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EUROPEAN MORALS.
VOL. II.
HISTORY
OF
EKUROPEAN MORALS |
FROM
AUGUSTUS TO CHARLEMAGNE.
BY
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY, M.A,
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET.
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CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER IV.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE.
Difference between the moral teaching of a palasaphy and that
of a religion ; , ‘ ]
Moral efficacy of the Christian sense of sin 3
Dark views of human nature not common in the early Church 9)
The penitential system 7
Admirable efficacy of Christianity in alciting ¢ disinterested
enthusiasm ‘ ‘ : 9
Great purity of the early Christians. F ner ya
The promise of the Church for many centuries falsified . ae t
General sketch of the moral condition of the Hagen and
Western Empires. 13
The question to.be examined in this chapter i 1S, the cause of
this comparative failure. : : : . : apr rra 6.
First Consequence of Christianity, a new Sense of the Sanctity of
Human Life
This sense only very gradually acquired A - : peed
Abortion.—Infanticide . 2 oe
Care of exposed children. —History of founding hospital . 984
Suppression of the gladiatorial shows : 37
Aversion to capital punishments . : ; . 4]
Its effect upon persecutions . : . ° eras)
Penal code not af gions by Christianity , : : 44
Suicide : ; : “A6-65
Second Piuleers of Cho istianity, to an Paes Brother-
hood
Laws concerning slavery . « CHD ee wel 934% “euler &03 4G
38667
vi CONTENTS OF
PAGE
The Church discipline and services brought master and slave
together . ; : : : : ae (5.
Consecration of the servile virtues ; : : ; ee
Impulse given to manumission . : ° ° : Peg:
Serfdom . . ‘ : ‘ ° ° . . Sn:
Ransom of captives . ee aha
Charity.—Measures of the Pagans ‘for the relief of the poor Ae ie!
Noble enthusiasm of the Christians in the cause of charity os eae
Their exertions when the Empire was subverted . : ee:
Inadequate place given to this movement in history : 1,
Two Qualifications to our Admiration of the Charity of the
Church
Theological notions concerning insanity . Bates fr : ee |
History of lunatic asylums . : 94
Indiscriminate almsgiving.—The political economy ‘of charity . 96
Injudicious charity often beneficial to the donor . pee
History of the modifications of the old views about charity « “LO2
Beneficial effect of the Church in supplying nifre images to the
imagination . 105
Summary of the philanthropic achievements of Christianity - 5 ae
The Growth of Asceticism
Causes of the ascetic movement . : ° . ° - 108
Its rapid extension : . ° ° : . . s. £42
The Saints of the Desert ;
General characteristics of their legends . ° . . - 114
Astounding penances attributed to the saints . 114
Miseries and joys of the hermit life— Dislike to knowledge 121
Hallucinations . . 124
The relations of female devotees with the anchorites 127
Celibacy was made the primal virtue. ae ow this upon
moral teaching . ; erg ; J ie0
Gloomy hue imparted to religion : ; ; ° : - 180
Strong assertion of freewill . : get
Depreciation of the qualities that accompany a strong physical
temperament . 131
Destruction of the domestic virtues. —Inhumanity of saints to
their relations . . ° ° ° -. 132
Encouraged by leading theologians : ° Pe
Later instances of the same kind . : ; . ° - 143
Extreme theological animosity . ° ° ° . - 146
Decline of the Civic Virtues
History of the relations of Christianity to patriotism . . 149
Influence of the former in hastening the fall of the Empire > hod
Permanent difference between ancient and modern societies in
the matter of patriotism . : : ‘ : : - 153
THE SECOND VOLUME,
Influence of this change on moral philosophy . : , °
Historians exaggerate the importance of civic virtues. :
General Moral Condition of the Byzantine Empire
Stress laid by moralists on trivial matters . °
Corruption of the clergy : : : . : ,
Childishness and vice of the populace. : : °
The better aspects of the Empire . : : ‘ °
Distinctive Excellencies of the Ascetic Period
Asceticism the great school of self-sacrifice . : ; .
Moral beauty of some of the legends , : . -
Legends of the connection between men and animals produced
humanity to the latter. : , . :
Pagan legends of the intelligence of animals . ; : 2
Legal protection of animals . ; .
‘Traces of humanity to animals in the Roman Empire
Taught by the Pythagoreans and Plutarch :
The first influence of Christianity not favourable to it
Legends in the lives of the saints connected with animals
Progress in modern times of humanity to animals . :
‘The ascetic movement in the West took practical forms .
Attitude of the Church to the barbarians.—Conversion of the
latter ; : : : : ; ; ‘ ;
Christianity adulterated by the barbarians.—Legends of the
conflict between the old gods and the new faith . ° .
Monachism
Causes of its attraction : ° ; . : ; °
New value placed on obedience and humility.—Results of this
change . : ‘ : ‘ ; : ° ° °
Relation of Monachism to the Intellectual Virtues
Propriety of the expression ‘ intellectual virtue’ . :
The love of abstract truth : : : : ; ;
The notion of the guilt of error, considered abstractedly,
absurd : : : ; : ‘ 2 ; ;
Some error, however, due to indolence or voluntary partiality
And some to the unconscious bias of a corrupt nature :
The influence of scepticism on intellectual progress :
The Church always recognised the tendency of character to
govern opinion ' . : ‘ ‘ :
Total destruction of religious liberty . : . ° ;
The Monasteries the Receptacles of Learning
Preservation of classical literature.—Manner in which it was
regarded by the Church . . d :
Charm of monkish scholarship. : . : :
The monasteries not on the whole favourable to knowledge
vill CONTENTS OF
PAGE
They were rather the reservoirs than the creators of literature 221
Fallacy of attributing to the monasteries the genius that was
221
displayed in theology : : : ' ; :
Other fallacies concerning the services of the monks ° - 222
Decline of the love of truth . ; : . . , Mey 715]
Value which the monks attached to pecuniary compensations
for crime. ; . 3 ‘ ; ‘ ‘ ee 2a
Doctrine of future torment much elaborated as a means of
extorting money. : . ° ° : ° ., Oe
Visions of hell . ‘ 3 A : : é i 3 268
Peter Lombard . ; é . . 4 ‘ . 240
Extreme superstition and terrorism ° . : »« 241
Purgatory . : : : : : . ° : « 246
Moral Condition of Western Europe
Scanty historical literature . : ; - é " s 24d9
Atrocious crimes . : : ‘ > ‘ ‘ : a
The seventh century the age of saints ' : ‘ . 258
Manner in which characters were estimated illustrated by the
account of Clovis in Gregory of Tours : 4 : . 254
Benefits conferred by the monasteries . , ‘ 5 Oe
Missionary labours : 4 > é , . ‘ «oe
Growth of a Military and an Aristocratic Spirit
Antipathy of the early Christians to military life . 262
The belief that battle was the special sphere of Providential __
interposition consecrated it : : 3 : . oe
Military habits of the barbarians . r ; 4 : ... 265
Military triumphs of Mahommedanism . : ; : eo
Legends protesting against military Christianity . : + OS
Review of the influence of Christianity upon war . ° . *a00
Consecration of Secular Ranks
The Pagan Empire became continually more despotic. oy
The early Christians taught passive obedience in temporal, but
independence in religious matters : : ‘ eee
After Constantine, their policy much governed by their interests 276
Attitude of the Church towards Julian . : : : one
And of Gregory the Great towards Phocas_. : : . oee
The Eastern clergy soon sank into submission to the civil |
power . : 5 : : : : : é Rede cet
Independence of the Western clergy——Compact of Leo and
Pepin’ . ‘ ; : ; , ; : i. fe eee
Effect of monachism on the doctrine of passive obedience . 289
The ‘ benefices’ . . are | : : : ‘ . 286
Fascination exercised by Charlemagne over the popular imagi-
nation . : : " : ; ; - ° .. 2nd
A king and a warrior became the ideal of greatness : seeee
Conclusion . r : : : . ; ‘ : 5. eek
THE SECOND VOLUME,
CHAPTER V.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN.
Importance and difficulties of this branch of a oe :
Women in savage life . <
First stage of progress the cessation of the sale of wives. Rise
of the. mOWry. we" go : : : :
Second stage the establishment of monogamy :
Women in the poetic age of Greece
Women in the historical age ranked lower. —Diieulty of real-
ising the Greek feelings on the subject
Nature of the problem of the relations of the SeXes
Recognition in Greece of two distinct orders of womanhood
Position of the Greek wives ; ° ; ° . °
The Courtesans
Elevated by the worship of Aphrodite . : ° . °
And by the esthetic enthusiasm .. é : Z
And by the unnatural forms Greek vice Be inet q : p
General estimate of Greek public opinion concerning women .
Roman Public Opinion much purer
The flamens and the vestals . d ‘ : : °
Position of women during the Republic : .
Dissolution of manners at the close of the Republic ; ‘
Indisposition to marriage. ‘ ; ‘ ; : :
Legal emancipation of women : : .
Unbounded liberty of divorce. —Its consequences ; :
Amount of female virtue which still subsisted in Rome .
Legislative measures to enforce female virtue
Moralists begin to enforce the Seasetan of obligation in in mar-
riage. .
And to censure prostitution. —Egyptian views of chastity y :
Christian Influence
Laws of the Christian emperors .
Effects of the area aa and of the examples of the
martyrs . : : : : :
Legends. : : : :
Asceticism greatly degraded : marriage
Disapproval of second marriages. —History of the opinions of
Pagans and Christians on the subject .
The celibacy of the onits aE and effects of this doc-
trine
Asceticism pr oduced a very ‘low view of the character of wo-
men,—Jewish opinions on this point
The canon law unfavourable to the proprietary rights of
women . ; ; f : : A ; :
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME,
The barbarian invasions assisted the Church in purifying
morals : ° + Ae
Barbarian heroines
Long continuance of polygamy among the Kings of Gaul
Laws of the barbarians.
Strong Christian assertion of the equality ‘of obligation in
marriage 5 : : .
This doctrine has not retained its force . .
Condemnation of transitory connections. —Roman concubines .
A religious ceremony slowly made an essential in marriage
Condemnation of divorce . : ° ibe nae : :
Compulsory marriage abolished
Condemnation of mixed marriages. —Domestic unhappiness
caused by theologians : 5 ; : ° ° °
Relation of Christianity to the Feminine Virtues
Comparison of male and female characteristics
The Pagan ideal ss masculine.—Its contrast ta the
Chasen ideal ; s ‘ e
Conspicuous part of women in the early Church
Deaconesses : . ‘ ° : ; ° .
Widows . ° : ° . : .
Reverence bestowed on ‘the Virgin
At the Reformation the feminine type remained with Catho-
Ligiarn. See. : ° : ° : ° °
The conventual system . : ° . ° : °
Conclusion . ; ; gg oe oo of ees
HISTORY
OF
HUROPEAN MORATS
CHAPTER IV.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE,
Havine in the last chapter given a brief, but I trust not
altogether indistinct account of the causes that ensured
the triumph of Christianity in Rome, and of the character
of the opposition it overcame, I proceed to examine the
nature of the moral ideal the new religion introduced, and
also the methods by which it attempted to realise it,
And at the very outset of this enquiry it is necessary to
guard against a serious error. It is common with many
persons to establish a comparison between Christianity
and Paganism, by placing the teaching of the Christians
In juxtaposition with corresponding passages from the
writings of Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, and to regard the
superiority of the Christian over the philosophical teach-
ing as a complete measure of the moral advance that was
effected by Christianity. But a moment’s reflection is
sufficient to display the injustice of such a conclusion.
The ethics of Paganism were part of a philosophy. The
ethics of Christianity were part of a religion. The first
2 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
were the speculations of a few highly cultivated indivi-
duals, and neither had nor could have had any direct in-
fluence upon the masses of mankind. ‘The second were
indissolubly connected with the worship, hopes, and fears
of a vast religious system, that acts at least as powerfully
on the most ignorant as on the most educated. The ob-
jects of the Pagan systems were to foretell the future, to
explain the universe, to avert calamity, to obtain the
assistance of the gods. They contained no instruments
of moral teaching analogous to our institution of preach-
ing, or to the moral preparation for the reception of the
sacrament, or to confession, or to the reading of the Bible,
or to religious education, or to united prayer for spiritual
benefits. To make men virtuous was no more the function
of the priest than of the physician. On the other hand, the
philosophic expositions of duty were wholly unconnected
with the religious ceremonies of the temple. To amalga-
mate these two spheres, to incorporate moral. culture with
religion, and thus to enlist in its behalf that desire to
enter, by means of ceremonial observances, into direct
communication with Heaven, which experience has shown
to be one of the most universal and powerful passions of
mankind, was among the most important achievements
of Christianity. Something had no doubt been already
attempted in this direction. Philosophy, in the hands of
the rhetoricians, had become more popular. The Pytha-
goreans enjoined religious ceremonies for the purpose of
purifying the mind, and expiatory rites were common,
especially in the Oriental religions. But it was the dis-
tinguishing characteristic of Christianity, that its moral
influence was not indirect, casual, remote, or spasmodic.
Unlike all Pagan religions, it made moral teaching a main
function of its clergy, moral discipline the leading object
of its services, moral dispositions the necessary condition
of the due performance of its rites. By the pulpit, by its
iti) “ i ioe == I he ee i ‘i
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 3
ceremonies, by all the agencies of power it possessed, it
laboured systematically and perseveringly for the regene-
ration of mankind. Under its influence, doctrines con-
cerning the nature of God, the immortality of the soul,
and the duties of men, which the noblest intellects of
antiquity could barely grasp, have become the truisms of
the village school, the proverbs of the cottage and of the
alley.
But neither the beauty of its sacred writings, nor the
perfection of its religious services, could have achieved
this great result without the introduction of new motives
to virtue. These may be either interested or disinterested,
and in both spheres the influence of Christianity was
very great. In the first, it effected a complete revolution
by its teaching concerning the future world and concern-
ing the nature of sin. The doctrine of a future life was
‘far too vague among the Pagans to exercise any power-
ful general influence, and among the philosophers, who
clung to it most ardently, it was regarded solely in the
light of a consolation. Christianity made it a deterrent
influence of the strongest kind. In addition to the doc-
trines of eternal suffering, and the lost condition of the
human race, the notion of a minute personal retribution
must be regarded as profoundly original. That the com-
mission of great crimes, or the omission of creat duties,
may be expiated hereafter, was indeed an idea familiar
to the Pagans, though it exercised little influence over their
lives, and seldom or never produced, even in the case of
the worst criminals, those scenes of deathbed repentance
which are so conspicuous in Christian biographies. But
the Christian notion of the enormity of little sins, the
belief that all the details of life will be scrutinised here-
ater, that weaknesses of character and petty infractions of
& HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
duty, of which the historian and the biographer take no |
note, which have no perceptible influence upon society,
and which scarcely elicit a comment among mankind,
may be made the grounds of eternal condemnation be-
yond the grave, was altogether unknown to the ancients,
and at a time when it possessed all the freshness of no-
velty, it was well fitted to transform the character. The
eye of the Pagan philosopher was ever fixed upon virtue,
the eye of the Christian teacher upon sin. The first
sought to amend men by extolling the beauty of holiness ;
the second, by awakening the sentiment. of remorse.
Each method had its excellencies and its defects. Philo-
sophy was admirably fitted to dignify and ennoble, but
altogether impotent to regenerate mankind. It did much
to encourage virtue, but little or nothing to restrain vice.
A relish and taste for virtue was formed and cultivated,
which attracted many to its practice; butin this, as m the
case of all our other higher tastes, a nature that was once
thoroughly vitiated became altogether incapable of ap-
preciating it, and the transformation of such a nature,
which was continually effected by Christianity, was con-
fessedly beyond the power of philosophy.! Experience has _
abundantly shown that men who are wholly insensible to
the beauty and dignity of virtue, can be convulsed by
the fear of judgment, can be even awakened to such a
genuine remorse for sin, as to reverse the current: of their
Henna detach them from the most inveterate habits,
and renew the whole tenor of their lives.
But the habit of dilating chiefly on the darker side ot |
human nature, while it has contributed much to the re-
generating efficacy of Christian teaching, has not been
1 There is a remarkable passage of Celsus, on the impossibility of re-
storing a nature once thoroughly depraved, quoted by Origen in his answer
to him
A Le ee ee eS ee ee ae ee.
FROM CON STANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 5
without its disadvantages. Habitually measuring cha-
racter by its aberrations, theologians, in their estimates of
those strong and passionate natures in which great virtues
are balanced by great failings, have usually fallen into a
signal injustice, which is the more inexcusable, because in
their own writings the psalms of David are a conspicuous
proof of what a noble, tender, and passionate nature could
survive, even in an adulterer and a murderer. Partly,
too, through this habit of operating through the sense of
sin, and partly from a desire to show that man is in an
abnormal and dislocated condition, they have continually
propounded distorted and degrading views of human
nature, have represented it as altogether under the em-
pire of evil, and have sometimes risen to such a height of
extravagance as to pronounce the very virtues of the
heathen to be of the nature of sin. But nothing can be
more certain than that that which is exceptional and dis-
tinctive in human nature is not its vice, but its excellence.
It is not the sensuality, cruelty, selfishness, passion, or
envy, which are all displayed in equal or greater degrees
in different departments of the animal world; it is that
moral nature which enables man apparently, alone of all
created beings, to classify his emotions, to oppose the
current of his desires, and to aspire after moral perfection.
Nor is it less certain that in civilised, and therefore deve-
loped man, the good greatly preponderates over the evil.
Benevolence is more common than cruelty; the sight of
suffering more readily produces pity than joy; gratitude,
not ingratitude, is the normal result of a conferred benefit.
The sympathies of man naturally follow heroism and
goodness, and vice-itself_is usually but an exaggeration
or distortion of tendencies that are in their own nature
perfectly innocent.
But these exaggerations of human depravity, which
6 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
have attained their extreme limits in some Protestant
sects, do not appear in the Church of the first three cen-
turies. ‘The sense of the sin was not yet accompanied by
a denial of the goodness that exists in man. Christianity
was regarded rather as a redemption from error than
from sin,’ and it is a significant fact that the epithet ‘ well
deserving,’ which the Pagans usually put upon their tombs,
was also the favourite inscription in the Christian cata-
combs. The Pelagian controversy, the teaching of St.
Augustine, and the progress of asceticism, gradually in-
troduced the doctrine of the utter depravity of man, which
has proved in later times the fertile source of degrading
superstition.
In sustaining and defining the notion of sin, the early
Church employed the machinery of an elaborate legisla-
tion. Constant communion with the Church was regarded
as of the very highest importance. [Participation in the.
Sacrament was believed to be essential to eternal life. At
a very early period it was given to infants, and at least as
early as the time of St. Cyprian we find the practice uni-
‘versal in the Church, and pronounced by at least some of
the Fathers to be ordinarily necessary to their salvation.?
Among the adults 1t was customary to receive the Sacra-
ment daily; in some churches four times a week.? Even
1 This is well shown by Pressensé in his Hist. des trois premiers Siécles.
2 See a great deal of information on this subject in Bingham’s Anti- .
quities of the Christan Church (Oxford, 1853), vol. v. pp. 870-878. It is
curious that those very noisy contemporary divines who profess to re-
suscitate the manners of the primitive Church, and who lay so much stress
on the minutest ceremonial observances, have left uupractised what was
undoubtedly one of the most universal, and was believed to be one of the
most important, of the institutions of early Christianity. Bingham shows
that the administration of the Eucharist to infants continued in France till
the twelfth century. |
3 See Cave’s Primitive Christianity, part i. ch. xi. At first the Sacrament
was usually received every day; but this custom soon declined in the Eastern
Church, and at last passed away in the West.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 7
in the days of persecution the only part of their service
Christians consented to omit was the half secular
agape.’ The clergy had power to accord or withhold
access to the ceremonies, and the reverence with which
they were regarded was so great that they were able to
dictate their own conditions of communion.
From these circumstances there very naturally arose a
vast system of moral discipline. It was always acknow-
ledged that men could only rightly approach the sacred
table in certain moral dispositions, and it was very soon
added that the commission of crimes should be expiated
by a period of penance, before access to the communion
was granted. A multitude of offences, of very various
degrees of magnitude, such as prolonged abstinence from
religious services, prenuptial unchastity, prostitution,
adultery, the adoption of the profession of gladiator or
actor, idolatry, the betrayal of Christians to persecutors,
and paideristia or unnatural love, were specified, to each
of which a definite spiritual penalty was annexed. The
lowest penalty consisted of deprivation of the Eucharist
for a few weeks. More serious offenders were deprived
of it for a year, or for ten years, or until the hour of
death, while in some cases the sentence amounted to the
greater excommunication, or the deprivation of the Eucha-
rist for ever. During the period of penance the penitent
was compelled to abstain from the marriage bed, and
from all other pleasures, and to spend his time chiefly in
religious exercises. Before he was readmitted to com-
munion, he was accustomed publicly, before the assem-
bled Christians, to appear clad in sackcloth, with ashes
strewn upon his head, with his hair shaven off, and thus
to throw himself at the feet of the minister, to confess.
1 Plin. Ep. x. 97.
30
8 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
aloud his sins, and to implore the favour of absolution,
The excommunicated man was not only cut off for ever
from the Christian rites; he was severed also from all
intercourse with his former friends. No Christian, on
pain of being himself excommunicated, might eat with
him or speak with him. He must live hated and alone
in this world, and be prepared for damnation in the next.
This system of legislation, resting upon religious ter-
rorism, forms one of the most important parts of early
ecclesiastical history, and a leading object of the Councils
was to develope or modify it. Although confession was
not yet an habitual and universally obligatory rite, al-
though it was only exacted in cases of notorious sins, it
is manifest that we have in this system, not potentially or
in germ, but in full developed activity, an ecclesiastical
despotism of the most crushing order. But although this
recognition of the right of the clergy to withhold from
men what was believed to be essential to their salvation,
laid the foundation of the worst superstitions of Rome,
it had, on the other hand, a very valuable moral effect.
Every system of law is a system of education, for it fixes
in the minds of men certain conceptions of right and
wrong, and of the proportionate enormity of different
crimes ; and no legislation was enforced with more solem-
nity, or appealed more directly to the religious feelings,
than the penitential discipline of the Church. More than,
perhaps, any other single agency, it confirmed that con-
viction of the enormity of sin, and of the retribution that
follows it, which was one of the two great levers by which
Christianity acted upon mankind. ¢
* The whole subject of the penitential discipline is treated minutely in
Marshall’s Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church (first published in
1714, and reprinted in the library of Anglo-Catholic Theology), and also in
Bingham, vol. vii. Tertullian gives a graphic description of the public
penances, De Pudicit. v. 18.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 9
But if Christianity was remarkable for its appeals to
the selfish or interested side of our nature, it-was far more
remarkable for the empire it attained over disinterested
enthusiasm. The Platonist exhorted men to imitate God,
the Stoic, to follow reason, the Christian, to the love of
Christ. The later Stoics had often united their notions
of excellence in an ideal sage, and Epictetus had even
urged his disciples to set before them some man of sur-
passing excellence, and to imagine him continually near
them ; but the utmost the Stoic ideal could become was a
model for imitation, and the admiration it inspired could
never deepen into affection. It was reserved for Chris-
tianity to present to the world an ideal character, which
through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired
the hearts of men with an impassioned love, has shown
itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments,
and conditions, has been not only the highest pattern of
virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has
exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said
that the simple record of three short years of active life
has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than
all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhorta-
tions of moralists. This has indeed been the wellspring
of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life. Amid
all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft and per-
secution and fanaticism that have defaced the Church, it
has preserved, in the character and example of its Founder,
an enduring principle of regeneration. Perfect love
knows no rights. It creates a boundless, uncalculating
self-abnegation that transforms the character, and is the
parent of every virtue. Side by side with the terrorism
and the superstitions of dogmatism, there have ever existed
in Christianity those who would echo the wish. of St.
Theresa, that she could blot out both heaven and hell, to
10 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
serve God for Himself alone ; and the power of the love of
Christ has been displayed alike in the most heroic pages
of Christian martyrdom, in the most pathetic pages of
Christian resignation, in the tenderest pages of Christian
charity. It was shown by the martyrs who sank beneath
the fangs of wild beasts, extending to the last moment
their arms in the form of the cross they loved ;? who or-
dered their chains to be buried with them as the insignia
of their warfare ;? who looked with joy upon their ghastly
wounds, because they had been received for Christ ;? who
welcomed death as the bridegroom welcomes the bride,
because it would bring them near to Him. S&t. Felicitas
was seized with the pangs of childbirth as she lay in
prison awaiting the hour of martyrdom, and as her suffer-
ings extorted from her a cry, one who stood by said, ‘If
you now suffer so much, what will it be when you are
thrown to wild beasts?’ ‘What I now suffer,’ she an-
swered, ‘concerns myself alone; but then another will
suffer for me, for I will then suffer for Him.’* When 8t.
Melania had lost both her husband and her two sons,
kneeling by the bed where the remains of those she loved
were laid, the childless widow exclaimed, ‘ Lord, I shall
serve thee more humbly and readily for being eased of
the weight thou hast taken from me.’®
_ Christian virtue was described by St. Augustine as ‘the
1 Eusebius, H. £. viii. 7. |
2 St. Chrysostom tells this of St. Babylas. See Tillemont, Mém. pour
servr aU Hist, eccl. tome iii. p. 403.
3 In the preface to a very ancient Milanese missal it is said of St, Agatha,
that as she lay in the prison cell, torn by the instruments of torture, St.
Peter came to her in the form of a Christian physician, and offered to dress
her wounds; but she refused, saying that she wished for no physician but
Christ. St. Peter, in the name of that Celestial Physician, commanded
her wounds to close, and her body became whole as before. (Tillemont,
tome ili. p. 412.)
4 See her acts in Ruinart,. 5 St. Jerome, Ep, xxxix.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. i}.
order of love.’* Those who know how imperfectly the
simple sense of duty can with most men resist the energy
of the passions; who have observed how barren Mahom-
medanism has been in all the higher and more tender vir-
tues, because its noble morality and its pure theism have
been united with no living example; who, above all, have
traced through the history of the Christian Church the in-
fluence of the love of Christ, will be at no loss to estimate
the value of this purest and most distinctive source of Chris-
tian enthusiasm.” In one respect we can scarcely realise
its effects upon the early Church. The sense of the fixity
of natural laws is now so deeply implanted in the minds
of men, that no truly educated person, whatever may be
his religious opinions, seriously believes that all the more
startling phenomena around him—storms, earthquakes,
invasions, or famines—are results of isolated acts of super-
natural power, and are intended to affect some human
interest. But by the early Christians all these things
were directly traced to the Master they so dearly loved.
The result of this conviction was a state of feeling
we can now barely understand. A great poet, in lines
which are among the noblest in English literature, has
spoken of one who had died as united to the all-pervad-
ing soul of nature, the grandeur and the tenderness, the
beauty and the passion of his being blending with the
kindred elements of the universe, his voice heard in all
its melodies, his spirit a presence to be felt and known, a
part of the one plastic energy that permeates and ani-
mates the globe. Something of this kind, but of a far
more vivid and real character, was the belief of the early
Christian world. The universe, to them, was transfigured
by love. All its phenomena, all its catastrophes were
* ‘Definitio brevis et vera virtutis; ordo est amoris,,—De Civ. Dei,
XV. o2:
12 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
read in a new light, were endued with a new signifi-
cance, acquired a religious sanctity. Christianity offered
a deeper consolation than any prospect of endless life, or
of millennial glories. It taught the weary, the sorrowing,
and the lonely, to look up to heaven and to say, ‘ Thou,
God, carest for me.’ |
It is not surprising that a religious system, which made
it a main object to inculcate moral excellence, and which,
by its doctrine of future retribution, by its organisation,
and by its capacity of producing a disinterested enthu-
slasm, acquired an unexampled supremacy over the human
mind, should have raised its disciples to a very high
condition of sanctity. There can indeed be little doubt
that, for nearly two hundred years after its establishment
in Europe, the Christian community exhibited a moral
purity which, if it has been equalled, has never for any
long period been surpassed. Completely separated from
the Roman world that was around them, abstaining alike
from political life, from appeals to the tribunals, and from
military occupations; looking forward continually to the
immediate advent of their Master, and the destruction of
the empire in which they dwelt, and animated by all the
fervour of a young religion, the Christians found within
themselves a whole order of ideas and feelings sufficiently
powerful to guard them from the contamination of their
age. In their general bearing towards society, and in the
nature and minuteness of their scruples, they probably
bore a greater resemblance to the Quakers than to any
other existing sect.!. Some serious signs of moral deca-
1 Besides the obvious points of resemblance in the common, though not
universal, belief that Christians. should abstain from all weapons and from
all oaths, the whole teaching of the early Christians about the duty of
simplicity, and the wickedness of ornaments in dress (see especially the
writings of Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Chrysostom, on this
subject), is exceedingly like that of the Quakers. The scruple of Ter-
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 18
dence might indeed be detected even before the Decian
persecution ; and it was obvious that the triumph of the
Church, by introducing numerous nominal Christians into
its pale, by exposing it to the temptations of wealth and
prosperity, and by forcing it into connection with secular
politics, must have damped its zeal and impaired its
purity ; yet few persons, I think, who had contemplated
Christianity as it existed in the first three centuries would
have imagined it possible that it should completely super-
sede the Pagan worship around it ; that its teachers should
bend the mightiest monarchs to their will, and stamp their
influence on every page of legislation, and direct the whole
course of civilisation for a thousand years, and yet that
the period in which they were so supreme should have
been one of the most contemptible in history.
The leading features of that period may be shortly told.
From the death of Marcus Aurelius, about which time
Christianity assumed an important influence in the Roman
world, the decadence of the empire was rapid and almost.
uninterrupted. The first Christian emperor transferred
his capital to a new city, uncontaminated by the tradi-
tions and the glories of Paganism ; and he there founded
an empire which derived all its ethics from Christian
sources, and which continued in existence for about eleven
hundred years. Of that Byzantine Empire the universal
verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single —
exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form
that civilisation has yet assumed. Though very cruel and
very sensual, there have been times when cruelty assumed
tullian (De Corond) about Christians wearing, in military festivals, laurel
wreaths, because laurel was called after Daphne, the lover of Apollo, was
much of the same kind as that of the Quakers about recognising the gods
Tuesco or Woden by speaking of Tuesday or Wednesday. On the other
hand, the ecclesiastical aspects and the sacramental doctrines of the Church
were the extreme opposites of Quakerism.
14 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
more ruthless, and sensuality more extravagant aspects ;
but there has been no other enduring civilisation so
absolutely destitute of all the forms and elements of
greatness, and none to which the epithet mean may be so
emphatically applied. The Byzantine Empire was pre-
eminently the age of treachery. Its vices were the vices
of men who had ceased to be brave without learning to
be virtuous. Without patriotism, without the fruition or
desire of liberty, after the first paroxysms of religious
agitation, without genius or intellectual activity ; slaves,
and willing slaves, in both their actions and their thoughts
immersed in sensuality and in the most frivolous pleasures,
the people only emerged from their listlessness when some
theological subtlety, or some rivalry in the chariot races,
stimulated them into frantic riots. They exhibited all the
externals of advanced civilisation. They possessed know-
ledge; they had continually before them the noble litera-
ture of ancient Greece, instinct with the loftiest heroism 7
but that literature, which afterwards did so much to
revivify Europe, could fire the degenerate. Greeks with
no spark or semblance of nobility. The history of the
empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests,
eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of
uniform ingratitude, of perpetual fratricides. After the
conversion of Constantine there was no prince in any
section of the Roman Empire altogether so depraved, or
at least so shameless, as Nero or Heliogabalus ; but the By-
zantine Empire can show none bearing the faintest resem-
blance to Antonine or Marcus Aurelius, while the nearest
approximation to that character at Rome was furnished by
the emperor Julian, who contemptuously abandoned the
Christian faith. At last the Mahommedan invasion termi-
nated the long decrepitude of the Eastern Empire. Con-'
stantinople sank beneath the Crescent, its inhabitants
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 15
wrangling about theological differences to the very mo-
ment of their fall.
The Asiatic churches had already perished. The Chris-
tian faith, planted in the dissolute cities of Asia Minor, had
produced many fanatical ascetics and a few illustrious theo-
logians, but it had ‘no renovating effect upon the people
at large. It introduced among them a principle of inter-
minable and implacable dissension, but it scarcely tem-
pered in any appreciable degree their luxury or their sen-
suality. The frenzy of pleasure continued unabated, and
in a great part of the empire it seemed indeed only to
have attained its climax after the triumph of Christianity.
The condition of the Western Empire was somewhat
different. Not quite a century. after the conversion of
Constantine, the Imperial city was captured by Alaric, and
a long series of barbarian invasions at last dissolved the
whole framework of Roman society, while the barbarians
themselves, having adopted the Christian faith and sub-
mitted absolutely to the Christian priests, the Church,
which remained the guardian of all the treasures of an-
tiquity, was left with a virgin soil to realise her ideal of
human excellence. Nor did she fall short of what might
be expected. She exercised for many centuries an
almost absolute empire over the thoughts and actions of
_ mankind, and created a civilisation which was permeated
in every part with ecclesiastical influence. And the dark
ages, as the period of Catholic ascendancy is justly called,
do undoubtedly display many features of great and
genuine excellence. In active benevolence, in the spirit
of reverence, in loyalty, in co-operative habits, they far
transcend the noblest ages of Pagan antiquity, while in
that humanity which shrinks from the infliction of suf-
fering, they were superior to Roman, and in their respect
for chastity, to Greek civilisation. On the other hand,
16 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
they rank immeasurably below the best Pagan civilisations
in civic and patriotic virtues, in the love of liberty, in the
number and splendour of the great characters they pro-
duced, in the dignity and beauty of the type of character
they formed. They had their full share of tumult,
anarchy, injustice, and war, and they should probably be
placed, in all intellectual virtues, lower than any other
period in the history of mankind. A boundless intole-
rance of all divergence of opinion was united with an
equally boundless toleration of all falsehood and deliberate
fraud that could favour received opinions. Credulity
being taught as a virtue, and all conclusions dictated by
authority, a deadly torpor sank upon the human mind,
which for many centuries almost suspended its action,
and was only broken by the scrutinising, innovating, and
free-thinking habits that accompanied the rise of the in-
dustrial republics in Italy. Few men who are not either
priests or monks would not have preferred to live in the
best days of the Athenian or of the Roman republics, in
the age of Augustus or in the age of the Antonines, rather
than in any period that elapsed between the triumph of
Christianity and the fourteenth century.
It is indeed difficult to conceive any clearer proof
than was furnished by the history of the twelve hun-
dred years after the conversion of Constantine, that while
theology has undoubtedly introduced into the world —
certain elements and principles of good, scarcely if at all
known to antiquity, while its value as a tincture or
modifying influence in society can hardly be overrated,
it is by no means for the advantage of mankind that in
the form which the Greek and Catholic Churches present,
it should become a controlling arbiter of civilisation.
It is often said that the Roman world before Constantine
was in a period of rapid decay, that the traditions and
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 17
vitality of half-suppressed Paganism account for many of
the aberrations of later times; that the influence of the
Church was often rather nominal and superficial than
supreme; and that, in judging the ignorance of the dark
ages, we must make large allowance for the dislocations
of society by the barbarians. In all this there is much
truth ; but when we remember that in the Byzantine
Empire the renovating power of theology was tried in a
new capital free from Pagan traditions, and for more than
one thousand years unsubdued by barbarians, and that
in the West the Church, for at least seven hundred years
after the shocks of the invasions had subsided, exercised
a control more absolute than any other moral or in-
tellectual agency has ever attained, it will appear, I
think, that the experiment was very sufficiently tried.
It is easy to make a catalogue of the glaring vices of
antiquity, and to contrast them with the pure morality
of Christian writings; but if we desire to form a just
estimate of the realised improvement, we must compare
the classical and ecclesiastical civilisations as wholes, and
must observe in each case not only the vices that were
repressed, but also the degree and variety of positive
excellence attained. In the first two centuries of the
Christian Church the ‘moral elevation was extremely
high, and was continually appealed to as a proof of the
divinity of the creed. In the century before the con-
version of Constantine, a marked depression was already
manifest. The two centuries after Constantine are uni-
formly represented by the Fathers as a period of general
and scandalous vice. The ecclesiastical civilisation that
followed, though not without its distinctive merits, as-
suredly supplies no justification of the common boast
about the regeneration of society by the Church. That
the civilisation of the last three centuries has risen in
18 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
most respects to a higher level than any that had pre-
ceded it, I at least firmly believe; but theological ethics,
though very important, form but one of the many and
complex elements of its excellence. Mechanical in-
ventions, the habits of industrialism, the discoveries of
physical science, the improvements of government, the
expansion of literature, the traditions of Pagan antiquity,
have all a distinguished place, while, the more fully its
history is investigated, the more clearly two capital truths
are disclosed. The first is that the influence of theology
having for centuries numbed and paralysed the whole
intellect of Christian Europe, the revival, which forms the
starting-point of our modern civilisation, was mainly due
to the fact that two spheres of intellect still remained un-
controlled by the sceptre of Catholicism. The Pagan
literature of antiquity, and the Mahommedan schools of
science, were the chief agencies in resuscitating the dor-
mant energies of Christendom. The second fact, which I
have elsewhere endeavoured to establish ail, is that
during more than three centuries the decadence of theo-
logical influence has been one of the most invariable signs
and measures of our progress. In medicine, physical
science, commercial interests, politics, and even ethics,
the reformer has been confronted with theological affirma-
tions which barred his way, which were all defended
as of vital importance, and were all in turn compelled
to yield before the secularising influence of civilisa- F
tion.
