GIFT OF SEELEY W. MUDD and GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER DR. JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI to the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SOUTHERN BRANCH HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION FIFTH CENTURY. i t 2 1 9 ,''',' <>, HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION FIFTH CENTURY. TRANSLATED BY PERMISSION FROM THE FRENCH OF A. FRÉDÊEIC OZANAM, LATE PROFESSOR OF FOREIGN LITERATURE TO THE FACULTY OF LETTERS AT PARIS. ASHLEY C. GLYN, B.A., OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: WM. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL, S.W. 1868. r\ * '. '1 LONDON : PRINTED BY WOODFALI. AND KINDER, MILFORD LANE, STRAND, W.C. C 13 ^ TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. r r CQ The following version in English, of an historical work which is well known and valued in France, is offered to a public which has welcomed the kindred writings of the Comte de Montalembert. It treats of a period which was the turning point in the history of Western civilization, and although the standpoint of W the author may to a certain extent influence the method H of treatment, and cause many in this country to take exception to details, yet it is submitted that all will ^ agree to its main argument, the position of the Chris- ^ tian Church as the great — the only civilizing force that (il survived the revolution which left the prostrate Empire face to face with the invading hordes. This fact, which is insisted on by the followers of Comte, will in these days surely not be controverted by any of those whose thought is governed by Christianity. A few words may be said as to the career of the author, Frédéric Ozanam, whose name has not yet become widely known in this country. He was born August 23rd, 1813, at Milan, where his father, who had fallen into poverty, was residing and studying medicine. His mother, whose maiden name had been Marie Nantas, was daughter to a rich Lyonnese merchant. VI TEANSLATOR s PREFACE. and it was to that city that his parents returned in 1816. The father obtained there a considerable repu- tation as a doctor, and died from the effects of an accident in 1837. His son pursued his studies at Paris with great success, and was destined for the Bar. He took a prominent place in the thoughtful and religious party among the students, and his published letters show how he became identified with the move- ment set on foot by Lacordaire and others. He was especially distinguished, however, by the foundation of an association of benevolence, called the Society of St. Vincent of Paul, which from its small beginnings in Paris spread over France, and has at the present time its conferences, composed of laymen, in all the larger towns of Europe. M. Ozanam showed, even during his student life, a leaning towards literary pursuits, and a distaste for the profession of the Bar, to which he was destined ; but he joined the Bar of Lyons, obtained some success as an advocate, and was chosen in 1839 as the first occupant of the professorial chair of Commercial Law which had just been established in that city. The courses of lectures given by him were well attended, the lectures themselves were eloquent and learned, and M. Ozanam seems to have preferred inculcating the science of jurisprudence to practising in the Courts. But in the course of the following year, 1840, he obtained an appointment which was still more suitable to his talent, the Professorship of Foreign Literature at Paris, and which gave him a perfect opportunity for the cultivation of his favourite pursuit, the philosophy of history. Shortly after his appointment, M. Ozanam married, and the remaining years of his life were spent in the duties of his calling; in travelling partly for TEANSLATOR S PREFACE. Vil the sake of health and pleasure, partly to gain informa- tion which might he woven into his lectures; and in visits to his many friends, chiefly those who had taken an active part with him in upholding the interests of reli- gion in France. He never entered upon active political life, though he ofiiered himself upon a requisition of his fellow-townsmen as representative of Lyons in the National Assemhly of 1848. In politics M. Ozanam was a decided Liberal, in religion a fervent Catholic. His letters show a great dislike of any alliance between the Church and Absolutism, and a conviction that re- ligion and an enlightened democracy might flourish together. He wrote in the "Correspondant " which em- bodied the newer ideas, and was frequently animadverted upon by the " Univers," which represented the more conservative party in Church and State. His more im- portant works were developed from lectures delivered at the Sorbonne : and his scheme was to embrace the his- tory of civilization from the fall of the Roman Emj)ire to the time of Dante. But failing health, although much was completed, did not allow him entirely to achieve the great object which he had originally conceived when a mere boy ; and the touching words in which he expressed his resignation to an early death, when his already brilliant life promised an increase of success, and his cup of domestic happiness was entirely full, may be found among his published writings. M. Ozanam seems to have continued his literary labours as long as rapidly increasing weakness would permit, but after a stay in Italy, which did not avail to restore his broken health, he reached his native country only to die, September 8th, 1853, in the fortieth year of his age, and the heyday of a bright and useful career. Vlll TRANSLATOR s PREFACE. He was lamented by troops of friends, old and young, rich and poor — the latter indeed being under especial obligations to his memory. His friend M. Ampère be- came his literary executor, and undertook the task of giving his complete works to the public, for which end a subscription was quicldy raised amongst those who had known and respected him at Lyons and elsewhere. From the lectures which he had completed and revised, from reports of others, and his own manuscript notes, an edition of his complete works was formed in nine volumes, comprising La Civilization au Cinquième Sù'cle, Etudes Germaniques, Les Poètes Franciscains, Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au Treizième Siècle, and Mélanges, to which were added two volumes of his letters. The work which has now been translated forms the first two volumes of the above series, and was intended by the author as the opening of the grand historical treatise which he had designed. But it is also com- plete in itself, and seems well worthy of an introduc- tion into England. As it was delivered originally in the shape of lectures, and preserves that form in the French edition, it has been necessary, in order to pre- serve the continuity of the historical narrative, to alter the construction occasionally, and to pass over a sen- tence here and there, which refers solely to the audience of students to which" the lectures were originally ad- dressed. The last chapter but one being based upon a lecture which the author had never revised, and which stands in the French in the shape of rough notes, has been rendered into connected English, regard being had to the general style of the completed lectures. With these exceptions the original form of the treatise has. TRANSLATORS PREFACE. IX as far as was compatible witli the exigencies of our idiom, been steadily maintained, and every idea has, in accordance with the accepted canons of translation, been scrupulously preserved. But the translator is fully conscious of the defects of his work, and only trusts that some portion of the beauty and earnest eloquence of the original may show through the veil which has been cast upon it. A. C. G. October, 18G7. a 3 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. I PURPOSE to write the literary history of the Middle Age, from the fifth to the end of the thirteenth century, the time of Dante, before whom I pause as the wor- thiest representative of that great epoch. But in the history of literature my principal study will be the civilization of which it is the flower, and in that civi- lization I shall glance especially at the handiwork of Christianity. The whole idea, therefore, of my book will be to show how Christianity availed to evoke from the ruins of Eome, and the hordes encamped there- upon, a new society which was cajiable of holding truth, doing good, and finding the true idea of beauty. We know how Gibbon, the historian, visited Rome in his youth, and how one day, as, full of its associa- tions, he was wandering over the Capitol, he beheld a long procession of Franciscans issuing from the doors of the Ara Coeli Basilica, and brushing with their sandals the pavement which had been traversed by so many triumphs. It was then that, indignation giving him inspiration, he formed the plan of avenging the antiquity which had been outraged by Christian bar- Xll AUTHOR s PREFACE. bariem, and conceived the idea of a history of the decline of the Koman Empire. And I have also seen the monks of Ara Coeli crowding the old pavement of the Capitolian Jove. I rejoiced therein as in a victory of love over force, and resolved to describe the history of progress in that epoch where the English philoso- pher only saw decay, the history of civilization in the period of barbarism, the history of thought as it escaped from the shipwreck of the empire of letters and traversed at length those stormy waves of invasion, as the Hebrews passed the Red Sea, and under a similar guidance, fortl tegente hracliio. I know of no fact which is more supernatural, or more plainly proves the divinity of Christianity, than that of its having saved the human intellect. I shall be reproached mayhap with an inopportune zeal, since the accusations of the eighteenth century have fallen into oblivion, and public favour has re- turned, and even with some excess, to the Middle Age. But, on the one hand, little confidence can be placed in these al)rupt returns of popularity : they love like the waves to quit the shores which they have been caress- ing, and indeed on looking more closely upon the movement of men's minds, we may already perceive that many are beginning to stand aloof from those Chris- tian ages whose genius they admire, but whose auste- rity they repudiate. In the depths of human nature there lies an imperishable instinct of Paganism, which reveals itself in every age, and is not extinct in our own, which ever willingly returns to pagan philosophy, to pagan law, to pagan art, because it finds therein its dreams realized and its instincts satisfied. The thesis of Gibbon is still that of half Germany, as well as of AUTHOR s PREFACE. Xlll those sensualistic schools which accuse Christianity of having stifled the legitimate development of humanity in suppressing the instincts of the flesh ; in relegating to a future life pleasures which should be found here below ; in destropng that world of enchantment in which Greece had set up strength, wealth, and pleasure as divinities, to substitute for it a world of gloom, wherein humility, poverty, and chastity are keeping watch at the foot of the cross. On the other hand, that very excess of admiration which is paid to the Middle Age has its perils. Its results may well be to rouse noble minds against an epoch, the very evils of which men seek to justify. Christianity will appear responsible for all the disorders of an age in which it is represented as lord over every heart. We must learn to praise the majesty of cathedrals and the heroism of crusades, without condoning the horrors of an eternal war, the harshness of feudal institutions, the scandal of a perpetual strife of kings with the holy see for their divorces and their simonies. We must see the evil as it was, that is in formidable aspect, precisely that we may better recognize the services of the Church, whose glory it was throughout those scantily studied ages not to have reigned, but to have struggled. Therefore I enter upon my subject with a horror of barbarism, with a respect for whatever was legitimate in the heritage of the old civilization. I admire the wisdom of the Church in not repudiating that heritage, but in preserving it through labour, purifying it th^'ough holiness, fertilizing it through genius, and making it pass into our hands that it might increase the more. For if I recognize the decline of the old world under the law of sin, I believe XIV AUTHOR s PREFACE. in its progress throughout Christian times. I do not fear the falls and the gaps which may interrupt it, for the chilly nights which succeed the heat of its days do not prevent the summer from following its course and ripening its fruits. History presents no commoner spectacle than that of generations that are feehle succeeding to those that are strong; centuries of destruction following ages of creation, and preparing unconsciously, and when bent only upon ruin, the first foundations of a new construc- tion. When the barbarians levelled the temples of old Rome, they did but make ready the marble where- with the Rome of the Popes has built its churches. Those Goths were the pioneers of the great architects of the Middle Age. For this reason, then, I thank God for those stormy years, and that amidst the panic of a society awaiting dissolution, I have entered upon a course of study in which I have found security. I learn not to despair of my own century by returning to more threatening epochs, and beholding the perils which have been traversed by that Christian society of which we are the disciples, of which, if it want us, we know how to act as champions. I do not close my eyes to the storms of the present day ; I know that I myself, and with me this work to which I can promise no lasting existence, may perish therein. I write nevertheless, for though God has not given me strength to guide the plough, yet still I must obey the law of labour and fulfil my daily task. I write as those workmen of the primitive centuries used to work, who moulded vessels of clay or of glass for the daily wants of the Church, and who pictured thereon in coarse design the Good Shepherd or the Virgin and the Saints. AUTHORS PREFACE. XV These poor folk had no dreams of the future, yet some fragments of their vessels found in the ceme- teries have appeared 1,500 years after them, to hear witness to and prove the antiquity of some contested doctrine.* * This preface is an extract from the Avant-Propos to the larger work on European Civilization, designed by M. Ozanam. It is inserted as showing the scope of his plan, and also as bearing upon as much of it as appears in the following pages. -{Tr.) CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTEK I. OF PEOGKESS IN THE AGES 0? DECLINE. Subject proposed. The education of the modern nations ; the two theories of progress. Progress by Christianity. Principle of dechne ia Paganism ; true progi'ess begins with our era. Cluistian ideas of truth, goodness, and beaut}', and thek results. Christian philosophy estab- lishes the law of progress, which histoiy shows to be necessary to humanity. The process by which mankind gaiued possession of the eai'th, and the knowledge of God sketched. Objections to the doctriue of progress, as tending to contempt for the past or to fatahsm. Distinction between humanity and man the iudividual as to progress ; fi-eedom of the latter ; his power of resistance ; general progress of humanity estabhshed. Two piinciples in man, perfection and cori'uption, answering to civihzation and barbarism in society ; progi-ess therefore a struggle. Fall of the Emph-e ; respect of the provinces for Rome, and consequent terror at the catastrophe. St. Augustine and the " City of God." Christianity becomes master of the conscience. Its mission-work ; it saves science, social institutions, the arts ; develops the good instincts of the German tribes. Good effects of the Empire of Charlemagne ; its fall. The Normans and Himgarians complete the pmiiication of Europe. PJse of the modern nations, France, Germany, Italy. The feudal system. The Chm-ch encom-ages chivalry ; learning and civilization fostered in the monasteries, in Ii'eland, France, and Germany. John Scotus Erigena. Literary tastes of Alfred the Great. The Greek language at St. Gall. Gerbert. Vernacular preacliing prescribed by the Council of Toui's. The monastic reform at Cluny. XVlll CONTENTS, PAOE Hildebrand opens a tliird period. Henry IV. at Canossa. Struggle between the Chiu-ch and Empire. The Cru- sades. Moral unity of the Christian commonwealth. Gradual decay of feudaUsm. The Lombard republics. Peter Damiani. Idea of political equality grows. Care of Gregory VII. for learning. St. Anselm ; the School- men. I'aris, Aix-la-Chapelle, Rome, the three capitals of Cluistendom. The Nibelungen-hed ; the Cid. Chris- tian poetrj' culminates in Dante. Progress in industry fostered by the Chiu'ch. Contrast between the towns of antiquity and those of Christian times. Conclusion . 1 CHAPTER II. THE FIFTH CENTURY. Two ci\-ihzations confront each other ; one pagan, the other Christian. Paganism still rooted in the popular mind. Some of the good things of the old system incorporated with the new. The literature of the time. Claudian, Rutilius Numatianus, Sidonius A j^llinairis ; pagan tone of their writings.' Tïïé îradition of learning. Donatus, Martianus Capella. St. Augustine ; his pro- gress towards Christianitj''. Growth of monasticism ; the new faith takes gradual possession of tlie lay world. The education of women. The old literature a strong- hold of Paganism ; is gradually adopted, and purified by the Cliristian Church, which soon has poets of its own. St. Ambrose introduces hymnody into the Western Church. St. Paulinus. Prudentius' rise above the crowd of Christian versifiers 48 CHAPTER III. PAGANISM. The old faith still holds the affections of multitudes. Aspect of Rome at the visit of Ilonorius, a.u. 40i. Claudian's panegyric. Christianity considered by many a passing frenzy. Origin of the Roman religion ; it is modified and corrupted by Greek and Eastern importations ; it possessed some line ideas ; e. (j., of justice, and regard for the dead ; its gross anthropomorphism issuing in adoration of the reigning Ciiîsar, encouraged the two passions terror and lust. Human sacrifice to the infer- nal gods; worship of Cybele and Venus. Religious aspect of the games of the circus and amphitheatre; CONTENTS. their demoralizing tendency ; passion of the people for them, making them cling to Paganism ; their intluence on Aljrpius. Philosopliy a revolt against the pagan cult. The Neoplatonists of Alexandria; Apiileius, Plotinus, theii" gi-eat popularitj- in Rome ; sj'stem of Plotinus ; its grandeur of theoiy, and distant resemblance to Chris- tianity; it led back to pagan naturalism. Allegorical intei-pretations given to the old myths. Apuleius, Jam- blichus, Poi-phj'ry. Prevalent scepticism and cre- dulity. Conservative feeling of the Pioman patriciate, represented by Sj-mmachus ; his character and opinions sketched. Hopeless conniption of society on the appear- ance of Alaric / 74 eâr^ CHAPTER IV. THE FALL OF PAGANISM. It did not fall by legislation, but by controversy and example. Calumnies against and apologies for the new system. St. Augustine's method of argument. Volusian. Pagan- ism strong in rural clisti-icts after the Church had gained the to's\'as. St. JMaximus of Tui'in ; the new religion brightens the condition of the poor ; its charity. St. Jerome, Lseta, and Albinus. St. Augustine and the town of Suffecta ; the martyi'dom of Telemachus ends the gladiatorial shows. PoUcy of the Church in pre- serving beauty of worsliip, and adapting many temples. Objections of Vigilantius answered by St. Jerome. Efforts of Christianity against Roman and Gennan Paganism. Pagan instincts survive in the Middle Age ; the old gods are believed in as daemons ; bloodj' spectacles remain. Petrarch at Naples ; the Albigenses : the Alex- andiian Pantheism breaks out in the writings of John Scotus Erigena, Amauiy de Bene, David de Diuand ; the occult sciences and magic flourish; sanguinary measures against them. Astrology encom'aged by Frederic II. and the Italian repubhcs. Struggle between truth and eiTor then, as ever, maintained 109 CHAPTER V. LAW. The idea of law peculiar to Rome ; she governed thereby when she had ceased to conquer. The two sources of law in XX CONTENTS. PAGE the fifth century — first, the work of the jm-isconsults, from Augustus to the Antonines, modified by the " Law of Citations ;" second, the constitutions of the Christian piinces, digested imder Tlieodosius II. and Valenti- nian III. The Law of the Twelve Tables ; homage paid to it in theory ; its exaltation of Rome, and theocratic character; pati'ician privileges under it, gradually in- vaded by the plebs, and the provinces under the Empire. The Prtetor's edicts temper its harslmess equitably. Further reform fi-om the Stoic jui-isconsults. Legal fictions. Analogy between the State law and State religion. Non-natural interpretations. Legal knowledge the property of adepts. Absolutism of the State be- comes di\dnity of the Emperor ; his word becomes law ; he possesses the supreme pontificate and the whole Roman territory. The fiscal system ; its cruel exactions. Prmciple of the inequality of man ; power of the father. Subject position of wife and son. Slavery. Cruelty in theory and practice. Cicero and Libanius cited. Strong feeling against manumission. Cato, Colmnella, and Gains on slaves. The Law of Citations confirms the old edicts as to slavery. The Theodosian Code tempers them. Clu'istianity accepted the Roman legisla- tion, but set its face against inequaUties and fictions. Improvement in law very gradual under the Christian emperors, until the Theodosian Code, which protected slaves and redi'essed family inequalities. The Roman law accepted by tlie barbarians — " Breviarium Alarica- num" and "Papiani Responsa " — and formed the basis of the Frankish capitularies 136 CHAPTER VI. PAGAN LITEBATUBE (POETEY). The ancient literature had much to correct, as religion and law had. Its decline began with tlie age of Augustus, who closed the golden era of letters. Literatiu'e, stifled beneath the growing despotism, was somewhat reUeved by the accession of Christian princes. Valentinian tlirew open the tribunals. Constantino encouraged poetr}^ ; the historical form of Roman poetry. Claudian tlie poet of the fifth century; his attachment to the old cult ; poi)ularity at Rome ; is patronized by the Senate and Stilicho ; attachment to mythology ; sarcasm CONTENTS. XXI PACK against Christianity ; panegyi*izes Honorius ; his in- tense love for Rome ; is to be ranked as a poet after Lucan. Poetrj' in decline ; custom of public declamation con- tributes to it. Metaphors become inflated and obscure, and form elaborate and tricky. Eutihus Numantianus also pays honour to Rome, and abuses Christian institu- tions more openly. Sidonius Apollinaris and Fortunatus, though Christian, still freely use pagan aUusions. The Drama was piuified, but not suppressed. Two comedies of the fourth century, " The Game of tlie Seven Sages," and " Querolus ; " the plot of the latter shows the state of society, especially among the servile classes ; family life and property menaced. Theodoiic opens the theatre of Llarcellus, a.d. 510. Terence jilayed in Gaul in the seventh and eighth centuries. Bishops forbidden, a.d. t)80, to attend theatres. Letter of Alcuin on the same subject. The Drama in the eleventh century. Comedies by Vitalis of Blois. Paganism was perpetuated in litera- ture. ]\lythology in the mosaics of Ravenna and Venice, and generally in manners and the arts, as well as in poetry more or less to the time of the Re\Tlval . .159 CHAPTER YII. THE LITERARY TRADITION. Poetry the preaching of Paganism. This idea had been lost under the Empire when it descended to panegjTic. How the tradition of literatiu-e was per])etuated. In the eai-her period of Roman historj-, teaching depended on the father of the family. First schools of grummarand rhetoric. Thek progress, notwithstaudbig the jealousy of authority. Measures of Caesar, Vespasian, and Alexander Severus, in favour of public instruction. Views of Phny the Younger. Constantine ratifies tlie old and makes new laws in favour of liberal studies. Edict of Valentinian and Gratian. Public teaching more under control. Le;_nslation of Julian. Theodosius the Younger, and Valentinian III. Thi-ee periods ia the history of public instruction throughout the Empire. Increase of private seminaries. Intellectual movement in Gaul, Germany, Rritam. and Spain. Oiigiu of the universities. Episcopal schools. I'agan cbaracter of the tuition of the tilth centuiy. Macrobius; the " Satmnales." The higher teaching comprised gram- XXll CONTENTS. PAGE mar, eloqueuce, and law. Grammar embraced philologj' , and criticism. Romanists and Hellenists. Anomalists and analogists. High respect paid to Virgil. Thé grammar of Donatus. The summary of Martianus Capella. The encycloptedia of antiquity. " The Nuptials of Mercury and Philologia" formed the text- books of the dark ages. Moulded Cluistian education up to the time of the Revival 187 CHAPTER VIII. HOW LITERATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. The ancient literature saved by means of commentators and grammarians. It had to become Christian before reaching the Middle Age. Question as to the pro- priety of receiving profane letters into the Church, 4 complicated by their essentially pagan tone. Oppo- sition of Tertullian. The charm of the old poetry caused lapses to Paganism. History of Licentius. The polic}^ of the Emperor Julian. History of the rhetori- cian Victorinus. Difficulties of the Church in adopt- ing literature. The catechetical school of Alexandria. St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St. Basil, and others, show the accord between philosophy and the faith. The Greek Church i-eceives the ancient literature. Pliilo- sophy to act as preparation for and demonstration of Christianity. Another school thinks philosophy dan- gerous. It is headed by Hermias among the Greeks ; Tertulhan, Arnobius, and Lactantius among the Latins. This school lasts, but is not dominant in the Church. Results iu mysticism and obscurantism. Hesitation of St. Jerome ; his love for the old learning ; finally he joins the more liberal school. St. Augustine ; his know- ledge of the works of Cicero, Virgil, and Plato ; he declares for the old learning in the " Confessions " and the " City of God ; " analysis of his work on " Order." Philosophy and science lead to a knowledge of God. Parallel between the Church and the old literature, and the Israelites and theiEgyptians; the decision of Augus- tine practically decides tlie question. Devotion to tlie memory of Virgil in the Middle Age ; regarded as a prophet, owing to the Fourth Eclogue. The Church preserved the old literary tradition. Some of its e\'ils were perpetuated iu spite of her efforts .... 209 CONTENTS. XXUl CHAPTER IX. THEOLOGY. PAGE The vices of the old ci\dlization ; Faith its regenerating prin- ci^^le, Reason its aiixihary ; Christianity honours both and places them in proper relation. The two orders of truth, one above, the other withm, the gi'asp of human reason ; the latter had been mixed with error until the appearance of the Christian revelation. Force of the new faith in adverse circumstances. Revealed doctrine defended scientifically. The Christian apologists, Justin, Athenagoras, Tertullian. The Christian School of Alexandria, Pantamus, Clement, Origen. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus ; his eulogy on the latter. Pdse of theologj^ : St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzura, St. John Chrysostom in the East; St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine in the West ; they devote themselves to exegesis, moral theology, and dogmatic theology, respectively. Dangers to Clms- tianity ; first from Paganism, by pei secution and the Alexandrian philosophy ; secondly, internal perils, first a return to Paganism through Gnosticism and Manichae- ism ; rise of the former; its connection with Buddhism ; a sketch of its system. Valentinus, Basihdes, Carpocrates, and ^larcion. Gnosticism merged into the system of Manes. Sketch of the Mani- chaean doctiines and practice ; their essentially pagan tendency. Augustine a Manichee ; he becomes their chief opjiouent ; his work " De Moribus Manichseorum." Arianism; its rise in Platonism ; the " Logos." Pliilo, Numenius, and Plotinus ; the system of Arius. The created Word ; it issues in Deism. Fascinations of the Stoicism of Zeno, which paves the way for Pelagianism ; both heresies destructive to Christianity ; are opposed respectively by St. Athanasius and St. Augustine. The faith handed on intact. The logical character of the Middle Age ; its development owing to theology . . 237 CHAPTER X. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. Arianism powerful amongst the barVarians; the Arian kingdom of Theodoric; it prevails amongst tlie Gotlis and A'andals ; aj^pears again in Islam. Manichansm XXIV CONTENTS. PAGE exists in Armenia and breaks out in the Albigensian tenets. Theologians of the thirteenth century. Philoso- phy ; it accompanies every religion, whether true or false; the two methods, dogmatism and mysticism. Thaïes and Pythagoras ; Plato and Aristotle ; their magnificent efforts to gi'asp the idea of God. The systems of Epicurus, Zeno, and Pyrrho. Cicero struggles in vain against Pyrrhonism. Christianity gives philosophy a foundation of certitude ; instances of Descartes and Kepler. Metaphysical system of St. Augustine ; his early youth, profligacy, and lofty aspirations ; his love of beauty and Manichœan phase ; is sent by Symmachus to Milan : comes under the influence of St. Ambrose ; liistory of liis conversion ; the " Confessions " a treatise of mystical pleilosophy ; was balanced by his dogmatic philosophy ; the intellectual society of Cassiciacmn ; development of his treatises, " Contra Academos," etc. ; he becomes Bishop of Hippo ; his mental energy and versatility ; sketch of his psychology ; his proof of the immortality of the soul ; the existence of God ; physical proof of it ; the originality of his metaphysical proof of the same ; avoids a pantheistic conclusion by the dogma of creation ; general character of his meta- physics ; he is followed in the same path by St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Male- branche 2(55 HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION FIFTH CENTURY. VOL. I.- -ERRATA. Pa<'el68, for "turning" read "standing." " 168 for "exalt" read "exalts. 211, /or "Septints" read "Sophists. 213* for "Kings" read "beings." 253 /or "inexpressibly true" read "inexpressible here. 262, for "endorsed" read "enclosed. doubtless fascinating to watch the genius of a people burst forth under a burning or an icy sky, on virgin soil, or in historic land, jdeld to the impress of con- temporary events, and put forth its first blossoms in those epic traditions or in those familiar songs, which still retain all the uncultured perfume of nature. But beneath that popular poetry wherein the great nations of Europe have shown all the variety of their re- spective characters, we perceive a literature which is learned but common to all alike, and a depository of VOL. I. 1 2 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. the theological, philosophical, and political doctrines which moulded for eight hundred years the education of Christendom. Let us study that common education, and consider the modern nations, no longer in that isolation to which the special historian of England or of Italy condemns himself, but in the spirit of that fruitful intercourse marked out for them by Providence, tracing the history of literature up to the Middle Age, by reascending to that obscure moment which beheld letters escaping from the collapse of the old order, and thence following it through the schools of the barbarous epoch, till the new settlement of the nations, and its egress from those schools to take modern languages in possession. This long period extends from the fifth to the thir- teenth century. Amidst the tempests of our times, and in face of the brevity of life, a powerful charm draws us to these studies. "VVe seek in the history of literature for civilization, and in the story of the latter we mark human progress by the aid of Christianity. Perhaps in a period in which the bravest spirits can only see decay, a profession of the doctrine of progress is out of place ; nor can one renew an old and discredited posi- tion, useless formerly as a commonplace, dangerous now- a-days as a paradox. This generous belief, or youthful illusion, if the name suits better, seems nothing better than a rash opinion, alike reproved by conscience and denied by history. The dogma of human perfectibility finds little adhesion in a discouraged society, but may- hap that very discouragement is in fault. Though often useful to humble man, it is never prudent to drive him to despair. Souls must not, as Plato says, lose their wings, and, renouncing a perfection pronounced im- OF PROGKESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 3 possible, fling themselves into pleasures of easy achieve- ment. For there are two doctrines of progress : the first, nourished in the schools of sensualism, rehabilitates the passions, and, promising the nations an earthly paradise at the end of a flowery path, gives them only a premature hell at the end of a way of blood ; whilst the second, born from and inspired by Christianity, points to progress in the victory of the spirit over the flesh, promises nothing but as prize of warfare, and pro- nounces the creed which carries war into the individual soul to be the only way of peace for the nations. We must try and restore the doctrine of progress by Christianity as a comfort in these troubled days ; we must justify it in refitting its own religious and philosophical principles, and cleansing it from errors Avhich had placed it at the disposal of the most hate- ful aims ; we must prove it by applying it to those ages which seem chosen to bely it, to an epoch of worse aspect, of misery unrivalled by our own — for we cannot join with those who accuse Pro\idence itself in the blame they cast on the present time. Traversing rapidly the period between the fall of the Empire and the decline of the barbarian powers, where most historians have found only ruin, we shall see the renewal of the human mind, and sketch the history of light in an age of darkness, of progress in an era of decay. Paganism had no idea of progress ; rather it felt itself to lie under a law of irremediable decay. Mindful of the height whence it had- fallen, Humanity knew no way to remount its steeps. The Sacred Book of the Indians declared that in primitive ages, "Justice stood firm on four feet, truth was supreme, and mortals owed to iniquity none of their good things ; but as time went 1 * 4 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. on, justice lost each foot in succession, and as each fell, rightly earned property diminished one quarter." Hesiod amused the Greeks hy his tale of the Four Ages, the first of which saw modesty and justice fly, "leaving to mortals only devouring grief and irre- parable woe." The Eomans, the most sensible of men, placed in their ancestors the ideal of all wisdom ; and the senators of the age of Tiberius, seated at the feet of their ancestral images, resigned themselves to deterio- ration in the words of Horace — iEtas parentum, pejor avis tiilit Nos neqiiiores mox datm'os Progeniein vitiosiorem. And if here or there a wonderful foreboding of the future breaks out, as in the case of Seneca, announcing in grand terms the revelation reserved by science for futurity, they were but the dawn-lights of Christianity just arising upon the earth, and gilding with its rays intellects which seemed most remote from its in- fluence. It is with the Gospel that the doctrine of progress appeared, not only teaching, but enforcing human perfectibility ; the saying Estate pcrfecti condemns hu- manity to an endless advance — for its end is in eternity. And what was of precept to the individual, became the law of Society. St. Paul, comparing the Church to a mighty body, desires it to increase to a perfect maturity, and realize in its plenitude the humanity of Christ ; and a Father of the Church, St. Vincent of Lerins, confirms this reading of the Sacred Text by inquiring, when he had established the immutability of Catholic dogma, " Will, then, there be no progress in the Church of Christ ? Surely there will, and in plenty ; for who OF PROGEESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 5 could be so jealous of the good of mankind, so accursed of God, as to stay that progress ? But it must be ad- vance and not change ; of necessity, with the ages and centuries, there must be an increase of intelligence, of wisdom, of knowledge, for each as for all." The great Bossuet continued this patristic tradition, and though so hostile to innovation, believed in an ad- vance in the faith. " Although constant and perpetual, the Catholic unity is not without her progress ; she is known in one place more thoroughly than in another, at one time more clearly, more distinctly, more universally than at another." We cannot wonder at this contrast between the sentiments of antiquity and of Christian times. Progress is an effort whereby man breaks loose from his present imperfection to seek perfection ; from the real, to approach the ideal ; from self-regard to that which is higher than self; when he loves and is content with his corruption, there can be no progress. The ancients were, doubtless, aware of the divine spell of perfection ; in many points they even came near to it, but perceived only under an obscure and misty figure, though it elevated souls for a time, weighed down by pagan egoism, they fell back upon self; and that mankind might come forth from itself not for a mere moment, but for ever, the pure perfection of God's revelation must shine upon his soul. The God of Christianity stands revealed as Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, drawing man to Him by faith through Truth, by hope through Beauty, by love through Goodness. Capable of grasping what is true and good, the human mind catches only a glimpse of what is beautiful. Truth we define, as the schools of 6 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. old, to be the equation of the idea and the object, jEqiiatio intellectus et rei. We can express goodness, after Aristotle, still farther back, as being "the end to which all existences tend;" but beauty we cannot define, or, rather, philosophers exhaust themselves in attempts which fail to become classical. Plato pro- nounces it to be the splendour of the truth ; according to Augustine, Beauty is unity, order, harmony. But absolute Beauty is precisely the absolute harmony of the divine attributes ; lying so little within our cogni- zance that we fail to reconcile the liberty of God with His eternal necessity, or His justice with His mercy. Thus these mysterious concords elude whilst they charm us, and perfect beauty is ever longed for and never present. According to Christianity, man lives a double life of nature and grace. In the supernatural order, truth revealed to faith forms dogma ; good embraced by man becomes morality ; beauty glanced at by hoj)e inspires worship : though everything seems immovable, yet, even here, according to Vincent of Lerins, the law of progress claims obedience. Dogma is changeless, but faith is an active power : Fides quœrens intellectum. Preserving truth, it meditates and comments upon it, and from the Credo which a child's memory may hold evolves the Summa of St. Thomas. Precepts are fixed, but their practice is multifarious : the Sermon on the Mount contained all the inspiration of Christian love, but ages were required to draw from it the monasteries, schools, and hospitals which civilized and covered Europe. Worship lastly is unchangeable in its funda- mental idea of sacrifice : and a little bread and wine sufficed for the Martyr's liturgy in the dungeon, but OF PKOGBESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 7 untiring hope inspires man to draw nearer to that Divine beauty which cannot be gazed on face to face on earth — it brings in aid everything which seems to point to heaven, as flowers, fire, or incense ; gives to stone its flight, and causes its cathedral spires to soar aloft, whilst it bears prayer on its double wings of poetry and music, higher than the churches or their towers. But it reaches only a point infinitely below its aspira- tion, and thence springs the melancholy which is breathed forth from the hymns of our great festivals ; therefore the devout man feels the weariness of the world stealing upon him at the end of our sacred rites, and says with St. Paul, Cup'io dissolvi, " I desire to be dissolved and be with Christ," the constant cry of the soul which pines for a larger sphere ; whilst Christian- ity represents her saints advancing from light to light, and the bliss of the life to come as an eternal progress. The supernatural order rules, enlightens, and fer- tilizes the order of nature. Philosophy is nourished by dogma ; the laws of religion afibrd a basis to political institutions, and worship produces architects and poets; yet the natural order, although subordinate, remains distinct, with reason, however insufficient, as a light peculiar to itself, manifesting truth, beauty, and good- ness in social organization, and through the arts. Science begins in faith and finds therein her principle of progress, for there is a natural faith which is the very foundation of reason, and gives science a group of undemonstrable truths as a point of departure. Faith is necessary to science, and Descartes, wishing to re- build the edifice of human knowledge, allowed himself the single certitude, Cogito ergo sum. At the same time faith starts science on a boundless course by 8 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. giving it the idea of the infinite, from which pitiless and tormenting thought, the human mind, condemned to despise that it knows, to rush with passion into the unknown, will never be delivered until, arrived at the end of Nature, it finds God. In the second place, love becomes the principle of progress in social in- stitutions. This order rests on two virtues, justice and charity ; but justice involves love as necessary to that recognition of the right of another which narrows our own right and restrains our freedom of action. And justice has its limits, but charity has none : pressed by the command to do to others the good desired for one's self, which is infinite, the lover of mankind will never feel that he has done enough for his fellows till he has spent his life in sacrifice, and died, declaring, " I am an unprofitable servant." Lastly, hope is the principle of progress in art. We know how perfect beauty flies at the pursuit of the human imagination, and no one has explained more vividly than St. Augustine the agony of the soul before that eternal flight of the eternally desired ideal. " For my own part, my expression nearly always dis- pleases mo, for I long for the better one which in thought I believe that I possess ; the idea illumines my mind with the rapidity of the lightning flash, but not so language : it is slow and halting, and whilst it is unfolding itself, thought has retired into its mysterious obscurity."* His complaint is common to all who seek for a beauty they have imaged, and are high-souled enough to confess that they have never found ; it was that of the dying Virgil bequeathing his " iEncid " to the flames, * St. Augustine, De Erudicndis Rudibus. OF PROGEESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 9 of Tasso inconsolable over the defects of liis " Jeru- salem ; " but still hope, stronger than the acknowledged impotence of these mighty minds, regains a hold on their successors, and brings them back to the inter- rupted task ; she inspires the generations of architects and painters who build after the Parthenon, the Coli- seum, and Notre Dame de Paris have been reared, or paint Christs and Madonnas before time has eifaced the colours of Giotto and Raphael, or those still more hardy poets who dare to advance upon a world that yet rings with the measures of Homer or of Virgil. It is true that such inimitable examples trouble them at the outset, making them hesitate like Dante at the threshold of his poetic pilgrimage to Hell ; but hope drives them on, and if more than once on his shadou'y course the poet feels his knees tremble and his heart quail, hope revives him, and pointing to Beatrice, his ideal smiling upon him from on high, forces his steps to their goal. If it is thus that Christian philosophy understands the law of progress, the question remains whether it is a moral or necessary law, whether it bears resistance or demands obedience ? History seems to answer that it is necessary and perforce obeyed, less visibly so in times of heathenism, when darkened dogma lent but a feeble light to the progress of the mind, but dis- tinctly when Christianity had placed religious certainty like a pillar of fire at the vanguard of humanity. The course of ages affords no grander spectacle than that of mankind taking nature in possession through science ; it has been traced by M. von Humboldt with an inspired hand, albeit with that of a septuagenarian, — and we may add two features, namely, that man, in gaining creation, is reducing into possession both him- 1 f 10 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. self and his God. We behold the Egyptian race con- tracted at first in the Nile valley, the desert on either side setting its limit to their habitable world ; then raising their eyes to those stars whose revolutions brought back the overflow of the sacred stream, they marvelled at their ordered courses, counted them, noted their rising and setting, till the ignorant people bound to a corner of the earth gained knowledge of the sky. The Phœnicians appeared, armed with astronomy and calculation, braved not only the seas which washed their shores, but the Atlantic to the Irish coasts, whence their ships brought tin, and the world opened to their mariners her "Western side. Greece again turned her mind to the East, whence danger had come to her with Darius and Xerxes — where Alexander, that bold youth, or rather faithful servant of civilization, was to find empire and double in a few years the Grecian world : but her Aristotle was to carve out for her a vaster and more lasting dominion, by laying hands on the invisible as well as the visible, and by giving laws alike to Nature and to Thought. Sages in many generations continued his work ; Eratosthenes measured the earth ; Hipparchus mapped out the heavens ; humanity became self-regarding — philosophers studied man in his essence, historians in his deeds. Herodotus affixed to his tale of the Median wars the history of Egypt and of Persia, and Diodorus Siculus pushed his research to the re- motest nations of the north. Eome added little indeed to these discoveries, but she traversed the known world throughout, pierced roads over it, rendered it available to men, Pervius orhis ; the nations approached — in- capable of mutual love, circumstance compelled them to mutual knowledge, and in the " Germania" of Tacitus OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 11 was wi'itten the history of the future. That ancient science had only an imperfect knowledge of God ; Plato, who made the nearest approach to the Father of all things, did not conceive Him to be a Sole, Free, or Creating Power, but opposed to Him an Eternal Matter. Paganism threw a shadow likewise over nature and humanity ; as the majority of minds shrank from ex- ploring the secrets of a physical world peopled by their imagination with jealous divinities, so historians could do little justice to races sprung fi-om hostile gods, destined some to rule, others to obey. Progress would have stopped had not Christianity appeared to chase away the superstitious awe which environed nature, and restore mankind to itself in unity of origin and of destiny. With Christianity appeared conquerors destined to leave the Eagles of Kome in their rear. In the seventh century Byzantine monks buried themselves in the steppes of Central Asia, and crossed the great wall of China. Six centuries later monks also carried Papal mandates to the Khan of Tartary, and showed to Genoese and Venetian merchants the road to Pekin. Following on their track, Marco Polo traversed the Celestial Empire, and preceded by two centuries the Portuguese mariners to the isles of Sunda. In another region, Irish monks, impelled by the missionary fervour that burnt in their cloisters, ventured upon the Western Ocean, touched in 795 the frozen shores of Iceland, and, pursuing their pilgiimage towards the unknown land, were cast by the wind on the coast of America. When in the eleventh century the Norsemen landed in Greenland, they learned from the Esquimaux that to the south of their country, beyond the bay of Chesapeake, "white 12 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. men miglit be seen clothed in long white robes, who marched singing and bearing banners." And yet those cloisters, whence issued the explorers of the globe, were devoted to divine culture, and gave birth to the scho- lastic theology which, starting from the idea of God, spread over the individual and society a light unknown to antiquity, so that those controversies, so often charged with over- subtlety, held minds in suspense for five hun- dred years, and were the discipline of modern reason. The Middle Age was a better servant to the moral than the physical sciences ; yet a word from Roger Bacon and the inexact calculations of Marco Polo impelled Columbus on the way to the New World ; his faith was the better part of his genius — its obstinacy repaired the error of his conjectures, and in reward God gave him, as he said, the Keys of Ocean, the power of breaking the close-riveted fetters of the sea. An entire creation unfolded itself with the new earth; the tributes of plants and of animals multiplied ; and when, some years later, the vessels of Magellan effected the voyage round the globe, man found himself master of his home. Science, too, landed at the ports of China and India, forced their impenetrable society, brought to light their sacred writings, their epopees and histories, and the moment approached in which she was to cause the hieroglyphics of Thebes and the inscriptions of Persepolis to speak. And whilst man was conquering his earth, lest he should find a moment of repose Copernicus opened out immensity by brealdng up the factitious heavens of Ptolemy ; the stars fled back from the puny distance awarded them by the calculations of the old astronomy, but the telescope brought them back, and observation grouped them under simpler and more learned laws. OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 13 Earth itself seemed to fade in presence of those masses of heavenly bodies sown like islands in an ocean of light. But man grows greater in realizing his nothingness, and miserable are they who think such a vision is apt to estrange him from God, as if their expectations had been duped, and they had hoped to find Him seated, as the ancients fabled, on a throne of matter ; for whatever carries man away from the visible and finite, brings him perforce nearer to the Being pronounced by the faith to be infinite and invisible, and as in David's times the stars were telling of the glory of the Creator, so to Kepler and to Newton they sang no other song. If thus the law of progress drags all human intelligence in its train, society cannot remain unmoved. In the great empires of the East, where an all-powerful autho- rity crushed the mil, there could be no progress because there was no contest. Liberty called the nations of Ionian Greece to action, made and unmade potentates as unsteady as the gods of Olympus ; but there also progress had little power, because the principle of order was wanting. The two necessary constituents were confronted in Kome ; one strong in the majesty of the patrician order, the other energizing in plebeian perse- verance, they were bound to meet in conflict : but the struggle was ordered by rule, and from it proceeded that Roman law which was the greatest effort of anti- quity to realize on earth the idea of justice. But ad- mirable as its system was for regulating contracts, it was ill at ease in dealing with persons. It sanctioned slavery ; and without speaking of the state of the wife and child, mere domestic chattels whom the family- father could slay or sell, established — such was its idea of justice — a class of men without God, or family, or 14 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. law, or duty, or conscience. Cicero mentioned the word cliarity {cayltas), but, far from its reality, dared not con- demn the gladiatorial conflicts. Pliny the Younger openly praised them, and Trajan, best of Roman princes, gave an hundred and twenty-three holidays, on which ten thou- sand combatants slaughtered each other for the pastime of the world's most polished race. We, in fact, dare not thoroughly realize all the horrors of that pagan society which mingled with the most refined mental pleasures the deepest glut of blood and lust. It was the task of Christianity to revive in souls, and infuse into institutions, two sentiments without which neither charity nor justice can exist — respect for liberty and for human life. Not at one blow, but little by little, the Gospel reconquered freedom for man. It destroyed the very standing ground of slavery by giving the slave the conscience which made him no longer a thing but a person, and endowed him with duties and rights, while following centuries worked out its ruin by the favour shown to enfranchisement, and the transformation of personal servitude into villenage, till a constitution of Pope Alexander III. declared slavery no longer existent in the Christian society. Lapse of time, as well as genius and courage, were also wanted to re-establish respect for life. Christianity might have thought its labour half achieved when the laws of its emperors punished the murder of new-born infants, and sup- pressed gladiatorial shows ; but then the barbarians bore down from their forests their twin-craving for gold and carnage — people armed itself against people, city against city, castle against castle, and the distracted Church was forced to throw herself between the combatants, protesting her hatred of blood, ecclesla ahhorret a san- OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OP DECLINE. 15 guine, while the barbarous instinct still burst forth amid crusades, and ran riot at the Sicilian Vespers. Such were the forces she had to contend with to prevent slaughter ; and it was her work also to preserve life, to cherish the exposed infant, the useless and infirm burdens rejected by faithless society, but held in honour by Christianity. It seemed still harder to keep alive progress in Art ; for what could be achieved after the ancients, or how could simplicity and grandeur be pushed beyond the limits they had reached ? Yet such beauty, if inimitable, is also inspiring, and leaves in the soul a desire, a passion of reproduction. Although the human mind could never surpass the works of antiquity, it could add monument to monument, and increase the adornment of its earthly abiding place. Beneath the Rome of the Ctesars, of marble and gold — become, as Virgil says, the most beautiful of objects — was dug the subterranean city of the Christians ; and the chapels hollowed out in these vaults by obscure and tardy pro- gress were one day to pierce the earth, soar higher than the temples and theatres of Paganism, and in St. Peter's and St. Mary Major give to the ruins of Forum and Coliseum a living beauty. And yet if the ancient art possessed a special power of rendering the finite and visible with purity of form, calm of attitude, and truth of movement, it had not the gift of reproducing what was infinite and invisible. Who but admires the bas- reliefs with which Phidias adorned the frieze of the Par- thenon — their simplicity of gesture, their vigour and grace of form ; and yet in the quarrels of the Lapithse and Centaurs, we wonder at the calm on the features of the combatants, slaying without passion or d}ing with- out despair, as if art was straining to express some 16 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. heroic ideal, inaccessible to human feeling. A contem- porary witness, however, undeceives us by betraying the impotence of that Grecian art, which could give to stone life but not expression. Xenophon has shown us Socrates loving to visit artists, and aid them with his advice, and how one day, on a visit to the painter Parr- hasius, the following conversation took place : — Socrates. — " Is not painting the art of reproducing what one sees ? You imitate with colour the depths and heights, light and shadow, softness and hardness, culture and rudeness, freshness and decay; but, still, that which is the most lovable, which most wins our confidence and kindles our longings, dost thou copy that, or must we look upon it as inimitable ? " Parrhasius. — " How can it be represented, since it has neither proportion nor colour, and cannot, in short, be grasped by vision ? " Socrates. — "But does not one mark in the expres- sion now friendship, now dislike ? " Parrhasius. — " Doubtless one does so." Socrates. — " Surely, then, such passions should be shown in the expression of the eye, for pride, modesty, prudence, vivacity, meanness, all manifest themselves in the face, as in the gait, attitude, or gesture." The same Christian presentiment which revealed to Socrates the nothingness of the false gods, and the per- versity of the heathen morality, laid bare the want in Greek art. Christianity gave to the meanest of its faithful the sense of things which could not be seen nor measured ; and the labourer of the Catacombs, adorning, in the lantern's flicker, and under the dread of persecution, the tombs of the martyrs, represented Christ, the Virgin, the Apostles, or Christians at OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 17 prayer, with rude execution and faulty proportion, but with the light of heaven in their eyes. A conscious- ness of eternity animated these paintings ; it passed into the frescoes which in the barbarous epoch adorned the churches of Rome and Ravenna, so that the whole progress of Italian painting from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries was absorbed in kindling Christian beauty of expression beneath the surface loveliness of the ancient forms. Thirdly, classic art bore a character of unity. One sole form of civilization, the Graeco-Latin, was known to antiquity, and beyond its light there was nothing but barbarism. Cultured society glutted itself with that very barbarism in the form of slaves unable to participate in its mental delights. Art was but the pleasure of a minority. Whilst the wealthy Roman, retained by ofi&cial duty at York or at Seleucia, had Propertius and Virgil read aloud to him under a por- tico which recalled his mother city, the Briton or Par- thian was profoundly ignorant of his master's favourite authors. Christianity shed its inspiration over every nation which received it ; revived the old idioms of the East, and enriched them with the beauties of her Greek, Syrian, Coptic, or Armenian liturgies ; it burst forth in the Western languages, flowing as in five mighty rivers through the literature of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and England. And thus two ad- vantages accrued to the modern world : on the one hand, beauty, preserving its one type, found new and infinite manifestations in the genius, passion, and lan- guage of so many different races ; on the other, mental pleasures were diffused, and art achieved its aim of educating not a few but the many, of delighting not 18 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. the liappy but the toilworn and suffering, and so shedding, as it were, a heavenly light on the intoler- able weariness of life. Thus mankind seems inevitably drawn towards a perfection never to be wholly compassed, but to which each succeeding age brings it nearer : a necessity which has scared many wise minds, and raised two objections against the doctrine of progress. Some repel it for its arrogance in supposing the men of each generation better than their forefathers, and thus bringing j)ast time and tradition into contempt ; others, as tending to fatalism, for if the last age must be best, as there are some in which virtue and genius were certainly darkened, progress is reduced to the simple uninter- rupted increase of material benefit. But these difl&cul- ties vanish before the distinction between man the individual and mankind. God did not create mankind without an eternal plan, which, being sustained by His Infinite Power, cannot remain void of effect. The will which moves the stars rules also the march of civiliza- tion ; humanity accomplishes its necessary destiny, but, being composed of free persons, with an element of liberty, so that error and crime find their place in its course, and we behold centuries which do not advance, but even recede — days of illness, and years of wandering. Who can say that the wretched carvings which degrade the Arch of Constantino excel the metopes of the Parthenon? or that the France of Charles VI. was more powerful than that of Philip Augustus or St. Louis? We may go farther, and pronounce the fourteenth century with its Hundred Years' War, the six- teenth with its anarchy in the conscience and absolutism on the throne, the eighteenth with its license of mind OF PROGBESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 19 and morals, frenzies of modern society — some recovery of whicli was seen in the wondrous outbreak of 1789, which, although turned from its proper course, brought back the nations to the Christian tradition of public right. In such times of disorder, God leaves individuals masters of their actions, but, keeping His hand on society, suifers it not to collapse, but waits till, arrived at a certain point, it can be brought back, as by a by-path, in darkness and pain, to the perfection of which it had been forgetful. So mankind never entirely and irremediably errs ; the light burns somewhere which is to go to the front of the straying generation and bring it along in its wake. When the Gospel failed in the East, it dawned on the races of the North; and when the schools of Italy closed before the Lombard inva- sion, the literary passion was kindled in the depths of Irish monasteries. Sometimes progress, interrupted in politics, finds scope in art ; and wearied art commits to science the guidance of the human intellect. If, as under Lous XIV., public spirit is silent, the voices of orators and poets attest that thought is not rocked to sleep. If, in our own age, eloquence and poetry seem to have fallen from the height to which the seventeenth century had borne them, scientific genius has mounted no less high, and the times of Ampère, Cuvier, and Humboldt are not open to the charge of stagnation. But while humanity works out its inevitable destiny, the indi^-idual remains free, able to resist the cogent but not necessary law of progress, the interior impulse or the example of society, which draws him to a higher aim. And two qualities there are, namely, inspiration and virtue, which are personal, and do not yield to the direction of a period. The "Divine Comedy" sur- 20 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. passed the "Iliad" by all the superiority of the Christian faith ; but Dante was not more inspired than Homer. Leibnitz knew infinitely more than Aristotle, but was his thought more intense ? The heroism of the early Christians was not surpassed by that of the missioners of the barbarous epoch, and these again have found rivals in those intrepid priests of our day who court martyrdom in the public places of Tonquin or the Corea. The great souls of the Middle Age, St. Louis, St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, loved God and man with as much passion, and served justice and truth with as much perseverance, as the noblest characters of the seventeenth century. Time, or increas- ing light and softening manners, only brings knowledge within reach, makes virtue of easier attainment, and adds to the debt of gratitude which accrues to us with the heritage of our forefathers ; and thus the doctrine which is accused of despising the past, brings all the future, as it were, forth from its recesses, recognizes no progress for new ages without the tradition of those which went before, and destroys also both arrogance and fatalism, in seeing in the march of progress the history not of man alone, but of God, respecting man's liberty, working out His purpose by man's free hands, unrecognized by His creatures, and often in spite of their plans. So far is such a view from favouring Materialism, that it has rallied round it the greatest Christian spiritualists, such as Chateaubriand and Ballanche, to speak of the dead, and M. do Bonald, who recognizes " in these very revolutions, these scandals of the world, the means in the hands of the Supreme Governor of bringing to perfection the constitution of society." We OF PROGKESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 21 might rather incur the reproach of pushing our respect for spirit to the neglect of matter, of forgetting the useful beneath the true, the good, and the beautiful, and in our consideration of science, social institutions, and the arts, passing over the industry which is so dear to our contemporaries. For industry must not be despised, when, in subordination to higher things, it brings light to the study of nature, inspires public good, and corrects the grossness of matter by purity of form. When science, art, and public spirit throw thus upon industry their triple ray, it becomes instinct with life, and is of true service to mental progress — a sight afforded by those Italian republics which were as resolved to compass immortality as to amass wealth, as bold in their monuments as in their navigation. But if the development of the industrial principle overwhelms and arrests instead of humbly waiting upon intellectual progress, society is degraded, and falls for a season into the way of decline. We have hitherto treated of progress with facility by choosing those great historical spaces in which it is easy to select events, and group them at will. We must now reduce ourselves to a narrower sphere, and treat of an epoch which seems entirely to militate against our theory — the period from the fall of the Western Empire to the end of the thirteenth century, the moment which it is customary to hail as the reawakening of the human mind. Had only one good principle been implanted in man, progress would have been but its calm and regular development ; but as there are two principles in him, perfection and corrup- tion, corresponding to civilization and barbarism in society, progress becomes a struggle with consequent 22 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. alternations of victory and defeat. Every great era of liistory takes its departure from ruin, and ends in a conquest. The first period upon wliicli we enter opens with the most stupendous of all catastrophes, that of the Roman Empire. We can hardly realize the majesty of that dominion which secured by its laws the peace of the world, by its schools the education of the nations, and adorned its provinces by covering them with a crowd of roads, aqueducts, and cities. Doubtless Roman avarice and cruelty caused these benefits to be dearly purchased, but the opinion the prostrate races had formed of their ruler was so high that the crash of her fall struck terror into the hearts, not only of consulars in the peaceful seclusion of their villas, or of philosophers and literati fascinated by a civilization to which the human mind had devoted all its light, but even to the Christians and the very recluses of the Desert. They were forced to expect the approach of the day of doom in witnessing the fall of an order which alone, according to Tertullian, warded off the consummation of time. At the news of that night of fear, in which Alaric entered Rome with fire and sword, St. Jerome shuddered in the depth of his Bethlehem solitude, and exclaimed, "A terrible, rumour reaches us from the West, telling of Rome besieged, bought for gold, besieged again, life and property perishing together ; my voice falters, sobs stifle the words I dictate, for she is a captive, that City which enthralled the world." Quia cladem illius noctis, qnis fnnora fnndo Explicct. aut possit lacrymis a^quare dolorein ? But the catastrophe which terrified the whole world afforded no astonishment to St. Augustine. Whether OF PROGKESS IN THE AGES OF DECLEsfE. 