mwmaaati^^ BRISTOL Congregational Institute >V ~t^f ^*~/ J.TT3RARY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE ABOLITION OF PAGANISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. BY HENEY HAKT MILMAN, D.D., EEAX OF ST. PAUL'S. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. EIDITIO1T LONDON: JOHN MUEEAY, ALBSMARLE STEEET 1867. The right of Translation is reserved. LONDON: PJUNTKI> BY WILLIAM CIXJWES AND SOMS, SIAJIFOKI> HTKKKT AND CHABISG CliOSS. CONTENTS OF VOL. Ill BOOK III. continued. CHAPTER VI. continued. Julian ' .. .. Page 1 CHAPTER VII. Valentinian and Valeus oO CHAPTER VIII. Theodosius Abolition of Paganism ... .. 59 CHAPTER IX. Theodosius Triumph of Trinitarianism The great Prelates of the East 100 CHAPTER X. The great Prelates of the West 150 CHAPTER XT. Jerome The Monastic System liH) 2112103 IV CONTENTS OF VOL. III. BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. The Roman Empire under Christianity Page 238 CHAPTEK II. Public Spectacles 306 CHAPTER IIL Christian Literature 349 CHAPTER IV. Christianity and the Fine Arts 371 CHAPTER V. Conclusion 406 INDEX .. -i27 HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. BOOK II I. continued. CHAPTER VL continued. Julian. INSTEAD of the Christian hierarchy, Julian hastened to environ himself with the most distinguished / i TT i iM i -*- 1*1 Philosophers. of the Heathen philosophers. Most ol these, indeed, pretended to be a kind of priesthood. Inter- cessors between the deities and the world of man, they wrought miracles, foresaw future events ; they possessed the art of purifying the soul, so that it should be re- united to the Primal Spirit : the Divinity dwelt within them. The obscurity of the names which Julian thus set up to rival in popular estimation an Athanasius or a Gregory of Nazianzum, is not altogether to be as- cribed to the final success of Christianity. The im- partial verdict of posterity can scarcely award to these men a higher appellation than that of sophists and rhetoricians. The subtlety and ingenuity of these more imaginative, perhaps, but far less profound, schoolmen of Paganism, were wasted on idle reveries, on solemn trifling, and questions which it was alike useless to agitate and impossible to solve. The hand of death was alike upon the religion, the philosophy, the elo- VOL. in. B MAXIMUS. BOOK III. Maxim us. quence, of Greece ; and the temporary movement which Julian excited was but a feeble quivering, a last impotent struggle, preparatory to total dissolution. Maximus appears, in his own time, to have been the most eminent of his class. The writings of Libanius and of lamblichus alone survive, to any extent, the general wreck of the later Grecian literature. The genius and the language of Plato were alike wanting in his degenerate disciples. Julian himself is, perhaps, the best, because the plainest and most perspicuous, writer of his time : and the " Caesars " may rank as no unsuccessful attempt at satiric irony. Maximus was the most famous of the school. He had been among the early instructors of Ju- lian. The Emperor had scarcely assumed the throne, when he wrote to Maximus in the most urgent and flattering terms : life was not life without him. a Maximus obeyed the summons. On his journey through Asia Minor, the cities vied with each other in doing honour to the champion of Paganism. When the Em- peror heard of his arrival in Constantinople, though engaged in an important public ceremonial, he broke it off at once and hastened to welcome his philosophic guest. The roads to the metropolis were crowded with sophists, hurrying to bask in the sunshine of im- perial favour. b The privilege of travelling at the public cost by the posting establishment of the empire, so much abused by Constantius in favour of the bishops, was now conceded to some of the philosophers. Chry- " Epi&t. iv. The nameless person to whom the first epistle is addressed .s declared superior to Pythagoras or Plato. Epist. i. p. 372. b The severe and grave Priscus de- spised the youths who embraced phi- losophy as a fashion. Kopvftavrictiv- rtav M ty a lainiliarity with the great models of antiquity, the Christian had risen at least to the level of the most correct and elegant of the Heathen writers of the day. Though something of Oriental expression, from the continual adoption of language or of imagery from the Sacred Writings, adhered to their style, yet even that gives a kind of raciness and originality to their language, which, however foreign to the purity of Attic Greek, is more animating and attractive than the prolix and languid periods of Libanius, or the vague metaphysics of lamblichus. Julian perceived the danger, and re- sented this usurpation, as it were, of the arms of Paganism, and their employment against their legiti- mate parent. It is not, indeed, quite clear how far, or in what manner, the prohibition of Julian affected the Education of Christians. A general system of education, the higher & J ' classes. tor the tree and superior classes, had gradually spread through the empire. 1 Each city maintained a certain number of professors, according to its size and population, who taught grammar, rhetoric, and phi- losophy. They were appointed by the magistracy, and partly paid from the municipal funds. Vespasian first assigned stipends to professors in Home, the Antonines 1 There is an essay on the professors and general system of education, by Monsieur Naudet, Mem. de 1'Institut, vol. x. p. 399. CH.VP. VI. EDUCATION OF THE HIGHER CLASSES. extended the establishment to the other cities of the empire. They received two kinds of emoluments ; the salary from the city, and a small fixed gratuity from their scholars. They enjoyed considerable immunities, exemption from military and civil service, and from all ordinary taxation. There can be no doubt that this education, as originally designed, was more or less intimately allied with the ancient religion. The gram- marians, the poets, k the orators, the philosophers of Greece and Rome, were the writers whose works were explained and instilled into the youthful mind. " The vital principle, Julian asserted, in the writings of Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Isocrates, Lysias, was the worship of the gods. Some of these writers had dedicated themselves to Mercury, some to the Muses. Mercury and the Muses were the tutelar deities of the Pagan schools." The Christians had glided imperceptibly into some of these offices, and perhaps some of the professors had embraced Chris- tianity. But Julian declared that the Christians must be shameful hypocrites, or the most sordid of men, who, for a few drachms, would teach what they did not belie ve. m The Emperor might, with some plausibility, have insisted that the ministers of public instruction paid by the state, or from public funds, should at least not be hostile to the religion of the state. If the prohi- bition extended no farther than their exclusion from the public professorships, the measure might have worn some k Homer, then considered, if not the parent, the great authority for the Pagan mythology, was the elementary school-book. "' When Christianity resumed the ascendancy, this act of intolerance was adduced in justification of the severities ofTheodosius against Paganism. Pe- tunt etiam, ut illis privilegia deferas, qui loquendi et docendi nostris com- munem usum Juliani lege proximS denegarunt. Ambros. Epist. Resp. ad Symmach. EDUCATION OF THE HIGHER CLASSES. BOOK III. appearance of equity ; but it was the avowed policy of Julian to exclude them, if possible, from all advantages derived from the liberal study of Greek letters. The original edict disclaimed the intention of compelling the Christians to attend the Pagan schools ; but it con- temptuously asserted the right of the government to control men so completely out of their senses, and, at the same time, affected condescension to their weakness and obstinacy. But if the Emperor did not compel them to learn, he 'forbade them to teach. The inter- dict, no doubt, extended to their own private and separate schools for Hellenic learning. They were not to instruct in Greek letters without the sanction of the municipal magistracy. He added insult to this narrow prohibition : he taunted them with their former avowed contempt for human learning ; he would not permit them to lay their profane hands on Homer and Plato. " Let them be content to explain Matthew and Luke in the churches of the Galileans." Some of the Christian professors obeyed the imperial edict." Proeeresius, who taught rhetoric with great success at Rome, calmly declined the overtures of the Emperor, and retired into a private station. Musonius, a rival of the great Proae- resius, was silenced. But they resorted to an expedient which shows that they had full freedom of Christian instruction. A Christian Homer, a Christian Pindar, and other works were composed in which Christian sentiments and opinions were interwoven into the lan- " Julian. Epist. xlii. p. 420. So- crates, v. 18. Theodoret, iii. 8. Sozomen, v. 18. Greg. Naz. Or. iii. p. 51, 96, 97. Julian. Epist. ilv. p The more liberal Heathens were disgusted and ashamed at this measure of Julian. " Illud autem erat inele- mens obruendum pereuni silentio, quod arcebat docere magistros, rhetoricos, et grammaticos, ritfls Christian! cultores." Amm. Marcell. sx c. 10. CHAP. VI. ARTS OF JULIAN. guage of the original poets. The piety of the age greatly admired these Christian parodies, which, how- ever, do not seem to have maintained their ground even in the Christian schools.* 1 Julian is charged with employing unworthy or insi- dious arts to extort an involuntary assent to . , ArteofJnlian ragamsm. Heathen symbols everywhere re- to undermine placed those of Christianity. The medals display a great variety of deities, with their attributes. Jupiter is crowning the Emperor, Mars and Mercury inspire him with military skill and eloquence. The monogram of Christ disappeared from the Labarum, and on the standards were represented the gods of Paganism. As the troops defiled before the Emperor, each man was ordered to throw a few grains of frankincense upon an altar which stood before him. The Christians were horror-stricken, when they found that, instead of an act of legitimate respect to the Emperor, they had been betrayed into paying homage to idols. Some bitterly lamented their involuntary sacrilege, and indignantly threw down their arms ; some of them are said to have surrounded the palace, and loudly avowing that they were Christians, reproached the Emperor with his treachery, and cast down the largess that they had received. For this breach of discipline and insult to the Emperor, they were led out to military execution. They vied with each other, it is said, for the honours of martyrdom/ But the bloody scene was interrupted 1 After the death of Julian, they were contemptuously thrown aside by the Christians themselves. fuv Sf dt ir6voi ei> -rif fcrif /j.^j ypa^vai Xo- yl^omcu. Socrates, E. H. iii. 16. r Jovian, Valentinian, and Valens, the future Emperors, are said to have been among those who refused to serve in the army. Julian, however, de- clined to accept the resignation of the former. 10 PERSECUTIONS. BOOK III. by a messenger from the Emperor, who contented him- self with expelling them from the army, and sending them into banishment. Actual persecutions, though unauthorised by the im- perial edicts, would take place in some parts Persecutions. , lv . /, ,, ,. m , from the collision of the two parties. The Pagans, now invested in authority, would not always be disposed to use that authority with discretion, and the Pagan populace would seize the opportunity of revenging the violation of their temples, or the interruption of their rites, by the more zealous Christians. No doubt the language of an address delivered to Constantius and Constans had expressed the sentiments of a large party among the Christians. " Destroy without fear, destroy ye, most religious Emperors, the ornaments of the temples. Coin the idols into money, or melt them into useful metal. Confiscate all their endowments for the advantage of the Emperor and of the government. God has sanctioned, by your recent victories, your hos- tility to the temples." The writer proceeds to thunder out the passages of the Mosaic law, which enforce the duty of the extirpation of idolaters. 8 No doubt, in many places, the eager fanaticism of the Christians had outstripped the tardy movements of imperial zeal. In many cases it would now be thought an act of religion to reject in others, it would be impossible to satisfy the demands for restitution. The best authenticated acts of direct persecution relate to these disputes. Nor can Julian himself be exculpated from the guilt, if not of conniving at, of faintly rebuking these tumultuous acts of revenge or of wanton outrage. In some of the Syrian towns, Gaza, Hierapolis, and Caesarea, the Pagans * Julius Firmicus Matemus, de Errore Pro&norum Religionum, c. 29. CHAI-. VI. RESTORATION OF TEMPLES. 11 had perpetrated cruelties too horrible to detail. Not content with massacring the Christians, with every kind of indignity, they had treated their lifeless remains with unprecedented outrage. They sprinkled the entrails of their victims with barley, that the fowls might be tempted to devour them. At Heliopolis, their cannibal fuiy did not shrink from tasting the blood and the inward parts of murdered priests and virgins. Julian calmly expresses his regret that the restorers Re Stora uon of the temples of the gods have in some oftem P les - instances exceeded his expressed intentions; which, however, seem to have authorised the destruction of the Christian churches, or at least some of their sacred places. 1 Julian made an inauspicious choice in the battle-field on which he attempted to decide his conflict jmiancon- with Christianity. Christianity predominated m-cho^n to a greater extent in Constantinople and in ground - Antioch than in any other cities of the empire. In Rome he might have appealed to the antiquity of Heathenism, and its eternal association with the glories of the republic. In Athens, he would have combined in more amicable confederacy the philosophy and the religion. In Athens his accession had given a consi- derable impulse to Paganism ; the temples with the rest of the public buildings, had renewed their youth." * Greg. Nazianz. Socrates, iii. 14. Sozomen, v. 9. Compare Gibbon, vol. iv. p. 116, who has referred the following passage in the Misopogon to these scenes. Oi ra /*ec Ttav 6ea>i> a.viffTt\aa.v avTiKa Tffj.4vr\' TOVS rdtyovs 8e rSiv a6fu>v avfrpf^/av irdiTas vwb TOV ffvv6^/j.aros, & 8); Se'Sorat trap' 3jj.ov OVTUS tirdpdfVTfs rbv vovv, Kal ptTfupoi yv6/JLvoi T^JV Stavoiav. ais Kal TrA.eoj' firff\6e'iv Tails els TOVS dtovs ir\r)fj.[j.f\ovffiv ij f)ov\a>- p.fvip IJLOI ?iv. Misopogon, p. 361. Did he mean by the rdTfi>fj.a entinian on the Heathen temples. These estates were re-incor- porated with the private treasure of the sovereign.* 1 At a later period of his reign, there must have been some general prohibition of animal sacrifice ; the Pagan wor- ship was restricted to the offering of incense to the gods/ But, according to the expression of Libanius, they dared not execute this law in Rome, so fatal would it have been considered to the welfare of the empire. 8 Yalens, in the East, as Valentinian, in the West, allowed perfect freedom to the public ritual preventions of Paganism. But both in the East, and in forma g ic - the West, the persecution against magic and unlawful o God. Theod. ix. 16, 9. P Cod. Theod. xvi. 1, 1. 'l Cod. Theod. x. 1, 8. The law reads as if it were a more general and indiscriminate confiscation. VOL. III. r Lib. pro Tcmplis, vii. p. 163, ed. Reiske. This arose out of some recent and peculiar circumstances. Liban. vol. ii. p. 180. 34 PROSECUTIONS FOR MAGIC. BOCK III. divination told with tremendous force against the Pagan cause. It was the more fatal, because it was not openly directed against the religion, but against practices de- nounced as criminal, and believed to be real, by the general sentiment of mankind, and prosecuted by that fierce animosity which is engendered by fear. Some compassion might be felt for innocent victims, supposed to be unjustly implicated in such charges ; the practice of extorting evidence or confession by torture, might be revolting, to those especially who looked back with pride and with envy to the boasted immunity of all Roman citizens from such cruelties ; but where strong suspicion of guilt prevailed, the public feeling would ratify the stern sentence of the law against such de- linquents; the magician or the witch would pass to execution amid the universal abhorrence. The notorious connexion of any particular religious party with such dreaded and abominated proceedings, especially if proved by the conviction of a considerable majority of the condemned from their ranks, would tend to depress the religion itself. This sentiment was not altogether unjust. Paganism had, as it were, in its desperation, thrown itself upon the inextinguishable superstition of the human mind. The more the Pagans were de- pressed, the hope of regaining their lost superiority, the desire of vengeance, would induce them to seize on every method of awing or commanding the minds of their wavering votaries.* Nor were those who conde- scended to these arts, or those who in many cases claimed the honours annexed to such fearful powers, only the bigoted priesthood, or mere itinerant traders in human credulity ; the high philosophic party, which had gained such predominant influence during the reign of Julian, now wielded the terrors and incurred the CHAP. VII. CRUELTY OF VALEXTINIAN. 35 penalties, of these dark and forbidden practices. It is impossible to read their writings without remarking a boastful display of intercourse with supernatural agents, which to the Christian would appear an illicit com- munion with malignant spirits. This was not indeed magic, but it was the groundwork of it. The theurgy, or mysterious dealings of the Platonic philosopher with the daemons or still higher powers, was separated by a thin and imperceptible distinction from Goetic- or unlawful enchantment. Divination, indeed, or the fore- knowledge of futurity by different arts, was an essential part of the Greek and Roman religion. But divination had, in Greece at least, withdrawn from its public office. It had retired from the silenced oracles of Delphi or Dodona. The gods, rebuked according to the Christian, offended according to the Pagan, had withdrawn their presence. In Eome the Etruscan soothsayers, as part of the great national ceremonial, maintained their place, and to a late period preserved their influence over the public mind. But, in general, it was only in secret, and to its peculiar favourites, that the summoned or spontaneous deity revealed the secrets of futurity; it was by the dream, or the private omen, the sign in the heavens, vouchsafed only to the initiate ; or the direct inspiration; or, if risked, it was by the secret, myste- rious, usually the nocturnal rite, that the reluctant god was compelled to disclose the course of fate. The persecutions of Valentinian in Rome were directed against magical ceremonies. The Pagans, who cmeity of remembered the somewhat ostentatious lenity Vatelianlan - and patience of Julian on the public tribunal, might contrast the more than inexorable, the inquisitorial and sanguinary, justice of the Christian Valentinian, even in ordinary cases, with the benignant precepts of his D 2 36 TRIALS IN ROME BOOK III. religion. But justice with Valentiniau, in all cases, more particularly in these persecutions, degenerated into savage tyranny. The Emperor kept two fierce bears by his own chamber, to which the miserable criminals were thrown in his presence, while the unrelenting Valentinian listened with ferocious delight to their groans. One of these animals, as a reward for his faithful service to the state, received his freedom, and was let loose into his native forest 1 Maximin, the representative of Valentinian at Rome. Trials in administered the laws with all the vindictive MiSmin? ferocity, but without the severe dignity, of his imperial master. Maximin was of an obscure and bar- barian family, settled in Paunonia. He had attained the government of Corsica and Sardinia, and subsequently of Tuscany. He was promoted in Kome to the important office of superintendent of the markets of the city. During the illness of Olybius, the prefect of Rome, the supreme judicial authority had been delegated to Maxi- min. Maximin was himself rumoured to have dabbled in necromantic arts ; and lived in constant terror of accusation till released by the death of his accomplice. This rumour may create a suspicion that Maximin was. at least at the time at which the accusation pointed, a Pagan. The Paganism of a large proportion of his victims is more evident. The first trial over which Maximin presided was a charge made by Chilon, vicar of the prefects, and his wife, Maximia, against three 1 The Christians did not escape these the decurions of three towns to be put legal murdeis, constantly perpetrated to death, in a remonstrance against by the orders of Valentinian. In their execution, it was stated that Milan the place where three obscure they would be worshipped as martyr* victims were buried was called ad by the Christians. Ainm. Marc, xxvii. Innocentes. When he had condemned 7, CHAP. VII. BEFORE MAXIMIN. 37 obscure persons for attempting their lives by magical arts: of these, one was a soothsayer." Cruel tortures extorted from these miserable men a wild string of charges at once against persons of the highest rank and of the basest degree. All had tampered with unlawful arts, and had mingled with them the crimes of murder, poisoning, and adultery. A general charge of magic hung over the whole city. Maximin poured these dark rumours into the greedy ear of Valentinian, and ob- tained the authority which he coveted, for making a strict inquisition into these offences, for exacting evi- dence by torture from men of every rank and station, and for condemning them to a barbarous and ignomi- nious death. The crime of magic was declared of equal enormity with treason ; the rights of Roman citizenship, and the special privileges granted by the imperial edicts, were suspended ; v neither the person of senator or dignitary was sacred against the scourge or the rack. The powers of this extraordinary commission were exercised with the utmost latitude and most impla- cable severity. Anonymous accusations were received ; Maximin was understood to have declared that no one should be esteemed innocent whom he chose to find guilty. But the details of this persecution belong to our his- tory only as far as they relate to religion. On general grounds, it may be inferred, that the chief brunt of this sanguinary persecution fell on the Pagan party. Magic although, at that time, perhaps, the insatiate curiosity about the future, the indelible passion for supernatural excitement, and even more criminal designs, might betray n Haruspex. Juris prisci justitia et divorum arbitrw. Airm. Marc. 38 CONNEXION OF THESE CHIMES BOOK III. some few professed Christians into this direct treason against their religion was an offence which, in general, would have been held in dread and abhorrence by the members of the church. In the laws it is invariably denounced as a Pagan crime. The aristocracy of Home were the chief victims of Maximin's cruelty, and in this class, till its final extinction, was the stronghold of Paganism. It is not assuming too much influence for the connexion Christianity of that age, to consider the immora- CTime?^ith lities and crimes, the adulteries and the poison- Paganism, mgs, which were mingled up with these charges of magic, as the vestiges of the old unpu rifled Roman manners. The Christianity of that period ran into the excess of monastic asceticism, for which the enthusiasm, to judge from the works of St. Jerome, was at its height ; and this violation of nature had not yet produced its remote but apparently inevitable consequence disso- luteness of morals. In almost every case recorded by the historian may be traced indications of Pagan reli- gious usages. A soothsayer, as it has appeared, was involved in the first criminal charge. While his meaner accomplices were beaten to death by straps loaded with lead, the judge having bound himself by an oath that they should neither die by fire nor steel, the soothsayer, to whom he had made no such pledge, was burned alive. The affair of Hymettius betrays the same connexion with the ancient religion. Hymettius had been ac- cused, seemingly without justice, of malversation in his office of proconsul of Africa, in the supplies of corn to the metropolis. A celebrated soothsayer (haruspex), named Araantius, was charged with offering sacrifices, by the command of Hymettius, with some unlawful or treasonable design. Amantius resisted the torture with unbroken courage; but among his papers was found a CHAP. VII. WITH PAGANISM. 39 writing of Hymettius, of which one part contained bitter invectives against the avaricious and cruel Valentinian ; the other implored Amantius, by sacrifices, to induce the gods to mitigate the anger of both the Emperors. Amautius suffered capital punishment. A youth named Lollianus, convicted of inconsiderately copying a book of magical incantations and condemned to exile, had the rashness to appeal to the Emperor, and suffered death. Lollianus was the son of Lampadius, formerly prefect of Kome, x and, for his zeal for the restoration of the ancient buildings, and his vanity in causing his own name to be inscribed on them, was called the Lichen. Lampa- dius, was probably a Pagan. The leader of that party, Praetextatus, whose unimpeachable character maintained the universal respect of all parties, was the head of a deputation to the Emperor/ entreating him that the punishment might be proportionate to the offences, and claiming for the senatorial order their immemorial ex- emption from the unusual and illegal application of torture. On the whole, this relentless and sanguinary inquisition into the crime of magic, enveloping in one dreadful proscription a large proportion of the higher orders of Borne and of the West, even if not directly, must, incidentally, have weakened the cause of Pa- ganism ; connected it in many minds with dark and hateful practices; and altogether increased the deep- ening animosity against it. In the East, the fate of Paganism was still more adverse. There is strong ground for sup- Jn the East, posing that the rebellion of Procopius was ^^Ssf connected with the revival of Julian's party. AlD- 365< It was assiduously rumoured abroad that Procopius had * Tillemont thinks Lampadius to have been a Christian ; but his reasons are to me inconclusive. y Amm. Marc, xxvii. 1, &c. 40 THE CEREMONY OF DIVINATION. BOOK III. AJ>. 368. been designated as his successor by the expiring Julian. Procopius, before the soldiery, proclaimed himself the relative and heir of Julian/ The astrologers had predicted the elevation of Procopius to the greatest height-jfof empire, as his partisans fondly hoped, of misery, as the ingenious seers expounded the meaning of their oracle after his death." The Pagan and philosophic party were more directly and exclusively implicated in the fatal event, which was disclosed to the trembling Yalens at Antioch, and brought as wide and relentless desolation on the East as the cruelty of Maxiinin on the West. It was mingled up with treasonable designs against the throne and the life of the Emperor. The magical ceremony of divination, which was denounced before Valens, was Pagan throughout all its dark and mysterious circum- stances. 1 ' The tripod on which the conspirators per- formed their ill-omened rites was modelled after that at Delphi ; it was consecrated by magic songs and frequent and daily ceremonies, according to the established ritual. The house where the rite was held was purified by incense : a kind of charger made of mixed metals was placed upon the altar, around the rim of which were letters at certain intervals. The officiating diviner wore the habit of a Heathen priest, the linen garments, sandals, and a fillet wreathed round his head, and held * Amra. Marc. xxvi. 6. See Le Beau, iii. p. 250. "flffTt avr~bv TUV tirl TOIS /Jitylar- Tais &px a ^ J yvopas yevfffdcu 810- ffijfiJ>Ttpov. He was deceived by the Genethliaci. Greg. Nyss. de Fato. Philostorgius describes it as a pre- diction of the Gentile oracles, fiav 'E.\\riviK xf >1 \ ffr ' r lp' i0>v - Lib. viii. c. 15. I cannot but suspect that the pro- hibition of sacrifice mentioned by I.i- banius, which seems contrary to the geneial policy of the brothers, and was but partially carried into execu- tion, may hare been connected with these transactions. CHAP. VII. THE CEREMONY OF DIVINATION. 41 s. sprig of an auspicious plant in his hand ; he chanted the accustomed hymn to Apollo, the god of prophecy. The divination was performed by a ring running round on a slender thread and pointing to certain letters, which formed an oracle in heroic verse, like those of Delphi. The fatal prophecy then pointed to the three first and the last letters of a name, like Theodoras, as the fated successor of Valens. Among the innumerable victims to the fears and the vengeance of Valens, whom the ordinary prisons were not capacious enough to contain, those who either were, or were suspected of having been entrusted with the fatal secret, were almost all the chiefs of the philosophic party. Hilarius of Phrygia, with whom are associated, by one historian, Patricius of Lydia, and Andronicus of Caria, all men of the most profound learning, and skilled in divination, were those who had been consulted on that unpardoned and unpardonable offence, the enquiring the name of the successor to the reigning sovereign. They were, in fact, the conductors of the magic ceremony ; and in their confession betrayed the secret circumstances of the incantation. Some, among whom appears the name of lamblichus, escaped by miracle from torture and execution. 4 Libanius himself (this may be observed as evidence how closely magic and philosophy were mingled up together in the popular opinion) had already escaped with difficulty two charges of unlawful practices ; e on this occasion, to the general surprise, he had the same good fortune: either the favour or the clemency of the Emperor, or some interest with the general accusers of his friends, exempted him from the common peril. Of those whose - Zosimus, iv. 15 A See Zonaras, 13, 2 e Vit. i. 114. 42 THE FATE OF MAXIMUS. BOOK III. sufferings are recorded, Pasiphilus resisted the extremity of torture rather than give evidence against an innocent man : that man was Eutropius, who held the rank of proconsul of Asia. Simonides, though but a youth, was one of the most austere disciples of philosophy. He boldly admitted that he was cognisant of the dangerous secret, but he kept it undivulged. Simonides was judged worthy of a more barbarous death than the rest ; he was condemned to be burned alive ; and the martyr of philosophy calmly ascended the funeral pile. The fate of Maximus, since the death of Julian, had been marked with strange vicissitude. With Priscus, on the accession of Valentinian, he was summoned before the imperial tribunal ; the blameless Priscus was dismissed, but Maximus, who, according to his own friends, had displayed, during the life of Julian, a pomp and luxuriousness unseemly in a philosopher, was sent back to Ephesus and amerced in a heavy fine, utterly disproportioned to philosophic poverty. The fine was mitigated, but, in its diminished amount, exacted by cruel torturea Maximus, in his agony, entreated his wife to purchase poison to rid him of his miserable life. The wife obeyed, but insisted on taking the first draught : she drank, expired, and Maximus declined to drink. He was so fortunate as to attract the notice of Clearchus, proconsul of Asia ; he was released from his bonds; rose in wealth and influence, returned to Constantinople; and resumed his former state. The fatal secret had been communicated to Maximus. He had the wisdom, his partisans declared the prophetic foresight, to discern the perilous consequences of the treason. He predicted the speedy death of himself and of all who were in possession of the secret. He added, CHAP. VII. DESTRUCTION OF MANUSCRIPTS. 43 it is said, a more wonderful oracle ; that the Emperor himself would soon perish by a strange death, and not even find burial. Maximus was apprehended and carried to Antioch. After a hasty trial, in which he confessed his knowledge of the oracle, but declared that he esteemed it unworthy of a philosopher to divulge a secret entrusted to him by his friends, he was taken back to Ephesus, and there executed with all the rest of his party who were implicated in the conspiracy. Festus, it is said, who presided over the execution, was haunted in after life by a vision of Maximus dragging him to judgement before the infernal deities. 1 Though a despiser of the gods, a Christian, Festus was compelled by his terrors to sacrifice to the Eumenides, the avengers of blood ; and having so done, he fell down dead. So completely did the cause of the Pagan deities appear involved with that of the persecuted philosophers. Nor was this persecution without considerable in- fluence on the literature of Greece. So severe an inquisition was instituted into the possession of magical books, that, in order to justify their sanguinary pro- ceedings, vast heaps of manuscripts relating to law and general literature were publicly burned, as if they contained unlawful matter. Many men of letters throughout the East in their terror destroyed their whole libraries, lest some innocent or unsuspected work should be seized by the ignorant or malicious informer, and bring them unknowingly within the relentless penalties of the law. g From this period, philosophy is f Eunap. Vit. Maxim. Amm. Marc, xx ix. 1. K Amm. Marcell. xxix. 1. Inde factum est per Orientales provinces, ut omnes metu similium exurerent libraria omnia : tantus universes in- vaserat terror, xxix. 2. Compare Heyne, note on Zosimus. 44 STATE OF CHRISTIANITY BOOK III. almost extinct, and Paganism, in the East, drags on its silent and inglorious existence, deprived of its literary aristocracy, and opposing only the inert resistance ot habit to the triumphant energy of Christianity. Arianism, under the influence of Valens, maintained state of its ascendancy in the East. Throughout the in the East, whole of that division of the empire, the two forms of Christianity still subsisted in irreconcileable hostility. Almost every city had two prelates, each at the head of his separate communion; the one, according to the powers or the numbers of his party, assuming the rank and title of the legitimate bishop, and looking down, though with jealous animosity, on his factious rival. During the life of Athanasius the see of Alexandria remained faithful to the Trinitarian doctrines. For a short period, indeed, the prelate was obliged to retire, during what is called his fifth exile, to the tomb of his father ; but he was speedily welcomed back by the acclamations of his followers, and the baffled imperial authority acquiesced in his peaceful rule till his decease. But at his death, five years afterwards, were renewed the old scenes of discord and bloodshed. Palladius, the prefect of Esrvpt, received the AJ>. 373. . . * . . .* r imperial commission to install the Anaii prelate, Lucius, on the throne of Alexandria. Palladius was a Pagan, and the Catholic writers bitterly reproach their rivals with tlu's monstrous alliance. It was rumoured that the Pagan population welcomed the Arian prelate with hymns of gratulation as the friend of the god Serapis, as the restorer of his worship. In Constantinople, Valens had received baptism from Eudoxus, the aged Arian prelate of that see. A J>. 370. . feacerdotal influence once obtained over the feeble mind of Valens, was likely to carry him to any CHAP. VII. IN THE EAST, 45 extreme ; yet, on the other hand, he might be restrained and overawed by calm and dignified resistance. In general, therefore, he might yield himself up as an instrument to the passions, jealousies, and persecuting violence of his own party; while he might have recourse to violence to place Deinophilus on the episcopal throne of Constantinople, he might be awed into a more tolerant and equitable tone by the eloquence and commanding character of Basil. It is unjust to load the memory of Valens with the most atrocious crime which has been charged upon him by the vindic- tive exaggeration of his triumphant religious adversaries. As a deputation of eighty Catholic ecclesiastics of Constantinople were returning from Nicomedia, the vessel was burned, the crew took to the boat, the ecclesiastics perished to a man. As no one escaped to tell ^the tale, and the crew, if accomplices, were not likely to accuse themselves, we may fairly doubt the assertion that orders had been secretly issued by Valens to perpetrate this wanton barbarity. The memorable interview with Saint Basil, as it is related by the Catholic party, displays, if the interview weakness, certainly the patience and toleration, Wlth Basil> of the sovereign if the uncompromising firmness of the prelate, some of that leaven of pride with which he is taunted by Jerome. During his circuit through the Asiatic provinces, the Emperor approached the city of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Modestus, the violent and unscrupulous favourite of Valens, was sent before, to persuade the bishop to submit to the religion of the Emperor. Basil was inflexible. " Know you not," said the offended officer, " that I have power to strip you of all your possessions, to banish you, to deprive you of life ? " 46 INTERVIEW WITH BASIL. BOOK III. " He," answered Basil, " who possesses nothing can lose nothing; all you can take from me is the wretched garments I wear, and the few books, which are my only wealth. As to exile, the earth is the Lord's ; every- where it will be my country, or rather my place of pilgrimage. Death will be a mercy ; it will but admit me into life: long have I been dead to this world." Modestus expressed his surprise at this unusual tone of intrepid address. " You have never, then," replied the prelate, "before conversed with a bishop?" Modestus returned to his master. "Violence will be the only course with this man, who is neither to be appalled by menaces nor won by blandishments." But the Emperor shrunk from such harsh measures. His humbler sup- plication confined itself to the admission of Arians into the communion of Basil; but he implored in vain. The Emperor mingled with the crowd of undistinguished worshippers ; but he was so impressed by the solemnity of the Catholic service, the deep and full chanting of the psalms, the silent adoration of the people, the order and the majesty, as well as by the calm dignity of the bishop and of his attendant clergy, which appeared more like the serenity of angels than the busy scene of mortal men, that, awe-struck and overpowered, he scarcely ventured to approach to make his offering. The clergy stood irresolute, whether they were to receive it from the infectious hand of an Arian ; Basil, at length, while the trembling Emperor leaned for support on an attendant priest, condescended to advance and accept the oblation. But neither supplications, nor bribes, nor threats, could induce the bishop to admit the sovereign to the communion. In a personal inter- view, instead of convincing the bishop, Valens was so overpowered by the eloquence of Basil, as to bestow an CHAP. VII. INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 endowment on the church for the use of the poor. A scene of mingled intrigue and asserted miracle ensued. The exile of Basil was determined, but the mind of Valens was alarmed by the dangerous illness of his son. The prayers of Basil were said to have restored the youth to life ; but a short time after, having been baptized by Arian hands, he relapsed and died. Basil, however, maintained his place and dignity to the end. h But the fate of Valens drew on ; it was followed by the first permanent establishment of the bar- Effect of barians within the frontiers of the Roman Mg&g empire. Christianity now began to assume a barbarian f new and important function, that assimilation invasion - and union between the conquerors and the conquered, which prevented the total extinction of the Roman civilisation, and the oppression of Europe by complete and almost hopeless barbarism. However Christianity might have disturbed the peace, and therefore, in some degree, the stability of the empire by the religious fac- tions which distracted the principal cities ; however that foreign principle of celibacy, which had now become completely identified with it, by withdrawing so many active and powerful minds into the cloister or the her- mitage, may have diminished the civil energies, and even have impaired the military forces of the empire, 1 yet the enterprising and victorious religion amply repaid those injuries by its influence in remodelling the new h Greg. Naz. Orat. xx. ; Greg. Nyss. contra Eunom. ; and the eccle- siastical historians in loco. * Valens, perceiving the actual operation of this unvvarlike dedication of so many able-bodied men to useless inactivity, attempted to correct the evil by law, and by the strong inter- ference of the government. He in- vaded the monasteries and solitary hermitages of Egypt, and swept the monks by thousands into the ranks of his army. But a reluctant Egyptian monk would, in general, make but an indifferent soldier. 48 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. BOOK III. state of society. If treacherous to the interests of the Roman empire, it was true to those of mankind. Throughout the whole process of the resettling of Europe and the other provinces of the empire, by the migratory tribes from the north and east, and the vast system of colonisation and conquest, which introduced one or more new races into every province, Christianity was the one common bond, the harmonising principle, which subdued to something like unity the adverse and conflicting elements of society. Christianity, no doubt, while it discharged this lofty mission, could not but undergo a great and desecrating change. It might repress, but could not altogether subdue, the advance of barbarism ; it was constrained to accommodate itself to the spirit of the times ; while struggling to counter- act barbarism, itself became barbarised. It lost at once much of its purity and its gentleness ; it became splendid and imaginative, warlike, and at length chivalvous. When a country in a comparatively high state of civilisation is overrun by a foreign and martial horde, in numbers too great to be absorbed by the local popu- lation, the conquerors usually establish themselves as a kind of armed aristocracy, while the conquered are depressed into a race of slaves. Where there is no con- necting, no intermediate power, the two races co-exist in stern and implacable hostility. The difference in privilege, and often in the territorial possession of the land, is increased and rendered more strongly marked by the total want of communion in blood. Intermar- riages, if not, as commonly, prohibited by law, are almost entirely discountenanced by general opinion. Such was, in fact, the ordinary process in the formation of the society which arose out of the ruins of the Koman CHAP. VII. INFLUENCE OF THE CLERGY. 49 empire. The conquerors became usually a military aristocracy; assumed the property in the conquered lands, or, at least, a considerable share in the landed estates, and laid the groundwork for that feudal system which was afterwards developed with more or less com- pleteness in different countries of Europe. One thing alone in some cases, tempered, during the process of conquest, the irreclaimable hostility ; Inflne nce of in all, after the final settlement, moulded up the clergy> together in some degree the adverse powers. Where, as in the Gothic invasion, it had made some previous impression on the invading race, Christianity was con- stantly present, silently mitigating the horrors of the war, and afterwards blending together, at least to a certain extent, the rival races. At all times, it became the connecting link, the intermediate power, which gave some community of interest, some similarity of feeling, to the master and the slave. They worshipped at least the same God, in the same church ; and the care of the same clergy embraced both with something of an harmonising and equalising superintendence. The Christian clergy occupied a singular position in this new state of society. At the earlier period, they were, in general, Koman ; later, though sometimes barbarian by birth, they were Koman in education. When the prostration of the conquered people was complete, there was still an order of people, not strictly belonging to either race, which maintained a commanding attitude, and possessed certain authority. The Christian bishop confronted the barbarian sovereign or took his rank among the leading nobles. During the invasion, the Christian clergy, though their possessions were ravaged in the indiscriminate warfare ; though their persons were not always secure from insult, or from slavery; VOL. in. E IMPORTANCE OF THE CLERGY. BOOK 111. yet, on the whole, retained, or very soon resumed, a certain sanctity, and hastened, before long, to wind their chains around the minds of the conquerors. Before a new invasion, Christianity had, in general, mingled the invaders with the invaded; till at length Europe, instead of being a number of disconnected kingdoms, hostile in race, in civil polity, in religion, was united in a kind of federal Christian republic, on a principle of unity, acknowledging the supremacy of the Pope. The overweening authority claimed and exercised by Their im- * ne c l er gy 5 their existence as a separate and tta^wBtote exclusive caste, at this particular period in the of things. progress of civilisation, became of the highest utility. A religion without a powerful and separate sacerdotal order, even, perhaps, if that order had not in general been bound to celibacy and so prevented from degenerating into an hereditary caste, would have been absorbed and lost in the conflict and confusion of the times. Eeligion, unless invested by general opinion in high authority, and that authority asserted by an active and incorporated class, would scarcely have struggled through this complete disorganisation of all the existing relations of society. The respect which the clergy maintained was increased by their being almost the ex- clusive possessors of that learning which commands the reverence even of barbarians, when not actually engaged in war. A religion which rests on a written record, however that record may be but rarely studied, and by a few only of its professed interpreters, enforces general respect to literary attainment. Though the tra- ditional commentary may overload or supersede the original book, the commentary itself is necessarily committed to writing, and becomes another subject of honoured and laborious study. All other kinds of litera- CHAP. VII. INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 ture, as far as they survive, gladly rank themselves under the protection of that which commands reve- influence of ., ,. . ,, ., mi i , Christianity rence lor its religious authority. Ihe cloister on literature, or the religious foundation thus became the place of refuge to all that remained of letters or of arts. Know- ledge brooded in secret, though almost with unproductive, yet with life-sustaining warmth, over these secluded treasures. But it was not merely an inert and quiescent resistance which was thus offered to barbarism ; it was perpetually extending its encroachments, as well as maintaining its place. Perhaps the degree to which the Roman language modified the Teutonic tongues may be a fair example of the extent to which the lioman civilisation generally leavened the manners and the laws of the Northern nations. The language of the conquered people lived in the religious ritual. Throughout the rapid suc- f j -u J in on language, cession 01 invaders who passed over xLurope, seeking their final settlement, some in the remotest province of Africa, before the formation of other dialects, the Latin was kept alive as the language of Western Christianity. The clergy were its conservators, the Vulgate Bible and the offices of the church its deposi- taries, unviolated by any barbarous interruption, re- spected as the oracles of divine truth. But the constant repetition of this language in the ears of the mingled people can scarcely have been without influence in increasing and strengthening the Eoman element in the common language, which gradually grew up from mutual intercourse, intermarriage, and all the other bonds of community which blended together the various races. The old municipal institutions of the empire probably owed their permanence, in no inconsiderable degree, to E 2 52 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. BOOK III. Christianity. It has been observed in what manner rmthemu- the dccurionate, the municipal authorities of stuutions, each town, through the extraordinary and oppressive system of taxation, from guardians of the liberties of the people, became mere passive and un- willing agents of the Government. Responsible for payments which they could not exact, men of opulence, men of humanity, shrunk from the public offices. From objects of honourable ambition, these functions had become burdens, loaded with unrepaid unpopularity, assumed by compulsion, and exercised with reluctance. The defensors, instituted by Valentinian and Valens, however they might afford temporary protection and relief to the lower orders, scarcely exercised any long or lasting influence on the state of society. Yet the municipal authorities at least retained the power of administering the laws ; and, as the law became more and more impregnated with Christian sentiment, it assumed something of a religious as well as civil authority. The magistrate became, as it were, an ally of the Christian bishop ; the institutions had a sacred character, besides that of their general utility. What- ever remained of commerce and of art subsisted chiefly among the old Roman population of the cities, which was already Christian ; and hence, perhaps, the guilds and fraternities of the trades, which may be traced up to an early period, gradually assumed a sort of religious bond of union. In all points, the Roman civilisation and Christianity, when the latter had completely pervaded the various orders of men, began to make common cause; and during all the time that this disorganisation of conquest and new settlement was taking place in this groundwork of the Roman social system, and the loose elements of society were severing CHAP. VII. INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 53 by gradual disunion, a new confederative principle arose in these smaller aggregations, as well as in the general population of the empire. The church became another centre of union. Men incorporated themselves together, not only, nor so much, as fellow-citizens, as fellow-Christians. They submitted to an authority co- ordinate with the civil power, and united as members of the same religious fraternity. Christianity, to a certain degree, changed the general habits of men. For a time, at least, they on general were less public, more private and domestic habits- men. The tendency of Christianity, while the Christians composed a separate and distinct community, to with- draw men from public affairs ; their less frequent attendance on the courts of law, which were superseded by their own peculiar arbitration ; their repugnance to the ordinary amusements, which soon, however, in the large cities, such as Antioch and Constantinople, wore off all these principles of disunion ceased to operate when Christianity became the dominant, and at length the exclusive, religion. The Christian community be- came the people ; the shows, the pomps, the ceremonial of the religion, replaced the former seasons of periodical popular excitement ; the amusements, which were not extirpated by the change of sentiment, some theatrical exhibitions, and the chariot race, were crowded with Christian spectators ; Christians ascended the tribunals of law : not only the spirit and language of the New Testament, but likewise of the Old, entered both into the Roman jurisprudence and into the various barbarian codes, in which the Eoman law was mingled with the old Teutonic usages. Thus Christianity was perpetually discharging the double office of conservator, with regard to the social institutions with which she had entered 54 CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE GOTHS. BOOK III. into alliance ; and of mediator between the conflicting races which she was gathering together under her own wing. Where the relation between the foreign conqueror and the conquered inhabitant of the empire was that of master and slave, the Eoman ecclesiastic still main- tained his independence, and speedily regained his authority ; he only admitted the barbarian into his order on the condition that he became to a certain degree Romanised ; and there can be no doubt that the gentle influence of Christian charity and humanity was not without its effect in mitigating the lot, or at least In consoling the misery of the change from independence or superiority, to humiliation and servitude. Where the two races mingled, as seems to have been the case in some of the towns and cities, on more equal terms, by strengthening the municipal institutions with something of a religious character, and by its own powerful fede- rative principle, it condensed them much more speedily into one people, and assimilated their manners, habits, and usages. Christianity had early, as it were, prepared the way for this amalgamation of the Goths with the Roman empire. In their first inroads during the reign of Gallienus, when the Goths ravaged a large part of the Roman empire, they carried away numbers of slaves, especially from Asia Minor and Cap- padocia. Among these were many Christians. The slaves subdued the conquerors ; the gentle doctrines of Christianity made their way to the hearts of the bar- barous warriors. The families of the slaves continued to supply the priesthood to this growing community. A Gothic bishop, k with a Greek name, Theophilus, Philostorgius, U. 5. CHAP. VII. THE GOTHIC OF ULPHILAS. 