We have here, then, a problem of deep interest and im-
portance, which I propose to investigate in the present
chapter. We have to inquire why it was that a religion
which was not more remarkable for the beauty of its
moral teaching than for the power with which it acted
upon mankind, and which during the last few centuries
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 19
has been the source of countless blessings to the world,
should have proved itself for so long a period, and under
such a variety of conditions, altogether unable to regene-
rate Europe. The question is not one of languid or im-
perfect action, but of conflicting agencies. In the vast
and complex organism of Catholicity there were some
parts which acted with admirable force in improving and
elevating mankind. There were others which had a
directly opposite effect.
The first aspect in which Christianity presented itself
to the world was as a declaration of the fraternity of
men in Christ. Considered as immortal beings, destined
for the extremes of happiness or of misery, and united
to one another by a special community of redemp-
tion, the first and most manifest duty of a Christian man
was to look upon his fellow-men as sacred beings, and
from this notion grew up the eminently Christian idea
of the sanctity of all human life. JI have already endea-
voured to show—and the fact is of such capital import-
ance in meeting the common objections to the reality of
natural moral perceptions, that I venture, at the risk of
tediousness, to recur to it—that nature does not tell man
that it is wrong to slay without provocation his fellow-
men. Not to dwell upon those early stages of barbarism
in which the higher faculties of human nature are still
undeveloped, and almost in the condition of embryo, it is
an historical fact, beyond all dispute, that refined, and
even moral societies, have existed, in which the slaughter
of men of some particular class or nation has been re-
garded with no more compunction than the slaughter of
animals in the chase. The early Greeks, in their dealings
with the barbarians; the Romans, in their dealings with
gladiators, and, in some periods of their history, with
slaves; the Spaniards, in their dealings with Indians ;
20 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
nearly all colonists removed from European supervision,
in their dealings with an inferior race ; an immense pro-
portion of the nations of antiquity, in their dealings with
new-born infants, display this complete and absolute cal-
lousness, and we may discover traces ‘of it even in our
own islands and within the last three hundred years.
And difficult as it may be to realise it in our day, when
the atrocity of all wanton slaughter of men has become
an essential part of our moral feelings, it is nevertheless
an incontestable fact that this callousness has been con-
tinually shown by good men, by men who in all other
respects would be regarded in any age as conspicuous for
their humanity. In the days of the Tudors, the best
Englishmen delighted in what we should now deem the
most barbarous sports, and it is absolutely certain that in —
antiquity men of genuine humanity—tender relations;
loving friends, charitable neighbours—men in whose eyes.
the murder of a fellow-citizen would have appeared as
atrocious as in our own, frequented, instituted, and ap-
plauded gladiatorial games, or counselled without a
scruple the exposition of infants. But it is, as I conceive,
a complete confusion of thought to imagine, as is so-
commonly done, that any accumulation of facts of this
nature throws the smallest doubt upon the reality of
innate moral perceptions. All that the intuitive moralist
asserts is that we know by nature that there is a distinction
between humanity and cruelty, that the first belongs to
the higher or better part of our nature, and that it is our
duty to cultivate it. The standard of the age, which is
itself determined by the general condition of society, con-
* See the masterly description of the relations of the English to the
[rish in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in Froude’s History of England, ch.
xxiv.; and also Lord Macaulay’s description of the feelings of the Master
of Stair towards the Highlanders. (Hist. of England, ch. xviii.)
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 21
stitutes the natural line of duty ; for he who falls below it
contributes to depress it. Now, there is no fact more
absolutely certain, than that nations and ages which have
differed most widely as to the standard have been per-
fectly unanimous as to the excellence of humanity. Plato,
who recommended infanticide ; Cato, who sold his aged
slaves ; Pliny, who applauded the games of the arena;
the old generals, who made their prisoners slaves or
gladiators, as well as the modern generals, who refuse to
impose upon them any degrading labour ; the old legis-
lators, who filled their codes with sentences of torture,
mutilation, and hideous forms of death, as well as the
modern legislators, who are continually seeking to abridge
the punishment of the most guilty ; the old disciplinarian,
who governed by force, as well as the modern education-
alist, who governs by sympathy ; the Spanish girl, whose
dark eye glows with rapture as she watches the frantic
bull, while the fire streams from the explosive dart that
quivers in its neck; the English lady, whose sensitive
humanity shudders at the chase; the reformers we some-
times meet, who are scandalised by all field sports, or by
the sacrifice of animal life for food; or who will eat only
the larger animals, in order to reduce the sacrifice of life
to a minimum; or who are continually inventing new
methods of quickening animal death—all these persons,
widely as they differ in their acts and in their judgments
of what things should be called ‘ brutal,’ and what things
should be called ‘fantastic,’ agree in believing humanity
to be better than cruelty, and in attaching a definite con-
demnation to acts that fall below the standard of their
country and their time. Now, it was one of the most
important services of Christianity, that besides quickening
greatly our benevolent affections, it definitely and dogma-
tically asserted the sinfulness of all destruction of human
22 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
life as a matter of amusement, or of simple convenience,
and thereby formed a new standard higher than any
which then existed in the world.
The influence of Christianity in this respect began with
the very earliest stage of human life. The practice of
abortion was one to which few persons in antiquity at-
tached any deep feeling of condemnation. I have noticed
in a former chapter that the physiological theory that
the foetus did not become a living creature till the hour
of birth, had some influence on the judgments passed upon
this practice ; and even where this theory was not gene-
rally held, it is easy to account for the prevalence of
the act. The death of an unborn child does not appeal
very powerfully to the feeling of compassion, and men
who had not yet attained any strong sense of the sanctity
of human life, who believed that they might regulate
their conduct on these matters by utilitarian views, ac-
cording to the general interest of the community, might
very readily conclude that the prevention of birth was in
many cases an act of mercy. In Greece, Aristotle not
only countenanced the practice, but even desired that it
should be enforced by law, when population had exceeded
certain assigned limits." No law in Greece, or in the Ro-
man Republic, or during the greater part of the Empire,
condemned it ;? and if, as has been thought, some measure
was adopted condemnatory of it in the latter days of the
Pagan Empire, that measure was altogether inoperative.
A long chain of writers, both Pagan and Christian, repre-
sent the practice as avowed and almost universal. They
describe it as resulting, not simply from licentiousness
or from poverty, but even from so slight a motive as
* See on the views of Aristotle, Labourt, Recherches historiques sur les
Enfants trouvés (Paris, 1848), p. 9.
? See Gravina, De Ortu et Progressu Juris Civilis, lib. i. 44.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 23
vanity, which made mothers shrink from the disfigure-
ment of childbirth. They speak of a mother who had
never destroyed her unborn offspring as deserving of
signal praise, and they assure us that the frequency of
the crime was such that it gave rise to a reeular profes-
sion. At the same time, while Ovid, Seneca, Favorinus
the Stoic of Arles, Plutarch, and Juvenal, all speak of
abortion as general and notorious, they all speak of it as
unquestionably criminal.’ It was probably regarded by
the average Romans of the later days of Paganism much
as Englishmen in the last century regarded convivial
excesses, as certainly wrong, but so venial as scarcely to
deserve censure.
The language of the Christians from the very beginning
was very different. With unwavering consistency and with
: ‘Nunc uterum vitiat que vult formosa videri,
Raraque in hoc evo est, que velit esse parens.’
Ovid, De Nuce, lines 22-23.
The same writer has devoted one of his elegies (ii. 14) to reproaching
his mistress Corinna with having been guilty of this act. It was not with-
out dangers, and Ovid says,
‘ Seepe suos utero que necat ipsa perit.’
A niece of Domitian is said to have died in consequence of having, at the
command of the emperor, practised it (Sueton. Domit, xxii.), Plutarch
notices the custom (De Sanitate Tuenda), and Seneca eulogises Helvia
(Ad Helv. xvi.) for being exempt from vanity and having never destroyed
her unborn offspring. Favorinus, in a remarkable passage (Aulus Gellius,
Noct. Att. xii. 1), speaks of the act as ‘publica detestatione communique
odio dignum,’ and proceeds to argue that it is only a degree less criminal
for mothers to put out their children to nurse. Juvenal has some well-
known and emphatic lines on the subject :—
“Sed jacet aurato vix nulla puerpera lecto ;
Tantum artes hujus, tantum medicamina possunt,
Quee steriles facit, atque homines in ventre necandos
Conducit,’ Sat. vi. lines 592-595.
There are also many allusions to it in the Christian writers. Thus
Minucius Felix (Octavius, xxx.): ‘Vos enim video procreatos filios nunc
feris et avibus exponere, nunc adstrangulatos misero mortis genere elidere.
Sunt que in ipsis visceribus medicaminibus epotis, originem futuri hominis.
extinguant et parricidium faciant antequam pariant.’
36
24 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
the strongest emphasis, they denounced the practice, not
simply as inhuman, but as definitely murder. In the
penitential discipline of the Church, abortion was placed
in the same category as infanticide, and the stern sen-
tences to which the guilty person was subject imprinted
on the minds of Christians, more deeply than any mere
exhortations, a sense of the enormity of the crime. By
the Council of Ancyra the guilty mother was excluded
from the Sacrament till the very hour of death, and
though this penalty was soon reduced, first to ten and
afterwards to seven years’ penitence, the offence still
ranked among the gravest in the legislation of the Church.
In one very remarkable way the reforms of Christianity
in this sphere were powerfully sustained by a doctrine
which is perhaps the most revolting in the whole theo-
logy of the Fathers. To the Pagans, even when condemn-
ing abortion and infanticide, these crimes appeared com-
paratively trivial, because the victims seemed very insigni-
ficant and their sufferings very slight. The death of an
adult man who is struck down in the midst of his enter-
prise and his hopes, who is united by ties of love or
friendship to multitudes around him, and whose departure
causes a perturbation and a pang to the society in which -
he has moved, excites feelings very different from any
produced by the painless extinction of a new-born infant,
which, having scarcely touched the earth, has known none
of its cares and very little of its love. But to the theolo-.
gian this infant life possessed a fearful significance. The
moment, they taught, the foetus in the womb acquired .
animation, it became an immortal being, destined, even if —
it died unborn, to be raised again on the last day, re-
sponsible for the sin of Adam, and doomed, if it perished —
without baptism, to be excluded for ever from heaven
1 See Labourt, Recherches sur les Enfans trouvés, p. 25.
a ee a0 ee
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 25
and to be cast, as the Greeks taught, into a painless and
Joyless limbo, or, as the Latins taught, into the abyss of hell.
It is probably, in a considerable degree, to this doctrine
that we owe in the first instance the healthy sense of the
value and sanctity of infant life which so broadly distin-
guishes Christian from Pagan societies, and which is now
so thoroughly incorporated with our moral feelings as to
be independent of all doctrinal changes. That which ap-
pealed so powerfully to the compassion of the early and
medizeval Christians, in the fate of the murdered infants,
was not that they died, but that they commonly died un-
baptised; and the criminality of abortion was immeasur-
ably aggravated when it was believed to involve, not only
the extinction of a transient life, but also the damnation of
an immortal soul.’ In the ‘ Lives of the Saints’ there is a
? Among the barbarian laws there is a very curious one about a daily
compensation to the parents of children who had been killed in the womb
on account of the daily suffering of those children in hell, < Propterea
diuturnam judicaverunt antecessores nostri compositionem et judices post-
quam religio Christianitatis inolevit in mundo. Quia diuturnam postquam
incarnationem suscepit anima quamvis ad nativitatis lucem minime per-
venisset, patitur poenam, quia sine sacramento regenerationis abortivo modo
tradita est ad inferos.’—Leges Byuvariorum, tit. vii. cap. xx. in Canciani, Leges
Barbar. vol. ii. p. 874, The first foundling hospital of which we have un-
doubted record is that founded at Milan, by a man named Datheus, in a.p.
789, Muratori has preserved (Antich. Ital. Diss. Xxxvil.) the charter
embodying the motives of the founder, in which the following sentences
occur :—‘ Quia frequenter per luxuriam hominum genus decipitur, et exinde
malum homicidii generatur, dum concipientes ex adulterio ne prodantur in
publico, fetos teneros necant, et absque Baptismatis lavacro parvulos ad Tar-
tara mittunt, quia nullum reperiunt locum, quo servare vivos valeant,’ &e.
Henry II. of France, 1556, made a long law against women who, ‘adve-
nant le temps de leur part et délivrance de leur enfant, occultement s’en
délivrent, puis le suffoquent et autrement suppriment sans leur avoir fait
empartir le Saint Sacrement du Baptéme.’—Labourt, Recherches sur les Enf.
trouvés,p. 47, There is astory told of a Queen of Portugal (sister to Henry V.
of England, and mother of St. Ferdinand) that, being in childbirth, her
life was despaired of unless she took a medicine which would accelerate
the birth but probably sacrifice the life of the child. She answered that
“she would not purchase her temporal life by the eternal salvation of her
son.’—Bollandists, Act. Sanctor., June 5th.
26 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS, —
curious legend of a man who, being desirous of ascertain-
ing the condition of a child before birth, slew a pregnant
woman, committing thereby a double murder, that of
the mother and of the child in her womb. Stung by
remorse, the murderer fled to the desert, and passed the
remainder of his life in constant penance and prayer.
At last, after many years, the voice of God told him that
he had been forgiven the murder of the woman. But
yet his end was a clouded one. He never could obtain an
assurance that he had been forgiven the death of the
child.
If we pass to the next stage of human life, that of the
new-born infant, we find ourselves in presence of that
practice of infanticide which was one of the deepest stains
of the ancient civilisation. The natural history of this
crime is somewhat peculiar.2 Among savages, whose
_ feelings of compassion are very faint, and whose warlike
and nomadic habits are eminently unfavourable to infant
life, it 1s, as might be expected, the usual custom for the
parent to decide whether he desires to preserve the child
he has called into existence, and if he does not, to expose
or slay it. In nations that have passed out of the stage
of barbarism, but are still rude and simple in their habits,
the practice of infanticide is usually rare; but unlike
Tillemont, Mémoires pour servir al Histoire ecclésiastique (Paris, 1701)
tome x. p. 41. St. Clem. Alexand. says that infants in the womb and ex-
posed infants have guardian angels to watch over them. (Strom. v.)
* There is an extremely large literature devoted to the subject of infan-
ticide, exposition, foundlings, &e. The books I have chiefly followed are
Terme et Monfaicon, Histoire des Enfans trouvés (Paris, 1840) ; Remacle, Des
Hospices d’Enfans trouvés (1838); Labourt, Recherches historiques sur les
LEnfans trouvés (Paris, 1848); Kcenigswarter, Essai sur la Législation des
Peuples anciens et modernes relative aux Enfans nés hors Mariage (Paris,
1842). There are also many details on the subject in Godefroy’s Commentary
to the laws about children in the Theodosian Code, in Malthus On Popula-
tion, in Edward’s tract On the State of Slavery in the Early and Middle
Ages of Christianity, and in most ecclesiastical histories,
ee ee ee
a
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 27
other crimes of violence, it is not naturally diminished by
the progress of civilisation, for after the period of savage
life is passed, its prevalence is influenced much more by
the sensuality than by the barbarity of a people. We
may trace, too, in many countries and ages, the notion that
children, as the fruit, representatives, and dearest pos-
sessions of their parents, are acceptable sacrifices to the
gods.” Infanticide, as is well known, was almost uni-
versally admitted among the Greeks, being sanctioned,
and in some cases enjoined, upon what we should now
call ‘the greatest happiness principle,’ by the ideal legis-
lations of Plato and Aristotle, and by the actual legislations
of Lycurgus and Solon. Regarding the community as a
whole, they clearly saw that it is in the highest degree
for the interests of society that the increase of population
should be very jealously restricted, and that the State
should be as far as possible free from helpless and unpro-
ductive members; and they therefore concluded that the
* It must not, however, be inferred from this that infanticide increases in
direct proportion to the unchastity of a nation. Probably the condition of
civilised society in which it is most common, is where a large amount of
actual unchastity coexists with very strong social condemnation of the
sinner, and where, in consequence, there is an intense anxiety to conceal the
fall. A recent writer on Spain has noticed the almost complete absence of
infanticide in that country, and has ascribed it to the great leniency of
public opinion towards female frailty. Foundling hospitals, also, greatly
influence the history of infanticide; but the mortality in them was long so
great that it may be questioned whether they have diminished the number of
the deaths, though they have, as I believe, greatly diminished the number of
the murders of children. Lord Kames, writing in the last half of the eight-
eenth century, says, ‘In Wales, even at present, and in the Highlands of
Scotland, it isscarce a disgrace for a young woman to havea bastard. In the
country last mentioned, the first instance known of a bastard child being
destroyed by its mother through shame is alateone. The virtue of chastity
appears to be thus gaining ground, as the only temptation a woman can
have to destroy her child is to conceal her frailty.’— Sketches of the History
of Man—On the Progress of the Female Sex. The last clause is clearly
inaccurate, but there seems reason for believing that maternal affection is
generally stronger than want, but weaker than shame,
* See Warburton’s Divine Legation, vii. 2.
28 HISTORY, OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
painless destruction of infant life, and especially of those
infants who were so deformed or diseased that their
lives, if prolonged, would probably have been a burden
to themselves, was on the whole a benefit. The very
sensual tone of Greek life rendered the modern notion
of prolonged continence wholly alien to their thoughts,
and the extremely low social and intellectual condition of
Greek mothers, who exercised no appreciable intfiuence
over the habits of thought of the nation should also, I
think, be taken into account, for it has always been
observed that mothers are much more distinguished than
fathers for their affection for infants that have not yet
manifested the first dawning of reason. Even in Greece,
however, infanticide and exposition were not universally
permitted. In Thebes these offences were punished by
death."
The power of life and death, which in Rome was
originally conceded to the father over his children,
would appear to involve an unlimited permission of in-
fanticide; but a very old law, popularly ascribed to
Romulus, in: this respect restricted the parental rights,
enjoining the father to bring up all his male children,
and at least his eldest female child, forbidding him to
destroy any well-formed child till it had completed its
third year, when the affections of the parent might be
supposed to be developed, but permitting the exposition
of deformed or maimed children with the consent of
their five nearest relations. The Roman policy was
1 Milian. Varia Hist. ii. 7. Passages from the Greek imaginative
writers, representing exposition as the avowed and habitual practice of poor
parents, are collected by Terme et Monfalcon, Hist. des Enfans_ trouvés, pp.
89-45. Tacitus notices with praise (Germania, xix.) that the Germans did —
not allow infanticide. He also notices (Hist. v. 5) the prohibition of infan-
ticide among the Jews, and ascribes it to their desire to increase the popu-
lation. 2 Dion. Halic. ii.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 29
always to encourage, while the Greek policy was rather
to restrain population, and infanticide never appears to
have been common in Rome till the corrupt and sensual
days of the Empire. The legislators then absolutely
condemned it, and it was indirectly discouraged by laws
which accorded special privileges to the fathers of many
children, exempted poor parents from most of the burden
of taxation, and in some degree provided for the security
of exposed infants. Public opinion probably differed
little from that of our own day as to the fact, though it
differed from it much as to the degree, of its criminality.
It was, as will be remembered, one of the charges most
frequently brought against the Christians, and it was one
that never failed to arouse popular indignation. Pagan
and Christian authorities are, however, united in speaking
of infanticide as a crying vice of the Empire, and Ter-
tullian observed that no laws were more easily or more
constantly evaded than those which condemned itt A
broad distinction was popularly drawn between infanticide
and exposition. The latter, though probably condemned,
was certainly not punished by law ;* it was practised on a
1 Ad Nat. i. 15.
* The well-known jurisconsult Paulus had laid down the proposition,
‘Necare videtur non tantum is qui partum perfocat sed et is qui abjicit
et qui alimonia denegat et qui publicis locis misericordiz causa exponit
quam ipse non habet.’ (Dig. lib. xxv. tit. iii. 1. 4.) These words have given
rise to a famous controversy between two Dutch professors, named Noodt and
Bynkershoek, conducted on both sides with great learning, and on the side of
Noodt with great passion. Noodt maintained that these words are simply
the expression of a moral truth, not a judicial decision, and that exposition was
never illegal in Rome till some time after the establishment of Christianity.
His opponent argued that exposition was legally identical with infanticide, and
became, therefore, illegal when the power of life and death was withdrawn
from the father. (See the works of Noodt (Cologne, 1763) and of Bynker-
shoek (Cologne, 1761). It is at least certain that exposition was notorious
and avowed, and the law against it, if it existed, inoperative. Gibbon
(Decline and Fall, ch. xliv.) thinks the law censured but did not punish ex-
position. See, too, Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit, p. 271.
80 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
gigantic scale and with absolute impunity, noticed by writers
with the most frigid indifference, and at least, in the case of
destitute parents, considered a very venial offence.! Often,
no doubt, the exposed children perished, but more fre-
quently the very extent of the practice saved the lives of the
victims. They were brought systematically to a column
near the Velabrum, and there taken by speculators who.
educated them as slaves, or very frequently as prostitutes.2
* Quintilian speaks in a tone of apology, if not justification, of the expo-
sition of the children of destitute parents (Decl. ccevi.), and even Plutarch
speaks of it without censure. (De Amor. Prolis.) There are several curious
illustrations in Latin literature of the different feelings of fathers and
mothers on this matter. Terence (Heauton, Acts iii. Scene 5) represents
Chremes as having, as a matter of course, charged his pregnant wife to —
have her child killed provided it was a girl. The mother, overcome by pity,
shrank from doing so, and secretly gave it to an old woman to expose it, in
hopes that it might be preserved. Chremes, on hearing what had been
done, reproached his wife for her womanly pity, and told her she had been
not only disobedient but irrational, for she was only consigning her daughter
to the life of a prostitute. In Apuleius (Metam. lib. x.) we have a similar
picture of a father starting for a journey, leaving his wife in childbirth, and
giving her his parting command to kill her child if it should be a girl,
which she could not bring herself to do. The girl was brought up secretly.
In the case of weak or deformed infants infanticide seems to have been
habitual. ‘Portentos foetus extinguimus, liberos quoque si debiles mon-
strosique editi sunt, mergimus. Non ira sed ratio est a sanis inutilia
secernere.’—Seneca, De Ira, i.15. Terence has introduced a picture of the
exposition of an infant into his Andria, Act iy. Scene 5. See, too, Suet.
August. lxv. According to Suetonius (Calig. v.), on the death of Ger-
manicus, women exposed their new-born children in sign of grief. Ovid
had dwelt with much feeling on the barbarity of these practices. It is a
very curious fact, which has been noticed by Warburton, that Chremes,
whose sentiments about infants we have just seen, is the very personage
into whose mouth Terence has put the famous sentiment, ‘Homo sum
humani nihil a me alienum puto.’
* That these were the usual fates of exposed infants is noticed by several
writers. Some, too, both Pagan and Christian (Quintilian, Decl. ccevi. ;
Lactantius, Div. Inst, vi. 20, &c.), speak of the liability to incestuous mar-
riages resulting from frequent exposition. In the Greek poets there are
several allusions to rich childless men adopting foundlings, and Juvenal
says if was common for Roman wives to palm off found]ings on their hus-
bands for their sons. (Sat. vi. 603.) There is an extremely horrible declama-
tion in Seneca the Rhetorician (Controvers. lib. y, 33) about exposed children
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 31
On the whole, what was demanded on this subject was
not any clearer moral teaching, but rather a stronger
enforcement of the condemnation long since passed upon
infanticide, and an increased protection for exposed
infants. By the penitential sentences, by the dogmatic
considerations I have enumerated, and by the earnest ex-
hortations both of her preachers and writers, the Church
laboured to deepen the sense of the enormity of the act,
and especially to convince men that the guilt of abandon-
ing their children to the precarious and doubtful mercy
of the stranger was scarcely less than that of simple in-
fanticide.'!' In the civil law her influence was also dis-
played, though not, I think, very advantageously. By
the counsel, it is said, of Lactantius, Constantine, in the
very year of his conversion, in order to prevent the fre-
quent instances of infanticide by destitute parents, issued
a decree applicable in the first instance to Italy, but
extended in a.p. 322 to Africa, in which he ordered that
those children whom their parents were unable to support
should be clothed and fed at the expense of the State,? a
policy which had already been pursued on a large scale
under the Antonines. In AD. 331, a law intended to
multiply the chances of the exposed child being taken
charge of by some charitable or interested person, pro-
vided that the foundling should remain the absolute pro-
perty of its saviour, whether he adopted it as ason or
employed it as a slave, and that the parent should not
have power at any future time to reclaim it.3 By another
who were said to have been maimed and mutilated, either to prevent their
recognition by their parents, or that they might gain money as beggars for
their masters.
* See passages on this point cited by Godefroy in his Commentary to the
Law De Expositis, Codex Theod. lib. y. tit. 7.
* Codex Theod. lib. xi. tit. 27,
eibidaltb.-y, tit.7,lex J, ®
BZ HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
law, which had been issued in a.p. 829, it had been pro-
vided that children who had been not exposed but sold,
might be reclaimed upon payment by the father.!
The two last laws cannot be regarded with unmingled
satisfaction. That reoulating the condition of exposed
children, though undoubtedly enacted with the most bene-
volent intentions, was in some degree a retrograde step,
the Pagan laws having provided that the father might
always withdraw the child he had exposed from servitude,
by payment of the expenses incurred in supporting it,?
while Trajan had even decided that the exposed child
could not become under any circumstance a slave.? The
law of Constantine, on the other hand, doomed it to an
irrevocable servitude, and this law continued in force till
A.D. 529, when Justinian, reverting to the principle of
Trajan, decreed that not only the father lost all legitimate
authority over his child by exposing it, but also that the
person who had saved it could not by that act deprive it
of its natural liberty. But this law applied only to the
Eastern Empire; and in part at least of the West* the
servitude of exposed infants continued for centuries, and
appears only to have.terminated with the general extinc-
tion of slavery in Europe. The law of Constantine con-
cerning the sale of children was also a step, though
perhaps a necessary step, of retrogression. A series of
emperors, among whom Caracalla was conspicuous, had
denounced and endeavoured to abolish as ‘ shameful,’
the traffic in free children, and Diocletian had expressly
and absolutely condemned it. The extreme misery, how-
ever, resulting from the civil wars under Constantine, had
1 Codex Theod. lib. v. tit. 8, lex 1.
* See Godefroy’s Commentary to the Law.
Ina letter to the younger Pliny. (Zp. x.72.)
* See on this point Muratori, Antich. Italian. Diss. xxxvii.
* See on these laws, Wallon, Hist. de ’ ESclavage, tome iii. pp. 52-58.
t
ee a es
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 83
rendered it necessary to authorise the old practice of
selling children in the case of absolute destitution, which,
though it had been condemned, had probably never
altogether ceased. Theodosius the Great attempted to
take a step in advance, by decreeing that the children
thus sold might regain their freedom without the re-
payment of the purchase-money, a temporary service be-
ing a sufficient compensation for the purchase ;! but this
measure was repealed by Valentinian III. The sale of
children in case of great necessity, though denounced by
the Fathers,” continued long after the time of Theodosius,
nor does any Christian emperor appear to have enforced
the humane enactment of Diocletian.
Together with these measures for the protection of
exposed children, there were laws directly condemnatory
of infanticide. This branch of the subject is obscured by
much ambiguity and controversy; but it appears most
probable that the Pagan legislature reckoned infanticide as
a form of homicide, though, being deemed less atrocious
than other forms of homicide, it was punished, not by
death, but by banishment.2 ‘Afflictos civitatis relevavit; puellas puerosque natos parentibus egestosis
sumptu publico per Italic oppida ali jussit.’—Sext. Aurelius Victor, Epitome,
‘Nerva.’. This measure of Nerva, though not mentioned by any cther
writer, is confirmed by the evidence of medals. (Naudet, p. 75.)
§ Plin. Panegyr. xxvi. xxviii.
82 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
support of 270 children.!' Private benevolence followed
in the same direction, and several inscriptions which still
remain, though they do not enable us to write its history,
sufficiently attest its activity. The younger Pliny, be-
sides warmly encouraging schools, devoted a small pro-
perty to the support of poor children in his native city of
Como.” The name of Ceelia Macrina is preserved as the
foundress of a charity for 100 children at Terracina.’
Hadrian increased the supplies of corn allotted to these
charities, and he was also distinguished for his bounty to
peor women.* Antoninus was accustomed to lend money
to the poor at four per cent., which was much below the
normal rate of interest,° and both he and Marcus Aurelius
dedicated to the memory of their wives institutions for
the support of girls.6 Alexander Severus in like manner
dedicated an institution for the support of children to the
memory of his mother.’ - Public hospitals were probably
unknown before Christianity ; but there were private in-
firmaries for slaves, and also, it is believed, military hos-
pitals. Provincial towns were occasionally assisted by
the Government in seasons of great distress, and there
are some recorded instances of private legacies for their
benefit.’
These various measures are by no means inconsiderable,
and it is not unreasonable to suppose that many similar
1 We know of this charity from an extant bronze tablet. See Schmidt,
Essai historique sur la Société romaine, p. 428.
? Plin. Ep. i. 8; iv. 18. | ~ 3 Schmidt, p. 428.
* Spartianus, Hadrian. > Capitolinus, Antoninus.
6 Capitolinus, Anton., Mare. Aurel. 7 Lampridius, A, Severus.
§ Seneca (De Ira, lib. 1, cap. 16) speaks of institutions called valetudinania,
‘ which most writers think were private infirmaries in rich men’s houses.
The opinion that the Romans had public hospitals is maintained in a yery
learned and valuable, but little-known work, called Collections relative to
the Systematic Relief of the Poor. (London, 1815.)
See Tacit. Annal. xii. 58; Pliny, v. 7; x. 79.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 83
steps were taken, of which all record has been lost. _ The
history of charity presents so few salient features, so
little that can strike the imagination or arrest the at-
tention, that it is usually almost wholly neglected by
historians; and it is easy to conceive what inadequate
notions of our existing charities could be gleaned from
the casual allusions in plays or poems, in political his-
tories or court memoirs. There can, however, be no
question that neither in practice nor in theory, neither in
the institutions that were founded nor in the place that
was assigned to it in the scale of duties, did charity in
antiquity occupy a position at all comparable to that
which it has obtained by Christianity. Nearly all relief
was a State measure, dictated much more by policy than
by benevolence, and the habit of selling young children,
the innumerable expositions, the readiness of the poor to
enroll themselves as gladiators, and the frequent famines,
show how large was the measure of unrelieved distress.
A very few Pagan examples of charity have, indeed,
descended to us. Among the Greeks, Epaminondas was
accustomed to ransom captives and collect dowers for
poor girls ;+ Cimon, to feed the hungry and clothe the
naked ;* Bias, to purchase, emancipate, and furnish with
dowers the captive girls of Messina.* Tacitus has de-
scribed with enthusiasm how, after a catastrophe near
Rome, the rich threw open their. houses and taxed all
their resources to relieve the sufferers.4 There existed,
too, among the poor, both of Greece and Rome, mutual
insurance societies, which undertook to provide for their
sick and infirm members.® The very frequent reference
é
1 Cornelius Nepos, Epaminondas, cap. 3.
2 Lactantius, Div. Inst. vi. 9. 8 Diog. Laért. Bias.
4 Tac. Annal. iv. 635.
5 See Pliny, Ep. x. 94, and the remarks of Naudet, pp. 38-39,
84 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
to mendicancy in the Latin writers show that beggars, and
therefore those who relieved beggars, were numerous.
The duty of hospitality was also strongly enjoined,
and was placed under the special protection of the
supreme Deity. But the active, habitual, and detailed
charity of private persons, which is so conspicuous a
feature in all Christian societies, was scarcely known in
antiquity, and there are not more than two or three
moralists who have even noticed it. Of these, the chief
rank belongs to Cicero, who devoted two very judicious
but somewhat cold chapters to the subject. Nothing, he
said, is more suitable to the nature of man than benefi- ‘
cence and liberality, but there are many cautions to be
urged in practising it. We must take care that our
bounty is a real blessing to the person we relieve; that it
does not exceed our own means; that it is not, as was the
case with Sylla and Cesar, derived from the spoliation of
others; that it springs from the heart and not from os-
tentation ; that the claims of gratitude are preferred to
the mere impulses of compassion, and that due regard is
paid both to.the character and to the wants of the
recipient.?
Christianity for the first time made charity a rudi-
mentary virtue, giving it the foremost place in the moral
type, and in the exhortations of its teachers. Besides its
general influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a
complete revolution in this sphere, by representing the
poor as the special representatives of the Christian
Founder, and thus making the love of Christ rather than
the love of man the principle of charity. Even in the
days of persecution, collections for the relief of the poor —
were made at the Sunday meetings. The Agape or
feasts of love were intended mainly for the poor, and food
' De Offic. i. 14-16.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. | 85
that was saved by the fasts was devoted to their benefit.
A vast organisation of charity, presided over by the
bishops, and actively directed by the deacons, soon ra-
mified over Christendom, till the bond of charity became
the bond of unity, and the most distant sections of the
Christian Church corresponded by the interchange of
mercy. Long before the era of Constantine, it was ob-
served that the charities of the Christians were so exten-
slve—it may, perhaps, be said so excessive—that they
drew very many impostors to the Church,’ and when the
victory of Christianity was achieved, the enthusiasm for
charity displayed itself in the erection of numerous in-
stitutions that were altogether unknown to the Pagan
world.
A Roman lady, named Fabiola, in the fourth century,
founded at Rome, as an act of penance, the first public hos-
pital, and the charity planted by that woman’s hand over-
spread the world, and will alleviate, to the end of time,
the darkest anguish of humanity. Another hospital was
soon after founded by St. Pammachus; another of great
celebrity by St. Basil, at Ceesarea. St. Basil also erected at
Caesarea what was probably the first asylum for lepers.
Xenodochia, or refuges for strangers, speedily rose, es-
pecially along the paths of the pilgrims. St. Pammachus
founded one at Ostia; Paula and Melania founded others
at Jerusalem. The Council of Nice ordered that one should
1 Lucian describes this in his famous picture of Peregrinus, and Julian,
much later, accused the Christians of drawing men into the Church by their
charities. Socrates (Hist. Eccl. vii. 17) tells a story of a Jew who, pre-
tending to be a convert to Christianity, had been often baptised in different
sects, and who had amassed a considerable fortune by the gifts he received
on those occasions. He was at last miraculously detected by the Novatian
bishop Paul. There are several instances in the Lives of the Saints of judg-
ments falling on those who duped benevolent Christians,
86 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
be erected in every city. In the time of St. Chrysostom the
church of Antioch supported 3,000 widows and virgins,
besides strangers and sick. Legacies for the poor became
common, and it was not unfrequent for men and women
who desired to live a life of peculiar sanctity, and especially
for priests who attained the episcopacy, as a first act to
bestow their entire properties in charity. Even the early
Oriental monks, who for the most part were extremely
removed from the active and social virtues, supplied
many noble examples of charity. St. Ephrem, in a time
of pestilence, emerged from his solitude to found and
superintend a hospital at Edessa. A monk named Tha-
lasius collected blind beggars in an asylum on the banks
of the Euphrates. A merchant named Apollonius founded
on Mount Nitria a gratuitous dispensary for the monks.
The monks often assisted by their labours provinces that
were suffering from pestilence or famine. We may trace
the remains of the pure socialism that marked the first
phase of the Christian community in the emphatic lan-
guage with which some of the Fathers proclaimed charity
to be a matter not of mercy but of justice, maintaining
that all property is based on usurpation, that the earth
by right is common to all men, and that no man can
claim a superabundant supply of its goods except as an
administrator for others. A Christian, it was maintained,
should devote at least one-tenth of his profits to the
poor.’
1 See on this subject Chastel, Etudes historiques sur la Charité (Paris,
1853) ; Martin Doisy, Hist. de la Charité pendant les quatre premiers Siécles
(Paris, 1848); Champagny, Charité chrétienne ; Tollemer, Origines de la Cha-
rité catholique (Paris, 1863) ; Ryan, History of the Effects of Religion upon
Mankind (Dublin, 1820); and the works of Bingham and of Cave. I am
also indebted, in this part of my subject, to Dean Milman’s histories,
Neander’s Ecclesiastical History, and Private Life of the Early Christians,
and to Migne’s Encyclopédie. ;
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 8?
The enthusiasm of charity, thus manifested in the
Church, speedily attracted the attention of the Pagans.
The ridicule of Lucian, and the vain efforts of Julian, to
produce a rival system of charity within the limits of
Paganism,’ emphatically attested both its pre-eminence
and its catholicity. During the pestilences that desolated
Carthage in A.D. 326, and Alexandria in the reigns of
Gallienus and of Maximian, while the Pagans fled panic-
stricken from the contagion, the Christians extorted the
admiration of their fellow-countrymen by the courage
with which they rallied around their bishops, consoled
the last hours of the sufferers, and buried the abandoned
dead.’ In the rapid increase of pauperism arising from
the emancipation of numerous slaves, their charity found
free scope for action, and its resources were soon taxed
to the utmost by the horrors of the barbarian invasions.
The conquest of Africa by Genseric, deprived Italy of the
supply of corn upon which it almost wholly depended,
arrested the gratuitous distribution by which the Roman
poor were mainly supported, and produced all over the
land the most appalling calamities. The history of Italy
became one monotonous tale of famine and pestilence, of
starving populations and ruined cities. But everywhere
1 See the famous epistle of Julian to Arsacius, where he declares that it
is shameful that ‘the Galileans should support not only their own, but also
the heathen poor. Sozomen (fist. eccl. vy. 16), and the comments of the
historian,
* The conduct of the Christians, on the first of these occasions, is described
by Pontius, Vit. Cypriant,ix. 19. St. Cyprian organised their efforts. On the
Alexandrian famines and pestilences, see Eusebius, H. EF. vii. 22; ix. 8.