23 bis great genius was less bound by an antique pati'iotism, or wbetber love bad raised it to calmer beigbts, be was able to measure witb a firmer glance tbe portentous events around bim. Amidst tbe pagan fury wbicb cbarged upon tbe Cburcb tbe disasters of tbe Empire, be wrote bis " City of God," in wbicb, deducinj? from tbe oricfin of Time tbe destinies of Rome and tbe world, be marked witb luminous pen tbe outlines of tbat Cbristian law of progress wbicb we bave feebly sketcbed. At tbe beginning, be wrote, two principles of love built two cities : tbe love of self, in contempt of God, reared tbe city of tbe world ; tbe love of God, scorning self, raised tbe beavenly city. Tbe eartbly republic was visible, as in Babylon or Eome, and was doomed to perisb ; tbe uneartbly state was invisible, and tbougb for a time confounded witb tbe worldly commonwealtb, could not sbare in its ruin. Tbe growtb was continuous, from tbe patriarcbal family, tbrougb Israel, to tbe Cbristian Cburcb ; per- secution gave it increase, beresy distinctness, torment fortitude ; its course on eartb was as a week of labour ; its Sabbatb was to be spent in Heaven, in no sterile and dreamy repose, but in tbe everlasting energy of a loving intelligence. Tbe sequel justified tbe fore- bodings of St. Augustine ; upon tbe ruins of tbe vanquisbed empire Cbristian civilization arose as a conqueror, excelling in its deptb, and tbe difiiculty and scope of its task, all tbe conquests of old. Cbristianity firstly took for ber object tbe conquest of tbe conscience ; and of tbis Rome bad never dreamed. In laying tbe bands of ber legions on subject provinces, and tbat of ber proconsuls on tbeir populations, sbe bad never troubled berself witb souls and tbeir immortal 24 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. destinies. She disciplined the barbarians, and did better service by instructing them, but never thought of converting them ; her Paganism made conscience a slave to deified passions, and conversion involved the government of carnal impulse by a purified reason. But Christianity held for nothing the mere possession of soil, and the enforced submission of nations ; it claimed dominion over the intellect and the will, and announced to brutalized minds, which knew only of murderous and lustful divinities, a spiritual dogma ; to men of violence it had to give a law of mercy and pardon ; to immolators of human victims to propose a worship comprised in prayer, preaching, and a bloodless oblation. Nor did the novelty of these doctrines touch hearts perforce, neither could the subtle persuasion of her priests triumph easily over the. ignorant; for we see Rathbod, Duke of Frisia, when, hesitating under the arguments of St. Wulfram, he had caused the equivalent for the Walhalla of his ancestors to be proposed to him, declaring that, for his part, he would rather rejoin his forefathers than go with a crowd of beggars to inhabit the Christian heaven. But the conquest of mind could be effected by mind only, and force of arms, far from serving, could hardly avoid compromising, the cause, as was often the case. Instruments were wanted in which mental power could alone appear ; and by such feeble and despised means as women, slaves, and the sick, was the conversion of the barbarians accomplished. It was effected by Clo- tilda among the Franks, Theodolinda among the Lombards, Patrick was found working in Ireland, and, lastly, two men, absent from the sphere of action, OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 25 who put no foot on the hostile soil, directed from the heart of Italy the conquest of the North. The one, St. Benedict, in his desert at Monte Cassino, formed the monastic host, and armed them with obedience and toil ; the spirit with which he inspired them, at once charitable and sensible, full of intrepidity and perse- verance, impelled them to the heart of Germany, to the recesses of Scandina^da, where they cut down with the forests the superstitions which they enshrined. The other, St. Gregory, though hardly able, during his twelve years' pontificate, to leave his couch of suffering for three hours each day, organized the invasion of civilization upon barbarism, reformed the Frankish Churches, and reconciled to Catholicism the Lombardic and Visigothic Arians. Lastly, Rome, with her admirable sagacity, had been content with a limited empire ; but the Church, with greater confidence, desired a boundless rule. From the cliffs of Britain, Roman generals had discerned and coveted the Irish shores. Doubtless Probus, when he had ravaged Germany up to the Elbe, dreamt of its reduction to a province. The prudence of the Senate had arrested these schemes of aggrandizement, but Christianity disdained its counsels of prudvjnce. A young Gaul named Patricius, kidnapped by Irish pirates, and sold on their island, succeeded in escaping, and having regained Gaul, buried himself in the monastery of Lerins. Some years later he appeared in Ireland as papal emissary, and in his turn reduced his captors to the light and golden yoke of the Gospel. At the end of thirty-three years Ireland was converted, and gave to the Faith a race capable of the extremes of labour and devotion. The evangelization of Ger- VOL. I. 2 26 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. many cost more labour, and three hundred years of preaching and martyrdom were wanted to gain the old Roman stations on the Rhine and the Danube ; and then inch by inch to grasp Thuringia, Franconia, and Frisia. Every age the Christian colonies were multi- plied ; they were buried in nameless solitudes, to perish age by age under a wave of Paganism, devoted alike to its false gods and to national independence. The struggle lasted till St. Boniface, after constituting at last the ecclesiastical province of Germany, died in Frisia, pardoning his barbarous murderers. The Roman had known how to die, and that had borne him on to the conquest of half the world ; but the Christian alone could die without revenge, and this power gained for him the whole. Such being the progress of Christian conquest in the Merovingian period, let us examine its results. What at once strikes us in them is the fact that the Church, though lo\àng the barbarians to the point of dying for them, and even by their hands, did not detach herself from the old civilization, which she preserved by breathing her spirit into its ruins ; and in this again the supernatural order sustained the natural order, and gave it life. Dogma firstly was the salvation of science. Whereas the pagan myth had loved darkness, had shrouded itself in mysteries and initiations, and shrunk from discussion, Christian doctrine loved the open light, preached on the housetops, and provoked controversy. St. Augustine said, "When the intelligence has found God, it still goes in search of Him," and added, finally, " Intellcctwm valde ama " — Love understanding ; and 80, as revelation stood in need of intelligence, philo- OF PEOGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 27 sophy began again. It was oj^en to the Church to commit the writings of the pagan philosophers to the flames, or to have suffered the barbarians to destroy them ; yet she guarded them, and set her monks, as to a holy task, to copy the writings of Seneca and of Cicero. St. Augustine brought Plato into the schools under his bishop's robe. Boethius opened the door to Aristotle by translating the introduction of Porphyry, which became the text-book of philosophic teaching. The Franks, Irish, and Anglo-Saxons, the children of pirates and ravagers of towns, grew pale over the problem as to the real or only mental existence of genus and species, the question which carried in embryo the whole quarrel between Realists and Nomi- nalists, the Scholasticism of the Middle Age, and, to speak more exactly, the philosophy of all time. Secondly, the religious law saved social institutions : it was a Christian opinion that God had let a reflex of His justice shine out in Roman law, which was also believed to present a marvellous agreement with the Mosaic institutions ; and this idea was the origin of a compilation published towards the end of the fifth cen- tury, " Collatio legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum." The Church preserved Roman law, gathered from it the wisest dispositions in the body of the law ecclesiastical, and put it forth as the common law of the clergy and of Roman subjects under barbarian control. She taught it to the barbarians themselves, as evidenced by the Lombardic, and, more especially, the Visigothic code. But of all of the political works to which the clergy of the time applied its hand, the consecration of royalty was the greatest. Born in the forests of Germany, fenced by a profoundly heathen tradition, and full of 28 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. bloodthirsty instincts, Christianity threw upon it the toga of the Eoman magistrate, and taught it to rule by justice rather than by force. Later, to complete its purification, the Church restored to it the consecration of the kings of Israel, desiring to mould the warrior chiefs into shepherds of the people, who by a gentle sway would temper the reign of justice with charity. Thirdly, Christian worship saved art. When the religion emerged from the Catacombs and built its churches, its first model was the Basilica, the tribunal of the magistrates — the most august object that anti- quity could show. It proceeded to cover their walls with mosaic, the lines of which, if they do not recall its harmony and just proportion, often rival the simple grandeur of Grecian art. The bishops and civilizing monks of France and England drew to their side the most perfect artists of Italy to build basilicas after the ancient form, and to animate them by fresco and glass- painting. To these churches, already instinct with life, voice was to be given ; their chants were to rise as one sound, that the concert of the lips might sym- bolize the union of souls. Schools of church music were accordingly opened, deriving their form and rule from that of St. John Lateran ; but music, the seventh of the liberal arts according to the ancients, presup- poses the knowledge of the rest, and it was not reached till the dusty ways of the triv'ium and qiiadrivium had been followed to their end. And as melody could not be divorced from poetry, so the doors of the ecclesias- tical school could hardly be closed on the poets. Indeed they had already effected an entrance, quoted as they were on every page by St. Basil, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome. S^me sterner spirits did try to stop Virgil OF PKOGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 29 upon the threshold ; but others, more accommodating, pointed out that the sweet singer of Mantua had an- nounced the advent of Messiah, so Virgil passed in with the Fourth Eclogue in his hands, and brought all the classic poets in his train. But it was but part of the task of the Church to have preserved antiquity. She was also bound to col- lect the fertile elements which existed in the chaos of barbarism ; for there is no ignorance, however thick, which is not streaked by some light; no violence so undisciplined as not to acknowledge some law ; no manners so trifling as not to be redeemed by some ray of inspiration. Christianity developed in the Germans that balance of intellect which a false philosophy had never warped. It stamped upon their manners and hallowed in their laws the two fine feelings of respect for the dignity of man and the weakness of woman. In the warrior-songs wherewith this unlettered race cele- brated the deeds of their ancestors, there is more inspi- ration to be felt than in all the declamations of the Latin Decline. The Church shrank from breaking the harp of Gaulish bard or Scandinavian scald ; she only purified it by adding another chord for the praise of God and of His saints, and the family joys which Christ had blessed. The last effort of the labour which steeped the world of barbarism with civilization, and brought from the barbarians new life for the world of civilization, was seen in Charlemagne. A second era opens upon us here with a ruin, and that of a Christian power, and at first sight nothing could seem more disastrous ; for no empire has ever appeared better founded in itself, or more necessary to society, than that of Charlemagne. That gi'eat man 30 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. had not received in vain the title of Advocate of the Church ; for he protected her by his sword from out- ward assault, and caused her canons to be respected within the fold. He revived the universal monarchy of the Caesars, and united the pacified nations by his beneficent policy. The school was raised in the palace, and the learned crowded round the conqueror who had laid might under tribute to mind. But so grand an order was not destined to a long continuance, and Charlemagne himself before his death had to lament its decay. Thirty years after his death, the great organism of his empire broke into three parts at the treaty of Verdun. The Norman torrent rolled upon it, rushing up the Weser, the Rhine, the Seine, and the Loire ; the pirate bands ascended the rivers, sacked the cloisters, and cast into the same fire rich copies of the Bible and manuscript copies of Aristotle and Virgil. At the same time the Hungarians, dragging with them the Slavonic tribes, invaded Germany, Bur- gundy, and Italy. Brothers of the Huns, they passed over Europe like a tempest, and the herbage, tram- pled by their cavalry, did not bud anew. At sight of so much misery, the world thought herself lost, and again imagined herself to be touching the end of time. The deacon Floras, at Lyons, sang thus of the fears of his contemporaries : — " Mountains and hills, woods and streams, and ye, oh deep dales, weep for the race of the Franks ! A mighty race flourished under a brilliant dynasty. There was but one king, one nation. Its children lived in peace and its foes in fear ; the zeal of its bishops was emulous in giving their people holy canons in frequent councils. Its young men learnt to OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 31 know the holy books ; the hearts of its children drank deep of the fount of learning. Happy, indeed, had it known its felicity, was the empire which had Rome for her citadel, the bearer of the keys of heaven for her founder ; but now this majesty has fallen from its lofty height, and is spurned by the feet of all. Ah ! who does not recognize the fulfilment of that Gospel prophecy, ' When the Son of Man cometh, think ye that He will find upon earth a remnant of His Faith?' " But when all seemed lost, salvation was imminent. Providence loves such surprises, and shows thereby the power of its government and the impotence of our own. Suddenly that very people who had seemed unloosed for the Church's destruction, became its regenerators and guardians. The German invasions had not sufficiently renovated Roman Europe. The north-west corner of France and the south of Italy had felt too little that fertilizing influence which alone can restore an exhausted soil. The Normans poured over these regions like a deluge, but as one which brings life. From the blazing ruins of the monasteries, monks, escaping the massacre, went forth, preached to the pirates, and often converted them. The Normans entered into Christian civilization, and brought to it their genius for maritime enterprise ; for government, as shown by the conquest of England ; for architec- ture, to be exhibited in Sicily, in the gilded basilicas of Palermo and Monreale, or in Normandy itself, by the abbey towers and spires which line the Seine banks from its mouth to Paris, and make it a fit avenue of monuments for a royal people. A little later the Hungarians and Sclaves fell, still stained with blood, 32 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. at the feet of St. Adalbert, and the scourges of God became his wiUing and intelhgent servants. They brought to the Church the aid of their invincible swords, covered its Eastern side from Byzantine cor- ruption and Moslem invasion, and thus at last assured the independence of the West. Moreover, that dismemberment of the Empire which drew groans from Floras the deacon, prepared remotely for the emancipation of the modern nations. France, Germany, and Italy arose, though it is true that the disruption of the monarchy, when pushed to an extreme, ended in the feudal subdivisions. The vices of the feudal system are well known, but it had at least the virtue of attaching men to the soil who were devoted to a nomad life and greedy of adventure. It held them by the double bond of property and sovereignty. Mere property in the soil would not alone have restrained the descendant of the barbarians, preferring by far movable wealth, gold, splendid weapons, and herds of cattle. But when the lord became at once proprietor and sovereign, master alike of the fief and of its in- habitants, his pride was moved, he learned to love his land and his men and to fight in their defence. The Church saw that this habit of drawing the sword for others raised the character, she recognized in feudal devotion a remedy for the evils of the system and proposed an heroic ideal to that warlike society in chivalry, the armed service of God and of the weak. As feudalism divided mankind by the subdivision of terri- tory and the inequality of right, so chivalry united it by Ijrotherhood in arms and equality in duty. Thus Christendom expanded, and slowly elaborated an organization compatible with her great principle. OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 33 But how could leisure for thought be found in that age of iron, and who was forthcoming to save the title- deeds of the human intellect, when the monks had but time to lay the relics of the saints on their shoulders in their flight from death ? — for many a chronicle breaks off at the Norman invasion, and many churches refer to that epoch the loss of their charters and of their legends. Two islands of the West had escaped the sovereignty of Charlemagne — wonder as we may how Great Britain and Ireland, enfeebled as they were by intestine war, could have avoided absorption into an empire which reached from the mouth of the Khine to that of the Tiber, from the Elbe to the Theiss. But it was needful that amid the decay of the Carlovingian dominion a less troubled society should afford a refuge to science and literature, and during the eleventh century the monasteries of Ireland continued to sup- port a whole people of theologians, men of letters and skilled in dialectic. From time to time their surplus population flowed over on to the coast of France, where, according to a contemporary, a troop of philosophers were seen to arrive. Amidst the nameless stood John Scotus Erigena, notorious to the point of scandal, bold to temerity, erudite enough to revive the doctrines of Alexandria, but halting upon the veiy brink of Pantheism, soon enough to exercise an incontestable influence over the mystics of the Middle Age. England on her side, watching from afar the fall of the Carlo- vingian d}Tiasty, inaugurated the reign of Alfred the Great ; the heroic youth reconquered the kingdom of his fathers, and with the hands that had expelled the Danes, reopened the schools. At the age of thirty- six he placed himself under a master to learn Latin, 2t 34 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. translated the pastoral of St. Gregory for the use of the clergy, the " Consolatio " of Boethius and the histories of Orosius and Bede for public instruction, "trem- bling," as he said, " at the thought of the penalties which the powerful and the learned would incur in this world and the next if they have neither known how to taste wisdom themselves nor to give it to others to enjoy." Whilst these lights were shining in the north, Germany was also preserving the sacred fire, in the three monasteries of New Corbey, Fulda, and St. Gall. These powerful abbeys, protected from the barbarians by strong walls, by public respect against rapacious princes, embraced schools, libraries, and studios for copyists, painters, and sculptors. Look at St. Gall, where we may almost feel a first breath from the Revival : its inmates are not confined to transcribing pagan authors under obedience, or collecting the Latin Muses with troubled and remorseful curiosity. The ancients are not merely honoured there, but loved with that intelligence which gives back to the past its life : its monks en- gaged in learned discussions, argued against all comers on grammar or on poetry, and even gave their opinion in Chapter in verses from the "yEneid." Latin litera- ture hardly sufiiced for the appetite of these recluses : they aspired to penetrate into Greek antiquity, and did so under the guidance of a woman. The chronicle of St. Gall has preserved the graceful tale, which in no way detracts from the gravity of monastic manners. It relates how the Princess Hedwige, affianced in her youth to the Emjieror of the East, had learnt Greek. On the rupture of their engagement Hedwige gave her hand to a landgrave of Suabia, who soon left her a OF PKOGEESS IX THE AGES OF DECLINE. 35 widow, free to live in prayer and study. She took up her residence near the abbey, and caused herself to be instructed by an old monk in all the learning of the time. One day the old man was accompanied by a young novice, and on the landgravine inquiring what whim had brought the child, the latter replied that though scarcely a Latin he wished to become a Greek — Esse velim gi-tecus cum ■vix sit, Domna, Latinus. The verse was bad, but its author was pretty and docile. Hedwige made him sit at her feet, and gave him as a first lesson an anthem from the Byzantine liturgy ; and continued her care for him till he under- stood the language of St. John Chrysostom, and was able to teach it to others. By this noble hand Greek literature was restored to St. Gall, and Hedwige, pleased with the lessons she had given and received, loaded the learned abbey with gifts, the most remark- able among which was an alb of marvellous workman- ship, embroidered with the nuptials of Mercury and Philologia. Thus literature did not entirely perish, though it languished in Italy, Spain, and France, the Latin countries. But even there teaching was continuous, and its most famous inheritor was one who belonged to those three countries by birth, by education, and by fortune, Gerbert, the monk of Aurillac, who was taught, not, as has been thought, by the Arabs of Cordova, but at the episcopal school of Visch, in Catalonia, and sub- sequently borne aloft by the admiration of his contem- poraries to the very chair of St. Peter. His illustrious name alone sufficiently acquits Southern Europe of the charge of barbarism, and dispenses us from a mention 36 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. of tlie less famous workmen who laboured with silent perseverance to keep unbroken the chain of tradition. Assuredly tradition, without which progress is impos- sible, must be guarded, but it must also be enlarged. As antiquity possessed no forms of sufficient variety or life for the genius of the new era, modern languages were to arise. Alfred, master of Latin at the age of thirty-six, was at home at twelve in the war-songs of the Anglo-Saxons ; by writing it in prose and forcing it to translate the firmness and precision of ancient thought, he fixed that most poetical and therefore most indefinite of idioms. The monks of St. Gall at the same time made it their task to pass into that Teutonic dialect — the rude accents of which the Emperor Julian had compared to the cry of the vulture — not only the hymns of the Church but the Categories of Aristotle, and the Encyclopaedia of Martianus Capella. Though the growth of the Neo-Latin languages was more gradual, yet from the ninth century downwards the traces of their existence were multiplied. The Council of Tours prescribed preaching in the vernacular, and we have proof that it was obeyed in a recently discovered homily, the date of which cannot be later than the year 1000. Its syntax is barbarous, and presents a confused mixture of French and Latin words ; yet from the chaos in which this old preacher struggled was to proceed the language of Bossuet. The cause of civilization was to conquer, but only after running the greatest risk, especially from the con- dition of the Church, then degraded at Kome by the ■ profiination of the Holy Sec, and invaded in every part by feudal customs, which changed bishoprics into fiefs, OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 37 and bishops into vassals. Salvation was, however, to spring from the Church, and out of the quarter in which the spiritual life had sought refuge, for it was the monastic reform of Cluny which decided the destiny of the world. A French monk named Odo, a student of Paris, had buried his learning and his virtues in a monastery, situated four leagues from Macon, in the depths of a silent valley, only troubled from time to time by the shouts of hunters and the baying of their hounds. He introduced a severe rule, which, however, did not exclude the literary passion or artistic culture, and which, by its intrinsic force, brought under the government of Cluny a number of religious houses in France, in Italy, and in England. Unity in the hierarchy, in administration, and in discipline was thus established in these monasteries, ready to extend thence into the general Christian society when the time arrived. The day soon came ; it was the Christmas Day of the year 1048. The Bishop Bruno, nominated by the Emperor Henry III. to fill the chair of St. Peter, happened on his way to Italy to visit the Abbey of Cluny ; when there an Italian monk named Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter, drawn to Cluny some years before through zeal for reformation, dared to present himself to the new Pontiff, and tell him that an emperor's nomi- nation could confer no right in the spiritual kingdom of Christ : he adjured him to proceed to Piome, throw off his empty title, and restore to clergy and people their liberty of election. Bruno, to his great credit, listened, desired to take him with him, and on his arrival in Piome placed himself at the discretion of the clergy and the people. He was chosen pope, and Hildebrand, from his position beside the pontifical throne, already gave T] 38 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. evidence of what his future course was to be under the name of Gregory the Seventh. Gregory VII. inaugurated a new period which began by a reverse. At the outset that great pontiff is seen by the mere force of his word to reduce the sensual and bloodthirsty Henry IV. to seek penitence and pardon at the Castle of Canossa, and then it in- deed appeared that barbarism had been conquered, and that Europe was willing to submit to the laws of a theocracy, which risked the loss of temporal power, but was destined to revive spiritual life throughout the world. But some years later the same emperor took Rome, enthroned an Antipope in the Vatican, and force again coerced conscience, whilst Gregory VII. uttered at Salerno his dying words, " I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile." More terrible than ever seemed the catastrophe in which, not an empire alone, but that principle which alone could give empires vigour, was perishing ; yet this time Christians did not look for the world's immediate ex- tinction, and one of the bishops in attendance on the dying Pope answered him, " My Lord, you cannot die in exile, for God has given you the earth for a possession and its nations for an inheritance." And, indeed, from the tomb of Gregory VII. pro- ceeded that mediœval progress which is too well known, too incontestable, too much enlightened by modern science, to make more than a sketch of its principal features necessary. The strife between the hierarchy and the empire continued more formidably as the rival powers found more illustrious champions — on the one side Frederic I. and Frederic II., as great in the field as in the council chamber, on the other the Popes OF PEOGEESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 39 Alexander III., Innocent III., Innocent IV., consum- mate politicians and heroic priests. After two centuries of warfare, the vanquished empire renounced its usur- pations on the spiritual order; the Popes, in aiming at aggrandizing the Church, had achieved her freedom ; the two powers separated — force returned to its ovm province, and the rights of conscience were saved. At the same time the Papacy executed another design of Gregory VII. It gathered into one the nations of the West, long given up to ceaseless conflicts, without justice and barren of result, and poured them over the East. There, if fight they must, they might wage a sacred war, justified by a most holy cause, and with the victory of right and liberty as its result and reward. The nations, borne far away from that powerful German empire and its usurped dominion over them, freed themselves from vassalage and regained their autonomy. Foucher, of Chartres, pictures the crusaders, whether German, French, or English, living together on terms of brotherly equality. The modern nations gained their spurs in Palestine, and to the visible unity of the empire succeeded the moral unity of the Christian commonwealth. And feudalism succumbed to the same blow. Under the banner of the cross the middle class fought with the same title as the nobles, that of soldiers of Christ; they gained the same indulgences, and if they fell, equally with them earned the martyi-'s palm. The merchants of Genoa and of Venice planted the scahng-ladder on the walls of Saracen towns, and led the assault with as finn a hand and as fierce a bearing as the barons of France. In vain did feudalism create in the Holy Land her principalities and her marquisates. She returned 40 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. thence in her agony, returned to find in Europe a triple contest to maintain ; against the Church, which reproved private war ; against royalty spreading its jurisdiction daily to the prejudice of seignorial rights ; and, lastly, against the nascent power of the commonalty. The Commonwealths of Italy, allied to the Papacy by a community of peril, were bound to espouse its cause, and the first example is seen in the republic of Milan, whose glorious history is well known. In 1046 a noble named Gui had obtained by bribery the archbishopric of that city, and was maintained in it by a corrupted clergy and a tyrannical aristocracy. Two schoolmasters, the priest Landulf and the deacon Ariald, undertook to relieve the profaned see of St. Ambrose, so banding together, first their own pupils, and then gradually the bulk of the populace, they bound them in solemn league against the simoniacal and incontinent clergy. Kome roused herself at the sound of the dispute, and Peter Damiani, charged as Papal Legate with the reform of the Church of Milan, heard the complaints of the people, and obliged the archbishop and his clergy to sign a public condemnation of concubinage * and simony. But their engagement was soon trampled under foot, and Ariald died at the hands of his enemies, but left an heir of his design in the warrior Harlembert, who was beloved by the multitude and powerful by his eloquence as well as by his prowess. He was declared the champion of the Church, received from the Pope the gonfalon of St. Peter, rallied the discouraged party of reform, bound it by a new oath, and sustained an * The clergy of Milan seem to have been actually married. Ariald says of them, " Et ipsi sicut laici palam uxores ducimt." Vit. Beat. Arialdi. Bolland, xxvii.; Jun.— (TV.) OF PKOGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 41 obstinate war against the nobility, whom he expelled from the city, and at length died in triumph in repelling an assault, fighting at the head of his men with the standard of St. Peter in his hand. But the reigning Pope was Gregory VII., and he consummated the work of the deacon and the knight. Simony and concu- binage were conquered, the nobility reduced to a mere share in the government, and the commonalty of Milan gained that strong plebeian organization which for two hundred years was the support of popes and the dismay of emperors. Whilst the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany formed themselves into republics, and treated on equal terms with monarchs, the communal spirit had passed the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees. After the admir- able work of Augustin Thierry, there is no need for us to show how the spirit of liberty revivified the remi- niscences of the Roman municipality or the traditions of the German guild ; if it did not succeed in rendering the cities paramount, it made them sharers in sove- reignty. Their deputies took part in States General, and the Christian principle of natural equality produced equality in the political order. In the midst of this strife and agitation, literature found ample place, and filled it with special distinction. It is not true that literature only loves peace ; she loves war, too, when civilizing in its results — when the sword is drawn in the cause of intellect, and when not in- terests but contrary principles are encountered ; when minds, divided between those principles, are bound to exercise the power of choice and consequently of thought. The ages of Pindar and of Augustus sprang from Sala- mis and Pharsalia ; the quarrel over investitures awoke 42 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. the scholastic philosophy; and Gregory VII. wished not only for a chaste but also for a learned clergy. At a council at Eome, in 1078, he renewed the canons which instituted in each episcopal see chairs for in- struction in the liberal arts. It is not easy, as some have imagined, to enslave a people by putting it under priestly guidance. Wherever a priest has stood, the succeeding generation will find a theologian ; in the third the theologian will bring forth a philosopher, who in his turn will produce a publicist, and the publicist will bring liberty. Those who know Little of the Middle Age will only see in it one long night, during which priests are keeping watch over troops of slaves ; yet one of these slandered priests was called Anselm, and he was troubled with the desire of finding the shortest proof of the existence of God. The thought alone sufficed to make him a great metaphysician, to bring him disciples, to rouse up opponents, and plunge the Christian mind into the controversy which was to range Abelard against Bernard, and drive many an intellect to the last excess of temerity. Amidst, but rising above, the tempest, appear the two Angels of the Schools, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventura, charged with the task, if death had not checked it, of laying the last stone to the edifice of Christian dogma and mysticism respectively. These two Saints did not dread enervat- ing theology by recognizing philosophy as a distinct science, nor profess that haughty contempt for reason which has been lately too much affected. From the heights of eternal truth they did not despise the wants of their time, but embraced them with a disinterested view ; and St. Thomas wrote on the origin of laws, on the legitimate share of democracy in political constitu- OF PEOGKESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 43 tiens, on tyranny and insurrection, pages which have startled a later age by their boldness. Never was thought more free than in the supposed era of its bondage, and, as if liberty alone was little, she had power. Her universities were endowed by Pope and Emperor ; she possessed laws, magistracies, and a studious but turbulent people. An historian of the epoch gave Christendom three capitals — Eome, the seat of the Hierarchy ; Aix-la- Chapelle, the seat of Empire ; and Paris, the seat of Learning. Life flowed in full tide through the learned literature, but it did not gush less abouudiugly, and flourished with greater grace and freedom, in the vulgar tongues. It brought forth from them two kinds of poetry, one common to all the Western nations, though ripening earliest on its native soil of France, which sang of the heroes who are the type of chivalric life, and that respect for women which is its charm ; the other the national lay which is proper to each people, and records its individual genius and tradition. Germany had her N'lb dung en-lied, still steeped in barbarous colouring and pagan association ; in it we behold long cavalcades riding through nameless forests, bloodstained banquets, the children of light at issue with those of darkness, and the hero-conqueror of the Dragon perishing for the sake of an accursed treasure and an abandoned woman. The mists of the North lent their shadows to these sombre fictions, but the Southern sunshine gave warmth and colour to the epic of the Cid. Spain in its essence lived in this hero, the terror of infidels but a rebel to his king — religious, but with so proud a piety that the Almighty Himself is said to have treated him wdth distinction, and warned him, through St. Peter, of his departure from the world. 44 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Italy chose a still better part, and found inspiration in holiness. The land which Gregory had ploughed pro- duced from its furrows a double harvest of Saints and of artists ; here St. Anselm, St. Francis, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventura, with a number of tender and ardent souls clustered around their greater intellects; there a whole generation of architects and painters, who, with Giotto at their head, formed rank at the tomb of St. Francis ; the bond uniting faith and genius was never more visible, and the national poem of Italy was naturally counted a sacred epopee. Thus did Dante think, and from his meditations proceeded that patriotic and théologie poem, written for a country whose pas- sions it stirred — for the Christian world, whose Belief it glorified — for the Middle Age, whose crimes, virtues, and learning it pictured — for modern times, which it surpasses in the grandeur of its presentiments ; a poem that rang with the groans of earth and the hymns of heaven. . . . . Poema sacro A cui ha posto man cielo e terra. It is also our duty to discuss the growth of industry and material prosperity, the humbler tasks which are imposed upon the majority. We may say that in many ways the Middle Age preserved, expanded, and in- creased the material wealth of the ancient world. We have seen already how the crusades gave back to the Latins all those ways of commerce which had of old been opened on the side of the Levant ; how apostolic zeal impelled men beyond these and to the very ex- tremity of Asia ; we have beheld the monks reaping the tradition of Roman agriculture, reconquering foot by OF PEOGEESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 45 foot, by spontaneous toil, lands which the indolence of slaves had left waste, and carrying the precepts of the Georgics to the banks of the Weser and the Elbe. We must point also to the ancient cities saved from the fury of the barbarians or rising again from their ashes, thanks to the courage of their bishops or the respectful immunities which surrounded the reliquaries of their saints, as well as to the new cities multiplying around the abbeys ; for, like all civilizing influences, the Church loved to build. But it was not as Rome built, for Christianity has, so to speak, changed the aspect of towns as well as the manners of men : of old every soul was turned outwards — a man lived in the public place, or in the richly decorated atrium, where he received his clients ; the rest of his house was neglected, and the narrow chambers opening on the peristyle were good enough for his women, children, and slaves. But Christianity turned the heart of man towards inner joys, pointed out happiness at the domestic hearth, and made him embellish the place in which he passed his life with his "v^dfe and family ; thence came the splendid woodwork and tapestry, the richly carved furniture, in which lay the pride of our ancestors. At first sight the modern towns seem far inferior to the cities of old. The ancients built small temples, it is true, but their amphitheatres were immense, their baths stupendous, their porticoes and colonnades without number. The Christian city was grouped humbly round the cathedral on which every effort had been expended ; if there was any other public building it would be the town-hall, the school, or the hospital. The ancients built for pleasure, and in that department we must despair of rivalry : our towns are built for work, for sorrow, and for prayer, 46 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. and it is in the knowledge of these that the eternal superiority of Christian times consists. We may finish here with Dante, the worthy follower of Charlemagne, and of Gregory VII., coming as a conqueror to inaugurate a new era of progress, by his own defeat to point to a new epoch of ruin. For the great poet who carried on to the Middle Age the legacy of his triumphant thought, was also great in his failure, exiled from his country, which denied him sepulture, and destined to he followed by that four- teenth century which was to see the fall of the Italian republics, France in the flames of war, and the schools in decline. But neither this dreary age nor any other could prevail against the design of God and the voca- tion of humanity. We have traversed a space of eight hundred years, a considerable portion of human destiny, and have en- countered three epochs, each commencing with a season of decline : but each decline veiled a progress, assured by Christianity, to be worked out obscurely and silently as if beneath the surface, till it came to the light of day, and burst forth in a juster economy of society, in a brighter flash of intellect. We have reached the term of the Middle Age, but must beware of supposing that humanity had but to descend, even but one short slope, before reascending to higher altitudes, which would not yet be the last. We have given full credit to the Middle Age, and may now avow what was wanting to that period so full of heroism, but also instinct with pagan associations and savage passions. From these came perils to the faith, which never had to enter upon conflicts more terrible, disordered man- ners, mad impulses of the flesh, lust for blood, and all OF PROGRESS IN THE AGES OF DECLINE. 47 that caused saints, preachers, and contemporary mo- ralists to despair. As severe judges, they acknowledged the vices of their epoch, and many even ignored the very good which they themselves produced. The scandals which deceived them show us that the Middle Age did not fully achieve Christian civilization, and from the error of these great souls, we may learn, amidst our own deterioration, not to deny an invisible progress. Fallen upon evil days, we must remember that the Faith in progress has traversed darker times, and like iEneas to his despairing comrades, let us say that we have passed so many trials that God will also end our present probation, — O passi graviora, dabit Deus Ms quoque finem ! 48 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. CHAPTEE II. THE FIFTH CENTURY. Before entering upon a study of the barbarous epoch, we must know in what the wealth of the human mind consisted at the moment of the invasions ; how much of it was to perish in that great catastrophe, as an empty ornament buried in the grave of antiquity ; and how much was to survive as the heritage of the modern nations. We shall start from the death of Theodosius at the dawn of the fifth century, and, leaving aside the East as exercising but a remote influence on the period, confine ourselves to the destinies of humanity as worked out in the provinces of the West. At the moment when all civilization seemed doomed to extinction, we find two forms of it, one pagan, the other Christian, confronting each other with their re- spective doctrines, laws, and literature, disputing for the possession of the fresh races who were pressing upon the threshold of the Empire. Paganism, indeed, had taken no speedy flight before the laws of the Christian emperors and the progress of philosophy. At the close of the sixty years during which the edicts of Constantius, renewed by Theodosius, had been pressing hard upon the superstitions of idolatry, in the West at least the temples were still open, and the sacrificial flames still unextinguished. When Honorius came to THE FIFTH CENTURY, 49 Rome in 404 for the celebration of his sixth consulate, the shrines of Jove, of Concord, and of Minerva still crowned the Capitol, and the statues of the old deities on their pediments were still presiding over the Eternal City. Yotive altars covered with inscriptions testified that the blood of bulls and goats had not ceased to flow, and to the middle of the fifth century the sacred fowls were fed whose presages governed Rome and the World. The pagan festivals and their appropriate games were still marked in the calendars. We hardly realize antiquity in its nature-worship, which, amidst the songs of poets and the apologies of sages, resulted in the celebration of the two great mysteries of life by religious prostitution and human sacrifice, or how in the theatre and amphitheatre dedi- cated as temples to Bacchus and Sol, the gods were honoured by mysterious rites, comprising nameless horrors which outraged the plainest laws of modesty, or by the mutual massacre of myriads of gladiators rush- ing to death amidst the applause of earth's most polished race. It was lust and bloodshed which in despite of imperial edicts kept the crowd spell-bound at the altars of their idols. Philosophy had done no more towards redeeming the higher minds of the ruling class, the heirs of the old senatorial families. The prodigious labours of the Alexandrian philosophers, however admirable for erudition, subtlety, and boldness, had only tended to revive Paganism, by lending to the worship which the Roman aristocracy could only defend as a State insti- tution the gloss of a refined interpretation. The old system was to fall by the hand of Christianity, before the spiritual weapons of controversy and charity, VOL. I. 3 50 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. preaching and martyi'dom. We shall glance at the learned discussions in which St. Augustine exhausted his zeal and eloquence to attract the choice intellect of a Volusian, a Louginian, or a Licentius, but will mark more closely the rise of that instruction which was devoted to the ignorant and the insignificant, to whom Paganism had never preached, enter the families in which war, as it were, was levied against some idolatrous parent till he was brought a happy cap- tive to the waters of Baptism, and listen to the shouts of the circus when the monk Telemachus threw him- self between the fighting gladiators and died under the stones of the spectators to seal by his blood the aboli- tion of those detestable games. But error yielded slowly, like night leaving its mists behind. The Pantheism of Alexandria was des- tined to a new birth, to carry its temerity into the very chairs of the Scholastic philosophy. In the full blaze of classic antiquity in the schools of Jamblichus, of Maximus of Ephesus, and the last pagan philo- sophers, flourished magic and astrology and the occult sciences, supposed to have been spawned in the dark- ness of the Middle Age. Moreover, the ignorant country-folk {imcjanï) shrunk from parting with a religion which appealed to their passions. The pil- grims from the North wondered in the eighth century at seeing the squares of Rome still profaned by pagan dances. The Councils of Gaul and Spain long pursued with anathema the sacrilegious art of the diviners, and the idolatrous practices of the Calends of January. Latin superstitions joined hands with those of Germany to make a last stand against conquering Christianity. Everything pagan in character, however, did not THE FITFH CENTURY. 51 deserve to i^erish, for even iu a false religion there is a meritorious craving for commerce .with Heaven, of fixing it in times and places, and under definite symbols. The Church had the faculty of appreciat- ing this want, which is a right of human nature. She spared the evangelized nations useless violence, and re- conciled art and nature to Christ by dedicating to Him the temples and festivals, flowers and perfumes, hitherto lavished on false divinities. The heretic Yigilantius was scandalized at this wise economy, but St. Jerome undertook to justify it, and in his reply we see the germ of that tender jdoHc}^ which inspired St. Gregory to instruct the English missioners to leave to the newly made Christians their rustic festivals, innocent ban- quets, and earthly joys, that they might be the more willing to taste of spiritual consolations. Thus the whole of the Church's struggle against Roman poly- theism was but an apprenticeship to another conflict which she was destined to wage against the Paganism of the barbarians, and in her last efi'orts to convert the ancient world we foresee the genius and patience she was to display in the education of the new nations. The preparation for the future amidst the ruins of the past, the conjunction of perishable elements with an immortal principle, which afl'ords so strong a contrast in the history of religion, is more maniferjt in that of Law, which in the fifth century the emperors organized by giving force to the writings of the old jurisconsults, and codifying the decisions of Christian princes. The lawyers of the classic age had never abjured the law of the Twelve Tables, and all the efi'orts of the school had failed in obliterating the pagan character impressed on the constitution of the State and of the family. 3 ■■■■ 52 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. The pagan doctrine was to deify tlie City, to make an apotheosis of public power, to render it sovereign in the conscience -without any further appeal to abstract justice. The Emperor had inherited a divine right over the goods, the persons, and the souls of men. He was above the law, which was the creature of his will ; as depo- sitary of military power (imperium) he was master of every life, as Vicar of the rights of the Koman people he was strictly the only proprietor of the soil of the provinces, of which the natives had but a precarious possession. It was not surprising that he should extract the taxes by exhausting the one and torturing the other ; and there was no excess of persecution or of exaction that did not find principles to justify it. The iniquity of the public law had descended into that of civil life. The father, as representative of Jove, surrounded by his tutelary gods, the images of his ancestors who lent him their majesty, exercised right of life and death over his wife, could expose his children or crucify his slaves. Philosophers admired this family constitution, with its priestly and military power installed at every hearth, as a domestic empire on the model of which was framed the empire of the World. But the violence of authority had provoked a resur- rection of liberty. The human conscience, outraged in its last refuge, began a memorable resistance by op- posing to the civil law that of the tribes and the prœtorial edicts, the resjwnsa of the jurisconsults and the constitutions of princes to the Code of the Twelve Tables, lastly succeeding in introducing into the impe- rial councils such firm and subtle minds as those of THE FIFTH CENTURY. 53 Gaius, Ulpian, and Papinian, who tempered the severity of the old legislation. But the struggle lasted for eight centuries, and the victory of equity could only be effected by the triumph of Christianity. A new faith was necessary to deal its death-blow to the respect for the old laws, embolden Constantino to decree the civil emancii^ation of woman, the penalty of death against the murderer of a son or of a slave, to elicit from Valentinian III. and Theodosius IV. the noble decla- ration that the prince is bound by the laws — a short speech, but marking the greatest of all political revo- lutions, causing the temporal power to descend to a lower but securer place, and inaugurating the consti- tutional principle of modern society. The Eoman law, as reformed by Christian emperors, survived the crash of the empire, penetrated gradually the barbarian mind, and earned Bossuet's panegyric, "that good sense, the master of human life, reigned throughout it, and that a more beautiful application of natural equity had never been seen." But the crown of pagan society, and its incomparable lustre, was derived from its literature. Rome doubtless knew no longer the inspiration of her great centuries, yet the reigns of Constantino and of his successors, so often accused of hastening the Decline, seemed for a space to give a new flight to the eagles, a fresh burst to the genius of Rome. Ammianus Marcellinus com- posed history with the dash and bluff sincerity of a soldier. Vegetius, in his " Treatise on the Military Art," gathered up the precepts of the science before it passed away to the Goths and the Franks, and the contemporaries of Symmachus rank him with Pliny in the exquisite urbanity of his correspondence, and 54 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. the elegance of his panegyric. Among the poets, three may be distinguished as worthily sustaining the old age of the Pagan Muse. Of these Claudian stood first. Born in Egypt, he had early drunk deep at the sources of Alexandrian learning, from which the great poets of the Augustan era had drawn, and had found a stray chord of that Latin lyre broken on the day on which Lucan caused his veins to be opened. Since the " Pharsalia," Kome had heard nothing comparable to the songs which told of the disgrace of Eutropius or the victories of Stilicho. But Claudian was so steeped in pagan memories that he could only move in a cloud of fables, so to speak, out of sight of his Christian age, out of hearing of the voices of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine thundering at Milan and Hippo, not even thinking of defending the menaced altars of his gods. He was singing of the Eape of Proserpine as the cultus of the Virgin Mary was taldng possession of the Temple of Ceres at Ca- tania, and was inviting the Graces, the Nymphs, and the Hours to deck with their garlands Serena, the lovely wife of Stilicho, who in her hatred of idolatry had torn the necklace from the image of Cybele to adorn her own neck. He dared to introduce the Christian princes into Olympus, and bring upon the scene ïheo- dosius, Jupiter's greatest foe, talldng familiarly with Jove himself. Kutilius Numatianus, though also a pagan, wrote under less illusion, and with a more accurate feeling as to the spirit of his age. He was no mere poet by profession, but a statesman, a prefect of Home, though on leaving the city in 418 to revisit his native Gaul, then under the ravages of the bar- barians, he wrote of his journey in verses so graceful THE FIFTH CEXTUEY. 55 as to deceive the ear into a remembrauce of Ovid. The ardour of his patriotism, his passionate worship of Rome, as the greatest deity of antiquity, saved him from illusion, and raised him high above his literary contemporaries. " Hear me, listen, Rome, ever beauteous Queen of a world that is for ever thine own : thou who art one amongst the Olympians, hearken, Mother of men and of gods ; when we pray in thy temples we are not far from heaven. For thee the sun doth turn on his course, he rises upon thy domains, and in their seas doth he plunge his chariot. From so many diverse nations thou hast moulded one sole country ; from that which was a world hast thou made a city {Urbem fecisti quod iwiiis orhis erat). He who can count thy trophies can tell the number of the stars. Thy gleaming temples dazzle the eye. Shall I sing of the rivers, that the vaults of air bring to thee — the entire lakes that feed thy baths ? Shall I tell of the forests imprisoned beneath thy ceilings, and peopled with melodious birds ? Thy year is but an eternal spring, and vanquished Winter respects thy pleasures. Raise the laurel from thy brow, that the sacred foliage may bud forth anew around thy hoary head ! It is thy children's tradition to hope in danger, like the stars which set but to rise again. Extend, extend thy laws, they will live through centuries become Roman perforce, and alone among things of earth dread not thou the shuttle of the Fates."* Finely and truly drawn. The old Roman magis- trate, vn\h a lawj'er's insight, foresaw that Rome, * Pvutil. Niuuat. 1. i. 00-133. 56 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. betrayed by her arms, would still reign by her laws ; and, pagan as it was, his faith in his country did not deceive him. Sidonius Apollinaris was pagan neither in creed or in name, but he was in education and in habit of mind. Christian, like Ausonius, but like him reared in the schools of the grammarians and rhetoricians of Gaul, he could not construct an hexameter or hang together dactyls or spondees without stirring up every mytho- logical association. Whether he was composing the panegyric of the Emperor Avitus, or that of Majorian after the deposition of Avitus, or that of Anthemius after the fall of Majorian, he treated always of the same deities, who were never weary of taking part in the triumph of the victor. Happily, his panegyrics failed before the complaisance of the gods, for Sidonius was converted, became a bishop, and was destined to become a saint. But though he mastered his passions he could not stifle his recollections. M. Ampère has ably shown* the struggles of that mind divided between victorious faith and mythology, which still so thoroughly possessed it, that in writing to St. Patientius, Bishop of Lyons, in praise of a distri- bution of corn to the poor, he could find no higher congratulation possible than in calling him a second Triptolemus. Such was the sequel of the old poetry, though Sidonius found one more disciple in the sixth century in the person of Fortunatus, and the writings of Claudian found copyists and imitators in the monas- teries of the Middle Age. But antiquity was to pro- * Histoire Littéraire de la France, t. ii. THE FIFTH CENTURY. 57 pound a harder lesson to the ages which followed. Rome in losing genius had still retained tradition, had formed a magistracy of instruction and provided the schools of the Capitol with thirty-one professors of jurisprudence, of rhetoric, and of grammar. The youth pressed into these schools with ardour and in such numbers, that an edict of Valentinian was necessary for a sort of police regulation of the studies. Gratian had desired that the provinces should enjoy the same benefit, and that every great town should possess public chairs with rich endowments. The favour of law multiplied these laborious grammarians, who made it their profession to explain and comment, and conse- quently religiously to preserve the classic texts. The learned Donatus, whose lectures St. Jerome had attended, fixed the principles of Latin grammar. Macrobius, in his commentary on the dream of Scipio, and in the seven books of the " Saturnalia," brought all the memories of Alexandrian philosophy and of Greek poetry to elucidate the thought of Cicero and of Virgil. Lastly, Marcianus enveloped in a spirited and graceful allegory the seven liberal arts wherein all the learning of the ancients had just been comprised. We must not wonder that the science of antiquity could be compressed within the narrow compass of seven arts; upon that condition and under that form, the heritage of the human mind was destined to traverse the barbarous epoch, and the treatises and commentaries whose dry- ness we despise were to save Latin literature. The text- book of Martianus Capella was to become the classic summary of all secular instruction during the sixth and seventh centuries, to be multiplied under the pens of monks, and be translated into the first stammering 3f 58 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. utterances of the modern languages. Donatus became so pojîular that his name was a synonym of grammar in the schools of the Middle Age ; no student was too poor to possess a Donatus, and there was a Provençal grammar under the name of Donatus Provincialts. The Middle Age was right in attaching itself to the masters who gave it that example of toil which is more necessary than genius, for genius is hut a thing of the moment ; and God, who never wastes it, seems to will that the world should know how to dispense with it. Yet He never lets labour fail, but distributes it with a liberal hand, as a punishment or as a blessing, effacing the distinction between ages and between men. Genius ravishes intelligence for a brief space, raising it, indeed, above the common condition of life, but work comes to recall it from its lofty forgetfulness and reduce it to the level of mortals. When we see Dante borne by the flight of his thought to the highest sphere of his Paradise, to the threshold of the infinite, we may well hesitate in our belief of the destined equality of all souls ; but when in the intervals of his song we mark him exhausting his sweat in study, paling over the labour like the meanest scholar of his century, we take courage in finding equality re-established and humbler spirits avenged. We see, then, that antiquity was not to be entirely buried beneath the ruins of the Roman Empire ; we must now find the new principle which preserved it, how the Christianity which has been held so inimical to the old civilization laid upon it a hand which was beneficent though it might be severe, as upon the sick whom we treat with rigour and weaken but to save. The close of the fourth century still rang with the pathetic THE FIFTH CENTURY. 59 accents of the Fathers. M. Villemain has clone justice to those masters of Christian eloquence in a work which can never be revised, and we must shrink from a subject which, in the words of one of old, he has made his possession for ever. The East we leave aside. The West had mourned the death of St. Ambrose in 393, and St. Jerome in his seclusion in the Holy Land only acted on events through the authority of his untiring correspondence. St. Augustine remained to fill with his presence the opening years of the fifth century, and with his thought those which followed. This is not the place to relate his history, or to depict his tender but impetuous heart, or his soul tormented by its cravings after light and peace; and wiio, indeed, is ignorant of his career, his birth under the African sky, his education at Madaura and Carthage, his long aber- ration, and the Providential guidance which brought him to Milan and to the feet of St. Ambrose, the conflict of his will groaning under the strokes of grace, the voice which cried out to him. Tulle, lege ! In the writings of this great mind we shall study that which is even greater — Christian metaphysics taking its first form, and Christianity defending itself with redoubled vigour, that it might remain what God had made it, namely, a religion, instead of being degraded by the sects to a philosophy or a mythology. A thirst for God tormented the soul of St. Augustine like a malady depriving his day and night of their repose. This want had cast him into the assemblies of the Manichees, in which he had been promised an explanation of the origin of evil ; had impelled him towards the Neoplatonic school, to learn the nature of the Supreme Goodness ; and, lastly, had flung him 60 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. upon his knees under the fig-tree in his garden to embrace Christianity, as he wetted the pages of St. Paul's epistles with his tears. Henceforward his life was hut one long struggle towards "the Beauty, ever ancient yet ever new, which to his reproach he had begun to love so late." Shortly after his conversion, in the retreat that he had given to his tempest-tost mind under the shades of Cassiciacum, he wrote those " Soliloquies" in which he supposes his reason to demand from him the aim of his knowledge. " Two things," he replied, " namely, God and the soul." But to what notion of Him did he aspire ? Did it suffice to know God as he knew Alypius, his friend ? Nay ; for knowledge does not alone imply a grasping by means of the senses ; a seeing, touching, or feeling. But would not the theology of Plato or Plotinus satisfy his curiosity ? Assuming them to be true, Augustine wished to go beyond them. But mathematical truths are perfect in their clearness. Would he not be content at knowing the attributes of God as the properties of the circle or of the triangle are known ? "I agree," he replied, " that the verities of mathematics are very clear, but, from the experience of God, I expect a different happi- ness and a difierent joy." Boldly, but with firm steps, he began his course on the road towards the knowledge of God. He deter- mined to leave Italy — that land of temptation — and it was while he was awaiting a favourable wind at Ostia, and leaning one day with his mother from the window of their house in contemplation of the sky, that he fell into that wonderful train of thought which has been handed down by him in the ninth book of his " Con- fessions " : — THE FIFTH CENTUKY. 