55 attended at the council of Nicsea ; Ulphilas, at the time of the invasion in the reign of Valens, conse- uiphuas's crated bishop of the Goths during an embassy scriptures. to Constantinople, was of Cappadociau descent. Among the Goths, Christianity first assumed its new office, the advancement of general civilisation, as well as of purer religion. It is difficult to suppose that the art of writing was altogether unknown to the Goths before the time of Ulphilas. The language seems to have attained a high degree of artificial perfection before it was employed by that prelate in the translation of the Scriptures. Still the Mseso-Gothic alphabet, of which the Greek is by far the principal element, was generally adopted by the Goths. It was universally disseminated ; it was per- petuated, until the extinction or absorption of the Gothic race in other tribes, by the translation of the sacred writings. This was the work of Ulphilas, who, in his version of the Scriptures, p is reported to have omitted, m Socrates, ii. 41. n The Gothic of Ulphilas is the link between the East and Europe, the transition state from the Sanscrit to the modern Teutonic languages. It is possible that the Goths, after their migration from the East to the north of Germany, may have lost the art of writing, partly from the want of materials. The German forests would afford no substitute for the palm-leaves of the East ; they may have been reduced to the barbarous runes of the other Heathen tribes. Compare Bopp., Conjugations System. The Mseso-Gothic alphabet has twenty-five letters, of which fifteen are evidently Greek, eight Latin. The two, th and hvv, to which the Greek and Latin have no corresponding sound, are derived from some other quarter. They are most likely ancient characters. The th resembles closely the runic letter, which expresses the same sound. See St. Martin, note on Le Beau, rii. p. 120. P The greater part of the fragments of Ulphilas's version of the Scriptures now extant is contained in the cele- brated Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala. This splendid MS., written in silver letters, on parchment of a purple ground, contains almost the whole four Gospels. Knittel, in 1762. discovered five chapters of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, in a Palimpsest MS. at Wolfenbuttel. The best edition of the whole of this is by J. Christ, 56 ARIANISM BOOK III. with a Christian, but vain, precaution, the books of Kings, lest, being too congenial to the spirit of his countrymen, they should inflame their warlike en- thusiasm. Whether the genuine mildness of Chris- tianity, or some patriotic reverence for the Roman empire, from which he drew his descent, influenced the pious bishop, the martial ardour of the Goths was not the less fatal to the stability of the Roman empire. Christianity did not even mitigate the violence of the shock with which, for the first time, a whole host of Northern barbarians was thrown upon the empire, never again to be shaken off. This Gothic invasion, which first established a Teutonic nation within the frontier of the empire, was conducted with all the ferocity- provoked indeed on the part of the Romans by the basest treachery of hostile races with no bond of connection.* 1 The pacificatory effect of the general conversion of the Goths to Christianity was impeded by the form of faith which they embraced. The Gothic prelates, Ulphilas among the rest, who visited the court O f Constantinople, found the Arian bishops in possession of the chief authority ; they were the re- cognised prelates of the empire. Whether their less the Goths. Zahn. Weissenfels, 1805. Since that time, M. Mai has published, from Milan Palimpsests, several other frag- ments, chiefly of the other Epistles of St. Paul. Milan, 1819. St. Martin, notes to Le Beau, iii. 100. On the Gothic translation of the Scriptures. See Socrat, iv. 33. Sozom. vi. 37. Philostorgius, ii. 5. Compare Theo- doret, v. 30-31. A complete edition of the remains of the Bible of Ulphilas was published by Dr. Gabelentz and Dr. Lobe, 1838, but the most useful edition is that of Massmanu. Stutt- gart, 1857. * It is remarkable to find a Chris- tian priest employed as an ambassador between the Goths and the Romans, and either the willing or undesigning instrument of that stratagem of the Gothic general which was so fatal to Valens. Amm. Marc. xixi. 12. OF THE GOTHS. 57 cultivated minds were unable to comprehend, or their language to express, the fine and subtle distinctions of the Trinitarian faith, or they were persuaded, as it was said, by the Arian bishops that it was mere verbal dispute, these doctrines were introduced among the Goths before their passage of the Danube, or their settlement within the empire. The whole nation received this form of Christianity ; from them it appears to have spread, first embracing the other branch of the nation, the Os- trogoths, among the Gepidse, the Vandals, and the Burgundians/ Among the barbaric conquerors was the stronghold of Arianism ; while it was gradually re- pudiated by the Romans both in the East and in the West, it raised its head, and obtained a superiority which it had never before attained, in Italy and Spain. Whether more congenial to the simplicity of the bar- baric mind, or in some respects cherished on one side by the conqueror as a proud distinction, and more cordially detested by the Eoman population, as the creed of their barbarous masters, Arianism appeared almost to make common cause with the Teutonic in- vaders, and only fell with the Gothic monarchies in Italy and in Spain. While Gratian and Valentinian the Second espoused the cause of Trinitarianism in the West (we shall hereafter resume the Christian history of that division of the empire), by measures which show that their sacerdotal advisers were men of greater energy and decision than their civil ministers, r " Sic quoque Visigothi a Valente Imperatore Ariani potius quam Chris- tian i effecti. De csetero tain Ostrc- gothis, quam Gepidis parentihiis suis per affectionis gratiam evangelizantes, hnjus perfidise culturam edocentes omnem ubique lingua: hujus nationem ad culturam hujus sectae incitavere." Jornand. c. 25. 58 THE BIBLE OF ULPHILAS. BOOK III. Arianism subsisted almost as a foreign and barbarous form of Christianity. 8 The Bible of Ulphilas was the Bible of all the Gothic races. Massmann, Die Unruhe wie die Nothdrang des ausseren Lebens, der inwohnenden Thatreich des einheitlichen nordischen Menschengeschlechtes, das die Welt erneuen und befreien sollte, fiihrte dasselbe von den friedlichen Ufern der Ostsee iiber die Donau vielmals bis vor die Thore des Constantinopel, zu den blutbetrankten Gestaden des Schwarzsee wie des Mittelmeeres, bis tief nach Asien, in und iiber Italien und Frankreich bis nach Spanien und Africa, iiherall aber trugen sie Ulfiias Bibel mit sick." Einleitung X. Mass- mann observes, p. xxiii., that there is no trace of Arianism in the sur- viving remains of the Gothic trans- lation of the New Testament. The Gothic of Philip ii. 6. has been mis- understood. The Aiian Goths pro- fessed to adhere to the words of Scripture, they avoided the Homo- iousios and Homoousios ; they called themselves Catholics, and were singu- larly tolerant of the orthodox tenets and of the Catholic clergy. Compare Latin Christianity, Book III. c. 2. CHAP. VIII. THEODOSIUS. CHAPTEE VIII. Theodosius. Abolition of Paganism. THE fate of Yalens summoned to the empire a sovereign not merely qualified to infuse a conservative vigour into the civil and military administration of the empire, but to compress into one uniform system the religion of the Roman world. It was necessary that Christianity should acquire a complete predominance, and that it should be consolidated into one vigorous and harmo- nious system. The relegation, as it were, of Arianism among the Goths and other barbarous tribes, though it might thereby gain a temporary accession of strength, did not permanently impede the final triumph of Trinitarianism. While the imperial power was thus lending its strongest aid for the complete triumph and concentration of Christianity, from the peculiar character of the mind of Theodosius, the sacerdotal order, on the strength and unity of which was to rest the permanent influence of Christianity during the approaching centuries of darkness, assumed new energy. A religious emperor, under certain circumstances, might have been the most dangerous adversary of the priestly power ; he would have asserted with vigour, which could not at that time be resisted, the supremacy of the civil authority. But the weaknesses, the vices, of the great Theodosius, bowed him down before the aspiring priesthood, who, in asserting and advancing their own authority, were asserting the cause of humanity. The passionate tyrant, CO THEODOSIUS. BOOK III. at the feet of the Christian prelate, deploring the rash resentment which had condemned a whole city to mas- sacre; the prelate exacting the severest penance for the outrage on justice and on humanity, stand in ex- traordinary contrast with the older Caesars, themselves the priesthood, without remonstrance or without hu- miliation, glutting their lusts or their resentment with the misery and blood of their subjects. The accession of Theodosius was hailed with universal enthusiasm throughout the empire. The pres- sing fears of barbaric invasion on every frontier silenced for a time the jealousies of Christian and Pagan, of Arian and Trinitarian. On the shore of each of the great rivers which bounded the empire, appeared a host of menacing invaders. The Persians, the Armenians, the Iberians, were prepared to pass the Euphrates or the eastern frontier; the Danube had already afforded a passage to the Goths ; behind them were the Huns in still more formidable and multiplying swarms ; the Franks and the rest of the German nations were crowd- ing to the Rhine. Paganism, as well as Christianity, hastened to pay its grateful homage to the deliverer of the empire ; the eloquent Themistius addressed Theodosius in the name of the imperial city ; Libanius ventured to call on the Christian Emperor to revenge the death of Julian, that crime for which the gods were exacting just retribution. Pagan poetry awoke from its long silence ; the glory of Theodosius and his family inspired its last noble effort in the verse of Claudian. Theodosius was a Spaniard. In that province Chris- tianity had probably found less resistance from the feeble provincial Paganism ; nor was there, as in Gaul, an old national religion which lingered in the minds of the native population. Christianity was early and per- CHAP. VIII. ABOLITION OF PAGANISM. 61 manently established in the Peninsula. To Theodosius, who was but slightly tinged with the love of letters or the tastes of a more liberal education, the colossal temples of the East, or the more graceful and harmo- nious fabrics of Europe, would probably create no feeling but that of aversion from the shrines of idolatry. His Christianity was pure from any of the old Pagan associations ; unsoftened, it may, perhaps, be said, by any feeling for art, and unawed by any reverence for the ancient religion of Home : he was a soldier, a provincial, an hereditary Christian of a simple and unquestioning faith ; and he added to all this the con- sciousness of consummate vigour and ability, and a choleric and vehement temperament. Spain, throughout the Trinitarian controversy, perhaps from the commanding influence of Hosius, had firmly adhered to the Athanasian doctrines. The Manichean tenets, for which Priscillian and his followers suffered (the first heretics condemned to death for their opinions), were but recently introduced into the province. Thus, by character and education, deeply impressed with Christianity, and that of a severe and uncompro- mising orthodoxy, Theodosius undertook the sacred obligation of extirpating Paganism, and of restoring to Christianity its severe and inviolable unity. Without tracing the succession of events throughout his reign, we may survey the Christian Emperor in his acts ; first, as commencing, if not completing, the forcible extermi- nation of Paganism ; secondly, as confirming Christianity, and extending the authority of the sacerdotal order ; and thirdly, as establishing the uniform orthodoxy of the Western Koman Church. The laws of Theodosius against the Pagan sacrifices grew insensibly more and more severe. The inspection 62 ABOLITION OF PAGANISM. BOOK III. of the entrails of victims, and magic rites, were made Hostmty of capital offences. In A.D. 391, issued an edict Theodoslus , ., . . . , , . to Paganism, prohibiting sacrifaces, and even the entering into the temples. In the same year, a rescript was addressed to the court and prefect of Egypt, fining the governors of provinces who should enter a temple fifteen pounds of gold, and giving a kind of authority to the subordi- clinate officers to prevent their superiors from committing such offences. The same year, all unlawful sacrifices are prohibited by night or day, within or without the temples. In 392, all immolation is prohibited under the penalty of death, and all other acts of idolatry under forfeiture of the house or land in which the offence shall have been committed.* The Pagan temples, left standing in all their majesty, but desecrated, deserted, overgrown, would have been the most splendid monument to the triumph of Chris- tianity. If, with the disdain of conscious strength, she had allowed them to remain without victim, without priest, without worshipper, but uninjured and only ex- posed to natural decay from time and neglect, posterity would not merely have been grateful for the preserva- tion of such stupendous and graceful models of art, but would have been strongly impressed with admiration of her magnanimity. But such magnanimity was neither to be expected from the age or the state of the religion. The Christians believed in the existence of the Heathen deities, with, perhaps, more undoubting faith than the Heathens themselves. The daemons who inhabited the temples were spirits of malignant and pernicious power, which it was no less the interest than the duty of the Christian to expel from their proud and attractive Cod. Theod. rvi. 10, 7, 11, 12. CHAP. VIII. ABOLITION OF PAGANISM- 63 mansions. 1 * The temples were the strongholds of the vigilant and active adversaries of Christian truth and Christian purity, of the enemies of God and man. The idols, it is true, were but wood and stone, but the beings they represented were real ; they hovered, perhaps, in the air ; they were still present in the consecrated spot, though rebuked and controlled by the mightier name of Christ, yet able to surprise the careless Christian in his hour of supineness or negligent adherence to his faith or his duty. When zeal inflamed the Christian populace to aggression upon any of these ancient and time-hallowed buildings, no doubt some latent awe lingered within ; something of the suspense of doubtful warfare watched the issue of the strife. However they might have worked themselves up to the conviction that their ancient gods were but of this inferior and hostile nature, they would still be haunted by some apprehensions, lest they should not be secure of the protection of Christ, or of the angels and saints in the new tutelar hierarchy of Heaven. The old deities might not have been so completely rebuked and controlled as not to retain some power of injuring their rebellious votaries. It was at last, even to the faithful, a conflict between two unequal supernatural agencies ; unequal in- deed, particularly where the faith of the Christian was fervent and sincere, yet dependent for its event on the confidence of that faith which sometimes trembled at its own insufficiency, and feared lest it should be aban- doned by the divine support in the moment of strife. Throughout the East and West, the monks were the chief actors in this holy warfare. They are constantly b " Dii enim Gentium dacmonia, ut Scriptura docet." Ambros. Epist. liesp. at Svmmach. in init. 64 ABOLITION OF PAGANISM. BOOK III. spoken of by the Heathen writers in terms of the bit- terest reproach and contempt. The most particular accounts of their proceedings relate to the East. Their desultory attacks were chiefly confined to the country, where the numberless shrines, images, and smaller temples were at the same time less protected, and more dear to the feelings of the people. In the towns, the larger fanes, if less guarded by the reverence of their worshippers, were under the protection of the municipal police. Christianity was long almost exclu- sively the religion of the towns ; and the term Paganism (notwithstanding the difficulties which embarrass this explanation) appears to owe its origin to this general distinction. The agricultural population, liable to fre- quent vicissitudes, trembled to offend the gods, on whom depended the plenty or the failure of the harvest Habits are more intimately enwoven with the whole being in the regular labours of husbandry, than in the more various and changeable occupations of the city. The whole Heathen ritual was bound up with the course of agriculture: this was the oldest part both of the Grecian and Italian worship, and had experienced less change from the spirit of the times. In every field, in every garden, stood a deity ; shrines and lesser temples were erected in every grove, by every fountain. The drought, the mildew, the murrain, the locusts, what- ever was destructive to the harvest or to the herd, was in the power of these capricious deities/ 1 Even when converted to Christianity, the peasant trembled at the consequences of his own apostasy ; and it is probable, e To\fj.arai ft.e.v oKv K&V rats iro\v Liban. pro Tempi is. at t\iri5fs, Sffai irtpl r( avtipiav Kal yvvaiKtai', Kal TtKvaiv Kal frowv, Kal rrjs ffirtipontvris yijs Kal irt. 389, Capitol, was tfye proudest monument of Pagan or 391. religious architecture. 1 * Like the more cele- brated structures of the East, and that of Jerusalem in its glory, it comprehended within its precincts a vast mass of buildings, of which the temple itself formed the centre. It was built on an artificial hill, in the old quarter of the city, called Khacotis. The ascent to it was by a hundred steps. All the substructure was vaulted over ; and in these dark chambers, which communicated with each other, were supposed to be carried on the most fearful, and, to the Christian, abominable mysteries. All around the spacious level platform were the habitations of the priests, and of the ascetics dedicated to the worship of the god. Within these outworks of this city rather than temple, was a square, surrounded on all sides with a magnificent portico. In the centre arose the temple, on pillars of enormous magnitude and beautiful proportion. The work either of Alexander himself or of the first Ptolemy, aspired to unite the colossal grandeur of Egyptian with Libanius expresses himself to this bilis Roma in seternum attollit, nihil cflect. I orbis ten-arum ambitiosius cernat." f " Post Capitolium, quo se venera- Ammian. Marcel] . xxii. 16. CHAP. VIII. STATUE OF SERAPIS. 69 the fine harmony of Grecian art. The god himself was the especial object of adoration throughout the whole country, and throughout every part of the empire into which the Egyptian worship had penetrated,* 1 but more particularly in Alexandria ; and the wise policy of the Ptolemies had blended together, under this pliant and all-embracing religion, the different races of their subjects. Egyptian and Greek met as wor- Worsh | pof shippers of Serapis. The Serapis of Egypt S 618 ? 18 - was said to have been worshipped for ages at Sinope ; he was transported from that city with great pomp and splendour, to be reincorporated, as it were, and reidenti- fied with his ancient prototype. While the Egyptians worshipped in Serapis the great vivific principle of the universe, the fecundating Nile, holding the Nilometer for his sceptre, the Lord of Amen-ti, the President of the regions beyond the grave, the Greeks, at the same time, recognised the blended attributes of their Dionysus, Helios, .ZEsculapius, and Hades/ The colossal statue of Serapis embodied these various attributes. 8 It filled the sanctuary : its out- stattie of stretched and all-embracing arms touched the s^P 18 - walls ; the right the one, the left the other. It was said to have been the work of Sesostris ; it was made of all the metals fused together, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin ; it was inlaid with all kinds of precious stones ; the whole was polished, and appeared of an In Egypt alone he had forty-two De Guigniaut, Le Dieu Serapis et son temples ; innumerable others in every part of the Roman empire. Aristid. Orat. in Canop. r This appears to me the most natural interpretation of the cele- brated passage in Tacitus. Compare Origine, originally written as a note for Bournouf 's Translation of Tacitus. 8 The statue is described by Ma- crobius, Saturn, i. 20. ; Clemens Alexandrin. Exhortat. ad Gent. i. p. 42. ; Rufinus, E. H. xii. 23. 70 THE FIRST ATTACKS BOOK III. azure colour. The measure or bushel, the emblem of productiveness or plenty, crowned its head. By its side stood the symbolic three-headed animal, one the fore- part of a lion, one of a dog, one of a wolf. In this the Greeks saw the type of their poetic Cerberus.' The serpent, the symbol of eternity, wound round the whole, and returned resting its head on the hand of the god. The more completely the adoration of Serapis had absorbed the worship of the whole Egyptian pantheon, the more eagerly Christianity desired to triumph over the representative of Polytheism. However, in the time of Hadrian, the philosophic party may have endeavoured to blend and harmonise the two faiths," they stood now in their old direct and irreconcileable opposition. The suppression of the internal feuds be- tween the opposite parties in Alexandria, enabled Christianity to direct all its concentered force against The flret Paganism. Theophilus, the archbishop, was attacks on . Paganism, a man of boldness and activity, eager to seize and skilful to avail himself of every opportunity to inflame the popular mind against the Heathens. A priest of Serapis was accused and convicted of practising those licentious designs against the virtue of the female worshippers, so frequently attributed to the priesthood of the Eastern religions. The noblest and most beauti- ful women were persuaded to submit to the embraces of the god, whose place, under the favourable darkness caused by the sudden extinction of the lamps in the temple, was filled by the priest. These inauspicious ' According t the interpretation oi' Macrobius, the three heads represented the past, the present, and the future ; the rapacious wolf the past, the central lion the intermediate present, the fawning dog the hopeful future. See the Letter of Hadrian, VoL II. p. 108. CHAP. VIII. ON PAGANISM. 71 rumours prepared the inevitable collision. A neglected temple of Osiris or Dionysus had been granted by Constantius to the Arians of Alexandria. Theophilus obtained from the Emperor a grant of the vacant site for a new church, to accommodate the increasing numbers of the Catholic Christians. On digging the foundation, there were discovered many of the obscene symbols, used in the Bacchic or Osirian mysteries. Theophilus, with more regard to the success of his cause than to decency, exposed these ludicrous or disgusting objects, in the public market place, to the contempt and abhorrence of the people. The Pagans, indignant at this treatment of their sacred symbols, and maddened by the scorn and ridicule of the Cliristians, took up arms. The streets ran with blood ; and many Christians who fell in this tumultuous fray received the honours of martyrdom. A philosopher, named Olympus, oiympus the placed himself at the head of the Pagan party. P hilos P her - Olympus had foreseen and predicted the ruin of the external worship of Polytheism. He had endeavoured to implant a profound feeling in the hearts of the Pagans which might survive the destruction of their ordinary objects of worship. " The statues of the gods are but perishable and material images ; the eternal intelligences, which dwelt within them, have withdrawn to the heavens." x Yet Olympus hoped, and at first with his impassioned eloquence succeeded, in rousing his Pagan compatriots to a bold defiance of the public authorities in support of their religion. Faction and rivalry supplied what was wanting to faith; and it appeared that Paganism would likewise boast its army T "TA.rjf (t>6aprr)v Kal lv5d,A/j.ara Se rtvas eVo/cf)IS. BOOK HI. ascended the steps to the temple of Serapis. They The temple surveyed the vacant chambers of the priests assailed. an( j ^ e asee ti cs ; they paused to pillage the library ; a they entered the deserted sanctuary ; they stood in the presence of the god. The sight of this colossal image, for centuries an object of worship, struck awe to the hearts of the Christians themselves. They stood silent, inactive, trembling. The archbishop alone maintained his courage : he commanded a soldier to proceed to the assault. The soldier struck the statue with his hatchet on the knee. The blow echoed through the breathless hall, but no sound or sign of divine vengeance ensued ; the roof of the Temple fell not to crush the sacrilegious assailant nor did the pavement heave and quake beneath his feet. The emboldened soldier climbed up to the head and struck it off; it rolled upon the ground. Serapis gave no sign of life, but a large colony of rats, disturbed in their peaceful abode, ran about on all sides. The passions of the multitude are always in extremes. From breathless awe they passed at once to ungovern- able mirth. The work of destruction went on amid peals of laughter, coarse jests, and shouts of acclama- tion ; and as the fragments of the huge body of Serapis were dragged through the streets, the Pagans, with that revulsion of feeling common to the superstitious populace, joined in the insult and mockery against their unresisting and self-abandoned god. b * " Nos vidimus armaria librorum ; j credulity of their worshippers. An quibus direptis, exinanita ea a nostris aperture of the wall was so contrived, hominibus, nostris temporibus memo- rant." Oros. vi. 15. b They were said to have discovered that the light of the sun, at a par- ticular time, fell on the face of Serapis. The sun was then thought to visit several of the tricks by which the : Serapis ; and at the moment of their priests of Serapis imposed on the meeting, the flashing light threw a CHAP. VIII. DEMOLITION OF THE TEMPLE. 75 The solid walls and deep foundations of the Temple offered more unsurmountable resistance to the baffled zeal of the Christians ; the work of demolition proceeded but slowly with the massive architecture ; c and some time after a church was erected in -the precincts, to look down upon the ruins of idolatry, which still frowned in desolate grandeur upon their conquerors.* 1 Yet the Christians, even after their complete triumph, were not without some lingering terrors ; the Pagans not without hopes that a fearful vengeance would be exacted from the land for this sacrilegious extirpation of their ancient deities. Serapis was either the Nile, or the deity who presided over the periodical inundations of the river. The Nilometer, which measured the rise of the waters, was kept in the Temple. Would the indignant river refuse its fertilising moisture ; keep sullenly within its banks, and leave the ungrateful land blasted with perpetual drought and barrenness? As the time of the inundation approached, all Egypt was in a state of trembling suspense. Long beyond the accustomed day the waters remained at their usual level; there was no sign of overflowing. The people began to murmur ; the murmurs swelled into indignant remonstrances ; the usual rites and sacrifices were demanded from the reluctant prefect, who despatched a smile on the lips of the Deity. There j c Compare Eunap. Vit. ^desii, p. is another story of a macnet on the 44. edit. Boissonade. roof, which, as in the fable about Mohammed's coffin, raised either a small statue of the Deity, or the sun d The Christians rejoiced in dis- covering the cross in various parts of the building ; they were inclined to in a car with four horses, to the roof, supjwse it miraculous or prophetic of and there held it suspended. A Christian withdrew the magnet, the ear fell, and was dashed to pieces on the pavement. their triumph. But, in fact, the crux ansata is a common hieroglyphic, a symbol of life. WAR AGAINST THE TEMPLES. BOOK III. hasty messenger to the Emperor for instructions. There was every appearance of a general insurrection ; the Pagans triumphed in their turn ; but before the answer of the Emperor arrived, which replied, in uncompromising faith, "that if the inundation of the river could only be obtained by magic and impious rites, let it remain dry ; the fertility of Egypt must not be purchased by an act of infidelity to God" e sud- denly, the waters began to swell, an inundation moru full and extensive than usual spread over the land, and the versatile Pagans had now no course but to join again with the Christians in mockeries against the impotence of their gods. But Christianity was not content with the demolition of the Serapion; its predominance throughout Egypt may be estimated by the bitter complaint of the Pagan writer : " Whoever wore a black dress (the monks are designated by this description) was invested in ty- rannical power ; philosophy and piety to the gods were compelled to retire into secret places, and to dwell in contented poverty and dignified meanness of appearance. The temples were turned into tombs for the adoration of the bones of the basest and most depraved of men who had suffered the penalty of the law, whom they made their gods." f Such was the light in which the martyr-worship of the Christians appeared to the Pagans. The demolition of the Serapion was a penalty inflicted Improbable as it may seem, that such an answer should be given by a statesman like Theodosius, yet it is strongly characteristic of the times. The Emperor neither denies the power of the malignant daemons worshipped by the idolaters, nor the efficacy of enchantments, to obtain their favour, and to force from them the retarded overflow of the river. 1 Eunap. Vit. jEdesii, loc. cit. CHAP. VIII. WAR AGAINST THE TEMPLES. 77 on the Pagans of Alexandria for their sedition and sanguinary violence ; but the example was too en- couraging, the hope of impunity under the present government too confident, not to spread through other cities of Egypt. It moved on to Canopus, where the principle of humidity was worshipped in the form of a vase, with a human head. Theophilus, who considered Canopus within his diocese, marched at the head of his triumphant party, demolished the temples, abolished the rites, which were distinguished for then: dissolute licence, and established monasteries in the place. Canopus, from a city of revel and debauchery, became a city of monks. g The persecution extended throughout Egypt; but the vast buildings which even now subsist, the successive works of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Eoman Emperors, having triumphed alike over time, Chris- tianity, and Mahommedanism, show either some reverent reluctance to deprive the country of its most magnificent ornaments, or the inefficiency of the instruments which they employed in the work of devastation. For once it was less easy for men to destroy than to preserve ; the power of demolition was rebuked before the strength and solidity of these erections of primeval art. The war, as we have seen, raged with the same partial and imperfect success in Syria; with less, probably, in Asia Minor ; least of all in Greece. The demolition was nowhere general or systematic. Wherever monastic Christianity was completely pre- dominant, there emulous zeal excited the laity to these e The Christians laughed at Cano- pus being called " the conqueror of the gods." The origin of this name was, that the principle of fire, the god of the Chaldeans, had been extin- guished by the water within the statue of Canopus, the principle of humidity. 78 WAR AGAINST THE TEMPLES. BOOK III. aggressions on Paganism. But in Greece the noblest buildings of antiquity, at Olympia, Eleusis, Athens, h show in their decay the slower process of neglect and time, of accident and the gradual encroachment of later barbarism, rather than the iconoclastic destructiveness of early religious zeal. 1 In the West, the task of St. Martin of Tours, the great extirpator of idolatry in Gaul, was comparatively easy ; and his achievements by no means so much to be lamented as those of the destroyers of the purer models of architecture in the East The life of this saint by Sulpicius, in which the comparatively polished and classi- cal style singularly contrasts with the strange and legen- dary incidents which it relates, describes St. Martin as making regular campaigns into all the region, destroy- ing, wherever he could, the shrines and temples of the Heathen, and replacing them by churches and monas- teries. So completely was his excited imagination full of his work, that he declared that Satan often assumed the visible form of Jove, of Mercury, of Venus, or of Minerva, to divert him, no doubt, from his holy design, and to protect their trembling fanes.* k The Parthenon, it is well known, was entire, till towards the elo*e of the sixteenth century. Its roof was destroyed during the siege by the Venetians. See Spon. and Wheler's Travels. 1 The council of Illiberis refused the honours of martyrdom to those who were killed while breaking idols Can. li. The invasion of the Goths (Eu- napius accuses the black monks of having betrayed Thermopylae to them) carried devastation into Greece and Pelojionnesus. These newly-converted barbarians had no feeling for art. They burned Corinth, Amyclae, Lace- da-mou, Olympia, (from that time the games ceased) with all their glorious temples and noble statues. Zosimns asserts that Minerva preserved Athens. Her apparition appalled Alaric. But Ceres did not protect Eleusis. There was a frightful massacre of the Hiero- phants among the ruins of the temple. (Eunapius, in loc., Los. v. 6.) Com- pare Chastel, p. 215. Fahnerayer, Geschichte der Morea, 136. k Sulpic. Sever. Vit. B. Martini, p. 469. CHAP. VIII. PAGANISM AT fcOME. 79 But the power and the majesty of Paganism were still concentred at Rome; the deities of the Paganism ancient faith found their last refuge in the atBx)jne - capital of the empire. To the stranger, Home still offered the appearance of a Pagan city : it contained one hundred and fifty-two temples, and one hundred and eighty smaller chapels or shrines, still sacred to their tutelary God, and used for public worship. 111 Christianity had neither ventured to usurp those few buildings which might be converted to her use, still less had she the power to destroy them. The religious edifices were under the protection of the prefect of the city, and the prefect was usually a Pagan ; at all events, he would not permit any breach of the public peace, or violation of public property. Above all still towered the Capitol, in its unassailed and awful majesty, with its fifty temples or shrines, bearing the most sacred names in the religious and civil annals of Rome, those of Jove, of Mars, of Janus, of Romulus, of Csesar, of Victory. Some years after the accession of Theodosius to the Eastern empire, the sacrifices were still performed as national rites at the public cost ; the pontiffs made their offerings in the name of the whole human race. The Pagan orator ventures to assert that the Emperor dared not to endanger the safety of the empire by their abolition." The Emperor still bore the title and insignia of the supreme Pontiff; the consuls before they entered upon their functions, ascended the Capitol ; See the Descriptiones Urbis, which I M. Beugnot has made out, on more bear the names of Publicus Victor, | or less satisfactory evidence, a list of and Sextus Rufus Festus. These works could not have been written before or long after the reign of Valentinian. Compare Beugnot, Histoire de la De- the deities still worshipped in Italy. t. i. 1. viii. c. 9. St. Augustin, when young, was present at the rites of Cybele, about A. D. 374. struction du Paganisme en Occident, j n Liban. pro Templis. 80 GRATIAN VALENTINIAN THEODOSIUS. BOOK III. the religious processions passed along the crowded streets; and the people thronged to the festivals and theatres, which still formed part of the Pagan worship. But the edifice had begun to tremble to its founda- Gratian, tions. The Emperor had ceased to reside at A.D.367.' Home; the mind of Theodosius, as afterwards Valentinian , /* /-~t ' 11 c i U..A.D.37S. that of Gratian, and that of the younger A.D. 379. ' Valentinian, was free from those early in- culcated and daily renewed impressions of the majesty of the ancient Paganism which still enthralled the minds of the Roman aristocracy. Of that aristocracy, the flower and the pride was Vettius Agorius Praetex- tatus. In him the wisdom of Pagan philosophy blended with the serious piety of Pagan religion: he lived to witness the commencement of the last fatal change which he had no power to avert ; he died, and his death was deplored as a public calamity, in time to escape the final extinction, or rather degradation, of Paganism. Only eight years before the fatal accession of Gratian, and the year of his own death, he had publicly consecrated twelve statues in the Capitol, with all becoming splendour, to the Dii curantes, the great guardian deities of Kome. 1 ' It was not only the ancient religion of Eome which still maintained some part of its dignity, all the other religions of the empire, which still publicly celebrated their rites, and retained their temples in the metropolis, concentred all their honours on Praetextatus, and took refuge, as it were, under the protection of his blameless See on Praetextatus, Macrob. j recently discovered (A. D. 1835), and Saturn, i. 2. Symmachi Epistoke, i. published in the Bulletino of the 40. 43. 45., ii. 7. 34. 36. 53. 59. Archaeological Society of Kome. Com- Hieronym. EpistoUe, xxiii. j pare Bunsen, Roms Beschreibung, p This appears from an inscription vol. iii. p. 9. CHAP. VIII. PE^TEXTATUS. 81 and venerable name. His titles in an extant inscription announce him as having attained, besides the countless honours of Roman civil and religious dignity, the highest rank in the Eleusinian, Phrygian, Syrian, and Mithriac mysteries. 4 His wife boasted the same religious titles ; she was the priestess of the same mysteries, with the addition of some peculiar to the female sex. r She celebrated the funeral, even the apotheosis, of her noble husband with the utmost pomp : he was the last Pagan, probably, who received the honours of deification. 8 All Rome crowded, in sorrow and profound reverence, to the ceremony. In the language of the vehement Jerome there is a singular mixture of enforced respect and of aversion ; he describes (to moralise at the awful change) and contrasts with his funeral the former triumphant ascent of the Capitol by Prastextatus amid the acclamations of the whole city ; he admits the popularity of his life, but condemns him, without remorse, to eternal misery.* > Augur, Pontifex \ r estae, Pontifex Soils, Quindecemvir, Curialis Herculis, sacratus Libero et Eleusiniis, Hiero- phanta, Neocorus, Tauroboliatus, Pater Patrum. Gruter, p. 1102. No. 2. r Sacratae apud Eleusinam Deo Baccho, Cereri, et Corae, apud Lernam> Deo Libero, et Cereri, et Corse, sacrata; apud jEginam Deabus; Taurobolitse, Isiacae, Hierophantiae Deae Hecatao, sacratae Deae Cereris. Gruter, 309. 8 Read the two beautiful poems, one a short one addressed by Vettius Agorius Prsctextatus to his wile Aconia Fabia Paulina, the other, longer, by Paulina to her husband. I subjoin some lines from that of VOL. III. Paulina, Tu me, marite, disciplinarum bono Pnram ac pudicam sorte mortis eximens, In templa dticis ac famulam divis uicas. Te teste cunctis imbuor mysteriis, Tu Dindymenes Atteosque autistitem Teletis honoras taureis consors plus, Hecates ministram trina secreta edoces, Cererisque Graias tu sacris dignari paras. Te propter omnes me beatam, me piam Celebrant, quod ipse me bonam disseminas Totum per orbem. Ignota noscor omnibus, Nam te marito cui placere iion queam. Exempla de me Romulap matres petunt. Sobolemque pulchram, si tua; similis, putant Optaut probantque nunc viri nunc icemins. Apud Meyer Anthologia Latina, ii. 128. * quanta rerum mutatio ! Die quern ante paucos dies dignitatum omnium culmina praccedebaut, qui quasi de subjectis hostibus triumpha- vet, Capitoliuas oscendit arces; quern G 82 GRATIAN AUGUSTUS. BOOK III. Up to the accession of Gratian, the Christian Emperor AJ>. 367. h ft d assumed, as a matter of course, the supre- Augnstus. macy over the religion, as well as the state, of AJ>. STB. Rome. He had been formally arrayed in the robes of the sovereign Pontiff. For the first few years of Gratian re- his reign, Gratian maintained the inaggressive pontificate, policy of his father Valentinian. u But the mas- culine mind of Ambrose obtained, and indeed had de- served by his public services, the supremacy over the feeble youth; and the influence of Ambrose began to re veal itself in a succession of acts, which plainly showed that the fate of Paganism drew near. When Gratian was in Gaul, the senate of Rome remembered that he had not been officially arrayed in the dignity of the supreme Pontificate. A solemn deputation from Home attended to perform the customary ceremonial. The ido- latrous honour waef disdainfully rejected. The event was heard in Eome with consternation ; it was the first overt act of separation between the religious and the civil power of the empire. 1 The next hostile measure was still more unexpected. Notwithstanding the manifest authority assumed by Christianity, and by one of the Christian prelates, best qualified by his own determined character to meld at his will the weak and irresolute Gratian; notwithstanding the long ill- suppressed murmurs, and now bold and authoritative was tolerant of Paganism from his accession, A.D. 367 to 382. He was sixteen when he ascended the throne, plausu quodam et tripudio populus Komanus excepit, ail cujus intent um urbs uni versa coramota est, nunc desolatas et nudus, . . . non in lacteo coeli palatio ut uxor mentitur infelix, death of Valens, A.D. 378. sed in sordentibus tenebris contine- x Zosimus, iv. 36. The date of tur. Hieronyra. Eptst. xxiii. vol. i. this transaction is conjectural. The p. 135. opinion of I .a Bastie, Mem.dcs Inscrip. M. Beugnot considers that Gratian xv. 141, is followed. CHAP. VIII. STATUE OF VICTORY. 83 remonstrances, against all toleration, and all connivance at Heathen idolatry, it might have been thought that any other victim would have been chosen from the synod of gods ; that all other statues would have been thrown prostrate, all other worship proscribed, before that of Victory. Constantius, though he had statBe of calmly surveyed the other monuments of Victor y- Eoman superstition, admired their majesty, and read the inscriptions over the porticos of the temples, had never- theless given orders for the removal of this statue, and this alome, its removal, it may be suspected not with- out some superstitious reverence to the rival capital. 5 ' Victory had been restored by Julian to the Senate-house at Home, where she had so long presided over the counsels of the conquering republic and of the empire. She had maintained her place during the reign of Valentinian. The decree that the statue of Victory was to be ignominously dragged from its pedestal in the Senate-house, that the altar was to be removed, and the act of public worship, with which the Senate had for centuries of uninterrupted prosperity and glory commenced and hallowed its proceedings, discontinued, fell, like a thunderbolt, among the par- tisans of the ancient worship. Surprise yielded to in- dignation. By the advice of Praetextatus, a solemn deputation was sent to remonstrate with the Emperor. The Christian party in the Senate were strong enough to forward, through the Bishop Damasus, a counter- petition, declaring their resolution to abstain from at- tendance in the Senate so long as it should be defiled 7 Constantius (the whole account of j of the best statues to adorn the new this transaction is vague and uncir- ! capital, perhaps intended to transplant cumstantial), acting in the spirit of his Victory to Constantinople, father, who collected a great number I G 2 84 THE VESTAL VIRGINS. BOOK III. by an idolatrous ceremonial. Gratian coldly dismissed the deputation though headed by the eloquent Symma- chus, as not representing the unanimous sentiments of the Senate/ This first open aggression on the Paganism of Rome was followed by a law which confiscated at once all the property of the temples, and swept away the privileges and immunities of the priesthood. The fate of the Ves- tal virgins excited the strongest commiseration. They now passed unhonoured through the streets. The vio- lence done to this institution, coeval with Rome itself, was aggravated by the bitter mockery of the Christians at the importance attached to those few and rare in- stances of chastity by the Pagans. They scoffed at the small number of the sacred virgins; at the occasional delinquencies (for it is singular that almost the last act of Pagan pontifical authority was the capital punishment of an unchaste Vestal) ; the privilege they possessed, and sometimes claimed, of marriage after a certain period of service, when, according to the severer Chris- tians, such unholy desires should have been long extinct." If the state is to reward virginity (said the vehement Ambrose), the claims of the Christians would exhaust the treasury. By this confiscation of the sacerdotal property, which 1 It is very singular that, even at qui venerabili religione neglectA ad this very time, severe laws seem to aras et templa transierint. Cod. have been necessary to punish apos- j Theodos. xvi. 7. 1, 2, 4, 5. tates from Christianity. In 381, Theodosius deprived such persons of the right of bequeathing their pro- perty. Similar laws were passed in Prudentius, though he wrote later, expresses this sentiment : Nnbit anus veterana, sacro perfuncta labore, Desertisque focis, quibus est famulata ju- 383 and 391, against those qui ex : _ v nt s> . t ,....-. ,' Transfer! invitas ad fulcra jupalla rngas, Cnnstiams Fagani tacu sunt ; qui ad Discitetingelidonovanuptacalescerelecto. Paganos ritus cultusque migrarunt ; Adv. Symm. lib. ii. CHAP. VIII. SYMMACHUS. 85 had hitherto maintained the priesthood in opulence, the temples and the sacrificial rites in splendour, the Pagan hierarchy became stipendiaries of the state, the imme- diate step to their total dissolution. The public funds were still charged with a certain expenditure 1 * for the maintenance of the public ceremonies. This was not abrogated till after Theodosius had again united the whole empire under his conquering sway, and shared with Christianity the subjugated world. In the interval, Heathenism made perhaps more than one desperate though feeble struggle for the ascendancy. Gratian was murdered in the year 383. Valentinian II. succeeded to the sole empire of the West. The cele- brated Symmachus became prefect of Home. Symma- chus commanded the respect, and even deserved the common attachment, of all Ms countrymen ; he ventured (a rare example in those days) to interfere between the tyranny of the sovereign and the menaced welfare of the people. An uncorrupt magistrate, he deprecated the increasing burdens of unnecessary taxes which weighed down the people ; he dared to suggest that the eager petitions for office should be at once rejected and the worthiest chosen out of the unpretending multitude. Symmachus inseparably connected, in his Pagan pa- triotism, the ancient religion with the welfare of Rome. He mourned in bitter humiliation over the acts of Gratian; the removal of the statue of Victory; the abrogation of the immunities of the Pagan priesthood. He hoped to obtain from the justice, or perhaps the fears, of the young Valentinian, that which had been refused by Gratian. The senate met under his autho- rity ; a petition was drawn up and presented in the b This was called the Annona. 86 APOLOGY OF SYMMACHUS. BOOK III. name of that venerable body to the Emperor. On this composition Symmaehus lavished all his eloquence. His oration is written with vigour, with dignity, with ele- gance. It is in this respect, perhaps, superior to the Apology of reply of Saint Ambrose. But in the feeble syrnmachus. ftn( j a p O i O g e tic tone, we perceive at once, that it is the artful defence of an almost hopeless cause ; it is cautious to timidity ; dexterous ; elaborately concilia- tory ; moderate from fear of offending rather than from tranquil dignity. Ambrose, on the other hand, writes with all the fervid ,and careless energy of one confident in his cause and who knows that he is appealing to an audience already pledged by their own feelings to his side ; he has not to obviate objections, to reconcile difficulties, to sue or to propitiate ; his contemptuous and criminating language has only to inflame zeal, to quicken resentment and scorn. He is flowing down on the full tide of human passion, and his impulse but accelerates and strengthens the rapid current. The personification of Eome, in the address of Sym- maehus, is a bold stroke of artificial rhetoric, but it is artificial ; and Rome pleads instead of commanding ; in- treats for indulgence, rather than menaces for neglect. " Most excellent Princes, Fathers of your country, re- spect my years, and permit me still to practise the religion of my ancestors, in which I have grown old. Grant me but the liberty of living according to my c Heyne has expressed himself , mationem Ambrosii compares. Cen- strongly on the superiority of Sym- ! sur. ingen. et mor. Q. A. Symmachi, machus. Argumentorum delectu, vi, , in Heyne Opuscul. pondere, aculeis, non minus admira- j The relative position of the parties bills ilia est quam prudentia, cautione, influenced, no doubt, the style, and ac verecundift ; quam tanto magis will, perhaps, the judgement, of seotias si verbosam et inanem, interdum posterity on the merit, of the com- calumniosam et veteiatoriam decla- positions. CHAP. VIII. REPLY OF AMBROSE. 87 ancient usage. This religion has subdued the world to my dominion ; these rites repelled Hannibal from my walls, the Gauls from the Capitol. Have I lived thus long, to be rebuked in my old age for my religion ? It is too late ; it would be discreditable to amend in my old age. I intreat but peace for the gods of Home, the tutelary gods of our country." Home condescends to that plea, which a prosperous religion neither uses nor admits, but to which a falling faith always clings with desperate energy. " Heaven is above us all ; we cannot all follow the same path ; there are many ways by which we arrive at the great secret. But we presume not to contend, we are humble suppliants ! " The end of the third century had witnessed the persecutions of Diocletian ; the fourth had not elapsed when this is the language of Paganism, uttered in her strongest hold by the most earnest and eloquent of her partisans. Syrn- machus remonstrates against the miserable economy of saving the maintenance of the vestal virgins ; the dis- grace of enriching the imperial treasury by such gains ; he protests against the confiscation of all legacies be- queathed to them by the piety of individuals. " Slaves may inherit ; the Vestal virgins alone, and the ministers of religion, are precluded from this common privilege." The orator concludes by appealing to the deified father of the Emperor, who looks down with sorrow from the starry citadel, to see that toleration violated which he had maintained with willing justice. But Ambrose was at hand to confront the eloquent Pagan, and to prohibit the fatal concession. Re piyof Far different is the tone and manner of the Ambrose - Archbishop of Milan. He asserts, in plain terms, the unquestionable obligation of a Christian sovereign to permit no part of the public revenue to be devoted 88 REPLY OF AMBROSE. BOOK III. to the maintenance of idolatry. Their Roman ancestors were to be treated with reverence ; but in a question of religion they were to consider God alone. He who advises such grants as those demanded by the suppliants is guilty of sacrifice. Gradually he rises to still more imperious language, and unveils all the terrors of the sacerdotal authority. " The Emperor who shall be guilty of such concessions will find that the bishops will neither endure nor connive at his sin. If he enters a church, he will find no priest, or one who will defy his authority. The church will indignantly reject the gifts of him who has shared them with Gentile temples. The altar dis- dains the offerings of him who has made offerings to images. It is written, ' Man cannot serve two masters.' " Ambrose, emboldened, as it were, by his success, ven- tures in his second letter to treat the venerable and holy traditions of Roman glory with contempt. " How long did Hannibal insult the gods of Eome ? It was the goose and not the deity that saved the CapitoL Did Jupiter speak in the goose ? Where were the gods in all the defeats, some of them but recent, of the Pagan emperors ? Was not the altar of Victory then standing ?" He insults the number, the weaknesses, the marriages of the vestal virgins. " If the same munificence were shown to Christian virgins, the beggared treasury would be exhausted by the claims." " Are not the baths, the porticos, the streets, still crowded with images? Must they still keep their place in the great council of the empire ? You compel to worship if you restore the altar. And who is this deity ? Victory is a gift, and not a power ; she depends on the courage of the legions, not on the influence of the religion, a mighty deity, who is bestowed by the numbers of an army, or the doubtful issue of a battle ! " CHAP. VIII. ACCESSION OF EUGENIUS. 