$ The effects of this conquest have been well described by Sismondi, Hist.
de la Chute de 1 Empire romain, tome i. pp. 258-260, Theodoric afterwards
made some efforts to re-establish the distribution, but it never regained its
former proportions. The pictures of the starvation and depopulation of
Italy at this time are appalling. Some fearfu facts on the subject are col-
lected by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvi.; Chateaubriand, vim® Dise..
2¢¢ partie. ii
88 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
amid this chaos of dissolution we may detect the ma-
jestic form of the Christian’ priest mediating between the
hostile forces, straining every nerve to lighten the calami-
ties around him. When the Imperial city was captured
and plundered by the hosts of Alaric, a Christian church
remained a secure sanctuary, which neither the passions
nor the avarice of the Goths transgressed. When a
fiercer than Alaric had marked out Rome for his prey,
the Pope St. Leo, arrayed in his sacerdotal robes, con-
fronted the victorious Hun, as the ambassador of his
fellow-countrymen, and Attila, overpowered by religious
awe, turned aside in his course. When, twelve years
later, Rome lay at the mercy of Genseric, the same Pope
interposed with the Vandal conqueror, and obtained from
him a partial cessation of the massacre. The Archdeacon
Pelagius interceded with similar humanity and similar
success, when Rome had been captured by Totila. In
Gaul, Troyes is said to have been saved from destruction
by the influence of St. Lupus, and Orleans by the in-
fluence of St. Agnan. In Britain an invasion of the Picts
was averted by St. Germain of Auxerrois. The relations
of rulers to their subjects, and of tribunals to the poor,
were modified by the same intervention. When Antioch
was threatened with destruction on account of its rebellion
against Theodosius, the anchorites poured forth from the
neighbouring deserts to intercede with the ministers of
the emperor, while the Archbishop Flavian went himself
as a suppliant to Rome. St. Ambrose imposed public
penance on Theodosius, on account of the massacre of
Thessalonica. Synesius excommunicated for his oppres-_
sions a governor named Andronicus, and two French
Councils, in the sixth century imposed the same penalty
on all great men who arbitrarily ejected the poor.
Special laws were found necessary to restrain the turbu-
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 89
lent charity of some priests and monks, who impeded the
course of justice, and even snatched criminals from the
hands of the law.t St. Abraham, St. Epiphanius, and St.
Basil are all said to have obtained the remission or reduc-
tion of oppressive imposts. To provide for the interests of
widows and orphans was part of the official ecclesiastical
duty, and a Council of Macon anathematised any ruler
who brought them to trial without first apprising the
bishop of the diocese. A Council of Toledo, in the fifth
century, threatened with excommunication all who robbed
priests, monks, or poor men, or refused to listen to their
expostulations. One of the chief causes of the inordinate
power acquired by the clergy was their mediatorial office,
and their gigantic wealth was in a great degree duc to the
legacies of those who regarded them as the trustees of the
poor. As time rolled on, charity assumed many forms,
and every monastery became a centre from which it
radiated. By the monks the nobles weré overawed, the
poor protected, the sick tended, travellers sheltered,
prisoners ransomed, the remotest spheres of suffering ex-
plored. During the darkest period of the middle ages,
monks founded a refuge for pilgrims amid the horrors of
the Alpine snows. A solitary hermit often planted him-
self, with his little boat, by a bridgeless stream, and the
charity of his life was to ferry over the traveller.2. When
the hideous disease of leprosy extended its ravages
* Cod. Theod. ix. xl. 15-16, The first of these laws was made by Theo-
dosius, A.D. 392 ; the second by Honorius, .p, 398.
* Cibrario, Economica politica del Medio Evo, lib. ii. cap. iii. . The most
remarkable of these saints was St. Julien l’Hospitalier, who, having under a
mistake, killed his father and mother, as a penance became a ferryman of
a great river, and, having embarked on a very stormy and dangerous night,
at the voice of a traveller in distress, received Christ into his boat,
His story is painted in a window of the thirteenth century, in Rouen
Cathedral. See Langlois, Essai historique sur la Peinture sur verre, PP.
32-37,
90 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
over Europe, when the minds of men were filled with
terror, not only by its loathsomeness and its contagion,
but also by the notion that it was in a peculiar sense
supernatural,! new hospitals and refuges overspread
Europe, and monks flocked in multitudes to serve in
them.? Sometimes, the legends say, the leper’s form was
in a moment transfigured, and he who came to tend the
most loathsome of mankind received his reward, for he
found himself in the presence of his Lord.
There is no fact of which an historian becomes more
speedily or more painfully conscious than the great differ-
ence between the importance and the dramatic interest
of the subjects he treats. Wars or massacres, the horrors
of martyrdom or the splendours of individual prowess, are
susceptible of such brillant colouring, that with but little
literary skill they can be so pourtrayed that their impor-
tance is adequately realised, and they appeal powerfully
to the emotions of the reader. But this vast and unosten-
tatlous movement of charity, operating in the village
hamlet and in the lonely hospital, staunching the widow’s
tears and following all the windings of the poor man’s
griefs, presents few features the imagination can grasp, and
leaves no deep impression upon ‘hie mind. The greatest
things are often those which are most imperfectly realised ;
and surely no achievements of the Christian Church are
more truly great than those which it has effected in the
sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of ©
mankind, it has inspired many thousands of men and
women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often
1 The fact of leprosy being taken as the image of sin gave rise to some
curious notions of its supernatural character, and to many legends of saints
curing leprosy by baptism. See Maury, Légendespieuses du Moyen Age, pp.
64-65.
* See on these hospitals Cibrario, Econ, politic, del Medio Evo, lib, iii.
cap. li.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 91
under circumstances of extreme discomfort or danger, to
devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging
the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe
with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown
to the whole Pagan world. It has indissolubly united,
in the minds of men, the idea of supreme goodness with
that of active and constant benevolence. It has placed
in every parish a religious minister, who, whatever may
be his other functions, has at least been officially charged
with the superintendence of an organisation of charity,
and who finds in this office one of the most important as
well as one of the most legitimate sources of his power.
There are, however, two important qualifications to
the admiration with which we regard the history of
Christian charity—one relating to a particular form of
suffering, and the other of a more general kind. A
strong, ill-defined notion of the supernatural character of
insanity had existed from the earliest times; but there
were special circumstances which rendered the action of
the Church peculiarly unfavourable to those who were
either predisposed to or afflicted with this calamity. The
reality, both of witchcraft and diabolical possession, had
been distinctly recognised in the Jewish writings. The
received opinions about eternal torture, and ever-present
demons, and the continued strain upon the imagination,
in dwelling upon an unseen world, were pre-eminently
fitted to produce madness in those who were at all
predisposed to it, and, where insanity had actually ap-
peared, to determine the form and complexion of the
hallucinations of the maniac.' Theology supplying
* Calmeil observes, ‘On a souvent constaté depuis un demi-sidcle que la
folie est sujette a prendre la teinte des croyances religieuses, des idées phi-
losophiques ou superstitieuses, des préjugés sociaux qui ont cours, qui sont
actuellement en vogue parmi les peuples ou les nations; que cette teinte
varie dans un méme pays suivant le caractére des événements relatifs a la
92 | HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
all the images that acted most powerfully upon the
imagination, most. madness, for many centuries, took a
theological cast. One important department of it appears
chiefly in the lives of the saints. Men of lively imagina-
tions and absolute ignorance, living apart from all their
fellows, amid the horrors of a savage wilderness, practis-
ing austerities by which their physical. system was
thoroughly deranged, and firmly persuaded that innu-
merable devils were continually hovering about their
cells and interfering with their devotions, speedily and
very naturally became subject to constant hallucinations,
which probably form the nucleus of truth in the legends
of their lives. But it was impossible that insanity should
confine itself to the orthodox forms of celestial visions,
or of the apparitions and the defeats of devils. Very fre-
quently it led the unhappy maniac to some delusion,
which called down upon him the speedy sentence of the
Church. Sometimes he imagined he was himself identi-
fied with the objects of his devotion. Thus, in the year
1300, a beautiful English girl appeared at Milan, who
imagined herself to be the Holy Ghost, incarnate for the
redemption of women, and who accordingly was put to
death. In the year 1359, a Spaniard declared himself
to be the brother of the archangel Michael, and to be
destined for the place in heaven which Satan had lost ;
and he added that he was accustomed every day both to
mount into heaven and descend into hell, that the end
*
politique extérieure, le caractére des événements civiles, Ja nature des pro-
ductions littéraires, des représentations théatrales, suivant la tournure, la
ilirection, le genre d’élan qu’y prennent Vindustrie, les arts et les sciences.’
De la Folie, tome i. pp. 122-123.
1 ¢Venit de Anglia virgo decora valde, pariterque facunda, dicens, Spiri-
tum Sanctum incarnatum in redemptionem mulierum, et baptisavit mulieres
in nomine Patris, Filii et sui. Que mortua ducta fuit in Mediolanum, ibi et
cremata.’—Annales Dominicanorum Colmariensium (in the ‘Rerum.’ Ger-
manic. Scriptores).
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 93
of the world was at hand, and that it was reserved for
him to enter into single combat with Antichrist. The
poor lunatic fell into the hands of the Archbishop of
Toledo, and was burnt alive. In other cases the hallu-
cination took the form of an irregular inspiration. On
this charge, Joan of Arc, and another girl who had been
fired by her example, and had endeavoured, apparently
under a genuine hallucination, to follow her career,” were
burnt alive. A famous Spanish physician and scholar,
named Torralba, who lived in the sixteenth century, and
who imagined that he had an attendant angel continually
about him, escaped with public penance and confession ; ®
but a professor of theology in Lima, who laboured under
the same delusion, and added to it some wild notions
about his spiritual dignities, was less fortunate. He was
burnt by the Inquisition of Peru. Most commonly,
however, the theological notions about witchcraft either
produced madness or determined its form, and, through
the influence of the clergy of the different sections of the
Christian Church, many thousands of unhappy women,
who, from their age, their loneliness, and their infirmity,
were most deserving of pity, were devoted to the hatred
of mankind, and, having been tortured with horrible and
ingenious cruelty, were at last burnt alive.
The existence, however, of some forms of natural mad-
1 Martin Goncalez, du diocése de Cuenca, disoit quil étoit frére de
Varchange S. Michel, la premiére vérité et ’échelle du ciel; que c’étoit pour
lui que Dieu réservoit la place que Lucifer avoit perdue ; que tous les jours
il s’élevoit au plus haut de l’Empirée et descendoit ensuite au plus profond
des enfers; qu’a la fin du monde, qui étoit proche, il iroit au devant de
)’Antichrist et qu’il le terrasseroit, ayant 4 sa main la croix de Jésus-Christ
et sa couronne d’épines. L’archevéque de Toléde, n’ayant pu convertir ce
fanatique obstiné, ni l’empécher de dogmatiser, l’avoit enfin livré au bras
séculier.—Touron, Hist. des Hommes tllustres de Vordre de St. Dominique,
Paris, 1745 (Vie d’Eyméricus), tome ii. p. 635.
? Calmeil, De la Folie, tome i. p. 134, 3 Ibid. tome i. pp. 242-247,
* Ibid. tome i. p. 247.
94 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
ness was generally admitted; but the measures for the
relief of the unhappy victims were very few, and very ill
judged. Among the ancients, they were brought to the
temples, and subjected to imposing ceremonies, which
were believed supernaturally to relieve them, and which
probably had a favourable influence through their action
upon the imagination. The great Greek physicians had
devoted considerable attention to this malady, and some
of their precepts anticipated modern discoveries ; but no
lunatic asylum appears to have existed in antiquity In
the first period of the hermit life, when many anchorites.
became insane through their penances, a refuge is said to
have been opened for them at Jerusalem.?. This appears,
however, to be a solitary instance, arising from the exi-
gencies of a single class, and no lunatic asylum existed
in Christian Europe till the fifteenth century. The Ma-—
hommedans, in this form of charity, preceded the Chris-
tians. A writer of the seventh century notices the
existence of several of these institutions at Fez, and
mentions that the patients were restrained by chains?
The asylum of Cairo is said to have been founded in A.D.
1304,* and it is probable that the care of the insane was
a general form of charity in. Mahommedan countries.
Among the Christians it first appeared in quarters con-
tiguous to the Mahommedans; but there is, I think, no
real evidence that it was derived from Mahommedan
example. The Knights of Malta were famous as the one
order who admitted lunatics into their hospitals; but
no Christian asylum expressly for their benefit existed
till 1409. The honour of instituting this form of charity in
Christendom belongs to Spain. A monk named Juan Gila-
1 See Esquirol, Maladies mentales.
2 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvii.
3 Leo Africanus, quoted by Esquirol.
* Desmaisons, Asides d Alhénés en Espagne, p. 53.
FROM .CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 95
berto Joffre, filled with compassion at the sight of the
maniacs who were hooted by crowds through the streets
of Valencia, founded an asylum in that city, and his ex-
ample was speedily followed in other provinces. In a.p.
1425, an asylum was erected at Saragossa. In a.p. 1436,
both Seville and Valladolid followed the example, as
did also Toledo, in a.p. 1483. All these institutions ex-
isted before a single lunatic asylum had been founded in
any other part of Christendom. Two other very honour
able facts may be mentioned, establishing the pre-eminence
of Spanish charity in this field. The first s, that the
oldest lunatic asylum in the metropolis of Catholicism
ras that erected by Spaniards, in a.p. 1548.2 The second
is, that, when at the close of the last century, Pinel began
his great labours in this sphere, he pronounced Spain to
be the country in which lunatics were treated with most
wisdom and most humanity.?
In most countries their condition was indeed truly
deplorable. While many thousands were burnt as witches,
those who were recognised as insane were compelled to en-
dure all the horrors of the harshest imprisonment. Blows,
bleeding, and chains were their usual treatment, and most
horrible accounts were given of madmen who had spent
decades bound in dark cells.4. The treatment naturally
aggravated their malady, and that malady in many cases
rendered impossible the resignation and ultimate torpor
' I have taken these facts from a very interesting little work, Desmaisons,
Des Asiles d Aliénés en Espagne ; Recherches historiques et médicales (Paris,
1859). Dr. Desmaisons conjectures that the Spaniards took their asylums
from the Mahommedans ; but, as it seems to me, he altogether fails to prove
his point. His work, however, contains much curious information on the
history of lunatic asylums.
* Amydemus, Pietas Romana (Oxford, 1687), p. 21; Desmaisons, p. 108.
° Pinel, Traité médico-philosophique, pp. 241-242.
* See the dreadful description in Pinel, Traité médico-philosophique sur
”Aliénation mentale (2nd ed.), pp. 200-202,
oe HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
which alleviate the suffering of ordinary prisoners. Not
until the eighteenth century was the condition of this
unhappy class seriously improved. The combined pro-
gress of theological scepticism and scientific knowledge,
relegated witchcraft to the world of phantoms, and. the
exertions of Morgagni in Italy, of Cullen im Scotland,
and of Pinel in France, renovated the whole treatment of
acknowledged lunatics.
The second qualification to the sammie with which
we regard the history of Christian charity arises from the
undoubted fact that a large proportion of charitable
institutions have directly increased the poverty they were
intended to relieve. The question of the utility and
nature of charity is one which, since the modern dis-
coveries of political economy, has elicited much discussion,
and in many cases, I think, much exaggeration. What
political economy has effected on the subject may be
comprised under two heads. It has elucidated more
clearly, and in greater detail than had before been done,
the effect of provident self-interest in determining the
welfare of societies, and it has established a broad distine-
tion between productive and unproductive expenditure.
It has shown that, where idleness is supported, idleness
will become common ; that, where systematic public pro-
vision is made for old age, the parsimony of foresight will
be neglected; and that therefore these forms of charity,
by encouraging habits of idleness and improvidence,
ultimately increase the wretchedness they were intended
to alleviate. It has also shown that, while expenditure
in amusements or luxury, or others of what are called
unproductive forms, is undoubtedly beneficial to those
who provide them, the fruit perishes in the usage, while
the result of productive expenditure, such as that which
is devoted to the manufacture of machines, or the improve-
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 97
ment of the soil, or the extension of commercial enter-
prise, give a new impulse to the creation of wealth; that
the first condition of the rapid accumulation of capital is
the diversion of money from unproductive to productive
channels, and that the amount of the accumulated capital
is one of the two regulating influences of the wages of the
labourer. From these positions some persons have in-
ferred that charity should be condemned as a form of
unproductive expenditure. But in the first place, all
charities that foster habits of forethought and develope
new capacities in the poorer classes, such as popular
education, or the formation of savings banks, or insurance
companies, or, in many cases, small and discriminating
loans, or measures directed to the suppression of dissipa-
tion, are in the strictest sense productive; and the same
may be said of many forms of employment, given in
exceptional crises through charitable motives; and in the
next place, it is only necessary to remember that the hap-
pimess of mankind, to which the accumulation of wealth
should only be regarded as a means, is the real object
of charity, and it will appear that many forms which
are not strictly productive, in the commercial sense, are in
the highest degree conducive to this end, and have no
serious counteracting evil. In the alleviation of those
sufferings that do not spring either from improvidence or
from vice, the warmest as well as the most enlightened
charity will find an ample sphere for its exertions.!
Blindness, and other exceptional calamities, against the
effects of which prudence does not and cannot provide,
1 Malthus, who is sometimes, though most unjustly, described as an
enemy to all charity, has devoted an admirable chapter (On Population,
book iv. ch. ix.) to the ‘direction of our charity; ’ but the fullest examina-
tion’ of this subject with which I am acquainted is the very interesting
work of Duchatel, Sur la Charité.
98 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS, |
the miseries resulting from epidemics, from war, from
famine, from the first sudden collapse of industry, pro-
duced by new inventions or changes in the channels of
commerce ; hospitals, which, Heide: other advantages, are
the greatest schools of medical science, and withdraw
from the crowded alley multitudes who would otherwise
form centres of contagion—these, and such as these, will
long tax to the utmost the generosity of the wealthy ;
while, even in the spheres upon which the political
economist looks with the most unfavourable eye, excep-
tional cases will justify exceptional assistance. The
charity which is pernicious is commonly not the highest
but the lowest kind. The rich man, prodigal of money,
which is to him of little value, but altogether incapable
of devoting any personal attention to the object of his.
alms, often injures society by his donations; but this is
rarely the case with that far nobler charity which makes
men familiar with the haunts of wretchedness, and follows
the object of its care through all the phases of his life.
The question of the utility of charity is simply a question
of ultimate consequences. Political economy has no doubt
laid down some general rules of great value on the sub-
ject; but yet, the pages which Cicero devoted to it nearly
two thousand years ago might have been written by the
most enlightened modern economist; and it will be con-
tinually found that the Protestant lady, working in her
parish, by the simple force of common sense and by a
scrupulous and minute attention to the condition and
character of those whom she relieves, 1s unconsciously
illustrating with perfect accuracy the enlightened charity
of Aa si
But in order that charity should be useful, it is essential
that the benefit of the sufferer should be a real object
to the donor; and a very large proportion of the evils
that have arisen from catholic charity may be traced
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 99
to the absence of this condition. The first substitution
of devotion for philanthropy, as the motive of benevo-
lence, gave so powerful a stimulus to the affections,
that it may on the whole be regarded as a benefit,
though, by making compassion operate solely through a
theological medium, it often produced among theologians
a more than common indifference to the sufferings of all
who were external to their religious community. But
the new principle speedily degenerated into a belief in
the expiatory nature of the gifts. A form of what may
be termed selfish charity arose, which acquired at last
gigantic proportions, and exercised a most pernicious
influence upon Christendom. Men gave money to the
poor, simply and exclusively for their own spiritual
benefit, and the welfare of the sufferer was altogether
foreign to their thoughts.!
The evil which thus arose from some forms of catho-
lic charity, may be traced from a very early period, but
it only acquired its full magnitude after some centuries.
The Roman system of gratuitous distribution was, in the
eyes of the political economist, about the worst that could
be conceived, and the charity of the Church being, in at
least a measure, discriminating, was at first a very great,
though even then not an unmingled good. Labour was
also not unfrequently enjoined as a duty by the Fathers,
and at a later period the services of the Benedictine monks,
in destroying by their example the stigma which slavery
had attached to it, were very great. Still, one of the first
consequences of the exuberant charity of the Church was
1 This is very tersely expressed by a great Protestant writer: ‘I give
no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish -
the will and command of my God.’—Sir T. Brown, Religio Medici, part ii.
§ 2. A saying almost exactly similar is, if I remember right, ascribed to
St. Elizabeth of Hungary.
some
oe x
ete,
aye
100 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
to multiply impostors and mendicants, and the idleness of
the monks was one of the earliest complaints. Valen-
tinian made a severe law, condemning robust beggars to
perpetual slavery. As the monastic system was increased,
and especially after the mendicant orders had consecrated
mendicancy, the evil assumed gigantic dimensions, Many
thousands of strong men, absolutely without private
means, were in every country withdrawn from produc-
tive labour, and supported by charity. The notion of the
meritorious nature of simple almsgiving immeasurably
multiplied beggars. The stigma, which it is the highest
interest of society to attach to mendicancy, it became a
main object of theologians to remove. Saints wandered
through the world begging money, that they might give
to beggars, or depriving themselves of their garments, that
they might clothe the naked, and the result of their
teaching was speedily apparent. In all Catholic countries
where ecclesiastical influences have been permitted to
develope unmolested, the monastic organisations have
proved a deadly canker, corroding the prosperity of the
nation. Withdrawing multitudes from all production,
encouraging a blind and pernicious almsgiving, diffusing
habits of improvidence through the poorer elasses, foster-
ing an ignorant admiration for saintly poverty, and an
equally ignorant antipathy to the habits and aims of an
industrial civilisation, they have paralysed all energy and
proved an insuperable barrier to material progress. The
poverty they have relieved has been insignificant com-
pared with the poverty they have caused. In no case
was the abolition of monasteries effected in a more inde-
fensible manner than in England; but the transfer of pro-
perty that was once employed, in a great measure in
charity, to the courtiers of King Henry, was ultimately a. _
vast. benefit to the English poor; for no misapplication
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 101
of this property by private persons could produce as much
evil as an unrestrained monasticism. The value of Catho-
lic services in alleviating pain and sickness, and the more
exceptional forms of suffering, can never be overrated.
The noble heroism of her servants, who have devoted
themselves to charity, has never been surpassed, and the
perfection of their organisation has, I think, never been
equalled; but in the sphere of simple poverty it can
hardly be doubted that the Catholic Church has created
more misery than it has cured.
Still, even in this field, we must not forget the benefits
resulting, if not to the sufferer, at least to the donor.
Charitable habits, even when formed in the first instance
from selfish motives, even when so misdirected as to
be positively injurious to the recipient, rarely fail to exer-
cise a softening and purifying influence on the charac-
ter. All through the darkest period of the middle ages,
amid ferocity and fanaticism and brutality, we may trace
the subduing influence of Catholic charity, blending
strangely with every excess of violence and every out-
burst of persecution. It would be difficult to conceive a
more frightful picture of society than is presented by
the history of Gregory of Tours; but that long series of
atrocious crimes, narrated with an almost appalling tran-
quillity, is continually interspersed with accounts of kings,
queens, or prelates, who, in the midst of the disorganised
society, made the relief of the poor the main object of
their lives. No period of history exhibits a larger amount
of cruelty, licentiousness, and fanaticism than the Crusades;
but side by side with the military enthusiasm, and with
the almost universal corruption, there expanded a vast
movement of charity, which covered Christendom with
hospitals for the relief of leprosy, and which erappled
nobly, though ineffectually, with the many forms of
102 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
suffering that were generated. St. Peter Nolasco, whose
great labours in ransoming captive Christians I have
already noticed, was an active participater in the atro-
cious massacre of the Albigenses.1 Of Shane O’Neale, one
of the ablest; but also one of the most ferocious Irish
chieftains who ever defied the English power, it is related,
amid a crowd of horrible crimes, that, ‘sittmg at meat,
before he put one morsel into his mouth he used to slice
a portion above the daily alms, and send it to some
beggar at his gate, saying it was meet to serve Christ
first.’ ? |
The great evils produced by the encouragement of
mendicants, which have always accompanied the uncon-
trolled development of Catholicity, have naturally given
rise to much discussion and legislation. William de St.
Amour denounced the mendicant orders at Paris in the
thirteenth century, and one of the disciples of Wycliffe,
named Nicholas of Hereford, was conspicuous for his oppo-
sition to indiscriminate gifts to beggars;* but few measures
of an extended order appear to have been taken till the
Reformation» In England, laws of the most savage cruelty
were passed, in hopes of eradicating mendicancy. A. par-
liament of Henry VIII, before the suppression of the
monasteries, issued a law providing a system of organised
1 See Butler’s Lives of the Saints.
2 Campion’s Historie of Ireland, book ii. chap. x.
8 Fleury, Hist. eccl. lib. Ixxxiv. 57. It does not appear, however, that
the indiscriminate charity they encouraged had any part in his invective.
He wrote his Perils of the Last Times in the interest of the University of
Paris, of which he was a Professor, and which was at war with the men-
dicant orders. See Milman’s Latin Christianity, vol. vi. pp. 348-306.
4 Henry de Knyghton, De Eventibus Angle.
5 There was some severe legislation in England on the subject after the
Black Death. Eden’s History of the Working Classes, vol. i. p. 84. In
France, too, a royal ordinance of 1350 ordered men who had been con-
victed of begging three times to be branded with a hot iron. Monteil,
Hist. des Francais, tome i. p. 434,
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 108
charity, and imposing on anyone who gave anything to
a beggar a fine of ten times the value of his gift. A
sturdy beggar was to be punished with whipping for the
first offence, with whipping and the loss of the tip of his
ear for the second, and with death for the third! Under
Edward VI., an atrocious law, which, however, was re-
pealed in the same reign, enacted that every sturdy
beggar who refused to work should be branded, and
adjudged for two years as a slave to the person who gave
information against him; and if he took flight during his
period of servitude, for the first offence he was condemned
to perpetual slavery, and for the second to death. The
master was authorised to put a ring of iron round the
neck of his slave, to chain him and to scourge him. Any-
one might take the children of a sturdy beggar for
apprentices, till the boys were twenty-four and the girls
twenty.” Another law, made under Elizabeth, punished
with death any strong man under the age of eighteen
who was convicted for the third time of begging ; but the
penalty in this reign was afterwards reduced to a life-long
service in the galleys, or to banishment, with a penalty of
death to the returned ¢onvict.3 Under the same queen
the poor-law system was elaborated, and Malthus long
afterwards showed that its effects in discouraging par-
simony rendered it scarcely less pernicious than the
monastic system that had preceded it. In many Catholic
countries, severe, though less atrocious measures, were
taken to grapple with the evil of mendicancy. That
shrewd and sagacious pontiff, Sixtus V., who, though not
the greatest man, was by far the greatest statesman who
has ever sat on the papal throne, made praiseworthy efforts
to check it at Rome, where ecclesiastical influence had
1’ Eden, vol. i. pp. 83-87. 2 Ibid. pp. 101-108.
’ pp pp
$ Thid. pp. ELD,
1
104 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
always made it peculiarly prevalent. Charles V., in
1531, issued a severe enactment against beggars in the
Netherlands, but excepted from its operation mendicant
friars and pilerims.? Under Lewis XIV., equally severe
measures were takenin France. But though the practical
evil was fully felt, there was little or no philosophical in-
vestigation of its causes before the eighteenth century.
Locke in England,? and Berkeley in Ireland,* briefly
slanced at the subject, and in 1704 Defoe published a
very remarkable tract, called, ‘Giving Alms no Charity,’
in which he noticed the extent to which mendicancy
existed in England, though wages were higher than in
any continental country.® A still more remarkable book,
written by an author named Ricci, appeared at Modena
in 1787, and excited considerable attention. ‘The author
pointed out with much force the gigantic development of
mendicancy in Italy, traced it to the excessive charity of
the people, and appears to have regarded as an evil all
charity which sprang from religious motives, and was’
ereater than would spring from the unaided instincts of
men.® The freethinker Mandeville assailed charity schools,
1 Morighini, Instetutions pieuses de Rome.
2 Eden, Hist. of the Labouring Classes, vol. i. p. 83.
3 Locke discussed the great increase of poverty, and a bill was brought
in suggesting some remedies, but did not pass. (Kden, vol. i. pp. 243-248.)
* In a very forcible letter addressed to the Irish Catholic clergy. _
5 This tract, which is extremely valuable for the light it throws upon
the social condition of England at the time, was written in opposition to a
Bill providing that the poor in the poor-houses should do wool, hemp, iron,
and other works. Defoe says that wages in England were higher than
anywhere on the Continent, though the amount of mendicancy was enor-
mous. ‘The reason why so many pretend to want work is, that they
can live so well with the pretence of wanting work. ... I affirm of my
own knowledge, when I have wanted a man for labouring work, and offered
nine shillings per week to strolling fellows at my door, they have frequently
told me to my face they could get more a-begging.’
© Reforma deg? Instituti pii di Modena (published first anonymously at
Modena). It has been reprinted in the library of the Italian economists,
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 105
and the whole system of endeavouring to elevate the
poor, and Magdalen asylums and foundling hospitals
have had fierce, though I believe much mistaken, adver-
saries.” The reforms of the poor-laws, and the writings of
Malthus, gave a new impulse to discussion on the subject ;
but with the qualifications I have stated, no new dis-
coveries have, I conceive, thrown any just cloud upon
Christian charity ; and though its administration is often
extremely injudicious, the principles that regulate it, in
Protestant countries at least, require but little reform.
The last method by which Christianity has laboured to
soften the characters of men has been by accustoming the
Imagination to expatiate continually upon images of ten-
derness and of pathos. Our imaginations, though less
influential than our occupations, probably affect our moral
characters more deeply than our judements, and, in
the case of the poorer classes especially, the cultivation
of this part of our nature is of inestimable importance.
Rooted, for the most part, during their entire lives, to a
single spot, excluded by their ignorance and their circum-
stances from most of the varieties of interest that animate
the minds of other men, condemned to constant and plod-
ding labour, and engrossed for ever with the minute cares
of an immediate and an anxious present, their whole
natures would have been hopelessly contracted, were
1 Essay on Charity Schools.
* Magdalen Asylums have been very vehemently assailed by M. Charles
Comte, in his Traité de Législation. On the subject of Foundling Hospitals
there is a whole literature. They were vehemently attacked by, I believe,
Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review, in the early part of this century.
Writers of this stamp, and indeed most political economists, greatly exagee-
rate the forethought of men and women, especially in matters where the
passions are concerned. It may be questioned whether one woman in a
hundred, who plunges into a career of vice, is in the smallest degree influ-
enced by a consideration of whether or not charitable institutions are pro-
vided for the support of aged penitents.
106 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
there no sphere in which their imaginations could expand.
Religion is the one romance of the poor. It alone extends
the narrow horizon of their thoughts, supplies the images
of their dreams, allures them to the supersensual and the
ideal. The graceful beings with which the creative fancy
of Paganism peopled the universe shed a poetic glow on
the peasants’ toil. Every stage of agriculture was pre-
sided over by a divinity, and the world grew bright by
the companionship of the gods. But it is the peculiarity
of the Christian types, that while they have fascinated
the imagination, they have also purified the heart. The
tender, winning, and almost feminine beauty of the
Christian Founder, the Virgin mother, the agonies of Geth-
semane or of Calvary, the many scenes of compassion
and suffering that fill the sacred writings, are the pictures
which, for eighteen hundred years, have governed the
imaginations of the rudest and most ignorant of mankind.
Associated with the fondest recollections of childhood,
with the music of the church bells, with the clustered
lights and the tinsel splendour, that seem to the peasant
the very ideal of majesty ; painted over the altar where he
received the companion of his life, around the cemetery
where so many whom he had loved were laid, on the
stations of the mountain, on the portal of theevineyard,
on the chapel where the storm-tossed mariner fulfils his
srateful vow; keeping guard over his cottage door, and
looking down upon his humble bed, forms of tender
beauty and gentle pathos for ever haunt the poor man’s
fancy, and silently win their way into the very depths of
his being. More than any spoken eloquence, more than
any dogmatic teaching, they transform and subdue his
character, till he learns to realise the sanctity of weakness
and suffering, the supreme majesty of compassion and
gentleness,
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 107
Imperfect and inadequate as is the sketch I have
drawn, it will be sufficient to show how great and multi-
form have been the influences of Christian philanthropy.
The shadows that rest upon the picture I have not con-
cealed; but when all due allowance has been made for
them, enough will remain to claim our deepest admiration.
The high conception that has been formed of the sanctity
of human life, the protection of infancy, the elevation
and final emancipation of the slave classes, the suppression
of barbarous games, the creation of a vast and multifarious
organisation of charity, and the education of the imagi-
nation by the Christian type, constitute together a move-
ment of philanthropy which has never been paralleled
or approached in the Pagan world. The effects of this
movement in promoting happiness have been very great.
Its effect in determining character has probably been still
greater. In that proportion or disposition of qualities
which constitutes the ideal character, the gentler and
more benevolent virtues have obtained, through Chris-
tianity, the foremost place. In the first and purest period
they were especially supreme, but in the third century a
great ascetic movement arose, which gradually brought a
new type of character into the ascendant, and diverted
the enthusiasm of the Church into new channels.
Tertullian, writing in the second century, in a passage
which has been very frequently quoted, contrasts the
Christians of his day with the gymnosophists or hermits
of India, declaring that, unlike these, the Christians did
not fly from the world, but mixed with the Pagans in the
forum, in the market-places, in the public baths, in the
ordinary business of life! But although the life of the
1 Apol. ch, xlii.
108 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
hermit or the monk was unknown in the Church for more
than two hundred years after its foundation, we may detect,
almost from the earliest time, a tone of feeling which pro-
ducesit. The central conceptions of the monastic system
are the meritoriousness of complete abstinence from all
sexual intercourse, and of complete renunciation of the
world. ‘The first of these notions appeared in the very
earliest period, in the respect attached to the egpdition of
virginity, which was alwayseregardéd as sacy€d, and es-
pecially esteemed in the clergy, though for a, long time
it was not imposed as an obligation. The second was
shown in the numerous efforts that were made to separate
the Christian community as far a8 possible %rom the
society in which it existed. Nothing could be more
natural than that, when the increase and afterwards the
triumph of the Church had thrown the bulk of the
Christians into active political or military labour, some
should, as an exercise of piety, have endeavoured to
imitate the separation from the world which was once
the common condition of all. Besides this, a movement
of asceticism had long been raging like a mental epidemic
through the world. Among the Jews—whose law, from
the great stress it laid upon marriage, the excellence of
the rapid multiplication of population, and the hope of
being the ancestor of the Messiah, was peculiarly repug-
nant to monastic conceptions—the Exssenes had consti-
tuted a complete monastic society, abstaining from
marriage and separating themselves wholly from the
world. In Rome, whose practical genius was, if possible,
even more opposed than that of the Jews to an inactive
monasticism, and even among those philosophers who
most represented its active and practical spirit, the same
tendency was shown. The Cynics of the later empire
recommended a complete renunciation of civic and do-
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 109
mestic ties, and a life spent wholly in the contemplation
of wisdom. The Egyptian philosophy, that soon after
acquired an ascendency in Europe, anticipated still more
closely the monastic ideal. On the outskirts of the
Church, the many sects of Gnostics and Manicheans all
held under different forms the essential evil of matter.
The Docetz, following the same notion, denied the reality
of the body of Christ. The Montanists and the Novatians
surpassed and stimulated the private penances of the
orthodox.t The soil was thus thoroughly prepared for a
great outburst of asceticism, whenever the first seed was
sown. This was done during the Decian persecution.
Paul, the hermit, who fled to the desert during that per-
secution, is said to have been the first of the tribe.”
Antony, who speedily followed, greatly extended the
movement, and in a few years the hermits had become a
mighty nation. Persecution, which in the first instance
drove great numbers as fugitives to the deserts, soon
aroused a passionate religious enthusiasm that showed
itself in an ardent desire for those sufferings which were
believed to lead directly to heaven, and this enthusiasm,
after the peace of Constantine, found its natural vent and
sphere in the macerations of the desert life. The imagina-
tions of men were fascinated by the poetic circumstances
of that life which St. Jerome most eloquently embellished.
Women were pre-eminent in recruiting for it. The same
* On these penances, see Bingham, Antig. book vii. Bingham, I think,
justly divides the history of asceticism into three periods, During the
first, which extends from the foundation of the Church to:a.p. 250, there
were men and women who, with a view of spiritual perfection, abstained
from marriage, relinquished amusements, accustomed themselves to severe
fasts, and gave up their property to works of charity; but did this in the
middle of society and without leading the life of either a hermit or a monk,
During the second period, which extended from the Decian persecution,
anchorites were numerous, but the custom of a common or ccenobitic life
was unknown. It was originated in the time of Constantine by Pachomius.
* This is expressly stated by St. Jerome (Vit. Pauli).
110 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
spirit that had formerly led the wife of the Pagan official
to entertain secret relations with the Christian priests,
now led the wife of the Christian to become the active
agent of the monks. While the father designed his son
for the army, or for some civil post, the mother was often
straining every nerve to induce him to become a hermit ;
the monks secretly corresponded with her, they skilfully
assumed the functions of education, in order that they
might influence the young; and sometimes, to evade the
precautions or the anger of the father, they concealed
their profession, and assumed the garb of lay pedagogues.?