61 " We were alone, talking with infinite sweetness, forgetful of the past looking beyond the future, of what the eternal life of the blest would be. . . . Kaised towards God by the ardent aspiration of our souls, we traversed the whole sphere of things corporeal, and the sky also, in which the sun, moon,- and stars spread abroad their light. And in our full admiration of thy works, Lord, we mounted yet higher, and reached the region of the soul ; then passed higher yet, to repose in that Wisdom, itself Uncreated, by whom all things were made, which has ever existed and will ever be ; in whose Eternal Being is no past, present, or future. And as we spoke thus, with this thirst for the wisdom of God, for a moment, by an effort of the heart, we touched upon It, and then groaned as we left the first-fruits of our souls clinging there whilst we de- scended to earth at the sound of our voices." Eegret- fully do we abridge that wonderful narration. They are indeed happy who have had such experiences, with a mother like his ; who, with her, have found their God and never again lost sight of Him. These few words comprise the whole of his metaphy- sical system. In them he introduces the novelty of his doctrine as compared with that of Plato or of Aristotle, the idea of Omnipotence, which, if not unknown to antiquity, was at least contradicted by the theory of an Eternal Matter, by refusing to the Supreme Worker the privilege of producing the clay which His hands were permitted to fashion. Philosophy of old had lived upon an equivocal axiom : Ex nihilo nihil. To estab- lish the counter-dogma of Creation, Augustine found it necessary to dive deep into the secrets of Nature, and thence to re-ascend to God (1) by the idea of Beauty, 62 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. as shown in his work "De Musicâ;" (2) by the idea of Goodness, as in the " De Libero Arbitrio ;" (3) by the idea of Truth, as in the treatise " De Vera EeHgione." M. l'xibbé Maret has thrown Hght upon the vast work which he pursued in spite of the demands of theolo- gical controversy, amidst a people whom he was called upon to instruct and to govern, in the presence of the Donatists and before the approach of the Vandals. The "Theodicea" of St. Augustine was, however, achieved, to be elaborated to the highest degree by St. Anselm, and finally enriched by the arrangement and additional corollaries of St. Thomas Aquinas. But the Bishop of Hippo was the acknowledged master of the generation of philosophers who filled the Middle Age with their discussions. Popular tradition gave testimony to this fact, and we read in the " Golden Legend " how a monk in ecstasy on beholding the heaven and the hosts of the elect, wondering at not seeing St. Augustine, inquired for the holy doctor. "He is higher far," it was answered; " gazing ever on the Holy Trinity, and discussing It throughout eternity." Mysteries, indeed, failed to discourage the genius of St. Augustine. From the time in which he uttered that great speech, Intellectum valcle ama, he became of necessity the guide of all the theologians who, like St. Anselm, were willing to put faith in quest of intel- ligence. Fides quœrcns intellectum — not the idea of God alone, but the whole cycle of Christian dogma, was embraced in his meditations. No depths were too obscure for his search, no controversy too perilous for his intellect. His age was endangered by two forms of heresy ; one of pagan parentage, the other the offspring THE FIFTH CEXTUKY. 63 of the philosophic schools. Ou the one hand, the Manichees were restoring the doctrines of Persia and of India, the strife of the two principles, emanation and metempsychosis — errors which had power to fasci- nate even nobler minds, as in the case of St. Augustine himself for so many years, to seduce the ^^llgar and form in Eome a powerful sect which terrified St. Leo the Great by its orgies. Four hundred years of preach- ing and martyrdom thus seemed fated to result in a rehabilitation of pagan fables, and Christianity to dis- solve at the breath of Manes into a mere mjiihology. On the other hand, the Arians, in denying Christ's di^dnity, the Pelagians, in suppressing gi-ace, severed the mysterious ties which linked man to God. The supernatural element disappeared, whilst the Platonic Demiurgus replaced the Consubstantial Word, and the Faith was reduced to the level of a philosophy. St. Augustine prevented this issue, and as his early life had been spent in struggling free from the Manichœan net, so its later years were devoted to combating Arius and Pelagius. Like all the great servants of Providence, he fought less for his own time than for posterity. The moment was approaching wherein Arianism was to enter as a conqueror through all the breaches of the Empire, in the train of the Goths, Vandals, and Lombards ; and in those days of terror bishops would have had little leisure to study by the light of conflagrations the disputed questions of Nicaea, had not Augustine kept watch over them. His fifteen treatises on the Trinity comprised all the objections of the sectarians and all the arguments of the orthodox ; and it was to him the victory was due in the con- ferences of Vienna and Toledo, when the Burgun- 64 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. dians and Visigoths abjured their heresy. In later days, when the Mauichœism preserved in the East by the Paulicians had regained its sway in the West, when its disciples, under the names of Cathari or Albigenses, had mastered the half of Germany, of Italy, and of Southern France, and gravely imperilled Christian society, it was not the sword of Simon de Montfort which supi^ressed it — for fire and sword cannot conquer thought however false, (rather many noble hearts must have wavered at the sight of the violence which degraded the crusade, and was con- demned by Innocent III.) — but the sound doctrine of St. Augustine, as expressed by his firm yet loving intellect, resettled their faith, and regained the Chris- tian world for orthodoxy. In that conflict, the excesses of which we must detest, but need not to exaggerate, victory was due to truth rather than to force. Christianity must be the soul of a society which it fashions after its own image, and in the fifth century that great work seemed near its achievement. The Papacy, fully acknowledged in its authority since the time of St. IrenjBus and Tertullian, which had presided at Nicaea,* and to which the Council of Sardica had referred all episcopal judgments, found in St. Leo the Great a mind capable alike of defending its rights and understanding its duties. While the Greek mind was divided between Nestorius and Eutyches, Leo intervened with the judicious force of a lawful authority, and caused the Council of Chalcedon to save the faith in the East. His more especial task lay in preserving Western civilization, by appeasing Genseric at the very gates of Kome, * Probably in the person of Hosius of Cordova. — (Tr.) THE FIFTH CENTURY. 65 Attila at the passage of the Mincio, and by forming the monastic legions which were to execute the designs of the Papacy. Souls worn out by vice and pubhc misfortune were driven into seclusion by the fame of the institutions of the deserts, and the popular histories of their saints written by St. Athanasius, St. Jerome, and Cassian. The wealthy but menaced cities of Eome, Milan, and Treves still possessed amphitheatres for the pleasure of the mob, but side by side with monasteries, in which were moulded a race better able to cope with the dangers of the future. The austere men, the enemies of light, as the pagan Eutilius disdainfully calls the monks whom he found in the islands which fringed the Italian coast, were soon to be the only guardians of enlightenment. The great abbeys of Lerins, of the island of Barba, of Marmontiers, were open a century before the time of Benedict, not to introduce the religious life into the West, but to perpetuate it, in tempering its rigour. But as Christian people could not emigrate entirely into the cloister, we must mark how the new faith gradually took possession of the lay world, and, by correcting its laws and manners, formed a more gentle society than that of St. Augustine's time, and equal to it in polish. We see in the clever letters of St. Jerome to the Roman matrons, who claimed descent from the Gracchi and Emilii, and spent their time in learning Hebrew, speculating on the mystic words of Isaiah, and diving into every controversy of their time, to what a pitch the Church had brought female educa- tion. It formed a better estimate of the sex which antiquity had condemned to spinning wool, in hopeless ignorance of things of divine or of political interest. 66 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. St. Jerome never appeared more noble than in stooping to teach Lœta how to train her child, by putting letters of box-wood or ivory under its eyes, and rewarding its early efforts by a flower or a kiss. Of old it had been said, Maxima dehetur puero reverentia, but the saintly doctor went further, and made Lseta's daughter the angel of her house ; and it was her task to begin, when a mere baby, the conversion of her grandfather, a priest of the old gods, by springing upon his knee and singing the Alleluia, in spite of his displeasure. Christianity did not, as men say, wait for the favouring times of barbarism, to build up in darkness the power of popes and monks, but laid the foundations of its edifice in the light of day, under the jealous gaze of the pagans. The approaching invasions seemed more fraught with danger than advantage to its interests. The Canon law, whose birth we have noticed, found an obstinate resistance from the passions of the bar- barians, and the Gospel had to devote more than twelve centuries to calming the violence of the conquerors, and reforming the evil instincts of their race, in restoring that clearness of intellect, that gentleness in the commerce of life, that tolerance towards the erring, and the many other virtues which throw over the society of the fifth century some of the charm of modern manners. But Religion had not consummated her work as long as Literature resisted, and the century which saw the fall of so many altars beheld that of the Muses still surrounded by an adoring multitude. Yet Christianity shrank from condemning a veneration for the beautiful, and as it honoured the human mind and the arts it produced, so the persecution of the Apostate Julian, in THE FIFTH CENTUKY. G7 which the study of the classics had been forbidden to the faithful, was the severest of its trials. Literary history possesses no moment of greater interest than that which saw the School, with its profane traditions and texts, received into the Church. The Fathers, whose Christian austerity is our wonder, were passionate in their love for antiquity, which they covered, as it were, with their sacred vestments, and thus guaranteed to it the respect of the future. By their favour Virgil traversed the ages of iron without losing a page, and by right of his Fourth Eclogue took rank among the prophets and the sybils. St. Augustine would have blamed Paganism less if, in place of a temple to Cybele, it had raised a shrine to Plato, in which his works might have been publicly read. St. Jerome's dream is well known, and the scourging inflicted upon him by angels for having loved Cicero too well ; yet his repentance was but short-lived, since he caused the monks of the Mount of Olives to pass their nights in copying the Ciceronian dialogues, and did not shrink himself from expounding the lyric and comic poets to the children of Bethlehem. While pagan eloquence, expelled from the Forum, could find no outlet but in the lecture-halls of the rhetoricians, or in the mouths of the mendacious pane- gyrists of the Csesars, a new form of oratory had founded its first chair in the Catacombs, and was drawing inspiration from the depths of the conscience. St. Ambrose organized it, and filled a chapter of his book, " Do Officiis," with precepts on the art of preaching, which St. Augustine developed, not fearing, in his treatise, " De Doctrinà Christiana," to borrow from the ancient rhetoric as much as was consistent with the 68 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. gravity of the Gospel message. We may listen, in Peter Cbrysologus, Gaudentius of Brescia, Maximus of Turin, to orators at once learned and popular, but their light was outshone by another preacher, who addressed himself not to some thousands of souls, but to the entire West. Amidst the confusion of the invasions, Salvian undertook the task of justifying the action of Providence. Eloquence never raised a more terrible cry than that which told from his lips the agony of the Eoman world, pointing to the mockery which accompanied its fall, to its vain struggles beneath the hand of God, and His treatment of fire and sword which failed to effect its cure. Secamur urimur non sanamur. The ancients, in writing history, had aimed at literary beauty, and thus loaded the narrative with ornament and declamation. The Christians only looked for truth, they wished for it in facts, and applied themselves to re-establishing order in time, which led to the dry but scrupulous chronicles of St. Jerome, of Prosper of Aquitaine, and the Spaniard Idatius. They sought for truth in the unravelling of causes, and, so to speak, made the Spirit of God to wander over the chaos of human events. The philo- sophy of history, so finely sketched by St. Augustine in his " City of God," was developed by the pen of Paulus Orosius. He was the first to condense the annals of the world into the formula Divinâ provldentiâ agitur mundus et homo. His works became the type of the chronicles which multiplied in the Middle Age. Gregory of Tours could not treat of the Merovingian period without ascending to the origin of things ; and Otto of Freysingen, in his fine work, " De Mutatione TSE FIFTH CENTUKY. 69 Rerum," continued the chain of history to which Bossuet was to add the last and most elaborate link. Poetry, in the last place, was destined to surrender the language which had been lavished on the false gods to the praises of Christ. When the Empress Justina was threatening to deliver over the Basilica of Milan to the Arians, St. Ambrose, with the Catholic people, passed day and night in the sacred place, and, to wile away the tediousness of the \'igils, introduced the hymn-tunes which had already found a place in the Eastern Church. The sweetness of the sacred chant soon gained the ear of the West, and Christianity" possessed a lyric poetry. Contemporaneously it beheld its epic take its rise in the verses of Sedulius and of Dracontius, and could even say with one of old, Nescio quid majus nascitiw Iliade. Not that modern genius could hope to rival the match- less perfection of the Homeric forms, but because humanity thus found the true and œcumenical epopee whereof every other was but a shadow, the themes of which were the Fall, Redemption, and Judgment, which was to traverse the ages, and culminate in Dante, Milton, and Klopstock. Moreover, in the fifth century, two Christian poets rose above the crowd. One was St. Paulinus, who laid aside the honours of his rank and fortune to dwell at the tomb of St. Felix of Nola, and who celebrated the peace of his seclusion in verses which were already quite Italian in their gi-ace. As he depicts the basilica of the Saint blazing with taper-light, its colonnades hung with white draperies, its flower-strewn court, with the troops of devout mountaineers from the mountains of the Abruzzi bringing their sick on litters, or driving their cattle before them to receive a blessing, we might 70 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY, fancy ourselves present at a pilgrimage of the Neapolitan peasantry at the present day. The other was the Spaniard Prudentius, who, at the end of a life full of honours, and long service to his duty, devoted to God the remnants of a tuneful voice and a dashing style. Beneath a method which the authors of the golden age would not have disowned, a modern cast of thought is apparent, whether the poet is borrowing the most genial accents of our Christmastides to invite the earth to wreathe its flowers round the cradle of the Saviour, or, as in the hymn of St. Laurence, is drawing the veil with a Dantean hardiness from the Christian destinies of Rome, or, as in his reply to Symmachus, makes a prayer to Honorius for the abolition of the gladiatorial shows the peroration of his invective against Pagan- ism : — Nullus in iirbe caclat cnjus sit i)oena voluptas ! Jam solis contenta feris infamis arena Nulla cruentatis liomicidia ludat in armis ! * It is not sufficiently known, but we perhaps may learn, how the poetical vocation of the Middle Age was sus- tained by those writers who filled the libraries, shared with Yirgil the honours of the " ^neid," and moulded the best imaginations of the time, until the mind grew weary of the chaste beauty of a poetry that had no pages for expurgation. Our work would be incomplete if, amongst these germs of future greatness, we should forget Christian art, which had emerged from the Catacombs to produce in the light of day the basilicas of Constantino and Theodosius, the sepulchral bas-reliefs of Rome, of Ravenna, and of Aries, and the mosaics with which +• Prudentius contra Symniacli. 1. ii. 1120 et seq. THE FIFTH CEXTURY. 71 Pope Sixtns III. embellished, iu 433, the sanctuaiy of St. Mary Major. The cupola already swelled over the tomb of St. Constance, and the Latin cross extended its arms in St. Peter's and in St. Paul's. The empire was still standing, and its every type was to be found in that Eomanesque and Byzantine architecture which was soon to cover with monuments the shores of the Loire, Seine, and Pihine, and which from the broken arch of its vault was to produce all the beauties of the Pointed Gothic. We have thus traced the rise of the modern faith, of modern society, and of modern art, all of which were born before the inroad of the barbarians, and were destined to grow sometimes through their aid, sometimes in their despite. The Barbarian mission was not that of inaugurating a craving for the in- finite, a respect for women, or a sad-coloured poetry. They came to break with axe and lever the edifice of pagan society, in which Christian principles were cramped ; yet their blows were not so crushing as to leave no remnants of the old ramparts, iu which heathenism still might lurk. AYe shall find that half the vices attributed to the barbarians were those of the Roman Decline, and a share of the disorders charged upon nascent Christianity must be laid to the account of antiquity. In this category must be placed the vulgar superstitions, the occult sciences, the bloody laws put in force against magic, which do but repeat the old decrees of the Cœsars ; the fiscal system of the Mero^-ingian kings, which was entirely borrowed from the imperial organization ; the corruption, lastly, of taste and the decomposition of language, which already prognosticated the diversity of 72 CIYILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. the new idioms. Beneath the common civilization which was destined to knit into one family all the races of the West, the national character of each struggles to the surface. In every province the Latin tongue found an obstinate resistance in native dialects, the genius of Eome in native manners. The distinctive elements in the three great Neo-Latin nations could already be recognized. Italy had statesmen in Symmachus and Leo the Great, and was soon to possess Gregory the Great, Gregory VIL, and Innocent III. Spain claimed a majority among the poets, and gave them that dashing spirit which has never failed from Lucan to Lope de Vega. The "Psychomachia" of Prudentius was a pre- lude to the allegorical dramas, to the "Autos Sacra- mentales" of Calderon. Gaul, lastly, was the country of wits, of men gifted with repartee. We know the eloquence of Salvian, the play of words so dear to Sidonius Apollinaris, but that sage of the Decline was, moreover, full of the ancient heroism, when called upon to defend his episcopal see of Clermont from the assaults of the Visigoths. And these were the very features in which Cato summed up the Gallic character : lîem militarem et argute loqui. Such is the plan of our course, for it is not neces- sary to follow out in detail the literary history of the fifth century, but only to seek light for the obscurity of the succeeding ages. As travellers tell of rivers which lose themselves amongst rocks, to appear again at some distance from their hiding-place, so we shall ascend above the point at which the stream of tradition seems to fail, and will attempt to descend with it into the gulf, that we may be certain that the issuing stream is indeed the same. As historians have opened THE FIFTH CENTURY. 73 a certain chasm between antiquity and barbarism, so let us undertake to re-establish the unfailing com- munication granted by Providence in time, as well as in space ; for there is no study more fascinating than that of the ties which link the ages, which give to the illustrious dead disciples century after century down the future, and thus demonstrate the victory of thought over destruction. VOL. I. 74 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. CHAPTER III. PAGANISM. In the fifth century Paganism, at first sight, seemed but a ruin. It is commonly supposed that the fall of superstition was imminent before the preaching of the Gospel, and that Christians have claimed an easy miracle in the destruction of an old cult which had long tottered beneath the blows of philosophy and the popular reason. Yet eighty years after the conversion of Constantino Paganism survived, and a greater lapse of time, a stronger expenditure of effort, was required to dispossess the ancient religion of the Empire, still mistress of the soil through its temples, of society through its associations, of some higher souls by the little truth it held, of the mass by the very excess of its errors. When the Emperor Honorius, in 404, celebrated his sixth consulate at Rome, the poet Claudian, charged with the task of doing public honour to the heir of so many Christian emperors, invited him to recognize in the temples which surrounded the imjDerial palace his heavenly body guard, and pointed to the sanctuary of the Tarpeian Jove which crowned the Capitol, and the sacred edifices which rose on every side toward the sky, upholding on their pediments a host of gods to PAGANISM. 75 preside over the City and the World.* We cannot accuse the poet of reviving in hyperbole the lustre of an extinct Paganism. Several years later a topogra- phical survey of Eome, in numbering the monuments which the sword and fire of the Goths had spared, still counted forty-three temples and two hundred and eighty chapels. The Colossus of the Sun, a hundred feet in height, still reared its front by the side of the Flavian amphitheatre, which had reeked with many ;i martyr's blood. Statues of Minerva, Hercules, and Apollo decorated the squares and cross streets, and the fountains still gushed under the invocation of the nymphs. f Time had gone by filled with the spirit of Christianity, the era of St. Augustine and of St. Jerome, but in 419, under Valentinian III., Rutilius Numatianus still sang of the pagan city as mother of heroes and of gods. "Her temples," said he, "bear us nearer to heaven." It is true that imperial edicts had closed the temples and forbidden the sacrifices, but the continued renewal of these laws during fifty years shows their constant infringement. In the midst of the fifth century the sacred fowls of the Capitol were still fed, and the consuls, on entering ofiice, demanded their auspices. The Calendar noted the pagan festivals side by side with the feasts of the Saviour and the Saints. AVithin the City and beyond, throughout Italy and the Gallic provinces, and even the entire Western Empire, the sacred groves were still untouched by the axe, idols were adored, altars were standing, and the pagan populace, believing alike * Claiidian, De Sexto Consulato Honorii, v. 43. f Descriptio XJrbis Romse, incerto auctori qui vixit sub Ilonorio vel Valentiniano III. 4 * 76 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. in the eternity of their cult and of the Empire, were waiting in scornful patience till mankind grew weary of the folly of the cross.* Hitherto, indeed, the fortunes of Rome had seemed mingled with those of her gods, and from the three great eras of her history had been gradually evolved the pagan system which we remark in the fifth century. The kingly epoch had furnished the antique dogmas on which reposed the whole theology of Rome. Supreme over all things stood an immutable power, unknown and nameless ; beneath were other deities known to men, but perishable in nature, borne along towards a fatal revolution which was to destroy the universe and raise it up anew ; lower still came souls, emanations of the Deity, but fallen and doomed to an expiation on earth and in hell, until they became worthy of a return to their first abode. A close com- merce between the visible and invisible worlds was in consequence maintained through the media of auguries, sacrifices, and the worship paid to the Manes. Rome herself was a temple in near relation to heaven and hell, square in form, facing towards the East, according to the ancient rites. Each patrician's house was a sanctuary, wherein the ancestral images from their place of honour watched over the fortunes of their descendants. The laws of the City, hallowed by the auspices, expanded into oracles, magistracies became sacerdotal, every important act in life a reli- gious transaction. A people so permeated with respect for their gods and their ancestors, under their eyes as * Salvian.Pe GuliornntionoDei ; rolcmius Sylvius, Latovcnlns, seu Index Dicrum l''iislorum ; IJcugnot, Histoire de la Chute du Paganisme on Occident. PAGANISM. 77 was the firm convictiou in council or in war, was fit for gi-eat achievements. These obscure but potent doctrines had disciplined the old Romans, and sus- tained the edifice of the commonwealth ; as the cloacae of Tarquin, those sombre but gigantic vaults, had purified the soil of the City and supported its monu- ments.* Doubtless the Greek m}i:hology modified the austerity of this primitive belief. It had, however, appeared during the most flourishing ages of the republic, with the first examples of that bold policy which was to advance by enlarging the circle of its law and of its worship, and receive into the bosom of Rome the con- quered nations and their gods. The divinities of Greece followed the car of Paulus-Emilius and of Scipio to the Capitol ; but though the victor descended when his hour of triumph was past, the captive gods remained to attract every art around their shrines. Sculptors and poets reared an Olympus of marble and gold in place of the deities of clay to which the old Romans had done homage. Religion lost her power over morality, but over the imagination she reigned supreme. At length the advent of the Cnesars opened Rome to the worship of the East. As the respect for primitive traditions was withering away, so society, rather than remain godless, sought new idols at the world's extremity. It was in Isis and Serapis, in Mithra and his mysteries, that troubled hearts now sought repose, Vespasian and his successors have been often blamed for their sanction to the barbarous rites which the Senate had for long * Ottfried Miiller, Die Etrusker; Creuzer, Religions de l'Antiqmté, translated by M. Guigniaut ; Cicero, De Legibus, ii. 8, 12. 78 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. contemptuously repelled, but the emperors did but renew the old polic}', and as sovereign pontiffs of a city which boasted of giving peace to the world, it was their duty to reconcile all religions. They realized the ideal of polytheism, in which there was room for all the false gods, but no place for the True. Thus was that mighty religion rooted in the history, the institutions, the very stones of Rome ; and, in jus- tice to Paganism, it had stronger ties in the souls of men, for the ancient society would never have survived so many ages had it not possessed some of those truths which the human conscience never entirely lacks. The Roman religion placed one supreme deity above all secondary causes ; he was proclaimed upon his temples as very good and very great. The feciales called him to witness before hurling the dart which carried with it peace or war. The poet Plautus showed the messen- gers of this god visiting cities and nations to procure " written in a book the names of those who sustained wicked lawsuits by false witness, and of those who per- jured themselves for money; how it is his task to be judge of appeal in badly judged causes, and if the guilty think to gain him by presents and victims, they lose at once their money and their trouble."* Such language was that of a poet rather than a philosopher, but it was addressed to the mob, and gained their applause in touching, like so many nerves, the group of beliefs which lay at the root of the public conscience. It was mindful also of the dead, and had touching prayers in their behalf. " Honour the tombs, appease the souls of your fiiihers. The Manes ask for little ,: to them devotion stands in the place of rich offerings." Ex- * Plautus, Rudens, prolog, v. 1 et seq. PAGANISM. 79 piatory sacrifices for ancestors were handed down as a charge upon the inheritance from father to son, cere- monies whose power was to be felt in hell, to hasten the deliverance of souls who were undergoing purgation, and bring the day in which they were to seat themselves as its tutelary deities around the family hearth.* The whole funeral liturgy bore witness to faith in a future life, to the reversibility of merits, to the solidarity of the family organization. The thought of a God and remembrance of the dead were as two rays, unkindled by philosophy but proceeding from a higher Source, with capacity of still guiding, after the lapse of ages of pagan darkness, some chosen spirits in the right way ; so they throw light on the obstinate resistance offered to Christianity by some honest but timid souls, who answered, like Longinian, to the arguments of St. Au- gustine, that they hoped to reach God by way of the old observances, and through the virtues of antiquity.! But that small and well-meaning band judged wrongly of the religion whose doomed altars they were defend- ing. If Paganism possessed elevating influences, so also did elements exist in Chaos. Side by side with doctrines which might have sustained life in the indi- vidual intellect and in society, a principle was working which must ever impel towards ruin the person of man and civilization itself. The evil leaven of heathenism laboured to extinguish reason in man by separating it from the supreme truth whence all its light is derived. Whereas religion is bound to strain every nerve in snatching the human soul from the distractions of sense, to give it an upward flight in raising the veils * Oa-ïcI. Fast. lib. ii. 35 et seq. t Epistola Louginiani Augustino, apud Ep. St. Aug. 234, 80 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Avhicli hang over the spiritual world, Paganism diverted it from the sphere of ideas by promising to find its god in the regions of sense. It pointed, firstly, to Him in Matter itself, whose hidden forces it hade the faithful to deify. The Romans adored the water of their fountains, stones, serpents, and the accustomed fetishes of the barbarian. Mankind till then had paid honour to an unknown power, conceived to be greater than himself; his second and more culpable error lay in adoring himself, in deifying that humanity which he recognized as weak and sinful. The priests, sculptors, and poets of Paganism borrowed for their gods not only the features but the frailties of mortals, and thence rose the fables which throned in heaven the passions of earth ; thence came the whole system of idolatry hardly to be realized in the intensity of its madness. It was no calumny of Christian apologists, but the avowal of the wise ones of the old cult, that the idols were as bodies into which the powers of heaven de- scended when conjured by the prescribed rites ; that they were held captive there by the smoke of victims, nourished by their fat smeared upon the statues, their thirst slaked when priests poured over them cupfuls of gladiatorial blood. Men of sober reason spent whole days in paying to the Jupiter of the Capitol the homage which as clients they owed to a patron — some in offering him perfumes, others in introducing visitors or declaiming comedies to him.* But Eome began to crave for a more concrete God than the Capitolian Jove, * Photius, Biblioth. 215 ; Tit. Liv. lib, xxxviii. c. 43 ; Cicero, in Verr. act ii. orat. iv. ; Minutius Felix, Octavius, 23 ; ïertullian, Apolog. 12; St. Cyp. De Spcctiu-ulis ; Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, 1. vi. c. 17 ; Seneca, quoted by St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, 1. vi. c. 10. PAGANISM. 81 and found a Imng and most terrible deity in the person of her Emperor. Earth could ofler nothing more divine in the sense of a majesty at once recognized and obeyed, and Paganism did but push its principles to their con- sequence in deifying the Caesars ; but reason fell to the lowest depth of degradation, and the Egyptians gro- velling before the beasts of the Nile outraged humanity less than the age of the Autonines, with its philoso- phers and jurisconsults rendering divine honours to the Emperor Commodus.* Again, Paganism perverted the Roman ■\^'ill by turn- ing it from the supreme good by means of the two passions — fear and desire. Man craves for God, and yet dreads Him, as he fears the dead, the life to come, and all invisible things. Drawn irresistibly towards Him, he takes flight and avoids His very Name, and the fear which severs him from his last end is the chief cause of all his aberrations. At first sight. Paganism seemed a mere religion of terror, which in disfiguring the idea of God, only made Him more obscure, more threatening, more crushing to the imagination of man. Nature, which it proposed as an object of adoration, seemed but a third force, governed by no law, subject only to the tremendous caprices which revealed them- selves in the lightning flash and the earthquake, or the volcanic phenomena of the Roman Campagna. Amidst the thirty thousand deities with which he had peopled the world, the Roman, far from being confident in their protection, was full of disquietude. Ovid represents the peasantry assembled before the image of Pales, and the following is the prayer which he makes them utter : — * Lampridius, Cominodus Antoninus. 4t 82 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. " goddess, appease for us the fountains and their divinities, appease the gods dispersed in the forest depths ; grant that we may meet no Dryads, nor Diana surprised at the bath, nor Faunus, when towards mid- day he tramples the herbage of our fields." * If the bold peasants of Latium thus shrank from an encounter with wood-nymphs, it is no marvel that they adored Fever and Fear. This feeling of terror per- meated the entire religion, and gave rise to numberless sinister rites, and the machinery in sight of which Lucretius might well say that fear alone had made the gods. It produced those frenzies of magic which were but a despairing effort of man to resist these cruel deities, and conquer them not by the moral merits of prayer and virtue, but by the physical force of certain acts and fixed formulas. There is no sight stranger but more instructive than of that system of incantation and senseless observance by means of which earth's wisest race sought to lay nature in fetters ; t but which sooner or later burst most terrible in power through its bonds, and took vengeance on man through death. As, then, death remained the ultimate ruler of the heathen world, so human sacrifice was the lasteflbrt of the pagan liturgy. It was principally by the infernal gods, by the souls of ancestors wandering pale and attenuated around their burial-place, that blood was demanded. Under Tar- quin the First, children were sacrificed to Maria, the mother of the Lares. In the brightest age of the re- public and of the empire, a male and female Gaul and a pair of Greeks were buried alive to avert an oracle * Ovid, Fast. iv. 747 et seq. t Cato, De re liustica, 132, 111, IGO ; Pliii. Hist. Nat. lib. PAGANISM. 83 which had promised the soil of Rome to the barba- rians ; the sjDell pronounced over the heads of the victims devoted them to the gods of hell ; and Pliny, a contemporary of these cruelties, was only struck by the majesty of the ceremonial, and the force of its for- mulas. When Constantine, and with him Christianity, had mounted the imperial throne, the pagan priests still offered, year by year, a cup of blood to Jupiter Latialis. Vainly did the Romans forbid to their conquered nations the slaughter of which they gave the example, and in the third century human sacrifice still lingered in Africa and Arcadia, as if all the laws of civilization were powerless to stifle the brutish instincts which Paganism let loose in the depths of man's fallen nature.* But mankind, in flying from the true good, followed one which was false. The terror which drove him from God plunged man into lustful indulgence, and the religion of fear became the sanction of carnal pleasure. We must glance at the excesses of this error, if only to disabuse the minds who, repelled by the sternness of the Gospel, turn regretfully to antiquity, asking in what respect the Roman civilization was inferior to that of Christian times. Though Nature is constantly affording a spectacle of decay, she is prodigal also in the prin- ciple of life. She shows man that same power which exists in him for the perpetuation of his race and is open to be abused by him to his loss, and exhales from every pore a dangerous spell, as it were, which is liable to cause him to forget his spiritual destinies. Far from * Macrob. Saturn, i. 7 ; Valor. Max. ii. 4, 7; Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. xxviii. cap. 2; Plutarch, QuiEst. Rom. 83; Suetonius, Vita Oct. 15; Tertullian, Apologet. 9; Prudontius coniia Symraa- chum, i. 555' et seq. ; cf. Tzcliirner der fall dos Heidjutliums, p. 54 et seq. 84 CIYILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. guarding man therefrom, Paganism plunged his being into the intoxications of sense, and brought him to adore the propagating principle in nature. Phidias and Praxiteles were the servants of its brilliant worship, and an obscene symbol was selected as a summary of its mysteries. The feasts of Bacchus saw it led in procession through the towns and villages of Latium, amidst ceremonies in which matrons of noble birth played their part. Songs and pantomime accompanied tlie rite, and robbed the women who joined in it of all excuse on the score of ignorance of its meaning ;* and though these infamies have been veiled by the name of symbolism, doubtless where the priests placed symbols, the populace found incentives and examples. The gods were honoured by imitation, and their adulteries served to reassure the consciences which scrupled. At length, from venerating love as the life-principle which circu- lated in nature, they came to deify the nameless lusts by which nature itself is outraged, and the immolation of beauty and modesty ranked as the worthiest tribute to the apotheosis of the flesh. Prostitution became a religion, and its temples at Cyprus, at Samos, and at Mount Eryx, were served by thousands of courtesans.! Lust also claimed its human victims, and terror and passion, the twin scourges of the old society, drove man- kind to the same abyss. Far distant from the supreme good, man had deified the two forms of evil, destruction and corruption, with a cult of which self-destruction was the essence. In the face of an error so monstrous, * St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, vii. c. 21, 24 ; cf. Aristoplian. Acliarn. ; of. Ovid, Fast, vi.; Iltjrodotus, ii. 4-8. + I'laiit. Ampliitryo ; Terence, Eunuch, iii. 5; Ovid, Meta- morph. ix. 78!}; Herodotus, i. 12b-18'J ; Justin, xviii. 5; cf. Tzcliirner, p. 10 et soq. PAGANISM. 85 of a worship which outraged the intellect in sanctioning murder and feeing impurity, St. Augustine declared that Christians honoured human nature too much to sup- pose that she herself could have sunk so low, finding it more pious to believe that the Spirit of Evil alone had conceived such horrors, and had dishonoured man that it might enslave him.* But these abominations, calculated as they were to raise every soul against Paganism, helped to subjugate men by depraving them, and thus preserved for more than a century the dominion of which the old religion had been robbed by law. Imperial edicts had pro- scribed the superstitions, dispersed the priests of Cybele and the priestesses of Venus, but all the lustful and bloody features of the old cult survived in the amphitheatre. St. Cyprian had called idolatry the mother of the games, and it was needful for a religion, whose object it was to throw a divine halo over pleasure, to lay prompt hold upon the public amusements. Eome had borrowed from Etruria gladiatorial combats to appease the dead, histrionic dances to cajole the anger of heaven. The Roman people held its festivals for the gods and its ancestors, and laboured to reproduce in symbolic representation the delights of the Immortals. The races of the Circus signified the movement of the stars, the dances of the theatre the voluptuous im- pulses which enslave every living being. In the conflicts of the amphitheatre were depicted in miniature the struggles of humanity.! The dedication of the Circus to the sun was marked by an obelisk raised in the • St. Aiiffiistine, De Civit. Dei, 1. vii. c. 27, 117; cf. Dollinger, Heidentlium und Judentlmm, Eng. Trans. Book ix. 2-4. — (7V.) t VaiTo, cited by St. Aug. De Civit. Dei, 1. iv. c. 1 ; ïertullian, De Spectaculis, 4 ; St. Cyprian, Epistola ad Donatum, 7 et 8. 86 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. midst of tlie enclosure ; on the line dividing it were built three altars in honour of the Cahires ; and every column and monument, as well as the post around which the chariots turned, had its tutelary god. Before the opening of the races, a procession of priests bore round the Circus images of the gods reposing on richly embroidered couches, and numbers of sacrificial acts preceded, interrupted, and followed the sports. When the napidu, falling from the hands of the magistrate, gave the signal for the charioteers, the darlings of Rome, to enter the arena, and the intoxi- cated and panting multitude pursued, with cries loud and long, the chariots which they favoured or scorned, divided into furious factions, and ended in coming to blows, then were the gods content, and Romulus recognized his people— his children, indeed — who had lost their world-wide dominion, who were bought and sold for money, but could still forget everything in the Circus, and find therein, according to the expression of a contemporary writer, their temple, their forum, their country, and the theme of all their hopes. The Calendar of 448 still marked fifty-eight days of public games — in that year of terror in which Genseric and Attila were awaiting in full panoply the hour appointed by Heaven.* The theatre was the domain of Venus, for when Pompey restored in marble the wooden benches on which the Romans of old had sat, he dedicated his edifice to the goddess who perturbed all nature by the power of her fascinations. It also was a temple, with a garland-crowned altar in the midst, set apart for a per- * Tcrtullian, De Spcctaciilis, vii. 10 ; Ammiauus Marcellin. xiv. 20; rulein. Sylv. Laterculus. PAGANISM. 87 formance of the myths in which the gods appeared as exemplars of the deepest immorality. It was there that the mimes, youths withered from infancy, played in pantomime the loves of Jupiter or the frenzies of Pasiphae. But the prosaic common-sense of the Romans was ill-content with the pleasure of dramatic illusion ; they spurned a vainly-excited emotion, so, to soothe their leisure, the ideal had to cede to reality : women were dishonoured on the stage, or, if the drama was tragic, the criminal who played the part of Atys was mutilated, or the personator of Hercules was burnt. Martial boasts of an imperial festival in which Orpheus appeared charming the mountains of Thrace with his lyre, drawing trees and rocks after him enamoured by his melody, and finally torn limb from limb by a bear, while the cries of the actor, who thus threw some life into the languor of the old tragedy, were drowned by songs and dances.* Three thousand female dancers served like so many priestesses the theatres of Rome, and were kept in the city when, on the occasion of a famine, all the grammarians were expelled. The sovereign people could not do without its lovely cap- tives ; it covered them with applause and with flowers, but caused them to uncover their bodies before the image of Flora. Yet the senators on the front ranks showed no indignation, and the rhetorician Libanius wrote an apology for dancers and mimes, justifying them by the precedent of the pleasures of Olympus, and praising their continuance of the education given to the people formerly by the priest ; whilst the pagan party was powerful enough to obtain a prohibition of - Mai-tial, Lib. de Spect. ep. 7; cf. DuUinger, Heidentlium und Jud^'iitlium, Eng. Trans, vol. ii. pp. 281 — 284. — {Tr.} 88 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. baptizing actors, except in danger of death, lest as Christians they might escape the public pleasures of which they were the slaves.* Paganism did not afford the gods any sweeter pleasure than that of contemplating the perils of men from the depths of their own repose, so the amphitheatre had more tutelary deities than the Capitol, and Tertullian could say that more demons than men assisted at the spectacle. Diana presided at the chase, and Mars at the combats ; and when the magisterial edicts had sanctioned the sports, the men who were the destined prey of the wild beasts appeared in garments sacred to Saturn, whilst the women were crowned with the fillets of Ceres, as victims in a sacrifice.! After the earth had been loaded with the corpses of gladiators in one of these popular shows, a gate of the arena opened and disclosed two personages, one bearing the attributes of Mercury struck the bodies with the end of his flame- coloured caduceus, to assure the people that the victims no longer breathed, and the other, armed with Pluto's hammer, despatched those who still survived. This apparition reminded the spectators that they were assisting at funereal games, and that the blood which was spilt was rejoicing the manes of the old Komans in their infernal dwelling-place. It was the spirit of Paganism which permeated that mighty people, as the magistrates, priests, and vestal virgins bent in applause from the height of the Podium, that they might do high honour to their ancestors, and eighty * Tertullian, De Spect. 10 ; Apologetic, 15 ; Martial, Spectac. xxi. ; Prudeiitius, Hymiius do Sancto Komano ; Sidon. Apollin. xiv. ; Libauius, Oratio pro Saltatoribus ; Thcodosian Code, 1. XV. tit. l;5, L. Unie. ; ibid. tit. 17, 1, 5, 12 ; Millier, De Ingenio, Moribus et Luxu aeri Tlieodosiani ; De Champagny, Monde Romain, 1. ii. p. 177 et seq. f Tertullian, De SpectacuHs, 12 ; Acta Sanctœ Perpétuée. PAGANISM. 89 thousand spectators joined in the action with a shudder of joy. The wise offered no resistance to tliis brutal- izing of the mass. Even Cicero, though troubled by a momentary scruple, dared not absolutely condemn prac- tices so rife with instruction for a people of warriors ; and the younger Pliny, though a man of benevolence and wisdom, congratulated Trajan on having provided " no enervating spectacle, but manly pleasures, destined to rekindle in the souls of men contempt for death and pride in a well-placed wound." Yet, as if to humiliate such bloodthirsty wisdom, the military worth of the Romans diminished as the games of cruelty were multiplied. The Republic had never witnessed the suf- ferings of more than fifty pairs of gladiators in a day, but five hundred figured in the games given by the Emperor Gordian ; and the Goths were at the very gates of Rome as the prefects were engaged in supplying the arena and finding a sufficient number of prisoners ready to devote themselves for the pleasures of the Eternal City.* Paganism had thus, as if in a forlorn hope, taken its last stand in the public amusements. Thence it defied the eloquence of the Fathers, disputed souls with them, moulded society after its own fashion, and therein it might be known by its fruits. Pagans themselves acknowledged that the passion for the Circus hastened the decline of Rome, and that nothing of mark could be expected from a people which passed days in breathless interest over the issue of a chariot race. And how much more did the fault lie mth the theatre, * Tertiillian, Apologetic, 15; Prudent, contra Symmachiim, lib. i. 279; Cicero, Tusculan. Quœst. 11-17 ; Plin. Panegyric, 33 ; XiphUin, in Trajano : Capitol, in Gorcliano ; cf. De Cliam- pagny, le Monde Romain, ii. ISO et seq. 90 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. and what eyes could have borne with impunity the ges- tures and scenes in which Kome found her recreation? Christian priests knew the result, and one of them declared that he could point to men whom the incita- tions of those spectacles had torn from the nuptial couch and thrown into the arms of courtesans. Yet fathers of families took their wives and daughters to witness them ; nor could they see anything that the temple services had not already made familiar. But the amphitheatre was resistless in its attractions, and the greatest school ever opened for the demoralization of man. Alypius, the friend of St. Augustine, a philoso- pher, a man of learning, and with Christian leanings, was drawn one day, through want of moral courage, to the scenes which his better nature loathed. At first he vowed to see nothing, and closed his eyes, when suddenly, at the sound of a death-shriek, he opened and turned them upon the arena, and did not withdraw them till the end. He drank in cruelty with the sight of blood, quenched his thirst in the Fury's cup, and intoxicated his spirit with the reek of the slaughter. No longer the same man, he became like the most ardent of that barbarous crew. He shouted, and felt his veins on fire, and brought away a passion to return, no longer with those who had taken him, but with others dragged thither by himself. To such a depth of irresolution, lust, and savageness had Paganism, ever corrupting itself and man with it, reduced earth's most civilized people.* Behind the popular creed stood Philosophy, which from having combated now sought to defend it, and succeeded with sufficient art to rally around the old • St. Clirysostom, Homil. 37, in Matthaium; St. Aug. Con- fess, vi. 8. PAGANISM. 91 religion the most enlightened members of Eoman so- ciety. It had at the outset announced itself to be a revolt of reason against Paganism, and our respect is due to those early sages who remounted to the sources of tradition, to explain the secrets of nature, in spite of the superstitious terrors which barred their approach, and with still greater courage busied themselves in the solitudes of the conscience, still desolate from the lack of Christian enlightenment. They had sought the First Cause to which Socrates, in teaching all the Divine attributes which Creation makes known, had nearly ap- proached. But the mere glimpse of the True Grod caused the thrones of the false deities to totter, and these philosophers, in exposing the foundations of the pagan society, dreaded the collapse of the whole super- structure. Loving truth insufl&ciently, whilst they de- spised humanity, they devoted their genius to rehabili- tating errors which, as they said, were necessary to the peace of the world. Cicero publicly derided the augurs, but in tracing the plan of an ideal republic in his " Treatise on Law," he placed therein augurs, whose decisions were to be obeyed on pain of death. Seneca ridiculed the worship of idols, but did not shrink from drawing the conclusion that even the wise ought to practise it, and thus honour custom and truth. The Stoics justified public worship for reasons of state, and protected the current mythology by an allegorical in- terpretation.* Nature they defended as an active prin- ciple, energizing under many forms, and which was * Cicero, De Legibus, ii. ; De Natnrâ Deorum, ii. 24 ; Seneca, cited by St. Augustine, Do Civ. Dei. vi. 10 ; Diogenes, Laert. vii. 147 ; St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, lib vi. and vii. through- out; Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique d'Aiistote, t. ii. p. 101. 92 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. open to veneration under many names — to be called Jupiter in the life-giving aspect, Juno in the air, Neptune in water, or Vulcan in fire — explanations which were but as preludes of the prodigious work by which the school of Alexandria was to undertake the reconciliation of the imperial religion with reason. History has made the school of Alexandria well known, and we can trace its rise in the East, how it passed into the West and established a school at Eome, which concurred in the political restoration of Paganism set on foot by Augustus, was for three ages upheld by the Caesars, and was prolonged to the fifth century through the obstinacy of the patrician order in defend- ing its interests and its deities. Neoplatonism appeared at Eome under Antoninus, in the j^erson of Apuleius, a learned but superstitious and adventurous African, who had visited the schools and sanctuaries of Greece and of Etruria, and returned to travel from town to town, haranguing the people and laying claim to a combination of the wisdom of philosophers, and the piety of the initiated in the Mysteries. The Imperial City admired his eloquence, and the provinces delighted in his opinions, which had such power in Africa that St. Augustine, after the lapse of two centuries, de- voted twenty-five chapters of " The City of God " to their refutation. Meanwhile the declamations of Apuleius had prepared men's minds for a teaching of greater gravity and deeper scope. Plotinus, the chief of the Alexandrian philosophers, came to Eome in 244, passed twenty-six years there, and reckoned among his auditors senators, magistrates, and matrons of noble birth, to whom this ^Egyptian of half-frenzied countenance, who expressed himself in semi-barbarous PAGANISM. 93 Greek, seemed a messenger of the gods. A praetor was seen to lay down bis fasces, dismiss bis slaves, and reliuquisb bis property, tbat be migbt abandon bimself to wisdom. So rapid was tbe increase of bis disciples, tbat Plotinus was bold enougb to demand from tbe Emperor Gallian a plot of land in Campania on wbicb be migbt found a city of pbilosoi^bers, to be governed by tbe rules of Plato. Altbougb tbe design failed, and tbe republic of sages was never constituted, yet be left bebind bim a bost of followers, wbo carried bis doctrines into tbe senate and tbe camp, tbe scbools and tbe social life of Piome. Porpbyry was tbe most faitbful and learned of bis disciples, and wrote books at Ptome, in Sicily, and at Cartbage, bis tbree places of residence, wbicb were translated into Latin, finally popularized tbe Neoplatonic views, and were banded down into tbe fiftb century. Under Valentinian III., Macrobius, in tbe full blaze of Cbristianity, wrote a commentary on '•' Scipio's Dream," in wbicb be found occasion to set fortb tbe system of Plotinus as an ancient doctrine, common to tbe first minds of Greece and Pome, wbetber poets or metapbysicians, as capable of reconciling every scbool of tbougbt, and justifying every fable of my- tbolog}\ Sucb being tbe propagandists of Neoplatonism in tbe West, it remains to note by wbat occult influence a pbilosojîby intrinsically abstruse, and cbarged witb Greek subtleties, could seduce tbe good sense of tbe Latins.* Tbe contradiction wbicb lay at tbe root of tbe old pbilosopby was tbe very point of tbe Alexandrian doctrines. Beginning witb a departure from Paganism, * St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, viii. and ix. id. epist. 118; Porphyry, De Vita Plotini ; Macrobius, in Somnium Scipionis. y4 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. they returned to it by long byways, charmed the reason by a promise of sublime dogmas, and satisfied the imagination by conceding all its fables. This was calculated to soothe many a spirit tormented by a double craving after faith and reason, but too weak to embrace the austere belief of the Christians. Plotinus incited a society, trembling at the earliest disasters of the Empire, which seemed to cause all pleasures of earth to slip from their grasp, to take refuge in God. It was necessary, he said, and St. Augustine praised the say- ing, to fly towards the spiritual abodes in which dwelt the Father and every good thing. He spared no effort, however costly, to achieve his lofty aim, and as the giants piled mountain on mountain to reach the sky, so did Plotinus labour to reach a knowledge of God by a fusion of the three great systems of Zeno, of Aris- totle, and of Plato. With Zeno, he gave to the world a soul, which made of it one single existence ; with Aristotle, he placed above the world an Intelligence whose sole function was self-contemplation ; and, with Plato, he fixed at the summit of all things an Invisible Principle, which he called the One, or the Good. But though he named it he pronounced it indefinable, and so veiled it from the gaze of mankind. The One, the Intelligence, the World-Soul, were not three Gods, but three Hypostases of a Sole God, who proceeded from his unity to think and to act.* As the three Hypostases produced themselves in eternity, so was the World-Soul engendered in time. It gave forth space first, then the bodies destined to people * St. Aug. De Civit. Dei, 1. ix. 17 ; Porpliyry, De Vit. Tlot. c. 14; riolinns, Eiincades, i. 1. vi. c. 8; ibid. ni. lib. v. c. 4 ; Ravaisson, Essai sur la Mctapliysiquc d'Aristote, t. ii. ]). 381. PAGANISM. 95 space, Rucli as tlie demons and the constellations, lastly men, animals, plants, and the bodies we think inani- mate. But nothing in nature is really inanimate, for everything lives and thinks according to one life and one thought ; for the Neoplatonists saw in the infinity of productions an emanation from the Divine Substance communicating itself without impoverishment — the sun pouring forth a wasteless light, the fountain which fed the river reseeking its source, and the whole universe aspiring to return to its primœval unity.* Nor was the destiny of man's soul different. Con- tained at first in the Divine Spirit, it had lived a pure life therein, till the sight of the world of matter beneath tempted it to essay an independent existence. Detached from the Divine Parent, it fell to inhabiting bodies formed after its own image, and human life became a Fall, of which the soul could repent, and raise herself so as to pass after death into a higher sphere. But too often she comes to delight in her exile, abandons her- self to the senses, and, on reaching death, is degraded to animating the bodies of brutes or of plants, whose lives of sensuality or of stupidity she had been imi- tating. Thus, in proportion to her wallowing in evil, does the soul sink deeper into matter, till by a supreme effort she tears herself from the mire and begins to aspire ; but, whatever may be the length of probation, its end is certain, for a time must come when good and e-vil alike shall find themselves confounded in the bosom of the Universal Soul.f * Plotin. Ennead. iv. lib. iv. c. 30 ; ibid lib. iii. cap. 9, &c. ; Jules Simon, Histoire de l'École d'Alexandrie, t. i. p. 342. t Plot. Enn. V. 1. i. 1. iv. c. 4 ; ibid. i. 1. il. c. 1. Ravaisson, ibid. p. 445 ; Jules Simon, ibid. p. 589. 96 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. This was assuredly a grand and elevating doctrine. When it spoke of a Supreme God, and declared Him to he One, Immaterial, and Impassible, it seemed as if nothing were left but to break the old idols. Some of these doctrines surprised Christians, who thought them to have been pilfered from the Gospel, as some, nowadays, have accused Christianity of enriching itself from the spoils of Neoplatonism. Yet, without denjdng that something might have been borrowed from the new religion, published two ages before, all the specu- lations of Alexandria had their issue in Paganism. The Principle placed by Plotinus at the summit of all things had nothing in common with the God of the Christians. They acknowledged in the First Cause perfections which brought Him near to the intellect and to the heart ; he robbed his First Principle of every attribute, denied him thought and life, forbade either definition or affirmation concerning him. His god was an abstraction, which could neither be known nor loved, an illogical and immoral being — fit character for the deities of Paganism. A similar abyss separated the trinity of Plotinus from our own, in which the Unity of Nature subsists through the equality of Three Persons, whereas the philosopher destroyed the Divine One-ness in his three unequal Hypostases. In his scheme, the First Principle alone was perfect and in- divisible ; the second and third detached themselves from it by a sort of deterioration, and leant towards the imperfect world which they had engendered. Nor was this divided god a free agent, but produced by necessity, by the inevitable outflow of his Substance, a world as eternal as himself. The Pantheism of Plotinus deified matter and justified magic, because, as PAGANISM. 97 he said, the philtres aud formulas of the magician tend to reawaken the attractions whereby the Universal Soul governs all things ; and it sanctioned idolatry because the sculptor's chisel, in causing marble to assume a character of expression and beauty, j)repares for the Supreme Soul a receptacle in which she reposes with greater satisfaction.* Such was the issue of the boldest flight of meta- physics in the old school, and its accompanying morality proceeded to the same extremities. Since it was the property of the divine nature to produce and animate everything, the human souls which it had generated could not arrest their own descent to matter. In their first fall there was no free will, and, consequently, no moral guilt. If new sins caused them to sink lower, this was but necessary to people the lower regions of the Universe, and fill the ladder of emanations to its last degrees. Evil thus became necessary, or, rather, evil only existed as a lesser good in the succession of existences that were farther and farther removed from the divine perfection which had produced and was to reabsorb them. An ultimate reception into the Unity, in utter unconsciousness of their past, was thus to be the end of both the just and of the unjust. Plotinus therefore returned, through the doctrine of Metempsychosis, to the old fables, and though severe in his personal character, disarmed morality by a suppression of the idea of individual permanence, without which a future life aftbrds in + Plot. Enn. III. viii. 9; ibid. vi. \'iii. 7; ibid. ix. f> ; ibid. ix. 4; ibid. iv. iv. 40 : ibid. iii. 11. M. Ravaisson has clearly brought out the points on which the doctrine of Plotinus departed from Christian thought, and was lost in pagan naturalism. Essai sm- la Métaphysique d'Aristote, t. ii. p. 405. VOL. I. 5 98 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. prospect neither hope nor fear ; whilst the doctrine of the emanation of the soul from the Divine Suhstance tended to that worst form of idolatry, the deification of man. The essence of Paganism was breathed forth in the haughty satisfaction with which the dying philosopher answered one of his disciples; "I am labouring," said he, " to disengage the divine element within me."* In looking closely at the distinctive dogmas of Plotinus, his unrevealed unity, and im- perfect trinity, the emanations which composed the substance of the Universe, the fall and rise of souls, we see traces of the mysteries of an old theosophy long prevalent in the East. The Etruscans had com- municated it to the ancient Romans, and their descendants of the Decline might have recognized with surprise, in the writings of the Egyptian philo- sopher, doctrines which formed the basis of the national religion. They saw them now clothed in eloquence, fortified by the subtleties of logic, brightened by the fires of mysticism ; but the Neoplatonists gave them, besides, sufficient justification for the rest of their creed, even to its most extravagant fables. Thus Apuleius had distinguished the incorporeal deities who were incapable of passion from the daemons en- dowed with subtle bodies, but having souls full of human feeling ; and mythology had taken refuge in the distinction.! It was no longer the gods, but daemons, who loved the odours of sacrifices, whom the poets had brought upon the scene, whom Homer had, without profanation, introduced on the battle- field. Porphyry imagined thousands of explanations =!= Porphyry, De Vita Plotini. f Apuleius, De Deo Socratis, 3, C, 7, 14. PAGANISM. 99 for the myths of Egj-pt and of Greece,* and Macrobius made it his one aim to justify the old fables through philosophy ; " for," said he, " the knowledge of things sacred is veiled ; nature loves not to be surprised in her nudity. When Numenius betrayed, by a rash interpretation, the mysteries of Eleusis, we are told that the outraged goddesses appeared to him in the guise of courtesans, and accused him of having drawn them from their shrines, and made them public to the passers-by : for the gods have ever loved to reveal themselves to men, and to serve them under the fabulous features in w'hich antiquity has presented them."t The Neoplatonists were equally ingenious in rehabilitating the observances which shocked the reason or outraged nature. Plotinus, being more of a philosopher than a theologian, had only justified the old superstitions incidentally ; but his disciples, im- patient of the hesitating methods of philosophy, craved for a speedier commerce with heaven by means of theurgy, by sacrifices, spells, and magical arts. Jam- blichus wrote a proof of the divinity of the idols, undertook the defence of Venus and Priapus, and approved the veneration of the obscene symbols. The Emperor Julian professed to reform Paganism. He could, with a word, have shorn it of its abominations, but he authorized the mutilation of the priests of Cybele, "for thus does it behove us," he said, "to honour the Mother of the Gods."