89 Foiled in argument, Paganism vainly grasped at other arms, which she had as little power to wield. On the murder of Valentinian, Arbogastes the Murder of . Valentinian, Gaul, whose authority over the troops was A.D. 392. without competitor, hesitated to assume the purple which had never yet been polluted by a barbarian. He placed Eugenius, a rhetorician, on the throne. The elevation of Eugenius was an act of military violence ; but the Pagans of the West hailed Accession of his accession with the most eager joy and the Eu s eniU8 - fondest hopes. The Christian writers denounce the apostasy of Eugenius, not without justice if Eugenius ever professed Christianity. d Throughout Italy the temples were re-opened ; the smoke of sacrifice as- cended from all quarters ; the entrails of victims were explored for the signs of victory. The frontiers were guarded by all the terrors of the old religion. The statue of Jupiter the Thunderer, sanctified by magical rites of the most awful significance, and placed on the fortifications amid the Julian Alps, looked defiance on the advance of the Christian Emperor. The images of the gods were unrolled on the banners, and Hercules was borne in triumph at the head of the army. Am- brose fled from Milan, for the soldiery boasted that they would stable their horses in the churches and press the clergy to fill their legions. In Rome, Eugenius consented, without reluctance, to the restoration of the altar of Victory, but he had the wisdom to foresee the danger which his cause might incur by the resumption of the temple estates, many of which had been granted away : he yielded with undis- d Compare the letter of Ambrose to Eugenius. He addresses Eugenius apparently as a Christian, but one in the hands of more powerful Pagans. 90 EDICT OF THEODOSIUS. BOOK HI. guised unwillingness to the irresistible importunities of Arbogastes and Flavianus. While this reaction was taking place in the West, perhaps irritated by the intelligence of this formidable conspiracy of Paganism, with the usurpation of the throne, Theodosius published in the East the last and most peremptory of those edicts which, gradually rising in the sternness of their language, proclaimed the ancient worship a treasonable and capital crime. In its minute and searching phrases this statute seemed eagerly to pursue Paganism to its most secret and private lurking-places. Thenceforth no man of any station, rank, or dignity, in any place in any city, was to offer an innocent victim in sacrifice ; the more harm- less worship of the household gods, which lingered, probably, more deeply in the hearts of the Pagans than any other part of their system, was equally forbidden, not merely the smoke of victims, but even lamps, incense, and garlands. To sacrifice, or to consult the entrails of victims, was constituted high treason, and thereby a capital offence, although with no treasonable intention of calculating the days of the Emperor. It was a crime of the same magnitude to infringe the laws of nature, to pry into the secrets of futurity, or to inquire concerning the death of any one. Whoever permitted any Heathen rite hanging a tree with chap- lets, or raising an altar of turf forfeited the estate on which the offence was committed. Any house profaned with the smoke of incense was confiscated to the im- perial exchequer. Whoever violated this prohibition, and offered sacrifice either in a public temple, or on the estate of another, was amerced in a fine of twenty-five pounds of gold (a thousand pounds of our money); and whoever connived at the offence CHAP. VIII. EDICT OF THEODOSIUS. 91 was liable to the same fine : the magistrate who neg- lected to enforce it, to a still heavier penalty. 6 This law, stern and intolerant as it was, spoke, no doubt, the dominant sentiment of the Christian world ; f but its repetition by the successors of Theodosius, and the employment of avowed Pagans in many of the high offices of the state and army, may permit us charitably to doubt whether the exchequer was much enriched by the forfeitures, or the sword of the executioner deeply stained with the blood of conscientious Pagans. Poly- theism boasted no martyrs ; and we may still hope that if called upon to carry its own decrees into effect, its native clemency though, unhappily, Christian bigotry had already tasted of heretical blood would have re- volted from the sanguinary deed, g and yet have seen the inconsistency of these acts (which it justified in theory, on the authority of the Old Testament) with the vital principles of the Gospel. The victory of Theodosius in the West dissipated at once the vain hopes of Paganism ; the pageant van- ished away. Rome heard of the triumph, perhaps witnessed the presence of the great conqueror, who, in the East, had already countenanced the most des- tructive attacks against the temples of the gods. The Christian poet describes a solemn debate of the Senate e Cod. Theod. xvi. 10. 12. amiably inconsistent with this fierce { Gibbon has quoted from Le Clerc tone might be quoted on the milder a fearful sentence of St. Augustine, | side. Compare Editor's note on addressed to the Donatists. " Quis uostrtUn, quis vestrum non laudat leges ab Imperatoribus datas adversus sacrifida Paganorum? Et certfe longe ibi prena severior constituta est ; illius quippe impietatis capitale supplicium est." Epist. xciii. But passages Gibbon, v. p. 114. B Quis eorum comprehensus esf. in sacrificio (cum his legibus ista pro- hiberentur) et non negavit. Augustin, in Psalm cxx., quoted by Gibbon from Lardner. 92 END OF WESTERN PAGANISM. BOOK III. on the claims of Jupiter and of Christ to the adoration of the Roman people. According to his account, Jupiter was outvoted by a large number of suffrages ; the decision was followed by a general desertion of their ancestral deities by the obsequious minority ; the old hereditary names, the Annii and the Probi, the Anicii and Olybii, the Paulini and Bassi, the popular Gracchi, six hundred families, at once passed over to the Chris- tian cause. h The Pagan historian to a certain degree confirms the fact of the deliberate discussion, but differs as to the result. The senate, he states, firmly, but respectfully, adhered to their ancient deities. 1 But the last argument of the Pagan advocates was fatal to their cause. Theodosius refused any longer to assign funds from the public revenue to maintain the charge of the idolatrous worship. The senate remonstrated, that if they ceased to be supported at the national cost, they would cease to be national rites. This argument was more likely to confirm than to shake the determination of the Christian Emperor. From this time the temples were deserted ; the priests and priestesses, deprived of their maintenance, were scattered abroad. The public temples still stood, nor was it forbidden to worship within their walls, without sacrifice; the private, and family, or Gentile, deities, still preserved their influence. Theodosius died the year after the defeat of Eugenius. We pursue to its close the history of Western Pa- ganism, which was buried at last in the ruins of the empire. Gratian had dissevered the supremacy of the national religion from the imperial Sexcentas numerare domes de sanguine j Prudentius has probably amplified NoHliuS licet, ad Christ! signacula versus, some considerable desertion of the Turpls ab idoli vasto emersisse profundo. wavering and dubious believers. Prud. ad Symmach. l Zosim. Hist. iv. 59. CHAP. VIII. END OF WESTERN PAGANISM. 93 dignity ; he had confiscated the property of the temples ; Theodosius had refused to defray the expense of public; sacrifices from the public funds. Still, however, the outward form of Paganism remained. Some priesthoods were still handed down in regular descent; the rites of various deities, even of Mythra and Cybele, were celebrated without sacrifice, or with sacrifice furtively performed ; the corporation of the haruspices was not abolished. There still likewise remained a special provision for certain festivals and public amuse- ments." The expense of the sacred banquets and of the games was defrayed by the state : an early law of Honorius respected the common enjoyments of the people. The poem of Prudentius n acknowledges that the enactments of Theodosius had been far from altogether successful ; his bold assertion of the universal adoption of Christianity by the whole senate is in some degree contradicted by his admission that the old pestilence of idolatry had again broken out in Eome. p It implies that the restoration of the statue of Victory had again been urged, and by the indefatigable Symmachus, on the sons of Theodosius. q The poem was written after * It was called the vectigal tem- plorum. m Communis populi latitia. * The poem of Prudentius is by no means a recapitulation of the argu- ments of St. Ambrose ; it is original, and in some parts very vigorous. o Inclitus ergo parens patriae, moderator et orbis, ..ViZ egit prohibendo, vagas ne pristinus error Crederet esse Deura nigrante sub acre fonnas. P Sed quoniam renovata lues turbare 'sa- lutem Tentat Konmlidum. i Armorum dominos, vernantes flore ju- ventee, Inter castra patris gemtos, sub imagine avita Eductos, excmpia domi congest* te- nentes, Orator catus instigat. Si vobis vel parta, viri, victoria cordi est, Vel parienda dehinc, templum Dea virgo sacratum Obtineat, vobis regnantibus. The orator catus, is Symmachus; the parta victoria, that of Pollentia^ the Dea virgo, Victory. LAW OF HOXORIUS. BOOK III. Law of Honorius. the battle of Pollentia, as it triumphantly appeals to the glories of that day against the argument that Rome was indebted for the victories of former times to her ancient gods. It closes with an earnest admonition to the son of Theodosius to fulfil the task which was designedly left to him by the piety of his father/ to suppress at once the Vestal virgins, and, above all, the gladiatorial shows, which they were accustomed to countenance by their presence. In the year 408 came forth the edict which aimed at the direct and complete abolition of Paganism throughout the Western empire. The whole of this reserved provision for festivals was swept away ; it was devoted to the more useful purpose, the pay of the loyal soldiery. 8 The same edict proceeded to actual violence, to invade and take possession of the sanc- tuaries of religion. All images were to be thrown down; the edifices, now useless and deserted, to be occupied by the imperial officers, and appropriated to useful purposes. 4 The government, wavering between demolition and desecration, devised this plan for the preservation of these great ornaments of the cities, which thus, taken under the protection of the magis- tracy as public property, were secured from the de- structive zeal of the more fanatical Christians. All sacrilegious rites, festivals, and ceremonies were pro- hibited. The bishops of the towns were invested with * Quam tibi supplendara Deus, et geei- toris arnica Servavitpietas: solus neprsemlatantio Virtutis caperet "partem, tibi, nate reserve," Diiit, et integrum decus intactmnque reliquit. Sub fin. Expensis devotissimorum militum profutura. 1 Augustine (though not entirely consistent) disapproved of the forcible demolition of the temples. " Let us first extirpate the idolatry of the hearts of the Heathen ; and they will either themselves invite us, or antici- pate us in the execution of this good work." Tom. v. p. 62. CHAP. VIII. LAW OF HONOEIUS. 95 power to suppress these forbidden usages, and the civil authorities, as though the government mistrusted their zeal, were bound, under a heavy penalty, to obey the summons, and to assist the prelates in the extirpation of idolatry. Another edict excluded all enemies of the Christian faith from the great public offices in the state and in the army, and this, if fully carried into effect, would have transferred the whole power throughout the empire into the hands of the Christians. But the times were not yet ripe for this measure. Generides, a Pagan, in a high command in the army, threw up his com- mission. The edict was repealed." u Prudentius ventures to admire Merobaudes was placed in the Forum the tolerant impartiality of Theodosius, j of Trajan, of which the inscription is in admitting both parties alike to civil and military honours. He urges this argumentum ad homiuem against Symmachus: Denique pro meritis terrestribus a?qua re- pendens still extant. Fragments of his poems have been discovered by the industry and sagacity of Niebuhr. In one passage, Merobaudes, in the genuine Heathen spirit, attributes the ruin of the empire to the abolition of Munera, sacricolis summos impertit honores Dux bonus, et certare sinit cum laude i Paganism, and almost renews the suorum. j o ] accusation of Atheism against Nee pago implicitos per debita cutmina > _. . . . mundi | Christianity. He impersonates some deity, probably Discord, who summons Bellona to take arms for the destruc- tion of Rome ; and, in a strain of fierce irony, recommends to her, among Ire vetat. Ipse magistratum tibi consulis, ipse tri- bunal Contulit. In the East, the Pagan Themistius had been appointed prefect of Con- j other fatal measures, to extirpate the stantinople by Theodosius. It is cu- gods of Rome : rious to read his flatteries of the ,, ! Roma, ipsique tremant funaha murmuni orthodox Christian hmperor ; he reges. pi-aises his love of philosophy in the i Jam , su P eros terris> at 1 ue nos P ita numina J pelle : most fervent language. | Romanos populare Deos, et nullus in aria The most remarkable instance of this inconsistency, at a much later Vest* exoratse, fotus strue, palleat ignis. His instructa dolts palatia celsa subibo, Jlajorum mores, et pectora prisca fugabo period, occurs in the person of Mero- I * un(lltus > atque simul, nullo discrimine , i rerum, baudes, a general and a poet, who Spernantur fortes, nee sit reverentia justis. flourished in the first half of the fifth i Attica neglecto pereat facundia Phoebo, . . , , Indigniscontingattuinos.etponderareruin; century. A statue in honour ot , Non virtus sed casus agat, tristisque cupido ; 1)6 CAPTURE OF ROME BY ALARIC. BOOK III. Rome once more beheld the shadow of a Pagan Emperor, Attains, while the Christian Emperor main- tained his court at Kavenna ; and both stood trembling before the victorious Alaric. When that triumphant Goth formed the siege of Home, Paganism, as if grateful for the fidelity of the imperial city, made one last desperate effort to avert the common ruin. Pagan magic was the last refuge of conscious weakness. The Etrurian soothsayers were called forth from their obscurity, with the concurrence of the whole city (the Pope himself is said to have assented to the idolatrous ceremony), to blast the barbaric invader with the light- nings of Jupiter. The Christian historian saves the credit of his party, by asserting that they kept away from the profane rite.* But it may be doubted, after all, whether the ceremony really took place; both parties had more confidence in the power of a large sum of money, offered to arrest the career of the triumphant barbarian. The impartial fury of Alaric fell alike on church and temple, on Christian and Pagan. But the Capture of Rome by capture of Kome consummated the ruin of Paganism. The temples, indeed, were for the most part left standing, but their worshippers had fled. The Roman aristocracy, in whom alone Paganism still retained its most powerful adherents, abandoned the city, and, scattered in the provinces of the empire, were absorbed in the rapidly Christianising population. The deserted buildings had now neither public authority Pectoribus ssevi demens furor a?8tnet aevi ; j x Zosimus, v. Sozomeu, ix. 6. Omniaifitt hoc tint mente Jovit, tine nit- mine summo. Merobandes in Niebuhr's edit, of the Byzantines. Compare Latin Christianity, vol. i. Ciuv. VIII. KUIX OF PAGANISM. 97 nor private zeal and munificence to maintain them against the encroachments of time or accident, to support the tottering roof, or repair the broken column. There was neither public fund, nor private contribution, for their preservation, till at length the Christians, in many instances, took possession of the abandoned edifice, converted it to their own use, and hallowed it by a new consecration/ Thus, in many places, though marred and disfigured, the monu- ments of architecture survived, with no great vio- lation of the ground plan, distribution, or general proportions. 2 Paganism was, in fact, left to die out by gradual dis- solution." The worship of the Heathen deities lingered in many temples, till it was superseded by the new form of Christianity, which, at least in its outward appear- ance, approximated to Polytheism : the Virgin gradually supplanted many of the local deities. In Sicily, which long remained obstinately wedded to the ancient faith, eight celebrated temples were dedicated to the Mother of God. b It was not till the seventh century, that the Pantheon was dedicated by Pope Boniface IV. to the 7 There are many churches in Rome, which, like the Pantheon, are ancient temples; thirty-nine built on the foundations of temples. Four re- tain Pagan names. S. Maria sopra Minbrva, S. Maria Aventina, S. Lo- renzo in Matuta, S. Stefano in Caeco. At Sienna, the temple of Quirinus became the church of S. Quirino. Beugnot, ii. p. 266. See in Bingham, book viii. s. 4., references to several churches in the East, converted into temples. But this passage must be read with caution. VOL. III. 1 In some eases, by a more de- structive appropriation, they con- verted the materials to their own use, and worked them up into their own barbarous churches. * The fifth council of Carthage (A. D. 398), can. xv., petitioned the most glorious Emperors to destroy the remains of idolatry, not merely " in simulacris," but in other places, groves, and trees. b Beugnot, ii. 271 ; from Aprile, Chronologia Universale de Sicilia. 93 DIVINATION AND WITCHCRAFT. BOOK IIL Holy Virgin. Of the public festivals, the last which clung with tenacious grasp to the habits of the Roman people, was the Lupercalia. It was suppressed towards the close of the fifth century bv Pope Ge- AJ) 493 lasius. The rural districts were not com- pletely Christianised until .the general introduction of monasticism. Heathenism was still prevalent in many parts of Italy, especially in the neighbourhood of Turin, in the middle of the fifth century. Its conqueror was the missionary from the convent who wandered through the villages, or who, from his monastery, regularly dis- charged the duties of a village pastor. St. Benedict of Nursia destroyed the worship of Apollo on Mount Casino. d Every where the superstition survived the religion, and that which was unlawful under Paganism, continued to be unlawfully practised under Christianity. The insatiable propensity of men to enquire into futurity, and to deal with secret and invisible agencies, which reason condemns, and often, while it condemns, consults, retained its old formularies, some religious, some pre- tending to be magical or theurgic. Divination and witchcraft have never been extinct in Italy, or, perhaps, in any part of Europe. The descendants of Canidia or Erictho, the seer and the magician, have still e See the sermons of Maximus, bishop of Turiu, quoted in Beugnot, ii. 253. d Greg. M. Dialog. Lib. 2, p. 262. He converted many worshippers of idols in a village near his monastery. Ibid. ch. xix. 60. he mentions idolonim cultores in an epistle to the Bishop of 23 and 26. The peasants belonging to the church were to be heavilv taxed till they ceased to Paganise, also he names 29 worshippers of trees, &c. near Terracina, vii. 20. Idolatrous Aruspices and Sortilegi in Sardinia to be preached to; if obstinate, slaves to be scourged, free men imprisoned till TynUaris in Sicily. So in Sardinea, iii. they repent, vii. 2. 67. CHAP. VIII. PAGANISING CHRISTIANITY. 99 practised their arts, to which the ignorant, including at times all mankind, have listened with unabated credulity. We must resume our consideration of Paganising Christianity, as the parent of Christian art and poetry, and, in fact, as the ruler of the human mind for many ages. 100 LAWS AGAINST HERETICS. BOOK III. CHAPTER IX. Theodosius. Triumph of Triuitarianism. The great Prelates of the East. BUT the unity, no less than the triumph, of Christianity orthodoxy of occupied the vigorous mind of Theodosius. Theodosius. jj e h a( j b een anticipated in this design in the West by his feeble predecessors and his colleagues, Gratian and Valentinian the younger. The laws began to speak the language not only of the exclusive establishment of Christianity, but of Christianity under one rigorous and unaccommodating creed and discipline. Almost the first act of Theodosius was the edict for the universal acceptance of the Catholic faith.* It appeared under the name, and with the conjoint authority of the three Emperors, Gratian, Valentinian IL, and Theodosius. It was addressed to the inhabitants of Constantinople. " We, the three Emperors, will that all our subjects follow the religion taught by St. Peter to the Romans, professed by those saintly prelates, Damasus Pontiff of Rome, and Peter Bishop of Alexandria, that we believe the one divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of majesty coequal, in the Holy Trinity. We will that those who embrace this creed be called Catholic Christians; we brand all the senseless followers of other religions by the infamous name of heretics, and forbid their conventicles to assume the name of Codex Theodos. svi. 1, 2. CHAP. IX. LAWS AGAINST HERETICS. 101 churches ; we reserve their punishment to the vengeance of heaven, and to such measures as divine inspiration shall dictate to us." b Thus the religion of the whole Roman world was enacted by two feeble boys, and a rude Spanish soldier.* 5 The next year witnessed the condemnation of all heretics, particularly the Photinians, Arians, and Eunomians, and the expulsion of the Arians from .the churches of all the cities in the East, d and their surrender to the only lawful form of Christianity. On the assembling of the council of Chalcedon, two severe laws were issued against Apostates and Mani- cheans, prohibiting them from making wills. During its sitting, the Emperor promulgated an edict, pro- hibiting the Ariaus from building churches either in the cities or in the country, under pain of the confiscation of the funds devoted to the purpose. 6 The circumstances of the times happily coincided with the design of Theodosius to concentrate f*i 11- All the more the whole Christian world into one vigorous powerful j^. , . . ecclesiastical and consistent system, ihe more legitimate writers n p -i -11 -i -i favourable to influence ot argument and intellectual and Trinitarian- religious superiority concurred with the stern mandates of the civil power. All the great and commanding minds of the age were on the same side as to the momentous and strongly agitated questions of b Post etiam motus nostri, qusm ex ccelesti arbitrio sumpserimus, ultione plectendos. Godefror supposes these words not to mean " coeleste oraculam," but, " Dei arbitrium, regulam et for- mulam juris divini." e Barcmius, and even Godefroy, call this law a golden, pious, and whole- some statute. Happily it was on the right side. d On the accession of Theodosius, according to Sozomen, the Arians possessed all the churches of the East, except Jerusalem. H. E. vii. 2. e Sozomen mentions these severe laws; but asserts that they were enacted merely in terrorem, and with no design of carrying them into execu- tion. H. E. vii. 12. 102 ECCLESIASTICAL WEITERS BOOK III. the faith. The productive energies of Arianism seemed, as it were, exhausted; its great defenders had passed away, and left, apparently, no heirs to their virtues or abilities. It was distracted with schisms, and had to bear the unpopularity of the sects, which seemed to have sprung from it in the natural course, the Eunomians, Macedonians, and a still multiplying progeny of heresies. Everywhere the Trinitarian prelates rose to ascendancy, not merely from the support of the government, but from their pre-eminent character or intellectual powers. Each province seemed to have produced some man adapted to the particular period and circumstances of the time, who devoted himself to the establishment of the orthodox opinions. The intractable Egypt, more especially turbulent Alexandria, was ruled by the strong arm of the bold and unprincipled Theophilus. The dreamy mysticism of Syria found a congenial representative in St. Ephrem. A more intellectual, yet still somewhat imaginative, Orientalism animates the writings of St. Basil ; in a less degree, those of Gregory of Naziauzum ; still less, those of Gregory of Nyssa. The more powerful and Grecian eloquence of Chrysostom swayed the popular mind in Constantinople. Jerome, a link, as it were, between the East and the West, transplanted the monastic spirit and opinions of Syria into Rome ; and brought into the East much of the severer thought, and more prosaic reasoning, of the Latin world. In Gaul, where Hilary of Poictiers had long maintained the cause of Trinitarianism, on the borders of civilisation, St. Martin of Tours acted the part of a bold and enterprising missionary ; while in Milan, the court-capital of the West, the strong practical character of Ambrose, his sternly conscientious moral energy, though hardening at times into rigid intolerance, with CHAP. IX. FAVOURABLE TO TRINITARIANISM. 103 the masculine strength of his style, confirmed the Latin church in that creed to which Rome had adhered with almost unshaken fidelity. If not the greatest, the most permanently influential of all, Augustine, united the intense passion of the African mind with the most comprehensive and systematic views and intrepid dogmatism on the darkest subjects. United in one common cause, acting in their several quarters according to their peculiar temperaments and characters, these strong-minded and influential ecclesiastics almost com- pelled the world into a temporary peace, till first Pelagianism, and afterwards Nestorianism, unsettled again the restless elements; the controversies, first in the West concerning grace, free-will, and predestination, then in the East on the Incarnation and two natures of Clirist, succeeded to the silenced and exhausted feud concerning the Trinity of persons in the Godhead. Theophilus of Alexandria f performed his part in the complete subjection of the world by Theopwinsot his energy as a ruler, not by the slower btehopjrom and more legitimate influence of moral 385to412 - persuasion through his preaching or his writings. 8 He suppressed Arianism by the same violent and coercive means with which he extirpated Paganism. The tone of this prelate's epistles is invariably harsh and crimi- natory. He appears in the best light as opposing the vulgar anthropomorphism of the monks in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, and insisting on the pure spiritual nature of the Deity. Yet he condescended to appease these turbulent adversaries by an unmanly 1 I have not placed these writers in their strict chronological order, but according to the countries in which they lived. * The Trinitarian doctrines had been maintained in Alexandria by the virtues and abilities of Didymus the Blind. 104 ST. EPHREM YHK SYRIAN. BOOK III. artifice. He consented to condemn the doctrines of Origeu, who, having reposed quietly in his tomb for many years, in general respect, if not in the odour of sanctity, was exhumed, as it were, by the zeal of later times, as a dangerous heresiarch. The Oriental doctrines with which Origen had impregnated his system were unpopular, and perhaps not clearly understood. 11 The notion that the reign of Christ was finite was rather an inference from his writings than a tenet of Origen. For if all bodies were to be finally annihilated (according to his anti-materialistic system), the humanity of Christ, and consequently his personal reign, must cease. The possibility that the devil might, after long purification, be saved, and the corruptibility of the body after the resurrection, grew out of the same Oriental cast of opinions. But the perfectly pure and immaterial nature of the Deity was the tenet of Origen which was the most odious to the monks; and Theophilus, by anathematising Origenism in the mass, while he himself held certainly the sublimest, but to his adversaries most objectionable part of the system, adopted a low and undignified deception. The persecution of Isidore, and the heads of the monasteries who befriended his cause (the tall brethren, as they were called), from personal motives of animosity, display the Alexandrian prelate in his ordinary character. We shall again encounter Theophilus in the lamentable intrigues against the advancement and influence of Chrysostom. The character of Ephrem, 1 the Syrian, was the exact s. Ephrem, counterpart to that of the busy and worldly died 379. Theophilus. A native of Nisibis, or rather of its neighbourhood, Ephrem passed the greater part of h Socrates, vi. 10. Sozomen. viii. l See the Life of Ephrem prefixed 13. to his works ; and in Tillemont. ClIAP. IX. ST. EPHREM THE SYRIAN. 105 his life at Edessa, and in the monastic establishments which began to abound in Mesopotamia and Syria, as in Egypt. His genius was that of the people in whose language he wrote his numerous compositions in prose and verse. k In Ephrem something of the poetic mysticism of the Gnostic was allied with the most rigid orthodoxy of doctrine. But with his imaginative turn were mingled a depth and intensity of feeling, which gave him his peculiar influence over the kindred minds of his countrymen. Tears were as natural to him as perspiration ; day and night, in his devout seclusion, he wept for the sins of mankind and for his own ; his very writings, it was said, weep; there is a deep and latent sorrow even in his panegyrics or festival homilies. 1 Ephrem was a poet, and his hymns, poured forth in the prodigality of his zeal, succeeded at length in entirely disenchanting the popular ear from the heretical strains of Bardesanes and his son Harmonius, which lingered after the general decay of Gnosticism. 111 The hymns of Ephrem were sung on the festivals of the martyrs. His psalms, the constant occupation which he enjoins upon his monkish companions, were always of a sorrowful and contrite tone. Laughter was the source and the indication of all wickedness, sorrow of all virtue. During the melancholy psalm, God was pre- sent with his angels ; all more joyous strains belonged to heathenism and idolatry. k According to Theodoret, he was unacquainted with Greek. IlaiSeias yap oil "/fyevfj-eyos eAATjpt/CTJs, TOVS re TroAuwxiSeTs r>v 'EAATJi/coy SITJ- \fye irXavovs Kal irdffT}s alperiKris tcaKorexvias eyvfj.vcaffe T^V aaOe- Vfiav. The refutation of Greek heresy in Syriac must have been curious. 1 See the two treatises in his woiks, vol. i. 104-107. ISon esse ridendum sed lugendum potius atque plorandum ; and, Quod ludicris rebus abstinendum sit Christiauis. m Theodoret, iv. 29. 106 ST. EPURKM THE SYRIAN. BOOK III. The monasticism, as well as the Trinitarianism, of Syria received a strong impulse from Ephrem; and in Syria monasticism began to run into its utmost ex- travagance. There was one class of ascetics who, at certain periods, forsook their cities, and retired to the mountains to browse on the herbage which they found, as their only food. The writings of Ephrem were the occupation and delight of all these gentle and irreproach- able fanatics ; and, as Ephrem was rigidly Trinitarian, he contributed to fix the doctrinal language of the various coenobitic institutions and solitary hermitages. In fact, the quiescent intellect probably rejoiced m being relieved from these severe and ungrateful en- quiries : and full freedom being left to the imagination and ample scope to the language in the vague and fervent expressions of divine love, the Syrian mind felt not the restriction of the rigorous creed, and passively surrendered itself to ecclesiastical authority. Absorbed in its painful and melancholy struggles with the internal passions and appetites, it desired not to provoke, but rather to repress, the dangerous activity of the reason. The orthodoxy of Ephrem himself savours perhaps of timidity and the disinclination to agitate such awful and appalling questions. He would elude and escape them, and abandon himself altogether to the more edifying emotions which it is the chief object of his writings to excite and maintain. The dreamer must awake in order to reason, and he prefers the passive tranquillity of the half-slumbering state. Greece, properly so called, contributed none of the more distinguished names in Eastern Christianity. Even the Grecian part of Asia Minor was by no means fertile in names which survive in the annals of the Church. In Athens philosophy still lingered, and struggled to CHAP. IX. CAPPADOCIA. 107 maintain its predominance. Many of the more eminent ecclesiastics had visited its schools in their youth, to obtain those lessons of rhetoric and profane knowledge which they were hereafter to dedicate to their own sacred uses. But they were foreigners ; and, in the old language of Greece, would have been called barbarians. The rude and uncivilised Cappadocia gave birth to Basil and the two Gregories. The whole of the less dreamy, and still active and commercial, part of Asia was influenced by Basil, on whose character and writings his own age lavished the most unbounded praise. The name of Basil is constantly united with those of the two Gregories. One, Gregory of Nyssa, was his brother ; the other, named from his native town of Nazianzum, of which his father was bishop, was the intimate friend of his boyhood and of his later years. The language, the eloquence, the opinions of these writers retain, in different degrees, some tinge of Asiatic colouring. Far more intelligible and practical than the mystic strains and passionate homilies of Ephrem, they delight in agitating, though in a more modest spirit, the questions which had inflamed the imagination of the Gnostics. But with them, likewise, enquiry proceeds with cautious and reverent steps. On these subjects they are rigorously orthodox, and assert the exclusive doctrines of Athanasius with the most distinct and uncompromising energy. Basil maintained the cause of Trinitarianism with unshaken fidelity during its days of depression and adversity. His friend Gregory of Nazianzum lived to witness and bear a great part of its triumph. Both Basil and Gregory were ardent admirers, and in them- selves transcendent models, of the more monastic Chris- tianity. The influence of Basil crowded that part of Asia with ccenobitic institutions : but in his monasteries 108 ST. BASIL. BOOK III. labour and useful industry prevailed to a greater extent than in the the Syrian deserts. Basil was a native of the Cappadocian Cwsarea. n He was an hereditary Christian. His grandfather had retired during the Diocletian persecution to a mountain-forest in Pontus. His father was a man of estimation as a lawyer, possessed considerable pro- perty, and was remarkable for his personal beauty. His mother, in person and character, was worthy of her husband. The son of such parents received the best education which could be bestowed on a Christian youth. Having exhausted the instruction to be obtained in his native city of Csesarea, he went to Constantinople, where he is reputed to have studied the art of rhetoric under the celebrated Libanius. Bat Athens was still the centre of liberal education, and, with other pro- mising youths from the Eastern provinces, Basil and his friend Gregory resided for some time in that city. But with all his taste for letters and eloquence (and Basil always spoke even of profane learning with gene- rous respect, far different from the tone of contempt and animosity expressed by some writers), Christianity was too deeply rooted in his heart to be endangered either by the studies or the society of Athens. On his return to Caesarea, he embraced the ascetic faith of the times with more than ordinary fervour. He abandoned his property ; he practised such severe austerities as to injure his health, and to reduce his bodily form to the extreme of meagreness and weakness. He was "without wife, without property, without flesh, almost without blood." He fled into the desert ; his fame collected, as it were, a city around him ; he built a monastery, and Life of Basil, prefixed to his works : and Tillemont, Vie de S. Basile. CHAP. IX. ST. BASIL. 109 monasteries sprang up on every side. Yet the opinions of Basil concerning the monastic life were far more moderate and practical than the wilder and more dreamy asceticism which prevailed in Egypt and in Syria. He admired and persuaded his followers to ccenobitic, not to eremitical, life. It was the life of the industrious religious community, not of the indolent and solitary anchorite, which to Basil was the perfection of Chris- tianity. All ties of kindred were indeed to give place to that of spiritual association. He that loves a brother in blood more than a brother in the religious community is still a slave to his carnal nature. The indiscriminate charity of these institutions was to receive orphans of all classes for education and maintenance, but other Children only with the consent, or at the request of parents, certified before witnesses ; and vows of virginity were by no means to be enforced upon these youthful pupils. p Slaves who fled to the monasteries were to be admo- nished, and sent back to their owners. There is one reservation, that slaves were not bound to obey their master, if he should order what is contrary to the laws of God. q Industry was to be the animating principle of these settlements. Prayer and psalmody were to have their appointed hours ; but by no means to intrude upon those devoted to useful labour. These labours were strictly defined, such as were of real use to the commu- nity, not those which might contribute to vice or luxury. Agriculture was especially recommended. The life was in no respect to be absorbed in a perpetual mystic com- munion with the Deity. Basil lived in his monastic retirement during a great Basil. Opera, ii. 325. Sermo As- P Basil. Opera, ii. 355. ceticus. * Basil. Opera, ii. 357. 110 ST. BASIL. BOOK III. part of the triumphant period of Arianisra in the East ; Aj>.366. but during the reign of Valens, he was re- see ch. vii. called to Caesarea, to be the champion of Trini- P- 48 - tarianism against the Emperor and his Arian Aj>.3To. partisans. The firmness of Basil, as we have seen, commanded the respect even of his adversaries. In the midst of the raging controversy, he was raised to the archepiscopal throne of Caesarea. He governed the see with activity and diligence : not only the influence of his writings, but his actual authority (his pious am- bition of usefulness induced him perhaps to overstep the limits of his diocese) extended beyond Cappadocia, into Armenia and parts of Asia Minor. He was the firm sup- porter of the Nicene Trinitarianism, but did not A.D. 379. live to behold its final triumph. His decease fol- lowed immediately upon the defeat and death of Valens. The style of Basil did no discredit to his Athenian education ; in purity and perspicuity he surpasses most of the Heathen as well as the Christian writers of his age. Gregory of Nazianzum, as he shared the friendship, Gregory of so ne nas constantly participated in the fame Nazism, of Basil. He was born in a village, Arianza, within the district of Nazianzum, his father was bishop of that city. r With Basil he passed a part of his youth at Athens, and predicted, according to his own account, the apostasy of Julian, from the observation of his character, and even of his person. Gregory Hlflpoems. ... is ms own biographer; one or rather two poems, the first consisting of above two thousand iambics, the second of hexameters, describe the whole course of his * Tillemont is grievously embar- attained the episcopate. Tillemont is rassed by the time of Gregory's birth, forced to acknowledge the laxity of The stubborn dates insist upon his ecclesiastical discipline on this head, at having been bora after his father had this period of the church. CHAP. IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN POETRY. Ill early life. But Grecian poetry was not to be awakened from its long slumber by the voice of a Christian poet : it was faithful to its ancient source of inspiration. Christian thoughts and images will not blend with the language of Homer and the tragedians. Yet the auto- biographical poems of Gregory illustrate a remarkable peculiarity which distinguishes modern and Christian from the older, more particularly the Grecian, poetry. In the- Grecian poetry, as in Grecian life, the public absorbed the individual character. The person of the poet rarely appears, unless occasionally as the poet, as the objective author or reciter, not as the subject of the poem. The Elegiac poets of Greece, if we characteristic may judge from the few surviving fragments, ^t^n 8 and the amatory writers of Kome, speak in chrSiM d their proper persons, utter their individual P etr 7- thoughts, and embody their peculiar feelings. In the shrewd common-life view of Horace, and, indeed in some of his higher lyric poetry, the poet is more pro- minent ; and the fate of Ovid, one day basking in the imperial favour, the next, for some mysterious offence, banished to the bleak shores of the Euxine, seemed to give him the privilege of dwelling upon his own sorrows ; his strange fate invested his life in peculiar interest. These however are rare and exceptional instances in Greek and Roman poetry. But by the Christian scheme, the individual man has assumed a higher importance ; his actions, his opinions, the emotions of his mind, as connected with his immortal state, have acquired a new and commanding interest, not only to himself, but to others. The poet profoundly scrutinises, and elaborately reveals, the depths of his moral being. The psycholo- gical history of the man, in all its minute particulars, becomes the predominant matter of the poem. In 112 POEMS OF GREGORY. BOOK III. this respect, these autobiographical poems of Gregory, value of loose as they are in numbers, spun out with Gregory's. a W earisome and garrulous mediocrity, and wanting that depth and passion of religion which has made the Confessions of Augustine one of the most permanently popular of Christian writings, possess never- theless some interest, as indicating the transition state in poetry, as well as illustrating the thought and feeling prevalent among the Christian youth of the -period. The one great absorbing question was the comparative excellence of the secular and the monastic life, the state of marriage or of virginity. The enthusiasm of the East scarcely deigned to submit this point to discussion. In one of Gregory's poems, Marriage and Virginity each pleads his cause ; but there can be no doubt, from the first, to which will be assigned the victory. The Saviour gives to Virginity the place of honour on his right hand. Gregory had never entangled himself with marriage, that fatal tie which enthralls the soul in the bonds of matter. For him silken robes, gorgeous banquets, splendid palaces, music and perfumes, had no charm. He disregarded wealth, and feasted contentedly on bread with a little salt, and water for his only drink. The desire of supporting the declining age of his parents thwarted his holy ambition of withdrawing from all worldly intercourse : but this became a snare. He was embarrassed by refractory servants, by public and private business. The death of his brother involved him still more inextricably in aifairs arising out of his contested property. But the faithless friendship of Basil, which he deplores in the one touching passage of his whole poem, 3 still further endangered his peace. Gibbon's selection of this passage, ! speare, do great credit to his poetical and his happy illustration from Shake- I taste : H6 >oi CHAP. IX. GREGORY BISHOP OF SASIMA. 113 Iii the zeal of Basil to fill the bishoprics of his metropoli- tan diocese, calculating perhaps that Gregory, Gregory like himself, would generously sacrifice the s^jma f luxury of religious quietude for the more useful A-I> - 372- duties of a difficult active position, he imposed upon his reluctant friend the charge of the newly created see of Sasima. This was a small and miserable town, at the meeting of three roads, in a country at once arid, marshy, and unwholesome, noisy and dusty from the constant passage of travellers, the disputes with extor- tionate custom-house officers, and all the tumult and drunkenness belonging to a town inhabited by loose and passing strangers. With Basil, Gregory had passed the tranquil days of his youth, the contemplative period of his manhood ; together they had studied at Athens, together they had twice retired to monastic solitude ; and this was the return for his long and tried attachment! Gregory, in the bitterness of his remon- strance, at one time assumes the language of an Indian faquir. Instead of rejoicing in the sphere opened to his activity, he boldly asserts his supreme felicity to be total inaction. 1 He submitted with the strongest repugnance to the office, and abandoned it, almost immediately, on the first opposition. He afterwards administered the see of Nazianzum under his father, and even after his father's decease, without assuming the episcopal title. ITofOt Koivoi \6ywv 'Onioerre-yo? re, K d/iujxnc * * * * Ateepovcri ras jraAaia9 eAmSas. Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The Bisters' vows, &c. Helena, In the Midsummer Night's Dream. Sec Gibbon, c. xxvii. vol. v. p. 18. * 'E/J.ol 5e [JicyiffTri irpais eWi!/ i] airpa ! .a. Epist. xxiii. p. 797. VOL. III. I 114 GREGORY, BISHOP BOOK III. But Gregory was soon compelled by his own fame for Gregory, eloquence and for orthodoxy to move in a consuiui- more arduous and tumultuous sphere. For forty years Arianism had been dominant in 3.^9 to 379. Constantinople. The Arians mocked at the small number which still lingered in the single religious assemblage of the Athanasian party. u Gregory is con- strained to admit this humiliating fact, and indignantly inquires, whether the sands are more precious than the stars of heaven, or the pebbles than pearls, because they are more numerous. 1 But the accession of Theodosius opened a new sera to the Trinitarians. The religion of the Emperor would no longer condescend to this humble and secondary station. Gregory was invited to take charge of the small community which was still faithful to the doctrines of Athanasius. Gregory was already bowed with age and infirmity ; his bald head stooped to his bosom ; his countenance was worn by his austerities and his inward spiritual conflicts, when he reluctantly sacrificed his peace for this great purpose/ The Catholics had no church; they met in a small house, on the site of which afterwards arose the celebrated church of St. Anastasia. The eloquence of Gregory wrought wonders in the busy and versatile capital. The Arians themselves crowded to hear him. His adver- saries were reduced to violence ; the Anastasia was attacked; the Arian monks, and even the virgins, mingled in the furious fray : many lives were lost, and Gregory was accused as the cause of the tumult. His innocence, and the known favour of the Emperor, se- cured his acquittal ; his eloquence was seconded by the imperial edicts. The law had been promulgated which u In the reign of Valentinian, they met Iv ftiKpy otKiffKif. Socrates, iv. 1. * Orat. xxv. p. 431. i Tillemont, art. xlvi. CHAP. IX. OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 115 denounced as heretics all who rejected the Nicene Creed. The influence of Gregory was thwarted and his peace disturbed, by the strange intrigues of one Maximus to possess himself of the episcopal throne of Constantinople. Maximus was called the Cynic, from his attempt to blend the rude manners, the coarse white dress, his enemies added, the vices, of that sect, with the profes- sion of Christianity. His memory is loaded with every kind of infamy ; yet by dexterous flattery and assiduous attendance on the sermons of Gregory, he had stolen into his unsuspecting confidence, and received his public commendations in a studied oration. 2 Constantinople and Gregory himself were suddenly amazed with the intel- ligence that Maximus had been consecrated the Catholic bishop of the city. This extraordinary measure had been taken by seven Alexandrians of low birth and character, 3 with some bishops deputed by Peter the orthodox Archbishop of Alexandria. 15 A number of mariners, probably belonging to the corn fleet, had assisted at the ceremony and raised the customary ac- clamations. A great tumult of all orders arose; all rushed to the church, from which Maximus and his party withdrew, and hastily completed a kind of tonsure (for the cynic prided himself on his long hair) in the private dwelling of a flute-player. Maximus seems to have been rejected with indignation by the Athanasians 1 The panegyric on the philosopher Heron. Some of their names were whim- sically connected with the Egyptian mythology, Ammon, Anubis, and Her- manubis. b The interference of the Egyptians is altogether remarkable. Could there be a design to establish the primacy of Alexandria over Constantinople, and so over the East? It is observable that in his law, Theodosius names as the examples of doctrine, the Bishop of Rome in the West, of Alexandria in the East. The intrigues of Theophihis against Chrysostom rather confirm this notion of an attempt to erect an Eastern papacy. I 2 116 GREGORY, BISHOP BOOK III. of Constantinople, who adhered with unshaken fidelity to Gregory ; he fled to the court of Theodosius, but the earliest measure adopted by the Emperor to restore strength to the orthodox party, was the rejection of the intrusive prelate. The first act of Theodosius on his arrival at Constan- a4th NOV. tinople, was to issue an edict, expelling the A.D. sac. Arians from the churches, and summoning Demophilus, the Arian bishop, to conform to the Nicene doctrine. Demophilus refused. The Emperor com- manded that those who would not unite to establish Christian peace should retire from the houses of Chris- tian prayer. Demophilus assembled his followers, and quoting the words of the Gospel, " If you are persecuted in one city, flee unto another," retired before the irre- sistible authority of the Emperor. The next step was the appointment of the reluctant Gregory to the see, and his enthronisation in the principal church of the metropolis. Environed by the armed legionaries, in military pomp, accompanied by the Emperor himself, Gregory, amazed and bewildered, and perhaps sensible of the incongruity of the scene with the true Christian cha- racter, headed the triumphal procession. All around he saw the sullen and menacing faces of the Ariau multi- tude, and his ear might catch their suppressed murmurs ; even the heavens, for the morning was bleak and cloudy, seemed to look down with cold indifference on the scene. No sooner, however, had Gregory, with the Emperor, passed the rails which divided the sanctuary from the nave of the church, than the sun burst forth in his splendour, the clouds were dissipated, and the glorious light came streaming in upon the applauding congre- gation. At once a shout of acclamation demanded the enthronisation of Gregory. CHAP. IX. OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 117 But Gregory, commanding only in his eloquence from the pulpit, seems to have wanted the firmness and vigour necessary for the prelate of a great metropolis. Theoclosius summoned the council of Constantinople ; and Gregory, embarrassed by the multiplicity of affairs ; harassed by objections to the validity of his own elec- tion; entangled in the feuds which arose out of the contested election to the see of Antioch, entreated, and obtained, apparently the unreluctant, assent of the bishops and the Emperor to abdicate his dignity and to retire to his beloved privacy. His retreat, in some degree disturbed by the interest which he still took in the see of Nazianzum, gradually became more com- plete, till, at length, he withdrew into solitude, and ended his days in that peace, which perhaps was not less sincerely enjoyed from his experience of the cares and vexations of worldly dignity. Arianza, his native village, was the place of his seclusion ; the gardens, the trees, the fountain, familiar to his youth, welcomed his old age. But Gregory had not exhausted the fears, the dangers', or the passions of life. The desires of youth still burned in his withered body and demanded the severest macerations. The sight or even the neigh- bourhood of females afflicted his sensitive conscience ; and instead of allowing ease or repose to his aged frame, his bed was a hard mat, his coverlid sackcloth, his dress one thin tunic ; his feet were bare ; he allowed himself no fire, and here, in the company of the wild beasts, he prayed with bitter tears, he fasted, and de- voted his hours to the composition of poetry, which, from its extreme difficulty, he considered as an act of penitence. His painful existence was protracted to the age of ninety. The complete restoration of Constantinople to the 118 CHRYSOSTOM. BOOK III. orthodox communion demanded even more powerful eloquence, and far more vigorous authority , than that of Gregory. If it was not finally achieved, its success was secured, by the most splendid orator who had ever adorned the Eastern church. Sixteen years after the retirement of Gregory, the fame of Chrysostom desig- nated him as the successor to that important dignity. Chrysostom was the model of a preacher for a great capital. Clear rather than profound, his doer- Chrysostom. r . r matic is essentially moulded up with his moral teaching. He is the champion, not so exclusively of any system of doctrines, as of Christian holiness against the vices, the dissolute manners, the engrossing love of amusement, which prevailed in the new Rome of the East. His doctrines flow naturally from his subject or from the passage of Scripture under discussion; his illustrations are copious and happy ; his style free and fluent ; while he is an unrivalled master in that rapid and forcible application of incidental occurrences, which gives such life and reality to eloquence. He is, at times, in the highest sense, dramatic in his manner. Chrysostom, like all the more ardent spirits of his age, was enamoured in his early youth of monasticism. But this he had gradually thrown off, even while he remained at Antioch. Though by no means formally abandoning these principles, or lowering his admiration of this imaginary perfection of religion, in his later works he is more free, popular, and practical. His ambition is not so much to elevate a few enthusiastic spirits to a high-toned and mystic piety, as to impregnate c Compare the several lives of volume of Neander's Joannes Chrvsos- Chrysostom by Palladius, that in the tomus. The second has since ap- Benedictine edition of his works, and ' peared. in Tillemont. 