The pulpit, which had almost superseded, and immea-
surably transcended in influence, the chairs of the rheto-
ricians, and which was filled by such men as Ambrose,
Augustine, Chrysostom, Basil, and the Gregories, was
continually exerted in the same cause, and the extreme
luxury of the great cities produced a violent, but not
unnatural, reaction of asceticism. The dignity of the
monastic position, which sometimes brought men who
had been simple peasants into connection with the empe-
rors, the security it furnished to fugitive slaves and eri-
minals, the desire of escaping from those fiscal burdens
which, in the corrupt and oppressive administration of the
empire, had acquired an intolerable weight, and espe-
cially the barbarian invasions, which produced every
variety of panic and wretchedness, conspired with the
new religious teaching in peopling the desert. A theology
of asceticism was speedily formed. The examples of
Elijah and Ehsha, to the first of whom, by a bold flight
of the imagination, some later Carmelites ascribed the
origin of their order, and the more recent instance of the
1 See on this subject some curious evidence in Neander’s Life of Chry-
sostom. St. Chrysostom wrote a long work to console fathers whose sons
were thus seduced to the desert.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 111
Baptist were at once adduced. To an ordinary layman
the life of the anchorite might appear in the highest
degree opposed to that of the Teacher who began His
mission in a marriage feast; who was continually re-
proached by His enemies for the readiness with which
He mixetl with the world, and who selected from the
female sex some of His purest and most devoted fol-
lowers; but the monkish theologians avoiding, for the
most part, these topics, dilated chiefly on His immaculate
birth, His virgin mother, His life of celibacy, His ex-
hortation to the rich young man. The fact that St. Peter,
to whom a general primacy was already ascribed, was
unquestionably married, was a difficulty which was in a
measure met by a tradition that he, as well as the other
married apostles, abstained from intercourse with their
wives after their conversion.! St. Paul, however, was
probably unmarried, and his writings showed a decided
preference for the unmarried state, which the ingenuity
of theologians also discovered in some quarters where it
might be least expected. Thus, St. Jerome assures us
that when the clean animals entered the ark by sevens,
and the unclean ones by pairs, the odd number typified
the celibate, and the even the married condition. Even
of the unclean animals but one pair of each kind was
admitted, lest they should perpetrate the enormity of
second marriage.” Ecclesiastical tradition sustained the
tendency, and the apostle James, as he has been portrayed
by Hegesippus, became a kind of ideal saint, a faithful
picture of what, according to the notions of theologians,
was the true type of human nobility. He ‘ was converted,’
it was said, ‘from his mother’s womb.’ He drank neither
wine nor fermented liquors, and abstained from animal
1 On this tradition see Champagny, Les Antonins, tome i. p. 193,
2 Ep. cxxiii.
po ncinggls ws
112 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
food. A razor never came upon his head. He never
anointed with oil, or used a bath. He alone was allowed
to enter the sanctuary. He never wore woollen, but linen
garments. He was in the habit of entering the temple
alone, and was often found upon his bended knees, and
interceding for the forgiveness of the people, so that his
knees became as hard as a camel’s.!
The progress of the monastic movement, as has been
truly said, ‘ was not less rapid or universal than that of
Christianity itself? Of the actual number of the anchorites,
those who are acquainted with the extreme unveracity
of the first historians of the movement will hesitate to
speak with confidence. It is said that St. Pachomius, who
early in the fourth century founded the ccenobitic mode
of life, enlisted under his jurisdiction 7,000 monks;* that
in the days of St. Jerome nearly 50,000 monks were
sometimes assembled at the Easter festivals ;* that in the
desert of Nitria alone there were, in the fourth century,
5,000 monks under a single abbot;° that an Egyptian —
city named Oxyrinchus devoted itself almost exclusively
to the ascetic life, and included 20,000 virgins and 10,000
monks ;° that St. Serapion presided over 10,000 monks,’
and that, towards the close of the fourth century, the
monastic population in that country was nearly equal to
the population of the cities.§ Eeypt was the parent of
monachism, and it was there that it attained both its
extreme development and its most austere severity ; but
there was very soon scarcely any Christian country in
1 Kuseb. Eccl. Hist. ii. 23.
2 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvii.; a brief but masterly sketch of
the progress of the movement.
§ Palladius, Hist. Laus. xxxviii.
4 Jerome, Preface to the Rule of St. Pachomius, § 7.
5 Cassian, De Cenob. Inst. iv. 1.
6 Rufinus, Hist. Monach. ch. v. Rufinus visited it himself.
7 Palladius, Hist. Laus. lxxvi. 8 Rutinus, Hist. Mon. vii.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 113
which a similar movement was not ardently propagated.
St. Athanasius and St. Zeno are said to have introduced it
into Italy, where it soon afterwards received a great stim-
ulus from St. Jerome. St. Hilarion instituted the first
monks in Palestine, and he lived to see many thousands
subject to his rule, and towards the close of his life to
plant monachism in Cyprus. Lustathius, Bishop of
Sebastia, spread it through Armenia, Paphlagonia, and
Pontus. St. Basil laboured along the wild shores of the
Kuxine. §St. Martin of Tours founded the first monastery
in Gaul, and 2,000 monks attended his funeral. Unre-
corded missionaries planted the new institution in the
heart of Aithiopia, amid the little islands that stud the
Mediterranean, in the secluded valleys of Wales and
Treland.? But even more wonderful than the many
thousands who thus abandoned the world, is the reverence
with which they were regarded by those who, by their
attainments or their character, would seem most opposed
to the monastic ideal. No one had more reason than
Augustine to know the danger of enforced celibacy, but
St. Augustine exerted all his energies to spread monasticism
through his diocese. St. Ambrose, who was by nature
an acute statesman; St. Jerome and St. Basil, who were
ambitious scholars ; St. Chrysostom, who was pre-emi-
nently formed to sway the refined throngs of a metro-
polis, all exerted their powers in favour of the life of
1 There is a good deal of doubt and controversy about this. See a note
in Mosheim’s Zccl. Hist. (Soame’s edition), vol. i. p. 354.
* Most of the passages remaining on the subject of the foundation of
monachism are given by Thomassin, Discipline de ’ Eglise, part i. livre iii.
ch. xii. This work contains also much general information about mona-
chism. A curious collection of statistics of the numbers of the monks in
different localities, additional to those [ have given and gleaned from the
Lives of the Saints, may be found in Pitra (Vie de S. Léger, Introd. p. lix.) ;
2,100, or, according to another account, 3,000 monks, lived in the monastery
of Banchor.
' y14 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
solitude, and the three last practised it themselves. St.
Arsenius, who was surpassed by no one in the extrava-
gance of his penances, had held a high office at the court
of the Emperor Arcadius. Pilgrims wandered among
the deserts, collecting accounts of the miracles and the
austerities of the saints, which filled Christendom with
admiration ; and the strange biographies which were thus
formed, wild and grotesque as they are, enable us to
realise very vividly the general features of the anchorite
life, which became the new ideal of the Christian world.?
There is, perhaps, no phase in the moral history of
mankind, of a deeper or more painful interest than this
ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid, and emaciated
maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without
natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of use-
less and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the
ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the
ideal of the nations which had known the writings of
Plato and Cicero and the lives of Socrates or Cato. For
about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body
was regarded .as the highest proof of excellence. St.
Jerome declares, with a thrill of admiration, how he had
seen a monk, who for thirty years had lived exclusively
1 The three principal are the Mistoria Monachorum of Rufinus, who
visited Egypt .p. 373, about seventeen years after the death of St. Antony ;
the Institutiones of Cassian, who, having visited the Eastern monks about
A.D. 394, founded vast monasteries containing, it is said, 5,000 monks, at
Marseilles, and died at a great age about a.p. 448; and the Mistoria Lau-
staca (so called from Lausus, Governor of Cappadocia) of Palladius, who was
himself a hermit on Mount Nitria, in A.D. 888. The first and last, as well
as many minor works of the same period, are given in Rosweyde’s invaluable
collection of the lives of the Fathers, one of the most fascinating volumes in
the whole range of literature.
The hospitality of the monks was not without drawbacks. In a church on
Mount Nitria three whips were hung on a palm-tree—one for chastising
monks, another for chastising thieves, and a third for chastising guests.
(Palladius, Hist. Laus. vii.) ;
is 7
‘
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 115
on a small portion of barley bread and of muddy water ;
another, who lived in a hole and never eat more than five
figs for his daily repast;! a third, who cut his hair only
on Haster Sunday, who never washed his clothes, who
never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces, who starved
himself till his eyes grew dim, and his skin ‘like a pumice
stone,’ and whose merits, shown by these austerities, Homer
himself would be unable to recount.” For six months, it
is said, St. Macarius of Alexandria slept in a marsh, and
exposed his body naked to the stings of venomous flies.
He was accustomed to carry about with him eighty pounds
of iron. His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred
and fifty pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a
dried-up well. St. Sabinus would only eat corn that had
become rotten by remaining for a month in water. St.
Besarion spent forty days and nights in the middle of
thorn-bushes, and for forty years never lay down when he
slept,? which last penance was also during fifteen years
practised by St. Pachomius.* Some saints, like St. Marcian,
restricted themselves to one meal a day, so small that
they continually suffered the pangs of hunger.® Of one of
them it is related that his daily food was six ounces of
bread and a few herbs; that he was never seen to recline
on a mat or bed, or even-to place his limbs easily for sleep ;
but that sometimes, from excess of weariness, his eyes
would close at his meals, and the food would drop into
his mouth.® Other saints, however, eat only every second
1 Vita Paul. St. Jerome adds, that some will not believe this, be-
cause they have no faith, but that all things are possible for those that
believe.
* Vita St. Hilarion.
3 See a long list of these penances in Tillemont, Wém. pour servir a
U Hist. ecclés. tome viii.
4 Vite Patrum (Pachomius). He used to lean against a wall when over-
come by drowsiness.
5 Vite Patrum, ix. 3. . ® Sozomen, vi. 29.
116 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
day;’ while many, if we could believe the monkish
historian, abstained for whole weeks from all nourish-
ment.” St. Macarius of Alexandria is said during an entire
week to have never lain down, or eaten anything but a
few uncooked herbs on Sunday.? Of another famous
saint, named John, it is asserted that for three whole years
he stood in prayer, leaning upon a rock; that during all
that time he never sat or lay down, and that his only
nourishment was the Sacrament, which was brought him
“on Sundays.* Some of the hermits lived in deserted dens
of wild beasts, others in dried-up wells, while others
found a congenial resting-place among the tombs.® Some
disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like the wild
beasts, covered only by their matted hair. In Meso-
potamia, and part of Syria, there existed a sect known by
the name of ‘ Grazers,’ who never lived under a roof, who
eat neither flesh nor bread, but who spent their time for
ever on the mountain side, and eat grass like cattle. The
1 Eg. St. Antony, according to his biographer St. Athanasius.
* “Ty eut dans le désert de Scété des solitaires d’une éminente perfection.
. » « On prétend que pour l’ordinaire ils passoient des semaines entiéres sans
manger, mais apparemment cela ne se faisoit que dans des occasions parti-
culiéres.’—Tillemont, Mém. pour servir 4 U Hist. ecckh tome viii. p. 580. Even
this, however, was admirable !
8 Palladius, Hist. Laus. cap. xx.
* “Primum cum accessisset ad eremum tribus continuis annis sub cujus-
dam saxi rupe stans, semper oravit, ita ut nunquam omnino resederit neque
acuerit. Somni autem tantum caperet, quantum stans capere potuit; cibum
vero nunquam sumpserat nisi die Dominica, Presbyter enim tunc veniebat
ad eum et offerebat pro eo sacrificium idque ei solum sacramentum erat et
victus.’—Rufinus, Hist. Monach. cap. xv.
* Thus St. Antony used to live in a tomb, where he was beaten by the
devil. (St. Athanasius, Life of Antony.)
® Booxoit. See on these monks Sozomen, vi. 83; Evagrius, i.21. It is
mentioned of a certain St. Mare of Athens, that having lived for thirty
years naked in the desert, his body was covered with hair like that of a wild
beast. (Bollandists, March 29.) St. Mary of Egypt, during part of her
period of penance, lived upon grass. (Vite Patrum.)
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 117
cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the
soul, and the saints who were most admired had become
one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates
with enthusiasm how 8t. Antony, the patriarch of mona-
chism, had never, in extreme old age, been guilty of wash-
ing his feet.’ The less constant St. Poemen fell into this
habit for the first time when a very old man, and, with
a glimmering of common sense, defended himself against
the astonished monks by saying that he had ‘learnt to
kill not his body, but his passions.’? §t. Abraham the
hermit, however, who lived for fifty years after his con-
version, rigidly refused from that date to wash either his
face or his feet.? He was, it is said, a person of singular
beauty, and his biographer somewhat strangely remarks,
that ‘ his face reflected the purity of his soul.’* St. Am-
mon had never seen himself naked.® A famous virgin
named Silvia, though she was sixty years old, and though
bodily sickness was a consequence of her habits, reso-
lutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of
her body except her fingers.® St. Euphraxia joined a con-
vent of one hundred and thirty nuns, who never washed
their feet, and who shuddered at the mention of a bath.’
An anchorite once imagined that he was mocked by an
illusion of the devil, as he saw gliding before him through
1 Life of Antony.
* Tl ne faisoit pas aussi difficulté dans sa vieillesse de se laver quelque-
fois les piez. Et comme on témoignoit s’en étonner et trouver que cela ne
répondoit pas a la vie austére des anciens, il se justifioit par ces paroles:
Nous avons appris 4 tuer, non pas notre corps mais nos passions.’—Tillemont,
Mém. Hist. eccl. tome xv. p. 148. This saint was so very virtuous, that
he sometimes remained without eating for whole weeks.
* “Non appropinquavit oleum corpusculo ejus. Facies vel etiam pedes
a die conversionis suze nunquam diluti sunt.’— Vite Patrum, c. xvii.
* ‘Tn facie ejus puritas animi noscebatur.’—Ibid. ec. xviii.
> Socrates, iv. 23. 6 Heraclidis Paradisus (Rosweyde), c. xlii.
7 “Nulla earum pedes suos abluebat; aliquante vero audientes de
balneo loqui, irridentes, confusionem et magnam abominationem se audire
118 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
the desert a naked creature black with filth and years of
exposure, and with white hair floating to the wind. It was
a once beautiful woman, St. Mary of Egypt, who had
thus, during forty-seven years, been expiating her sins.’
The occasional decadence of the monks into habits of
decency was a subject of much reproach. ‘ Our fathers,’
said the abbot Alexander, looking mournfully back to
the past, ‘never washed their faces, but we frequent the
public baths.’ It was related of one monastery in the
desert, that the monks suffered greatly from want of water
to drink; but at the prayer of the abbot Theodosius, a
copious stream was produced. But soon some monks,
tempted by the abundant supply, diverged from their old
austerity, and persuaded the abbot to avail himself of the
stream for the construction of the bath. The bath was
made. Once, and once only, did the monks enjoy their
ablutions, when the stream ceased to flow. Prayers,
tears, and fastings were in vain. A whole year passed. At
last the abbot destroyed the bath, which was the object
of the Divine displeasure, and the waters flowed afresh.?
But of all the evidences of the loathsome excesses to
judicabant, que neque auditum suum hoc audire patiebantur.’—Vit. S.
Euphrax. ¢. vi. (Rosweyde.)
1 See her acts, Bollandists, April 2, and in the Vite Patrum.
* ¢Patres nostri nunquam facies suas lavabant, nos autem lavacra publica
balneaque frequentamus.’—Moschus, Pratum Spirituale, clxviii.
3 Pratum Spirituale, \xxx.
An Irish saint, named Coemgenus, is said to have shown his devotion in a
way which was directly opposite to that of the other saints I have men-
tioned—by his special use of cold water—but the principle in each case
was the same—to mortify nature. St. Coemgenus was accustomed to pray
for an hour every night in a pool of cold water, while the devil sent a
horrible beast to swim round him. An angel, however, was sent to him
for three purposes. ‘Tribus de causis 4 Domino missus est angelus ibi ad
S. Coemgenum. Prima ut a diversis suis gravibus laboribus levius viveret
paulisper ; secunda ut horridam bestiam sancto infestam repelleret ; tertia,
ut frigiditatem aque calefaceret.—Bollandists, June, 3. The editors say
these acts are of doubtful authenticity.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 119
which this spirit was carried, the life of St. Simeon Stylites
is probably the most remarkable. It would be difficult
to conceive a more horrible or disgusting picture than is
given of the penances by which that saint commenced
his ascetic career. He had bound a rope around him so
that it became imbedded in his flesh, which putrefied
around it. ‘A horrible stench, intolerable to the by-
standers, exhaled from his body, and worms dropped from
him whenever he moved, and they filled his bed’ Some-
times he left the monastery and slept in a dry well, in-
habited, it is said, by demons. He built successively
three pillars, the last being sixty feet high, and scarcely
two cubits in circumference, and on this pillar, during
thirty years, he remained exposed to every change of
climate, ceaselessly and rapidly bending his body in prayer
almost to the level of his feet. A spectator attempted to
number these rapid motions, but desisted from weariness
when he had counted 1,244. For a whole year, we are
told, St. Simeon stood upon one leg, the other being co-
vered with hideous ulcers, while his biographer was com-
missioned to stand by his side, to pick up the worms that
fell from his body, and to replace them in the sores, the
saint saying to the worm, ‘ Eat what God has given you.’
From every quarter pilgrims of every degree thronged
todo him homage. As Tillemont puts it: ‘Il se trouva trés-peu de saints en qui Dieu ait
joint les talens extérieurs de l’éloquence et de la science avec la grace de
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 123
the passion for asceticism was general, many scholars
became ascetics, the great majority of the early monks
appear to have been men who were not only absolutely
ignorant themselves, but who also looked upon learning
with positive disfavour. St. Antony, the true founder of
monachism, refused when a boy to learn letters, because
it would bring him into too great intercourse with other
boys.’ At atime when &t. Jerome had suffered himself
to feel a deep admiration for the genius of Cicero, he
was, as he himself tells us, borne in the night before the
tribunal of Christ, accused of being rather a Ciceronian
than a Christian, and severely flagellated by the angels.
This saint, however, afterwards modified his opinions
about the Pagan writings, and he was compelled to de-
fend himself at length against his more jealous brethren,
who accused him of defiling his writings with quotations
from Pagan authors, and of Minldeiha some monks in
copying Cicero, and of explaining Virgil to some children
at Bethlehem.? Of one monk it is related, that being
especially famous as a linguist, he made it his penance to
remain perfectly silent for thirty years. Of another, that
having discovered a few books: in the cell of a brother
la prophétie et des miracles. Ce sont des dons que sa Providence a presque
toujours séparéz.’—Mém. Hist. ecclés, tome iv. p. 815.
1 St. Athanasius, Vit. Anton.
* Ep. xxii. He says his shoulders were bruised when he awoke.
° Ep. Ixx.; Adv. Ruyfinum, lib. i. ch. xxx. He there speaks of his vision
as a mere dream, not binding. He elsewhere (Zp. cxxv.) speaks very
sensibly of the advantage of hermits occupying themselves, and says he
learnt Hebrew to keep away unholy thoughts.
* Sozomen, vi. 28; Rufinus, Hist. Monach. ch. vi. Socrates tells rather
a touching story of one of these illiterate saints, named Pambos. Being
unable to read, he came to some one to be taught a psalm. Having learnt
the single verse, ‘I said I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with
my tongue,’ he went away, saying that was enough if it were practically
acquired. When asked six months, and again many years after, why he
did not come to learn another verse, he answered that he had never been
able truly to master this. (H. EL. iv. 23.)
124 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
hermit, he reproached the student with having thus de-
frauded of their property the widow and the orphan ;?
of others, that their only books were copies of the New
Testament, which they sold to relieve the poor.’
With such men, living such a life, visions and miracles
were necessarily habitual. All the elements of halluci-
nation were there. Ignorant and superstitious, believing
as a matter of religious conviction that countless dzemons
filled the air, attributing every fluctuation of his own tem-
perament, and every exceptional phenomenon in surround-
ing nature to spiritual agency ; delirious, too, from solitude
and long-continued austerities, the hermit soon mistook
for palpable realities the phantoms of his brain. In the
ghastly gloom of the sepulchre, where, amid mouldermg
corpses, he took up his abode; in the long hours of the
night of penance, when the desert wind sobbed around
his lonely cell, and the cries of wild beasts were borne
upon his ear, visible forms of lust or terror appeared to
haunt him, and strange dramas were enacted by those who
were’ contending for his soul. An imagination strained
to the utmost limit, acting upon a frame attenuated and
diseased by macerations, produced bewildering psycho-
logical phenomena, paroxysms of conflicting passions,
sudden alternations of joy and anguish, which he regarded
as manifestly supernatural. Sometimes, in the very ecstasy
of his devotion, the memory of old scenes would crowd
upon his mind. The shady groves and soft voluptuous
gardens of his native city would arise, and, kneeling alone
upon the burning sand, he seemed to see around him the
fair groups of dancing-girls, on whose warm, undulating
limbs and wanton smiles his youthful eyes had too fondly
dwelt. Sometimes his temptation sprang from remem-
1 Tillemont, x. p. 61. 2 Thid. viii. 490; Socrates, H. EZ, iv. 23.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 125
bered sounds. The sweet, licentious songs of other days
came floating on his ear, and his heart was thrilled with
the passions of the past. And then the scene would
change. As his lips were murmuring the psalter, his
imagination, fired perhaps by the music of some martial
psalm, depicted the crowded amphitheatre. The throng,
and passion, and mingled cries of eager thousands were
present to his mind, and the fierce joy of the gladiators
passed, through the tumult of his dream. The simplest
incident came at last to suggest diabolical influence. An
old hermit, weary and fainting upon his journey, once
thought how refreshing would be a draught of the honey
of wild bees of the desert. At that moment his eye fell
upon a rock on which they had built a hive. He passed
on with a shudder and an exorcism, for he believed it to
be a temptation of the devil.? But most terrible of all
were the struggles of young and ardent men, through
whose veins the hot blood of passion continually flowed,
physically incapable of a life of celibacy, and with all that
pronencss to hallucination which a southern sun engenders,
who were borne on the wave of enthusiasm to the desert
life. In the arms of Syrian or African brides, whose soft
eyes answered love with love, they might have sunk
to rest, but in the lonely wilderness no peace could ever
visit their souls. The lives of the saints paint with an
1 T have combined in this passage incidents from three distinct lives. St.
Jerome, in a very famous and very beautiful passage of his letter to Eusto-
chium (Zp. xxii.), describes the manner in which the forms of dancing-girls
appeared to surround him as he knelt upon the desert sands. St. Mary of
Lgypt (Vite Patrum, ch. xix.) was especially tortured by the recollection
of the songs she had sung when young, which continually haunted her
mind. St. Hilarion (see his Zzfe by St. Jerome) thought he saw a gladia-
torial show while he was repeating the psalms. The manner in which the
different visions faded into one another like dissolving views is repeatedly
described in the biographies.
* Rufinus, Hist. Monach. ch. xi. This saint was St. Helenus.
126 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
appalling vividness the agonies of their struggle. Multi-
plying with frantic energy the macerations of the body,
beating their breasts with anguish, the tears for ever
streaming from their eyes, imagining themselves. conti-
nually haunted by ever-changing forms of deadly beauty,
which acquired a greater vividness from the very passion
with which they resisted them, their struggles not unfre-
quently ended in insanity and in suicide. It is related
that when St. Pachomius and St. Palemon were conversing
together in the desert, a young monk, with his counte-
nance distracted with madness, rushed into their presence,
and, with a voice broken with convulsive sobs, poured out
his tale of sorrows. A woman, he said, had entered his
cell, had seduced him by her artifices, and then vanished
miraculously in the air, leaving him half dead upon the
ground ;—and then with a wild shriek the monk broke
away from the saintly listeners. Impelled, as they ima-
gined, by an evil spirit, he rushed across the desert, till
he arrived at the next village, and there, leaping into the
open furnace of the public baths, he perished in the
flames. Strange stories were told among the monks of
revulsions of passion even in the most advanced. Of one
monk especially, who had long been regarded as a pattern
of asceticism, but who had suffered himself to fall into
that self-complacency which was very common among
the anchorites, it was told that one evening a fainting
woman appeared at the door of his cell, and implored
him to give her shelter, and not permit her to be devoured
by the wild beasts. In an evil hour he yielded to her
prayer. With all the aspect of profound reverence she
won his regards, and at last ventured to lay her hand
upon him. But that touch convulsed his frame. Passions
? Life of St. Pachomius (Vit. Patrum), cap. ix.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 127
long slumbering and forgotten rushed with an impetuous
fury through his veins. In a paroxysm of fierce love,
he sought to clasp the woman to his heart, but she
vanished from his sight, and a chorus of demons, with
peals of laughter, exulted over his fall, The sequel of
the story, as it is told by the monkish writer, is, I think,
of a very high order of artistic merit. The fallen hermit
did not seek, as might have been expected, by penance
and prayers to renew his purity. That moment of passion
and of shame had revealed in him a new nature, and
severed him irrevocably from the hopes and feelings of
the ascetic life. The fair form that had arisen upon his
dream, though he knew it to be a deception luring him
to destruction, still governed his heart. He fled from the
desert, plunged anew into the world, avoided all in-
tercourse with the monks, and followed the light of that
ideal beauty even into the jaws of hell.
Anecdotes of this kind, circulated among the monks,
contributed to heighten the feelings of terror with which
they regarded all communication with the other sex.
But to avoid such communication was sometimes very
difficult. Few things are more striking in the early his-
torlans of the movement we are considering, than the
manner in which narratives of the deepest tragical in-
terest alternate with extremely whimsical accounts of the
profound admiration with which the female devotees
* Rufinus, Hist. Monach. cap. i. This story was told to Rufinus by St.
John the hermit. The same saint described his own visions very graphi-
cally. ‘Denique etiam me frequenter demones noctibus seduxerunt, et
neque orare neque requiescere permiserunt, phantasias quasdam per noctem
totam sensibus meis et cogitationes suggerentes. Mane vero velut cum
quadam illusione prosternebant se ante me dicentes, Indulge nobis, abbas,
quia laborem tibi incussimus tota nocte.’—Ibid. St. Benedict in the desert
is said to have been tortured by the recollection of a beautiful girl he had
once seen, and only regained his composure by rolling in thorns, (St. Greg.
Dial, ii, 2.)
128 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
regarded the most austere anchorites, and the unwearied
perseverance with which they endeavoured to force them-
selves upon their notice. Some women seem in this re-
spect to have been peculiarly fortunate. St. Melania,
who devoted a great portion of her fortune to the monks,
accompanied by the historian Rufinus, made near the
end of the fourth century a long pilgrimage through the
Syrian and Eeyptian Rene But with many of the
hermits it was a rule never to look upon the face of any
woman, and the number of years they had escaped this
contamination was commonly stated as a conspicuous
proof of their excellence. St. Basil would only speak to
a woman under extreme necessity.” St. John of Lycopolis
had not seen a woman for forty-eight years.’ . A tribune
was sent by his wife on a pilgrimage to St. John the
hermit to implore him to allow her to visit him, her
desire being so intense that she would probably, in the
opinion of her husband, die if it was ungratified. At last
the hermit told his supplant that he would that night
visit his wife when she was in bed in her house. The
tribune brought this strange message to his wife, who
that night saw the hermit in a dream,4 A young Roman
girl made a pilgrimage from Italy to Alexandria, to look
upon the face, and obtain the prayers of St. Arsenius,
into whose presence she forced herself. Quailing beneath
his rebuffs, she flung herself at his feet, imploring him
with tears to grant her only request—to remember her,
and to pray for her. ‘ Remember you,’ cried the indignant
1 She lived also for some time in a convent at Jerusalem which she had
founded. Melania (who was one of St. Jerome’s friends) was a lady of
rank and fortune, who devoted her property to the monks. See herjourney
in Rosweyde, lib. ii.
2 See his life in Tillemont.
5 Tbid. x. p. 14. A certain Didymus lived entirely alone till his death,
which took place when he was ninety. (Socrates, H. £. iv. 23.)
4 Rufinus, Hist. Monachorum, cap. i.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 129
saint, ‘It shall be the prayer of my life that I may
forget you.’ The poor girl sought consolation from the
Archbishop of Alexandria, who comforted her by assur-
ing her that though she belonged to the sex by which
demons commonly tempt saints, he doubted not the
hermit would pray for her soul, though he would try to
forget her face. Sometimes this female enthusiasm took
another and a more subtle form, and on more than one
occasion women were known to attire themselves as men,
and to pass their lives undisturbed as anchorites. Among
others, St. Pelagia, who had been the most beautiful,
and one of the most dangerously seductive actresses of
Antioch, having been somewhat strangely converted,
was appointed by the bishops to live in penance with an
elderly virgin of irreproachable piety ; but impelled, we
are told, by her desire for a more austere life, she fled
from her companion, assumed a male attire, took refuge
among the monks on the Mount of Olives, and, with
something of the skill of her old profession, supported her
feigned character so consistently, that she acquired great
renown, and it was only (it is said) after her death that
the saints discovered who had been living among them
1 Verba Seniorum, § 65.
* Pelagia was very pretty, and, according to her own account, ‘her sins
were heavier than the sand.’ The people of Antioch, who were very fond
of her, called her Marguerita, or the pearl. ‘II arriva un jour que divers
évesques, appelez par celui d’Antioche pour quelques affaires, estant ensemble
a la porte de l’église de 8.-Julien, Pélagie passa devant eux dans tout l’éclat
des pompes du diable, n’ayant pas seulement une coeffe sur sa teste ni un
mouchoir sur ses épaules, ce qu’on remarque comme le comble de son im-
pudence. Tous les évesques baissérent les yeux en gémissant pour ne pas voir
ce dangereux objet de péché, hors Nonne, trés-saint évesque d’Héliople,
qui la regarda avec une attention qui fit peine aux autres” However, this
bishop immediately began crying a great deal, and reassured his brethren,
and a sermon which he preached led to the conversion of the actress,
(Tillemont, Mém. d’ Hist. ecclés. tome xii. pp. 378-880.) See, too, on
women, ‘under pretence of religion,’ attiring themselves as men, Sozomen,
ili, 14.)
130 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
The foregoing anecdotes and observations will, I hope,
‘have given a sufficiently clear idea of the general nature
of the monastic life in its earliest phase, and also of the
writings it produced. We may now proceed to examine
the ways in which this mode of life affected both the
ideal type and the realised condition of Christian morals.
And in the first place, it is manifest that the proportion
of virtues was altered. If an impartial person were to
glance over the ethics of the New Testament, and were
asked what was the central and distinctive virtue to which
the sacred.writers most continually referred, he would
doubtless answer, that it was that which is described as
love, charity, or philanthropy. If he were to apply a
similar scrutiny to the writings of the fourth and fifth
centuries, he would answer that the cardinal virtue of
the religious type was not love, but chastity. And this
chastity, which was regarded as the ideal state, was not
the purity of an undefiled marriage. It was the abso-
lute suppression of the whole sensual side of our nature.
The chief form of virtue, the central conception of the
saintly life, was a perpetual struggle against all unchaste
impulses, by men who altogether refused the compromise
of marriage. From this fact, if I mistake not, some in-
teresting and important consequences may be deduced.
In the first place, religion gradually assumed a very
sombre hue. The business of the saint was to eradicate
a natural appetite, to attain a condition which was em-
phatically abnormal. The depravity of human nature,.
and especially the essential evil of the body, were felt with
a degree of intensity that could never have been attained
by moralists who were occupied mainly with transient
or exceptional vices, such as envy, anger, or cruelty.
And in addition to the extreme inveteracy of the appetite
which it was desired to eradicate, it should be remem-
bered that a somewhat luxurious and indulgent life, even
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 151
when that indulgence is not itself distinctly evil, even
when it has a tendency to mollify the character, has
naturally the effect of strengthening the animal passions,
and is therefore directly opposed to the ascetic ideal.
The consequence of this was first of all a very deep sense
of the habitual and innate depravity of human nature,
and in the next place, a very strong association of the
idea of pleasure with that of vice. All this was the
necessary consequence of the supreme value placed upon
virginity. The tone of calm and joyousness that charac-
terises Greek philosophy, the almost complete absence of
all sense of struggle and innate sin that it displays, is
probably i in a very vie degree to be ascribed to the fact
that, in the department of morals we are considering,
Greek moralists made no serious efforts to improve our
nature, and Greek public opinion acquiesced, without
scandal, in an almost boundless indulgence of illicit
pleasures.
But while the great prominence at this time given to
the conflicts of the ascetic life threw a dark shade upon
the popular estimate of human nature, it contributed, I
think, very largely to sustain and deepen that strong con-
viction of the freedom of the human will which the
Catholic Church has always so strenuously upheld; for
there is, probably, no other form of moral conflict in
which men are so habitually and so keenly sensible of
that distinction between our will and our desires, upon
the reality of which all moral freedom ultimately depends.
It had also, I imagine, another result, which it is difficult
to describe with the same precision. What may be called
a strong animal nature—a nature, that is, in which the
passions are in vigorous, and at the same time healthy
action, is that in which we should most naturally expect
to find several moral qualities. Good humour, frankness,
182 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
generosity, active courage, sanguine energy, buoyancy of
temper, are the usual and appropriate accompaniments of
a vigorous animal temperament, and they are much more
rarely found either in natures that are essentially feeble
and effeminate, or in natures which have been artificially
emasculated by penances, distorted from their original
tendency, and habitually held under severe control. The
ideal type of Catholicism being, on account of the supreme
value placed upon virginity, of the latter kind, the quali-
ties I have mentioned have always ranked very low in
the Catholic conceptions of excellence, and the steady
tendency of Protestant and industrial civilisation has been
to elevate them.
I do not know whether the reader will regard these
speculations—which I advance with some diffidence—as
far-fetched and fanciful. Our knowledge of the physical
antecedents of different moral qualities is so scanty, that
it is difficult to speak on these matters with much con-
fidence; but few persons, I think, can have failed to
observe that the physical temperaments I have described,
differ not simply in the one great fact of the intensity of
the animal passions, but also in the aptitude of each to
produce a distinct moral type, or, in other words, in the
harmony of each with several qualities, both good and
evil.
in vain. No woman was admitted within the precincts
of his dwelling, and he refused to permit her even to
look upon his face. Her entreaties and tears were
mingled with words of bitter and eloquent reproach.?
? Bollandists, June 6. I avail myself again of the version of Tillemont,
‘ Lorsque S. Pemen demeuroit en Egypte avec ses fréres, leur mére, qui avoit
un extréme désir de les voir, venoit souvent au lieu ot ils estoient, sans
pouvoir jamais avoir cette satisfaction. Une fois enfin elle prit si bien son
temps qu’elle les rencontra qui alloient 4 l’église, mais dés qu’ils la virent
ils s’en retournérent en haste dans leur cellule et fermérent la porte sur eux.
Elle les suivit, et trouvant la porte, elle les appeloit avec des larmes
et des cris capables de les toucher de compassion. . . . Pemen s’y leva et
s'y en alla, et l’entendant pleurer il luy dit, tenant toujours la porte fermée,
“ Pourquoi vous lassez-vous inutilement & pleurer et crier ? N’étes-vous pas
déja assez abattue par la vieillesse ?” Elle reconnut la voix de Pemen, et
s'efforgant encore davantage, elle s’écria, “ H6é, mes enfans, c’est que je vou-
drois bien vous voir: et quel mal y a-t-il que je vous voie? Ne suis-je
pas votre mére, et ne vous ai-je pas nourri du lait de mes mammelles?
Je suis déja toute pleine de rides, et lorsque je vous ay entendu, l’extréme
envie que j’ay de vous voir m’a tellement émue que je suis presque tombée
en défaillance.” ’—Mémoires de Hist. ecclés. tome xv. pp. 157-158.
® The original is much more eloquent than my translation. ‘ Fili, quare
hoc fecistiP Pro utero quo te portavi, satiasti me luctu, pro lactatione qua
te lactavi dedisti mihi lacrymas, pro osculo quo te osculata sum, dedisti mihi
amaras cordis angustias; pro dolore et labore quem passa sum, imposuisti
mihi szvissimas plagas.’— Vita Simeonis (in Rosweyde).
5 ae
os"
ae
— ee ae ee ee ee ee o
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FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 139
‘My son,’ she is represented as having said, ‘ Why have
you done this? I bore you in my womb, and you have
wrung my soul with grief. I gave you milk from my
breast, you have filled my eyes with tears. For the
kisses I gave you, you have given me the anguish of a
broken heart; for all that I have done and suffered for
you, you have repaid me by the most bitter wrongs.’
At last the saint sent a message to tell her that she would
soon see him. ‘Three days and three nights she had wept
and entreated in vain, and now, exhausted with grief and
age and privation, she sank feebly to the ground and
breathed her last sigh before that inhospitable door.
Then for the first time the saint, accompanied by his
followers, came out. He shed some pious tears over the
corpse of his murdered mother, and offered up a prayer
consigning her soul to heaven. Perhaps it was but fancy,
perhaps life was not yet wholly extinct, perhaps the story
is but the invention of the biographer; but a faint mo-
tion—which appears to have been regarded as miracu-
lous—is said to have passed over her~ prostrate form.
Simeon once more commended her soul to heaven, and
then, amid the admiring murmurs of his, disciples, the
saintly matricide returned to his devotions.
