IN THE
TRANSLATED BY PERMISSION FROM THE FRENCH OF
LATE PROFESSOR OF FOREIGN LITERATURE TO THE FACULTY
OF LETTERS AT PARIS.
By
OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
CHAPTER I.
THE INSTITUTIONS OF CHRISTENDOM.
Esteem shown for St. Augustine in the Middle Age, for his services to
Christian doctrine. Christianity established as a society; gifted with
institutions fitted to achieve the ends for which it was established; how were
these institutions introduced; the Papacy and Monasticism acted with most force
on the Middle Age. Theory of Planck, Neander. and Guizot as to the rise of the
former. Christianity does not admit individualism; less a doctrine than a
society. Sketch of its constitution. Witness of St. Irenseus, Tertullian, and
St. Cyprian. Proofs drawn from the Catacombs as to the antiquity of the
Popedom. Action of the Popes in disputed questions. St. Leo the Great; his
learning, eloquence, and courage; the heresy of Nestorius; Leo declares the
true doctrine; the Council of Chalcedon; Leo saves civilization in the West
from the barbarians. Attila and Genseric. The patriotism of the Pope. The
origin of Monasticism examined. The anchorites of Buddhism and Brahminism. The
Therapeutse and Essenes; the latter gave the idea of Christian monachism. Its
services at the collapse of the old society; passed from the East into the
West, probably with St. Athanasius; the solitary developed into the coenobitic
life; the flourishing monasteries of Gaul. Contrast between the Christian and pagan asceticism
CHAPTER II.
CHRISTIAN MANNERS.
The available forces of society at the time of the invasions. Rise of the Canon Law. Incompatibility
between pagan laws and pagan manners; Christian manners more congruous with
legislation; the feelings of independence ; the dignity of man and respect for
women; intensified by the Germans; Christianity had already made virtues of
these instincts ; attitude of the Church with regard to slavery; the spirit of
the new religion favours gradual emancipation; improves the condition of the
working class; free labour shackled under the old system ; cruelty of the old
law of debtor and creditor; the Church encouraged labour; was recruited from
the labouring classes at first; pagan objections on this account; the fossores
of the Catacombs; the idea of labour reconstructed; it formed an essential
element in the monastic system. Associations of labour in Roman antiquity; the
collegia ; their nature ; these corporations strengthened and continued under
the new system; their importance in the Middle Age, especially in Italy; relief
of the poor; vice of the old system of public largess; Christianity makes
almsgiving the duty of each individual; encourages discrimination in private
charity; its system of public benevolence; hospitals and refuges. Canon of the
Council of Nice on the subject. Fabiola and Psammachius. The charitable sentiment
in the Middle Age; it was not due to the barbarians. Contrast between the
towns of ancient and modern times 33
CHAPTER III.
THE WOMEN OF CHRISTENDOM.
The practical condition of woman degraded throughout antiquity,
notwithstanding legislative enactments. The Roman theory of marriage belied by
practice; inequality of the respective obligations of man and wife ; facility
of divorce; consequent frivolity and immorality of women; Seneca’s opinion of
them. Christian theology presupposes the dignity of the female sex; the first
and second Eve; the female martyrs; elevation of women in every-day life by the
new idea of marriage; the unity of the duties and condition of husband and wife; divorce;
inveteracy of the old habit; legislation against it therefore gradual; laws of
Constantine, Honorius, and Theodosius the Younger; firm opposition of the
Church to divorce conferred domestic dignity on women, and thus assured them
respect; the penance of Fabiola; woman becomes foremost in works of
benevolence; their new part in influencing manners; the Empress Pulcheria
respected by Attila; these ideas were not owing to the barbarians; instances of
their cruelty and polygamy; they also upheld divorce, and carried it on to
later times. The share of woman in the work of civilization; Clotilda, Bertha,
and Theodolinda, forerunners of Blanche of Castille and Joan of Arc. Their part
in literature; they are highly educated; St. Jerome’s schemes for their instruction
; influence of his mother over St. Augustine; St. Jerome’s class of noble matrons; Fabiola, Paula, Marcella, etc.;
their intellectual aspirations suggest the idea of the Vulgate; their place in
art; paintings of women in the Catacombs, and in poetry; poems on the martyrdom
of St. Agnes, by Prudentius; the vision of Hennas; formation of the female type
which distinguished later ages; the rise of Chivalry; the Beatrice of Dante
and Laura of Petrarch ; the great intellectual revolution of the fifth century;
letters become the property of the many 56
CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE LATIN LANGUAGE BECAME CHRISTIAN.
rise of a Christian literature; it required a language and adopted the
Latin, which seemed little fitted for the new ideas; its terseness and
harshness originally; contrast between its genius and that of Greek; adapted to
a hard and practical race; subsequent introduction of Greek forms, encouraged
by Cicero; stress laid upon euphony in public speaking; poetry becomes
Graecized in the hands of Virgil, Horace, and Catullus. The golden age of
Latin; its speedy corruption and the causes of it; the Eastern genius of
contemplation; the Greek tendency to speculation and the Latin love for action
dominated antiquity; these three elements passed on to modern times by means of
the Vulgate; history of the work undertaken by St. Jerome, aid examination of
its
effects on literature. The Hebrew
contributed the idea of eternity, the Greek metaphysical accuracy; reception
of new expressions into Latin; prominent part played by Africans in the
literary history of the fifth century; their defects, instanced by Tertullian’s
writings; further corruption of the Latin; the inscriptions of the Catacombs;
poetry corrupted; introduction of the rhyme. Christianity achieved its purpose
with the Bible as its instrument, and by means of the people; Latin thus became
the classical language of the Middle Age, to which it was necessary, as the
means of educating the new nations
CHAPTER V.
CHRISTIAN ELOQUENCE.
The intense love of the ancients for eloquence, which was expected to
please the senses as well as to exercise the thought; the five divisions of
rhetoric; eloquence fell off as interest in politics grew weaker; reduced to
the Bar; to panegyrists of the great and itinerant rhetoricians. Dion,
Chrysostom, Apuleius; the science dies away; interest of the new faith in
restoring it; differences between the new method and the old ; rules given by
St. Ambrose; Augustine the real founder of Christian rhetoric ; his method
explained, with its difference from that of Cicero. The treatises “De
Inventione” and “De Catechizandis Rudibus”; the orators of the Greek Church,
St. Gregory, Basil, and Chrysostom; their superior grace to the Latins owing to
the greater refinement of their audiences; character of the audiences at Hippo
; the eloquence of St. Ambrose was, however, polished; analysis of that of St.
Augustine, and citation from his works; other famous preachers, St. Zeno of Verona, Peter Clirysologus of
Ravenna, Gaudentius of Brescia, and Maximus of Turin; the homiliana;
characteristics of the new eloquence; its capability of adaptation to varying
circumstances . 117
CHAPTER VI.
CHRISTIAN HISTORY.
History stood next to eloquence in the esteem of the ancients; the
romantic and uncritical nature of Greek and Roman history; liberties taken by
Herodotus and Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus; history narrowed by national
egoism; decadence of history at the fifth century; Ammianus Marcellinus;
interest of the new faith in restoring history, and in making it universal.
Sources of early Christian history; the acts of martyrs and canons of councils.
The new historical elements. Chronicles ; their ambitious scope compared with
those of antiquity; the universal history of Eusebius, continued by St.
Jerome; the chronicles of Prosper of Aquitaine and Idatius; precision, brevity,
and dryness of these writings. The acts of martyrs drawn from authentic
sources; brevity and sobriety of their details; the acts of St. Perpetua, St.
Polycarp, and St. Cyprian; examination of the latter; the period of the
anchorites succeeds; introduction of poetical and legendary element; lives of
saints of the Thebaid; story of Paul and Antony; moral of it; the desire of
knowing causes as well as facts existed scantily throughout antiquity. The
treatise “ De Civitate Dei;” the commencement of the philosophy of history was
undertaken in answer to the complaints of the followers of the old religion on
the fall of the Empire; the work analyzed ; the history of Paulus Orosius;
Salvian; “ De Guber- natione Dei;” these works moulded later history; their
authors the precursors of Bossuet. Fact, colour, and philosophy remain the
constituents of historical composition. Influence of thought over events as
well as feelings exemplified in the result of the part taken by Augustine,
Orosius, and Salvian in the face of contemporary events
CHAPTER VII.
POETRY.
Prose the vehicle of Christian ideas for the first three centuries;
contrast in this respect with the ancient literatures; feeble rise of Christian
poetry; it gains strength from the time of Constantine; its early tendency ;
the old forms retained to express new ideas; Sedulius and Juvencus; aims and
results of the new poetry, which still treated principally of human affairs;
lyric poetry; compositions of St. Ambrose; introduction of the rhymed
sequence; St. Paulinus and Pru- dentius; history of Paulinus; his conversion
and
correspondence with Ausonius ;
criticism of his poetry; similarity in idea with that of Dante; the career of
Prudentius, as lawyer, poet, and controversialist; his arguments against
Paganism, and his patriotism; his excellence in lyric poetry; the
“Cathemerinon” and “ Peristephanon; ” his use of the Horatian metres;
admiration shown for his writings in the Middle Age ; they were undervalued at
the time of the Revival; reasons for this; Christian poetry was to be found
principally in Christian art
CHAPTER VIII.
CHRISTIAN ART.
Symbolism a law of nature and of the human mind; it appears in Scripture,
and in Christianity; the early use of allegory; the shepherd of Hermas; the
discipline of the Secret; the “Book of Formulas;” connection between religious
symbolism and the arts; rise of Christian art in the Catacombs; description of
the latter; their paintings; frequent similarity to the old models. Orpheus;
the Good Shepherd; significance of the latter; the symbolical language; the use
of sculpture; inscriptions in verse ;• development of art after the period of
persecution; supervision of sculpture; bas-reliefs and sarcophagi; greater
favour shown to painting; evidence of its early use in church-decoration; the
Byzantine method. Mosaic works; it appears in all the principal churches at
Rome and elsewhere; fidelity to the old types; instances of this; exception
taken to it by Charlemagne; architecture the dominant art; the first churches
developed from the sepulchral chapels of the Catacombs; type preserved in
baptisteries and burial- places, and in the Byzantine style, as in St. Sophia;
the Roman basilicas used by the Christians, and imitated by them; idea and
object of a church in the early ages ; description of its appearance and
arrangement; the Byzantine cujpola added to the basilican form; the Romanesque,
or Lombard architecture; its prevalence in North Italy and Germany; it gives
place to the Gothic style; reaction in favour of the rounder form at the
Revival; St. Peter’s at Rome . . . .202
CHAPTER IX.
THE MATERIAL CIVILIZATION OF THE EMPIRE.
Summary of the progress effected in ideas; the material worid beneath
their current; appreciation by old Rome of the idea of utility; her care for
material civilization; Aristides, the rhetorician, and Tertullian on the great
prosperity of the Empire; channels of Roman commerce ; Rome adopted the Greek
routes to the East, the land-route by the Euxine, the sea-route by Alexandria;
she created her own way to the North; the means of communication; connection
maintained after the invasion between Italy and Constantinople; Eastern produce
still introduced into Western Europe , story of Charlemagne and his courtiers;
commerce in the Middle Age ; it is protected by the Church; effects of the Crusades
upon it; Amalfi, Genoa, and Venice foremost in enterprise; Roman agriculture;
completeness of the system, which served to protect the frontiers ; causes of
its collapse; St. Benedict; the monks as cultivators; flourishing state of
agriculture under Charlemagne; the policy of Rome in establishing cities like
herself; magnificence of the provincial towns; their buildings . respected by
the barbarians after the first onslaught; letter from Cassiodorus to the
prefect of Rome; the Church preserves cities; temporal authority of the
bishops; respect for patron saints; the towns remained cradles of industry ;
encouragement of labour; confraternities and corporations; their political
influence in the Middle Age, especially in France and Italy; the constitution
of Florence; sketch of the points of difference between the cities of Paganism
and Christendom . 231
CHAPTER X.
THE RISE OF THE NEO-LATIN NATIONS.
General uniformity of civilization in the fifth century; rise of the new
nationalities erroneously attributed solely to the invasions; existence of
distinctive features in the great provinces of the Empire before that era;
causes which preserved a national spirit in the subject races— 1st, a political
cause ; diversity in some respects in the order established by Rome ; harshness
of the system of taxation
produces a feeling of hatred to the central authority, and a national feeling;
St. Augustine and P. Orosius as instances of this; 2nd, a literary.cause,
arising from diversity of language; corruption of the Latin through the
admixture of older languages; this produced various dialects: the power of
language in defining nationalities; 3rd, a religious cause; the variety and to
a certain extent autonomy r e the national Churches;
provincial councils ; national saints; sentiment of religious patriotism; the
social mission of various nations. Characteristics of the three great
provinces—1st, Italy; two principles persistent in her character; the
theological and governing spirit, traced from the Etruscan and Roman elements
respectively; the Papacy; the same characteristics appear in the Middle Age ;
the mediaeval Popes and Dante; the commonwealths and Machiavel; inferiority of
the Italian genius in later periods; 2nd, Spain; their characteristics,
gravity and bravery of character; rapid advances of culture in Spain; defects
in Spanish literature; scantiness of her sacred literature up to the fifth century;
Spain profited by the labours of Africa; Juvencus, Damasus, Dracontius,
Prudentius; the “ Psychomachia” of the latter; he was the precursor of Lope de
Yega and Calderon; the “ Autos Sacramentales;” 3rd, France ; strength of the
Frank element in the nation; its civilization, nevertheless, essentially
Latin; impatience of Gaul under the Roman yoke; Gallic rebellions in the time
of Yespasian, Julian, and Honorius; love of the Gauls at the same time for
Roman culture and tradition ; their taste for eloquence; the rhetoricians;
their acknowledged excellence; Cato’s estimate of the Gallic character.
Sic^onius Apollinaris as a representative Frenchman; his versatile career; a
poet and orator; became a bishop ; the elaborateness of his style; his brave
defence of Clermont, his episcopal town ; the urbanity, lightness, and strong
feeling of honour which appeared in him marked the French character in ancient
and modern times ; summary and conclusion . .
HISTORY OF
CIVILIZATION
IN THE
CHAPTER I.
THE INSTITUTIONS OF CHRISTENDOM (THE PAPACY AND MONASTICISM).
In our attempted
examination of the philosophy of St. Augustine, we have seen how his great
genius, the true representative of Christian eclecticism, reunited the two
methods which had, up to his time, under the names of intuition and reasoning,
love and intelligence, mysticism and dogmatism, divided the world of thought.
We followed him along the ways which lead to the knowledge of God ; and on
scaling the vast heights of speculation to which he had been our guide,
perceived that it was his metaphysical system which enlightened, dominated, and
influenced the lofty minds of the Middle Age. For whilst the mysticism of the “
Confessions” was to inspire the contemplation of Hugh and Richard of St. Victor,
and draw from Bonaventura his “Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum,” St. Augustine’s
demonstration
of God’s existence was to be rigorously drawn out to its conclusions by St.
Anselm, and to become an element in the “Summa Contra Gentes” of St. Thomas
Aquinas, in which that great master undertook to prove, without recourse to
Holy Writ, three hundred and thirty-six theses upon God, the soul, and their
relations one with another.
But the
remembrance of St. Augustine could not fill the domain of theology without
descending into those arts which the Sacred Science inspired. Legend, as we
know, had, as it were, seized upon the great doctor of Hippo, and woven around
him an especial glory, as for instance in the vision of the sainted host
granted to a monk in ecstasy, whose astonishment at not beholding St.
Augustine was dissipated by the intelligence that his place was higher far, on
heaven’s very summit, and veiled by the rays of that Divinity which it was the
work of his eternity to contemplate. Nor was it surprising that monks should
cling to his memory thus, when even the Saracens, encamped on the^ruins of
Hippo, showed their devotion to its bishop; and considering that in our own
day the Bedouins of the neighbourhood of Bona come every Friday to the spot
which is marked by the ruins of the Basilica of St. Augustine, to honour a hero
whom they call mysteriously the great Roman, or the great Christian. Painting,
too, found in the history of this Saint an inexhaustible store of subject, and,
amongst others, Benozzo Gonzali has depicted the incidents of his life in ten
paintings in the church of San Gemignano—that charming town of Tuscany which
defies the curiosity of the traveller from its rocky site—paintings which, with
touching simplicity, unfold the various epochs in
his
career, from the day on which he was taken by his parents to school at Tagaste,
praying God that he might escape the rod. -
Thus did the
highest intellects of Christian Italy aim to draw near to that genius of old
time. Petrarch, in writing his treatise on Contempt for the World, tormented by
a passion that robbed his mind of all repose, imagined that he had St.
Augustine for an interrogator, and that the Saint warned him that he was bound
by two fetters of diamond, which he mistook for treasures, but which in reality
were crippling him —namely, glory and love. Petrarch ardently defended his
bonds, declaring that he bore,them with joyful pride, and wished no one to lay
hands on that Platonic love which had inspired his whole life, and raised him
above the crowd. But the other, with a higher wisdom, derived from his
Christian instincts, pointed to the perils of an undefined passion, which,
though ostensibly ideal, would never have been conceived by him had not the
beauty of his Laura appeared in sensible form. St. Augustine saw in it only a
dangerous weakness, and prayed God that he might stay with the poet as a
safeguard against himself, while Petrarch, at last yielding to the argument of
the holy doctor, exclaimed, “ Oh, may thy prayer be granted; may I, too, under
Divine protection, come safe and whole from these long wanderings, feel the
tempest of my mind subside, feel the world growing silent around me, and the
temptations of fortune come to an end! ”
But
Christianity had not appeared for the sole purpose of promulgating the
doctrine which shone with so vivid a light upon the writings of Augustine, but
rather to found a society which might unfold itself, and receive
l *
within its
ranks those multitudinous hordes of barbarians who for many ages before its
advent had been in motion towards the rally-point which had been marked out for
them. We must learn if any and what influences were ready to subjugate, to
instruct, and to organize them, or whether the great institutions- of Catholicism
insinuated themselves into the Church, as has been often stated, in a time of
congenial barbarism, and as if by stealth, in the deep intellectual darkness
under which humanity was labouring.
There are two
institutions amongst those which were destined to act with energy on the Middle
Age, which arrest us at once, as their incontestable preponderance detaches
them from the rest—the Papacy and Monas- ticism; and it is our duty to seek out
their origin, to consider the forces they respectively wielded at the moment
when their exercise was called for, and to see whether their powers were
exerted for the salvation or the corruption of the human race.
This is no
place for renewing a worn-out controversy as to the origin of the Papacy, for
the equity of modern criticism has reduced the passionate exaggerations of our
predecessors, and no enlightened mind of our own day continues to regard it as
a premeditated and wicked usurpation on the part of certain ambitious priests.
A more impartial method points it out as an historical labour of the ages, the
temporary consequence of a certain development which Christianity was destined
to encounter. The religion of Christ, they say, took its rise in the
conscience, in the inner solitude of man’s personality, and so the Christian of
the apostolic age was self-sufficient, was king and priest to his own consciousness.
It was later that he felt the want of com
bination, and
with it the need of a common authority and a common rule; and thus towards the
end of the first century the clergy was separated and distinguished from the
mass of the faithful. It was not until the second century that the episcopal
power was seen first to arise, then to dominate, so that in the third age the
bishops of the different cities were naturally subordinated to the
metropolitans of the provinces, and thus the authority of the bishops and the
metropolitan archbishops was formed, by necessary consequence, upon the
constitution of the Roman provinces. Lastly, when Europe, Asia, and Africa began,
in the fourth century, to aspire to a separate existence, the capitals of these
three quarters of the world became the three Patriarchal Sees—Antioch for Asia,
Alexandria for Africa, and Rome for Europe; whilst in the two succeeding ages,
when the barbarians had severed the West from the East, the Bishop of Rome, the
acknowledged Patriarch of the West, became, without usurpation, tyranny, or
outrage to humanity, the supreme chief of the Latin Church. Such was the theory
in vogue at the opening of the present century—the view which claimed the
most'enlightened spirits of Protestantism as disciples, and formed the essence
of the theology of its greatest modern writers; a thesis which aroused Planck
and Neander, and was the corner-stone of the edifice of ecclesiastical history
raised by the respected hands of Guizot; a view remarkable from its moderation,
and which we must now examine more closely, to find the claim that it possesses
to support a system of opinions which have been widely embraced and even become
dominant.
In the first
place, Christianity in no way admits of
this
individualism which is thus laid down as the point of departure for the faith.
For it is less a collection of doctrines than a society. It has charity as well
as enlightenment for its special characteristic, and even the last-mentioned
quality is not communicated to man solely by study and reading, but is the
result of the spoken as well as the written word, as in a popular religion
destined to make its earliest converts amongst the poor and those who could not
read. Enlightenment as well as charity found its medium of communication in the
contact of souls. For this reason St. Paul regarded the Faith as being the soul
of a vast and single Body, of which Christ was the Head and His followers the
members; and as the limbs cannot will except through their chief member, it
followed that Christendom must be a living and consequently an organized body,
and that from its beginning it must be manifested not as a group of scattered
and solitary consciences, but as a true society, possessing a constitution with
a chief over all, with obedience and control among its lower orders, and
offering to the view all the necessary conditions of a complete organization.
And this idea is evidenced by the earliest documents of Christianity, though we
need enter into no minute discussion on the texts of the Acts of the Apostles
to show how continual witness is borne therein to the action of the Apostolic
College under the presidency of Peter, in conferring the episcopal character,
in instituting priests and ordaining deacons, surrounded, in the meanwhile by
the Christian people, from whom it was not separate indeed, but still perfectly
distinct.
Thus from
this early period we find that priests existed, and not bishops alone. And this
has been
often
controverted, because as the bishop had of necessity passed through the
priesthood, the name of priest was often given to him; but not a single passage
can be quoted in which a simple priest, on the other hand, has received the
title of bishop, whilst to avoid minute discussions, which only cause a loss of
time and light, it is evident that St. Paul, in his epistles* to Titus and
Timothy, confers upon them the right of judging priests, whom the very fact of
their yielding to this jurisdiction proves to have filled a subordinate
position. And so from the beginning we have a hierarchy, not only existent, but
in strong organization.
We might cite
here as evidence for the end of the first century, and the beginning of the second,
the epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch; but from their precise character the
adversaries of the opinion we maintain have accused them of being apocryphal,
as if unable to conceive the authenticity of documents so expressly condemning
their position. So we must refrain from using this contested authority, and
turn to others which have never been disputed. We come then to St. Irenseus, to
Tertullian, and St. Cyprian, the most ancient of the writers who have treated
of the ecclesiastical organization, who flourished at the end of the second
century, and from their positions in the Eastern and Western divisions
expressed the opinion of the Universal Church. These three great doctors agreed
on all essential points, and amidst the strife of opposing doctrines, the din
of heresies which were tearing Christendom asunder and snatching at the pages
of Holy Writ, unanimously recognized the necessity of tradition in the
interpretation of Scripture,
and the
presence of that tradition in the corporation named the Church. * This
corporation seemed to them to have been filled with a light which was
universal, as the sun is one object, though it spreads its rays over the face
of the earth, to borrow its strength from the Divine authority, to be the
habitation of the Holy Spirit, which afforded it a perpetual vitality, “ like a
precious liquid which perfumes and preserves the vessel in which it is
contained.” But the Spirit could only be transmitted by the medium of the
apostles, and the episcopate was but a continuation of the apostolate; so that
in the time of St. IrensBus, at the end of the second century, each of the
great churches maintained the succession of its bishops, but had never more
than one at a time. Thus was the distinction between the episcopate and the
rest of the priesthood established. But another and greater power was appearing
contemporaneously, and as its bishop formed the bond of unity for the
particular Church, so all these episcopal churches had need of a common centre.
And therefore St. Cyprian, in his treatise “ DeUnitate Ecclesia,” professed
that the unity of the Church must be visible, and that therefore Christ had
founded His Church upon the Apostle Peter, in order that its unity thus personified
might be patent. Nor did Cyprian confine this primacy of Peter, or the unity
which he represented, and whereby he gave strength to the Church, to the time
of the Apostle’s life, but prolonged and maintained it in the Petrine See,
naming it, in a letter
* “
Tradition reposes in the Church as one and universal, like a single sun, a
single tree, a single fountain. Beyond the Church there are no Christians, no
martyrs.”
to Pope
Cornelius, as the principal Church from whence the unity of the priesthood was
derived.*
Language
nearly identical was used by Tertullian; but it may be objected to these
witnesses that they were Africans and Westerns—subject, therefore, to the
indirect influence of Home and of Latin ideas. Let us look, then, to
counterbalance them, for evidence emanating from the Eastern Church. We shall
find it in the person of St. IrensBus, who wrote earlier, at the end of the
second century, and pointed to the episcopal succession as remounting without
break to the Apostles themselves. For the sake of brevity, to save the task' of
enumerating that succession in every town, he paused before the Church of
Borne, with which, he said, on account of its higher primacy, all churches,
that is to say the faithful, throughout the world, ought to agree. These
passages are incontestable, generally recognized and admitted even by Neander
and Planck, reducing them to maintain that in the time of St. Cyprian, of
Tertullian, and of IrensBus, the primitive spirit of the Gospel had been lost ;
that the doctrine of St. Paul was veiled by the Judaizing influence which was
dominant, and aimed at organizing the Church after the fashion of the
synagogue, with a spiritual chief corresponding to the high priest of the
latter. So that we Christians have not only to reply to the objection as to why
God waited four thousand years before sending His Son into the world, but to
another which would ask why the whole order of the newly-granted revelation was
disturbed at the end of the second century, and
* Et ad
Petri cathedram atque ecclesiam principalem unde unitas sacerdotalis exorta
est.” (St. Cypr. Ep. 55 ad Cor- nelium.)
1 t
its believers
compelled painfully to grope amidst impenetrable' darkness for the witness of
those few years during which alone the true doctrine prevailed.
But these
theories are wanting in foundation, and science itself demolishes them
continually. For the Catacombs of Rome are pregnant with novel proofs of the
ancient orthodoxy, and show us, with that rugged symbolism which characterized
Christian art in the early centuries, Peter in every place teaching doctrine,
and exercising the governing functions, and that not only in the short time
that his life comprised, but as it were by anticipation in ages yet to come. We
may allude especially to a crystal disk, lately found in the Catacombs, carved
with the oft-repeated type of Moses striking the rock, from which the
life-giving waters of doctrine flowed, whereat all the people might quench
their thirst. But the figure as Moses was vested, not in the costume of the
East, but in the traditional robes of the Popes, and bore the name Petrus—
doubtless representing Peter, the guide, like Moses, of the people of God, who
was drawing forth, by his episcopal staff, the waters which were to refresh
believing humanity.
Thus, then,
was the primitive constitution of the Church established: it possessed an
authority founded by the intervention of the Almighty; its origin was divine,
as was the consecration of its career; it was also visible, and the order
descended from the Apostles to the bishops, from the bishops to their
ministers. But yet there was scope for liberty in its organization. The
Sovereign Pontiff could do no act without having previously consulted his
brethren in the episcopate; the bishop referred to his brethren of the
priesthood; and
the
priest was of no authority at the altar without the concurrence of the entire
Church—that is, of the whole body of the faithful, who supported him with their
own prayers, and joined with him the intercession which he offered. '
Before the
close of the second century, in those remote times, the hierarchical
constitution of the primitive Church contained, as it were, a sphere allotted
to God, and another the privilege of the Christian people, principles of
authority and of liberty, and all the essential elements of a newly-ordered
society. When she was still menaced by persecution, and hunted down with
remorseless perseverance, there was but little reason for her to leave traces
of her passage, or of her institutions, which, much as they would have enlightened
us in these days, would have then served but to betray her faithful children;
but from that time forward, in spite of difficulty and peril still subsisting,
the question we have been examining grows bright with an unmistakable
clearness, and the Papacy is seen exercising its influence harmoniously with
the process of time and the increase* of danger.
Such, then,
is the nature of the historical development, not of the principle, but in the
exercise of that chief authority; and in proof that from the first it asserted
itself with singular energy, we find Tertullian reproving a Pope, his
contemporary, for having assumed the title of Epis copus Episcoporum and
Pontifex Maximus. Strong expressions no doubt, which—or at least the gift of
them—have seldom been claimed by Popes of modern days, for they have found a
preferable title, and a more powerful guarantee, in being styled the servant of
the * servants of God. The considerable discussions which
arose later
in the East, as well as the West, threw a light upon the subject which divested
it of all ambiguity. The minds of the faithful were troubled by three great
questions: the celebration of Easter, the administration of Baptism by
heretics, and the case of Dionysius, the Alexandrian patriarch* As the Churches
of Asia persisted in keeping the Paschal-time on the fourteenth day, which was
the time chosen by the Jews, instead of on the first Sunday after the
anniversary of the Resurrection, they fell under the interdict and
excommunication of Pope St. Victor. Later, when the Africans, headed by St.
Cyprian, decided that baptism given by heretics was invalid, and must be
renewed, Rome maintained its validity if given with the appointed ceremonies,
and, therefore, that it could not be repeated, and excommunicated the African
Churches, who at once made their submission. And again, when Dionysius of
Alexandria, in combating the heresy of Sabellius, let fall the expression that
Christ was not the Son, but the work of God, the Bishop of Rome summoned him
to explain. Dionysius accordingly did so, justified himself, and withdrew the
statement. Thus in three important questions, which nearly touched dogma, the
Papacy was seen intervening in the plenitude of a supreme authority. In the
midst of the light of that brilliant fourth century, which beheld so many great
occupants of the episcopal seat in the Eastern and the Western Church, we find
the pontifical authority recognized and proclaimed in far stronger terms by
St. Athanasius, the great patriarch of Alexandria, who declared that it was
from the See of Peter that the bishops who preceded him had derived alike their
orders and their doctrine, by St. Optatus of Milivium,
by St.
Jerome, by St. Augustine—in a word by the Church’s greatest minds. And the
exercise of that power continued simultaneously, as when the Popes Julius I.
and Damasus deposed or reinstated the patriarchs of Alexandria, of
Constantinople, or of Antioch; when the legates of the Holy See took the chief
place at Nicsea, and a.d. 847 at Sardica, where they declared that all
episcopal sentences might be carried to the chief see of the Church of Rome;
and when in the assembly of Ephesus the reunited bishops of the East, at the
zealous instance of St. Cyril, who was supported by the authority of Pope
Celestine, pronounced their decision in the case of Nestorius.
No one can
doubt, therefore, that in the fourth century the Papacy was already in
possession of its entire authority; nor can we see in this fact*the work of the
Christianized emperors of Rome, who desired to grant the half of their purple
and of their dignity to the bishops of the imperial city. Hardly, in truth, had
Constantine embraced the faith than he transferred the seat of his empire to
Byzantium, and the interest of his successors lay in enhancing the power of the
patriarchs of Constantinople, in elevating their authority over the Church,
thus making them docile and obedient to themselves. For this they toiled, and
in this they succeeded; but the emperors did not spend their cunning policy on
behalf of the Roman pontiff— rather if they extended their care to him it would
have been devoted to his humiliation. Nor was it any genius on the part of the
Popes which raised their place so high, for not a single great man filled the
See of Eome
during the first four centuries : they were but martyrs, perhaps wise as men,
and capable as administrators—those obscure pontiffs who were destined to
found so marvellous a power. Even Julius I. and Damasus were as nothing in
comparison with the brilliant intellects which formed the boast of Asia and of
Greece ; for there was hardly a see in the East that had not been distinguished
by some powerful mind. Alexandria had held Athanasius and Cyril; Antioch and
Constantinople had seen their respective chairs filled by St. Gregory of Nyssa
and St. John Chrysostom: and as authority was seated in the West, genius
certainly was the property of the East.
The first man
of genius who appeared at Rome to don the insignia of the pontificate was St.
Leo the Great, who was especially destined to contribute to the papal see no
new principle of authority, but an example of the novel action which it would
be called upon to exercise on the barbarous nations. On the 29th of September,
a.d. 440, the clergy of Eome assembled upon the death of Sixtus III., and
elected in his place Leo, then archdeacon of the Roman Church. The confidence
placed in him by the late pontiff, and by the emperors, had made it a worthy
choice; and at the very moment of his election the new Pope was in Gaul,
occupied in reconciling Aetius and Albinus, who had turned their swords against
each other.. Leo was already eminent for the zeal of his faith, and known as a
champion against heretics, as a patron of Christian literature, and the friend
of Prosper of Aquitaine and of Cassian. He was a man of learning and culture,
and his eloquence had gained him the title of the
Christian
Demosthenes. When called to assume the time-honoured authority of the Roman
pontiffs, he showed prompt appreciation of the majesty of the* office, and we
still possess the discourse in which he rendered thanks to the people, and
which he renewed year by year on the anniversary of his election. He expressed
therein his gratitude to the clergy and people who had chosen him, modestly
lamented the weight of the burden laid upon his soul, but turned confidently to
God and the love of the Church, which would help him to sustain it, and above
all trusted in the presence of Peter, who sat motionless and invisible behind
his unworthy successors. Throughout he developed a doctrine which was the same
as that of St. Cyprian, and without being bolder than the view of St.
Athanasius, was more explicitly stated.
“ The Saviour
accords to St. Peter a share in His authority, and whatever He may will to
grant in common with him to the other princes of the Church, it is through
Peter that He communicates it, and everything which He does not refuse; but
Peter did not give up the government of the Church with his life. As immortal
minister of the priesthood he is the foundation of the whole Faith, and it is
by him that the Church says daily, Thou art the Christ, Son of the living God,
and who can doubt that his care extends to all the Churches ? —for in the
prince of the Apostles yet lives that love of God and of men, which neither
fetters, nor prisons, nor the fury of the multitude, nor the menaces of tyrants
can affright, and that dauntless faith which can perish neither in the conflict
nor in the triumph. And he speaks in the acts, in the judgments, and in the
prayers of his successor, in whom the episcopate
recognizes
with one accord not the pastor of one city, but the primate of all the
churches.” *
Doctrine
cannot be expressed in terms more formal, nor can ignorance go to a further
excess than in the case of those who, not aware of the above statement, think
it possible to date the rise of the papal primacy from Gregory the Great or
even from Gregory VII.
St. Leo had
reached the pontificate late in life, and under the most disastrous
circumstances for the Church and the Empire; and Providence in no way lightened
the difficulties of his mission. It was his task, moreover, to relieve
Christianity from the heresies which were tearing it apart; for as if that form
*of probation was never to be complete, the efforts made by Arian- ism and
Manichaeism to wither its doctrine were reproduced under other forms in the
middle of the fifth century. The conflict was then restricted to one point, the
dogma of the Incarnation, and the. person of Christ. Since the Council of Nice,
it had been granted that His person was divine ; but the issue now arose on the
method of understanding that mystery. In order that His mission might be
accomplished, it was necessary that He should be God-Man—man, for otherwise
humanity could not expiate its offence in His person ; God, that the mystery of
redemption might be accomplished. But minds trembled at the depths of this
mystery,' and divided into two factions, one of which attacked the Divinity,
the other cavilled at the Humanity. About a.d. 426, Nestorius, the Patriarch
of Constantinople, declared in a sermon preached before the assembled people
that it was heretical to call the
* “ Non
solum hujus sedis praesulem, sed ut omnium episco- poram noverunt esse
primatem.”
mother of
Christ mother of God, as there were two distinct persons in Christ, one divine
and one human ; that it was a man in whom the Word resided, as God might abide
in a temple, without more union than existed between the sanctuary and the
Divinity which inhabited it. It was but a transformation of the doctrine of
Arius, an attempt to deny the presence of God in Christ, and to sever what He
had united by representing the person of the Saviour as that of a mere sage, a
man of higher enlightenment, of more intimate connection with God than His
fellows, but distinguished in no other respect from the rest of mankind; and
the theory tended from its rationalistic character to a denial of the
supernatural, and thence in unforeseen consequence to the destruction of the
element of mystery in the faith and in time of religion itself.
But the
Eastern Church also was aroused by the teachings of Nestorius : the council
held at Ephesus in a.d. 431, at the pressing instance of Pope Celestine,
condemned the heresiarch, and the contrary doctrine, that one person and two
natures dwelt in Christ, was recognized and defined. A little later Eutyches,
the archimandrite of a great monastery at Constantinople, pushing his zeal in
the controversy against Nestorius to excess, maintained that in Christ there
had been only one person and one nature, that the human had been absorbed in
the divine nature, and therefore He had not possessed a body similar to ours,
or flesh corresponding in substance to that of man, but that as God Himself
and alone had laid aside impassibility, and suffered death upon the cross. By
supposing a suffering and dying Divinity, Eutyches made a step towards
Paganism, and confounded the attributes of the Deity
with those of
humanity. This doctrine attracted the, notice of Flavian, Patriarch of
Constantinople, who deposed its author, whereupon Eutyches, looking to the spot
which every Christian held to be the shrine of all wisdom and justice, appealed
to Rome, and for greater surety referred the matter also to the Emperor, with
whom the influence of Eudoxia and Chrysaphus was exerted in his behalf. Their
interference procured his vindication at the robber-synod of Ephesus, held
a.d. 449, which acquitted him on every point. But these intrigues failed to
deceive the insight of Leo, who had fixed his attention upon those erring
theologians, worthy forerunners of the men who maintained a mad dispute as to
the nature of the light of Thabor at the moment in which the Turks were pouring
through the breaches of the city of Constantine. The Pope had already intervened.
With broad wisdom and true Roman good sense, he had written a letter fixing the
truth of the contested proposition, and, dispersing with perseverance every obstacle
opposed by intrigue, obtained the convocation of a great council at Chalcedon,
a.d. 451. He did not select a spot remote from the Court, but a city of Asia,
at the very gates of Constantinople, as he was without dread of any opposition
which might be offered, and confident in the influence of his eloquence and
talent. And, in fact, the letter written by him on the occasion is still
considered as a worthy monument of ecclesiastical antiquity; it took its place
at once in the cycle of dogma venerated by the Greek Church, and was translated
into the languages of the East. We may give a fragment here to show the wise
moderation with which Leo the Great kept to the true course.
“We could not
conquer sin and death, had not He
who cannot be
retained by death, nor touched by sin, taken our nature upon Him, and made it
His own. He is God, as it is written, at the beginning was the Word. He is Man,
as it is written, the Word was made Flesh.”
This firm and
luminous exposition of doctrine, which ran with so scrupulous an exactitude
within the limits of the truth, so charmed and swayed the minds of the
Orientals assembled at Chalcedon, that in the second session, having read the
Creed of Nicasa, and the letters of Cyril and Leo, they exclaimed,—
“It is the
faith of the Fathers; it is the faith of the Apostles. We all believe thus:
anathema to those who do not. Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo. Leo has
taught in accordance with truth and piety. It is the faith of all Catholics; we
all think thus.”
Thus was the
great controversy decided, and Leo had made an act of faith in preserving to
Christianity its character of a religion, and not suffering it to degenerate
into Paganism, or a system of philosophy. He had made an act of faith in
guarding its mysteries, lest it should degenerate into a theory in the hands of
Nes- torius, a myth with the treatment of Eutyches; for, as a theory, it would
only appeal to reason, as a myth, charm the imagination; but, as a mystery, it
engaged belief, for faith plunges into the unknown as a just man yields himself
to the shades of death, knowing that in its darkness he will glide into a purer
light, and find in dissolution another life. The strong mind of Leo, too, knew
that in the obscure region of the faith he would receive the supernatural
existence given as a grace from God to those who believe ; for as the power
of persuasion
is accorded as well to those who are strong in trust as to those who reason and
dispute, so the confident assertion of that Roman priest silenced for a season
the sophists of the East, and the Church retired into the long repose of
thought, of reason, and of faith.
At the same
time, St. Leo saved civilization in the West from the menaces of the
barbarians. The era of invasion had arrived, and small were the resources of
the Empire to offer resistance to the formidable hordes which swarmed on the
steppes of Asia, and penetrated beyond the Rhine until the Gallic provinces,
Spain, and Africa, fell under their dominion. Amidst the confusion, it was
seen that the official resources of civilization had, indeed, dwindled away:
the Emperor Valentinian III., a feeble and bad prince, remained at Ravenna,
under the tutelage of his mother, Placidia. He was served by two eminent
warriors, Aetius and Boniface, but they were traitors capable of sacrificing
their master to their mutual detestation. Aetius was in constant communication
with the Huns ; Boniface had sold Africa to the Yandals : the former killed the
latter with his own hand, and was in return poniarded by Valentinian himself,
who again was destined to fall under the dagger of Petronius Maximus, whose
wife he had dishonoured. Maximus succeeded to his throne and to his spouse,
until the widow of Valentinian, on hearing of the crime committed by her new
husband, called Genseric to her aid, and opened to him the gates of Rome. This
was the signal for the death of Maximus, who was stoned in attempting to fly.
He was succeeded by Avitus, Majorian, and Severus, whose short-lived reigns
were lost at the approach of the day of doom
which was to
sound, a.d. 476, for the Empire of the West.
The enemies
of civilization, the double peril from which the world must be saved, were
Attila, who, with his following of three hundred thousand strong, struck terror
into Germany, Gaul, and the whole world, and Genseric, master of Africa and the
South, who was feared even by the warriors of Attila. One day the latter sent a
message to the two Caesars of Ravenna and Byzantium, “Make ready your palaces,
for I am resolved to visit you;” then, with his multitudinous hordes, he passed
like a torrent over Gaul, lost the battle of Chalons, but neither hope nor
fury, and, a.d. 452, crossed the Alps, and appeared before Aquileia. Carried by
assault, after a short resistance, the town was given over to pillage and
destruction, and Pavia and Milan soon shared its fate. The terrified emperor
took refuge in Eome, but found therein neither generals nor legions ; his only
resource was the presence of a few counsellors, amongst the eloquent of the
Senate, and the stronger influence which resided in the person of Leo. The Pope
was deputed, in concert with Trygetius, ex-prefect of the city, and Avienus, a
man of consular rank, to stop Attila, as swords and legions were lacking, by
his eloquence, at the passage of the Mincio. The interview which followed has
had no historians, for it did not accord with the nature or with the duty of
Leo the Great to recount his own victory, nor with the taste of Trygetius and
Avienus to avow their impotence. One thing is certain, that after an interview
with Leo, Attila retreated across the Alps into Pannonia, where he died in the
following year. Different legends were
woven around
this fact: one especially related how that Attila had told his officers that
their retreat was caused by the presence of another priest of severe mien, who
stood behind Leo as he spoke, * and signified that a further advance would be
followed by his death. This tale, free from criticism, though apparently
without authority, has traversed the ages as history, and received an eternal
consecration from the hands of Raphael in the chambers of the Vatican. And
when, in later times, another horde of barbarians, in the shape of the German
Lutherans, entered Rome in the train of the Constable de Jtourbon, and set fire
to the Stanze of Raphael, in order to efface the triumphs of the papacy, flame
and smoke alike respected the victory of Leo the Great.
Leo thus
resisted the danger which proceeded from the North, but that from the South was
still imminent. Genseric, half Christian, and half civilized, served by a
hierarchy of functionaries formed after the method of the Empire, with a fleet
under his orders which could annihilate distance and avenge the old disgrace of
Hannibal, was more formidable than Attila. Summoned by the widow of
Valentinian, he set sail, and in reply to the inquiry of his pilot,'bade him
direct the prow “ Towards those whom the wrath of God was menacing”—a menace
which, on that day, was hurled at Rome. Three years had elapsed sinee the
retreat of Attila, and frequently had Leo reminded the Romans, of their deliverance,
had bade them attribute it not to the stars or to chance, but to the mercy of
God and the prayers of the saints, and had adjured them to celebrate the
anniversary in the Christian churches rather than in the circus or the
amphitheatres. But his
words were in
vain, and with the foolhardiness of mariners on the morrow of one tempest, and
the eve of another, they had forgotten his warnings, till they learnt that
Genseric had just landed at the head of a mighty army, was ascending the Tiber,
and approaching the gates. Again did Leo go forth to the barbarians, and
obtained that they should content themselves with mere plunder, but spare the
lives and respect the persons of the inhabitants; whereupon Genseric entered
the city, and remained there a fortnight, historians attesting that he
pillaged the town, but refrained from shedding a drop of blood. And surely the
second miracle was greater than the first, inasmuch as there was merit and
skill, less in arresting the course of the barbarous Attila, struck mayhap by
the majestic aspect of an aged Christian, than in restraining for fourteen days
and nights that Vandal multitude, partly Arian, partly pagan, bound to the
Roman population amongst whom they had fallen by no bond of identical belief,
and in keeping them faithful to the letter of a treaty which had been signed on
the eve of their entrance into a defenceless town.
It was the
intense patriotism inspiring Leo which alone gave him such strength in the
presence of the barbarians. This quality distinguished him amongst all the
doctors of the West; it was the knot which bound together antiquity and modern
times, perpetuating in the Christian mind the legitimate traditions of old.
The Pope felt the passions of Cincinnatus and the Scipios within him, and though
he took a different view of Roman greatness, was as devoted as they were to the
glory of the city, in which he was citizen as well as bishop. He shows us this
feeling in that sermon
for the
festival of the Apostles Peter and Paul, in which he claims a providential
destiny for the city in which he was established as servant of the servants of
God.
“In order
that Grace and Redemption might spread their effects throughout the world, the
Divine Providence prepared the Roman Empire, which pushed to such a point its
development, that in its bosom all the nations of the world were united, and
seemed to touch one another. For it was part of the plan of the Divine economy
that a great number of kingdoms should be confounded in one empire, that
preaching, finding ways open to it, might speedily reach all the various
nations whom one city held subject to her laws.” *
This was akin
to the doctrine which we have marked in the writings of Claudian, and shall
find also in those of Prudentius and Rutilius—a view which will run on from age
to age, and cause Dante to repeat that it was with regard to the Christian
greatness of Rome that God established the Roman Empire. And thus the Roman
idea did not vanish, but was revived, at the presence of barbarism, to resist
and combat it; and Leo the Great commenced the glorious strife which Gregory
the Great and his successors were to carry on until barbarism, purified,
regenerate, victorious over its own nature, was definitely to yield in the
person of Charlemagne, and to reconstruct the Empire of the West.
We have now
sufficiently proved, that whatever power of the papacy there was, none of it
was due to the period of barbarism ; that it was constituted in the full light
of the ancient order, under the jealous eye of Paganism, the discerning gaze of
the Fathers of the
* St.
Leonis Magni, Sermo primus in Natale Apost. Petri et Pauli.
Church, and
raised in the centuries which were greatest in Christian theology; that it owed
nothing to obscurity. It was endowed with its incontestable influence that it
might resist the menaces of the barbarians, and begin a struggle, which lulled
but for a moment under Charlemagne, to be waged again; for when Gregory VII.
inflicted upon Henry IV. that penance which has gained him so much obloquy, he
was but continuing the work of Leo against Attila, and saying civilization by
driving the barbarian back to his proper domain.
But there was
another power, namely, Monasticism, which took its part in the preservation of
literature and civilization. We shall not have to rebut on its behalf the
charge of novelty, which has been made against the papacy, for monasticism has
been accused of too early rather than of too late an origin; of being born
amongst the hoary religions of the East, of being penetrated with their spirit,
and of being surreptitiously introduced into the Church to bring to her habits
which were not her own, and, therefore, of having been less an aid than a
peril, far less a glory than a scandal to the Faith. We have already said that
Christianity did not create, but transformed humanity. Man already existed, but
under the law of the flesh; the family, but under the law of the stronger; the
city, but subject to the law of interest. Then Christianity reformed man by the
revival of his spiritual constituent; the family, by protecting the right of
the weak; the city, by arousing a public conscience. It found temples,
sacrifices, and priests in the old society, and these, according to its maxim
of regenerating everything, but abolishing nothing, it preserved and purified.