1 have only the first CHAP. IX. LIFE OF CHRYSOSTOM. 119 the whole population of a great capital with Christian virtue and self-denial. John, who obtained the name of Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed, was born at Antioch, about the Llfe of year 347. He was brought up by his mother Chl ? s stom - in the Christian faith ; he studied rhetoric under the celebrated Libanius, who used his utmost arts, and dis- played all that is captivating in Grecian poetry and philosophy, to enthral the imagination of his promising- pupil. Libanius, in an extant epistle, rejoices at the success of Chrysostom at the bar in Antioch. He is said to have lamented on his death-bed the sacrilegious seduction of the young orator by the Christians ; for to Chrysostom, he had intended to bequeath his school and the office of maintaining the dignity of Paganism. But the eloquence of Chrysostom was not to waste itself in the barren litigations of the courts of justice in Antioch, or in the vain attempt to infuse new life into the dead philosophy and religion of Greece. He felt himself summoned to a nobler field. At the age of eighteen, Chrysostom began to study that one source of eloquence to which the human heart responded, the sacred writings of the Christians. The church was not slow in recognising the value of such a proselyte. He received the strongest encouragement from Mele- tius, Bishop of Antioch ; he was appointed a reader in the church. But the soul of Chrysostom was not likely to embrace these stirring tenets with coolness or moderation. A zealous friend inflamed, by precept and emulation, the fervour of his piety : they proposed to retire to one of the most remote hermitages in Syria ; and the great Christian orator was almost self-doomed to silence, or to exhaust his power of language in prayers and ejaculations heard by no human ear. The 120 LIFE OF CHRYSOSTOM. BOOK III. mother of Chrysostom saved the Christian church from this fatal loss. There is something exquisitely touching in the traits of domestic affection which sometimes gleam through the busy pages of history. His mother had become a widow at the age of twenty; to the general admiration, she had remained faithful to the memory of her husband and to her maternal duties. As soon as she heard the determination of her son to retire to a distant region (Chrysostom himself relates the incident), she took him by the hand, she led him to her chamber, she made him sit by her on the bed in which she had borne him, and burst out into tears and into language more sad than tears. She spoke of the cares and troubles of widowhood ; grievous as they had been, she had ever one consolation, the gazing on his face, and beholding in him the image of his departed father. Before he could speak, he had thus been her comfort and her joy. She reminded him of the fidelity with which she had administered the paternal property. " Think not that I would reproach you with these tilings. I have but one favour to entreat make me not a second time a widow; awaken not again my slumbering sorrows. Wait, at least, for my death; perhaps 1 shall depart before long. When you have laid me in the earth, and reunited my bones to those of your father, then travel wherever thou wilt, even beyond the sea ; but, as long as I live, endure to dwell in my house, and offend not God by afflicting your mother, who is at least blameless towards thee." d Whether released by the death of his mother, or hurried away by the irresistible impulse which would d M. Villemain, in his Essai sur 1'Eloquence Chre'tienne dans le Qiin- trifcme Sifccle, has pointed out the exquisite simplicity and tenderness of this passage. De Sacerdotio, i. CHAP. IX. LIFE OF CHRYSOSTOM. 121 not allow him to withhold himself from what he calls "the true philosophy," Chrysostom, some years after- wards, entered into one of the monasteries in the neighbourhood of Antioch. He had hardly escaped the episcopal dignity, which was almost forced upon him by the admirers of his early piety. Whether he con- sidered this gentle violence lawful to compel devout Christians to assume awful dignity, he did not hesitate to practise a pious fraud on his friend Basilius, with whom he promised to submit to consecration. Basilius found himself a bishop, but looked in vain for his treacherous friend who had deceived him into this momentous step, but deserted him at the appointed hour. But the voice of Chrysostom was not doomed to silence even in his seclusion. The secession of so many of the leading youths from the duties of civil life, from the municipal offices and the service of the army, had awakened the jealousy of the government. Valens issued his edict against those " followers of idleness." e The monks were, in some instances, assailed by popular outrage ; parents, against whose approbation their children had deserted their homes and retired into the desert, appealed to the imperial authority to maintain their own. Chrysostom came forward as the zealous, the vehement, advocate of the " true philosophy/' f He threatened misery in this life, and all the pains of hell (of which he is prodigal in his early writings) against the unnatural, the soul-slaying fathers, who forced their sons to expose themselves to the guilt and danger of the world, and forbade them to enter into the earthly society of angels ; by this phrase he describes the 8 Ignaviac scctatores. f Adversns Oppugnatorcs Vita; Monasticrc. 122 LIFE OF CHR rsOSTOM. BOOK HI. monasteries near Antioch. He relates, with triumph, the clandestine conversion of a noble youth, through the connivance of his mother, whom the father, himself a soldier, had destined to serve in the armies of the empire. But Chrysostom himself, whether he considered that the deep devotion of the monastery for some years had braced his soul to encounter the more perilous duties of the priesthood, appeared again in Antioch. His return was hailed by Flavianus, the bishop, who had succeeded to Meletius. He was ordained deacon, and then presbyter, and at once took his station in that office, which was sometimes reserved for the Bishop, as the principal preacher in that voluptuous and effeminate city. The fervid imagination and glowing eloquence of Chrysostom, which had been lavished on the angelic immunity of the coanobite or the hermit from the passions, ambition, and avarice inseparable from a secular life, now arrayed his new office in a dignity and saintly perfection, which might awake the purest ambition of the Christian. Chrysostom has the most exalted notion of the majesty, at the same time of the severity, of the sacerdotal character. His views of the office, of its mission and authority, are the most sublime ; his demands upon their purity, blamelessness, and superiority to the rest of mankind, proportionably rigorous. 8 Nor, in the loftiness of his tone as a preacher or his sanctity as a man, did he fall below his own standard of the Christian priesthood. His preaching already took its peculiar character. It was not so much addressed to t The treatise de Saccrdotio passim. CHAP. IX. LIFE OF CHRYSOSTOM. 123 the opinions as to the conscience of man. He threw aside the subtleties of speculative theology and repu- diated, in general, the fine-drawn allegory in which the interpreters of Scripture had displayed their ingenuity, and amazed and fruitlessly wearied their unimproved audience. His scope was plain, severe, practical. Rigidly orthodox in his doctrine, he seemed to dwell more on the fruits of a pure theology (though at times he could not keep aloof from controversy) than on theology itself. If, in her ordinary course of voluptuous amusement, of constant theatrical excitement, Antioch could not but listen to the commanding voice of the Christian orator, it is no wonder that in her hour of danger, possibly of impending ruin, the whole city stood trembling and awestruck beneath his pulpit. Soon after he had assumed the sacerdotal office, Chrysostom was placed in an extraordinary position as the repre- sentative of the bishop. In one of those sudden tumultuous insurrections which take place among the populace of large cities, Antioch had resisted the exorbitant demands of a new taxation, maltreated the imperial officers, and thrown down and dragged about, with every kind of insult, the statues of Theodosius, his empress, and their two sons. h The stupor of fear succeeded to this momentary outbreak of mutiny, h It is curious to observe the simi- tf$ov\6p.-nv. This is a sentence of larity between the Pagan and Christian Libanius (ad Theodos. iv. p. 638), accounts of this incident which we not of Chrysostom. Flavianus ex- have the good fortune to possess, horts Theodosius to pardon Antioch, Both ascribe the guilt to a few stran- in order that he may disappoint the gers, under the instigation of diabolic malice of the devils, to whom he agency. Totovrois ujnjpeVais d Ka/cbs ascribes the guilt. Chrys. Horn. xvi. s Saifj.uii', firpa^fv, a. (rionrav ad Antioch. 124 LIFE OF CHRYSOSTOM. BOOK III. which had been quelled by a single troop of archers. For days the whole people awaited in shuddering agitation the sentence of the Emperor. The anger of Theodosius was terrible ; he had not yet, it is true, ordered the massacre of the whole population of Thessalonica, but his stern and relentless character was too well known. Dark rumours spread abroad that he had threatened to burn Antioch, to exterminate its inhabitants, and to pass the ploughshare over its ruins. Multitudes fled destitute from the city ; others remained shut up in their houses, for fear of being seized. Instead of the forum crowded with thousands, one or two persons were seen timidly wandering about. The gay and busy Antioch had the appearance of a captured and depopulated city. The theatres, the circus, were closed; no marriage-song was heard; even the schools were shut up. 1 In the mean time the government resumed its unlimited and unresisted authority, which it administered with the sternest severity and rigorous inquisition into the guilt of individuals. The prisons were thronged with criminals of every rank and station ; confiscation swept away their wealth, punishments of every degree were inflicted on their persons. Citizens of the highest rank were ignominiously scourged ; those who confessed their guilt were put to the sword, burned alive, or thrown to the wild beasts.* Chrysostom's description of the agony of those days is in the highest style of dramatic oratory. Women of the highest rank, brought up with the utmost delicacy and accustomed to every luxury, were seen crowding around the gates, or 1 Liban. ad Theod. in fin. k Chrysostom asserts this in a fine passage, in which he reminds his hearers of their greater offences against God. Kol o fj.tv ffiS-lipv, ol 8 irvpi, ol Sf Ojipiois wapaSoGtyTf s airtakoi'ro. Horn. iii. 6, p. 45. CHAP. IX. FLAVIANUS. 125 in the outer judgement hall, unattended, repelled by the rude soldiery, but still clinging- to the doors or prostrate on the ground, listening to the clash of the scourges, the shrieks of the tortured victims, and the shouts of the executioners; one minute supposing' that they recognised the familiar voices of fathers, husbands, or brothers ; or trembling lest those who were under- going torture should denounce their relatives and friends. Chrysostom passes from this scene, by a bold but natural transition, to the terrors of the final Judge- ment, and the greater agony of that day. Now was the time to put to the test the power of Christianity, and to ascertain whether the orthodox opinions of Theodosius were altogether independent of that humanity which is the essence of the Gospel. Would the Christian Emperor listen to the persuasive supplications of the Christian prelate that prelate for whose character he had expressed the highest respect ? While Flavianus, the aged and feeble bishop, quitting the bedside of his dying sister, set forth on his riavianus pious mission to the West, on Chrysostom ^'^6 for devolved the duty of assuaging the fears, of mercy< administering consolation, and of profiting by this state of stupor and dejection to correct the vices and enforce serious thoughts upon the light and dissolute people. Day after day he ascended the pulpit ; the whole population, deserting the forum, forgetting the theatre and the circus, thronged the churches. There was even an attendance (an unusual circumstance) after the hour of dinner. The whole city became a church. There is wonderful skill and judgement in the art with which the orator employs the circumstances of the time for his purpose ; in the manner in which he allays the 126 SENTENCE OF THEODOSIUS. BOOK III. terror, without too highly encouraging the hopes, of the people : " The clemency of the Emperor may forgive their guilt, but the Christians ought to be superior to the fear of death ; they cannot be secure of pardon in this "world, but they may be secure of immortality in the world to come." Long before the success of the bishop's intercession sentence of could be known, the delegates of the Emperor, Theodoaus. JJellabichus and Caesarius, arrived with the sentence of Theodosius, which was merciful, if compared with what they had feared, the destruction of the city, and the massacre of its inhabitants. But it was fatal to the pleasures, the comforts, the pride of Antioch. The theatres and the circus were to be closed ; Antioch was no longer to enjoy theatrical representa- tions of any kind; the baths, in an Eastern city not objects of luxury alone, but of cleanliness and health, were to be shut ; and Antioch was degraded from the rank of a metropolitan city, to a town under the jurisdiction of Laodicea. The city was in the deepest depression, but Chry- sostom maintained his lofty tone of consolation. Antioch ought to rejoice at the prohibition of those scenes of vice and dissipation which disgraced the theatres: the baths tended to effeminacy and luxury, they were disdained by true philosophy the monastic system ; the dignity of the city did not depend on its rank in the empire, but on the virtue of its citizens ; it might be a heavenly, if no longer an earthly, metropolis. The inquisition into the guilt of those who had actually assisted, or had looked on in treasonable indifference, while the statues of the Emperor and his family were treated with such unseemly contumely, CHAP. IX. INTERVIEW OF FLAVIANUS. 127 had commenced under the regular authorities ; it was now carried on with stern and indiscriminate impartiality. The prisoners were crowded together in a great open enclosure, in one close and agonising troop, which comprehended the whole senate of the city. The third day of the inquiry was to witness the execution of the guilty, and no one, not the relatives or kindred of the wealthiest, the noblest, or the highest in station, knew whether the doom had not fallen on their fathers or husbands. But Hellabiclms and Csesarius were men of humanity, and ventured to suspend the execution of the sentence. They listened to the supplications of the people. One mother, especially, seized and clung to the reins of the horse of Hellabichus. The monks who, while the philosophers, as Chrysostom asserts, had fled the city, had poured down from their mountain solitudes, and during the whole time had endeavoured to assuage the fear of the people, and to awaken the compassion of the government, renewed, not without effect, their pious exertions. They crowded round the tribunal, and one, named Macedonius, was so courageous as boldly to remonstrate against the crime of avenging the des- truction of a few images of brass by the destruction of the image of God in so many human beings. Caesarius himself undertook a journey to Constantinople for farther instructions. At length Chrysostom had the satisfaction to an- nounce to the people the return of the bishop . i 7, ,. TT i Issue of the with an act or unlimited amnesty. He de- interview of scribed the interview of Flavianus with the Em- with the peror ; his silence, his shame, his tears, when Theodosius gently reminded him of his benefactions m Chrysostom, Horn. xvii. vol. ii. p. 172. 128 INTERVIEW OF FLAVIANUS. BOOK III. to the city which enhanced their heinous ingratitude. The reply of Flavianus, though the orator professes to relate it on the authority of one present at the interview, is no doubt coloured by the eloquence of Chrysostom. The Bishop acknowledged the guilt of the city in the most humiliating language. But he urged, that the greater that guilt, the greater would be the magna- nimity of the Emperor if he should pardon it. He would raise statues, not of perishable materials, in the hearts of all mankind. It is not the glory of Theo- dosius, he proceeded, but Christianity itself, which is put to the test before the world. The Jews and Greeks, even the most remote barbarians, are anxiously watching whether this sentence will be that of Christian clemency. How will they all glorify the Christian's God if he shall restrain the wrath of the master of the world, and subdue him ic that humanity whicli would be magnanimous even in a private man. Inexorable punishment might awe other cities into obedience, but mercy would attach mankind by the stronger bonds of love. It would be an imperishable example of clemency, and all future acts of other sovereigns would be but the fruit of this, and would reflect their glory on Theodosius. What glory to concede that to a single aged priest, from the fear of God, which he had refused to all other suppliants. For himself, Flavianus could never bear to return to his native city ; he would remain an exile, until that city was reconciled with the Emperor. Theodosius, it is said, called to mind the prayer of the Saviour for his enemies, and satisfied his wounded pride that in his mercy he imitated his Redeemer. He was even anxious that Flavianus should return to announce the full pardon before the festival of Easter. "Let the Gentiles," exclaims the ardent OIIAP. IX. CHRYSOSTOM. 129 preacher, " be confounded, or rather, let them be instructed by this unexampled instance of imperial clemency and episcopal influence." n Theodosius had ceased to reign many years before Chrysostom was summoned to the pontifical A.D. 393. /N i mi T-I Chrysostom throne oi Constantinople. The East was now t'sbop of governed by women and eunuchs. In assum- tiuopie. ing the episcopal throne of the metropolis, to which he is said to have been transported almost by force, Chrysostom, who could not but be conscious of his power over the minds of men, might entertain visions of the noblest and purest ambition. His views of the dignity of the sacerdotal character were as lofty as those of his contemporaries in the West ; while he asserted their authority, which set them apart, and far above the rest of mankind, he demanded a moral superiority and entire devotion to their calling, which could not but rivet their authority upon the minds of men. The clergy, such as his glowing imagination conceived them, would unite the strongest corporate spirit with the highest individual zeal and purity. The influence of the bishop in Antioch, the deference which Theodosius had shown to the intercession of Flavianus, might encourage Chrysostom in the fallacious hope of restoring peace, virtue, and piety, as well as orthodoxy, in the imperial city. But in the East, more particularly in the metropolis, the sacerdotal character never assumed the Difference unassailable sanctity, the awful inviolability, which it attained in the West. The religion . of Constantinople was that of the Emperor. nop! -- Instead of growing up, like the Bishop of Eome, first to n Chrysostom had ventured to assert "Atrep ouSevl ere'p&j, ravra -^apifiTai TOIS lepfvffi. Horn. x-xi. 3. VOL. III. K 130 CHRYSOSTOM'S CHARACTER. BOOK III. independence, afterwards to sovereignty, the religious supremacy was overawed and obscured by the presence of the Imperial Government. In Eome, the Pope was subject at times to the rebellious control of the aristo- cracy, or exposed to the irreverent fury of the populace ; but he constantly emerged from his transient obscurity and resumed his power. In Constantinople, a volup- tuous court, a savage populace, at this period multitudes of concealed Arians, and heretics of countless shades and hues at all periods, thwarted the plans, debased the dignity, and desecrated the person of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In some respects, Chrysostom's character wanted the peculiar, and perhaps inconsistent qualifications requisite for his position. He was the preacher, but not the man of the world. A great capital is apt to demand that magnificence in its prelate at which it murmurs. It will not respect less than splendid state and the show of authority, while at the same time it would have the severest austerity and the strongest display of humility, the pomp of the Pontiff with the poverty and lowliness of the Apostle. Chrysostom carried the asceticism of the monk not merely into his private chamber but into his palace and his hall. The great prelates of the West, when it was expedient, could throw off the monk and appear as statesmen or as nobles in their public transactions ; though this, indeed, was much less necessary than in Constantinople. But Chrysostom cherished all these habits with zealous, perhaps with ostentatious, fidelity. Instead of munificent hospitality, he took his scanty meal in his solitary chamber. His rigid economy endured none of that episcopal sumptuousness with which his predecessor Nectarius had dazzled the public eye: he proscribed CHAP. IX POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES OF CHRYSOSTOM. 131 all the carpets, all the silken dresses ; he sold the costly furniture and the rich vessels of his residence ; he Avas said even to have retrenched from the church some of its gorgeous plate, and to have sold some rich marbles and furniture designed for the Anastasia. He was lavish, on the other hand, in his expenditure on the hospitals and charitable institutions. But even th^ uses to which they were applied, did not justify to tne general feeling the alienation of those ornaments from the service of the church. The populace, who, no doubt, in their hours of discontent, had contrasted the magnificence of Nectarius with apostolical poverty, were now offended by the apostolical poverty of Chrysostom, which seemed unworthy of his lofty station. But the Bishop of Constantinople had even a more difficult task in prescribing to himself the limits of his interference with secular affairs, difficulties of ... Chrysostom. It is easy to imagine, in the clergy, a high and serene indifference to the political tumults of society. This is perpetually demanded by interference those who find the sacerdotal influence adverse ^^5^ to their own views ; but to the calm inquirer, affalre ' this simple question becomes the most difficult and intricate problem in religious history. If religion consisted solely in the intercourse between man and his Jreator; if the Christian minister were merely the officiating functionary in the ceremonial of the church, the human mediator between the devotion of man and the providence of God, the voice which expresses the common adoration, the herald who announces the gracious message of revelation to mankind, nothing could be more clear than the line which might exclude him from all political, or even all worldly affairs. But Christianity is likewise a moral power; and as that K 2 132 INTERFERENCE OF THE CLERGY BOOK III. moral power or guide, religion, and the minister of religion, cannot refrain from interposing in all questions of human conduct ; as the interpreter of the divine law to the perplexed and doubting conscience, it cannot but spread its dominion over the whole field of human action. In this character religion embraced the whole life of man, public as well as private. How was the minister of that religion to pause and discriminate as to the extent of his powers, particularly since the public acts of the most eminent in station possessed such unlimited influence over the happiness of society and even the eternal welfare of the whole community? What public misconduct was not at the same time an unchristian act? Were the clergy, by connivance, to become accomplices in vices which they did not endeavour to counteract ? Christianity on the throne as in the cottage, was equally bound to submit on every point in which religious motive or principle ought to operate, in every act, therefore, of life, to the admitted restraints of the Gospel; and the general feeling of Christianity at this period had invested the clergy with the right, or rather the duty, of enforcing the precepts of the Gospel on every professed believer. How, then, were the clergy to distinguish between the individual and political capacity of the man; to respect the prince, yet to advise the Christian ; to look with in- difference on one set of actions as secular, to admonish on the danger of another as affairs of conscience ? Nor at this early period of its still aggressive, still consciously beneficial influence, could the hierarchy be expected to anticipate with coldly prophetic prudence the fatal consequence of some of its own encroachments on worldly authority. The bishop of a great capital was the conductor, the representative, of the moral CHAP. IX. IX SECULAR AFFAIRS. 133 power of the Gospel, which was perpetually striving to obtain its ascendancy over brute force, violence, and vice ; and of necessity, perhaps, was not always cautious or discreet in the means to which it resorted. It became contaminated in the incessant strife, and forgot its end, or rather sought for the mastery as its end, rather than as the legitimate means of promoting its beneficial objects. Under the full, and no doubt, at first, warrantable persuasion, that it was advancing the happiness and virtue of mankind, where should it arrest its own course, or set limits to its own humanising and improving interpositions? Thus, under the constant temptation of assuming, as far as possible, the manage- ment of affairs which were notoriously mismanaged through the vices of public men, the administration even of public matters by the clergy might seem, to them at least, to insure justice, disinterestedness, and clemency. Till tried by the possession of power, they would be the last to discern the danger of being invested in that power. The first signal interposition of Chrysostom in the political affairs of Constantinople was an act Emropius not merely of humanity but of gratitude. theeunuch - Eutropius the eunuch, minister of the feeble Arcadius, is condemned to immortal infamy by the vigorous satire of Claudian. Among his few good deeds, had been the advancement of Chrysostom to the see of Constantinople. Eutropius had found it necessary to restrict the right of asylum, which began to be generally claimed by all the Christian churches, little foreseeing that to the bold assertion of that right he would owe his life. There is something sublime in the first notion of the right of asylum. It is one of those institutions based in 134 EIGHT OF ASYLUM. BOOK III. the universal religious sentiment of man; it is found Eight of i n almost all religions. In the Greek, as in the asylum. Jewish, man took refuge from the vengeance, often from the injustice, of his fellow-men, in the presence of the gods. Not merely private revenge, but the retributive severity of the law, stands rebuked before the dignity of the divine court, in which the criminal has lodged his appeal. The lustrations in the older religions, the rites of expiation and reconciliation performed in many of the temples, the appellations of certain deities, as the reconcilers or pacifiers of man, were enwoven with their mythology, and embodied in their poetry. But Christianity, in a still higher and more universal sense, might assume to take under its protection, in order to amend and purify, the outcast of society, whom human justice followed with relentless vengeance. As the representative of the God of mercy it excluded no human being from the pale of repentance, and would protect the worst, when disposed to that salutary change, if it could possibly be made consistent with the public peace and safety. The merciful inter- vention of the clergy between the criminal and his sentence, at a period when the laws were so implacable and sanguinary, was at once consistent with Christian charity and tended to some mitigation of the ferocious manners of the age. It gave time at least for ex- asperated justice to reconsider its sentence, and checked that vindictive impulse, which if it did not outrun the law, hurried it to instantaneous and irrevocable execution. 1 * But that which commenced in pure The airorpoircuol, or averrunca- tores. P In a law which is extant in Greek, the right of asylum had been granted by the Heathen to their altars, and to the statues of the Emperors, it ought there is an elabonite argument, that if to belong to the temples of God. See CHAP. IX. CHRYSOSTOJL SAVES EUTROPIUS. 135 benevolence had already, it should seem, begun to degenerate into a source of power. The course of justice was impeded, but not by a wise discrimination between the more or less heinous delinquents, or a salutary penitential system, which might reclaim the guilty and safely restore him to society. Like other favourites of arbitrary sovereigns, Eu- tropius was suddenly precipitated from the height of power. The army forced the sentence of his dismissal from the timid Emperor ; and the furious populace, as usual, thirsted for the blood of him to whose unbounded sway they had so long submitted in humble obedience. Eutropius fled in haste to that asylum, the sanctity of which had been limited by his own decree ; and the courage and influence of Chrysostom protected that most forlorn of human beings, the discarded favourite of a despot. The armed soldiery and the raging populace were met at the door of the church by the defenceless ecclesiastic. His demeanour and the sanctity of the place arrested the blind fury of the assailants. Chrysostom Chrysostom before the Emperor pleaded the cause of nfe e of the Eutropius with the same fearless freedom; Eutr P in8 - and for once the life of a fallen minister was spared, his sentence was commuted for banishment. His fate indeed was only delayed; he was afterwards brought back from Cyprus, his place of exile, and beheaded at Chalcedon. See the laws which defined the right of asylum, Cod. Theodos. ix. 45. 3. et seqq. The sacred space extended to the outer gates of the church. Bu: those who took refuge in the church were on no account to be permitted to profane the holy building itself by eating or sleeping within it. " Quibus si perfuga non adnuit, neque consentit, prsefereuda humanitati religio est." There was a strong prohibition against introducing arms into the churches ; a prohibition which the Emperors themselves did not scruple to violate on more than one occasion. 136 CHRYSOSTOM GOVERNED BOOK III. But with all his courage, his eloquence, his moral dignity, Chrysostom, instead of establishing a firm and permanent authority over Constantinople, became him- self the victim of intrigue and jealousy. Besides his personal habits and manners, the character of Chry- sostom, firm on great occasions and eminently persuasive when making a general address to the multitude, was less commanding and authoritative in his constant daily intercourse with the various orders. Calm and self- possessed as an orator, he was accused of being passionate and overbearing in ordinary business : the irritability of feeble health may have caused some part of this infir- mity. Men, whose minds, like that of Chrysostom, are centered on one engrossing object, are apt to abandon the details of business to others, who thus become necessary to them, and at length, if artful and dextrous, rule them with inextricable sway: they have much knowledge of mankind, little practical acquaintance Chrysostom with individual men. Thus, Chrysostom was hL V dron by completely governed by his deacon Serapion serapion. w j 1Q mana g e( j h{ g affairs, and like all men of address in such stations, while he exercised all the power, and secured the solid advantages, left the odium and responsibility upon his master. On the whole, the character of Chrysostom retained something of the unworldly monastic enthusiasm, and wanted decisive practical wisdom, when compared, for instance, with Ambrose in the West; and thus his character power- fully contributed to his fall. q But the circumstances of his situation mijrht have 1 The unfavourable view of Chry- sostom's character is brought out perhaps with more than impartiality by the ecclesiastical historian Sozomen, who wrote at Constantinople, ami may have preserved much of the hostile tradition relating to him. CHAP. IX. BY HIS DEACOX SERAPION. 137 embarrassed even Ambrose himself. All orders and interests conspired against him. The court would not endure the grave and severe censor ; the clergy rebelled against the rigour of the prelate's discipline ; the popu- lace, though when under the spell of his eloquence, fondly attached to his person, no doubt, in general resented his implacable condemnation of their amuse- ments. The Arians, to whom, in his uncompromising zeal, he had persuaded the Emperor to refuse a single church, though demanded by the most powerful subject of the empire, Gainas the Goth, were still no doubt secretly powerful. A Pagan prefect, Optatus, seized the opportunity of wreaking his animosity towards Christianity itself upon its powerful advocate. Some wealthy females are named as resenting the severe con- demnation of their dress and manners/ Of all these adversaries, the most dangerous, the most persevering, and the most implacable, were those of his own order and his own rank. 8 The sacerdotal authority in the East was undermined by its own divisions. The imperial power, which, in the hands of a violent, and not irreproachable woman, the Empress Eudoxia, might, perhaps, have quailed before the energy of a blameless and courageous prelate, allied itself with one section of the church, and so secured its triumph over the whole. The more Chrysostom endeavoured to carry out by episcopal authority those exalted notions of the sacer- dotal character which he had developed in his work upon the priesthood, the more he estranged many of his natural supporters. He visited the whole of Asia Minor ; degraded bishops ; exposed with unsparing indignation the vices and venality of the clergy ; and involved them Tillemont, p. 180. The jrood Tillemont confesses this humiliating truth with shnme and re- luctance. Viede Chiysostome, p. 181. 138 THEOPHILUS OF^ ALEXANDRIA. BOOK III. all in one indiscriminate charge of simony and licen- tiousness. The assumption of this authority was somewhat questionable ; the severity with which it was exercised did not reconcile the reluctant province to submission. Among the malcontent clergy, four bishops took the lead; but the head of this unrelenting faction was Theophilus, the violent and unscrupulous Prelate of Alexandria. The apparently trivial causes which inflamed the hostility of Theo- philus confirm a suspicion, previously suggested, that the rivalry of the two principal sees in the East mingled with the personal animosity of Theophilus against the Bishop of Constantinople. Chrysostom had been ac- cused of extending his jurisdiction beyond its legitimate bounds. Certain monks of Nitria had fled from the persecutions of Theophilus, and taken refuge in Con- stantinople ; and Chrysostom had extended his counte- nance, if not his protection, to these revolted subjects of the Alexandrian prelate. But he had declined to take legal cognisance of the dispute as a superior pre- late, or as the head of a council ; partly, he states,* out of respect for Theophilus, partly because he was unwilling to interfere in the affairs of another province. But Theophilus was not so scrupulous ; he revenged himself for the supposed invasion of his own province by a most daring inroad on that of his rival. He assumed for the Patriarch of Alexandria the right of presiding over the Eastern bishops, and of summoning the Bishop of Constantinople before this irregular tribunal. Theophilus, with the sanction, if not by the invitation, of the Empress, landed at Constantinople. He was accompanied by a band of Alexandrian Epist. ad Innocentium Papnm, vol. iii. p. 516. CHAP. IX. COUNCIL OF THE OAK. 139 mariners as a protection against the populace of the city. The council was held, not in Constantinople, but at a place called the Oak, in the suburb of co unc ii f Chalcedon. It consisted for the most part ihe Ak - of Egyptian bishops, under the direct influence of Theophilus, and of Asiatic prelates, the personal ene- mies of Chrysostom. u For fourteen days it held its sessions, and received informations, which gradually grew into twenty-nine grave and specific charges. Four times was Chrysostom summoned to appear before this self-appointed tribunal, of which it was impossible for him to recognise the legal authority. In the mean time, he was not inactive in his peculiar sphere the pulpit. Unfortunately, the authenticity of the sermon ascribed to him at this period is not altogether certain, nor the time at which some extant discourses, if genuine, were delivered, conclusively settled. One, however, bears strong indications of the manner and sentiments of Chrysostom ; and it is generally acknowledged that he either did boldly use, or was accused of using, language full of contumelious allusion to the Empress. This sermon, therefore, if not an accurate report of his ex- pressions, may convey the sense of what he actually uttered, or which was attributed to him by his adver- saries.* " The billows," said the energetic prelate, " are u It is contested whether there were that of personal impurity with a thirty or forty-six bishops. j female, he calmly offers the most * It is singularly characteristic of unquestionable evidence. But he was the Christianity of the times to ob- likewise accused of having adrninis- serve the charges against which tered baptism after he had eaten. On Chrysostom protests with the greatest this he breaks out : " If I have done vehemence ; and this part of the this, Anathema upon me ; may I be no oration in question is confirmed by longer counted among bishops, nor be one of his letters to Cyriacus. Against admitted among the angels accepted 140 CONDEMNATION OF CHRYSOSTOM. BOOK III. mighty, and the storm furious ; but we fear not to be wrecked, for we are founded on a rock. What can I fear ? Death ? To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Exile ? The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. Confiscation? We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out of it. I scorn the terrors, and smile at the advantages of life. I fear not death. I desire to live only for your profit. The church against which you strive, dashes away your assaults into idle foam. It is fixed by God, who shall revoke it ? The church is stronger than Heaven itself ! Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. * * * But you know, my brethren, the true cause of my ruin. Because I have not strewn rich carpets on niy floors, nor clothed myself in silken robes; because I have discountenanced the sensuality of certain persons. The seed of the serpent is still alive, but grace is still on the side of Elijah." Then follows in obscure and embarrassed language, as though, if genuine, the preacher were startled at his own boldness, an allusion to the fate of John the Baptist, and to the hostility of Herodias : " It is a time of wailing lo, all things tend to "disgrace; but time judgeth all things." The fatal word, " disgrace" (a&o%ia) was sup- posed to be an allusion to Eudoxia, the Empress. There was a secret understanding between the court condenma- and the council. The court urged the pro- sostom, ceedings of the council, and the council pronounced the sentence of deposition, but left to the of God." He was said to have administered the sacrament to those who had in like manner broken their fast. " If I have done so, may I be rejected of Christ." He then justifies himself, even if guilty, by the example of Paul, and even of Christ himself, but still seems to look on this breach of discipline with the utmost horror. CHAP. E. HE LEAVES CONSTANTINOPLE. 141 court to take cognisance of the darker charge of high treason, of which they asserted Chrysostom to be guilty, but which was beyond their jurisdiction. The alleged treason was the personal insult to the Empress Eudoxia, which was construed into exciting the people to rebellion. But the execution of this sentence embarrassed the council and the irresolute government. Chrysostom now again ruled the popular mind with unbounded sway. It would have been dangerous to have seized him in the church, environed, as he constantly was, by crowds of admiring hearers, whom a few fervent words might have maddened into insurrection. Chrysostom, however, shrunk, whether from timidity or Christian peacefulness of disposition, from Chrysostom being the cause, even innocently, of tumult stantinopie. and bloodshed. He had neither the ambition, the desperate recklessness, nor perhaps the resolution, of a demagogue. He would not be the Christian tribune of the people. He seized the first opportunity of the absence of his hearers quietly to surrender himself to the imperial officers. He was cautiously trans- ported by night, though the jealous populace crowded the streets in order to release their prelate from the hands of his enemies, to the opposite side of the Bosphorus and confined in a villa on the Bithynian shore. The triumph of Chrysostom's enemies was complete. Theophilus entered the city, and proceeded to wreak his vengeance on the partisans of his adversary ; the Empress rejoiced in the conscious assurance of her power; the people were overawed into gloomy and sullen silence. The night of the following day, strange and awful sounds were heard throughout the city. The palace, 142 RETURN OF CHRYSOSTOM. BOOK III. the whole of Constantinople, shook with an earthquake. The Empress, as superstitious as she was violent, when she felt her chamber rock beneath her, shuddering at the manifest wrath of Heaven, fell on her knees, and entreated the Emperor to revoke the fatal sentence. She wrote a hasty letter, disclaiming all hostility to the banished prelate, and protesting that she was " innocent of his blood." The next day, the palace was surrounded by clamorous multitudes, impatiently demanding his recall. The voice of the people and the voice of God seemed to join Return of i n the vindication of Chrysostom. The edict chrysostom. o f reca n was issued ; the Bosphorus swarmed with barks, eager to communicate the first intelligence, and to obtain the honour of bringing back the guardian and the pride of the city. He was met on his arrival by the whole population, men, women, and children ; all who could, bore torches in their hands, and hymns of thanksgiving, composed for the occasion^ were chanted before him, as he proceeded to the great church. His enemies fled on all sides. Soon after, Theophilus, on the demand of a free council, left Constantinople, at the dead of the night, and embarked for Alexandria. There is again some doubt as to the authenticity of the first discourse delivered by Chrysostom on this occasion, none of the second. But the first was an extemporaneous address, to which the extant speech appears to correspond. " What shall I say ? Blessed be God ! These were my last words on my departure, these the first on my return. Blessed be God ! because he permitted the storm to rage ; Blessed be God ! because he has allayed it. Let my enemies behold how their conspiracy 1ms advanced my peace, and CHAP. IX. RUTURN OF CHRYSOSTOM. 143 redounded to my glorv. Before, the church alone was crowded, now, the whole forum is become a church. The games are celebrating in the circus, but the whole people pour like a torrent to the church. Your prayers in my behalf are more glorious than a diadem, the prayers both of men and women ; for in Christ there is neither male nor female." In the second oration he draws an elaborate com- parison between the situation of Abraham in Egypt and his own. The barbarous Egyptian (this struck, no doubt, at Theophilus) had endeavoured to defile his Sarah, the church of Constantinople; but the faithful church had remained, by the power of God, uncon- taminated by this rebuked Abimeleeh. He dwelt with pardonable pride on the faithful attachment of his followers. They had conquered ; but how ? by prayer and submission. The enemy had brought arms into the sanctuary, they had prayed ; like a spider's web the enemy had been scattered, the faithful remained firm as a rock. The Empress herself had joined the tri- umphal procession, when the sea became, as the city, covered with all ranks, all ages, and both sexes. y But the peace and triumph of Chrysostom were not lasting. As the fears of the Empress were allayed, the old feeling of hatred to the Bishop, embittered by the shame of defeat, and the constant suspicion that either the preacher or his audience pointed at her his most vigorous declamation, rankled in the mind of Eudoxia. It had become a strife for ascendancy, and neither could recede with safety and honour. Opportunities could not but occur to enrage and exasperate ; nor y Chrysostom, in both these dis- that the Jews of Constantinople took courses, states a curious circumstance, great interest in his cause. 144 STATUE OF THE EMPRESS. BOOK III. would ill-disposed persons be wanting to inflame the passions of the Empress, by misrepresenting and personally applying the bold and indignant language of the prelate. A statue of the Empress was about to be erected ; statue of the an d on these occasions of public festival the Kaipress. people were wont to be indulged in dances, pantomimes, and every kind of theatrical amusement. The zeal of Chrysostom was always especially directed against these idolatrous amusements, which often, he confesses, drained the church of his hearers. This, now ill-timed, zeal was especially awakened, because the statue was to be erected, and the rejoicings to take place, in front of the entrance to the great church, the St. Sophia. His denunciations were construed into personal insults to the Empress ; she threatened a new council. The prelate threw off the remaining restraints of prudence ; repeated more explicitly the allusion which he had before but covertly hinted. He thundered out a homily, with the memorable exordium, " Herodias is maddening, Herodias is dancing, Herodias demands the head of John." If Chrysostom could even be suspected of such daring outrage against the temporal sovereign ; if he ventured on language approaching to such unmeasured hostility ; it was manifest that either the imperial authority must quail and submit to the sacerdotal domination, or employ, without scruple, its power to crush the bold usurpation. An edict of the Emperor suspended the prelate from second con- his functions. Though fortv-two bishops demnationof . . , . a ., -, ,., ' , . chrysostom. adhered, with inflexible fidelity, to his cause, he was condemned by a second hostile council, not on any new charge, but for contumacy in resisting the CHAP. IX. CIIRYSOSTOM SURRENDERS. 145 decrees of the former assembly, and for a breach of the ecclesiastical laws, in resuming his authority while under the condemnation of a council. The soldiers of the Emperor were more dangerous enemies than the prelates. In the midst of *.. 404. the solemn celebration of Good Friday, in the the church! great church of Santa Sophia, the military forced their way, not merely into the nave, but up to the altar, on which were placed the consecrated elements. Many worshippers were trodden under foot ; many wounded by the swords of the soldiers ; the clergy were dragged to prison; some females, who were about to be bap- tized, were obliged to fty with their disordered apparel : the waters of the font were stained with blood; the soldiers pressed up to the altar ; seized the sacred vessels as their plunder : the sacred elements were scattered about ; their garments were bedewed with the blood of the Kedeemer. z Constantinople for several days had the appearance of a city which had been stormed. Wherever the partisans of Chrysostom were assembled, they were assaulted and dispersed by the soldiery ; females were exposed to insult, and one frantic attempt was made to assassinate the prelate. 3 Clirysostom at length withdrew from the contest; he escaped from the friendly custody of his 0^0^,,, adherents, and surrendered himself to the surrenders - imperial officers. He was immediately conveyed by night to the Asiatic shore. At the instant of his departure, another fearful calamity agitated the public z Chrysostom, Epist. ad Inno- centium, c. iii. v. iii. p. 519. Chrysostom exempta the Emperor from all share in this outrage ; VOL. III. but attributes it to the hostile bishops. See Letter to Olympias, p. 548. 146 EXILE OF CHRYSOSTOM. BOOK III. mind. The church which he left burst into flames, and the conflagration, said to have first broken out in the episcopal throne, reached the roof of the building, and spread from thence to the senate-house. These two magnificent edifices, the latter of which contained some noble specimens of ancient art, became in a few hours a mass of ruins. The partisans of Chrysostom, and Chrysostom himself, were, of course, accused of this act, the author of which was never discovered, and in which no life was lost. But the bishop was charged with the horrible design of destroying his enemies in the church; his followers were charged with the guilt of incendiarism with a less atrocious object, that no bishop after Chrysostom might be seated in his pontifical throne. b The prelate was not permitted to choose his place of exile. The peaceful spots which might have been found in the more genial climate of Bithynia, or in the adjacent provinces, would have been too near the capital. He was transported to Cucusus, a small town in the mountainous and savage district of Armenia. On his journey thither of several days, he suffered much from fever and disquiet of mind, and from the cruelty of the officer who commanded the guard. Yet his influence was not extinguished by his b There are three laws in the Theodosian Code against unlawful and seditious meetings (conventicula), directed against the followers of Chrysostom, the Joannitae, as they were called, "qui sacrilego animo auctoritatem nostri numinis ausi fuerint expugnare." The deity is the usual term, but the deity of the feeble Arcadius, and of the passionate Eudoxia, reads strangely. * The zeal of Chrysostom did not slumber even in this remote retreat. In his power he had caused to be destroyed all the temples of Cybele in Phrygia. He now urged the tardy monks to the destruction of all the Heathen Temples in the neighbouring districts. Epist. 