The glaring mendacity that characterises the lives of
the Catholic saints, probably to a greater extent than any
other important branch of existing literature, makes it
not unreasonable to hope that many of the foregoing
anecdotes represent much less events: that actually took
place than ideal pictures generated by the enthusiasm of
the chroniclers. ‘They are not, however, on that account
the less significant of the moral conceptions which the
ascetic period had created. The ablest men in the
Christian community vied with one another in inculcating
as the highest form of duty the abandonment of social
140 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
ties and the mortification of domestic affections. A few
faint restrictions were indeed occasionally made. Much—
on which I shall hereafter touch—was written on the
liberty of husbands and wives deserting one another; and
something was written on the cases of children forsaking
or abandoning their parents. At first, those who, when
children, were devoted to the monasteries by their parents,
without their own consent, were permitted, when of
mature age, to return to the world; and this hberty was
taken from them for the first time by the fourth Council
of Toledo, in A.D. 633.4. The Council of Gangra con-
demned the heretic Eustathius for teaching that children
might through religious motives forsake their parents,
and St. Basil wrote in the same strain;? but cases of this
kind of rebellion against parental authority were con-
tinually recounted with admiration in the lives of the
saints, applauded by some of the leading Fathers, and vir-
tually sanctioned by a law of Justinian, which prohibited
parents either from restraining their children from en-
tering monasteries, or disinheriting them if they had done
so without their consent.2 St. Chrysostom relates with
enthusiasm the case of a young man who had been de-
signed by his father for the army, and who was lured
away into a monastery. The eloquence of St. Ambrose
is said to have been so seductive, that mothers were ac-
customed to shut up their daughters to guard them against
his fascinations.® The position of affectionate parents was
at this time extremely painful. The touching language:
is still preserved, in which the mother of St. Chrysostom
—who had a distinguished part in the conversion of her
son—implored him, if he thought it his duty to fly to the
desert life, at least to postpone the act till she had died.®
1 Bincham, Antiquities, book vii. ch. iii. 2 Thid. > Thidk
4 Milman’s Early Christianity (ed. 1867), vol. ii. p. 122. —
5 Thid. vol. ili. p. 153. 6 Thid. vol. iii. p. 120.
PERN MT SOO NS TE RN ae aed - ee :
Ni Stel RE Samos Ane bis eae” - Fe eee a ali > eo eS
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 141
St. Ambrose devoted a chapter to proving that, while those
are worthy of commendation who entered the monasteries
with the approbation, those are still more worthy of praise
who do so against the wishes, of their parents; and he pro-
ceeded to show how small were the penalties the latter
could inflict when compared with the blessings asceticism
could bestow.! Even before the law of Justinian, the invec-
tives of the clergy were directed against those who endea-
voured to prevent their children flying to the desert. St.
Chrysostom explained to them that they would certainly
be damned.? St. Ambrose showed, that even in this world
they might not be unpunished. A girl, he tells us, had
resolved to enter into a convent, and as her relations were
expostulating with her on her intention, one of those
present tried to move her by the memory of her dead
father, asking whether, if he were still alive, he would
have suffered her to remain unmarried. ‘Perhaps,’ she
calmly answered, ‘it was for this very purpose he died,
that he should not throw any obstacle in my way.’ Her
words were more than an answer, they were an oracle.
The indiscreet questioner almost immediately died, and
the relations, shocked by the manifest providence, desisted
from their opposition, and even implored the young
saint to accomplish her design.? St. Jerome tells with
rapturous enthusiasm of a little girl, named Asella, who,
when only twelve years old, devoted herself to this reli-
gious life, refused to look on the face of any man, and
whose knees, by constant prayer, became at last like
those of a camel.* A famous widow, named Paula, upon
the death of her husband, deserted her family, listened
with ‘ dry eyes’ to her children, who were imploring her
to stay, fled to the society of the monks at Jerusalem,
1 De Virginibus, i. 11. ? Milman’s Early Christianity, vol. iti. p. 121.
3 De Virginibus, i. 11. 4 Epist. xxiv.
142 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
made it her desire that ‘she might die a beggar, and
leave not one piece of money to her son,’ and having
dissipated the whole of her fortune in charities, be-
queathed to her children only the embarrassment of her
debts.‘ It was carefully inculcated that all money given
or bequeathed to the poor, or to the monks, produced
spiritual benefit to the donors or testators, but that no
spiritual benefit sprang from money bestowed upon rela-
tions ; and the more pious minds recoiled from disposing
of their property in a manner that would not redound to
the advantage of their souls. Sometimes parents made it
a dying request of their children that they would preserve
none of their property, but would bestow it all among the
poor.” It was one of the most honourable incidents of
the life of St. Augustine, that he, like Aurelius, Bishop of
Carthage, refused to receive legacies or donations which
unjustly spoliated the relatives of the benefactor.2 Usu-
ally, however, to outrage the affections of the nearest
and dearest relations was not only regarded as innocent,
but proposed as the highest virtue. ‘A young man,’ it
was acutely said, ‘who has learnt to despise a mother’s
grief, will easily bear any other labour that is imposed
* St. Jerome describes the scene at her departure with admiring eloquence.
‘Descendit ad portum fratre, cognatis, affinibus et quod majus est liberis
prosequentibus, et clementissimam matrem pietate vincere cupientibus.
Jam carbasa tendebantur, et remorum ductu navis in altum protrahebatur.
Parvus Toxotius supplices manus tendebat in littore, Ruffina jam nubilis
ut suas expectaret nuptias tacens fletibus obsecrabat. Et tamen illa siccos
tendebat ad calum oculos, pietatem in filios pietate in Deum superans.
Nesciebat se matrem ut Christi probaret ancillam.’—Zp. cvyiii. In another
place he says of her, ‘Testis est Jesus, ne unum quidem nummum ab ea
filiee derelictum, sed, ut ante jam dixi, derelictum magnum es alienum.’—
Ibid. And again, ‘ Vis, lector, ejus breviter scire virtutes? Cums suos
pauperes, pauperior ipsa dimisit.’—Ibid.
2 See Chastel, Ltudes historiques sur la Charité, p. 231. The parents of
‘At. Gregory Neca had made this request, which was faithfully observed.
§ Chastel, p. 232.
PN a eee
aaa ‘ cas Bey sew rd Yeaeed =
aioe oy FT Ne et a er bbe eee See me elie
ak pee ee
Ba ee ere ae
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 143
upon him.’? §St. Jerome, when exhorting Heliodorus to
desert his family and become a hermit, expatiated with
a fond minuteness on every form of natural affection he
desired him to violate. ‘Though your little nephew
twine his arms around your neck; though your mother,
with dishevelled hair and tearing her robe asunder, point
to the breast with which she suckled you; though your
father fall down on the threshold before you, pass on
over your father’s body. Fly with tearless eyes to the
banner of the cross. In this matter cruelty is the only
piety. . . . Your widowed sister may throw her gentle
arms around you. ... Your father may implore you to
wait but a short time to bury those near to you, who will
soon be no more; your weeping mother may recall your
childish days, and may point to her shrunken breast and
to her wrinkled brow. Those around you may tell you
that all the household rests upon you. Such chains as
these, the love of God and the fear of hell can easily
break. You say that Scripture orders you to obey your '
parents, but he who loves them more than Christ loses
his soul. The enemy brandishes a sword to slay me.
Shall I think of a mother’s tears ? ”?
The sentiment manifested in these cases continued to
be displayed in the later ages. Thus, St. Gregory the
Great assures us that a certain young boy, though he
had enrolled himself as a monk, was unable to repress
his love for his parents, and one night stole out secretly
to visit them. But the judgment of God soon marked
the enormity of the offence. On coming back to the
monastery, he died that very day, and when he was
1 See a characteristic passage from the Life of St. Fulgentius, quoted by
Dean Milman. ‘Facile potest juvenis tolerare quemcunque imposuerit
laborem qui poterit maternum jam despicere dolorem,’—Hist. of Latin
Christianity, vol. ii. p. 82.
? Ep. xiv. (Ad Heliodorum).
144 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
buried, the earth refused to receive so heinous a criminal.
His body was repeatedly thrown up from the grave, and
it was only suffered to rest in peace when St. Benedict
had laid the Sacrament upon its breast.) One nun re-
vealed, it is said, after death, that she had been con-
demned for three days to the fires of purgatory, because
she had loved her mother too much.? Of another saint
it is recorded, that his benevolence was such that he was
never known to be hard or inhuman to anyone except
his relations.? St. Romuald, the founder of the Camal-
dolites, counted his father among his spiritual children,
and on one occasion punished him by flagellation.* The
first nun, whom St. Francis of Assisi enrolled, was a beau-
tiful girl of Assisi, named Clara Scifi, with whom he had
for some time carried on a clandestine correspondence, and
whose flight from her father’s home he both counselled
and planned.’ As the first enthusiasm of asceticism died
away, what was lost in influence by the father was gained
by the priest. The confessional made this personage the
confidant in the most delicate secrets of domestic life.
The supremacy of authority, of sympathy, and sometimes
even of affection, passed away beyond the domestic circle,
and by establishing an absolute authority over the most
secret thoughts and feelings of nervous and credulous
women, the priests laid the foundation of the empire of
the world.
The picture I have drawn of the inroads made in the
first period of asceticism upon the domestic affections,
tells, I think, its own story, and I shall only add a very
1 St. Greg. Dial. ii. 24. * Bollandists, May 3 (vol. vii. p. 561).
3 “Hospitibus omni loco ac tempore liberalissimus fuit. . . . Solis con-
sanguineis durus erat et inhumanus, tamquam ignotos illos respiciens,’—
Bollandists, May 29.
4 See Helyot, Dict. des Ordres religieux, art. ‘Camaldules,’
° See the charming sketch in the Life of St. Francis, by Hase.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 145
few words of comment. That itis necessary for many men
who are pursuing a truly heroic course to break loose
from the trammels which those about them would cast
over their actions or their opinions, and that this severance
often constitutes at once one of the noblest and one of the
most painful incidents in their career, are unquestionable
truths ; but the examples of such occasional and excep-
tional sacrifices, endured rather than relinquish some
creat unselfish end, cannot be compared with the conduct
of those who regarded the mortification of domestic love
as in itself a form of virtue, and whose ends were mainly
or exclusively selfish. The suffermgs endured by the
ascetic who fled from his relations were often, no doubt,
very great. Many anecdotes remain to show that warm
and affectionate hearts sometimes beat under the cold
exterior of the monk,! and St. Jerome, in one of his
letters, remarked, with much complacency and congratu-
lation, that the very bitterest pang of captivity is simply
this irrevocable separation which the superstition he
preached induced multitudes to inflict upon themselves.
But if, putting aside the intrinsic excellence of an act, we
attempt to estimate the nobility of the agent, we must
consider not only the cost of what he did, but also the
motive which induced him to do it. It is this last con-
sideration which renders it impossible for us to place the
heroism of the ascetic on the same level with that of the
great patriots of Greece or Rome. A man may be as
1 The legend of St. Scholastica, the sister of St. Benedict, has been often
quoted. He had visited her, and was about to leave in the evening, when
she implored him to stay. He refused, and she then prayed to God, who
sent so violent a tempest that the saint was unable to depart. (St. Greg.
Dial. ii, 33.) Cassian speaks of a monk who thought it his duty never to
see his mother, but who laboured for a whole year to pay off a debt she had
incurred. (Ccenob. Inst. v. 38.) St. Jerome mentions the strong natural
affection of Paula, though she considered it a virtue to mortify it. (Zp.
cviii.)
146 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
truly selfish about the next world as about this. Where
an overpowering dread of future torments, or an intense
realisation of future happiness, is the leading motive of
action, the theological virtue of faith may be present, but
the ennobling quality of disinterestedness is assuredly ab-
sent. In our day, when pictures of rewards and punish-
ments beyond the grave act but feebly upon the imagina-
tion, a religious motive is commonly an unselfish motive;
but it has not always been so, and it was undoubtedly not
so in the first period of asceticism. The terrors of a
future judgment drove the monk into the desert, and
the whole tenor of the ascetic life, while isolating him
from human sympathies, fostered an intense, though it
may be termed a religious selfishness.
The effect of the mortification of the domestic affections
upon the general character was probably very pernicious.
The family circle is the appointed sphere not only for the
performance of manifest duties, but also for the cultivation
of the affections ; and the extreme ferocity which so often
characterised the ascetic was the natural consequence of
the discipline he imposed upon himself. Severed from
all other ties, the monks clung with a desperate tenacity
to their opinions and to their Church, and hated those
who dissented from them with all the intensity of men
whose whole lives were concentrated on a single subject,
whose ignorance and bigotry prevented them from con-
ceiving the possibility of any good thing in opposition to
themselves, and who had made it a main object of their
discipline to eradicate all natural sympathies and affec-
tions. We may reasonably attribute to the fierce bio-
erapher the words of burning hatred of all heretics which
St. Athanasius puts in the mouth of the dying patriarch of
the hermits ;* but ecclesiastical history, and especially the
| Life of Antony. See, too, the sentiments of St. Pachomius, Vit. cap.
et Wipes 2 ine Paige a OD ce ae ee ee be ; ~ > ? "
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 147
writings of the later Pagans, abundantly prove that the
sentiment was a general one. To the Christian bishops
it is mainly due that the wide and general, though not
perfect recognition of religious liberty in the Roman legis-
lation was replaced by laws of the most minute and
stringent intolerance. To the monks, acting as the exe-
cutive of an omnipresent, intolerant, and aggressive clergy,
is due an administrative change, perhaps even more im-
portant than the legislative change that had preceded it.
The system of conniving at, neglecting, or despising forms
of worship that were formally prohibited, which had been
so largely practised by the sceptical Pagans, and under
the lax police system of the empire, and which is so im-
portant a fact in the history of the rise of Christianity,
was absolutely destroyed. Wandering in bands through
the country, the monks were accustomed to burn the
temples, to break the idols, to overthrow the altars, to
engage in fierce conflicts with the peasants, who often
defended with desperate courage the shrines of their gods.
It would be impossible to conceive men more fitted for
the task. Their fierce fanaticism, their persuasion that
every idol was tenanted by a literal demon, and their
belief that death incurred in this iconoclastic crusade was
a form of martyrdom, made them careless of all conse-
quences to themselves, while the reverence that attached
to their profession rendered it scarcely possible for the
civil power to arrest them. Men who had learnt to look
with indifference on the tears of a broken-hearted mother,
and whose ideal was indissolubly connected with the
degradation of the body, were but little likely to be
moved either by the pathos of old associations, and of
reverent, though mistaken worship, or by the gran-
deur of the Serapeum, or the noble statues of Phidias
and Praxiteles. Sometimes the civil power ordered the
148 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
reconstruction of Jewish synagogues or heretical churches
which had been illegally destroyed ; but the doctrine was
early maintained, that such a reconstruction was a deadly
sin. Under Julian some Christians suffered martyrdom
sooner than be parties to it; and St. Ambrose from the
pulpit of Milan, and Simeon Stylites from his desert pillar,
united in denouncing Theodosius, who had been guilty of
issuing this command.
Another very important moral result to which asceti-
cism largely contributed, was the depression and some-
~ times almost the extinction of the civic virtues. A candid
examination will show that the Christian civilisations have
been as inferior to the Pagan ones in civic and intellectual
virtues as they have been superior to them in the virtues
-of humanity and of chastity. We have already seen that
one remarkable feature of the intellectual movement that
preceded Christianity was the gradual decadence of pa-
triotism. In the early days both of Greece and Rome, the
first duty enforced was that of a man to his country.
This was the rudimentary or cardinal virtue of the moral
type. It gave the tone to the whole system of ethics, and
different moral qualities were valued chiefly in propor-
tion to their tendency to form illustrious citizens. The
destruction of this spirit in the Roman Empire was due,
as we have seen, to two causes—one of them being poli-
tical and the other intellectual. The political cause was
the amalgamation of the different nations in one great
despotism, which gave indeed an ample field for personal
and intellectual freedom, but extinguished the sentiment
of nationality and closed almost every sphere of political
activity. The intellectual cause, which was by no means
unconnected with the political one, was the growing as-
cendency of Oriental philosophies, which dethroned the
active stoicism of the early empire, and placed its ideal
sii
20-7) pega
CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 149
of excellence in contemplative virtues and in elaborate
purifications. By this decline of the patriotic sentiment
the progress of the new faith was greatly aided. In all,
matters of religion the opinions of men are governed
much more by their sympathies than by their judgments,
and it rarely or never happens that a-religion which is
opposed to a strong national sentiment, as Christianity
was in Judea, as Catholicism and Episcopalian Protes-
tantism have been in Scotland, and as Anglicanism is even
now in Ireland, can win the acceptance of the people.
The relations of Christianity to the sentiment of
patriotism were from the first very unfortunate. While
the Christians were, from obvious reasons, completely
separated from the national spirit of Judea, they found
themselves equally at variance with the lingering rem-
nants of Roman patriotism. Rome was to them the power
of Antichrist, and its overthrow the necessary prelude
to the millenniai reign. They formed an illegal organisa-
tion, directly opposed to the genius of the empire, an-
ticipating its speedy destruction, looking back with some-
thing more than despondency to the fate of the heroes
who had adorned its past, and refusing resolutely to partici-
pate in those national spectacles which were the symbols
and the expressions of patriotic feeling. Though scrupu-
lously averse to all rebellion, they rarely concealed their
“sentiments, and the whole tendency of their teaching
was to withdraw men as far as possible both from the
functions and the enthusiasm of public life. It was at
once their confession and their boast, that no interests
were more indifferent to them than those of their country.!
They regarded the lawfulness of taking arms as very
questionable, and all those proud and aspiring qualities
* “Nec ulla res aliena magis quam publica.’—Tertullian, Apol. ch. xxxviii.
&
a
150 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
that constitute the distinctive beauty of the soldier’s cha-
racter as emphatically unchristian. Their home and their
interests were in another world, and, provided only they
were unmolested in their worship, they avowed with
frankness, long after the empire had become Christian,
that it was a matter of indifference to them under what
rule they lived.! Asceticism, drawing all the enthusiasm of
Christendom to the desert life, and elevating as an ideal
the extreme and absolute abnegation of all patriotism,”
formed the culmination of the movement, and was un-
doubtedly one cause of the downfall of the Roman Em-
pire.
There are, probably, few subjects on which popular
judgments are commonly more erroneous than upon the
relations between positive religions and moral enthusiasm.
1 ‘Quid interest sub cujus imperio vivat homo moriturus, si illi qui im-
perant, ad impia et iniqua non cogant.’—St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, v. 17.
2 ‘Monachum in patria sua perfectum esse non posse, perfectum autem
esse nolle delinquere est.’—Hieron. Zp. xiv. Dean Milman well says of a
later period, ‘According to the monastic view of Christianity, the total
abandonment of the world, with all its ties and duties, as well as its trea-
sures, its enjoyments, and objects of ambition, advanced rather than dimi-
nished the hopes of salvation. Why should they fight for a perishing
world, from which it was better to be estranged ? . . . It is singular, indeed,
that while we have seen the Eastern monks turned into fierce undisciplined
soldiers, perilling their own lives and shedding the blood of others without
remorse, in assertion of some shadowy shade of orthodox expression, hardly
anywhere do we find them asserting their liberties or their religion with
intrepid resistance. Hatred of heresy was a more stirring motive than the
dread or the danger of Islamism. After the first defeats the Christian mind
was still further prostrated by the common notion that the invasion was a.
just and heayen-commissioned visitation; . . . resistance a vain, almost an
impious struggle to avert inevitable punishment.’ — Milman’s Latin Chris-
tianity, vol. ii. p. 206. Compare Massillon’s famous Discours au Régiment
de Catinat :—‘ Ce qu’il y a ici de plus déplorable, c’est que dans une vie rude
et pénible, dans des emplois dont les devoirs passent quelquefois la rigueur
des cloitres les plus austéres, vous souffrez toujours en vain pour l’autre vie.
. . . Dix ans de services ont plus usé votre corps qu’une vie entiére de péni-
tence . . . un seul jour de ces souffrances, consacré au Seigneur, vous aurait
peut-étre valu un bonheur éternel.’
Se eee ae me
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 151
Religions have, no doubt, a most real power of evoking
a latent energy which, without their existence, would
never have been called into action; but their influence
is on the whole probably more attractive than creative.
They supply the channel in which moral enthusiasm
flows, the banner under which it is enlisted, the mould
in which it is cast, the ideal to which it tends. The first
idea the phrase ‘a very good man’ would have suggested
to an early Roman, would probably have been that of
great and distinguished patriotism, and the passion and
interest of such a man in his country’s cause were in direct
proportion to his moral elevation. Ascetic Christianity
decisively diverted moral enthusiasm into another channel,
and the civic virtues, in consequence, necessarily declined.
The extinction of all public spirit, the base treachery and
corruption pervading every department of the Govern-
ment, the cowardice of the army, the despicable frivolity
of character that led the people of Treves, when fresh from
their burning city, to call for theatres and circuses, and
the people of Roman Carthage to plunge wildly into the
excitement of the chariot races, on the very day when
their city succumbed beneath the Vandal;* all these
things coexisted with extraordinary displays of ascetic and
of missionary devotion. The genius and the virtue that
might have defended the empire were engaged in fierce
disputes about the Pelagian controversy, &t the very time
when Attila was encircling Rome with his armies,’ and
there was no subtlety of theological metaphysics which did
not kindle a deeper interest in the Christian leaders than
1 See a very striking passage in Salvian, De Gubern. Div. lib. vi.
2 Chateaubriand very truly says, ‘qu’Orose et saint Augustin étoient
plus occupés du schisme de Pélage que de la désolation de PAgioue et des
Gaules.’—Htudes histor. vim discours, 29 partie. The remark might cer--
tainly be extended much further.
44
152 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN RALS.
the throes of their expiring country. The moral enthu-
siasm that in other days would have fired the armies of
Rome with an invincible valour, impelled thousands to
abandon their country and their homes, and consume the
weary hours in a long routine of useless and horrible
macerations. When the Goths had captured Rome, St.
Augustine, as we have seen, pointed with a just pride to
the Christian Church, which remained an unviolated
sanctuary during the horrors of the sack, as a proof that
a new spirit of sanctity and of reverence had descended
upon the world. The Pagan, in his turn, pointed to what
he deemed a not less significant fact—the golden statues
of Valour and of Fortune were melted down to pay the
ransom to the conquerors! Many of the Christians con-:
templated with an indifference that almost amounted to
complacency what they regarded as the predicted ruin of
the city of the fallen gods.2. When the Vandals swept
over Africa, the Donatists, maddened by the persecution of
the orthodox, received them with open arms, and con-
tributed their share to that deadly blow.2 The immortal
pass of Thermopylee was surrendered without a strugele to
the Goths. A Pagan writer accused the monks of having
betrayed it.* It is more probable that they had absorbed
or diverted the heroism that. in other days would have
defended it. The conquest, at a later date, of Egypt by
the Mahommedans, was in a great measure due to an
Invitation from the persecuted Monophysites.> Subse-
quent religious wars have again and again exhibited the
7 Zosimus, Hist. v.41. This was on the first occasion when Rome was
menaced by Alaric.
* See Merivale’s Conversion of the Northern Nations, pp. 207-210.
° See Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de ? Empire romain, tome i. p. 230.
* Eunapius. There is no other authority for the story of the treachery,
which is not believed by Gibbon.
> Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de ?Empire romain, tome ii. pp. 52-54;
Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 218. The Monophysites were
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FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 153
same phenomenon. ‘The treachery of a religionist to his
country no longer argued an absence of all moral feeling.
It had become compatible with the deepest religious en-
thusiasm, and with all the courage of a martyr.
It is somewhat difficult to form a just estimate of how
far the attitude assumed by the Church to the barbarian
invaders has on the whole proved beneficial to mankind.
The empire, as we have seen, had already been, both
morally and politically, in a condition of manifest decline ;
its fall, though it might have been retarded, could scarcely
have been averted, and the new religion, even in its most
superstitious form, while it did much to displace, did also
much to elicit moral enthusiasm. It is impossible to deny
that the Christian priesthood contributed very materially,
both by their charity and by their arbitration, to mitigate
the calamities that accompanied the dissolution of the
empire ;? and it is equally impossible to doubt that their
political attitude greatly increased their power for good.
Standing between the conflicting forces, almost indifferent
to the issue, and notoriously exempt from the passions of
the combat, they obtained with the conqueror, and used
for the benefit of the conquered, a degree of influence
they would never have possessed, had they been regarded
as Roman patriots. Their attitude, however, marked a
complete, and, as it has proved, a permanent change in
greatly afflicted because, after the conquest, the Mahommedans tolerated the
orthodox, who believed that two concurring wills existed in Christ, as well
as themselves, who believed that Christ had only one will. In Gaul, the
orthodox clergy favoured the invasions of the Franks, who alone, of the
barbarous conquerors of Gaul, were Catholics, and St. Aprunculus was obliged
to fly, the Burgundians desiring to kill him on account of his suspected con-
nivance with the invaders. (Greg. Tw. ii. 23.)
1 Dean Milman says of the Church, ‘If treacherous to the interests of
the Roman Empire, it was true to those of mankind.’—Mst. of Christianity,
vol. iii. p. 48. So Gibbon, ‘If the decline of the Roman Empire was hastened
by the conversion of Constantine, the victorious religion broke the violence
of the fall and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors.’—Ch. xxxviil.
154 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
the position assigned to patriotism in the moral scale. It
has occasionally happened, in later times, that Churches
have found it for their interest to appeal to this sen-
timent in their conflict with opposing creeds, or that
patriots have found the objects of churchmen in harmony
with their own; and in these cases a fusion of theological
and patriotic feeling has taken place, in which each has
intensified the other. Such has been the effect of the
conflict between the Spaniards and the Moors, between
the Poles and the Russians, between the Scotch Puritans
and the English Episcopalians, between the Irish Catholics
and the English Protestants. But patriotism itself, as a
duty, has never found any place in Christian ethics, and
a strong theological feeling has usually been directly
hostile to its growth. cclesiastics have no doubt taken
a very large share in political affairs, but this has been in
most cases solely with the object of wresting them into
conformity with ecclesiastical designs; and no other body
of men have so uniformly sacrificed the interests of their
country to the interests of their class. For the repug-
nance between the theological and the patriotic spirit,
three reasons may, I think, be assigned. The first is that
tendency of strong religious feeling to divert the mind
from all terrestrial cares and passions, of which the ascetic
life was the extreme expression, but which has always,
under different forms, been manifested in the Church.
The second arises from the fact that each form of theolo-
gical opinion embodies itself in a visible and organised
church, with a government, interest, and policy of its
own, and a frontier often intersecting rather than follow-
ing national boundaries ; and these churches attract to
themselves the attachment and devotion that would natu-
rally be bestowed upon our country and its rulers.
The third reason is, that the saintly and the heroic cha-
‘
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 155
racters, which represent the ideals of religion and of
patriotism, are generically different; for although they
have no doubt many common elements of virtue, the dis-
tinctive excellence of each is derived from a proportion
or disposition of qualities altogether different from that of
the other.?
Before dismissing this very important revolution in
moral history, I may add two remarks. In the first place,
we may observe that the relation of the two great schools
of morals to active and political life has been completely
changed. Among the ancients, the Stoics, who regarded
virtue and vice as generically different from all other
things, participated actively in public life, and made this
participation one of the first of duties, while the Epicu-
reans, who resolved virtue into utility, and esteemed hap-
piness its supreme motive, abstained from public life,
and taught their disciples to neglect it. Asceticism fol-
lowed the stoical school in teaching that virtue and
happiness are generically different things; but it was at
the same time eminently unfavourable to civic virtue.
On the other hand, that great industrial movement which
has arisen since the abolition of slavery, and which has
always been essentially utilitarian in its spirit, has been
one of the most active and influential elements of political
progress. ‘This change, though, as far as I know, entirely
1 Observe with what a fine perception St. Augustine notices the essen-
tially unchristian character of the moral dispositions to which the greatness
of Rome was due. He quotes the sentence of Sallust: ‘ Civitas, incredibile
memoratu est, adepta libertate quantum brevi creverit, tanta cupido gloriz
incesserat ;’ and adds, ‘ Ista ergo laudis aviditas et cupido gloriz multa illa
miranda fecit, laudabilia scilicet atque gloriosa secundum hominum existima-
tionem . . . causa honoris, laudis et gloriz consuluerunt patric, in qua ipsam
gloriam requirebant, salutemque ejus saluti suze preeponere non dubitaverunt,
pro isto uno vitio, id est, amore laudis, pecunis cupiditatem et multa alia
vitia comprimentes. .. . Quid aliud amarent quam gloriam, qua volebant
etiam post mortem tanquam vivere in ore laudantium?’—De Civ. Dei,
Vv. 12-137
156 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
unnoticed by historians, constitutes, I believe, one of the
ereat landmarks of moral history.
The second observation I would make relates to. the
estimate we form of the value of patriotic actions. How-
ever much an historian may desire to extend his researches
to the private and domestic virtues of a people, civic
virtues are always those which must appear most prom1-
nently in his pages. History is concerned only with large
bodies of men. The systems of philosophy or religion,
which produce splendid results on the great theatre of
public life, are fully and easily appreciated, and readers
and writers are both liable to give them very undue ad-
vantages over those systems which do not favour civic
virtues, but exercise their beneficial influence in the more
obscure fields of individual self-culture, domestic morals,
or private charity. If valued by the selfsacrifice they
imply, or by their effects upon human happiness, these
last rank very high, but they scarcely appear in history,
and they therefore seldom obtain their due weight in
historical comparisons. Christianity has, I think, suffered
peculiarly from this cause. Its moral action has always
been much more powerful upon individuals than upon
societies, and the spheres in which its superiority over
other religions is most incontestable, are precisely those
which history is least capable of realising.
In attempting to estimate the moral condition of the
Roman and Byzantine Empires during the Christian
period, and before the old civilisation had been dissolved
by the barbarian or Mohammedan invasions, we must —
continually bear this last consideration in mind. We
must remember, too, that Christianity had acquired the
ascendency among nations which were already deeply
tainted by the inveterate vices of a corrupt and decaying
civilisation, and also that many of the censors from whose
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 157
pages we are obliged to form our estimate of the age were
men who judged human frailties with all the fastidious-
ness of ascetics, and who expressed their judgments with
all the declamatory exaggeration of the pulpit. Modern
critics will probably not lay much stress upon the relapse
of the Christians into the ordinary dress and usages of the
luxurious society about them, upon the ridicule thrown
by Christians on those who still adhered to the primitive
austerity of the sect, or upon the fact that multitudes
who were once mere nominal Pagans had become mere
nominal Christians. We find, too, a frequent disposition
on the part of moralists to single out some new form of
luxury, or some trivial custom which they regarded as
indecorous, for the most extravagant denunciation, and to
magnify its importance in a manner which in a later age
it is difficult even to understand. Txamples of this kind
may be found both in Pagan and in Christian writings,
and they form an extremely curious page in the his-
tory of morals. Thus Juvenal exhausts his vocabulary
of invective in denouncing the atrocious criminality of a
certain noble, who in the very year of his consulship did
not hesitate—not, it is true, by day, but at least in the
sight of the moon and of the stars—with his own hand to
drive his own chariot along the public road.t Pliny
assures us that the most monstrous of all criminals was
the man who first devised the luxurious custom of wear-
ing golden rings.” Apuleius was compelled to defend
: ‘Preeter majorum cineres atque ossa, volucri
Carpento rapitur pinguis Damasippus et ipse,
Ipse rotam stringit multo sufflamine consul ;
Nocte quidem ; sed luna videt, sed sidera testes
Intendunt oculos. Finitum tempus honoris
Quum fuerit, clara Damasippus luce flagellum
Sumet,’—Juvenal, Sat. viii. 146.
2
1 Plin, Hist. Nat. x. 6.
2 A long list of legends about dogs is given by Legendre, in the very
curious chapter on animals, in his Traité de ’ Opinion, tome i. pp. 808-327.
3 Pliny tells some extremely pretty stories of this kind (2st. Wat. ix.
8-9). See, too, Aulus Gellius, xvi. 19, The dolphin, on account of its
love for its young, became a common symbol of Christ among the early
Christians.
4 A very full account of the opinions, both of ancient and modern philo-
sophers, concerning the souls of animals, is given by Bayle, Dvct. arts.
‘ Pereira E,’ ‘ Rorarius K.’
8 The Jewish law did not confine its care to oxen. The reader will re-
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FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 173
the same feeling was carried so far, that for a long time
it was actually a capital offence to slaughter an ox, that
animal being pronounced, in a special sense, the fellow-
labourer of man.’ A similar law is said to have in early
times existed in Greece.” The beautiful passage in which
the Psalmist describes how the sparrow ‘could find a
shelter and a home in the altar of the temple, was as
applicable to Greece as to Jerusalem. The sentiment of
Xenocrates who, when a bird pursued by a hawk took
refuge in his breast, caressed and finally released it, say-
ing to his disciples, that a good man should never give
up a suppliant,’ was believed to be shared by the gods,
and it was regarded as an act of impiety to disturb the
birds who had built their nests beneath the porticoes of
the temple.* A case is related of a child who was even
put to death on account of an act of aggravated cruelty
to birds.®
member the touching provision, ‘Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s
milk’ (Deut. xiy. 21); and the law forbidding men to take a parent bird
that was sitting on its young or on its eggs. (Deut. xxii. 6-7.)
* ‘Cujus tanta fuit apud antiquos veneratio, ut tam capital esset bovem
necuisse quam civem.’—Columella, lib. vi. in procem. ‘ Hic socius hominum
in rustico opere et Cereris minister. Ab hoc antiqui manus ita abstinere
voluerunt ut capite sanxerint si quis occidisset.’—Varro, De Re Rustic. lib.
ii. cap. v.
* See Legendre, tome ii. p. 338. The sword with which the priest
sacrificed the ox was afterwards pronounced accursed. (A®lian, Hist. Var.
lib. viii. cap. iii.) 5 Diog. Laért. Xenocrates.
* There is a story told in some classical writer, of an ambassador who
was sent by his fellow-countrymen to consult the oracle of Apollo about a
suppliant who had taken refuge in the city, and was demanded with menace
by the enemies. The oracle, being bribed, enjoined the surrender. The
ambassador on leaving, with seeming carelessness, disturbed the sparrows
under the portico of the temple, when the voice from behind the altar
denounced his impiety for disturbing the guests of the gods. The ambas-
sador replied with an obvious and withering retort.. AZlian says (Hist. Var.)
that the Athenians condemned to death a boy for killing a sparrow that
had taken refuge in the temple of Asculapius.
» Quintillian, Jnsé. v. 9.
174 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
The general tendency of nations, as they advance
from a rude and warlike to a refined and peaceful con-
dition, from the stage in which the realising powers are
faint and dull, to those in which they are sensitive and
vivid, is undoubtedly to become more gentle and humane
in their actions ; but this, like all other general tendencies
in history, may be counteracted or modified by many
special circumstances. The law I have mentioned about
oxen was obviously one of those that belong to a very
early stage of progress, when legislators are labouring to
form agricultural habits among a warlike and nomadic
people." The games in which the slaughter of animals
bore so large a part, having been introduced but a little
before the extinction of the republic, did very much to
arrest or retard the natural progress of humane senti-
ments. In ancient Greece, besides the bull-fights of Thes-
saly, the combats of quails and cocks? were favourite
amusements, and were much encouraged by the legis-
' In the same way we find several chapters in the Zendavesta about the
criminality of injuring dogs; which is explained by the great importance of
shepherds’ dogs to a pastoral people.
* On the origin of Greek cock-fighting, see Alian, Hist. Var. ii. 28.
Many particulars about it are given by Atheneeus. Chrysippus maintained
that cock-fighting was the final cause of cocks, these birds being made by
Providence in order to inspire us by the example of their courage. (Plu-
tarch, De Repug. Stoic.) The Greeks do not, however, appear to have
known ‘ cock-throwing,’ the favourite English game of throwing a stick called
a ‘cock-stick’ at cocks, It was a very ancient and very popular amusement,
and was practised especially on Shrove Tuesday, and by school-boys. Sir
Thomas More had been famous for his skill in it. (Strutt’s Sports and
Pastimes, p. 283.) Three origins of it have been given :—Ist, that in the
Danish wars the Saxons failed to surprise a certain city, in consequence of
the crowing of cocks, and had in consequence a great hatred of that bird ;
2nd, that the cocks (galli) were special representatives of Frenchmen, with
whom the English were constantly at war; and 8rd, that they were con-
nected with the denial of St. Peter. As Sir Charles Sedley said :—
‘ Mayst thou be punished for St. Peter’s crime,
And on Shrove Tuesday perish in thy prime.’
Knight’s Old England, vol. ii. p. 126,
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FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 175
lators, as furnishing examples of valour to the soldiers,
The colossal dimensions of the Roman games, the cir- -
cumstances that favoured them, and the overwhelming
interest they speedily excited, I have described in a for-
mer chapter. We have seen, however, that notwith-
standing the gladiatorial shows, the standard of humanity
towards men was considerably raised during the empire.
It is also well worthy of notice, that notwithstanding the
passion for the combats of wild beasts, Roman literature
and the later literature of the nations subject to Rome
abound in delicate touches displaying in a very high de-
gree a sensitiveness to the feelings of the animal world.
This tender interest in animal life is one of the most
distinctive features of the poetry of Virgil. Lucretius,
who rarely struck the chords of pathos, had at a still
earlier period drawn a very beautiful picture of the
sorrows of the bereaved cow, whose calf had been sacri-
ficed upon the altar.’ Plutarch mentions, incidentally,
that he could never bring himself to sell, in its old age,
the ox which had served him faithfully in the time of its
strength.” Ovid expressed a similar sentiment with an
almost equal emphasis. Juvenal speaks of a Roman
lady with her eyes filled with tears on account of the
death of a sparrow.* Apollonius of Tyana, on the ground
1 De Natura Rerum, lib. ii.
2 Life of Mare, Cato.
8 ‘Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque,
Innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores ?
