Fall of Rome made Christians err even the sentence of baptism – 08/31/2023 – Darwin and God

What happened to Christianity in Europe during the first few centuries after the end of the Roman Empire was a far cry from the traditional image we have of the supposed absolute dominion of the papacy over the Western Church.

In fact, what happened was a slow but steady wave of fragmentation of religious practices, thanks mainly to the disappearance of the educational and communications infrastructure maintained by the Christianized Roman elites (which, of course, had depended on the empire’s economic infrastructure, which disappeared ). In this process, as British historian Peter Heather tells it, even the formula used to baptize children could deteriorate — due to lack of Latin classes.

This is what the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface (675-754 AD) discovered, who left England to help re-evangelize the population of continental Europe.

Boniface discovered that a Christian priest in Bavaria (southern Germany) was baptizing his faithful with the phrase “In nomine Patria et filia” (literally “in the name of the Fatherland and the daughter”), instead of the correct “In nomine patris et filii ” (“in the name of the Father and the Son”).

Worse yet, when asking the pope about the strange practice, he was told that these baptisms remain valid despite the linguistic nonsense. Haja reza brava for such a Latin.

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