129. 126. Compare Chastel, p. 220. CHAP. IX. % HIS DEATH. 147 absence. The Eastern Church was almost governed from the solitary cell of Ghrysostom. He corre- J His retreat. sponded m all quarters ; women ot rank and opulence sought his solitude in disguise. The bishops of many distant sees sent him assistance, and coveted his advice. The Bishop of Borne received his letters with respect, and wrote back ardent com- mendations of his patience. The exile of Cucusus exercised perhaps more extensive authority than the Patriarch of Constantinople. 11 He was not, however, permitted to remain in peace in this miserable seclusion : sometimes his life was endangered by the invasions of the Isaurian marauders ; and he was obliged to take refuge in a neighbouring fortress, named Ardissa. He encouraged his ardent disciples with the hope, the assurance, of his speedy return ; but he miscalculated the obstinate and im- placable resentment of his persecutors. At length an order came to remove him to Pityus, on the Euxine, a still more savage place on the verge of the empire. He died on the journey, near Comana, in Pontus. Some years afterwards, the remains of Chrysostom were transported to Constantinople with HM remains the utmost reverence, and received with to^cS^ solemn pomp. Constantinople, and the tino ^ le - imperial family, submitted with eager zeal to worship d Among his letters may be re- I been contaminated by marriage. She , marked those written to the celebrated : was the friend of all the distinguished Olympias. This wealthy widow, who ; and orthodox clergy, of Gregory of had refused the solicitations or com- Nazianzum, and of Chrysostom. mands of Theodosius to marry one of Chrysostom records to her praise, that his favourites, had almost washed by her austerities, she had brought away, by her austerities and virtues, ou painful diseases, which baffled the the stain of her nuptials, and might j art of medicine. Chrysost. Kpist. viii. rank in Christian estimation with p. 540. those unsullied virgins who had never L2 148 EFFECTS OF THE FALL BOOK III. as a saint him whom they would not endure as a prelate. The remarkable part in the whole of this persecution of Chrysostom is that it arose not out of difference of doctrine or polemic hostility. No charge of heresy darkened the pure fame of the great Christian orator. His persecution had not the dignity of conscientious bigotry ; it was a struggle for power between the temporal and ecclesiastical supremacy ; but the passions and the personal animosities of ecclesiastics, the am- bition, and perhaps the jealousy of the Alexandrian Patriarch as to jurisdiction, lent themselves to the degradation of the episcopal authority in Constan- tinople, from which it never rose. No doubt the choleric temper, the overstrained severity, the monastic habits, the ambition to extend his authority, perhaps beyond its legitimate bounds, and the indiscreet zeal of Chrysostom, laid him open to his adversaries ; but in any other station, in the episcopate of any other city, these infirmities would have been lost in the splendour of his talents and his virtues. Though he might not have weaned the general mass of the people from then- vices or their amusements, which he proscribed with equal severity, yet he would have commanded general respect ; and nothing less than a schism, arising out of religious difference, would have shaken or impaired his authority. At all events, the fall of Chrysostom was an in- auspicious omen, and a warning which might repress the energy of future prelates ; and, doubtless, the issue of this conflict materially tended to degrade the office of the chief bishop in the Eastern empire. It may be questioned whether the proximity of the court, and such a ccurt as that of the East, would, under any CHAP. IX. OF CHRYSOSTOM. 149 circumstances, have allowed the episcopate to assume its legitimate power, far less to have encroached on the temporal sovereignty. But after this time, the Bishop of Constantinople almost sank into a high officer of state ; appointed by the influence, if not directly nominated by the Emperor, his gratitude was bound to reverence, or his prudence to dread, that arbitrary power which had raised him from nothing, and might dismiss him to his former insignificance. Ex- cept on some rare occasions, he bowed with the rest of the empire before the capricious will of the sovereign or the ruling favourite ; he was content if the Emperor respected the outward ceremonial of the church, and did not openly espouse any heretical doctrine. Christianity thus remained, in some respects, an antagonist principle, counteracting by its perpetual remonstrance, and rivalling by its attractive ceremonial, the vices and licentious diversions of the capital ; but its moral authority was not allied with power ; it quailed under the universal despotism, and was entirely inefficient as a corrective of imperial tyranny. It thus escaped the evils inseparable from the undue elevation of the sacerdotal character, and the tempta- tions to encroach beyond its proper limits on the civil power; but it likewise gradually sank far below that uncompromising independence, that venerable majesty, which might impose some restraint on the worst excesses of violence, and infuse justice and humanity into the manners of the court and of the people. 150 AMBROSE. BOOK III. CHAPTEE X. The great Prelates of the West. THE character and the fate of Ambrose offer the Ambrose strongest contrast with that of Chrysostom. Archbishop , .. of Milan. Ambrose was no dreaming solitary brought up in the seclusion of the desert or among a fraternity of religious husbandmen. He had been versed in civil business from his youth; he had already obtained a high station in the Imperial service. His eloquence had little of the richness, imaginative variety, or dramatic power of the Grecian orator; hard but vigorous, it was Koman, forensic, practical I mean where it related to affairs of business, or addressed men in general ; it has, as we shall hereafter observe, a very different character in some of his theological writings. In Ambrose the sacerdotal character assumed a dignity and an influence as yet unknown ; it first began to confront the throne not only on terms of equality, but of superior authority, and to exercise a spiritual dictatorship over the supreme magistrate. The re- sistance of Athanasius to the Imperial authority had been firm but deferential, passive rather than aggressive. In his public addresses he had respected the majesty of the empire ; at all events, the hierarchy of that period only questioned the authority of the sovereign in matters of faith. But in Ambrose the episcopal power acknowledged no limits to its moral dominion, and admitted no distinction of persons. While the bishops of Home were comparatively without authority, and CHAP. X. YOUTH OF AMBROSE. 151 still partially obscured by the concentration of Paganism in the aristocracy of the Capitol, the Archbishop of Milan began to develop papal power and papal im- periousness. Ambrose was the spiritual ancestor of the Hildebrands and the Innocents. Like Chrysostom, Ambrose had to strive against the passionate animosity of an empress, not merely exasperated against him by his suspected disrespect and disobedience, but by the bitterness of religious difference. Yet how opposite the result! And Ambrose had to assert his religious authority, not against the feeble Arcadius, but against his father, the great Theoclosius. We cannot, indeed, but recognise something of the undegraded Roman 01 the West in Ambrose ; Chrysostom has something of the feebleness and degeneracy of the Byzantine. The father of Ambrose, who bore the same name, had administered the province of Gaul as youth of praetorian prefect. The younger Ambrose, AmbrosLi - while pursuing his studies at Rome, had attracted the notice of Probus, praetorian prefect of Italy. Ambrose, through his influence, was appointed to the administra- tion of the provinces of ^Emilia and Liguria. a Probus was a Christian, and his parting admonition to the young civilian was couched in these prophetic words " Eule the province, not as a judge, but as a bishop." b Milan was within the department assigned to Ambrose. This city had now begun almost to rival or eclipse Rome as the capital of the Occidental empire, and from the celebrity of its schools it was called the Athens of the West. The Church of Milan was rent with Chiefly from the life of Ambrose affixed to the Benedictine edition of his works ; the Life by Paulinus ; and Tillemont. b Paul. Vit. Ambros. 152 AMBROSE BOOK III- divisions. On a vacancy caused by the death of Auxentius, the celebrated Arian, the two parties, the Arian and the Athanasian, violently contested the appointment of the bishop. Ambrose appeared in his civil character to allay the Ambrose tumult, by the awe of his presence and by A.D.374. the persuasive force of his eloquence. He spoke so wisely, and in such a Christian spirit, that a general acclamation suddenly broke forth, "Ambrose, be bishop Ambrose, be bishop." Ambrose was yet only a catechumen; he attempted in every way, by assuming a severe character as a magistrate, and by flight, to elude the unexpected honour. The ardour of the people, and the approbation of the Emperor, d compelled him to assume the office. Ambrose cast off at once the pomp and majesty of his civil state; but that which was in some degree disadvantageous to Chrysostom, his severe simplicity of life, only increased the admiration and attachment of the less luxurious, or at least less effeminate, West, to their pious prelate ; for Ambrose assumed only the austerity, nothing of the inactive and contemplative seclusion of the monastic Ambrose svstem. The only Eastern influence which advocate of . . . celibacy. fettered his strong mind was his earnest admiration of celibacy ; in all other respects he was a Roman statesman, not a meditative Oriental, or rhetorical Greek. The strong contrast of this doctrine with the dissolute manners of Rome, which no doubt extended to Milan, made it the more impressive : it was received with all the ardour of novelty, and the impetuosity of the Italian character ; it captivated all ranks and all c De Offic. ; Vita S. Ambros. \ d Compare the account of Va- p. xxxiv. ; Epist. xxi. p. 865 ; lentinian's conduct in Theodoret, Kpist. Ixiii. [ iv. 7. CHAP. X. ADVOCATE OF CELIBACY. 153 orders. Mothers shut up their daughters, lest they should be exposed to the chaste seduction of the bishop's eloquence ; and, binding themselves by rash vows of virginity, forfeit the hope of becoming Roman matrons. Ambrose, immediately on his appointment, under Valentinian I., asserted that ecclesiastical power which he confirmed under the feeble reign of Gratian and Valentinian II.; e he maintained it when he was confronted by a nobler antagonist, the great Theodosius. He assumed the office of director of the royal conscience, and he administered that office with all the uncom- promising moral dignity which had no indulgence for unchristian vices, for injustice, or cruelty, even in an emperor; and with all the stern and conscientious intolerance of one, with whom hatred of paganism and of heresy was a prime article of his creed. The Old and the New Testament met in the person of Ambrose the implacable hostility to idolatry, the abhorrence of every deviation from the established formulary of belief; the wise and courageous benevolence, the generous and unselfish devotion to the great interests of humanity. If Christianity assumed a haughtier and more rigid tone in the conduct and writings of Ambrose, it was by no means forgetful of its gentler duties, in allaying human misery and extending its beneficent care to the utmost bounds of society. With Ambrose it began its high office of mitigating the horrors of slavery, which now that war raged in turn on every frontier, might seem to threaten individually the whole free population of the empire. Rome, who had drawn new supplies of slaves from almost every frontier of her dominions, now Theodoret, iv. 7. 154 REDEMPTION OF CAPTIVES. BOOK III. suffered fearful reprisals; her free citizens were sent into captivity and sold in the markets by the barbarians, whose ancestors had been bought and bartered by her Redemption insatiable slave trade. The splendid offerings of captives . * . by Ambrose, of piety, the ornaments, even the consecrated vessels of the churches, were prodigally expended by the Bishop of Milan, in the redemption of captives/ " The church possesses gold, not to treasure up, but to distribute it for the welfare and happiness of men. We are ransoming the souls of men from eternal perdition. It is not merely the lives of men and the honour of women, which are endangered in captivity, but the faith of their children. The blood of redemp- tion which has gleamed in those golden cups has sanctified them, not for the service alone, but for the redemption of man." 8 These arguments may be considered as a generous repudiation of the ecclesiastical spirit for the nobler ends of beneficence ; and, no doubt, in that mediation of the church between mankind and the miseries of slavery, which was one of her most constant and useful ministrations during the darker period of human society, the example and authority of Ambrose perpetually encouraged the generosity of the more liberal, and repressed the narrow view of those who considered the consecrated treasures of the church inviolable, even for these more sacred objects. 11 The ecclesiastical zeal of Ambrose, like that of Chrysostom, scorned the limits of his own diocese. The see of Sirmium was vacant ; Ambrose appeared Numerent qnos redemerint templa | * Offic. c. 15. c. 28. Compare captives. So Ambrose appeals, in excusable pride, to the heathen orator. Arobros. Epist. ii. in Sym- machum. Greg. M. Epist. vi. 35. vii. 2. 14. k Even Fleury argues that these could not be consecrated vessels. CHAP. X. JUSTINA 155 in that city to prevent the election of an Arian, and to secure the appointment of an orthodox bishop. The strength of the opposite party lay in the zeal and influence of the Empress Justina. Am- brose defied both, and made himself a powerful and implacable enemy. But, for a time, Justina was constrained to suppress her resentment. In a few years, Ambrose ... / n , . . AJX 383. appears in a new position for a Christian bishop, as the mediator between rival competitors for the empire. The ambassador sent to Maximus (who had assumed the purple in Gaul, and, after the murder of Gratian, might be reasonably suspected of hostile designs on Italy), was no distinguished warrior, or influential civilian ; the difficult negociation was forced upon the bishop of Milan. The character and weight of Ambrose appeared the best protection of the young Valentinian. Ambrose is said to have refused to communicate with Maximus, the murderer of his sovereign. The interests of his earthly monarch or of the empire would not induce him to sacrifice for an instant those of his heavenly Master ; he would have no fellowship with the man of blood. 5 Yet so com- pletely, either by his ability as a negociator or by his dignity and sanctity as a prelate, did he overawe the usurper, as to avert the evils of war, and to arrest the hostile invasion of his diocese and of Italy. He succeeded in establishing peace. But the gratitude of Justina for this essential service could not avert the collision of hostile religious Dispute with creeds. The Empress demanded one of the Justina. churches in Milan for the celebration of the Arian 1 The seventeenth Epistle of Ambrose relates the whole transaction, p. 852. 156 DISPUTE WITH BOOK III. service. The first and more modest request named the Porcian Basilica without the gates, but these demands rose to the new and largest edifice within the walls. k The answer of Ambrose was firm and distinct; it asserted the inviolability of all property in the possession of the church " A bishop cannot alienate that which is dedicated to God." After some fruitless negociation, the officers of the Emperor proceeded to take possession of the Porcian Basilica. Where these buildings had belonged to the state, the Emperor might still, perhaps, assert the right of property. Tumults arose : an Arian priest was severely handled and only rescued from the hands of the populace by the influence of Ambrose. Many wealthy persons were thrown into prison by the government, and heavy fines exacted on account of these seditions. But the inflexible Ambrose persisted in his refusal to acknowledge the imperial authority over things dedicated to God. When he was com- manded to allay the populace, "it is in my power," he answered, " to refrain from exciting their violence, but it is for God to appease it when excited. The soldiers surrounded the building ; they threatened to violate the sanctity of the church in which Ambrose was performing the usual solemnities. The bishop calmly continued his functions, and his undisturbed countenance seemed as if his whole mind was absorbed in its devotion. The soldiers entered the church ; the affrighted females began to fly ; but the rude and armed men fell on their knees and assured Ambrose that they came to pray and not to fight." Ambrose ascended the pulpit ; his k Paul. Vit. Ambrose. Ambros. i mitigaret. Epist. xx. m Referebam in meo jure esse, It would be curious if we could ascertain the different constitution of ut con excitarem, in Dei manu, uti ' the troops employed in the irreverent CHAP. X. THE EMPRESS JUSTINA. 157 sermon was on the Book of Job ; he enlarged on the conduct of the wife of the patriarch, who commanded him to blaspheme God; he compared the Empress with this example of impiety ; he went on to compare her with Eve, with Jezebel, with Herodias. "The Emperor demands a church what has the Emperor to do with the adulteress, the church of the heretics?" Intelligence arrived that the populace were tearing down the hangings of the church on which was the sacred image of the sovereign, and which had been suspended in the Porcian Basilica, as a sign that the church had been taken into the possession of the Emperor. Ambrose sent some of his priests to allay the tumult, but went not himself. He looked triumph- antly around on his armed devotees: "The Gentiles have entered into the inheritance of the Lord ; but the armed Gentiles have become Christians and co-heirs of God. My enemies are now my defenders." A confidential secretary of the Emperor appeared, not to expel or degrade the refractory prelate, but to deprecate his tyranny. " Why do ye hesitate to strike down tlie tyrant" replied Ambrose, "my only defence is in my power of exposing my life for the honour of God." He proceeded with proud humility, " Under the ancient law, priests have bestowed, they have not condescended to assume empire ; kings have desired the priesthood rather than priests the royal power." He appealed to his influence over Maximus, The Emperor which had averted the invasion of Italy. The Ambrose. imperial authority quailed before the resolute prelate ; scenes in the churches of Alexandria and Constantinople, and here at Milan. Were the former raised from the vicious population of the Eastern cities, the latter partly composed of barbarians ? How much is justly to be attributed to the character of the prelate ? 158 ANIMOSITY OF THE EMPRESS. BOOK III. the soldiers were withdrawn, the prisoners released, and the fines annulled. When the Emperor himself was urged to confront Ambrose in the church, the timid or prudent youth replied, "His eloquence would compel yourselves to lay me bound hand and foot before his throne." To such a height had the sacerdotal power attained in the West, when wielded by a man of the energy and determination of Ambrose. p But the pertinacious animosity of the Empress was not yet exhausted. A law was passed authorising the assemblies of the Arians. A second struggle took place ; a new triumph for Ambrose ; a new defeat for the Imperial power. From his inviolable citadel, his church, Ambrose uttered in courageous security his defiance. An emphatic sentence expressed the prelate's notion of the relation of the civil and religious power, and proclaimed the subordination of the Emperor within the mysterious circle of sacerdotal authority " The Emperor is of the church, and in the church, but not above the church." Was it to be supposed that the remonstrances of expiring Paganism would make any impression upon a court thus under subjection to one, who, by exercising the office of protector in the time of peril, assumed the right to dictate on subjects which appeared more completely within his sphere of jurisdiction? If 8 Certatim hoc nuntiare milites, irruentes in altaria, osculis signi- ficare pacis insigne. Ambrose per- ceived that God had stricken Lu- cifer, the great Dragon (vermem antelucanum). P Ambrose relates that one of the officers of the court, more daring than the rest, presumed to reseat this outrage, as he considered it, on the Emperor. " While I live, dost thou thus treat Valentinian with contempt ? I will strike off thy head." Ambrose replied, " God grant that thou mayest fulfil thy menace. I shall suffer the fate of a bishop, thou wilt do the act of an eunuch" (tu fades, quod spadones). CHAP. X. ELOQUENCE OF AMBROSE. 159 Arianism in the person of the Empress was compelled to bow, Paganism could scarcely hope to obtain even a patient hearing. We have already related the contest between ex- piring Polytheism and ascendant Christianity in the persons of Symmachus and of Ambrose. The more polished periods and the gentle dignity of Symmachus might delight the old aristocracy of Rome. But the full flow of the more vehement eloquence of Ambrose, falling into the current of popular opinion at Milan, swept all before it. q By this time the Old Testament language and sentiment with regard to idolatry were completely incorporated with the Christian feeling ; and when Ambrose enforced on a Christian Emperor the sacred duty of intolerance against opinions and practices which scarcely a century before had been the established religion of the Empire, his zeal was supported by almost the unanimous applause of tho Christian world. Ambrose did not rely on his eloquence alone, or on the awfulness of his sacerdotal character, to control the public mind. The champion of the Church was invested by popular belief, perhaps by his own ardent faith, with 1 The most curious fact relating to Ambrose, is the extraordinary contrast between his vigorous, prac- tical, and statesmanlike character as a man, as well as that of such among his writings as may be called public and popular, and the mystic subtlety which fills most of his theological works. He treats the Scripture as one vast allegory, and propounds his own fanciful interpretation, or corol- laries, with as much authority as if they were the plain sense of the sacred writer. No retired schoolman follows out the phantastic analogies and recondite significations which he perceives in almost every word, with more vain ingenuity than Ambrose. Every word or number reminds him of every other place in the Scripture in which the same word or number occurs ; and stringing them together with this loose connexion, he works out some latent mystic signification, which he would suppose to have been within the intention of the inspired writer. See particularly the Hexaemeron, 160 MIKACLES. BOOK III. miraculous power, and the high state of religious excite- ment was maintained in Milan by the increasing dignity and splendour of the ceremonial, and by the pompous installation of the reliques of saints within the principal church. It cannot escape the observation of a calm inquirer into the history of man, or be disguised by an admirer of a rational, pious, and instructive Christian ministry, that whenever, from this period, the clergy possessed a full and dominant power, the claim to supernatural power is more frequently and ostentatiously made, while where they possess a less complete ascendency, miracles cease. While Ambrose was at least availing himself of, if not encouraging, this religious credulity, Chrysostom, partly, no doubt, from his own good sense, partly from respect for the colder and more inquisitive character of his audience, not merely distinctly disavows miraculous powers in his own person, but asserts that long ago they had come to an end. 1 " But in Milan the arch- T Aia ToOro irapa fj.fv T^V a.v yap e?x f ro ifa\ai&y t TT)S irlffTfias eveita, TOUTTJS ri)s f$oT)Qeias' vvv 8e oi>8 allots SiSoraj. In Act. vol. iii. 65. M^ Tolvvv rb /iij yivtaQai vvv reKfJ.'fipiov itoiov TOV fib ye- i Tort , Kal yap 5$i r6re XP 7 !' ty'tvero, Kal vvv JffjfflfHM ov yiverai. See the whole passage in Cor. Horn. vi. an. 45. On Psalm ex., indeed, vol. v. p. 271, he seems to assert the continuance of miracles, particularly during the reign of Julian and of Ma.ximin. But he 'jives the death of Julian as one of those mi- racles. Kal yap ai 5io TOVTO, Kal 51 erepov TO. A dispute had arisen in Thessalonica about a favourite charioteer in the circus ; out of the dispute a sedition, in which some lives were lost The imperial officers, who interfered to suppress the fray, were wounded or slain, and Botheric, the repre- sentative of the Emperor, treated with indignity. Not- withstanding every attempt on the part of the clergy to allay the furious resentment of Theodosius, the counsels of the more violent advisers prevailed. Secret orders were issued ; the circus, filled with the whole population of the city, was surrounded by troops, and a general and indiscriminate massacre of all ages and sexes, the guilty and the innocent, revenged the insult on the im- perial dignity. Seven thousand lives were sacrificed in this remorseless carnage. On the first intelligence of this atrocity, Ambrose, with prudent self-command, kept aloof from the ex- asperated Emperor. He retired into the country, and a letter from his own hand was delivered to the sovereign. The letter expressed the horror of Ambrose and his brother bishops at this inhuman deed, in which he should consider himself an accomplice if he could refrain from expressing his detestation of its guilt; if he should not refuse to communicate with a man stained with the innocent blood, not of one, but of thousands. He exhorts Theodosius to penitence; he promises to offer prayers in his behalf. He acted up to his declaration ; the Emperor of the world found the doors of the church closed against him. For eight months he endured this ignominious exclusion. Even on the sacred day of the Nativity, Theodosius implored in vain to be admitted within those precincts which were open CHAP. X. PUBLIC PENANCE OF THE EMPEROR. 167 to the slave and to the beggar ; those precincts which were the vestibule to heaven, for through the church alone was heaven to be approached. Submission and remonstrance were alike in vain ; to an urgent minister of the sovereign, Ambrose calmly replied, that the Emperor might kill him and pass over his body into the sanctuary. At length Ambrose consented to admit the Emperor to an audience ; with difficulty he was persuaded to permit him to enter, not into the church itself, but into the outer porch, the place of the public penitents. At length the interdict was removed on two conditions ; that the Emperor should issue an edict prohibiting the execution of capital punishments for thirty days after conviction, and that he should submit to public penance. Stripped of his imperial ornaments, prostrate on the pavement, beating his breast, tearing his hair, watering the ground with his tears, the master of the Roman empire, the conqueror in so many victories, the legislator of the world, at length received the hard- wrung absolution. This was the culminating point of pure Christian influence. Christianity appeared before the world as the champion and vindicator of outraged humanity ; as having founded a tribunal of justice, which extended its protective authority over the meanest, and sus- pended its retributive penalties over the mightiest of mankind. Nearly at the same time (about four years before) had been revealed the latent danger from this Flrst cap^ new unlimited sovereignty over the human ^Tre^on! mind. The first blood was judicially shed for A>D - 386> religious opinion. Fa*\ however, from apprehending the fatal consequences which might arise out of their own JG8 MARTIN OF TOURS. BOOK III. exclusive and intolerant sentiments, or foreseeing that the sacerdotal authority, which they fondly and sincerely supposed they were strengthening for the unalloyed welfare of mankind, would seize and wield the sword of persecution with such remorseless and unscrupulous severity this first fatal libation of Christian blood, which was the act of an usurping Emperor, and of a few foreign bishops was solemnly disclaimed by all the more influential dignitaries of the Western Church. Prisoiiiian Priscillian, a noble and eloquent Spaniard, andhisfol- . / lowers. had embraced some JMamchean or rather Gnostic opinions. The same contradictory accusations of the severest asceticism and of licentious habits, which were so perpetually adduced against the Mani- cheans, formed the chief charge against Priscillian and his followers. The leaders of the sect had taken refuge, from the persecutions of their countrymen, in Gaul, and propagated their opinions to some extent in Aquitaiue. They were pursued with unwearied animosity by the Spanish Bishops Ithacius and Idacius. Maximus, the usurping Emperor of Gaul, who then resided at Treves, Martin of tk cognisance of the case. In vain the TOUTS. celebrated Martin of Tours, whose life was almost an unwearied campaign against idolatry, and whose unrelenting hand had demolished every religious edifice within his reach a prelate whose dread of heresy was almost as sensitive as of Paganism, urged his protest against these proceedings with all the vehemence of his character. During his absence, a capital sentence was extorted from the Emperor; Priscillian and some of his followers were put to death by the civil authority for the crime of religious error. The fatal precedent was disowned by the general voice of Christianity. It required another considerable CHAP. X. VALENTIXIAN THEODOSI US AMBROSE. 169 period of ignorance and bigotry to deaden the fine moral sense of Christianity to the total abandonment of its spirit of love. When Ambrose reproached conductor the usurper with the murder of his sovereign Ambrose - Gratian, he reminded him likewise of the unjust execution of the Priscillianists ; he refused to communi- cate with the bishops who had any concern in that sanguinary and unchristian transaction. 2 Ambrose witnessed and lamented the death of the young Valentinian, over whom he pronounced A.D. 392. a funeral oration. On the usurpation of the vlkntinian. Pagan Eugenius, he fled from Milan ; but A -- 393 - returned to behold and to applaud the triumph of Theodosius. The conquering Emperor gave a new proof of his homage to Christianity and to its represen- tative. Under the influence of Ambrose, he refrained for a time from communicating in the Christian mys- teries, because his hands were stained with blood, though that blood had been shed in a just and necessary war. a To Ambrose the dying Emperor commended Death of i i -n* i /> TIT-I Theodosius. his sons, and the .Bishop ot Milan pronounced AJ>. 395. the funeral oration over the last great Emperor of the world. He did not long survive his imperial friend. It is related that, when Ambrose was on his death- Death of bed, fetilicho, apprehending the loss of such a Ambrose. -_ _ _ ... . _ A.D. 397* man to Italy and to Christendom, urged the principal inhabitants of Milan to entreat the effective prayers of the bishop for his own recovery. " I have not so lived among you," replied Ambrose, " as to be ashamed to live ; I have so good a Master, that I am 1 Ambros. Epist. xxiv. The whole transaction in Sulpicius Sever. E. H. and Life of St. Martin. Oratio de Obitu Theodos. 34. 1 70 AUGUSTINE. BOOK 111. not afraid to die." Ambrose expired in the attitude and in the act of prayer. While Ambrose was thus assuming an unprecedented supremacy over his own age, and deepening and strengthening the foundation of the ecclesiastical power, Augustine was beginning gradually to consummate that total change in human opinion which was to influence the Christianity of the remotest ages. Of all Christian writers since the Apostles, Augustine has maintained the most permanent and extensive influence. That influence, indeed, was unfelt, or scarcely felt, in the East; but as the East gradually became more estranged, till it was little more than a blank in Christian history, the dominion of Augustine over the opinions of the Western world was eventually over the whole of Christendom. Basil and Chrysostom spoke a language foreign or dead to the greater part of the Christian world. The Greek empire, after the reign of Justinian, gradually contract- ing its limits and sinking into abject superstition, forgot its own great writers on the more momentous subjects of religion and morality, for new controversialists on frivolous and insignificant points of difference. The more important feuds, as of Nestorianism, made little progress in the West ; the West repudiated almost with one voice the iconoclastic opinions; and at length Mohammedanism swept away its fairest provinces, and limited the Greek church to a still narrowing circle. The Latin language thus became almost that of Christianity ; Latin writers the sole authority to which men appealed, or from which they imperceptibly imbibed the tone of religious doctrine or sentiment. Of these, Augustine was the most universal, the most commanding, the most influential. CHAP. X. AUGUSTINIAX THEOLOGY. 171 The earliest Christian writers had not been able or willing altogether to decline some of the more obvious and prominent points of the Augustinian theology ; but in his works they were first wrought up into a regular system. Abstruse topics, which had been but slightly touched, or dimly hinted in the Apostolic writings, and of which the older creeds had been entirely silent, became the prominent and unavoidable tenets of Christian doctrine. Augustinianism has constantly re- vived, in all its strongest and most peremptory state- ments, in every period of religious excitement. In later days, it formed much of the doctrinal system of Luther ; it was worked up into a still more rigid and uncompromising system by the severe intellect of Calvin; it was remoulded into the Roman Catholic doctrine by Jansenius ; the popular theology of most of the Protestant sects is but a modified Augustinianism. Christianity had now accomplished its divine mission, so far as impregnating the Roman world with A ugnstinian its first principles, the unity of God, the theology - immortality of the soul, and future retribution. These vital questions between the old Paganism and the new religion had been decided by their almost general adoption into the common sentiments of mankind. And now questions naturally and necessarily arising out of the providential government of that Supreme Deity, out of that conscious immortality, and out of that acknowledged retribution, had begun profoundly to agitate the human heart. The nature of man had been stirred in its inmost depths. The hopes and fears, now centered on another state of being, were ever restlessly hovering over the abyss into which they were forced to gaze. As men were not merely convinced, but deeply penetrated, with the belief that they had souls to be 172 AUGUSTUS I AN THEOLOGY. BOOK III. saved, the means, the process, the degree of attainable assurance concerning salvation, became subjects of anxious inquiry. Every kind of information on these momentous topics was demanded with importunity and hailed with eagerness. With the ancient philosophy, the moral condition of man was a much simpler and calmer subject of consideration. It could coldly analyse every emotion, trace the workings of every passion, and present its results ; if in eloquent language, kindling the mind of the hearer, rather by that language, than by the excitement of the inquiry. It was the attractive form of the philosophy, the adventitious emotion produced by bold paradox, happy invention, acute dialectics, which amused and partially enlightened the inquisitive mind. But now mingled up with religion, every sensation, every feeling, every propensity, every thought, had become not merely a symptom of the moral condition, but an element in that state of spiritual advancement or deterioration which was to be weighed and examined in the day of Judgement. The ultimate and avowed object of philosophy, the summum bonum, the greatest attainable happiness, shrunk into an unimportant consideration. These were questions of spiritual life and death, and the solution was therefore embraced rather by the will and the passions, than by the cool and sober reason. This solution in all these difficulties was the more acceptable in proportion as it was peremptory and dogmatic. Any thing could be endured rather than uncertainty, and Augustine himself was, doubtless, urged more by the desire of peace to his own anxious spirit than by the ambition of dictating to Christianity on these abstruse topics. The influence of Augustine thus concentered the Christian mind on subjects to which Christianity led, but did not answer CHAP. X. AUGUSTINIAN THEOLOGY. 173 with fulness or precision. The Gospels and Apostolic writings paused within the border of attainable human knowledge; Augustine fearlessly rushed forward, or was driven by his antagonists; and partly from the reasonings of a new religious philosophy, partly by general inferences from limited and particular phrases in the sacred writings, framed a complete, it must be acknowledged, and as far as its own consistency, an harmonious system ; but of which it was the inevitable tendency to give an overpowering importance to problems on which Christianity, wisely measuring, it should seem, the capacity of the human mind, had declined to utter any final or authoritative decrees. Almost up to this period in Christian history, b on these mysterious topics, all was unquestioned and undefined ; and though they could not but cross the path of Christian reasoning, and could not but be incidentally noticed, they had, as yet, undergone no full or direct investigation. Nothing but the calmest and firmest philosophy could have avoided or eluded these points, on which, though the human mind could not attain to knowledge, it was impatient of ignorance. The imme- diate or more remote, the direct or indirect, the sensible or the imperceptible, influence of the divine agency (grace) on the human soul, with the inseparable consequences of necessity and free-will, thus became the absorbing and agitating points of Christian doctrine. From many causes, these inevitable questions had forced themselves, at this period, on the general attention. Manicheism on one hand, Pelagianism on b In the Historia Pelagiana of Vossitis may be found quotations expressive of the sentiments of the earlier Fathers on many of points. 174 AUGUSTIX IAN THEOLOGY. BOOK III. the other, stirred up their darkest depths. The Christian mind demanded on all these topics at once excitement and rest. Notlung could be more accept- able than the unhesitating and peremptory decisions of Augustine. His profound piety ministered perpetual emotion ; his glowing and perspicuous language, his confident dogmatism, and the apparent completeness of his system, offered repose. But the primary principle of the Augustinian theology was already deeply rooted in the awe-struck piety of the Christian world. In this state of the general mind, that which brought the Deity more directly and more perpetually in contact with the soul, at once enlisted all minds which were under the shadow of religious fears, or softened by any milder religious feeling. It was not a remote supremacy, a government through unseen and untraceable influences, a general reverential trust in the divine protection, which gave satisfaction to the agitated spirit ; but an actually felt and immediate presence, operating on each particular and most minute part of the creation ; not a regular and unvarying emanation of the divine will, but a special and peculiar intervention in each separate case. The whole course of human events, and the moral condition of each individual, were alike under the acknowledged, or conscious and direct, operation of the Deity. But the more distinct and unquestioned this principle, the more the problem which in a different form had agitated the Eastern world, the origin of evil, forced itself on the consideration. In the East it bad taken a kind of speculative or theogonical turn, and allied itself with physical notions ; in the West it became a moral and practical, and almost every-day question, involving the prescience of God and the freedom of the human soul. CHAP. X. AUGUSTINIAN THEOLOGY. 175 Augustine had rejected Manicheisni ; the antagonistic and equally conflicting powers of that system had offended his high conception of the supremacy of God. Still his earlier Mauicheism lent an unconscious colouring to his maturer opinions. In another form, he divided the world into regions of cloudless light and total darkness. But he did not mingle the Deity in any way in the darkness which enveloped the whole of mankind, a chosen portion of which alone were rescued, by the gracious intervention of the Eedeemer and the Holy Spirit. The rest were separated by an insuper- able barrier, that of hereditary evil ; they bore within, the fatal and inevitable proscription. Within the pale of Election was the world of Light, without, the world of Perdition ; and the human soul was so reduced to a subordinate agent before the mysterious and inscrutable power, which, by the infusion of faith, rescued it from its inveterate hereditary propensity, as to become entirely passive, altogether annihilated, in overleaping the profound though narrow gulph, which divided the two kingdoms of Grace and of Perdition. Thus that system which assigned the most un- bounded and universal influence to the Deity was seized upon by devout piety as the truth which it would be an impious limitation of Omnipotence to question. Man offered his free agency on the altar of his religion, and forgot that he thereby degraded the most wonderful work of Omnipotence, a being endowed with free agency. "While the internal consciousness was not received as sufficient evidence of the freedom of the will, it was considered as un- questionable testimony to the operations of divine grace. At all events, these questions now became unavoid- 176 PELAGIANISiT. BOOK III. able articles of the Christian faith. From this time the simpler Apostolic Creed, and the splendid ampli- fications of the divine attributes of the Trinity, were enlarged, if not by stern definitions, by dictatorial axioms on original sin, on grace, predestination, the total depravity of mankind, election to everlasting life, and final reprobation. To the appellations which awoke what was considered righteous and legitimate hatred in all true believers, Arianism and Mani- cheism, was now added as a term of equal obloquy, Pelagianism." e The doctrines of Pelagius have been represented as arising out of the monastic spirit, or at least out of one form of its influence. The high ideal of moral perfection (it has been said) which the monk set before himself, the conscious strength of will which was necessary to aspire to that height, the proud impatience and disdain of the ordinary excuse for infirmity, the inherited weakness and depravity of human nature, induced the colder and more severe Pelagius to embrace his peculiar tenets ; the rejection of ori- ginal sin ; the assertion of the entire freedom of the will ; the denial or limitation of the influence of divine grace. Of the personal history of Pelagius little is known, except that he was a British or French monk (his name is said, in one tradition, to have been Morgan), but neither he nor his colleague Ca;lestius appears to have been a secluded ascetic ; they dwelt in Rome for some time, where they propagated their doctrines. Of his character perhaps still less is known, unless from his tenets, and some fragments of his writings, pre- served by his adversaries ; excepting that the blamelessness of his manners is admitted by his adversaries (the term egregife Christianus is the ex- pression of St. Augustine) : and even the violent Jerome bears testimony to his innocence of life. But the tenets of Augustine appear to flow more directly from the mo- nastic system. His doctrines (in his controversy with Pelagius, for in his other writings he holds another tone) are tinged with the Encratite or Munichean notion, that there was a physical transmission of sin in the propagation of children, even in lawful marriage. (See, among other writers. Jer. Taylor's Vindication of his Deus Justiticatus.) Even this coucupis- centia carnis peccatum est, quia inest illi inobedientia contra dominatum mentis. De Pecc. Kemis. i. 3. This is the old doctrine of the inherent evil of matter. We are astonished that Augustine, who had been a father and a fond father, though of an ille- gitimate son, could be driven by the stern logic of polemics to the damna- tion of unbaptized infants, a milder damnation, it is true, to eternal lire. This was the more genuine doctrine of AUGUSTINE. 177 Augustine, by the extraordinary adaptation of his genius to his own age, the comprehensive grandeur of his views, the intense earnestness of his character, his inexhaustible activity, the vigour, warmth, and per- spicuity of his style, had a right to command the homage of Western Christendom. He was at once the first universal, and the purest and most powerful of the Latin Christian writers. It is singular that almost all the earlier Christian authors in the West were pro- vincials, chiefly of Africa. But the works of Tertullian were, in general, brief treatises on temporary subjects of controversy ; if enlivened by the natural vehemence and strength of the man, disfigured by the worst barbarisms of style. The writings of Cyprian were chiefly short epistles or treatises on subjects of im- mediate or local interest. Augustine retained the fervour and energy of the African style with much men in whose hearts all the sweet chanties of life had been long seared up by monastic discipline ; men like Fulgentius, to whose name the title of saint is prefixed, and who lays down this benignant and Christian axiom : " Firmissime tene et nullatenus dubites, parvulos, sive in uteris matrum vivere incipiunt, et ibi moriuntur, sive cum de matribus nati, sine sacramento sancto baptismatis de hoc seculo transeunt, ignis ceterni sempiterno supplicio punicndos." Fulgentius de Fide, quoted in Vossius, Hist. Pelaj;. p. 257. The assertion of the entire freedom of the will, and the restricted sense in which Pelagius appears to have re- ceived the doctrine of divine grace, confining it to the influences of the divine revelation, appear to arise out VOL. III. of philosophical reasonings rather than out of the monastic spirit. The severe monastic discipline was more likely to infuse the sense of the slavery of the will ; and the brooding over bodily and mental emotions, the general cause and result of the monastic spirit, would tend to exaggerate rather than to question or limit the actual, and even sensible workings of the divine spirit within the soul. The calmer temperament, indeed, and probably more peaceful religious deyelopcment of Pelagius, may have disposed him to his system ; as the more vehement character, and agitated religious life of Augustine, to his vindication, founded on his internal experience, of the con- stant divine agency upon the heart and the soul. N 178 AUGUSTINE. BOOK III. purer and more perspicuous Latinity. His ardent imagination was tempered by reasoning powers which boldly grappled with every subject. He possessed and was unembarrassed by the possession of all the know- ledge which had been accumulated in the Eoman world. He commanded the whole range of Latin literature, and perhaps his influence over his own hemisphere was not diminished by his ignorance, or at best imperfect and late-acquired acquaintance with Greek." But all his knowledge and all his acquirements fell into the train of his absorbing religious sentiments or passions. On the subjects with which he was conversant, a calm and dispassionate philosophy would have been indignantly repudiated by the Christian mind, and Augustine's temperament was too much in harmony with that of the time to offend by deficiency in fervour. It was profound religious agitation, not cold and abstract truth, which the age required ; the emotions of piety, rather than the convictions of severe logical inquiry ; and in Augustine, the depth or abstruseness of the matter never extinguished or allayed the passion, or in one sense, the popularity, of his style. At different periods of his life, Augustine aspired to and succeeded in enthralling all the various powers and faculties of the human mind. That life was the type of his theology ; and as it passed through its various changes of age, of circumstance, and of opinion, it left its own impressions strongly and permanently stamped upon the whole of Latin Christianity. The gentleness of his childhood, the passions of his youth, the studies of his adolescence, the wilder dreams of his immature Chris- d On St. Augustine's knowledge l the common people in the neighbour- of Greek, compare Tillemont, in his hood of Carthage. Life, p. 7. Punic was still spoken by CHAP. X. HIS CHILDHOOD. 179 tianity, the Manicheism, the intermediate stage of Platonism, through which he passed into orthodoxy, the fervour with which he embraced, the vigour with which he developed, the unhesitating confidence with which he enforced his final creed all affected more or less the general mind. His Confessions became the manual of all those who were forced by their tem- perament or inclined by their disposition to brood over the inward sensations of their own minds; to trace within themselves all the trepidations, the misgivings, the agonies, the exultations, of the religious conscience ; the gradual formation of opinions till they harden into dogmas, or warm into objects of ardent passion. Since Augustine, this internal autobiography of the soul has always had the deepest interest for those of strong religious convictions ; it was what multitudes had felt, but no one had yet embodied in words ; it was the appalling yet attractive manner in which men beheld all the conflicts and adventures of their own spiritual life reflected with bold and speaking truth. Men shrunk from the divine and unapproachable image of Christian perfection in the life of the Redeemer, to the more earthly, more familiar picture of the developement of the Christian character, crossed with the light and shade of human weakness and human passion. The religious was more eventful than the civil life of St. Augustine. He was born A.D. 354, in Tagasta, an episcopal city of Numidia. His parents were Christians of respectable rank. In his childhood, he was attacked by a dangerous illness ; he entreated to be baptized. His mother Monica took the alarm ; all was prepared for that solemn ceremony ; but on his recovery, it was deferred, and Augustine remained for some years in the N 2 180 AUGUSTINE. BOOK III. humbler rank of catechumen. He received the best education, in grammar and rhetoric, which the neigh- bouring city of Madaura could afford. At AJ> 371 seventeen, he was sent to Carthage to finish his studies. Augustine has, perhaps, highly coloured both the idleness of his period of study in Madaura, and the licentious habits to which he abandoned him- self in the dissolute city of Carthage. His ardent mind plunged into the intoxicating enjoyments of the theatre, and his excited passions demanded every kind of gratification. He had a natural son, called by the somewhat inappropriate name A-deo-datus. He was first arrested in his sensual course, not by the solemn voice of religion, but by the gentler remonstrances of Pagan literature. He learned from Cicero, not from the Gospel, the higher dignity of intellectual attain- ments. From his brilliant success in his studies, it is clear that his life, if yielding at times to the temptations of youth, was not a course of indolence or total abandonment to pleasure. It was the Hor- tensius of Cicero which awoke his mind to nobler aspirations and to the contempt of worldly enjoy- ments. But philosophy could not satisfy the lofty desires which it had awakened : Augustine panted for some better hopes, and more satisfactory objects of study. He turned to the religion of his parents, but his mind was not subdued to a feeling for the inimitable beauty of the New Testament. Its simplicity of style appeared rude, after the stately march of Tully's eloquence. But Manicheism seized at once upon his kindled imagi- nation. For nine years, from the age of nineteen to twenty-eight, the mind of Augustine wandered among the vague and fantastic reveries of Oriental theology. CHAP. X. HIS CONVERSION. 