+ The most learned plunged deepest into superstition, and men whose * Poi-pliyiy, De Antro Nympliarum. + Macroljius, in Somnium Scipionis, 1. i. c. 2. Z Jamblichus, De Mystems, sect. i. c. 11 ; Jules Simon, Histoire de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, t. i. 5 * 100 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. minds had fed on Plato and Aristotle, wasted tlieir vigils in the hope of evoking at their will gods, daemons, and departed souls : or, assembled round a vervein-garlanded tripod, questioned fate as to the end of the emperor and his destined successor. Thus was the prophec}^ of St. Paul accomplished, and the heirs of that Alexandrian philosophy which professed to have gathered up the scattered lights of antiquity only restored its frenzies of vice. In this manner was heathenism reinvigorated by the Neoj^latonists, precisely as was congruous to a worn- out society, tired of doubt, incapable of faith, but a prey to every superstition which was offered to it. From the pagan aristocracy, whose views they seconded, their welcome was assured, and their school of philo- sophy, which had blossomed into a religious sect, became the bulwark of a political party. In fact, the senatorial families who were attached to the old creed had not followed the court to Constantinople, Milan, or Piavenna, but remained at Rome, to adorn with their patrician majesty the capital which the Csesars had repudiated. In it at least they hoped to guard the sacred hearth of the Empire, and avert the anger of the gods by their fidelity to the ancient rites. They drew to their side and covered with patronage and applause the men who defended by their learning the old interests and the old altars. By the aid of an allegorical interpretation the nobility tasted the sweet- ness of believing otherwise than the common people, and yet preserving the customs of their ancestors ; whilst, strong in the teaching of Porphyry and Macro- bius, they looked with pity on the mad crowd who were drawn to Baptism, and cared not to conceal their PAGANISM. 101 contempt for the Christian rulers, to whose charge the}" laid all the disasters of the state. Disquieted within, bearing a threatening attitude to those without, the pagan world looked to them as champions, who, looking again to the future, were ready to support any ruler who would resume Julian's incompleted task. At court they had followers of mark enough to gain the highest dignities of the state ; from the offices of the priesthood they drew a certain amount of influence and a considerable revenue ; their palaces comprised whole towns, and their demesnes were provinces from which they could summon at will an army of slaves and clients ; and by the public games which they pro- vided they wielded their last weapon for kindling the passions of the people. At the opening of the fifth century, the best representation of the Roman aristo- cracy, the man best fitted to grace it by his eloquence and learning, was Symmachus, the prefect of Rome. His versatile genius, capable alike in the sphere of politics as in that of learning, was the wonder of his contemporaries ; and men of taste, comparing his letters to those of Pliny, desired to see them WTitten on rolls of silk. He had sung of the \ine-clad volcanoes of Baiae in graceful verse, and taken a high rank among orators by right of his panegp'ics, in which he had exhausted on Christian princes the language of idolatry. So active an intellect could not but live in close rela- tion to the finest wits of the time. In his letters to Ausonius he compared him to Virgil, and the poet's reply put Symmachus side by side with Cicero. He was the chosen patron of all new lectures and decla- mations. One day he was observed in high spirits at having just been present at the first appearance 102 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. of the rhetorician Palladius, who had charmed the auditory hy his florid eloquence ; another time, when the city of Mihm had appHed to him for a professor of eloquence, he sent for a young African noted for his learning and genius, proposed him a subject, heard with approval, and dispatched him to Milan. The youth was Augustine, and Symmachus little knew the injury he was doing to his gods in sending such a disciple to the Bishop Ambrose. His well-founded authority in literature was enhanced by his brilliant political position. Successively governor of Lucania, proconsul of Africa, prefect of Rome, and lastly consul, as a versatile politician but pure adminis- trator, Symmachus had become the crown of the Roman nobility, and the soul of that senate which he did not hesitate to name the best part of the human race. He beheld in it the last asylum of the doctrines to which he had devoted all his genius and all his fame. Like the patricians of old, whose example he followed, he aspired to reunite all religious and civil honours in his own person, and add the fillets of the priest to the fasces of the consul. To his post in the college of pontiffs he brought a scrupulous ardour which withered the timidity of his colleagues, and groaning over the abandonment of the sacrifices, was as eager to appease the gods by victims as to defend them by the powers of his eloquence. This zealous pagan, so justly respected for his learn- ing, certainly merited to be the spokesman of the cause of polytheism when it made its last public protest in demanding the restoration of the altar of victory. This altar had stood in the midst of the senate house, had given it the character of a temple, PAGANISM. 103 and served to recall the ancient theocratic system of law and the alliance of Rome with the gods. The Christian emperors had removed it as a scandal, and the pagan senators declared that they could no longer deliberate in a place which had been thus profaned, and shorn of the auspices of the divinity who, for twelve hundred years, had preserved the Empire. S}Tnmachus took charge of the complaint, and showed in his protest how much faith the mind of an idolater could preserve. His eloquent plaint began and ended in scepticism, and in face of the religious differences which sundered his contemporaries, his view grew dark and uncertain. " Every one," said he, " has his peculiar custom and rite ; surely it is just to recognize one and the same di^•iuity beneath these different forms of adoration. We contemplate the same stars, the same heaven is common to both, and we are enfolded by the same earth. What does the manner matter in which each seeks for truth ? One sole way cannot suffice for arriving at that great mystery ; and yet how healthy are such disputes for the slothful."* This revealed the hidden sore of paganism, and showed that the efforts of philosophy had only issued in a declaration of the inaccessibility of truth. Yet the spirits which were too worn out for faith had force left still for persecution ; and the same Symmachus, who was so uncertain about the gods, to whom the supreme reason of things was veiled by an eternal mist, who deemed religious controversy an unworthy waste of a statesman's time, hunted down with inde- * Villemain, Tableau de l'Eloquence Chrétienne au Quatrième Siècle ; SjTnmach. 1. x. epist. (il. 104 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. fatigable energy a vestal who had fallen. He consulted with the imperial officers, importuned the prefect of the city and the president of the province, and took no repose until he had seen the culprit buried alive, according to the custom of his ancestors ; for the bloody instincts of his creed were preserved as fresh beneath the robe of the senator and the polish of the man of culture as beneath the rags of the populace who crowded the amphitheatre. In a.d. 402, Sym- machus desired to celebrate his son's praetorship by games, and before the time fixed had drained the provinces of their rarest products in the way of race- horses, wild beasts, comedians, and gladiators ; but amidst these cares an unlooked-for calamity overtook him, which he confided in a letter to Flavian, his friend. All the philosophy of Socrates was not enough, he said, to console him for twenty-nine of the Saxon prisoners whom he had purchased for the arena having impiously strangled themselves rather than serve the pastimes of the sovereign people.* Such was the efi"ect of heathen wisdom on a naturally upright and benevolent soul in the fifth century, that advanced age in the world's life, bright moreover with all the lights of antiquity. A contemporary historian, himself a pagan, has undertaken a general description of the aristocracy, and represents the last guardians of the traditions of Numa as no longer believing in the gods, but not daring to dine or bathe before the astrologer had assured them of the favour of the planets. The sons of those Komans who had gone forth with the eagle's flight, as it were, to conquest •!= SjTiimach. lib. ix. epist. 128, 129 ; lib. xi. epist. 46. PAGANISM. 105 under the frigid or the torrid zone, thought they had rivalled the doings of Caesar if they coasted the bay of Baiœ, cradled in a sumptuous bark, fanned by boys, and declaring life unbearable if a ray of sun stole through the awning spread overhead. They exposed to public gaze all the infamy of their domestic orgies, and appeared abroad surrounded by a legion of slaves, headed by a troop of youths who had been mutilated for their hideous pleasures. What respect could these voluptuaries have for their fellow-creatures? Little did they recognize the sanctity which lies in the blood and tears of men, and whilst they had only a laugh for the clever slave who skilfully killed his fellow, they condemned another to the rods who had made them wait for hot water.* Such men as these loved the creed which left their vices at peace. In despair of truth they only asked for repose in error, and St. Augustine had sounded the depth of their hearts, or rather of their passions, when he put into their mouths this language, that of materialists of every age : — " What matter to us truths which are not to be reached by human reason ? What is of importance is that the State should stand, should be rich, and, above all, tranquil. What touches us supremely is that public prosperity should serve to augment the wealth which keeps the great in splen- dour, the small in comfort, and, consequently, in submission. Let the laws ordain nothing irksome, forbid nothing that is agreeable ; let the ruler secure his people's obedience by showing himself no gloomy censor of their morals, but the purveyor of their plea- sures ; let the markets teem with beautiful slaves ; let * Ammian. Maxcellin. xiv. G ; xxviii. 4. 5 I 106 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. the palaces be sumptuous and banquets frequent, at v/hicli every one may gorge, drink, and vomit till day- break ; everywhere let the sound of dancing be heard and joyous applause break over the benches of the theatre ; let those gods be held true who have assured us such happiness ; give them the worship they prefer, the games they delight in, that they may enjoy themselves with their adorers. We pray them only to make our felicity lasting, that we may have no cause for fear from plague or foe."* But the foe was at the gate, and the hour approach- ing in which doctrines which had been handed down from school to school, and found their place in the Eoman senate, were to undergo their supreme probation before the barbarians, that the world might see what philosophic Paganism could do towards saving the Empire, or, at least, making its fall dignified. In A.D. 408, Alaric presented himself before Eome, and the smoke of the enemy's camp could be seen from the temple of the Capitolian Jupiter. At this pressing moment the first act of the senate, assembled in delibe- ration, was to put to death Serena, the widow of Stilicho and niece of Theodosius — a victim whom the gods required ; for it was said that this sacrilegious Chris- tian had once entered the Temple of Cybele and carried off the necklace from the image. Serena was strangled after the old fashion {more majorum), but that last human sacrifice did not save her country. Alaric demanded all the gold, silver, and precious stones of the city, and only left the Romans their dishonoured lives ; whereupon the prefect, Pompeianus, caused the Etruscan priests, who boasted of having saved the little * St. Aug. Dc Civitate Dei, ii. 20. PAGANISM. 107 town of Nurcia by tlieir spells, to be siimmoiiecl, and they undertook to bring down fire from heaven upon the barbarians, but on condition that public sacrifice should be offered at the public expense in presence of the senate, and with all the pomp of past ages. Such an open infringement of the imperial edicts was dreaded by the senate, and as at the same time Alaric modified his conditions, the ransom of Rome was fixed at 6,000 pounds of gold and 30,000 of silver. The patrician families charged themselves with its payment ; but as the money in their treasuries did not suffice, it was necessary to seize the gold in the temples ; so they robbed the gods they had been defending of their ornaments, and as the weight required was not yet forthcoming, melted down several of their images, and amongst them the statue of Valour {Virtutis).* There is something truly pathetic in this catastrophe of a mighty religion ; and could one forget all the error which was mingled in its teaching, all the crime which found sanction in its practice, it would be impossible to regard without emotion the believers who clung to it, motionless at the altars of their gods, showing some remnant, if not of the energy, at least of the obstinacy, of the Roman character. We, without justifying their stubbornness, must consider the inevitable perplexity of the mind balanced between two hostile creeds, and especially now that their faith required a struggle. This was in the mind of the Fathers as, acknowledging the painful process by which souls are conquered, they exclaimed, "Non nascuntur seel fiunt Christiani!" But we must not, on the other hand, by an unjust parallel, compare the ruin of the fifth century with * Zosimus, Hist. v. 38-41. 108 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. the confusion of our own time,* or place the pagan collapse in the same category with the supposed decline of Christian civilization. History does not halt to point to apparent recurrences of events, knowing that in our softness we always exaggerate the evils of the present time, and find our vanity flattered in surpass- ing the misfortunes of our ancestors. Civilization, it tells us, cannot perish through passions which it cor- rects, nor by institutions which it may modify, but by doctrines which an inflexible logic impels to their results. History points to a difference in favour of our age which may reassure the most fearful ; for our Christianity does not distinguish, like the heathen philosophy, between the religion of higher minds and that of the people, nor found the peace of the world upon a system of necessary falsehood. It does not, like Plotinus, under the guise of a pantheistic prin- ciple, practically deify matter, and issue in governing nations through their interests and their pleasures {panem et circenses), which is pure political mate- rialism. Christianity especially does not profess, with Symmachus, doubt or indifférence on the momentous questions of God, the soul, and futurity; but as long as it can give an answer at once supremely authori- tative and supremely reasonable to these problems, nothing is really lost, for the truths of eternity do not let fall those societies in time which are of their own moulding, and the invisible is the sustaining influence of that visible civilization in which it reveals itself. t- These lectures wore delivered at the time of tlie last French Revolution. — (ÏV.) 109 CHAPTER IV. THE FALL OF PAGANISM, AND WHETHER ITS FALL WAS ENTIRE. We have seen by what an inexorable necessity Paganism led the aristocracy of Rome to degradation, her people to barbarism, and her empire to destruc- tion. If regenerated humanity was to subsist, the old order must perish, and it is our object now to consider the manner of its fall, and whether its extinction was complete. Paganism did not succumb, as has often been supposed, to the laws of the Emperors, nor did Constantine, when, in a.d. 312, he gave liberty to the Christians, desire them to turn the sword upon their foes of the old religion. A later edict, which seems entirely modern in its principle, promised to the heathens the same tolerance as was afforded to the faithful. " For," as it said, " it is one thing to engage in mental conflicts in order to conquer heaven, another to employ force to coerce conviction." Notwithstand- ing the instigation of the Arians, who were interested in laying violent hands upon the conscience, and certain edicts of Constantius against superstition. Paganism continued in possession of its liberties and privileges until the end of the fourth century, when the menacing attitude of its professors, and their eager rallying round any usurper, elicited a sterner legislation. Two laws of Theodosius, and four of Honorius, effected the 110 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. closing of the temples, by suppressing their revenues and forbidding their sacrifices. These seemed crushing blows to idolatry, but St. Augustine attests that in Africa the idols remained standing, and that their wor- shippers were powerful enough to burn a church and slaughter sixty Christians. In spite of the imperial edicts, there was no case known of pagans being con- demned and punished by death for the sake of religion; and the Imperial line was about to end, but poly- theism was destined to survive it, as if to prove that ideas are not to be slain by the sword, and that even false doctrine is more durable than the powers of earth.* Paganism, then, perished by the two weapons of con- troversy and charity. The controversy on both sides was loud and free, and was prolonged in the East until a decree of Justinian closed the schools of Athens ; whilst in the West Ammianus, Claudian, and Rutilius calumniated with impunity the new religion, and its saints and monks. The old cult was entrenched behind the consent of antiquity, and struggled to retain its hold over the mind by every art which was calculated to touch it, by the subtlety of philosophic interpretation, the majesty of its ritual, the charm of its mythology, whilst it enlisted every human interest and passion against the Gospel. Then, as ever, it reproached Christianity with hatred of the human race, in other words, its contempt of the world, with an avoidance of the public pleasures, and the incompatibility of its laws with the maxims and manners which had built up the greatness of Rome. * Eusebius, De Vita Constantini, ii. 56 ; Cod. Theodos. 1. xvi. tit. 10 ; De Paganis Sacriticiis et Templis, ii., 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, IG, &c. ; St. August, epist. 50, Senioribus Colonise Suffec- tanse, epist. 91, Nectario ; Beugnot, Histoii-e de la Chute du Paganisme en Occident. THE FALL OF PAGANISM. Ill By it calamity had befallen the Empire whose frontiers had been delivered to the barbarians by the outraged gods, and heaven kept back its very rain on account of the Christians. Pluvia desit causa Christiani.*- The Christian apologist answered with inimitable equity and vigour, refusing in the first place to condemn entirely the old civilization, acknowledging a modicum of truth in the doctrines of the philosophers, of good in the Roman legislation, and, as we shall see hereafter, preserving the literature whilst they rejected the fables of antiquity with a thorough discernment, — thus doing honour to the human mind, and teaching it to recognize the divine ray within it. Having thus rubbed off the polish of Paganism, they presented it to the eyes of the people, naked and bloodstained, in the full horror of its impure and murderous observances ; instead of the « glosses which are so pleasing to our modern delicacy, instead of explaining away the crime of idolatry by acknowledging it as a necessary error, the apologists kindled conscience against a hateful worship by showing in it the work of the devil and the reflexion of hell. This system of argument, at once full of charity towards human reason, but without pity for Paganism, was presented in its entirety in the writings of St. Augustine. f The Bishop of Hippo had become the light of the universal Church ; Asia and Gaul pressed him with questions ; the Manichœans, Donatists, and Pelagians * Symmach. epist. 16; St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, lib. i. cap. 1 et seqq. t St. Justiii, Apolog. 1 et 2 ; Minutius Felix, Recenseamus, si placet, disciplinas pliilosoplioram, deprehendes eos, etsi sermonibus variis, ipsis tameu rebus in banc unani coii'e et consph-are sen- tentiam. 112 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. left him no repose. But it was the pagan controversy which absorbed his life, overflowed into his letters, and inspired his greatest works. In a.d. 412, Africa was governed by Volusian, a man of noble birth, and attached to the old religion, who was drawn towards the Church by the genius of Augustine, but brought back to his superstitions by the idolatrous examples all around him. One day, as he was whiling away his leisure in conver- sation with some men of letters, had touched on many points of philosophy, and deplored the contradictions of the sects, the discussion turned upon Christianity. Volusian set forth his objections, and at the close, of the usual cavils against Holy Writ and the mysteries, showed the real cause of his repugnance by accusing the new religion of preaching pardon of injuries which was irreconcilable with the dignity of a warlike state, and so hastening the decline of Rome, of which the calamities produced by the rule for a century of Christian princes was sufl&cient evidence. A disciple of Augustine, who had taken part in this discussion, re- lated it to his master, and implored him to answer it. He complied, and without neglecting the theological objections, mainly directed his attack to the political questions. Beginning by expressing surprise that the mildness of Christianity should give scandal to men accustomed to praise clemency with the sages of old, he denied that the faith had suppressed justice in insisting upon charity. Christ had not forbidden war, but had only desired it to be just in its cause, and merciful in its process ; if the state had possessed such warriors, magistrates, or taxpayers as the Church required,. the Republic would have been intact. If the Empire had been carried off by a wave of decay, yet St. Augustine THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 113 could point to a period long anterior to the Christian era, and show how in the time of Jugurtha the public morals were entirely corrupted, and how Rome might have been sold if a purchaser could have been found ; and then in horror at the profligacy which was sapping the core of humanity when the new faith appeared, the Bishop of Hippo exclaimed, " Thanks to the Lord our God, who has sent us against so great evils an un- exampled help, for whither were we not carried, what souls would not the horrible wave of human perversity have carried off, had not the Cross been planted above us, that we might seize and hold fast to that sacred wood. For in that disorder of manners, detestable as they were, that ruin of the old discipline, it was time that an authority should come from on high to announce to us voluntary poverty, continence, benevolence, justice, and other strong and shining virtues ; it was necessary not only that we might honourably order this present life and assure a place in this earthly city, but to lead us to eternal salvation, to the all-holy Republic, to that endless nation of which we are all denizens by the title of faith, hope, and charity. Thus, as we are living as travellers on earth, we should learn to tolerate, if not strong enough to correct, those who wish to establish the Republic on a basis of unpunished vice, when the ancient Romans had founded and aggrandized it by their virtues. If they had not that true piety towards the True God which would have conducted them to the eternal city, they kept at least a certain native righteous- ness which sufl&ced to form the city of earth, to extend and to preserve it. God washed to manifest in that glorious and opulent Empire what civil virtues could effect, even when divorced from true religion, that with 114 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. the addition of the latter men might become members of a better city, which had truth for its sovereign, charity for its law, eternity for its duration."* Noble words, and yet Augustine did not aim at perfection of eloquence, according to the standard of the rhetoricians, but at convincing Volusian, whose yielding convictions only waited for the last assault. It was this hope that impelled him from the first blow of controversy to the depths of the subject, and brought forth the first idea of his " City of God." This was in 412, and the twenty-two books of that work, com- menced the following year, interrupted and continued by snatches during fourteen years, were not concluded until 426. St. Augustine did but develope therein the doctrine of the above letter, which he did not exceed in eloquence ; and it is thus that immortal books are born, not from the proud dream of the lover of vain-glory, nor from leisure nor solitude, but of the travail of a soul which has been flung into the strug- gles of its age, has sought for truth and found inspi- ration. We shall have occasion soon to study and analyze the " City of God," and note the commence- ment of a science unknown to the ancients — the philo- sophy of history, but we may pause for a moment now before the greatest work undertaken for the refu- tation of Paganism. Its plan gave the author an occasion of attacking and destroying in succession the mythological theology of the poets, the political theology of statesmen, the natural theology of the philosophers of old time ; and whilst he dissipated * Volusianus Axigustino, inter August, epist. 135 ; Marcelliiiiis, Augustiuo, epist. 130 ; August. Volus. epist. 137; MarcellLao, epist. 138. THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 115 the last scruples of the scientific, he left no pretext for repugnance on the part of men of letters. That religion which they charged with a reaction towards ignorance and barharism gave ample evidence of rivalling hy its beauty the good things of profane antiquity ; for what was the elegance of Symmachus in comparison with the thunders of the apologists for Christianity ? * Yet the new faith would not have changed the world had it appealed only to men of learning and science. This had been the crying fault of philosophy. Plato had written on the door of his school, " Let none but geometers enter here," and Porphyry, seven hundred years later, confessed that he knew of none among so many sects which could teach a way of salvation for every soul. But Christianity had found a universal path of safety : the teaching of the poor was its special novelty, and ^persecutors long reproached her with re- cruiting in the workshops or in the cottages of weavers or of fullers. At the beginning of the fifth century, the working-classes in the towns, who occupied, according to a poet, the upper floors of the houses, were almost entirely devoted to the new religion. But idolatry was still mistress of the rural districts : votive garlands still adorned the sacred trees ; the traveller came across open temples in which the sacrificial embers were burning, or statues with portable altars at their feet, or encountered some haggard peasant with a tattered mantle over his shoulders and a sword in his hands, pro- fessing to be a votary of the gi-eat goddess Diana, and * St. August, epist. 138, Marcellino: " Verum tamen cognosce quid eos contra nioveat, atque rescribe, ut vel epistolis vel libris, si adjuverit Deus ad omnia i-espondere curemus." — De Civil. Dei, Prefatio ad MarceUinum. 116 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. to reveal futurity by her aid.* Yet the Church believed that these rude meu, who toiled aud suffered and led that pastoral life from which the Saviour had drawn His parables, were not far from the kingdom of God, so she collected labourers and shepherds into her temples, and did not disdain arguing before them as St. Paul before the Areopagus. The homilies of St. Maximus of Turin form the chief example of this popular controversy. The inhabitants of the rugged valleys of Piedmont defended step by step the superstitions of their forefathers, and the bishop provoked the dispute by maldng his first onslaught on the fatalism which attracted the souls of the indo- lent, by discharging them from all moral responsibility. " If everything is fixed by destiny, why, pagans, do you sacrifice to your idols ? To what purpose those prayers, that incense, those victims, and those gifts which you lavish in your temples ? That the gods may not injure us, is the answer. How can those beings who are unable to help themselves, who must be guarded by watch-dogs that robbers may not carry them * Porphyr. apud S. Aiigiist. De Civit. Dei, 1. x. c. 32 ; Origen contra Celsum ; Prudent, conti-a Symmachum, 1 : Omnis qui celsa scandit cœnacula vulgus, Qiiique terit silicem variis discursibus atram Et quern panis alit gradibus dispensas ab altis, Aut Vaticano tumxiluni sub monte û-equentat. . . Coetibus aut magnis Lateranas currit ad sedes. Sanct. Severi. carmen Bucolicum: Signiun quod perbibent esse crucis Dei Magnis qui colitui- solus in lu'bibus. St. Maxim, de Tiu'in, Serm. 101. Et si ad agnim processeris, cernis aras ligneas et simulacra lapidea. . . Cum maturius vigil- averis et videris sancium vino rusticum, scire debes quoniam ut dicunt aut Dianaticus aut Arus-pex est, &c. — Idem. Serm. 102, homilia 16, tractatus 4 ; Beugnot, Hist, de la Chute du Paganisme. THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 117 ofif, who cannot protect themselves against spiders, rats, or worms, injure you ? But, they reply, we adore the sun, the stars, and the elements. They worship fire, then, which can be quenched by a drop of water or fed by a stick of wood ; they worship the thunder, as if it was not as obedient to God as the rains, the \\dnds, and the clouds ; they adore the starry sphere which the Creator has made with so marvellous an art for an ornament of beauty to the world. Lastly, the pagans reply, the gods whom we serve inhabit the heaven." The preacher followed them into this last refuge and scourged with his satire the crimes of these di^dnities — Saturn devouring his children, Jupiter married to his sister, the adulteries of Mars, then he continued : — " Is it on account of her beauty that you give Venus alone among the goddesses an abode in a planet ? What do you make up there of that shameless woman among a crowd of men ? What do you say of the host of children you pagans have given to Jupiter? and if once they were born of the gods, why do we not see the same thing now ? or is it that Jupiter has grown old, and Juno past childbearing ? "* We cannot wonder that this system of preaching did not shrink from bold images, familiar expressions, or from sarcasm, if it was necessary to subdue a coarse- minded audience. Christianity stooped thus to the language of the vulgar to instruct and reawaken thought in minds held incapable of reasoning, to break the bonds of superstition, and release the souls of men from the terrors which peopled nature with malevolent deities, and from the pleasures by which * S. Peter Chiysologus, Serm. 5, 155; St. Maxim, de Turin, tractatus 4 ; cf. St. Cyprian, ad Demet. de Idolorum vanitate. 118 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. men repaid themselves for the horror caused by their gods. Whereas eloquence subdued the more intel- ligent, the grosser minds were carried away by example ; the waters of baptism fell upon their brow to sanctify its sweats, and these poor people returned calmed and purified to their ploughs and their flocks, dreading no longer an encounter with Satyrs or Dryads in the depth of the forests. Yet the earth had not lost its enchantment, for at every step they could recognize the footprint of the Creator, and they laboured upon its soil as in the vineyard of the Heavenly Father. Bacchic orgies no longer profaned the manners of which Virgil had sung as pure and peaceful ; Christianity had given to the men of the fields the happiness M^hich to the poet of the " Georgics " had been only a dream. They could realize their happiness now, and love the poverty which the Gospel had blessed ; self-respect was present in every hovel ; and as at length the Supreme Cause of all things, the truth of which philosophers had been ignorant, had been manifested to the ignorant, they could aô"ord to spurn their superstitious fears, inex- orable fate, and the din of greedy Acheron.* The conquest of conscience, commenced by contro- versy, was consummated by charity. It was not a charity of that peaceful nature which knew no enemy, and dreamed only of delivering the captive, building schools and hospitals, and covering the old Roman world with its peculiar institutions, as a wounded body is swathed in bandages, but charity, as it were, in arms, attacking Paganism with the novel weapons of gentleness, forgiveness, and devotion. We must enter the recesses of those Roman families which were still * Virgil, Georoic. lib. ii. THE FAIiL OF PAGANISM. 119 divided between the old and the new belief, and see how their Christian members were skilled in laying siege to a pagan soul with tender violence, counting no time lost if it was led at last to the altar of Christ. St. Jerome shows us this very spectacle in bringing us into the house of Albinus, who was a patrician and pontiff of the old religion. His daughter, Laeta, was a Chris- tian, and had borne to a Christian husband the young Paula, whose education occupied Jerome in his desert retreat. The latter wrote to Laeta, " Who would have believed that the grand-daughter of the pontiff Albinus would, from a vow made at a martyr's tomb, have brought her grandfather to listen smilingly as she stam- mered a hymn to Christ, and that the old man should one day cherish on his knees a virgin of the Lord ? " Then he added, in touching consolation to Laeta : — " A holy and faithful house sanctifies the one infidel who remains firm in his principles. The man who is surrounded by a troop of Christian children and gi-and- children, must be already a candidate for the faith. Laeta, my most holy sister in Jesus Christ, let me say this, that you may not despair of your father's salva- tion." He ended by adding advice to encouragement, and entered into and directed the last attack of the domestic plot, to which the old man's obstinacy was destined to yield. " Let your little child, whenever she sees her grand- father, throw herself on his breast, hang on his neck, and sing him the Alleluia in spite of himself."* * St. Jerome, epist. 107, ad Laetam. " Qiiis hoc crederit ut Albini pontificis neptis de repromissione martyris nasceritur? Cum a^iim ^•iderit, in pectus ejus transiliat, collo dependeat nolenti alleluia decantet." 120 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. To such pious manœuvres, repeated doubtless in every patrician house, that proud and opiniated spirit of the old Romans, which had formed the last rampart of Paganism, surely though slowly succumbed. But kindness and consideration were naturally easy when the conversion of a parent was the aim, and a greater merit lay in preaching truth to enemies and conquering fanatical crowds by generosity. When St. Augustine took possession of his see at Hippo, the imperial laws put sword and fire at his disposal against the pagans, but he at once forbade violence, and was even unwilling that they should be forced to break the idols raised upon their lands. " Let us begin rather," he said, " by destroying the false gods in their hearts." Once the Christians of the little town of Suffecta, forgetful of his instructions, destroyed a statue of Hercules. The pagan populace, in a fury, took uj) arms, and rushing upon the faithful, killed sixty of them. St. Augustine might have obtained the execution of the homicides, not only by setting the edicts of Theodosius in motion, but under the whole system of Roman law against murder and violence in arms ; but he wrote to the pagans of Sufiecta, reproaching them, indeed, with the shedding of innocent blood, and threatening them with the Divine justice, liut refrained from summoning them before the tribunals of earth. " If you say that the Hercules was your property, be at peace, we will restore it ; stone is not wanting to us ; we have metal, many kinds of marble, and workmen in abundance. Not a moment shall be lost in carving out your god, in moulding and gilding it. We will also be very careful to paint him red, that he may be able THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 121 to hear your prayers ; but if we give you back your Hercules, restore to us the number of souls of which you have robbed us."* Language so full of sense, so hardy, and yet so tender, was calculated to touch men's hearts; for human nature loves that which excels it, and the doctrine of pardon towards enemies ended in gaining the world which it had at first astonished. As the imperial edicts had no power to demolish the idols, still less could they close the arenas. Constan- tino, by a constitution of a.d. 325, promulgated in the first fervour of his conversion, had, indeed, forbidden those games of bloodshed ; but the passions of the populace, stronger than law, had not only protected their pleasures, but insisted on making the princes accomplices in them, so that the victories of Theodosius still provided gladiators for the amphitheatres of Rome. Vainly did the eloquence of the Fathers ring against these bloody amusements ; vainly did the poet Pru- dentius, in pathetic verse, press Honorius to command that death should cease to be a sport, and murder a public pleasure. But charity accomplished what no earthly power had dared commence. An Eastern monk, named Telemachus, one of those useless men, those enemies to society, as they were called, took up his staff one day and journeyed to Rome, to put down the gladiatorial combats. On the 1st of January of the year a.d. 404, the Roman people, piled tier upon tier on the benches of the Coliseum, were celebrating the sixth consulate of Honorius. The arena had already been reddened with the blood of several pairs of * St. August Serm. Gl, epist. 50, Senioribus Colouias Suflfectanae. VOL. I. 6 122 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. gladiators, when suddenly, in the thick of an assault of arms which held every eye fixed, and kept every mind in breathless suspense, a monk appeared, rushed forward with outstretched arms, and forced the swords asunder. At the sight, the astonished audience rose as one man, roaring in question as to what madman it could be who dared to interrupt the most sacred plea- sures of the sovereign people. Then curses, threats, and finally stones, rained from every circle. Telemachus fell dead, and the combatants he had striven to part finished their bout.* This blood was needed to seal the abolition of the games of blood, for the martyrdom of the monk forced the irresolution of Honorius, and an edict of the same year, which seems to have extorted obedience, suppressed the gladiatorial shows, and with them idolatry lost its chief support. The Coliseum remains to this day, and the mighty breach in its side symbolizes the assault of Christianity upon Koman society, which it entered only by dismantling it. To-day we must bless the ruin which it made, as on entering the old amphitheatre we discern therein only the signs of peace, plants growing, birds building their nests, children playing innocently at the foot of the wooden cross which rises in the midst as the avenger of humanity which was outraged, the redemptress of humanity which fell. We may marvel that, before so much love and so much light, the world did not yield at once, to the entire discomfiture of Paganism. But one portion of the latter * Lex Unica, Cod. De Gladiatoribus ; Symmaclnis, lib. x. epist. 68 ; Prudent, contra Sym. ii., on the Martyrdom of St. Telemachus ; Theodoret, Sed. Hist. v. 26 ; Martyrologium Ro- manum ad diem 1 Jan. THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 123 survived in spite of Christianity, and as if to keep it strung to an eternal resistance, while another remained in the very bosom of the Church which showed her wisdom in respecting the legitimate wants of man and the innocent pleasures of the nations. For Paganism has two constituent parts, the one being an absolutely false religious idea, the other the true idea of the necessary relation of man with the invisible world, and the consequent methods of fixing that relation under sensible forms in temples, festivals, and symbols. Religious thought cannot be confined to the solitary domain of contemplation, but proceeds thence to grasp space by the temples which it causes to be reared, time by the days which it keeps holy, and nature in her entirety, by selecting as emblems such things as fire, perfume, and flowers, her brightest and purest products. These truths ought not to perish, and the policy of the Church had to solve the difficulty of crushing idolatry without stifling beauty of worshij?. The zeal of the Fathers was displayed on every page of their writings, and they have been charged with pushing it to the point of Vandalism in demanding the destruction of the temples. But St. Augustine took a most effec- tual step towards obviating that passion for iconoclasm which seizes whole nations at some moment of intense public emotion, and forbade Christians to turn articles which had been devoted to the service of the false deities to their personal use. He desired that the stone, wood, and precious metals should be purified in the service of the state, or in honour of the true God, and his maxims saved many a building in Italy, Sicily, and Gaul which remains to us instinct with the genius of antiquity. The Pantheon of Agrippa became the 124 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Basilica of All the Martyrs, and in Eome alone eight pagan sanctuaries stand in our day under the invocation of a saint as protector of their ancient walls. The Temple of Mars at Florence, and that of Hercules at Milan, were converted into Baptisteries. Sicily defended for long her ancient altars ; but when the Council of Ephesus had given to the veneration of the Mother of God a new and brilliant lustre, the Sicilians surrendered, and the soft touch of the Virgin opened more temples than the iron hand of the Caesars. The Mausoleum of the tyrant Phalaris was made sacred to our Lady of Mercy, and the temple of Venus, on Mount Eryx, formerly served by a college of harlots, became the Church of St. Mary of the Snows.* And if the people hankered after those lofty porticoes beneath which their fathers had prayed, still more difficult was it to rob them of those festivals which had lightened the severity of their labour, and broken in upon the monotony of their life. So Christianity hallowed in place of suppressing them, and from the end of the fourth century solemnities in honour of the martyrs took the place of those of the false gods. The bishops encouraged an admixture of sober joy with the gravity of these pilgrimages, permitted fraternal love- feasts on their celebration, and transported thus into the Church the fairs which had tempted the multitude to the worship of Bacchus and Jupiter. Yet the per- severance of the clergy failed to displace the days which custom had consecrated, and the cycle of the Christian * St. Augustine, epist. 47, PublicolfB ; Marangoiii delle cose gentilesclie e profane trasportate ad use et ornamento delle cliiese, pp. 25U, 257, 282 ; Beugnot, De la Chute du Paganisme en Occident. THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 125 year was forced to conform in many particulars to the l^agan calendar. Thus, according to the authority of Bede, the procession of Candlemas consigned the Lupercalia to obli\T[on, and the Ambaryalia only yielded to the rustic pomps of the Eogations. As the peasants of Enna, in Sicily, could not detach themselves from the joyful festivals they always held after harvest in honour of Ceres, the Feast of the Visitation was retarded on their account, and they offered on the altar of Christ the ripe wheat-ears with which they had garlanded their idols.* In fact, if Christianity prohibited the adoration of Nature, she never cursed or condemned that which con- stituted the visible beauty of the universe. It beheld, not only in the heathen religion, but in the public ritual, a symbolism which employed creatures as the signs of a sacred language between God and man. The seven- branched candlestick had lighted the tabernacle of Moses, the gums of Arabia had burnt on the altar, and year by year the Hebrew people had gathered palm- branches and foliage for the Feast of Tabernacles. The rites which were so common to every worship were to pass into the new religion. The poet Pruden- tius was already inviting Christian virgins to the tomb of St. Eulalia, and bidding them bring baskets of flowers in honour of the youthful martp' ; and at the same period was the custom introduced of burning tapers before the places where the saints reposed. The priest Vigilantius cavilled at this practice, and taxed it * Tlieodoret, cited by Bar. nius, ad. ann. 44, 87 ; St. August, epist. 29 ; St. Gregory Nyssan.in Vita St. Gregorii Thaumatm-gi. The Councils instantly reproved the disorders wliich crept into these new festivals. Concilium Carthagin. iii. canon 30 ; Tolet, III. cap. xxiii ; Mai-angoni, p. 282. 126 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. mth idolatry ; but St. Jerome replied, and bis clever genius embraced at once the wbole scope of tbe question. " You call tliese Christians idolaters. I deny it not, for all who believe on Christ have come from idolatry ; but because we rendered this worship once to idols, must it be forbidden now to offer it to the true God ? All the churches of the East burn candles at the mo- ment of the reading of the Gospel, not truly to dissi- pate the darkness, for at that hour the sun is shining with all its brightness, but as a sign of joy, in memory of those lamps which the wise virgins kept burning in honour of the Eternal Light, of which it is written, ' Thy word, Lord, shall be a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my paths.' "* St, Jerome summed up on this point the whole policy of the Church, whereby she achieved the conversion of the Roman world, as well as the civilization of the bar- barians. Two centuries later, when the Anglo-Saxons poured in crowds to baptism, and demanded permission to burn their idols. Pope Gregory the Great moderated this zeal, and wrote to his missioners, directing them to destroy the images but to preserve the temples, and consecrate them, that the people, having acknowledged the true God, might the more readily come to worship Him in places to which they had become accustomed. He also advised them to replace the old pagan orgies by orderly banquets, in the hope that if they allowed the people some sensible gratifications, they might rise more easily to spiritual consolations.! The enemies of the Roman Church have triumphed over these pass- * Marangoni. p. 378 ; Prudentius, Peri-Steplianon Hymn. Sanctïe Eulaliœ; St. Jerome contra Vigilantium. j- St. Greg lib. xi. epist. 76. THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 127 ages, in which they have only seen the abomination brought into the sacred place ; but we must rather ad- mire the utterances of a religion which has penetrated into the depths of humanity, and knowing what con- flicts with passion she must of necessity demand from it, shrinks from imposing needless burdens. This course has shown that true knowledge and love of human nature whereby alone it can be won. But there was that other principle in Paganism with which the Church could not treat, which she had to attack without respite, and which on its own side offered a resistance as imperishable as the passions in which it was rooted. At first, the old religion had hoped to preserve itself intact, and spring over the period of the invasions like ^neas traversing burning Troy with the gods he had saved. Pagans counted with joy a multitude of sympathizers amongst those Goths, Franks, and Lombards who had covered the face of the Western Emj)ire. Roman polytheism, faithful to its maxims, held out the hand to the poly- theism of the barbarians, and as the Jupiter of the Capitol had admitted the strange divinities of Asia to share his throne, he could hardly reject Woden and Thor, who were compared to Mercury and Vulcan. They were, it was said, the same heavenly powers honoured under different names, and the twin cults were bound to sustain one another against the jealous God of the Christians. Thus the wave of invasion seemed to leave a sediment which revived the genius of Paganism, and in the midst of the sixth century, when Rome had passed fifty years under Gothic domination, the idolatrous party boldly attempted to reopen the Temple of Janus and restore the Palladium. So, at the 128 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. opening of the seventh century, St. Gregory the Great awakened the solicitude of the Bishops of Terracina, Corsica, and Sardinia towards the pagans in their respective dioceses. Ahout the same time, the efforts of St. Romanus and St. Eloi barely achieved the con- version of Neustria, and in the next century Austrasia was so much troubled by the corruption of the clergy and the violence of the nobles, that multitudes aban- doned the Gospel and restored their idols. In truth, the two systems of Paganism were mingled, and the struggle sustained by the Church for three centuries against the deities of Eome was but an apprenticeship to the longer conflict she was destined to wage against the idols of the Germans. In that case, also, she con- quered by a charity whose only term was martyrdom, and by a controversial method which carried its considera- tion for rude minds to the last degree. The Church treated these barbarians with the same respect as the people of Italy or of Greece, and the entire polemical system of the old apologists reappeared in the homilies of the missioners who evangelized Frisia and Thuringia. The Bishop Daniel, in expounding the proper method of discussion with the pagans of the North, renewed the arguments of St. Maximus of Turin. " You must ask them," he said, " if their gods breed still, and if not, why they had ceased to do so." * But Charlemagne was now about to appear, to assure to Christianity dominion, but not repose. Van- quished Paganism was transformed, and instead of a * Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. 28 ; Beugnot, Hist, de la Chute du Paganisme ; Procopius, de BeUo Gothico ; St. Gre- gory, Ej)ist. As to conversion of the Germans, compare the atitiior's work, " Civilization Chrétienne chez les Francs." THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 129 worship became a superstition. Yet, under the new form, it retained its essential faculty of leading men astray through their fears and their lusts. The con- verted races agreed to hold that their former gods were so many daemons, but upon the condition of reverencing and invoking them, and attaching an occult virtue to their images. Thus the Florentines had dedicated the Temple of Mars to St. John ; but a certain awe still attached to the image of the fallen god. In the year 1215, a murder committed upon the spot brought the Guelphs and Ghibellines to blows, upon which Villani,* an able historian, but one apt to be carried away by the opinions prevalent in his time, concluded "that the enemy of the human race had retained a certain power in his ancient idol, since at its feet the crime had been committed which had brought upon Florence so many evils." These malevolent phantoms were but slowly dissipated, for imaginations could not shake themselves free of a spell which had bound them for so many ages. The ancient gods still kept their place in imprecations and oaths, and to this day the Italians swear by Bacchus. Pagan associations were as firmly and still more dangerously perpetuated in the sensual festivals, with their orgies and obscene songs, which the canons of the councils held in Italy, France, and Spain did not cease to condemn. The pilgrims from the North were astonished, on visiting Rome, at seeing the calends of January celebrated by bands of musicians and dancers, who paraded the town with sacrilegious songs and exclamations which savoured of idolatry. When the ItaHan cities were hastening, in their newly acquired liberty, to form themselves in the image of * Villani, Cronaca, lib. i. 42, 60 ; ibid. lib. v. 38. 6t 130 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Rome, they established consuls and wished for public games. Horse and foot races were celebrated, and the lustful memories of old time came to mingle with these recreations, and races of courtesans were given in imitation of the festivals of Flora. If the Italy of the Middle Age did not actually revive the gladiatorial conflicts, she did not renounce bloody spectacles. At Ravenna, at Orvieto, and at Sienna, custom had fixed certain days upon which two bands of their citizens took up arms and slaughtered each other for the amusement of the mob. Petrarch, in 1346, grew indignant at beholding a renewal at Naples of the butcheries of the Coliseum. He relates how, one day, he was drawn by some friends to a spot not far from the city, where he found the court, the nobility, and the multitude ranged in circles assisting at the warlike sports. Noble youths were being slaughtered there under the eyes of their fathers, their glory consisting in the coolness with which they received the death-blow ; and one of them rolled in a pool of blood at the very feet of the poet. Petrarch, horror-stricken, struck spurs into his horse and fled, vowing to quit before three days were past a land which was stained with Christian blood.* If pagan instincts thus lurked in the bosom of Catholic society, we may expect to see them burst forth as soon as Paganism reappeared openly in the heresy of the Albigenses. From Bulgaria to Catalonia, from the mouths of the Rhine to the pharos of Messina, millions of men arose, fought, and died for a doctrine, the essence of which lay in replacing the austerity of * Muratori, Dissert. 29 de Spectaculis et Ludis Publicis Medii ^vi, pp. 8;52, h;?;3, 852 ; Pctrarcli, Familiarium, lib. v. epist. 8 (pointed out to the author by M. Eugène Rendu). THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 131 Catholic dogma by a new mythology, in recognizing two eternal princijjles of Good and Evil, and dethroning the sole God of the Christians.* This popular hea- thenism surprises us in an epoch wherein the Church seemed absolute over the conscience ; but, more strange still, it possessed a learned element, as if the human reason, once set free by the new faith, had fallen back into its old slavery, whilst in every age men of learning, ingenuity, and perseverance conspired to renew the traditions of the school of Alexandria, and restore error by philosophy and the occult sciences. Up to the seventh century we can trace the pagan doctrines in the Gallo-Roman schools, which even contained men who were professedly heathen ; and the writers of that epoch were still combating the false learning of those who boasted of extending the dis- coveries of .their predecessors, but were in reality attached to their errors. But these dying sparks were to be extinguished in the obscurity of the barbarous era. It was in the midst of the Carlovingian Revival that a theologian of depth, who had studied in the monastic schools of Ireland, John Scotus Erigena, began to profess, with force and brilliancy of exposition, a philosophy which was thoroughly imbued with the Alexandrian opinions. He tempered its excesses, in- deed, by contradictions which saved his own ortho- doxy, but failed to satisfy the logic of his disciples — a logic which three hundred years later impelled Amaury de Bene and David de Dinand to teach publicly the pantheistic tenets of the unity of substance, the identity * Sclimidt, Hist, et Doctrine de la Secte des Cathares ou Albigeois. 132 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. of spirit and matter, and of God and nature.* The Church perceived the greatness of the danger, and the new sect succumbed to the condemnations of her doctors and her councils ; but these pantheistic prin- ciples, yet alive, lay hidden amongst the disciples of Averrhoes, to appear again with a more menacing attitude in the persons of Giordano Bruno and of Spinoza. And whereas a false system of metaphysics was enticing many minds back to pagan antiquity, a greater number still were being drawn thither through those occult sciences which formed the living sore of the Middle Age. Christianity has been charged with breeding, in her favouring obscurity, astrology and magic, as well as the sanguinary legislation by which their excesses were repressed ; but it is forgotten that the classic ages of the hidden sciences were the most brilliant periods of Paganism, that they flourished at Rome under Augustus, were elaborated at Alexandria, and could claim Jamblichus, Julian, and Maximus of Ephesus, the most illustrious of the Neoplatonists, amongst their neophytes. It was in vain that Origen, who had detected the secrets of the adepts, unveiled a portion of their artifices, by what illusions they caused the thunders to mutter, daemons to appear, death's- heads to speak ; for the vulgar believed in the mysteries which afforded the charm of fear. But the Csesars were troubled by that divining art which boasted of having announced their advent, but also foretold their * St. Ouen, Prefatio ad vitam Sancti Eligii ; Prologus ad vitam Sancti Maximum Miliaccnsis apud Mabillon ; Acta S. O. S. B. i. 5S1 ; Jolm Scotus de Divisione Naturœ ; Amaury de Bene and David de Dinand ; Martin Polon. Clironic. lib. iv.; St. Thomas, in Secund. Sentent, dis. xvii. quasst. THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 133 fall, and we find the astrologers suffering banishment as mathematicians under Tiberius, persecuted for three centuries, and finally proscribed by constitutions of Diocletian and of Maximian.* It was the legislation of the pagan emperors, carried on by Valentinian and Valons, and received into the codes of Athalaric, of Liutprand, and of Charlemagne, which founded the penal laws against sorcery which prevailed in the Middle Age ; and thus did the torch of the ancient wisdom kindle the piles with which the Church has been reproached. But penal fires could effect nothing against the fas- cinations of the forbidden fruit. In the thirteenth century, an age when Christian civilization was in its bloom, the doctrines reappeared which tended to deify the stars, by submitting human wills to their influence. Astrology had made its peace with the law, and placed itself beside the thrones of princes, or even in the chairs of the universities ; armies refused to march unless preceded by observers who would mark the height of the stars, and rule the conjunction under which camps should be traced or battle given. The Emperor Frederick the Second was surrounded by astrologers, and the republics of Italy had theirs as well, so that the rival factions disputed for heaven in addition to earth. f On the other hand, there was a renewal of the radical vice of Paganism, of the despair- ing struggle between man and nature, the attempt to * Origen, JPhilosophxxmena, editit Millier, lib. iv. 62, 03. 71, 75 ; Suetonius in Tiberio. Cod. Justin, ix. 18, de Maleficis et Mathematicis, ibid. yi. 4, 5, 9. + Ijibri Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques en Italie, ri. 52 ; Mirratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, viii. 228, xiv. 930-1 ; Villani, Cronaca, vi. 83. 134 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. conquer the latter, not by science or by art, but by superstitious operations and formulas ; the adepts in magic renewed the idolatrous observances, not only in the secrecy of their laboratories, but in the numerous writings to which fear and curiosity afforded a circula- tion, in the shade of school or of cloister. Albert the Great recognized their influence, and in his summary of the processes by which those erring spirits boasted of predicting and governing the future, we may wonder at superstitions which the ancients themselves decried and repudiated; for instance, "Those abominable images which they call Babylonian, which appertain to the worship of Venus, and the figures of Belenus and of Hercules, whom they exorcise by the names of the fifty-four daemons attached to the service of the Moon : upon them they inscribe seven names in direct order to obtain a happy issue, and seven inversely to avert an unlucky event. In the first case, they incense them with aloes and balm ; in the second, with resin and sandal- wood.* So much could error effect in the time of St. Louis and St. Thomas Aquinas, though theologians exliausted their arguments against thé magicians and astrologers, and Dante fixed them in the lowest circle of his Hell. The occult sciences threw their spell over mankind, until they faded before the broad light of the sixteenth century. Yet Paganism did not expire with them, but continued to seethe like the lava of a volcano, terrifying the Christian world by chronic eruptions. No, Pagan- ism could not be extinct in the hearts of men as long as a terror of God and the voluptuous influences of nature reigned therein together, nor could it be stifled * Albortus Magnus, Oper. lib. v. Speculum Astronom THE FALL OF PAGANISM. 135 in the schools as long as Pantheism held its own, and new sects rose to announce the apotheosis of humanity and the rehabilitation of the flesh. And the old error still ruled in Asia, in Africa, and in half of the islands of ocean, maintaining itself by threats and in arms, and now making martyrs at Tonquin and in China, as of old in Rome and Nicomedia : it still contends with the Church for six hundred millions of immortal souls. A celebrated man, the object of our just regrets, but often liable to erroneous conclusions, has wi-itten, " How dogmas end." But the study we have made may teach us that dogmas do not end. Humanity has only recog- nized two of them, though under diverse forms — that of the true God and that of the false deities. The latter was the masters of pagan hearts and the old society, the idea of the former went forth from among the Judsean hills to enlighten Europe first, and thence, little by Httle, the remainder of the world. The struggle between these two dogmas is the key of history, and affords to it all its grandeur and its interest ; for what can be a prouder position or a more touching issue for the human race than to stand as prize in the combat between Error and Truth ? 136 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. CHAPTER V. ROMAN LAW. We have seen what roots the old religion of Rome had struck out, how their dislodgment was the work of centuries, and how the highest degree of wisdom, of courage, and of tact was necessary to stifle error with- out doing violence to human nature, to destroy Pagan- ism without breaking the innocent symbols of the commerce between heaven and earth. But its religious belief did not make up the essence of the Roman civilization ; its primitive dogma had come from the Etruscans — Greece had brought to it its fables — the conquered East had yielded her mysteries; but that which was the exclusive property of Rome was her genius for action, her destiny was to realize on earth the idea of justice and found the empire of Law.* A time arrived when Rome no longer remembered the art of conquest, but she was never to forget the secrets of government. The moment even of her deepest decline, when the barbarians revenged them- selves upon her in every place, ordered her proceedings, and debated with her the figure of her ransom — when they seemed to have entirely fettered her action — was the period in which all her power was reflected and gathered up into the codes of that legislation which * Tu regcre impcrio populos, Romane, memento ; Hae tibi erunt artes. EOMAN LAW. 137 was sooner or later to achieve the conquest of the bar- barians, to retain the world under her tutelage after the fall of her empire, and compel the descendants of the Visigoths, Burgundians, and Franks to seat themselves in the schools, and grow pale over the test of the Roman law. We must study now this great victory of thought over strength, and find the hidden force which bore up the Roman constitution at the beginning of the fifth century, and what were to be its respective losses or gains under the mighty blows which demolished the empire of the West. In the first place stood the mass of jurisprudence of the classic epoch, comprising the works of the entire succession of jurisconsults from Augustus to the reigns of the Antonines. In order that no doubt might arise as to the binding force of these decisions, a well-known constitution, issued under Theodosius II. and Valen- tinian III., in a.d. 426, laid down that in future the writings of Papinian, Paulus, Gains, Ulpian, and Mo- destinus should alone have force of law ; that in case of difi'erence of opinion the view supported by the majority should prevail, or, in the case of equality, the position taken by Papinian.* It might seem a rash measure to canonize, as it were, opinions, controversy, consulta- tions, often contradictory and full rather of subtlety than genius, but there may be seen in it that gi-eat principle of Tradition providentially preserved at Rome, and it is a happiness for posterity that those maxims which the disasters of the Empire might well have crumbled into dust were thus preserved, and invested with the character of inviolable law. * Cod. Theod. lib. i. tit. 4 ; Lex prima de Responsis pru- dentum. 