It acted likewise as to monasticism, for every great religion has had
VOL. II. 2
its monks; as
India with her ascetics, who abandon everything, bnry their existence in
deserts, with no possession but a rag upon the shoulder, and a wooden platter
in the hand, supporting life on grains or roots dug from the' earth, and with
huddled limbs spend day and night in contemplating the soul of God captive in
their bodies, from which it is seeking release. Side by side with these Brahmin
anchorites are the coenobites of Buddhism, for in Tartary, China, and Japan
there are no priests, but only monks, who live under the law of their
respective communities. These Oriental institutions have but the spirit of the
Paganism which inspires them; they are founded on a confusion of the principle
of the creature and the Creator; and as the Brahmin supposes himself the lord
of the universe, and that all men live by his permission, his contempt for his
fellows is supreme; whilst the anchorite thinks that the supreme good is an
absorption in the incomprehensible Buddha, so that pride and egoism are of the
essence of the Indian asceticism. Monasticism appeared under purer forms
amongst the Hebrews in the last days of the old order, for Judaism had its ascetics
also in the Essenes and the Therapeutae: the first, residing on the shores of
the Dead Sea, were devoted to a life of activity; the second were placed at
Alexandria, and gave themselves up to contemplation and prayer; while both
classes practised celibacy and a community of goods, but rejected the use of
slaves. The hard spirit of Judaism appeared in their hatred of foreigners, and
their absolute separation from the remainder of mankind, whom they considered
so impure, that the approach of a man who was not an Essene had to be followed
by a purification;
whilst the
sinner amongst them could hope for no reconciliation, his fault was
irreparable, and the offering him the hand or breaking bread with him was
forbidden. These orders survived the foundation of Christianity, and were known
to Pliny the Elder, who instanced them as being a people distinguished from all
others, “ Living without women, abnegating all pleasure, leading an existence
of poverty under the palm-trees .... thus, for thousands of centuries,
remarkable fact, has this everlasting nation subsisted, and yet no child is
born of its bosom, so profound is its hatred for other modes of life.”*
It is in this
quarter, and amongst the Therapeutae especially, that we must look for the
origin of Christian monasticism. Whilst imperilled society was still capable of
regeneration, and martyrdom was the condition of the consolidation of the
faith, the saints remained in the world to die in the circus or on the pile at
the hour appointed by their God. As long as persecution lasted, the men were
martyrs who would have been anchorites, and it was not till the moment which
saw the dissolution of the Roman society that a new order was organized to
replace it, and the bands were disciplined who, when Rome had fallen, were to
assume her task and reconquer the universe. St. Paul, the first hermit,
appeared a.d. 251. A little later he was followed by St. Anthony, who formed a
Eule, and was succeeded by St. Pacomius, who assembled his disciples into
regular communities, governed by a fixed law. Under this new rule they spread
rapidly over the entire East, and at length St. Basil became the author of the
.ordinance which was soon vene-
* Plin.
Maj. Hist. Nat lib. v. cap. xv. (s. xvii.)
2 * •
rated and
adopted by all the Oriental monasteries. Suspicious of a solitary existence, be
reduced the scattered ascetics to a life in community, and showed his
preference for coenobites rather than anchorites. “For,” as he said to a
hermit, “ whose feet wilt thou wash, whom wilt thou serve, how canst thou be
the last, if thou art alone ?”
We must now
mark the adoption by the West of that monastic life which already flourished in
the Eastern Churches. We may probably see the precise period of the propagation
in the Latin Church of the coenobitic life, and assign to it a more remote date
than that usually given at the foundation of Liguge. For it was St. Athanasius,
the friend and biographer of the hermit St. Anthony, who brought with him into
the West the passion of imitating his life. In examining the journeys of
Athanasius to the West more closely, we find that, exiled by Constantine, he
came first to Treves, a.d. 386, lived there for some time, and doubt- ‘ less
then found leisure for writing his life of Anthony, whilst he saw around him
evidence of the superior merit of the coenobitic life, for monasteries had
early been founded at Treves which retained the life of St. Anthony as their
law and constitution. We have already spoken of the tale, related by St.
Augustine, in his “ Confessions,” as making so deep an impression on his mind,
of the two officers of the Court, who, whilst walking apart from their comrades
in the suburbs of Treves, came to a house tenanted by monks. Entering, they
perceived a book upon the table : it was the “Life of St. Anthony.” One of them
began to read it, and at the tale of that pure life of the desert, spent in
communion with God, and under a
cloudless
sky, the poor officer, lacerated, doubtless, by the injustice of the Court, was
profoundly touched, and, turning to his friend, remarked :—
“ ‘ Whither
does all our toil lead us ? What end are we pursuing? What hope have we except
that of becoming the friends of the Emperor? And what danger we are incurring !
For it is our main duty to become the friends of God, and from to-day.’ He
began to read again, and his soul was transformed, and his mind despoiled
itself of the world. He read, and the waves of his heart rolled tumultuously.
He trembled a moment, judged, decided, and already subdued, said to his friend,
* It is over. I give up my prospects, and resolve to serve God here and at
once.’ His friend imitated his example, and when their comrades rejoined them,
and had learnt their decision, they left them in tears, but weeping for
themselves.”* This history shows the sudden power and irresistible fascination
by which the enthusiasm for a solitary life was propagated in the heart of that
dissipated, mournful, and worn-out society of the West, at the doors of which
the barbarians were already demanding admittance. The companion of that
officer followed his friend into the same monastery, and thus arose the
coenobitic life in the Western Church. We need not relate how St. Jerome formed
and disciplined from his retreat at Bethlehem the colonies of monks who soon
spread over the whole of Italy, nor how St. Augustine, charmed by the
Pythagoraean idea of a life in common, which had been a part of the dreams with
his friends at Milan in former days, founded monasteries when raised to the see
of Hippo, and prescribed to them rules
* August.
Confess, lib. viii. cap. vi.
which bore
the impress of the wisdom and tact which characterized his genius. Gaul,
however, was the peculiar land of the ccenobitic life; since St. Martin, who
had been educated in a monastery at Milan, founded a similar institution at
Liguge, near Poitiers ; and a little later the great house of Marmoutiers, near
Tours, where he lived as bishop of the neighbouring town, with some eighty
monks, and whence he was borne to his resting-place with an escort of more than
two thousand. We see without surprise the foundation, in 410, of the great
abbey of Lerins, which was to produce so many illustrious names; of another,
also, by St. Victor, at Marseilles, which received from Cas- sian the
traditions of the “ Thebaid;” and again in the Island of Barba, near Lyons ;
whilst Vitrucius peopled with his religious the sandbanks of Flanders. So, from
the opening of the fifth century, we see that the frontiers which the warriors
of Rome had abandoned were guarded by colonies of different soldiery, by the
cohorts of another Rome, who would stop the course of the barbarians, would fix
them on the soil they had gained, and thus advance far towards the work of
their civilization. We may state, in conclusion, the three points of difference
between Monasticism and the Roman world, which gave it power over that old
society, poverty in the midst of a world which was dying in its own opulence,
chastity in a world which was expiring in orgies, obedience in a world that
disorder was decomposing. But between Christian and Indian asceticism lay a
deeper difference. Though the pagan hermits were chaste, poor, and submissive,
they lacked the labour and prayer of their Christian followers. The ascetics of
India spurned work and remained motion^-
less, lest
the occupation of their hands should trouble their contemplation, but the
recluses of Christendom laboured either manually or mentally. The solitudes of
the “ Thebaid ’-had their smiths, carpenters, curriers, and even shipbuilders,
whilst mental toil was dominant in the monasteries of the West. St. Augustine
established it in the convents of Africa ; it flourished at Liguge, Lerins,
and elsewhere; and literature found in the cloister its secret asylum. To
labour perseveringly, not for self, nor even for wife or children, but for a
community, was no light demand upon human nature, and the founders of the
spiritual life had only called for this sacrifice and abnegation of leisure in
the name of charity. They had never imagined that men could be united in a
perpetual restraint, in a companionship which had mortification and
forgetfulness of self as its essence, in the name of a pride which ambitioned
ascendancy, or of a sensualism which craved for a gratification. To achieve
this wonderful result a degree of self-denial was necessary: it was the work of
the humility and charity which Christians laboured to attain through prayer.
The sages of Paganism and the anchorites of India did not pray. Why should they
do so, in their life of contemplation and absorption, having the Deity within
them, or being gods themselves ? But the motive to prayer with the recluse of
Christianity was, that he recognized a principle which was greater and stronger
than himself; his devotion was prompted by love, by aspirations to a better
life, and to God Himself. He did not despise his fellow- men, but loved them
with passionate effusion. Far from forgetting his aged father or weeping mother
at the moment of his leaving them, or from becoming
generally
dead to humanity, the Christian monk remembered his parents and his fellow-men
by day and by night, in the moment of silent contemplation, or of loving
communion with the Almighty, and his prayers were a method of doing service to
mankind, and of cooperating in the work which aimed at purifying and
sanctifying the Church.
CHAPTER II.
CHRISTIAN MANNERS.
It was our task
to look for the available forces of the Christian society in the presence of
that invasion whose mutterings were, so to speak, already perceived; to know
what institutions were ready to receive the first onslaught of barbarism, to
withstand it from the first, and finally to overcome it. Amongst these, two
merited a nearer study, owing to the great destiny which following ages had in
store for them. We have examined into the origin of the Papacy and of
Monasticism, and found that the first arose out of the constitution of
Christianity, and was the type of its visible unity ; we have seen it increase
in spite of danger, and as occasion called, until it exercised, in the person
of Leo the Great, prerogatives as full as any that might be claimed by Gregory
the Great or Gregory VII., and proved that the second was a phenomenon
necessary to all great religions; and seen how, following the example of the
prophetic colleges, the Essenes, and the Therapeutae, the great monastic
colonies arose which were to replace the faltering legions on the imperial
frontier, and increase so rapidly as to stud the banks of every river; and how
the writings of St. Jerome exhaled that aroma of the desert which was destined
to attract countless anchorites towards a solitary life, and drive St. Columba
into the mountains of the Vosges or the
2 t
forests of
Switzerland. Thus the two institutions which have been represented as the work
of the barbarians, the inevitable but irregular result of a period of trouble
and of intellectual darkness, preceded the shadows which it was their mission
to illumine.
It remains to
examine the ecclesiastical legislation in its totality, in the cases especially
of the new organization of the family by Christian marriage, of property by
the laws relating to Church property, of justice by the procedure in the
episcopal courts, and the penitential system of the Church, which embraced in
some way all the degrees of human morality. But as time and space would be
wanting for so vast an undertaking, we must confine ourselves to marking the
origin of the Canon Law, that continuation in a purified form of the Roman
traditions. And as the old temples remained standing, and Latin literature
assisted to educate the generations of Christians who were thronging into the
Church, so also was the ancient legislation most effectually preserved in the
canonical institutions, which seemed at first sight to veil and smother it. We
must study in the decrees of councils, or the mandates of the series of Popes
who had followed the martyrs, all that survived of the traditional legislation
of their persecutors, and how Ulpian, the great enemy of Christianity, was
assured of living to posterity at the moment when the Church, by an amnesty,
caused him to enter her fold, and occupy the highest place amongst her
jurisconsults.
Thus the new
institutions were full of power, but side by side with law was the prevailing
state of manners. Society is seated less upon the large, solid, and
perceptible bases called law, than on those other foun
dations,
hidden from the scope of science, which are called manners. Pagan Rome had
mighty institutions also, but the progress of her legislation was the result of
the decay of her morality. Did, then, the Christian society of the fifth
century present the same contrast, or did progressive morality accompany the
course of legislation ? We may stop at two points of superiority in Christian
manners, and dwell on the dignity of the man, and his respect for woman. The
barbarians have been, credited with the introduction of these two sentiments
into modern civilization, and, in truth, those wandering heroes of the battle
and the chase, who scorned to yield to any visible authority, and trusted in
nothing but their bows and arrows, did bring to the new order of things—with
that haughty humour which trampled under foot for long any legislative attempt
to render them amenable to civil servitude—the feelings of independence, of
honour, and of personal inviolability. And those savage men also recognized a
certain divine quality in women; they sought oracles from them before the
battle, came to them for the healing of their wounds when the conflict was
past, and knelt before the soothsaying Velleda. Thus they were rich in a
sentiment which was unknown to Roman society, which was to adorn the Middle Age
and blossom into chivalry. Such, then, were the innovations of the barbarians
upon the old world; but it remains to be seen whether they had not been
forestalled— whether their contribution of these two generous instincts, which
elevated the man, and surrounded the woman with veneration, had not been
anticipated^ by a power which had already placed them in the category of
virtues.
The chief,
though deep-lying and secret, support of modem society, lies in the noble
feeling termed honour, which is synonymous with the independence and inviolability
of the human conscience, in its superiority to all tyranny and external
force—in a word, the feeling of personal dignity which, be it understood,
antiquity, with all its civic virtues, had suppressed. For, as we know, the
citizen was nothing in the presence of the state ; conscience was silent before
law; the individual had no rights distinct from those of the Commonwealth.
This was the general rule, and whilst under the old order the dignity of the
man was crushed by the majesty of his country, humanity was debased in the
three classes of slaves, the working men, and the poor, who formed its great
majority.
We know what
legislation had effected for the slave ; but we hardly realize what was the
practical lot of that human creature, or rather chattel, which was used either
as a victim of infamous passions, or, as by Cleopatra, to try the effect of
poisons, or, as by Asinius Pollio, as food for lampreys. Yet humanity had never
quite lost its rights, and Seneca had dared to give utterance somewhere to the
rash opinion that slaves might be men like himself. He had twenty thousand
slaves of his own, and his stoicism did not issue in the emancipation of one.
Moreover, his philosophy had passed into the writings of the Roman
jurisconsults* and yet they laboured to diminish the number of manumissions as
being detrimental to the public security. A moiety of the Roman population were
held in a servitude withering alike to both mind and body. It was a received
proverb that Jupiter deprived those whose liberty was forfeit of a half of
their intelligence, and the slaves
believed
themselves to have been fated to their eternal condemnation, under the weight
of which they were crushed; and this resulted in the frenzied passion and gross
profligacy to which they were abandoned, and which Latin comedy has so freely
treated. Plautus himself had once turned the wheel as a slave, and we can
therefore receive his evidence as to the deep corruption of the servile
condition.
Christianity
found matters thus, and has often been reproached with not immediately
liberating the slaves; but it had two reasons for its course—in the first
place, its horror for violence and bloodshed, and because the Christ who died
upon the Cross had not pointed to the example of Spartacus—secondly, because
the slave was not yet capable of liberty, until he had been made a man, with a
reconstituted personality, restored self-respect, and a reawakened conscience.
This was the work begun by Christ in taking the form of a servant and dying
upon the - Cross, and every one, after His example, in becoming a Christian,
entered upon a voluntary servitude, Qui liber vocatus est, servus est Christi.
Every martyr who died was truly and legally a slave servl poence, and so from
the earliest time the fetters which had been reddened with the blood of
Calvary, were purified and newly consecrated in that of the martyrs, and slaves
came spontaneously to steep their irons therein, and disputed with their
Christian masters the honour of dying for the inviolability of conscience.
Amongst the martyred bands who braved death from the earliest days of the
faith, the fallen and accursed section of humanity was amply represented. We
have St. Blan- dina at. Lyons, St. Felicita in Africa, and at Alex
andria St.
Potamisena, who, when summoned by he;r judge to respond to the passions of her
master, exclaimed, “ God forbid that I should ever find a judge so wicked as
to constrain me to yield to the lust of my master.” From that time forward the
conscience was reorganized, the person of man restored, and the slave had bent
under a voluntary service. Henceforth the peril was rather that he should
despise his master than himself; and we find St. Ignatius exhorting the slaves
not to scorn their owners, nor to suffer themselves to be carried away by a
pride in their purified yoke. A little later St. Chrysostom replied to those
who inquired why Christianity had not enfranchised all slaves at a blow:—
“ It is that
you may learn the excellence of liberty. For as it was a greater work to
preserve the three children whilst they remained in the furnace, so there is
less greatness exhibited in the suppression of slavery than in showing forth
liberty even in fetters.”*
Thus did the
enfranchisement of humanity commence, as has ever been the method of
Christianity, by action upon the soul, in giving to the slave his moral liberty,
and preparing the way for this long laborious struggle for civil freedom ; for
in proportion as the slave rose in his own, so also did he gain the esteem of
his master. The dogma of the native equality of all souls appeared; slavery
appeared rooted, not in nature, but in sin; and sin had been vanquished by
Redemption. No Christian could believe that he possessed in his slave a being
of an inferior nature, upon which he had every right, even to that of life and
death; and St. Augustine declared that no Christian
* St.
Johann. Clirysos. in ep. i. ad Cor. homil. 19.
master could
own a slave by the same title as he owned a horse, and that, being man himself,
he -was bound to love his man as himself; and another doctor, commenting on
the words which gave Noah dominion over the animals, insisted that in giving
man the power of terrifying and coercing the beasts of the earth, God refused
to grant it over his fellows. Slavery then subsisted amongst Christians, but
as absolute power over the person was for ever abolished, it lost the half of
its rigour, and the slave recovered a right in many things which were held
sacred. He had rights in the family, to life, honour, and repose. The “
Apostolical Constitution,” an apocryphal work, but which certainly originated
no later than the fifth century, decided that the slave might rest on Sunday in
memory of the Redemption, and also on Saturday in memory of the Creation. The
Church was skilful in finding pretexts for granting a respite to the poor
people, in favour of whom Christ had said, “ Come, all ye that labour, and I
will give you rest.” The master began, in sight of the Face which still glowed
with the aureola of the crown of thorns, to recognize in the wretch whom once
he had trampled under foot the image of his Lord. St. Paulinus, on thanking
Sulpicius Severus for the gift of a young slave, took himself to task for
having accepted the services of a young man in whom he detected a loftiness of
soul.
“ He has
served me, and been my slave : woe to me who have permitted it, that he who has
never been the slave of sin should serve a sinner. And I, unworthy that I am,
have suffered a servant of righteousness to be my servant. Every day he washed
my feet, and had I permitted it would have cleansed my sandals,
ardent to
render every service to the body, that he might gain dominion over the soul. It
is Jesus Christ Himself whom I venerate in the youth, for every faithful soul
cometh from God, and every one who is humble of heart proceeds from the very
heart of Christ.”*
It is obvious
that when respect for the individual was thus established, the very foundations
of slavery were sapped; and in truth Christianity had but few blows to deal in
order to level successively the walls of the half-ruined edifice. At first
entire categories of slaves, as for instance those of the theatre, were suppressed.
Before they were closed for ever, the gates of the pagan theatres had to open
wide to give forth the crowds attached to their service, the numberless dancers
and mimes, and the rest who laboured under the most shameful servitude — that
of pleasure. Troops of gladiators also were enfranchised from slavery and
slaughter, and although certain Christians still publicly paraded their
following of slaves with insolence, it was at the cost of a determined
opposition on the part of their faith; whilst St. John Chrysostom waited for
them on the days of festival in the Basilica of Constantinople, and with
scornful brow and outstretched hands demanded an account of their harshness,
their prodigality, and their sloth. “ Wherefore so many slaves ? One master
should be content with one servant. Nay, more, one servant should suffice for
two or three masters; and if that seems a hard doctrine, think of those who
have none.” f
He finally
granted two slaves to each, but he could not tolerate the rich men who used to
walk in the
* St.
Paulin. ep. xxiii. ad Severum.
t St. Johann. Chrysos. in ep. i. ad Cor. homil. 40.
public places
and frequent the baths, driving men in herds before them like shepherds; and if
it was objected to him that it was done in order to nourish a number of
unfortunates who would die of hunger if they did not win their bread thus,
would reply, “If you wish to act out of charity, you should teach them a trade
and render them independent, and that is what you refuse to do. I know well,”
he added, “that my teaching is at your expense, but I am doing my duty and
shall not cease to speak.” His words had other results than the mere
accomplishment of duty, and reconquered a right for oppressed humanity, so
that every day beheld the manumissions multiplied which Constantine had
authorized on the festival days of the Church; and the proper joyfulness seemed
impossible if at the end of the service the hymn for the day was not shouted by
a crowd of men as they shook off their fetters and cast them far away.
Thus the
number of emancipations, once held so dangerous to the state, was ceaselessly
enlarged. But now the Romans were bound to accustom themselves to enfranchise
the captive barbarians if they wished to be liberated in their turn. For the
barbarians had crept through all the chinks of the Empire, and were carrying
away women and children in troops, and selling the senators themselves in the
market-places. Christendom roused itself at this new phase of slavery, and
threw its energy into the work of liberation, whilst the bishops, treated
formerly as madmen when they spoke of the manumission of slaves, begged from
the pulpit that subscriptions should be opened and collections made for the
enfranchisement of the senators and patricians, who were now the captives of
some Sueve or Yandal.
It was on
such an occasion St. Ambrose uttered the admirable words in which he advocated
the sale of the sacred vessels of the Church for the sake of these prisoners,
“for,” he said, “the redemption of captives is an ornament to the mysteries.”
Such are the
texts, and time would fail if more were cited, which must be given in reply to
the questionings as to where and when Christianity first formally preached the
release of slaves. We may also point to St. Cyprian, who found time during
persecution, r when tracked by the satellites of the proconsul, to
collect money from the faithful, not for himself or his priests, but for some
man who had been captured on the frontier by wandering Arabs ; and later to St.
Gregory the Great, freeing the slaves of his wide domains, and giving the
following motive for his procedure:—
“Since our
Redeemer, the author of* the entire, creation, willed to take the flesh of a
man that the power of His Divinity might break the chain of our servitude, and
restore our primitive liberty, it is a wholesome act to pity the men whom He
made free, but whom the law of nations has reduced to slavery, and to render
them, by the benefit of manumission, to the liberty for which they were born.”
*
These maxims
were essential to the great labour of the Middle Age for the emancipation of
classes, that transformation of slaves into serfs, of serfs into coloni, of
coloni into proprietors, of proprietors into the middle class, of the latter
into that third estate which was destined one day to dominate the modern
nations. These principles animated the illustrious St. Eloi, when
* Decret.
Grat. p. 11, caus. xii. quaest. 2; cf. M. Wallon, His- toire de l’Esclavage, tom. iii. p. 382.
escaping from
the palace of the Merovingian Kings, whose servant and minister he was, he
waited in the public place, impatient for the time of sale of the captives,
then bought them and gave them immediate liberty in the Basilica, declaring
them freemen at the feet of the Saviour. Later, Snaragdus, writing to King
Louis le Debonnaire, made it a case of conscience that he should not suffer
slaves to remain on his own domain, and should abolish slavery, by edict, from
the land of every Christian. The efforts made for emancipation will be felt in
the Christian society to the end; and when, in the thirteenth century, the land
of France had no more slaves to set free, it was customary on great festivals
to recall these solemn acts of enfranchisement by loosing crowds of caged
pigeons in the churches, that captivity might be ended, and prisoners delivered
still in honour of the Redeemer.
We
must secondly consider what Christianity effected for the working men. Nothing
can be more inimical to slavery than free labour, and so antiquity, as it supported
the former, trampled upon the latter, and saluted it with the most opprobrious
epithets. Even Cicero, that man of ability and common sense, to whom men of our
own day so much love to recur, said somewhere that there could be nothing
liberal in manual labour— that commerce, if transacted in a small way, should
be considered sordid; if of vast and opulent character, could not be
sufficiently blamed.* Brutus, however, lent money, but at such terrible usury
that all Greece, in some manner, was his debtor. Atticus also lent at a high
risk, and realized enormous profits. Seneca had successively involved his
debtors'in such cunniiigly
* De
Officiis, lib. i. cap. 42. .
calculated
toils that Britain, unable to free herself, and stung by the exactions of the
imperial proconsul, rose in a revolt which was nearly proving fatal, and cost
the lives of eighty thousand Romans.
Under burdens
of this nature free labour was crippled, and the result of this usury was the
nexi and other penalties which menaced the insolvent debtor. For under the law
of the Twelve Tables the man who failed to satisfy his creditor was given over
into his hands to be sold as a slave, or might be cut into as many pieces as
there were creditors, that each might claim his share. In the time of Seneca,
although it was no longer customary to cut him into morsels, the insolvent was
obliged to sell his children in public auction ; and till the time of
Constantine this mode of discharging debts was in force. But if free labour was
thus treated by antiquity, Christianity rehabilitated it, following the example
of Christ and His Apostles, especially St. Paul, who chose manual labour, and
was a partner with the Jew Aquila, at Corinth, in the trade of tent-making,
rather than eat bread which had not been won by the sweat of the brow. The
early Christians were generally working men, and Celsus professed great pity
for “those woolcarders, fullers, and shoemakers, a coarse and ignorant rabble,
who kept silence before the aged and the heads of families, but secretly
perverted women and children into a belief in their mysteriesyet the Church was
proud of that mob of her first children for whom he could not evince a
sufficiently profound contempt, and even boasted of having taught some true
philosophy to shoemakers, to cowherds, and labourers. Moreover, the labour
which was elevated by faith and doctrine, was enhanced still
more by the
sacred objects to which it was applied. Below the priests and deacons, but
respected by all, was placed the order of diggers (fossores), so called from
their work in providing beneath the quarries of puz- zolane which old Rome had
dug in the hidden recesses of the Catacombs, the retreats which sheltered the
Christian community. They laboured with pickaxe and lantern, as pioneers of the
new society, in clearing the way along which we are marching now, and were comprised
in the ecclesiastical hierarchy as being the first order among the inferior
clergy, “ charged after the example of Tobias with the task of burying the
dead, that their attention to things visible might lead their thoughts to those
which are invisible and their condition is attested by numerous inscriptions
and paintings which show us the fossor, with the instruments of his humble
calling.* Christianity, therefore, regenerated labour by the force of example;
and as it was not sufficient to honour toil, it reorganized it by adding an
unselfish element, and teaching men to work in common one for another. This aim
appeared in the monastic communities, and from the first St. Basil prescribed
manual labour to his monks, and bade them, “ if fasting made labour impossible,
to live more generously, as’ being the soldiers of Christ.” St. Augustine, too,
replied in his work, “De Origine Monachorum,” to those haughty monks who, once
in the cloister, held themselves discharged from the burdens imposed upon the
first man, and argued that Christ had bade them to act like the birds of the
air, which toiled not, or the lilies of the field, which did not spin, and yet
were not less gloriously
* Dion
Cassius, lib. xii. 2; cf. Tacitus, Annales, xiii. 42.
clothed than
Solomon himself, * by pointing out the dignity and majesty of manual work, how
supremely excellent it was, in that it did not absorb the whole being, but left
scope for meditation. “ True that the birds do not sow nor reap,” said he, “
but as they do not possess your palaces, your granaries, your servants, why
should you have them ? ” He added that if a multitude of slaves should come and
demand admission to the monastery, its doors should be opened wide to them,
for such hardy people assured prosperity to a Christian community, but that the
men who entered upon the monastic life must not think that they were thus to
escape their daily and accustomed toil, nor that peasants were to look for a
life of delicacy and repose in the places in which senators buried themselves,
that they might labour with their hands.
It was thus,
then, that labour was organized in the early days of the Church. Roman
antiquity had established industrial institutions; corporations (collegia),
formed from the association of the working class; and Roman legislation bore
plentiful witness to the existence of numbers of these societies for the use of
workmen in wood, in marble, gold, iron, and wool. Their colleges appeared early
to be in possession of common property with their ordo, their curies and
especial magistrates, who were named duumviri, but they were feeble, crushed by
the dominant legislation, oppressed by heavy imposts, and corroded by the
corruptions of Paganism. Many of these institutions which have been so
immoderately belauded were, in fact, only constituted for the purpose of mutual
feasting and pleasure-seeking upon fixed days, so lofty was
* Matt.
vi. 28, 29.
the essential
idea of the corporations of labour in the times of heathenism. But Christianity
undertook and succeeded in the task of regenerating them by an infusion of
novel principles ; and when the Empire succumbed the collegia and scholcs
multiplied. Warlike corporations rose speedily in Rome, in Ravenna, and all
the cities of the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, broke the power of the Eastern
emperors, saved the Papacy from the perils which menaced it at the commencement
of the eighth century, and paved the way for those powerful commonwealths which
were destined to so glorious a career. And the devotion which impelled their
members to die in battle when the aggressions of Germany had to be resisted and
the Guelph liberties, which were also the liberties of religion, had to be
defended, was a true sign that Christianity was on their side, and a better
idea than that of enjoyment was inspiring their deliberations; whilst in the
passion of the Florentine and the other Italian corporations for the arts and
for poetry, for all that is lovely and elevating, we may recognize at a later
date the mark of the Christian and civilizing mission with which they were
stamped—for it was by the hands of associated workmen that the Church of San Michele
was reared at Florence, to be a noble monument of republican greatness.
In the third
place, we must treat of poverty. Under the old order the poor had been trampled
on consistently with the genius of an antiquity which regarded them as
stricken with the reprobation of God, and even in the time of St. Ambrose
Pagans and bad Christians were accustomed to say, “We care not to ^ve to people
whom God must have cursed, since He
has left them
in sorrow and want.” Poverty had first to be treated as honourable, and this
was effected by giving to the poor the first place in the Church and in the
Christian community; and St. John Chrysostom said of them : “As fountains flow
near the place of prayer that the hands that are about to be raised to heaven
may be washed, so were the poor placed by our fathers near to the door of the
Church, that our hands might be consecrated by benevolence before they are
raised to God.” *
Thus the poor
were not only respected but necessary to Christendom, and this explains the
saying so often misunderstood and so often perverted: “ There always will be
poor men.” No word has been said as to the perpetuity of the rich, but poverty
must always exist in voluntary if not compulsory form, the reason of the
institutions in which every member abnegates his own possessions, and vows
himself to destitution; and so poverty has taken its proper rank in the divine
economy, and become the mainspring of Christian society. Yet this was not
enough, and want must also be succoured and consoled. Antiquity could boast of
a system of public almsgiving, and could point to the corn laws of Caesar, and
the imperial largesses. Aurelian had had kindly feelings towards the people,f
and desired that the distributions should be daily made to the poor of a loaf of
bread of two pounds weight, of lard and of wine,
* St. Johann. Chrysos. De Verbis Apost.; habentes eundem
spiritum, serm. iii. c. 2.
+ Christianity first created the people. It had not existed at Athens or
Rome, or rather there had been three distinct peoples, the citizens,
foreigners, and slaves. The Church was the first to speak with accuracy in
addressing her instructions clero et popvlo.
till the
praetorian prefect had remarked to him, if he proceeded on thus, there could be
no reason for not presenting them with chickens and geese. And the functionary
was right; for the paupers of Rome fattened at the cost of their brethren of
the provinces, and the Gauls, our ancestors, gave their blood and their sweat
to nourish the starving rabble inscribed on the register of the census.
At Rome,
almsgiving was not the duty of the individual but the right of all. But
Christianity inverted the rule, and in its economy charity was not the right of
any person, but the duty of the whole community. Benevolence became a sacred
duty, a precept and not merely a counsel, and St. Ambrose addressed the wealthy
amongst the faithful in these terms :—
“ You say, I
shall not give, but mark, if you do give alms to the poor, you give not what is
your own, but his. You pay a debt instead of giving a voluntary largesse, and
therefore the Scripture bids you to incline your soul towards the poor man and
render to him his due.” *
But if
Christianity made almsgiving a duty towards the poor, it was towards that
nameless and universal poverty which was in fact Christ Himself in the persons
of the destitute. He was the sole Creditor and Judge of the tribunal to which
the rich would be summoned who had abused their trust ; and the Church
conferred no personal right on the individual of reclaiming the share which
might be rightly his. St. Augustine said:—“ Surplus wealth is the competency of
the poor, and the possession of what is superfluous is an usurpation of the
rights of others. Give, then,
* Ecclesiastic,
lib. iv. 8.
VOL. H. 8
to your brother
who is in need, and in giving to him give to Christ.” The Almighty, then, as
the sole master of everything, was the sole, the invisible, but long-suffering
creditor of the rich man, who was but his steward ; the judge as to the wants
of his fellows; disposing of his wealth and ruling its distribution on his own
responsibility. St. Ambrose desired that the wealthy should discriminate those
who were able-bodied and could dispense with * relief, as well as the rogues
and vagabonds, and the men who pretended that they had been pillaged by thieves
or ruined by creditors, whilst they made a scrupulous search for hidden misery,
elicited complaints that had hitherto kept silence, visited the pallet of
unrepining agony, and brought to light the hiding-places which had no echo for
the voice of sorrow.*
Upon such
conditions as these did the charities of the Church proceed; but besides what
was done in private she possessed a public system of relief. We need not enter
upon the organization of the various societies for almsgiving which were
initiated by the collections made by the Thessalonians upon the ad
* Here
appears the misapprehended truth that in Christianity its morality is sustained
by its mysteries. How did the new religion reconcile the duty of charity and
the right of property, the precept of almsgiving and the right of refusing alms
? Christ was present in man, and therefore the man who suffered must be loved
for Christ, who would vindicate the rights of the poor in another world.
Christian morality exists side by side with its dogma. If the latter is
subtracted, the former falls entirely, or its fragments help to construct a
morality of egoism, of tyranny, of disorder, and of immorality. The abiding
presence of Christ in humanity is witnessed to by St. Martin and the beggar,
St. Elizabeth and the leper, and thence their miseries were alleviated with a
feeling of passionate transport rather than disgust, for they were the
sufferings of the Saviour.
vice of St.
Paul, on the first day of every week. The writings of St. Jnstin show ns that
the faithful never separated on the Sunday till a collection had been made for
the poor, and we have it on the authority of St. Cyprian and others, down to
the time of St. Leo, that these subscriptions were of regular continuance until
the establishment of the Roman diaconates. Thereupon a vast system of public
benevolence arose, as each one of these deacons was bound to visit two quarters
of the great city and to inscribe the names of the poor therein upon a
register, mentioning their claims to relief and taking all the precautions of a
regular administration. We may give as one example that beautiful story which
tells how St. Laurence, when charged to surrender the treasures of the Church
to the prefect of the city, promised to do so within three days, and how when
the time had elapsed the functionary came to the appointed spot and found
ranged under the colonnades a multitude of maimed and miserable paupers, whom
Laurence presented to him as forming the wealth and the sacred vessels of the
Roman Church.
Moreover,
Christianity instituted communities of benevolence, as, for instance, the
hospitals which arose everywhere as open asylums for the miseries and infirmities
of humanity. These establishments were mentioned as of long foundation in one
of the laws of Justinian, and the same idea is expressed in a canon which finds
its place ordinarily at the end of those passed at the Council of Nicsea, and
shows us the condition of legislation and manners in the East from the earliest
days of Christianity:—
“ Let houses be selected in every town to serve as
retreats for strangers, for the poor and for the sick. If
3 *
the goods of
the Church suffice not for this expenditure, let the bishop cause alms to be
continually collected through the agency of the deacons, and let the faithful
give according to their ability. And thus let him provide for the poor, the
sick, and the stranger among our brethren, for he is their mandatary and their
steward. That work obtains the remission of many sins, and of all others is the
one which brings man nearest to God.”*
Hospitals,
accordingly, were opened from one end to the other of the Eoman Empire, and as
they multiplied in the East, the West was not wanting in the work. Two
illustrious personages—a Roman lady named Fabiola, a descendant of the Fabii,
and Psammachius, the scion of a senatorial family—devoted themselves to God,
sold their goods and raised, the one a hospital for the sick at Rome, the other
an asylum for the poor at Ostia. On the death of his wife, Psammachius honoured
her memory by charity instead of strewing flowers upon her tomb, and St.
Jerome, writing from the wilderness in praise of his good works, does not say
that they are sufficient:—4 41 learn that you have founded at the port
of Ostia an asylum for destitute travellers, that you have planted a shoot from
the tree of Abraham on the coast of Italy, and have raised another Bethlehem, a
house of bread, on the spot where iEneas traced his camp. Who would have
believed that the great‘grandson of so many consuls, bred in the senatorial
purple, would have dared to appear clothed in the black tunic without reddening
at the glance of those who were his equals ? Yet although you, the first
amongst patricians, have become a monk for the sake of the poor, find
* Concil.
Nicsen. can. 70.
therein no
subject for pride. Well may you humble yourself, for you will never be more
lowly than Christ. I desire that you walk barefoot, make yourself equal with
the poor, knock modestly at the door of the indigent, become an eye for the
blind, a hand for the maimed, a foot for the lame, a carrier of water, a
cleaver of wood, a lighter of fires; all this I wish for you; but then—where
are the buffetings and spittings, where the scourge, where the cross, where the
death?” He lighted upon the secret of Christian benevolence, for it was the
memory of its first poor Man, dying upon the cross, which was to impassion
those servants of the destitute who were to carry to such a pitch during the
Middle Age their enthusiasm for poverty. St. Francis of Assisi was to afford a
fresh example, and his devotion, capable of inspiring the poetry of Jacopone
da Todi, was to inspire Giotto also to represent in his matchless fresco the
marriage of the Saint with Poverty. Neither had the barbarians recognized this
sentiment any more than the love of work or pity for the slave. It was true
that they felt keenly on the dignity of man, but it was of man when free, and
lord of money and the sword. They placed the slave in a happier position than
any he had known under the Roman law, but he was still dependent on the caprice
of a master who could forfeit the life of a useless servant. And as for
poverty, they thought their Valhalla could only open to those whose hands were
filled with gold, whilst they scorned labour no less as involving subjection
and self-conquest —for the barbarian could conquer everything except himself.
Barbarism, indeed, failed to regenerate the states of slavery, poverty, and
labour, which antiquity had blighted and dishonoured, and even Christianity
only effected
little by little, at the cost of many a long struggle, the restoration of their
proper dignity to those three types of humanity which had been so long insulted,
disowned by the injustice of the old civilization, and trampled in the dust by
the scorn of the barbarians. Long ages passed ere some few hospitals were
reared in the regions of barbarism. At Lyons, in the sixth century, that great
Hotel Dieu was opened which has never since been closed, and the seventh age
beheld the commencement of the hospitals of Clermont, of Autun, and of Paris.
Speedily they were multiplied everywhere with a grand prodigality, till the
time came when every Christian township had, beside its church, an asylum open
to misfortune. St. Gregory of Nazianzum, in relating the foundation of the
great hospital at Caesaraea, raised by St. Basil, exclaimed that he was witness
to marvels surpassing those of antiquity, excelling the walls of Thebes or
Babylon with its hanging gardens, the Monument of Mausolus or the Pyramids of
Egypt, those magnificent tombs which could not give life back to one of their
regal occupants, and reflected but a gleam of empty glory upon their founders.
And he was right, for the old time had excelled us in raising monuments for
pleasure, and when we look at our cities of dirt and squalor, with their houses
crowded one against another, and the hard and joyless existence meted out to
those who are imprisoned within their walls, we may well think that could the ancients
return they would think us simply barbarous; and did we show them our theatres,
those small and smoky rooms in which we are pressed together, they would retire
in contempt and disgust. For they understood the art of enjoyment far better
than we do; no sum was too great
if spent in
rearing their coliseums, those theatres and circuses in which an audience of
eighty thousand came and sat with ease; but we can crush them with the
monuments we have raised to sorrow and to weakness, by pointing to the numberless
hospitals that our fathers consecrated to suffering. Yes, the ancients could
methodize pleasure, but ours is a different science: they, too, knew how to
die—but let us avow it, the pangs of death are short, we have the secret of
true human dignity, our service is long—as long as life itself —and it consists
in suffering and in toil.
CHAPTER III.
THE WOMEN OF CHRISTENDOM.
We have been
seeking to know to what degree the Christian society was prepared to receive
the barbarians and subject them to its institutions and its customs; how far,
also, it excelled them in surpassing the generous instincts that those
youthful races had preserved, far away from Roman corruption, under the
favouring shade of their forests and their icy sky; and we paused to contemplate
the two feelings, as to the dignity of man and the respect due to woman, with
the introduction of which the savage tribes have been credited, and which form
the essence of modern manners. But we perceived that if the barbarians
preserved these sentiments as instincts, Christianity had raised them to the
category of virtues. The former had recognized a dignity proper to man, but to
the man who was free and armed, who scorned both obedience and labour; they
owned, in fact, that chivalrous sentiment of honour which was destined to
replace the old military discipline of the Roman legions. But they knew
nothing, for the Gospel alone could read them the lesson, of the dignity of
that great majority of the human race which was bound by servitude, by labour,
and by poverty, to obey, to work, and to suffer. In woman also they
recognized,
side by side with the qualities of weakness, an element of divinity. The power
of delicately swaying the strong is the chief weapon of the weak, and the
gauntlet of iron does not pluck a flower as it crushes a swordso the barbarians
beheld in their females the necessary companions of their adventures and of
their perils, and could boast of warriors, virgins, and prophetesses amongst
them. But their renown was dissipated when the danger that produced it had
past ; and, on the other hand, classic antiquity was absolutely ignorant of the
delicate influence of female tact.
As
for the East, the laws of Manou contain exquisite passages on the destiny of
woman; but side by side with these they tell us that “ women have long hair,
but narrow minds ; ” and the Greeks pronounce that as the gods had given
strength to the lion, wings to the bird, and reasoning faculties to man, having
nothing left for woman, they gave her beauty. As famous amongst their women
they can only cite the courtesans Phryne and Aspasia, and the highest eulogium
the Roman passed on the female sex was in praise of their fecundity. Such was
the term allotted to female virtue and greatness by the sole nation of antiquity
which honoured them at all. Yet we must remember that Rome did admire Lucretia,
Yeturia, and Cornelia, for she recognized the merit of domestic virtues and
family traditions. .
Let us
confess, in justice to Roman law, that it gave a sublime definition of
marriage. It is, it said, the union of male and female on the condition of a
common life and a complete sharing in all rights, divine and human—Nuptice sunt
conjunctio maris et femince et consortium omnis vitce, divini et liumani juris
com-
3 +
municatio * A law which was grandly expressed, but
was daily belied, not only by the prevailing manners, but by other enactments,
till, instead of the professed equality, a Roman marriage presented an aspect
of extreme inequality. And, firstly, an inequality in respect to its duties;
for although there were modesty and virtue of old, and Rome, in fencing them
about with oaths, the Divine Majesty, and the terrible image of the domestic
tribunal, had spared nothing to place these qualities out of danger, yet she
had neglected male chastity, the surest guardian of the modesty of woman. She
had divided its duties unequally, and though she required of the wife virginity
before, fidelity and constant purity during, marriage, these were mere virtues
of the gynseceum, which the husband need not recognize. And society undertook
to give to women different and most dangerous lessons in admitting them to the
ceremonies of the pagan worship, and the mysteries of the Bona Dea. Marriage
also brought about a difference in social condition. The best position afforded
by the Roman law to the wife on the day whereupon the pair were united by the
ceremonies of the confarreation, under the auspices and with the consent of
all the gods, was that of being treated as the daughter of her husband, and of
having a child’s portion on the day on which his property was divided; This
was the utmost the majesty of man could afford to concede to woman—to treat her
as a child, and indulge her with infantile pleasures, with playthings, and the
luxurious living which was fitted to charm an uncultured imagination; and
thence proceeded the complaints of philosophers as to the insolent luxury of
the
* Digest,
xxiii. tit. ii. lib. i.
Roman ladies,
as to those feeble creatures whose foot could not touch the ground, who could
only move a step unless carried in the arms of eunuchs, and dangled from their
ears the value of many an estate: all this because the woman was principally
but a mere instrument of pleasure.
But she was
also a means of perpetuating the family. A Roman of position always married for
the sake of getting children, liberomm qucerendorum causa, and law itself
favoured paternity and maternity by giving privileges to those who had given
three children to the State, jus trium liberomm. But it was only on the two
conditions of pleasing her husband and propagating his race that the wife held
her place at the domestic hearth, for if she became old and barren, or wrinkles
appeared on her forehead, the gates of the conjugal domicile instantly opened,
and the freedman came to bid her go forth: College sarcinulas, dicet libertus,
et exi.*
So
unequal an union could hardly be lasting, and divorce was introduced into the
Roman legislation, and practised under every form and upon every motive. There was
the favourite divorce of men of position, on account of weariness, practised by
those who changed their wives yearly. Another kind proceeded from calculation,
as proved by Cicero, who repudiated Terentia, not because she had caused
trouble to his soul, but because a new dowry was a necessity for the
satisfaction of his creditors; and, lastly, divorce might have generosity for
its motive, as in the case of Cato, who, when he found that his wife Marcia had
taken the fancy of Hortensius, transferred her to ' * Juv. Sat. vi. 147.
him, under
the title of spouse. But if this was the position conferred upon wives at their
marriage, woman found her revenge in the iniquity of the law itself, and made,
in her turn, divorce her weapon to serve her interests and her calculations.
This occasioned the notorious immodesty of the Roman matrons, who, in the time
of Seneca, reckoned their years by the number of their husbands, instead of the
number of consuls.* They also suffered divorce in order to remarry, and married
with a view to divorce ; and St. Jerome related how he had been present at the
funeral of a woman who had possessed seventeen husbands. Women found the
equality in vice which their husbands refused them in virtue, and were to be
seen, like men, seated at orgies, passing whole nights in glutting themselves
with wine; like them, vomiting that they might feast anew, and multiplying
their adulteries, till continence was but a synonym for ugliness.f They had a
place of honour in the amphitheatre, and gave the signal for the butchery of
the last gladiator as he fell wallowing at their feet, and imploring their
mercy. When, at last, the passion for the fights of the circus had taken
possession of the whole Boman people, women followed the knights and senators
as they descended into the arena, and the populace had the pleasure of gazing
at combats between nude matrons. And thus Seneca could say with force—for the
horrors of the time and the degradation of human nature favoured the illusion—
“ Woman is but a shameless animal, and unless she is given plenty of education
and'much learning, I can see in her nothing but a savage creature, incapable of
* Seneca,
De Beneficiis, lib. iii. 16.
f Ibid. ep. xcvii.
restraining
its passions.” * Yet this proud philosopher was ungrateful, for he was the
spouse of that Paulina who desired to share her husband’s fate, and caused her
veins to be opened with his.
Such was the
history of marriage with the wisest, most upright, and most practical nation of
antiquity. It was from this degraded state that Christianity had to raise the
sex, and at first sight it seems as if the memory of original sin, as due to
the first woman, would have added to its bitterness. But St. Ambrose did not
thus regard it, and applied all his genius to the task of proving that, in the
Fall, woman was more excusable than man, for the latter had suffered himself to
be led away by his sister, and his equal, whereas the former was deceived by a
fallen angel, a being superior to mankind; that- her repentance also had been
more prompt, and her excuse more generous, in merely laying the blame upon the
serpent, whereas man had replied to God, 4 4 It was the woman that
thou gavest me!” And what, again, were memories such as these, compared with
those thoughts which surrounded the work of Redemption ; for if woman had been
the cause of the first offence, had she not made due reparation in giving birth
to the Redeemer ?—and, as the saint continued with eloquence, “ Approach then,
0 Eve, henceforth to be called Mary, thou who hast given us an example of
virginity, who hast given us a God, a God who has thus visited but one, but who
calls all to Himself.”!
It was
theology, then, which rehabilitated woman for Christianity, and the worship of
the Virgin, speedily
* Seneca,
De Constantia Sapientis, c. xiv.
f St. Ambros. De Institutione Virginis, c. v.
introduced,
wrought the same effect in practical manners as in dogma. That this worship
commenced in the Catacombs has been established by discoveries made up to the
present day; and the Virgin and Child figure in frescoes, of which, from the
nature of the cement on which they are painted, the third century must be given
as the latest date. Thus did the radiant image which was calculated to gild
with its rays the weaknesses of women, illumine the shades of that primitive
and subterranean Christendom, and emerged thence surrounded by a galaxy of
those virgins and martyrs to whom places were assigned on the altars of the
Church. It was supremely necessary that faith in female virtue should be
restored, an,d this Christianity effected by founding the public profession of
virginity, and giving the veil and golden chaplet to those maidens who remained
in the bosom of their respective families, but honoured by an open adhesion the
virtue to which antiquity had refused belief. It was needful, also, that women
should rival men in the stern qualities which had been thought their monopoly,
in the courage that courted martyrdom, and the honour of dying frequently the
last of all. Such was the example given in the earliest days by Thecla and
Perpetua, and it is supremely touching to note the respect with which the
martyrs in their prisons environed these nursing mothers of Christendom, our
mothers in the faith, who showed them the way to glory, as angels from heaven,
wingless indeed, but excelling the angels by their tears. The early ages of the
Church afford many a like spectacle, but nothing chronicled in the acts of
martyrs excels in beauty the reverence showed to St. Perpetua by her brethren
in suffering up to the
moment when
she fell beneath the hand of the gladiator, in the presence of the Roman
people yelling with delight.
