Avignon Papacy

We just learned about the Mirabilia Descripta.

Another part of early Christianity is the Avignon Papacy.

Remember that there were church leaders in all the different countries called Bishops, and that the Bishop in Rome - Italy was supposed to be the leader of all the other Bishops, called the Pope.

In the early 1300s, the king of France was very powerful, and helped a French person get elected as the Pope.
But to make France more powerful, he wanted him to live in the city of Avignon instead of Rome.

So in 1305 this Pope and the 6 popes after him all lived in Rome and were the heads of all the other churches.
It made the people in the city of Rome angry because they believed they were the most important city, and also having the Pope live in your city means you get a lot of power and money that they didn't get anymore.

After 74 years in 1379 AD the new Pope moved back to Rome.


(from: wikipedia - avignon papacy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Saint Augustine of Hippo

Mirabilia Descripta

We just learned about the first English Bible, Wycliffe's Bible.

Another part of early Christianity from around the 1300s is the book Mirabilia Descripta.

When a Christian person named Jordanus of Severac went to India to explore and see what people believed in, he ran into some trouble, and was put into prison.

Later on he was let out, and traveled all over India writing about the way people lived, what they believed in, and all about the land and country.

He wrote it into a book he called Mirabilia Descripta which means something like Diary of Marvels.
His book was so well written at the time it was better than any other explorer from the west who traveled to India.

Because he wrote so well about it, other Christians were able to travel to India and help tell people about God and Jesus.


(from: wikipedia - jordanus)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Saint Ninian in Scotland

Wycliffe's Bible

We just learned about the Divine Comedy - Paradiso.

Another part of early Christianity is Wycliffe's Bible.

When people found the old writings and letters that make up the Bible, they were in different languages like Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic.

The church put all of these together and translated them into Latin, and some other languages like Greek or Cyrillic.

The first time the Bible was written in English was when a priest named John Wycliffe worked to translate the whole Bible into English in 1395.

Wycliffe believed that people needed to be able to read the Bible in their own language, and not many people could speak or read Latin to understand the Bible readings in church.


(from: wikipedia - wycliffe's bible)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Latin Vulgate Bible

Divine Comedy - Paradiso

We just learned about the Divine Comedy - Purgatorio.

Another part of the Divine Comedy book written in Early Christianity is Paradiso.

In this part of the story, Dante writes about what heaven might be like.

Long ago people didn't really know how the planets and stars worked, and a lot of people thought that the other planets and the sun went around the earth.
These days we know that the earth and other planets go around the sun, but in Dante's picture of heaven he thought the earth was the middle of our universe.

He wrote about 10 levels of heaven:
- Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Stars, Primum Mobile, Empyrean

Each higher level was better than the last one, and the Empyrean was the special holy perfect place where God lived.
The Primium Mobile was like a circle outside all of the planets that helped move the sun and stars, and this was where the angels lived.

Just like the other parts of this book, it was so popular that many people came to believe that this was what heaven really looked like.



(from: wikipedia - divine comedy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: The Great Persecution - Persia

Divine Comedy - Purgatorio

We just learned about the Divine Comedy and it's picture of the inferno.

Another part of that story is the Divine Comedy's picture of Purgatory.

Some Christians think that after you die if you believed in Jesus but did some bad things that you can go to a place between heaven and hell called purgatory and work your way up to heaven.

Other Christians don't agree and don't think this is a real place.

In the Divine Comedy, after the story goes through and talks about what hell looks like, it goes on to talk about what purgatory looks like.

In this place people were treated very badly, but not usually as badly as they were in the inferno hell.
They were forced to carry heavy weights, there was poisonous smoke and fire, and they were starving or blind.

If people made it through their suffering here for long enough they could go to heaven.
Many of the people and ideas in this picture of purgatory came from Greek mythology, so these weren't stories from the bible.
But because this book was so popular many people believed it was true.


(from: wikipedia - divine comedy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Constantinople

Divine Comedy - Inferno

We just learned about the Divine Comedy.

Another part of early Christianity is Divine Comedy - Inferno.

We've learned that the Divine Comedy was a story about a man named Dante getting to see what heaven and hell are like.

Because this story was so popular, many people came to believe the things he wrote about are actually what heaven or hell are like.

When he wrote about hell, which he called inferno, he said there were 9 levels, called circles.

Each of the circles was bad, and had terrible things like terrible storms, freezing smelly rain, heavy stones to carry, smelly slimy swamps, fires, boiling rivers, burning sand, and many monsters.

This story uses a lot of things from Greek mythology like the river Styx, the dog cerebus, medusa and the minotaur.

Even though it was just a story and mixed things together like Christianity and Greek mythology, a lot of people believed that maybe he was right, and so for a long time people have talked about the circles or levels of hell and the different types of monsters and punishments there.


(from: wikipedia - inferno (dante))


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Monasticism

Divine Comedy

We just learned about the Medieval Inquisition.

Another part of early Christianity is the book the Divine Comedy.

This was written by a man named Dante Alighieri who was an Italian poet.

Long ago there were many ideas about what heaven and hell looked like.
The different mythologies from Romans and Greeks and other people mixed together and a lot of people took those ideas and mixed them in with what the Bible says about heaven and hell.

Dante wrote this book of poetry and talked about going into hell and heaven, and a lot of the places that he described going are a lot like the stories from mythology.

No one really knows what hell and heaven look like, but Dante's book was so popular that many people started to believe that what he wrote about was what they really looked like.


(from: wikipedia - divine comedy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Fifty Bibles of Constantine