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Augustine died in 430 at the age of 76 (or 780). When he died there were barbarians at the gate of Hippo. This all started when Alaric, king of the Goths, took Rome in 410. With this corruption, Roman society was thrown into confusion. In the west there is a vacuum of authority, so the church steps into the vacuum. They seized political control. The barbarians didn’t care, they were not anti-Christian. Actually, Alaric considered himself an Arian Christian. Chalcedon happens after all of this. This goes on for centuries where political authority and the church were intermingled. These years prevented the spread of Islam through Europe. It spread quickly through Northern Africa by force of arms. The Christian political system did a lot to stop that. This also accomplished some form of stability. Pope Gregory supervises the rebuilding of the ruins of Rome. During this time, France is Christian in the same way Morocco was Islamic, the government said they had to be. This was a shallow political Christianity. The movement that comes out of this is monasticism. Western monasticism is different than the eastern. Benedict is the one that catalogued western monasticism. Western monasticism is almost all communal and it is not about punishing the body (sitting on poles). Western monasticism forces the evangelical counsel of obedience, not to God, but to the abbot of your monastery. Permanence became true, if you commit to a monastery, you are there forever. St. Francis of Assisi - His name was Giovanni, but his father called him Francesco because he like France. From a filthy rich family and he loved money. Had lots of $ and spent a lot of it. Decided to embark on a military career, he wasn’t good. Got captured and was a P.O.W. for about a year. When he was released, he was going to go back into the military but then had a vision that told him to go home. He gets home and he is not the same guy. All kinds of stories about him began to circulate. His friends thought that he was in love, so they asked him and he said yes, he is getting married to Lady Poverty. His family is not too happy about that. One day he was crossing a field on his horse and he meets a leper, he embraces the leper and gives him all of his money. He made a pilgrimage to Rome and was watching people give their offering at the a cathedral and he was not happy about what the people were giving, so he gives all of his money in the offering. Then he sees a poor person and gives him all of his clothes and he takes the beggars clothes. Dad is really really mad. He goes into his dad’s shop and takes his cloth and sells it to give away the money.
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