But we must
refrain from top near an approach to the sanctuary, and rather than treat of
women in their privileged and exceptional positions as deaconess, virgin, or
widow, let us consider the place assigned by Christianity to daughters of Eve,
whom it had redeemed from their ancient curse, in the ordinary walks of life.
It was incumbent upon the Church, in order to regain for woman her proper place
in the family, to remould from head to foot the institution of marriage, and
add to it all that Paganism had rejected. Under the Christian order the
propagation of children was no longer the principal end of marriage, and St.
Augustine says beautifully—and it is also the teaching of Tertullian—that its
chief object is to set forth the example, type, and primitive consecration of
human society in that love which is its bond. And as that type of all society
must needs be a perfect unity, an unity consequently in which every part is
equal and indissoluble, therefore it follows that in Christian matrimony
everything is equally divided but nothing broken; the condition and duties of
life are equally shared by the two contracting parties ; each is bound to bring
the same hope, a heart in due subservience to the ties which are to unite them
for ever, as St. Jerome says, with his rough and energetic language—“ The laws
of Caesar are one thing, the precept of Christ another ; one thing the decisions
of Papinian, another the commands of Paul. The pagans give free scope to the
impurity of men, and content themselves with for: bidding them to
commit adultery with married women,
or to violate
freeborn maidens; but they allow them their slaves and the lupanar. But with us
what is forbidden to women is not permitted to men, and under a common duty
there must be equal obedience.”*
Such teaching
made Christianity burdensome to the pagan world as well as to the Jews and the
barbarians ; and may we not add that it renders it distasteful to men of our
own day ? It was the magnificent equity manifested in the voluntary humiliation
of the mighty, the spectacle of strength and weakness subjected to a common
yoke, which caused the world to shrink from submitting to the faith. This
appears even in the Gospels, when the Apostles replied to Christ when He used
such language, c If it be thus it were better never to marry;” and
therefore the Fathers, from the first days of the Church, laboured in
instilling these stern maxims into the rebellious hearts even of Christians,
and acted, so to speak, the office of police in those Christian families into
which concubinage was ever stealthily creeping to banish the wife whom they desired
to install as queen over the domestic hearth, unsatisfied till they were
assured that henceforth the house would recognize but one ruler, and that no
stranger would usurp the place marked out by God for the wife. And as Christian
morality was labouring to establish an equality in duty between each married
couple, it was also necessary to maintain an equality in their conditions ; for
woman, destined formerly to serve the pleasures, to please the senses, and to
multiply the posterity of her husband, was to be entrusted henceforth with a
graver task. So the Church did not shrink from raising her dignity by an
austere method,
* St.
Hieronymus, ad Oceanum de Morte Fabiolae, ep. xxvii.
by despoiling
her of all superfluous ornament, and stripping off the wretched finery which
was of no use in winning the heart of her husband. Tertullian wrote whole books
against the attire of women, reproached them with being loaded with jewels, and
expressed fear lest on the day of martyrdom the neck which was covered with
emeralds should leave no room for the axe of the executioner. The early time of
Christianity was no golden time, but rather an age of iron, and therefore the
Church assigned such lofty duties to its daughters, and entrusted them with the
majestic ministrations of charity. In his writings to his wife, Tertullian
shows us the Christian woman fasting, praying with her husband, rising by night
to attend the religious assemblies, visiting the poorer brethren in their
hovels, haunting the prisons, and throwing herself at the gaoler’s feet to
obtain the privilege of kissing the martyr’s chain. It was through these severe
exercises, these austerities and perils, that the dignity of the wife was
tempered, that she shared with her husband the honours of life.*
But this was
not all, and when unity in duty and condition had been established, it was
necessary to make it lasting. The Roman law admitted of divorce without limit,
and subject to no condition, by the simple consent of the parties; and so great
was the strength of the prevailing habit, the influence of the manners in
vogue, that the Christianized emperors dared not touch the law of divorce, or
rather did so with cautious timidity, and then quickly withdrew the reforming
hand. An institution, enacted by Constantine in the year 331, restricted it to
three cases between the
* Tertullian,
ad Uxorem, c. ix.
husband and
wife, but transgression was only punishable by fine. Yet even this legislation
seemed too rigorous, for Honorius, in 421, narrowed certain of these
provisions, whilst Theodosius the Younger went so far as to restore divorce by
mutual consent, in which aspect it passed into the legislation of Justinian,
who did not dare to efface it entirely from his codes. But the Christian
doctrine could not relax its inflexibility, although the wisdom of the emperors
hesitated : it was the occasion then or never to declare that Christianity had
its laws as well as Caesar, and St. Chrysostom exclaimed, “ Do not cite to me
the laws which ordain you to notify your repudiation ; for God will not judge
you according to the laws of men, but according to His own.”
In the year
416, the Council of Milevium forbade parties who had been divorced to contract
other marriages, and thus for ever changed divorce into a simple separation of
body. This expressed the entire Christian theory as to marriage, the doctrine
which has ever since subsisted, and has resisted all the opposition afforded it
by the advancing centuries.
Marriage
.includes something more than a contract, for it involves a sacrifice, or
rather a double sacrifice. The woman sacrifices an irreparable gift, which was
the gift of God, and has called forth the solicitude of her mother, her first
beauty, frequently her health, and that faculty of loving which women have but
once; whilst the man in his turn surrenders the liberty of his youth, those
incomparable years which can never return, the power of devoting himself for
the being whom he loves, that is only found at the opening of life, and the
love- inspired effort for the creation of a glorious and happy future. All this
man can effect but once between the
age of twenty
and thirty years—a little earlier or a little later—perhaps never; and
therefore Christian marriage is a double oblation, offered in two chalices, one
containing virtue, modesty, and innocence, the other a pure love, devotion,
the eternal consecration of a manhood to a feebler being, whom yesterday he
knew not, and with whom to-day he thinks himself happy to pass his existence :
and the cups must be equally full, that the union may be a holy alliance and
blessed of Heaven.
It was only
by thus making over to woman an absolute dominion over the heart of man, and
giving her an undivided rule in domestic matters, that Christianity could
consent to open to her the gates of the house, permit her to cross the limits
of that gynseceum to which the ancients had delegated her, and advance into the
city now disposed to reach her with respectful veneration. For, when during
the space of three centuries mankind, Christian and pagan, had become
accustomed to seeing women standing as martyrs before the prseto- rium, as
virgins in the churches, speeding in every direction to visit the poor, and
hunting out misery for relief, they suffered them to pass free from injury and
insult, as heavenly messengers who went through the world only to do good; and
there was thus no longer any danger for them in the streets of those tumultuous
towns along which formerly the matrons of Eome used to be carried in their
litters, borne in the vigorous arms of German or of Gallic slaves, who
protected them from insult. Respect was now assured them, and they availed
themselves of it to exercise that magistracy over charity which they have
preserved to our own day; and not the deaconesses alone, but simple Christian
women, devoted their lives, or the part which was left free from
the
exigencies of family duties, to the service of the poor and suffering, who had
never- yet had their tears wiped away by hands so tender and benevolent.
St. Jerome
relates how Fabiola, the descendant of the Fabii, who in her ignorance of the
principles of Christianity had unhappily availed herself of the right of
divorce, when touched by the death of her second husband, resolved to do
public penance, and presented herself one day at the Lateran basilica with
ashes upon her head, in the ranks of the avowed sinners, imploring, amidst the
tears of the people, the clergy, and the bishop himself, that she might be
permitted to expiate her fault; and how, upon receiving absolution, she sold
all her goods and raised out of the proceeds a hospital for the poor, which she
served in person. The daughter of consuls and dictators dressed the wounds of
the maimed and miserable, of slaves whom their owners had discarded, carried
the epileptic sufferers upon her own shoulders, staunched the blood of sores,
and in fine, as St. Jerome said, performed all the services which wealthy and
charitable Christians, who were ready to give alms of their money, but not to
sacrifice their repugnances, were accustomed to transact by the hands of their
slaves. But a stronger faith conquered all natural disgust, and therefore
popular veneration attached itself to the woman who had so scorned and trampled
upon her hereditary grandeur, that she might become the serving-maid of
misfortune; and when Fabiola died, St. Jerome related her triumphant obsequies
as forming a worthy parallel to the ovations which old Rome had lavished on her
great ones. “No,” said he, “ Camillus did not triumph so gloriously over the
Gauls, or Scipio over Numantia, or
Pompey over
the nations of Pontus. They have told me of the crowd which preceded the
procession, and the torrents of the people who came to swell it. Neither the
squares, nor the porticoes, nor the terraces of the houses sufficed to contain
the multitude. Rome saw all her diverse constituent races reunited into one
body, and crowds of enemies found themselves in agreement for the glory of a
penitent.” * We see the female sex already in possession of that tender empire
of charity which they have never suffered since to escape from their hands. And
a few years ago the spectacle offered by an entire people accompanying the
funeral procession of Fabiola, was again to be witnessed, when the same
populace hurried to the obsequies of the young Princess Borghese, and the
horses of the bier were unharnessed by the crowd, which insisted on carrying
the corpse of its benefactress to its last resting-place. This was a point upon
which the manners of our day touch the usages of antiquity. Scarcely, in spite
of the ages which divide them, can we discover the least distance between them,
for all the differences of time vanish as they enter the bosom of the Church,
the domain of eternity. Armed with the influences of benevolence, women soon
acquired a power over the tone of manners, an empire more puissant than that of
law. Soon they had their share in swaying legislation itself, as appeared in
the fifth century in the case of Pulche- ria, the daughter of Arcadius, who
being a little older than her young brother Theodosius II., felt forcibly the
difficulty of the epoch in which he was called to reign. Therefore, devoting
her youth and her virginity to God, she undertook the guardianship of her
* St.
Hieronymus, ep. lxxvii. de Morte Fabiolse.
brother, and
thus afforded the spectacle of a girlish princess of sixteen years,
grand-daughter certainly, and sole inheritress of the genius and courage of
Theodosius, governing the Empires of the East and West, which had no
opposition to offer to her influence and her talent, and struggling during a
whole reign against the intrigues of a court of eunuchs, and, notably, against
that eunuch Chrysaphus, who seemed to be raised up as the evil genius of the
Byzantine Empire. On the death of Theodosius, the praetorians made over the
purple to Pulcheria herself, and she was proclaimed Augusta, Imperatrix, and
mistress of the world. But she soon, in mistrust of her solitary greatness,
gave her hand, charged henceforth with the burden of empire, to Marcian, an
aged soldier, from whom she obtained a promise of sisterly respect; and the
Roman world enjoyed some years of greatness and glory under the united sway of
Marcian and Pulcheria. For when Attila, thinking it was still the time when
eunuchs governed the court, demanded the accustomed tribute from the Empire of
the West, he received as the answer of the Empress, “ I have only gold for my
friends, but for my foes ironand it was necessary to attain the respect of the
barbarian that the throne of Constantine should be occupied by a woman, who was
at once a Christian and a saint.* We insist upon the workings of Christianity
in the manners of the fifth century, because then, as ever, the Church was
labouring not for the present only, but for the ages which were to follow. It
was essential that the idea of the Christian family
* St. Leo
bears her witness that in lending her influence to the condemnation of
Nestorius and Eutyches, she had given peace to the religious world.
should be
founded before the barbarians came to trouble it with their disorders. For the
instinct which they brought might easily have perished had it not encountered
examples which might develop and enlarge it. Nor did they always show respect
towards women, for history relates that the Thuringians, who had invaded Gaul
in the commencement of the sixth century, and had carried off three hundred
young girls, fastened them with stakes to the ground, and then drove their
chariots over their bodies. Moreover, as Tacitus informs us, the barbarians
practised polygamy, and their chiefs gloried in the number of their wives.
Amongst the Germans it was customary to buy -and sell concubines, and the dying
chief often caused the women who had shared his couch to attend him on his
funeral pyre.
Therefore
Christianity had to teach the barbarians a constant respect for women, and if
it found some succour it encountered more dangers in their native instincts.
Theodoric and Gondebald, too, hastened to borrow from the Theodosian code that
constitution concerning divorce which had been enacted by Constantine, and by
the help of such texts the barbarian monarchs hoped ' to introduce, if not
simultaneous, at least successive polygamy.* It was this instinct which caused
the Merovingian kings to indulge in a number of wives, and it is well known how
St. Columba, having reproached Brunehault with her care in furnishing her son’s
seraglio, was exiled and forced to find a resting-place amongst the solitudes
of Switzerland, in company with bears and wild beasts, who were more amenable
than his fellow-men to his wonder-working hands. And the
* V. edict
of Theodosius, c. liv.; and the laws of the Burgundians, tit. iii. sect. 3.
same question
which was mooted during all the dark ages was renewed in the time of King
Lothaire, who desired to repudiate his wife Teutberge, but was resisted by
Nicholas I. declaring as a sole answer to all his importunities that he would
never suffer such an irregularity to gain ground, and encourage men who grew
weary of their wives. It also reappeared in the struggle between Pope Gregory
YII. and the Emperor Henry IV., whose real aim in laying his hands on the right
of investiture was to annul his marriage with Bertha, the daughter of the
Margrave of Saxony; again between Innocent III. and Philip Augustus; and
finally, in the sixteenth century, between Henry VIII. and Clement VII.,
affording the remarkable spectacle of the Papacy consenting to see the schism
of the former rather than assent to his adultery, to lose a province of the
Christian empire rather than outrage the dogma which had regenerated the
Christian family. It was the work of twelve centuries to struggle against the
violent instincts of the sons of the North, who had abjured none of the
passions of the flesh; so long was the strife needed in order to bring out in
their full bloom those delicate feelings which had existed indeed deep in the
bosom of the Christian society, destined to a momentary eclipse, but to a later
reappearance, and which constitute in our own day all the purity and all the
charm of- modern civilization.
It was, then,
upon the condition of their exalted place in the family life that women
undertook so large a share in the task of civilization, and therefore were
these honoured beings able to bring their barbarous husbands one after,
another, and with them the people they ruled, to the faith of Christ. It is
enough to name Clotilda
and Clovis,
Bertha and Ethelbert, Theodolinda and Lothaire, appearing as conductors of
their respective nations, whom they drew, as if by enchantment, after the sweep
of their royal robes, and tracing out the way in which their descendants were
to march. And so great was the confidence with which these queenly women
inspired these half-barbarous races, that the Germans, Franks, Saxons, and
Spaniards, who gloried in spurning the idea of obedience, yet did not shrink
from submitting to a female sovereign.
Yet these
premisses must not lead us to conclude that Christianity threw down the •
barriers of nature, by desiring to plunge women into public life, and so
establish that absolute equality which has been dreamed of by the materialism
of our own epoch. Not thus did the Church understand the matter, for
Christianity is too spiritualistic for such an idea. The part to be played by
its women was in some sort to be analogous to that of the guardian angels. They
were to guide the world, but to remain invisible. The angels became rarely
visible, and then only at moments of supreme danger, as the angel Raphael
appeared to the young Tobias, and so it is only on certain long predestined occasions
that the empire of women can be seen, and the saving angels of Christian
society are manifest under the names of a Blanche of Castille or of a Joan of
Arc.
But we have
paused to mark the rehabilitation of woman in the prevailing order of manners, in
order the better to study her rank and influence in the world of letters; and
pursuing this our proper sphere and duty, we shall find ourselves in new paths,
and so quit, to return no more to it, the hackneved theme of the
VOL. II. 4
restoration
of woman under Christian influences. As the Church had every hope of female
intelligence, and was bound to refuse nothing that could tend to its
improvement, she took great care of their education. And we possess some
striking documents on this very point amongst the correspondence of St. Jerome.
He showed in the two letters which he wrote to Laeta and Gaudentius on the
education of their two daughters, that, like all great minds, he had no
contempt for small things, and bade them commence their educational cares from
the nurse’s arms; and following the Eoman who attributed the earliest
corruption of eloquence to the bad lessons of nurses and pedagogues, so St.
Jerome wished for a modest and grave nurse, who had often the name of God upon
her lips. He desired that they should refrain from piercing the ears of
children, or staining their faces with carmine and ochre, or giving to their
hair that red hue which was but a first reflexion of hell, and begged that they
should speedily be taught to clear their intellects, and that letters of ivory
should be placed in their hands that they might learn the formation of words;
that a number of Greek verses should be committed to their memory first, to be
followed by Latin studies; and especially that they should not be left ignorant
of Holy Writ; nor, lastly, of the writings of the Fathers.*
Such was the
severe and solid system of education laid down by St. Jerome for the use of the
daughters of the Church; nor need it surprise us to find him offering his own
services towards instruction, and writing thus to Laeta from his desert
retreat. “ I will carry her on my own shoulders, and will confirm her
* St.
Hieronym. ad Laetam, ep. cxii.
stammering
lips; my task will be more glorious than that of Aristotle, for he trained a
king who was destined to perish by the poison of the Babylonians, while I
shall raise a servant and spouse for Christ, an inheritress of heaven.”* After
this it may seem surprising that the women of the early ages of Christianity
have left such scanty writings, for we can only cite a few excellent letters,
which, however, will always do them credit; and some verses, like those of
Faltonia Proba, who composed a canto in honour of the faith. These are the sole
and feeble claims put forth by these Christian women of primitive times to
literary distinction ; or rather they gloried more in understanding that in
the world of letters, as in that of politics, their influence was to be
invisible—their mission to inspire far rather than to shine.
We never find
that women inspired any serious works in classic time : if we run through the
familiar letters of Cicero we see few, amongst those of Sym- machus none,
addressed to females. Seneca, indeed, wrote in a consoling strain to his mother
and to Helvia; that haughty spirit which so utterly disdained the other sex,
was once moved by their tears. But Christianity brought with it an imitation of
the example given by the Saviour in teaching the woman of Samaria. St. John
corresponded with Electa, and all the Fathers of the Church wrote for women.
Tertullian composed two books “ Ad Uxorem Suam,” and the treatises “ De Cultu
Fseminarum ” and “ De Yelandis Yirginibus; ” that proud and captious mind bent
before the handmaids of Christ, and declared himself the last and the least of
their servants. Similar lan
* St. Hieronym. ad Gaudentium, ep. cxxviii.
^
guage was
used by St. Cyprian in his work “ De Habitu Virginum,” while St. Ambrose
composed three works upon virginity, and addressing himself to the destined
readers of his books, said:—“ If you find some flowers herein, they are those
of your virtues, and from you proceeds all the perfume of the book.” *
Courtesy
proper to so great a soul, but destined to be even excelled by that of St.
Augustine. Augustine was especially the work of his mother, St. Monica, who had
twice, as it were, given birth to him—once in the sufferings of the body, the
second time in the agonies of the spirit; and in the latter she had borne him
for eternity. We remember the tears she shed over the errors of her son, and
the joy she had experienced from the bishops prophesying that the child of so
much weeping could not perish; how her joy was the chiefest on his conversion;
her place the highest at the philosophical discussions of Cassiciacum; and how,
to his good mother’s question whether philosophizing women had ever been read
of in the books, Augustine asked, in reply, whether philosophy was anything
else than the love of wisdom. Monica, who had long loved her God, was far
nearer philosophy than many. “For after all, my mother,” he said, “ do you not
fear death far less than many would-be sages ?” adding that Jhe would willingly
become her disciple. He also, instead of repelling, drew her on to take a .part
in their discussions, declaring that if his books fell into any hands in the
future, no reader should reproach him for giving to his mother the expression
of her opinion. Whilst they were treating of the Supreme Good,
* St.
Ambros. De Virginibus, ad Marcellinam sororem suam, lib. ii. s. vi. •
Monica ventured
the proposition that the soul had no natural aliment but science, the
intelligence but truth, which was in accord with sentiments in the “ Horten-
sius ” of Cicero. Delighted with the coincidence, St. Augustine declared that
his mother had carried off the palm in philosophy ; that he owed to her his
thought for truth, his desire to know nothing besides truth, and referred to
the inspiration which he had drawn from her his entire vocation as a thinker.
And, in fact, he justified this idea in that ever memorable passage of his “
Confessions,” in which he relates how that a few days before the death of
Monica, he was standing with her near to a window at Ostia, discoursing of the
future life, of God and of eternity, and touched by a momentary effort of the soul
the things of which they were speaking. Monica ended the interview by declaring
that no more work remained for her on earth; and she died shortly afterwards,
with her task accomplished, for she had moulded her son according to the method
which God had appointed to her.* St. Augustine many a time in after life trod
again the road which he had followed with his mother in that last conversation;
he came back again and again to God, and reached a high point in the knowledge
of Him; but it was always by the same track, repassing the same places, into
which, then but an inexperienced neophyte, he had first adventured himself
under his mother’s care.
But St.
Augustine, as a genius, was of tender nature, and he might well one day have
been carried onwards by a mother’s hand. The case of St. Jerome seemed
different, and it is a marvel how that man of fiery and
* Confessiones,
lib. ix. c. ix.
untamed
spirit, of ardent and undisciplined imagination, then conquered by
Christianity, was only developed under the same influences by Christian women.
We have already noticed St. Jerome at Eome, but the fact is less known that at
that time he was fifty-two years of age and had written little—merely two or
three letters and some treatises of mediocre importance. These represented the
entire produce of that long life which had ripened in the desert. But his
reputation brought around him in numbers the most illustrious Christian
matrons of Rome, such as Paula and her two daughters Eustochia and Blaesilla,
Felicitas, Albina, Marcellina, the widow Laea, and the virgin Asella Marcella,
at whose house the others assembled to listen to the great doctor. She had a
passionate love of the Scriptures, and never could see Jerome without plying
him with questions, multiplying objections, and never leaving him till her view
was clear. When he had left Rome she became the soul of*that little society of
Christian women, answered their questions with the tact and delicacy which is
the special attribute of women, and saying always that such and such was the
doctrine of St. Jerome or some other doctor —never speaking in her own name.
After his return to Bethlehem, St. Jerome was still pursued by the questionings
of these noble matrons, and, moreover, some of them came and joined him, that
they might recover the light which they could not surrender. They followed him
into his desert solitude, and thus we see Fabiola crossing the seas, ostensibly
to visit the Holy Places, but in fact to read the Book of Numbers again with
Jerome, and to receive his explanation of chapters which she could not
comprehend. Paula then also become a widow, and her daughter Eustochia,
renouncing the
glory and
fortune which surrounded them, also crossed the Mediterranean and arrived at
Antioch, from which city these women, of the class which once required the
support of their eunuchs’ arms for a journey into the streets of Rome, mounted
upon asses, and set out for Jerusalem over the rugged passes of Lebanon. On
their arrival at Bethlehem they founded a monastery and three convents, and the
rule of the latter made a study of Holy Writ incumbent upon every nun. These
institutions were in fact schools of theology and language, since the
interpretation of Scripture was necessarily founded upon the study of foreign
tongues; and these Roman ladies were adepts in Latin, in Greek, and in Hebrew.
Paula, in fact, used to chant the Psalms in Hebrew, and on her deathbed
answered St. Jerome, when he asked if she suffered, in Greek. They left him no
peace, these two women, and pressed him to read the whole Bible from end to end
with them, and to comment on its details. For long he refused, and when at last
he acceded, found that he had undertaken a burdensome task, as they would not
permit him to ignore anything, and answered his plea of want of personal
knowledge by a demand for the most probable opinion. It was for them that he
undertook his great work in the translation of the Scripture, which not only
redounded then to his glory and influence, but made him the master of Christian
prose for succeeding generations. The Vulgate was begun simply to satisfy the
keen impatience of Paula and Eustochia; it was to them that he dedicated the
books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, Ruth, Esther, the Psalms, Isaiah, and the
twelve minor Prophets, declaring in his preface that to them was owing the
influence which caused him again to
take up the
plough and trace so laborious a furrow, to remove the brambles which
ceaselessly germinate in the field of Holy Scripture, and that to them must lie
his appeal from all who would doubt the exactness of the version. “You are,” he
said, “competent judges in controversies as to texts upon the original Hebrew;
compare it with my translation, and see if I have risked a single word.” *
Whilst as he was the object of every kind of accusation, as his translation
troubled some as being a novelty, and reduced to despair all the priests who
possessed magnificent copies, parchments lettered in gold, to whom he said in
fact that newer ones were required, and who preferred cavilling at the
exactness of the fresh translation to admitting so mortifying a truth, he
found a resource and comfort in the prayers of Paula and Eustochia, and begged
them to take up his defence against the tongues of his revilers.
Thus did
these women of Christendom emulate the example of their German sisters; like
them they were present at the conflict, but it was a struggle of the mind; they
also predicted its sequel, assured it a happy issue, and tended the wounds
dealt in the controversy. And in this manner was a Christian school of women
constituted which was destined to continue through many centuries, and be the
exemplar of that sight of many persons of moral and social excellence who also
did not shrink from growing pale over the holy books and writings of the great
doctors of the Church, which was the wonder of the seventeenth century; for the
women of the Church had already taken possession of that double work of
inspiring and of conciliating which will be theirs until the end.
* See
letter xcii. to Paula and Eustocliia.
But if they
gained every advantage in the order of knowledge, there was danger of their
losing ground in that of art and that of poetry. For it seemed that as women
had been sources of frequent and perilous inspiration to the sculptors and
poets of Paganism, so Christianity might seek to efface for ever the images
which appealed too forcibly to the imagination and the awakened passions. Yet
this was not the case, and a visit to the Catacombs, those rugged homes of the
most austere Christianity, will show us, amidst the relics of persecution and
memories of the menacing guards, who were perhaps then at the entrance, on the
point of laying hands upon the priest at the altar and the faithful who
surrounded him, in the light of torches and lamps, a certain number of
paintings decorating the sanctuaries, and developing into garlands around the
altars. Of the subject of these pictures we shall treat in another place; but
may remark that the most frequent after the Good Shepherd is that of the figure
of a woman at prayer, alone, with arms crossed, the head often veiled, dressed
in the simple fashion preached by Tertullian and St. Cyprian. In other places,
it appears as a martyr at the place of execution, dressed like Felicitas and
Perpetua, when they stood in the arena, without veil or ornaments, despoiled of
those necklaces and emeralds which would have balked the sword of the headsman,
covered only with the stola, a simple white robe, with a girdle of purple
descending to the feet as her sole adornment, the eyes and hands alike raised
towards heaven. It was thus under the features of a woman that Prayer was
symbolized by the Christians, as if persuaded that
4 t
the orisons,
which were accompanied by the humility and gentleness of so holy a being, would
move the Almighty more easily. She was again represented in the company of two
aged men, who stood on each side, and supported her uplifted arms; and
sometimes two names were written underneath the painting. The two elders were
named Peter and Paul; and the woman who stood between them praying, with
outstretched hands, was named Mary. So this figure, which appeared always side
by side with that of Christ, was the first representation of the Madonna, of
that long course of Byzantine Yirgins which were destined to inspire the
painters of the Middle Age, the regenerated woman who was to recreate art for
the modern world.
But it1
was not sufficient for Christian womanhood to take up with a reforming hand
painting and the plastic arts; it was also to enter the domain of • poetry,
then overflowing with the ardours of Sappho and Alcaeus, burning with the
passion which had been kindled by the women of old time—poetry which was to be
purified by being sprinkled with the blood of those virgin martyrs who were to
be for the future the heroines and inspirers of the Christian bards. And it is
a touching fact, that the first woman who moved and drew forth new accents from
poetry for the Church, was a young girl, St. Agnes, who was martyred at Rome at
the close of the persecution under Diocletian, a.d. 310. A sort of preeminence was attached
to her, as the youngest born of the numerous family of martyrs. All the efforts
of the imagination of the time, added to love, respect, and enthusiasm, were
united, as it were, to compose her
crown. A
short time after her death, one of the most beautiful of Christian legends was
related as to her. It told l;ow, as her parents, some little time, after her
martyrdom, were spending a vigil in prayer at her tomb, the virgin Agnes
appeared in the brightest light, amidst a multitude of virgins clothed like
herself in long robes of gold, and having a snow-white lamb at her side, she
addressed her weeping parents, and said, “ Weep not, for you see that I have
been admitted into this company in the abodes of light, and that I am united
now with those whom I have ever loved.”
Her life
seamed to have attracted the notice and charmed the respect of all the men of
her age, and no sacred topic has been more often celebrated in the discourses
of the eloquent, or the verses of poets. Three times did St. Ambrose return to
it, and at the beginning of his work “De Yirginitate,” todk pleasure in
honouring the action of the maiden who had braved her executioners, and had
advanced to the place of slaughter with a more triumphant step than if she had
been about to bestow her hand on the most illustrious scion of the consular
houses. But the poets, especially, claimed it as their own, and the Pope St.
Damasus, in the first place, who lived at the end of the fourth century, sang
in a short but forcible poem of the martyrdom and glory of St. Agnes. “ How,
at the mournful signal given by the trumpet, she rushed from the arms of her
nurse, trampled under foot the tyrant’s menace; and how, when her noble body
was given over to the flames, her young soul conquered their great terror, and
how she covered herself with her long hair for fear lest her eyes, then about
to perish, should not behold the temple of God.”
Viribus immensum parvis superasse timorem,
Nudam profusum crinem per membra dedisse Ne Domini templum facies
peritura videret.*
And those
beautiful verses are equalled by the hymn composed by Prudentius, a poet of the
beginning of the fifth century, in honour of St. Agnes, in which he narrates at
length the history of the martyr, and crowns her by the following invocation :—
“ 0 happy
Virgin, 0 new-born glory, noble dweller in the heavenly palace, lower towards
our mire your brow, now girt with a double diadem. The light of your favouring
countenance, if it penetrates therein, will purify my heart. For every place on
which you deign to cast your eyes becomes1 pure; every place on
which your foot, so brilliant in its whiteness, has alighted.” Surely this
poetry has recovered the ancient fire, but the path along which it journeys is
one which leads to heaven, f
And yet
another breath was to proceed from the lips of women, to penetrate the depths
of Christian poesy, and reveal therein a fertility, of which succeeding ages
would reap the fruits, in the shape of Platonic love. This sentiment only just
began with Plato to free itself from the obscurity and depravity of the Greek
idea of love; but when a Christian, who had been touched by its inspiring
influence, wrote for the first time in prose, a prose instinct with poetry,
when Hermas composed his wonderful “Shepherd,” Platonic love found place in its
pages, but suffered no surroundings which were not chaste. He related that in
his youth he had loved, for her beauty and her virtue, a young
* Biblioth.
Patrum. tom. iv. 543. f Prudent. Peristephanon, xiv. 133.
Christian
slave, the property of his tutor, and often had said, “Happy should I be had I
such a wife.” But some time after he wandered into the country, alone with his
thoughts, honouring the creatures of God which seemed so fair; and at last,
falling asleep, dreamed that he was on his knees at prayer in a wild spot, and
as he prayed the sky opened, showing to him the maiden he had loved, who said
to him,—
“ Hail,
Hermas !” “ My lady, what do you there?” “ I have been called hither to accuse
you before God.” “ My lady, if I have sinned against you, when was it, and
where ? Have I not always regarded you as my mistress, and respected you as my
sister?” “ An evil desire has found its way into your heart; pray to God, and
He will pardon you your sin.” And the heaven closed again.* Thus commenced the
love which questions even the legitimate object of marriage, which desires
nothing in its own interest, but is consistent in its sacrifice and devotion,
and becomes faulty in the moment that it ceases to forget itself.
However, we
soon recognize this as the essential principle of Christian literature in the
future. The barbarians came, but Christendom had already secured their
daughters. Frank and Saxon virgins filled the cloisters, and the saints of time
wrote for them as the Fathers had done for their sisters of the primitive ages.
Fortunatus, during his long sojourn at Poitiers, composed poetry for St.
Radagonde, the wife of King Clotaire, and St. Boniface, in the midst of his
great apostolic labours, addressed verses to the beautiful Lioba, abbess of an
English cloister, who was destined later to follow in his steps, continue his
missionary
* Hermas.
Pastor. Visio prima.
work, and
raise convents in the forests of Germany to serve for the education of the
young barbarians. Alcuin also was to number amongst his disciples the daughters
and nieces of Charlemagne, who demanded from him a commentary on St. John, and
did not neglect to remind him that St. Jerome had not despised the entreaties
of noble ladies, but had written them long letters in explanation of the
obscure passages of prophecy, adding that there was less distance between
Tours and Paris than between Bethlehem and Rome. And so he was unable to resist
them; and from that time we see posterity carried away by his example, and
Christian women gradually taking rank in theology and literature. In the tenth
century Hroswitha, in the twelfth St. Hildegard, in later times St. Catherine
of Siena, shared the glory of the greatest writers, and, lastly, St. Theresa,
who stands on the threshold of modern times, and at whose genius the world is
still wondering.
And thus
their influence showed itself in continuance, when amidst the light of the
sixteenth century some of the greatest minds appeared canvassing the respect of
a certain number of superior women, such as Jacqueline Pascal, who shared her
brother’s toil, and thereby was associated in his fame; Madame de Longueville,
who lent so favouring an influence to the genius of Nicole ; Madame de Sevigne,
Madame de la Fayette, Madame de Maintenon, and the other illustrious females
who were destined to consummate the intellectual education of the world’s most
polished race.
If it
effected so much for prose and for science, respect for women was the
generating principle of poetry, the very soul of chivalry. Without the idea of
sacrifice,
the whole essence of that poetry must have vanished; the knight was bound to
serve his mistress disinterestedly, and the poet of chivalry was only suffered
to sing of her upon the same condition. The worship which effected a
purification in the minds of its votaries, became the dominating influence of
all the poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; it enkindled the first
troubadours, the first minnesinger, the early Italian poets, and was,the
presiding genius of Dante and Petrarch. For what, in fact, was Beatrice but a
living personification of the divine intelligence, a symbolical representation,
but at the same time a perfect and fascinating reality ? What was Beatrice but
an influence destined to purify the soul of Dante, and • to free it from all
its earthly constituents. The mere smile of the maiden as she passed sufficed
to flood the poet’s heart with joy, to give him peace, to lower his pride, to
blot out his offences, and dispose him to virtue. Doubtless, Dante attributed
too great a power to Beatrice; but, at least, it was a power that he had
experienced. When he found her once more, as she appeared to him on the topmost
point of purgatory, in the terrestrial paradise which he had reconstructed, it
was not to receive flattery and empty praise, but blame for not having vowed to
her a love that was pure enough, for having suffered his soul to be weighed
down towards the perilous atmosphere of earth; and as the beautiful slave
accused Hermas, so did Beatrice accuse Dante; and thus the unknown slave, whom
Hermas had casually loved, stood, as it were, in the place of elder sister to
Beatrice, to Laura, and the noble women whose task it was to strike the most
brilliant chords of modern poetry.
We have
before us, then, a spectacle which is rare in the annals of literature. Ages
there are like the spring time of the year, when the human intellect flourishes
throughout, but to reach down to the lowest roots, to the earliest germs of
these flowers of the mind, to know from whence their life and sap may flow, is
a pleasure but seldom tasted. But this is what we have just attained, and
therefore we need pause no more to contemplate the blossoms which poetry put
forth in the days of chivalry, the roots of which lay hidden deep in primitive
Christendom.
In studying
Christian manners, during the fifth century, ’we have witnessed the greatest
intellectual revolution that has ever taken place. For literature is governed
by intellect, but the mission of intellect is to instruct or to charm. It is
his audience which moulds the orator ; the crowd for whom he sings inspires and
kindles the poet. Under the old order philosophers only spoke for a handful of
select spirits, of the initiated, and of adepts; though the orator harangued
the crowd which covered the market-places, that crowd was only composed of
citizens. At Athens, the poets composed for the theatre, but it was only
frequented by men who were free. The women of Rome attended the theatres, but
the Latin poetry was scarcely intelligible to the vulgar, and could only be
enjoyed by the cultured minority. Horace complained of this, knowing that, like
Virgil, he could only be appreciated by, at most, the knights, and that his
genius could never make itself felt in the lower ranks of the sovereign people.
The literature of antiquity had appealed to but few, but Christian culture, on
the other hand, was addressed to all. The Fathers com
posed for
slaves and for women, and St. John Chrysostom boasted, in the forcible
language which we have cited, that the Church taught shoemakers and fullers to
philosophize. They mounted the pulpit, not merely to address those who had the
freedom of the city, but to all the freedmen, slaves, women, and children who
were assembled in the same Basilica.
The invasion
and settlement of the barbarians has been considered a grave event in the
history of the human mind: and it was so, for they appeared to recreate the
intelligence of humanity in affording to all who could speak or write a new
crowd of auditors, bringing no wearied ears or dulled intellects, but ready to
open hearts free till then, and disposed to shudder at and respond to
everything that was truly worthy of admiration. It was a grave event, for the
rush of that wave of fallow minds could not but modify the intellectual
conditions of the world. But still not sufficient attention has been paid to a
greater and more important inroad accomplished before that of the barbarians
had begun—the invasion of the world of intellect by slaves, workmen, paupers,
and women—the vast majority, in fact, of humanity—who came, not to demand
empire, goods, or property, as did the barbarians later, but their rightful
share in the enjoyment of truth, of the good and of the beautiful, which has
been promised to and is the just due of all.
CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE LATIN LANGUAGE BECAME CHRISTIAN.
We have found
that, at the moment in which the barbarians stormed the gates of the Empire,
two kinds of civilization existed face to face. On the one side stood the
civilization of Paganism, powerless to receive into itself, to enlighten, and,
above all, to soften the terrible guests whom Providence had sent; condemned,
in consequence, to perish, though not entirely and without a struggle, nor
without leaving to religion, legislation, and literature dangers and advantages
which the following ages would reap; whilst, on the other, Christian dogma,
then strong enough to proceed in victory from the debates of theology, and to
produce, in the writings of St. Augustine, a philosophy of its own, was capable
of building up an entirely new society. And the elements of this already
existed in that hierarchy whose antiquity we have demonstrated, and in that code
of manners which had been the means of receiving slaves, the poor, and women
into the life of the spirit; whilst it was the case that this , inroad of those
whom the old world had disowned, whom the ancient society had despised, paved
the way for, preceded, and surpassed in its proportions that other invasion of
the barbarians; for it had already enlarged the audience to whom human
eloquence could address itself, and in
so doing had
renewed the inspiration innate in literature.
We will now
study the early efforts of the Christian literature, and search out the method
whereby the regenerating principle, descending all the degrees of thought, took
possession of eloquence, of history, and of poetry, and moulded them from the
fifth century into those very forms which, in the Middle Age, appeared
expanding with such vigour and brilliancy. But it was necessary, first, that
Christian literature should find its proper language, and enter upon the still
more difficult task of composing it out of existing but opposing elements.
Latin was, of necessity, the language of the Western Church, as being the
natural tongue of the dying society whose last moments she was called upon to
console, and the borrowed language of that host of Germans, of Franks, and of
Yandals, who were already making their way on to the lands of the frontier,
into the ranks of the army, and even the high offices of the Empire. But it
remains to us to discover the miracle whereby Latin, the old pagan tongue,
which preserved the names of its thirty thousand deities, which was also
tainted with the indecencies of Petronius and of Martial, became not only
Christian, but the language of the Church and of the Middle Age; how the idiom
which seemed destined to perish with that world from whose side it had proceeded,
remained a living language upon the tomb of an extinct society, so that,
throughout the mediaeval period, it was continually used in preaching, in
oratory, and in teaching; and noble races, even in our own day, have refused to
abjure the Latin language, as forming a certain portion of their liberties. It
is this trans
formation,
then—one without parallel in the history of the human mind—which we will now
take into account, as it amply deserves some measure of our attention ; and our
thorny task has been facilitated and smoothed by the work of a contemporary
historian, who has shown how the same revolution was accomplished at
Alexandria* in the language of Greece.
Nothing,
indeed, could seem, at first sight, worse adapted for the ideas of Christianity
than that old Latin tongue which in its primitive harshness seemed only fitted
for war, for agriculture, and for litigation. Mark its harsh, terse, and
monosyllabic forms, befitting the idiom of a people who had no leisure to lose
themselves, like the Greeks, in long discussions, nor to waste their time upon
the marble steps of the Parthenon, or beneath the porticoes of the Agora. It
points, on the contrary, to men of business, less greedy of ideas than of pelf,
meeting each other by chance on a dusty road, scorched by the rays of the sun,
and exchanging briefly, in the tersest and most elliptical language, words
expressive of their rights, of their longings, and of their hopes. Thus, if war
were in the question, all the expressions referring to it were short and
forcible: Mars, vis—war, strength; cbs, the iron from which weapons were
forged. If they talked of the country, we must not expect its beauties to be
celebrated in harmonious and ear-filling expressions, but in monosyllables:
flos, frux, bos—flower, fruit, ox ; everything which appertained to the
agriculturalist was ended by a short sound, as contracted as the moment which
was allotted to him for the sowing or reaping of his crops. And the language of
business had its germ
* M.
Egger.
in those
compressed expressions which seemed to concentrate the whole energy of a
litigious and law-making race : jus, fas, lex, res—right, justice, law, thing ;
the essential roots, in fine, of the language of law.
Doubtless on
a closer view one can discover the affinity of Latin to the iEolian dialect,
and see traces of a remote parentage amongst the languages of the East; as, for
instance, Sanscrit. But, on setting aside these useful and luminous theories of
science, in order to consider that alone which characterizes the genius of the
people, it is impossible not to recognize in the speakers of that harsh and
concise idiom the same men whom Plautus, at the opening of his “Amphitryon,”
caused the god Mercury to address, and for whom he wished no soft and fascinating
day-dreams beneath cool shades, nor delights of wit or of imagination, but a
speedy enrichment through a solid and enduring gain.* So vulgar was the
character of the people whose language was destined to be the universal
dialect of civilization.
But as soon
as the manners of Greece had invaded Rome, her orators set themselves to model
the Latin tongue after Grecian forms. Thus an artificial culture arose which,
though confined to a small number of enlightened minds, was pushed to an
incredible pitch of ardour and of perfection. Cicero trained himself to declaim
in the Greek language, as offering greater wealth than his own in resource and
ornament. Nay, more, not content with stealing the figures, reasonings,
* Et lit
res rationesque vestrorum omnium Bene expedire voltis peregreque et domi,
Bonoque atque amplo auctare perpetuo lucro,
Quasque incepistis res quasque inceptabitis.
Plaut. A mpliitr. prolog. v. 5.
and hardy
flights of the oratorical compositions of Demosthenes and of JEschines, he sought
also for the secrets of their eloquence and the mysteries of the harmony
whereby the speakers of Greece used to flatter the itching ears of its
multitudes. So we see Cicero making research with infinite art and prodigious
subtlety in the works of Aristotle, of Ephorus, and of Theopomp'us, for the
diverse measures which could be introduced into an oratorical period, to render
it richer and more satisfying to the ear. Nor must we believe that he suffered
his speeches to be composed of long and short syllables at haphazard: a certain
number of trochees, paeans, and other feet was indispensable, and he
continually expatiated on a speech which he had heard in his youth, when Carbo,
tribune of the people, in the peroration to a fierce invective against his political
adversaries, won the popular applause by a phrase which was crowned by the most
harmonious ditrochee that had ever been heard—Patris dictum sapiens temeritas
filii comprobavit. The word com- probavit, with its two long alternated by two
short syllables, had so ravished the ear of the audience that the orator was
surrounded by one long murmur of approbation. To such a point were the
refinements of euphony insisted upon by this people, who also expected that a
flute-player would always accompany the orator in the tribune, and keep his
voice to the proper level.
A like
measure of care, zeal, and laborious application, was also bestowed upon
poetry. The metres of Greece had passed in succession, first into the epic, and
then into the dramatic poetry of the Latins; and finally Catullus and Horace
had borrowed from the
lyric poets
of the iEolian school the most subtle and delicate combinations that were
permitted by the harmony of their beautiful language.
Thus a time
came when Greece possessed no treasure upon which Rome had not laid her hand ;
and the hour, though it was but a brief one, arrived which saw the perfect
maturity of the Latin language, capable then of pursuing with Cicero the
loftiest flight vouchsafed to the intellect of man, as far as the threshold of
the infinite ; capable also of diving with the jurisconsults into the lowest
depths, the most delicate subtleties, and the remotest windings of human
affairs; and capable, moreover, with Virgil, of drawing from syllables, till
then harsh and inharmonious, sounds which were destined to charm the ears of a
long posterity, to charm them even now; poetic lamentations which caused
Octavia to faint away in the arms of Augustus.
Such was the
grandeur and beauty of that Latin tongue, to which too high a tribute cannot be
paid, ip that incomparable but fugitive period which we have noticed. But this
artificial culture could not be of long duration, for languages contain an
inherent law of decomposition which wills that, on arriving at a •certain stage
of maturity, like the fruits, they should fall, open out, and render to the
world seeds from which newer languages might germinate. . Whilst Roman society,
in its most elegant and polished portion, clung to all the delicate perfections
of an exquisite language, the people were without the capacity of raising themselves
to so high a level, without the patience necessary to a respect for the
exigencies of patrician ears. For, in fact, two kinds of rules exist in a
literary language,
those rules
of euphony which regard art, and those of logic which look towards science; and
the people, pressed with business, articulating carelessly and without regard
to purity, spoke as the occasion called, and thereby violated the laws of
euphony, whilst they outraged the rules of logic by erroneous constructions.
So it
followed of necessity, that in a short time a popular and imperfect language—a
dialect, in fact, of some coarseness—was formed beneath the learned Latin, and
circulated amongst the mighty multitude which thronged in Rome and her
provinces. Nor are traces wanting of the colloquial diction which prevailed in
the streets of the city, and which the comedians employed as a means of
bringing themselves within the sympathies of their audiences; for it appears
in the works of Plautus, and in the inscriptions we may find still stranger
instances wherein the rules of grammar were incredibly violated. For instance,
cum conjugem suam, pietatem causa, templum quod est in palatium, with numerous
other expressions of like nature.
Thus the
Latin language was in process of decomposition as early as the time of Cicero,
who used to point to the age of Scipio Africanus as its golden era. To Cicero,
as to many others, the century in which he lived gave him a sad impression, as
being smitten with decay; and so he placed the apogee in a time remote from his
own. It was, he said, the privilege of the age of Scipio to speak as well as to
live with purity; but since then speech had been corrupted by a host of
foreigners. Quintilian again said, later, that the whole language had altered,
and bears witness that more than once, when a tragic spectacle had roused the
emotions of the audience, the exclamations which burst
from all
sides of the theatre had comprised some barbarous elements, which, as it were,
belied the purity of the language which the poet had designed.*
Accordingly,
from the earliest days of the Empire corruption had set in, the Latin language
was perishing, and far from its desolation being the work of Christianity, it
was only through the Church that it was destined to revive.
Antiquity had
been divided by three influences, the genius of the East, namely, that of
contemplation and of symbolism, which led through the observation of Nature to
a discovery of the language of the Creator, and that of true poetry—for poetry
is nothing but a divine contemplation of things of earth, an ideal conception
of the real; secondly, the genius of Greece, specially adapted to speculation
and to philosophy, with the capacity of adapting expressions of refined
accuracy to all the shades of human thought, which sufficed for all the wants
of the past—may we not say, also, for all those of our own time?—for it is from
that language that we ask for words to designate the discoveries of the age;
and, lastly, the Latin genius, which was that of action, of law, and of empire.