138 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. On tlie other hand stood the ever-increasing collec- tion of the constitutions of princes, and especially of Christian jn-inces. In 429, Theodosius the Younger and Valentinian III., to remedy the confusion which had sjDrung up among them, appointed a commission of nine jurisconsults, or men of official rank, to make a regular compilation, in sixteen books, under their re- spective titles, of those legislative enactments which bore on public or civil life, and to leave the primitive text, as far as necessary correction and clearness would allow, free from contradictory comments. Thus the whole series of legislation of the Christian emperors was pre- served to us, and respect was shown, notwithstanding the thoroughness of the reaction which had followed them, even to the works of Julian. Accordingly the Roman society possessed, in 430, two systems of law, and the barbarians found face to face, on the one hand ancient Paganism tempered by the phi- losophy of the jurisconsults themselves, acting, as we shall see, under Christian influences, and on the other Christianity tempered by the timidity of the emperors, who only embraced reforms already rough-hewn by their philosophic lawyers, and measured out carefully the blows they were bound to strike at the old institutions : here pagan law just gilded by the rising of Christianity — there the beginning of Christian jurisprudence still entangled in the last shades of the darkness from which the world was issuing. We must examine these two principles in order, and the result which they had brought about. We see, on opening the text-books of the classic jurisprudence of the vaunted epoch of the Antonines, that all the lawyers whose writings Valentinian had codified, recognized still ROMAN LAW. 139 as a thing of the remote past but as supreme and permanent, the law of the Twelve Tables. They cite, comment on, and often evade it, but still did it homage in refusing to ignore, contravene, or abjure the edicts graven on its bronze by the iron hand of the decemvirs : it was still thus a master from whose scourge they sought in vain to escape. Let us sketch in a few words, not the precepts but the tendency of that ancient pagan and theocratic law- system whose authority, secular in its essence, the jurisconsults did not as yet dare con- temn. It was a half- sealed book, a collection of tradi- tions, sacramental formulas, and sacred rites, enveloping the law under the same veils as a religion — a mass of mysteries whose secret the patricians alone possessed, who as descendants of the gods could alone know and enounce law {jus ; fas, what is permitted; fatum, the right, the Divine will). Law, in its primitive aspect, was the true and only recognized religion of Rome. Its first act was to deify Rome herself, who became not only the shrine and dwelling-place of an unknown genius to whom altars were raised, and whose name was known only to the initiated, but herself the mighty goddess who had altars not only in her peculiar territory, but amongst her conquered nations, and even in Asia, on the shores of the Troad. As divine, her will was justice ; the law decided through her curies was legitimate if ratified by consent of the gods in the taking of the auspices, and which assumed a commerce between earth and heaven. To give an act life and a divine character, its accom- plishment must be surrounded by rites and ceremonies. God Himself inteiwened in the judgments and under the strokes of the magistrate to give peace to His earth ; execution was an act of sacrifice ; the tribunal, as a 140 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. sacred place, was to be turned to the East, to be closed when the sun, type of the ray of intellect by which judgment is enlightened, had set on the earth. This powerful theocratic imprint was everywhere to be seen, and underlay all the civilization of Paganism. As Rome was supreme in her sphere, so was every father a god in his own family, a genius sent for a time here below. His will had all the features of law and resist- less destiny, admitting no limit, stretching to the right of life and death over his dependants, — over his wife, whom he could judge ; his son, whom he could expose ; his slave, whom he could put to death. Authority, the presence of irresistible will in all human actions, marked Roman law, gave to it mystery, and also provoked the greatest awakening of liberty which had yet been seen. Rome's very function, in thus overstraining her principle of authority, was to give a greater volume to the outburst of freedom, and the most remarkable sight her history offers to us is that of the rigour of the private prison, the sale of the debtor cut piecemeal, Virginia's blood spirting over the de- cemvirs, acting as God's incentive to that very people to show us as an example their eight-century-long delivery. This was first seen when the plebs, straining to enter upon the sacred enclosure, long defended by the patrician order, tore from their grasp in succession the conmihium, the magistrate's offices, the auspices ; lastly, the very secrets of the Law, and when the freed- man Flavius stole from Appius the Actions of Law, the formulas of which that patrician had drawn up.* The movement, begun under the Republic, lived on under the Empire, which did not close, as has been t Dig. lib. i. tit. ii. § 7, de Origine Juris. ROMAN LAW. 141 erroneously supposed, the history of liberty ; but the game changed, and whilst under the Eepuhlic we see the patrician city stormed and carried by the plebs, the Empire shows us every province, the whole West, be- sieging the imperial city to gain a place at the sanctuary of law and public justice. The emperor, often himself a foreigner, like Galba or Trajan, sprung from Spain, acted as their representative, as invested with procon- sular rank, and so becoming familiar with the provinces whose natural protector he was. Caracalla, after a long period of resistance and partial concession, threw down every barrier, and in proclaiming Rome the common capital, with as many citizens as she had subjects, im- pelled the Empire to its definitive destiny.* Such was the history of the enfranchisement of the plebs and of the Western provinces, and as races and men were pressing with such energy into the precinct so obstinately guarded. Justice also began to find her place there through the efi'orts of the prœtor. Every year that magistrate, on entering office, pro- claimed by edict the principles on which he would administer justice. He was used to interpret the iron law of the Twelve Tables with equity and clemency, to supply its lacunœ, to throw light on its obscurity, and softness over its rigour ; and in this commenced that struggle entered on by the magistrate against a text he was obliged to apply, regretting its harshness, yet sub- mitting to its authority while blunting its sharp edge. The prastor and jurisconsults, who also had the right of extenuating law principles, then created the Useful Actions, in order to supply what was clearly wanting in the primitive system; and the emperors, opening their * Diff. lib. i. tit. v. de Statu homiiium. 142 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. minds to the light, called to their aid such men as Gains, Ulpiau, and Panlus, who were influenced by the Stoic philosophy, and supported it by their autho- rity, not in Eome alone but throughout the Empire. The efi'ort of human reason developed under their sanction a new law- system, in which the law of the gens stood opposed to the civil law ; to the civil family, composed only of agnats, or relations on the male side, the natural family (cognatio), comprising those related through females only ; to the property of the Quirites, the property by natural right, called in bonis ;^ to succession to legitimate descendants only as established by the Twelve Tables, the right of succession in all alike to whose being nature had given the same author. This was the work of many centuries, at last effected by the conscience-cry of the plebs and the help of philosophy in the shape of the Stoic lawyers. It was one of the greatest spectacles reason could offer, not only as showing, as in the jurisprudence of the Automnes, a triumph of good sense, of lucidity of thought, a perfect purity of form, an edifice giving with unexpected felicity space and clearness of arrangement to the former chaos of public and domestic relations, but as a first- fruit of satisfaction to humanity, as tempering woman's lot by dower ; paternal authority, by suppressing its right of life and death ; the condition of slaves, by declaring, through Antoninus Pius, to whoever could escape from his master's rod and embrace the prince's statue, the protection of a magistrate, who must descend from the tribunal, cover him with a fold of his robe, and compel his owner to transfer him to another more humane than himself.* * Inst. Just. Dc his. qui siii vel alieni juris sunt, § 2. KOMAN LAW. 143 While recognizing the services of human reason and the merits of this ancient jurisprudence, we see heneath the surface what was wanting to this first effort of man's intelligence, the vices still inevitably lurking in it, which gave it up to the time of which we treat that pagan character so difiicult to eradicate. Fiction appears everywhere ; a superstitious respect for a past openly belauded, but secretly disdained. The entire labour of the praetor was lavished on a succession of subterfuges by which to evade a law he dared not overturn, to escape from their inflexible Twelve Tables, not one of whose long-traced lines he dared efi"ace. If, for instance, they only granted succession to relations on the male side, to grant it to those of defunct female descent a fiction was necessary by supposing in the formula of deliverance the new possessor to be the heir. As the old law willed that certain chattels, called mancipia, could only pass by mancijjation, or by iisucaption, had an article of that class been delivered to a claimant by simple tradition, and been lost before possession had been acquired by usucaption, property in it, according to strict law, was gone, yet the praetor allowed a revendication, by supposing a previous usucaption after the forms of the publician action. Roman law, again, taking no cognizance of foreigners, afforded them no action to enforce respect of their rights. The actio furti would not, for in- stance, lie, as, according to strict civil law, it was not open to a foreigner ; but the praetor would grant it by the fiction of supposing him a Roman citizen.* Such things were calculated sooner or later to bring into contempt so essentially simple a system of law. * Gaius, Com. iv. § 54 et seq. 144 CIVILIZATION IN FITTH CENTURY. This faithless superstition and dishonest interpretation represents what was passing in Paganism at large — maintenance of form and absence of faith. The old law stood on the same footing as the mythology. It was a mere fable {carmen serium) ; serious in the sense of having much which was evil on its pages, and also a mere song, in that its inspiration had ceased. Men listened to its frequent repetition, and then passed on, to other and graver occupations. Not an education of some years alone, but that of an entire life, was neces- sary to find the way through its mazes, which again began to contain a mystery in which very few were adepts ; only it was no longer the patricians who held the deposit, but the school, the family of juris- consults, the few devoted by the state to the study of law, and who alone, in diving into its recesses, could exercise that species of priestly office which Ulpian defined, Jus est ars boni et œqui cvjus merito qnis nos sacerdotcs ajjpellet.* Ammianus Marcellinus, living at the close of the fourth century, leaves us the following picture of the lawyers of his day : — " You would think they professed the drawing of horoscopes or unfolding the Sibylline oracles, to see the deep gravity of their faces, in loudly boasting of a science wherein one can merely grope." So the chief vice of Paganism had not vanished ; still there appeared the adepts, few in number and without the vulgar herd ; philosophy had succeeded the old religions, detesting, like them, the common people — that is to say, the multitude, humanity itself. Its second vice was the maintenance of the absolute sovereignty of the state over not property only, but life, souls, and consciences, carrying out the old * Dig. de Justitia et Jui-e, lib. i. tit. i. § 1. RO^IAN LAW. 145 principle ficcording to which Rome was divine and so was her will ; and to its legitimate laws human will could find no place of resistance, as no one could be right in contradicting the gods. But a considerable change had still come about, for the name of the genius hitherto dwelling in mystery on the Capitol was at last revealed. It was sometimes named Tiberius, or Nero, or Heliogabalus, and its works were known as well. The Empire became an idolatry, of which the Emperor was priest and god. Altars were raised to him in his lifetime; his images were sent in all directions, to be greeted with light and perfume, and thousands of Christians died rather than cast on the fire at their feet some grains of frankincense. He was a true god, in fact, while living as after death, ordaining this, willing the contrary on the morrow, exercising a tyranny the more intolerable from its being exercised in a moral sphere, and suffering no other will ; declaring to the Christians by the organ of the jurisconsults that their existence could not be permitted, " non licet esse vos;" crushing the state-right itself in placing the prince above the law, princeps leg'ibus sohihts ; to which privi- lege it was determined that the sovereign, acceding to her the half of his rights, could also raise his Empress. The will of one thus placed above all law naturally became imperious and irresistible, and the conclusion of the jurisconsults, quod pnnc'ipi placuit legis hahct vigor em utpote cum lege regia popidus ei et in eum omne siium imperiiim et potestatem conferet* led to that formula so insulting to humanity wherewith princes so often have terminated their acts, " for such is our good pleasure." Not only did the prince's pleasure become * Dig. de Constit lib. i. tit. 4. VOL. I. 7 146 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. the world's law, but he owned beside the pontifical office, the absolute power of making and unmaking legisla- tion, and nearly the whole Roman territory. The soil of the provinces had been divided into two great parts : the tributary, under the Emperor, and the stipendiary, depending on the Roman people. In course of time the former succeeded to the latter, and thus the whole pro- perty in the provinces devolved on the sovereign so thoroughly that no private person was considered an actual proprietor, but only a stipendiary maintained and guaranteed till further notice in its use by the Imperial will.* Hence no subject could complain when the most sacred treasury sacratlsslmum (drarlum claimed some portion of his goods, or when taxes, indictions, or superindictions were imposed, or the land itself dis- trained, as the prince only took his own. On this prin- ciple stood the fiscal system of Rome, full of exactions, which reduced the groaning provinces to such a pitch of distress that the curia responsible for the levy of the impost was gradually deserted by the decurions, whose place was filled by men of evil life and broken fortunes, by concubinous priests and their bastard ofi"spring, since the honour had come to be looked on rather as a disgrace. The provincials, tortured, forced to sell wife and child to satisfy these requirements, began to aban- don their lands, and to call upon the barbarians in aid, assured of finding in them less exacting masters, and preferring to render them one or two thirds of the soil than be subject to a' system which carried off the total of their revenues. All the confusion at the beginning of the Lower Empire, the responsibility of which has been fixed upon the Christian emperors, flowed natu- + Gaius, Comm. ii. 7. ROMAN LAW. 147 rally from principles long before established. "When Aurelian took to himself the diadem of Persia and the pomps of the East, th n Diocletian established that hierarchy of officials which was to crush the Empire with its weight, and the government in the days of its strength sowed the seeds of its ruin. A third radical vice in Paganism, an unmistakable sign of its last catastrophe, was that terrible inequality which no effort of reason could justify. At the root of its legislation, written though it were by the im- mortal pen of a Gaius or an Ulpian, lay that heathen emanation principle which supposed that some men sprang from the head, others from the belly or feet of the all-pervading deity. This kept- women in perpetual tutelage, not in the legitimate guardianship of her agnate alone, but in a dative tutelage restraining her capacity in the most trifling actions of civil life. It sub- jected the child to not only the paternal right of life and death, but to that of sale. He was open to exposal on his birth, condemned to a continual minority, whatever his age or dignity might be, deprived of every kind of property, up to the time of Constantine, except the "peculium castrense," or military pay. It kept up the servile system, the well-known horrors of which existed not only in the heroic and mythical ages, but throughout those centuries of light and philosophical wisdom that were for so many a time of freedom. The opinions of Greek philosophers on the subject were not doubtful. Plato did not admit slavery into the Re- public, but dared not condemn it in his native city ; and Aristotle gave human nature itself for its cause, saying that some were made for rule and others for obedience. Cicero held the same view. Cum autem hi famulantur 148 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. qui sihi moderarl ncqneant nulla injuria est* " There is no injustice in making slaves of those who know not self-government." In his admirahle treatise Dc OJficiis, the masterpiece of ancient morality, he relates, without commentary, certain cases of conscience proposed by a philosojîher named Hecaton. Is a master in a famine time hound to feed his slaves ? Economy says No ; humanity Yes. Hecaton decides against it.f Suppose one's self adrift in a small boat with a had slave and a good horse on hoard ; a storm comes on, which of the two should be thrown overboard ? Hecaton and Cicero will not pronounce upon it. Such was the philosophy of the best epoch of Rome, which time did not do much to modify. To come down to Libanius : in his discourse on slavery he takes care not to repeat Chris- tian complaints about it, nor to let slip any of the old pagan traditions on the subject. Slavery is an evil com- mon to all mortals ; all men serve either their passions or their business or their duty— ^the peasant is the slave of wind and rain, the professor of his audience. Slaves in name are least slaves in reality, but happiest of all in knowing nothing of hunger, that pitiless master ; happy in their state of care- less lethargy, leaving their master the care of finding them food ; and it is thus that passion and selfish- ness have argued in every age as to slaves of every colour. The opinion of the philosophers became the doctrine of the jurisconsults, whose duty it was to inspire theory and reduce it to practice. The ancient law had a punishment of death for the slaughterer of a steer ; but * Cic, quoted by Nonius, de Rep. lib. iii. c. xxiii. f Cic. de Officiis, 1. iii. c. xxiii. ROMAN LAW. 149 when Q. Flaminius, the senator, to amuse an aban- doned youth, who was his companion, and was regret- ting at never having seen any one put to death, cut the head off one of his slaves, it was silent, having no penalty for that kind of fault. They had instituted a fine for the murder of a slave,* but hastened to remedy their weakness by taking back from liberty what they had granted to slavery ; and by the laws .JîZta Sentia, Junia Norbana, and Fusia Caninia, they calmed the terrors of the serious, who feared revolution on seeing at some funeral games a few freedmen, clad in their caps of liberty, taking their place among citizens, by restraining the frequency of enfranchisement, and closing the city of Rome to the freed. Different orders were distinguished in the Ser\dle ranks, such as deditii, who could never become citizens, and the Latini Juniani, who could only become citizens in certain cases. The senatus - consult of Silanian, drawn up under Claudius, had ordained torture to all his slaves upon the violent death of any man ; and Tacitus paints the terrified stupor of the city when it was one day announced that a senator had died by violence, and that his four hundred slaves were to be put to the torture.! Hanging a slave was forbidden, but he might die under the torment, and then his price must be paid to the master. Nourishment was due to him, and Cato tells us how a prudent head of the family should arrange the matter. " Pour tWo amphorœ of sweet wine into a cask ; add two of very sharp vinegar, and as much boiled wine, to the dilution of two-thirds, with fifty amphora? of fresh water. Stir up the whole * Tacit. Annal. 1. xiv. c. cxlii. et seq. + Wallon : Histoire de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquité. 150 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. with a stick for five consecutive days, and then ponr in sixty-four measures of sea-water."* Paganism appears clearly here, and the bitter beverage that Cato used to give his slaves reminds us of a certain sponge of vinegar and gall which another Eoman, a soldier, was to offer on the lance's point to that other slave who was dying on a cross for the redemp- tion of slaves. As to their housing, Columella prescribed " ergastnla suhterranea," in which openings were to be contrived out of reach of the hand,t either for the purpose of pre- venting escape, or of cutting oif the sight of the world, which was denied them. Those employed at the mill carried a large wheel round their necks to prevent their raising to the mouth a handful of the flour that they sjjent the day in grinding. This deprives the Chinese of the honour of having invented their peculiar mode of torture, and it was the mildœt method of treatment, as the law of Antonine had not taken away the right of maldng eunuchs of slaves, and they were to be counted, by troops, greges puerorum, as well as crowds of gladiator-slaves who assembled in the lanista, and took the terrible oath to let themselves be burnt, fettered, scourged, and slaughtered, uri, vinciri, ver- hcrarifferroque necan,\îrioi men at least merchandise, subject-matter for contracts of sale and purchase, and therefore obliging, in some manner, the attention of the jurisconsults. Gains, in examining the difficulties which might arise in certain cases, in declaring a con- tract to be one of sale, or merely of hiring, proposed the following question : — " If I tender you a number * Cato, de Ec Rusticâ. t Coluiii. 1. vi. 3. ROMAN LAW. 151 of gladiators at the rate of twenty cleuarii ahead for those who survive, as wages for their toils, and a thousand ahead for the dead and wounded, is there a sale or a letting ? The prevailing opinion is that, as to the survivors, it is a hiring ; as to dead or wounded a sale, the event deciding it, as if each slave was con- ditionally an object either of sale or hire, for there is no doubt that either contract may be subject to con- ditions."* It is a question which is the most wonderful, the calm of the la^^Ter, or the horror of the prevailing manners. And those manners did not soften ; we find Trojan, on his return from Dacia, putting to death ten thousand gladiators. Fear was expressed lest oxen should fail, but no one seemed to fear a scarcity of gladiators. The Koman law of the classic period, as modified by the legislation of the Antonines, was certainly like the Coliseum, a splendid monument, wherein men were thrown to lions ! At the beginning of the fifth century, all this jurisprudence still had force, and had just been invigorated by the law of Citations, under Valentinian III., but happily for a Christian period, a rival system was rising in the code inaugurated by Theodosius. Christianity had early penetrated the Empire, coming as a doctrine that hated fiction, unable by reason of its liberty to sufier enslavement of conscience, or by its charity all those social inequalities which were an outrage to nature. Yet it did not aspire to change violently the world's aspect, but rather to win its point slowly and with patience, and like the Saviour to destroy slavery in becoming itself a slave, formam servi acci- 2)icns. "While Plato daily thanked the gods that he * Gains, lib. ni. § 140. 152 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. had been born male rather than female, free and not a slave, a Greek instead of a barbarian, it proclaimed by St. Paul that there was no longer male nor female, free nor slave, Greek nor barbarian, but one body in Christ Jesus,* a saying strong enough to effect as ages passed the great changes which God had determined. It could not tolerate imperial pretensions over the conscience of mankind, and whilst praying for its persecutors pro- claimed that God rather than man was to be obeyed. Finally it repulsed all the pagan fictions, but yet in its contempt for a law which was reserved for a little band of experts, and hidden perforce from the multitude, it did not profess to despise the Roman law-system. As was declared in the Apostolic Constitutions, " God did not will that His justice should be shown forth only by us, but let it shine in the Roman laws ; " and St. Augustine said, " Leges Eomanoriim divluitus per ora jjrincijnim emanaruut." It received these laws with admiration, recognizing in them the light which lightens every man coming into the world that he might know and adore his God, and was forced to toil with patience to reform in accordance with its principles the legisla- tion whose vices we have examined. Its presence was early suspected and soon perceived, but this is not the place for showing how the new society toiled in its catacombs, hidden deep under another hostile society whose reform it had entered upon; how in every rank of public and domestic life, in the senate and the foulest ergastula, it knew how to mould disciples and to en- lighten and modify the manners of the time. It has been pointed out how St. Paul, by his speech on Areopagus, his dispute with Stoics and Epicureans, his apology at * 1 Corinth, vii. 2:2, xii. 13 ; Romans i. 14. ROMAN LAW. 153 Corinth before the Roman magistrate, Annœus Gallic, must have roused the opinions of his contemporaries and of those Greeks and philosophers so greed}- of noveltv ; in particular, Gallio must have informed his beloved brother Seneca, who dedicated to him his treatises De Ira and De Vita Bcatâ, of the fame and doctrines of that Grascized Jew who went to make proselytes at Rome in the very j)a] ace of Nero. Seneca's own doctrines bear witness to the necessary contact between Pagan and Christian philosophy. His stoicism put in the place of the ancient fatum, the third arbiter of our destinies, a Providence, a Di\ine Father, to honour and obey ; it gave him faith in the soul's immor- tality, and the conflict here below between spirit and flesh, an enemy to be conquered only by Di\-ine help, namely grace, and filled him with a singular pity for all human sorrow, and especially for his enslaved fellow- creature. It is pleasant to believe that this Stoic bore the impress of a Christian philosopher, who was at Rome in the time of Seneca, and was destined to die there more gloriously than himself. It seems inevitable that the Christians, daily increas- ing in numbers, filling the forum, the senate, and the army, with the apologies of Quadratus, Bishop of Athens, of Athenagorus, St. Justin, Tertullian, and the senator Apollonius, circulating through every rank of society, should influence the Stoic philosophy and the juris- consults through it. Their admission to the councils of Alexander Severus, who adored amongst his lares the image of Christ, and inscribed in golden letters on his palace walls the maxims of Christianity, points to the gi'owing force of the new religion. The plagiarism of the jurisconsults from its sources, though denied 7 1 154 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. on account of tlieir inveterate hostility, was but the last resource of a baffled enemy, trying to disarm truth by borrowing its principles, "which were attracting every heart. Julian meant this in advising the pagans about him to imitate the Christian priests and open hospitals ; and the jurisconsults laboured to disarm the Gospel by infusing it into Eoman law, that there might remain no excuse for reforming a society open to legitimate pro- gress, or to destroy a religion so capable of wholesome reform. When Christianity ascended the throne with Con- stantine, far from exacting too much and assuming empire as a conqueror, it continued its course with the same calmness. Constantine acted with caution, re- taining the title of Supreme Pontiff, and still issuing edicts as to the manner of consulting the auspices. The tactics of his successors were similar : one advanced, another drew back, but all hesitated, and the Theodosian Code still preserved slavery, divorce, concubinage, ine- quality between man and wife, and father and son, though three great novelties found place in it. In the first place an effort was made to give to law a character of publicity and sincerity. Under Constantine the sacramental formulas relating to wills, stipulations, and other acts of civil life, the sacramental syllables, called by the Christian emperors aucuixitio syllahariim, as well as the whole system of juridical subtleties, fell to the ground ; and by determining the names of the jurists whose decisions should have force, and uniting in one code, as was the case under Theodosius and Valentinian, the scattered edicts of the Christian princes, a popular and accessible form was given to the law. Secondly, the temporal and spiritual orders were sepa- KOMAN LAW. 155 rated, and in this respect advance was less easy, for, as Constantine had retained the title of pontiff, his successors were willing to believe that the religion of the Empire alone had changed, and not their old su- premacy over the conscience. The Church had to labour perseveringly in preventing their usurpation of the right of convoking and presiding in her councils, saying in the words of Lucifer of Cagliari, "What! are we to respect your diadems, bracelets, and earrings, and despise the Creator?" The declaration wrnng from Theodosius and Valentinian, " It is worthy of a prince's majesty to pronounce himself bound by the laws," ended the struggle by the victory of the Church, and then the monarch became subject to law, and the tem- poral power took up the less splendid but firmer position assigned it in the Gospel: "Let him who would be first be the servant of all." In the last place, the hands of the emperors touched with healing the three great wounds humanity bore in the injury done to women, children, and slaves. Constantine gave mothers a larger share in succession to their children, forbade exposing infants, and punished the child murderer in the same measure as the parricide. He abolished crucifixion as a punishment for slaves, issued an edict against the gladiatorial combats, "not willing," as he said, "such bloody sights in the midst of the Peace of the Empire," and condemned to death the master who had killed a slave. " Let masters use their right with clemency, and let that man be held a murderer who shall have slain his slave voluntarily by blows of rods or of stones, or by mortally wounding him with a dart, who shall have hung him by a halter, or by cruel order had him thrown into an abyss, or made him drink poison, or 156 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. caused savage beasts to tear his body, or branded his flesh with burning coals, or in frightful torment caused life to flee from his bloody and foam-flecked limbs with a fierceness worthy only of barbarians." * This eloquent law, dated a.d. 319, well expresses the Christian in- dignation at the horrors of slavery, and shows the Church, just clothed with the purple, hastening to make a law in favour of her enslaved children. In this manner did the Theodosian Code remedy the triple outrage offered by the old system to liberty, truth, and humanity, in slavery and domestic inequality. It was no wonder that the reading, by the Prefect of Eome and the consuls, of the edict inaugurating the Theodosian Code throughout the Empire was received by the senate with magnificent applause. t The last minutes of its sittings contained this ratification, and its acclamations must have penetrated to the camp of the barbarians, already established in a.d. 438, on Roman territory. At the very moment when the Van- dals were masters of Africa, the Burgundians and Visigoths of Gaul and Spain, and Attila was advancing at the head of his Huns, by a sublime coincidence the legislation was proclaimed which was destined to master the future. Its fame was to reach those bar- barians, whose kings would seek to know the great idea of Roman law which was never to abandon them. The edict of Theodosius, in the year 590, proclaimed the * Cod, Just. ix. li, de Emeudatione Servorum. Cod. Theod. lib. ix. tit. xii. c. 1. f The senate exclaimed, " May God preserve you, Augustus ! (27 times). You have taken all doubt from the edicts (2.'3 times). You labour for public justice aiul for our peace ("25 times). From you we hold our honoiu'S. our patrimony, all our possessions (28 times). Spare this code the danger of interpolations'' (25 times). KOMAN LAW. 157 Theodosian Code the law of the Ostrogoths ; Alaric gave his subjects, a few years later, the " Breviarium Alaricanum," extracted from the same code ; and in 534 the " Papiani Responsa," in great measure col- lected from it again, appeared for the use of the Roman subjects of the Burgundians. Nor was its destiny to end there ; it was taught throughout Gaul, particularly in the schools of Clermont, during the sixth and seventh centuries. Carried into England to the school of York, into Germany in the peaceful train of conquering Boniface, it was to serve as basis to the capitularies of Frankish kings, and thus pene- trating into all the barbarian legislation, to give it temper, enlightenment, and system. It is true that the barbarian chiefs were no less taken by its faults than by its merits, and did not shrink from assuming the heirship of the Roman emperors with regard to their subjects' goods. In this spirit Frederick Barbarossa caused his lawyers to decide, at Roncaglia, that as Trajan's heir he was absolute master of his subjects' property; the same doctrine was adopted by Louis XIV. in speaking of his royal goods, " of which part are comprised in our demesne, the rest left by our good pleasure in the hands of our subjects;" and such pagan traditions have been handed down to become, under other forms, the gravest danger of the present day. The last traditions of divorce in the family were to disappear in the gi-eat struggle of the Papacy against Philip Augustus and Henry IV. Slaves gradually were to become serfs, and serfs freemen. Lastly, the great principle of the separation of the spiritual and temporal orders was to gain its victory at the moment 158 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. wlien Gregory VII. gave out his dying cry, " I fought for justice, and therefore am dying in exile." He died, but the principle which he supported so vigorously gained a stronger life, for the ideas which save the human race are those which suffer all that is mortal in them to perish. Roman law was to rule the world on condition of the fall of the Roman Empire ; nothing less was required to dissipate the mist of legal fiction and the remnant of that deep discord which was rooted in the old system. The swords of Attila and Odoacer were to banish the lingering phantom of the imperial throne, and to give breathing space to the world, to revive the soul of the old law on that principle of natural equity which began its struggle in the blood of Virginia and on the Sacred Hill, continued it by tribune's word and praetor's edict, found a new power in the Stoic philosophy, and its ultimate triumph in Christianity. When stripped of its trappings of gold and purple, of imperial pomp and human circum- stance, it issued forth lord of the world at the moment of its apparent dissolution. 159 CHAPTER VI. PAGAN LITERATURE. ^I. POETRY. The deeper we penetrate Roman society of the fifth century the more obvious appears its necessary, but not total dissolution. In religion and law we have already seen the mixture of perishable elements and the immortal principles which were to survive gaining, rather than losing, from the destruction of the former. Literature would seem to afford a different spectacle ; that if the idea of holiness was veiled from antiquity by carnal and bloody thoughts, that of justice troubled by the arrogance of the strong and their oppression of the weak, it at least had nothing to correct, nothing to lose, without irreparable loss for the future, and that in respect to art, those men of the North, Celts, Germans, Sclaves, just coming from their forests, could do nothing better than learn at the feet of Latin masters their eloquence and poetry. But it was not so ; the fifth century preserved the traditions of art, but overlaid by all the defects and vices of the Decline, and we shall see what forces had to be overcome in order to set her free. The Latin decline in literature began with the reign of Augustus, simultaneously ^"ith the end of liberty. The historical commonplace, that inspiration can only flourish with freedom, seems, indeed, contestable, and expressly belied by facts, as in the case of this very age 160 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. of Augustus, that of tlie Medicis, and of Louis XIV., and every other in which a huge despotism, covered with a shadow, deadly to Hberty, heneficial to genius, the whole aspect of things. But the defenders of this posi- tion forget that the great princes who have given name to these golden ages of letters have not opened, but closed them, and, therefore, left, as it were, their in- scription on their sepulchres. Augustus began by sell- ing to Antony the head of Cicero ; and so calming, as, according to his contemporaries, he calmed everything — even eloquence — he rather extinguished it, and though surrounded forthwith by poets, they had received their training in the midst of the civil war, within hearing of Philippi and Actium. Later, the Medicis embraced Italian literature, still quivering with Guelph or Ghibe- line passion and the breath of Dante, to leave it to slumber for three centuries at the feet of women. Louis XIV. was heir to a century still seething with the tempest of the League and the generous errors of the Fronde, but entered upon another destined to waste itself in the antechambers of courtesans and courtiers ; so that all these Msecenas patrons of literature's golden age did but raise a common though splendid sepulchre for both liberty and genius. Advancing into the ages of the Empire, servitude be- comes heavier, and its shadows more obscure. Yet the reigns of Christian emperors, often accused of hastening the Decline, in giving some liberty to men's minds, re- stored a particle of inspiration to literature. Symma- chus, an unsuspected witness, tells us that Valentinian, after Julian's philosophic reign, restored public judicial debates, and as a pagan author, praises him for putting an end to the silence. If eloquence could revive at all, PAGAN LITERATUKE, — POETRY. 161 it would have been at these Roman tribunals, haunted by such great memories, still instinct with the genius of Cicero : but it was not destined to gain recognition beyond their precincts. Poetry, favoured by Constantine's liberality, regained an inspiration to which she had been a stranger nearly three hundred years. The fifth century offering to our view at first sight only palace intrigues, and the quarrels of eunuchs, was of all centuries the most capable of inspiring a great epic poem. Rome had always loved the heroic songs which brought back to life the glory of her great men and military achieve- ment ; but she required a form of poetry known to, but not preferred by, Greece — the historic form, rather than the mythical epopee, and from the "Annals" of Ennius to the " Pharsalia " of Lucan and the "Punic War" of Silius Italicus claimed as especially her own the poets who followed the course of her history, and expressed it in language worthy of its glory. The scene was now enlarged, the struggle grown more terrible. The barbarians were at her gates. Though always conquered and repulsed by the prowess of Constantine, the sense of Julian, the genius and firmness of Theodosius, no one could tell which way the balance held by Fate would incline. And another mightier and more lasting conflict was proceeding ; and as the poet showed us from Trojan ramparts the pha- lanxes of heaven joined in battle far above, so we see far over these earthly contests the great duel between Paganism and Christianity being fought out ; no one unenlightened by Christian principle being on the morrow of Julian's death able to predict the issue. Here, as in the " Iliad," a world- struggle was 162 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. in progress, not between East and West alone, but be- tween two halves of the human race, and it was again as if the immortals had descended from the clouds to fight under the light of day in the thickest of the battle. But the poet was wanting to describe it, or rather he was there, but mistook its meaning. The poet of the fifth century was Claudian, a native of the learned city of Alexandria, and of that Egypt under whose vaunted sky the labourer, served by the waters of Nile, need never call the clouds to his help. He sang passionately of his city, wherein the whole learning of ancient time was stored — parent of Calli- machus and Apollonius, at whose schools Virgil and Horace had not disdained to study, and the poet him- self had been formed and trained. In 395 he appeared in still pagan Rome amidst universal homage from the partisans of the old cult, who were overjoyed at hearing the brilliant youth belaud their gods at the moment when their fall had been proclaimed. Public admiration bore him to the highest honours, and leave was obtained from Christian emperors to erect him a statue in Trajan's forum beside the great poets of anti- quity, bearing on the base an inscription ascribing to him Virgil's intelligence and Homer's muse.* In obtaining such favours for him a more powerful protector was joined with the senate in the person of Stilicho, to whose suite the poet was attached. He sang of his victories, combats, repose, pleasures, vices, and crimes, and accompanied the tutor of Honorius, the conqueror of the Goths, to the end of his career, and * Ell» tv\ BipyiKioio v6ov kuX fiova-av 'Oixrjpov KXavdiavov Vwixrj Kai ^ua-iXrjs edfcrav. UuKLLi : Inscrit. Lai. Col. No. 1182. PAGAN LITEEATURE. POETRY. 163 when be perished at the assassin's hand was sprinkled with his blood. Claudian thereupon, in disgrace and persecuted, addressed a poem to Adrian, the praetorian prefect, to implore him to show pity, to stay his baud, and suffer him to breathe freely in retirement, and, with the deplorable license of flattery, comparing the prefect to Achilles, reminded him that he did not show fury over the remains of Hector. Manibus Hectoreis ati'ox ignovit Achilles.* This man's genius lay precisely in bis errors. Born in a Christian age, he lived by power of an intense imagi- nation, surrounded by the associations of pagan anti- quity, and like the gods who walk the earth in mist, so he could only speak in an atmosphere of fable which hid the truth. At this epoch temples were everj^'here being closed, except at Eome, where, however, the Galilsean Fisherman bad conquered Jupiter Olympus ; yet be began a Gigantomachia, to celebrate Jove's victory over the giants. As the time was approaching for the temple of Ceres at Catania to receive the image of the Blessed Virgin on its altar, he was composing a poem in three books on the Rape of Proserpine. The genii of the levelled temples, the inspiration of the Delphic tripod, bad passed on to his lips to bring forth no eloquent defence or apology of his menaced gods that would link his fame to that of Symmachus, and confute those of the most glorious confessors, but only to teach us, with great noise and parade, how the infernal god carried Ceres' lovely daughter from the meadows of Enna : • * Claudiani Epistola, i. 13. 164 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKT. Infemi raptoris eqnos, efflataque curru Sidera TtBiiario, caligautesque profundse Juuonis thalamos, audaci prodere cantu Mens congesta jubet.* But it was not mere fancy ; in Claudian's errors and forgetfulness there was plenty of political significance. The pagan society that had received the new comer with transport and loaded him with favours, in making him the poet of its predilection, and which consisted chiefly of the senatorial families, had embraced the policy, according to the speech of Sallust the rhetorician to Julian, of treating Christianity as a passing whim of some infatuated minds, which would soon fade and leave them to return to the religion of their ancestors. Pagans, formerly so disturbed at these Christians, whom they had treated to menace, to the arenas, execu- tioners, or lions, whom they had accused of treason and a desire to undermine the Empire, contented themselves now with the calmer method of ignoring them as of little account at present, and to be non-existent to posterity. Claudian passed without recognition amidst the Christian glories of the century, in ignorance of St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, who did him on the contrary the honour of quoting from his writings, never attacking Christianity directly but once in his private life, when he hurled the following epigram at Jacobus, a military prefect, for the great crime of disapproving his poetry : * My mind, swollen (with poetry), bids me set forth in bold verse the horses of the lu;llisli ravishcr, the stars, the Tajnarian chnriot, and profound Juno's misty couch. — Ve Rnptu Proser- pinif:, lib. i. 1-i. PAGAN LITERATURE. — POETRY. 165 Per cineres Pauli, per cani limina Petri, Ne lacères versiis, dux Jacobe, meos. Sic tua pro clypeo sustentet pectora Thomas, Et comes ad bellum Bartholoma^us eat. Sic ope sanctorum, non barbarus iiTuat Alpes ; Sic tibi det vires sancta Susanna tuas.* So the use of sarcasm against Christianity is not modern, and in writing a history of Voltairianism we have to go back long before Voltaire. But the Roman aristocracy rarely allowed its poet such compromising liberties, for it had other services to extract from him. Claudian had been made the poet laureate of its solemnities, of its interests, and of its passions. He was its spokesman ; not, indeed, in prose, which might have incurred blame through excess, but in the language of the gods, which could be accused of no liberty, and in which he might recall, from time to time, expressions of Virgil or of Homer. He was spokesman in those great events which were stirring every mind, the war against Gildo or Alaric, the fall of Rufinus or Eutropius ; and then it was that he appeared at Rome, Milan, or Ravenna before Honorius, Stilicho, and the high dignitaries of the Empire, to speak in the name of the great senatorial assembly and the aristocracy of Rome ; to treat these Christian poten- tates as he would have treated Augustus and his court ; to envelop them in a cloud of words breathing, as it were, * idolatrous incense and the perfume of sacrifice ; and entangle them in a sort of complicity with the Paganism * By the ashes of Paul, by hoary Peter's shrine, hurt not, O Jacob, my verses. If, instead of shield, Thomas protect thy breast and Bartholomew goes with thee to battle as companion ; if by the aid of the saints the barbarian maj^ not cross the Alps ; so may also holy Susanna give tliee her strength. — Cladd. Epig. 27. 166 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. whicli they were not strong enough to disperse. Had he to praise Theodosius, he represented him, after giving his last advice to Stjlicho, as taking flight for heaven, hke Komulus of old, traversing the milky way, cleaving to right and left the shadows which pressed respectingly on his course, leaving far behind him Apollo, Mercury, and Jupiter, and taking his place on the highest summit of the empyrean, whilst his star rose in the east, to take another loving glance at his son Arcadius, and set regretfully on the dominions of Honorius, in the Western Empire. Thus did the poet of this century sing of the apotheosis of the greatest defenders and crowned servants of Christianity. Still holder and freer was his tone in addressing the young Honorius, not hesitating on the occasion of his marriage to Mary to picture Love and Cupid coming to pierce the heart of the prince with their darts, and departing to boast of his exploits to Venus in her Cyprian palace, of which he gave a sounding description. The goddess, borne by a triton, crossed the seas, arrived at Eavenna, and entering the palace of the espoused, found them reading the ancient poets. The odes of Sappho (the reading of which pagans forbade to their children) was what Claudian placed in the hands of the young bride of Honorius.* But there was a greater solemnity for him. In the year 404, when Honorius had reigned nine years, pre- ferring the Christian city of Eavenna to Eome, which was still bound to the false gods, and having issued three edicts against Paganism, he decided, after long hesitation, to go to Eome, to celebrate his sixth consu- late. He took possession of the old palace of Augustus, * Dc Nuptiis Hoiiorii et Mariœ, v. 235. PAGAN LITEEATURE. — POETEY. 167 on the Palatine, and gathered around him that divided Senate, the majority of which was still deploring the overthrow of the altar of Victory. In that great assembly, wherein the Christians preponderated by influence, if not by number, Claudian came forward charged to make known the wishes of the Senate and people, and from a parchment on which his verses were written in letters of gold related a dream: — "Balmy sleep gives back to our calmed hearts all the thoughts that during the day have troubled our souls. The hunter dreams of the woods, the judge of his tribunal, and the skilful rider thinks in sleep to pass a fancied goal. Me, also, does the worship of the muses pursue in the silence of night, and brings me back to an accus- tomed task. I dreamt that in the midst of heaven's starry vault I was bringing my songs to the feet of mighty Jove, and, as sleep has its sweet illusions, thought I saw the hallowed choir of the gods applaud- ing my words. I sang of the vanquished giants, Enceladus and Typhœus, and of the joy with which heaven received Jupiter, all radiant with triumph. But no vain image deceived me. No ivory gate sent me forth a deceitful vision. Here is the prince, the world's master, high as Olympus. There in truth that assembly which I saw, an assembly of gods. Sleep could show me nothing more excellent, and the Court has rivalled heaven."* Nothing at once more polished or more pagan could be said. , After this brilliant exordium he continued. First he vowed a temple to Fortune * En princeps, en orbis apex tequahis Olympo ! En, quales memini, turba verenda. Deos ! Fingere nil niajus pohiit sopor ; altaque vati Conventum coclo pr?ebiiit aula parem. Claud, de Sext. Consul. Honor. 'Prcfatio, l-2o. 168 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. (Fortuna redux), since Rome and the consulate had recovered tlieir majesty. When Apollo abandoned for a moment his splendid home at Delphi the laurel became hut a common shrub, the oracles were dumb ; but as the god's return gave voice to caves and forests, so did Mount Palatine revive at the presence of the new deity and remembered the Caesars who for so many ages had dwelt therein. " Truly no other home suits as well the masters of the world, no other mount exalt so highly the imperial power or more dominion to the supreme law, turning as it does over the forum and the vanquished rostra. Behold the sacred palace everywhere environed by temples. How the gods guard it round ! Before me I behold Jove's sanc- tuary, the mighty steeps of the Tarpeian rock, sculp- tured porticoes, statues that rise toward heaven, holy buildings whose crowded roofs darken the sky. I perceive the columns studded with many a ship-beak in iron and numberless arches charged with spoils. Respected Prince, dost thou not recognize thy house- hold gods ? " Agnoscisque tuos, princeps venerancle, pénates.* There was more than imagination or empty pomp in such verses. They read a bold lesson to the prince who had deserted Rome to hide himself in Ravenna, and it was not without temerity that Claudian called him back to his pagan pénates, to Mount Palatine as a place still defended by the divine sentinels which are standing around. But a fine sentiment of Roman patriotism pushed to a singular degree in a native of Alexandria explains * Claud, de Sext. Cons. Honor, v. 39-53. PAGAN LITERATUKE. — POETRY. 169 and gives a reason for the poet's unusual audacity. It was a proof of the deep feeling of unity with which Kome had infected all the nations under her sway. Claudian had digested the whole of Roman antiquity, and was penetrated with the spirit of Latin heroism. He filled his verse with the names of the Fahricii, Decii, and Scipios ; not as mere verbiage to stock the edifice of an empty poetry, but as living thoughts restoring, if but for a moment, the faded past. Not Jupiter, in whom he only half believed, nor Ceres, nor Proserpine, but Rome was the true divinity of Clau- dian ; Rome as she was pictured on her monuments and seen in the public places or in the temples which even in Asian cities had been dedicated to her name. " Rushing forth on a chariot, followed in breathless course by her two outriders, Terror and Impetuosity, with helmeted head and bare shoulder, in her hand the sword of victory, turned now against Parthian, now against German." Such was the deity of his dreams, and in admiration of her stern beauty he was never weary. At other times, quitting his rich and florid mytho- logy, he seized the very idea of Rome in her career of conquest and legislation, expressing it with an accuracy worthy of a historian or a laAvyer. " She is the mother of arms and of law ; she has stretched her empire over the world, and given to law her earliest cradle ; she alone received the vanquished to her bosom, and gave her name as consolation to the human race, treating it not as its queen, but its mother. She made citizens of those she had conquered, and bound earth's extremities by a chain of love. By her peaceful genius, we find all of us our country under foreign sides, and change our VOL. I. 8 170 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. dwelling with impunity. Througli ber it is but play to visit tbe frozen sbores of Tbule and penetrate regions wbose very name caused our fathers horror. Through ber we drink at will of the Kliine or Orontes ; through ber we are but one people, and her empire will know no end. The Sibyl has given ber promise, Jupiter thunders but for her, and Pallas covers her with ber whole œgis."* I have treated of Claudian in detail, as being the next in tbe rank of poets to Lucan, and do not shrink from putting him above Statius and all subsequent poets, on account of a singular brilliancy of imagery, an astonish- ing richness of metaphor, and a warmth of tone which often called forth the true light of poetic diction. But I cannot veil his faults, in devoting such great qualities to the service of a religion which no longer inspired any mind ; for Paganism had its time of inspiration in days when it was sustained by a kind of faith, as when Homer pictured a Jupiter the movement of whose eye- brow made the world tremble, with such deep religious truth that the poet himself seemed awed by tbe mighty image be had just evoked. Virgil, too, in less degree, lighted upon some measure of the same inspiration, when be called us to assist at the foundation of the Koman Destiny, at that assembly of gods wherein it was decided that tbe stones of the Capitol should never be displaced. But Claudian scarcely believed in these gods ; he used them as so many actors to pour ■i- Ha3C est in gremium victos qure sola recepit, Humamiraque genus commimi nomine fovit, Matris non dominœ ritu ; IIu.jus pacificis debemus logibus omnes Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Claudian, de Consul. Stiliclion. lib. ill. 13C-158. PAGAN LITERATURE. — POETRY. 171 forth school harangues, and only brought forward Jupiter, Juno, and Pluto to treat of some common- place about glory or pardon, farewell or despair. It was worse when he disposed them as so many slaves in the train of his protectors ; made them march behind the chariot of Stilicho, or hurled them in pursuit of such of his enemies as Rufinus ; and in this all the badness and ser\àlity of that pagan society, whose disorders w^e have glanced at, was at once betrayed. Like his friends, the Roman senators, he ofiered vows in secret for the triumph of Arbogastes or Eugenius, whom he disowned on their fall — finding, when one had died on the battle-field, and the other had, like Brutus at Philippi, fallen on his own sword, nothing but poetic insults for their memory. When Rufinus, again sur- rounded by his enemies, was torn in pieces, his head carried one way, his arms another, and the fragments of his body a third, Claudiau showed a savage joy, and could not gloat sufficiently over the blood which he saw flow '5\ith the same pleasure as Diana felt when her dogs tore Actaeon limb from limb, and exclaimed, "Happy was the hand which first was plunged into such blood as that."* Manldnd could scarcely inspire the poets of this time more than the gods. The familiarity of Augustus, the elegant and prudent commerce he sustained with his poets, was efficient to encourage the muses of Virgil and Horace ; he wished for flattery, but the more delicate it was, the more did it please him. Far dif- ferent was the courtiership of the Lower Empire to which our poet cringed. Stilicho was a Vandal, and Eutropius an eunuch, but Claudian was their hired * In Rufinum, lib. ii. 400. 172 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. servant, owing tliem verses in return for every benefit they conferred. All antiquity then was sacrificed to Stilicho ; lie was compared to the Scipios, who had patronized poetry, but he was raised to a higher place. Serena, his wife, was invited to give her auspices to the poet's marriage, and in an invitatory epistle in verse, by which he announced it to the great princess, he reminded her that Juno assisted at those of Orj)heus, and hints that the queen of earth will not suffer herself to be excelled in generosity by the queen of heaven.* In such phrases he addressed a Christian guilty of the unpardonable crimes in his pagan eyes of burning the Sibylline books, and of snatching from the goddess in the temple of Ceres her necklace, whilst repulsing with a kick the ancient vestal who reproached her with the sacrilege. Thus all the poet's Paganism was incapable of ex- tracting from him a word of ill-will towards the enemies of his religion, and he includes them all in a generous forgiveness. This leaning towards panegyric was a sign of a degradation of morality ; not only did it take from the poet all moral dignity, but was inimical to the spirit of poetry. The panegyrist, in fact, cannot take the truly great and heroic as the object of his verse. He must praise and immortalize everything — take his hero at his birth, and follow him through his childish games ; and when Honorius could not lead his armies in person, find a reason for his inaction in declaring the boy of nine to be busied in philosophic study at the * Seel qimd Thre'ico Juno placabilis Orphei, Hoc poteris votis esse, Serena, meis. Illius expectat famiilantia sidera nutum; Sub pedibus regitur terra fretumque tuis. PAGAN LITERATURE. — POETRY. 173 moment when he was sought for that he might be made Augustus. Such is the law of panegyi-ic. The publicity with which these compositions were declaimed, and the custom of public readings of them, brought the poets of the Decline to the oblivion which was their destiny. It has been ingeniously shown how this custom, unknown to the time of Virgil — the self- conceited habit introduced by Pollio, and encouraged later by Nero, of bringing a multitude together at the recital of a poem — contributed profoundly to stifle genius by degrading it to a mere literary game and pastime for men of culture. When a whole people is addressed, there must be some common thoughts, which must be eloquent to gain hearers — simple to gain appreciation. But when only a cloyed and cap- tious handful of so-called fine spirits, who boast of never admiring, because that faculty seems redolent of simplicity, is in question, then, instead of mere emo- tion, there must be astonishment. It is the principle of periods of decline to strain every nerve to astound by the deep science of the matter and the excessive refinement of the form. As to the former, it is at such times that we meet with those myth-loving poets, astronomers, geographers, naturalists, who will put into their Latin verse everything — whether the pheno- mena of Aratus, the astronomy of Ptolemy, or descrip- tions of the earth by some other ancient — except poetry itself. As to the latter, everything is sacrificed to minute detail — to culture, refinement — to the budding of a happy phrase, hid in some word as in a germ, which is developed, enlarged, watered, cherished, till at last it displays its whole foliage to some delighted assembly. 174 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. This was the method of Claudian, whereby he struggled to show himself the most learned man of antiquity. His whole art lay in detaching phrases, in rounding periods, refining and polishing the points which were to hold the memory and he learnt by rote, for whereas few knew separate scraps of the " J^neid" or " Iliad," of which the whole or none must be known, no one who had ever heard it forgot the opening of Claudian' s poem against Eufinus : — Sœpe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem, ' Curarent superi terras, an niillus inesset Rector, et incerto lluereut mortalia casu. I pass over the stirring lines which follow, in which he developes at length the Stoic thesis, and which ended in these verses, to which he was bound to come at any price : — Abstulit hunc primum Rufiui pœna tumiiltum, Absolvitque cleus. One of the chief secrets of the literature of the Decline was this cutting the line and arresting the sentence after the first hemistich, instead of finishing together the poetic period and the idea ; another pro- cess to excite surprise was hit upon, the finishing the idea before the line, which was thought an achieve- ment. Herein lay all Claudian's defects. He was great in promises, as in beginning his invective against Rufinus by involdng heaven and earth. His works were full of that flourish, that passion for erudition and exaggeration of form, as well as the hidden un- belief suddenly revealed in his pretension of judging and absolving the gods, of whose justice he was not sure. The faults of Claudian himself, and of the PAGAN LITERATURE. — POETRY. 175 Decline, lay iu that master-vice of scepticism which had strangled faith, and with it inspiration. We might still after Claudian treat of poets animated by the breath of heathenism, were it good to lengthen the history of a death-struggle. Some fire still burned in the breast of Rutilius Numantianus, who also honoured in Rome the mistress of law and arms, the uuiter of the world into a single faith. Many a feature might be added to our sketch of pagan society from the bold heathenism of this poet's writings. Claudian had scarcely ventured on one stealthy epigram against Jacobus, but Rutilius, on his return voyage from Rome to Marseilles, having passed the island of Capraria, which he found tenanted by monks, shows us what he thought of these men of black robe and stern countenance, whom he qualified as hating the light : — "Called from a Greek word monks, as wishing to live without witnesses ; flying the gifts of fortune to avoid the blows, making themselves wretched that they may not know misery. What can that fury of the troubled brain be which carries so far the terror of evil as not to undergo what is good?"* These words of Rutilius were to be repeated later by the Provençal poets, by the calumnious minstrels of the langue cVoil in their perpetual strife with the clergy, * Processii pelagi jam se Capraria tollit; Squalit lucilugis insula plena viris. I^Dsi se monachos graio cognomine dicunt, Quox soli nullo %ivere teste volunt. Munera fortuutB mctuunt dum daniua verentur. Qiiisquam sponte miser, ne miser esse queat ? Quœnam perversi rabies tam stnlta cerebri, Dum mala formidas liec bona posse i)ati ? RuTiL. Itin. 439. 176 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. and so to be handed from age to age, to our fathers, to ourselves, who, perhaps, may think them new. It would be more interesting to follow this pagan poetry at the moment in which it fell in some manner under Christian influence, in the writings of Ausonius in the fourth and Sidonius Apollinaris in the fifth century. The latter followed his master Claudian ; like him framing epithalamia, j)anegyrics, and sonnets on pagan models, evoking with his pen Thetis and Peleus, Venus and Cupid, and composing pieces to be learnt by heart. In one of these he shows Rome appearing helmetless, dragging painfully her lance and buclder in the assembly of the gods, and complaining that she, the former mistress of the world, should now be under the domination of the Caesars, but at least, she exclaimed, if I must serve, let heaven send me a Trajan ! Jupiter accordingly sent her Avitus, who reigned but one year, and amid thorough disorder, but he was the father-in-law of Sidonius. The poet excused the imperfection of his verse by the presence of the barbarians — those men of six feet high, with hair greased with rancid butter, who surrounded him importunately, stunned him with rude songs wild as their own forests, and took from him the liberty of mind necessary to inspiration. Fortunatus was not so sensitive, but though he lived at the court of these terrible patrons, he had not forgotten his Claudian. In leaving Italy he had brought carefully under his mantle the roll of his master's poetry, had studied and assimilated it, and when the great event of a marriage between Sigebert and the beautiful Brunehaut came to pass, was happy in finding an occasion for his recollections, PAGAN LITERATURE. POETRY. 177 in bringing Cupid from Cyprus to the wedding, to affiance these barbarians, in making Love sing the praise of the prince and Yenus of the princess, another Venus, fairer than the Nereids, to whom the river gods were happy to offer their nymphs. Ipsa sua subclimt tibi fluimna nymphas. Venus and Amor little knew that the lovely Spaniard, the 3'oung princess of the barbarians, the world's delight, would one day be dragged by the hair at the tail of a wild charger, amidst the yells of a barbarian army. As the pagan divinities and Jupiter himself had lost their power of foretelling such a future, so also had the epopee left these undiscerning deities for the camp of the once despised barbarian; and was to be found then, as ever, to her shame, on the side of the victors. As with Greek against Trojan, as with the Roman against the Avorld, so now with the barbarian against Rome. It lurked in those songs of the people which told of the beautiful Sigurd, conqueror of the dragon, and grouped around his myth the heroes of the invasion ; in those which pictured Attila, the world's subduer, dying of hunger, a despairing captive in the depths of a cavern, gold- surrounded but shut in by iron doors, while his enemy bade him " Surfeit thyself with gold — take thy fill of money." It was with Theodoric hunting wild beasts in the forest, and then having become Christian in his old age, appearing on earth from time to time, in the belief of the Swabian peasantry, to announce to men the disasters of the Empire. Such was the destiny of the poetry which Rome had thought all her own. The theatre had not fallen before the vices of the de- generate Romans of the Decline, or the scandal of the 8 -!