181 The virtuous and holy Monica, with the anxious appre- hensions and prescient hopes of a mother's heart, watched over the irregular development of his powerful faculties. Her distress at his Manichean errors was consoled by an aged bishop, who had himself been involved in the same opinions. "Be of good cheer, the child of so many tears cannot perish." The step against which she remonstrated most strongly, led to that result which she scarcely dared to hope. Augustine grew discontented with the wild Manichean doctrines, which neither satisfied the religious yearnings of his heart nor the philosophical demands of his understanding. He was in danger of falling into a desperate Pyrrhonism, or at best the proud indifference of an Academic. He determined to seek a more distinguished sphere for his talents as a teacher of rhetoric; and, notwithstanding his mother's tears, he left Carthage for Eome. The fame of his A . D . 383 . abilities obtained him an invitation to teach ^ tot - 29 - at Milan. He was there within the magic circle of the great ecclesiastic of the West. But we cannot pause to trace the throes and pangs of his final conversion. The writings of St. Paul accom- plished what the eloquence of Ambrose had begun. In one of the paroxysms of his religious agony, he seemed to hear a voice from heaven, " Take and read, take and read." Till now he had rejected the writings of the Apostle ; he opened on the passage which con- tains the awful denunciations of Paul against the dissolute morals of the Heathen. The conscience of Augustine recognised " in the chambering and wanton- ness " the fearful picture of his own life ; for though he had abandoned the looser indulgences of his youth (he had lived in strict fidelity, not to a lawful wife 182 AUGUSTINE HIS BAPTISM. BOOK III. indeed, but to a concubine) even his mother was anxious to disengage him, by an honourable marriage, from the bonds of a less legitimate connexion. But he burst at once his thraldom ; shook his old nature from his heart ; renounced for ever all, even lawful indulgences, of the carnal desires ; forswore the world, and withdrew himself, though without exciting any unnecessary astonishment among his hearers, from his profaner function as teacher of rhetoric. His Aj>.387. ' mother, who had followed him to Milan, lived to witness his baptism as a Catholic Christian by the hands of Ambrose ; and in all the serene happiness of her accomplished hopes and prayers, expired in his arms before his return to Africa. His son, Adeodatus, who died a few years afterwards, was baptized at the same time. To return to the writings of St. Augustine, or rather controversial to his life in his writings. In his controversial writings. treatises against the Manicheans and against Pelagius, Augustine had the power of seemingly at least, bringing down those abstruse subjects to popular comprehension. His vehement and intrepid dogmatism hurried along the unresisting mind, which was allowed no pause for the sober examination of difficulties, or was awed into acquiescence by the still suspended charge of impiety. The imagination was at the same time kept awake by a rich vein of allegoric interpretation, dictated by the same bold decision, and enforced as necessary conclusions from the sacred writings, or as latent truths intentionally wrapped up in those myste- rious plirases. The City of God was unquestionably the noblest work, both in its original design, and in the City of God. fulness of its elaborate execution, which the geiiius of man had as yet contributed to the support of CUAP. X. HIS WRITINGS. 183 Christianity.- Hitherto the Apologies had been framed to meet particular exigences : they were either brief and pregnant statements of the Christian doctrines ; refutations of prevalent calumnies; invectives against the follies and crimes of Paganism ; or confutations of anti-Christian works like those of Celsus, Porphyry, or Julian, closely following their course of argument, and rarely expanding into general and comprehensive views of the great conflict. The City of God, in the tirst place, indeed, was designed to decide for ever the one great question, which alone kept in suspense the balance between Paganism and Christianity, the connection between the fall of the empire and the miseries under which the whole Eoman society was groaning, with the desertion of the ancient religion of Koine. Even this part of his theme led Augustine into a full, and, if not impartial, yet far more comprehensive survey of the whole religion and philosophy of antiquity than had been yet displayed in any Christian work. It has preserved more on some branches of these subjects than the whole surviving Latin literature. The City of God was not merely a defence, it was likewise an exposition of Christian doctrine. The last twelve books developed the whole system with a regu- larity and copiousness, as far as we know, never before attempted by any Christian writer. It was the first complete Christian theology. The immediate occasion of this important work of Augustine was worthy of this powerful con- centration of his talents and knowledge. The Occasion of capture of Borne by the Goths had appalled its compo- the whole empire. So long as the barbarians only broke through the frontiers, or severed province after province from the dominion of the Emperor, men 184 AUGUSTINE. BOOK III. could close their eyes to the gradual declension and decay of the Koman supremacy ; and in the rapid alternations of power, the empire, under some new Caesar or Constantine, might again throw back the barbaric inroads ; or where the barbarians were settled within the frontiers, awe them into peaceful subjects, or array them as valiant defenders of their dominions. As long as both Romes, more especially the ancient city of the West, remained inviolate, so long the fabric of the Roman greatness seemed unbroken, and she might still assert her title as Mistress of the World. The capture of Rome dissipated for ever these proud illusions ; it struck the Roman world to the heart ; and in the mortal agony of the old social system, men wildly grasped at every cause which could account for this unexpected, this inexplicable, phenomenon. They were as much overwhelmed with dread and wonder as if there had been no previous omens of decay, no slow and progressive approach to the sacred walls ; as if the fate of the city had not been already twice suspended by the venality, the mercy, or the prudence of the conqueror. Murmurs were again heard impeaching the new religion as the cause of this dis- astrous consummation : the deserted gods had deserted in their turn the apostate city. 6 There seems no doubt that Pagan ceremonies took place in the hour of peril, to avert, if possible, the imminent nun. The respect paid by the barbarians e Orosius attempted the same theme : the Pagans, he as-serts, " prje- .-e.'itia tantum tempera, veluti mails extra solitum infestissima, ob hoc f-olum, quod creditor Christus, et colitur, idola autem minus coluntur, infamant." Heyne has well observed on this work of Orosius, Excitaveiat Augustini vibrantis arma exi*mplum Orosium, discipulum, ut et ipse arma snmeret, etsi imbellibus minibus. Opiiscula, vi. p. 130. CHAP. X. HIS WRITINGS. 185 to the churches might, in the zealous or even the wavering votaries of Paganism, strengthen the feeling of some remote connexion between the destroyer of the civil power and the destroyer of the ancient religions. The Eoman aristocracy, which fled to different parts of the world, more particularly to the yet peaceful and uninvaded province of Africa ; and among whom the feelings of attachment to the insti- tutions and to the gods of Rome were still the strongest, were not likely to suppress the language of indignation and sorrow, or to refrain from the extenuation of their own cowardice and effeminacy, by ascribing the fate of the city to the irresistible power of the alienated deities. Augustine dedicated thirteen years to the completion of this work, which was for ever to determine A . D . 4 i 3 to this solemn question, and to silence the last murmurs of expiring Paganism. The City of God is at once the funeral oration of the ancient society and the gratulatory panegyric on the birth of the new. It acknowledged, it triumphed in the irrevocable fall of the Babylon of the West, the shrine of idolatry ; it hailed at the same time the universal dominion which awaited the new theocratic policy. The earthly city had undergone its predestined fate ; it had passed away with all its vices and superstitions, with all its virtues and its glories (for the soul of Augustine was not dead to the noble reminiscences of Roman greatness), with its false gods and its Heathen sacri- fices. Its doom was sealed, and for ever. But in its place had arisen the City of God, the Church of Christ; a new social system had emerged from the ashes of the old ; that system was founded by God, was ruled by divine laws, and had the divine promise of perpetuity. 186 AUGUSTINE. BOOK III. The first ten books of the City of God are devoted to the question of the connection between the prosperity and the religion of Home ; five of them to the influence of Paganism in this world; five to that in the world to come. Augustine appeals in the five first to the mercy shown by the conqueror as the triumph of Christianity. Had the Pagan Kadagaisus taken Home, not a life would have been spared, no place would have been sacred. The Christian Alaric had been checked and overawed by the sanctity of the Christian character and his respect for his Christian brethren. He denies that worldly prosperity is an unerring sign of the divine favour ; he denies the exemption of the older Romans from disgrace and distress, and recapitulates the crimes and the calamities of their history during their worship of their ancient gods. He ascribes their former glory to their valour, their frugality, their contempt of wealth, their fortitude, and their domestic virtues ; he assigns their vices, their frightful profligacy of manners, their pride, their luxury, their effeminacy, as the proximate causes of their ruin. Even in their ruin they could not forget their dissolute amusements ; the theatres of Carthage were crowded with the fugitives from Rome. In the five following books he examines the pretensions of Heathenism to secure felicity in the world to come ; he dismisses with contempt the old popular religion, but seems to consider the philosophic Theism, the mystic Platonism of the later period, a worthier anta- gonist. He puts forth all his subtlety and power in refutation of these tenets. The last twelve books place in contrast the origin, the pretensions, the fate, of the new city, that of God. He enters at large into the evidences of Christianity; he describes the sanctifying effects of the faith ; but HIS LIFE. 187 pours forth all the riches of his imagination and eloquence on the destinies of the church at the Resurrection. Augustine had no vision of the worldly power of the new city ; he foresaw not the spiritual empire of Rome which would replace the new fallen Rome of Heathenism. With him the triumph of Christianity is not complete till the world itself, not merely its outward framework of society and the con- stitution of its kingdoms, has experienced a total change. In the description of the final kingdom of Christ, he treads his way with great dexterity and address between the grosser notions of the Millenarians with their kingdom of earthly wealth, and power, and luxury (this he repudiates with devout abhorrence) ; and that finer and subtler spiritualism, which is ever approaching to Pantheism, and by the rejection of the bodily resurrection, renders the existence of the disem- bodied spirit too fine and impalpable for the general apprehension. The uneventful personal life of St. Augustine, at least, till towards its close, contrasts with that Life of of Ambrose and that of Chrysostom. After Augustine, the first throes and travail of his religious life, described with such dramatic fidelity in his Confessions, he subsided into a peaceful bishop in a remote and rather inconsiderable town. f He had not, like Ambrose, to interpose between rival Emperors, or to rule the conscience of the universal sovereign. He had not, like Chrysostom, to enter into a perilous conflict with the vices of a capital and the intrigues of a court. Forced by the devout admiration of the people to assume the { He was thirty-five before he was ordained presbyter, A.D. .389 : he was chosen coadjutor to the Bishop of Hippo, A.D. 395. 188 AUGUSTINE. BOOK III. episcopate in the city of Hippo, he was faithful to his first bride, his earliest, though humble, see. Not that his life was that of contemplative inactivity, or tranquil literary exertion; his personal conferences with the leaders of the Donatists, the Manicheans, the Arians, and Pelagians, and his presence in the councils of Carthage, displayed his power of dealing with men. His letter to Count Boniface showed that he was not unconcerned with the public affairs, and his former connection with Boniface, who at one time had expressed his determination to embrace the monastic life, might warrant his remonstrance against the fatal revolt which involved Boniface and Africa in ruin. At the close of his comparatively peaceful life, Augustine was exposed to the trial of his severe and lofty principles. His faith and his superiority to the world were brought to the test in the fearful calamities which desolated the whole African province. No part of the empire had so long escaped; no part was so fearfully visited, as Africa by the invasion of the Vandals. The once prosperous and fruitful region presented to the view only ruined cities, burning villages, a population thinned by the sword, bowed to slavery, and exposed to every kind of torture and mutilation. With these fierce barbarians, the awful presence of Christianity imposed no respect. The churches were not exempt from the general ruin, nor the bishops and clergy from cruelty and death, nor the dedicated virgins from worse than death. In many places the services of religion entirely ceased from the extermination of the worshippers or the flight of the priests. To Augustine, as the supreme authority in matters of faith or conduct, was submitted the grave question of the course to be pursued by the clergy ; CHAP. X. HIS DEATH. 189 whether they were to seek their own security or to confront the sword of the ravager. The advice of Augustine was at once lofty and discreet. Where the flock remained it was cowardice, it was impiety, in the clergy to desert them and to deprive them in those disastrous times of the consolatory offices of religion, their childern of baptism, themselves of the holy Eu- charist. But where the priest was an especial object of persecution and his place might be supplied by another ; where the flock was massacred or dispersed or had aban- doned their homes, the clergy might follow them, and if possible, provide for their own security. Augustine did not fall below his own high notions of Christian, of episcopal duty. When the Vandal army gathered around Hippo, one of the few cities which still afforded a refuge for the persecuted provincials, he refused, though more than seventy years old, to abandon his post. In the third month of the siege he was released by death, and escaped the horrors of the capture, the cruelties of the conqueror, and the desolation of his church. g s In the life of Augustine, I have chiefly consulted that prefixed to his works, and Tillcmout, witn the passages in his Confessions and Epistles, 190 JEROME. BOOK III. CHAPTER XL Jerome. The Monastic System. THOUGH not so directly or magisterially dominant over the Christianity of the West, the influence of Jerome. i . n -it Jerome has been of scarcely less importance than that of Augustine. Jerome was the connecting link between the East and the West ; through him, as it were, passed over into the Latin hemisphere of Christendom that which was still necessary for its permanence and independence during the succeeding ages. The time of separation approached, when the Eastern and Western empires, the Latin and the Greek languages, were to divide the world. Western Chris- tianity was to form an entirely separate system. The different nations and kingdoms which were to arise out of the wreck of the Roman empire were to maintain, each its national church, but there was to be a perma- nent centre of unity in that of Rome, considered as the common parent and federal head of Western Christen- dom. But before this vast and silent revolution took place, certain preparatives, in which Jerome was chiefly instrumental, gave strength, and harmony, and vitality to the religion of the West, from which the precious inheritance has been secured to modern Europe. The two leading transactions in which Jerome took the effective part, were 1st, the introduction, or at least the general reception, of Monachism in the West ; 2nd, the establishment of an authoritative and univer- sally recognised version of the sacred writings into the CHAP. XL JEROME. 191 Latin language. For both these important services, Jerome qualified himself by his visits to the East. He was probably the first occidental (though born in Dal- matia, he may be almost considered a Roman, having passed all his youth in that city) who became completely naturalised and domiciliated in Judsea : and his example, though it did not originate, strengthened to an extra- ordinary degree the passion for pilgrimages to the Holy Land; a sentiment in later times productive of such vast and unexpected results. In the earlier period, the repeated devastations of that devoted country, and still more its occupation by the Jews, had overpowered the natural veneration of the Christians for the scene of the life and sufferings of the Redeemer. It was an accursed rather than a holy region, desecrated by the presence of the murderers of the Lord, rather than endeared by the reminiscences of his personal ministry and expiatory death. The total ruin of the Jews, and their expulsion from Jerusalem by Hadrian ; their dis- persion into other lands, with the simultaneous progress of Christianity in Palestine, and their settlement in yElia, the Roman Jerusalem, notwithstanding the pro- fanation of that city by idolatrous emblems, allowed those more gentle and sacred feelings to grow up in strength and silence.* Already, before the time of Jerome, pilgrims had flowed from all quarters of the Augustine asserts that the whole vorld flocked to Bethlehem to see the place of Christ's nativity, t. i. p. 561. Pilgrimages, according to him, were undertaken to Arabia, to see the dung- heap on which Job sat. t. ii. p. 59. For 180 years, according to Jerome, from Hadrian to Constantine, the statue of Jupiter occupied the place of the resurrection, and a statue of Venus was worshipped on the rock of Calvary. But as the object of Hadrian was to insult the Jewish, not the Christian, religion, it seems not very credible that these two sites should be chosen for the Heathen temples. Hieronym. Oper. Epist. xlix. p. 505. 192 JEROME. BOOK III world ; and during his life, whoever had attained to any proficiency in religion, in Gaul, or in the secluded island of Britain, was eager to obtain a personal know- ledge of these hallowed places. They were met by strangers from Armenia, Persia, India (the Southern Arabia), ^Ethiopia, the countless monks of Egypt, and from the whole of Western Asia. b Yet Jerome was, no doubt, the most influential pilgrim to the Holy Land ; the increasing and general desire to visit the soil printed, as it were, with the footsteps, and moist with the re- deeming blood of the Saviour, may be traced to his writings, which opened as it were a constant and easy communicationj and established an intercourse, more or less regularly maintained, between Western Europe and Palestine. b Quicunque in Gallia fuerat pri- mus hue properat. Divisus ab orbe nostro Britannus, si in religione pro- cesserit, occiduo sole diraisso, quarit locum t'ama sibi tantum, et Scriptura- rum relatione cognitum. Quid vefe- ramus Armenios, quid Persas, quid Indise, quid ^Ethiopia: populos, ipsam- que juxta jEgyptum, fertilem mona- chorum, Pontum et Cappadociam, Syriam, Cretam, et Mesopotamiam cunctaque orientis examina. This is the letter of a Roman female, Paula. Hieronym. Oper. Epist. xliv. p. 551. e See the glowing description of all the religious wonders in the Holy Land in the Epitaphium Paulse. An epistle, however, of Gregory of Nyssa strongly remonstrates against pil- grim;'.ges to the Holy Land, even from Cappadocia. He urges the dangers and suspicions to which pious recluses, especially women, would be ubject with male attendants, either strangers or friends, on a lonely road ; the dissolute words and sights wmch may be unavoidable in the inns ; the dangers of robbery and violence in the Holy Land itself, of the moral state of which he draws a fearful picture. He asserts the religions superiority of Cappadocia, which had more churches than any part of the world ; and inquires, in plain terms, whether a man will believe the virgin birth of Christ the more by seeiitg Bethlehem, or his resurrection by visiting his tomb, or his ascension by standing on the Mount of Olives. Greg. Nyss. de eunt. Hieros. The authenticity of this epistle is indeed contested by Roman Catholic writers ; but I can see no internal evidence against its genuineness. Je- rome's more sober letter to Pan linns, Epist. xxix. vol. iv. p. 563., should also be compared. CHAP. XL THE MONASTIC SYSTEM. 193 But besides this subordinate, if indeed subordinate, effect of Jerome's peculiar position between the East and West, he was thence both incited and enabled to accomplish his more immediately influential under- takings. In Palestine and in Egypt, Jerome became himself deeply imbued with the spirit of Monachism, and laboured with all his zeal to awaken the more tardy West to rival Egypt and Syria in displaying this sublime perfection of Christianity. By his letters, des- criptive of the purity, the sancity, the total estrangement from the deceitful world in these blessed retirements, he kindled the holy emulation, especially of the females, in Eome. Matrons and virgins of patrician families embraced with contagious fervour the monastic life ; and though the populous districts in the neighbourhood of the metropolis were not equally favourable for retreat, yet they attempted to practise the rigid observances of the desert in the midst of the busy metropolis. For the second of his great achievements, the version of the sacred Scriptures, Jerome derived inestimable advantages, and acquired unprecedented authority, by his intercourse with the East. His residence in Pales- tine familiarised him with the language and peculiar habits of the sacred writers. He was the first Christian writer of note who thought it worth while to study Hebrew. Nor was it the language alone ; the customs, the topography, the traditions, of Palestine were care- fully collected, and applied by Jerome, if not always with the soundest judgement, yet occasionally with great felicity and success to the illustration of the sacred writings. The influence of Monachism upon the manners, opi- nions, and general character of Christianity, as well as that of the Vulgate translation of the Bible, not only VOL. III. O 194 MONACHISM CCENOB1TISM. BOOK III. on the religion, but on the literature of Europe, appear to demand a more extensive investigation ; and Munachism. _ . c as Jerome, it not the representative, was the great propagator of Monachism in the West, and as about this time this form of Christianity overshadowed and dominated throughout the whole of Christendom, it will be a fit occasion, although I have in former parts of tins work not been able altogether to avoid it, to develope more fully its origin and principles. It is singular to see this oriental influence succes- sively enslaving two religions in their origin and in their genius so totally opposite to Monachism as Chris- tianity and the religion of Mohammed. Both gradually and unreluctaiitly yield to the slow and inevitable change. Christianity, with very slight authority from the precepts, and none from the practice of the Author and first teachers of the faith, admitted this without inquiry as the perfection and consummation of its own theory. Its advocates and their willing auditors equally forgot that if Christ and his apostles had retired into the desert, Christianity would never have spread beyond the wilderness of Judaea. The transformation which afterwards took place of the fierce Arab marauder, or the proselyte to the martial creed of the Koran, into a dreamy dervish, was hardly more violent and complete, than that of the disciple of the great example of Chris- tian virtue, or of the active and popular Paul, into a solitary anchorite. Still that which might appear most adverse to the universal dissemination of Christianity eveu- Coenobitism. tually tended to its entire and permanent in- corporation with the whole of society. When Eremitism gave place to Coenobitism; when the hermitage grew up into a convent, the establishment of these religious CHAP. XI. ORIGIN OF MONACHISM. 195 fraternities in the wildest solitudes gathered round them a Christian community, or spread, as it were, a gradually increasing belt of Christian worship, which was maintained by the spiritual services of the monks. The monks, though not generally ordained as ecclesi- astics, furnished a constant supply for ordination. In this manner, the rural districts, which, in most parts, long after Christianity had gained the predominance in the towns, remained attached by undisturbed habit to the ancient superstition, were slowly brought within the pale of the religion. The monastic communities com- menced, in the more remote and less populous districts of the Koman world, that ameliorating change which, at later times, they carried on beyond the frontiers. As afterwards they introduced civilisation and Chris- tianity among the barbarous tribes of North Germany or Poland, so now they continued in all parts a quiet but successful aggression on the lurking Paganism. Monachism was the natural result of the incorporation of Christianity with the prevalent opinions of Mgiri of mankind, and in part of the state of profound Monachism - excitement into which it had thrown the human mind. We have traced the universal predominance of the great principle, the inherent evil of matter. This primary tenet, as well of the Eastern religions as of the Pla- tonism of the West, coincided with the somewhat ambi- guous use of the term " world " in the sacred writings. Both were alike the irreclaimable domain of the Adver- sary of good. The importance assumed by the soul, now through Christianity become profoundly conscious of its immortality, tended to the same end. The deep and serious solicitude for the fate of that everlasting part of our being, the concentration of all its energies on its own individual welfare, withdrew it entirely o2 19ti ORIGIN OF MONACHISM. BOOK 111. within itself. A kind of sublime selfishness excluded all subordinate considerations.* 1 The only security against the corruption which environed it on all sides seemed entire alienation from the contagion of matter ; the constant mortification, the extinction, if possible, of those senses which were necessarily keeping up a dan- gerous and treasonable correspondence with the external universe. On the other hand, entire estrangement from the rest of mankind, included in the proscribed and in- fectious world, appeared no less indispensable. Com- munion with God alone was at once the sole refuge and perfection of the abstracted spirit ; prayer the sole unendangered occupation, alternating only with that coarse industry which might give employment to the refractory members, and provide that scanty sustenance required by the inalienable infirmity of corporeal exist- ence. The fears and the hopes were equally wrought upon the fear of defilement and consequently of eternal perdition ; the hope of attaining the serene enjoyment of the divine presence in the life to come. If any thought of love to mankind, as an unquestionable duty entailed by Christian brotherhood, intruded on the iso- lated being, thus labouring on the single object, his own spiritual perfection, it found a vent in prayer for their happiness, which excused all more active or effective benevolence. d It is remarkable how rarely, if ever (I cannot call to mind an in- stance), in the discussions on the comparative merits of marriage and celibacy, the social advantages appear to have occurred to the mind ; the benefit to mankind of raising up a race born from Christian parents and brought up in Christian principles. It is always argued with relation to the interests and the perfection of the individual soul ; and even with regard to that, the writers seem almost un- conscious of the softening and human- ising effect of the natural affections, the beauty of parental tenderness and filial love. CHAP. XI. CELIBACY. 197 On both principles, of course, marriage was inexorably condemned. 6 Some expressions in the writings of St. Paul, f and emulation of the Gnostic sects, combining with these general sentiments, had very early raised celibacy into the highest of Christian virtues: marriage was a necessary evil, an inevitable infirmity of the weaker brethren. With the more rational and earlier writers, Cyprian, Athanasius, and even in occasional passages in Ambrose or Augustine, it had its own high and peculiar excellence; but even with them, virginity, the absolute estrangement from all sensual indulgence, was the transcendant virtue, the pre-assumption of the angelic state, the approximation to the beatified existence. 6 There is a sensible and judicious book, entitled " Die Einfiihrung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit bei den Christlichen Geistlichen und ihre Folge," von J. A. und Aug. Theiner, Altenburg, 1828, which enters fully into the origin and consequences of celibacy in the whole church. This is an early work of Theiner, now become a Koman Catholic, and labour- ing in the library of the Vatican, as the Continuator of Baronius. * I agree with Theiner (p. 24) in considering these precepts local and temporary, relating to the especial circumstances of those whom St. Paul addressed. e The general tone was that of the vehement Jerome. There must not only be vessels of gold and silver, but of wood and earthenware. This con- temptuous admission of the necessity of the married life distinguished the oithodox from the Manichean, the Montanist, and the Encratite. Jerom. adv. Jovin. p. 146. The sentiments of the Fathers on marriage and virginity may be thus briefly stated. I am not speaking with reference to the marriage of the clergy, which will be considered here- after. The earlier writers, when they are contending with the Gnostics, though they elevate virginity above marriage, speak very strongly on the folly, and even the impiety, of prohibiting or disparaging lawful wedlock. They acknowledge and urge the admitted fact that several of the Apostles were married. This is the tone of Ignatius (Cotel. Pat. Apost. ii. 77), of Ter- tullian (licebat et Apostolis nubere et uxores circumducere. De Exhort. Castit.), above all, of Clement of Alexandria. In the time of Cyprian, vows of virginity were not irrevocable. Si 198 CAUSES WHICH TENDED BOOK III. Every thing conspired to promote, nothing remained causes which to counteract, this powerful impulse. In the East this seclusion from the world was by no means uncommon. Even among the busy and restless Greeks some of the philosophers had asserted the privilege of wisdom to stand aloof from the rest of mankind; the question of the superior excellence of the active or the contemplative life had been agitated on equal terms. But in some regions of the East, the sultry and oppressive heats, the general relaxation of the physical system, dispose constitutions of a certain temperament to a dreamy inertness. The indolence and prostration of the body produce a kind of activity in the mind, if that may properly be called activity which is merely giving loose to the imagination and the autem perseverare nolunt, vel non possunt, melius est ut nubant, quam in ignem delictis suis cadant. Epist. 62. And his general language, more particularly his tract de Habitu Vir- ginum, implies that strong discipline was necessary to restrain the dedicated virgins fiom the vanities of the world. But in the fourth century the eloquent Fathers vie with each other in exalting the transcendant, holy, angelic virtue of virginity. Every one of the more distinguished writers, Basil, the two Gregories, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostum, has a treatise or treatises upon virginity, on which he expands with all the glowing lan- guage which he can command. It became a common doctrine that sexual intercourse was the sign and the con- sequence of the Fall ; they forgot that the command to " increase and mul- tiply" is placed in the Book of Genesis (i. 28) before the Fall. We have before (p. 199) quoted passages from Greg, of N;izi;mznm. Gregory of Nyssa says, T)$OIJ) Si airdrTjs tyyivofiftrri TTJS fKirr claustra, velut in portu fidissirao valeat cou- tineri. Cassian. Instit. ii. 13. 200 ANCHORITES ESSENES. BOOK III. tion of the different persons in the Godhead to each other, seemed the only worthy objects of man's contem- plative faculties. If the soul never aspired to that Pantheistic union with the spiritual essence of being which is the supreme ambition of the higher Indian mysticism, their theory seemed to promise a sublime estrangement from all sublunary things, an occupation for the spirit, already, as it were, disembodied and immaterialised by its complete concentration on the Deity. In Syria and in Egypt, as well as in the remoter East, the example had already been set both of solitary retirement and of religious communities. The Jews had both their hermitages and their cceuobitic institu- tions. Anchorites swarmed in the deserts near the Dead Sea ; ' and the Essenes, in the same district, and the Egyptian Therapeutae, were strictly analogous to the Christian monastic establishments. In the neigh- bourhood of many of the Eastern cities were dreary and dismal wastes, incapable of, or unimproved by, cultiva- tion, which seemed to allure the enthusiast to abandon the haunts of men and the vices of society. Egypt especially, where everything excessive and extravagant found its birth or ripened with unexampled vigour, seemed formed for the encouragement of the wildest anchoritism. It is a long narrow valley, closed in on each side by craggy or by sandy deserts. The rocks were pierced either with natural caverns, or hollowed out by the hand of man into long subterranean cells and galleries for various uses, either of life, or of super- stition, or of sepulture. The Christian, sometimes driven out by persecution (for persecution no doubt 1 Josephi Vita. CHAP. XI. ANTONY. 201 Antony. greatly contributed to people these solitudes),* or prompted by religious feelings to fly from the face of man, found himself, with no violent effort, in a dead and voiceless wilderness, under a climate which required no other shelter than the ceiling of the rock-hewn cave, and where actual sustenance might be obtained with little difficulty. St. Antony is sometimes described as the founder of the monastic life ; it is clear, however, that he only imitated and excelled the example of less famous anchorites. But he may fairly be considered as its representative. . Antony m was born of Christian parents, bred up in the faith, and before he was twenty years old, found himself master of considerable wealth, and charged with the care of a younger sister. He was a youth of ardent imagination, vehement impulses, and so imperfectly educated as to be acquainted with no language but his native Egyptian. 11 A constant attendant on Christian worship, he had long looked back with admiration on those primitive times when the Christians laid all their worldly goods at the feet of the Apostles. One day he heard the sentence, " Go, sell all thou hast, and give to the poor, .... and come, and follow me." It seemed personally addressed to himself by the voice of God. He returned home, distributed his lands among his k Paul, the first Christian hermit, fled from persecution. Hieronym. Vit. Paul, p. 69. m The fact that the great Atha- nasius paused in his polemic warfare to write the life of Antony, may show the general admiration towards the monastic life. u Jerome claims the honour of being the first hermit for Paul, in the time of Decius or Valerian, (Vit. Paul. p. 68); but the whole life of Paul, and the visit of Antony to him, read like religious romance ; and, it appears from the preface of Jerome to the Life of Hilarion, did not find implicit credit in his own day. 202 ANTONY. BOOK III neighbours, sold his furniture and other effects, except a small sum reserved for his sister, whom he placed under the care of some pious Christian virgins. Another text, " Take no thought for the morrow," transpierced his heart, and seat him forth for ever from the society of men. He found an aged solitary, who dwelt without the city. He was seized with pious emulation, and from that time devoted himself to the severest asceticism. There was still, however, something gentle and humane about the asceticism of Antony. His retreat (if we may trust the romantic life of St. Hilarion, in the works of St. Jerome), was by no means of the horrid and savage character affected by some other recluses : it was at the foot of a high and rocky mountain, from which welled forth a stream of limpid water, bordered by palms, which afforded an agreeable shade. Antony had planted this pleasant spot with vines and shrubs ; there was an enclosure for fruit trees and vegetables, and a tank from which the labour of Anthony irrigated his garden. His conduct and character seemed to partake of this less stern and gloomy tendency. He visited the most distinguished anchorites, but only to observe, that he might imitate, the peculiar virtue of each ; the gentle disposition of one ; the constancy of prayer in another; the kindness, the patience, the industry, the vigils, the macerations, the love of study, the passionate contemplation of the Deity, the charity towards man- kind. It was his devout ambition to equal or transcend each in his particular austerity or distinctive excellence. But man does not violate nature with impunity ; the solitary state had its passions, its infirmities, its perils. The hermit could fly from his fellow men, but not from Vita St. Hilarion. p. 85. CHAP. XI. DJSMONOLOGY. 203 himself. The vehement and fervid temperament which drove him into the desert was not subdued: , f -i 1 AM. Dsemonology. it found new ways ot giving loose to its sup- pressed impulses. The self-centred imagination began to people the desert with worse enemies than mankind. Dsemonology, in all its multiplied forms, was now an established part of the Christian creed, and embraced with the greatest ardour by men in such a state of reli- gious excitement as to turn hermits. The trials, the temptations, the agonies, were felt and described as per- sonal conflicts with hosts of impure, malignant, furious, fiends. In the desert, these beings took visible form and substance ; in the day-dreams of profound religious meditation, in the visions of the agitated and exhausted spirit, they were undiscernible from reality. p It is im- possible, in the wild legends which became an essential part of Christian literature, to decide how much is the disordered imagination of the saint, the self-deception of the credulous, or the fiction of the zealous writer. The very effort to suppress certain feelings has a natural tendency to awaken and strengthen them. The horror of carnal indulgence would not permit the sensual desires to die away into apathy. Men are apt to find what they seek in their own hearts, and by anxiously searching for the guilt of lurking lust, or desire cf worldly wealth or enjoyment, the conscience, as it were, struck forcibly upon the chord which it wished to deaden, and made it vibrate with a kind of morbid, but more than ordinary, energy. Nothing was so licentious or so terrible as not to find its way to the cell of the recluse. Beautiful women danced around him; wild beasts of every shape, and monsters with no shape at all, howled Compare Jerome's Life of St. Hilarion, p. 76. 204 D^MONOLOGY. BOOK III. and yelled and shrieked about him, while he knelt in prayer, or snatched his broken slumbers. " Oh how often in the desert," says Jerome, " in that vast solitude, which, parched by the sultry sun, affords a dwelling to the monks, did I fancy myself in the midst of the luxuries of Rome. I sat alone ; for I was full of bitter- ness. My misshapen limbs were rough with sackcloth; and my skin was so squalid that I might have been taken for a negro. Tears and groans were my occu- pation every day, and all day ; if sleep surprised me unawares, my naked bones, which scarcely held toge- ther, clashed on the earth. I will say nothing of my food or beverage : even the rich have nothing but cold water ; any warm driuk is a luxury. Yet even I, who for the fear of hell had condemned myself to this dun- geon, the companion only of scorpions and wild beasts, was in the midst of girls dancing. My face was pale with fasting, but the mind in my cold body burned with desires ; the fires of lust boiled up in the body, which was already dead. Destitute of all succour, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus, washed them with my tears, dried them with my hair, and subdued the rebellious flesh by a whole week's fasting." After describing the wild scenes into which he fled, the deep glens and shaggy precipices, "The Lord is my witness," he concludes; " sometimes I appeared to be present among the angelic hosts, and sang, ' We will haste after thee for the sweet savour of thy ointments.' " q For at times, on the other hand, gentle and more than human voices were heard consoling the constant and devout recluse ; and some- times the baffled daemon would humbly acknowledge himself to be rebuked before the hermit. But this was 1 Song of Solomon. Hieronym. Epist. xxii. CHAP. XL SELF-TORTURE. 205 in general after a fearful struggle. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. The severest pain could alone subdue or distract the refractory desires .,.,-,--,- . . Self-torture. or the preoccupied mind. Human invention was exhausted in self-inflicted torments. The Indian faquir was rivalled in the variety of distorted postures and of agonising exercises. Some lived in clefts and oaves ; some in huts, into which the light of day could not penetrate ; some hung huge weights to their arms, necks, or loins ; some confined themselves in cages ; some on the tops of mountains, exposed to the sun and weather. The most celebrated hermit at length for life condemned himself to stand in a fiery climate, on the narrow top of a pillar/ Nor were these always rude or uneducated fanatics. St. Arsenius had filled, and with universal respect, the dignified post of tutor to the Emperor Arcadius. But Arsenius became an hermit ; and, among other things, it is related of him, that, em- ploying himself in the common occupation of the Egyp- tian monks, weaving baskets of palm-leaves, he changed only once a year the water in which the leaves were moistened. The smell of the foetid water was a just penalty for the perfumes which he had inhaled during his worldly life. Even sleep was a sin ; an hour's un- * The language of Evagrius (H. E. i. 13) about Simeon vividly expresses the effect which he made on his own age. " Rivalling, while yet in the flesh, the conversation of angels, he withdrew himself from all earthly things, and doing violence to nature, which always has a downward ten- dency, he aspired after that which is on high ; and standing midway between uarth and heaven, he had communion with God, and glorified God with the angels ; from the earth offering sup- plications (irpefffiflas irpoa-yoiv) as an ambassador to God ; bringing down from heaven to men the divine bless- ing." The influence of the most holy martyr in the air (Tra.va.yiov KO\ atpiov fj.dpTvpos) on political affairs, lies beyond the range of the present history. 206 SELF-TORrURE. BOOK III. broken slumber was sufficient for a monk. On Saturday evening, Arsenius lay down with his back to the setting sun, and continued awake, in fervent prayer, till the rising sun shone on his eyes; 8 so far had Christianity departed from its humane and benevolent and social simplicity. It may be a curious question how far enthusiasm repays its votaries as far as the individual is concerned ; in what degree these self-inflicted tortures added to or diminished the real happiness of man ; how far these privations and bodily sufferings, which to the cool and unexcited reason appear intolerable, either themselves produced a callous insensibility, or were met by apathy arising out of the strong counter-excitement of the mind ; to what extent, if still felt in unmitigated anguish, they were compensated by inward complacency from the conscious fulfilment of religious duty ; the stern satis- faction of the will at its triumph over nature ; the ele- vation of mind from the consciousness of the great object in view, or the ecstatic pre-enjoyment of certain reward. In some instances, they might derive some recompense from the respect, veneration, almost adora- tion, of men. Emperors visited the cells of these ignorant, perhaps superstitious, fanatics, revered them as oracles, and conducted th.e affairs of empire by their advice. The great Theodosius is said to have consulted John the Solitary on the issue of the war with Eugenius. 1 His feeble successors followed faithfully the example of his superstition. Antony appeared at the juncture most favourable for the acceptance of his monastic tenets." His fame and Compare Fleury, . 1, 2. * E\agr. Vit. St. Paul, c. 1. Theo- doret, v 24. See Flechier, Vie de Theodose, iv. 43. a Hujus vita auctor Paulus, illus- trator Antoniui. Jerom. p. 46. CHAP. XI. INFLUENCE OF ANTONY. 207 his example tended still further to disseminate the spreading contagion. In every part the desert i nflnenc e O f began to swarm with anchorites, who found it AntoQ y- difficult to remain alone. Some sought out the most retired chambers of the ancient cemeteries ; some those narrow spots which remained above water during the inundations, and saw with pleasure the tide arise which was to render them unapproachable to their fellow- creatures. But in all parts the determined solitary found himself constantly obliged to recede farther and farther ; he could scarcely find a retreat so dismal, a cavern so profound, a rock so inaccessible, but that he would be pressed upon by some zealous competitor or invaded by the humble veneration of some disciple. It is extraordinary to observe this infringement on the social system of Christianity, this disconnecting principle, which, pushed to excess, might appear fatal to that organisation in which so much of the strength of Christianity consisted, gradually self- expanding into a new source of power and energy, so wonderfully adapted to the age. The desire of the anchorite to isolate him- self in unendangered seclusion was constantly balanced and corrected by the holy zeal or involuntary tendency to proselytism. The farther the saint retired from the habitations of men, the brighter and more attractive became the light of his sanctity ; the more he concealed himself, the more was he sought out by a multitude of admiring and emulous followers. Each built or occupied his cell in the hallowed neighbourhood. A monastery was thus imperceptibly formed around the hermitage ; and nothing was requisite to the incorporation of a regular community, but the formation of rules for com- mon intercourse, stated meetings for worship, and something of uniformity in dress, food, and daily occu- 208 C(ENOBITIC ESTABLISHMENTS. BOOK III. pations. Some monastic establishments were no doubt formed at once, in imitation of the Jewish Therapeutae ; but many of the more celebrated Egyptian establishments gathered, as it were, around the central cell of an Antony or a Pachomius.* Something like an uniformity of usage appears to have Cosnobitic prevailed in the Egyptian monasteries. The establish- * OJ r menu. brothers were dressed, after the fashion of the country, in long linen tunics, with a woollen girdle, a cloak, and over it a sheep-skin. They usually went barefooted, but at certain very cold or very parching seasons, they wore a kind of sandal. They did not wear the hair-cloth. y Their food was bread and water ; their luxuries, occasionally a little oil or salt, a few olives, peas, or a single fig : they ate in perfect silence, each decury by itself. They were bound to strict obedience to their superiors ; they were divided into decuries and centenaries, over whom the decurions and centurions presided : each had his separate cell. 2 The furniture of their cells was a mat of palm-leaves and a bundle of the papyrus, which served for a pillow by night and a seat by day. Every evening and every night they were summoned to prayer by the sound of a horn. At each meeting were sung twelve psalms, pointed out, it was believed, by an angel. On certain occasions, lessons * Pachomius was, strictly speaking, women assumed it. Epitaph. Paula:, the founder of the coenobitic establish- p. 678. Cassian is inclined to think ments in Egypt ; Eustathius in Ar- it often a sign of pride. Instit. i. 3. menia ; Basil in Asia. Pacliomius x The accounts of Jerome (in had 1400 monks in his establishment; Eustochium, p. 45) and of Cassian 7000 acknowledged his jurisdiction. < are blended. There is some difference 1 Jerome speaks of the cilicium as as to the hours of meeting for pi-avers, common among the Syrian monks, but probably the cccnobitic institutes with whom he lived. Epist. i. Hor- differed as to that and on some point* rent saeco membra deformi. Even of diet. CHAP. XI. CCENOBITIC ESTABLISHMENTS. 209 were read from the Old or New Testament. The assembly preserved total silence ; nothing was heard but the voice of the chanter or reader. No one dared even to look at another. The tears of the audience alone, or if he spoke of the joys of eternal beatitude, a gentle murmur of hope, was the only sound which broke the stillness of the auditory. At the close of each psalm, the whole assembly prostrated itself in mute adoration/ In every part of Egypt, from the Cataracts to the Delta, the whole land was bordered by these communities ; there were 5000 cosnobites in the desert of Nitria alone ; b the total number of male anchorites and monks was estimated at 76,000 ; the females at 27,700. Parts of Syria were, perhaps, scarcely less densely peopled with ascetics. Cappadocia and the provinces bordering on Persia boasted of numerous communities, as well as Asia Minor and the eastern parts of Europe. Though the monastic spirit was in its full power, the establish- ment of regular communities in Italy must be reserved for Benedict of Nursia, and lies beyond the bounds of our present history. The enthusiasm pervaded all orders. Men of rank, of family, of wealth, of education, suddenly changed the luxurious palace for the howling wilderness, the flatteries of men for the total silence of the desert. They voluntarily abandoned their estates, Tantum a cunctis praebetur silen- tium, ut cum in unum tain numerosa fratrum multitude conveniat, praeter ilium, qui consurgens psalmum decantat in medio, uullus hominum penitus adesse credatur. No one was heard to spit, to sneeze, to cough, or to yawn there was not even a sigh or a groan nisi forte; base quse per ex- cessum mentis claustra oris effugerit, VOL. III. quaoque msensibiliter oordi obrepserit, immoderate scilicet atque intolerabili spiritus fervore succenso, dum ea qua; ignita mens in semetips& non praevalet continere, per ineffabilem quendam gemitum pectoris sui conclavibus eva- porare conatur. Cassian. Instit. ii. 10. b Jerom. ad Eustoch. p. 44, 210 DANGERS OF (XENOBITISM. BOOK III their connections, their worldly prospects. The desire of fame, of power, of influence, which might now swell the ranks of the ecclesiastics, had no concern in their sacrifice. Multitudes must have perished without the least knowledge of their virtues or their fate transpiring in the world. Few could obtain or hope to obtain the honour of canonisation, or that celebrity which Jerome promises to his friend Blesilla, to live not merely in heaven, but in the memory of man ; to be consecrated to immortality by his writings. But the ccenobitic establishments had their dangers Dangers of no I GSS than the cell of the solitary hermit. ccenobitism. jjggideg those consequences of seclusion from the world, the natural results of confinement in this close separation from mankind and this austere discharge of stated duties, were too often found to be the proscription of human knowledge and the extinction of human sym- pathies. Christian wisdom and Christian humanity could find no place in their unsocial system. A morose, and sullen, and contemptuous ignorance could not but grow up where there was no communication \vith the rest of mankind, and the human understanding was rigidly confined to certain topics. The want of objects of natural affection could not but harden the heart; and those who, in their stern religious austerity are merciless to themselves, are apt to be mer- ciless to others : d their callous and insensible hearts have no sense of the exquisitely delicate and c Quae cum Christo vivit in coelis, in hominura quoque ore victura est. .... Nunquam in meis moritura est libris. Epist. xxiii. p. 60. d There is a cruel histoiy of an treated admission into a monastery. He had one little boy with him of eight years old. They were placed in separate cells, lest the father's heart should be softened and indisposed to abbot. Mucius, in Cassian. Mucius en- | total renunciation of all earthly joys, CHAP. XI. FANATICISM. 