In order that these three influences should subsist, it was necessary that the
triple spirit of the East, of Greece, and of Eome, should in some measure form
the soul of the nascent nations. The Latin tongue offered to the Church a
marvellous engine of legislation and government, fitted for the administration
of her vast society; but it was also required that the language of action
should become that of speculation, that its stiff and pedantic nature should
* “
Tota ssepe theatra, et omnem circi turbam exclamasse barbare scimus.”—Quint. Instit. Or. lib. i. c. 6.
vol. n. 5
be made
supple and popular, that it should be endowed with the qualities which it
wanted in order to satisfy the reason with a regularity and exactitude cognate
to that of the Greek terminology, and to charm the imagination with splendours
kindred to those of the Oriental symbolism. This end Christianity effected by
a work which, though humble at first sight, like everything which is truly
humble, concealed one of the boldest and grandest ideas that have ever been
conceived, by the translation of the Bible called the Yulgate. A certain man,
who was perfectly versed in Latin literature, steeped in all the culture, and
nearly all the passions, of the Roman world, after having for some time
mastered all the enlightenment and gazed, though from some distance, at the
pleasures of that debased society, came to his senses and fled in terror into
the desert. He sought an asylum at Bethlehem, amidst its solitudes, which were
but beginning to be peopled by the first monks; and therein Jerome forced
himself to repel the memories which he had carried from Rome, and the
voluptuous images which troubled his thoughts even in the place of his
meditation and fasting. The works of Cicero and of Plato were never absent from
his hands, and yet they recalled and echoed too loudly the sounds of that old
world which he longed to forget. To subdue himself, and conquer the flesh, as
he tells us, he undertook the study of Hebrew, and put himself under the
tuition, and even at the service, of a monk, a converted Jew, who, greedy of
interpretation, taught him, in a* quarry and by night—for fear lest his
countrymen should detect him—the secrets of the sacred language. “And I,” said
he, “ all nourished as I still was with the flower of Cicero’s eloquence, with
the sweetness of
Pliny and
Fronto, and the charm of Virgil, began to stammer harsh and breath-disturbing
words, stridentia anhelantiaque verba. I tied myself down to that difficult
language, like a slave to a millstone, buried myself in the darkness of that
barbarous idiom like a miner in a cavern, in which, after a long time, he at
last perceives a gleam of light; so in its obscure depths I began to find
unknown joys, and later, from the bitter seedtime of my study I gathered in the
fruits of an infinite sweetness.”
Such was the
language of St. Jerome—we may recognize it by the savage energy of its
eloquence. The harvest which he desired to reap, the fruits of his bitter
study, were the sacred books which he proposed to translate from the Hebrew,
and thus to rectify what- • ever errors might have crept into the visions
framed upon the Septuagint, as well as to deprive the Jews of all subterfuge,
and cut from under their feet the objections upon which they stood as to the
supposed discrepancy between the Hebrew original and the Greek version. It was
this motive that impelled St. Jerome to undertake the translation of the Bible,
and nothing less than an inspiration of faith, a strong conviction of duty, was
necessary to enable him to brave the intrinsic difficulty of the work, and the
opposition offered by certain Christians who possessed the older translations,
and were quite content to keep them; for, as Jerome said, there were people who
prided themselves on having fine manuscripts, without caring for their
accuracy. But his native genius and enthusiasm was hardly sufficient to carry
him through all the difficulties and disgusts of his long labours. He was
sustained by the friendship and the docility of St. Paula, of Eustochia,
= 5 *
and the other
Roman ladies who shared in his toil; and with their encouragement and help he
advanced in his work, following a system of translation which he arranged
himself, and which consisted in the continued practice of two rules. The first
and the most common was to preserve, as far as was possible, without injuring,
the sense, the elegance, and euphony of the language into which the translation
was made. For thus, he said, had Cicero translated Plato, Xenophon, and
Demosthenes; thus the Greek comedians had passed on to the Latin stage under
the auspices of Plautus, Terence, and Catullus ; and in this manner did he propose
to transfer the beauties of the Hebrew language into the Latin text without
marring the grammatical purity of the latter. But the second rule, to which he
sacrificed the former, was to the effect that when it was a question of
preserving the sense in translating an obscure passage, nothing besides should
be considered, and that the language used in translating must be violated
rather than that any of the energy of the original should be lost, for the
Divine text must be correctly rendered at any cost. This, then, St. Jerome
desired, proposed to himself, and pursued with a marvellous boldness. He did
not ignore the barbarisms that of necessity crept into his style, and entreated
Paulinus not to suffer himself to be repelled by the rude and simple language
of Scripture. In another place he begged that his reader should not demand of
him an elegance which he had lost through contact with the Hebrews.
Thus was
produced the translation of the Old Testament into Latin, named the Vulgate,
which was one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, and
has not been
sufficiently studied under that point of view. Through its means the whole
current of the Eastern genius entered, so to speak, into the Roman
civilization; and yet not so much by the small number of untranslatable Hebrew
words, which St. Jerome preserved, and which need not be taken much into
account. For it was not by a mere adoption of the Alleluia and the Amen that
the Latin tongue was enriched, but by the bold constructions which it appropriated,
the unexpected alliance of words, the wonderful abundance of images, by that
Scriptural symbolism in which events and persons are figures of other events
and of other persons; in which Noah, Abraham, and Jacob have their chief value
as types and foreshadowings of Christianity; in which the solemn nuptials of
Solomon represented the nuptials that were to be between the Messiah and the
Church; in which, finally, every image of the past had reference to the future.
And this gave rise to a phenomenon which has somewhat escaped observation in
the depths of the Hebrew genius —the parallelism which is of its essence, and
which was now added to the newly gained riches of the language of Christendom.
The Greeks
nearly always founded their compositions upon the number three. Thus their odes
were formed of a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode; and the Greek grammar
comprised three tenses—the past, the present, and the future. But the Hebrew
arrangement was different, and we find the verses of their psalms always
divided into two nearly equal parts, counterbalancing and responding to one
another. That language, with the peculiarity which was also common to the
other Semitic languages, possessed only two tenses.
Hebrew has in
it no present, and rightly, for what is the present but an invisible point of
intersection between the past and the future, which can always be divided
between the one and the other, and is, therefore, non-existent as the present.
It comprised only a past and a future tense, like the Hebrew people itself,
which has no present destiny, and recognizes only that of the past, which it
calls tradition, and that which is yet to come, which it knows as prophecy.
Hence, in its language and its poetry, the novel characteristic of the people
effected that the two periods of time, tradition which had been, and prophecy
which would be fulfilled, stood face to face, calling and responding the one to
the other ; and that the idea of the present was effaced by these two tenses,
which were continually changing their names and positions between themselves.
For often did the prophets make use of the past to express futurity; Isaiah
related the passion of Christ as an accomplished event, whilst, on the other
hand, Moses^ speaking of the alliance concluded between the people of Israel
and its God, placed his facts in the future. This predestined peculiarity of
the Hebrew language, which, as it were, effaced time, and produced that
sentiment of unity which was at the root of Eastern ideas, entered with it into
the Latin tongue, and imprinted on it a stamp, which was to mark the whole
literature of the Middle Age, for it was the notion of eternity which came into
the Latin at the time of which we are treating, penetrated it thoroughly, and
remained rooted in its soil.
We come to a
second point. Only a portion of the Old Testament had been written in and
translated from the Hebrew; but the remainder, with the whole New
Testament—those
Apostolic epistles which contained the most essential analysis of Christian
theology, and the works of the early Fathers—was in Greek. It had been of
necessity translated in primitive times into Latin, for the purposes of
religion ; but now it also passed beneath the hand of St. Jerome, as the Pope
Damasus required that he should completely revise the Scriptures of the New as
well as those of the Ancient Covenant. Consequently, the theological treasures
of Greek Christianity passed in their turn into the Latin language; and here
again we may take small notice of the new words, which must, perforce, have
been borrowed from the Greek—as, for instance, all that related to the liturgy
and to the hierarchy—episcopus, presbyter, diaconus, the name of Christ, the
Paraclete, the words baptism, anathema, and many others; for such gains cannot
be counted as conquests to a language, and merely resemble the stone which the
avalanche gathers up in its course, but which is no part of itself.
The lesson
gathered by the Latin tongue from the school of the Greek Christianity did not
consist either in those oratorical artifices and tricks of number and rhythm
which had struck Cicero, but rather in supplying from its stores the
insufficiency of her own philosophic terms, an insufficiency which Cicero
himself had lamented, when, in his attempts at translating the writings of
Plato, and endowing his own language with the treasures of Greek thought, he
found himself occasionally conquered and despairing. But Christianity did not
feel his despair, nor accept the defeat; and when once the Latin tongue had
been bold enough to translate the epistles of St. Paul, which contained the
most difficult propositions and the boldest flights of
Christian
metaphysics, there was nothing thenceforth that it could not attempt. The
Church created certain Words which were necessary to Christian theology—
spiritualis, carnalis, sensuaiis—as designating states referring respectively
to the soul, the flesh, or the senses; and also verbs expressive of certain
ideas which had been unknown to the ancients, as, for instance, the verb
salvare. Cicero himself having somewhere said that no word existed to render
the Greek o-coTrip, to express the idea of a Saviour, therefore a Christian
innovation was necessary to coin salvator; and thus justificare, mortificare,
jejunare, and many new verbs were in time produced.
But this was
not sufficient, and a deeper descent than any that the ancients had dared, into
the delicacies of the human heart, was needed. Seneca had doubtless pushed his
scrupulous analysis far; but Christianity transcended it, and discovered
virtues in the deep recesses of feeling with which the ancients had never
credited humanity. Christians were the first to use the term compassio, which
had been unknown to the Romans, though it is true that they were unable sometimes
to frame Latin words, and often confined themselves to a mere translation of
the Greek, as in the case of eleemosyna, alms. They were bound to prosecute
vigorously tjie work of creating resources before unknown to their language,
and were not hindered by a fear of forming new expressions.
The Latin
language had always preserved a concrete character; it had no love for abstract
expressions, and no means of extracting them from its own resources. Thus the
ancients expressed gratitude by gratus animus, and used for ingratitude the
words ingratus
animus, but Christianity was bolder, and coined the
word ingratitudo. Facilities appeared for the construction of many analogous
terms, for multiplying and filling the Latin dictionary with names for abstract
ideas, and thus appeared the words sensualitas, gratio- sitas, dubietas. But
these expressions were not merely superfluous and adapted to encumber with vain
redundancies a language which already sufficed for itself; they rendered what
before had been expressed by a periphrasis, or, owing to the unwillingness of
men to enounce anything that is not comprised in a single word, had not been
expressed at all. Through their aid close reasonings and subtle distinctions
could be sustained in Latin, now the language of Christianity, which in
following the thorny disputes on Arianism had been obliged to mould itself
after the supple delicacy of the Greek, and ’to acquire the same readiness in
serving the intellect by providing it instantly with the word which it required
to express a definite thought. And thus Latin gained the richness which had
been peculiar to the Greek, and the power of creating words to meet its
requirements.
But
Christianity only achieved this revolution in the Latin tongue on condition of
doing great violence to the beautiful idiom of Cicero and of Quintilian, in
forcing upon it the unheard-of expressions which we have just noticed, and
making sensualitas, impassi- bilitas, and the other words required by the oecumenical
discussions, possible in a language formerly so exquisite. The Bible had commenced
and been chiefly instrumental to the change by introducing into Latin the
poetic wealth of the Hebrew on the one hand, and the philosophic wealth of
Greek on the other. But in
5 t
this task the
Bible and the Church itself had two auxiliaries, firstly in the Africans, and
secondly in the populace, who, in the epoch of which we are treating, were
semi-barbarians.
Let us mark
the fact, which has been too little studied, of the invasion by the Africans of
Latin, and especially of Christian, literature in the time which we are
discussing. It has been often remarked that Latin literature made in some
measure the tour of the Mediterranean; going forth from its cradle in Etruria
and Magna Grsecia, it crossed the Alps, and found in Gaul writers of the class of
Cornelius Gallus, Tro- chius Pompeius, and their contemporaries. It then passed
into Spain, to find there poets and historians, though of a less pure taste,
and finally a little later into Africa, where it gave birth to the latest, but
not least laborious generation of its children, who brought to the study of
letters all the fire of their climate. Amongst the latter may be numbered
Cornutus, the disciple of Seneca, who flourished in the time of Nero; Fronto,
the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, the poet Neme- sianus, and many others, and
finally that Martianus Capella, whose learned allegory on the marriage of
Philologia and Mercury we have already noticed. The speciality of African
genius was, however, manifested by Apuleius, who showed strikingly, in his romance
of the Golden Ass, a taste for obscure metaphors, archaic expressions, and
daring hyperboles. He loaded his poetry with adornments proper to prose, and
filled his prose with poetical turns, thus trampling remorselessly upon all the
rules of Latin taste. It seemed in truth as if these writers of Africa had
bound themselves to avenge the misfortunes of Hannibal upon the lan
guage of his
conquerors; and yet we must recognize amidst all the irregularities of their
style a certain fire which smacked of the heat of their sun and of the sand of
their deserts. And this was still more apparent when the African School had
become Christian, and had produced the first and most illustrious of the
Fathers, such as Tertullian, called always by St. Cyprian the Master, St.
Cyprian himself, Arnobius, and above all St. Augustine.
Thus we see
that Christian literature of the primitive ages was African by origin and in
character, and Tertullian, the chief of the school, showed all the failings of
the African genius. He was wanting in repose—a cardinal fault in the presence
of the calmness which is generally the marked characteristic of the literary
works of antiquity. His impetuous thought always snatched, tnot at
the most accurate, but the most forcible expression. Had he a truth to present,
he was certain to present not its most attractive but its most wounding side.
Rash and aggressive, he defied the intellects which were to follow him ; but
still the darkness of his style only veiled its brilliance, and the pomp of
his verbiage never served to cloak poverty of idea. He broke the ancient moulds
only because they could no longer contain the fast-flowing lava. His energetic
expressions, which seemed so many challenges, often obliged unwilling reason
to own its defeat; and the man who argued so barbarously achieved in the end
the highest triumph of human eloquence, in saying what he meant, rudely
perhaps, but thoroughly and without compromise, after a method alike forcible
and enduring. Thus on one occasion, in order to express the totality of the
Roman civilization, he
coined the
monstrous but pregnant word Romanitas, and again, in defining the Church, said
in a jargon which assuredly no Roman would have owned, “ Corpus sumus de
conscientia religionis et discipline divinitate et spei fcedere.” (The Church
is a mighty body resulting from the consciousness of the same religion, from
the divinity of the same discipline, from the bonds of the same hope.) Wishing
again to pursue to the last details the decomposition of the human organization,
he used the following strong expressions: Cadit in originem terrain, et
cadaveris nomen, ex isto jam nomine peritura in nullum inde jam nomen et omnis
vocabuli mortem, and bequeathed to Bossuet the following immortal phrase : Ce
je ne sais quoi qui n'a de nom dans aucune langue. These Africans, therefore,
if barbarians, were at least gifted with eloquence, and if they broke down the
edifice of polished Latinity which had been reared by the ancients, it was
because they knew that they could build up a grander fabric from the ruins.
However, it
was not the Africans alone who lent their aid to Christianity in the great work
of destruction and reconstruction; for they only formed the vanguard of the
advancing columns which now formed in truth the bulk of the Roman people, and
which had been recruited from all the barbarous nations. From the remotest
time, long before Goths or Vandals came in question, the mission of Rome began
and accomplished itself day by day. When in the fifth century of its existence,
for example, the slave Herdonius, with a multitude of his fellows, found
himself master of the Capitol, the city was already in the power of the
barbarians. Her population was composed of slaves, freedmen, and merce
naries,
strangers who took liberties with her language; and Scipio himself, the man
whom Cicero placed at its golden age, said to the people from the tribune, with
the audacity of a dauntless warrior :—“ I see that you are all Numidians,
Spaniards, and barbarians of other kinds, whom I brought hither with your hands
bound behind your backs, freedmen but of yesterday, and voters of to-day.” Thus
the mass which was named the Roman people was but a great and increasing ingathering
of barbarism, and it was also recruited by Christianity; for the religion which
did not despise the mean and ignorant, which had been the first to approach
them, opened widely its doors for their entrance, showed no repugnance at their
coarseness, and permitted her Catacombs to be covered with inscriptions which
bristled with barbarisms and solecisms : (( Qiiam stabilis
tibi hcec vita est—Befrigero deus animo homi- nis—Irene da Cdlda
We see, then,
that the language of the inscriptions of the Catacombs was identical with the
language of that people whom we have before noticed as taking no heed of rules
of euphony or of logic, and using a very different pronunciation from that of
the chosen and elegant few who used the idiom of Cicero and of Horace. They
even corrupted the popular Latin of the Psalms, and St. Augustine tells us that
in the churches of Africa the clergy were unable to bring their congregation to
chant Super ipsum efflorebit sanctificatio mea. They persisted in saying
floriet, nor could all their Christian docility uproot the solecism. The same
authority also tells us that in order to be understood by the people, it was
necessary to say, “ Non est abscondi- tum a te ossummeum,” instead of “os
meum,” and that
he preferred
that rendering, as it was more essential to be understood than to use good
Latin; and even St. Jerome, fond as he still was of the beautiful diction of
the poets and the classic memories of Cicero and of Plautus, granted that the
Scriptures ought to be in a simpler style, which would put them within the
grasp of an assembly of the unlearned.
But it was in
the domain of poetry especially that the intervention of the people became
marked and fertile. Side by side with that learned versification which only
the minority could justly appreciate, stood another poetry; and whilst the
cultivated courtiers of Augustus were delighting in the dactyls and spondees
which fell from the lips of Virgil, the Roman populace, too rude for such
mental pleasures, possessed their own popular verses in those atellans and old
Saturnine rhythms of which we -now know so little. We are certain of but one
peculiarity in the poetic taste of the ancient Romans, but that is a most
interesting fact, namely, that they delighted in seeing their verses in rhyme.
Of this traces appear in the works of Ennius, the poetical writings of Cicero,
and even in the measures of Yirgil, the hemistich often rhyming with the end of
the verse; and we find it used with care and a certain affectation in the
pentameters of Ovid, who seemed to take delight in bringing the consonant
terminations of his lines into apposition, as if it were a certain method of
extracting applause. So that this taste, which could be not entirely
suppressed in the elaborate poetry of the Augustan age, seemed to proceed from
the instincts of the people, who formed a species of poetry which was germane
to the rude qualities of their language, as we find many rhyming couplets
amongst the ancient relics
of the
popular Latin melodies, for instance in the Roman war song,—
Mille, mille Sarmatas occidimus!
Mille, mille Persas quaerimus!
Christianity,
always considerate of popular tastes, had no need to outrage this one, and we
find even in the poetic attempts which first fell from Christian hands that the
rhyme was developed to a point which reminds us of modern habits. We will cite
here, for the first time, a poem which is scarcely known, but which seems
decisive on this point—a poem bearing the authorship of St. Cyprian, but which
can hardly be his, though certainly dating from his era, which was also that
of the persecutions. Its subject is the Resurrection from the Dead, and the
first fourteen verses form a singular train of monorhymes:—
Qui milii ruricolas optavi carmine musas,
Et vernis roseas titulari floribus auras,
JEstivasque graves maturavi messis aristas
Succidi tumidas autumni vitibus nvas, &c.
After
fourteen lines which rhyme in as, follow five in o, and six in is, as if the
Christian poet, seeking to impress their meaning upon his auditors, could find
no method surer than this reiterated rhyme to lay hold of the memory and charm
the imagination.
A little
later the Christian Commodianus, who also lived during the persecutions,
composed eighty chapters, Adversus Gentium Deos, which aspired to be in verse.
But they were not equal to those which we have just quoted, and had nothing in
common with the old heroic verse except the number of the syllables, which the
author, in order to obtain the necessary dactyls and spondees, made long or
short arbitrarily. The last
twenty-six
lines formed a long succession upon a single rhyme,—
Incolae coelorum futuri cum Deo Christo,
Tenente principium, vidente cuncta de coelo,
Simplicitas, bonitas habitet in corpore vestro.
Wretched
lines intrinsically, but yet curious as showing the prominence given to the
rhyme, which, from being a mere accessory to the poems of the age of Augustus,
formed the sole object of the new poetry, in which the imitation of the old
heroic verse was but a discredited tradition.
But St.
Augustine entirely discarded the methods of the ancient poetic art and the
harmony of the Latin metres, upon which he had formerly composed a treatise in
five books; and for the sake of his flock, in order to fix in their minds the
principles of the controversy against the Donatists which had so long troubled
the African Church, composed a psalm Contra Donatistas of not less than two
hundred and eighty-four verses, divided into twenty couplets of twelve verses
each, accompanied by a refrain, and not including the epilogue. These verses
were all composed of sixteen or seventeen syllables divided in the middle by a
caesura, and all ending with the same rhyme,—
Omnes qui gaudetis de pace modo verum
judicate.
Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare.
Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos prsemonere,
Comparans regnum coelorum reticulo mi'sso in mare.
From this we
may see that all the artifices of the ancient poetry had disappeared; all that
referred to quantity, dactyls, or spondees, was effaced, leaving only the two
constituents of all modern popular poetry—the number of its syllables and
rhyme.
Moreover, it
is a striking fact that the plan of following the same rhyme for twenty,
thirty, or forty verses, until it was fairly exhausted, was precisely the
earliest method adopted for the chivalrous poems of the Middle Age, for the
poems and romances of the Carlovingian period. In them also the same assonance
returned over and over again, until the patience of both the orator and the
audience was wearied, as if the human mind found a singular charm in the novel
artifice which had taken the place of the canons of the ancient poetry. And to
look closer, it appears as if the attractions of rhyme consisted in the
expectation which it roused and satisfied, in the experience which it produced,
and the memory which it recalled, in the _ return of an agreeable consonance,
the reawakening of a pleasure once enjoyed when most pleasures pass by to
return, no more. Such was perhaps the psychological principle of that new art
which was introduced with the popular element into the Latin tongue, and became
the ruling canon of all modern versification.
These,
therefore, were the achievements of Christianity, with the Bible for her
instrument, with Africans, barbarians, and the populace, who were recruited
from the latter, for her servants. Nothing less than this great transformation
of the Latin language was needed in order to mould from it the classic tongue
of the Middle Age, and to reunite the scattered elements of the ancient
civilization. .
For, in the
first place, the Middle Age was a period of contemplation, full of that ascetic
and coenobitic life which was already flourishing on every hand, and which
could only find adequate expression in a language which sparkled with the fires
which had lightened
the
anchorites of the East. And the Middle Age had to find in the idiom which it
used a vehicle for that symbolism which had become its want; for no epoch has
striven more to represent ideas by figures, and to discover in every being the
mark of a divine thought; and thus throughout, in its poetry and its
architecture, in its works by brush or by chisel, did the Middle Age preserve a
character of allegory, and the chant of the Psalms alone could give to its
Gothic cathedrals a worthy voice. Latin was the necessary language of the
Liturgy, which formed the poetic song of the mediaeval period.
And,
secondly, the Middle Age was rich in the genius of speculation, in an activity
of mind which never ceased to analyze and to distinguish. It produced those
legions of logicians and controversialists whose dauntless subtlety never
wearied in . fathoming the regions of the intellect; and as to render their
thoughts a supple language like that of the Greek metaphysic was required, so
the mediaeval Latin became the language of the schools.
In the third
place, the Middle Age possessed the genius of action; it was pressed upon by
the idea of law, so that the majority of its great wars began, so to speak, by
lawsuits. It was filled with Pleadings for and against the priesthood, or the
Empire, or divorce. Litigation lay at the root of all its armed quarrels ; it
was a juridical epoch, and [produced the Canon Law; and as it required a
language adapted to the rendering of all the subtleties and the satisfaction of
all the needs of the jurisconsults, therefore the Latin of the Middle Age
became the language of the law courts. And most of all, those ages represented
the childhood of the
Christian
nations; therefore their common infancy called for one language as the
instrument of its education, and demanded that it should be simple,
expressive, and familiar, capable of lending itself to the meagre intellects of
the Saxons, Goths, and Franks, who then formed the bulk of the Christian world.
For this reason the Church, with reason, preferred the idiom of the people to
the idiom of the learned few, and prepared in advance a language which would be
accessible to those sons of the barbarians who soon were to throng her schools. .
Thus all the
modern languages, one after another, were destined to gather energy and
fertility from the ancient Latin; and not only those of them which have been
styled Neo-Latin, such as Italian, Provencal, and Spanish, but the Teutonic
dialects also were not free from the tutorship exercised by the language of the
Romans. Long were they subject to its happy influence, and the English, which
amongst all the languages of the North preserved the most of its effect, was
also the tongue which acquired a peculiar clearness, energy, and popularity.
But the Latin
which thus moulded our modern languages was not that of Cicero, nor even that
of Virgil, deeply studied as these authors were in the Middle Age, but the
Latin of the Church and of the Bible, the religious and popular idiom whose
course we have been tracing. It was the Bible—the first book that the new languages
essayed to translate, that was taken up by the French in the twelfth, by the
Teutonic tongues in the eighth and ninth centuries— which, with its beautiful
narrative, with the simplicity of its Genesis and its pictures of the infancy
of the
human race,
was found speaking the very language which was needed by the infant races who
were about to enter upon civilized and intellectual life. Our fathers were
accustomed to cover the volume of Holy Writ with gold and precious stones. They
did more, for when a council assembled, the Scriptures were placed upon the
altar in the midst of the conference, over which they were to preside, and
whose deliberations they were to conduct. And when processions marched under
the open sky, amid their ranks, as Alcuin tells us, the Bible was ever borne
triumphantly in a golden shrine. Assuredly our ancestors were right when they
covered it with gold and carried it in triumph, for the first of the books of
antiquity is also the chief book of modern times; it is, in fact, the author of
all our literature, for from its pages proceeded all the languages, and all the
eloquence, poetry, and civilization of the later ages.
CHAPTER V.
CHRISTIAN ELOQUENCE.
The Latin
language perished hy the dissolving process which sooner or later awaits every
learned idiom, which begins by sapping its principles and ends by resolving it
into a number of popular dialects. But the decaying language was in this case
to subsist for the use of Western Christendom. We have glanced at the extraordinary
transformation whereby the Latin tongue was adapted to its new destiny, and
seen how the living forces of the Bible entered into the ancient idiom of
Cicero to add to it breadth, the boldness of the Eastern symbolism, and the
wealth of the Greek metaphysic; how the great work was seconded even by
barbarous influences, by those African writers who remorselessly violated the
ancient forms, as well as by the various crowd of foreigners who outraged the
laws of language as unscrupulously as the frontiers of the Empire, who, in
debasing the purity of the idiom, reduced it to their own rude level, and
rendered it accessible to the multitude of Goths, Franks, and Saxons, whose
speech it was one day destined to become. Thus was formed the Latin of the
Church, a curious idiom which, though at once old and new, was frequently
sublime in its very rudeness, which also possessed a native grace, ornaments,
and great writers of its own, was sufficient
for all the
requirements of the liturgy, of the schools, and of the feudal and canon law;
popular enough to serve for all matters of business as well as for the teaching
and education of the barbarians, and gifted with a fecundity which brought
forth the whole modern family of the Latin languages.
Christian
civilization, therefore, had found its proper tongue, and we now must examine
its production of the three constituents of all literature—eloquence, history,
and poetry. We will treat firstly of Christian eloquence. Antiquity had loved
to excess the pleasures of speech, pleasures we may call them, for under its
order eloquence was bound to charm the senses and not merely to satisfy the
intellect. To the Greeks and Romans a speech was a spectacle, and the tribune a
stage. As the Greek theatre was a species of temple, wherein the actor, clothed
in majestic and ennobling costume, represented the gods and heroes of old, and
was bound to preserve a kind of statuesque dignity, so was the Greek and Roman
orator expected to manifest on the tribune, by the taste of his dress and his
whole attitude and adornment of person, the correctness of a figure by
Praxiteles or Phidias. His voice was raised and carefully sustained by the
flute-player, who was his constant companion, whilst the exacting ear of his
audience forbade his altering it to rise or fall beyond a certain number of
tones selected to satisfy the musical craving of their fastidious and sensual
organizations. Therefore, although it was customary to divide rhetoric into the
five provinces of invention, disposition, elocution, action, and memory,
Demosthenes, that great master of the art, declared that action, comprised the
whole matter, and that an audience was conquered at
once if the
eye and ear were won. If such was the case with the sensual Greeks, equally
must it have been so with the Eomans, the most essentially materialistic race
that has ever existed.
But the time
came when the political interest, which had been the sustaining influence of
these great displays, failed, and as the Greek stage had refused to produce
any great tragedians when inspiration had departed from a conquered patriotism,
so did eloquence wither on the disappearance of the mighty topics which had
been provided by the centuries of liberty. At the time of which we are speaking
only three roads were open to eloquence ; the first of which was that afforded
by the Bar, which had, under Yalentinian, reconquered the right of public
speaking. This was one of the benefits conferred by the Christian emperors, and
the forums of the great cities, such as Milan, Rome, and Carthage, could show a
certain number of orators famed for their skill in pleading. But the Bar was
not the path to fortune. Martianus Capella, who was the boast of his
contemporaries, and remarkable alike for the extent of his erudition and the
suppleness of his style, confessed that the Bar of Carthage had never enriched
him, and that he was dying of hunger whilst surrounded by applauding crowds at
the tribunal of the proconsul.
The second
employment open to eloquence lay in panegyric of the emperors, of their
ministers and favourites, and even of the favourites of their ministers. But
the talent was degraded by thus crouching at the feet of the degenerate and
contemptible greatness of that period, and in danger of losing the nobility of
heart, the pectus quod disertos facit, which provided its
healthiest
inspiration. For what could he hoped for from men who could only praise
Maximian, the colleague of Dipcletian, by comparing him to Hercules, scorning
a parallel with Alexander as far too weak; who, if Providence sent them a man
of mark, could in the degradation which a course of miserable flatteries had
brought upon their intellects and imaginations, find nothing new to say in
praise of him; like Pacatus, who, in celebrating the merits of Theodosius, could
only remark that Spain in giving him birth had excelled Delos, the cradle of
Apollo, or Crete, the country of Jupiter.
It is
elsewhere, then, that we must seek for the last remnants of the ancient
eloquence, and, perhaps, it may be found in another form less known, but, perhaps,
more in use amongst the ancients, namely, in the declamatory discourses
pronounced by itinerant rhetoricians, who were in the habit of strolling from
city to city with speeches prepared to serve for exordium or for peroration, or
of extorting the applause of their audience by improvisations made at the
request of a town, and with certain precautions. This was an ancient usage, and
showed how devoted Greece had been to those pleasures of the ear for which her
poetry alone was not sufficient; and we find men like Hippias and Gorgias, in
the early days of Athenian history, making it their business to teach methods
of proving the just or the unjust, and advertising their art in sustaining a
thesis or maintaining a declamation as a means of drawing attention to their
school.
Therefore,
although liberty, and with her the serious motives of eloquence, had
disappeared, this occupation still remained. We see, for instance, Dion
Chrysostom,
the
rhetorician, pursued by the hatred of the Emperor Domitian, taking refuge in an
exile more remote than that of Ovid, in the town of Olbia on the shores of the
Black Sea, inhabited partly by Greeks, partly by Scythians, and, on his
arrival, being surrounded by a crowd of men who spoke a language which was
barely Greek, inhabited the ruins, and were ceaselessly menaced by Scythian
invasion, but who pressed round the orator who had appeared amongst them, led
him to the temple of Jupiter, assembled in masses on the steps, and conjured
him to address them until Dion was obliged to discuss some common subject, and
mingle with his oration the praises of their native town.* And this passion, so
strong in the East, was not less so in the West. Of this Africa, in the second
and, perhaps, the third century, affords a notable instance in the person of
Apuleius, who used to travel throughout the towns of Numidia and Mauritania
with a collection of various discourses ready to be delivered upon emergency,
which he called his “ Florida.” Once, on arriving at Carthage, he congratulated
himself in his speech on the immense audience which had assembled to hear him,
and begged them not to confound him with those miserable strolling orators who
veiled the hand of a mendicant under the cloak of a philosopher. He went on to
compare himself with the rhetorician Hippias; and although he was unable to
make his garments, his wig, and his pot of oil with his own hands, “ Still,”
said he, “ I do profess to be able to turn the same pen to every description of
poem, whether those whose cadence is marked by the lyre, or those which are
recited by the wearers of the sock or the buskin; as
* Dionis
Borysthenica, orat. 36.
VOL. II. 6
well
as satires, enigmas, stories of every class, discourses which men of eloquence
would praise, and dialogues approved by philosophers, all in either Greek or
Latin, with the same application and the same style.” * '
To such a
pitch had the effrontery and, at the same time, the degradation of the art of
speech been pushed that this man, finding out that he had flattered himself >
too grossly, excused himself on the plea that his selfpraise was merely a
device to fix the attention of the proconsul, with whose eulogium his oration
was to terminate, and thus fell into a double obloquy from his vanity and his
meanness.
If eloquence
was thus lost, it mattered little whether lessons in rhetoric were still given
in the schools, or if the youth of the time continually repeated the same
exercises, composed the same harangues, or renewed the laments of Thetis or the
death of Achilles, or those of Dido on the departure of iEneas. These themes,
'preserved throughout the times of barbarism, are to be found in the writings
of Ennodius, who composed many of them, and later in those of Alcuin, who recommended
and used them himself in tuition. But it was evident that they contained no
intellectual vitality.
But
Christianity could not suffer eloquence to perish. She more than any system was
bound to hold it in honour, as representing the Word, the creative spirit of
the universe, which had also redeemed and was one day to judge His work. That
same divine eloquence was to be perpetuated in the Christian Church by means of
preaching, and no form of outward respect was too honourable for its
enshrinement. The ancients had
* Apuleius,
Florida, lib. ii. initio.
given a truly
magnificent pedestal to human eloquence. They had raised for it a tribune in
the midst of the Agora or Forum; thence it might preside over those intelligent
and passionate cities the conquest of which was the guerdon of victorious
oratory. It was difficult to find a more honourable post for a mere human
thing; but Christianity effected this by planting her eloquence, not on a
tribune, but within her temples, side by side with her altars. The Church
raised for it a pulpit, a second altar, as it were, hard by the sanctuary, and
offered a spectacle, unseen by Paganism, of an oratory, prosaic in form and
simple in matter, delivered in the pause of her mysteries. It was true that
thereby the conditions of eloquence were changed ; it ceased to be a means of
enjoyment, and became a medium of instruction. Its end was no longer to
enchain the senses, but to enlighten the mind and to touch the heart, and,
therefore, action disappeared almost entirely from Christian oratory; for who
could expect it from those bishops who sat motionless on their pontifical
seats, in the depth of the apses, to address a multitude composed of paupers,
slaves, and women, little skilled in the antique delicacies of Greek and Roman
declamation?*
And,
secondly, elocution was doomed to lose much of its importance. Disposition of
the subject was to be neglected, for the Christian art was to be entirely devoted
to invention and to a profound and exhaustive grasp of the subject-matter. But
as art diminished so did inspiration increase; and as in the fifth century
* Eloquence
became preaching, and the bishop became the orator, who spoke to fulfil a duty,
no longer as a service rendered to the intellect, but as a call of charity.
inspiration
had quitted rhetoric and left only a phantom of art, so, if art was absent,
inspiration had returned to the eloquence of the Church, and method was soon to
follow it, attracted sooner or later by the presence of the inspiring
influence, as the sun on his rising calls all the harmonious voices of creation
to salute him.
From the
first appearance of a Christian school of eloquence we may trace in it an
inherent and profound separation from the theories and methods of that of
antiquity, and also an element of originality which touched mankind and was its
true secret. St. Paul came into the midst of those intensely refined Greeks
only to trample on the base resources of human oratory, to hold cheap the
sublimities of speech, and to profess the knowledge of a single thing, Christ
and Christ crucified. Yet we, like St. Jerome, cannot fail to perceive that
the man who even thus appears uncultured had resources within himself of which
his auditors of Areopagus were ignorant, and that his harsh, unexpected, and
unpolished words struck home like thunderbolts. But as the Christian society
was enlarged, the system of preaching was extended, and a want of organization
was felt. A ministry of such scope and continuity soon found its laws, and St.
Ambrose, in his work “De Officiis Ministrorum,” founded, in some measure, on
the “De Officiis” of Cicero, traced out the various functions of the
priesthood, including that of preaching. Ambrose has been erroneously placed in
the category of the Fathers who were estranged from art and inimical to
literature, whereas he had so well preserved the tone of the masterpieces of
antiquity upon which his mind had fed, that he sought for artistic rules in
Holy Scripture itself, and laboured to prove, in
a letter
written to a certain Justus, that it was possible to find throughout a respect
shown to the three points considered by the old rhetoricians essential to a complete
discourse, namely, a cause, a matter, and a conclusion. Moreover, his esteem
for the canons and graces of the ancient eloquence appeared to some extent in
the rules he laid down for the Christian orator. They were as follows :—4 4 Let your discourse be correct,
simple, clear, lucid, full of dignity and gravity, with no affectation of
elegance, but tempered by a certain grace. What shall I say of the voice? It
suffices, in my opinion, that it should be pure and distinct; for its harmony
must depend rather upon nature than our own efforts. The pronunciation should
be articulate and strong, free from the rude and coarse intonation of the
country, without assuming the emphatic rhythm of the stage, but always
preserving the accent of piety.”* This shows that St. Ambrose was no mean
authority, but a member still of the school which took into account not merely
the thought and the expression of the orator, but also his gestures and the
disposition of his drapery.
But the true
founder of Christian rhetoric was St. Augustine, to whom the function
appertained, especially in the capacity of his former profession as a
rhetorician. This is evidenced by the fourth book of one of his most important
treatises, “ De Doctrina Christiana et de Catechizandis Rudibus.” Having
devoted the first three books to an exposition of the method and spirit in
which the Scriptures ought to be studied, he showed in the fourth the proper
manner of communicating to others the science which had
* St.
Ambrose, De Officiis Ministrorum, lib. i. c. 22-25.
been
mastered, and thus collected in his theory of Christian preaching all the
precepts of a novel rhetoric : “ And in the first place, he declared that he
knew well the rhetoric of the schools, but did not propose to relate or to
discredit its precepts—for as it had for its object persuasion of what was true
and what was false, who would dare to affirm that truth should remain unarmed
against falsehood?”* But he did innovate in adding, what the ancients had not
dared to say, that eloquence could exist without rhetoric, and could be
achieved by listening, by reading the works of eloquent authors, and exercising
the mind in dictation and composition. On these conditions the subtleties of
the schools could be dispensed with, and by this path a man could attain to the
ineffable gift of persuasion and of eloquence.
But having
made this just division between eloquence and rhetoric, St. Augustine suddenly
returned to the precepts of the ancients, and selected from them, leaving aside
whatever was unnecessary for the simplicity of the new era. He gave the
principal share to invention, as befitted a Christian epoch in which the empire
over mere form had been assured to ideas, and, adapting from the beautiful
treatise of Cicero, “ De Inventione,” insisted that wisdom was the very
foundation of eloquence, and of far surpassing value; for that whereas wisdom,
without eloquence, had founded states, eloquence, deprived of wisdom, had more
than once brought them to destruction. Applying these precepts, he continued,
that though it was better that preachers should speak eloquently, it sufficed
if they spoke words of wisdom, precepts admissible
* St.
Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, lib. iv. c. 2.
alike in
their liberality and their fitness; for had the Church been as severe as
antiquity in matter of art, had she given the right of speech only to the
eloquent, few indeed would have been entitled to spread her doctrines, few able
to receive them, and thus the teaching of Christianity, instead of being the
light and consolation of all, would have remained the pleasure and privilege
but of a few. Great, therefore, and pregnant in consequences, was the fiat
which opened the pulpit not only to the man who had been exercised during »
long years in oratorical struggles, like Demosthenes and Cicero, but to the
humblest priest who had the faith which could inspire him, and the good sense
which would keep him in the right track.
St. Augustine
preserved, like Cicero, the distinction between the three parts of oratorical
invention, for, said he, it is an eternal truth that a speaker is bound to
convince, to please, and to touch. Nor can we wonder that he wished to retain
for the Christian orator his mission of convincing, of stirring, and touching
the rebellious will, nor especially that he permitted him to please ; for we
know the insight of St. Augustine, that finished expert in the mystery of the
human heart; and we know also that the secret of pleasing is the secret by
which souls are won. But even in this case he calls only for what is essential,
declaring that if the key will really open, it matters little whether its
substance be of gold, of lead, or of wood, only that it must be efficient to
unlock the barriers of the heart to all the light of truth and the gentle
evidence of the divine influence.
In elocution
also he preserved, as being founded upon nature, a distinction of three
styles—the simple,
the
temperate, and the sublime. The subject of Christian oratory must ever be
sublime, but it was not so with the style of the orator. A simple style, said
Augustine, is the one which the auditor can listen to for the longest time; and
more than once in his long career he remarked that admiration for a brilliant
period sometimes extracted less applause from the audience than the pleasure of
having clearly and easily grasped a difficult verity which a simple sentence
had brought down to its level. Such were his recommendations in’ the matter of
elocution. With regard to oratorical rhythm, he declared that although he aimed
at preserving it without affectation in his own discourses, yet he really held
it in slight esteem, and rejoiced at not finding it in the sacred books,
delighting rather on the frank, uncultured, and highly spiritual beauties of
Scripture, which was, as it were, released from these usages of a sensuous
antiquity.
However,
there was a certain danger in the contempt evinced by Augustine for the
delicacies of style, some traces of the Decline, and of the vicious taste of
his age. But however deficient he might be in his views upon elocution, and
though his rules as to invention were but a repetition of the canons of the
Ciceronian rhetoric, he recovered himself singularly when he entered into the
hidden depths of the philosophy of eloquence, and promulgated the true mystery
of the new school which he was about to found. This he effected in another
work, which is interesting both from the circumstances which produced it, and
as giving us an insight into the soul of its author. A deacon, named
Deo-Gratias, who had been entrusted with the instruction of the catechumens,
wrote him a
letter
relating the disgust, trouble, and discouragement encountered in his difficult
duty; and the saint endeavoured to raise his courage by representing, in
masterly analysis, all the trials which must befall the man whose duty it was
to expound the word to his brethren, and pointing at the method by which he might
vanquish his difficulties, and triumph, sooner or later, over the repugnance
shown by his own heart or by his hearers. The two secrets of the eloquence,
which had its essence in the study of the human heart, were love towards the
men who had to be instructed, and the love of that truth which was nothing less
than God Himself. For St. Augustine found in charity the craving to communicate
to our fellows the truth which has convinced ourselves, and in the impulse
which causes us to open to others the hand which we deem to be filled with the
stores of truth, beauty, and righteousness, a provocative to eloquence which
had been unknown to the ancients : “For,” said he, “like as a father delights
in becoming childish with his child, and stammering out with it its first
words—not that there is an intrinsic attraction in thus murmuring confiised
utterances, though it is a happiness looked for by all young fathers—so it
should be a pleasure for us, as fathers of souls, to make ourselves little
with the little ones, to murmur with them the first words of truth, and to
imitate the bird in the gospel which gathers her young under her wings, and is
only happy when she is warmed by their warmth, and can warm them by her own.”
And, in fact, no one could better understand than Augustine that mysterious
sympathy between the speaker and his audience, by means of which the one
enlightens, sustains, and guides the other, whilst both work at the same
6 t
time, and by
the same effort, to discover and to glorify the same verity.
But if the
love of humanity was one principle of the new kind of eloquence, there was also
that real sacred love of truth, of the supreme ideal, which ought to fill the
whole mind of the orator, never perhaps to be grasped in its full perfection,
sometimes lost to view, but capable when seen from time to time of sustaining
and quickening his zeal. And this influence, better known to Augustine perhaps
than to any of the eloquent ones of. classic time, is thus described by him :—“
For my own part, my discourse generally displeases me, as I covet a better
rendering, which I often seem to hold in my mind before I begin to express by
myself in the sound of words; and so, when all my efforts remain inferior to my
conception, I grieve at finding that my tongue is not sufficient for my heart.
An idea flashes through my mind with the rapidity of lightning, but not so
language, which is slow and tardy, and permits the thought to return into
mystery whilst it is unfolding itself. Yet as the flying thought has left some
fair traces imprinted upon the memory, which last long enough to lend
themselves to the sluggishness of the syllables, upon them do we form the words
that are named the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or any other tongue; for these same
traces of the idea are neither Latin, Greek, Hebrew, nor of any other nation,
but as the features are marked upon the face so is the idea in the mind. . . .
Hence it is easy to conjecture the distance of the sounds which escape from the
mouth from that first glimpse of thought. . . . But in our eager desire for the
welfare of our hearts, we long to speak as we feel. . . . And because we do
not succeed
we torment ourselves, and, as if our labour was useless, are devoured by
discouragement, which withers our speech and renders it more impotent than it
was when, from a feeling of futility, discouragement first came upon us.”* We
need not insist upon the merit of this, for eloquence was certainly renovated
when not only the influences which could inspire it, but all the accompanying discouragements
and melancholy were thus appreciated; and this was the method used by the
chief Christian orators in reconstructing the theory of eloquence. It would now
remain to us to observe the practical working of the new rules in their
discourses, but this matter has already been treated by M. Villemain with a
superiority which forbids a further analysis, and our subject simply demands an
examination of the chief features of the changes gradually produced by the
action of these rules, and the adaptation of eloquence from the shapes it had
assumed in the classic period to the form which prevailed in the Middle Age.
The Christian
eloquence of Greece seemed to have been born from the scoff hurled by Julian at
Christianity, when in a moment of passionate contempt he bade the Galilseans
go to study Luke and Matthew in their churches. It was then that Gregory of
Nazian- zum replied to him :—“ I abandon to you everything else, riches,
authority, birth, glory, and all the good things of this life, of which the
memory passes like a dream, but I lay my hand upon eloquence and regret not the
labours and journeyings over land and sea which it has cost me to acquire it.”
t The Christians
* St.
Augustine, De Catechizandis Rudibus, cap. ii.
f St. Greg. Naz. Op. tit. i. p. 132, orat. iv.
were far from
wishing to abandon their share in the empire of eloquence, and then in fact
arose the great school in which, side by side with St. Gregory of Nyssa,
flourished St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, whose conversion caused constant
regret to the rhetorician Libanius, who lamented daily that he, Chrysostom, had
been stolen from him to whom he had intended to bequeath his school; but from
our point of view, Chrysostom was no great loser.
The Latins
were not, like the Greeks, masters in the art of disposition, or gifted with
their brilliancy and grace of elocution, nOr ready with those comparisons
which, though old enough, were always fresh drawn from the sea, the port, the
theatre, and the palaestra. They had not the same pure instinct in the choice
of expressions, and a certain barbarism was apparent in their subtleties and
coarseness, as well as in the laboured refinement which was the offspring of
bad taste. The fact was that the Latin Fathers did not address so polished an
audience, but a variously mixed multitude ; whereas the Greek Fathers at
Antioch, Caesarea, and Constantinople, had before them a select remnant of the
ancient society. The congregation which crowded around the chair of the Bishop
of Hippo was principally composed of fishermen and of peasants ; and the
multitudes of Milan even and Rome comprised a vast number of freedmen and
mercenaries, who by the guttural sound of their voices recalled the forest from
which they had sprung. Therefore other methods of conquest were necessary for
these mingled populations upon whose rude natures the external graces of speech
would have been wasted, and as the eloquence which moved them must be familiar,
plain,
and
pathetic, these three qualities generally formed the dominant characteristics
of the oratory of the Latin Fathers. ,
But we see in
the eloquence of St. Ambrose a more faithful adhesion to the traditions, and a
kind of lingering perfume, as it were, derived from the ancient art. Whereas in
his teaching he gave a large share to grace of form and even of costume; so
also did his language contain a spice of the Attic honey. It is told how, when
still an infant, as he was one day sleeping in his cradle in the court of the
prsetorium at Treves, a swarm of bees settled upon his lips, as of old upon the
lips of Plato. The tale gained credit with the growing fame of his eloquence;
an eloquence which kept the people of Milan at once in perseverance and in
duty, in firmness and in submission, whilst for two days the soldiery of the Empress
Justina besieged the basilica, in order to make it over to the Arians; an
eloquence which was of so winning a nature that mothers hid their daughters
when St. Ambrose glorified virginity; and the power of which was able to arrest
the guilty Theodosius upon the threshold of the sanctuary; its sweetness to
ravish St. Augustine, still half Mani- chsean, still undecided, but more than
half gained by the spells of so skilled a speaker.