■ 178 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUET. gladiatorial and mimetic shows, or before the rivalry from the readings, or an exhausted treasury. It had not suc- cumbed to the decrees of Christian emperors, for though they had at first expressly suspended theatrical repre- sentations, a law of Arcadius in 399, levelled against certain impurities therein, disclaimed any intention of suppressing them, lest the people should be dispirited. It remained, and Claudian reckoned among the inaugu- rators of the consulate of Mallius, actors of the sock and of the buskin, devoted respectively to tragedy and comedy : thus at the end of the fourth century we find two contemporary comedies : one the " Game of the Seven Sages," from the pen of Ausonius, a subject dear to the Middle Age, and often repeated, consisted of monologue in which each of the seven successively enunciated his wise maxims with all fit dramatic surroundings ; the other, " Querolus," was also a work of the fourth century, and has been brought forward in the skilful comments of M. Magnin as a strong proof of the con- tinuity of theatrical tradition. The i^rologue commences by asking silence and a hearing from the audience for a barbarian who wished to revive the learned games of Greece and Latin anti- quity, for he followed the steps of Plautus in imitating the " Aulularius." The first who entered on the scene was an entirely pagan personage in the shape of the family Lar, and he appeared, as will be seen, before a society in full decay. The plot was as follows : — An old miser named Euclion, having hidden his money in an urn, filled it for better concealment with ashes, and inscribed upon it that it contained the remains of his father ; he then departed with light heart on a long journey. On the way he died, having made one of his parasites co-heir PAGAN LITEKATURE. — POETRY. 179 with his son, and charged him to tell the latter that all the gold the old man had amassed was to he found in a certain urn. The parasite arrived and, fully resolved to reap the sole profit of the legacy, passed himself off as a magician, and was introduced by Querolus, the miser's son, into his house. There he was left alone, and having ransacked the premises and found only one urn, the inscription of which told him that it held ashes, in a rage threw it out of window : it broke at the feet of Querolus, and thus betrayed the secret. The parasite was imprudent enough to claim his share, and brought forward the will, but Querolus replied, "Either you knew what the urn held, in which case I shall treat you as a thief, or you did not, in which case I shall have you punished as a violator of tombs." And so the comedy ended. But it affords another page to add to those already cited, and complete wdiat our classic education often slurs over — -the reverse side of that splendid Roman antiquity ; for not only does Querolus lash with his satire everything public, official, and solemn in the old society, and expose the perfidy and cupidity of the pagan priests by showing, for instance, how they denounced all the offerings and other impostures which were essential to the system of w'orshij) ; not only does he ridicule the whole crew of divines, augurs, and astrologers who fattened on public credulity, but he shows us the honest man of Paganism one to be honoured by mortals and protected by the gods, TheLar set forth the plot in these terms : — "lam," he said, "the guardian and inhabitant of this my assigned house ; I temper Fate's decrees for it ; if any good luck is promised I press it on, if bad, I soften the blow. I rule the afiairs of this Querolus, who is 180 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. neither agreeable nor the reverse. At present he is in want of nothing ; soon we shall make him very rich, and he will deserve it, for if you think that we don't treat worthy people according to their worth you are mistaken." Knowing Querolus' had temper, he promises himself a laugh at his expense. Soon Querolus enters, and asks why the bad are always happy and the good un- fortunate, and the Lar tells them he will explain it. Querolus declares that he does not count himself among the unhappy, whereupon he puts this question to him, — The Lar. " Have you never stolen, Querolus ?" Querolus. " Never since I have lost the habit of doing so. When I was young I admit that I did play some young man's tricks." Lar. "Why then give up such a laudable crime? and what shall we say as to lying ?" Querolus. " Well, who does tell the truth ? That little sin belongs to every one. Pass on to the next thing." Lar. "Certainly, as there is no harm in lying; but how about adultery?" Querolus. " Oh; but that's no crime." Lar. " When did they begin to permit it, then ? Tell me how often you have sworn, and be quick about it." Querolus. "All in good time. That's a thing I've never been guilty of." Lar. "I allow for a thousand perjuries. Tell me the rest, or at least how often you have sworn love to people you hated." Querolns. " What a wretch I am to have such a PAGAN LITERATURE. POETRY. 181 pitiless judge. I confess I have often sworn and given my word without giving my faith." The Lar, content with this confession, tries to re- assure Querohis by proving once more that the gods overlook the peccadilloes of good fellows. And this, be it remarked, shows us the more innocent side of that society, so we can judge of the dangers which must have surrounded it. The Lar, ■s\ishing to reward Querolus for his candour, promises to grant his wishes but to warn him of their peril. His wish was the glory of battle but not the blows. He longed for Titus's cash-box but not for his gout. He wanted to be a decemvir, but not to pay the fee for the honour ; to be lastly a simple citizen, but powerful enough to rob his neighbours without any one gainsaying it. To which the Lar answers, "It is not influence, but sheer rob- bery, that you are hankering for." Such was the visible and glaring disorder ranged at the gates of that wealthy and learned society. But we must examine what lay beneath and within it amongst the redoubtable and implacable slave-caste. One of them named Pantomalus appears in " Querolus," and shows us of what sort they were, and in what their wishes and thoughts consisted in the fifth century, " It is acknowledged," he says, " the slave-masters are bad, but I have found none worse than mine ; not that he is actually cruel, but so exacting and cross. If there's any theft in the establishment he flies out as if it was a crime. If one happens to throw a table, chair, or bed on the fire, see how he scolds ; he calls it hastiness. He keeps the accounts from end to end with his own hands, and if anything is wrong pretends that we must make it up. How unjust masters are ! They find us taking 182 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. our nap in the daytime, the secret of which is that we are up all night. I don't know what nature has made better than the night. It is our day. Then we go to the baths with the pretty female slaves. That is free- dom in life. We shut our masters up at home, and are sure of their being out of the way. We have no jealousies ; there is but one family among slaves ; for us it is one long festival, wedding games and baccha- nals, and therefore few of us want to be freed. What freedman could stand such expense or be sure of such impunity ? " We see then that family life at this time was menaced as well as property ; deep-seated perils were shaking that world with its thin crust of marble and gold ; domestic danger was besieging those haughty patricians who owned the world, in the very days which they passed on the benches of the Circus applauding the course of the chariot. One of two things — either the poet wished to crush the slave with his own vices, and answer the complaint of Christianity by showing him to be unworthy of en- franchisement, which would be an eternal proof of the pitiless cruelty of Paganism towards the portion of mankind which it held in fetters, or to show the peril society was running, in which case we must admire the boldness of the Fathers in reading, whilst tolerating slavery, such severe lessons on the equality of all men before God ; and even now may ask ourselves whether the fears of those are well-founded who wish to relegate to times of security such dangerous truths, as if the truths of the Gospel were not made for a period in which suffering and sacrifice alike are frequent. The dramatic shows lastc/i through the following cen- PAGAN LITERATURE. — POETRY. 183 turies. In 510 Theocloric rebuilt the theatre of Mar- cellus at Rome, and the Senate undertook the expense of providing actors. In Gaul Chilperic repaired the stage at Soissons, and Terence was acted there in the seventh and eighth centuries. Of this we have proof in a fragment which has been preserved to us. It opens with a prologue, in which Jerome, the manager of the theatre, announces to the audience the perform- ance of a comedy by Terence. A buffoon {delusor) then appears, who expresses disgust at the idea, and wishes them to pack off such a broken-down poet. Terence thereupon enters in person, and encounters the young man who had insulted him, whereupon there is a dialogue and the commencement of a new and bar- barous comedy. The clown replies to Terence, " I am worth more than you. You are old, I am young. You are only a dry old stick ; I am a green tree." The latter asks where his fruit is, and the two begin to use strong language, then threats, and the pageant breaks off just as they are coming to blows.* A council held at Rome in 680 forbade bishops to attend at the shows of mimes, and a letter of Alcuin a little later exhorts certain abbots, priests like himself, to abstain from theatrical amusements. In the eleventh century, at the marriage of Beatrix, mother of the Countess Matilda, mimes were still playing after the old method. Later Yitalis of Blois composed two comedies; one called " Geta," the other "Amphitryon." Thus "Amphitryon" was played for the men of the twelfth century, as Molière was to bring it again under the eyes of the staid and learned court of Louis XIV. So hard was it to subdue that lusty spirit of antiquity, * Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, première series, t. i. 517. 184 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. which was to reappear in every age, not only in the centuries of the Revival, but in those of purer and severer character, which seemed farthest removed from the taste of the ancients. In fact, mythology was not, as has been supposed, a posthumous resurrection, a wonder of the Revival, an effort to bring back a departed element into literature. Tasso, Camoens, and Milton are not open to the accusa- tion of having revived the pagan muses ; it was rather Paganism perpetuating itself in literature, as in religion by superstition, in law by the oppression of the weak, by slavery, and by divorce ; and as astrologers con- tinued the science, so did mythologists continue the literature, of heathendom. Mythology had entered deep into the manners of anti- quity. Rome, disputed for by Belisarius and Totila, still kept the vessel in which Ciesar was fabled to have touched the shores of Italy. The teeth of the Eryman- thian Boar were still shown at Beneventum, and upon the ornaments borne by the Emperor at Rome on days of feasting were embroidered the Labyrinth and the Minotaur, to signify that his thoughts should be im- penetrable to his subjects. In the mosaics which beautify the churches of Ravenna and Venice a number of subjects borrowed from the old fables are to be found. Thus, in the baptism of Christ, the Jordan is depicted as an old man, nude, crowned with rushes, pouring from an urn the waters of the river. The earth was represented as a female, sometimes nude, sometimes covered with flowers ; the sea under the features of a man vomiting forth water. The Caroline books alluded to these abuses, and condemned them in vain, so that under Charles the Great artists employed all their time PAGAN LITERATURE. — POETRY. 185 in painting Actœon, Atys, and Bellerophon, until mytbolog}' triumphed everywhere. Later, in describing the palaces of the time and their mosaics, they inform us that the principal group represented Amor dis- charging his arrows, and around him were the beautiful women of old whom he had struck. At Florence, during festivals, bands of youths paraded the city, the handsomest at their head, who was called Love. At marriages during the Middle Age it was customary to play little pastoral dramas, in which Cupid appeared levelling his shafts at the ladies present. The first Spanish dramatic poem by Rodrigo de Cota (1470) was a simple dialogue between an old man and Love. It cannot be supposed that, since mythology still held the manners and the arts, that it would relax its hold on poetry, and we find the barbarians comjiosing works of entirely pagan character, and revelling, in the seventh and eighth centuries, in all the impurity of Catullus. The fables of Ovid were translated in verse, and I have seen at St. Gall a complaint of Œdipus, rhymed like the chants of the Church, and so noted that the music was joined to the text, which proves it to have been the work of a man who laboured for the public. Mythology even returned in the works which came from the pen of men of heroic courage and virtue, as St. Columba and St. Boniface. The mythology of Dante's Hell has been condemned as a pedantic contrivance to bring science into his art, fit only to astonish the mind ; but he did but follow in this the inspiration, tastes, and prejudices of the men of his time, and, far from being pedantic, he obeyed the feelings of a people which still believed in such things as the hidden virtue of the . statue of Mars, the geese of the Capitol, and the aiiciUa. The 186 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. ancient deities had but changed their form and become daemons or fallen angels ; in this sense the poet used them, according to his belief in them ; and it is not till we come to his Purgatory and Paradise that we feel that poetry was entering its true destiny. We must traverse the Middle Age, the Eevival, the quarrels of the Jansenists and Molinists, of ancients and moderns, to find the end of mythology ; and can we say even now that we have found it ? All this time had to elapse that, in religion, faith might rise in triumph above the creed, in law the spirit of equity might conquer the arbitrary and changeful letter, that in literature thought might become mistress of form and independent of tradition. The literature of the fifth century then preserved the tradition of its art, as treasure in a vase which must ultimately be broken ; but we must confess that the receptacle was sculptured with art, and its fair exterior was calculated to excite the desire of many. "When it had been shattered, and its contents were in dispute, the majority thought themselves rich in having picked up a morsel of the painted clay, but few were found to grasp the treasure which had been hidden within. 187 CHAPTER VII. THE LITERARY TRADITION. We have seen what poetic inspiration could effect in the fifth century, how the majesty of the epopee was sustained as by a last effort in the poems of Claudian, how the drama remained poj)ular, and how the comedy of Plautus lived again in the merry scenes of" Querolus." The tales which had charmed the polished imagination of antiquity did not weary the barbarian world, and the fables which had been expelled from their religious shrines long took refuge in the manners, arts, and poetry of the Christianized nations. But the old in- spiration was burning itself out day by day. The ancient poetry had been essentially religious in origin and principle, the only form of preaching known to Paganism ; it was the accompaniment of the mysteries, and the histories, destined afterwards to be gathered up into the epic celebrations of god-born heroes, were originally a part of divine worship. Hymns to the immortals had been the earliest form of poetry. The theatre had only opened for tragedy on the feasts of Bacchus, and as a form of public worship. The destiny of poetry was lowered when it went forth from the temples to be given to the people in the works of Homer and Hesiod, to enter with Yirgil into familiar inter- course with Augustus, to sit as a courtier at the feet of 188 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Nero, and lastly, to justify all misgivings on its behalf, in stooping under Claudian to the domestic life of Stilicho and the other minions of Honorius. Inspira- tion it had no longer, but tradition still lived tenaciously in the ancient literature ; its genius had departed, but its methods survived. Genius is but a lightning-flash, playing on the human mind, but in such vivid beauty that man would fain fix it there for ever ; science grasps by one intense effort the passing words, holds them in meditation, and thence unfolds the ideal of an eternal beauty. Thus the tradition of the beautiful is preserved through those masterpieces of genius which became the property and educating principle of the human mind. No century can be so unhappy as not to find pleasure and consolation even in its most barren period from some productions of literature's golden age. We must sum up the services and show the conservative spirit and method of tradition, and now, especially, observe the labours whereby it was perpetuated in antiquity, and by dint of which it passed into the bosom of the Church. The traditions of literature lived through the old times, as indeed ever, principally in schools and by teaching. What was the Roman method of teaching. Was it — and this, like all great questions, is a perpetual one — carried on under a principle of authority or one of liberty ? In the earliest period of Roman history teaching seems to have been free, or rather it fell under that omnipotent domestic authority which hitherto the legis- lature had not dared to touch. The father at his family hearth amidst his household gods was a type of Jupiter, and his rule at home symbolized, and was the secret in Roman eyes, of that universal empire destined to be THE LITEKARY TRADITION. 189 borne by them abroad to the world's extremity. The law did uot trouble itself to know what masters he seated at his side, or to what schools his sous were sent ; and when Crates of Mallos opened the first school of grammar and Carneades of rhetoric, fathers pur- chased in open market the expensive services of some of these philosophers at the cost of about four hundred thousand sesterces a year. But teaching spread so rapidly that in Caesar's time no less than twenty public schools were to be counted, and the number of rhetori- cians, the dangerous facility of their art, undertaking as it did to prove the j^ro and con., the true and the false, began to startle the old Roman gravity and provoked from the censors, Cnaeus Domitius and Licinius Crassus the following decree: "We have learnt that certain teachers, calling themselves Latin rhetoricians, have introduced a new kind of discipline. Our ancestors have laid down what it pleased them that their children should learn and what schools they should frequent. These innovations, as contrary to the customs of our fathers, displease us and do not appear to us proper. Therefore we have thought it necessary to make known to those who keep and those who frequent these schools that they are displeasing to us." In this decree appears the severe censorship of old Rome, but it was powerless, for the schools of the rhetoricians were soon reopened on every side. Later Roman policy perceived that private tuition could not be stifled, but might be directed, usefully aided, and enlightened by the foundation of a public instruction. Caesar was the first to grant it privileges, and whilst honouring to keep it within bounds. Vespasian fixed the salaries of the public professors at a hundred 190 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. thousand sesterces, and the imperial schools of the Capitol, destined to be the haunt of the youth of the whole world, were founded. Adrian built the Athe- naeum, and granted honourable privileges to public instruction, and Alexander Severus founded burses (sti- pendia) for poor scholars of good family. Thus the imperial system of teaching was constituted, its professoriate became a magistracy, a literary tradition was infused into many of the public institutions of Rome, and liberty flourished under its shade ; for at this epoch we find from the letters of the younger Pliny families associated in one city, under the auspices of a man of influence, to found there the first literary resort open to the children of the town. One day at Comum the young son of one of the inhabitants came with his father to visit Pliny in his library. " Do you study? " asked Pliny. "Yes," was the youth's answer. ' ' Where ?" "At Milan . " " Why not here ? ' ' (The father) " There are no masters." " And why ? is it not your interest, as fathers of families, to keep your children near you. What can be more consoling, more cheap, and more satisfactory as regards their morals ? Is it so difficult to get funds to engage masters ? I, though childless, am ready, for love to this city, which I look on as daughter or a mother, to undertake a third of the sum required. I would promise the whole did I not think it would be dangerous, as it is in many places where professors are paid from public funds. Those who are careless of the money of others keep good watch over their own, and will always take care that what they spend shall not fall into unworthy hands. Let your children, educated on their own native soil, learn early to love it, and may you be able to attract THE LITERAKY TRADITION. 191 professors of such mark that one day the neighbouring cities may send their children to your schools." * Nothing can he more modern in spirit, more judicious and benevolent than this, worthy in fact of times much nearer our own ; but still antiquity opened no slave- schools — no such idea of literary benefits for high and low ever entered its philosophy. To come to the Christian emperors. Constantino, instead of extinguishing the old lights, became their protector, and as a benefactor to public tuition wrote to the poet Optatianus, " I wish my century to afford an easy access to eloquence, and render a friendly testi- mony to serious studies." Three of his laws, dated aun. 321, 326, 336, re-enacted the old imperial consti- tutions, and granted to public professors of medicine, grammar, and literature in general, exemption from municipal taxes, military service, and every call on property and residence which the imperial tax-system required ; extending the same privileges to their wives and children, that many might be called to liberal studies, " quo facilius liheralihus stiidiis multos insti- tuant.'' t The law also guaranteed them against personal injury, punishing by a fine of a hundred thousand pieces of gold any one who publicly insulted them, or if a slave was the offender, by beating with rods before the person aggrieved, that the latter might enjoy the sight of the penalty.! A decree of Gratian and Valentinian in a.d. 76 took the more solid measure of fixing the salary of all professors throughout Gaul, desiring that in each metropolis a yearly stipend of * Plin. Jun. lib. iv. 12. f Cod. Theod. lib. xiii. tit. iii. 1. 3 ; De Medicis et Profes- soribns. 1 Ibid. lib. i. 192 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. twenty-eiglit annones, or twenty-four times the military allowance, sliould be given to the rhetoricians, and twelve to the Greek and Latin grammarians. At Treves rhetoricians received thirty annones, Latin grammarians twenty, and Greek grammarians, if found able, twelve only.* In the West Greek teaching was sacrificed to the Latin, but the contrary was the case in the East. Thus were established the privileges, payment, and right of public instruction. But it was more important to think of the pupils than the masters, and the police of the schools were settled by an enactment of Valentinian dated 370. " Those who come to Rome to study must be furnished with a certificate of consent from the magistrates of their province. They must announce their intended subject of study on arrival, and make known their lodging to the office of the Censorship, the functionaries of which must strictly admonish them to w^orthy behaviour, to fear a bad name, and avoid those associations which are the first step towards crime ; consociationes qiias proximas esse putamus crim'nilbiis. They must warn them against too great a passion for ^Jublic spectacles, and against dis- orderly banquets. They shall have power to punish the disobedient by scourging, to send them back from Rome to their province. All who do not fall under censure may pursue their studies till twenty years old, then the magistracy must insist on their departure and provide for it in spite of them. A report must be sent from the offices at Rome every month to the provincial magistrates, and a yearly memorandum to the emperor, of those who are most worthy of employment." * Coil. Thcod. lib. ii. THE LITEEARY TEADITION. 193 As the tree grew and its foliage became thicker there was less room for the sun to reach it, and so private tuition gradually lost its freedom. A law of Julian, in 362, considering that masters ought to excel in morality and in eloquence, ordained that postulants for the honours of teaching must submit to be examined by a municipal commission chosen from the curia, whose judgment was then to be ratified by the prince. This was aimed at the Christians, to exclude from the chairs those whom he hated as Galilœans, but the decree was to recoil one day on its authors. In 425, a decree of Theodosius the Younger and Valentiniau III. gave per- mission to private professors to teach in families, but forbade their keeping public schools, to debar them from that road to fortune and even dignities, and at the same time interdicted public professors from domestic tuition on pain of losing their privileges.* We have to consider, then, three periods in Roman instruction. At first an absolute liberty for private tuition, but no ofiicial teaching; secondly, private teaching still existing, but the public system all-power- ful ; and during the golden age of the Empire, its longest and brightest period, an official instruction honoured and sustained by state aid, side by side with a general liberty which enabled every capable man to give proof of his learning by undertaking the education of his 5'oung fellow-citizens. But neither the measures of Julian nor those of Theodosius the Younger received their full accomplishment, for on every side private schools were opened which caused alarm and disquie- tude to the legislators. The year 425 approached too =t= Cod. Theod. 1. xiv. tit. xi. 1. 3 ; de professoribus piiblicis Constautiiiopolitanis. VOL. I. 9 194 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. nearly those formidable invasions which had already carried off Spain, and were destined to sever Gaul and all the provinces in turn from the power of the Koman Caesars. The laws never were in full vigour, and as, under the continual menace of invasion and before the tide of barbarism, the impoverished cities were little able to provide the large charge imposed by Antoninus and renewed by Gratian, public teaching had to disappear in favour of the private schools. Toulouse, at the end of the sixth century, possessed barely thirty gramma- rians, left at perfect liberty to assemble in delibera- tion amongst themselves, but hardly calculated to excite the jealousy of the Merovingian executive, since the object of their gatherings was only to know whether the adjective must always agree with its sub- stantive, or if the verb had always a frequentative form, making lego, leglto, as legitimate as moneo, monito. Instruction thus constituted had a power of exten- sion to the very ends of the Empire. We have marked its establishment at Treves, and at Xanten on the Rhine an altar has been found attesting the restoration of a school in that northern region by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. At Autun, Clermont, Bordeaux, Poitiers, Auch, Toulouse, and Narbonne flourished numberless schools, whose professors and grammarians, Greek and Latin, Ausonius lauded to the skies, and even Homer found in one of them a new Aristarchus to throw light on the obscure and doubtful passages. Britain offered the same spectacle, since the conquering Agricola introduced eloquence and Roman manners hand in hand, in the belief that, by throwing the toga over its haughty islanders, he would enervate their cou- rage and disarm their opposition. THE LITERARY TRADITION. 195 When Britain ceased to form part of the Empire, Roman culture survived in such a manner that the tra- ditions of the "^neid" were confounded with the fabulous tales of Cambria. The same songs celebrated the fame of Merlin, the enchanter, and of Brutus, the founder of the British realm, or vaunted the greatness of the old Latin city of Caerleon, with its baths and palaces, its schools and its forty philosophers. The same movement of intellect was seen in Spain. In the days of the republic Sertorius had founded a school of the liberal arts at Huesca, and later a legion of brilliant minds, such as Quintilian, Seneca, and Lucan came out of that province to Rome. So many poets and actors, indeed, did it produce in the time of Theodosius, that, unable to gain a livelihood in their own country, they passed the Pyrenees to seek their fortunes beyond. Moreover, when all intercourse seemed suspended between the central seat of empire and the provinces, the learned tradition survived through the most uncon- genial time, and lightened the obscurity of the darkest age. The imperial schools subsisted to the end of the seventh century, not only in Gaul but in Italy, Spain, and on every point of the old Roman world. In Italy, till the eleventh century, lay teachers pursued their course side by side with the ecclesiastical schools, as if to unite the end of the old imperial system to the origin of that of the universities, and especially the university of Bologna, which, in spite of difference from one another, and from the old schools of the Empire, per- petuated the public method of antiquity through a privileged professoriate and an universally accessible system of instruction. 9 * 196 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. As Alexander Severus hacl founded burses for poor scholars, so numberless colleges were opened during the Middle Age for students, who sat on straw at the feet of their masters to receive their tuition. On one side, the spirit of the universities was derived from antiquity, while the new principle brought forth in the schools and the laws of the emperors was entirely modern and moulded by Christianity — then a power in the world, and straining to penetrate its institutions. Antiquity loved seience, but as a miser loves his gold ; it loved it more than humanity, and feared by spreading to dis- honour it. Christianity loved science also but as it said, Venite ad me omnes ; and it loved mankind more. It honoured j)ublic eloquence, and encouraged it by the canons of its councils, as the favoured weapon which had brought the world under its dominion, and it distributed the gift with profusion. Therefore, from the time of Charles the Great, every province opened schools for the children of its peasants and serfs, and the bishop kept a higher school, supported by the alms of the rich proprietors of his Church, the benches of which were open to all. Around sprang up in numbers colleges and hospices for needy students and pilgrims from afar. Pious legacies for these purposes were encouraged, and we have ten or twelve enactments of St, Louis relating to the foundation of scholarships and colleges. Christendom's greatest minds, like Albert the Great and St. Bonaventura, did not think their vigils wasted in multiplying abstracts of Holy Scripture for poor students, hïblïa 2'>au'perum, and feared not, in opening the gates of knowledge to their widest, to encouragé by too liberal a training vocations that would be useless or dangerous to society. Christianity had THE LITERARY TRADITION. 197 no such scruple. It made science shine as its God makes the sun to beam upon the good and the evil, lea\'ing all responsibility to those who abused the light, but not dreaming of extinguishing it. What, then, was the nature of the teaching afforded by those schools whose origin, number, and duration have just been considered ? In the fifth century its spirit was still profoundly pagan, and proof of this is given in writings of Macrobius, the learned author of a "Commentary on Scipio's Dream." He compiled, also, under the title of " Saturnales," a sort of encyclo- paedia of the old learning of antiquity, as it had been handed down in literary tradition, and, to give to so dry a study the advantage of the dialogues introduced by Cicero into Latin literature, supposed a group of men of birth and letters, such as Symmachus, Fla- vianus, Caecina Albinus, Avienus, Eusebius the rheto- rician, and Servius the grammarian, to have assembled during the Saturnalia at the house of Praetextatus, to pass the time in social festival and philosophical dis- cussion. The mornings were devoted to serious pursuits, and in the evening a more playful mood and mirthful sallies enlivened the board. This assembly of sages, enjojing the repose so rare in the Rome of Theodosius, agitated, as it was, by incessant business and political anxieties, sought their natural recreation in the sciences, whose elements they had acquired in their youth, and show us, by the tenor of the'ir conversation, what constituted the education of the man of culture at the end of the fourth century. The discussion was opened upon the origin of the feast of the Saturnalia, which Praetextatus, as being the best versed in matters religious, was asked to expound. He 198 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. did not " seek for its cause in the hidden nature of any deity, but drew his explanation from some fabulous stories or the philosopher's comments upon the same for the secret causes which spring from the pure source of truth cannot be revealed even through the mysteries, and even he who can raise his spirit to their contem- plation must keep the result in the depths of his intelligence"* — and herein again appeared the old jealousy of heathenism, and its determination of having two theologies, as it had two kinds of science and politics — one theology for the learned patrician, another for the ignorant plebeian. Prtetextatus only gave out half his idea, for fear of betraying the secret of the mysteries, but he went very far in his avowal by urging, in conclusion, that the gods of different name really made up but one deity, the Sun, to whom, by physical and allegorical interpretation, must be referred all that was said of those gods who, of old, had crowded the heights of Olympus and Parnassus.t In this attempt to serve Paganism he destroyed it, and forgot, in giving his gods a refuge in the Sun, that Christians saw, in his deified luminary, the first of the servants of the Almighty, Pmetextatus would have been surprised could he have met at his table another writer of the time, who, in an admirable and too little known essay, gave speech to the constellation which the ancients adored, making it reprove with energy the worship whereby it was insulted by setting up it, the eternal slave of God, as His rival and enemy. So deeply was the theology of Prœtextatus, . the essence of this teaching, tainted by a Paganism * Macrobius, Saturnales, lib. i. 17. t Ibid. lib. i. 1-7. THE LITERARY TRADITION. 199 not yet transformed and purified by the wisdom of Alexandria. In his discourse he had named Virgil, and Evangelius the rhetorician present to act as critic and general opposer, seized the occasion of saying that many intentions had been assigned to the poet which he had never entertained.* S}Tnmachus replied by an eulogy upon Virgil ; and Prsetextatus himself undertook his defence, regarding him as of all the ancients the most versed in priestly law and the lore of religious anti- quities, sho\\àng how Virgil had distinguished the parts of the sacred rites, had never confounded dif- ferent kinds of gods and victims, and had known the worship proper to deities at home and from abroad.! Flavianus claimed further for him an intimate ac- quaintance with the science and rules of auspices and omens, and then the whole literary clique pointed out how he had scattered philosophic theories through- out his poems, the knowledge of astronomy displayed in them, what he borrowed from the Greeks, stealing the gold from Homer himself with consummate art, sometimes showing and at others hiding it, and how he had profited by the treasures of Ennius.t Lastly, they placed him above Cicero, as having known all the depths of pathos and exhausted the resources of eloquence, and being equally great as an orator and as a poet. In such grave debates the mornings of these days were passed, and in the evenings another portion of the teaching given by grammarians and rhetoricians was reproduced. Proof of this lies in the jokes and * Macrobius, Saturnales, lib. i. 24. f Ibid.Ub. iii. :;: Euseblus, lib. ,iv. ; Eustathius, lib. v.; Furius Albin. Severin, Ub. vi. 200 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. wagers the feasters proposed to each other, as indicated by Seneca the rhetorician. In the schools of his time, wherein discussions on agrarian law or imperial interest were no longer permitted, we find, among questions thought fit to exercise the eloquence of the Roman youth, and to occupy the leisure of the idle patricians, such an one as this — "Which is the first, the egg or the chicken ?" Was the world the creation of chance or of some supreme wisdom ? If of the latter, it needed a good beginning, and would a logical nature commence with that of the hen or of the egg ? We may leave the question where it was left in the dialogue of the " Saturnales,"* for it is enough to give an idea of the futility of that teaching, so grave and learned in pretension, which claimed to be a sum- mary of the relics of antiquity. Yet Macrobius lived to posterity, and was to be found in a work by Alard of Cambray, entitled ''Extracts of Philosophy and Morality," named after Solomon, Cicero, and Virgil, and was popular enough to be quoted by a poet, not in Latin only, but in the vulgar tongue. If such was the spirit of Eoman instruction, what were the sciences expounded in detail by the voice of its masters ? It comprised three subjects, grammar, eloquence, and law ; grammar and rhetoric were taught in all the cities of Gaul, as at Rome. Law had special chairs, though there was no official instruction on it in the provinces generally. Under Justinian, its schools were placed at Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus. As the science of law was to be studied at Rome, so had the other indispensable accessories to a thorough literary education been professed there, since Cicero, * Saturn, lib. vii. l-Ki. THE LITERARY TRADITION. 201 like Plato, demanded that orators should be made out of musicians and geometers, thinking that with- out such experiences eloquence would consist merely of empty declamation, sallies of humour, sonorous tirades, instead of entering the depths of its subject through a well-grounded system of teaching; and so geometry, dialectics, astronomy, and music formed part of the galaxy of science taught to the youth of Rome. Grammar, which formed a summary of the whole, was not confined to the elementary art of spealdng and thinking correctly. Suetonius and its other professors expressly declared that, far from narrowing its sphere to the study of language, it comprised a criticism of all the great works of antiquity, and a reading and inter- pretation of its poets, its function being not merely to read, but to analyze and compare. It had two parts, philology and criticism. In France, it extended into the domain of rhetoric, comprising the humanities, and a critical reading of all the great orators and poets of antiquity. With the ancients, philology was no such rudimentary science as might be supposed in hearing Varro and the old jurisconsults derive lucus from non lucendo, and testamentum from tcstatio mentis. We have no idea, while smiling at this, of the learning and labour neces- sary for the unravelling of the chaos of the old lan- guages. One section derived the diverse and confused elements of which Latin was formed from the old national idiom, whilst the other found them in the Greek, and hence arose for many centuries the disputes of the rival schools of Romanists and Hellenists. Another problem worked out Avith different results, 9 t 202 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. was to find which was the oldest and most masterful principle in the universe — authority or liberty, the finite or the infinite. Those who believed in the principle of mobility referred everything to usage gradually corrupting words, to irregularity and anomaly, while the believers in the infinite, immovable, and eternal principle proposed to subject everything to a fixed law, which subjugated custom to reason, and ruled through analogy ; and thus arose two other sects, the anom- alists and analogists. Thus every controversy was carried into the sphere of grammar, in which all the treasures of antiquity were reunited. In the laborious agony of the Latin language, the origin of institutions whose traces had long been lost were to be found, and through the dry and ungrateful study of etymology the secrets of those which had remained a sealed book in the hands of the jurisconsults were again laid bare. In the matter of criticism, we see grammarians early taking in hand the works of the old poets, as Njevius, Ennius, and Pacuvius, which, before Lucretius and Virgil appeared to efi'ace all other models, had been commented on and criticised in a thousand ways. The figure of Virgil, long surrounded by clouds, stood out in such radiant beauty that posterity took it for that of a god, as which the poet was honoured in the lararium of Alexander Severus ; his name was placed on the calendar, and his birthday, the eve of the ides of October, marked and honoured like that of the em- peror ; while the Mantuan women told of his mother's marvellous dream, of the budding laurel, and would, when near childbirth, bear votive offerings to their poet's oratory. His fame grew from day to day, and upon it the Roman scholiasts concentrated all their THE LITERAKY TRADITION. 203 labour. Donatus, Servius, Charisius, Diomecl, and many others might be instanced, but Servius especially, preserved through the Middle Age to our own day, saw in Virgil not merely a poet, but an orator, phi- losopher, and theologian, finding so rich and various a store of teaching in the sixth book of his " ^neid," that he did not wonder that whole treatises had been composed in comment upon it. But the ancient teaching, and especially the labours of the grammarians, w^ere concentrated to a special aim, of which their prodigious activity, never greater at Kome than in this century, was the proof. It seemed that they were struggling to save, verse by verse, frag- ment by fragment, the remnants of that splendid language, to rescue portions of so many authors des- tined to perish, save in the morsels which the gram- marians had preserved. Donatus and Priscian were the two most eminent of the time ; the latter was so honoured in the East that Theodosius the Younger copied, with his own hand, the eighteen books of his " Grammatical Institutions." The former had St. Jerome for a disciple, and was so pQi'severingly com- mented upon in every generation, that his name became a synonyme for grammar itself. His work lived as the ground-plan and tvpe of all modern grammars, and by its clearness and brevity held the Middle Age, though it was as the bed of Procrustes for the different idioms which adopted it, too short for some, too long for others. Thus the " Donatus Provincialis," omitting the article which existed in Provençal, said that there were but eight parts of speech, and in the French adaptation, there being no declensions in that language, it was some- 204 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. what bard for thé author to find place for all the nouns in his scheme. But all the labours spent on grammar and criticism were summarized, in these essential points, under a taldng form, in the work of Martianus Capella, written at Kome about 470, and under this guise the treasures of antiquity were to traverse with some safety the stormy period in which what was less valuable was destined to perish. The author was an old African rhetorician, plunged in all the contention of the Bar, and who, in his own words, had not found wealth in pleading before the proconsul. He composed, for the instruction of youth, a book entitled " De Nuptis Mer- curii et Philologiœ," of the nuptials of Mercury, the god of eloquence, with Philologia, the goddess of speech, a vicious title, as all are that require an explana- tion. The two first books related, in prose mingled with verse of frequent elegance, how Mercury, seeing that the gods had yielded all things to the laws of love, determined to act in like manner. He went to consult Apollo, who points out to him in oracle a virgin for a wife, who read the stars by her glance, and in spite of his lightnings revealed the secrets of Jupiter. The latter, being warned of it, called a meeting of the gods, to announce that a mortal was to be called to take a place in their midst, and demand a decree to naturalize in heaven the virgin of earth. But Philologia, from the depths of her retreat, lost nothing of what passed ; and, knowing some noble alliance was in store for her, com- bined, by Pythagorean processes and calculation, the numerical value of the letters of her name with those of Mercury, and finding a perfect harmony between them, THE LITERARY TRADITION. 205 decided on submitting to fate. Her mother, Phronesis, and her handmaids, Periagia and Epimelia, hastened to complete her attire. Scarcely had they finished, when the Muses appeared to sing at her door, and Athanasia hurried in to wish her joy ; but, as before becoming immortal all that was perishable must be put off, the goddess of immortality placed her hand on the breast of the virgin, who instantly vomited a frightful quantity of books, parchments, letters, hieroglyphics, figures of geometry, and even notes of music ; no one being able to tell, as the poet says, what a chaos escaped from the half-opened lips of Philologia : and then, nothing hindering her upward flight, she was assumed into heaven. Her dowry was fixed, and Apollo appeared with the seven virgins assigned by Mercury as her companions — Grammar, Pihetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music — being the seven liberal arts of antiquity, which allegorical personages, each with its accom- panying attributes, briefly summed up, now in verse, now in prose, the group of sciences committed to the share of each. Geometry was not understood in the modern sense, but embraced geogi-aphy ; music was not confined to music proper, but it united the art of melody with that of composition, the secrets of harmony and the rules of versification. Such was this encyclopaedia of antiquity, which sought to reduce all sciences to the arbitraiy number of seven : the old world had not dreamed of straiten- ing its wealth to so narrow a compass, that task was left to a deeply imperilled society, which, like a traveller, clutched its treasure lest any should be lost by the way. The mythological machinery in which 206 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. science was enveloped saved it by making it popular ; for we know the barbarian passion for the mythical, and how readily their conquering hordes would open their ears to the new fables related to them by the Romans, to the graceful myths of the grammarians and men of letters. The nuptials of Mercury and Philologia were to be the delight of Gauls and Germans, who would desire them to be embroidered on the tapestry of their churches and the saddles of their horses, so easily would they have been gained over to the worship of false gods, had not Providence im- pelled them to other temples and far different priests. The legendary scenery in which Martianus had con- cealed the graceless subject of his poem was especially calculated to charm them ; and he once also formed a natural mnemonic, whereby the meaning he had wished to convey was deeply imprinted on their minds. His book became the text and groundwork of elementary education during the sixth and seventh centuries, was translated into German in the eleventh ; and in the ninth, thirteenth, and fourteenth, was commented upon by Scotus Erigena, Remy of Auxerre, and Alexander Nicasius. It gave, in one word, law to the whole Christian education of the Middle Age, and fenced whole generations of intellects around with the limits of the triv'mm and quadrivium, until the Revival came to burst these barriers and give a larger sphere to genius, which languished in such confinement and aspired to the infinite. In going over the catalogues of the monastic libraries of the time, and especially those of Bobbio ; of York, in the time of Alcuin ; and of St. Gall, at the same period, we find therein, next to the chief Latin poets — Virgil, Horace, and Lucan — grammarians THE LITERARY TRADITION. 207 and commentators, the last writers of antiquity, perhaps, whom we should count worthy of the pre- servation, which, however, our ancestors did right in affording them. It was only on the condition of bringing the heavy hammer of the old grammarians to bear on their iron nature that Vandals, Suevi, Alani, and Sarmates could digest their knowledge, and become capable of study- ing a language so little made at first sight for their ears or their spirit. It was only by constant repetition that their lesson was retained. Without the labours of those commentators who guarded Virgil's works down to their last verse, syllable, and lacuna, poetasters would have arisen, undertaking to finish his incomplete rhythms. It needed the Argus-like jealousy of these watchful guardians to prevent the profane from actually laying hands upon them, and so justifying the suspi- cion of Père Hardouin and his successors. Their labours, so repulsive at first sight, were destined to mould both our ancestors and ourselves. Impelled to the lowest depth, it was to become the effort whereby genius was to rise again under that ad- mirable law of the Almighty which makes it the prize of labour. Long ages indeed, and many a generation, passed away in their course before the spark was struck out, to fall at once into eclipse, till other generations came to dash in their turn against the cruel rock of labour, and to end by finding another stone from whence the fire of ignition must spring. The schools of the Middle Age were for a time buried as in the earth out of sight, but the day came when a blaze of light arose from beneath their blows, where Dante and Petrarch, the precursors 208 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. and prophets of the Eevival, hurried to kindle their torches. It must now be seen how this century, so pagan in its memories, so filled with traditions of mythology, became Christian, and after what repeated efforts its heathenism was transformed and thrown into the great movement which bore away the age in its current. 209 CHAPTER VIII. HOW LITERATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. Whilst poetical inspiration was dying out, the tradition of literature was gaining a lasting power, under the shelter of the schools which the imperial policy had endowed and multiplied, by making a magistracy of their professors, and organizing science as an institu- tion. The Roman law, in resj^ecting the liberty of instruction, gave to it an authority that the culture of minds might not be left to chance. It sustained the right of a father to send his son to the schools of the mercenar}' grammarians, evidenced by their purple hangings, or to buy a professor of rhetoric in the slave- market ; and at the same time founded a public system as a model and rule for the others, thereby presemng from destruction the wealth of human intelligence, and handing it down under û severe and scrupulous control. We have seen with what ardour that tradition was taken up and cultivated in the fifth century by a whole people of grammarians, rhetoricians, and scholiasts, who extracted from the ancient text-books the rules of language and the principles of every branch of science, until the whole cycle of human knowledge was enclosed in the encyclopaedia finished at Rome in 470 by Mar- tianus Capella. Whilst the Empire was tottering, its literature must be saved at any cost, and though 210 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Claudian, Rutilius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and the rest of the poets, in deed or in name, would have wondered had they been told that posterity would prefer to them such obscure bookworms and word- splitters as Donatus, Servius, and Macrobius, yet posterity was wise ; for in the works of the latter they found the ancient language, the essence of the knowledge, ideas, and experience of the old world, and the text of the classics, preserved with scrupulous accuracy, transmitted with a care that had not let a page perish ; and, lastly and especially, an example of labour of thorny and disinterested study on the part of men who could not foresee their recompense. This was the most precious fruit gathered from it by a barbarian age. Horace speaks of the lyre of Orpheus civilizing the nations, but his imagination led him astray. Doubtless the Muses have their share in the march of civilization, and the nations have ever loved to see poets in their van, especially in ages of difficulty ; but whereas these guides have often failed, toil has never been lacking to a people struggling for improvement. The period we are traversing is eminently one of labour, and will teach us the difficulty and merit of the task of binding to the study of mouldy texts on the benches of the crowded school the descendants of the barbarians whose fathers had found their home in the German forests; men who had to be civilized by a process full of anxious labour, of which the light of genius was to be the result and the recompense. The traditions of ancient literature, in order to reach the Middle Age, must pass through the ordeal of Christianity ; the School must desire to enter the Church, the Church to receive the School. It was no easy question to solve, but a problem which was to be for long ages the tor- I HOW LITEEATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 211 ment of the human mind, as to which the treaty con- cluded seemed never to be definitive, so often has it been reopened and recontested, even to our own day ; it was the immortal problem of the connection between science and faith, the alliance of the Gospel with profane literature, the agreement of religion with philosophy — questions which are proposed anew every day to our- selves, and were the special difficulties of the times of which we are treating. Moreover, they were rendered especially obscure and dangerous in the fifth century by the profoundly pagan character of the schools. We know all that the Alexan- drian Syncretists attempted in order to reunite religion and literature, how under the influence of its doctrines poetry became a means of popularizing the worship of the false gods, eloquence a proj^agandism, and philoso- phy a theology ; that whilst Claudian reproduced in verse the history of the Eape of Proserpine, and brought the deities of Paganism into the councils of Christian princes, Acacius, the rhetorician, was triumphantly telling Libanius by letter that he had j^reached in the temple of ^sculapius, and in making the innovation of praising the gods in a prose discourse, pronounced before pagans, had not forgotten to insult the Christians, the very neighbourhood of whom was an outrage to the immor- tals. Jamblichus, Maximus of Ephesus, and all the later disciples of Plotinus, who had embraced or adopted these doctrines, and plunged in all the errors of theo- logy, spent their time in invoking gods and demons. The last bulwark of Paganism, both in West and East, was among these poets and philosophers, and Libanius, congratulating himself on the fact, tells us that the Greek Septiuts still had many allies at Rome. Au- 212 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. sonius also bears witness to this fact, and among the public professors of Bordeaux specifies one named Phnebitius, priest of Balenus, who vaunted his descent from the caste of Druids. So essentially pagan was the school, that it was a question to what point a Christian might continue to teach literature, and Ter- tullian did not scruple to maintain the negative; " for," he said, ' ' they must of necessity teach the names of the gods, their genealogies and the attributes given them by mythology, and observe the pagan festivals and their solemnities, on which their emoluments depend. The first fee paid by the pupil is conserved to the honour and name of Minerva ; presents are given in the name of Janus ; if the œdiles sacrifice, it is called a ferial day ;"* and concludes by defying any teacher of letters to disengage himself from these bonds of idolatry. But a stronger tie was found in the charm of these dis- credited fables, which had raised the shoulders of Cicero and embarrassed Varro. In the presence of Christianity they seemed to revive ; before its severe doctrine, so filled with austerity and mortification, their carnal and seductive spirit rose again, to throw its power on the side of graces, muses, and pleasure. Literature had to be shorn of their fascina- tion before it could become Christian — to resist such tendencies before it could enter the pale of the new truth, which commanded an abandonment even of the charms and illusions of the mind. It >vas not to be wondered at, that many apostasies came to pass at this time among men of learning ; and it was the influence of the Muses, or of Homer himself, which was guilty of that of Julian. When he assumed the purple, it was * Tcrtul. Idolatria, cap. x. HOW LITERATI-RE BECA:ME CHRISTIAN. 213 no marvel that men of letters in crowds rushed into the temples in his train. The terrible edicts put forth by Theodosius against apostasy make us feel how deeply the evil had corroded Christendom. Licentius, pupil of St. Augustine, a youth in whom he had placed all his sympathy, who had passed many months with him in the elevated and familiar intercourse of Cassiciacum, was pursued and tormented, though a Christian, by the dœmou of poetry, and escaped to compose a piece upon Pyramus and Thisbe. It was touching in the extreme to see the efforts of the saint on his behalf. At first he bantered Licentius, and tried to draw him from the influence of his Musé ; then, thinking advice the wiser course, begged him to continue and complete his fable, but, when he had represented the two kings dying at each other's feet, to give way to his rapture, and extol the conquering love which leads souls to the light, which gives them life, and never suffers it to die. Advice like this seems instinct with supreme -oisdom, but it was dangerous. St. Augustine returned into Africa ; Licen- tius was attracted by the honours and pleasures of Rome ; he found jovial mirth there, and was soon sur- rounded by all the pagan aristocracy. He dreamt one night that the gods appeared to him, and promised, if he returned to their allegiance, that he should become consul and sovereign pontiff; and under the joint effects of the dream, the festivals, and poetry, he em- braced Paganism. Such was the irresolution of the souls of the poets, philosophers, and men of letters, whose eternal curse was a kind of incorrigible weakness, a softness of heart open to seduction, an activity of mind which perceives at a glance strong points and weak, and 214 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. at the same time is incapable of decision and of choice, through excess of knowledge ; for fine intellects are often served by feeble wills, and we may find in all ages the irresolute souls who have not the courage of faith. To meet this, St. Paulinus wrote to Jovius, to engage him on the side of Christianity, and to conquer his doubts. " You breathe the perfume of all the poets, carry in your breast the streams of eloquence which have flowed from the orators, bathe in the fountains of philosophy, and taste the honey of Attic literature. Where is your business, when you read and read again Demosthenes or Cicero, Xenophon, Plato, Cato, or Varro, and all the rest whose names I hardly know, but whose works you know by heart. You are always able to give yourself up to such as these ; but when the knowledge of Christ, which is the wisdom of God, is in question, then you are a slave to business. You can find time to be a philosopher, but not to be a Christian. Rather change your thoughts, carry your eloquence into another sphere ; you need not abandon your philosophy, if you will but hallow it by faith, and employ it wisely by uniting it to religion. Become the philosopher and poet of the Almighty, no longer eager to find, but to imitate Him. Show your knowledge in your life rather than in your words, and produce great actions rather than wise discourses." Such firm and manly language was necessary for that efi'eminate generation of men of talent and sense, but whose minds were crij)pled by weakness, and had to be dragged, as it were, under the yoke of the holy and fertile austerities of the Faith. But these efi'orts were blessed, and a certain number of hardier souls had early the courage to bury them- HOW LITEEATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 215 selves in the mysteries, which gave a recompense to their boldness. Quadratus, Athenagoras, St. Justin, pupils of the most brilliant schools of Greek phi- losophy, were among the first of these ; and the rhetoricians, Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactatius, fol- lowed them. They began, on entering the Church, by shutting their schools, and abjuring a vocation of which they were ashamed, as irreconcilable with the literature of Christianity ; but soon the further sacri- fice was demanded of them, of remaining in their places, to preserve science amidst all its dangers, in spite of the requirements and newly-arisen difficulties of their faith. St. Basil, accordingly, in the fourth century, found a Christian master in the person of Preheresius. The two men named Apollinaris, one a poet, the other a rhetorician, reproduced the form of the epic in a versified New Testament, and the Platonic dialogue, by adapting it to that method, that the precious treasure of the literary tradition might be preserved ; and Julian showed his fear of these Christian masters in that masterpiece of hypocrisy in which he enacted : "As we are now, thanks to the gods, enjopng liberty, I hold it absurd to lead men to teach the works of poets whom they condemn ; for do not Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes, and Virgil, recognize the gods as authors of their knowledge ? Were not many of their works con- secrated to Mercury and the Muses ? If these masters think them to have been in error, let them confine themselves to interpreting Luke and Matthew in the churches of the Galilœans." This persecution, held by Christianity to be the most hateful to which it was ever exposed, attests in the loud protests raised against it on every side to the number of the Christian masters, 216 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. some of whom closed their schools, while others main- tained them, and sought to elude the rigour of the new enactment. But the time came when such a resistance was use- less, when everything vielded to the suhduing power of the Church, and the last rhetoricians were obliged to give up the contest. Witness the history of Victorinus : " He was an African, who had for long been a teacher of rhetoric at Rome, had seen the noblest senators among his pupils, and had received as reward of merit a statue in the Forum of Trajan. He had remained an idolater till his old age, but was at last converted. Having read Holj^ Scripture, and carefully examined all the Christian books, he said in secret one day to a Christian friend of his, named Simplician, ' Know that I am a Christian.' ' I cannot believe it,' was the answer, 'till I see you at church.' Victorinus said, scornfully, ' Do walls make one a Christian ? ' They held similar conversations from time to time, as Vic- torinus feared giving offence to certain influential friends of his among the idolaters. At length, strengthened by reading, he began to fear lest Jesus Christ should deny him before the holy angels if he dared not confess Him before men ; so he sought Simplician at a time when he least expected him, and said, 'Let us go to church, for I wish to become a Christian.' Sim- plician, in a transport of joy, brought him there ; he was admitted as catechumen, and shortly after, to the great surprise of Rome, and disgust of the pagans, gave in his name for baptism. When the time for his profession, made at Rome from an elevated place, so as to be in sight of all the faithful, approached, the priests offered to receive it privately, as was the case HOW LITEKATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 217 with some whom shame otherwise might overcome ; but he preferred pronouncing it in public. When he rose to recite the Creed, as every one knew him, a general murmur went round, every one saying, in accents of joy to his neighbour, Victorinus ! Victorinus ! Then as the desire of hearing it from his lips caused an intense silence, he pronounced the symbol in a firm tone, each of the congregation following him from the heart with joy and love."