211 poignant feelings which arise out of the domestic affec- tions. Bigotry has always found its readiest and sternest executioners among those who have never known the charities of life. These fatal effects seem inherent consequences of Monasticism ; its votaries could not but degenerate from their lofty and sanctifying purposes. That which in one generation was sublime enthusiasm, in the next became sullen bigotry, or sometimes wrought the same individual into a stern forgetfulness not only of the vices and follies but of all the more generous and sacred feelings of humanity. In the coenobitic insti- J . . , Fanaticism. tutes was added a strong corporate spirit, and a blind attachment to their own opinions, which were identified with religion and the glory of God. The monks of Nitria, from simple and harmless enthusiasts, became ferocious bands of partisans ; instead of remain- ing aloof in jealous seclusion from the factions of the rest of the world, they rushed down armed into Alex- andria: what they considered a sacred cause inflamed and warranted a ferocity not surpassed by the turbulent and blood-thirsty rabble of that city. In- support of a favourite doctrine or in defence of a popular prelate, by the sight of his child. That he might still farther prove his Christian obedience!! and self-denial, the child was systematically neglected, dressed in rags, and so dirty, as to be disgust- ing to the father ; he was frequently beaten, to try whether it would force tears down the parent's squalid cheeks. "Nevertheless, for the love of Christ!!! and from the virtue of obedience, the heart of the father remained hard and unmoved ;" he thought little of his child's tears, only of his own humility and perfection. He at length was urged to show the last mark of his submission by throwing the child into the river. As if this was a command- ment of God, he seized the child, and " the work of faith and obedience " would have been accomplished, if the brethren had not interposed, " and, as it were, rescued the child from the waters." And Cassian relates this as an act of the highest religious heroism 1 Lib. iv. 27. p2 212 IGNORAXCfi-AXTHEOPOMOfirniSM. BOOK III. they did not consider that they were violating their own first principles, in yielding to all the savage passions, and mingling in the bloody strife of that world which they had abandoned. Total seclusion from mankind is as dangerous to enlightened religion as to Christian charity. We might have expected to find among those who separated them- selves from the world, to contemplate, undis- turbed, the nature and perfections of the Deity, in general, the purest and most spiritual notions of the Godhead. Those whose primary principle was dread of the corruption of matter would be the last coarsely to materialise their divinity. But those who could elevate their thoughts or could maintain them at this height, were but a small part of the vast numbers, whom the many-mingled motives of zeal, superstition, piety, pride, emulation, or distaste for the world, led into the desert. They required something more gross and palpable than the fine and subtle conception of a spiritual being. Superstition, not content with crowding the brain with imaginary figments, spread its darkening mists over the Deity himself. It was among the monks of Egypt that anthropomor- phism assumed its most vulgar and obstinate form. They would not be persuaded that the expressions in the sacred writings which ascribe human acts, and faculties, and passions to the Deity were to be under- stood as a condescension to the weakness of our nature ; they seemed disposed to compensate to themselves for the loss of human society by degrading the Deity, whom they professed to be their sole companion, to the like- ness of man. Imagination could not maintain its flight, and they could not summon reason, which they surren- dered with the rest of their dangerous freedom, to supply CHAP. XL ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 213 its place ; and generally superstition demanded and received the same implicit and resolute obedience as religion itself. Once having humanised the Deity, they could not be weaned from the object of then* worship. The great cause of quarrel between Theophilus, the Archbishop of Alexandria, and the monks of the ad- jacent establishments, was his vain attempt to enlighten them on those points to which they obstinately adhered, as the vital and essential part of their faith. Pride, moreover, is almost the necessary result of such distinctions as the monks drew between themselves and the rest of mankind ; and prejudice and obstinacy are the natural fruits of pride. Once having embraced opinions, however, as in this instance, contrary to their primary principles, small communities are with the utmost difficulty induced to surrender those tenets in which they support and strengthen each other by the general concurrence. The anthropomorphism of the Egyptian monks resisted alike argument and authority. The bitter and desperate remonstrance of the aged Serapion, when he was forced to surrender his anthro- pomorphic notions of the Deity, " i r ou have deprived me of my God," e shows not merely the degraded intel- lectual state of the monks of Egypt, but the incapacity of the mass of mankind to keep up such high-wrought and imaginative conceptions. Enthusiasm of any par- ticular kind wastes itself as soon as its votaries become numerous. It may hand down its lamp from individual to individual for many generations ; but when it would include a whole section of society, it substitutes some new incentive, strong party or corporate feeling habit, : Cassian Collat. x. 1. 214 GENERAL EFFECTS OF MONACHISM BOOK III. advantage, or the pride of exclusiveness, for its original disinterested zeal ; and can never for a long period adhere to its original principles. The effect of Monachism on Christianity, and on General society at large, was of a very mingled cha- nSm f multitude of cooks and other attendants on the splen- dour and indulgence of the conrt. k That which in Theodosius was the relaxation or the reward for military services, and the cares and agitations of an active administration, degenerated with his feeble sons into indolent and eifeminate luxury. The head of the empire became a secluded Asiatic despot. When, on rare occasions, Arcadius condescended to reveal to the public the majesty of the sovereign, he was pre- ceded by a vast multitude of attendants, dukes, tribunes, civil and military officers, their horses glittering with golden ornaments, with shields of gold, set with precious stones, and golden lances. They proclaimed the coming of the Emperor, and commanded the ignoble crowd to clear the streets before him. m The Emperor stood or reclined on a gorgeous chariot surrounded by his imme- diate attendants distinguished by shields with golden bosses set round with golden eyes, and drawn by white 1 Libanius, Epitaph. Julian, p. 565. j tions , and Miiller, in his treatise de k Zosimus, iv. 28. \ Genio, Moribus, et Luxu JEvi Theodo- m Montfaucon, in an essay in the ; siani, have collected the principal fea- last volume of the works of Chryso- ' tures of this picture, chiefly from stom, and in the twelfth vol. of the Chrysostom. Memoirs of the Academy of Inscrip- R 2 244 CQURT-SPLENDOUR. BOOK IV. mules with gilded trappings ; the chariot was set with precious stones, and golden fans vibrated with the move- ment, and cooled the air. The multitude contemplated at a distance the snow-white cushions, the silken car- pets with dragons enwoven upon them in rich colours. Those who were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the Emperor beheld his ears loaded with golden rings, liis arms with golden chains, his diadem set with gems of all hues, his purple robes, which with the diadem were reserved for the Emperor, in all their sutures em- broidered with precious stones. The wondering people, on their return to their homes, could talk of nothing but the splendour of the spectacle, the robes, the mules, the carpets, the size and splendour of the jewels. On his return to the palace, the Emperor walked on gold ; ships were employed with the express purpose of bring- ing gold dust n from remote provinces, which was strewn by the officious care of a host of attendants, so that the Emperor rarely set his foot on the bare pavement. The official aristocracy, which had succeeded to the Thearisto- hereditary patriciate of Rome, reflected in more moderate splendour, and less unap- proachable seclusion, the manners of the court. The chief civil offices were filled by men of ignoble birth, often eunuchs. These, by the prodigal display of their ill-acquired wealth, insulted the people, who admired, envied, and hated their arrogant state. The military officers, in the splendour of their trappings and accou- trements, vied with the gorgeousness of the court- favourites ; and even the barbarians, who began to force their way by their valour to these posts, in the capital caught the infection of luxury and pomp. As in all n X/><5 i develope- the sole magistracy 01 the new communities, mentofthe But it is not alone from the scantiness of power. authentic documents concerning the earliest Christian history, but from the inevitable nature of things, that the developement of the hierarchical power, as has already been partially shown, 1 was gradual and untrace- able. In the infant Christian community, we have seen that the chief teacher and the ruler, almost immediatelv. if not immediately, became the same person. It wa not so much that he was formally invested in authority, as that his advice, his guidance, his control, were sought on all occasions with timid diffidence, and obeyed with unhesitating submission. In the Christian, if it may be so said, the civil was merged in the religious being ; he abandoned willingly his rights as a citizen, almost tis a man, his independence of thought and action, in order to be taught conformity to the new doctrines which he * Book ii. cli. 4. 250 THE EPISCOPATE. BOOK IV. had embraced, and the new rule of life to which he had submitted himself. Community of sentiment, rather than any strict federal compact, was the primary bond of the Christian republic ; and this general sentiment, even prior, perhaps, to any formal nomination or ordina- tion, designated the heads and the subordinate rulers, the Bishops, the Presbyters, and the Deacons; and therefore, where all agreed, there was no question in whom resided the right of conferring the title." The simple ceremonial of " laying on of hands," wliich dedicated the individual for his especial function, ratified and gave its religious character to this popular election which took place by a kind of silent acclamation ; and without this sacred commission by the bishop, no one, from the earliest times of which we have any record, presumed, it should seem, to invest himself in the sacred office. 1 The civil and religious power of the hierarchy grew up side by side, or intertwined with each other, by the same spontaneous vital energy. Every thing in the primary formation of the communities tended to increase the power of their ecclesiastical superiors. The investi- ture of the blended teacher and ruler in a sacred, and at a The growth of the Christian hierarchy, and the general constitution of the Church, are developed with learning, candour, and moderation, by Planck, in his Geschichte der Christ- lich-Kirchlichea Verfassung. Hanover, 1803. x Gradually the admission to orders became a subject not merely of eccle- siastical, but of civil regulation. It has been observed that the decurion was prohibited from taking orders in order to obtain exemption from the duties of his station. Cod. Theod. ill. 1, 49. No slave, curialis, officer of the court, public debtor, procurator, or collector of the purple dye (murile- gulus), or one involved in business, might be ordained, or, if ordained, might be reclaimed to his former state. Cod. Theod. ix. 45, 3. This was a law of the close of the fourth century, A.D. 398. The Council of Illiberis had made a restriction that no freedman, whose patron was a Gentile, could be ordained ; he was still too much under control. Can. Izzx. CHAP. I. THE EPISCOPATE. 251 length in a sacerdotal character, the rigid separation of this sacred order from the mass of the believers, could not but arise out of the unavoidable developement of the religion. It was not their pride or ambition that withdrew them, but the reverence of the people which enshrined them in a separate sphere : they did not usurp or even assume their power and authority ; it was heaped upon them by the undoubting and prodigal con- fidence of the community. The hopes and fears of men would have forced this honour upon them, had they been humbly reluctant to accept it. Man, in his state of religious excitement, imperiously required some au- thorised interpreters of those mysterious revelations from heaven which he could read himself but imper- fectly and obscurely ; he felt the pressing necessity of a spiritual guide. The privileges and distinctions of the clergy, so far from being aggressions on his religious independence, were solemn responsibilities undertaken for the general benefit. The Christian commonalty, according to the general sentiment, could not have existed without them, nor could such necessary but grave functions be entrusted to casual or common hands. No individual felt himself safe, except under their superintendence. Their sole right of entering the sanctuary arose as much out of the awe of the people as out of their own self-invested holiness of character. The trembling veneration for the mysteries of the sacra- ment must by no means be considered as an artifice to exalt themselves as the sole guardians and depositaries of these blessings ; it was the genuine expression of their own profoundest feelings. If the clergy had not assumed the keys of heaven and hell ; if they had not appeared legitimately to possess the power of pro- nouncing the eternal destiny of man, of suspending or 252 THE EPISCOPATE. BOOK IV. excommunicating from those Christian privileges which were inseparably connected in Christian belief with the eternal sentence, or of absolving and readmitting into the pale of the Church and of salvation, among the mass of believers, the uncertainty, the terror, the agony of minds fully impressed with the conviction of their immortality, and yearning by every means to obtain the assurance of pardon and peace, with heaven and hell constantly before their eyes, and agitating their inmost being, would have been almost insupportable. However the clergy might exaggerate their powers, they could not ex- tend them beyond the ready acquiescence of the people They could not possess the power of absolving without that of condemning ; and men were content to brave the terrors of the gloomier award, for the indescribable consolations of confidence in their brighter and more ennobling promises. The change in the relative position of Christianity to the rest of the world tended to the advancement of the hierarchy. At first there was no necessity to guard the admission into the society with rigid or suspicious jealousy, since the profession of Christianity in the face of a hostile world was in itself almost a sufficient test of sincerity. Expulsion from the society, or a temporary exclusion from its privileges, which afterwards grew into the awful forms of interdict or excommunication, must Lave been extremely rare or unnecessary/ since he who 1 The case in St. Paul's Epistle to would not be permitted, to return into the Corinthians (I Cor. v. 5), which the bosom of the Jewish community, seems to have been the first of forcible which they had abandoned, and, if expulsion, was obviously an act of Apostolic authority. This, it is pro- bable, was a Jewish convert, and these persons stood in a peculiar posi- tion ; they would be ashamed, or expelled from the Christian Church, would be complete outcasts. Not so the Heathen apostate, who might one day leave, and the next return to his old religion with all its advantages. CHAP. I. ITS NECESSITY 253 could not endure the discipline, or who doubted again the doctrines of Christianity, had nothing to do but to abandon a despised sect and revert to the freedom of the world. The older and more numerous the com- munity, severer regulations were requisite for the ad- mission of members, the maintenance of order, of unity in doctrine, and propriety of conduct, as well as for the ejection of unworthy disciples. Men began to Expulsion or l ni. j.' I T A- excommuui- be Christians, not from personal conviction, cation, but from hereditary descent, as children of Christian parents. The Church was filled with doubtful converts, some from the love of novelty, others, when they in- curred less danger and obloquy, from less sincere faith ; some, no doubt, of the base and profligate, from the desire of partaking in the well-known charity of the Christians to their poorer brethren. Many became Christians, having just strength of mind enough to em- brace its tenets, but not to act up to its duties. A more severe investigation, therefore, became necessary for admission into the society, a more summary au- thority for the expulsion of improper membe rs. z These powers naturally devolved on the heads of the com- munity, who had either originally possessed, and trans > ' It is curious to find that both ecclesiastical and civil laws against apostasy were constantly necessary. The Council of Elvira readmits an apostate to communion, who has not worshipped idols, after ten years' penance. The laws of Gratian and Theodosius, and even of Arcadius and Valentiuian III., speak a more menacing language: the Christian who has be- come a Pagan forfeits the right of bequeathing by will his will is null and void. Cod. Theod. xvi. 7. 1, 22. A law of Valentinian II. inflicts the same penalty (only with some limita- tion) on apostates to Judaism or Manicheism. The laws of Arcadius and Valentinian III. prove, by the severity of their prohibitions, not only that cases of apostasy took place, but that sacrifices were still frequently offered. Cod. Theodos. xvi. tit. de Apostatis. 254 THE EPISCOPAL POWER. BOOK IV. mitted by regularly appointed descent, or held by general consent, the exclusive administration of the religious rites, the sacraments, which were the federal bonds of the community. Their strictly civil functions became likewise more extensive and important. All increase m legal disputes had, from the first, been sub- thelr civil ? , V. . influence. mitted to the religious magistracy, not as interpreters of the laws of the empire, but as best acquainted with the higher principles of natural justice and Christian equity. The religious heads of the com- munities were the supreme and universally recognised arbiters in all the transactions of life. When the magistrate became likewise a Christian, and the two communities were blended into one, considerable diffi- culty could not but arise, as we shall hereafter see, in the limits of their respective jurisdictions. But the magisterial or ruling part of the ecclesiastical function became thus more and more relatively import- ant ; government gradually became an affair of asserted superiority on one hand, of exacted submission on the other; but still the general voice would long be in favour of the constituted authorities. The episcopal power would be a mild, a constitutional, an unoppres- sive, and therefore unquestioned and unlimited sove- reignty ; for, in truth, in the earlier period, what was the bishop, and in a subordinate degree, the presbyter, or even the deacon ? He was the religious superior, elected by general acclamation, or at least, by general consent, as commanding that station by his unrivalled religious qualifications ; he was solemnly invested in his office by a religious ceremony; he was the supreme arbiter in such civil matters as occurred among the members of the body, and thus the conservator of peace ; he was the censor of morals, the minister in holy CHAP. I. THE PRIMITIVE BISHOP. 255 rites, the instructor in the doctrines of the faith, the adviser in all scruples, the consoler in all sorrows ; he was the champion of the truth ; in the hour of The bishop trial the first victim of persecution, the de- community, signated martyr. Of a being so sanctified, so ennobled to the thought, what jealous suspicion would arise, what power would be withholden from one whose commission would seem ratified by the Holy Spirit of God ? Power might generate ambition, distinction might be attended by pride, but the transition would not be perceived by the dazzled sight of respect, of reverence, of veneration, and of love. Above all, diversities of religious opinion would tend to increase the influence and the power of those who held the religious supremacy. It has been said, not without some authority, that the establishment of episcopacy in the Apo- power ' stolic times arose for the control of the differences with the Judaising converts. 3 The multitude of believers would take refuge under authority from the doubts and perplexities thus cast among them ; they would be grateful to men who would think for them, and in Avhom their confidence might seem to be justified by their station ; a formulary of faith for such persons would be the most acceptable boon to -the Christian society. This would be more particularly the case when, as in the Asiatic communities, these were not merely slight and unimportant, but vital points of difference. The Gnos- ticism, which the bishops of Asia Minor and of Syria had to combat, was not a Christian sect or heresy, but No doubt this kind of constant and of natural appeal to the supreme religious functionary must have mate- rially tended to strengthen and con- firm this power. See vol. ii. pa;;e 28, and note. 256 THE PRIMITIVE BISHOP. BOOK IV. another religion, although speaking in some degree Christian language. The justifiable alarm of these dan- gerous encroachments would induce the teachers and governors to assume a loftier and more dictatorial tone ; those untainted by the new opinions would vindicate and applaud their acknowledged champions and de- fenders. Hence we account for the strong language in the Epistles of Ignatius, which appears to claim the extraordinary rank of actual representatives, not merely of the Apostles, but of Christ himself, for the bishops, precisely in this character, as maintainers of the true Christian doctrine. b In the pseudo-Apostolic Const itu- b My own impression is decidedly in favour of the genuineness of these Epistles, the shorter ones I mean which are vindicated by Pearson ; nor do I suspect that these passages, which are too frequent, and too much in the style and spirit of the whole, are later interpolations. Certainly the fact of the existence of two different copies of these Epistles throws doubt on the genuineness of both ; but I receive them partly from an historical argu- ment, which I have suggested, vol. ii. p. 151, partly from internal evidence. Some of their expressions, e. g^ " Be ye subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ" (ad Trail, c. 2); "Follow your bishop as Jesus Christ the Father, the presbytery as the Apostles: re- verence the deacons as the ordinance of God " (ad Snayrn. c. 8) ; taken as detached sentences, and without regard to the figurative style and ardent man- ner of the writer, would seem so extra- ordinary a transition from the tone of the Apostles, as to throw still further doubts on the authenticity at least of these sentences. But it may be ob- served that in these strong expressions the object of the writer does not seem to be to raise the sacerdotal power, but rather to enforce Christian unity, with direct reference to these fatal differences of doctrine. In another passage he says, " Be ye subject to the bishop and to each other (T$ ktri- ffic6ir(f KCU &AA^A.o?), as Jesus Christ to the Father, and the Apostles to Christ, to the Father and to the Spirit." I cannot indeed understand the in- ference that all the language or tenets of Christians who may have heard the Apostles are to be considered of Apo- stolic authority. Ignatius was a vehe- ment and strongly figurative writer, very different in his tone, according to my judgement, to the Apostolic writ- ings. His eager desire for martyrdom, his deprecating the interference of the Roman Christians in his behalf, is re- markably at variance with the sober dignity with which the Apostles did not seek, but submitted to death. CHAP. I. CLERICAL USURPATIONS. 257 tions, which belong probably to the latter end of the third century, this more than Apostolic authority is sternly and unhesitatingly asserted. Thus, the separa- tion between the clergy and laity continually widened ; the teacher or ruler of the community became the dictator of doctrine, the successor, not of the bishop appointed by Apostolic authority,* 1 or according to Apostolic usage, but of the Apostle ; and at length took on himself a sacerdotal name and dignity. A strong corporate spirit, which arises out of associations formed for the noblest as well as for the most unworthy objects, could not but actuate the hierarchical college which was formed in each diocese or each city by the bishop and more or less numerous presbyters and deacons. The control on the autocracy of the bishop, which was exercised by this senate of presbyters, without whom he That which may have been high- wrought metaphor iu Ignatius, is re- peated by the author of the Apostolic Constitutions, without reserve or limi- tation. This, I think, may be fairly taken as indicative of the language prevalent at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century, vfuv 6 tiriffKOTTOS fls 0ebl> TTljU7J. The bishop is to be honoured as God, ii. 30. The language of Psalm Ixxxi. " Ye are Gods," is applied to them : they are as much greater than the king as the soul is superior to the body ffrepyfLV ofi\erf Sis irarepa, opeiff6ai us /3atriA.e'a. 1st Edit. The question of the genuineness and authority of the Ignatian Epistles has been placed in an entirely new light, or perhaps has been enwrapped in a more indistinct haze, by the valuable publication of the Syriac Ignatius by VOL. III. Dr. Cureton. With this should be read some of the answers, especially Dr. Hussey's, and Baron Bunsen's Dis- sertation. My conclusion is, that I should be unwilling to claim historical authority for any passage not con- tained in Dr. Cureton's Syriac reprint. There is enough in Dr. Cureton's copy to justify the text, which I leave un- altered, though some of the quotations are probably not genuine. (1863.) c Ovros vfuv firiyttos &e6s jufra Qfov. Lib. ii. c. 26. d The full Apostolic authority was claimed for the bishops, I think, first distinctly, at a later period. See the letter from Firmilianus in Cyprian's works, Epist. Ixxv. " Potestas pecca- torum remittendorum Apostolis data est * * et episcopis qui eis vicaria ordinatione successerunt." S 258 THE SACERDOTAL CASTE : BOOK IV. rarely acted, tended to strengthen, rather than to inva- lidate, the authority of the general body, in which all particular and adverse interests were absorbed in that of the clerical order. 6 The language of the Old Testament, which was re- ijmguageof ceived perhaps with greater readiness, from the Old & . Testament, the contemptuous aversion in which it was held by the Gnostics, on this as on other subjects, gradually found its way into the Church/ But the ciergy and strong and marked line between the minis- terial or magisterial order (the clergy) and the inferior Christians, the people (the laity), had been drawn, before the bishop became a pontiff (for the Heathen names were likewise used), the presbyters the sacerdotal order, and the deacons, a class of men who shared in the indelible sanctity of the new priesthood. The common priesthood of all Christians, as distin- guishing them by their innocent and dedicated cha- racter from the profane Heathen, asserted in the Epistle of St Peter, was the only notion of the sacerdotal cha- racter at first admitted into the popular sentiment. 8 The appellation of the sacerdotal order began to be metaphorically applied to the Christian clergy, h but * Even Cyprian enforces bis own j of Korah is significantly adduced ; authority by that of his concurrent tithes are mentioned, I believe, for the College of Presbyters : " Quando a first time, ii. 25. Compare vi. 2. primordio episcopatfls mei statuerem, See the well-known passage of Ter- nihil sine consilio vestro, et cum con- tullian : "Noune et laici sacerdotes sensu plebis, mea privatim sententia sumus? * * Differentiam inter ordi- gerere." Epist. v. la other passages nem et plebem constituit ecclesia auc- he says, "Cui rei non potui me solum toritas." Tertullian evidently Mon- judicem dare." He had acted, there- tanises in this treatise, de Exhort. fore, " cum collegis mei.s, et cum plebe Castit. c. 7, yet seems to deliver these ipsa universa." Kpist. xxviii. as maxims generally acknowledged. ' It is universally adopted in the h We find the first appearance of Apostolic Constitutions. The crime this in the figurative Ignatius. Ter- CHAP. I. ITS ASSUMPTIONS. 259 soon became real titles ; and by the close of the third century, they were invested in the names and claimed the rights of the Levitical priesthood in the Jewish theocracy.' The Epistle of Cyprian to Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, shows the height to which the episcopal power had aspired before the religion of Christ had become that of the Roman empire. The passages of the Old Testament, and even of the New, in which honour or deference are paid to the Hebrew pontificate, are recited in profuse detail ; implicit obedience is demanded for the priest of God, who is the sole infallible judge or delegate of Christ. k Even if it had been possible that, in their state of high-wrought attachment and reverence for the teachers and guardians of their religion, any mistrust could have arisen in the more sagacious and far-sighted minds of the vast system of sacerdotal domination, of which they were thus laying the deep foundations in the Roman world, there was no recollection or tradition of any priestly tyranny from which they could take warning or imbibe caution. These sacerdotal castes were obsolete or Oriental ; the only one within their sphere of know- ledge was that of the Magians in the hostile kingdom tullian uses the term " summi Sacer- dotes." 1 The passage in the Epistle of Cle- mens (ad Roman, c. 40), in which the analogy of the ministerial offices of the Church with the priestly func- tions of the Jewish temple is distinctly developed, is rejected as an interpola- tion by all judicious and impartial scholars. k See his 68th Epistle, in which he draws the analogy between the legiti- mate bishop and the sacerdos of the law, the irregularly elected and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram : " Neque enim aliunde hasreses obortse sunt, aut nata sunt schismata, quam inde quod sacer- doti Dei non obtemperatur, nee unus in ecclesia ad tempus sacerdos, et ad tempus Judcx, vice Christi cogitatur : cui si secundum magisteria divina ob- temperaret fraternitas universa, nemo adversum sacerdotum collegium quic- quam moveret." Ad Cornel., I'pist. 1\\ s 2 260 ORIGIN OF BOOK IV of Persia. In Greece, the priesthood had sunk into the neglected ministers of the deserted temples ; their highest dignity was to preside over the amusements of the people. The Emperor had now at length disdain- fully cast off the supreme pontificate of the Heathen world, which had long been a title, and nothing more. Even among the Jews, the rabbinical hierarchy, which had gained considerable strength, even during our Saviour's time, but after the fall of the temple, and the publication of the Talmuds, had assumed a complete despotism over the Jewish mind, was not a priesthood. The Eabbins came promiscuously from all the tribes; their claims rested on learning and on knowledge of the traditions of the Fathers, not on Levitical descent. Nor indeed could any danger be apparent, so long as the free voice of the community, guided by fervent piety and rarely perverted by less worthy motives, sum- moned the wisest and the holiest to these important functions. The nomination to the sacred office experi- enced the same, more gradual, perhaps, but not less inevitable, change from the popular to the self-electing form. The acclamation of the united, and seldom, if ever, discordant voices of the presbyters and the people, might be trusted with the appointment to the headship of a poor and devout community, whose utmost desire was to worship God, and to fulfil their Christian duties in uninterrupted obscurity. But as the episcopate be- changeinthe came an object of ambition or interest, the election. disturbing forces which operate on the justice and wisdom of popular elections could not but be called forth ; and slowly the clergy, by example, by influence, by recommendation, by dictation, by usurpation, iden- tified their acknowledged right of consecration for a particular office with that of appointment to it. This CHAP. I. THE SECULAR CLERGY. 261 was one of their last triumphs. In the days of Cyprian, and towards the close of the third century, the people had the right of electing, or at least of rejecting, can- didates for the priesthood. 1 In the latter half of the fourth century, the streets of Rome ran with blood in the contest of Damasus and Ursicinus, for the bishopric of Rome ; both factions arrayed against each other the priests and the people who were their respective parti- sans. Thus the clergy had become a distinct and recognised class in society, consecrated by a solemn ceremony, the imposition of hands, which, however, does not yet seem to have been indelible. 11 But each church was still a separate and independent community ; the bishop as its sovereign, the presbyters, and some- times the deacons, as a kind of religious senate, con- ducted all its internal concerns. Great deference was paid from the first to the bishops of the more important sees : the number and wealth of the congregations would give them weight and dignity; and in general those prelates would be men of the highest character and attainments. Yet promotion to a wealthier or more distinguished see was looked upon as betraying worldly 1 " Plebs ipsa maxime habeat potes- tatem vel eligendi dignos sacerdotes, vel indignos recusandi." Epist. Ixvii. Cornelius was " testitnonio cleri, ac suf- f'ragio populi electus." Compare Apo- stol. Constit. viii. 4. The Council of Laodicea (at the beginning of the fourth century) ordains that bishops are to be appointed by the metro- politans, and that the multitude, ol 6x^-', are n t to designate persons for the priesthood. m Ammianus Marcell. xxvii. 3. Hierom. in Chrou. Compare Gibbon, vol. iv. 259. n A canon of the Council of Chalce- don (can. 7), prohibits the return of a spiritual person to the laity, and his assumption of lay offices in the state. See also Cone. Turon. i. c. 5. The laws of Justinian confiscate to the Church the property of any priest who has forsaken his orders. Cod. Just. i. tit. iii. 53 ; Nov. v. 4. 125 c. 15. This seems to imply that the practice was not uncommon even at that late period, vol. i. 399. Compare Planck, 262 METROPOLITAN BISHOPS. BOOK IV. ambition. The enemies of Eusebius, the Arian, or semi- Arian, bishop of Constantinople, bitterly taunted him with his elevation from the less important see of Nico- media to the episcopate of the Eastern metropolis. This translation was prohibited by some councils. The level of ecclesiastical or episcopal dignity gra- Metropoiitan dually broke up ; some bishops emerged into bishops. a high er ran k j the single community over which the bishop originally presided grew into the aggregation of several communities, and formed a diocese; the metropolitan rose above the ordinary bishop, the patriarch assumed a rank above the metro- politan, till at length, in the regularly graduated scale, the primacy of Kome was asserted, and submitted to by the humble and obsequious West. The diocese grew up in two ways, 1. In the larger Formation of cities, the rapid increase of the Christians led the diocese. necessar jly to the formation of separate con- gregations, which, to a certain extent, required each its proper organization, yet invariably remained subordinate to the single bishop. In Rome, towards the beginning of the fourth century, there were above forty churches, rendering allegiance to the prelate of the metropolis. 2. Christianity was first established in the towns and cities, and from each centre diffused itself with Chorcpiscopi. , . more or less success into the adjacent country. In some of these country congregations, bishops appear to have been established, yet these chorepiscopi, or rural bishops, maintained some subordination to the head of the mother church ; p or where the converts Synod. Nic. can. 15 ; Cone. Sard, j the controversy about the chorcpiscopi c. 2; Cone. Arel. 21. or rural bishops. p See in Bingham, Ant. b. ii. c. 14, | CHAP. I. RURAL BISHOi-S. 263 were fewer, the rural Christians remained members of the mother church in the city. q In Africa, from the immense number of bishops, each community seems to have had its own superior ; but this was peculiar to the province. In general, the churches adjacent to the towns or cities, either originally were, or became, the diocese of the city bishop ; for as soon as Christianity became the religion of the state, the powers of the rural bishops were restricted, and the office at length was either abolished or fell into disuse/ The rank of the metropolitan bishop, who presided over a certain number of inferior bishops, and the con- vocation of ecclesiastical or episcopal synods, grew up apparently at the same time and from the same causes. The earliest authentic synods seem to have arisen out of the disputes about the time of observing Easter ; s but before the middle of the third century, these occasional and extraordinary meetings of the clergy in certain districts took the form of provincial synods. These began in the Grecian provinces/ but extended through- out the Christian world. In some cases they seem to have been assemblies of bishops alone, in others of the whole clergy. They met once or twice in the year ; they were summoned by the metropolitan bishop, who presided in the meeting, and derived from, or confirmed his metropolitan dignity by this presidency." "1 Justin Martyr speaks of the coun- try converts : iravriav Kara ir<$Aeis 4} aypovs fj.fv6vTav, eVJ rd aind ffwf\ev(ns yivfrat. Apolog. i. 67. 1 Concil. Antioch. can. 10 ; Concil. Ancyr. c. 13 ; Cone. Laod. c. 57. See the list of earlier synods chiefly on this subject, Labbe, Con- cilia, vol. i. pp. 595, 650, edit. Paris, 1671. ' See the remarkable passage in Ter- tullian, de Jejunio, with the ingenious commentary of Mosheim, De Keb. Christ, ante Const. M. pp. 264, 268. u " Necessario apud nos fit, ut per singulos annos seniores et proepositi in 264 THE PATRIARCHS OF THE EAST. BOOK As the metropolitans rose above the bishops, so the Archbishops archbishops or patriarchs rose above the archT " metropolitans. These ecclesiastical dignities seem to have been formed according to the civil divi- sions of the empire. x The Patriarchs of Antioch, Jeru- salem, Alexandria, Home, and by a formal decree of the Council of Chalcedon, Constantinople, assumed even a higher dignity. They asserted the right, in some cases, of appointing, in others of deposing, even metropolitan bishops. 7 While Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople con- tested the supremacy of the East, the two former as more ancient and Apostolic churches, the latter as the imperial city, Kome stood alone, as in every respect the most eminent church in the West. While other churches might boast their foundation by a single apostle (and those churches were always held in pecu- liar respect), Borne asserted that she had been founded by, and preserved the ashes of two, and those the most distinguished of the Apostolic body. Before the end of the third century, the lineal descent of her bishops from St. Peter was unhesitatingly claimed, and obse- quiously admitted by the Christian world. 2 The name unum conveniamus, ad diponenda ea, quae curse nostrae commissa sunt." Firm, ad Cyprian. Ep. 75. " Bingbam names thirteen or four- teen patriarchs : Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, Jerusalem, Ephesus, Con- stantinople, Tliessalonica, Sirmium, Home, Carthage, Milan, Lyons, To- ledo, York. But their respective claims do not appear to have been equally recognised, or at the same period. f Chrysostom deposed Geiontius, metropolitan of Nicomedia. Sozo- men, viii. 6. 1 The passage of Irenaeus (lib. ii. c. 3), as is well known, is the first distinct assertion of any primacy in Peter, and derived from him to the see of Rome. This passage would be better authority if it existed in the original language, not in an indifferent translation ; if it were the language of an Eastern, not a Western, prelate, CHAP. I. THE PONTIFF OF THE WEST. 265 of Kome was still imposing and majestic, particularly in the West ; the wealth of the Roman bishop probably surpassed that of other prelates ; for Kome was still the place of general concourse and resort ; and the pious strangers who visited the capital would not withhold their oblations to the metropolitan church. Within the city, he presided over above forty churches, besides the suburbicarian districts. The whole clerical establishment at Rome amounted to forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolyths, fifty-two exorcists, readers, and doorkeepers. It comprehended fifteen hundred widows and poor brethren, with a countless multitude of the higher orders and of the people. No wonder that the name, the importance, the wealth, the accredited Apo- stolic foundation of Rome, arrayed her in pre-eminent dignity. Still, in his correspondence with the Bishop of Rome, the general tone of Cyprian, the great advocate of Christian unity is that of an equal ; though he shows great respect to the Church of Rome, it is to the faithful guardian of an uninterrupted tradition, not as invested with superior authority.* who might acknowledge a supremacy in Rome, which would not have been admitted by the older Asiatic ses; still more, if it did not assert what is manifestly untrue, the foundation of the Church of Kome by St. Peter and St. Paul (see vol. ii. p. 44); and, finally if Irenaeus could be conclusive authority on such a subject. Planck justly observes, that the potior prinei- palitas of the city of Rome was the primary reason why a potior princi- palitas was recognised in the see of Kome. * While I deliver my own conclu- sions, without fear or compromise, I would avoid all controversy on this as well as on other subjects. It is but right, therefore, for me to give the two apparently conflicting passages in Cyprian on the primacy of St. Peter : " Nam nee Petrus quern primiim Do- minus elegit, et super quern sedificavit Ecclesiam suam * * vindicavit sibi aliquid insolenter aut arroganter as- sumpsit, ut diceret se primatum te- nere, et obtemperari a novellis et pos- teris sibi potius oportere." Epist. 266 NEW SACRED OFFICES. BOOK IV. As the hierarchical pyramid tended to a point, its base spread out into greater width. The greater pomp of the services, the more intricate administration of affairs, the greater variety of regulations required by the increasing and now strictly separated classes of votaries, imposed the necessity for new functionaries, besides the bishops, priests, and deacons. These were the archdeacon and the five subordinate officiating ministers, who received a kind of ordination. 1. The New sacred sub-deacon, who, in the Eastern church, col- lected the alms of the laity and laid them upon the altar ; and, in the Western, acted as a messenger, or bearer of despatches. 2. The reader, who had the custody of the sacred books, and, as the name implies, read them during the service. 3. The acolyth, who was an attendant on the bishop, carried the lamp before him, or bore the Eucharist to the sick. 4. The exorcist, who read the solemn forms over those possessed by daemons, the energoumenoi, and some- times at baptisms. 5. The ostiarius or doorkeeper, who assigned his proper place in the church to each member, and guarded against the intrusion of improper persons. As Christianity assumed a more manifest civil existence, the closer correspondence, the more intimate sympathy between its remote and scattered members, became indispensable to its strength and consistency. Its uniformity of development in all parts of the world kxi. " Hoc erant utique caeteri Apo- i De Unit. Eccles. But this last pas- stoli, quod fuit Petrus, pari consortio sage is of more than doubtful authen- prsediti et honoris et potestatis ; sed | ticity ; it is, no doubt, spurious. On exordium ab imitate proficiscittir, et the whole of this I have enlarged in primatus Petro datur, ut una Christi the history of Latin Christianity, ecclesia, et cathedra una monstretur." I CHAP. 1. CHUKCH-UNITY. 267 arose out of, and tended to promote, this unity. It led to that concentration of the governing power in a few, which terminated at length in the West in the unre- stricted power of one. The internal unity of the Church, or universally disseminated body of Christians, had been maintained by the general similarity of doctrine, of sentiment, of its first simple usages and institutions, and the common dangers which it had endured in all parts of the world. It possessed its consociating principles in the occa- sional correspondence between its remote members, in those recommendatory letters with which the Christian who travelled was furnished to his brethren unity in the in other parts of the empire ; above all, in Church - the common literature, which, including the sacred writings, seems to have spread with more or less regu- larity through the various communities. Nothing, however, tended so much, although they might appear to exacerbate and perpetuate diversities of opinion, to the maintenance of this unity, as the assemblage and recognition of general Councils as the representatives of universal Christendom. b The bold impersonation, b The earliest councils (not (Ecu- menic) were those of Rome (1st and 2nd) and the seven held at Carthage, concerning the lapsi, the schism of Novatianus, and the re-baptizing of heretics. The seventh in Routh, Re- liquias Sacrae (Labbe, Concilia III.), is the first of which we have anything like a report ; and from this time, either from the canons which they issue, or the opinions delivered by the bishops, the councils prove important authorities, not merely for the decrees of the Church, but for the dominant tone of sentiment, and even of man- ners. Abhorrence of heresy is the prevailing feeling in this council, which decided the validity of heretical baptism. " Christ," says one bishop, " founded the Church, the Devil heiesy. How can the synagogue of Satan administer the baptism of the Church ? " Another subjoins, " He who yields or betrays the baptism of the Church to heretics, what is he but a Judas of the spouse of Christ?" The Synod or Council of Antioch (A.D. 269) condemned Paul of Samo- 268 THE CHUfiCH A POWER. BOOK I V. the Church, seemed now to assume a more imposing General visible existence. Its vital principle was no Councils, longer that unseen and hidden harmony which had united the Christians in all parts of the world with their Saviour and with each other. By the assistance of the orthodox Emperors, and the commanding abilities of its great defenders, one dominant form of doctrine had obtained the ascendancy ; Gnosticism, Donatism, Arianism, Manicheism, had been thrown aside ; and the Church stood, as it were, individualised, or idealised, by the side of the other social impersona- tion, the State. The Emperor was the sole ruler of the latter, and at this period the aristocracy of the superior clergy, at a later the autocracy of the Pope, at least as sata. The Council of Illiberis (Elvira, or Granada), A.D. 303, affords some curious notices of the state of Chris- tianity in that remote province. Some of the Heathen flamines appear to have attempted to reconcile the per- formances of some of their religious duties, at least their presiding at the games, with Christianity. There are many moral regulations which do not give a high idea of Spanish virtue. The bishops and clergy were not to be itinerant traders ; they might trade within the province (can. xviii.), but were on no account to take upon usury. The Jews were settled in great numbers in Spain (compare Hist, of the Jews) : the taking food with them is interdicted, as also to permit them to reap the harvest. Gambling is forbidden. The Councils of Rome and of Arlts were held to settle the Donatist controversy ; but of the latter there are twenty-two canons chiefly of ecclesiastical regula- tions. The Council of Ancyra (A.D. 358) principally relates to the conduct of pel-sons during the time of persecu- tion. The Council of Laodicea (A.D. 368) has some curious general canons. The first (Ecumenic council was that of Niea. See book iii. c. iv. It was followed by the long succession of Arian, and anti-Arian councils, at Tyre, Antioch, Rome, Milan, Sardica, Rimini, &c. The Arian Council of Antioch is very strict in its regula- tions for the residence of the bishops and the clergy, and their restriction of their labours to their own dioceses or cures (A.D. 341). Apud Labbe, vol. ii. 559. The first of Constantinople was the second CEcumenic council (A.D. 381). It re-established Trinitarianism as the doctrine of the East ; it ele- vated the bishopric of Constantinople into a patriarchate, to rank after Rome. The two other (Ecumenic councils are beyond the bounds of the present history. CHAP. I. THE STATE ECLIPSED. 269 the representative of the Western Church, became the supreme authority of the former. The hierarchical power, from exemplary, persuasive, amiable, was now authoritative, commanding, awful. When Christianity became the most powerful religion, when it became the religion of the many, of the Emperor, of the State, the convert, or the hereditary Christian had no strong Pagan party to receive him back into its bosom when outcast from the Church. If he ceased to believe, he no longer dared cease to obey. No course remained but prostrate submission, or the endurance of any penitential duty which might be enforced upon him ; and on the peni- tential system, and the power of excommunication, to which we shall revert, rested the unshaken hierarchical authority over the human soul. With the power of the clergy increased both those other sources of influence, pomp and wealth. Increage ^ Distinctions in station and in authority natu- P "* rally lead to distinctions in manners, and those ad- ventitious circumstances of dress and habits, which designate different ranks. Confederating upon equal terms, the superior authorities in the church began to assume an equal rank with those of the state. In the Christian city, the bishop became a personage of the highest importance ; and the clergy, as a kind of subordinate religious magistracy, claimed, if a different kind, yet an equal share of reverence, with the civil authority. Where the civil magistrate had his insignia of office, the natural respect of the people, and the desire of maintaining his official dignity, would invest the religious functionary likewise with some peculiar symbol of his character. With their increased rank and estimation, the clergy could not but assume a more imposing demeanour; and that majesty in. wliich they 270 PRIDE AND HUMILITY. BOOK IV. were arrayed during the public ceremonial could not be entirely thrown off when they returned to ordinary life. The reverence of man exacts dignity from those who are its objects. The primitive Apostolic meanness of appearance and habit was altogether unsuited to their altered position, as equal in rank, more than equal in real influence and public veneration, to the civil officers of the empire or municipality. The consciousness of power will affect the best disciplined minds, and the unavoidable knowledge that salutary authority is main- tained over a large mass of mankind by imposing manners, dress, and mode of living, would reconcile many to that which otherwise might appear incongruous to their sacred character. There was, in fact, and always has been, among the more pious clergy, a per- petual conflict between a conscientious sense of the importance of external dignity, and a desire, as con- scientious, of retaining something of outward humility. The monkish and ascetic waged implacable Avar against that secular distinction which, if in some cases eagerly assumed by pride and ambition, was forced upon others by the deference, the admiration, the trembling sub- servience of mankind. The prelate who looked the most imperious, and spoke most sternly, on his throne, fasted and underwent the most humiliating privations in his chamber or his cell. Some prelates supposed, that as ambassadors of the Most High, as supreme governors in that which was of greater dignity than the secular empire, the earthly kingdom of Christ, they ought to array themselves in something of imposing dignity. The bishops of Rome early affected s ate and magnificence. Chrysostom, on the other hand, in Con- stantinople, differing from his predecessors, considered poverty of dress, humility of demeanour, and the most CHAP. I. OF THE ANCIENT CLERGY. 