But although
the character of the oratory of St. Ambrose stood so high, we pass it over to
come to that of St. Augustine, which filled a higher place in the opinion of
posterity. It was true that th6 latter was less ornate, less antique in form,
less moulded upon Greek models, and its author had not, like St. Ambrose, translated
from their original Greek many of the writings of the Fathers. Augustine has
left us about three
hundred and
ninety-eight sermons, not including several treatises, which were preached
before being written, and they show the characteristics which we have noticed
as recommended by the saint himself, and which gave to preaching a novel form,
by their familiar, simple, and attractive style. For, in fact, the discourse of
the Bishop of Hippo was simply a discussion with his people, who often
interrupted him, and to whom he replied. Often, also, he related his most
private and domestic affairs, as, for instance, in two sermons he described to
his audience the life in community which he led with his clergy; how their
union was in imitation of the primitive community at Jerusalem; how none
amongst them possessed any property of his own; and the bishop himself
combatted any objection that might be raised against it. It was a common
complaint at Hippo that the Church was poor because the bishop refused to receive
either donations or legacies, and that nobody cared to offer more. To this
Augustine replied that he had, in fact, refused heritages and legacies from
certain fathers who had disinherited their children in order to enrich the
Church: “ For with what excuse could I, who, if both were living, would be
bound to labour for their reconciliation, receive an inheritance which was in
itself evidence of a passion which refused to pardon ? But let a father who has
nine children count Christ for a tenth, then I will accept the portion. When a
father disinherits a son to enrich the Church, he must find some one else than
Augustine to receive the legacy, or rather may God grant that he finds nobody.”
* Still, these minute explanations of even
* St.
Augustine, De Vita Clericorum suorom, serin. 355.
his household
expenses did not hinder his expounding to his people the hardest passages of
Holy Writ, of initiating them into the mysteries of allegorical explanation,
of relating the history of its persons and its events, of showing the
figurative which underlay the apparent sense, and refuting the opposition made
by the Manichaeans between the Old and the New Testaments. He kept up also the
struggle against Arianism, and, in the presence of his rude people, handled all
the difficulties and objections, penetrated and dispersed the mists of
controversy, and compressed into his rustic and simple sermons, with an
admirable art, the momentous considerations and mighty views which were spread
throughout those theological treatises which he had composed for the whole
Christian Church. He succeeded in teaching his humble hearers how the Trinity
was imaged in the triple unity of the memory, the intellect, and the will, and
thus the idea which was exhaustively developed in his philosophical writing^
was laid in summary before fishermen and peasants. He led them into the domain
of psychology, and the inner details of human thought, in asking, “ Have you a
memory? but if not, how do you retain the words which I speak to you ?” “ Have
you an intellect ? but if not, how do you comprehend what I say?” “Have you a
will? but if not, how can you answer me?” And then, having caused them to
disengage from the chaos of their coarse perceptions the three constituent
faculties of the soul, he showed to them their co-existent unity and variety;
and, little by little, that crowd understood, followed, and anticipated him,
until he exclaimed in delight at their appreciation, “ I say it sincerely to
your charity, that
I feared to
delight the subtle minds of the skilful, and to discourage the slow, but now I
see that, by your application in listening and your promptness in understanding,
you have not only grasped my words, but have forestalled them. I render thanks
to God.”*
It was indeed
an achievement to elevate to the regions of metaphysic, and endow with
intellectual power, those rough and uncultured minds, and, as Plato had
inscribed on the door, “None but geometers enter here,” it was a glorious
contradiction to write, in the words of Christ, Venite ad me omnes—“ All you
who labour, who dig the earth, who fish in the sea, who carry burdens, or
slowly and painfully construct the barks in which your brothers will dare the
waves, all enter here, and I will explain to you not only the
7vu9i crsauTov of Socrates, but the profoundest of
mysteries, the Trinity.” And this was the secret of that simple eloquence.
At other
times he delighted in giving more polish to his discourse, and some place to
the ancient art (though always using the same form of a familiar discussion),
in unrolling before his hearers the greatest memories of Holy Writ in
succession, and using also those literary reminiscences which would appeal to
the minds of the small number of cultivated men to be found among his flock. As
one instance of these discourses, we may cite the homily on prayer, spoken on
the occasion of hearing the news of the capture of Rome by Alaric, one of the
most curious, if not the most eloquent, of his sermons. We must mark the echoes
awakened throughout the world, at Hippo as at Bethlehem, by that tremendous
catastrophe, whilst
* St.
Augustine, De Trmitate, serm. 52.
crowds of
fugitives were landing for refuge upon every coast, who had purchased their
hare lives by the abandonment of gold, silver, and treasure. Hearts began to
quail before such disasters, and even the fishermen and peasants of Africa
began to say, like Symmachus and his followers, that everything was collapsing
in that Christian age, and that the new religion had ruined that greatness of
Rome which the old divi- • nities had guarded so well. St. Augustine, provoked
by these complaints, answered with a mixture of irony, playfulness, and
sternness, “ You say, behold how all things are perishing in these Christian
times. Why do you murmur ? God has never promised that these things of earth
should not perish, nor did Christ promise it. The Eternal One has promised
eternal things. Is the city which gave us temporal birth still standing ? Let
us thank God and pray that, regenerated by the spirit, she may pass on with us
to eternity. But if the city which gave us temporal life is no more, that city
is standing which engendered us spiritually! . . . What city ? The holy city,
the faithful city, the city which has its pilgrimage upon earth, but its
foundations in heaven. Christians, let not your hope perish, nor your charity
be lost; gird your reins. Why do you fear if the empires of earth fail ? The
promise has been given you from on high that you should not perish with them,
for their ruin has been predicted. And those who have promised eternity to the
empires of this earth have but lived to flatter men. One of their poets makes
Jupiter to speak and say to the Romans,—
‘ His ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono;
Imperium sine fine dedi.’
“ Truth has
answered ill to these promises. That endless empire which thou givest them, 0
Jupiter, thou who hast never given them anything, is it in heaven or on earth?
Doubtless on earth, but were it even in heaven, has it not been written that
heaven and earth will pass away ? If that which God has made is to depart, how
much more quickly that which Eomulus founded ? Perhaps, if we had found fault
with Virgil about these lines, he would have taken us aside and said, ‘ I know
it as well as you do, but what could I say when bound to charm the ears of the
Romans ? ’ and yet I took the precaution of putting these words in the mouth of
their Jupiter—‘a false god could be but a lying oracle ’—whilst in another
place, speaking in my own name, I said—
‘ Non res Roman® perituraque regna,
4 for see I then affirmed that
their empire would perish.’ ” It is plain that St. Augustine only quoted Virgil
here in order to oppose the poet in one place to the poet in another, and thus
to shake the extravagant respect still shown to him by the cultivated minority.
Knowing,
moreover, that a certain number of his hearers lamented his severe treatment of
the calamities of Rome, and murmured when he spojse of the recent events—for
there were two parties in Africa, one Roman faction, and one opposed to Rome,
to the latter of which St. Augustine stood in the relation of chief—he at once
forestalled their objections : “ I know that some say of me, if he would only
say nothing about Rome. As if I came to insult others and not to move the
Almighty, and to exhort you to the best of my power. God forbid that I should
insult Rome.
Had we not
many brothers therein, can we not still count many there ? Has not a great part
of the city of God which is sojourning on earth its place there ? What can I
say, then, when I do not wish to be silent, except that it is false that our
Christ has lost Eome, and that she was better guarded by her gods of wood or
stone ? Do you speak of more precious ones ? Then by her gods of iron, add to
them those of silver and gold, and mark to whom learned men have committed the
guardianship of Rome. How could those gods who failed to preserve their own
images have saved your houses ? Long ago did Alexandria lose her false deities,
long ago did Constantinople give up hers, and nevertheless, reconstructed by a
Christian emperor, she has increased and still increases. She stands and will
stand as long as God has determined,' for even to that Christian city we can
promise no eternal existence.”
This last
fragment has much grandeur, whilst the opposition of the new destinies of
Constantinople to those of the elder Rome, and the view of a mighty but
perishable empire attached to the former city, shows the accuracy of the glance
flung by St. Augustine down the stream of history, and would make us conclude
that he saw in ages to come another horde of barbarians, led by a second
Alaric, announcing to Constantinople that her day had arrived. .
We may find
many equally eloquent passages in the sermons of this saint, and entire
fragments gleaming with beauties analogous to those which are so common in the
writings of St. John Chrysostom and of St. Basil, of which the following
extract from a sermon on the Resurrection may form an example :—
“You are sad
at having carried a beloved one to his sepulchre, sad because suddenly you have
ceased to hear his voice. He lived and is dead ; he ate and eats no more;
mingles no more in the joys and pleasures of the living. Do you weep, then, for
the seed which you cast into the furrow ? If a man was so utterly ignorant as
to mourn for the grain which is brought into the field, placed in the earth,
and buried beneath the broken clod; if he said to himself, 4 Why then have they hidden this
wheat which was gathered with such care, threshed, cleansed, and preserved in
its granary ? We beheld it, and its beauty caused us joy: but now it has
vanished from our eyes ! ’ Did he weep thus, would they not say to him, * Be
not afflicted, this hidden corn is truly no longer in the granary, no longer in
our hands; but we will come again and visit this field, and you will then
rejoice at beholding the richness of the crop standing in the furrows whose
avidity you now deplore.’ . . . These harvests may be seen year by year, but
that of the human race will only
be
seen once at the end of the ages In
awaiting it,
we, creatures as we are, unless we are dull, will speak of the resurrection.
Sleep and awakening are daily occurrences; the moon disappears, and is renewed
month by month. Why do the leaves of the trees go and come again ? Behold it is
winter, assuredly these withered leaves will bud. forth again in spring. Will
it be the first time, or did you see it last year ? You have seen it. Autumn
brought winter, spring brings summer. The year begins again in its appointed
time, and do those men that are made in the image of God die to rise no more ?
” *
* St.
Augustine, serm. 105, c. 7, et seq.
We
will show in conclusion how St. Augustine could raise himself to that third
degree of eloquence which was called the sublime; and how, after traversing the
region of simple and familiar language, and using a style which was rich in
ornament and condition, he had a method still by which he could assure himself
of victory in the depths of the heart. For this purpose we will cite two facts,
recounted by the saint himself by necessity, and in no way to vaunt his
eloquence/ From time immemorial there had existed at Caesarea, in Mauritania, a
custom called the Caterva, a small, but serious and bloody encounter, which
took place yearly, and in which the inhabitants of the city were divided into
two armed bands, fathers against sons, or brothers against brothers, and fought
to the death for five or six days, until the town flowed with blood. No
imperial edict had availed to uproot the hateful custom, which* fact will not
surprise those who recollect that mediaeval Italy knew several similar usages
which it required persevering efforts to repress. St. Augustine attempted to
abolish a practice against which the edicts of emperors had been directed in
vain ; he harangued the people, and was deafened by their applause, but not
thinking the victory gained as long as he merely heard applause, he spoke till
tears began to flow, and then felt that he had conquered. In fact, he said, “I
have spoken on it for eight years, and it is now eight years since the annual
custom was celebrated.” * Another time a less dangerous custom, but one which
it was less easy to uproot, was in question. At Hippo semi-pagan banquets had
been instituted, which were called Laetitia, and were celebrated in the
* St.
Aug. De Doctrin. Christian, lib. iv 24. u
church. The
inhabitants seemed little disposed to abandon the custom, when the ancient
bishop, Valerius, called Augustine to share with him the burden of the
episcopate and the ministry of the word, and charged him to attack the profane
usage against which his own efforts had been useless. It was the occasion of
another triumph for Augustine. As soon as it became known that he would preach
on the subject, the townspeople % agreed to pay no heed to his
discourse. However, some came to hear him from curiosity. He spoke on it three
times on three different days, and on that which saw him in possession of the
field, he appeared so to speak in his full panoply, for he sent for all the
books of Holy Scripture, read out the passage in the Gospel as to the Saviour
casting the merchants out of the temple, that in the Exodus which told of the
Jews adoring false gods, and lastly the passages of the Epistle of St. Paul to
the Ephesians, in which the Apostle condemned banqueting and drunkenness, and
then, having returned the volumes to their guardian, “ I began,” he said, “ to
represent to them the peril which was common to the flock which had been
committed to us and to ourselves who would have to render an account to the
Prince of Pastors, and implored them by the sufferings of Christ, by the crown
of thorns, His cross and His blood, that if they wished to destroy themselves
they would at least have pity on us, and would consider the charity of their
old and venerable bishop, Valerius, who had out of love for them imposed upon
me the formidable task of preaching the word of truth. And it happened that
whilst I reproached them thus the Master of Souls gave me inspiration according
to the want and peril. My tears did not provoke theirs,
but whilst I
spoke I own that, anticipated by their weeping, I was unable to restrain my
own, and when we had wept in company, I finished my discourse with a firm hope
of their conversion.”*
These are
worthy examples of the victories of speech, and humble and obscure as their
subjects may have been, every spiritual conquest begins from humility and
obscurity, and the eloquence which vanquished the inhabitants of Caesarea and
of Hippo was destined to conquer on wider battle-fields.
Christian
orators of the school of St. Ambrose and of St. Augustine were numerous in the
fourth and fifth centuries, and we need only point to St. Leo, so eloquent in
unfolding the destinies of Christian Rome and in inviting St. Peter to take
possession of that capital of every system of Paganism; St. Zeno of Verona,
whose sermons are both interesting an4 instructive, being addressed to
catechumens at the moment of their admission to baptism; St. Peter Chrysologus
of Ravenna, Gaudentius of Brescia, and Maximus of Turin. But that the
discourses of St. Augustine with those of Gregory the Great remained as the
principal and favourite models of the Christian oratory during the Middle Age
is proved by the fact of the sermons of St. Csesarius of Arles being confounded
with those of Augustine himself, and by their still being placed in the
appendices to the works of the latter, from the close resemblances of their
minds and the close adherence of the disciple to the master. And in its turn
the collection of the discourses of St. Caesarius became the manual of all who
were incapable of original preaching, and were moulded into the homiliana or
* Epist.
xxix. ad Alypimn.
homily-books
which served as repertories for the numberless missioners who were sent to all
the extremities of the world to win the barbarians to the faith.
The new era,
therefore, was in possession of the eloquence which it wanted, which could be
simple, to meet the requirements of St. Eloi, St. Gall, and St. Boniface in
touching the souls of neophytes, who were still filled with the memories of
their coarse Paganism and of the bloody deities of the Valhalla. It could be
familiar and rustic in the mouths of the preachers of the Carlovingian period,
who had to instruct and enlighten the swineherds and shepherds, for whom they
so carefully procured the Sunday rest, that one day at least might be free for
an advance in a knowledge of their religion. And it was bound to remain in
sufficient loftiness and power to preserve the high thought of the Christian
metaphysic, to render all its delicacies and subtle details, and impress them
one after another upon intellects which seemed the least fitted to grasp them,
and able also at a given moment to stir the blood of nations. We do not wonder,
after our study of the divine marvels of eloquence, at the work achieved by it
in the eighth and the ninth centuries, for it is harder to create societies
than to guide and to arm them when made. And when we find Christian preaching
able to rescue whole nations from Paganism, to bring them into new ways and
uproot their most inveterate passions, it is hardly strange that it should have
the power in later times of reconciling the Lombard cities and John of Vicenza
on the field of Verona, or of driving with St. Bernard the whole assembly of
Vezelay under the banner of the Cross.
CHAPTER VI.
C HEIST IAN HISTORY. •
We have seen how exhausted eloquence was freshened
at the springs of Christianity. History was, after eloquence, the chief
occupation of the genius of the ancients. Amongst those nations who through
their uncertainty of a future life sought for an immortality here on earth,
sculptors and historians became powerful to give glory, to rescue heroes from
the lapse of time, and to cause them to survive for eternity in living marble
or on the ineffaceable page of history. But as history thus became, like
sculpture, an art to the ancients, so also it possessed the characteristic of
an art, seeking beauty rather than truth; aspiring rather to please than
instruct mankind, and imitating the methods of poetry or of eloquence.
Herodotus, in describing the strife between Asia and Greece, was ever mindful
of Homer; the names of the Muses were conferred on his books, and they were
read at the Olympic Games amidst the acclamations of assembled Greece.
Thucydides witnessed the spectacle, and seeing the impossibility of competing
with such a rival upon his own ground, inserted in his work on the
Peloponnesian war thirty-nine harangues of his own composition, which continued
to be the admiration of his contemporaries and the principal object of the
study VOL. II. 7
and imitation
of Demosthenes. And the same influence was at work amongst the Latin writers.
Livy celebrated the epopee of Rome in his first books, and devoted the later
ones to relating the chief instances of political eloquence; Sallust and
Tacitus used the same licence; and all alike manipulated the events of the past
with the freedom of Praxiteles or of Phidias, in chiselling the marble into
form. History thus was especially poetical and oratorical in its nature; and it
was not till later that it strove to become critical and gave rise to men like
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, or Diodorus Siculus, who, though obscure in
comparison with their predecessors, dived into the recesses of antiquity and
the hidden causes which they had neglected, but always to be confronted by an
insurmountable obstacle. For all the efforts of the old historians, confined
as they were by a narrow spirit of nationality, issued, even while like Diodorus
Siculus they aimed at a general view, in the apotheosis of a single people;
they invariably appealed to secondary causes, whether political or military,
and therefore Polybius, one of the most gifted with insight amongst them, gives
us indeed an admirable idea of the warlike superiority of Rome, but goes no
farther, and does not raise a corner of the veil which would open out the
general advance of humanity. Ancient history had, in short, two defects; it did
not love truth sufficiently, and. carried away by national egotism, it failed
to compass universal destinies.
Moreover, in
the fifth century, history properly so called was no more; the “ Scriptores rei
August®” had succeeded amidst the general decline to the biographer Suetonius,
and the last historical pages of the Latin tongue were scarcely read, History
only lived under
the pen of a
soldier, Ammianus Marcellinus, who, being a pagan and a man of slender
learning, could only follow the course of events with a troubled eye, but who
wrote from the heart, and forced the Eoman patriciate, who had summoned him to
read his composition, to applaud the withering description of their vices. Such
was the last echo of the plaudits of Olympia, the last imitation of the
triumphs of the historians of old. Herodotus and Thucydides had as their
successor an obscure and uncultured soldier, whose chief honour in that evil
age lay in the possession of a shred of probity.
But history
was of necessity to be regenerated by Christianity, for the new religion was
historical as opposed to the religions of fable, and was impelled to
re-establish and to rearrange history on those motives, in order to dissipate
the myths which the nations had woven round their cradle, and which charmed
them still; to refute the charge of novelty which was hurled every day against
its children, by attaching the New to the Old Testament, and thus reascending
with Moses to the origin of the world; and, lastly, to resume the broken links
of human society and bring to light the providential designs of God, which were
to issue not in the inevitable and imperishable superiority of a single nation,
but in the common salvation of the whole human race. Thus the history that
Christianity desired, unlike that favoured by antiquity, which erred in its leaning
to what was beautiful, and in fixing itself in the narrow limits of
nationality, aimed at being true, and also as far as possible universal, and
these characteristics we shall find marked in the different forms taken by
history with the Christian writers of the fifth century.
It is the
fashion to throw doubt upon Christian antiquity, and to represent it as without
books and monuments, and possessing only uncertain traditions. Doubtless
Christianity is a religion of tradition, but it is also a religion of
scripture. The Apostles and their disciples wrote ; the bishops of the first
three centuries followed their example, and each Church had its archives, which
it could not always save from its persecutors. The acts of martyrs and canons
of councils were the sources which supplied the ecclesiastical history at the
period of which we are treating. At this time, then, we find history decomposed
and reduced to its elements, but a reconstruction was imminent in the midst of
the decay, and the separate constituents were but waiting for the breath which
would quicken and reunite them. We find amongst distinct and differing writers
three forms of historical work—firstly chronicles, which re-established the
order of time; secondly, the acts of saints, which gave life to the foremost
figures of the new era; thirdly, the first essays of that philosophy of history
which unrolls the whole order of the divine economy, penetrates deeper than
life itself, and arrives at the idea presiding over the succession of ages and
of men, embracing and sustaining the totality of passing things, which would be
unworthy of the attention given to following them, or the effort of memory in
retaining them, was there not beyond the crowd of years which press upon us
behind or before the idea of an invariable agency which impels and sustains,
advances and causes to advance.
We find,
firstly, chronicles, and this was a new fact. Doubtless the ancients had
possessed some chronicles— as, for instance, the works of Eratosthenes and
Apollo-
dorus, but
they had found the task tardy and unsatisfactory ; and the calculation of time
and the art of verifying dates, as historical criticism was never a dominant
feature of the genius of antiquity, had not been thoroughly cultivated. Certain
efforts had been made to fix the time and place of particular events—those
made, for instance, by Polybius, or to arrive at a particular study of certain
causes, but they had never been extended to the universality of human destiny.
The early
Christian apologists, Justin, Clement, and Tatius insisted at once, and not
without sufficient motives, on the antiquity of Moses and the superiority of
his wisdom to that of the sages and heroes of Greece. Julius Africanus wrote a
chronography from the commencement of the world to the time of the Emperor
Heliogabalus; St. Hippolytus, in his work upon Easter, gave a chronology down
to the first year of Alexander Severus, and a paschal cycle for the celebration
of the feast calculated for sixteen years. And the same idea occupied Eusebius,
who undertook an universal history, which was translated and augmented by St.
Jerome, and applied himself to placing side by side and harmonizing the profane
and sacred chronologies. To effect this, he skilfully chose as a fixed point
of departure the fifth year of the reign of Tiberius, which was the date of the
advent of Christianity, and going back to the Olympiads and the Assyrian era,
counted two thousand and forty-four years as the time back to Ninus. Then, by
the aid of the sacred books, he also reckoned two thousand and forty-four years
between the fifth year of the reign of Tiberius and the time of Abraham, and
thus found points common'to the two antiquities, and a possibility of agreement
between
those two
pasts which had seemed eternally estranged. Eusebius, or rather St. Jerome, who
translated, corrected, and completed his work, carefully collected complete
lists of the kings of Assyria, Egypt, Lydia, and the different cities of
Greece; of kings, dictators, and emperors of Rome, as well as of the Jewish patriarchs,
judges, and kings, and fixed accurately the length of their respective reigns.
This first part of his book was merely introductory, and contained little
besides names and numbers ; but when he had, as it were, laid down the mathematical
elements of history, and taken his vast domain into possession, the syn-
chronical tables were unfolded, in which he marked by periods of ten years the
succession of kings and chiefs in different nations, from Ninus and Abraham to
Constantine. This, by the side of the shapeless attempts of antiquity, was a
bold and able array indeed. It confronted, in the first place, the Assyrians
and Hebrews with the kings of Sicyon and of Egypt, then gradually the picture
was enlarged as the Argives, Macedonians, Athenians, Lydians, Persians, and
lastly the Romans struggled forward into light and life. But the advent of the
last was a signal for the retreat of the rest; and whereas at first his tables
showed the Hebrews and Greeks side by side with the Romans, gradually the
Greeks disappeared when Corinth lost her liberty, the Hebrews on the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, until Rome occupied the page alone, invading
and devouring the space once held by other nations. And thus the rise of
Christianity was entangled in the history of Rome, and amongst the annals of
the latter were placed the story of the persecutions, of the martyrs, and of
the rise and succession of heresies, for the
plan of
Eusebius and St. Jerome did not neglect the history of human thought, but
carefully placed side by side with the memories of kings and the mention of the
events which marked the destinies of the nations, those of poets, philosophers,
and all who devoted their mind or their blood to the service of humanity. So
that the two great aims of history, verity and universality, were achieved as
far as was possible in the first attempt at founding a science which all the
Benedictine erudition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has not
sufficed to complete.
An example of
such brilliancy called forth imitators, and St. Jerome continued the chronicle
of Eusebius from 325 to 328. Prosper of Aquitaine, a theologian and poet, took
up the history until 444; and the Spanish bishop Idatius, in his retreat in the
depths of Galicia, amidst barbarians, and at the world’s extremity, brought it
down to the year 469. The latter writer mingled with it in terse but moving
terms his sad experience of that time of universal ruin, and tremblingly
pointed to the last blows which were being dealt to the perishing empires,
under which, for a moment, the Church also seemed to totter; and told, with the
brevity as it were of a funeral hymn, how, after the barbarians had ravaged the
provinces of Spain, and famine and pestilence had followed to complete the
work, the wild beasts came forth from their dens, penetrated into the towns,
and gaining ferocity from their feasts upon the unburied corpses, engaged the
living whom they met in bloody and mortal combat.
The very
precision of these chronicles gave them interest, but their dominant
characteristics were brevity and dryness. They simply registered events,
without
thinking of
the tears which their narration would force from the eyes of men; and being
written upon papyrus, which was destined to become so rare, they possessed a
monumental character as if they had been written upon marble or upon iron. Yet
the world had reached an epoch in which history, as known to the ancients, was
impossible. No hand, then, was bold enough to wield the pen of Tacitus or of
Livy; that of Prosper of Aquitaine or of Idatius must have seemed lighter, and
there was no monastery so wanting in intelligent men as not to hold at least
one monk who would write year by year of the events which had brought joy or
mourning to the neighbourhood. It was done briefly, with a strange admixture of
the particular griefs of the compiling monk and of the general sorrows of
humanity. And thus we find, in some Frankish annals of the year 710, the entry,
“ Brother Martin is dead,” the brother, probably, of the poor writer; whilst
some years afterwards the great victory of Charles Martel over the Saracens,
on the plains of Poitiers, was inscribed in the same annals with a similar
terseness, as if in fact it was only by compressing itself that history could
survive those difficult times, like the seed which always finds a breeze,
strong enough to carry it to the place which God has fixed.
Such, then,
was the first form of history, of such nature the benefits which flowed from
it. But it is certain that had the chronicle alone survived, all the beauty,
all art and vitality of history would have been extinguished. This was not for
the interest of Christianity, which had every reason for showing the living
forces of humanity, ,the combat of the spirit with the flesh, the strife of the
passions, and the ideal life in the
persons
of her saints; and therefore her children laboured with respect and love to
describe in full the career of those amongst them who had cast into the world
the seed of an elevating eloquence or a faith- bearing death. For this reason
the acts of martyrs early became a portion of the offices in their honour, and
were read publicly upon their feast-days; and from the primitive times we find
in the Roman Church, under the Popes St. Clement, St. Antherius, and St.
Fabian, “notarii,” who were charged to collect reports of the martyrs’ acts,
which they drew sometimes from their indictments purchased from the recorders.
These were solid foundations for the Christian hagiography, as the indictments,
which were really authentic, left no place for interpolation, and the brevity,
simplicity, and sobriety of their details attested the good faith of their compilers.
It is to this category that the acts of the martyr St. Perpetua, the letter of the
Church of Lyons upon its martyrs, and the admirable letter from the Asian
Church which related the death of St. Polycarp and the acts of St. Cyprian,
respectively belonged. The latter was a legal document, which might well, from
the absence of comment and of any expression of personal commiseration, have
been the report of the pagan official attached to the tribunal of the
proconsul. However, the fidelity with which the greatness of the martyrdom and
the emotion and pity of the bystanders are depicted, point to a Christian hand,
faithful and incorruptible, but neglecting no means of making his narration
vivid, and giving to it the colour and beauty that one might have thought it
had lost for ever. It was in the following terms that the editor of the Acta
related the interrogation of St, Cyprian: “ Galerius
• 7
t
Maximus,
proconsul, says to the Bishop Cyprian, ‘ You are Thascius Cyprianus ? ’ Cyprian
answers, ‘ I am he.’ Galerius Maximus replies, ‘ It is you who have made
yourself bishop of those sacrilegiously-minded men?’—‘It is I.’ The proconsul
says, ‘The most sacred Emperors have commanded you to sacrifice.’ The Bishop
Cyprian answers, ‘ I will not do it.’ Galerius Maximus says, ‘ Think of your
safety !’ The Bishop Cyprian responds, ‘Do what you have been commanded, there
is no room for deliberation in so just a cause.’ ”
Every one
might suppose these words to have been written under the very dictation of
their utterers; nothing was added to give scope to the feelings of their
chronicler. Their freedom from abuse of the proconsul or the emperor, which
might have been expected from a hagiographer of the barbarous epoch, points to
the austere and dignified period of primitive Christendom. The judge pronounced
sentence with unction, and the crowd of the brethren who surrounded the bishop
exclaimed, “ Let them behold us also with him,” and he was then conducted to
the place of execution with such a following of his deacons and the faithful
as almost made his persecutors tremble. It was necessary that he should undergo
his sentence, but they left him surrounded by those who had always looked upon
him as a father, and. now a saint. Putting off his tunic and dalmatic, he
ordered that twenty-five pieces of gold should be given to his executioner.
Then the brethren brought him the pieces of linen, and as he could not bandage
his own eyes, this last office was performed by a priest and a sub-deacon,
after which he suffered with the majestic dignity of a
prince
surrounded by bis people. When night came he was carried to his resting-place
with lights and music and all the pomp of a triumph. Such was the energetic
life of that ancient and powerful Church of Carthage which even in the third
century had become formidable to Paganism.
Up' to this
period, then, we have absolute certainty, and these recitals were followed by
others which offered the same guarantees, namely, the lives of certain men of
ever illustrious name, such as St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Martin of
Tours, which were written by their disciples, friends, and fellow-labourers,
St. Paulinus, Possidius, and Sulpicius Severus. But to the epoch of the martyrs
and the Fathers succeeded that of the anchorites. The distance of their desert
retreats, the remoteness of the period, and the transmission of their histories
from mouth to mouth left room for the introduction of an imaginative and
poetical element. These stories of solitude fascinated the soul of St. Jerome,
who undertook to collect them and so form a series of Christian pictures. It is
not known whether his design was carried out, but three of these lives, namely,
those of St. Paul, St. Hilarion, and Malchas, have come down to us. We will
pause at the first to gain an idea of the tales which were peopling the
Thebaid, were to be repeated throughout the East and West, and were destined to
stir all souls which longed for peace and repose in self-sacrifice.
St. Jerome
tells the wonderful story thus: That a young Christian of sixteen, living under
his sister’s roof in a town of the Lower Thebaid, during the reign and
persecution of Yalerian, and dreading the fanaticism of his pagan
brother-in-law which threatened him daily,
determined on
quitting the hospitable roof and finding a retreat in the mountains. After a
long wandering he at last reached a spot wherein an almost inaccessible
precipice offered a single opening into a somewhat spacious chamber hollowed in
the rock and open to the sky; a vast palm-tree stretched its branches over the
cavern and formed a roof, whilst a clear and refreshing stream flowed at the
foot of the tree. Paul halted and took up his abode there, and lived—no
surprising fact with his sobriety of manners, and considering the manners of
the East—till the age of a hundred and thirteen years. As his last hour was approaching,
the anchorite Antony, who was then ninety years of age, and had served God in
the same desert for many long years, fell under the temptation of crediting
himself with being probably the oldest and most perfect monk in the world. But
the following night he was warned from on high to seek for an older and more
perfect anchorite than himself, and the road which he was to take was
indicated. So on the morrow he set forth; and the old man, already bent double
with age, tottered painfully on his staff under the burning heat, until at the
end of four days and four nights he fell exhausted at the entrance of a
rock-hewn cave and cried so loudly that Paul, its inmate, heard him and
appeared on the threshold. Paul, after some hesitation at breaking the
impassable barrier which had up to that time guarded his solitude, brought the
anchorite Antony into his home, and asked the first man whom he had seen for so
long whether they still built roof by roof in the cities, whether the old
empires subsisted, and the idolatrous altars still smoked. When Antony had
satisfied him on all these points and had become
hungry, a
raven alighted on the palm-tree bearing a loaf baked upon coals, and Paul said
to Antony, “ Behold the providence of God! Daily, until this day, I received
half a loaf, but to-day Providence perceived that we should be two to break
bread, and He has sent me an entire loaf!” Paul then informed Antony that he
had expected his arrival, “for the hour of my departure from this world has
arrived, and thou art only come to provide for my burial.” And he asked him to
wrap his body in the cloak which had been given him by 'St. Athanasius. Antony
returned to his own cell to fetch the garment, saying to himself: “ Wretch that
I was, I have seen Elias; I have seen John in the desert; I have seen Paul in
Paradise.” But on returning to the abode of Paul with the garment of St. Athanasius,
he found that the hermit had just expired, his lifeless corpse in the attitude
of prayer, in which death had surprised him. Antony then took thought as to
burying him ; but how could he open the ground? He sat down in despair,
resolved rather to die than resign the corpse as a prey to wild beasts. Then
two lions appeared, and Antony took no more notice of them than if they had
been doves. They dug a trench and then came to lick Antony’s feet, and taking
pity upon them he exclaimed, “ 0 Lord, without whose will the leaf is not
severed from the tree, nor does the sparrow fall to the earth, give these Thy
creatures what Thou knowest to be good for them.” Having then blessed the lions
he dismissed them and departed, carrying with him the tunic of palm-fibre which
Paul had made for himself, and which he wore from that time forth upon the days
of great festival, such as Easter and Pentecost.
We need not
wonder at the artlessness of the narrative, for even the great mind of St.
Jerome could believe in the superiority over creation which manhood regained,
in the re-establishment of the empire over every creature given to our first
parents in that primitive order wherein whatever lived in the world was made to
serve the wants of the world’s masters, and in the reconciliation of all things
through Christianity. We are now in the Middle Age, surrounded by the ideas
and influences which gave to the men of that barbarous epoch their courage,
their zeal, and their power, and the achievement of St. Paul in the desert was
to be related of St. Gall, whom the legend makes to appease the bears of the
Alps, or of St. Columba, who attracted about his steps the wild beasts of the
Yosges, or of St. Francis of Assisi, who, as he crossed the plains of Umbria,
was followed by the lambs and swallows as if they wished to gather up his
words, whilst the wolves fled away from him. Truly, the conviction was
necessary for the men who had to conquer nations which were fiercer than
wolves, and we must feel less surprise at beholding the docility of the lions
who came to dig the grave of the anchorite Paul than at seeing the most
independent and implacable of men, accustomed to serve no master, to pardon no
injury, to seek no counsel but that of the sword, learn at the voice of these
monks and mis- sioners, not only to obey, but to pardon.
Such was the
commencement of a method peculiar to the Middle Age, and destined to form for
the future the two parts of every historical work—on the one hand chronology,
or the simple truth bare and dry in form; on the other, legend, containing the
life, colour,
and movement
of history, but often touched by the licence of poetry.
But, to
analyze more deeply, if the ancients had been content with obtaining an
approximative verity in facts and a certain beauty of colour and movement, the
times of Christianity had a higher ambition, for th6y panted to know causes,
with the longing which besets both great souls and those which are feeble but
spiritual. For first causes are immaterial, and therefore the periods of
materialism aim at nothing but a knowledge of facts, whilst, the periods of
spiritualism seek to arrive at causes which move in a higher sphere than facts,
in the region of spirit. Nothing similar to this had been known to the
ancients. Content with collecting facts and visible causes, they had never
risen to the superior and invisible causes which rule the universe, and
therefore their efforts in constructing a philosophy of. history had been
scanty. Doubtless the wont of referring every phenomenon to a superior
principle had not entirely abandoned them, and Herodotus himself, in describing
the fall of empires, showed a certain mysterious power, which he called to Qehv, which nourished a secret jealousy against everything which elevated
itself, and sooner or later overthrew that earthly greatness which had risen
too high; but this was the whole of his philosophy of history. His successors
explained the succession of events even more insufficiently, and therefore
Christianity had an effort to make, and then, as ever, great facts w6re needed
to produce a potent inspiration. For surely no mighty event has ever happened
in the world without producing an imperishable book, though not always one of
the sort that might have been expected ;
and thus in
our opinion it was the Battle of Actium which inspired the “ iEneid,” and drew
it like Venus from the waves in her shining beauty.
And now
another event, the greatest since the day 6f Actium, had just happened in the
world: Alaric had entered Rome with his barbarians, and had encamped for three
days within its walls. It was the most formidable event ever chronicled in the
annals of-the world, yet there was no elegy ready to be poured forth over the
watchfires kindled by the barbarians at the foot of the Capitol ,* no orator
was there to protest, at least on the third day when Alaric had departed, that
the danger had passed; there was no disciple of Symmachus or Macrobius, no
successor of those pagan rhetoricians who had been so excellent in the craft of
eloquence, to make the world echo with his ardent protestation. No, the cry
wrung from humanity by that great and terrible spectacle was to proceed from
Africa, and the book produced by the sack of Rome under Alaric was “ The City
of God,” the first real effort to produce a philosophy of history. Nothing less
than that mighty collapse was required to turn the attention of the world to
the Supreme Hand which could shake it' thus.
The Goths, on
entering Rome, had set fire to the gardens of Sallust and a large portion of
the city, but had halted in terror and respect—for they were Christians,
although Arians—before the Basilica of the Apostles. They had respected the keepers
of the sacred vessels, and the crowd of the faithful and of the unbelieving
who had sought for life and liberty under the aegis of the sacred relics. Yet
the humiliations of the Eternal City had unloosed the passions of the pagans,
and many of
those who owed their safety to the tombs of Peter and Paul reproached
Christianity with the ruin of Rome, and asked the Christians where their God
was; why He had not protected them, but had suffered the good and the evil to
be confounded; why He had not rescued the just from spoliation, death, and
captivity, but had abandoned their very virgins to the mercy of the barbarians.
These lamentations came in the mouths of a multitude of fugitives to trouble
Augustine in the repose of Hippo, and to them in an inspired moment did he
resolve to reply. He did this by pointing out to the pagans that the troubles
of Rome were the necessary consequence of war, and how the intervention of
Christianity was manifested in the power that had conquered the barbarians on
the moment of their victory, and triumphed over their unshackled liberty. To
the question as to why the same ills had befallen the righteous and the
sinners, he answered that they were sent as a probation to the one, but as a
punishment to the other, like mud and balm stirred by the same hand, the one of
which exhales a fetid odour, the other an excellent perfume. Moreover, it
mattered little to know who it was that suffered, but much to understand the
manner in which the misfortune was borne—non quis sed quails. For the Christian
knew of no other evil but sin, and the captivity which did not dishonour
Regulus could not disgrace a brow which had been marked with the character of
Christ. Many, doubtless, had died, but who was to escape death ? And when the
resurrection day arrived the eye of God would discover those bodies which had
remained unburied. He had consolation also for the outraged virgins, and then
turning
upon the
pagans, said, “ What you really regret is, not that peace in which you could
enjoy your temporal goods with sobriety, piety, and temperance, but a
tranquillity which you laboured for at the cost of a profusion of unheard-of
luxuries, and which tended to produce from the corruption of your manners evils
worse than the utmost fury of your enemies.”
After this
triumphant invective against the friends and defenders of those false gods
which the pagans of all times have ever regretted and redemanded, Augustine
entered upon the discussion, and confuting those doctrines of the pagan world,
and of Rome in particular, which accounted for the destinies of a state by the
power of its deities, he undertook to prove that those gods could effect
nothing, either for the present life or for that of eternity. The gods of Rome
had spared her neither crimes nor misfortunes; plentiful were the examples they
had given her of the first, for was not mythology filled with recitals of their
scandalous doings, and had not the infamies of Olympus taken their place in
its worship ? Had not Rome followed these examples in the rape of the Sabines,
the ruin of Alba, the fratricidal strife of the two orders, the civil wars,
proscriptions, and frightful corruption of manners ? The gods who had left Troy
to perish could not have saved Rome ? Had not she honoured them, indeed, when she
was taken by the Gauls, humbled at the Caudine Forks, conquered at Cannes ?
Sylla put to death more senators than the Goths had pillaged, and still the
altars smoked with Arabian incense; the temples had their sacrifices, the games
their delirious audience, and the blood of the citizens flowed at the very feet
of those deities who were so
powerless to
save them. He then maintained, upon the authority of Cicero, that Rome had
never known the republican idea, which, according to the definition of the
latter, was nothing else but the association of a people for the furtherance of
justice, and the satisfactions of its legitimate wants.
We wonder at
the boldness with which the African reconstructed the history of Rome in the
light of its failures and chastisements ; yet his enlightenment could not but
show him also its value and its glory, and he explained the greatness of Rome
by its place in the divine economy; for the true and supreme God, who had
ordered not only the heaven and the earth, but the organs of the minutest
insect, the plumage of the bird, and the flowers of the field, could not
exclude the guidance of the nations and the destiny of empires from the laws of
Providence. His justice shone forth in the government of the world, and
especially in the career of Rome. The Romans of old only existed for glory,
which they loved with a boundless attachment: “For it they wished to live; for*
it they did not hesitate to die, and by that all-absorbing passion they
stifled all the rest. Finding it shameful to serve and glorious to rule, they
strained to render their country free, and then to make her mistress of the
world.” Therefore God, desiring to found a mighty Empire in the West, that all
the nations, being subject to one law, might end by forming a single city,
having need of a people strong enough to vanquish the martial races of the
West, selected the Romans, and thus recompensed their imperfect virtues by a
terrestrial prize. “ They had spurned their own interest for the public
welfare, and provided for the safety of their
country with
a mind which was free, and exempt from the crimes which their laws condemned,
seeking by every method honour, power, and glory. Therefore God, who could not
grant them eternal life, willed that they should be honoured by all nations;
they subjected to their rule a vast concourse of nations; their glory,
perpetuated by history and literature, filled the whole earth; they have no
cause to complain of the divine justice, for they have received their reward.”
The pagan
deities could effect nothing for eternity, and every explanation of the things
of time must have some reference to eternity. A summary of political and
military events is not the sole function of history,
'
but to collect ideas, and teach the revolutions of the human mind; and this St.
Augustine bore in mind in his examination of the principles and transformations
of Paganism. Following Yarro in his poetical, civil, and physical theologies,
he refuted all the attempts at saving the false gods by means of an allegorical
interpretation which could not justify an obscene and sanguinary symbolism.
Socrates, Plato, and the Neo- platonists, amongst the philosophers, had gained
a glimpse of the truth, but had not glorified it; they had rehabilitated the
plurality of gods, theurgy, and magic, whilst every system of error had found
its proselytes amongst the disciples of the school of Alexandria, who,
vanquished at last by a consciousness of their own impotence, had avowed with
Porphyry that no sect had yet found the universal way of deliverance for the
souls of men. •
Having thus
established the inefficiency of Paganism, he continued by unfolding the novel
philosophy
imported into
history by Christianity. God desires that His creatures should be intelligent,
associated in community and good; but He foresees that some of them will be
evil, which He does not effect but merely permits, as subserving alternately
the well-being of the good and manifesting the beauty of the scheme of the
universe, as in a poem, by contrast. Hence arose the two cities, “ built by two
principles of love—the city of earth by that self-love which tended to a scorn
of God; the city of heaven by the- divine love which issued in the abnegation
of self;” both being so interlaced and confounded in the present life that the
pilgrims of the heavenly state journeyed through the city of men. The city of
God was represented by the patriarchs, the Jewish people, the righteous
generally ; but that of earth was forced to attach itself to things of earth.
Cain built the first city, Babylon, and Romulus, like Cain a fratricide, built
the second, Rome. Babylon was the first Rome, and Rome the second Babylon ; the
end of the one empire was confounded with the rise of the other. Both enjoyed '
a similar duration and the same power, and showed the same forgetfulness of
God. St. Augustine summarized history in a synchronical table, at the head of
which he placed the Assyrians, the Jews, and the kings of Sicyon and of Argos,
and continued it to the advent of Christ and the progress of the Gospel. The
city of God was still increasing, and had not finished at the fatal period of
three hundred and sixty-five years which the pagans had assigned for its
duration, a period that ended in 339, the very year in which the pagan temples
had been closed at Carthage. The problem as to the end of man had divided the
philosophers into two
hundred and
eighty-eight sects, all of whom had looked for it in the present life, whilst
Christianity placed it in a future existence. It proved the emptiness of
earthly pleasures against the Epicureans, and confuted Stoicism through the
insufficiency of human virtues. Man was born for society, but social justice
can never be fully realized on earth; therefore a judgment was necessary which
would ultimately sever the two cities and assign the one to ruin and the other
to salvation ; and although the Almighty had reserved the secret of its
happening, yet we may compare the world’s duration to that of a week, upon the
sixth day of which it had already entered, and was thus approaching the eternal
Sabbath, which would be a season of repose, brightened by intelligence and
love.
This is a
rapid apd incomplete sketch of that astonishing but ill-arranged work which at
first sight shocks us by its repetitions and omissions, which cost St.
Augustine eighteen years of toil amidst the labours of his episcopate, and
which, as its author composed the last twelve books after the first ten had
passed from under his hand, was of necessity full of redundancies. Yet the toil
of penetrating its apparent obscurities will be rewarded by finding a real
arrangement and a wealth of insight and enlightenment. It shattered the pagan
solution of the destinies of the world', imported philosophy into the realm of
history by its novel doctrine, and sought for the secret of human affairs, not
in the aberration of the passions, but in the mysteries of metaphysic, and the
hard questions of Providence, of liberty, of prescience, and the natural end of
things. It showed us ourselves in the sphere we had thought our own, no longer
as
filling the
world, but as small and hardly visible, absorbed by the Divinity which was ever
enveloping and moulding His creatures, and taught mankind that, struggle as it
might, it must be moved by God.
But great as
was his achievement, St. Augustine was not content, and wished to undertake a
completer treatise of universal history; and as he was unable to accomplish his
design, he bequeathed it to the Spanish priest Orosius. We cannot stay to
analyze his work, which gained celebrity, showed much talent, and an occasional
flash of the true Spanish genius. But Paulus Orosius showed little of the.
prudent moderation and sustained firmness of his predecessor, and many were the
illusions to which he succumbed. He maintained, for instance, that as
Christianity extended, so would the empire of death diminish in the world ;
that the era of blood would close when the Gospel had mastered Europe; and
prophesied an eternal duration to the brief peace which the Empire was then enjoying,
in which the Goths and Yandals would consent to become the chief soldiers of
Caesar. However, his views were occasionally remarkable for their happy
temerity, as when he spoke of the vocation of the barbarians to the Church,
and, although more intensely Roman than St. Augustine, declared that if at the
price of invasion and its attendant horrors, captivity, famine, and outrage, he
could see the Burgundians, Huns, Alans, and Yandals saved for eternity, he
would thank God that he had been suffered to live in those days. The Christian
feeling thus prevailed over the Roman national sentiment in his desire to
initiate the barbarians into the sacred mysteries in the midst of the fall of
the Empire, an auspicious event if it
made a breach
through which his brother might enter.
Several years
passed, and in 455 Salvian wrote his work “ De Gubernatione Dei.” But
circumstances had changed ; there was no room then for illusion, for Bome had
actually fallen, and the invincible barbarians had devoted seventeen days to
the pillage of the world’s capital. Who could speak of the eternity of the
Empire then ? The pagans, amidst their cries of terror and despair, asked where
was the God of the Christians, and Salvian replied by showing the causes,
natural and supernatural, of the ruin of Rome. He pointed to them in the
corruptions of a society which was dying through the disorder of its
institutions, and in the degradation of manners fostered by the Roman laws,
insisting upon the superiority of the barbarians in this respect. “ The Franks
are perfidious but hospitable; the Alans are impure but sincere; the Saxons are
cruel but upright; whereas we combine all their vices.” He maintained that the
Yandals had been sent into Africa to sweep away the filth with which the Romans
had defiled it, and declared that their legislation was superior to that of
Rome in not recognizing either prostitution or divorce; whilst he applauded the
conduct of those conquered Romans who preferred becoming Germans to remaining
subjects of the Empire, for Salvian had taken the last step and passed over to
the side of the barbarians. Thus may we trace the progress of the philosophy
of history; the new science which in the last years of the fifth century had
lost none of its force. In the difficult time which was about to follow
infinite popularity was to surround the name of Augustine. Charlemagne himself,
in his
leisure
moments, sought for lessons in the “ City of God;” Alfred the Great translated
the work of Paulus Orosius into Anglo-Saxon ; and the mind of Dante had been so
nourished that a canto of his “ Purgatory” was simply a paraphrase of a chapter
of the “ City of God;” and Orosius had a place amongst the five or six authors
who formed the companions of his solitude.