* Thus the School entered the Church, but did the Church receive it with open doors, or did a new diffi- culty arise to prevent literature from reconciling itself to a system so foreign to its spirit? It would seem, at first sight, that Christianity ought not to give help to the alliance of learning and faith, for the latter pre- sents itself as a dominant principle, ready to crush human science. Such is the language of St. Paul, glorying in the fact of Christianity being reputed as folly by the Greeks, delighting that in its turn it had confounded the haughty wisdom of antiquity; happy in its having few sages of its own, but rather choosing the ignorant and the insignificant to confute by their aid the learned and the influential. The apostle rightly charges them to join the battle, with no speeches learned in the schools of eloquence and philosophy, but tells them, with Cicero, that though philosophy is the ornament of human minds, no rule of life must be sought for in it, but rather on the stronger and surer ground of ancient custom, mos majoruni; for every error has in its turn been brought forth by philosophy. We think the Apostle right at the sight of philosophy bringing Gnosticism into Christianity, reducing it to a mere * Fleiirj-, torn. iv. lib. xv. p. 14. VOL. I. 10 218 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. mythology, in opposing to each other two eternal worlds of matter and spirit, renewing all the errors of Pan- theism and Oriental Dualism. Philosophy held a frag- ment, hut not the whole of Truth. Christianity also taught that the Word was the Light which lightened every man w^io came into the world, and that the reason which had so divine an origin could not be trampled under foot. So St. Paul did not fail to add that the philosophy of old had known God, that His works, manifested to man, had sufficed to show him his Crea- tor, and that the crime of its experts had consisted not in ignoring, hut in hiding the truth, in keeping it from sight, lest they should suffer the fate of Anaxa- goras and Socrates ; of having abandoned by their cowardly retreat the truth they were bound to serve. Hence flowed the two principles maintained by St. Paul, and by Christianity after him, the insufficiency of reason and its power, the danger and the usefulness of literature — principles which were oiie in essence, but which had separated and formed the guiding influences of two different schools. However, the agreement wished for by the Apostle seemed to have been understood. The East, enlight- ened by the luminaries of Alexandria, Greece en- chanted by the eloquence with which Athens was still resounding, those speculative races occupied with the beautiful and the true, could not suffer the heritage of so many masterpieces, and of the instruction which they had received from their ancestors, to be snatched from them. Early were combined efforts made to bring together in a lasting peace the two rivals, faith and knowledge ; and this was the motive for the foun- dation of the catechetical school of Alexandria, which HOW LITERATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 219 could trace its origin almost to apostolic times, of which one of the first known masters was St. Pantee- nus, in the second century. At the same time great schools of theology rose at Antioch, Cœsarea, Nisibis, and Edessa, the work of which was to throw on the darkness of ancient philosophy the rays of Christianity, and reciprocally to illustrate the mysteries of the faith by all the legitimate light of human reason. Of this gi-eat scheme, St. Clement of Alexandria gives us an example in his three works, "An Exhortation to the Greeks," "The Pœdagogue," and "The Stromata." It is impossible here to examine these admirable trea- tises in detail, or do more than sketch their principal thoughts. The saint wished that philosophy and pro- fane science should become like Hagar to Sara, a handmaid to the Faith, but that the servant should be treated as a sister, and thus expresses it : — " No, phi- losophy does no harm to the Christian life; those have slandered it who represented it a treacherous and im- moral attendant, for it is a light, an image of the Truth, a gift from God to the Greeks, which, far from seducing us from the Faith by an empty fame, gives it another bulwark, and becomes its sister science, afford- ing it a further demonstration. For it was the school- master of the Greeks, as the Law was of the Hebrews, both being means to bring them unto Christ." * The method of St. Clement was also that of Origen, whose efforts tended to compare and balance the philo- sophical doctrines of his time, to bring out, not their contradictions, but their harmony, as fundamental verities on which the edifice of the faith might rest. And so also taught Gregory of Nyssa, Eusebius, * Clem. Ales. Stromat. lib. i. 1, 5, 6. 10 * 220 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUET. Synesius, Nemesius, and all those Orientals who were still held spell-bound by the Platonic doctrine. But it is in the works of St. Basil in particular, the friend of St. Gregory of Nazianzum, the rival of Julian, the pupil of the school of Athens, when it was just newly lighted by Christianity, that the true and wholesome doctrines on the share of the Church in the profane legacy of antiquity were to be found ; he im- provised, and afterwards committed to writing, for the benefit of the schools, that homily on the right use of the pagan authors, which, beginning by establishing the necessity of subordinating everything to a future life, recognizes promptly that the future itself can gain lustre from the literature which adorns the present; for, as he says in his beautiful language, which in its comparisons well recalls that of Plato : "As dyers dis- pose by certain preparations the tissue which is des- tined for the dye, and then steep it in the purple, so, in order that the idea of good may be traced ineffaceably in our souls, we shall first initiate them in the outer knowledge, and then will listen to the hallowed teach- ing of the mysteries ; and as the real property of trees is to bear fruit in their season, and yet they clothe themselves with flowers and green branches, so the holy truth is the fruit of the soul, and yet there is , some grace in clothing it with a different wisdom, like the foliage which covers the fruit, and lends it the charm of its verdure."* He then applies these maxims in considering how much of the old learning could be received, and how much must be cast away, as with the poets the pictures of vice and of the nature of the * St. Basil, Ad adolescentes, quomodo possint ex Gentilium libris fnictum capae, c. iv. HOW LITERATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 221 false gods, the voluptuous sentiments which too often formed the essence of the work, the fierce Paganism which knew neither sister nor mother, nor any loving influence ; at the same time separating and prizing whatever might tend to virtue in them. Homer was, according to him, to be looked upon less as the narrator of the fabulous loves of the gods, than as the learned oracle who covered in allegoric form the wisest doctrines of antiquity, and showed, under Ulysses, the symbol of worth ; for what could be grander than the idea of that man arriving naked on the Phaeacian shore, but en- veloped as in a cloak by his courage, virtue, and wisdom, so that the young princess, daughter of Alcinous, could not look upon him without respect ; then appearing in their popular assembly to confound it by his heroic aspect, all battered, as it was, by battle and shipwreck, so that no Phaeacian among them all but longed to be Ulysses, even in his piteous plight ? Thus it pleased the Christian bishop to dive into the most mysterious depths of Homer's thought, to show the sweetness which it contained, and to run through the other poets of old time — Hesiod, Theognis, Euripides, Plato — to repeat whatever he found therein that could elevate the human mind. He had no wish to deny the good in pagan virtues, for he did not fear them, and cited boldly and joyfully the examples of such as Aristides and Themistocles, for he knew well that Christianity need not fear the comparison. In this way the Greek Church accepted in part the literature of old, as both a preparation for Christianity, and as its proof; as a preparation, because philosophy had acted as schoolmaster to the heathen world, and it was fit, according to St. Basil, to steep in the science 222 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. of antiquity the young souls that aspired to become Christian, that they might then be imbued with the principle of the Faith, as a means of proof, because Faith, its mistress, would act herself upon the intellect which sought the light that it had perceived afar off in the bosom of the Almighty. And the schools and their science came forward to lend their aid to religion, and surround with a new and ever-enlarging light the elements of Christianity. And so the alliance was completed. It has been thought that Clement of Alexandria did but enslave philosophy, and that the chart of the human mind remained torn until the day when Luther brought it anew out of the convents of Germany — a strange error, for at the very hour when Faith seemed to bind philosophy in her fetters, she is seen, if closely watched, to deliver it from the tyranny of the schools, and their masters from that word avrbc i(py), ipse dixit, the last argument of antiquity, which had been repeated from one generation to another with- out any making the necessary effort to break its yoke. The eclectism which Alexandria named, but never grasped, is found in the writings of the Fathers. Truth must be sought not in one school, but in all; Aristotle and Plato must be weighed in an even balance. The eye must be turned from the fascinating page of error ; and the mind, absolute master of what lies within human scope, acknowledge an authority in things divine. And whilst faith freed the human mind from its old tyrants, it snapped also the old bonds of everlasting doubt, which lay at the bottom of those schools that were for ever beginning anew their search after God and the soul, which they never found. It was the HOW LITERATUEE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 223 glory of Christianity to have bidden the quest to cease; it gave itself to the world, rather than the world to it, and, forbidding the light to be longer withheld, said to it, " Christ is here, go no further in pursuit of Him." By taking from man uncertainty, the Church gave him liberty, and broke the chain which was hindering him from carrying his investigations with ambitious ardour to the extreme limits of the finite and the infinite. But side by side with this school, which was to last fourteen centuries, another, less in number and in influence, but of equal vitality, was forming itself. Struck with the danger, it found it easier to fell litera- ture than to prune it ; finding philosophy dangerous, and rightly in the hands of the Gnostics, the Epicu- reans, and the Stoics, it declared it impotent, and sought to bring man to faith through despair of reason. It resolved to disgust men with it by proving it incapable of anything, and by bringing forward as a proof of this its perpetual contradictions. This work was undertaken by the whole line of apologists, begin- ning among the Greeks with Hermias, but was taken up especially among the Latins, whose spirit had always been practical rather than speculative, to whom lite- rature had always been somewhat an exotic, and whom Cicero had found so wedded to the business of life, that he had been forced to apologize for his philo- sophical labours, and to evince, or at least to feign, a profound contempt for Greek subtlety. In the train of Hermias, who undertook to prove the contradictions of the various schools of philosophy, followed Tertul- lian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, eager to repel all pos- sibility of accord between religion and letters, and disclaim the services of Dialectic itself. TertuUian 224 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. contemptuously pitied Aristotle as architect of the art of construction and destruction, of that logic of thorny argument which was a mere nest of eternal contro- versy, and source of division among men ; which returned upon every question ceaselessly as if discon- tented at having settled it. He was indignant at the efforts of some of his contemporaries to bring about an union between philosophy and the Faith. " What is there in common," he exclaimed, " between Athens and Jerusalem ; between the Academy and the Church ; between Heretics and Christians ? Our doctrine comes from the Porch, but the Porch of Solomon, and teaches us to seek God with a simple heart. Let those who wish to give us a Stoic, or Platonic, or logical Christianity come to terms with it, for we have no want of science with Christ, nor of study with the Gospel, and when we believe we search no more." * This proud, self-confident language points to the fall into error, its fitting punishment, which we soon perceive in its authors. Lactantius reproduced the same views up to a certain point, when he finally modi- fied them in assigning to philosophy a subordinate place in his scheme. It was not only a small number of Christian orators of the third, fourth, or fifth century who spoke thus ; they had disciples and imitators in all subsequent ages ; in the Middle Age, among the schools of Mysticism, some of which were destined to go to the last extremity of opposition to human reason ; in the seventeenth century, in the person of Huet, who de- voted his labours to the establishment of a kind of universal scepticism ; and in the person of the great * Tertull. de Prsescriptione Hœreticorum, cap. viii. HOW LITEKATUKE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 225 Pascal himself. The school has even its disciples among ourselves. It has never closed its doors, its adopted thesis has never lacked supporters, for some have ever been found ready to throw the gauntlet down to reason, and to attempt, by the production of an arti- ficial Pp'rhonism — a system of organized doubt — to overturn the labours of the human mind, and to give faith a freer and wider sphere. Against these men are ranged the general tradition of the Church, the great and glorious names of Christendom, and especially their own errors. Their excesses were not without peril in the midst of that doctrine which abhorred extremes, and was ever charac- terized by wisdom and moderation. The eagerness to burn what had been once adored, without distinguishing the precious metal from the idol — perhaps an excusable exaggeration in newly-made Christians — became more perilous in the reasonings and dogmatizings of these doctors, as showing a want of faith, or at least a faith which trembled before reason and the ancient literature, as if the Church had an}i;hing to dread in philosophy, or her faith was destined to pale like a torch of night before the light of day. And this weakness betrayed itself by remarkable lapses. Tertullian gave up science for ever to follow in the train of the heretic Montanus and the two women who believed in him. The Mystics of the Middle Age were travellers on the road which led to the heretical excesses of the fifteenth century, and Pascal himself followed one of the tracks of error. We must remember that, however stubborn their doc- trine might be, it never had the character of authority or general prevalence, and its most illustrious follower 10 i 226 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. of our day lias finally abjured it, and redeemed the rashness of trampling reason under foot by his pregnant saying, that "Plato wrote a human preface to the Gospel."* But the union of science and the faith, of religion and literature, was no easy question, presented as it was in the fifth century with a host of partisans on either side, with the East in its favour and the West in oppo- sition ; and its solution was entirely doubtful until the West decided it in the person of her two great doctors, St. Jerome and St. Augustine. Up to this time, whilst the masters of the West had abjured their literary heritage, those of the Greek Church had inclined to avail themselves of their right. The hesitation of St. Jerome was natural before the formidable duty of deciding under the eyes of the whole Church, bent upon the question in anxious attention. Moreover, he was imbued with his readings of grammarians, rhetoricians, and philosophers, though burning with faith. Plato had been his meditation, the declamation of oratorical controversies after the school-methods his exercise. When the Spirit of God came upon him he fled into the desert, but having carried his library with him, he read Cicero as he fasted, and devoured Plautus whilst he bewailed his sins. He came to himself and took up the sacred writings, to be disgusted at their unpolished style. Towards the middle of one Lent he fell danger- ously ill, and was transported in a dream to the foot of the throne of Jesus Christ. " Who art thou?" asked the Saviour. "I am a Christian," answered St. Jerome. " No," replied Christ, " you are not Chris- tian, but Ciceronian." Confounded by the reproach, the * De Maistre. HOW LITERATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 227 Saint promised, wdth many tears, to abandon for ever his profane studies.* It was a grave engagement, and he seemed to contract it anew in a letter written soon afterwards to Eustochius. About the same time he sent to Pope Damasus an elaborate commentary on the parable of the prodigal son, in which he denounced the priests and bishops who knew Virgil by heart, who used to recite bucolic poems and love-songs, and occupied their leisure in declaiming entire tragedies. " For all," said he, " these muses of poets, this eloquence of orators, wis- dom of philosophers, are but dœmons' delights ; truth doubtless may be found in them, but it must be sought with prudence, that the faithful may not be scandalized." These harsh maxims, however, were written in the years 383, 384, in the first fervour of conversion ; the Saint was accusing himself, his hard blows were brought from the depths of his remorse to punish his own faults, but wisdom and good counsel came to him from the solitude of his desert retreat, to change his tone. He continued his writing, Virgil still filled the fourth part of his correspondence, Plato and all the ancients threw over it their eloquence in turn, for his fine intel- lect could not separate itself from the influence of the old literature, which overflowed his mind and escaped inevitably into his writings. Some were scandalized at this, and Magnus, a rhetorician of Piome, who was somewhat jealous of Jerome, reproached him with having filled his works with pagan memories, of having profanely stained the whiteness of the Church's robe, and of being unable to write a page or a letter to a woman mthout allusion to those whom he * St. Hieronjini. epist. xviii. ad Eustoch. 228 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. called our Cicero, our Horace, and our Virgil. But St. Jerome retorted, " that liis critic could never have applied such a reproach to him had he known the sacreduess of antiquity. St. Paul, pleading the cause of Christ before the Areopagus, had not scrupled to use the inscription on a pagan altar in defence of the faith, and to invoke as a witness the poet Aratus. The austerity of his doctrine did not hinder the Apostle from citing Epimeuides in his Epistle to Titus,* and a verse from Meuander in another place. It was because he had read in Deuteronomy the Lord's per- mission to the Israelites to purify their captives, and then take them to wife. What wonder, then, that I, struck by the science of the age in the beauty of its features, and the grace of its discourses, should wish to transform it from the slave it is now into an Israelite."! And St. Jerome was so regardless of his dream, and the promise given never again to open profane books, that he made his monks copy the " Dialogues of Cicero," and carried a copy of Plato with him on a journey to Jerusalem, so as to lose no time on the road. He taught grammar at Bethlehem, and expounded Virgil, the lyric and comic poets, and historians to children confided to him for training in the fear of God, and did not hesitate to plead that it had been but a dream, to the accusations of Rufinus. " Rufinus," he said, "has accused me of the promise I made in a dream, and has brought proofs of my perjury from my writings. But who can forget the days of his infancy ? My head is bald twice over, and yet in sleep I think I see myself young * Titus, i. 12. f St. Hieron. Ep. Ixxxiii. ad Magmiin. HOW LITERATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 229 again, with long hair and well-draped toga, declaiming before the rhetorician. Must I drink the water of Lethe ? I should give this answer, if there was any question of an engagement undertaken in the fulness of my wakeful senses. But I send him who reproaches me with a dream to those prophets who teach that dreams are vain and deserve no faith."* It is a grave and remarkable fact that St. Jerome vn-ote this between A.D. 397 and a.d, 402, when old and full of experience of life ; when he had played his part and taken his side advisedly in the gi-eat questions in debate around him ; when he had gained a gi-eater wisdom, and freed from the excesses of his youth had learnt in the moral order to pardon much to human wills, and to be tolerant of the intellect of mankind. What was the doctrine of St. Augustine on the subject, the result of the mental labour of which that gi-eat soul gave us the sight, and by which, in greater measure than St. Jerome, he was to decide the vexed question of the whole of Christian antiquity ? We need not speak of his early passion for ancient literature, the tears which Dido's fate caused him, or the ardour with which he devoured the " Hortensius " of Cicero, and later, the works of the Neoplatonists, but stop at the period when, upon his conversion, he abjured all his errors, and follow him into his retreat at Cassiciacum, where he passed many months of peace with his friends Trygetius and Licentius, devoting the mornings to dis- cussion of grave questions of philosophy, commenting on Cicero, and reading every day the half of one of Virgil's cantos. He was in no haste to abjure all that he had once admired, and ignored the declamations of * St. Hieron. contra Rufinum, lib. i. 30. 230 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Tertullian, Arnobms,Lactantius, and all those other men whom the Church has never counted in the number of her saints. In the " Confessions," that deep outpouring of a devout soul, he recalls the time when the Neo- platonic books first fell into his hands: " Thou didst send me, Lord, several works of the Platonists, translated into Greek and Latin, and in them I read, though in other terms, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God, and the Word was God, and that It was the true light which enlightened every man that came into this world. But that He came to His own, and that they received Him not, and that to those who did receive Him He gave power to be made children of God, that the Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us, I read not in those books ; that He existed before time, beyond time, in an immutable eternity, that to be happy, souls must partake of His fulness, I found indeed in the writings of those Platonists ; but I did not find that He died in time for the wicked. Thou hast hidden these things from the wise, my God, and hast revealed them to babes, that all who suffer and are heavy laden may come to Him for comfort."* This was the measure and the secret of the question which for so many centuries has tormented the world. Philosophy was not without power to lead men to the feet of God, but Reason could not bring the human mind to comprehend the God-man, or the charity and mystery of His infinite love. St. Augustine was con- tinually repeating this in the Church at his first conversion, when writing his " Confessions," and when he had become the great doctor of the Western Church. * St. August, Confess, lib. vii. cap. ix. HOW LITEEATUKE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 231 He spoke with respect of the Platonists on every page of his " City of God," and finished it with this fine saying : " I could have pardoned the pagans if, instead of raising a temple to Cybele, they had reared a shrine to Plato wherein his books should be read." The door, thus opened to Philosophy, could not be closed to the rest of human learning ; and thus, in his work " On Order," in tracing the plan of Christian edu- cation, St. Augustine followed the changeless law of God, written by Him on the hearts of the wise, and divided it into two parts, discipline of life, and discipline of knowledge ; the first proceeding from a principle of authority, the second from that of reason. "Keason is an effort of the soul, capable of bringing man to a knowledge of himself, and even of God, were he not arrested by the preoccupation of the senses. It seeks intercourse with men in whom reciprocally it resides, from whence springs Literature, and Grammar, which embraces whatever the former hands down through the memory of man, and is in consequence history. Reason then bending to its work, and taking account of the definitions, rules, and divisions pro- duced, forms Dialectic ; and to it, as it is not in itself sufficient for persuasion, adds lihetoric. Having com- passed man, it goes in search of God, or of steps by which to reach Him ; and thence comes the idea of Beauty, which, grasped by hearing, sound, rhythm, and number, forms Music, and by sight, symbol, dimen- sions, and numbers becomes, again. Geometry and Astronomy. But what is seen by the eye is incom- parable to the harmony discovered to the Soul. In this course of study everything is reduced to number, of which the shadow rather than the reality is perceived ; 232 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. and thereupon Keason takes courage, and begins to suspect that a number must exist of capacity to measure all the rest. From its efforts in this direction Philosophy is born, and with it the two questions of the Soul and God, our nature and our origin, one rendering us worthy of happiness, the other giving bliss itself." Such was his order of study, a system of wisdom by which the soul was to be rendered worthy of knowing the sovereign order of things, of distin- guishing the two worlds, and rising in thought to the Father of the Universe. Moreover, it is remarkable that this scheme was nearly the same as that of the ancients, but renewed and regenerated by the loftier spirit of Christianity. It contained their entire encyclopaedia of the seven arts, modified by the conjunction of arithmetic with geometry, and giving to philosophy, which in the system of Martianus Capella had been confounded with dialectic, a distinct place. But it was far grander in conception, regarding the sciences, as it did, as so many steps fitted to lead manldnd from the earth it dwelt on to the presence of its Supreme Governor. St. Augustine did not shrink from the objections hurled at his method, that it degraded the sacred science which man could gather from faith alone, and replied, with conscious superiority, that God could have used the ministry of angels, but He willed to. honour humanity in giving forth His oracles in a human temple, and charity itself would perish if man had nothing to learn from man, if one soul could not pour its over- flowings into others. " If those, then, who are called philosophers, and especially Platonists, hold doctrines which are true and HOW LITERATURE BECAME CHRISTIAN. 233 in agreement with tlie faith, not only must not their tenets be held in suspicion, but must be reclaimed from their wrongful possessors. For as the ^Egyptians had not only idols which the people of Israel were bound to fly from and loathe, but vases and ornaments of gold and silver and garments which they carried with them in their flight, so the Gentile science is not entirely composed of superstitious fictions which the Christian must abhor, but contains liberal arts, ser- viceable to the truth, wise moral precepts not created by them, but drawn like so much gold and silver from the mines of Providence, which are dispersed over the world ; and these the Christian may carry away when he has purged them from their surrounding dross." * Thus the question was solved, and the dispute closed for many centuries. On the word of St. Au- gustine, and upon the same motives, following ages accepted their inheritance from antiquity ; but the Church held it as a wise trustee receives the property of minors, with a privilege of inventory. The same reason determined Cassiodorus, Bede, Alcuin, who all, by a j)henomenon of the intellect which it is well to mark, actuated rather by comparisons than by reasons, by images rather than great motives, repeated the metaphor that Christendom was bound to act like the children of Israel on coming out of Egypt, and to carry off the gold and silver vessels of their enemies. With this saying the science, art, and tradition of antiquity passed into the Middle Age, the great problem was solved, and the literary and intellectual knot was formed which bound the two periods into one. It remains to show how Virgil, deified by pagan * St, Aujïustme. 234 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. science, raised to the rank of Pontiff, Flamen, and inheritor of the priestly tradition, became also the representative of the religion of the future, the bar- barous ages having, in order to' save him, thrown over his body the end of the prophet's robe. Thanks to his " Fourth Eclogue," the Christian world regarded him as a foreteller of the new religion ; and this interpreta- tion, first given by Eusebius in the fourth century, continued through the mediaeval time, placed him among the prophets, and afforded to his works an increase of respect. A tradition relates how St. Paul, the fierce contemner of the profane sciences, on his arrival at Naples, went to visit the tomb of Virgil, and having opened the "Eclogues," and read the Fourth, burst into tears ; and the memory of this was preserved in a sequence chanted long in the Cathedral of Mantua, which recalled the legend in the following graceful lines : — Ad Maronis mausoleum Ductus, fudit super cum Pife rorem lacrjonse : Quern te, inquit, redcledissem, Si te vivum invenissim, Poetarum maxime. Popular tradition was also desirous of adding to this more ancient legend, and for long the shepherd who guided travellers to the poet's tomb used to show a little chapel near to it in which he said Virgil heard mass. Thus the pagan civilization did not perish entirely, or deserve to do so. One portion of it was preserved by the Church, another remained in spite of her. So great was the necessity for the culture which we have seen, although stricken by a mortal malady, con- HOW LITEEATUEE BECAME CHEISTIAN. 23.5 tinued for the education of races yet to come. We might easily believe in the fitness of its dissolution, in order that Christianity alone might hold the ground. But no. Christianity itself gathered up all that was lofty, equitable, generous, and beneficent in the old order, and at the same time, and in spite of her efforts, mythology was perpetuated in literature, though pro- scribed by the Church ; in religion itself a superstitious element appeared, and gave the hand to the defunct Paganism of old, and in the order of law there remained an odious system of taxation, which kept alive political oppression, divorce which brought domestic tyranny in its train, and the confusion between the power of the priesthood and of the Empire which went far towards engendering the bloody struggles of the Middle Age. The Church, then, preserved the ancient literature, which also in spite of her kept alive, amidst a mytho- logical Pantheism all the voluptuous and carnal feelings which were to reappear in full fury in moments of dis- order and intellectual anarchy. Antiquity gave, in a word, its vices as well as its enlightenment to the dark ages, and, when tempted to accuse our ancestors and reproach them with their barbarism, we may well recognize in them the heirs of the refinements of the Decline ; for there is a singular analogy between the vices of an used-up society and those of a savage state, and a "moment comes in which the impotence of the aged is brought near to the weakness of babes, and we know not whether we are treating of a people which is perishing, or of one rising into life. It has been wished to separate arbitrarily antiquity from modern times, by assuming a kind of abyss at the year 476, and saying, Here is modern history to the 236 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. right, to the left antiquity, and the two have nothing in common ; but God, who is stronger than the chroniclers, sufifers no such break, for He sets order and unity everywhere, in time as in space, and makes even the disordered passions of man the bond- slaves of His design. The times which we divide so arbitrarily are bound by two ties, the golden chain of weal, wrought by God Himself, and the iron chain of evil, which He tolerates ; and history has no other end but to weld together all these links, and thus establish that dogma of continuity, so fundamental in Christianity, to which human society is aspiring. This task is assigned to us, for we are not as independent as we would think, but are bound to our forefathers by our responsibility for their sins, no less than by our gratitude for their benefits. 237 CHAPTER IX. THEOLOGY. In the pagan civilization of the fifth century we have seen the works whereupon antiquity had expended her light and her strength. The human mind could go no farther than that mighty lahour of the Alexandrian philosophy towards attaining to truth, or than the admirable perseverance of the Roman Law in establish- ing the reign of justice. We have not hidden the grandeur and merit of these efforts, and as mere admi- ration profits but little, have followed their effects do^Ti into Christian ages, and have seen the institutions, knowledge, literature, and even the industry of the old world entering, so to speak, into the construction of modern society to be the teaching principle for those barbarians who had encamped on its ruins. There is assuredly no spectacle in which the power of human reason breaks forth more, and none in which it more plainly manifests its insufficiency. For all that pagan civilization, to the preservation of which Greek genius and Roman common sense had been alike devoted, perished without hope ; and while the statues of Aris- totle and Plato before the schools did not hinder their successors from giving themselves up to all the aberra- tions of theurgy and superstition, the wisdom of Paulus, Gains, Ulpian, or Papinian had not closed the doors 238 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. of the Empire against the vices of the Decline. In that learned and polished society we have seen fetichism reduced to a dogma, philosophers believing in a con- stant presence of the deities in their idols, religious prostitution, and human sacrifice ; in the political order, gladiators, eunuchs crowding the imperial serag- lios, and slavery, profound excesses which Christianity was bound to dissipate ; literature itself degraded, reduced to be a domestic pleasure for some few favourites, or at the service of a corrupted aristocracy. Moreover, Alaric was at the gates of Rome, afar off too was heard the tramp of the horses of the Vandals, Huns, and Alani, who were rising in masses round their chief, and were about to bring Attila to the foot of the Alps. So it would have perished, had it not been for the new principle of Faith which came to penetrate and regenerate it. Reason is powerful, no doubt, and is always present in man, for there has never been an age so unfortunate as not to give some sign of its presence and influence ; but it is bound within us — held in in- active captivity till awoke by the Word from without, which calls it from its repose ; then it becomes conscious of and holds intercourse with itself; and that it may fully realize its own existence and its faculties, using the same language which has come to its ear from without, becomes self-regarding, and names itself in saying, " I think, therefore I exist." Therefore, as the Word which provokes the reason comes from something external to the reason, it comes as an authority and impulse, an invading force from without, and as a forerunner of some other reasonable existence, which draws it to itself by an irresistible THEOLOGY. 239 influence. The soul, when addressed, is bound to respond, and as the first eflort of persuasion is to pro- voke the adhesion of our intellects, to draw them into the path of that other intelligence which approaches them, so is that adhesion to the spoken word, called in the order of nature human faith, to which divine and supernatural faith are correspondent in the order of theolog}'. Thus Reason and Faith are two primitive principles, distinct from hut not hostile to one another, for neither can dispense with the other, reason being aroused only by the persuasion which provokes its energ}% and faith only 3'ielding itself when the object proposed is reason- able. These principles were brought into the world by Christianity, which gave to reason a perpetual honour and sanctification in recognizing in it the Word which enlightened every man that came into the world, and ha^dng thus surrounded it with a divine glory, and acknowledged in it a ray from the Almighty Himself, could never again trample it under foot. But it estab- lished also the necessity of an exterior word to pro- voke responsive action, which was exjn'essed in a series of revelations, the first of which was to be traced to the world's commencement, and having given mankind its elementary education, was renewed through Moses, and, lastly, sanctified, extended, and fixed for ever in the Gospel dispensation. And so Christianity realized, in a diviner form, and proclaimed, with a deeper truth, what had been always a necessity to society, and had ever existed in the depths of human nature — the per- petual agreement of reason and faith — and raised, at the same time, reason and nature above themselves. And in the Christian view, this external and open 240 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. word of revelation, which had kept the light of the ages alive from their commencement, had uttered two varieties of truth — the first of an order to which reason, unaided, could never attain, for religious truth is the expression of the relation between the finite and the infinite, and one of its elements, the infinite, being beyond the power and scope of human thought, it ■"esults that a portion of it is by nature inaccessible, to expound which a revelation, withdrawn from all supple- ment and development by the human intellect, was an imperative necessity ; the second variety embraced those natural truths to which the reason of man could attain, and which Christianity attested to have been actually compassed by science, avowing, with St. Paul, that the ancients had known God, but had lacked courage to glorify Him as God ; truths grasped only by a few, and still mingled with obscurities, doubts, and errors, which had cost the human race more than three thousand years of painful wandering before the genius of Plato and Aristotle laboriously produced them, still enveloped in error and false principles, but which revelation established by a short, sure, and supremely popular method, making them no longer the monopoly of a minority, but the possession of each and of all. Never had a stronger appeal been made to the inner power of the human soul than that addressed to it from the height of Calvary, and when that word which called for faith from the human race, consummatum est, went forth from the lips of Him who had come to bring it life and deliverance, the unexampled prodigy was manifested of a power of faith which no one could have pictured excited in that decaying world in which THEOLOGY. 241 all good feeling seemed corrupted, if not extinct. A German theologian, in criticising the text of the Gospel, has declared that the marvel of it broke upon him in a vivid manner on reading the passage which relates how Christ, walking by the Lake of Genneseret and meeting some fishermen, said to them, " Follow me," and that had he been in their place he would never have done so ; that he cannot comprehend the inconsequence and logical deficiency of those boatmen who abandoned their nets and fishing-boat to follow the first passer-by who promised them life eternal. That was, indeed, the prodigy, and it appears less in those two or three Gali- lœans than in the numberless multitudes of the Greek, Roman, and Asiatic world who tore themselves, not from their boats and the daily labour and sweat of their brow, but from the pleasure and luxury of an existence of delight, which the ancient world understood very differently from ourselves, to throw themselves into the difficulty, privation, and sacrifice of a Christian life — a life far harder than death itself; for, though the faith of the martyrs may move us, that of those who lived in the midst of a world which no longer knew them, devoted to the hatred and execration of the whole human race, must touch us more. But that their num- ber grew, and their energy lasted, and that the early ages passed entirely under the dominion of their faith, is attested by the writings and letters of the chief pas- tors of the Christian commonwealth, as St. Ignatius, St. Clement, and St. Polycarp. But faith could not dispense with reason, for the Apostle himself had said, " Let your submission be complete, but rational." Ratlonahile sit obsequlum vestrum. The moment came when it was necessary that VOL. I. 11 242 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. the revealed dogmas and heaven -born principles must be arranged and defended as with a bulwark by all the lights of knowledge. The provocation came from without, and the attacks of pagan philosophy compelled the early Christians to defend themselves, to prove their doctrines by an appeal to history, philosophy, and eloquence ; and this gave rise to the works of Justin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, and the many other apolo- gists. But although those early labours imposed by polemical necessity were little, j-et the combat with external enemies was to bring out the necessity of ren- dering an account to the disciples of the school they were forming of the dogmas they wished to defend, and so gave rise to the catechetical school of Alexan- dria, whose illustrious children, Pantsenus, Clement, Origen, were to be seen devoting their lives to the exposition of the Scriptures and of dogma. We have scarcely arrived at the third century, and yet Origen had not bound himself merely to the task of collating and comparing different texts, of publishing editions in some measure polyglot, in which the translations of many Jewish authors were confronted with the primitive text, but, grasping these eternal sources of verity, had developed them and drawn thence theology, not only in its first elements, but in its complete form, as we find expressed in his eulogy by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, resulting in the unison and powerful harmony of that novel science which was moulding itself into what was to be theology. "In the first place, he taught them logic in accus- toming their minds not to receive nor to reject proofs at hazard, but to examine them carefully without stopping at their surface-appearance, nor at sayings THEOLOGY. 243 whose lustre dazzled or whose simplicity disgusted, and not to reject what at first may seem a paradox but aftei-wards is shown to be most true, but in a word to weigh everything healthily and without prejudice. He also applied their minds to physics, — that is, to the consideration of the power and infinite wisdom of the world's Author which are so fitted to humble us. He also taught them the mathematical sciences, especially geometry and astronomy, and lastly morality, which he did not confine to empty discourses, to definitions and barren divisions, but taught practically, making them mark in themselves the motions of passion, that the soul, seeing itself as in a mirror, might tear up its vices by the roots, and strengthen the reason which pro- duced the virtues. To discourse he joined example, being himself a model of every virtue. And last of all he brought them to the study of theology, sa^dng that the most necessary laiowledge was that of the First Cause. He made them read whatever the ancients, whether poets or philosophers, Greeks or barbarians, had written on the subject, except when they expressly taught atheism. He made them read it all, that, knowing the strong and the weak in each opinion, he might guarantee them against prejudices. But he was their guide in the study, leading them as it were by the hand, that they might not stumble ; showing them what every sect had which was useful, for he knew them all perfectly. He exhorted them not to cling to any philosophy, whatever the rej)utation, but to God and His prophets. And then he explained to them the Sacred Scriptures, of which he was the most learned interpreter ; and in this exposition he gave them an idea of the order and gist of the whole Chris- 11 * 244 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. tian doctrine, and so raised their souls to the under- standing of revealed truth."* Thus theology was already in existence, and the time which elapsed from the fourth to the end of the fifth century was its golden age. It was then that these great men appeared who were the glory and admiration of the East — St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. John Chrysostom, not to be treated of here, as we have separated Oriental civili- ization from our task, though their writings, translated into Latin and inherited by the monasteries of the Middle Age, form part of the education of our times. In the West these men continued the development of the new science. St. Jerome, who attached himself to fixing the sense of the sacred text by Latin transla- tions of the Bible, and so commenced true exegesis ; St. Ambrose, who founded moral theology ; and St. Augustine, who undertook dogmatic theology. Time would fail to give the history of these great men in a work confined to that of ideas. We must rather see, within our narrow limits of the theological history of the fifth century, at the price of what struggles and by what genius Christianity succeeded in keeping its ground in spite of the heresies which threatened it, on the one hand, with sinking into a mere mythology (a new form of Paganism), on the other, with the danger of becoming pure rationalism, but one more philosophic system to add to history. The weighty subject for our present attention is to find how amid perils so various Christianity was enabled to remain as it was, a verity revealed but reasonable, full of mystery in that it * St. Gregorii Tliaumat. " Oratio panegyrica et charisteria ad Originem," passim. THEOLOGY. 245 touched the infinite, but at the same time intelligible to the human mind. Paganism had hurled two menaces against the nascent faith, persecution and the Alexandrian schools. These two dangers, which first engage the Christian historian's attention, were, however, insignificant. The former multiplied believers, and the apologies of the latter failed to replenish the deserted fold of heathenism. But at the moment in which the old religion, conquered in every field, powerless to defend itself, seemed in its agony, it was on the point of revival, or at least of dragging its opponents after it, by conforming to Chris- tianity. However exorbitant such an expression may seem, it is no vain utterance of words, but an historical reality. For the epoch in which our work is placed was that of a general syncretism, in which every doc- trine, every error, and some few truths were struggling to bind themselves into a single and comprehensive system. So true is this that the Roman world, so long enclosed in its pride, which had cast such scorn on its vanquished peoples, had gone to seek on its knees, one after another, all the gods of the Orient to enshrine them in its temples. We have seen Cybele arriving from Phrygia, Osiris and Serapis from Egypt, Mithra from Persia ; and when Heliogabalus, that madman whose frenzy proceeded from a deeper source than has been supposed, who was possessed by idolatry as by a daemon, that young priest of the Syrian god Heliogaba- lus, or the Sun, was transplanted suddenly to the throne of the Csesars, and wished to celebrate his own bridal with the Pioman Empire, he ordered three beds to be prepared in the Temple of Minerva, and the image of the Sun, the divinity of Asia, that of Astarte, the 246 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. African Venus, and of Pallas, the deity of Europe and of tlie West, to be laid upon tbem together. In the marriage which he desired to solemnize between the gods of the three quarters of the world, Heliogabalus did but express, with singular force, the spirit which was tormenting his age — the necessity for Paganism to gather up all its forces to resist an enemy which it had tried in vaifi to stifle by punishment, and ipiust now attempt to conquer by a novel method. And if this tendency was thus manifest at Eome, what must it have been at Alexandria? — that city, along whose streets, of two leagues in length, amidst colonnades of rich workmanship raised by the Ptolemies, thronged Eomans, Greeks, Jj^gyptians, and all the navigators who came from the East, traversed the Red Sea, and de- scended the Nile to this emporium of the world. Here reigned all the doctrines of Greek philosophy, regene- rated by the sages of the Museum, by Callimachus, Lycophron, and the rest who had sought out the origin of those fables which men had but weakened by adornment. Those memories of Chaldœa and of Persia, those traditions of Zoroaster and the naturally nearer traditions of ancient Egypt, that multitude of philosophies and apocryphal predictions which filled the first ages of the Alexandrine science, witnessed to the effort made to lay hold again on the ancient sacer- dotal traditions, in order to revive that hieratic science which was half extinct. Whilst all these doctrines were approaching each other, a great movement was at work behind them, which perhaps explains this sort of revival in the first Christian ages ; for the time had arrived for a new form of heathenism to seize upon Eastern Asia. The sect THEOLOGY. 247 of Bhucldlia, born about five centuries and a half before our era, for long firmly enclosed within the limits of Hiudostan, and in the bands of a philosophic school, had taken flight with its brilliant mythology, at once popular and learned, and capable of fascinating and subduing the minds and imaginations of entire nations. Having burst over the borders of the country to which it had once been confined, Bhuddhism at the year Gl b.c. made a new appearance on the scene, and invaded all Northern Asia, so as to extend from the sea of Japan to the coasts of the Caspian, filling all the inter- vening countries and rekindling the religious zeal of their countless populations. This great movement evi- dently could not but influence the pagan development of the AYest, and was destined to stir nations who remained at a certain point strangers to it. As it was in the East and among the Tartar tribes that the agi- tation began which, spreading from man to man, was to end in throwing the Huns, Alani, and Goths upon the Ehine banks, and even beyond the Pyrenees, so an Orientalized Paganism put forth its last effort to pene- trate the faith of Christendom. It effected its entrance through the Gnostic sects. The Gnosis was the designation of a higher science or initiation reserved for a handful of chosen spirits. It was one of the chief characteristics of Paganism to divide the human race, to refuse recognition to its pri- mitive equality, to make certain classes to spring from the head of the Deity, others from the stomach, legs, or feet, and to measure out enlightenment, like justice, with a grudging, unequal, and jealous hand. The Gnosis possessed the other pagan principle of confounding 248 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. creation with the creature, and by whatever means it tried to explain the commencement of things ultimately to unite them in one substance. It represented God as a pleroma, a plenitude of existence which overflowed, a vessel surcharged, which let its superabundance drip over in a multitude of emanations, firstly in the form of Mons, semi-divine essences which descended in steps of successive existences to the lowest ranks of creation. These divine outpourings, which had as it were a perpetual migration to accomplish, had names, were divided into gods and goddesses, and became in consequence mythological personifications ; so that the Gnosis tells at length of the adventures of Soj)liia, the divine wisdom, one of the first emanations of God, which, wandering on the brink of chaos, fell into the abyss, and could only escape by the intervention of Christ. She then was to be manifested in a female devotee, who was shown as the destined propagator of the Gnostic doctrine ; and accordingly Simon Magus led about with him a woman called Helen, as the incarnate soul of the world. The pagan influence breaks out again in these poetical adventures lent to the divine emanations, but especially in the eternity of matter, a principle common to every scheme of Gnostic doctrine, which thus seated a resisting power by the side of the Divine Power, an evil face to face with a good principle, assigned two causes instead of one, and sowed the seeds of dualism by its own pantheism. Such is an abridg- ment of the doctrine of Valentinus, one of the first Gnostics, as developed by Basilides and corrected by Carpocrates and Marcion. Its sects multiplied and brought about their division, and thence their ruin. THEOLOGY. 249 Like all false doctrines, it perished by that propagation which is the salvation of truth, but by which errors disappear in their variations. At the end of three centuries, when the sects who sought to bring Paganism into Christianity seemed near their end, their errors were reunited and strength- ened in the new doctrine of the Manichaeans. Manes was a Persian by origin, and two distinct but recon- cilable traditions as to his life, and the circumstances under which his system was founded, have come down to us. One relates that he was born in Persia, and in the course of long travels in Hindostan, Turkistan, and China, encountered Buddhism in its rise, or at least in the ardour of its first propagandism. The other tells how the true author of the system was not Manes, but a certain Scythianus, who had a disciple named Terebinthus, or Buddha, the latter having a slave called Manes, who received from the widow of Buddha his liberty, and doubtless his doctrine also. Both accounts agree in assigning to Manes a birthplace in Persia, a long jieriod of travel, and the work of uniting the belief of his own country with the Oriental dualism, and the other dogmas which the disciples of Buddha had circulated through the East. It is not astonishing, then, that this heresy, pre- senting as it did some features of the Oriental mytho- logy, was not wanting in a certain grandeur. It admitted two Principles — the one, God, or SjHrit ; the other, Satan, or Matter ; the former dwelling with His jî^ons, or primitive emanations, in the immeasurable world of light ; the latter in the sphere of darkness, equally eternal, but limited by the realms of light, over which it cast its shadow, as a cone of obscurity veils in 11 t 250 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. part the face of a star.* The powers of darkness, beholding the splendour of the Deity, undertook the conquest of those fields of light of whose beauty they were enamoured. Thereupon God, the author of Good, sent forth as a guardian of the frontiers of His king- dom a new emanation, the Soul of the World. Planted between the limits of the light and the darkness, it fell to pieces before the inevitable assault of the powers of the latter. t Then God sent His Spirit in aid of the World- Soul given over to the fury of the shadowy forces. It came and took from its shattered fragments each of the members of primitive man, and therewith made the world. It chose the brightest and most spiritual constituent to create therefrom the sun, the moon, and the stars ; from its aerial but more material parts it made the atmosphere and the purer existences ; from its entirely material elements the animal and sensible portions of this world. But the latter was under the empire of those dark powers to whom Matter appertained, and so the World- Soul, dispersed every- where, existing in every atom of the visible world, was held in a sort of captivity. The divine essence spread through it had to struggle against its shackles with a long effort for deliverance, and this, alike of heavenly origin, and a suffering prisoner, was no other than Jesus patibilis, whose conflicts formed the true and only Passion endured by the Word which went forth from God.t Moreover, the soul of the primitive man, which * St. Aug. (le Vera Religione, c. xcvi. f St. Aug. de Agoue Christ, lib. i. 4 ; Id. de Moribus Manich. lib. ii. passim. I St. Aug. de Hseresibus, c. xlvi. THEOLOGY. 251 resided in the sun and moon which it had helped to- create, had become a power which had taken the name of Christ, who, according to the Manichœans, dwelt in the heavens — now in the sun, now in the moon — but seeking from the former to attract to Himself the spiritual particles which were wandering through matter. He had become incarnate in a human body, but which was unreal, and had vanished at the moment in which the Jews stretched it on the Cross. Thus, therefore. He had not come into the world to shed the blood which He did not possess, but to infuse into it a truth which would raise the divinely emanated souls of men to the light, and bring them to Him. There were three categories of souls. The j^neiimatic, or most perfect souls were able to discard the flesh and purify themselves in the Sun. The iisychical souls were pas- sionate and weak, but not evil ; their struggle, though real, could not afifect their triumph, and they were forced to pass through another existence in another body. The hylic souls were entirely material, daemon-possessed, and reprobate, without any hope of future immortality. Those who between these two extremes were struggling to return to God had to traverse, according to the dogma of Metempsychosis, a fresh series of existences in other men, or beasts, and even plants, before their return to Him. Such, according to the Manichaean conception, was the law of the Universe ; its end being to reunite all the dispersed particles of the divine power, and bring them back to their source ; ,for the soul that, triumphing over every obstacle, arrived at the close of life, was at once transported to the presence of the Supreme Power in the realms of light. The Mauichseans reduced their moral system to the 252 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. three seals of the lips, the hands, and the breast. The object of the seal of the lips was to close them against blasphemy, and particularly all animal food, the use of which was forbidden as a Satanic corruption, tending naturally to weigh down the divine particles within, and bind them to earth. The seal of the hands for- bade on the same motive the slaughter of animals, or the gathering of plants, which were purer still, as being so many vents whereby the perfumes and exha- lations of earth rose to heaven, to restore in their light mists the portions of divinity which longed to remount to their source. The seal of the breast was to close the heart to all passion, for Manes forbade marriage and the procreation of children, as tending by the in- crease of the human race, in long series of generations, to lengthen the divine captivity and send new souls to languish and groan upon earth, and so commit the greatest crime against the Soul of God whose deliver- ance mankind was bound to further.* Such were the fundamental principles of the system, and in them its utter immorality is manifest. These distinctions of souls into three classes, the division of mankind into two parts, the elect and the hearers, the denial of any enlightenment to non-Mauichœans, made the system an outrage to tli^ human conscience. Thus, giving alms to any one external to the sect was for- bidden, as affording him a means of insinuating as nourishment to his impure and material body substances which, if placed on Manichœan lips, would be cleansed and raised towards God;f and the contempt thrown * St. Aug. Dc Moribus Mauich. lib. ii. ; De Hœresibus, passim. f St. Aug. De Moribus Manich. lib. ii. liii. THEOLOGY. 253 over the whole of nature degraclecl the Divine work- manship), and resulted ine\"itahly in an interdiction of all property as one more bond to fix man to the cor- rupted earth, whose curse extended to those also who tilled it with harrow and plough, w^hose plants were full of hallowed life, and those who reaped them guilty of a crime. It tended to the destruction of the family, for marriage was under a ban, and the giving of chil- dren to the state and fresh shoots to the Manichsean Church accounted the greatest of sins, and its doctrine, owing to human nature's inextinguishable passions, had for a result, by ine\dtable though unavowed conse- quence, the ruin of man himself. To this pointed those maxims, inexpressibly true, which established dis- tinctions between the requirements of nature and the prohibitions of law, the forbidden and the tolerated among the pleasures of sense, and which inaugurated a state of manners to the real and frightful corrup- tion of which contemporary evidence bears witness. We have thus sufficiently shown the profoundly pagan character of the Manichsean errors ; but on closer con- sideration of its origin, of the country and personal adventures of its chief apostle, we can easily recognize in it traces of the Persian dualism, the opposition of Ormuzd and Ahriman, and the eternal struggle on their respective frontiers of the realms of light and of dark- ness. This was the essence of the religion of Zoroas- ter, but in the battle between these principles there was a third, of mediating character, called Mithra, the worship of whom had attained such singular popularity on its importation into the Western Empire that Com- modus even dared to immolate a man, and Julian at Constantinople established games in his honour, while 254 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. numberless monuments bear witness to the worship of him at Mihm, in the Tyrol, throughout the two pro- vinces of Gaul, and in the remotest parts of Germany. But Manichœism had an element ignored by the system of Zoroaster, which in approaching nearer the infancy of the world had never hurled an absolute curse at the flesh, nor believed in the entire degradation of created matter, nor the captivity of the divine essence, nor dreamt of prohibiting marriage and procreation of chil- dren — doctrines which sprang from that worship of Bu4dha, the energetic and passionate propagandism of which we have observed in the early centuries of the Christian era. But it is difficult to decide whether Manes drew his system originally from these Buddhist sources, or found the teaching which he handed down to his disciples held by former Gnostic sects, themselves impregnated with the Oriental doctrine. Yet, however this may be, it was instinct with Paganism, and from that one cause, perhaps, the Manichsean belief exercised so incredible an influence over the minds which had seemed entirely severed from the errors of the pagan world. At the end of the fourth century, under Theodosius, when Christianity had enjoyed a century of sway over the mind of man and the provinces of the Empire, Manichneism became bolder than ever, and the idolatry of old seemed to have found its avenger. Its tenets spread with marvellous rapidity in both East and West, and made a conquest of St. Augustine himself, who for nine years was one of the hearers of Manes, and strug- gled vainly against the problem of the origin of evil, which he used to turn in every sense on his tear- bedewed couch, to return always to the same question, THEOLOGY. 255 " How was evil created." Finding no solution in the early notions of Chiistianity which he had received from his mother, he suffered his mind to be drawn to- wards the fables of Manichœism, and hung upon the lips of the eloquent preachers who told of the strife of the two principles, of the agony of Jesus patihil'is, the sufferings of all creation, even, as he says, to the tear shed by the fig when dissevered from the branch to which it had clung. Such were the errors to which this gi-eat intellect had fallen a prey, until the wiser philosophy of the Platon- ists and the eloquence of Ambrose snatched it from these delusive fables, and made it their most formidable opponent by assigning him the mission of refuting and destroying them, by rehabilitating in the face of the heathen world a philosophical, holy, and reasonable view of the origin of evil. In default of an analysis of his works on the subject, the following passage from his book, "DeMoribusManichseorum," mil suffice to show their tendency : — " That which especially merits the name of being is what always remains in its own likeness, is not subject to change or corruption, or to lapse of time, but the same in conduct in the present as in the past. For the word Being carries with it the thought of another permanent and immutable nature. We can name no other such but God Himself, and if you seek a contrary principle to Him, you will not find it, for existence has no contrary but non-existence. " If you define evil as that which is against nature, you speak truly ; but you overturn your heresy, for all that is contrary to nature tends to self-destruction, and to make what is non-existent. What the ancients 256 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. called nature we name essence and substance, and therefore in the Catholic doctrine God is called the author of every nature and every substance, and by it is understood that He is not the author of evil. For how could the author of being to everything which exists be the cause by which anything already existent should cease to be, lose its essence, and tend towards nothing ? And how can your evil principle, that you pretend to be the supreme ill, be contrary to nature, if you attribute to it a nature and a substance ? For if it works against itself it will destroy its own existence, which it must succeed in doing to arrive at the supremacy of evil, but which it cannot do according to you, as you predicate of it not only existence but eternity of existence. "Evil, then, is not an essence, but a deprivation and a disorder. All that tends to existence tends to order. For to be is to be one, and the nearer anything stands to unity so much the fuller is its participation in exist- ence, it being the work of unity to give concord and arrangement to its constituent part : this order gives existence, disorder takes it away, and everything that has an internal principle of disorder tends to dissolution. But the goodness of God forbids things to arrive at that point ; and even to those creatures of His who miss their end He gives such order that they are placed in their most congruous place, so that by regular effort they may again ascend to the rank whence they had fallen. For this cause reasoning souls, in whom free- will is powerful, if they distance themselves from God, are arranged by Him as befits them in the lowest degrees of creation, so that they become miserable by a divine judgment, in accordance with their merits." * * De Moribus Manichaîorum, lib. iii. 2, et seq. THEOLOGY. 