271 severe austerity of life, as more becoming a Christian prelate, who was to set the example of the virtues which he inculcated, and to show contempt for those worldly distinctions which properly belonged to the civil power. Others, among whom was Ambrose of Milan, while in their own persons and in private they were the plainest, simplest, and most austere of men, nevertheless threw into the service of the Church all that was solemn and magnificent ; and as officiating functionaries, put on for the time the majesty of manner, the state of attendance, the splendour of attire, which seemed to be authorised by the gorgeousness of dress and ceremonial pomp in the Old Testament. With the greater reverence, indeed, peculiar sanctity was exacted, and no doubt, in general, observed by the clergy. They were imperatively required to surpass the general body of Christians in purity of morals, and. perhaps even more, in all religious performances. As c The clergy were long without any distinction of dress, except on cere- monial occasions. At the end of the fourth century, it was the custom for them in some churches to wear black. Seer. H. E. vi. 22. Jerome, however, recommends that they should neither be distinguished by too bright nor too sombre colours. Ad Nepot. The proper habits were probably intro- duced at the end of the fifth century, as they are recognised by councils in the sixth. Cone. Matisc. A.D. 581, can. 1. 5 ; Trull, c. 27. The tonsure began in the fourth century. " 1'rima del iv. secolo i semplici preti non avevano alcun abito distinto dagli altri o Pagani o Cristiani, se non in quanto la professata loro umilta faceva una certa pompa di abjezione e di poverta." Cicognara, Storia di Scultura, t. i. p. 27. Count Cicognara gives a curious account of the date and origin of the different parts of the clerical dress. The mitre is of the eighth century, the tiara of the tenth. The fourth Council of Carthage (A.D. 398) has some restrictions on dress. The clericus was not to wear long hair or beard (nee comam habeat nee barbam. Can. sliv.) ; he was to approve his profession by his dress and walk, and not to study the beauty of his dress or sandals. He might obtain his sustenance by working as an artisan, or in agriculture, provided he did not neglect his duty. Can. li. lii. 272 THEIR WEALTH. BOOK IV. the outward ceremonial, fasting, public prayer during almost every part of the day, and the rest of the ritual service, were more completely incorporated with Chris- tianity, they were expected to maintain the public devo- tion by their example, and to encourage self-denial by their more rigid austerity. Wealth as well as pomp followed in the train of wealth of the power. The desire to command wealth (we clergy. must not yet use the ignoble term covetous- ness) not merely stole imperceptibly into intimate con- nexion with religion, but appeared almost a part of religion itself. The individual was content to be disin- terested in his own person ; the interest which he felt in the opulence of the Church, or even of his own order, appeared not merely excusable, but a sacred duty. In the hands of the Christian clergy, wealth, which seemed at that period to be lavished on the basest of mankind, and squandered on the most criminal and ignominious objects, might seem to be hallowed to the noblest purposes. It enabled Christianity to vie with Paganism in erecting splendid edifices for the worship of God, to provide an imposing ceremonial, lamps for midnight service, silver or golden vessels for the altar, veils, hangings, and priestly dresses ; it provided for the Uses to wants of the poor, whom misgovernment, war, and taxation, independent of the ordinary calamities of human life, were grinding to the earth. To each church were attached numbers of widows and other destitute persons ; the redemption of slaves was an object on which the riches of the Church were freely lavished: the sick in the hospitals and prisons, and destitute strangers were under their especial care. " How many captives has the wealth of the Pagan establish- ment released from bondage ? " This is among the CHAP. I. CHRISTIANITY ASCENDANT. 273 triumphant questions of the advocates of Christianity. 11 The maintenance of children exposed by their parents, and taken up and educated by the Christians, was another source of generous expenditure. When, then, at first the munificence of the Emperor, and afterwards the gratitude and superstitious fears of the people, heaped up their costly offerings at the feet of the clergy, it would have appeared not merely ingratitude and folly, but impiety and uncharitableness to their brethren, to have rejected them. The clergy, as soon as they were set apart from the ordinary business of life, were main- tained by the voluntary offerings of their brethren. The piety which embraced Christianity never failed in liberality. The payments seem chiefly to have been made in kind rather than in money ; though on extra- ordinary occasions large sums were raised for some sacred or charitable object. One of the earliest acts of Constantine was to make munificent grants to the despoiled and destitute Church. 6 A certain portion of the public stores of corn and other produce, which was received in kind by the officers of the revenue, was assigned to the Church and clergy/ This was with- drawn by Julian, and when regranted by the Christian Emperors, was diminished one-third. The law of Constantine which empowered the clergy of the Church to receive testamentary be- Ijawof Con . quests, and to hold land, was a gift which ^ering^o would scarcely have been exceeded if he had ^[yebt granted them two provinces of the empire. 85 quests - It became almost a sin to die without some bequest to pious uses ; and before a century had elapsed, the mass d Ambros. contra Symmachum. f Sozomen, H. E. v. 5. Euseb. H. E. x. 6. VOL. III. This is the observation of Planck. 274 EtVAL POPES. BOOK IV. of property which had passed over to the Church was so enormous, that the most pious of the Emperors were obliged to issue a restrictive law, which the most ardent of the Fathers were constrained to approve. Jerome acknowledges, with the bitterness of shame, the necessity Restrictive of this check on ecclesiastical avarice. h " I edict of Va- lentinian. complain not ot the law, but that we have deserved such a law." The ascetic father and the Pagan historian describe the pomp and avarice of the Roman clergy in the fourth century. Ammianus, while he describes the sanguinary feud which took place for Pope Da- * ne prelacy between Damasus and Ursicinus, intimates that the magnificence of the prize may account for the obstinacy and ferocity with which it was contested. He dwells on the prodigal offerings of the Roman matrons to their bishop ; his pomp, when in elaborate and elegant attire he was borne in his chariot through the admiring streets ; the costly luxury of his almost imperial banquets. But the just historian con- trasts this pride and luxury of the Roman pontiff with the more temperate life and dignified humility of the provincial bishops.' Jerome goes on sternly to charge the whole Roman clergy with the old vice of the Heathen aristocracy, hseredipety or legacy hunting, and asserts that they used the holy and venerable name of k Valentinian II. de Episc. "Solis j necessity of the law. Augustine, cleriois et monachis hac lege prohi- while he loftily disclaims all paitici|>a- betnr, et prohibetur non i\ persecutori- bus sed & principibus Christian is ; nee de lege conqueror, sed doleo cur nie- ruerimus hanc legem." Hieronym. ad Nepot. He speaks also of the " pro- vida severaque legis cautio, et tamen non sic refrasuatur avaritia." Am- brose (1. li. adv. Symm.) admits the tion in such abuses, acknowledges their frequency. " Quicunque vult, exhaeredato filio hasre.lem facere eccle- siam, quaerat alterum qui suscipiat, non Augustinum, immo, Deo propitio, inveniat neminem." Serm. 49. 1 Amm. Marcellinus, xxvii. 3. CHAP. I. CHURCH-PROPERTY. 275 the Church to extort for their own personal emolument, the wealth of timid or expiring devotees. The law of Valentinian justly withheld from the clergy and the monks alone that privilege of receiving bequests which was permitted to the "lowest of mankind, Heathen priests, actors, charioteers and harlots." Large parts of the ecclesiastical revenues, however, arose from more honourable sources. Some of the estates of the Heathen temples, though in general con- fiscated to the imperial treasury, were alienated to the Christian churches. The Church of Alexandria obtained the revenue of the Temple of Serapis. k These various estates and properties belonged to the Church in its corporate capacity, not to the clergy. They were charged with the maintenance of Application the fabric of the church, and the various onhl wealth charitable purposes, including the sustenance Church - of their own dependent poor. Strong enactments were made to prevent their alienation from those hallowed purposes, 1 " the clergy were even restrained from be- queathing by will what they had obtained from the property of the Church. The estates of the Church were liable to the ordinary taxes, the land and capita- tion tax, but exempt from what were called sordid and extraordinary charges, and from the quartering of troops. 11 k Sozoraen, v. 7. The Church of Antioch possessed lands, houses, rents, carnages, mules, and other kinds of property. It undertook the daily sus- tenance of 3000 widows and virgins, besides prisoners, the sick in the hos- pitals, the maimed, and the diseased, who sat down, as it were before the Christian altar, and received food and raiment, besides many other accidental claims on their benevolence. Chryso- stom, Oper. Montfaucon in his dis- sertation, gives the references. m Cone. Garth, iii. 40 ; Antioch, 24. Constit. Apost. 40. Cod. Theo- dos. de Episc. et Clericis, t. 33. a Planck, P. iii. c. vi. 3. T2 276 THE CLERGY: BOOK IV. The bishops gradually obtained almost the exclusive management of this property. In some churches, a steward (oeconomus) presided over this department, but he would, in general, be virtually under the control of the bishop. In most churches, the triple division began to be observed ; one-third of the revenue to the bishop, one to the clergy, the other to the fabric aud the poor ; the Church of Home added a fourth, a separate portion for the fabric. The clergy had become a separate community ; they had their own laws of internal government, their own special regulations, or recognised proprieties of life and conduct. Their social delinquencies were not as yet withdrawn from the civil jurisdiction ; but besides this, they were amenable to the severe judgments of eccle- siastical censure ; p the lowest were liable to corporal chastisement. Flagellation, which was administered in the synagogue, and was so common in Roman society, was by no means so disgraceful as to exempt the per- sons at least of the inferior clergy from its infliction.* 1 By a law of Theodosius and Va- lent. A. p. 434, the property of any bishop, presbyter, deacon, deaconess, sub-deacon, &c., or of any monk, who died intestate, and without legal heirs, fell, not to the treasury, as in ordi- nary cases, but to the church or monastery to which he belonged. The same privilege was granted to the Corporation of Dccurions. Codex Theodos. v. iii. 1. p Sozomen states that Constantine gave his clergy the privilege of re- jecting the jurisdiction of the civil tribunal, and bringing their causes to the bishop. H. E. i. 9. But these were probably disputes between clergy- man and clergyman. All others were cases of arbitration, by mutual agree- ment ; but the civil power was to ratify their decree. In a Novella of Valentinian II., A.D. 452, it is expressly said, " Quoniam constat episcopos et presbyteros forum legibus non habere * * nee de aliis causis prater reli- gionem posse cognoscere." Compare Planck, p. 300. The clericus wao bound to appear, if summoned by a layman, before the ordinary judge, Justinian made the change, and that only in a limited manner. Bishops were accustomed to order flagellations. " Qui modus coercitionis, a magistris artium liberalium, et ab CHAP. I. THEIR CELIBACY. 277 But the more serious punishment was degradation into the vulgar class of worshippers. To them it was the most fearful condemnation to be ejected from the inner sanctuary and thrust down- from their elevated station/ As yet the clergy were not entirely estranged from society, they had not become a caste by the ceiibacyof legal enforcement or general practice of celi- thecler sy- bacy. Clement of Alexandria asserts and vindicates the marriage of some of the Apostles. 8 The discreet remonstrance of the old Egyptian bishop perhaps pre- vented the Council of Nicaa from imposing that heavy burden on the reluctant clergy. The aged Paphnutius, himself unmarried, boldly asserted that the conjugal union was chastity.* But that, which, in the third century is asserted to be free to all mankind, clergy as well as laity, in Egypt ; u in the fourth, according to Jerome, was prohibited or limited by vows of continence. It has been asserted," and without refutation, that there was no ecclesiastical law or regulation which compelled the celibacy of the clergy for the first three centuries. ipsis parentibus, et saepe in judicii* soletab Episcopisadhiberi." Augustin. Epist. cxxxiii. High authority for the antiquity of flogging in public schools ! r The decrees of the fourth council of Carthage show the strict morals and humble subordination demanded of the clergy at the close of the fourth century. 8 *H Kal roi/S 'A.TTOffT6\OVS OTToSo- Ki/J.dovffi ; Tlerpos fn\v yap Kal 4>iAi7r- iro9 irai5oiroii]ffavTo- iA.nr7ros 5e na.1 TO.S Bvyarfpas avSpdffiv f^eSuKtv, Kal oyt riaOAos OVK oKVf"t ev rtvt firiv Kal r6v TTJS /utas yvvai- KOS &i>5pa iravv airoSe'xerat K&V irptff- fivrepos y, KO.V Stdicovos, K&v Aai'^os, fftrai 8e Sia rrjs reKVoyovias. Strom, iii. 12, 9. * By Bingham, book iv. 278 EISE OF BOOK IV. Clement of Alexandria, as we see, argues against en- forced celibacy from the example of the Apostles. Married bishops and presbyters frequently occur in the history of Eusebius. The martyrdom of Numidicus was shared and not dishonoured by the companionship of his wife. 7 It was a sight of joy and consolation to the husband to see her perishing in the same flames. The wives of the clergy are recognised, not merely in the older writings, but also in the public documents of the Church/ Council after council, in the East, introduced regulations, which, though intended to restrict, recognise the legality of these ties. a Highly as they exalt the angelic state of celibacy, neither Basil in the East, nor Augustine in the West, positively prohibits the marriage of the clergy. b But in the fourth century, particularly in the latter half, the concurrent influence of the higher honours attributed to virginity by all the great Christian writers ; of the hierarchical spirit, which, even at that time, saw how much of its corporate strength depended on this entire detachment from worldly ties ; of the monastic system, which worked into the clerical, partly by the frequent selection of monks for ordination and for con- secration to ecclesiastical dignities, partly by the emula- tion of the clergy, who could not safely allow themselves x " Numidicus presbyter uxorem adhaerentem lateri suo, concrematam cum cseteiis, vel censervatam potius dixerim, Isetus aspexit." Cyprian, p. 525. See in Basnage, Dissertatio Septima, a list of married prelates. * Cone. Gang. c. 4. Cone. Ancyr. c. 10. This law allows any deacon to marry. In the West, the Council of Elvira commands the clergy to abstain from connubial intercourse and the procreation of children. Can. xxxiii. This was frequently re-enacted. Among others, Cone. Carthag. v. '2. Labbe, ii. 12-16. b Basil speaks of a presbyter who had contumaciously contracted an un- lawful marriage. Can. ii. c. 27. On Augustine, compare Theiner, p. 154. ClIAI'. I. CLERICAL CELIBACY. 279 to be outdone in austerity by these rivals for popular estimation; all these various influences introduced re- strictions and regulations on the marriage of the clergy, which darkened at length into the solemn ecclesiastical interdict. First, the general sentiment repudiated a second marriage as a monstrous act of incontinence, an infirmity or a sin which ought to prevent the Christian from ever aspiring to any ecclesiastical office. The next offence against the general feeling was marriage with a widow ; then followed the restriction of marriage after entering into holy orders ; the married priest re- tained his wife, but to condescend to such carnal ties after ordination, was revolting to the general sentiment, and was considered to imply a total want of feeling for the dignity of their high calling. Then was generally introduced a demand of abstinence from sexual con- nexion from those who retained their wives : this was imperatively required from the higher orders of the clergy. It was considered to render unclean, and to disqualify even from prayer for the people, as the priest's life was to be a perpetual prayer. d Not that there was as yet any uniform practice. The bishops assembled at the Council of Gangra 6 condemned the f Athenagoras laid down the general principle, 6 yap Scurepos (71x^10$) ei>irpein)j itrn jioxa. De Resurr. Cam. Compare Orig. contr. Gels, vii., and Horn, vi., in Num. xviii., in Luc. xviii., in Matt. Tertull. ad Uxor. 1-5. This was almost an universal moral axiom. Epiphanius said, that since the coming of Christ no digamous clergyman had ever been ordained. Barbeyrac has collected the passages of the Fathers expressive of their ab- horrence of second marriages. Morale des Pfcres, p. 1. 29. 34, 37, &c. The Council of Neo-Caesarea forbade clergy- men to be present at a feast for a second marriage irpefffrintpov els ya.fj.ovs Siya/xoiWeuj/ ^i) fffrtaffdai. Can. vii. d Such is the distinct language of Jerome. " Si lak-us et quicunque fidelis orare non potest nisi careat officfo conjugali, sacerdoti, cui semper pro populo oflerenda sunt sacrificia sem- per orandum est. Si semper orandum est, semper carendum matrimonio." Adv. Jovin. p. 175. e In the Council of Gangra i^about 280 PROHIBITION OF BOOK IV. followers of Eustathius, who refused to receive the sacra- ments from any but unmarried priests. The heresy of Jovinian, on the other hand, probably called forth the severe regulations of Pope Siricius. 1 This sort of ency- clical letter positively prohibited all clergy of the higher orders from any intercourse with their wives. A man who lived to the age of thirty, the husband of one wife, that wife, when married, a virgin, might be an acolyth or subdeacon ; after five years of strict continence, he might be promoted to a priest ; after ten years more of the same severe ordeal, a bishop. A clerk, any one in holy orders, even of the lowest degree, who married a widow, or a second wife, was instantly deprived : no woman was to live in the house of a clerk. The Council of Carthage, reciting the canon of a former council, commands the clergy to abstain from all connexion with their wives. The enactment is per- petually repeated, and in one extended to subdeacoris. 8 The Council of Toledo prohibited the promotion of ec- clesiastics who had children. The Council of Aries prohibited the ordination of a married priest, h unless he made a promise of divorce from the married state. Jerome distinctly asserts that it was the universal regu- lation of the East, of Egypt, and of Home * to ordain 350) the preamble and the first canon do not appear to refer necessarily to the wives of the clergy. They anathe- matise certain teachers (the Eusta- thians) who had blamed marriage, and said that a faithful and pious woman who slept with her husband could not enter into the kingdom of heaven. A sacred virgin is prohibited from vaunt- ing over a married woman, canon x. Women are forbidden to abandon their husbands and children. ' The letter of Siricius in Mansi Concil. Hi. 635, A.D. 385. t These councils of Carthage are dated A.D. 390, 418, and 419. h " Assumi aliquem ad sacerdotium non posse in vinculo sacerdotii consti- tutum, nisi primum fuerit promissa conversio." A.D. 452. 1 " Quid facient Orientis Ecclesise ? quid JEgypti, et sedis Apostolicse, quae aut virgines clericos accipiunt aut con- tinentes ; aut si uxores habueriut, CHAP. I. CONJUGAL EIGHTS. 28.1 only those who were unmarried, or who ceased to be husbands. But even in the fourth, and the beginning of the fifth centuries, the practice rebelled Married . , ... _ . 1 bishops and against this severe theory. Married clergymen, clergy. even married bishops, and with children, occur in the ecclesiastical annals. Athanasius, in his letter to Dracontius, admits and allows the full right of the bishop to marriage.* Gregory of Nazianzum was born after his father was bishop, and had a younger brother named Csesarius. Gregory of Nyssa, and Hilary of Poictiers, were married. Less distinguished names fre- quently occur: those of Spyridon n and Eustathius. Synesius, whose character enabled him to accept epi- scopacy on his own terms, positively repudiated these unnatural restrictions on the freedom and holiness of the conjugal state. "God and the law, and the holy hand of Theophilus bestowed on me my wife. I declare, therefore, solemnly, and call you to witness, that I will not be plucked from her, nor lie with her in secret, like an adulterer. But I hope and pray that we may have many and virtuous children." p The Council in Trullo only demanded this high test of spirituality, absolute celibacy, from bishops, and left the inferior clergy to their freedom. But the earlier Western Council of Toledo only admitted the deacon, mariti esse desistunt." Adv. Vigilan- tium, p. 281. Jerome appeals to Jovinian himself: " Certfc confiteris non posse esse episcopum qui in epi- scopatu filios faciat, alioqui si depre- hensus fcierit, non quasi vir tenebitur, sed quasi adulter damnabitur." Adv. \ . , , n Sozom. i. 11. Socrat. i. 12. Jovin. 175. Compare Epiphamus, | Q . t 43 Hffires - liv ' 4 " i P SynTsi'i Epist! 105. k Athanasii Epistola ad Dracon- tium. m Gregory makes his father thus address him : OVJTCO roirovrov e/c/ie/ieVpTjita? /SiW 'O<7os Siri\6e ( 282 THE CONSEQUENCES. BOOK IV. and that under restrictions, to connubial intercourse ; the presbyter who had children after his ordination could not be a bishop/ 1 This overstrained demand on the virtue, not of indi- Morai conse- viduals in a high state of enthusiasm, but of a quences. whole class of men ; this strife with nature, in that which, in its irregular and lawless indulgence, is the source of so many evils and of so much misery, in its more moderate and legal form is the parent of the purest affections, and the holiest charities ; this isolation from those social ties which, if at times they might withdraw them from total dedication to their sacred duties, in general, would, by their tending to soften and humanise, be the best school for the gentle and affec- tionate discharge of those duties the enforcement of the celibacy of the clergy, though not yet by law, by dominant opinion, was not slow in producing its inevi- sub- taD l e evils. Simultaneously with the sterner s. condemnation of marriage, or at least the ex- aggerated praises of chastity, we hear the solemn denun- ciations of the law, and the deepening remonstrances of the more influential writers, against those secret evasions by which the clergy endeavoured to obtain the fame without the practice of celibacy, to enjoy some of the pleasures and advantages without the crime of marriage. From the middle of the third century, in which the growing aversion to the marriage of the clergy begins to appear, we find the " sub-introduced " females con- stantly proscribed/ The intimate union of the priest q Cone. Tolet. A.D. 400, can. i. * They are mentioned in the letter of the bishops of Antioch, against Paul of Samosata. The Council of llliberis (incautiously) allowed a sister, or a virgin, dedicated to God, to reside with a bishop or presbyter, not a stranger. CHAP. I. DEGENERATION OF MORALS. 283 with a young, often a beautiful female, who still passed to the world under the name of a virgin, and was called by the priest by the unsuspected name of sister, seems from the strong and reiterated language of Jerome, 8 Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and others, to have been almost general. It was interdicted by an imperial law. 1 Thus, in every city, in almost every town and every village of the Roman empire, had established itself a new permanent magistracy, in a certain sense inde- pendent of the government, with considerable inalienable endowments, and filled by men of a peculiar and sacred character, and recognised by the state. Their authority extended far beyond their jurisdiction ; their influence " Unde sine nuptiis aliud noraen uxorum ? Imo unde novum concu- binarum genus ? Plus inferam. Unde meretrices univirse? Eadem domo, uno cubiculo, saepe uno tenentur et lectulo. Et suspiciosos nos vocant, si aliquid existimamus. Frater sororem Tirginem deserit: caelibem spernit virgo germanum : fratrem qujerit extraneum, et cum in eodem proposito esse se simulent quasrunt alienorum spiritale solatium, ut doini habeant carnale commercium." Hieronym. Epist. xxii. ad Eustochium. If the vehemence of Jerome's language betrays his own ardent character and his monkish hos- tility to the clergy, the general charge is amply borne out by other writers. Many quotations may be found in Gothof red's Note on the Law of Hono- rius. Gregory of Nazianzum says, fipaeva iravr' a\ffii>e, crvvsiffaKTOv rt juaAKTTcc. The language of Cyprian, however, even in the third century, is the strongest: "Certfe ipse concubitus, ipse arnpk-xus, ipsa confabulatio, et inosculatio, et conjacentium duorum turpis et foeda dormitio quantum dede- coris et criminis confitetur." Cyprian justly observes, that such intimacy would induce a jealous husband to take to his sword. Epist. Ixii. ad Pomponium. But the canon of the Council of Nicaea, which prohibits the usage, and forbids the priest to have a subintro- ducta mulier, unless a mother, sister, or aunt, the only relationships beyond suspicion, and the still stronger tone of the law, show the frequency, as well as the evil, of the practice. Un- happily they were blind to its real cause. 1 " Eum qui probabilem saeculo disci- plinam agit decolorari consortio soro- rise appellationis non decet." But this law of Honorius, A. D. 420, allowed the clergy to retain their wives, if they had been married before entering into orders. See, too, the third and fourth canons of the Council of Car- thage, A. D. 348. 284 UNION WITH THE STATE. BOOK IV. far beyond their authority. The internal organisation was complete. The three great patriarchs in the East, throughout the West the Bishop of Rome, exercised a supreme, and, in some points, an appellant jurisdiction. Great ecclesiastical causes could be removed to their tribunal. Under them, the metropolitans, and in the next rank the bishops, governed their dioceses, and ruled the subordinate clergy, who now began to form parishes, separate districts to which their labours were to be confined. In the superior clergy had gradually become vested, not the ordination only, but the appoint- ment, of the inferior ; these could not quit the diocese without letters from the bishop, or be received or exercise their functions in another, without permission. On the incorporation of the Church with the State, Union of the co-ordinate civil and religious magistracy Churchand . . . , . state. maintained each its separate powers. On one side, as far as the actual celebration of the ecclesiastical ceremonial, and in their own internal affairs in general ; on the other, in the administration of the military, judicial, and fiscal affairs of the state, the bounds of their respective authority were clear and distinct. As a citizen and subject, the Christian, the priest, and the bishop, were alike amenable to the laws of the empire and to the imperial decrees, and liable to taxation, unless specially exempted, for the service of the state." The * The law of Constantius which appears to withdraw the bishops en- tirely from the civil jurisdiction, and to give the privilege of being tried upon all charges by a tribunal of bishops, is justly considered by Gotho- frel as a local or temporary act, pro- bably connected with the feuds con- .cerning A nanism. Cod. Theod. xvi. 2, 12, with Gothofred's note. Valens admitted the ecclesiastical courts to settle religious difficulties and slight offences, xvi. 2, 23. The same is the scope of the more, explicit law of Honorius. xvi. 2, 201. The immu- nity of the clergy from the civil courts was of very much later date. CHAP. I. CHURCH AND STATE. 285 Christian statesman, on the other hand, of the highest rank, was amenable to the ecclesiastical censures, and was bound to submit to the canons of the Church in matters of faith and discipline, and was entirely de- pendent on their judgement for his admission or rejection from the privileges or hopes of the Christian. So far the theory was distinct and perfect ; each had his separate and exclusive sphere ; yet there could not but appear a debateable ground on which the two authorities came into collision, and neither could alto- gether refrain from invading the territory of his ally or antagonist. The treaty between the contracting parties was, in fact, formed with such haste and precipitancy, union of the . , , , , i Church and that the rights of neither party could be de- the state. fined or secured. Eager for immediate union, and impatient of delay, they framed no deed of settlement, by which, when their mutual interests should be less identified, and jealousy and estrangement should arise, they might assert their respective rights, and enforce their several duties. In ecclesiastical affairs, strictly so called, the supre- macy of the Christian magistracy, it has been said, was admitted. They were the legislators of discipline, order, and doctrine. The festivals, the fasts, the usages and canons of the Church, the government of the clergy, were in their exclusive power. The decrees of particular synods and councils possessed undisputed authority, as far as their sphere extended. General councils were held binding on the whole Church. But it was far more easy to define that which did belong to the pro- vince of the Church than that which did not. Religion asserts its authority, and endeavours to extend its influence over the whole sphere of moral action, which 286 COMPLICATED RELATIONS BOOK IV. is, in fact, over the whole of human life, its habits, manners, conduct. Christianity, as the most profound moral religion, exacted the most complete and universal obedience ; and as the acknowledged teachers and guar- dians of Christianity, the clergy continued to draw within their sphere every part of human life in which man is actuated by moral or religious motives. The moral authority, therefore, of the religion, and conse- quently of the clergy, might appear legitimately to extend over every transaction of life, from the legislature of the sovereign, which ought, in a Christian king, to be guided by Christian motive, to the domestic duties of the peasant, which ought to be fulfilled on the principle of Christian love. But, on the other hand, the State was supreme over all its subjects, even over the clergy, in their character of citizens. The whole tenure of property, to what use soever dedicated (except in such cases as the State itself might legalise on its first principles, and guarantee, when bestowed, as by gift or bequest), was under its absolute control ; the immunities which it conferred it might revoke ; and it would assert the equal authority of the constitutional laws over every one who enjoyed the protection of those laws. Thus, though in extreme cases, these separate bounds of jurisdiction were clear, the tribunals of ecclesiastical and civil law could not but, in process of time, interfere with and obstruct each other. But there was another prolific source of difference. The clergy, in one sense, from being the representative body, had begun to consider themselves' the Church; but in another and more legitimate sense, the State, when Christian, as comprehending all the Christians of the empire, became the Church. Which was the legis- CHAP. I. OF CHURCH AND STATE. 287 lative body, the whole community of Christians? or the Christian aristocracy, who were in one sense the admitted rulers ? And who was to appoint these rulers ? It is quite clear that, from the first, though the conse- cration to the religious office was in the bishop and clergy, the laity had a voice in the ratification if not in the appointment. Did not the State fairly succeed to all the rights of the laity, more particularly when privileges and endowments, attached to the ecclesiastical offices, were conferred or guaranteed by the State, and therefore might appear in justice revocable, or liable to be regulated by the civil power ? This vital question at this time was still farther embarrassed by the rash eagerness with which the domi- nant Church called upon the State to rid it of its internal adversaries. When once the civil power was recognised as cognisant of ecclesiastical offences, where was that power to end? The Emperor, who commanded his subjects to be of one religion, might command them, by the same title, to adopt another. The despotic head of the State might assert his despotism as head of the Church. It must be acknowledged that no theory, which has satisfactorily harmonised the relations of these two, at once, in one sense separate, in another identical, com- munities, has satisfied the reasoning and dispassionate mind ; while the separation of the two communities, the total dissociation, as it were, of the Christian and the citizen, is an experiment apparently not likely to advance or perpetuate the influence of Christianity. At all events, the hasty and unsettled compact of this period left room for constant jealousy and strife. As each was the stronger, it encroached upon and extended its dominion into the territory of the other. In general, though with very various fortunes, in different parts of 288 MARRIAGE. BOCK IV. the world, and at different periods, the Church was in the ascendant, and for many centuries confronted the State, at least on equal terms. The first aggression, as it were, which the Church Mamage made on the State, was in assuming the cogni- brought ' . . under eccie- sance over all questions and causes relating to siastical dia- . T .. . ,. , cipiine. marriage. In sanctifying this solemn contract, it could scarcely be considered as transgressing its proper limits as guardian of this primary element of social virtue and happiness. In the early Church, the bene- diction of the bishop or presbyter seems to have been previously sought by the Christian at the time of mar- riage. The Heathen rite of marriage was so manifestly religious, that the Christian, while he sought to avoid that idolatrous ceremony, would wish to substitute some more simple and congenial form. In the general senti- ment that this contract should be public and sacred, he would seek the sanction of his own community as its witnesses. Marriage not performed in the face: of his Christian brethren was little better than an illicit union. x It was an object likewise of the early Christian com- munity to restrict the marriage of Christians to Christ- " Ideo penes nos occultie conjunc- tiones, id est, non prius apud ecclesiam professse, juxta moechiam et fornica- tionem judicari periclitantur." Tertull. de Pudic. c, 4. Though the rite was solemnised in the presence of the Christian priest, and the Church attempted to impose a ism, or rather, perhaps, human nature, was too strong to submit. The austere preacher of Constantinople reproved the loose hymns to Venus, which were heard even at Christian wed- dings. The bride, he says, was borne by drunken men to her husband's house, among choirs of dancing har- graver and more serious dignity, it lots, with pipes and flutes, and songs, was not so easy to throw off the gay j full, to her chaste ear, of offensive and festive character which had pre- license. vailed in the Heathen times. Pagan- CHAP. I. RESTRAINTS OX MARRIAGE. 289 ians to discountenance, if not prohibit, those with unbelievers/ This was gradually extended to marriages with heretics, or members of another Christian sect. When, therefore, the Church began to recognise five legal impediments to marriage, this was the 1st dif- ference of religion as between Christians and infidels, Jews, or heretics. The Ilnd was, the impediment of crime. Persons guilty of adultery were not allowed to marry according to the Roman law : this was recognised by the Church. A law of Constantius had made rape, or forcible abduction of a virgin, a capital offence ; so, even with the consent of the injured female, marriage could not take place. III. Impediments from relation- ship. Here also the Church was content to follow the Bonaan law, which was as severe and precise as the Mosaic Institutes. 2 IV. The civil impediment. Chil- dren adopted by the same father could not marry. A freeman could not marry a slave ; the connection was only concubinage. It does not appear that the Church yet ventured to correct this vice of Roman society. V. Spiritual relationship, between godfathers and their spiritual children: this was afterwards carried much farther. To these regulations for the repression of im- J A law of Valentinian II., Theo- dosius and Arcadius (A. D. 388), pro- hibited the intermarriage of Jews and Christians. Codex Theodos. iii. 7, 2. It was to be considered adultery. " Ca-ve, Christiane, Gentili aut Judaso filiam tradere ; cave, inquam, Gen- tilem aut Judream atque alienigenam, hoc est, hsereticam, et omnem alienam a fide tua usorem accersas tibi." Am- bros. de Abraham, c. 9. "Cumcer- tissirn^ noveris tradi a nobis Christi- VOL. III. anam nisi Christiano non posse." Au- gustin. Ep. 234, ad Rusticum. The Council of llliberis had prohi- bited Christians from giving their daughters in marriage to Gentiles (propter copiam puellarum), also to Jews, heretics, and especially to Hea- then priests. Can. xv. xvi. xvii. 1 See the various laws in the Cod. Theod., Kb. Hi. tit. 12, De Incestis Nuptiis. 290 DIVORCE. BOOK IV. Divorce. proper connections were added some other ecclesiastical impediments. There were holy periods in the year, in which it was forbidden to contract marriage. No one might marry while under ecclesiastical interdict, nor one who had made a vow of chastity. The facility of divorce was the primary principle of corruption in Roman social life. Augustus had attempted to enforce some restrictions on this unlimited power of dissolving the matrimonial contract from caprice or the lightest motive. Probably, the severity of Christian morals had obtained that law of Constantino which was so much too rigid for the state of society, as to be entirely ineffective from the impos- sibility of carrying it into execution. 4 It was relaxed by Constantius, and almost abrogated by Honorius. b The inveterate evil remained. A Christian writer, at the beginning of the fifth century, complains that men changed their wives as quickly as their clothes, and that marriage chambers were set up as easily as booths in a market. At a later period than that to which our Codex Theodos. iii. 16, 1. See vol. ii. p. 397. k By the law of Honorius, 1. The woman who demanded a divorce with- out sufficient proof forfeited her dowry, was condemned to banishment, could not contract a second marriage, and was without hope of restoration to civil rights. 2. If she made out only a tolerable case (convicted her husband only of mediocris culpa), she only for- feited her dowry, and could not con- tract a second marriage, but was liable to be prosecuted by her hus- band for adultery. 3. If she made a strong case (gravis causa), she retained her dowry, and might marry again after five years. The husband, in the first case, forfeited the gifts and dowry, and was condemned to per- petual celibacy, not having liberty to many again after a certain number of years. In the second, he forfeited the dowry but not the donation, and could marry again after two years. In the third, he was bound to prosecute his guilty wife. On her conviction, he retained the dowry, and might marry again immediately. Cod. Theodos. iii. xvi. 2. " Mulieres a. mantis tanquam ves- tes subinde mutari, et thalamos tarn saepe et facile stnii quam nundinarum tabernas." Asterius Amasenus apud Combefis. Auct. t. i. The story has been oftea quoted CHAP: I. SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE. 291 history extends, when Justinian attempted to prohibit all divorces except those on account of chastity, that is when the parties embraced the monastic life, he was obliged to relax the law on account of the fearful crimes, the plots and poisonings, and other evils, which it intro- duced into domestic life. But though it could not correct or scarcely mitigate this evil by public law in the general body of society, Christianity, in its proper and more peculiar sphere, had invested marriage in a religious sanctity, which at least, to a limited extent, repressed this social evil. By degrees, separation from bed and board, even in the case of adultery, the only cause which could dissolve the tie, was substituted and enforced by the clergy instead of legal divorce. Over all the ceremonial forms, and all expressions which related to marriage, the Church threw the utmost solemnity ; it was said to resemble the mystic union of Christ and the Church ; till at length marriage grew up into a sacrament, indissoluble until the final separation of death, except by the highest ecclesiastical authority." 1 It is impossible to calculate the effect of this canonisation, as it were, of marriage, the only remedy which could be applied, first to the corrupt manners of Roman society, and afterwards to the consequences of the barbarian invasions, in which, notwithstanding the strong moral element in the Teutonic character, and the respect for women (which, no doubt, was one of the from St. Jerome, of the man (of the in a kind of triumphal procession, lowest class) in Rome, who had had Hieronym. Epist. xci. p. 745. twenty wives, not divorced (he had j d The Eastern churches had a buried them all) ; his wife had had twenty-two husbands. There was a reat anxiety to know which would outlive the other. The man carried the day, and bore his wife to the wave horror of second marriage ; a pres- byter was forbidden to be present at the wedding- feast of a digamist. Can. vii. See above. u2 292 WILLS. BOOK IV. original principles of chivalry), yet the dominance of brute force, and the unlimited rights of conquest, could not but lead to the perpetual, lawless, and violent disso- lution of the marriage tie. 6 The cognisance of wills, another department in which the Church assumed a power not strictly eccle- Wills. . , , . / siastical, seems to have arisen partly irom an accidental cause. It was the custom among the Heathen to deposit wills in the temples, as a place of security ; the Christians followed their practice, and chose their churches as the depositaries of these important docu- ments. They thus came under the custody of the clergy, who, from guardians, became, in their courts, the judges of their authenticity or legality, and at length a general tribunal for all matters relating to testaments. Thus religion laid its sacred control on all the material incidents of human life, and around the ministers of religion gathered all the influence thus acquired over the sentiments of mankind. The font of baptism usually received the Christian infant, and the form of baptism was uttered by the priest or bishop ; the marriage was unhallowed without the priestly benediction ; and at the close of life, the minister of religion was at hand to absolve and to reassure the departing spirit; at the funeral, he ratified, as it were, the solemn promises of immortality. But the great, permanent, and perpetual source of sacerdotal authority was the penitential dis- cipline of the Church, which was universally recognised e It is curious to trace the rapid I vitta, the Goth, married a Roman fall of Roman pride. Valentinian j woman with the consent of the Em- made the intermarriage of a Roman i peror. Eunap. Excerpt. Legat. In provincial with a barbarian a capital ' another century, the daughters of em- crime (A. D. 370). Codei Theodos. ' perors were the willing or the enforced iii. 14, 1. Under Theodosius, Fra- j brides of barbarian kings. CHAP. 1. PENANCE. 293 as belonging exclusively to the jurisdiction of the clergy. Christianity had sufficient power, in a p en itentiai certain degree, to engross the mind and heart, v i]fj.apriiKora, ttes TWV KOTTJ- Xovp.tvtav, Kal tvrevOfv {(px*(rOai' CLKOVWV yap rj(r! TCO atovffdv Ka.Ti\\o\i- /j.(vmtheambo. bocr. vi. 5.Sozomen, "" Sid. Apollon. can. xvi. from the arnbo. viii. 5. Both usages prevailed in the West. Apollo ' Fronte sub adversa gradibus sublime tri- bunal Tollitur, antistes praxilcat unde I)cum." Prudent Hymn, ad Hippolyt. CHAP. n. THE ALTAR. 313 Here the steps of the profane stranger must pause ; an insuperable barrier, which he could not pass without violence, secluded the initiate from the society of the less perfect. Yet, till the more secret ceremonial began, he might behold, at dim and respectful distance, the striking scene, first of the baptized worshippers in their order, the females in general in galleries above (the vir- gins separate from the matrons). Beyond, in still further secluded sanctity, on an elevated semicircle, around the bishop, sat the clergy, attended by the sub- deacons, acolyths, and those of inferior order. Even the gorgeous throne of the Emperor was below this plat- form. Before them was the mystic and awful table, the altar, as it began to be called in the fourth century, over which was sometimes suspended a richly-wrought canopy (the ciborium) : the altar was covered with fine linen. In the third century, the simpler vessels of glass or other cheap material had given place to silver and gold. In the later persecutions, the cruelty of the Heathen was stimulated by their avarice ; and some of the sufferers, while they bore their own agonies with pa- tience, were grieved to the heart to see the sacred vessels pillaged, and turned to profane or indecent uses. In the Eastern churches, richly embroidered curtains overshadowed the approach to the altar, or light doors secluded altogether the Holy of Holies from the profane gaze of the multitude. Such was the ordinary Christian ceremonial as it addressed the mass of mankind. But at a certain time, the uninitiate were dismissed, the veil was dropped which shrouded the hidden rites, the doors were closed, profane steps might not cross the threshold of the bap- tistery, or linger in the church, when the Liturgy of the faithful, the office of the Eucharist, began. The veil of 314 SECRECY OF THE SACRAMENTS. BOOK IV. concealment was first spread over the peculiar rites of Christianity from caution. The religious assemblies were, strictly speaking, unlawful, and they were shrouded secrecy of the i n secrecy lest they should be disturbed by the sacrameuts. intrusion of their watchful enemies ; l and it was this unavoidable secrecy which gave rise to the frightful fables of the Heathen concerning the nature of these murderous or incestuous banquets. As they could not be public, of necessity they took the form of mysteries, and as mysteries became objects of jealousy and of awe. As the assemblies became more public, that seclusion of the more solemn rites was retained from dread and reverence, which was commenced from fear. Though profane curiosity no longer dared to take a hostile character, it was repelled from the sacred ceremony. Of the mingled multitude, Jews and Heathens, the in- cipient believers, the hesitating converts, who must be permitted to hear the Gospel of Christ, or the address of the preacher, none could be admitted to the sacraments. It was natural to exclude them, not merely by regula- tion and by the artificial division of the church into separate parts, but by the majesty which invested the last solemn rites. That which had concealed itself from fear, became itself fearful : it was no longer a timid mystery which fled the light, but an unapproachable communion with the Deity, which would not brook profane intrusion. It is an extraordinary indication of the power of Christianity, that rites in themselves so simple, and of which the nature, after all the conceal- ment, could not but be known, should assume such unquestioned majesty ; that, however significant, the 1 " Tot hostes ejus, quot extranei . . . quotidife obsidemur, quotidife pro- dim ur, in ipsis pluriiniim coetibus et congregationibus opprimimur." tull. Apologet. 7. Ter- CHAP. II. SECRECY OF THE SACRAMENTS. 31o simple lustration by water, and the partaking of bread and wine, should so affect the awe-struck imagination, as to make men suppose themselves ignorant of what these sacraments really were, and even when the high- wrought expectations were at length gratified, to expe- rience no dissatisfaction at their plain, and in themselves, unappalling ceremonies. The mysteriousness was no doubt fed and heightened by the regulations of the clergy, and by the impressiveness of the service, 11 but it grew of itself out of the profound and general religious sentiment. The baptistery and the altar were closed against the uninitiate, but if they had been open, men would scarcely have ventured to approach them. The knowledge of the nature of the sacraments was reserved for the baptized ; but it was because the minds of the unbaptized were sealed by trembling reverence, and shuddered to anticipate the forbidden knowledge. The hearers had a vague knowledge of these mysteries float- ing around them, the initiate heard it within. m To add to the impressiveness, night was sometimes spread over the Christian as over the Pagan mysteries. 11 k This was the avowed object of the clergy. " Catechumeuis sacramenta fidelium non produntur, non ide6 fit, quod ea ferre non possunt, sed ut ab eis tanto ardentius concupiscantur, quanto honorabilius occultantur." Au- gustin. in Johan. 96. " Mortalium generi natuia datum est, ut abstrusa fortiiis qiiaerat, ut negata magis ambiat, ut tardius adepta plus diligat, et eo flagrantius ametur veritas, quo vel diutiiis desideratur, vel laboriosius quaeritur, vel tardius invenitur." Clau- dius Mamert., quoted by Casaubon in Baron, p. 497. m The inimitable pregnancy of the Greek language expresses this by two verbs differently compounded. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Procatechesis, states the Catechumens the Faithful ej'TJxeTffOaj ing of the mysteries. n "Noctu ritus multi in mysteriis pergebantur ; noctu etiam initiatio Christianorum inchoabatur." Casau- bon, p. 490, with the quotations sub- joined. This might have originated in the vigil of Easter being thus prolonged to midnight. It was an old Jewish tradition that the Messiah would come at the Passover at midnight. "Dicamus aliquid, quod forsitan lectori BAPTISM. BOOK IV. Baptism. At Easter, and at Pentecost, and in some places at the Epiphany, the rite of Baptism was admi- nistered publicly (that is, in the presence of the Faithful) to all the converts of the year, excepting those few instances in which it had been expedient to perform the ceremony without delay, or where the timid Christian put it off till the close of life ; p a practice for a long time condemned in vain by the clergy. But the fact of the delay shows how deeply the importance and efficacy of the rite were rooted in the Christian mind. It was a complete lustration of the soul. The Neophyte emerged from the waters of Baptism in a state of perfect innocence. The Dove (the Holy Spirit) was constantly hovering over the font, and sanctifying the waters to the mysterious ablution of all the sins of the passed life. If the soul suffered no subsequent taint, it passed at once to the realms of purity and bliss ; the heart was purified ; the understanding illuminated ; the spirit was clothed with immortality. 9 Kobed in utile sit. Traditio Judaeorum est Christum media nocte venturum in similitudinem JEgyptii tempons, quan- do Pascha celebratum est, et extermi- nator venit et Dominus super taber- nacula transiit et sanguine agni postes nostrarum frontim consecrati sunt. Unde reor traditionem apostolicam per- tnansisse ut in die vigiliarum paschae ante noctis dimidium populos dimittere non liceat expectantesadventumChristi, et postquam illud tempus transient, securitate prsesumta festum cunctis agentibus diem." Hieron. in Matt. 24. At Constantinople, it appears from Chrysostom, baptism did not take place at Pentecost. Montfaucou, Dia- tribe, p. 179. f The memorable example of Con- stantine may for a time not only have illustrated but likewise confirmed the practice. See Gibbon's note (vol. iii. p. 266) and the author's observations. i Gregory of Nazianzum almost exhausts the copiousness of the Greek language in speaking of Baptism, Swpov Ka\ovfj.fv, x^P lff f ia ^ ^dirrifffia, Xplfffia, (ptariffiia, &.0apffia.s fv5v[j.a, \ovrpov ira\iyyfVfffias, ff