecclesiastical and liturgical reform
 “its [the Empire’s] work of cultural and
religious unification remained the
permanent foundation of all the later
medieval developments.” (Dawson,
p.63)

38. “And after the fall of the Empire it was the
great monasteries…that were the only
remaining islands of intellectual life amidst
the returning flood of barbarism which once
again threatened to submerge Western
Christendom.
“Ninety-nine out of a hundred monasteries
could be burnt and the monks killed or
driven out, and yet the whole tradition
could be reconstituted from the one
survivor,..

39. “following the same rule, singing the same
liturgy, reading the same books and
thinking the same thoughts as their
predecessors. …with the result that a
century later the Norman and English
monasteries were again among the
leaders of Western culture.” (Dawson,
p.66)

40.  “by the beginning of the fourteenth
century, the [Benedictine] order had
supplied the Church with 24 popes, 200
cardinals, 7,000 archbishops, and 1,500
canonized saints. At its height, the
Benedictine order could boast 37,000
monasteries.” (Woods, How the Catholic Church Built
Western Civilization, p.28)

41.  1964, Pope Paul VI named St. Benedict as
patron saint of Europe
 9 April, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI discussed
the influence St. Benedict had on Western
Europe. The pope said that “with his life and
work St. Benedict exercised a fundamental
influence on the development of European
civilization and culture” and helped Europe
to emerge from the "dark night of history"
that followed the fall of the Roman empire

42. Monks – lonely ones
Renouncing civilization
 Preserving and transmitting civilization !
時世造英雄？ 英雄造時世？

45. Scriptorum （繕寫
室） , where monks
copied books and
preserved civilization
during the dark ages

46. Gregory the Great at his
writing desk

47. Tribal community Monastic community
The chieftain and his The abbot and his
company of warriors who community which is sworn
are bound to follow him to to obedience to eternal life
the death
The ethos of honour and The ethos of sacrifice and
fidelity and the cult of sanctity and the cult of the
heroes saint and the martyr
The oral tradition of heroic The literary tradition of the
poetry Sacred Scriptures and the
legends of the saints
Dawson, p.50

52.  位於甘肅省 甘南藏族自治州 夏河縣
 藏傳佛教格魯派六大寺院之一
 3000 人
 尚有藏经楼、印经院等
《維基百科》

54.  聞思學院 （顯宗學院 / 哲學學院）
 續部上學院
 續部下學院
 時輪學院
 醫藥學院
 喜金剛學院

59. “there have been other cultures – Tibet,
Burma and Ceylon, for example – in
which a non-Christian monasticim
played a somewhat similar role.”
(Dawson, p.44)

60.  中文，非基督徒論述，圖書館有：
 王亞平著，《修道院的變遷》。
 姚介厚 , 李鹏程 , 杨深著，《西歐文明》
（ 2002 ， 2007 ），上冊，頁 194-195 。
（“修道院制度的衍變”）
 李秋零、田薇著，《神光沐浴下的文化再生
》（ 2000 ），頁 102-110 。（“西方修道制
度的形成及其文化意義”）
 田薇著 , 《信仰與理性 : 中世紀基督敎文化
的興衰》（ 2001 ），頁 54-60. （“修道院 –

62. 燕京大學神學院 1936 / 2000
1970

64.  今天教會該如何回應時代社會的需要？
 今天教會有甚麼重要資源可以與社會中匱乏
者分享？
 我們教會目前有甚麼關懷社會行動？