Thus the
whole mediaeval period was trained in the doctrines of these great men, and we
must instance among the many historians who imitated them the celebrated German
writer of the twelfth century, Otto of Freysingen, uncle of the great emperor,
Frederic Barbarossa. That ancient bishop, although weighed down by the number
of his years, was not content with writing the history of his own times, but
extended his views to the composition of an universal history, and followed the
scheme of St. Augustine in opposing the City of God to the City of Man. Writing
with a thorough and somewhat severe freedom, he paused occasionally to
vindicate his authority as uncle, and to warn his imperial kinsman in the words
of the Psalmist —Et nunc reges intelligite; erudimini qui judicatis terram. And
so the precursors of Bossuet were found, and so numerous were the links of the
chain which bound his work to St. Augustine, that the connection never for an
instant escaped out of sight.
These, then,
formed the three constituents of history: the chronicle, which brought to it
bare facts; legend, which afforded it colour and life; and philosophy, which
formed its soul, gave to it a coherent explanation, and referred it ultimately
to God as its First cause. Henceforth it was necessary to the production
VOL. II. 8
of veritable
history that the three elements should unite and grow beneath the fostering
wing of the modern genius into a single organism capable of explaining and
containing every fact. But to have prepared the minds of their successors was
not the sole achievement of the men of whom we have treated, for they did more
by preparing the way for events. We must insist upon this, for it is morally
profitable to show to writers and to thinkers the point to which they may act,
not only upon the sentiments, but on the events of the future. Two things might
have occurred had the Christian writers of this time thought and written
otherwise than they did. Augustine, Paulus Orosius, and Salvian might have
taken the side of Rome absolutely as against the barbarians, or have ranged
themselves in the ranks of the latter without pity for Rome. , Had they taken
the course which seemed the most natural one, and abandoned themselves to that
despair which is so-common in our day, and in which certain minds seem to find
some excellence, they would by their example have so discouraged the Church of
the West that the entire Christian population of its component nations would
have declared an unreserved hostility against the barbarians. They would have
made the seeming enmity of the latter to God and the human race a reality, and
have brought upon Rome, upon the Christian civilization, and upon humanity, a
series of incalculable calamities. On the other hand, had they taken up the
second position, and given a precipitate adhesion to the cause of the
barbarians, they would have made themselves judges in the place of God,
condemned Rome as the second Babylon to an eternal ruin, and brought such a
chastisement upon
her that
hardly one stone would have remained upon another; and thus they would have
lent their aid to elimination of the central point of the world, displaced the
rally-point of Christian life in the Middle Age, and disturbed the whole
economy of the succeeding ages. They would have quenched the spark of light of
which Rome was the sole preserver up to the time of Charlemagne, and
consequently would have deprived humanity of the civilizing influences which
had been thus treasured up for its benefit. But with a happier inspiration they
evinced the courage, branded by those who knew it not with the name of
optimism, which enabled them to regard those difficult and menacing times with
a firm and calm glance, and could wisely distinguish the real property of the
past amidst, the trembling destinies of the future. Without committing
themselves to the side of the barbarians, they met them half way, and applauded
the Goths for the clemency which had spared the Basilica of St. Peter and St.
Paul; nor shall we find a single Christian writer of the period who did not
celebrate this generous action* of a conquering and success-maddened people. By
this means they conciliated the barbarians, half won from that moment, and
thrust their swords back into the scabbards, so that every chief amongst them
envied the glory of Alaric, and respected the altars which had been blessed by
the aged bishop or priest. And as defeat was thus made more tolerable to the
vanquished, so did courageous zeal reinspire the Christians, who perceived ’
that after all their conquerors were not devourers of men, and that as the
work of their conversion might be undertaken and accomplished, a lasting
spirit of despair was not neces-
* 8 *
sary. They
might enter as pilgrims into the city of God, and the wild-beast skin which
covered the barbarian might vest a future citizen of the Eternal State.
Moreover, in
taking the part of Rome in a certain measure, and recalling its virtues and
glory, they showed that the city was still worthy of respect, and that if she
had merited a punishment for her crimes, God had but stricken in order to warn,
and that the time for her consolation had arrived. They so worked upon the
barbarian mind by their pictures of her ancient might that they produced the
result described by Jornandes, and caused Rome to reign through the imagination,
if not by force of arms ; and well has she shown that her new method of empire
was a thousandfold more powerful than that of old; for she entered thereby on
her novel destiny, and founded that spiritual sovereignty of which she was
always to remain the centre. Those who had undertaken her defence against the
weapons and the invectives of the barbarians formed, as it were, a circle round
the tomb of St. Peter, and, extolling it as the spot selected by God for the
centre of enlightenment, compelled the barbarians who had encamped around the
Capitol firstly to respect and then to submit; and thus arose the mediaeval »
economy wherein antiquity, regenerated in Rome, enlightened and disciplined
the barbarism of a new era. Such was one of the greatest examples of the
influence of literature, not merely over minds, but over events; such the
nature of one of those glorious delegations of power made occasionally by
Providence to the genius of mankind.
CHAPTER VII.
POETRY.
In commencing
onr study of the Christian literature with its prose, and placing eloquence and
history before its epopee, we have reversed, in some measure, the commonly
established order. Had it been our object to examine an ancient literature such
as that of the Greeks, we should have found that for many ages poetry alone was
produced, and that it was only gradually that prose emerged from its golden
mists, for the civilization of Paganism was cradled amidst fables. The nations
then, like children, understood no language but that of the imagination, and
the lapse of seven ages, from the time of Homer to that of Herodotus, was
necessary in order that reason might gain courage to address mankind in its
natural language.
Christianity,
on the contrary, could not suffer its origin to be veiled by fiction, for it
proposed facts and dogmas which were defined verities, to the reason and not
merely to the imagination of the nations; and therefore during three centuries
it spoke to them in prose and prose alone. It was at the end of that period
that Christian poetry took its first and feeble rise. And yet nothing seemed
wanting to inspire it in the greatness of passing events and the revolution
which was sweeping over the world, or in the emotions
of the soul
and the inward agony which was upheaving the depths of the conscience; but the
spectacle was still too near at hand, and, as M. St. Marc Girardin has
admirably expressed it, the truth of that era was too powerful to create poets,
and could still only make martyrs; for an interval must ever lie between deep
emotion and poetical inspiration; and we shall find that those silent ages were
not too long for their work of ripening the rich harvest of Christian art.
We may pass
by the small band of unknown poets who wrote at the time of the persecutions,
and omit several compositions, attributed sometimes to Tertulli&n, and at
others to St. Cyprian, but which were certainly of contemporary date with those
great men. The peace of the Church was like a day-dawn, calling forth harmonies
from every side, and Christianity seemed as she assumed in the person of
Constantine the crown of the Caesars to inherit also, so numerous were the
Christian versifiers, the laurel wreath of Yirgil. Their great number already
calls for a division, and we, adopting the great classification of the
ancients, may divide them into epic and lyric poets, for the Church had not at
that time reopened the theatre. •
Thus the two
orders in poetry were already existent, and to the epic order we may assign, as
did the ancients, the didactic poetry, such as the instructions given by the
poet Commodianus against Paganism, or the poem against the Semi-pelagians which
was written by Prosper of Aquitaine, and has since become so famous through its
imitation by Louis Eacine. But the principal tendency and the chief effort of
Christian poetry from that era was to reduce the narratives of its religion to
its own laws. Its dominant idea was to lend to the
Biblical
traditions, which were the very foundations of the faith, the brilliancy of the
Latin versification and some of the ornament which had been borrowed from the
pagan authors. We see some poets, like Dracontius, St. Hilary of Arles, and
Marius Victor, turning their minds to the earliest narrations of the Bible, to
the scenes of G-enesis and the lovable simplicity of an infant world; whilst
others, as Juvencus and Sedulius, confining .themselves to the evangelical
history, laboured solely towards the reproduction, with harmony and accuracy
and a certain amount of poetical adornment, of the text of the Gospel. However,
the common characteristic of all these poets and translators of Holy Scripture
into verse was a scrupulous and exact fidelity, and thence followed on the one
hand a remarkable gravity and sobriety, a renunciation of that wealth of epithet
and hyperbole which had formerly roused the emotions, so that even the
sufferings of the Saviour, the ingratitude of the Jews, and the coldness of the
Disciples, extracted no bitter epithet which had not already fallen from the
sacred writer himself, and the general effect of the poems presented a certain
solemnity and grandeur. But, on the other hand, it must be confessed that
their sobriety often verged upon dryness; that they contained neither episodes
nor descriptions, and hardly any paraphrases or commentaries, but simply the
text itself, adapted to the hexameter measure, which was kept as close as was
possible to the ancient form.
We can
understand the motives which inspired these labourers by the explanations given
by the authors themselves; for Sedulius, one of the most popular amongst them,
has accounted in his dedicatory epistle to the Bishop Macedonius, for the
influence which
guided his
pen. He declared that he desired to devote to the service of the faith those
studies which had been commenced with a different aim, and to consecrate to the
truth the predestined instruments of vanity. “For,” said he, “I know that many
spirits will not accept the truth, nor willingly retain it, unless it be
presented to them beneath the flowers of poetry; and I thought that people of
such a disposition should not be repelled, but should be treated in accordance
with their natural wants, in order that each man might become the voluntary
captive of God according to his own genius!”* Light is thrown upon this by our
previous knowledge of the Roman schools : the whole order of instruction was
founded by the ancients—and this was most wisely preserved during the Middle
Age—upon the exercise of the memory and the study of the poets. In Greece it
was commenced by Homer, and in the West by Yirgil; but under the auspices of
Yirgil, the Christians and the pagans of the fifth century learned by heart,
and imprinted upon their recollection, all the ideas, doc-' trines, and images
of Paganism, and it was against these that the early Christian poets strained
every nerve. They wrote under the idea of polemical controversy, and made it
their aim to dethrone the false gods from the envied place which had been given
them in the memory and the hearts of children, and to enthrone thereon a
worthier deity. For this reason they laboured to retain the pure and classic
forms of Yirgil, whilst they cast their novel ideas into the ancient mould, at
the risk of beholding them burst through the form into which they had been
compressed, and finally destroy the mould which had received them.
* Sedulius,
Epist. dedicat. ad Macedonium.
Some of them
went so far as to reduce the Gospel into cantos, and to make, like Faltonia
Proba, a history of the Saviour in three hundred hexameters, each composed of
two or more fragments of Virgil. But Sedu- lius and Juvencus, without
proceeding to this extremity, aimed at preserving the language of antiquity, in
which they succeeded in many respects, and were not inferior to any of the
pagan poets of their day. We recognize in their writings a constant imitation
of Virgil, of Ovid, and of Lucretius. It is, doubtless, often without meaning,
as for instance where the verse in which Virgil represents Cassandra as raising
her eyes in supplication when her hands were bound, is made to express the
action of the good thief upon the cross in turning his eyes to Christ because
his hands were nailed to the wood of torture. More than once is this copy of
antiquity wanting in taste and accuracy; but still the poets who used it
attained their object, and obtained from it the result they desired, and
another of which they had never dreamed. They caused the verities of
Christianity under this poetic form to penetrate more easily and more
thoroughly the cultured classes of the Roman world; this was their object, and
to this they attained. But that which they had never desired, and of which they
had never dreamed, but which they nevertheless effected in a marvellous
manner, was the laying hold later of a society which was no longer Roman, which
although Christian was barbarous, and by the means of their Christian poetry
penetrating it with the taste, and to a certain point with the genius and traditions,
of the literature of antiquity. In fact, Sedulius and Juvencus, those two Virgilian
Christians so to speak, were destined to become the favourite instructors
of the youth
of the barbarous ages; their evangelic poems were to be placed in the hands of
all, and to begin the education of infancy. Having thus gathered disciples, they
also found imitators, not only in the Latin but also in all the new languages
which were being framed upon Latin models; and it was after their example that
the Anglo-Saxon Caedmon, that priest v who one day by divine grace
found himself inspired and became a poet, undertook to sing of the origin of
the world and the fall of the first man; whilst later, about the time of
Charlemagne, the monk Ottfried did not shrink from writing a great poem on the
Harmony of the Gospels, and was the first who forced the glorious language of
the Franks to resound with the praises of Christianity.
Yet these
frequent and long-sustained efforts did not result in moulding the Christian
epopee into the form which might have seemed proper to it. For on seeing
Juvencus and Sedulius labouring, even in the fifth century, to sing of the
birth, the life, and the sufferings of Christ; on seeing the whole Christian
world filled with the same idea, and every art, from painting to archi- •
tecture, occupied in reproducing it under a thousand forms; and, lastly, on
beholding the entire manhood of the Church rushing, at the cry of the crusades,
to deliver the sepulchre of the Saviour, does it not seem that the whole poetic
effort must have tended to realize the type of which it dreamed, and to treat
in glorious and immortal narrative of the advent and the mission of Christ ?
Yet it is this that Christian poetry will never achieve. Doubtless it is true
that poetry calls for the intervention of the Divinity, but not of the Divinity
alone, for it is especially necessary to it that
humanity
should fill the scene. Poetry attaches itself in preference t6 that which is
human, because she finds therein elements of passion, of nobility, of pathos,
of changefulness, and, consequently, a plenitude of diverse and contrary
emotions. And therefore the Christian poetry found its principal resources in
the events, the temporal, warlike, political, and military developments of
Christendom. The conquests of Charlemagne, chivalry as symbolized under the
myth of the Round Table, and the recovery of the ‘Holy Places, brought forth
the chivalric romances and resulted in the epopee of Tasso. The discovery by
Christians of an unbelieving world was to inspire the admirable author of the
“Lusiades.” Thus it is always from humanity that even Christian poetry seeks
its principal inspiration ; though it seeks also to bury itself in the depths
of the faith, and to return, as far as possible, to that divine epopee which
has for its three points the Fall, Redemption, and Judgment. Yet even when it
has reached that subject which has never ceased to torment mankind, it succeeds
only in grasping the two human extremities, for the Divine mean still escapes
it. We see Milton, indeed, after the lapse of many ages, when the Bible itself
had felt the influence of the Protestant controversy, using the boldest
interpretation, that he might turn the first pages of Genesis into a poem; but
the hero that he took was a mortal man capable of supreme misery—the man who
from the beginning to the end of things is ever disquieting us by his weakness
and reassuring us by the impulse which bears him back to God. Dante, likewise,
causes us to explore the three kingdoms of hell, of purgatory, and of paradise;
but he peopled them with men of
like nature
to himself, and it was from their conversation that he evoked the floods of
poetry with which his century was inundated. On the other hand, when Christian
poetry sought to touch the mysteries of redemption—the knot of the divine
epopee—it shrunk back; and however great might be the genius of those who
ventured on it, it found itself always arrested, floating vaguely amidst its
own conceptions; and whether it brought to the task the piety which breathed
through the writings in which Hroswitha celebrated the infancy of the Saviour,
or was evinced by Gerson in his charming poem, 4 4 Josephina,” which
was devoted to the same subject; or through the learned and elegant methods of
the Revival, as employed by Sannazar, in his work “De Partu Yirginis,” or Yida
in his “ Christiad;” or, lastly, was strong in the boldness of the modern
spirit, in the charms of a dreamy imagination, and of a richly endowed mind,
like that of Klopstock, it still has always failed. And the reason is, that the
Christian world has still too much faith, and that the august figure of Christ
still inspires so much respect that the hands which approach it tremble.
Painters have traced that Form because there was no authentic image; but poets
were unable to lend to it speech and action, for they were crushed by the
reality of the Gospel. Providence has willed that nothing akin to poetry or to
fiction should envelop that fundamental dogma upon which the whole economy of
the world’s civilization is reposing.
But side by
side with Christian hymnody, which surmounted with so much labour the
difficulties of its origin, stood that lyric poetry, the free outpouring of the
soul, which was only moulded into verse that it
might be
established and perpetuated. The production of a lyric poetry was predestined
from the earliest times of Christianity. St. Paul himself exhorted the faithful
to sing hymns of praise, and we can mark traces of them in the letter from
Pliny to Trajan, or that in which St. Justin described the liturgy used by the
Christians of his day. Again, an ancient legend prevailed in the East to the
effect that St. Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, had beheld in vision the
heaven opened, and had heard the angels singing in double choir the praises of
the Holy Trinity : he had therefore introduced the double chant into the
Churches of the East. It was a graceful and majestic idea that caused the music
of the Church to originate in heaven itself.
But although
the East had adopted the Christian hymnody from the beginning of the fifth
century, the same was not the case in the West. It was in the time of St.
Ambrose, and owing to a remarkable circumstance in his life, that church music
was definitively adopted in Italy. St. Augustine relates the fact thus :—the
Empress Justina was persecuting St. Ambrose, and the people of .Milan watched
day and night around their bishop in order to protect him from her fury. And
he, touched by their fidelity and the long nights passed in guarding his
person, bethought himself of beguiling their interminable vigils by an introduction
into his Church of the Eastern method of chanting the psalms and hymns. It
spread gradually thence over the whole of the Church, and St. Augustine does
not neglect to convey to us the profound impression which those sacred songs
exercised over him; for he says, in speaking of the day of his baptism, “ Thy
hymns and canticles, 0 my God, and the sweet
chant of Thy
Church stirred and penetrated my being. These voices streamed upon my ears and
caused the truth to flow into my heart; the emotions gushed up therein; lastly
my tears poured forth, and, I rejoiced in them.”* However, this man, who had
such a profound appreciation of music, perhaps from its very intensity felt
doubts as to its fitness, and asked himself whether the pleasure given by the
music did not injure the meditation of the soul, and whether he did not give
too much attention to those harmonious modulations which were so charming to
the ear. Happily, however, the scruples of Augustine did not survive in his own
mind nor in the Church, and so the cause of religious music was gained.
St. Ambrose
not only introduced the chant, but was himself the composer of hymns to be sung
in his own Church. Numbers of these have been collected under his name, which
were more probably the work of his disciples, or of later times, but which were
composed in conformity to his spirit and the rules which he had laid down.
Twelve only can, with certainty, be attributed to him; but they are full of
grace and beauty, thoroughly Roman in the gravity of their character, and'of a
certain peculiar manliness amidst the tender effusions of Christian piety, as
if still animated by the tone of primitive times. We may cite the following as
an instance:—
Deus creator omnium Polique rector, vestiens Diem decoro lumine,
Noctem soporis gratia.
St. Ambrose
himself acknowledged the authorship of
* St.
Augustine, Confess, lib. ix. c. 6.
this. Whilst
its language was ancient, its versification had something of the modern form,
in that little strophe of four iambic verses of eight syllables, which lends
itself so easily to replacing the quantity by the accent, and thus paving a way
for the rhyme, which, as we have seen, was introduced early into Christian
versification, was used by St. Augustine himself in his psalm against the
Donatists, and recurred for twenty-four verses, every two of which rhymed, in
the hymn addressed by Pope Damasus to St. Agatha. Thus the sequence of the
Middle Age had already appeared, nearly all of which are thus cut into strophes
of four verses, each containing eight syllables, with this difference, that in
the mediaeval poetry quantity was replaced by the rhyme, which was to afford to
the ear the satisfaction which the ancient prosody would henceforth be unable
to offer. It was a strange fact that it was only upon the condition of breaking
loose once and for ever from the ancient forms, that the poetry of Christianity
was at last to attain that liberty without which it must lack inspiration,
which was to endow it with the abundant wealth and strength which it possessed
in the thirteenth century, and, finally, with the majesty of the Dies Irce and
the inexpressible grace of the Stabat Mater.
Such, then,
was the general aspect of Christian poetry in its commencement. We must now
demand whether the century which has shown us so many men of eloquence did not
also produce some few who were really touched by the beams of poetry; whether
we are only to observe in them the obscure beginning of that which was destined
to become illustrious, or if they did not already manifest some inspiration ?
We may
answer the
question by separating from the mass two men, St. Paulinus and Prudentius, who
deserve to be placed side by side and to be known by us.
If poetry
could be found anywhere, it was surely in those disquieted souls which came for
refuge to the Christian life, bruised by the long resistance of the flesh and
the passions. It was an age of tormented consciences ; feeble minds were
hesitating, stronger natures were deciding, and found in the shock inspiration,
eloquence, and poetry. Such was the state of Ambrose, Augustine, and the many
others whom we have seen by their side. Those great souls had the courage to
break with the past, and in the effort they found that which has always been
its recompense, the strength which comes from on high to aid the will. That
strength was, to some, the courage to act," to others the courage to
speak; it came to some as eloquence, to certain as philosophy, and to others,
lastly, in the shape of poetry.
Paulinus, who
bore the surnames Pontius Meropius, came of a great Roman family, of senatorial
rank. He was born in the environs of Bordeaux, and received his first education
at the schools of Gaul, which then possessed the most illustrious masters in
the West. The poet Ausonius had been the first tutor of Paulinus’s youth, and
had communicated to him that versifying art which he had himself carried to a
point of such marvellous subtlety. Paulinus was rich from his own patrimony and
the demesne of his wife, and was covered with every honour; he had already
reached the consulate, and there was nothing to which at the age of twenty-six
years he might not have aspired; for who amidst the continual revolutions which
shook the
throne of the
Caesars could know that the descendant of so many illustrious men might not one
day be called to sit thereon ? However, at that epoch, in 398, the news reached
Bordeaux that Paulinus had clandestinely, and without the knowledge of that’
Roman aristocracy to the whole of which he was related or allied, been
initiated into Christianity and had received baptism. On his becoming a
Christian he had retired to his Spanish property, where he lived with his wife
in retirement, but not in penitence, detached from the grandeurs of life, but
not from its sweetness and illusion, as far as we can perceive from the
following prayer in verse, which from that time he addressed to God:—“0 Supreme
Master of all things, grant my wishes if they are righteous. Let none of my
days bev sad, and no anxiety trouble the repose of my nights. Let
the good things of another never tempt me, and may my own suffice to those who
ask my aid. Let joy dwell in my house. Let the slave born on my hearth enjoy
the abundance of my stores. May I live surrounded by faithful servants, by a
cherished wife, and by the children which she will bring me.” These are the
wishes of a Christian, but not those of an anchorite. Paulinus shortly after
had a child born to him which he lost at the end of eight days. This severed
tie broke all those which bound Therasia and himself to the things of earth,
and they both agreed to sell their goods and distribute them to the poor, to
lead thenceforth a monastic life, and moreover to live in that state of simple
fraternity which was authorized by the ancient customs of Christianity, and
which caused many a saint aft^r his conversion to keep his wife in the position
of sister, as a sharer of his prayers and
almsdeeds.
Therasia also became the companion of the retreat of Paulinus, and their letter
to the magnates of the Church was signed Paulinus et Therasia peccatores. They
left Spain and retired into the depth of Italy, to Nola in Campania, near the
tomb of the martyr St. Felix, for whom Paulinus had conceived a singular
devotion, and lived there in poverty and penitence.
This
secession had at first surprised and then enraged the Roman aristocracy. What
frenzy could have driven a man of such name and birth, clothed with so many
honours, and endowed with so much genius, to abandon his hopes and break the
succession of a patrician house ? His relations did not forgive him, his
brothers disowned him, and the members of his family who happened to come near
him passed like a torrent, without stopping. But when temporal society rejected
him, religious society received him with open arms, and Jerome, Augustine, and
Ambrose congratulated one another on counting another great doctor in their
ranks. Paulinus became, in fact, a considerable theologian; but he had another
talent within him, for a poetic soul had gradually formed and revealed itself
amidst the interior agonies which his conversion had cost him. Ausonius, on
learning the change in his disciple, had been at first smitten with despair,
and had written him a powerful letter, in which he begged him no longer to
afflict his master, thus: “ Disdain not the father of thy spirit. It was I who
was thy earliest master, the first to guide thy feet into the path of honour.
It was I who introduced thee into the society of the Muses. 0 Muses, divinities
of Greece, hear my prayer and restore a poet to
Latium.”* St.
Paulinus answered from his remote retreat, in verse, and in the following terms
:—“ Why,
0 my father, dost thou recall in my favour
the Muses, whom I have renounced ? This heart, henceforth dedicated to God, has
no more room for Apollo nor for the Muses. Formerly I was one with you in
invoking, not with the same genius, hut the same ardour, a deaf Apollo from his
Delphian cave, in calling the Muses divinities, and demanding,from the woods
and from the mountains that gift of speech which is given by God alone. But now
a greater Deity enthralls my soul.” “Nothing,” wrote Paulinus again to his
friend, “ will tear you from my remembrance, during the entire span of that age
which is granted to mortals. As long as I am captive in this body, and at
whatever may be the distance which severs us, I will guard thee in the depth of
my heart. Present everywhere for me, I shall behold you in thought, and
embrace you in soul; and when delivered from the prison of this body I shall
fly from earth into whatever star the common Father may place me, thither shall
1 carry thee in spirit, and the last moment
which will release me from earth shall not deprive me of my tenderness for you;
for that soul which survives our organs which have perished and is sustained by
its celestial origin must of necessity preserve the affections, as it retains
its existence. Filled with life and with memory, it cannot forget, as it cannot
die.”f
These were
measures which Ausonius, with all his wit and learning, never found. His wit
had taught him the artifices of the poetry of a decaying society
* Auson. ep.
xxiv. ad Paulin. •
t St. Paul. Carm. x. ii. 18 et seq.
which
excelled in acrostics, in playing upon words, and every kind of subtlety, but
had never taught him the secret of that heartfelt poetry which gushed forth in
Paulinus and made him so greatly to surpass his master. Paulinus repudiated
indeed the inspiration of the pagan muses, but he knew of an influence which
was more powerful. He did not abjure poetry in his solitude at Nola, but still
shared all the joys and sorrows of his friends, and his verses reached every
place in which there was a tear to be dried or happiness to be partaken. We
find amongst his writings accordingly an Epithalamium composed for the wedding
of a Christian couple named Julian and Ya, in which he saluted charmingly the
virgin spouses whom Christ was about to unite like two well-paired doves to the
light yoke of His chariot. He removed far away the divinities who had formerly
profaned marriage, Juno and Yenus, and dwelt upon the just, true, and touching
maxims of Christian matrimony, the necessary and. fertile equality of the
spouses before God, the affranchisement of woman from her former state of
slavery, the conditions upon which he promised the presence of the Saviour at
their wedding :—
Tali conjugio cessavit servitus Evse,
iEquavitque suum libera Sara virum;
Tali lege suis nubentibus adstat Jesus
Pronubus, et vini nectare mutat aquam: *
Thoughts
which have nothing in them of the classic tone, and through which a thoroughly
new spirit was already breathing.
We find the
same characteristic in the consolation afforded by him to Christian parents
upon the death of
* St.
Paulin. Carm. xxii. Epitlial. Juliani et Yse, v. 150.
a child, in
which, borrowing the most charming images of the Faith, he represented the same
child as playing in heaven with the one whom he had himself lost, the
remembrance of whom had never been effaced from his heart, although he had sat
so many years as a penitent at the tomb of Nola. “ Live, young brothers, a
happy couple in that eternal participation, inhabit those joyous dwellings,
prevail both of you through your innocence, and may your prayers be more powerful
than the transgressions of your parents.”
Vivite participes setemum vivite fratres,
Et lsetos dignum par habitate locos;
Innocuisque pares meritis peccata parentum,
Infantes, castis vincite suffragiis.*
This is far
superior in charm to all the idyls of Ausonius or the panegyrics of Claudian,
and nowhere before have we found such pathos, such life, and such inspiration.
We could instance many other religious compositions, for the works of Paulinus
are abundant, but those in which the inexhaustible effusion of his loving soul
is especially ♦manifested are the eighteen pieces composed for the
anniversary of the feast of St. Felix. That martyr, to the service of whom
Paulinus was consecrated, had bound the soul of the latter by the tie which the
Scripture mentions as attaching the soul of David to that of Jonathan ; and he
never wearied in relating the life, the miracles, the festivals, the honours of
St. Felix; the pilgrimages which were made to his tomb, the church raised above
it, the homage paid to him from every quarter of Italy, and especially, as a
theme which constantly recurred to his pen, the description of the popular
festival which was
* St.. Paulin. Carm. xxxiii.
De obitu Celsi pueri, v 615.
celebrated in
his memory. “ The people filled the roads with their motley swarms. Pilgrims
arrived from Lucania, Apulia, and Calabria, and others from sea- bound Latium.
Even the Samnites descended from their mountains. Piety conquered the
difficulty of the journey; there was no pause, and, unable to wait for day, the
pilgrims marched, by the light of torches. Not only did they bear their
children in their bags, but they often brought with them their ailing cattle.
Moreover, the walls of Nola seemed to expand till it equalled the royal city
which enshrines the tombs of Peter and Paul. The church was bright with the
light of lamps and tapers. White veils were hung over the gilded doors, the
precinct was strewn with flowers, the porch was crowned with fresh garlands,
and spring blossomed forth in the midst of winter.” The poet then addressed in
self-recollection the following invocation to the martyr. “ Suffer me to
remain seated at thy gates; let me cleanse thy courts every morning, and watch
every night for their protection. Suffer me to end my days amid the employments
which I love. We take our refuge within your hallowed pale, and make our nest
in your bosom. It is therein that we are cherished and expand into a better
life, and, casting off the earthly burden, we feel something divine springing
up within us, and the unfolding of the wings which are to make us equal to the
angels.” -
Et tuus est nido sinus. Hoc bene foti,,
Crescimus, inque aliam mutantes corpora formam
Terrena ejaiimur sorde, et subeuntibus alis Vertimur in volucres divino semine
verbi.*
These, again,
are fine verses, but they are more, for
* St.
Paulin. Natalis, iii.
they were the
chrysalis from which proceeded those still more striking lines of Dante :
Non voccorgete voi que noi siam vermi
Nati a formar l’angeUca Farfalla?
The idea is
similar, and Dante’s often-cited comparison was first roughly sketched by a
poet who sang long before him.
We may have
long studied the poets and have sought in history for the true nature of
poetry. After many years of search we know what poetry is, but cannot define
it; it is impossible for us to grasp and examine, so to speak, face to face,
that unknown thing which is veiled from our eyes like Love in the tale of
Psyche, which only remained whilst invisible, the presence of which was
evidenced by its voice, its accent, and the charm which surrounded it, but
which evaporated on being perceived. So when we encounter anywhere the graces
of imagination and an infinite tenderness of heart, the indefinable charm which
no art can give, and the alternations of divine smiles and equally divine
tears, we declare without a moment’s doubt that poetry is there.
This man,
then, was a Christian poet—an undeniable poet—but he did not stand alone. By
his side we find a fellow, less tender perhaps, and less imbued with the spirit
of Petrarch, but even more truly a poet through the abundance and richness of
his compositions, and this was Prudentius. Paulinus, in fact, was essentially
a bishop and a Father of the Church to whom poetry and grace had been given in
addition ; but the principal function, the sole vocation and glory of Prudentius,
lay in his being the poet of the Christians.
Born in Spain
at about the same time as Paulinus had been born in Gaul, about a.d. 848, he
had passed through its schools, in which he had learnt eloquence, the art, as
he said, of deceiving in sonorous words. After a striking success at the bar,
after having governed two cities of his native country in succession, and
having, lastly, been raised to some of the higher dignities in the imperial
hierarchy, of which he does not define the nature, Prudentius, when fifty-seven
years of age, and at the summit of all the honour which was open to a
provincial advocate, grew weary of his dignities and occupations, and resolved
to return to , God; for his already whitening hair had warned him, as he tells
us in a kind of little preface to his works, that it was time to consecrate
what remained of his voice to Him. Some of the different compositions which
flowed from his pen were devoted to theology and controversy ; others to the
inspiration of the lyric muse. However, in spite of his intention of serving
the Catholic faith by discussion, as he boldly expressed it, he did not
exaggerate the force of the arms .which he was about to carry in the service of
a holy cause, but spoke of them with a humility which was not without grace.
“It is time to devote to God the remnant of the voice. Let hymns accompany the
hours of the day, and let not the night be silent. Let heresies be com- batted,
the Catholic faith discussed, insults cast upon the idols, glorious verses
rendered to martyrs, and praise to apostles. In the mansions of the wealthy,
rich services of plate are spread out, the golden goblet gleams there, and yet
the iron boiler is not wanting. We see therein the vessel of clay and the broad
and heavy platter of silver, massy vessels of ivory, and
k
others hewn
from the elm or the oak. So does Christ employ me as a valueless vessel for
humble occupations, and permits me to remain in a corner of my Father’s
palace.”
Hie patemo in atrio Ut obsoletum. vasculum caducis Christus aptat usibus,
Sinitque parte in anguli manere.*
We see that
Prudentius announced himself at once as a poet, theologian, and
controversialist armed for the fray ; but he was not about to undertake the
part in order to confine himself to turning theological treatises into verse,
and to express thoughts which were not his own, with a fidelity which was often
servile. He, on the contrary, found his inspiration and his fire in himself
alone, and the accents of the poet betray more than once, especially in the two
books composed against Symmachus, the habits of the orator. We have noticed how
Symmachus had petitioned Valentinian for the restoration of the altar of
Victory, and how, after an eloquent reply from St. Ambrose, he had encountered
the refusal of the emperor. But his request survived in spite of this; it
passed from hand to. hand as the eloquent protest of Paganism against those who
were overthrowing its altars, and it was on account of the power which it had
retained over the minds of men that Prudentius felt bound to reply to it in two
books of verse.
In the first
of these he undertook to combat the worship of the false gods by the ordinary
arguments, and then to celebrate, in triumphant accents, the defection of the
nobility and populace of Rome, who
* Prudent.
Peristeplianqn, preface.
vol. n. 9
had gradually
passed from the service of these fictitious divinities to that of Christ. He
delighted in counting all the families, the descendants of the Manlii and of
Brutus, who rallied one by one around the Laba- rum. The idols remained
abandoned, but the poet did not ask for their destruction, but rather that, as
the deities had disappeared, their statues should be saved, and should remain
standing as immortal monuments to witness to the past. He used the following
expressions, which are curious as showing us one of the usages of Paganism,
which archaeology has never perfectly accounted for; the old statues are often
found covered with a crust, the quality of which cannot always be determined,
and which changes their colour. Pru- dentius said, in addressing the Roman
senators—
Marmora tabenti respergine tincta lavate,
O proceres ! liceat statuas consistere puras,
Artificum magnorum opera lisec pulcherrima nostras Omamenta fiant patrise,
nec decolor usus,
In vitium versae monumenta coinquinet artis *
They used to
rub the statues of the gods with the blood of the victims as a means of slaking
the thirst of Jupiter with the blood which he loved. These lines, which have
not been often cited, are very remarkable, and we may notice generally in the
works of this poet a passion for art which caused a mind which was thoroughly
hostile to Paganism to demand, when once the old religion had been suppressed,
the preservation of its statues, and to open widely to them' the asylums built
and guarded by Rome for many centuries, which were to receive, under the name
of museums, all the trophies of vanquished Paganism.
* Prudent,
contra Symmach. i. 502.
He replied,
in his second book, to the arguments of those who found the cause of the
victories of. Eome in her piety towards the false gods, and sought for and
pointed to the real cause in the designs of Providence, which used the Romans
for the purpose of reconciling, ruling, and civilizing all the nations of the
West, that a way might be laid open for Christianity, and her task made more
easy When the whole universe was subject to the same law. Here his patriotic
feeling broke out, and he triumphed in the name of Eoman greatness at the
refusal of Yalentinian to rebuild the altar of Yictory, which had been
destroyed for ever, to give place to a higher protecting influence, and
concluded by an ever- memorable request to Honorius, the son 'of Theodosius,
for the abolition of the gladiatorial combats. He had just depicted the
amphitheatre as it rang with the cries of the combatants. “May Eome, the golden
city, no longer recognize such crimes as these. For this, I adjure thee, most
illustrious chief of the Cassarian Empire, command that so odious a sacrifice should
disappear like the rest. This is the merit which the tenderness of thy father
desired to leave for thee. ‘ My son,’ he said, 41 leave thee thy
share; ’ and so he made over to thee the honour of this design. Make then thine
own, 0 Prince, the glory which has been reserved for this century. Thy father
forbade that the sovereign city should be polluted with the blood of bulls; do
thou not permit that hecatombs of human life should be offered therein. Let no
one die any more that his agony may form a sport! Let the hateful arena be
content with its wild beasts, and no longer afford the bloody spectacle of
homicide ! And let Eome, devoted to God, worthy of her prince, powerful by her
courage, be
so also through her innocence.”* Here was poetry put not only at the service of
Christianity, but of that humanity which it had so often betrayed.
It would be
more instructive perhaps to examine the. theological poems of Prudentius, which
dived into the deepest difficulties of dogma; to analyze the poem styled “ Hamartigenia,”
in which he discussed all the objections levelled against the divinity of
Christ, or that entitled “ Psychomachia,” in which he occupied himself with
the origin of evil; to note the boldness with which the man who had up to that
time been devoted to the business and the disputes of the bar attacked the
highest metaphysical questions, discussed the existence of the two principles
of good and evil, explained how the mind could perceive without the assistance
of the senses, and traced out the inner struggle between the flesh and the
spirit. He grasped and expressedthese truths with an energy which he might have
borrowed from Lucretius, and which recalled the language of Rome’s old
philosopher-poet; whilst on the other side the reader might, from the Christian
idea which reigned throughout, imagine himself transported into that paradise
of Dante wherein the poet, emboldened by the presence of Beatrice, dared to
probe the most formidable topics of theology.
But perhaps
Prudentius was even greater as a lyric poet. We must look to his two
collections styled the “ Cathemerinon ” and the. “ Peristephanon ” for these
hymns, twelve of which were devoted to the different hours of the day or the
different solemnities of the Christian year, and fourteen to a celebration of
the anniversaries of the martyrs. It was in these especially
4k.
* Prudent,
contra Symmach. ii. 1114 et seq.
that he
showed the research and perseverance with which he had mastered all the forms
of the ahcient versification. Thus all the Horatian metres were to be found in
these hymns, used in the same variety if not with the same purity, and often
with an attention to rule which is surprising in a century of decline, whilst
whole passages might be cited as models of a Latinity which was superior to
that of the Latin poets at the end of the second and even of the first century.
The two characteristics of his poetry %were gracefulness and force;
the former appeared especially in passages wherein he showed the earth pouring
forth her flowers to surround and veil the cradle of the Saviour ; or where he
described the Holy Innocents as the flowers of martyrdom whom the sword had
reaped as the whirlwind reaps the budding roses, and who play as children in
heaven, and under the very altar of God, with their palm and their crown. This
again was followed by a description of heaven, which in its quaintness
foreshadowed the loveliest paintings of Fra Angelico da Fiesole; and, in fact,
when we listen to Prudentius as he gracefully depicts the- souls of the blessed
singing in chorus as they moved, and scarcely brushing the lilies of the field
which failed to bend beneath their footsteps, we might well imagine ourselves
gazing upon one of his heavenly pictures.
But the power
of the poet appeared far more when he described the conflicts of the martyrs;
and he caught, as it were, all their fire when he represented St. Fructuosus on
the pile, St. Hippolytus at the heels of the untamed horses, or St. Laurence on
the gridiron. The latter was one of the dearest memories of the
Roman people,
for that apostle and martyr of the faith was also the martyr of charity, and
had suffered for refusing to give up not only the Christ whom he bore in his
heart, but those treasures also of the Church which were hoarded for the nourishment
of her poor; and Rome has shown her gratitude by the fact—so popular has the
memory of the deacon, who was the servant of the poor, ever remained—that after
the Virgin there is no saint, including St. Peter himself, who has had as many
churches dedicated to him. Prudentius sang of him, and was led through the
enthusiasm inspired by the face of the young saint to put into his mouth the
following prayer, which again showed that Christian inspiration which surveyed
the destiny of Rome with a glance of assurance:—“ Christ, only name beneath the
sun, splendour and virtue of the Father, author of the earth and the sky, and
true founder of these walls, Thou who didst place Rome as the supreme head of
all things, willing that the entire universe should serve the people who bear
the toga and the sword, that the customs, genius, tongues, and worships of the
hostile nations might be brought under the same laws, behold how the human race
hath passed in its entirety beneath the law of Remus, and opposing manners have
approached in the same word and the same thought. 0 Christ, grant to Thy Romans
that their city may be Christian, that city through which Thou hast given a
like faith to all the cities of the earth. May all the members of her Empire
unite in the same Creed. The world has bowed; may its sovereign city bend in
its turn; grant that Romulus may become faithful, and Numa believe in Thee.”
Mansuescit orbis subditus,
Mansuescat summiim caput.
Fiat fidelis Romulus,
Et ipse jam credat Numa*
But lofty
thoughts and strong expressions are the
property of
all men of eloquence, whilst gracefulness
is the
distinction and inimitable characteristic of poets,
and,
therefore, it marked as with a first seal all the
compositions
of Prudentius. They always returned to
his own
person with a great charm, and concluded with
thoughts
which left a soothing influence upon the mind,
whether he
showed the white dove escaping from the
pile of'St.
Eulalia, or invited young maidens to bring
baskets full
of violets to the tomb of the virgin martyrs,
reserving to
himself, as he said, “ the task of weaving
garlands of
verses, which, though pale and withered,
had yet a
certain festal air; ” or whether, again, the
poet
concluded his history of the martyrdom of St.
Romanus by
this touching prayer: “I should wish,
ranked as I
shall be on the left amongst the goats, to
be recognized
from afar, and that to the prayers of
the martyr
the merciful judge might turn and say,
* Romanus has prayed to me; let them bring
me that
goat, let him
stand as a lamb on my right hand, and
let him be
vested in the fleece.’ ”
Vellem sinister inter hasdorum greges Ut sum
futurus, eminus dignoscerer,
Atque, hoc precante, dicerit rex optimus :
Romanus orat; transfer hunc hsedum mihi:
• Sit dexter agnus, induatur vellere.f
This man,
whose verses we are now admiring, was destined not to remain without admirers.
The Middle Age rendered him a homage which was equal
* Peristeph.
ii 412 et seq. f Ibid. x. 1136 et seq.
to that
received by the most illustrious teachers, Boethius, Bede, and St. Boniface.
All the writers of the seventh century loved to borrow his verses and place
them as examples by the side of the finest rhythms of antiquity. In later times
he was cited as the first and the most famous of Christian poets. At last we
find St. Bruno, one of the most learned men of that learned Germany of an epoch
that is but little known, one of the men of that Teutonic revival which we have
not studied yet, but may examine one day in company, placing in the library of
his Church a copy of Prudentius, which thenceforth was scarcely ever out of
his hands. This poet held his post of honour up to the Revival. The Revival
entered the Christian school and found therein Christian poets, ranked beneath
those pagan bards to whom, as befitted the most eloquent, the first place had
been granted. Virgil and Horace still retained the honour which antiquity had
bestowed, but as for the poets of Christianity, since their language was not of
Ciceronian purity, since Prudentius had been convicted of using seventy-five
words which had no precedent amongst earlier writers, they were swept away and
put to flight forthwith as a barbarous crew which had been introduced into the
school under the pretext of their Christianity, that the pagans might remain sole
masters of the .ground.
There were
also some accessory reasons for the step. Prudentius had become somewhat
irksome with his passionate devotion towards the martyrs, and these numberless
acts of homage to the saints were so many damaging testimonies which must be
suppressed or silenced. In vain did some men of taste and learning, as for
instance Louis Vives, one of the most famous
and
zealous adherents of the Revival, complain courageously of this, and demand a
resting-plafee for the instructors of our fathers; it was necessary that they
should disappear. -
Let us be
more equitable, let our admiration be wide enough to render to the poets of the
first centuries of Christianity the justice which for so long a time was not
refused them; and as Prudentius, fervent convert and penitent as he was,
tolerantly wished that even the statues of the false gods should remain
standing in the Forum, so let us reclaim for the early Christian poets their
standing-place before the school. There would be no rashness in the act; and
yet, in spite of all the poetry to which we have been bound to point in the
works of these writers, which we have just traced in a perhaps too lengthy
analysis, we must at length affirm that the true Christian poetry, and its very
basis, was not there, but in a quarter which we shall now proceed to examine.
CHAPTEE VIII.
CHRISTIAN ART.
We ought to have
closed our history of the Christian literature of the fifth century with that
of poetry; and yet when we sought for that poetical inspiration which seemed to
spring forth with such abundant life from the great scenes of Christianity, it
was with difficulty that we found it. It did not lurk in those numerous epic
and dialectic compositions in which so many writers laboured, with more
exactness than originality, to bend the stories of Scripture or the hard points
of dogma to the metres of Virgil and of Ovid. It is true that we perceived the
poetic ray upon the brow of two men of different genius and destiny, St.
Paulinus and Pru- dentius, the former of whom renounced honour, fortune, and
the whole world in order to consume his days at the tomb of St. Felix of Nola,
though he never gave up those sweet rhythms which flowed as naturally as tears,
and served, like tears, as an outflow. of his feelings ; whilst the latter
devoted his last days to the service of the faith, and employed himself in
defending its doctrines and its glory. We saw how power and grace combined to
weave his verses into so many crowns, which, as he said himself, he used to
hang amongst the fresh garlands with which the faithful decked the
sepulchres of
the saints. Poetry doubtless existed therein, but not entirely; certainly not
in such a measure as might have been expected after three centuries of
persecution, after Constantine and the Nicene Council, in the times of the
Fathers, and in the days in which the heroic anchorites flourished like so many
plants of the desert. Then if poetry cannot be found complete there, it must
have existed elsewhere. There must have been some source whence it sprang in
abundance to flow on and spread abroad over the succeeding ages.
Symbolism is
the common fount of all Christian poetry. Symbolism is at once a law of nature
and a law of the human mind. It is a law of nature: for what, after all, is
creation but a magnificent language which is speaking to us by night and by day
? The heavens tell us of their author; and all created beings speak not only of
Him who made them, but of each other, the meanest and most obscure unfolding
the history of the sons of light and glory. What is the returning bird of
passage but the sign of the spring which, it brings with it, and of stars which
have been coursing on for months ? And does not the fragile reed which casts
its shadow on the sand serve to register the height of the sun on the horizon ?
Thus do all existences bear mutual witness, arouse and summon one another from
one end of immensity to the other, and thus do their continual combinations,
their numberless symbols and harmonies, form the poetry of the world which we
inhabit.
Thus the
Almighty speaks by signs, and man in his turn, when he speaks to God, exhausts
the whole series of signs which his intelligence can grasp. What other language
could the human intellect speak than
that which it
has received, and in which it has been formed ? And therefore prayer alone does
not satisfy man when he is addressing God ; he desires music and those sacred
ceremonies which also express in their way, by their development and the choice
songs which they contain, by their pauses and their advances, the movements of
the soul, its headlong flight towards the infinite, and the want of power which
forces it to halt on the way. A sacrifice is wanted, too, to be the symbol of
adoration and of human impotence in presence of the Divine Power. Therefore
also the temple appears to act as a grand and abiding witness, planted upon the
earth in order to mark the fact that intellects are present which desire, after
their own fashion, to attest their efforts to reach their Creator. Thus the whole
of nature instructs mankind by symbols, and it is by symbols that man replies
to nature’s Author.
The same idea
appears in Christianity, and in Scripture God spoke only in the language of
symbol. The entire Old Testament is full of realities, and has, doubtless, an
historical value, but, at the same time, all the patriarchs and prophets
represented Him who was to come. Joseph and Moses were but the precursors and,
at the same time, the signs of Him who was one day to accomplish the law, and
in whom every type was to find its reality. The New Testament, in its turn,
only addresses us in parables; and Christ Himself, using the familiar language
of rustic life, that kind of life which is most natural and most grateful to
humanity, said one day, “I am the vine,” and on another occasion, “ I am the
good shepherd.” It was the same in the whole ulterior development of the New
Testament. St. Paul interpreted Scripture by means of allusions
and
allegories; the two mountains represented, according to him, the two
covenants, and the Red Sea, which the Hebrews had crossed, became in his eyes
the symbol of baptism. Again, in the Apocalypse, that especially symbolic
book, each figure was produced with a mysterious meaning attached to it; and
when St. John represented the new Jerusalem as resplendent with gold and
jewels, with its wall of precious stones and its gates of pearl, it was not
mere material splendour, nor a flattery of the senses which he offered to the
men who were daily dying, braving martyrdom and renouncing every treasure, as
the supreme end of their efforts ; for in the language of the East every
precious stone #had a symbolical value, which was admitted according
to rule into all the ancient schools, and represented in a mystic manner
certain vague virtues of the soul and certain forces of the human understanding
or of divine grace.