Immemor est demum nec frugum munere dignus,
Qui potuit curvi dempto modo pondere aratri
Ruricolam mactare suum.’— Metamorph. xy. 120-124.
4 ‘Cujus
Turbavit nitidos extinctus passer ocellos.’
Juvenal, Sat. vi. 7-8,
There is a little poem in Catullus (iii.) to console his mistress upon
the death of her favourite sparrow; and Martial more than once alludes to
the pets of the Roman ladies,
176 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
of humanity, refused, even when invited by a king, to par-
ticipate in the chase.t Arrian, the friend of Epictetus, in
his book upon coursing, anticipated the beautiful picture
which Addison has drawn of the huntsman refusing to
sacrifice the life of the captured hare which had given
him so much pleasure in its flight.?
These touches of feeling, slight as they may appear,
indicate, I think, a vein of sentiment such as we should
scarcely have expected to find coexisting with the
gigantic slaughter of the amphitheatre. The progress,
however, was not simply one of sentiment—it was also
shown in distinct and definite teaching, Pythagoras and
Empedocles were quoted as the founders of this branch of
ethics. The moral duty of kindness to animals was in
the first instance based upon a dogmatic assertion of the
transmigration of souls, and the doctrine that animals are
within the circle of human duty, being thus laid down,
subsidiary considerations of humanity were alleged. The
rapid growth of the Pythagorean school, in the latter
days of the empire, made these considerations familiar to
the people.? . Porphyry elaborately advocated, and even
Compare the charming description of the Prioress, in Chaucer :—
‘ She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous
Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.
Of smale houndes had she that she fedde
With rosted flesh and milke and wastel brede,
But sore wept she if on of them were dede,
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert:
And all was conscience and tendre herte.’
Prologue to the ‘ Canterbury Tales,’
1 Philost. Apol. i. 38.
* See the curious chapter in his Kuynyeriéc, xvi. and compare it with No.
116 in the Spectator.
3 In his De Abstinentia Carnis, The Paitiroveedl between Origen and
Celsus furnishes us with a very curious illustration of the extravagancies
into which some Pagans of the third century fell about animals. Celsus
objected to the Christian doctrine about the position of men in the universe;’
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 177
Seneca for a time practised, abstinence from flesh But
the most remarkable figure in this movement is unques-
tionably Plutarch. Casting aside the dogma of transmi-
gration, or at least speaking of it only as a doubtful
conjecture, he places the duty of kindness to animals on
the broad ground of the affections, and he urges that
duty with an emphasis and a detail to which no adequate
parallel can, I believe, be found in the Christian writ-
ings for at least seventeen hundred years. He condemns
absolutely the games of the amphitheatres, dwells with
great force upon the effect of such spectacles in hardening
the character, enumerates in detail, and denounces with
unqualified energy, the refined cruelties which gastronomic
fancies had produced, and asserts in the strongest lan-
guage that every man has duties to the animal world as
truly as to his fellow-men.!
If we now pass to the Christian Church, we shall find
that little or no progress was at first made in this
sphere. Among the Manicheans, it is true, the mixture of
Oriental notions was shown in an absolute prohibition of
animal food, and abstinence from this food was also fre-
quently practised upon totally different grounds by the
orthodox. One or two of the Fathers have also men-
tioned with approbation the humane councils of the
Pythagoreans.? But, on the other hand, the doctrine of
transmigration was emphatically repudiated by the Catho-
lics; the human race was isolated, by the scheme of re-
that many of the animals were at least the equals of men both in reason
and in religious feeling and knowledge. (Orig. Cont. Cels. lib. Iv.)
* These views are chiefly defended in his two tracts on eating flesh.
Plutarch has also recurred to the subject, incidentally, in several other
works; especially in a very beautiful passage in his Life of Marcus Cato.
* See, for example, a striking passage in Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. ii.
St. Clement imagines Pythagoras had borrowed his sentiments on this
subject from Moses.
178 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
demption, more than ever from all other races; and in the
range and circle of duties inculcated by the early Fathers
those to animals had no place. This is indeed the one
form of humanity which appears more prominently in the
Old Testament than in the New. The many beautiful
traces of it in the former, which indicate a sentiment,!
even where they do not very strictly define a duty, gave
way before an ardent philanthropy which regarded human
interests as the one end, and the relations of man to his
Creator as the one question of life, and dismissed some-
what contemptuously, as an idle sentimentalism, notions of
duty to animals.’ A refined and subtle sympathy with
animal feeling is indeed rarely found among those who
are engaged very actively in the affairs of life, and it was
not without a meaning or a reason that Shakspeare placed
that exquisitely pathetic analysis of the sufferings of the
wounded stag, which is perhaps its most perfect poetical
expression, in the midst of the morbid meee of Ly
diseased and melancholy Jacques.
But while what are called the rights of aniiaad had no
place in the ethics of the Church, a feeling of sympathy
with the irrational creation was in some degree inculcated
indirectly by the incidents of the hagiology. It was very
natural that the hermit, living in the lonely deserts of the
Hast, or in the vast forests of Europe, should come into
1 There is, I believe, no record of any wild beast combats existing
among the Jews, and the rabbinical writers have been remarkable for the
great emphasis with which they inculcated the duty of kindness to animals.
See some passages from them, cited in Wollaston, Religion of Nature, § ii.
§ 1, note. Maimonides believed in a future life for animals, to recompense
them for their sufferings here. (Bayle, Dict. art. ‘Rorarius D.’) There is
a curious collection of the opinions of different writers on this last point
in a little book called the Rights of Animals, by William Drummond
(London, 1888), pp. 197-205.
* Thus St. Paul (1 Cor. ix. 9) turned aside the precept, ‘ Thou shalt not
muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn,’ from its natural
meaning, with the contemptuous question, ‘Doth God take care for oxen ??
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FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 179
an intimate connection with the animal world, and it was
no less natural that the popular imagination, when de-
picting the hermit life, should make this connection the
centre of many picturesque and sometimes touching
legends. The birds, it was said, stooped in their flight at
the old man’s call; the lion and the hyena crouched sub-
missively at his feet; his heart, which was closed to all
human interests, expanded freely at the sight of some
suffering animal; and something of his own sanctity de-
scended to the companions of his solitude and the objects
of his miracles. The wild beasts attended St. Theon when
he walked abroad, and the saint rewarded them by giving
them drink out of his well. An Egyptian hermit had
made a beautiful garden in the desert, and used to sit
beneath the palm-trees while a lion eat fruit from his
hand. When St. Poemen was shivering in a winter night,
a lion crouched beside him, and became his covering.
Lions buried St. Paul the hermit and St. Mary of Egypt.
They appear in the legends of St. Jerome, St. Gerasimus,
St. John the Silent, St. Simeon, and many others. When
an old and feeble monk, named Zosimas, was on his
journey to Czsarea, with an ass which bore his pos-
sessions, a lion seized and devoured the ass, but, at
the command of the saint, the lion itself carried the
burden to the city gates. St. Helenus called a wild ass
from its herd to bear his burden through the wilder-
ness. ‘The same saint, as well as St. Pachomius, crossed
the Nile on the back of a crocodile, as St. Scuthinus did
the Irish Channel on a sea monster. Stags continually ac-
companied saints upon their journeys, bore their burdens,
ploughed their fields, revealed their relics. The hunted
stag was especially the theme of many picturesque legends.
A Pagan, named Branchion, was once pursuing an ex-
hausted stag, when it took refuge in a cavern, whose
180 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
threshold no inducement could persuade the hounds to
cross. The astonished hunter entered, and found himself
in presence of an old hermit, who at once protected the
fugitive and converted the pursuer. In the legends of
St. Hustachius and St. Hubert, Christ is represented as
having assumed the form of a hunted stag, which turned
upon its pursuer, with a crucifix glittering on its brow,
and, addressing him with a human voice, converted him
to Christianity. In the full frenzy of a chase, hounds and
stags stopped and knelt down together to venerate the
relics of St. Fingar. On the festival of St. Reoulus, the wild
stags assembled at the tomb of the saint, as the ravens
used to do at that of St. Apollinar of Ravenna. St. Eras-
mus was the special protector of oxen, and they knelt
down voluntarily before his shrine. St. Anthony was the
protector of hogs, who were usually introduced into his
pictures. St. Bridget kept pigs, and a wild boar came
from the forest to subject itself to her rule. A horse fore-
shadowed by its lamentations the death of St. Columba.
The three companions of St. Colman were a cock, a mouse,
anda fly. The cock announced the hour of devotion,
the mouse bit the ear of the drowsy saint till he got up,
and if in the course of his studies he was afflicted by any -
wandering thoughts, or called away to other business, the
fly alighted on the line where he had left off, and kept
the place. Legends, not without a certain whimsical
beauty, described the moral qualities existing in animals. °
A hermit was accustomed to share his supper with’ a
wolf, which, one evening entering the cell before the
return of the master, stole a loaf of bread. Struck with
remorse, it was a week before it ventured again to visit
the cell, and when it did so, its head hung down, and its
whole demeanour manifested the most profound contri-
tion. The hermit ‘stroked with a gentle hand its bowed
Co
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 181
down head,’ and gave it a double portion as a token of
forgiveness. A lioness knelt down with lamentations
before another saint, and then led him to its cub, which
was blind, but which received its sight at the prayer
of the saint. Next day the lioness returned, bearing
the skin of a wild beast asa mark of its gratitude. Nearly
the same thing happened to St. Macarius of Alexandria :
a hyena knocked at his door, brought its young, which
was blind, and which the saint restored to sight, and re-
paid the obligation soon afterwards, by bringing a fleece
of wool. ‘O hyena!’ said the saint, ‘how did you
obtain this fleece? you must have stolen and eaten a
sheep.’ Full cf shame, the hyena hung its head down,
but persisted in offering its gift, which, however, the holy
man refused to receive till the hyena ‘had sworn’ to
cease for the future to rob. The hyena bowed its head
in token of its acceptance of the oath, and St. Macarius
atterwards gave the fleece to St. Melania. Other legends
simply speak of the sympathy between saints and the
irrational world. The birds came at the call of St.
Cuthbert, and a dead bird was resuscitated by his prayer.
_ When St. Aengussius, in felling wood, had cut his hand,
the birds gathered round, and with loud cries lamented
his misfortune. A little bird, struck down and mortally
wounded by a hawk, fell at the feet of St. Kieranus,
who shed tears as he looked upon its torn breast, and
offered up a prayer, upon which the bird was instantly
healed. |
+ Ihave taken these illustrations from the collection of hermit literature
in Rosweyde, from different volumes of the Bollandists, from the Dia-
logues of Sulpicius Severus, and from what is perhaps the most interesting
of all collections of saintly legends, Colgan’s Acta Sanctorum Hibernie. M.
Alfred Maury, in his most valuable work, Légendes pieuses du Moyen Age,
has examined minutely the part played by animals in symbolising virtues .
and vices, and has shown the way in which the same incidents were
182 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
Many hundreds, I should perhaps hardly exaggerate
were I to say many thousands of legends, of this kind
exist in the lives of the saints. Suggested in the first in-
stance by that desert life which was at once the earliest
phase of monachism and one of the earliest sources of
Christian mythology, strengthened by the symbolism
which represented different virtues and vices under the
forms of animals, and by the reminiscences of the rites
and the superstitions of Paganism, the connection be-
tween men and animals became the key-note of an
infinite variety of fantastic tales. In our eyes they may
appear extravagantly puerile, yet it will scarcely, I hope,
be necessary to apologise for introducing them into what
purports to be a grave work, when it is remembered that
for many centuries they were universally accepted by
mankind, and were so interwoven with all local traditions,
and with all the associations of education, that they
at once determined and reflected the inmost feelings of
the heart. Their tendency to create a certain feeling of
sympathy towards animals is manifest, and this is probably
the utmost the Catholic Church has done in that direc-
tion.’ A very few authentic instances may, indeed, be
cited of saints whose natural gentleness of disposition was
displayed in kindness to the animal world. Of St. James
of Venice—an obscure saint of the thirteenth century—
it is told that he was accustomed to buy and release the
birds with which Italian boys used to play by attaching
repeated, with slight variations, in different legends. M. de Montalembert
has devoted what is probably the most beautiful chapter of his Moines
d Occident (‘Les Moines et la Nature’) to the relations of monks and the
animal world ; but the numerous legends he cites are all, with one or two
exceptions, different from those I have given.
1 Chateaubriand speaks, however (Etudes historiques, étude vi™*, partie
l'*), of an old Gallic law, forbidding to throw a stone at an ox attached to
the plough, or to make its yoke too tight.
3
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 183
them to strings, saying that ‘he pitied the little birds of
the Lord,’ and that his ‘tender charity recoiled from all
cruelty, even to the most diminutive of animals.’! St.
Francis of Assisi was a more conspicuous example of the
same spirit. ‘If I could only be presented to the em-
peror,’ he used to say, ‘I would pray him, for the love of
God, and of me, to issue an edict prohibiting anyone from
catching or imprisoning my sisters the larks, and ordering
that all who have oxen or asses should at Christmas feed
them particularly well.’ A crowd of legends turning
upon this theme were related of him. A wolf, near
Gubbio, being adjured by him, promised to abstain from
eating sheep, placed its paw in the hand of the saint, to
ratify the promise, and was afterwards fed from house to
house by the inhabitants of the city. A crowd of birds,
on another occasion, came to hear the saint’ preach, as
fish did to hear St. Anthony of Padua. A falcon awoke
him at his hour of prayer. A grasshopper encouraged
him by her melody to sing praises to God. The noisy
swallows kept silence when he began to teach.?
On the whole, however, Catholicism has done very
little to inculcate humanity to animals. The fatal vice of
theologians, who have always looked upon others solely
through the medium of their own special dogmatic views,
has been an obstacle to all advance in this direction. The
animal world, being altogether external to the scheme of
? Bollandists, May 31. Leonardo da Vinci is said to have had the
_ same fondness for buying and releasing caged birds, and (to go back a
long way) Pythagoras to have purchased one day, near Metapontus, from
some fishermen all the fish in their net, that he might have the pleasure
of releasing them, (Apuleius, Apologia.)
* See these legends collected by Hase (St. Francis. Assist), Itis said
of Cardinal Bellarmine, that he used to allow vermin to bite him, saying,
‘We shall have heaven to reward us for our sufferings, but these poor
creatures have nothing but the enjoyment of this present life,’ (Bayle,
Dict, philos, art, ‘ Bellarmine.’)
46
184 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
redemption, was regarded as beyond the range of duty,
and the notion of our having any kind of obligation to
them has never been inculcated—has never, I believe,
been even admitted by Catholic theologians. In the
‘popular legends, and in the recorded traits of individual
amiability, it is curious to observe how constantly those
who have sought to -inculcate kindness to animals have
done so by endeavouring to associate them with some-
thing distinctively Christian. The legends I have noticed
glorified them as the companions of the saints. The stag
was honoured as especially commissioned to reveal the
relics of saints, and as the deadly enemy of the serpent.
In the feast of asses, that animal was led with veneration
into the churches, and a rude hymn proclaimed its dig-
nity, because it had borne Christ in His flight to Eeypt, and
on His entry into Jerusalem. St. Francis always treated
lambs with a peculiar tenderness, as being symbols of his
Master. Luther grew sad and thoughtful at a hare hunt,
for it seemed to him to represent the pursuit of souls by
the devil. Many popular legends exist, associating some
bird or animal with some incident in the evangelical nar-
rative, and securing for them, in consequence, an unmo-
lested life. But such influences have never extended far.
There are two distinct objects which may be considered
by moralists in this sphere. They may regard the cha-
racter of the men, or they may regard the sufferings of
the animals. ‘The amount of callousness or of conscious
cruelty displayed or elicited by amusements or prac-
tices that inflict sufferings on animals, bears no kind of
proportion to the intensity of that suffering. Could we
follow with adequate realisation the pangs of the wounded
birds that are struck down in our sports, or of the timid
hare in the long course of its flight, we should probably
conclude that they were not really less than those caused.
ay
4;
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aE eT oe ody ea
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we
igi
es
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 185
by the Spanish bull-fight, or by the English pastimes of
the last century. But the excitement of the chase refracts
the imagination; the diminutive size of the victim, and
the undemonstrative character of its suffering, withdraw
it from our sight, and these sports do not, in consequence,
exercise that prejudicial influence upon character which
they would exercise if the sufferings of the animals were
vividly realised, and were at the same time accepted as
an element of the enjoyment. That class of amusements
of which the ancient combats of wild beasts form the
type, have no doubt nearly disappeared from Christendom,
and it is possible that the softening power of Christian
teaching may have had some indirect influence in abolish-
ing them; but a candid judgment will confess that it has
been very little. During the periods, and in the countries,
in which theological influence was supreme, they were
unchallenged. They disappeared? at last, because a lux-
urious and industrial. civilisation involved a refinement of
manners ; because a fastidious taste recoiled with a sensa-
tion of disgust from pleasures that an uncultivated taste
would keenly relish ; because the drama, at once reflect-
ing and accelerating the change, gave a new form to
popular amusements, and because, in consequence of this
* I have noticed, in my History of Rationalism, that although some Popes
did undoubtedly try to suppress Spanish bull-fights, this was solely on
account of the destruction of human life they caused. Full details on this
subject will be found in Concina, De Spectaculis (Rome, 1752). Bayle says,
‘Il n’y a point de casuiste qui croie qu’on piche en faisant combattre des
taureaux contre des dogues,’ &c. (Dict. philos. ¢ Rorarius, C.’)
* On the ancient amusements of England the reader may consult Sey-
mour’s Survey of London (1784), vol. i. pp. 227-235 ; Strutt’s Sports and
Pastimes of the English People. Cock-fighting was a favourite children’s
amusement in England as early as the twelfth century. (Hampson’s Medi?
vt Kalendarii, vol. i. p. 160, It was, with foot-ball and several other
amusements, for a time suppressed by Edward III, on the ground that they
were diverting the people from archery, which was necessary to the mili«
tary greatness of England. ; '
186 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
revolution, the old practices being left to the dregs of
society, they became the occasions of scandalous disor-
ders! In Protestant countries the clergy have, on the
1 The decline of these amusements in England began with the great
development of the theatre under Elizabeth. An order of the Privy
Council, in July 1591, prohibits the exhibition of plays on Thursday,
because on Thursdays bear-baiting and suchlike pastimes had been usually
practised, and an injunction to the same effect was sent to the Lord Mayor,
wherein it was stated that, ‘in divers places the players do use to recite
their plays, to the great hurt and destruction of the game of bear-baiting
and like pastimes, which are maintained for Her Majesty’s pleasure.’—
Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (ed. 1823), vol. i. p. 438, The reader
will remember the picture in Kenilworth of the Duke of SuSsex petitioning
Elizabeth against Shakespeare, on the ground of his plays distracting men
from bear-baiting. Elizabeth (see Nichols) was extremely fond of bear-
baiting. James I. especially delighted in cock-fighting, and in 1610 was
present at a great fight between a lion and a bear. (Home, Every Day
Book, vol. i. pp. 255-299). The theatres, however, rapidly multiplied, and
a writer who lived about 1629 said, ‘that no less than seventeen playhouses
had been built in or about London within threescore years.’ (Seymour's
Survey, vol. i. p. 229.) The Rebellion suppressed all public amusements,
and when they were re-established after the Restoration, it was found that
the tastes of the better classes no longer sympathised with the bear-garden.
Pepys’ (Diary, August 14, 1666) speaks of bull-baiting as ‘a very rude
and nasty pleasure,’ and says he had not been in the bear-garden for many .
years. Evelyn (Diary, June 16, 1670), having been present at these shows,
describes them as ‘ butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties,’ and says
he had not visited them before for twenty years. A paper in the Spectator
(No. 141, written in 1711) talks of those who ‘seek their diversion at the
bear-garden, . . . where reason and good manners have no right to disturb
them.’ In 1751, however, Lord Kames was able to say, ‘The bear-garden,
which is one of the chief entertainments of the English, is held in abhor-
rence by the French and other polite nations.’—LEssay on Morals (Ist ed.),
p. 7; and he warmly defends (p. 30) the English taste. During the latter
half of the last century there was constant controversy on the subject
(which may be traced in the pages of the Annual Register), and several
forgotten clergymen published sermons upon it, and the frequent riots
resulting from the fact that the bear-gardens had become the resort of the
worst classes assisted the movement. ‘he London magistrates took mea-
sures to suppress cock-throwing in 1769 (Hampsoni’s Med. A%v. Kalend. p.
160) ; but bull-baiting continued far into the present century. Windham
and Canning strongly defended it; Dr. Parr is said to have been fond of
it (Southey’s Commonplace. Book, vols iv. p. 585) ; and as late as 1824, Sir
Robert (then Mr.) Peel argued strongly against its prohibition. (Parhae
mentary Debates, vol. x. pp. 182-133, 491-495.) :
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 187
whole, sustained this movement. In Catholic countries
it has been much more faithfully represented by the school
of Voltaire and Beccaria. In treating, however, amuse-
ments which derived their zest from a display of the
natural ferocious instincts of animals, and which suggest
the alternative between death endured in the frenzy of
combat and that endured in the remote slaughter-house,
a judicious moralist may reasonably question whether
they have, in any appreciable degree, added to the sum of
animal misery, and will dwell less upon the suffering in-
flicted upon the animal than upon the injurious influence
the spectacle may sometimes exercise on the character
of the spectator. But there are forms of cruelty which
must be regarded in a different light. The horrors of
vivisection, often so wantonly, so needlessly practised,! the
prolonged and atrocious tortures, sometimes inflicted in
* Bacon, in an account of the deficiencies of medicine, recommends vivi-
section in terms that seem to imply that it was not practised in his time.
‘ As for the passages and pores, it is true which was anciently noted, that
the more subtle of them appear not in anatomies, because they are shut and
latent in dead bodies, though they be open and manifest in live; which
being supposed, though the inhumanity of anatomia vivorum was by Celsus
justly reproved, yet, in regard of the great use of this observation, the en-
quiry needed. not by him so slightly to have been relinquished altogether,
or referred to the casual practices of surgery; but might have been well
diverted upon the dissection of beasts alive, which, notwithstanding the
dissimilitude of their parts, may sufficiently satisfy this enquiry.,—Advance-
ment of Learning, x. 4. Harvey speaks of vivisections as having contri-
buted to lead him to the discovery of the circulation of blood. (Acland’s
Harvevan Oration (1865), p. 55.) Bayle, describing the treatment of ani-
mals by men, says, ‘Nous fouillons dans leurs entrailles pendant leur vie
afin de satisfaire notre curiosité.’—Dict. philos. art. ‘Rorarius, C.’ Public
opinion in England was very strongly directed to the subject in the pre-
sent century, by the atrocious cruelties perpetrated by Majendie at his
lectures. See a most frightful account of them in a speech by Mr. Martin
(an eccentric Irish member, who was generally ridiculed during his life, and
has been almost forgotten since his death, but to whose untiring exertions
the legislative protection of animals in England is due).— Parliament. Hist.
vol. xii, p. 652. Mandeville, in his day, was a very strong advocate of
kindness to animals.—Commentary on Fable of the Bees,
188 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
order to procure some gastronomic delicacy, are so far
removed from the public gaze, that they exercise little
influence on the character of men. Yet no humane man
can reflect upon them without a shudder. To bring these
things within the range of ethics, to create the notion of
duties towards the animal world, has, so far as Christian
countries are concerned, been one of the peculiar merits
of the last century, and, for the most part, of Protestant
nations. However fully we may recognise the humane
spirit, transmitted to the world in the form of legends,
from the saints of the desert, it must not be forgotten that
the inculcation of humanity to animals on a wide scale is
mainly the work of a recent and a secular age; that the
Mohammedans and the Brahmins have in this sphere con-
siderably surpassed the Christians, and that Spain and
Southern Italy, in which Catholicism has most deeply
planted its roots, are even now, probably beyond all other
countries in Europe, those in which inhumanity to ani-
mals is most wanton and most unrebuked.
The influence the first form of monachism has exer-
cised upon the world, as far as it has been beneficial, has
been chiefly through the imagination, which has been
fascinated by its legends. In the great periods of theolo- .
gical controversy, the Eastern monks had furnished some
leading theologians, but in general, in Oriental lands, the
hermit life predominated, and extreme maceration was
the chief merit of the saint. But in the West monachism
assumed very different forms, and exercised far higher
functions. At first the Oriental saints were the ideals of
Western monks. The Eastern St. Athanasius had been
the founder of Italian monachism. St. Martin of Tours
excluded labour from the discipline of his monks, and he -
and they, like the Eastern saints, were accustomed to
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 189
wander abroad, destroying the idols of the temples.' But
three great causes conspired to direct the monastic spirit
' in the West into practical channels. Conditions of race
and climate have ever impelled the inhabitants of these
lands to active-life, and have at the same time rendered
them constitutionally incapable of enduring the austerities
or enjoying the hallucinations of the sedentary Oriental.
There arose, too, in the sixth century, a great legislator,
whose form may be dimly traced through a cloud of
fantastic legends, and the order of St. Benedict, with that
of St. Columba and some others, founded on substantially
the same principle, soon ramified through the greater
part of EKurope, tempered the wild excesses of useless
penances, and, making labour an essential part of the
monastic system, directed the movement to the pur-
poses of general civilisation. In the last place, the bar-
barian invasions, and the dissolution of the Western Em-
pire, distorting the whole system of government and
almost resolving society into its primitive elements, natu-
rally threw upon the monastic corporations social, political,
and intellectual functions of the deepest importance.
It has been observed that the capture of Rome by
Alaric, involving as it did the destruction of the grandest
religious monuments of Paganism, in fact established in
that city the supreme authority of Christianity.2 A
similar remark may be extended to the general downfall of
the Western civilisation. In that civilisation Christianity
had indeed been legally enthroned; but the philosophies
and traditions of Paganism, and the ingrained habits of an
ancient, and at the same time an effete society, continually
paralysed its energies. What Europe would have been
without the barbarian invasions, we may partly divine
1 See his life by Sulpicius Severus. * Milman.
190 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
from the history of the Lower Empire, which represented,
in fact, the old Roman civilisation prolonged and Chris-
tianised. The barbarian conquests, breaking up the old
organisation, provided the Church with a virgin soil; and
made it, for a long period, the supreme and indeed sole
centre of civilisation.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the skill and courage
displayed by the ecclesiastics in this most trying period.
We have already seen the noble daring with which they
interfered between the conqueror and the vanquished, and
the unwearied charity with which they sought to alle-
viate the unparalleled sufferings of Italy, when the colo-
nial supplies of corn were cut off, and when the fairest
plains were desolated by the barbarians. Still more won-
derful is the rapid conversion of the barbarian tribes.
Unfortunately this, which is one of the most important,
is also one of the most obscure pages in the history of the
Church. Of whole tribes or nations it may be truly said
that we are absolutely ignorant of the cause of their
change. The Goths had already been converted by
Ulphilas, before the downfall of the empire, and the con-
version of the Germans and of several northern na-
tions was long posterior to it; but the great work of
Christianising the barbarian world was accomplished
almost in the hour when that world became supreme.
Rude tribes, accustomed in their own lands to pay abso-
lute obedience to their priests, found themselves in a
foreign country, confronted by a priesthood far more
civilised and imposing than that which they had left, by
gorgeous ceremonies, well fitted to entice, and by threats
of coming judgment, well fitted to scare their imagina-
tions. Disconnected. from all their old associations, they
bowed before the majesty of civilisation, and the Latin
religion, like the Latin language, though with many
eer A pee: : POR: A Cee — Ser Sct taal 8 kt cine Lil ai At ey oe Sa aan ee ee eet ee a ‘ ; aes
CSR ANE SR Si Leaet a Satie miata Ss eet a ents Suture Ne MI ee a a ca etre a FE Oa ey ae Ot ae te a eT ee ee ee
FROM CON STANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 191
adulterations, reigned over the new society. The doc-
trine of exclusive salvation, and the doctrine of deemons,
had an admirable missionary power. The first produced
an ardour of proselytising which the polytheist could
never rival, while the Pagan, who was easily led to
recognise the Christian God, was menaced with eternal
fire if he did not take the further step of breaking off
from his old divinities. The second dispensed the con-
vert from the perhaps impossible task of disbelieving his
former religion, for it was only necessary for him to
degrade it, attributing its prodigies to infernal beings.
The priests, in addition’ to their noble devotion, carried
into their missionary efforts the most masterly judgement.
The barbarian tribes usually followed without enquiry the
religion of their sovereign, and it was to the’ conversion
of the king, and still more to the conversion of the queen,
that the Christians devoted all their energies. Clotilda,
the wife of Clovis, Bertha, the wife of Ethelbert, and
Theodolinda, the wife of Lothaire, were the chief instru-
ments in converting their husbands and their nations.
Nothing that could affect the imagination was neglected.
It is related of Clotilda, that she was careful to attract her
husband by the rich draperies of the ecclesiastical cere-
monies." In another case, the first work of proselytising
was confided to an artist, who painted before the terrified
Pagans the last judgment and the torments of hell.
But especially the belief, which was sincerely held, and
sedulously inculcated, that temporal success followed in
the train of Christianity, and that every pestilence,
famine, or military disaster was the penalty of idolatry,
heresy, sacrilege, or vice, assisted the movement. The
? Greg. Turon. ii. 29,
* This was the first step towards the conversion of the Bulgarians,—
Milman’s Latin Christianity, vol. iii. p. 249,
192 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
theory was so wide, that it met every variety of fortune,
and being taught with consummate skill, to barbarians
who were totally destitute of all critical power, and
strongly predisposed to accept it, it proved extremely
efficacious, and hope, fear, gratitude, and remorse drew
multitudes into the Church. The transition was softened
by the substitution of Christian ceremonies and saints for
the festivals and the divinities of the Pagans! Besides
the professed missionaries, the Christian captives zealously
diffused their faith among their Pagan masters. When the
chieftain had been converted, and the army had followed
his profession, an elaborate monastic and ecclesiastical
organisation grew up to consolidate the conquest, and re-
pressive laws soon crushed all opposition to the faith.
In these ways the victory of Christianity over the
barbarian world was achieved. But that victory, though
very great, was less decisive than might appear. A
religion which professed to be Christianity, and which
contained many of the ingredients of pure Christianity,
had risen into the ascendant, but it had undergone a
profound modification through the struggle. Religions,
as well as worshippers, had been baptised. The festivals,
images, and names of saints had been substituted for
those of the idols, and the habits of thought and feeling
of the ancient faith reappeared in new forms and a new
language. The tendency to a material, idolatrous, and |
polytheistic faith, which had long been encouraged by the
monks, and which the heretics Jovinian, Vigilantius, and
Aerius had vainly resisted, was fatally strengthened by
the infusion of a barbarian element into the Church, by
_ the general depression of intellect in Europe, and by the
many accommodations that were made to facilitate con-
* A remarkable collection of instances of this kind is given by Ozanam,
Civilisation in the Fifth Century (Eng. trans.), vol. i. pp. 124-127.
— FP nt
a a ee eS
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 193
version. Though apparently defeated and crushed, the
old gods still retained, under a new faith, no sue part of
their influence over the world.
To this tendency the leaders.of the Church made in
general no resistance, though in another form they were
deeply persuaded of the vitality of the old gods. Many
curious and picturesque legends attest the popular belief
that the old Roman and the old barbarian divinities, in
their capacity of demons, were still waging an unrelenting
war against the triumphant faith. A great Pope of the
sixth century relates how a Jew, being once benighted on
his journey, and finding no other shelter for the night, lay
down to rest in an abandoned temple of Apollo. Shud-
dering at the loneliness of the building, and fearing the
demons who were said to haunt'it, he determined, though
not a Christian, to protect himself by the sign of the
eross, which he had often heard possessed a mighty power
against spirits. To that sign he owed his safety. For at
midnight the temple was filled with dark and threatening
forms. The god Apollo was holding his court at his
deserted shrine, and his attendant demons were re-
counting the temptations they had devised against the
Christians." A newly married Roman, when one day
playing ball, took off his wedding-ring, which he found an
impediment in the game, and he gaily put it on the finger
of a statue of Venus, which was standing near. When he
returned, the marble finger had bent so that it was im-
possible to withdraw the ring, and that night the goddess
appeared to him in a dream, and told him that she was
1 St. Gregory, Dial. iii. 7. The particular temptation the Jew heard dis-
cussed was that of the bishop of the diocese, who, under the instigation of
one of the demons, was rapidly falling in love with a nun, and had proceeded
so far as jocosely to stroke her on the back. The Jew, having related the
vision to the bishop, the latter reformed his manners, the Jew became a
Christian, and the temple was turned into a church.
194 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
now his wedded wife, and that she would abide with him
for ever.1 When the Irish missionary St. Gall was fish-
ing one night upon a Swiss lake, near which he had
planted a monastery, he heard strange voices sweeping
over the lonely deep. The Spirit of the Water and the
Spirit of the Mountains were consulting together how
they could expel the intruder who had disturbed their
ancient reign.”
The details of the rapid propagation of Western mon-
achism have been amply treated by many historians, and
the causes of its success are sufficiently manifest. Some
of the reasons I have assigned for the first spread of
asceticism continued to operate, while others of a still
more powerful kind had arisen. The rapid decomposition
of the entire Roman Empire by continuous invasions of
barbarians rendered the existence of an inviolable asylum
and centre of peaceful labour a matter of transcendent im-
portance, and the monastery as organised by St. Benedict
soon combined the most heterogeneous elements of at-
traction. It was at once eminently aristocratic and in-
tensely democratic. The power and princely position of
the abbot was coveted, and usually obtained, by members
of the most illustrious families, while emancipated serfs or
peasants, who had lost their all in the invasions, or were
harassed by savage nobles, or had fled from military
service, or desired to lead a more secure and easy life,
found in the monastery an unfailing refuge. The isti-
tution exercised all the influence of great wealth, ex-
pended for the most part with great charity, while the
monk himself was invested with the aureole of a sacred
poverty. To ardent and philanthropic natures, the pro-
fession opened boundless vistas of missionary, charitable,
1 This is mentioned by one of the English historians—I think by Mathew
of Westminster.
2 See Milman’s Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. i. p. 298.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 195
and civilising activity. To the superstitious it was the
plain road to heaven. To the ambitious it was the portal
to bishoprics, and, after the monk St. Gregory, not un-
frequently to the Popedom. To the studious it offered
the only opportunity then existing in the world of seeing
many books and passing a life of study. To the timid
and the retiring it afforded the most secure, and probably
the least laborious, life a poor peasant could hope to find.
Vast as were the multitudes that thronged the monas-
teries, the means for their support were never wanting.
The belief that gifts or legacies to a monastery opened
the doors of heaven, was in a superstitious age sufficient
to secure for the community an almost boundless wealth,
which was still further increased by the skill and per-
severance with which the monks tilled the waste lands,
by the exemption of their domains from all taxation, and
by the tranquillity which in the most turbulent ages they
usually enjoyed. Si France, the Low Countries, and Ger-
many they were pre-eminently agriculturists. Gigantic
forests were felled, inhospitable marshes reclaimed, barren
plains cultivated by their hands. The monastery often
became the nucleus of a city. It was the centre of civi-
lisation and industry, the symbol of moral power in an age
of turbulence and war.
It must be observed, however, that the beneficial in-
fluence of the monastic system was necessarily transitional,
and the subsequent corruption the normal and inevitable
result of its constitution. Vast societies living in enforced
celibacy, exercising an unbounded influence, and possessing
enormous wealth, must necessarily have become hotbeds
of corruption when the enthusiasm that had created them
expired. The services they rendered as the centres of
agriculture, the refuge of travellers, the sanctuaries in war,
the counterpoise of the baronial castle, were no longer
196 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
required when the convulsions of invasion had ceased,
and when civil society was definitely organised. And
a similar observation may be extended even to their
moral type. Thus, while it is undoubtedly true that the
Benedictine monks, by making labour an essential ele-
ment of their discipline, did very much to efface the
stigma which slavery had affixed upon it, it is also true
that when industry had passed out of its initial stage,
the monastic theories of the sanctity of poverty, and the
evil of wealth, were its most deadly opponents. The dog-
matic condemnation by theologians of loans at interest,
which are the basis of industrial enterprise, was the expres-
sion of a far deeper antagonism of tendencies and ideals.
In one important respect, the transition from the ere-
mite to the monastic life involved not only a change of
circumstances, but also a change of character. The habit
of obedience, and the virtue of humility, assumed a posi-
tion which they had never previously occupied. The
conditions of the hermit life contributed to develope to a
very high degree a spirit of independence and spiritual
pride, which-was still further increased by a curious habit
that existed in the Church of regarding each eminent
hermit as the special model or professor of some parti-
cular virtue, and making pilgrimages to him, in order to
study this aspect of his character.’ These pilgrimages,
combined with the usually solitary and self-sufficing life
of the hermit, and also with the habit of measuring
progress almost entirely by the suppression of a physical
appetite, which it is quite possible wholly to destroy,
very naturally produced an extreme arrogance.? But in
* Cassian. Cenob. Instit. y.4. See, too, some striking instances of this
in the life of St. Antony. .