257 These theories, though abstract, afforded a vast comfort to the human mind as it emerged from its Manichsean frenzy, from the pagan fables which were wafting it back to all the spells of Greek mythology, into the light of a purer philosophy and possession of the innate reason. In accepting them, the Christian world divorced for ever the tales which too long tyran- nized over the intellect, but yet while it escaped the peril of becoming a mythology, it fell under the risk of reducing its system to so rational a form as to sink into mere philosophical speculation. Among these new forms of heresy two stand out as especially to be noticed. Arianism and Pelagianism, infants of those two philosophical systems of antiquity which had most attraction for Christian minds, were most calculated to strike them by their metaphysical character or pure morality, the doctrine respectively of Plato and of Zeno. The former gave a lofty notion of the Deity, whom it represented as acting on the world by means of ideas, which Plato abstained from defining, and, in calling them only the principle of all knowledge, avoided ex- plaining their place of residence, whether within or external to the Deity, whether they were reduced to one idea or the many, whether, reunited, they formed the Aôyoç, or Divine Word, or continued in distinct and personal existence. On all these points the master kept silence, but as the disciples did not imitate his reserve, these questions have been the continued torment of the schools of Platonism. An Alexandrian Jew named Philo, tor- tured by the wish of adapting his Mosaic creed to the doctrines of their philosophy, undertook to establish 258 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. God's creation of the universe by the aid of a perfect idea or archetj^pe, wherein was reflected the creative law, which was personified in the wisdom of Solomon and the Word of the sacred writings. God, not being able to act directly on matter, as too evil and weak for His action, had created the Word before the world to serve as intermediary between the Divine Will and this imperfect and corrupt universe. Therefore the Word was inferior to God, and beneath it were produced a series of ema- nations to which Philo gave a distinct personality, and named them sometimes ideas, sometimes angels. His doctrine was destined to inspire that of the Alexandrian commentators Numenius and Plotinus, who evolved a trinity formed of unity (to sv), absolute intelli- gence {vouç), and the soul of the world (^^^xw toS Travrôg), which, far from inspiring the idea of the Christian Trinity, did not appear in any precise form till Christianity had promulgated its doctrines, and made known the mysteries on which this philosophical triad was designed. But a certain number of minds fell into error on comparing the two dogmas, especially those of a philosophical bent, who were fascinated by the old lore and the Platonic doctrines, nourished on Plotinus, and steeped in that Alexandrian speculation which Tertullian had especially defied when he cast his ban upon pagan philosophy and letters ; the Judaizers also, who though believing in the Christian scheme, found it heavy for their faith, and therefore sought to rob it of its aureole ; and lastly the mighty multitude who had entered the Church in the train of the emperors, and sought to attenuate its mysteries by seeking refuge in the reception of a dogma of higher morality than any antiquity had known, but which would ill support THEOLOGY. 259 the miraculous element of Christianity. And these three classes of minds became the components of the Arian sect, Arius himself, on his appearance, speaking only as their organ. Arius rehabilitated Philo in professing that God was too pure to act upon creation, and that the world could not support the divine action, that it was necessary to utter a middle existence, purer than creation, less holy than Grod Himself, namely, the Word, created and not eternal, enjoying a great but not infinite share of light and wisdom ; holy, but not so immutable in sanctity as to preclude the possibility of a fall, submitted in fact by God, who foresaw the triumphant issue, to the supreme probation of an incarnation, and assigned in recomjDense as the Creator and Saviour of mankind. This \Yord, united to a human body, became the man Jesus ; and thus Christ had no real divinity, and as man had never been in immediate relation with God, the original fall had not the same gravity, nor redemption the same effect ; it could not bring man, still too feeble, into com- munion with the infinite Goodness and Wisdom, and so became a bald teaching by the example of a divinely- inspired man named Jesus, who was a mere prophet or sage, with superior enlightenment to his fellows. At the same time the doctrine of Zeno made many converts. Its Stoic morality, so nobly stern and mor- tifying to carnal impulse, had a gi-eat fascination for manly and ascetic natures, like those of the men who took refuge from the world in the deserts of the Thebaid that they might bring their body into subjec- tion. It need not astonish us to see St. Nilus putting into the hands of his anchorites the manual of Epictetus, or Evagrius of Pontus falling into heresy 260 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. through the system of Zeno. It exalted human nature as being that of God Himself, whence it followed that the two laws of nature and of reason sufficed as a rule of life, and that by their aid man could rise to the same or even a higher level than the Deity Himself. "For," said Seneca, " what difference is there between the wise man and Jupiter ? the latter can effect no more than him ; the only advantage he has over him is that of having been good for a longer time, but virtue itself is not enhanced by a longer duration. The sage despises material advantages as much as Jupiter, and excels him in this respect, that the god abstains from pleasures which he cannot, the sage from those he will not, avail himself of." * And so man by his own strength rose superior to his God ; and such dreams seduced many a hermit's soul in the contemplative hours of his long vigils ; till, carried away by this stoicism, the monk Pelagius arrived at the profession of the doctrine that nature had never suffered original sin, but had remained intact and always able to raise itself to God by its own strength ; that grace was useless, and if it existed at all was nothing but the possibility of well-doing, the fact of human liberty, the divine law promulgated in the gospel, a light innate to the intellect and shining there without any impulse or aid to the will from without ; prayer had no meaning, and with it vanished the con- solation which feeble man found in recourse to the Almighty. Such were the essential errors of Pelagius, against which St. Augustine declared war as Athanasius had done against the heresy of Arius. The two systems, near in point of time, filled a century and a half with * Epist. ad Lucilium, Ixxiii. 13. THEOLOGY. 2G1 controversy, which roused into activity the whole Christian world, moulded its polemics, and gave in- spiration to its genius. We need not speak of the councils without number which forced men to occupy themselves with the most difficult problems in the cycle of Christian metaphysics, and roused their minds from their sloth to precipitate them into that pregnant strife which called for crucial proof of their subtlety and skill in handling all the resources of dialectic, nor of the mighty travail of the intellect which was destined to give birth to modern theological science, but need only mark that in repelling the double error, Christianity repudiated as well the idea of being but a system of philosophy, to remain a religion, as it had been first announced. Lactantius summed this up in his me- morable sentence, " Christianity can never be a philo- sophy without religion, nor a religion without philo- sophy." The faith is dogmatic, and therefore more than an opinion, but a dogma that is entirely reason- able. Had Pelagianism or Arianism triumphed, and the Church creed become a philosophy, the consequences would have been that as Arius suppressed the relation of Christ with God, and Pelagius those of man with Christ, in denying grace, original sin, and redemption, so all the supernatural intercourse between God and man being snapped, all religion would have perished, for religion (religare) is but a bond between the two extremes of God and man, the Infinite and the finite ; and with the disappearance of the mysteries which enshrined the two principles of faith and love, nothing would have remained but a learned, subtle, but feeble deism, impotent, as the mere scientific opinion ever will be, to fertilize and regenerate humanity in its entirety. 262 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Science has a sufficiently ample and glorious domain, but it is not lier mission to be popular and universal, for limitation to a small minority of the race is the con- dition of her existence. Even to-day, in the full light of civilization and of Christianity, how many meta- physicians in Europe are there who, by the effort of their own unaided thought, can arrive at a precise notion of God and of man's destiny ? And if so, how much the more, when the world had but just emerged from her proof by blood and lire, and was still groaning beneath the sword of the barbarian ? What would then have been the issue had not the principle of Faith been endorsed in the flanks of that new society, and the reconstructing influence been revealed at the period of seemingly utter ruin ? 'More than knowledge was wanting for the training of those bloody and coarse- minded hordes which were vomited from every quarter of the East, and to bring them to that Middle Age whose entire civilization was to be but a development of theology. The most salient feature of these barbarous centuries of the Middle Age, and that least open to doubt, is their supremely logical character. From that proceeded the intense fascination exercised by syllogistic reasonings upon a period which could never lay down a principle without seeking to deduce its consequences, nor realize a great event without labouring to find its cause. From this sprang all the great efforts and mighty achieve- ments of the mediaeval epoch. Theology was destined to bring about not only the marvellous intellectual development of the thirteenth century, under the grand intellects of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventura, but also the Crusades, the struggle of the priesthood THEOLOGY. 263 and the Empire, the reign of St. Louis, and the consti- tutions of the Italian republics. It was to influence all the great political movements of the time, to pene- trate the universities, to be found in the painter's studio and in the poet's song, and, further still, to open the fields of ocean, pregnant with stormy peril, to the genius of Christopher Columbus, who, in obedience to his own interpretation of a Scripture text, set foot on his ship to find another road for a new Crusade which might release the Sepulchre of Christ, rendered up, to his despair, to Moslem oppression. The logical principle of every great achievement of that period was faith, the desire for belief, and the power man finds in himself when he believes ; for, as it is only on the condition of faith that manldnd can attain to love, the power of theology lies in its being the native principle of both faith and love. For man- kind only loves what it takes on trust, not what it can easily compass ; the not understanding a thing is the condition of loving it ; and whatever is capable of mathematical demonstration gives little warmth to the heart. Who has ever been in love with an axiom, with a truth which leaves no need of further search ? The unknown is the most powerful constituent of love, for nothing fascinates the human mind like mystery, and, on the contrary, we soon weary of what we compre- hend. How many illustrious men of letters or of science have finished a long life of toil in Aveariness at all they knew, and have acted like Newton, who, dis- gusted with mathematics, forced himself to expound the Apocalypse, attracted by speculations on that which was indemonstrable ? Mystery is the secret of love, and in love there is faith. We need not wonder at the I 264 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. great works of the Middle Age, when we see how it believed, still less when we see how it loved. It was the power which inspired St. Francis of Assisi, and all those generations of devoted men to whom no cost was too dear to bring another soul to the threshold of truth. It was in its faith and its love that the Middle Age found its strength, and therefore our treatise on the theology which produced them has been long. St. Anselm has spoken of Faith seeking understanding, Fides quœrens intellectum, and in the words of St. Augustine, Intellectum valde ama* * St. Aug. Epist. cxx. ad Consentium. 265 CHAPTEK X. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY (sT. AUGUSTINE). We have seen amidst the ruins of the fourth and fifth centuries theology arising as a new power, unknown to antiquity, but destined to dominate the Middle Age. Antiquity had possessed learned priesthoods, and had made attempts at bringing its religious traditions to order and light, but had no true theology in the sense of a science founded uj^on a serious alliance of reason and faith, because in Paganism there was no faith and but little reason. These two principles, on the other hand, were of the very essence of Christianity ; faith had given it three centuries full of martyrs, and reason, applied to the understanding of dogma, had given it the Fathers. We have also seen what a degree of rectitude, perseverance, and toil was necessary to maintain the dogmatic deposit free from the two perils of a return to heathenism with the Gnostics and Manichees, or of losing itself in philosophy under the guidance of Arius and Pelagius. And these questions had a right to occupy us in spite of their difficulty, for the fifth century was labouring far less for itself than for the ages to come, thereby manifesting the admirable economy in the laws of Pro- vidence, which causes nothing to be lost to the Christian family, but that each generation should show itself bent VOL. I. 12 266 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. under the burden and heat of its own day, and weighed down also by that of its successors. Arianism did not perish at Nicasa or at Constantinople. Banished from the Koman Empire, it took refuge with and made rapid progress amongst the barbarians, to return again with the clouds of Goths, Alani, Suevi, and Vandals, which, in the course of another century, were to break over the Empire, and to become dominant in Italy, in Southern Gaul, in Spain, and on the shores of Africa. The greatest of the Arian princes, Theodoric, seemed as if raised up for the purpose of founding a new empire with an Arian civilization, which, however, was soon destined to fall before the breath of Providence. Behind these Arians were others, the Moslems, possessing a newer edition of the same error — the unity of God, and Christ considered as a prophet, under which novel appearance the heresy was to cover the East, and even the West, till its recoil before the little kingdom of the Franks, founded by bishops and built upon theology, before the theologian monarch who called himself Charles the Great, and before the age which left upon the whole of Christendom so deep an impress. Neither had Manichfeism irretrievably disappeared, though hurled back by the puissant eloquence of St. Augustine to the boundaries of the Eastern Empire and Persia, and into the mountains of Armenia. It was there that Petrus Siculus, a Sicilian bishop, and envoy of the Greek emperors, found in the ninth century a powerful sect, possessed of a perfect hierarchy and organization, and which sought to propagate itself under the name of Bogomites, or as Paulicians in Bulgaria. It was Manicliœism again which reappeared CHEISTIAN PHILOSOPHY — ST. AUGUSTINE. 267 during the eleventh century in France, Italy, and Germany, in the errors of the Cathari, Patariui, and Albigenses, and suddenly enveloping, as in a net, the greater part of Southern Christendom, threatened the Catholic civilization with the gravest perils. At the rumour of these heresies, which alike denied the Christian's God and attacked the principles of property and the family, and consequently the very elements of society, Europe roused herself and chivalry grasped the sword ; and though we must ever deplore the excesses and horrors of the Albigensian crusades, yet the smoke of their conflagrations must not conceal the truth, that if the victory won by the sword was tarnished by cruelty, the triumph of thought and reason leaves no room for regi-et. From that furious struggle proceeded all the great theologians, in whom the age was so wealthy — St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventura, and Italy's great poet, Dante; and from their theology, which had profoundly agitated the human mind and fertilized its thought, had penetrated during the long gestation of the fourteenth century, in the mid-chaos of its stormy years to the last ranks of Christian civilization, went forth the marvels of the sixteenth century, its grand expansion of human genius, which, in less than a hundred years, discovered printing, sounded with Copernicus the secrets of heaven, and brought to light with Columbus a moiety of the world ; all long before the appearance of the man to whom the honour of having aroused the human intellect has been awarded — Luther, the German monk. Theology, then, was the soul of the Middle Age, and in looking upon the work- ing of all the great thoughts which gave birth to the crusades, to chivalry, and the great movements which 12 * 268 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. carried away our forefathers, we must confess that, amidst the general confusion, it was the only influence that made its impulse felt. Mens agitât molcm. Theology descends from faith to reason, and philo- sophy ascends from reason to faith. This return of the soul towards truths which it has perceived from afar under mysterious shadows, only to desire their con- templation anew, and face to face, is an irresistihle and imperishahle want in human nature. And what re- ligion, true or false, has not given faith a philosophy to confirm it or to contradict ? Those two great verities, God and the immortality of the soul, at once supremely attractive and supremely terrible, have never ceased to pursue humanity, and to strive by one way or another to come under its cognizance. But every time philo- sophy has pointed out two ways towards grasping the ideas by whose aspect it has been attracted, one way by the laborious reasoning process, which is continually pausing to consider the steps it has made, the metho- dical reasoning of logic, the science of binding ideas together, as if to mount to the seat of the Deity by piling Ossa upon Pelion; but these mountains are heavy to raise, dialectic is no moderate efl"ort for the human mind, and its ambitious edifice often falls before it has been half constructed. And, therefore, man turns to the other path, and perceiving that now and then unsought truth has beamed in upon him, that inspiration has its instincts and contemplation its lights,* demands wherefore they are not his, and so he seeks another method in the eff"ort of will, in the puri- fication of the heart, in the interior labour of love ; in short, he puts his confidence in morality instead of in logic, and thinks that in making himself more worthy CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY ST. AUGUSTINE. 269 of God lie may arrive at the contemplation of Him. These two methods, then, the former proceeding from logical reason, the latter from morality and contem- plative love, have constituted the two philosophies of dogmatism and mysticism. It is not our task to remount to the origin of mys- ticism, nor to point to the highest antiquity of India, to those motionless contemplators who lived whole lives on the point whereon their resting-place had first been fixed, forbade themselves any movement, and with eyes strained forward, gave themselves up to the last degree of privation and mortification, in order to conjure their Deity to descend upon them ; neither those speculative philosophers who, in expounding the text of the Vedas, drew in imagination from them many systems to elucidate the revelation which they sup- posed had been confided to their charge. We may leave this too remote antiquity, and pause at the same efforts appearing in Greece, whose mystics, with Pytha- goras, made wisdom consist in abstinence and con- tinence, and which, in the persons of Thaïes, the sophists, and half the school of Socrates, contributed to the dogmatic system. We may be content with the results of Greek genius, that finest shoot of the human mind, and ask what conclusion its mightiest intellects, Aristotle and Plato, arrived at on the weightiest problem of the reason, the knowledge of God. Plato, indeed, pushed the knowledge of God farther than any other sage of antiquity. He conceived of God as the Idea of Good, from whom all beings receive their intelligence, and by whom they exist; his God was good, and by his bounty had produced the world, 270 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. not out of nothing, but from previously existent matter, which he drew from the chaos in which it was labour- ing, and which he was ever opposing as the rebellious principle by which his works are modified, corrupted, and spoilt. The God of Plato was a great conception, but he was not a free agent nor a sole existence, but living eternally side by side with undisciplined matter, and, conquered in his efforts by its resistance, was but half master, and though great and good, if not free and sole, was not God. Aristotle, on the other hand, in the fourteen books of his " Metaphysics," put forth his utmost efforts to surpass Plato, and brought together the mightiest scientific apparatus that human hand has ever moved. Yet the man who knew the history of all animals, who had laid a basis for a republic, studied the laws of the human mind, and classed thought in categories, felt at last the necessity of recapitulating all his toil ; he stretched his hands to right and left, and reassembled the knowledge which he had gained in the study of the universe in its totality, and from the most pro- found notions as to substance and accident, poten- tiality and action, movement and privation, hewed steps, as it were, on the summit of which, breathless and panting from the immense labour to which he had condemned himself, he believed at last he had reached God. He proclaimed him as a First Motor, necessary and eternal, of a world as eternal as himself, as guiding the universe without volition and without love, submitted with a capacity of directing it to a kind of physical attraction. He was powerful and intelligent, and found his pleasure in self-contemplation ; but as he was not good, did not love his works, but only CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY — ST. AUGUSTINE. 271 himself, was still more imperfect than the God of Plato. Such were the results obtained by the human in- tellect, aided by the light thrown upon it during ages of infinite laboriousness, and by the immense advan- tages afforded in the congenial and brilliant epochs of Pericles and Alexander. Epicurus and Zeno followed, the former with his system of atoms, the latter making God a corporeal substance — a great animal, as it were ; and then Pyrrho, with his universal scepticism, which Cicero struggled against in vain, by surrounding with the brightest lustre those two fundamental verities of all true doctrine — the existence of God and the soul's immortality. In vain, for, tainted himself by scep- ticism, he ended by finding the former a mere proba- bility, and the latter eminently desirable for men of worth. And this was the issue of philosophy at the dawn of Christianity. Christianity appeared to refresh the forces of the human mind, in giving it that certitude without which its action is paralyzed ; for that which has been hurled as a chief objection against Christian philosophy con- stituted in fact its strength, its novelty, and its merit. It has been constantly said that the Church only suffers a verification of dogma already pronounced certain, that she fixes the goal, and leaves only the road to it open to search. Yet surely no great minds, no deep thinkers, have entered upon the ways of science but with a firm and settled idea as to their end ; the human intellect only resigns itself to the formidable task of philosophic reasoning on condition of seeing their result in the distance. When Descartes went on his pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loretto as a Catholic 272 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. pilgrim, he had a fixed determination of arriving at the proof of the existence of God and the immortahty of the soul. It is in a settled certainty as to its aim that genius finds its power. Kepler's dying speech was that he knew that his calculations were inexact, hut that, by God's help, sooner or later, some one would come forward to correct their errors, and prove the truth of the conclusions. This was true genius, science, and philosophy — the light destined to guide the intellect of mankind for the future. Christianity brought cer- tainty to it, and to the gift added the liberty of choosing among the different paths which led there, and freeing human thought from mystic or dogmatic schools, spoke at once to the mind and to the heart, and imposed upon man the duty of arriving, by aid of his faculties and feelings, at a supremely lovable and supremely intelligible notion of God Himself. In this lay the novelty of the Christian eclecticism, and the road was followed by the Fathers of the Church in succession ; but as the majority of those great minds, being involved in pressing polemical struggles, had no leisure to summarize and reduce into philosophical form the issues of their thought, that labour was reserved for St. Augustine, as being one out of the three or four great metaphysicians assigned by the Almighty to modern times ; it was his task to clear the two roads open to Christian philosophy, and to inaugurate its two methods of mysticism and dog- matism. No soul had ever been more troubled with an in- satiable love for truth which could not be seen — a feeling happily described as a heavenly home-sickness, a deep craving for the eternal fatherland whence man CHEISTIAN PHILOSOPHY ST. AUGUSTINE. 273 came and whither he is tending. No soul, on the other hand, ever seemed thrown upon this world at a greater distance from its God. He was born on that African coast, already given up to the last state of dis- order, which required nothing less than the Vandal torrent to cleanse the impurity in which it was steeped. His father was not Christian, and, greater danger still, designed his son, not only for the study but the pro- fession of the corrupt literature of the Decline ; to hire out his eloquence, and teach the art of lying on lucra- tive terms. Amidst the traffic in rhetoric of the schools of Madaura and Carthage, the young Augustine began to grow skilled in tricks of speech, in the dangerous art which holds thought cheap and seeks an empty pleasure for the ear. His fellow-pupils, the students of Carthage, had earned, from their wild reputation, the nickname of eversores (ravagers), and, according to the Saint himself, were in the habit of attending the lectures of some favourite master through door or window, breaking everything in their way. We can judge of the peril Augustine encountered among such wild freaks, and his "Confessions" show us, in fact, that he resisted none of the temptations by which early youth is generally assailed. But God had given him a rest- less heart, which could find no repose but in Him, and the secret disturbance of a soul which aspired to purity revealed itself in the very midst of its pollutions. When a mere child, he used to pray to God that his masters might not flog him, and later, when it seemed as if every remembrance of Him must have been banished in those nights of wild debauchery, the idea was still present, though unrecognized. His strong 12 f 274 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. admiration of the beautiful began to reveal his literary vocation ; it drew tears from him on reading of the woes of Dido, and took him as a spectator, not so much to the games of the circus as to the representations of the theatre, and especially to those tragedies which placed beneath his eyes the heroic misery of the great ones of antiquity. It pursued him as an insatiable passion into the pulpit of the rhetorician, and caused him constantly to ask his friends, " Qmdamamus, nisi pulchrum ? Quid est pulclirum ? " whilst his first literary labour consisted of three volumes on Beauty. But Goodness attracted him as well as Beauty ; friendship, the communion of soul with soul, showed itself with great force in his breast when, on the loss of a beloved fellow-pupil, he bewailed him with an agony which nothing could console. " My eyes looked for him in every place, but no place gave him back to me, and I loathed everything, because nothing could show me him, nor say, ' Behold, he is just coming,' as when he lived and was absent from me. I bore then within me a torn and bleeding heart, which hardly suffered me to bear it, and yet I knew not where to lay it down, for it would not repose in charming thickets, nor in the country with its sports, nor in perfumed chambers, banquets, or voluptuous delights, neither in books nor in poetry."* Such was the affection of St. Augustine; and if he could thus love a friend, what must have been the nature of those other passions of his heart ? for amidst the horror with which the wild disorder of his youth inspired him, mark that he maintains that his soul plunged into unlawful love because it was famish- ing for some love, and divine nourishment had been * Confess, lib. iv. cap. iv. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY — ST. AUGUSTINE. 275 withdrawn from it. At nineteen, the " Hortensius " of Cicero fell into his hands, caused him a disgust for fortune, and made him to swear to love nothing thence- forth but the Eternal Wisdom ; " for already," he says, " I was aiming to return, my God, to Thee."* But he was but half satisfied with " Hortensius," and troubled at not finding therein the name of Christ — a word which, with its sweet and tender influence, had remained rooted in the depths of his heart. The Mauichaeans spoke of Christ, and that drew his mind towards them, as, tormented by the thought of God, he asked himself ceaselessly, "What is evil? from whom does it proceed ?" A sect which promised an explanation of the problem could not fail to fascinate him. The Manichaeans brought him up to the point of admitting, with them, a corporeal God and a corporeal soul ; no notion of things spiritual entered his intellect; be believed that Christ resided between the sun and the moon ; that He had taken only a fantastic body ; that primitive man had been broken in pieces by the spirit of darkness ; that plants exhaled in their perfumes different particles of the soul of the World, and the fig plucked from the tree shed tears of pain. All this St. Augustine believed, rather than nothing, so deeply did his soul crave for sacrifice and for entire self-devotion. But the Manichœans them- selves at last wearied him by the demands they in- sisted on from his lofty reason, and the works of the Neoplatonists having, at the same time, come in his way, he again found a philosophy which told of God as the Author of good. He gave himself up by preference to their guidance, and under it began to conceive of * Confess, lib. iii. cap. iv. 276 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. God otlierwise than under corporeal forms, as a hal- lowed, invisible, impalpable Light ; and yet these notions had difficulty in penetrating his still hesitating mind. "And I said, ' Has Truth, then, not existence, seeing it not spread over finite nor over infinite space ? ' and Thou didst cry to me from afar, ' I exist, I am that which is ; ' and I understood in my very heart, and I could no longer doubt more of Thy Truth than of my life!"* But at the moment of this revolution in his soul, St. Augustine left Carthage, a. d. 383, and set sail for Rome, leaving his mother kneeling on the shore as the scud- ding ship bore far away that diild of so many tears. At Rome, the prefect of the city, who had been asked for a professor of rhetoric for Milan, where the court was then residing, summoned the young African, whose fame had reached him, to his presence, heard him, and entrusted him with the appointment. The man who played the part of protector and Maecaenas to St. Augustine was, by strange fatality, the pagan Symmachus. Arrived at Milan, St. Augustine saw St. Ambrose, heard him with admiration, and went again to listen to him at the Church. At other times he went to behold him working, reading, compiling manuscripts, writing in his house, which was open to all, and constantly thronged by the curious, though Ambrose never raised his eyes, except on some demand of charity. • Augustine saw him in meditation, and went out again in silence.* He had his mother also at his side, for she, counting always upon his conversion, had not feared to cross the sea to rejoin him, reassured, too, by the speech of a bishop to her : "It is impos- * Confess, lib. yi. cap. iii. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY ST. AUGUSTINE. 277 sible but that your child of many tears should be restored to you." His friends were with him ; his pupils, who had followed him from Africa, unable to detach themselves from their beloved master, and in their midst his soul began to seek for the calmness and repose of a better regulated life. They discussed toge- ther the formation of a philosophical community, which had been the dream of so many philosophers, and which Pythagoras had attempted ; but their difficulty lay in the admission of women, for Augustine had not resolved on tearing himself from the pleasures of his youth, and his old lusts still kept their grasp on "his garment of flesh." When in this condition, he learnt the story of Victorinus, who had left everj-thing at the summit of his fame, and ripe in age, to follow Christ; and was captivated by that other history of the two imperial officers, who, whilst walking in the suburbs of Treves, had entered a monastery, and struck with admiration at their life, had decided to abandon everything to live in perfection with its inmates. All these stories troubled the mind of St. Augustine, and drew him on insensibly towards Christianity, which St. Ambrose had lately taught him, and whose marv^els excelled so infinitely those related by Plato and his disciples. At the con- clusion of the conversation, in the course of which the account of the two officers had been related to him, he felt that decisive blow of which he has left us so vi\'id a picture. We must give it here, in remembrance of that memorable day at the close of August, 386, in which this great soul was snatched from its errors, and thrown at the feet of the Truth, into the bosom of that doctrine which henceforth he was so gloriously to serve. 278 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. "I advanced into the garden, and Alypius followed me step by step. I could not feel alone with myself as long as he was with me, and how could he desert me in the trouble in which he beheld me. We sat down at the farthest spot from the house, and I shuddered in my very soul with ardent indignation at my tardiness in flying to that new life to which I had agreed with God, and into which my whole being cried out to me to enter I flung myself on the ground, why, I know not, under a fig-tree, and gave free course to my tears, which gushed forth in streams, as an ofl'ering agreeable to Thee, my God. And I spoke thousands of things to Thee, not in these words, but in this sense : ' Lord, how long wilt Thou be angry with me ? Kemember no more my old iniquities,' for I felt that they held me still. I let these pitiable words escape me : ' When ? On what day ? To-morrow ? The day after ? Why not yet ? Why is not this very hour the last of my shame ? ' So did I speak to Thee, and wept bitterly in the contrition of my heart, when, behold, I heard pro- ceeding from a house a voice like that of a child, or a young girl, which sang and repeated as a burden, these words, ' Take up, and read ! take up, and read ! ' *' Then I returned with hurried steps to the place where Alypius was sitting, for I had left the book of the Apostle there on rising from my seat. I took it, and opened and read silently the first chapter on which my eyes fell : ' Live not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy ; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences. * I would read no farther, nor was there need for it, for * Rom. xiii. 13, 14. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY ST. AUGUSTINE. 279 instantly, as I grasped the tliouglit, a light of certainty spread over my soul, and the mists of doubt vanished. Then I marked the passage with my finger or some other sign, shut the book, and gave it to Alypius to read." All the darkness was, indeed, dispelled, and from that day Augustine was in possession of the God whom he had so long pursued, who had sought him, too, and at last had gained him. So perfect was the com- munion, so real the contemplation, that in that other famous moment of which he leaves us the history, in his intercourse with his mother, we feel that he reached the farthest point open to mortal man in relation with God. A short time after this day of his conversion, when Monica was on the point of giving back her soul to God, though the approach of that hour was not yet known, both mother and son were at Ostia, preparing to embark on the vessel which was to bear them back to Africa. As one evening the two were leaning on a window in contemplation of the sky, they fell to talking of the hopes of immortality, and then, said St. Augustine, having traversed the whole order of things visible, and considered every creature which bore witness to God, far above stars and sun they reached the region of the soul, and there found their aspirations were not satisfied, and so they turned to the Eternal and Creative Wisdom ; and whilst we spoke thus, continues the Saint, we seemed to touch It ; and, in conclusion, he declares that had that moment's contemplation lasted for eternity, it would have sufficed, and far more than sufficed, for his ever- lasting happiness. 280 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Thus did St. Augustine, by the way of purification, of illumination, of contemplation, reach the true idea of God, and in this sense his " Confessions" become a grand work of mystic philosophy ; and that he thus considered them himself is evidenced by the concluding address : " And what man can cause man, what angel his fellow- angel, what angel can cause man to understand these things ? It is Thou "Whom we must ask, God ! Thou Whom we must seek, at Whom we must knock, and it is then only tliat we shall find, shall receive, and be opened to. Amen." To him these " Confessions" were nothing else than a mystic method of reaching God, and in them we find every characteristic of mysticism, and especially asceticism, the eifort to create a moral and not a logical method of purifying self, and so render- ing it worthy of an approach to God, to which end alone the long struggle against passion must ever tend ; the careful cleansing of the intellect, in banishing every error which had crept in, whether Pagan, Manichsean, or Neoplatonic ; and, lastly, the raptures of a heart hence- forth free in its aspirations towards the Eternal One, and able to enter into closest communion with Him. These are the three degrees and phases through which great mystics make every soul pass which is under their guidance — the life of purgation, the life of illumination, the life of union. And, again, it contains another force ; the soul, no longer given over to itself, as when a guidance towards reason is in question, for love cannot stand alone, but must have a proper surrounding, its philosophy cannot go alone, but only in company, so Augustine was accompanied by his mother, the guardian angel of his convictions, and one of their living and necessary elements — the soul, as it were, of his loving CHEISTIAN PHILOSOPHY ST. AUGUSTINE. 281 and inspiring philosophy ; it was his mother who guided and stood hy him from his dark youth to his brilliant maturity, whilst his friends, such as St. Ambrose, or the Church Universal, greedy of his presence, brought him on to the threshold of truth. This method, then, condemns mankind to no un- natural isolation, it appeals to nature in its entirety, with all its splendours, errors, and illusions. By the aid of Beauty St. Augustine returned to God ; the things of earth, which had charmed and deceived him, held amidst their seductive errors a true reality, making itself felt as alone capable of filling his heart. At last he cleft the veil and found the deep and creative beauty which lay hid under the form of every creature as a ray from the Creator, the symbolism which is another note of mysticism seeking in natural objects the reflection of the Deity and the footprints of the Invisible. Mysticism, with these three characteristics, is the same in every time ; and during the Middle Age the mystic philosophy of St. Augustine blossomed into that of Hugh and Eichard of St. Victor, of St. Bonaventura, and the other great masters of the Western Church. But the fact that this doctrine has its dangers was proved in the case of St. Augustine himself, and was to be showTi by many subsequent instances. Like love, it brooks no control, and will be responsible to no one for its raptures and abandonments, and so it lies open to extravagance, to be drawn into paths in which the ties of its wings may break, and its aspirations towards the Sun end in a fall into the abyss. Control is essen- tial to it, and so Christianity did not call for a mystic philosophy to stand alone without guide or rule, but 282 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. placed at its side a dogmatic system, as the mysticism of St. Augustine was supported by his dogmatism. In the earlier portion of the intellectual history of this Saint, it was God who was pursuing him pitilessly in the doubt of his mind and the struggle of his heart, as well as through the deep abasement of his carnal nature ; and though he could fly from his country and his mother, he could not escape from his God, Who found him at Milan in that garden and under the fig-tree, whither we have followed him ; but when He had once possessed him, it was St. Augustine's turn to follow after his God : ,he found Him, indeed, but never suffi- ciently — he for ever was wishing to enter into deeper enjoyment of His perfection, and his whole philosophi- cal toil lay in the attempt to return by dint of Reason to that Being whom he had already grasped by Love. At the moment of taking the great resolution of an irrevocable self-devotion to God, he had also determined to quit the school in which he now saw a mere traffic in vanity. From one of his friends, Verecundus, he had sought and found in his beautiful villa of Cassiciacum, at some distance from Milan, the reposeful asylum so necessary after the struggle through which he had passed. Though out of health and with an afiected chest, the dauntless activity of his mind forbade repose. Surrounded by his mother, his brother, son, and other relations, as well as the friends who had followed him, his days were passed now in reading a half-canto of the *'^neid," now in commenting on the "Hortensius" of Cicero, to which he used to refer the earliest motions of his heart towards virtue, now in talking philosophy with Trygetius, Alypius, Licentius, and others ; obscure enough, indeed, by the side of the illustrious interlocu- CHEISTIAN PHILOSOPHY — ST. AUGUSTINE. 283 tors in the "Dialogues of Cicero," but touching in their obscurity when viewed in the light of Christian phi- losophy, which counts none insignificant, the meanest becoming, as St. Augustine says, gi-eat when occupied with great things. One day his mother came to take part in these discussions ; the Saint took care not to repulse her; and as she wondered at herself, as a woman, being thus admitted to philosophize, her son gloried, and rightly, in the idea. These conversations, preserved by stenography, form the first of St. Augus- tine's treatises on philosophy, and are found in his books, " Contra Academos," " De Ordine," " De Vita Beatâ," to which may be added the "Soliloquies," and the works " De Quantitate Animœ," " De Immortalitate Animœ," "De Libero Arbitrio ;" and though no single volume amongst these furnishes a complete system of his philosophy, which must be sought for throughout the whole of his writings, this is due to the manner of composition assumed by this most laborious of men, whose time was disputed between an infinite variety of occupations ; now engrossed in settling law-suits and other difficulties between the worthy people of Hippo, now called upon to direct the Church in her gravest decisions ; and amidst such calls he was able from time to time to devote himself to some discussions on philosophy. All that we possess from him has, more- over, been written in haste, collected by reporters, and hardly ever revised by its author. Treatises were com- menced by him and never finished, and in others the plan adopted at the outset was changed in the sequel. But yet, beneath apparent disorder, is found the most powerful internal arrangement ; and it is not the least satisfaction to the mind which penetrates into the heart 284 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUKY. of his works, to discover therein the strength and unity of a genius ever master of itself, like the Christian faith which inspired it, marching without the slightest deflection in the straight road which was to lead it to God. Moreover, he never reached the point of despising philosophy or of sacrificing reason to faith. Far from it ; he wrote to Eomanian urging him to emhrace that system into the bosom of which he had plunged his own mind, and by which he had learnt to condemn Pelagius and throw off the Manichœan errors* which had sus- tained him through his researches, and promising to show him God had, in fact, given him a glimpse of Him, though veiled in lustrous mist. Whilst he pointed to the weakness of the old philosophers, he gave them credit for their glory. He admired the chief of the Academy ; to him Plato's approach to God seemed near ; but he did not deny the impotence of the essays of the human mind. He declared that a handful of men, at the expense of great genius, leisure, and toil, had grasped the notion of God and of the soul's immortality, but had found truth without love ; they had perceived the goal, but had not taken the path which alone led up to it, and so the truth they held was imperfect. f " It is one thing to gaze down upon the land of peace, as from the peak of a mountain, whose sides are covered with forests haunted with wild beasts of prey and fugitive slaves, without knowing the road to follow, another to be upon the highway traced out by the Supreme Master." This was the distinction he drew between the philosophy of antiquity and that of Christianity, of * Contra Academos, lib. i. cap. ii. I De Vera Reliijione, initio. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY — ST, AUGUSTINE. 285 wliicli lie was one of the most illustrious representa- tives — the necessary union of reason and faith. God Himself, he said, cannot despise reason, for how can He despise that principle which distinguishes man from His other creatures ? Nor does He desire that we should seek faith that we may cease to reason, but, on the contrary, that the possession of faith should make us reason more — should give it stronger and more ample j^inions, for, were we not reasoning creatures^ we should not know how to believe. Eeason precedes faith, to determine where authority lies ; it follows it too, for when the intellect has reached God, it seeks Him still. St. Augustine was far from wishing to discourage the reason by dwelling on the contradictions of the old schools of philosophy, and rather blamed the new Academy for seeking refuge in a state of doubt between Epicurus and Zeno. He destroyed its specially adopted doctrine of probability, showing the disciples of the school that, in speaking of probability, they held an idea 'of truth, and even supposed the pre- sence of what they denied ; and in order to refute doubt, he sought for certitude in thought by the psychological method. "In truth," he said, "those who doubt cannot doubt that they are alive, that they remember, wish, think ; for, if they doubt, it is from a desire for certainty, and so they refuse to consent to anything without proof. You, then, who wish to know 3'ourself, do you know if you exist ? I do know it. Whence? I am ignorant whence. Do you think yourself to be simple or complex ? I know not. Do you know whether you are in movement ? No. Do you know whether CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. you thinlî ? I know that I do. Then it is certain that you think." * This is, in fact, the Cogito ergo Sum, as expressed in the second book of the " Soliloquies" of St. Augustine, in a dialogue between his reason and himself, and in which he thus lays down the very foundations of certainty. It was in the deep trouble of his mind, when, as philo- sopher, he beheld within himself the ruin of every system of philosophy, on the point of giving up reason in despair, he sought the corner-stone whereon to raise the fabric of his knowledge, and found no other but the Cogito ergo Sum. The advance of Descartes consisted only in putting the same idea into higher relief, in seizing it to hold it for ever, and so never to be drawn into empty speculation again. He was to stop his course at the point marked out by St. Augustine, by whom, indeed, the seal was placed upon the page which would draw succeeding generations to return upon it in meditation, and extract from it so many others equally immortal. Thus the soul is at least sure of its own thought, doubt, or volition, the witnesses of its own conscious- ness ; it is aware of sensations also, and demands whence they come. The Platonists alleged that the senses were full of error, and compared them to the oar, which appears broken when plunged into water, or to a tower on the sea-coast, which seems falling when observed from the sea ; but St. Augustine replied, with all the superiority of philosophic truth, " The senses do not deceive us as it is ; they would do so did they make the oar look straight or the tower steadfast ; it is you who deceive yourselves, in asking them to give judg- * Soliloquia, lib. ii. cap. i. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY ST. AUGUSTINE. 287 ments when they can only give impressions." * And, taking higher ground, he perceived in the soul and conscience something higher than the inner sense, the most solid of sensations, namely, ideas, universal and evident notions, everything, for instance, which consti- tuted the elements of dialectical science. Thus the same thing cannot be existent and non-existent. He found therein numbers, which were the same in relation to everything, and of which no one could doubt ; mathe- matical verities, and also moral principles, likewise the same to all, which he sometimes called numbers, with the Pythagoreans, more often ideas, after Plato ; and this was all discussed by him at a time of absorption in all the duties of a religious life. Thus the philosopher sub- sisted in the Christian, and the excellent tradition of disdaining nothing of real utility in the results of the old reasoning was perpetuated. " Ideas are certain principal forms, certain reasons of things fixed and invariable, not formed themselves, and therefore eternal, acting ever after the same method, and contained in the Divine Intelligence : and as they are never born, and can never perish, it is upon them that everything which must have a birth and a decay is formed. The reasoning soul alone can perceive them, which it does through the highest part of itself, namely, through the Reason, which is to it as an interior and discerning eye. And again, the soul, to be capable of this vision, must be pure, and its interior eye must be healthy, and like to that which it seeks to contemplate. Who dares say that God created without reason ? For the same reason, the same type could not equally subserve the creation of a man and a horse. * Contra Acad. lib. iii. cap. xi. 288 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. Therefore every particular being had its particular reason. But these reasons can only reside in the thought of the Creator, for He did not regard a model placed exterior to Himself, and so the reason of things produced were of necessity contained in the Divine Intelligence,"* Thus the Divine Reason is present to the reason of man through these eternal truths, by this sight of numbers and the essential reasons of all things; and so when speech external to ourselves gives names to these things invisible and absolute truths, it does not itself convey to us the idea of them, but only warns us to consult that internal monitor whom we name the true, the beautiful, and the just, in that language of ours which, though neither of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, nor barbarian tongue, has been understood by all the world from the beginning ; an eternal language taught us by a Master who is no other than the Word, the true Christ, present in the depths of human consciousness. Such was the psychology of St. Augustine, which we now leave aside to examine his treatment of those two propositions as to the spirituality and immortality of the soul which will bridge the space that divides us from the second point in his metaphysical system — the search for God. For he let not the scruple of there being any inconvenience or culpability in making self-knowledge the preliminary step to a knowledge of God arrest his course, but affirmed, on the contrary, that the science of the human soul was a necessary and legitimate intro- duction to the science of God. It was through his adoption of the psychological method of the ancients that he went far beyond Socrates : while the latter had said * Liber dc Diversis Qiiœstionibus, cap. xlvi. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY — ST. AUGUSTINE. 289 "Know thyself," the cry of the former was, Noverim me, sed noverim te* But in what manner would he know God ? He wished for an essential knowledge of Him, one deeper than of the truths of mathematics, and shrank from a cold and freezing scientific ap- preciation of Him, as he promised himself therefrom hapj)iness as well as enlightenment. The way along which he was to seek for God was that passed by Da\dd as he uttered the sublime hymn of praise, Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei; by Xenophon in the memorable Discussions of Socrates, to develop the old but eternal proof of God's existence, as he says in the passionate language of Christian love : — " Behold the heaven and the earth ; they exist, they cry out that they have been made, for they vary and they change. For that which exists without creation has no particle which has not for ever existed ; so these exclaim, ' We stand because we have been created ; we did not exist before our creation, that we might create ourselves, — and this their voice is their evidence. It is Thou who hast made them, Lord ; Thou art beautiful, and so are they ; Thou art good, and they are good ; Thou art, and they are." In this lay his whole physical proof of the existence of God ; but it was upon the metaphysical proof that he innovated in conveying to it all the power of a genius hitherto unique. By his study of the soul, St. Augustine recognized immutable principles of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, to which he was bound to give the adhesion of his mind and heart. But these principles did not merely reveal themselves to him, but gave the impulse towards * Soliloq. Ub. ii. 1. VOL. I. 13 290 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. some unknown existences whose manifestations he ah'eady felt. He did not resist it, and thence came the reason for insisting on that idea of beauty which had fascinated him from his infancy, and been the food of frequent meditation — which made him the first among Christians to lay the foundations of an sesthetic philo- sophy, to write treatises on Beauty, and utter the senti- ment, Omnis lyidchrltudinis forma unitas est. This road, then, led him to God through his idea of beauty, but it did not suffice, and unwearied of the chase he sought Him also by the path of goodness. "You love," said he, "nothing but what is good; you love the earth because it is so goodly, with its lofty mountains, its hills and dales ; you love the human face because it is comely in the harmony of form, colour, and feeling ; you love the soul of your friend, which is beautiful by the charm of ordered intimacy and faithful love ; eloquence, because it teaches sweetly ; poetry, which is lovely in the melody of its numbers and the solidity of its thought ; in all that you love you find some character of goodness — suppress that which distin- guishes all these things, and you will find the good itself. We compare these various goodnesses ; and how, if not by a perfect and immutable idea of good, by the com- munication of which everything is good ? If in each of these particular excellences you behold only the supreme excellence, you gain a sight of God." * And so Goodness, by a similar way, leads to the same goal as Beauty. But the perception of the philo- sopher still distrusted this idea of what was beautiful and good ; it feared the empire of mere fame, and dreaded yielding to the raptures of a spell-bound ima- * De Trinitate, lib. viii. c. 3. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY — ST. AUGUSTINE. 291 gination. Severe in its reason, it sought a conviction of its own, and, to escape all possibility of delusion, determined to seek God through the idea of a Truth which was pure, absolute, and mathematical. In his trea- tise, " De Libero Arbitrio," he therefore recommenced the demonstration of the existence of God, and, that it might be complete, plunged into the very abysses of human nature. Considering man as possessing three qualities of existence, of continuing life, and of intelli- gence, he devoted his mind to the last, leaving the two former out of the question, and found in it both the external senses and that innermost feeling which is their moderator and judge, and, in a word, Eeason. " Eeason," he said, " surpasses all the rest ; if there exists anj-thing above it, that must be God." Thus, by a third effort, and, as it were, by a third assault, he made a breach in the metaphysical barrier, and entered on possession of the Divine Idea ; but knowing well the danger of confiding the notion of which he now was master to human language, declared, at the moment in which his possession seemed sure, that perhaps it would profit more to know less — Scitur ineHiis nescicndo* — recognizing the inexactness of all human speech in describing the attributes of the Divinity. Right and left, with the dread of one long entangled in Manichœism, he beheld the perils of Dualism and Pantheism. He avoided the danger in declaring that evil formed no opposing force to good ; that there were not two principles, but that evil does not exist in itself, but only relatively as a deprivation of, an apostasy from, or an inferiority in * De Ordine, lib. ii. c. 44. 292 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTUEY. good ; that beings have no existence that is not given them by God ; and that, in consequence, there is nothing exteïnal to God — thus dispeUing at one blow the perils of Dualism. But, then, did he not seem to fall into Pantheism — especially in such strong expres- sions as that existences have no real existence ? No ; there was no fear of his relapsing into his old error, and seeing in all beings an emanation of the Divinity. He drew himself from the toils by what was then a novelty in philosophy, and severed his mind from Pantheism by the dogma of Creation. The ancients had held with Plato an eternity of matter existing at the side of God, or had thought, with the philosophers of Alexandria, that God had drawn, and was for ever drawing, all existences from Himself by a continual emanation. St. Augustine was the first to profess a Creation from nothing ; that, external to God, there was nothing from which the world could have been formed, and if it had flowed out from God, would itself have been God.* He thus establishes the doctrine of Creation, and, in answer to the philosophical difficulties of the dogma that creation was in time and God in eternity — why and when had God created — what had been His occupa- tion previous to creation — replied, with calm superiority, that God had created the world in freedom, but not without reason, that He, as the good God, had created it for a good purpose. " We must not inquire when He created, nor whether, in the creative action. He went forth from His immuta- bility, nor as to what His previous work might be. He * De Civitate Dei, lib. xii. 15. 1(). 17. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY ST. AUGUSTINE. 293 willed from eternity, but produced time with the world, because He produced the world in movement, of which time is the measure."* He thus abandons his mind to the highest and boldest considerations, with the utmost judgment and accuracy, and without the least subtlety. Having es- tablished time as being the measure of movement, he thus concludes : — " Thus all my life is but succession — dissipation. But Thy hand, my Lord, has brought me together in Christ, the Mediator between Thy unity and our multi- fariousness, so that, rallying my existence, once dissi- pated by the caprices of my early days, I dwell under the shadow of Thy Oneness, without memory of what is no more, with no anxious aspiration towards that which has to come."f And so his reason brings him back to love, as love had brought him to reason ; and as all his mystic phi- losophy, under the guidance of divine love, tended to a rational and pure notion of God, so all his dogmatism, under the reasoning principle, ended in love to the Almighty. This impossibility of severing these two great forces of the soul is the essential characteristic of Christian philosophy. As antiquity pictures to us the aged Œdipus weighed down under a sense of guilt and by blindness, its punishment, supporting his pain- ful steps by the aid of his two daughters, Antigone and Ismene, so the human mind, like a blind and age- stricken monarch groping from the beginning of time in search of its God, has need, indeed, of its twin- offspring, love and reason, to help it to its goal, the * De Civitate Dei, lib. xii. 15, l(i, 17. t Confess, lib. xi. Ui. 294 CIVILIZATION IN FIFTH CENTURY. knowledge of the Divinity ; and we must shrink from depriving it of either. But the philosophy which St. Augustine opened, that new dogmatic system which compassed a true notion of God as Creator, as One, and Free, loving and really to be loved, did not stay its progress with its author. Truth, we have said, lay scattered throughout his many writ- ings, and if any reproach is due towards the great genius of Hippo, it lies against the inevitable diffusion of his thought in the midst of innumerable works, interrupted as they were by the duties of a thoroughly occupied life. But these germs were not useless ; they bore their fruit, and were carried over the stormy centuries of the Middle Age, and cast upon fertile ground in France, Italy, and Spain, the native lands of great intellects in the future, and where another great meta- physician and profound thinker was to appear in St. Anselm, whose predestined labour was to bind together in one group the proofs of God's existence given by St. Augustine, and present them by a more rigorous method and in an exacter form. St. Thomas Aquinas was also, in his turn, to develop the theories of St. Anselm, so that the seventeenth century, with all its right to be captious in the matter of genius, philosophy, and truth, could find no greater work than that of bringing to its light, in another form, the doc- trines of St. Augustine, by the aid of Descartes and Leibnitz, who reproduced his metaphysics with certain corrections and greater accuracy. This was alike the labour of these great minds, and of Malebranche in his treatise, " Recherche de la Vérité," who, in the epigraph of his works, gloried, like St. Augustine, in listening to that internal master which speaks in the language CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY — ST. AUGUSTINE. 295 of eternity, and who professed to behold everything in God. It is upon this great and potent system of Christian metaphysics that, from the fifth century down to our own times, the totality of modern civilization has hinged. Its action, indeed, remains unrecognized amidst the passions and disorders of the present day ; but to the serious and enlightened nations of the modern world metaphysics appear as the essence and the guiding principle of all things, as moulding the public opinion of Christian races, as governing every- thing, and giving the first reason for the institutions amongst which we live. Dante, on reaching the summit of his Paradise, beheld God as a mathe- matical point, without length or breadth, but as the centre of the revolving heavens : Da quel punto Dipende il cielo eel tutta la natura. Metaphysics, the idea of God, form the point whereupon the whole heaven of our thought, of our nature, of our education, all society, the entirety of the Christian organism, is suspended. So, as long as no one has shaken that point, nor laid violent hands on that Divine idea, there need be no fear for our civilization. END OF VOL. I. 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