Therefore,
when the Christians had to compose their language we need not wonder that,
imitating the Bible, .they formed one that was figurative and full of types and
symbols ; or that when the first apostolic fathers, St. Clement and St.
Barnabas, interpreted the Scriptures, allegory superabounded throughout their
works and in their interpretations. About the same time a Christian writer
named Hermas, whose history has remained unknown, but whose book had preserved
a singular character of antiquity and beauty, wishing to instruct the faithful,
did so by means of parables, after the fashion of the ancients. His book was
divided into three parts; the visions, the precepts, and the parables. In the
visions, for instance, the Church was represented to him under the figure of a
young girl, of
a queen, or
of a mother whom age had already marked with its character and endowed also
with a sign of authority. The institutions and callings to which God had given
the support of His will always appeared to him beneath that living and sensible
figure, and when he desired to represent the diversity of human conditions, he
employed the following analogy. Hermas, whilst walking one day in the country,
saw a vine and an elm, and paused to consider them. Thereupon the shepherd
appeared to him: “ That vine,” said he, “bears much fruit, and the elm has
none; yet if the climbing vine was not supported by it, it would produce but
little, and that of scanty value. Therefore, as it can produce no fruit
abundantly or of good quality without the support of the elm, the elm is not
less fertile than the vine. The man of wealth is generally poor in the eyes of
the Lord, because his treasures lead him away from God and his prayer is
feeble. But if he gives to the poor, the poor, who is rich in the eyes of the
Lord, and whose prayer is powerful, prays for him, and God answers it. Thus, if
the rich lean upon the poor man like the vine upon the elm, they both become
rich, the one by almsdeeds, the other by prayer.” *
We see that
this symbolical language penetrated and even became necessary to Christian
manners. After the period of liberty which Christianity enjoyed up to the time
of the first persecutions, the rulers of the Church recognized the necessity of
veiling its mysterie's in the discipline of the Secret, and they were
communicated gradually, so as not to be immediately exposed to profanation from
the unbelieving. The
* Hermas
Pastor,’i. 3, Similitudo Secunda.
necessity of
keeping the mysteries secret, and also of a mutual recognition among
Christians, led to the adoption of' rallying signals, intelligible to those
alone who had learnt their meaning, and consequently to a symbolic system
whereby Christians might interchange ideas without laying them open to
sacrilegious minds. The number of these symbols also increased infinitely, and
at the end of the third century had become so great that Meliton of Sardis, a
father of the Greek Church, wrote a book named the “ Key,” devoted to an explanation
of these symbols, which at that remote period had so multiplied as to render a
scientific interpretation of them necessary.
In the fifth
century St. Eucher wrote the Book of Formulas for the spiritual understanding
of the Scriptures—Liber formularum spiritualis intelligentice— in which he
gave precisely the mystic sense of the numbers, flowers, figures of animals, of
plants, and precious metals, which had all a meaning, and had puzzled the
ancient philosophy by their value and mutual relation. He explained therein,
after the manner of a great symbolical dictionary, all the signs then used in
the language of theology, the figures of the lion, the stag, the lamb, the
dove, the palm, the olive, the pomegranate, and many others. It showed as it
were the secret of Christian hieroglyphics, unveiled voluntarily by a priest,
when, as the danger of the persecutions and with it the necessity of the
discipline of the Secret had vanished, the Church could satisfy her inherent
craving to communicate everything, whereby it differed so entirely from the
ancient priesthood whose theory and practice had ever been to hicle and to
obscure.
It is because
all religions are necessarily symbolical, that they become the guiding
principle and cradle of the arts, for all the arts are born beneath the shadow
of a religion. We need not wonder at this, for if man is obliged when he
desires to say anything, to employ figures which, precisely because they are
material, always remain inferior to his idea, much rather must the same be the
case when he undertakes to speak to God, of God, of things invisible, of all
the infinite conceptions which the understanding can hardly grasp, of which it
catches a hasty glimpse, but which pass in a moment like the lightning, and
which, though it longs to arrest them, have disappeared before we have been
able to compare the imperfect expression with the very idea which it would
render. This is why no sign can satisfy man when he wishes to speak of these
eternal things, ' why all methods are employed, and so to speak come all at
once under his hand. All that the chisel, the brush, or stones piled towards
the heaven into in- accessiblev heights can effect,- all the
harmonious illusions that speech can produce when sustained by music, may be
used by man, and yet nothing result to satisfy the just demands of his mind,
when once it has been occupied with these mighty and immortal ideas. Yet in
spite of that feebleness, the ideal which he pursues suffers itself to be
glimpsed at with a sort of transparency; and it is this transparence of the
ideal through the forms in which it is clothed that truly constitutes poetry,
which in its primitive aspect does not lie only in verse nor in rhymed words,
but in every effort of the human will to grasp the ideal and to render it
either in colour, or in stone, or by any of the means which have been granted
to strike the senses
and to
communicate to the understanding of another the conceptions of one’s own.
We see, then,
that Christian art found its destined cradle in those Catacombs which formed
the cradle of the Christian faith, and we must descend into them in order to
find the origin of the poetry which we have sought in books. But the people who
assembled there were too fervent and full of emotion to be satisfied by one or
two of the methods whereby man is able to translate his thoughts. They were
also too poor and ignorant, too much composed of the lower classes of the Roman
society, to be able to carry perfection very far in their use of the arts ; so
they were obliged at once to essay all the arts and all the methods whereby
ideas can be expressed, in order imperfectly to render those emotions with
which the glad tidings of the faith had lately filled their hearts. We must
picture to ourselves the Catacombs as a vast labyrinth of subterranean
galleries, stretching for a considerable distance beneath the suburbs and the
Campagna of Rome. No less than sixty of these Christian cemeteries have been
counted,^ and the circumvallations which they formed around the ancient city
extended, according to the popular tradition which is repeated by the herdsmen
of the Campagna, as far as the sea. But on a descent into these sunless haunts,
one is more struck by their depths than by the space over which they spread
themselves. The entrance to them lies chiefly through the old quarries of
puzzo- lano, which doubtless supplied material for the monuments of Rome, and
were the work of the ancients. But beneath and beside these quarries the Christians
themselves have dug out of the granulated tufa other galleries of a totally
different form, which could never
have served
for the extraction of stone, but only for the object for which they were used.
All these galleries descend to two, three, or four stories beneath the surface
of the earth, that is to say, to eighty, a hundred feet or more; they branch
into countless windings, sometimes ascending and sometimes descending, as if to
balk the steps of the persecutors when, engaged in their task, they press upon
the crowd of the faithful by whom their approach had been heard. To right and
left the face of the wall is pierced by oblong horizontal niches, 'like the
shelves of a library, each shelf forming a burial-place, which served,
according to its depth, for one or more bodies. As soon as the burial-place was
filled, the ledge was closed by blocks of marble, bricks, or whatever material
chance threw in the way of these -persecuted workmen. Here and there these
long corridors opened into chapels, in which the mysteries were celebrated, or
upon chambers in which the catechumens received their instruction and penitents
made their expiation.
We must give
immediate proof that these great works were really those of the early Christian
centuries, the ages of persecution. Of this we have evidence in the writings of
Prudentius and St. Jerome, who both descended there more than once to honour
the sepulchres of the martyr's, and spoke of the place as much with awe as
with admiration. St. Jerome, when a young student at Rome, in the zeal of his
soul, descended every Sunday into these bowels of the earth, and tells us that
these occasions always recalled the word of the prophet, Descendunt ad infernum
viventes, and the line of Yirgil—
Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent;
a mingling of
the great traditions of the faith with secular associations which shows the
double nature of the education bestowed upon Jerome and his contemporaries.*
In fact, at
first sight, the works of the Catacombs show traces of the effects of terror
and necessity ; but on a closer inspection, they appear full of eloquence, and
had the monuments of architecture no other object but that of instructing and
moving the hearts of men, no construction in the world would afford such mighty
and terrible lessons. For when we have penetrated these depths of the earth, we
learn perforce that which is life’s great lesson—the severance of one’s self
from what is visible, and even from that light itself whereby all things are
visible. The places of burial close in upon the whole, as death envelopes life;
and even the oratories which open here and there to right and left are like so
many days opening upon immortality to console man in some measure for the night
in which he is living here. Thus did architecture achieve there all that it was
destined to achieve in after times, in instructing, in moving, and in pervading
everything.
Let those
then who, when young, wander out on their pilgrimages of travel descend into
these vast caverns, and tell us on their return if they did not find emotions
there that none of the great constructions of antiquity, neither the remnants
of the Coliseum, nor of the Parthenon, nor of any other of the buildings which
seemed to have been destined to immortality, could ever produce.
But this was
not all, for these oratories were covered with paintings, which were often of
the rudest nature.
* St. Hieronym. in Ezechielem, c. 40.
There were
but few great artists amongst the Christians of the early centuries, amongst
those poor plebeians whom Christianity preferred. The Apelles and Par- rhasius
of the time remained in the service of Nero, and decorated his golden horse. It
was the poverty- stricken refuse which descended there, and yet something
superhuman betrayed itself amidst the weakness and powerlessness of a degraded
art. On descending, indeed, into those Catacombs, which appear to have been dug
in the remotest centuries, we can recognize the faithfully observed tradition
of the arts of antiquity, and find paintings which may be said, without exaggeration,
to show some remant of the old beauty, without any evidence of that decline of
the Eoman art which was not strongly pronounced until the second century. Thus
the paintings themselves bear witness to the antiquity of the walls on which
they were traced, and to beliefs which they demonstrate; and it was, in fact,
impossible for the nascent Christian art not to reproduce, in many respects,
the traditions of art as they existed in the classic epoch. Some pagans, like
the Scipios, had possessed painted and even subterranean burial-places, in
which they were accustomed to bury the dead of the family, after the manner of
the Christians. In the tombs of the Scipios, the Nasos, and others, paintings
and cheerful designs, such as of flowers, animals, Yictories, and genii, have
been found spread over the walls, as if to enliven the sadness of death. What
wonder if the humble diggers (fossores), as they were called, who were the
first to decorate the Christian burial-places and chapels, reproduced in many
ways the processes, figures, and subjects of the ancient artists ? It was thus
that the same allegorical figures,
which often
seemed only fit for Paganism, such as Victories, or winged genii, adorned
several Christian tombs ; as, for instance, the three paintings of the cemetery
of St. Callistus, in which we find the figure of Orpheus represented after the
ancient manner. But the wisdom of the Church, ever watchful over the simple
ignorance of her poor workmen, was careful to develop the symbol, to purify it,
and give it a novel significance. She achieved the same for art that she had
achieved for language; it was necessary that she should adopt the ancient
tongue, but in doing so she had given to the ancient terms a new sense, which
was destined to add a fresh fertility to eloquence. Orpheus figured amongst
these Christian types; but, according to St. Clement of Alexandria, he figured
there as an image of Christ, who also attracted all hearts, and stirred the
coldest rocks of the desert, and the fiercest beasts of the field ; as he
figured later in the Christian art of every century down to the time of
Calderon, who gave to one of the most admirable of his Autos Sacramentales the
title of the Divine Orpheus. Likewise, archaeologists have good reason in
affirming that the figure of the Good Shepherd, which the painters of the
Catacombs represented on the archivolt of their oratories, was copied from the
antique.
The ancients
used often to represent pastoral employments in their places of burial and
elsewhere ; and amongst those graceful pictures in which the painting and
sculpture of antiquity delighted, none was more pleasing than that of the young
shepherd bearing a kid on his shoulder. The Christians in their turn adopted
for their sepulchres this figure of the shepherd, with the chlamys and the
complete details of his costume,
and placed on
his shoulder the traditional kid; for the ignorant artist, unfaithful to the
text of the Gospel, which speaks of a lamb, generally copied exactly from the
ancient picture, without troubling himself as to conformity with Scripture.
This is the
account given by the archaeologists, but it is a somewhat exaggerated
interpretation, and we shall see how a deeper and more enlightened criticism
can throw sudden light upon an obscure point and bring out all the significance
and beauty of a symbol.
It happened
that at the very moment in which the Christians were digging the Catacombs of
St. Callistus at Rome, at the end of the second century, there was a question
in the Church as to one of the gravest points which she has ever mooted, as to
whether the promise of pardon to the sinner had been made for once or for many
times, and whether the lapsed could be admitted to penance. A considerable
sect, the Montanists, presided over by the most illustrious of the seceders
from orthodoxy, namely Tertullian, maintained that pardon was only extended to
him who had sinned once, but not to the man who had fallen again ; that the
good shepherd bears upon his shoulders the strayed sheep indeed, but not the
goat, which at the day of judgment would be placed on the left of the judge,
whilst only the sheep would be seen on his right. The Christians pointed, in
objection, to the parable of the good shepherd, whereupon he answered, with
bitterness, that the shepherd had gone in quest of the sheep, but he could
nowhere find that he had sought for the goat; and in his work, “ De Pudicitia,”
he reproached the Bishop of Rome with going in search of goats
instead of
confining his attention to strayed sheep. It was then that the merciful
instinct of the Church gave a loving and lofty answer to the pitiless men who
refused pardon to the weakness which fell once and had fallen again, and caused
the good shepherd to be painted in the Catacombs, no longer with the lamb alone
on his shoulders, but with a goat, with that type of the sinner who seemed lost
for ever, but whom the shepherd notwithstanding brings back in triumph on his
shoulders. And thus in the place in which some have only seen an error of a
workman, an awkward copy of the antique, is unfolded a charming mystery of
grace and mercy.
Around this
picture of the good shepherd, which generally fills the keystone of the vault
of the Catacombs, are arranged four compartments, separated from one another
by arches of flower designs. These generally contain paintings of four sacred
subjects, two taken from the Old and two from the New Testament, put in
apposition for the purpose of comparison and parallel. These subjects scarcely
vary. The most frequently represented have been about twenty in number, and
this has been attributed to poverty of genius in the artists of the time, who
could never get beyond a small circle of conventional models. Yet, if we
examine the subjects, we find that they are not always identical, that they
follow no absolute type, but are treated with a certain freedom. Some of the
representations, as, for instance, that of the original fall, vary singularly,
according to their artists and their dates, and it is evident that the
restricted number of subjects is owing to the need of symbolizing thereby a
certain number of dogmas, to their symbolical nature, and to their
possessing a
deeper meaning than that which they express. Thus, the serpent placed between
our two first parents expresses sin ; the water running from the rocks
represents baptism; Moses bringing down manna from heaven symbolizes the
Eucharist; the figure of the paralytic healed and bearing his pallet on his
back points to penance ; that of Lazarus expresses the idea of the
resurrection; whilst the three children in the furnace, Jonas cast into the
sea, and Daniel in the lions’ den, symbolize martyrdom under its three principal
forms, by fire, by water, and by wild beasts. But it is remarkable that reference
was always made to the triumphant martyrs who had been crowned of God, and
never, except in the case of St. Hippolytus, to those who were contemporary. It
was not till some age afterwards that the Christians traced some pictures of
their martyrs in the Catacombs, but the Christians of the times of persecution,
those men whom Tacitus had branded as the horror and shame of the human race,
never chose to depict what they had suffered themselves, or the tortures they
had seen inflicted upon their fathers, their children, and their wives. This
fact surely demands our admiration, that, whilst pagan art was wallowing in the
grossest and most odious realism, and whilst, in order to stir the senses of
those worn-out men, it was necessary to burn a slave at the close of the
tragedy of “ Hercules on Mount 2Eta,” or to outrage a woman on^the stage in the
course of some play by Euripides, whilst this same realism held every Roman
theatre, and reigned throughout the triumphant city which queened it over the
world, those few poor and detested men, without influence, hidden beneath the
earth in places where they could hear, strictly
speaking,
the yells of the crowd, whose cry was 4 4 the Christians to the
lions,” could only give us as a type the martyrdom of antiquity, but never that
which they were suffering themselves, or figures of the resurrection, and
other graceful, amiable, and touching symbols, thus affording us at once the
finest example of an art which loves not materialism, and of a charity which
can pardon and forget. *
The Catacombs
had not afforded an asylum to architecture and painting alone, although
sculpture necessarily found less place there as being the special art of
Paganism. The representations of the gods were less often in pictures than
statues, and therefore sculpture did not now find such favour as painting.
Doubtless we find it employed from the earliest times to help out words in the
inscriptions which were placed upon the tombs. Often did a sign, a
hieroglyphic, or a symbol, lightly traced with the point of a chisel, tell
moi;e than many lines from the hand of the most skilful poet, who would have
sought to express the grief of those who were left, or the faith of those who
had been taken. Already had the ancients beautifully expressed the frailty of
human life by a flower upon the tomb, or the rapidity of the days of man by a
ship under sail; and the Christians adopted these signs with that excellent
spirit and admirable good sense of the nascent Church, which, as we have
already seen from the history of literature and of philosophy, took from
antiquity all its beauty and its worth.
And
in adapting these signs the Church added new ones, and gave consolation in
death after her own manner by placing on the tombs the dove with the branch as
a type of hope and of immortality; the ark VOL. II. 10
of
Noah instead of the common bark, as the ark which gathers mankind into a place
of safety, and bears it over the abyss; and, lastly, the fish, as the mystic
sign of Christ, because the Greek word com
* prised the five initials of the various
names by which He was designated.* The latter sign had been agreed upon among
Christians; had served as a rallying signal and means of mutual recognition;
whilst the fish also expressed the believer who had been dipped in the waters
of baptism. Thus a certain burial-place, the inscription of which has been
preserved, bore no verse, nor even a word in prose, which could in any way
point to the dead, but only showed the fish and the five miraculous loaves. Yet
it was eloquent, for it said, here lies a man who has been baptized and has
tasted the miraculous bread of the eucharist, and afforded thus a forcible and
expressive epitaph. Sometimes words came in as an auxiliary, and sometimes with
a graceful simplicity, as in the case of that plain inscription, tottos ^iXyi/xovos.
Sometimes a word of tenderness and gentleness appeared on the tomb of a child,
Glorentius felix agnellus Dei; or at others the fear of the judgment of God is
expressed with a terrible exclamation, as in the inscription of the father of
Benirosus, Domine, ne quando adumbratur spiritus veneris.
Lastly, the
inscription in verse burst forth and spread over these sepulchres, and the true
poetry in rhyme set its seal upon the stones of the Catacombs. The following
verses relating to a child of four years old, though of an extreme rudeness,
are remarkable from the classic association which they perpetuate :
* Irja-ovs
Xpia-Tos, Qeov vios, 2a>Tr]p.
Hie jacet infelix proprio Cicercula nomen
Innocens. qui vix semper in pace quiescat,
Cui cum bis binos natura ut compleret annos,
Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo.
Certainly one
could not expect to find a line of Virgil at the close of these Christian but
barbarous verses. But these tattered memories of antiquity apart, everything
then was popular and even coarse. We must not wonder at the multitude of faults
in orthography and grammar, nor at the number of Latin words written in Greek
characters, nor the many other solecisms and barbarisms of which these
inscriptions are so full. It was in this very thing that the glory of that
ignorant, coarse, and impoverished people lay; it was thus, moreover, that they
were destined to triumph over the rich and powerful class above their heads,
who inhabited the gilded places beneath which they dug their burial-places. No
doubt, had these Christian stones with their verses been brought to the
rhetoricians of Rome, they would have shrugged their shoulders and asked how
miserable Galilaeans who wrote so badly could dream of reforming the human
race. Yet it was from the depths of those cemeteries and the poetry of those
tombs that the new art was to proceed which would change the intellectual
aspect of the world.
It would be
our proper task to look for the destiny of art at the precise epoch of which we
are treating, that is, after the period of the Catacombs, but it was necessary
first to trace out its roots. It was, in fact, after Christian art had emerged
from the Catacombs, and after the era of persecutions had closed, that it was
seen to develop with more liberty and variety; that its branches detached
themselves, though still being nourished by the same sap and covered with the
same ' 10 *
flowers.
Sculpture was still supervised and restrained, for it was natural that
suspicion should hover round the sculptor at a time when it was so difficult to
preserve him from the perilous seduction exercised over his mind by the old
images of Jupiter. Yet we must hesitate to believe that this art was forbidden
in the early ages of Christendom. We find a statue of St. Hippolytus, in the
time of the persecutions, of incon- testible authenticity and of as early date
as the third century, which is now placed in the library of the Vatican. There
are also statues of St. Peter and of the Good Shepherd, which date from the
earliest Christian times. But it was especially in bas-relief and the
decoration of sarcophagi that sculpture placed its career and found its
liberty. It generally represented therein the same subjects from the two Testaments
that we have remarked in the Catacombs; and the aim likewise was to render
through symbols and figures the chief mysteries of the Christian faith.
However, some novel subjects were added, as is shown by the admirable but
unfinished studies upon the Christian sarcophagi of the fourth and fifth
centuries. A great number of these are to be found in the Vatican; but they
should be compared with those at Ravenna, and the fine collection already made
of them at Arles ; Rome, Ravenna, and Arles being the three great Imperial
cities during the fifth century, the latter for some time the capital of the
Gauls, having succeeded Treves in that dignity. In each of these towns a
different school of Christian sculpture was formed, all possessing common
rules, but each claiming a peculiar originality. The same subjects were not
equally popular in each place; at Arles, for instance, we find the passage of
the Red Sea
treated as
often as three times in the sarcophagi of St. Trophimus. The breadth, scope,
and life of these point to the skill of a practised chisel, and are imitations
of the finest battle-pieces upon the ancient bas-reliefs. At Arles, again, we
may find historical subjects which are to be met with nowhere else; as, for
instance, two warriors kneeling before Christ like Constantine before, the
Labarum, which signified the recognition of religious truth by the temporal
power, and the submission to truth by the bearer of the sword; an expressive
and simple image of a leading fact of the epoch in which the temporal authority
was bending the knee before the truth which it had so often persecuted. We may
content ourselves with pointing to the presence of these great schools of
sculpture which found disciples in the other great cities of Italy and Gaul,
for we find Christian sarcophagi at Parma, Milan, and on the shores of the
Rhine, which, though of not an equal merit, do not the less bear witness to a
condition of the art which merits study. We must not, as has been too often the
case, hasten to judge of the sculpture of these times by the triumphal arch of
Constantine at Rome, or say that, as but four or five bas-reliefs of real merit
can be found there, which themselves had been pillaged from earlier monuments,
it stands as proof of the impotence of the contemporary artists, who were
incapable themselves of producing anything worthy of examination. It is true
that the frieze has been covered with the most disproportionate figures, from
which all the sculpture of the fourth and fifth centuries has been judged, but
was it not a period when court artists might under the favouring caprice of the
prince crowd
the place
which should have been filled by the works of true merit with their coarse and
miserable performances ? Does not every epoch show the same inequality in
talent ? Is not the temple of Phigalia with its rude carvings exactly
contemporaneous with the Parthenon upon which are displayed the unrivalled
compositions of Phidias ? However, side by side with those trivial works which
disgrace the monument which bears them, we possess sarcophagi of incontestable
beauty, and there are several amongst those at Ravenna which testify to a
great purity of conception. Accordingly we cannot doubt that sculpture had not
perished, but was defending itself, preparatory to a difficult journey across
the dark ages, and if we lay to the account of this art the capitals of our
pillars, the fagades and the portals of our cathedrals, we shall gain some idea
of what it was destined to achieve.
Following
sculpture and enjoying greater favour, came painting, and if some were
scandalized at the number not only of sacred but of profane figures with which
it was the fashion to embellish the churches, the custom was defended by the
greatest minds of the time. It is hard to conceive how it can be stated that
the employment of images was a novelty in the Church, when all the writings of
the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries were filled with witnessings to
the religious use of images, and the place -they had in the decoration of all
the basilicas, whether in the East or West, with the exception of a certain
number of provinces, as for instance Judaea, where it was feared they might
offend the prejudices of the Jews. But in spite of this, the evidence is
unanimous, and in the fifth century we find letters written by the anchorite
St. Nilus to
Olympiodorus, the praetorian prefect, praising his intention of decorating the
basilica which he had just founded with paintings. We have also some letters in
verse, a kind of poem, of St. Paulinus, in which he explained the ornament with
which he had enriched the church at Nola, and described the pictures which he
caused to be drawn upon the porticoes.
Such is the
proof and also the justification of the use of painting in the Christian basilicas.
This art also was to be perpetuated in times which seemed the most unfavourable
to it, as is shown by the innumerable Byzantine Virgins that are to be seen
throughout Italy, pictures that are very ancient and often nearly effaced, and
which may be recognized still at St. Urbano della Cafarella, near Rome, in the
subterranean church of St. Peter, in St. Caecilia, in the church of the Four
Crowned Saints, and in that of St. Laurence, which contains a succession of
pictures dating from the eighth to the thirteenth century ; of the time, that
is to say, in which the art was supposed to have been entirely extinct. The
genius of painting scarcely appeared, indeed, in these generally coarse
attempts; but it was not entirely eclipsed, and reappeared under another form
in the mosaics with which the churches were adorned from the fifth to the
thirteenth century; for it was in 424 that Pope Celestine I. ornamented in that
manner the church of St. Sabina. In 433, Sixtus III. caused those which still,
exist, after fourteen hundred years, in the basilica of St. Mary Major, to be
executed; and thus that representation of the bloodless Cross decked with
precious stones, with the figure of the Virgin beneath, the history of the
infancy of Christ around, and the twenty scenes from the history of the
Old Testament
at its side, dates entirely from the time of that Pope. Little by little this
mosaic work crept into all the great Roman basilicas, such as St. Peter and St.
Paul; and, at length, in the capital of the Christian world, and in the great
cities of'Italy, Milan, Ravenna, Yerona, and Venice, the apses of the churches
were filled with that imposing and resplendent delineation of Christ and the
heavenly Jerusalem which glowed so brightly, as if to reanimate the hopes of
the faithful amidst the perils of those ensanguined centuries.
The mosaic
filled the whole Romanesque period, survived until the rise of the Gothic, and
soon gained possession of the ogival arcades of the churches built by the
Normans in Sicily; thus at Monreale and in the Palatine chapel of Palermo, the
traditional figures of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints still shine after the
conception of the artists who were contemporary with Constantine and
Theodosius. So obstinate was the prevalent fidelity to the ancient types that
it extended even to borrowing images from antiquity, and we may cite this as
one of the knots which bound the time of which we are treating to the Middle
Age; in the baptistery of Ravenna, for instance, the Jordan was represented after
the pagan fashion, under the form of a river-god, crowned with marine plants,
and leaning upon his urn, whence the streams gushed forth which formed the
sacred wave in which the Redeemer was plunged. This imitation was so inveterate
that it was ceaselessly reproduced. At Venice, again, the four Evangelists were
accompanied by the four rivers of the terrestrial paradise, to which they
answered in the symbolical language of the Church, the streams being
here
also covered with seaweed and leaning upon their urns. Charlemagne was
scandalized at this, and lamented in the Caroline works that in the midst of
the sacred pictures rivers had been represented under pagan emblems; but
Charlemagne could not get rid of them, and we may still, in the cathedral of
Autun and the church of Vezelay, see the streams of the earthly paradise
depicted under the form of classic deities supported on their recumbent urns. .
But painting
and sculpture were still only subsidiary to architecture, which, in primitive
ages, is always the dominant art. And, in fact, to tell the truth, these
bas-reliefs, frescoes, and mosaics could only form the monumental accessories
of an edifice which would be capable of sustaining and grouping them into a
system which would have a precise and extensive meaning, and would afford them
the means of truly instructing and touching the hearts of men. This is hardly
the place in which to unfold the history of Christian architecture from its
rise in the Catacombs, or to trace out exhaustively the first origin of the
basilicas. We may shortly state, however, that that origin seems to have been
of a double nature. On the one hand, the first churches seem to have been
nothing but a development, and, if we may so express it, a germination of the
sepulchral chapels of the Catacombs. Those chapels were square, or round, or
polygonal, and nearly always terminated by a vault surmounted by a dome.
Gradually they were divided into four compartments. When the persecuted
Christians, those glorious members of the Church, escaped from their obscurity,
it seemed as if their sepulchres burst through the earth, raised themselves
over it, and formed its crown; for the first
10 t
chapels, the
first Christian tombs, and the first baptisteries which were constructed upon
the face of the earth, instead of being hidden within its depths, all affected
that form. The baptisteries were round, and so were the first Christian
burial-places, as, for instance, the baptistery of St. John Lateran at Rome,
the tomb of St. Constance, also at Rome, built by Constantine for his sister
and other illustrious members of his family, and we may also cite the cathedral
of Brescia, which is a rotunda. In the East, that form was destined to prevail
and to form the cupola; for already the Church of the Holy Apostles,
constructed by Constantine, showed a cupola crowning the intersection of a
Greek cross. In the case of St. Sophia, the cupola was developed still more,
until it extended on every side, and, in some measure, absorbed the limbs of
the cross, thus forming the special Byzantine type which was to remain peculiar
to the East.
But another
and not less incontestable origin was that derived from the use made by the
Christians of the old Roman basilicas. Athens had possessed a portico, named
the Kingly Porch, which had served for the audiences of the archon king, and
Rome had imitated this architecture. In the arcades wherein justice was
administered was comprised a building styled a basilica. This was a vast
palace, divided into three naves by colonnades placed tier upon tier, and at
the end was the tribunal occupied by the judge and his assessors. When
Christianity had expanded and grown powerful, it did not desire to borrow from
antiquity its temples, for they were too small; but it borrowed its basilicas.
It is thus that the churches of Tyre and Jerusalem, of which we have the
description ; those of St. Peter and
St. John
Lateran, built by Constantine; that of St. Paul, founded by Theodosius ; and,
lastly, the Basilica of Nola, of which St. Paulinus has given us an account,
were all constructed.
But we do not
exactly understand all that was signified by a church in these early Christian
ages. It was not simply a place to which a hasty visit of a half hour was made
once a week for the accomplishment of a pious duty. The church was bound to
embrace every portion of the Christian society, and to be the image and
representation of the universal Church of the earth in its whole hierarchy from
the bishop to the humblest penitent. Thus the bishop’s throne was placed in the
apse; around it were ranged the benches of his clergy, to right and left;
separated in the two naves, lying north and south, were the men and women, who
were admitted to participation in the mysteries; at the extreme end of the
principal nave was the place for the catechumens and some of the penitents ;
and, lastly, in the atrium, the vestibule, and the arcaded court which
separated the church from the street, were stationed the penitents of lower
degree, and another portion of the catechumens. Thus all in their previously
assigned positions occupied a similar place in the sacred building to that
which they filled in the designs of Providence. Moreover, the Church was bound
to instruct men and to attract them, that they might go forth informed and
touched, desirous too of returning as to a place in which they had found truth,
goodness, and beauty. Accordingly the church was covered with symbolical
pictures, with lessons written beneath them in verse ; every wall spoke, as in
the case of the beautiful frescoes which we have seen painted on those of St.
Germain des
Pres, and there was no stone there which had not something to teach to mankind.
So with that mingling of architecture, of painting, and of inscriptions,
multiplied occasionally to such an extent that in St. Mark, at Yenice, there is
a whole poem of two hundred and fifty verses on the walls. The church contained
a theology, a rule, and a sacred poem. It was after this manner that the
basilica of the first Christian ages was conceived, and it was thus that it was
repeated and reproduced until it became the dominant system of the West.
Nevertheless
the East and the West were not without connection, and during the whole period
which separated Charlemagne and Constantine, there was no breach between these
rival and often jealous sections of the Church. Hence we find many mutual
exchanges and adaptations; the Byzantine cupola invaded the West and was
annexed in Northern Italy to the ordinary type of the Roman basilicas. The
style thus formed, which has been named Romanesque, Lombard, ’ and inaccurately
Byzantine, was continued on the banks of the Rhine, and still shows excellent
specimens at Spires, Worms, Mayence, and Cologne. Those fine churches of the
tenth and eleventh centuries confound us by their grandeur and solemnity.
Their form was always that of the Roman basilica, with its body divided into
three naves, but with the cupola crowning the centre of the cross, and
sometimes the apse itself.
Lastly came
the Gothic period, having less to effect than • has been supposed, for the
Romano-Byzantine architecture had already pushed farther and raised higher than
had been dared by the contemporaries of
Constantine
and Theodosius, every portion of the sacred building, especially in those great
buildings of the Rhineland, with their infinite wealth of detail, their
belfries which rose towards heaven on every side, and their towers which seemed
to defy all that antiquity had told of the giants. Gothic architecture was
destined to a last effort, like one rising from the dead who would strive to
raise the lid of his sepulchre and end by breaking it. So the Gothic, in
labouring to raise the Byzantine arch, broke it in the midst, and the pointed
style was formed. With it broke forth that architectural system whose marvels
mayhap are yet neither known nor admired enough; for although Rheims and
Chartres are at our sides, we seem to ignore them. We now go to the Parthenon
and say that we have never seen the like; whereas marvels of a different
grandeur and variety, and equally immortal, lie around us. However, this Gothic
architecture was still only the development of the Christian basilica as it had
been moulded in the fifth century; and a near inspection will show the same
disposition and the recurring idea of the keel (navis) of the vessel; and, in
fact, this nave and this vessel imitated the ark of Noah, of which the
Scripture spoke. But the arch of the thirteenth century has so extended the
cross that it was necessary to support it by buttresses—things unknown to the
ancients. Their weight was concealed by their number; they were multiplied,
lightened, and diminished, until they appeared as so many cables extended to
bind to the earth the heavenly bark, which otherwise would escape, sail away,
and disappear. *
Such was the
origin of the Gothic architecture, and it points also to the origin of the
Revival; but we see
that the
Revival preferred the rounder form and the cupola which was so dear to the
Byzantines. The new St. Peter’s, which was then reared upon the ruins of the
older church, was but another mighty effort to raise still higher into the air
the dome which already swelled over St. Sophia, St. Yitalis at Ravenna, and St.
Mark at Venice; only the new shrine was to be greater and vaster than had ever
been seen. It was to soar higher than had ever been reached ; for beneath it
was a generating tomb—one of those burial-places that are always full of life;
one of those germs that are ever shooting forth—and which, beneath the obscure
basilica which had veiled it, had laboured ceaselessly to shape the walls which
it found too strait. Above it now is suspended the loftiest dome that has ever
been built, nearly equalling the height of Egypt’s greatest pyramid, which is,
after all, but a masterpiece of materialism, a mass of piled up masonry;
whereas great waves of light and life ebb and flow beneath the arches of St.
Peter’s. Its stones are instinct with spirit, and, borne into the air by the
hands of faith, they command the neighbouring mountains. You start from the
lowest step of the basilica and your view is cramped; you mount the endless
stairs, and, at last, above the church and its cupola, you find the platform
and see from thence the hills sink down and disappear on the plain; and over
them you may perceive the sea, a sight never gazed upon by Romans in their
triumphs from the heights of the Capitol.
CHAPTER IX.
THE MATERIAL CIVILIZATION OF THE EMPIRE.
We know How the
ideas which formed the spirit of the Roman civilization escaped the ruin of the
Empire, traversed the barbaric period, and descended to the mediaeval epoch, of
which they became at one time the beacon light, at another the scandal. We have
also noticed the marvel of wisdom and accommodation by which Christianity saved
the feeble remnants of the ancient worship, the greater part of literature, and
the whole legal system. Meanwhile, however, the baneful influences of Paganism
subsisted in the popular superstitions and occult sciences, in the policy of
the princes who busied themselves in reconstructing the absolutism of the
Caesars in their own interests, and those mythological fables which were ever
relished, and which tended to propagate the poison of the ancient licentiousness.
Thus were perpetuated the two traditions of good and evil ,* thus a double bond
linked the ages which history has vainly separated; and thus was strengthened
that wholesome but terrible law of reversibility which causes us to reap the
fruit of the merits of our forefathers and to bear the burden of their faults.
But beneath
the current of ideas which dispute the empire of the world lies that world
itself such as labour
has made it,
with that treasure of wealth and visible adornment which • render it worthy of
being the transient sojourn-place of immortal souls. Beneath the true, the
good, and the beautiful, lies the useful, which is brightened by their
reflection. No people has ever more keenly appreciated the idea of utility than
that of Rome; none has ever laid upon the earth a hand more full of power, or more
capable of transforming it, nor more profusely flung the treasures of earth at
the feet of humanity. So we must also closely examine what may be styled the
material civilization of the Empire, that we may know whether it also perished
entirely at the time of the invasions, or, if not, how much of it was stored up
for the ages to come.
At the close
of the second century, before the barbarians had carried fire and sword across
the frontiers, the rhetorician Aristides celebrated, in the following terms, the
greatness of the Roman Empire :—• “ Romans, the whole world beneath your
dominion seems to be keeping a day of festival. From time to time a sound of
battle comes to you from the ends of the earth, where you are repelling the
Goth, the Moor, or the Arab. But soon that sound is dispersed like a dream.
Other are the rivalries and different the conflicts which you excite throughout
the universe. They are combats of glory, rivalries in magnificence between
provinces and cities. Through you gymnasia, aqueducts, porticoes, temples, and
schools are multiplied ; the very soil revives, and earth is but one vast
garden.”* Similar also was the language of the stern Tertullian :—“ In truth,
the world becomes day by da
* Aristides,
Romse Encomium, oratio xiv.
richer and
more cultivated; even the islands are no longer solitudes, the rocks have no
more terrors for the navigator; everywhere there are habitations, population,
law, and life.” In fact, we are at once struck by the life which animated every
quarter of the Empire, and, therefore, every corner of the world; life which
was sustained by commerce, the greatness of which lies in its faculty of thus
carrying the sovereignty of man over every sea and every land. The trade of
Rome flowed necessarily towards the East and the North, and in the East she had
inherited the ideas as well as the conquests of Alexander. The Greeks had
penetrated Asia by two great routes—one by land, the other by sea; the first
led by the colonies on the Euxine, the Tauric Chersonese, Olbia, and Theodosia.
From these places, and from Armenia, they reached Media, Hyrcania, and
Bactriana, in which last a Grecian dynasty had sustained itself for a thousand
years; and then, traversing the passes of the Imaus, gained Little Bokhara,
about the ninety-sixth degree of longitude. Here there was a caravanserai of
stone, and to it the Seri brought their silks, furs, and steel in bales, on
which the price was marked, deposited them, and departed. The buyers then came,
examined the merchandise, and, if it suited them, left the value which the Seri
had put upon it. The latter then returned, and, if satisfied with the bargain,
they left their goods, and carried off the price. It took the Seri seven
months’ march, according to Pomponius Mela, * to reach their native country of
Eastern Thibet, and those dearly-purchased stuffs were handed over to
* HuUmann
Handelsgeschiclite der Griechen.
workwomen,
who unwove them in order to give them a finer texture : ut matronce publice
transluceant.*
The principal
sea route open to ancient commerce was that by Alexandria. Ptolemy Philadelphus
had formed ports upon the Red Sea, and under the Romans 120 ships sailed yearly
from Myos Amos, weighing anchor generally at the island of Pattala, at the
mouth of the Indus, though a small number pushed their enterprise to the port
of Palibothra, at the mouth of the Ganges. They kept close to the shore of the
mainland and of the island of Ceylon. The vessels employed in the commerce of
the Indus carried there fifty million sesterces every year, but the merchandise
they brought back sold for a hundred times as much. It comprised silk, cotton,
colouring materials, pearls and jewels, ivory, steel of superior quality,
lions, leopards, panthers, and slaves, all this mass of wealth being disembarked
at Puteoli.
To the North,
however, every facility for trade was the creation of Rome herself. Her legions
had constructed the roads which furrowed mountains, leaped over marshes, and
crossed so many different provinces with a like solidity, regularity, and
uniformity, and the various races were lost in admiration at the mighty works
which were attributed in after times to Caesar, to Brunehaut, or to Abelard.
There were two routes from Rome to the Danube, one by Aquileium and Lau-
riacum, another by Yerona and Augsburg. Another way ran from the Black Sea
along the course of that river and joined Yienna, Passau, Ratisbon, Augsburg,
Winterthur, Basle, Strasburg, Bonn, Cologne, Leyden,
* A native
of Cos, named Pamphila, had first conceived the idea of unravelling silk stuffs
in order to reweave them.
and Utrecht.
The Rhine and the Meuse were linked by a canal; another was destined to reach
the Saone, and thus the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic were
brought into communication. Beyond, again, lay conquered Britain, divided into
five provinces and covered with a network of roads, which ended at the wall of
Hadrian. From these northern regions the Roman merchants gained tin, amber,
rich furs, and the fair tresses which adorned the heads of patrician matrons.
But at length the barbarians came down over all this, and it seemed as if the
links which bound the world were snapping. However, a connection was maintained
between Italy and Constantinople. The capital of the Eastern Empire formed a
place of refuge for the Frankish kings whom their subjects had rejected, or for
the chiefs who were persecuted by the kings. Childeric, Gondowald, Gontran Duke
of Auvergne found a retreat there ;* and on the other hand Syrians were found
at Orleans,! and a Syrian named Eusebius even purchased the episcopal see of
Paris.I Moreover, the luxury which Roman commerce had produced was not unknown
to the West in the Carlo- vingian period. The Franks found at Pavia silk
clothes of every colour, and foreign furs of all sorts, brought thither by the
merchants of Venice from the treasures of the East, and the following anecdote,
* Histoire
de la Gaule Meridionale (Fauriel); Recits Mero- vingiens (Augustine Thierry).
f Gregor}'- of Tours, in describing the solemn entry of King Gontran into
Orleans, says, “ Et hinc lingua Syrorum, hinc' Latmorum, hinc etiam ipsorum
Judaeorum in diversis laudibus varie concrepabunt,” lib. viii. 1.
I Raguemodus quoque Parisaecae urbis episcopus
obiit, Eusebius quidam negotiator genere Syrus, datis multis muneribus in
locum ejus subrogatus est.—Oreg. Turon. x. 26.
related by
the monk of St. Gall, shows that Oriental garments were in fashion even at the
court of Charlemagne. “ On a certain feast day after mass, Charles took his
chief courtiers out hunting. The day was cold and rainy, and the emperor wore a
sheepskin coat; but the courtiers who had just come from Pavia, whither the
Venetians had recently brought all the riches of the Orient from countries
beyond the sea, were clad, after their fashion on holy days, in robes covered
with the feathers of Phoenician birds, trimmed with silk and the downy feathers
tof the neck and tail of the peacock, and adorned with Tyrian purple and
fringes of cedar bark; upon some shone embroidered stuffs, upon others the fur
of dormice. In this array they rode through the woods, and so they returned
torn by the branches of trees, thorns, and brambles, drenched with rain, and
stained with the blood of wild beasts and the exhalations from their hides.
‘Let none of us,’ said the mischievous Charles, ‘ change our clothes until the
time of going to rest, for they will dry quicker upon us.’ Immediately every
one became more occupied with the body than its covering, and looked about for
a fire at which to get warm. But in the evening, when they began to doff the
fine furs and delicate stuffs which had shrivelled and shrunk at the fire,
these fell to pieces with a sound like the breaking of dry sticks. The poor
wretches groaned and lamented at having lost so much money in a single day. But
they had been ordered by the emperor to present themselves before him on the
following day in the same apparel. They did so ; but all, instead of making a
brilliant show in their fine new clothes, caused disgust at their dirty and
colourless rags. Thereupon Charles said to his groom of the
chamber with
some irony, ‘Just rub my coat a little with your hands, and bring it back to
me.’ Then taking in his hands the garment which had been brought back to him
clean and whole, and showing it to the bystanders, he exclaimed, ‘ 0 most
foolish of men, which of us now has the most precious and useful attire ? Is it
mine, which I bought for a single penny, or yours, which has cost you not only
pounds, but even talents of silver?’ ”*
Thus was the
tradition of commerce handed down to the Middle Age, when the Church, far from
declaring herself hostile, became eminently its protectress. Her councils
condemned piracy, and by the mouths of her pontiffs, Gregory YII., Pascal II.,
Honorius II., and Alexander III., she pronounced against the right of
shipwreck. Innocent III., again, obliged a Seigneur de Montfort, who had
pillaged some Italian merchantmen, to make restitution. But she more especially
infused fresh energy, into commerce by her pilgrimages and crusades. The
former were frequent in the barbaric times, and the inhabitants of the
commercial town of Amalfi possessed a benefice at Jerusalem. The Crusades had
the double effect of drawing the population of France and Germany along the
route of the Danube, and of launching on the sea the vessels of Pisa, Genoa,
and Venice. Genoa and Venice succeeded to the Oriental commerce of Greece and
Rome,t and conducted it along the same channels. Their route to the North was
by way of Caffa and Tana, upon the Black Sea, from whence the caravans reached
Ispahan, Balk, and
* Mon. St.
Gall. lib. ii. xxvii.
f Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’ltalia, t. iv.;
Heeren, Essai sur l’lnfluence des Croisades.
Bokhara;
whilst the way to the South lay by Alexandria, where were stored the cargoes
from India. But Christian proselytism was destined to surmount the barriers at
which the cupidity of Rome had paused. The mission of Carpinus was to pave the
way for the researches of Marco Polo, and Christopher Columbus was to discover
America, whilst striving to place the wealth of Asia at the service of a new
crusade.
Rome owed the
methods by which she gathered in the fruits of the earth to herself alone.
Agriculture was indeed the glory of a people which took its dictators from the
plough, and whose greatest poem, the “ Georgies,” was the epopee of the fields.
We must not confound that admirable work with the didactic poetry of the
literature of the Decline, for it was due to an entirely new inspiration, and
Virgil, in the place of a golden era, sang of an age of iron :—
Labor omnia vincit Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas;
And caused
the genius of his country to pass into his verses—
Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini,
Hanc Remus et frater; sic fortis Etruria
crevit,
Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma.
Moreover, the
agricultural system, which was their boast at home, was carried by the Romans
to the end of that world which the issue of their conflicts had given them:
JRomanus sedendo vincit. In their eyes the frontiers of the Empire were deemed
more efficiently protected by a line of harvests than by a wall of stone.
Accordingly, military colonies were established by Trajan among the Dacians ;
by Alexander Severus,
Probus, and
Valentinian on the German frontier; all of which were provided with cattle and
slaves, and exempted from the tribute. Thus the crops which seemed destined to
tempt the barbarians really served to ward them off. Eoman establishments were
placed on the northern coasts of Gaul and on the remotest promontories of
Finisterre, and Germany bears witness still to the agriculture of the Empire in
the form of the plough now used by the peasantry of Baden, and in the vineyards
first planted by Probus on the hills that overhang the Rhine.
Yet it was
Rome herself, through the detestable fiscal system of the emperors and the
opulence of the aristocracy, that first sapped the foundations of this magnificent
system. The immense domains (latifundia perdidere Italiam), entirely abandoned
to slaves on the one hand and the exactions of the tribute on the other, were
alike fatal to it. The peasant properly so called passed over to the Bagaudes
and the barbarians. At length the Northern hordes swept down upon the Empire ;
half or two-thirds of the land was demanded by the invaders ; but they still
retained the Roman coloni.
Legions of
volunteers, however, were formed as time went on, to assist these cultivators
in their forced labour. A young man of Latium, named Benedictus, had rallied a
certain number of Christians round him, and imposed upon them a rule comprising
poverty, chastity, and obedience. These three virtues were placed under the
protection of labour, and six hours of manual toil were exacted day by day. One
day he embraced his disciple Maurus, and, giving him a certain measure of bread
and wine, sent him forth to extend
the system to
Gaul. Such was the origin of those monastic colonies whose mission was to push
the work of clearing and civilizing into the marshes of Flanders and the depths
of the Black Forest, and enlarge the limit of cultivation to the Baltic Sea.
