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. 
 
 Woodfall and Kinder, Printers, Milford Lane, Strand, London, W.C.
 
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