* This spiritual pride is well noticed by Neander, Ecclesiastical History
(Bohn’s ed.), vol. iii. pp. 321-323. It appears in many traits scattered
through the lives of their saints. I have already cited the instances of St.
a”
se ee ee ee
ERO es ee ee ee
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 197
the highly organised and disciplined monasteries of the
West, passive obedience and humility were the very first
things that were inculcated. The monastery, beyond all
other institutions, was the school for their exercise; and as
the monk represented the highest moral ideal of the age,
obedience and humility acquired a new value in the minds
ofmen. Nearly all the feudal and other organisations that
arose out of the chaos that followed the destruction of the
Roman Empire were intimately related to the Church, not
simply because the Church supplied in itself an admirable
model of an organised body, but also because it had done
much to educate men in habits of obedience. The spe-
cial value of this education depended upon the peculiar
circumstances of the time. The ancient civilisations, and
especially that of Rome, had been by no means deficient
in those habits, but it was in the midst of the dissolution
of an old society, and of the ascendency of barbarians,
who exaggerated to the highest degree their personal in-
dependence, that the Church proposed to the reverence of
mankind a life of passive obedience as the highest ideal
of virtue.
The habit of obedience was no new thing in the world,
but the disposition of humility was pre-eminently and al-
most exclusively a Christian virtue; and there has probably
never been any sphere in which it has been so largely
‘and so successfully inculcated as in the monastery. The
Antony and St. Macarius, and the visions telling them they were not the
best of living people ; and also the case of: the hermit, who was deceived by
a devil in the form of a woman, because he had been exalted by pride.
Another hermit, being very holy, received pure white bread every day from
heaven, but, being extravagantly elated, the bread got worse and worse till
it became perfectly black. (Tillemont, tome x. pp. 27-28.) A certain Isidore
affirmed that he had not been conscious of sin, even in thought, for forty
years. (Socrates, iv. 23.) It was a saying of St. Antony, that a solitary
man in the desert 1s free from three wars—of sight, speech, and hearing ;
he has to combat only fornication. (Apotheymata Patrum.)
198 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
whole penitential discipline, the entire mode or tenor of
the menastic life, was designed to tame every sentiment of
pride, and to give humility a foremost place in the hier-
archy of virtues. We have here one great source of the
mollifying influence of Catholicism. The gentler virtues
—benevolence and amiability—may, and in an advanced
civilisation often do, subsist in natures that are completely
devoid of genuine humility ; but on the other hand, it is
scarcely possible for a nature to be pervaded by a deep
sentiment of humility without this sentiment exercising a
softening influence over the whole character. To trans-
form a fierce warlike nature into a character of a gentler
type, the first essential is to awaken this feeling. In the
monasteries, the extinction of social and domestic feelings,
the narrow corporate spirit, and, still more, the atrocious
opinions that were prevalent concerning the cult of
heresy, produced in many minds an extreme and most
active ferocity; but the practice of charity, and the ideal
of humility, never failed to exercise some softening in-
fluence upon Christendom.
But, however advantageous the temporary pre-eminence
of this moral type may have been, it was obviously un-
suited for a later stage of civilisation. Political liberty is
almost impossible where the monastic system is supreme,
not merely because the monasteries divert the energies of
the nation from civic to ecclesiastical channels, but also
because the monastic ideal is the very apotheosis of ser-
vitude. Catholicism has been admirably fitted at once
to mitigate and to perpetuate despotism. When men have
learnt to reverence a life of passive, unreasoning obedience
as the highest type of perfection, the enthusiasm and
passion of freedom necessarily decline. In this repect
there is an analogy between the monastic and the mili-
tary spirit, both of which promote and glorify passive
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 199
obedience, and therefore prepare the minds of men
for despotic rule; but on the whole, the monastic spirit
is probably more hostile to freedom than the military
spirit, for the obedience of the monk is based upon
humility, while the obedience of the soldier coexists with
pride. Now, a considerable measure of pride, or self-asser-
tion, is an invariable characteristic of free communities.
The ascendency which the monastic system gave to the
virtue of humility has not continued. This virtue is
indeed the crowning grace and beauty of the most perfect
characters of the saintly type; but experience has shown
that among common men humility is more apt to degene-
rate into servility than pride into arrogance ; and modern
moralists have appealed more successfully to the sense of
dignity than to the opposite feeling. Two of the most
Important steps of later moral history have consisted of
the creation of a sentiment of pride as the parent and the
guardian of many virtues. The first of these encroach-
ments on the monastic spirit was chivalry, which called
into being a proud and jealous military honour that has
never since been extinguished. The second was the
creation of that feeling of self-respect which is one of the
most remarkable characteristics that distinguish Protes-
tant from most Catholic populations, and which has proved
among the former an invaluable moral agent, forming
frank and independent natures, and checking every servile
habit and all mean and degrading vice! The peculiar
* ‘Pride, under such training [that of modern rationalistic philosophy],
instead of running to waste, is turned to account, It gets anew name; it is
called self-respect. . . . It is directed into the channel of industry, ru-
gality, honesty, and obedience, and it becomes the very staple of the religion
and morality held in honour in a day like our own. It becomes the safo-
guard of chastity, the guarantee of veracity, in high and low; it is the very
household god of the Protestant, inspiring neatness and decency in the ser-
vant-girl, propriety of carriage and refined manners in her mistress, upright-
47
200 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
vigour with which it has been developed in Protestant
countries may be attributed to the suppression of monastic
institutions and habits; to the stigma Protestantism has
attached to mendicancy, which Catholicism has usually
slorified and encouraged; and lastly, to the action of
free political institutions, which have taken deepest
root where the primciples of the Reformation have been
accepted.
The relation of the monasteries to the intellectual virtues,
which we have next to examine, opens out a wide field
of discussion; and in order to appreciate it, it will be
necessary to revert briefly to a somewhat earlier stage of -
ecclesiastical history. And in the first place, it may be
observed, that the phrase intellectual virtue, which is often
used in a metaphorical sense, is susceptible of a strictly
literal interpretation. If a sincere and active desire for
truth be a moral duty, the discipline and the dispositions
that are plainly involved in every honest search fall rigidly
within the range of ethics. To love truth sincerely means
to pursue it with an earnest, conscientious, unflageing zeal.
It means to be prepared to follow the light of evidence
even to the most unwelcome conclusions; to labour
earnestly to emancipate the mind from early prejudices ;
to resist the current of the desires, and the refracting in-
fluence of the passions; to proportion on all occasions
conviction to evidence, and to be ready, if need be, to
ness, manliness, and generosity in the head of the family... . It is the
stimulating principle of providence, on the one hand, and of free expenditure
on the other; of an honourable ambition’ and of elegant enjoyment.’—New-
man, On University Education, Discourse ix. In the same lecture (which is,
perhaps, the most beautiful of the many beautiful productions of its illus-
trious author), Dr. Newman describes, with admirable eloquence, the
manner in which modesty has supplanted humility in the modern type of
excellence. It is scarcely necessary to say that the lecturer strongly disap-
proves of the movement he describes.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 201
exchange the calm of assurance for all the suffering of a
perplexed and disturbed mind. To do this is very diffi-
cult and very painful; but it is clearly involved in the
notion of earnest love of truth. If, then, any system stig-
matises as criminal the state of doubt, denounces the ex-
amination of some one class of arguments or facts, seeks
to introduce the bias of the affections into the enquiries of
the reason, or regards the honest conclusion of an up-
right investigator as involving moral guilt, that system is
subversive of intellectual honesty.
Among the ancients, although the methods of enquiry
were often very faulty, and generalisations very hasty, a
respect for the honest search after truth was widely dif-
fused.* There were, as we have already seen, instances
in which certain religious practices which were recarded
as attestations of loyalty, or as necessary to propitiate the
gods in favour of the State, were enforced by law; there
were even a few instances of philosophies, which were be-
lieved to lead directly to immoral results or social convul-
sions, being suppressed ; but as a general rule, speculation
was untrammelled, the notion of there being any necessary
guilt in erroneous opinion was unknown, and the boldest
enquirers were regarded with honour and admiration.
The religious theory of Paganism had in this respect
some influence. Polytheism, with many faults, had three
great merits. It was eminently poetical, eminently pa-
triotic, and eminently tolerant. - The conception of a vast
hierarchy of beings more glorious than, but not wholly
unlike, men, presiding over all the developments of nature,
and filling the universe with their deeds, supplied the
chief nutriment of the Greek imagination. The national
* Thus, ‘indagatio veri’ was reckoned among the leading virtues, and,the
high place given to cogia and ‘prudentia’ in ethical writings, preserved the
notion of the moral duties connected with the discipline of the intellect.
202 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
religions, interweaving religious ceremonies and associa-
tions with all civic life, concentrated and intensified the
sentiment of patriotism, and the notion of many distinct
groups of gods led men to tolerate many forms of worship
and great variety of creeds. In that colossal amalgam
of nations of which Rome became the metropolis, in-
tellectual liberty still further advanced; the vast variety
of philosophies and beliefs expatiated unmolested; the
search for truth was regarded as an important element of
virtue, and the relentless and most sceptical criticism
which Socrates had applied in turn to all the fundamental
propositions of popular belief remained as an example to
his successors.
We have already seen that one leading cause of the
rapid progress of the Church was, that its teachers en-
forced their distinctive tenets as absolutely essential to
salvation, and thus assailed at a great advantage the
supporters of all other creeds oe did. not claim this
exclusive authority. We have seen, too, that in an age of
great and growing credulity they had been conspicuous
for their assertion of the duty of absolute, unqualified,
and unquestioning belief. The notion of the guilt, both
of error and of doubt, grew rapidly, and, being soon re-
garded as a fundamental tenet, it determined the whole
course and policy of the Church.
And here, I think, it will not be unadvisable to pause
for a moment, and endeavour to ascertain what miscon-
ceived truth lay at the root of this fatal tenet. Considered
abstractedly and by the light of nature, it is as unmeaning
to speak of the immorality of an intellectual mistake as
it would be to talk of the colour of a sound. If a man
has sincerely persuaded himself that it is possible for
parallel lines to meet, or for two straight lines to enclose
a space, we pronounce his judgment to be absurd ; but it is
free from all tincture of immorality. And if, instead of
FROM CONSTANTINE TO GHARLEMAGNE, 203
failing to appreciate a demonstrable truth, his error con-
sisted in a false estimate of the conflicting arguments of
an historical problem, this mistake—assuming always that
the enquiry was an upright one—is still simply external
to the sphere of morals. It is possible that his conclusion,
by weakening some barrier against vice, may produce
vicious consequences, like those which might ensue from
some ill-advised modification of the police force; but it
in no degree follows from this that the judgment is in
itself criminal. If a student applies himself with the
same dispositions to Roman and Jewish histories, the
mistakes he may make in the latter are no more immoral
than those which he may make in the former.
There are, however, two cases in which an intellectual
error may be justly said to involve, or at least to repre-
sent, guilt. In the first place, error very frequently
springs from the partial or complete absence of that
mental disposition which is implied in a real love of truth.
Hypocrites, or men who through interested motives pro-
fess opinions which they do not really believe, are pro-
bably rarer than is usually supposed; but it would be
difficult to over-estimate the number of those whose
genuine convictions are due to the unresisted bias of their
interests. By the term interests, I mean not only material
well-being, but also all those mental luxuries, all those
grooves or channels for thought, which it is easy and
pleasing to follow, and painful and difficult to abandon.
Such are the love of ease, the love of certainty, the love
of system, the bias of the passions, the associations of the
imagination, as well as the coarser influences of social
position, domestic happiness, professional interest, party
feeling, or ambition. In most men, the love of truth is
so languid, and their reluctance to encounter mental
suffering is so great, that they yield their judgments with-
out an effort to the current, withdraw their minds from
204 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
all opinions or arguments opposed to their own, and thus
speedily convince themselves of the truth of what they
wish to believe. He who really loves truth, is bound at
least to endeavour to resist these distorting influences,
and in so far, as his opinions are the result of his not
having done so, in so far they represent a moral failing.
In the next place, it must be observed that every moral
disposition brings with it an intellectual bias which exer-
cises a great and often a controlling and decisive influence
even upon the most earnest enquirer. If we know the
character or disposition of a man, we can usually predict
with tolerable accuracy many of his opinions. We can
tell to what side of politics, to what canons of taste, to
what theory of morals he will naturally incline. Stern,
heroic, and haughty natures tend to systems in which
these qualities occupy the foremost position in the moral
type, while gentle natures will as naturally lean towards
systems in which the amiable virtues are supreme. Im-
pelled by a species of moral gravitation, the enquirer will
glide insensibly to the system which is congruous to his
disposition, and intellectual difficulties will seldom arrest
him. He can have observed human nature with but
little fruit who has not remarked how constant is this
connection, and how very rarely men change funda-
mentally the principles they had deliberately adopted
on religious, moral, or even political questions, without
the change being preceded, accompanied, or very speedily
followed, by a serious modification of character. So, too,
a vicious and depraved nature, or a nature which is hard,
narrow, and unsympathetic, will tend, much less by caleu-
lation or indolence than by natural affinity, to low and
degrading views of human nature. Those who have
never felt the higher ‘emotions will scarcely appreciate
them. The materials with which the intellect builds are
ra eee
ye ee es ye | ee
4
:
;
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 205
often derived from the heart, and a moral disease is there-
fore not unfrequently at the root of an erroneous jude-
ment.
Of these two truths the first cannot, I think, be
said to have had any influence in the formation of the
theological notion of the guilt of error. An elaborate
process of mental discipline, with a view to strengthening
the critical powers of the mind, is utterly remote from
the spirit of theology ; and this is one of the great reasons
why the growth of an inductive and scientific spirit is
invariably hostile to theological interests. To raise the
requisite standard of proof, to inculcate hardness and
slowness of belief, is the first task of the inductive rea-
soner. He looks with great favour upon the condition
of a suspended judgment; he encourages men rather to
prolong than to abridge it; he regards the tendency of
the human mind to rapid and premature generalisations
as one of its most fatal vices; he desires especially that
that which is believed should not be so cherished that
the mind should be indisposed to admit doubt, or, on the
appearance of new arguments, to revise with impartiality
its-conclusions. Nearly all the greatest intellectual achieve-
ments of the last three centuries have been preceded
and prepared by the growth of scepticism. The historic
scepticism which Vico, Beaufort, Pouilly, and Voltaire
in the last century, and Niebuhr and Lewes in the present
century, applied to ancient history, lies at: the root of all
the great modern efforts to reconstruct the history of
mankind. The splendid discoveries of physical science
would have been impossible but for the scientific scep-
ticism of the school of Bacon, which dissipated the old
theories of the universe, and led men to demand a seve-
rity of proof altogether unknown to the ancients. The
philosophic scepticism of Hume and Kant has given the
206 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
greatest modern impulse to metaphysics and ethics, Ex-
actly in proportion, therefore, as men are educated in the
inductive school, they are alienated from those theological
systems which represent a condition of doubt as sinful,
seek to govern the reason by the interests and the affec-
tions, and make it a main object to destroy the impar-
tiality of the judgment.
But although it is difficult to look upon Catholicism in
any other light than as the most deadly enemy of the
scientific spirit, it has always cordially recognised the most
important truth, that character in a very great measure
determines opinions. To cultivate the moral type that is
most congenial to the opinions it desires to recommend,
has always been its effort, and the conviction that a de-
viation from that type has often been the predisposing
cause of intellectual heresy, had doubtless a large share
in the first persuasion of the guilt of error. But priestly
and other influences soon conspired to enlarge this doc-
trme. A crowd of speculative, historical, and adminis-
trative propositions were asserted as essential to salvation,
and all who rejected them were wholly external to the
bond of Christian sympathy.
If, indeed, we put aside the pure teaching of the Chris-
tian founders, and consider the actual history of the Church
since Constantine, we shall find no justification for the
popular theory, that beneath its influence the narrow spirit
of patriotism faded into a wide and cosmopolitan philan-
thropy.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 211
too minute for the new intolerance to embitter. The
question of the proper time of celebrating Easter was
believed to involve the issue of salvation or damnation ;}
and when, long after, in the fourteenth century, the
question of the nature of the light at the transfiguration
was discussed at Constantinople, those who refused to
admit that that light was uncreated, were deprived of the
honours of Christian burial.”
Together with these legislative and _ ecclesiastical
measures, a literature arose surpassing in its mendacious
ferocity any other the world had known. The polemical
- writers habitually painted as demons those who diverged
from the orthodox belief, gloated with a vindictive piety
over the sufferings of the heretic upon earth, as upon
a Divine punishment, and sometimes, with an almost
superhuman malice, passing in imagination beyond the
threshold of the grave, exulted in no ambiguous terms
on the tortures which they believed to be reserved for
him for ever.. A few men, such as Synesius, Basil, or
Salvian, might still find some excellence in Pagans or
heretics, but their candour was altogether exceptional ;
and he who will compare the beautiful pictures the
Greek poets gave of their Trojan adversaries, or the Roman
historians of the enemies of their country, with those
which ecclesiastical writers, for many centuries, almost
invariably gave of all who were opposed to their Church,
1 This appears from the whole history of the controversy ; but the prevail-
ing feeling is, I think, expressed with peculiar vividness in the following
passage—‘ Hadmer says (following the words of Bede) in Colman’s times
there wasa sharp controversy about the observing of Easter, and other rules
of life for churchmen ; therefore, this question deservedly excited the minds
and feeling of many people, fearing lest, perhaps, after having received the
name of Christians, they should run, or had run in vain,’—King’s Hist. of
the Church of Ireland, book ii. ch. vi.
2 Gibbon, chap. 1xiil.
212 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
may easily estimate the extent to which cosmopolitan
sympathy had retrograded. 7
At the period, however, when the Western monasteries
began to discharge their intellectual functions, the supre-
macy of Catholicism was nearly established, and polemical
ardour had begun to wane. The literary zeal of the
Church took other forms, but all were deeply tinged
by the monastic spirit. It is difficult or impossible to
conceive what would have been the intellectual future of
the world had Catholicism never arisen—what princi-
ples or impulses would have guided the course of the
human mind, or what new institutions would have been °
created for its culture. Under the influence of Catho-
licism, the monastery became the one sphere of intel-
lectual labour, and it continued during many centuries
to occupy that position. Without entering into anything
resembling a literary history, which would be foreign
to the objects of the present work, I shall endeavour
briefly to estimate the manner in which it discharged its
functions.
The first idea that is naturally suggested by the men-
tion of the intellectual services of monasteries is the con-
servation of the writings of the Pagans. I have already
observed, that among the early Christians there was a
marked difference on the subject of their writings. The
school which was represented by Tertullian regarded
them with abhorrence, while the Platonists, who were
represented by Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and
Origen, not merely recognised with great cordiality their
beauties, but even imagined that they could detect in
them both the traces of an original Diyine inspiration,
and plagiarisms from the Jewish writings. While avoiding,
for the most part, these extremes, St. Aucustine, the
great organiser of Western Christianity, treats the Pagan
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 213
writings with appreciative respect. He had himself
ascribed his first conversion from a course of vice to the
‘Hortensius’ of Cicero, and his works are full of discrimi-
nating, and often very beautiful applications, of the old
Roman literature. The attempt of Julian to prevent the
Christians from teaching the classics, and the extreme
resentment which that attempt elicited, show how highly
the Christian leaders of that period valued this form of
education; and it was naturally the more cherished on
account of the contest. The influence of Neoplatonism,
the baptism of multitudes of nominal Christians after
Constantine, and the decline of zeal which necessarily
accompanied prosperity, had all in different ways the same
tendency. In Synesius we have the curious phenomenon
of a bishop who, not content with proclaiming himself the
admiring friend of the Pagan Hypatia, openly declared his
complete disbelief in the resurrection of the body, and his
firm adhesion to the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence
of souls! Had the ecclesiastical theory prevailed which
gave such latitude even to the leaders of the Church, the
course of Christianity would have been very different. A
reactionary spirit, however, arose at Rome. The doctrine
of exclusive salvation supplied its intellectual basis; the
political and organising genius of the Roman ecclesiastics
impelled them to reduce belief into a rigid form ; the genius
of St. Gregory guided the movement,” and a series of
1 An interesting sketch of this very interesting prelate has, lately been
written by M. Druon, Etude sur la Vie et les Eiivres de Synésius (Paris,
1859).
* Tradition has pronounced Gregory the Great to have been the destroyer
of the Palatine library, and to have .been especially zealous in burning the
writings of Livy, because they described the achievements of the Pagan
gods. For these charges, however (which I am sorry to find repeated by
so eminent a writer as Dr. Draper), there is no real evidence, for they are
not found in any writer earlier than the twelfth century. (See Bayle, Dict.
art. Greg.) The extreme contempt of Gregory for Pagan literature is,
214 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
historical events, of which the ecclesiastical and political se-
paration of the Western empire from the speculative Greeks,
and the invasion and conversion of the barbarians, were
the most important, definitely established the ascendency
of the Catholic type. In the convulsions that followed
the barbarian invasions, intellectual energy of a secular
kind almost absolutely ceased. A parting gleam issued,
indeed, in the sixth century, from the Court of Theodorie,
at Ravenna, which was adorned by the genius of Boéthius,
and the talent of Cassiodorus and Symmachus; but after
this time, for a long period, literature consisted almost
exclusively of sermons. and lives of saints, which were
composed in the monasteries.| Gregory of Tours was
succeeded as an annalist by the still feebler Fredegarius,
and there was then a long and absolute blank. A few
outlying countries showed some faint animation. St.
Leander and St. Isidore planted at Seville a school, which
flourished in the seventh century, and the distant monas-
teries of Ireland continued somewhat later to be the
however, sufficiently manifested in his famous and very curious letter to
Desiderius, Bishop of Vienne, rebuking him for having taught certain per-
sons Pagan literature, and thus mingling ‘the praises of J upiter with the
praises of Christ ;’ doing what would be impious even for a religious layman,
‘ polluting the mind with the blasphemous praises of the wicked’ Some
curious evidence of the feelings of the Christians of the fourth, fifth, and
sixth centuries, about Pagan literature, is given in Guinguené, Hist. littéraire
del Itahe, tome i. p. 29-31, and some legends of a later period are candidly
related by one of the most enthusiastic English advocates of the Middle
Ages. (Maitland, Dark Ages.)
* Probably the best account of the intellectual history of these times is
still to be found in the admirable introductory chapters with which the
Benedictines prefaced each century of their Hist, littératre de la France.
The Benedictines think (with Hallam) that the eighth century was, on the
whole, the darkest on the continent, though England attained its lowest
point somewhat later. Of the great protectors of learning Theodoric was
unable to write (see Guinguené, tome i. p. 81), and Charlemagne (Eginhard)
only began to learn when advanced in life, and was never quite able to
master the accomplishment. Alfred, however, was distinguished in lite-
rature.
Vt ems Ey oe ay ea
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 216
receptacles of learning; but the rest of Europe sank into
an almost absolute torpor, till the rationalism of Abelard,
and the events that followed the crusade, began the revival
of learning. The principal service which Catholicism ren-
dered during this period to Pagan literature was probably
the perpetuation of Latin asa sacred language. The com-
plete absence of all curiosity about that literature is shown
by the fact that Greek was suffered to become almost abso-
lutely extinct, though there was no time when the Western
nations had not some relations with the Greek empire, or
when pilgrimages to the Holy Land altogether ceased.
The study of the Latin classics was for the most part posi-
tively discouraged. The writers, it was believed, were
burning in hell; the monks were too inflated with their
imaginary knowledge to regard with any respect a Pagan
writer, and periodical panics about the approaching ter-
mination of the world continually checked any desire for
secular learning. There existed a custom among some
monks, when they were under the discipline of silence,
and desired to ask for Virgil or Horace, or any other
Gentile work, to indicate their wish by scratching their
ears like a dog, to which animal it was thought the
Pagans might be reasonably compared.? The monasteries
* The belief that the world was just about to end was, as is well known,
very general among the early Christians, and greatly affected their lives.
It appears in the New Testament, and very clearly in the epistle ascribed
to Barnabas in the first century. The persecutions of the second and third
centuries revived it, and both Tertullian and Cyprian (in Demetrianum)
strongly assert it. With the triumph of Christianity the apprehension for
a time subsided; but it reappeared with great force when the dissolution of
the empire was manifestly impending, when it was accomplished, and in
the prolonged anarchy and suffering that ensued. Gregory of Tours, writing
in the latter part of the sixth century, speaks of it as very prevalent (Pro-
logue to the First Book) ; and St. Gregory the Great, about the same time,
constantly expresses it. The panic that filled Europe at the end of tha
tenth century has been often described.
* Maitland’s Dark Ages, p. 403.
48
216 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
contained, it is said, during some time, the only libraries
in Europe, and were therefore the sole receptacles of the
Pagan manuscripts; but we cannot infer from this, that
if the monasteries had not existed, similar libraries would
not have been called into being in their place. To the
occasional industry of the monks, in copying the works of
antiquity, we must oppose the industry they displayed,
though chiefly at a somewhat later period, in scraping
the ancient parchments, in order that, having obliterated
the writing of the Pagans, they might cover them with
their own legends.
There are some aspects, however, in which the mo-
nastic period of literature appears eminently beautiful.
The fretfulness and impatience and extreme tension of
modern literary life, the many anxieties that paralyse,
and the feverish craving for applause that perverts, so
many noble intellects, were then unknown. Severed from
all the cares of active life, in the deep calm of the monas-
tery, where the turmoil of the outer world could never
come, the monkish scholar pursued his studies in a spirit
which has now almost faded from the world. No doubt
had ever disturbed his mind. To him the problem of
the universe seemed solved. Expatiating for ever with
unfaltering faith upon the unseen world, he had learnt to
live for it alone. His hopes were not fixed upon human |
greatness or fame, but upon the pardon of his sins, and
the rewards of a happier world. A crowd of quaint and
often beautiful legends illustrate the deep union that sub-
sisted between literature and religion. It is related of
* This passion for scraping MSS. became common, according to Mont-
faucon, after the twelfth century. (Maitland, p. 40.) According to Hallam,
however (Middle Ages, ch, ix. part i.), it must have begun earlier, being
chiefly caused by the cessation or great diminution of the import of Egyp-
tian papyrus, which was a consequence of the capture of Alexandria by
the Saracens, early in the seventh century.
aes Pere 1 ie
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE 217
Cxdmon, the first great poet of the Anglo-Saxons, that
he found in the secular life no vent for his hidden genius.
When the warriors assembled at their banquets, sang in
turn the praises of war or beauty, as the instrument passed
to him, he rose and went out with a sad heart, for he alone
was unable to weave his thoughts in verse. Wearied and
desponding he lay down to rest, when a figure appeared
to him in his dream and commanded him to sing the
Creation of the World. A transport of religious fervour
thrilled his brain, his imprisoned intellect was unlocked,
and he soon became the foremost poet of his land} A
Spanish boy having long tried in vain to master his task,
and driven to despair by the severity of his teacher, ran
away from his father’s home. Tired with wandering,
and full of anxious thoughts, he sat down to rest by the
margin of a well, when his eye was caught by the deep
furrow in the stone. He asked a girl who was drawing
water to explain it, and she told him that it had been
worn by the constant attrition of the rope. The poor
boy, who was already full of remorse for what he had
done, recognised in the reply a Divine intimation. < If,
he thought, ‘by daily use the soft rope could thus pene-
trate the hard stone, surely a long perseverance could
overcome the dullness of my brain. He returned to
_ his father’s house; he laboured with redoubled earnest-
ness, and he lived to be the great St. Isidore of Spain.?
A monk who had led a vicious life wag saved, it is said,
from hell, because it was found that his sins, though very
numerous, were just outnumbered by the letters of a
ponderous and devout book he had written.2 The Holy
1 Bede, H. E£. iv. 24. |
* Mariana De Rebus Hispania, vi. 7. Mariana says the stone was in his
time preserved as a relic.
* Odericus Vitalis, quoted by Maitland (Dark Ages, pp. 268-269). The
monk was restored to life that he might have an opportunity of reformation.
218 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
Spirit, in the shape of a dove, had been seen to inspire
St. Gregory; and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas
and of several other theologians, had been expressly ap-
plauded by Christ or by his saints. When, twenty years
after death, the tomb of a certain monkish writer was
opened, it was found that, although the remainder of the
body had crumbled into dust, the hand that had held
the pen remained flexible and undecayed.! A young and
nameless scholar was once buried near a convent at Bonn.
The night after his funeral, a nun whose cell overlooked
the cemetery was awakened by a brilliant light that filled
the room. She started up, imagining that the day had
dawned, but on looking out she found that it was still
night, though a dazzling splendour was around. A female
form of matchless loveliness was bending over the
scholar’s grave. The effluence of her beauty filled the
air with light, and she clasped to her heart a snow-white
dove that rose to meet her from the tomb. It was the
Mother of God come to receive the soul of the martyred
scholar ; ‘ for scholars too,’ adds the old chronicler, ‘are
martyrs if they live in purity and labour with courage.’?
But legends of this kind, though not without a very
real beauty, must not blind us to the fact that the period | :
of Catholic ascendency was on the whole one of the
most deplorable in the history of the human mind. The
energies of Christendom were diverted from all useful
and progressive studies, and were wholly expended on
theological disquisitions. A crowd of superstitions, attri-
The escape was a narrow.one, for there was only one letter against which
no sin could be adduced—a remarkable instance of the advantages of a
diffuse style. |
1 Digby, Mores Catholici, book x. p. 246. Mathew of Westminster tells
of a certain king who was very charitable, and whose right hand (which
had assuaged many sorrows) remained undecayed after death (A.D. 644).
* See Hauréau, Hist, de la Philosophie scolastique, tome i. pp. 24-25.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, \\v
buted to infallible wisdom, barred the path of knowledg@
and the charge of magic, or the charge of heresy, crushed
every bold enquiry in the sphere of physical nature or of
opinions. Above all, the conditions of true enquiry had
been cursed by the Church. A blind unquestioning cre-
dulity was inculcated as the first of duties, and the habit
of doubt, the impartiality of a suspended judgment, the
desire to hear both sides of a disputed question, and to
emancipate the judgment from unreasoning prejudice,
were all in consequence condemned. ‘The belief in the
guilt of error and doubt became universal, and that belief
may be confidently pronounced to be the most pernicious
superstition that has ever been accredited among man-
kind. Mistaken facts are rectified by enquiry. Mistaken
methods of research, though far more inveterate, are gra-
dually altered ; but the spirit that shrinks from enquiry as
sinful, and deems a state of doubt a state of cuilt, is
the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of
man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the
monasteries to the universities, not till Mahommedan
science, and classical freethought, and industrial inde-
pendence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intel-
lectual revival of Europe begin.
{ am aware that so strong a statement of the intellec-
tual darkness of the middle ages is likely to encounter
opposition from many quarters. The blindness which
the philosophers of the eighteenth century manifested to
their better side has produced a reaction which has led
many to an opposite, and, I believe, far more erroneous
extreme. Some have become eulogists of the period
through love of its distinctive theological doctrines, and
others through archeological enthusiasm, while a very
pretentious and dogmatic, but I think sometimes super-
ficial, school of writers who loudly boast themselves the
220 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
regenerators of history, and treat with supreme contempt
all the varieties of theological opinion, are accustomed,
partly through a very shallow historical optimism which
scarcely admits the possibility of retrogression, and partly
through sympathy with the despotic character of Catho-
licism, to extol the medizeval society in the most extra-
vagant terms. Without entering into a lengthy ex-
amination of this subject, I may be permitted to indicate
shortly two or three fallacies which are continually dis-
played in their appreciations.
It is an undoubted truth that, for a considerable period,
almost all the knowledge of Europe was included in the
monasteries, and from this it is continually inferred that,
had these institutions not existed, knowledge would have
been absolutely extinguished. But such a conclusion I
conceive to be altogether untrue. During the period of
the Pagan empire, intellectual life had been diffused over
a vast portion of the globe. Egypt and Asia Minor had
become great centres of civilisation. Greece was still a
land of learning. Spain, Gaul, and even Britain! were
full of libraries and teachers. The schools of Narbonne,
Arles, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyons, Marseilles, Poitiers,
and Tréves were already famous. The Christian em-
peror Gratian, in A.D. 376, carried out in Gaul a system
similar to that which had already, under the Antonines,
been pursued in Italy, ordaining that teachers should be
supported by the State in every leading city.? To sup-
pose that Latin literature, having been so widely diffused,
could have totally perished, or that all interest in it could
have permanently ceased, even under the extremely
unfavourable circumstances that followed the downfall of
1 On the progress of Roman civilisation in Britain, see Tacitus, Agri-
cola, xxi.
* See the Benedictine Hest. littér. de la France, tome i. part ii. p. 9.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 221
the Roman Empire and the Mahommedan invasions, is, I
conceive, absurd. If Catholicism had never existed, the
human mind would have sought other spheres for its de-
velopment, and at least a part of the treasures of antiquity
would have been preserved in other ways. The monas-
teries, as corporations of peaceful men protected from the
incursions of the barbarians, became very naturally the
reservoirs to which the streams of literature flowed; but
much of what they are represented as creating, they had
in reality only attracted. The inviolable sanctity which
they secured rendered them invaluable receptacles of an-
cient learning in a period of anarchy and perpetual war,
and the industry of the monks in transcribing probably
more than counterbalanced their industry in effacing the
classical writings. The ecclesiastical unity of Christendom
was also of extreme importance in rendering possible a
general interchange of ideas. Whether these services out-
weighed the intellectual evils resulting from the complete
diversion of the human mind from all secular learning,
and from the persistent inculcation, as a matter of duty,
of that habit of abject credulity which it is the first task
of the intellectual reformer to eradicate, may be rea-
sonably doubted.
It is not unfrequent, again, to hear the preceding fal-
lacy stated in a somewhat different form, We are re-
minded that almost all the men of genius during several
centuries were great theologians, and we are asked to
conceive the more than Egyptian darkness that would
have prevailed had the Catholic theology which produced
them not existed. This judgment. resembles that of the
prisoner in a famous passage of Cicero, who, having spent
his entire life ina dark dungeon, and knowing the light
of day only from a single ray which passed through a
222 HISTORY OF ‘EUROPEAN MORALS.
fissure in the wall, inferred that if the wall were removed,
as the fissure would no longer exist, all light would be :
excluded. Medizval Catholicism discouraged and sup-
pressed in every way secular studies, while it conferred a
monopoly of wealth and honour and power upon the
distinguished theologian. Very naturally, therefore, it
attracted into the path of theology the genius that would
have existed without it, but would have been displayed
in other forms.
It is not to be inferred, however, from this, that me-
diseval Catholicism had not, in the sphere of intellect, any
real creative power. A great moral or religious enthu-
siasm always evokes a certain amount of genius that
would not otherwise have existed, or at least been dis-
played, and the monasteries were peculiarly fitted to
develope certain casts of mind, which in no other sphere
could have so perfectly expanded. The great writings of ©
St. Thomas Aquinas! and his followers, and, im more
modern times, the massive and conscientious erudition of
the Benedictines, will always make certain periods of the
monastic history venerable to the scholar. But, when
we remember that during many centuries nearly every
one possessing any literary taste or talents became a
monk, when we recollect that these monks were familiar
with the language, and might easily have been familiar
with the noble literature of ancient Rome, and when we
also consider the mode of their life, which would seem,
from its absence of care, and from the very monotony of
its routine, peculiarly calculated to impel them to study,
we can hardly fail to wonder how very little of any real
* A biographer of St. Thomas Aquinas modestly observes: ‘ L’opinion
généralement répandue parmi les théologiens c’est que la Somme de Théologie
de St.-Thomas est non-seulement son chef-d’ceuvre mais aussi celui de
esprit humain’ (!!).—Carle, Hist. de St.- Thomas d’ Aquin, p. 140.
TS a ke
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 223
value they added, for so long a period, to the know-
ledge of mankind. It is indeed a remarkable fact, that
even in the ages when the Catholic ascendency was
most perfect, the greatest achievements were either
opposed to, or simply external to, ecclesiastical influence.
Roger Bacon having been a monk, is frequently spoken
of as acreature of Catholic teaching. But there never
was a more striking instance of the force of a great
genius in resisting the tendencies of his age. At a time
when physical science was continually neglected, dis-
couraged, or condemned, at a time when all the oreat
prizes of the world were open to men who pursued avery
different course, Bacon applied himself with transcendent
genius to the study of nature. Fourteen years of his
life were spent in prison, and when he died, his name
was blasted as a magician. The medieval laboratories
were chiefly due to the pursuit of alchemy, or to Mo-
hammedan encouragement. The inventions of the
mariner’s compass, of gunpowder, and of rag paper were
all, indeed, of extreme importance; but they were ereat
inventions only from their effects, and in no degree from
the genius they implied. They were all unconnected
with the prevailing intellectual tendencies or teachings,
and might have equally appeared in any age and under
any religion. The monasteries cultivated formal logic to
great perfection. They produced many patient and 1a-
borious, though, for the most part, wholly uncritical
scholars, and many philosophers who, having assumed
their premises with unfaltering faith, reasoned from them
with admirable subtlety; but they taught men to regard
the sacrifice of secular learning as a noble thing ; they
impressed upon them a theory of the habitual govern-
ment of the universe, which is absolutely untrue, and
they diffused, wherever their influence extended, habits
224 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
of credulity and intolerance that are the most —_
poisons to the human mind.
It is, again, very frequently observed among the more
philosophic eulogists of the medieval peniaas that al-
though the Catholic Church is a trammel and an obstacle
to the progress of civilised nations, although it would
be scarcely possible to exaggerate the misery her perse-
cuting spirit caused, when the human mind had out- .
stripped her teaching; yet there was a time when she
was greatly in advance of the age, and the complete and
absolute ascendency she then exercised was intellectually
eminently beneficial. That there is much truth in this
view, | have myself repeatedly maintained. But when
men proceed to isolate the former period, and to make
it the theme of unqualified eulogy, they fall, I think, into »
a grave error. The evils that sprang from the later
period of Catholic ascendency were not an accident or a
perversion, but a normal and necessary consequence of
the previous despotism. The principles which were
imposed on the medieval world, and which were the
conditions of so much of its distinctive excellence, were
of such a nature that they claimed to be final, and could
not possibly be discarded without a struggle and a con-
vulsion. We must estimate the influence of these
principles considered as a whole, and during the entire
period of their operation. There are some poisons which,
before they kill men, allay pain and diffuse a soothing
sensation through the frame. We may recognise the
hour of enjoyment they procure, but we must not sepa-
rate it from the price at which it was purchased.