Thus the traditions of Rome did not perish, and agriculture, like
civilization, generally flourished again under Charlemagne. The following
extract, from the “Capitularies,” shows the care of that great monarch for
husbandry, and its satisfactory condition during his reign :—“We desire that
our serfs should be kept in good estate, and that no one should reduce them to
poverty; that none of our officers should presume to attach them to their
service, to impose forced labour upon them, nor receive from them any
gift—neither a horse, an ox, a sheep, a lamb, nor anything But fruits, fowls,
and eggs. When the duty of carrying out any work upon our lands falls upon any
of our officers, either the ploughing, sowing, reaping, or gathering the
vintage, let each of them provide for everything in its proper season, that it
all may be done in order. Let them carefully train the vines committed to their
charge; let the wine be put into well-seasoned vessels, and let them be careful
that nothing be lost. In proportion to the number of farms under the
supervision of an intendant shall be the number of men allotted to him to tend
the bees. The yards of our chief farms must never produce less than a hundred
fowls and thirty geese; and the smaller ones shall nourish, at least, twelve
geese and fifty chickens. Let the utmost care be taken that all the produce of
our farms—lard, dried meats, wine, beer, butter, cheese, honey, wax, and flour,
are prepared with the greatest cleanliness. We also desire that every kind of
plant
should be
cultivated in our gardens, namely, lilies, roses, sage, cucumber, melon,
pumpkin, pea, bean, fennel, lettuce, rosemary, mint, poppy, and mallow.” * We
do not smile at the sight of a great mind thus stooping to details; for it is a
true mark of genius to embrace the small things which mediocrity despises, as
the Almighty Himself gives laws to the stars without forgetting the grain of
dust, or the hyssop, smallest of plants. Charlemagne counted his chickens as he
scolded the choristers of his chapel or the children in his palace school, and
it was thus that he was instrumental in re-establishing both the culture of
the fields and the culture of letters.
The face of
the earth was transformed by the foundation of cities, which shelter and
develop social life. Rome, as a city which had conquered the world, thought
that her surest method of preserving her dominion was by covering it with towns
like herself. Wherever her legions travelled, they bore with them an emblem of
the mother city, quasi muratam civitatem. The camp was in fact a military city,
and the Roman idea of a town was but an expansion of the permanent camp with
its square area, four gates, two intersecting streets, and the praetorium or
palace in the midst. There was, moreover, no method by which the soil could be
more thoroughly taken in possession than by thus inclosing its space, in
forcing its waters to flow through aqueducts, and its stones to rise in
.porticoes and form temples, thermae, and amphitheatres. The Empire became,
therefore, a network of towns, and the itineraries mention one hundred and
sixteen in Germany alone. Britain numbered thirty-eight, and
* Capit.
de Villis. v. 812.
vol. n. 11
Bath and
Caerleon amongst them contained theatres, palaces, and magnificent baths.
Dorchester possessed an amphitheatre, and St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, in
London, occupy respectively the sites of temples of Apollo and Diana. To these
multitudinous and magnificent centres of civilization the invasion of the
barbarians was at first most fatal. It was at the outset furious and implacable
in character, and Gildas describes how the whole island of Britain was ravaged
by fire and sword, and how solid buildings fell on every side beneath the blows
of battering rams. The Gothic provinces were invaded by the Suevi, the Alans,
and the Yandals; and Spires, Strasburg, Reims, and Mayence fell into heaps of
ruins under their hands. The imperial city of Treves, so long the abode of the
Court, where the splendours of the banks of the Tiber had been in some measure
reproduced on those of the Moselle, became a mere sepulchre. Still greater was
the ruin in Italy, and the queen-city of the world was made over to the
soldiers of Alaric, who devoted two long days to its pillage. The gardens of
Sallust were devoured by flames, and the golden tiles of the Capitol and the
bronze plates of the Pantheon were torn off by the invaders.
But when
their first fury had passed, the barbarians were touched by the majesty of
Rome, and laboured to preserve their edifices. They desired to restore what
they had injured, to study the models which they had never surpassed; and the
following letter from Cassi- dorus to the Prefect of Rome on the subject of an
architect for the public buildings shows the sincerity of this conservative
feeling :—“ It is fit,” he says, “that the beauty of the Roman monuments should
be skil-
fully
guarded, that the admirable thickness of our walls should be preserved by
strict diligence. Let your greatness know, therefore, that we have appointed an
architect for the buildings of Rome. He will behold works more beautiful than
any he has found in books or conceived in thought, statues which still bear the
living features of famous men. He will see veins running, muscles strained, and
nerves stretched in bronze. He will admire the horses of iron foaming
impetuously beneath the motionless metal. What shall be said of columns which
shoot forth like reeds; of the lofty constructions which are borne up by light
supports; or of those marbles which are so skilfully joined that nature seemed
to have cast them in a single piece ? The historian of the ages that are passed
did but^number seven wonders of the world, but who that has seen so many
surprising things in a single city can henceforth hold them as marvellous ? It
will be merely true if it is said that Rome is one great miracle.”* The
Frankish kings adopted the same policy of reparation, and we find them
inhabiting the palace of Julian, whilst Chilperic rebuilt the ruins of
Soissons.
But there
were other forces at work which prevented the decay of the cities. In the first
place their interests were defended by their bishops, who became of great
importance in the barbaric period, both from their generally superior culture,
and from their using their substantial but ill-defined temporal authority to
improve the condition of their episcopal towns. In many cases also respect for
the saint who reposed in the cathedral procured immunities. St. Martin became
* Cassiod.
Variorum, vii. 15; Formula ad prsBfectum urbis de architecto publicorum.
the protector
of Tours, St. Aignan of Orleans, and St. Hilary of Poitiers. The Church, in her
capacity of a civilizing agency, not only preserved but constructed cities; and
her abbeys, as in the case of St. Gall, became germs of new towns to which they
gave a name. These cities remained also the cradles of industry. Eome had
possessed the nine corporations of Numa and colleges of workmen under the
emperors, and there were traces of the system during the barbaric period. The
history of St. Eloi, his apprenticeship to Abbon, the overseer of the royal
mint at Limoges, and his subsequent career at Paris, shows us the Christian
workman with his labour transformed and sanctified by religion. 'We find the
workmen among the Franks and Saxons beguiling their toil by singing psalms, and
the spirit of piety and brotherhood at last issued in the labour
confraternities of the Middle Age. These organizations became a considerable
power; throughout France they effected the emancipation of the commons, and in
Italy they formed the sinews of the sturdy republics of Lombardy. Labour again
was of the essence of the Florentine constitution, and no one could be counted
among the citizens until he had been enrolled in one of the twelve arts. Nor
did this empire of industry crush the aesthetic sentiment. Far from it; for
companies of workmen raised the Duomo of Florence and the church of Or San
Michele, and it was for them that the arcades of the old palace were covered by
Giotto with his frescoes.
It only
remains to us to notice briefly the difference between the cities of Paganism
and of Christendom. Christianity had so to speak recovered the true life and
affections
of humanity. Every man had before been turned as it were to the outer world,
had passed his life on the public square, or received his friends and clients
in his richly adorned atrium, whilst the narrow chambers which opened upon the
portico had been thought good enough for the women, children, and slaves. But
Christianity had turned the heart of man inwards, had given him the family
life, and caused him to find his happiness within his house; so he left it as
little as possible, and loved to embellish the spot in which his days were
passed in the company of his wife and children with woodwork, tapestry, rich
furniture, and skilfully graven plate. Yet the Church preserved the old type of
house, but only in her-monasteries, where the time was passed in prayer or
labour, and it was not needed that the cell should be home-like. Modern towns
indeed seem at first sight far inferior to the cities of antiquity. Look for
instance at Pompeii, a city of the third order, with its colonnades,-
porticoes, thermse, theatres, and circus. The pagan city had small temples and
gigantic amphitheatres, whilst the Christian town was grouped around its
cathedral, and had its hospital and school. The ancients, without question,
understood the art of enjoyment far better than ourselves, and we must despair
of ever rivalling their pleasure-adapted cities, for our own are built for
labour, for suffering, and for prayer, and in this fact does their greatness
consist. .
[The preceding chapter, which was never completed, is published merely
in the shape of rough notes in the French edition. It has been thought better
to work it up here into a connected form.—Tr.]
CHAPTER X.
THE RISE OF THE NEO-LATIN NATIONS.
We have hitherto
studied only that uniform civilization which in the fifth century extended
from one end of the Western Empire to the other. Two prin-. ciples were at
issue within it, Paganism and Christianity, but without any distinction of
place, under the empire of a common legislation and a common language. Whilst
Virgil was solemnly read in the Forum of Trajan at Rome, the grammarians were
discussing his works with the utmost zeal in the schools of York, Toulouse,
‘and Cordova. If St. Augustine, from his retreat at Hippo, dictated a new
treatise against the heresies of his time, all the Churches of Italy, of the
Gauls, and of Spain listened with attention. Thus at first sight we can only
discover one sole Latin literature, which, so to speak, began the education of
all the races of the West; a teaching which was to be continued through the
barbarous epoch far forward into the Middle Age, until the unity of the
Christian society was formed. Yet gradually we perceive differences of genius
piercing through the apparent community of the literary tradition. Amongst the
crowd of nations subject to the domination of Rome, was there not one which
had preserved some remnant of its original character ? Could one not discover
in their laws, their
manners,
their dialects, and even in the works of their writers, some distinctive
features, some inveterate instincts, some irresistible vocation towards the
part which Providence intends them to perform in later times, and which was to
constitute their nationality ? This is the question which remains for our
discussion.
It has been
customary to date the modern nationalities from the invasion of the barbarians
and the establishment of the German chiefs in the different provinces of the
West. Thus the history of the Franks is made to commence with Clovis, the
history of Spain with Wamba, and that of Italy with Odoacer. The history of
language has been treated in a similar way to that of nations; and it is to the
confusion of the Germanic idioms with the Latin tongue—idioms which, it is
said, presented analytical forms, possessed articles, and employed
prepositions—that the origin of the languages which were destined to become
those of modern Europe has been attributed. We shall separate, in the first
place, those countries in which the Germanic wave submerged everything ; as,
for instance, England, where the British population was driven back to make
place for the new Anglo-Saxon race which mastered the soil and imprinted on it
the indelible and characteristic mark of language ; and, again, Southern
Germany, as Rhaetia and Noricum, formerly subject to the Roman civilization,
which almost entirely disappeared before the invasion of the Herulan, Lombard,
and Vandal races which filled those countries, and % 7 handed them down to their descendants. But it was far different in the
case of those three great countries, Italy, France, and Spain, over which the
barbarians only passed, like the waves of the Nile, to fertilize the
land; and it
is in them that we may seek to trace out the first features of the national
genius, before even the barbaric invasion, and before that mingling of idioms
to the intervention of which the birth of the modern languages has for long,
but erroneously, been exclusively attributed.
We must here
consider those general causes which could preserve a national spirit in each of
the great Roman provinces. They are three in number, namely, a political cause;
another, which may be called a literary cause; and, lastly, a cause arising
from religion. Rome never professed any great respect for her conquered
nationalities. She often outraged them; but, in the wisdom of her policy, never
more than was necessary for the interests of her domination. She left a shadow
of autonomy to the cities of Italy and the great towns of the East and of
Greece, and permitted a kind of bond to subsist between the populations of Gaul
and Spain. In that organization of the Empire of the West which resulted from
the decrees of Diocletian and Maximian, each of the three great dioceses,
Italy, Gaul, and Spain, was presided over by a vicar charged to govern and to
administer it. This vicar was generally surrounded by a counciL composed of the
notable inhabitants of the province, and thence it followed that each province
had, as it were, its representation to defend its own interests and make known
its wants; and from that diversity of interests, wants, and resources, resulted
the very wealth of the Empire • for every province supplied what was wanting to
the others, and thus became an ornament of that mighty Roman society of the
time of the Caesars. So true was it that the Roman world derived a certain
beauty and grandeur
from the very
variety which was produced in the midst of its uniformity, that Claudian, the
poet of the Decline, in a composition in praise of Stilicho, represented the
different provinces of the Empire gathering round the goddess Rome and demanding
her aid. They were all personified with their attributes, the expressions of
the respective genius of each. Thus Spain, then so peaceful, appeared crowned
with branches of olive, and bearing upon her garment the gold of the Tagus ;
Africa, burnt brown by the sun, had her brow bound with the wheat-ears which
she poured into the lap of Rome, as being the feeder of the Roman Empire, and
was crowned with a diadem of ivory; Gaul, always warlike, proudly tossed her
hair and balanced two darts in her hand; whilst Britain came last, having her
cheeks tatooed, her head covered with the hide of a sea-monster, and her
shoulders with a long mantle of azure, which imitated, by its flowing folds,
the waves of the ocean, as if the poet foresaw that this Britain, then so
barbarous, was destined one day to the empire of the seas.
Thus
diversity prevailed even in the order which Rome had established in the
government of her provinces. And this feature was far more strongly pronounced
in the obstinate resistance opposed by these provinces to the Roman
administration. In fact, the power of Rome was not established and maintained
without much resistance, much passion, and much rebellion. To the horrors of
conquest succeeded all the injustice of exaction and all the persecutions of
the tribute. In every province, side by side with the prefect, who was at the
head of the civil government, stood the proctor of Caesar, charged with the
financial admi-
11 t
nistration.
At the mere sight of the lictors of the latter, the inhabitants of the country
took to flight and the houses of the city were closed; for the Roman fisc was
insatiable in its demands. It claimed, firstly, the capitation, which was a
personal impost, and the indiction, a tax upon property; and then, in
extraordinary cases, the superindiction, or extraordinary impost; then the
chrysargyrum, or charge upon industry; lastly, upon the succession of the
emperor, the crown tax; which was a gratuitous gift which no one could withhold
with impunity. Moreover, these repeated taxes were levied with a cruelty and
severity to which contemporary historians bear witness. The tax-gatherers, or
comptrollers of the fisc, were spread throughout the rural districts, and in
order to evince their zeal and increase their profits, entered the house and
made children older and old men younger, that they might bring them upon their
lists in the category of those between fifteen and sixty, on whom the payment
of the impost was obligatory. When the value of any fortune was hard to
discover, they put slaves, wives, and children to the torture, in order to
extract the real extent of wealth owned by the father of the family. It could
hardly be expected that the provinces should submit with good grace to such
unheard-of persecutions; but it was in vain that Constantine issued edicts to
stop the cruelties of the fiscal agents, which were pushed to such an extent
that after his time the inhabitants of certain provinces emigrated into the
territory of the barbarians, that they might find under the shelter of the
German tents a life less miserable than that which Rome meted out to them under
the roofs of their fathers.
At length
this profound and bitter hatred broke forth
in the words
and writings of the eminent men of each province. We have already remarked the
existence of an African party in Africa, and perceived the reawakening there
of the old spirit of Carthage. This faction had raised a marble tomb to
Hannibal, and from his ashes were the avengers to arise who, in their turn,
were to go forth and punish Rome, when Genseric weighed anchor in the harbour
of Carthage and proceeded to hold to ransom the once proud but now fallen
capital. In the meanwhile the African spirit loved to dwell upon its
grievances, and it had found in St. Augustine an eloquent interpreter. In spite
of the deep charity of that great man, and the love which he extended to Rome,
in common with the rest of the universe, the ancient African patriotism showed
itself in him frequently; as, for instance, when he reproached Maximus of
Medaura for having made a laughing-stock of those African names which were
after all those of his maternal language. “ You cannot,” said he, “be so
forgetful of your origin that, though bom in Africa and writing for Africans,
yet, in contempt of the natal land in which we both were raised, you should
proscribe the use of Punic names.”
We have seen
the same spirit throughout that bold chapter of the “ City of God,” in which
St. Augustine dared to reproach Rome with the glory which was stained with
blood and crime, and dashed by weakness and disgrace, and have heard the
murmurs which arose around his pulpit when he ascended it to tell of the fall
of Rome and her capture by Alaric. “Above all,” said many of his audience, “
let him not speak of Rome, nor say anything on the subject.” And he was obliged
to enter upon
the easy task of defending and justifying himself. So true was it that Africa
then contained two parties, one in favour of Rome, and another to which St.
Augustine was impelled by his patriotic zeal, and this point, which we seem to
have been the first to insist upon, has never at least been gainsaid.
In Spain, a
similar spirit was manifested in the works of the priest Paulus Orosius. After
pointing to the conquests and the grandeur of Rome, he demanded an account of
the tears and blood which they had cost. And in those days of supreme felicity
for the Roman people, when their triumphant leaders mounted the Capitol,
followed by many captives from many nations chained one to another, “ how many provinces,”
said he, “were then lamenting their defeat, their humiliation, and their
servitude ! Let Spain say what she thinks of it. Spain, who for two ages
watered her fields with her own blood, being at once incapable of repulsing or
of bearing with that inveterate foe. Then when hunted from city to city, worn
out by hunger and decimated by the sword, the last and miserable effort of her
warriors was spent, firstly in massacring their wives and children, and then in
mutual slaughter.”*
The
resentment of Saguntum when abandoned by the Romans and obliged to bury itself
beneath its ruins, lived again in the bitter words and implacable reproaches
of this priestly writer. And if the bands of the Empire were nearly breaking
from the very violence with which they had been strained, if political causes
were also at work in producing and nourishing a spirit of opposition and
isolation in each of the different provinces, we must also recognize the fact
that the diversity
* Paul. Oros. lib. v. c. 1.
of their
languages also contributed to the same end. Nothing seems more feeble than a
language, nothing less formidable to a conqueror than a certain number of
obscure words, an unintelligible dialect preserved by a vanquished race. Yet a
force lies within those words which skilful conquerors and intelligent despots
well understand, and in which they will never let themselves be deceived. We
need only point in proof to those who in our own days are suppressing a
national idiom and imposing Euss as an obligatory language in the very place in
which it has met with an invincible resistance. The Eomans likewise had
encountered dialects which resisted the sword, and over which the prefect of
the province or the proctor of the fisc could exercise no coercion. The Latin
tongue was, doubtless, propagated early in many of the countries which the
Eoman conquest had invaded, as for instance in Narbonensis, in Southern Spain.
But the Latin which was established there was the popular idiom spoken by the
veteran soldiers who were despatched to the colonies. It soon became corrupted
through the fusion of races by mingling with local dialects, and was formed
into so many particular idioms, the popular Latin of Gaul being different from
that which prevailed beyond the Pyrenees. Moreover, the older languages did not
give way, and the Greek survived in the southern provinces of Italy into the
heart of the Middle Age. Many districts, entirely Greek in their character,
existed in the kingdom of Naples as late as the fifteenth century. In Northern
Italy, again, the language of the Ligurians, the inhabitants of the mountains
of Genoa, was preserved until the fall of the Empire; whilst the Etruscan still
lingered in the times of Aulus Gellius, and was not
without
effect upon the Latin which was spoken in the neighbouring towns. Moreover, the
ancient inscriptions found in the Italic towns are often tainted with that
corruption from which the Italian language was one day to proceed. In them were
already to be found such entirely modern forms as cinque, nove, sedice mese, or
such new words as bramosus for cupidus; testa for caput; brodium for jus. The
declension of words also had completely disappeared, and it was only by the aid
of particles that their functions could be determined.
In Gaul, the Celtic
language lasted into the fifth century, and St. Jerome heard ifc still spoken
at Treves. In Spain, the old Iberian tongue disputed the ground as it were foot
by foot, fell back towards the mountains, within the limits of which it was at
last confined, and became the Basque language still spoken there in our own
days, and which has left no less than one thousand nine hundred words in modern
Spanish. Such then is the resistance which a language is capable of offering.
But what influence is that which bestows so much power upon those syllables,
which in themselves might seem so ill adapted to neutralize the effects of a
conquest ? It is derived from the thoughts, feelings, and recollections which
they arouse in man; it is from their containing the sentiments which are most
deeply rooted in his heart, from their power of recalling the usages amidst
which he was born, the affections in which he has grown and lived. A well-made
language—and all languages are well formed when they are developed by themselves
and without foreign influences—is but the natural product of that soil which
has seen its rise, and of the heaven
which has
shone upon its birth; it is in some measure the very type of fatherland, and
therefore as long as its language subsists, the time has not come to despair of
a nation.
In the third
place, religion itself, that power which seemed destined to bring about unity
everywhere, contributed nevertheless to the preservation of the variety and
diversity of the provincial spirit. In fact, when the Roman Church was founded,
it seemed as if a new power had been granted to Rome, which would thenceforth
link to her destinies all the provinces of the West. But it was no less true
that that unity and the power of the Roman authority could only be maintained
by respecting in some measure the individuality and originality of national
Churches. The wisdom and good sense of the Roman Church was greater in this
respect than that of the Roman government, for she knew how to respect the
rights, privileges, institutions, and liturgies which were peculiar to the
different provinces of the Empire. Accordingly, from the earliest time, we find
councils formed in every direction for the religious representation of a whole
province. Africa was the first after Italy to afford an example of this, and so
numerous were these national assemblies that from 897 to 419 Carthage alone saw
fifteen synods. This activity was imitated by the other Churches. In Gaul, the
councils followed in quick succession upon that of Arles, in which the right of
the Holy See to intervene in the government of the whole of Christendom was so
distinctly proclaimed; and in Spain we find, in the year 506, the Council of
Illiberis, in which the rule of ecclesiastical celibacy was so stringently laid
down, followed by that of
Saragossa,
and lastly by the first of those councils of Toledo which were destined in time
to mould the civil and public legislation of the nation.
Beside its
councils, each province had its schools of theology; such as Marmoutiers and
Lerins in Gaul, and Hippo in Africa. Each again of these schools had its
doctors to the memory of whom it deferred; and lastly each had its peculiar
heresies which in some measure reflected the character of each nation. Thus
Spain in the fourth century produced the Priscillianists, Great Britain had her
Pelagians, and Gaul gave forth the Semipelagians. Italy alone had no heretics,
the reason of which we shall soon see.
Every Church
had its saints, its national glory, who also represented it on high. And
accordingly the poet Prudentius described the appearance of the Christian
nations before Christ the Judge on His descent at the last day, each of them
bringing its reliquary, with the remains of those martyrs who would protect and
shield it from the divine justice.
Quum Deus dextram quatiens coruscam Nube
subnixus veniet rubente,
Gentibus justam positurus aequo Pondere
librain.
Orbe de magno caput excitata,
' Obviam Cliristo properanter ibit Civitas
quaeque pretiosa portans
Dona canistris.*
Thus the
sentiment which may be balled religious patriotism was of early rise. The
Christian nationality differed widely from that of antiquity, which consisted
in declaring everything foreign to be hostile : liospes hostis. In the economy
of the modern world,
* Prud. Peristeph.
iv. v. 13 et seq.
on the
contrary, each nationality is but a function assigned by Providence to a given
people, for which end it is developed, made strong, and endowed with glory, but
which it can only accomplish in harmony with other races, and in the society of
other nations ; such is the peculiar property of modern nationalities. Each of
them has its social mission in the bosom of that mighty society which is called
the human race, and this fact will appear on a review of those centuries of the
mediaeval period in which Italy so gloriously fulfilled that duty of teaching
which was her function during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the epoch of
her great doctors; in which France formed the right hand of Christendom, and
grasped the drawn sword in her defence against all comers ; in which Spain and
Portugal came, by means of their fleets, under the notice of those backward
nations upon whom the light of Christian civilization had not yet shone. Such
was the respective destiny and character of these nationalities after their
necessary transformation through the hidden workings of Christianity ; and thus
we see that everything already contributed to the production and development of
the individual and original genius of each of the great provinces of the Roman
Empire.
But we must
now turn our attention to each of those three great provinces in particular
which were one day to be, Italy, France, and Spain, and which already, in some
measure, bore the marks of their destiny. Italy was the one fitted above all to
preserve her historical character; for she was by far the older, had lived
longer under the same discipline, and the adverse influences of her social war
had had time to abate. Therefore she preserved the impress of those two great
characteristics
which had shown themselves from the very commencement of her civilization—the
presence of the Etruscan and of the Roman element, the genius of religion and
the genius of government. The Etruscans, who were especially a religious
people, communicated to the Romans their traditions, their ceremonies, the use
of auspices, and, in fact, whatever tended to impress upon the Eternal City
that theocratic character which she has never put off. Rome has carried into
all her works that good sense which made her the mistress of the world, and has
marked everything with the seal of that eternal policy of hers, the powerful
memory of which has not yet been effaced.
And,
therefore, we are not surprised at finding these two principles—the theological
and the governing spirit —persistent in the Italian character of modern times.
We have already noticed that Italy produced no heresies, and this was one sign
of the good sense with which she was deeply imbued, and which preserved her
from the subtleties of Greece and the dreams of the East. Every system of error
came in turn to find life and popularity at Rome, and only met there with
obscurity, impotence, and death. Rome interfered in the great dispute on
Arianism; she saved, on that occasion, the faith of the world, and from one end
to another of the peninsula illustrious theologians started up in defence of
orthodoxy, such as Ambrose of Milan, Eusebius of Vercelli, Gaudentius and
Philaster of Brescia, Maximus of Turin, Peter Chrysologus of Ravenna, with many
too numerous to mention. Above all this theological agitation the Papacy soared
aloft, as the heir of the political spirit of the old Romans, that is to say,
of their perseverance, their good sense,
their power,
their faculty of comprehending what was great, and their knowledge of the art
of triumphing over the mere interests of earth. But* it owned one gift in
addition to those of old Rome, in that it was unarmed, that it had no she-wolf
nor eagle upon its standards, and that it wielded the power of persuasion, which
was greater far than that of the sword.
At the moment
which saw the government of the world escaping from the feeble hands of the
Caesars, in the time of Yalentinian HE. and Theodosius II., that falling
dominion was restored by St. Leo, one of the greatest of the older Popes. We
had marked the fresh vigour with which that famous man undertook the direction
of all the spiritual and temporal affairs of the West, of the Empire, and of
Christendom. On the one hand, he intervened in the East, at Chalcedon, to end
the eternal disputes of the Greeks, and fix the dogma of the Incarnation;
whilst, on the other, he arrested Attila at the Mincio, and bequeathed to the
lasting gratitude of posterity the day whereon he rescued civilization in the
West. The patriotism of the Romans of old still lived in his highly tempered
spirit, and showed itself in that homily, which he preached on the Feast of St.
Peter and St. Paul, in which he celebrated the destiny of the new Rome, and
fondly pointed to Providence itself as presiding over the temporal greatness of
the queenly city which had paved a way by her conquests for the conversion of
the universe.
Thus from the
fifth century Rome and Italy, now become Christian, preserved the two great
peculiarities of the ancient Italy, and we have proof that they retained it
throughout the whole mediaeval period; for
at the close
of the Carlovingian period, the theological spirit on the one hand was manifest
in that succession of famous men, the two Saint Anselms, Peter Lombard, St.
Thomas Aquinas, and St. Bonaventura, whilst the political spirit so agitated
the peninsula that the humblest artisans of the towns formed corporations
whereby they might take part in the government of the commonwealth, and was
developed to such a point as to bring forth in due time, in the person of
Machiavel, one of the greatest political writers of the world.
And these two
elements, which formed the characteristics of the Middle Age in Italy, were
united in the persons of such great Popes as St. Gregory the Great, Gregory the
Seventh, and Innocent the Third. And they joined also in lending inspiration to
the “ Divine Comedy,” which would have been nothing had it not stood out
especially as the poem of theology and politics in Italy, as they had been
conceived and produced by the mediaeval epoch.
We must ever
carefully distinguish the two periods in the destiny of Italy, and refrain from
confounding her mediaeval genius with that of the Revival, or from throwing
upon that strong and manly Italy of old, which was ready to suffer and to
resist, the responsibility of the actions of that more modern Italy which
owned as many tyrants as she had noblemen, ended by degenerating into languor,
forgetting her destiny as she knelt at the feet of women, and losing her time in
the wretched exercises of an emasculate poetry, or in sensual pleasures; the
Italy which still bore her crown of flowers, but beheld all her other diadems
trampled under foot, and all her glories compromised in the dangers of an
obscure future. How
ever,
mediaeval Italy rigidly preserved the character which she had manifested from
the earliest times of the Western Empire.
In the case
of Spain, the persistency of the primitive character was still more striking.
When the Romans first penetrated that country, they found there the ancient
Iberian people mingled with Celts, and remarked their singular gravity of
character, which had this especial peculiarity, that they never walked except
for the purpose of fighting, otherwise they sat still; their sobriety was equal
to their obstinacy; they fought frequently, but in isolated groups, and their
women wore black veils. All these traits belong to the Spain of modem times.
Roman culture made rapid strides amongst them ; Sertorius founded a school at
Orca, in the heart of the country, and established there both Greek and Latin
masters. Metellus praised the poets of Spain, whose laudation had not been
displeasing to himself. A certain foreign element was always observable in
that Hispano-Latin school which was destined to such celebrity, and which
successively produced Portius Latro, the declaimer, the two Senecas, Lucan,
Quintilian, Columella, Martial, and Floras, two-thirds in fact of the great
writers of the second age of Roman literature. Yet, with the exception of the
faultless Quintilian, they all precisely presented that inflation, elaboration,
taste for mock brilliancy, exaggeration in sentiment and idea, and prodigality
of metaphor, which make up the defects of the Spanish school. They were all of
them represented to a certain point by that rhetorician, of whom Seneca speaks,
who was always longing to tell of mighty things, and was so enamoured of size,
that he kept bulky servants, bulky
furniture,
and a bulky wife, for which reason he was nicknamed by his contemporaries
Senecio grandio. Thus early did Castilian bombast and exaggeration develop.
Neither did
the sacred literature of Spain appear capable of greatly modifying these
characteristics, for it remained very poor up to the century of which we are treating.
It was doubtless a Spanish bishop, Hosius of Cordova, who had presided at
Nicsea, yet we do not find either that he had written much, or that his country
had produced many doctors. But another province was working for her, and indeed
it often happens in the history of literature, that some country seems to
labour but to perish, and finally to disappear; then we ask for the reason of
such efforts, for the purpose of productions of genius in a land soon destined
to be brought under the barbaric yoke, and at last it appears that the genius
of the fallen country of that stifled nationality has taken refuge in a neighbouring
land. Thus Spain profited by all the labour of Africa, and the spirit of
Tertullian, of St. Cyprian, and of St. Augustine was destined one day to cross
the strait and inflame the Spanish Church. Where in fact did St. Augustine find
his heirs, if not in the country of St. Theresa and of St. John of the Cross ?
With a mystic literature as fertile as hers, modern Spain was bound to possess
a more abundant poetic literature than had ever yet existed. And in fact we
have seen, that if this Christian literature of the fifth century was at all
productive in Spain, it was so especially in the shape of poetry, and that
with an extraordinary abundance; for all those Christian poets, Juvencus,
Damasus, Dracontius, and the inexhaustible
Prudentius,
were Spaniards. Prudentius was especially the poet of dogma, to which he bent
his mind with a singular energy, developing it with all the zeal of a
controversialist, and with all the exuberance which afterwards appeared in the
poetry of Lope de Yega and of Calderon. But on a further examination we find
out the spirit of the poetry of Prudentius; that he was not content with
throwing dogma into verse, but that he brought it, as it were, on to the stage,
by personifying the human affections and passions, and composing a poem,
entitled “ Psychomachia,” in which he opposed faith to idolatry, chastity to
sensuality, humility to pride, and charity to avarice. Nothing assuredly could,
at first sight, seem more fanciful than such a composition. Was it worth while
deserting that pagan literature, then so charged with heavy allegory, which
personified the passions, the fatherland, or war, sometimes Africa, at others
Europe, only to create new fictions, and people the field of Christian poetry
with unreal personages ? Yet we halt in our condemnation, for the Middle Age
was also to be smitten with a love for allegory, and to delight in multiplying
in infinite number, and without the least vestige of idolatrous intention, the
personification of the human affections ; as for instance on the magnificent
portal of the cathedral at Chartres, which shows us still the senses, virtues,
passions, in a word the whole moral encyclopaedia of man, the “ speculum
chorale ” of Yincent of Beauvais, represented by human figures, with happily
chosen attributes, and we find these allegories carved in stone in every
Western nation.
The Spanish
drama effected more, for it placed them in action upon the stage and endowed
them with
speech. It
was the task of Calderon to take up the subjects of Prudentius. In the Autos
Sacramentales he personified grace, nature, the five senses, the seven capital
sins, the synagogue and the Gentile world, until by his marvellous art he
endowed with speech that people of statues which had been produced by the
Middle Ages. He made them descend from their niches, showed them to the
assembled spectators, whom he interested in them as in real personages, and so
mixed them with the characters of history that the readers of the dramas of
Calderon have to endure a dialogue between Adam and Sin, and to welcome all
those other personifications which could only have thus •been kept alive by
dint of the genius, fire, and inexhaustible spirit which filled these poets of
Spain. And this action passed not before a select and lettered audience, nor a
handful of courtiers from the court of Philip III. and Philip IY., brought
together to enjoy the delicate pleasures of academicians, but before the mighty
crowd which filled the great square of Madrid, which pressed together from
every quarter to see the allegory from one end to the other, and follow the
drama up to its prearranged close, upon which the back of the theatre opened
widely and discovered an altar, a priest, and the bread and wine.
Perhaps it is
less easy to grasp with the same precision the characteristics of the French
genius in the spirit of the Gallo-Romans of the fifth century. For there, in
fact, the Germanic impress was stronger, and we cannot forget that the Franks
have poured their blood into ours, that their sword passed into the hands of
our fathers, that their traditions and language brought aliment to our own. It
is certain that on
passing the
Alps or the Pyrenees, and crossing the rivers of Southern Gaul, and especially
the Loire, the German mark is found to he more distinct as the North is
approached. Nevertheless, we are above all a Neo- Latin people, the essence of
our civilization came to us from the Roman Conquest, though from no sudden and
unresisted invasion, for perhaps no other part of Europe shows so remarkably
both the attracting power of the civilization of Rome and the resistance which
it encountered.
The conquest
of Gaul by Caesar had indeed been rapid, and was quickly consummated by his
successors, but as quickly also appeared its impatience against a foreign
yoke. In the time of Vespasian, Classicus and Tutor caused themselves to be proclaimed
emperors, and forced the vanquished legions to swear allegiance to the new
eagles of Gaul. In the third century, and the reign of Julian, Gaul, with Spain
and Britain, formed a Transalpine empire, the leadership of which was
successively held by Caesars— worthy of a better fate—Posthumus, Victorinus,
and Tetricus, who, as warriors, statesmen, and highly- principled men, would
assuredly have been capable of founding a durable empire had the season marked
out by Providence arrived. Lastly, when in the fifth century Gaul was invaded
by the Vandals, and had been forgotten by the Court of Ravenna, a soldier named
Constantine, whom the soldiery of Britain had already chosen, and around whose
standard they were ranged, was recognized by her as emperor. He remained for
five years the master of the Gallic provinces, took possession of several
cities, obliged Honorius to send him the purple, and did not die till A.D. 411,
after a
VOL. II. 12
long
succession of treasonable attempts on the part of those around him.
We must not
mistake fthe motives which impelled the Gauls thus to rebel against
Rome and three times to proclaim a Gallo-Roman empire, nor set it down to their
hatred of the Roman civilization, for if they detested the tyranny, they loved
the enlightenment of the Imperial city. In fact, they always selected the Roman
insignia, and bestowed the purple upon the generals whom they crowned. It was
always their desire to preserve the traditions of the Empire, purged from the
fiscal exactions and the egoism which sacrificed every interest to the
cravings of the Roman populace, in order to provide them with bread and the
games of the circus—yanem et circenses—and to save Roman literature for their
country, whose schools were so flourishing that, from the earliest ages, the
rhetoricians of Gaul supplied orators for the nascent cities of Britain.
Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos.*
These schools
reached so high a pitch of excellence as to draw from Gratian that decree which
conferred such an increase of dignity upon the seminaries of Treves. Ausonius witnesses
to the popularity of the crowd of grammarians and rhetoricians who taught at
Autun, Lyons, Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux. In fact, the passion for
eloquence and a taste for the art of oratory reappeared everywhere; and whilst
we may mark the gradual extinction at Rome of the last embers of the art which
had produced Cicero, some remains of it survived in Gaul, and showed themselves
in a miser-
* Juvenal,
Sat. xv. 3.
able but
still recognizable form in the panegyrists of the emperors. We have already
incidentally condemned this custom, and scorned the ignominy of these
eulogiums, often addressed, as they were, to bloodstained men by others who
were greedy of gold, of dignities, or of patronage ; but we must still own that
amidst this humiliation and littleness lurked the last traditions of the
oratorical art, and that such degenerate men as an Eumenius, a Pacatus, or a
Mamertinus bear witness at least to the taste and passion of the Gauls of their
day for eloquence and the science of forcible and refined speaking. What Cato
said of the Gallic race has always been true—when he defined their character
prophetically and with his own admirable terseness in the words “ Rem
militarem et argute loqui”*
There can be
no better representative of the Gallo- Roman spirit in this respect than
Sidonius Apollinaris, one of the chief writers of the fifth century. He was
born at Lyons about the year 430, and was probably of Arvernic race, sprung
from one of those wealthy Gothic families which preserved the literary
traditions of Rome, and kept alive an hereditary bitterness against her
dominion. He had received his education from skilful masters, and studiously
guarded the remembrance of them. The name of the man from whom he had received
lessons in poetry was Ennius, for the time had come for that usurpation of
classic names which soon filled the schools with Ovids, Horaces, and Yirgils.
His master in philosophy was called Eusebius. Suddenly this young Gaul, who had
thus, been trained
* Gallia
duas res industriosissime persequitur,
Rem militarem et argute loqui.
in the art of
eloquence and in philosophical science, found himself called to the highest
dignity by the accession of his father-in-law, Avitus, to the Imperial throne.
This wealthy Gaul named Avitus had, in fact, just been set over the Roman
Empire by the Gothic king Theodoric, and soon after his proclamation fell
beneath the hand of an obscure assassin. Sidonius Apollinari3 had been summoned
to Rome to pronounce a public panegyric on his father-in-law in the presence of
the senate, and shortly after, on the murder of Avitus, he pronounced at Lyons
an eulogium upon his successor Majorian. A little later, when Majorian had
disappeared in his turn, Sidonius, who was too fertile in these eulogies,
pronounced the panegyric on Anthemius at Rome. He could not have judged his
conduct thus himself, for favours multiplied around him in proportion to the
number of his rhymes. He had attained the highest honours in politics and
literature, his statue was placed in the Forum of Trajan at Rome amongst the
chief poets of the Empire, he had been raised to patrician rank and the dignity
of prefect of Rome, and had in a word drained the cup of human delights, when
suddenly the weariness of temporal advantage, which is apt to lay hold of
higher souls, seized upon him, so that in a short time he was found to have
become a convert, to have adopted a severer life, and to have been carried by
popular acclamation to the episcopal chair of Clermont. Renouncing thereupon
profane poetry and the distractions and wanderings of a worldly life, he
assumed the demeanour of a' holy bishop. But how could he renounce literature,
the first delight of his youth, and how avoid manifesting in all that he wrote
the traqe of the spirit of the
Gallo-Roman
schools in which he had been nurtured ? Accordingly, on reading his collected
works, upon whatever epoch of his career we may light, whether we have to do
with the Roman prefect or the Christian bishop, we always find different
sentiments expressed in the same language. For, in fact, Sidonius Apollinaris
had desired above all things to gain skill in the art of eloquence, and had
gained it. Such, on the authority of Gregory of Tours, was his power in this
respect, that he was capable of an immediate improvisation on any given
subject, and he himself is careful to inform us, that being charged with the
task of providing a bishop for the people of Bourges, who were then divided
amongst themselves, he had only two watches of the night, or six hours, in which
to dictate the discourse which he had to pronounce on the occasion before the
assembled clergy and people. And therefore he begged excuse, if in consequence
“ an oratorical partition, historical authorities, poetical images,
grammatical figures, and the flashes which the rhetoricians strike out of
their controversies,” could not be found there; his discourse was in fact
merely simple and clear, and that idea humiliated him.*
But he
vindicated himself by his correspondence, in which he aspired to imitate Pliny
and Symmachus. In this he seems so far to have succeeded that he was prevailed
upon to collect and publish them. All these letters, in fact, show traces of
the polish which was bestowed upon them before handing them over to the chances
of publicity. . But that which put Sidonius Apollinaris most completely at his
ease was the power of rivalling his friend throughout the interchange of
* Sidon.
Apollin. Ep. lib. vii. 9.
correspondence
in wit, research, refinement, and even obscurity. He was fond of struggling
against difficulties, plunging into hazardous descriptions, and laying open to
the last details the life of the Romans or the barbarians of his time; details
which, though useful for history, were tainted with all the vices of the
Decline. He put the finishing stroke to his achievements, and fancied himself
at the summit of literary glory, when he succeeded in mingling with his
friendly letters some improvised verses and a few distichs which had suddenly
occurred to his mind under circumstances which he had not foreseen. It was upon
these little poems, composed out of hand at 'the desire of the emperor or some
other personage, that he especially prided himself. Having, for instance, one
day to pass over a torrent, he stopped to look for a ford, but as he could not
easily find a convenient passage, he paused till the water had lowered, and
composed a distich which could be read at will from one end or the other.
Prsecipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen Tempore consumptum jam cito
deficiet.
The
superiority of these verses over those of Virgil and Ovid lay in their
capability of being thus reversed—
Deficiet cito jam consumptum tempore flumen Tramite decurrit quod modo
prsecipiti.*
On other
occasions he infused a greater measure of grace and gallantry, so that on
reading -the verses which he made to be inscribed on the goblet which Evodius
desired to offer to the Queen Regnahilda, wife of Euric, one might be reminded
of the French wit of the seventeenth century. The princess was a thorough barbarian
* Sid. Apol. Ep. lib. ix. 14.
no doubt, but
the lines were most refined. The cup which was to be offered to her was in the
form of a sea- shell, and in allusion to the shape and the associations
attached to it by antiquity, Sidonius said, “ The shell whereupon the mighty
Triton bore Yenus can bear no comparison with this one. Abase a little, we pray
thee, thy sovereign majesty, and receive, 0 powerful patroness, an humble gift.
Happy is the water which, enclosed in the resplendent metal, will touch the
more resplendent countenance of a lovely queen. For whenever she deigns to
plunge her lips therein, the reflection of her face will whiten the silver
cup.”*
Nothing can
be more graceful than this, and the most elaborate madrigals would fail to
excel the exquisite gallantry of Sidonius Apollinaris. There is no indication
that he had entered ecclesiastical orders at this period, and he perhaps
appears in the character of a poet of the world.
Had he no
other claim upon the attention of posterity, Sidonius Apollinaris would
present himself as a man of wit, and so fulfil the second condition of Cato’s
sketch of the Gallic character, “ argute loqui;” but he would be far from the
first, and nothing shows that he had the zeal for action—“ rent militarem.” But
this was not the case. On becoming a bishop, Sidonius had adopted all the
sentiments of his office, and in consequence he was the defender of his
episcopal city. We know how the great bishops of the fifth century became,
amidst the universal disorganization and the incessant invasions of the
barbarians, at once the civil and voluntary magistrates of their respective
cities, and how their moral authority often availed to sustain the courage of
* Sid. Apol. Ep. lib. iv. 8, ad Evodium.
the citizens
and to daunt and divide the barbarians. Sidonius occupied at Clermont the
outpost of the Empire, the edge of the remnant of the Roman province, and the
frontiers of the kingdom which the emperors had been obliged to make over to
the Visigoths ; and the Visigoths, discontented with their boundaries, pushed
themselves in daily attack upon the walls of Clermont, and obliged'Sidonius to
struggle to obtain the intervention of the emperor in order to stem the progress
of barbarian conquest and spare the episcopal city the horrors of invasion. He
had long hoped, and for long excited the bravery of his fellow-citizens, to
defend the city walls in despite of all the miseries of famine and pestilence.
An imperial deputation at length waited upon the Visigothic monarch and proposed
a capitulation, by the terms of which Clermont was to be abandoned to him on
the consideration of his respecting the rest of the Empire. Sidonius was suddenly
made aware of this treaty. Whilst he had been so energetically defending the
walls of his episcopal city the men in whom he had placed his hopes had
betrayed him. Thereupon he wrote to one of them the following letter, in which
we no longer find the old spirit of refinement, but the energy, warmth, and
dash which marked the character of his race. “ Such is at present the condition
of this unhappy corner of the earth, that it has suffered less from war than
from peace. Our servitude has become the’price of another’s safety. 0 misery!
the slavery of the Arverni, who, if one goes back to their origin, had dared to
call themselves the brothers of the Romans, and to number themselves among the
races which issued from the blood of Ilion! If one stops at their modern glory,
these are the men
who by their
unaided efforts arrested the arms of the public enemy, who from behind their
ramparts defied the assaults of the Goths, and struck back terror into the
barbarian camp. Behold, then, our reward for starvation, fire, sword,
pestilence, spears that have fattened in blood, warriors emaciated by privation
! This is the glorious peace for which we have lived upon the herbs plucked
from the crevices of our rocks. Employ all your wisdom to break so shameful an
agreement. Yes, if needs be, we should rejoice at seeing ourselves again
besieged, at again suffering from hunger, if we might fight once more.” *
In this man
the French genius appears with all the urbanity, with the lightness for which
it has been so often reproached, but also with that passionate feeling of
honour which will never be, effaced. The latter characteristic was preserved
throughout those long ages of barbarism, upon the threshold of which we are
standing. We may observe the remarkable fact that during the whole Merovingian
period, a certain number of illustrious personages may be seen who became
afterwards bishops, and in time canonized saints, called to the courts of the
kings and raised to the highest dignities of the kingdom on account of their
skill in the art of speaking—quia facundus erat—and because of their possessing
the power which from that time forward subjugated the minds of men. And again,
if we go farther, and plunge into the depths of the Middle Ages at the time in
which the French language first was spoken, we shall notice that the chief
characteristic of that nascent literature was that it was military and
chivalric, and destined by those qualities to make the
* Sid. Apoll. Ep. lib. vii. 7, ad Grsecum.
tour of
Europe; the whole of Europe, nevertheless, confirming that its origin was
France, that it was born in the land whose natives love the art of eloquence,
but better still the achievement of acts of prowess—rem militarem.
We have thus
pointed out the origin of the three great Neo-Latin nationalities in Spain, in
Italy, and in Gaul; and at the end of our proposed task we find two points
established; the first being that the Roman world and its ancient civilization
perished far less suddenly than has been supposed; that its resistance to
barbarism was long; and that its good and its evil institutions, its vices as
well as its virtues, were prolonged into the Middle Age, and explained many of
those errors the source of which has been but imperfectly recognized. Thus
astrology, and the exaggerations of royal despotism, all the pedantry, and
those lingering memories of pagan art which can be detected in the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, are to be traced back to a time-honoured
origin, and formed so many links by which the Middle Age clung to antiquity,
and which it did not desire to sever.
On the other
hand, we have established the position that the Christian civilization
contained already, and in greater completeness than has been supposed, those
developments which have been generally attributed to the times of barbarism.
Thus the Church already possessed the Papacy and monasticism; and in the
sphere of manners we have specified the independence of the individual, the
popular sentiment of liberty, and the dignity of the woman. In the sphere of
letters we have marked how the philosophy of St. Augustine contained in germ
the scholastic labours of the mediaeval
epoch. We
have seen the “ City of God ” tracing nobler views of history, and, lastly,
discovered in the Catacombs all the elements which were developed in the modern
basilicas.
And thus
Providence employed a singular art and a mighty course of preparation in the
work of linking together periods which, from the different spirits which moved
them, would seem fated to be for ever separate. We see that when the Almighty
desires to mould a newer world, He gently and gradually breaks the ancient
edifice which must fall, and uses its materials considerably in rearing the
modern monument which is to succeed. As in a beleaguered city the defenders
begin betimes behind the works which the enemy is attacking to construct the
fortification which is to succeed them, and before which all the efforts of the
besieging force will fail, so also, while the ancient barrier of Roman
civilization was falling stone by stone, the Christian rampart was being formed
behind which society might find another entrenchment. And this spectacle should
serve us for an example and a lesson. The invasion of the barbarians was
without doubt the mightiest and most terrible revolution that has ever
occurred; and yet we see the infinite care with which Providence softened the
blow in some respects, and broke the fall of the ancient world. Let us also
trust that our own epoch will not be more unfortunate; that if our old fortress
is fated to fall, new and solid defences will be raised to protect us; and, in
fine, that the civilization which has cost so much to God and to man will never
perish.
FINIS.