The extremely unfavourable influence the Catholic
Church long exercised upon intellectual development
had important moral consequences. Although moral
progress does not necessarily depend upon intellectual
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 225
progress, it 1s materially affected by it, intellectual
activity being the most important element in the growth
of that great and complex organism which we call civili-
sation. The medixval credulity had also a more direct
moral influence in producing that indifference to truth,
which is the most repulsive feature of so many Catho-
lic writings. The very.large part that must be assigned
to deliberate forgeries in the early apologetic literature
of the Church we have already seen, and no impartial
reader can, I think, investigate the innumerable srotesque
and lying legends that were deliberately palmed upon
mankind as undoubted facts, during the whole course
of the middle ages, can follow the histories of the false
decretals, and the discussions that were connected with
them, or can observe the complete and absolute incapacity
the polemical historians of Catholicism so frequently dis-
play, of conceiving any good thing in the ranks of their
opponents, and their systematic suppression of whatever
can tell against their cause, without acknowledging how
serious and how inveterate has been the evil. There
have, no doubt, been many noble individual exceptions.
Yet it is, I believe, difficult to exaggerate the extent to
which this moral defect exists in most of the ancient and
very much of the modern literature of Catholicism. It is
this which makes it so unspeakably repulsive to all inde-
pendent and impartial thinkers, and has led a great
German historian! to declare, with much bitterness, that
the phrase Christian veracity deserves to rank with the
phrase Punic faith. But this absolute indifference to truth
whenever falsehood could subserve the interests of the
Church, is perfectly explicable, and was found in mul-
titudes, who, in other respects, exhibited the noblest
virtue. An age which has ceased to value impartiality of
1 Herder.
226 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
judgment will soon cease to value accuracy of statement,
and when credulity is inculeated as a virtue, falsehood
will not long be stigmatised as a vice. When, too, men
are firmly convinced that salvation can only be found
within their Church, and that their Church can absolve
from all guilt, they will speedily conclude that nothing can
possibly be wrong which is beneficial to it. They ex-
change the love of truth for what they call the love of
the truth. They regard morals as derived from and sub-
ordinate to theology, and they regulate all their state-
ments, not by the standard of veracity, but by the interests
of their creed.
Another important moral consequence of the monastic
system was the great importance that was given to the
pecuniary compensations for crime. It had been at first
one of the broad distinctions between Paganism and
Christianity, that while the rites of the former were for
the most part unconnected with moral dispositions, Chris-
tianity made purity of heart an essential element of all its
worship. Among the Pagans a few faint efforts had, it
is true, been made in this direction. An old precept
or law, which is referred to by Cicero, and which was
strongly reiterated by Apollonius of Tyana, and the
Pythagoreans, declared that ‘no impious man should dare
to appease the anger of the divinities by his gifts’! and
oracles are said to have more than once proclaimed that
the hecatombs of noble oxen with gilded horns that were
offered up ostentatiously by the rich, were less pleasing
to the gods than the wreaths of flowers and the modest
and reverential worship of the poor.? In general, how-
ever, in the Pagan world, the service of the temple had
? ‘Impius ne audeto placare donis iram Deorum,’—Cicero, De Leg. ii. 9.
See, too, Philost. in Apoll. Tyan. i. 11.
* There are three or four instances of this related by Porphyry, Adstin.
Carnis, lib. ii.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 227,
little or no connection with morals, and the change
which Christianity effected in this respect was one of its
most important benefits to mankind. It was natural,
however, and perhaps inevitable, that in the course of
time, and under the action of very various causes, the old
Pagan sentiment should revive, and even with an in-
creased intensity. In no respect had the Christians been
more nobly distinguished than by their charity. It was
not surprising that the fathers, while exerting all their
eloquence to stimulate this charity—especially during the
calamities that accompanied the dissolution of the empire
—should have dilated in extremely strong terms upon the
spiritual benefits the donor would receive for his gift. It
is also not surprising that this selfish calculcation should
oradually, and among hard and ignorant men, have
absorbed all other motives. A curious legend, which is
related by a writer of the seventh century, illustrates the
kind of feeling that had arisen. The Christian bishop
Synesius succeeded in converting a Pagan named Eva-
orius, who for a long time, however, felt doubts about the
passage, ‘ He who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.’
On his conversion, and in obedience to this verse, he gave
Synesius three hundred pieces of gold to be distributed
among the poor; but he exacted from the bishop, as being
the representative of Christ, a promissory note, engaging
that he should be repaid in the future world. When,
many years later, Evagrius was on his deathbed, he com-
manded his sons, when they buried him, to place the note
in his hand, and to do so without informing Synesius. His
dying injunction was observed, and three days afterwards
he appeared to Synesius in a dream, told him that the
debt had been paid, and ordered him to go to the tomb,
where he would find a written receipt. Synesius did as
he was commanded, and the grave being opened, the
228 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
promissory note was found in the hand of the dead man,
with an endorsement declaring that the debt had been
paid by Christ. The note, it is said, was long after pre-
served as a relic in the church of Cyrene.
The kind of feeling which this legend displays was soon
turned with tenfold force into the channel of monastic life.
A law of Constantine’accorded, and several later laws en-
larged, the power of bequests to ecclesiastics. Ecclesiastical
property was at the same time exonerated from the public
burdens, and this measure not only directly assisted. its
increase, but had also an important indirect influence ;
for, when taxation was heavy, many laymen ceded the
ownership of their estates to the monasteries, with a secret
condition that they should as vassals receive the revenues
unburdened by taxation, and subject only to a slight pay-
ment to the monks as to their feudal lords.2, The monks
were regarded as the trustees of the poor, and also as them-
selves typical poor, and all the promises that applied to
those who gave to the poor, applied, it was said, to the
benefactors of the monasteries. The monastic chapel also
contained the relics of saints or sacred images of mira-
culous power, and throngs of worshippers were attracted
by the miracles, and desired to place themselves under
the protection, of the saint. It is no exaggeration to say,
that to give money to the priests was for several centuries
* Moschus, Pratum Spirituale (Rosweyde), cap. cxcy. M. Wallon quotes
from the Life of St.-Jean VAuménier an even stranger event which
happened to St. Peter Telonearius. ‘Pour repousser les importunités des
pauvres, il leur jetait des pierres. Un jour, n’en trouvant pas sous la main,
il leur jeta un pain a la téte. Il tomba malade et eut une vision. Ses
mérites étaient comptés; d’un cété étaient tous ses crimes, de l’autre ce
pain jeté comme une insulte aux pauvres et accepté comme une aumdne par
Jésus-Christ.’— Mist, de l’ Esclavage, tome iii. p. 897.
I may mention here that the ancient Gauls were said to have been
accustomed to lend money on the condition of its being repaid by the lender
in the next life. (Val. Maximus, lib. ii. cap. vi. § 10.)
* Muratori, Antich. Italiane, diss. 1xvii.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 229
the first article of the moral code. Political minds may
have felt the importance of agerandising a pacific and
industrious class in the centre of a disorganised society,
and family affection may have predisposed many in favour
of institutions which contained at least one member of
most families; but in the overwhelming majority of
cases the motive was simple superstition. In seasons
of sickness, of danger, of sorrow, or of remorse, when-
ever the fear or the conscience of the worshipper was
awakened, he hastened to purchase with money the favour
of a saint. Above all, in the hour of death, when the
terrors of the future world loomed darkly upon his mind,
he saw in a gift or lezacy to the monks a sure means of
effacing the most monstrous crimes, and securing his ulti-
mate happiness. A rich man was soon scarcely deemed
a Christian, if he did not leave a portion of his property
to the Church, and the charters of innumerable monas-
teries in every part of Europe attest the vast tracts of -
land that were ceded by will, to the monks. ‘for the
benefit of the soul’ of the testator.
It has been observed by a great historian, that we may
trace three distinct phases in the history of the Church.
In the first period religion was a question of morals; in
the second period, which culminated in the fifth century,
it had become a question of orthodoxy; in the third
period, which dates from the seventh century, it was a
question of munificence to monasteries.? The despotism
* See on the causes of the wealth of the monasteries, two admirable
dissertations by Muratori, Antich. Italiane, Ixvii. Ixviii.; Hallam’s Middle
Ages, ch. vil. part i.
* ‘Lors de l’établissement du christianisme la religion avoit essentielle-
ment consisté dans l’enseignement moral; elle avoit exercé les cceurs et les
ames par la recherche ‘de ce qui étoit vraiment beau, vraiment honnéte. Au
tinquiéme siécle on lavoit surtout attachée & l’orthodoxie, au septiéme on
Yavoit réduite & la bienfaisance envers les couvens,’—Sismondi, Hist. des
Frangais, tome ii. p. 50.
30 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
cf Catholicism, and the ignorance that followed the bar-
barian invasions, had repressed the struggles of heresy,
and in the period of almost absolute darkness that con-
tinued from the sixth to the twelfth century, the theolo-
gical ideal of unquestioning faith and of perfect un-
animity was all but realised in the West. All the energy
that in previous ages had been expended in combating
heresy was now expended in acquiting wealth. The
people compounded for the most atrocious crimes by gifts
to shrines of those saints whose intercession was supposed
to be unfailing. The monks, partly by the natural cessation
of their old enthusiasm, partly by the absence of any hostile
criticism of their acts, and partly too by the very wealth
they had acquired, sank into gross and general immorality.
The great majority of them had probably at no time been
either saints actuated by a strong religious motive, nor
yet diseased and desponding minds seeking a refuge
from the world; they had been simply peasants, of no
extraordinary devotion or sensitiveness, who preferred an
ensured subsistence, with no care, little labour, a much
higher social position than they could otherwise acquire,
and the certainty, as they believed, of going to heaven,
to the laborious and precarious existence of the serf,
relieved, indeed, by the privilege of marriage, but exposed
to military service, to extreme hardships, and to constant
oppression. Very naturally; when they could do so with
impunity, they broke their vows of chastity. Very na-
turally, too, they availed themselves to the full of the
condition of affairs, to draw as much wealth as possible
into their community.! The belief in the approaching end
? Mr. Hallam, speaking of the legends of the miracles of saints, says :,
‘It must not be supposed that these absurdities were produced as well as
nourished by ignorance. In most cases they were the work of deliberate
imposture. Every cathedral or monastery had its tutelar saint, and every
saint his legend, fabricated in order to enrich the churches under his pro-
,
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 231
of the world, especially at the close of the tenth cen-
tury, the crusades, which gave rise to a profitable traffic
in the form of a pecuniary commutation of vows, and the
black death, which produced a paroxysm of religious
fanaticism, stimulated the movement. In the monkish
chronicles, the merits of sovereigns are almost exclusively
judged by their bounty to the Church, and in some
cases this is the sole part of their policy which has been
preserved.}
There were, no doubt, a few redeeming points in this
dark period. The Irish monks are said to have been
honourably distinguished for their reluctance to accept
the lavish donations of their admirers,2 and some mis-
sionary monasteries of a high order of excellence were
scattered through Europe. A few legends, too, may
perhaps be cited censuring the facility with which money
acquired by crime was accepted as an atonement for
crime.’ But these cases were very rare, and the religious
tection, by exaggerating his virtues, his miracles, and consequently his
power of serving those who paid liberally for his patronage.’— Middle Ages,
ch. ix. part i. Ido not think this passage makes sufficient allowance for
the unconscious formation of many saintly myths, but no impartial person
doubts its substantial truth.
1 Sismondi, Hest, des Frangais, tome ii. pp. 54, 62-63.
* Milman’s Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 257.
* Durandus, a French bishop of the thirteenth century, tells how,
‘when.a certain bishop was consecrating a church built out of the fruits of
usury and pillage, he saw behind the altar the devil in a pontifical vestment,
standing in the bishop’s throne, who said unto the bishop, ‘‘ Cease from
consecrating the church; for it pertaineth to my jurisdiction, since it is
built from the fruits of usuries and robberies.” Then the bishop and the
clergy having fled thence in fear, immediately the devil destroyed that
church with a great noise.’—Rationale Divinorum, i. 6 (translated for the.
Camden Society).
A certain St. Launomar is said to have refused a gift for his monastery
from a rapacious noble, because he was sure it was derived from pillage.
(Montalembert’s Moines d’Occident, tome ii. pp. 850-351.) When pro-
stitutes were converted in the early Church, it was a rule that the money
of which they had become possessed should never be applied to eccle-
siastical purposes, but should be distributed among the poor.
49
232.” HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
history of several centuries is little more than a history
of the rapacity of priests and of the credulity of laymen.
In England, the perpetual demands of the Pope excited
a fierce resentment ; and we may trace with remarkable
clearness, in every page of Mathew Paris, the alienation
of sympathy arising from this cause, which prepared and
foreshadowed the final rupture of England from the
Church. Ireland, on the other hand, had been given
over by two Popes to the English invader, on the con-
dition of the payment of Peter’s pence. The outrageous
and notorious immorality of the monasteries, during the
century before the Reformation, was chiefly due to their
great wealth, and that immorality, as the writings of
Erasmus and Ulric Von Hutten show, gave a powerful
impulse to the new movement, while the abuses of the
indulgences were the immediate cause of the revolt of
Luther. But these things arrived only after many cen-
turies of successful fraud. The religious terrorism that
was unscrupulously employed had done its work, and the
chief riches of Christendom had passed into the coffers of
the Church.
The part which was played by the Catholic doctrine of
future torture was indeed probably greater in the monas-
tic phase of the Church than it had been even in the great
work of converting the Pagans. Although two or three
amiable theologians had made faint and altogether abor-
tive attempts to question the eternity of punishment ; al-
though there had been some slight difference of opinion
concerning the future of some Pagan philosophers who
had lived before the introduction of Christianity, and also
upon the question whether infants who died unbaptised
were simply deprived of all joy, or were actually sub-
jected to never-ending agony, there was no question as to
the main features of the Catholic doctrine. According
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 283
to the patristic theologians, it was part of the gospel
revelation that the misery and suffering the human race
endures upon earth is but a feeble image of that which
awaits it in the future world; that the entire human race
beyond the Church, as well as a very large proportion of
those who are within its pale, are doomed to an eternity
of agony in a literal and undying fire. The monastic
legends took up this doctrine, which in itself is sufficiently
revolting, and they developed it with an appalling vivid-
ness and minuteness. St. Macarius, it is said, when
walking one day through the desert, saw a skull upon the
ground. He struck it with his staff and it began to speak.
It told him that it was the skull of a Pagan priest who had
lived before the introduction of Christianity into the world,
and who had accordingly been doomed to hell. As hich
as the heaven is above the earth, so high does the fire of
hell mount in waves above the souls that are plunged
into it. The damned souls were pressed together back to
back, and the lost priest made it his single entreaty to the
saint, that he would pray that they might be turned face
to face, for he believed that.the sight of a brother’s face
might afford him some faint consolation in the eternity of
agony that was before him.’ The story is well known of
how St. Gregory, seeing on a bas-relief a representation
of the goodness of Trajan to a poor widow, pitied the
Pagan emperor, whom he knew to be in hell, and he
prayed that he might be released. He was told that his
prayer was altogether unprecedented; but at last, on his
promising that he would never make such a prayer again,
it was partially granted. Trajan. was not. withdrawn
from hell, but he was freed from the torments which the
remainder of the Pagan world endured.
Verba Seniorum, Prol. § 172.
* This vision is not related by St. Gregory himself, and some Catholics
234 | HISTORY OF EUROPEAN: MORALS,
An entire literature of visions describing the torments
of hell, was soon produced by the industry of the monks.
The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which purported —
to describe the descent of Christ into the lower world,
contributed to foster it, and St. Gregory the Great has
related many visions in a more famous work, which pro-
fessed to be compiled with scrupulous veracity from the
most authentic sources,’ and of which it may be confi-
dently averred, that it scarcely contains a single page
which is not tainted with grotesque and deliberate false-
hood. Men, it was said, passed into a trance or tem-
porary death, and were then carried for a time to hell.
Among others, a certain man-named Stephen, from whose
lips the saint declares that he had heard the tale, had died
by mistake. When his soul was borne to the gates of
hell, the Judge declared that it was another Stephen who
was wanted ; the disembodied spirit, after inspecting hell,
was restored to its former body, and the next day it was
known that another Stephen had died.2- Voleanoes were
the portals of hell, and a hermit had seen the soul of the
Arian emperor Theodoric, as St. Eucherius afterwards
did the soul of Charles Martel, carried down that in the -
Island of Lipari? The craters in Sicily, it was remarked,
were continually agitated and continually increasing, and
this, as St. Gregory observes, was probably due to the’
are perplexed about it, on account of the vision of another saint, who
afterwards asked whether Trajan was saved, and received for answer, ‘I wish
men to rest in ignorance of this subject, that the Catholics may become
stronger. For this emperor, though he had great virtues, was an un-
baptised infidel.’ The whole subject of the vision of St. Gregory is dis-
cussed by Champagny, Les Antonins, tome i. pp. 872-873, This deyout
writer says, ‘Cette légende fut acceptée par tout le moyen-ige, wdulgent
pour les paiens ilustres et tout disposé & les supposer chrétiens et sauvés.’
* See the solemn asseveration of the care which he took in going only
to the most credible and authorised sources for his materials, in the Preface to
the First Book of Dialogues,
2 Dial. iv. 36. 5 Dial. iv. 80,
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 235
impending ruin of the world, when the great press of
lost souls would render it necessary to enlarge the ap-
- proaches to their prisons.1
But the glimpses of hell that are furnished in the
‘ Dialogues’ of St. Gregory appear meagre and unimagin-
ative, compared with those of some later monks. A long
series of monastic visions, of which that of St. Fursey, in
the seventh century, was one of the first, and which fol-
lowed in rapid succession, till that of Tundale, in the
twelfth century, professed to describe with the most de-
tailed accuracy the condition of the lost.2 It is impos-
sible to conceive more ghastly, grotesque, and material
conceptions of the future world than they evince, or more
hideous calumnies against that Being who was supposed
to inflict upon His creatures such unspeakable misery.
The devil was represented bound by red-hot chains, on
a burning gridiron in the centre of hell. The screams
of his never-ending agony made its rafters @ resound;
but his hands were free, and with these he seized the lost
souls, crushed them like grapes against his teeth, and
then drew them by his breath down the fiery cavern of
his throat. Daemons with hooks of red-hot iron plunged
souls alternately into fire and ice. Some of the lost were
hung up by their tongues, other were sawn asunder,
t Dial. iv. 35.
* The fullest collection of these visions with which I am acquainted, is
that made for the Philobiblon Society (vol. ix.), by M. Delepierre, called
LEnfer décrit par ceux qui Vont vu, of which I have largely availed myself.
See, too, Wright’s Purgatory of St. Patrick, and an interesting collection of
visions given by Mr. Longfellow, in his translation of Dante. In an older
work, Rusca De Inferno, there is, I believe, a complete collection of these
Visions, but it has not come in my way. ‘The Irish saints were, I am sorry
to say, prominent in producing this branch of literature. St. F ursey, whose
vision is one of the earliest, and Tondale, or Tundale, whose vision is one
of the most detailed, were both Irish. The English historians contain
several of these visions. Bede relates two or three—William of Malmes-
bury that of Charles the Fat; Mathew Paris three visions of purgatory.
236 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
others gnawed by serpents, others beaten together on an
anvil and welded into a single mass, others boiled and
then strained through a cloth, others twined in the em- -
braces of demons whose limbs were of flame. The fire
of earth, it was said, was but a picture of that of hell.
The latter was so immeasurably more intense, that it
alone could be called real. Sulphur was mixed with it,
partly to increase its heat, and partly, too, in order that an
insufferable stench might be added to the misery of the
lost, while, unlike other flames, it emitted, according to
some visions, no light, that the horror of darkness might be
added to the horror of pain. A narrow bridge spanned
the abyss, and from it the souls of sinners were plunged
into the darkness that was below.!
Such catalogues of horrors, though they now awake
in an educated man a sentiment of mingled disgust,
weariness, and contempt, were able for many centuries to
create a degree of panic and of misery we can scarcely
realise. With the exception of the heretic Pelagius, whose
noble genius, anticipating the discoveries of modern
science, had repudiated the theological notion of death
having been introduced into the world on account of the
act of Adam, it was universally held among Christians,
that all the forms of suffering and dissolution that are
manifested on earth were penal inflictions. The destruc-
tion of the world was generally believed to be at hand.
The minds of men were filled with the images of the
approaching catastrophe, and innumerable legends of
visible demons were industriously circulated. It was
the custom then, as it is the custom now, for Catholic
1 The narrow bridge over hell (in some visions covered with spikes),
which is a conspicuous feature in the Mohammedan pictures of the future
world, appears very often in Catholic visions. See Greg. Tur. iv. 83; St
Greg. Dval. iv. 836; and the vision of Tundale, in Delepierre.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 237
priests to stain the imaginations of young children by
ghastly pictures of future misery, to imprint upon the
virgin mind atrocious images which they hoped, not un-
reasonably, might prove indelible! In hours of weakness
and of sickness their overwrought fancy seemed to see
hideous beings hovering around, and hell itself yawning
to receive its victim. St. Gregory describes how a monk,
who though apparently a man of exemplary and even
saintly piety, had been accustomed secretly to eat meat,
saw on his deathbed a fearful dragon twining its tail round
his body, and with open jaws sucking his breath ;? and
how a little boy of five years old, who had learnt from his
* Few Englishmen, I imagine, are aware of the infamous publications
written with this object, that are circulated by the Catholic priests among
the poor. I have before me a tract ‘for children and young persons,’ called
The Sight of Hell, by the Rev. J. Furniss, C.S.S.R., published, permissu
superiorum,’ by Duffy (Dublin and London). It is a detailed descrip-
tion of the dungeons of hell, and a few sentences may serve as a sample.
“See ! on the middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl; she looks about six-
teen years old, Her feet are bare. She has neither shoes nor stockings.
. . - Listen! she speaks. She says, I have been standing on this red-hot
floor for years. Day and night my only standing-place has been this red-hot
floor. .. . Look at my burnt and bleeding feet. Let me go off this burning
floor for one moment, only for one single short moment. ... The fourth
dungeon is the boiling kettle . . . in the middle of it there isa BOVee)s".
His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two long flames come out of
his ears. . . . Sometimes he opens his mouth, and blazing fire rolls out. —
But listen! there is a sound like a kettle boiling. .. . The blood is boiling
in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his
head. The marrow is boiling in his bones. . . . The fifth dungeon is the
red-hot oven. ... The little child is in this red-hot oven. Hear how it
screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire.
It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on
the floor. . . . God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw it
would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and soit would have
to be punished much more in hell. So God in his mercy called it out of
the world in its early childhood.’ If the reader desires to follow this sub-
ject further, he may glance over a companion tract by the same reverend
gentleman, called « Terrible Judgment on a Little Child ; and also a
book on Hell, translated from the Italian of Pinamonti, and with illustra-
tions depicting the various tortures.
* St. Greg. Dial. iv. 38,
238 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN. MORALS.
father to repeat blasphemous words, saw, as he lay dying,
exulting demons who were waiting to carry him to hell!
To the jaundiced eye of the theologian, all nature seemed
stricken and forlorn, and its brightness and beauty sug-
gested no ideas but those of deception and of sin. The
redbreast, according to one popular legend, was commis-
sioned by the Deity to carry a drop of water to the souls
of unbaptised infants in hell, and its breast was singed in
piercing the flames.? In the calm, still hour of evening,
when the peasant boy asked why the sinking sun, as it
dipped beneath the horizon, flushed with such a glorious
red, he was answered, in the words of an old Saxon
catechism, because it is then looking into hell.?
It is related in the vision of Tundale, that as he gazed
upon the burning plains of hell, and listened to the
screams of ceaseless and hopeless agony that were wrung
from the sufferers, the cry broke from his lips, ‘ Alas,
Lord, what truth is there in what I have so often heard
—the earth is filled with the mercy of God?’4 It is
indeed one of the most curious things in moral history,
to observe how men who were sincerely indignant with
Pagan writers for attributing to their divinities the frailties
of an occasional jealousy or an occasional sensuality, for
= Thid.ave 18:
” Alger’s History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (New York, 1866),
p. 414. The ignis fatuus was sometimes supposed to be the soul of an un-
baptised child. There is, I believe, another Catholic legend about the red-
breast, of a very different kind—that its breast was stained with blood when
it was trying to pull out the thorns from the crown of Christ. |
° Wright’s Purgatory of St. Patrick, p. 26. M. Delepierre quotes a
curious theory of Father Hardouin (who is chiefly known for his sugges-
tion that the classics were composed by the medieval monks) that the rota-
tion of the earth is caused by the lost souls trying to escape from the fire
that is at the centre of the globe, climbing, in consequence, on the inner
crust of the earth, which is the wall of hell, and thus making the whole
revolve, as the squirrel by climbing turns its cage! (L’Enfer décrit par ceua
qui Vont vu, p. 151.) * Delepierre, p. 70,
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 239
representing them, in a word, like men of mingled cha-
racters and passions, have nevertheless unscrupulously
attributed to their own Divinity a degree of cruelty which
may be confidently said to transcend the utmost bar-
barity of which human nature is capable. Neither Nero
nor Phalaris could have looked complacently for ever
on millions enduring the torture of fire—most of them
because of a crime which was committed, not by them-
selves, but by their ancestors, or because they had
adopted some mistaken conclusion on intricate questions
of history or metaphysics.! To those who do not regard
such teaching as true, it must appear without exception
the most odious in the religious history of the world,
subversive of the very foundations of morals, and well
fitted to transform the man who at once realised it, and
1 Thus Jeremy Taylor, in two singularly unrhetorical and unimpassioned
chapters, deliberately enumerates the most atrocious acts of cruelty in human
history, and says that they are surpassed by the tortures inflicted by the
Deity. A few instances will suffice. Certain persons ‘put rings of iron
stuck fast with sharp points of needles, about their arms and feet, in such a
manner as the prisoners could not move without wounding themselves ;
then they compassed them about with fire, to the end that, standing still,
they might be burnt alive, and if they stirred the sharp points pierced their
flesh. . . . What, then, shall be the torment of the damned where they shall
burn eternally without dying, and without the possibility of removing? ..
Alexander, the son of Hyrcanus, caused eight hundred to be crucified, and whilst
they were yet alive caused their wives and children to be murdered before
their eyes, that so they might not die once, but many deaths. This rigour
shall not be wanting in hell. . . . Mezentius tied a living body to the dead
until the putrefied exhalations of the dead had killed the living... . What
is this in respect of hell, when each body of the damned is more loathsome
and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs? . . . Bonaventure says, if one
of the damned were brought into this world it were sufficient ta infect the
whole earth. . . . We are amazed to think of the inhumanity of Phalaris,
who roasted men alive in his brazen bull. That was a joy in respect of
that fire of hell. . . . The torment . . . comprises as many torments as the
body of man_has joints, sinews, arteries, &c., being caused by that pene-
trating and real fire, of which this temporal fire is but a painted fire... .
What comparison will there be between burning for an hundred years’
space, and to be burning without interruption as long as God is God ?’—
Contemplations on the State of Man, book ii. ch. 6-7.
240 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
who accepted it with pleasure, into a monster of barbarity.
Of the writers of the medieval period, certainly one of
the two or three most eminent was Peter Lombard, whose
‘Sentences,’ though now, I believe, but little read, were
for a long time the basis of all theological literature in
Europe. More than four thousand theologians are said
to have written commentaries upon them !— among
others, Albert the Great, St. Bonaventura, and St. Thomas
Aquinas. Nor is the work unworthy of its former re-
putation. Calm, clear, logical, subtle, and concise, the
author professes to expound the whole system of Catholic
theology and ethics, and to reveal the interdependence of
their various parts. Having explained the position and
the duties, he proceeds to examine the prospects, of man.
He maintains that until the day of judgment the in-
habitants of heaven and hell will continually see one
another; but that, in the succeeding eternity, the inhabit-
ants of heaven alone will see those of the opposite world ;
and he concludes his great work by this most impressive
passage. ‘In the last place, we must enquire whether the
sight of the punishment of the condemned will impair
the glory of the blest, or whether it will augment their
beatitude. Concerning this, Gregory says the sight of
the punishment of the lost will not obscure the beatitude
of the just ; for when it is accompanied by no compassion
it can be no diminution of happiness. And although
their own joys might suffice to the just, yet to their
greater glory they will see the pains of the evil, which
by grace they have escaped. . . . The elect will go forth,
not indeed locally, but by intelligence and by a clear
vision, to behold the torture of the impious, and as they
see them they will not grieve. Their minds will be sated |
* Perrone, Historie Theologie cum Philosophia comparata Synopsis, p. 29.
Peter Lombard’s work was published in a.p. 1160.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 241
with joy as they gaze on the unspeakable anguish of
the impious, returning thanks for their own freedom.
Thus Esaias, describing the torments of the impious, and
the joy of the righteous in witnessing it, says, ‘The elect
in truth will go out and will see the corpses of men who
have prevaricated against Him; their worm will not die,
and they will be to the satiety of vision to all flesh, that
is, to the elect. The just man will rejoice when he shall
see the vengeance.’!
This passion for visions of heaven and hell was, in
fact, a natural continuation of the passion for dogmatic
definition, which had raged during the fifth century. It
was natural that men, whose curiosity had left no con-
ceivable question of theology undefined, should have
endeavoured to describe with corresponding precision the
condition of the dead. Much, however, was due to the
hallucinations of solitary and ascetic life, and much more
to deliberate imposture. It is impossible for men to con-
tinue long in a condition of extreme panic, and supersti-
tion speedily discovers remedies to allay the fears it had
created. If a malicious demon was hovering around
the believer, and if the jaws of hell were Opening to
* ‘Postremo queeritur, An poena reproborum visa decoloret gloriam bea-
torum? an eorum beatitudini proficiat? De hoc ita Gregorius ait, Apud
animum justorum non obfuscat beatitudinem aspecta poena reproborum ;
quia ubi jam compassio miserise non erit, minuere beatorum letitiam non
valebit. Et licet justis sua gaudia sufficiant, ad majorem gloriam vident
peenas malorum quas per gratiam evaserunt. . . . Egredientur ergo electi,
non loco, sed intelligentia vel visione manifesta ad videndum impiorum cru-
ciatus ; quos videntes non dolore afficientur sed letitia satiabuntur, agentes
gratias de sua liberatione visa impiorum ineffabili calamitate. Unde Esaias
impiorum tormenta describens et ex eorum visione letitiam bonorum expri-
mens, ait, Egredientur electi scilicet et videbunt cadavera virorum qui
prevaricati sunt in me. Vermis eorum non morietur et ignis non extin-
guetur, et erunt usque ad satietatem visionis omni carni, id est electis,
Letabitur justus cum viderit vindictam.’—Peter Lombard, Senten. lib. iv,
finis. These amiable views have often been expressed both by Catholic and
by Puritan divines. See Alger’s Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 541.
242 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
receive him, he was defended, on the other hand, by
countless angels; a lavish gift to a Church or monastery
could always enlist a saint in his behalf, and priestly
power could protect him against the dangers which
priestly sagacity had revealed. When the angels ‘were
weighing the good and evil deeds of a dead man, the
latter were found by far to preponderate ; but a priest of
St. Lawrence came in, and turned the scale by throwing
down among the former a heavy gold chalice, which the
deceased had given to the altar.’ Dagobert was snatched
from the very arms of demons by St. Denis, St. Maurice,
and St. Martin.” Charlemagne was saved, because the
monasteries he had built outweighed his evil deeds.?
Others, who died in mortal sin, were raised from the
dead at the desire of their patron saint, to expiate their
guilt. ‘To amass relics, to acquire the patronage of —
saints, to endow monasteries, to build churches, became ©
the chief part of religion, and the more the terrors of the
unseen world were unfolded, the more men sought
tranquillity by the consolations of superstition.‘
The extent to which the custom of materialising re-
ligion was carried, can only be adequately realised by
those who have examined the medizval literature itself.
That which strikes a student in perusing this literature,
is not so much the existence of these superstitions, as
1 Legenda Aurea. There is a curious fresco representing this transaction,
on the portal of the church of St. Lorenzo, near Rome.
2 Aimoni, De Gestis Francorum Hist. iv. 34.
° Turpin’s Chronicle, ch. 82. In the vision of Watlin, however (A.D. 824)
Charlemagne was seen tortured in purgatory on account of his excessive love
of women. (Delepierre, L’Enfer décrit par ceux qut ont vu, pp. 27-28.)
* As the Abbé Mably observes: ‘On croyoit en quelque sorte dans ces
siécles grossiers que l’avarice étoit le premier attribut de Dieu, et que les
saints faisoient un commerce de leur crédit et de leur protection. De-la les
richesses immenses données aux églises par des hommes dont les mceurs
déshonoroient la religion.’— Observations sur U Hist. de France, i. 4.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 245
their extraordinary multiplication, the many thousands of
grotesque miracles wrought by saints, monasteries, or
relics, that were deliberately asserted and universally
believed. Christianity had assumed a form that was
quite as polytheistic and quite as idolatrous as the
ancient Paganism. ‘The low level of intellectual culti-
vation, the religious feelings of half-converted barbarians,
the interests of the clergy, the great social importance of
the monasteries, and perhaps also the custom of com-
pounding for nearly all crimes by pecuniary fines, which
was so general in the penal system of the barbarian
tribes, combined in their different ways, with the panic
created by the fear of hell, in driving men in the same
direction, and the wealth and power of the clergy rose
to a point that enabled them to overshadow all other
classes. They had found, as has been well said, in an-
other world, the standing-point of Archimedes from which
they could move this. No other system had ever ap-
peared so admirably fitted to endure for ever. The
Church had crushed or silenced every opponent in
Christendom. It had an absolute control over education
in all its branches: and in all its stages. It had absorbed
ail the speculative knowledge and art of Europe. It
possessed or commanded wealth, rank, and military
power. It had so directed its teaching, that everything
which terrified or distressed mankind drove men speedily
into its arms, and it had covered Europe with a vast net-
work of institutions, admirably adapted to extend and
perpetuate its power. In addition to all this, it had
guarded with consummate skill all the approaches to its
citadel. Every doubt was branded as a sin, and a long
course of doubt must necessarily have preceded the
rejection of its tenets. All the avenues of enquiry were
painted with images of appalling suffering, and of mali-
244 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
cious demons. No sooner did the worshipper begin to
question any article of faith, or to lose his confidence in
the virtue of the ceremonies of his Church, than he was
threatened with a doom that no human heroism could
brave, that no imagination could contemplate undismayed.
Of all the suffering that was undergone by those brave
men who in ages of ignorance and superstition dared to
break loose from the trammels of their Church, and who
laid the foundation of the liberty we now enjoy, it is
this which was probably the most poignant, and which is
the least realised. Our imaginations can reproduce with
much vividness gigantic massacres like those of the Albi-
genses or of St. Bartholomew. We can conceive, too, the
tortures of the rack and of the boots, the dungeon, the
scaffold, and the slow fire. We can estimate, thcugh less
perfectly, the anguish which the bold enquirer must have
undergone from the desertion of those he most dearly
loved, from the hatred of mankind, from the malignant
calumnies that were heaped upon his name. But in the
chamber of his own soul, in the hours of his solitary
meditation, he must have found elements of a suffering
that was still more acute. Taught from his earliest
childhood to regard the abandonment of his hereditary
opinions as the most deadly of crimes, and to ascribe
it to the instigation of deceiving demons, persuaded
that if he died in a condition of doubt he must pass
into a state of everlasting torture, his imagination satu-
rated with images of the most hideous and appalling.
anguish, he found himself alone in the world, struggling
with his difficulties and-his doubts. There existed no
rival sect in which he could take refuge, and where, in the
professed agreement of many minds, he could forget the
anathemas of the Church. Physical science, that has dis-
proved the theological theories which attribute death to
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 245
human sin, and suffering to Divine vengeance, and all na-
tural phenomena to isolated acts of Divine intervention—
historical criticism, which has dispelled so many imposing
fabrics of belief, traced so many elaborate superstitions
to the normal action of the undisciplined imagination, and
explained and defined the successive phases of religious
progress, were both unknown. Every comet that blazed
in the sky, every pestilence that swept over the land,
appeared a confirmation of the dark threats of the theo-
logian. A spirit of blind and abject credulity, inculcated |
as the first of duties, and exhibited on all subjects and in
all forms, pervaded the atmosphere he breathed. Who can
estimate aright the obstacles against which a sincere en-
quirer in such an age must have struggled? Who can
conceive the secret anguish he must have endured in the
long months or years during which rival arguments
gained an alternate sway over his judgment, while all
doubt was still regarded as damnable? And even when
his mind was convinced, his imagination would still often
revert to his old belief. Our thoughts in after years flow
spontaneously, and even unconsciously, in the channels
that are formed in youth. In moments when the con-
trolling judgment has relaxed its grasp, old intellectual
habits reassume their sway, and images painted on the
Imagination will live, when the intellectual propositions
on which they rested have been wholly abandoned. In
hours of weakness, of sickness, and of drowsiness, in the
feverish and anxious moments that are known to all, when
the mind floats passively upon the stream, the phantoms
which reason had exorcised must have often reappeared,
and the bitterness of an ancient tyranny must have en-
tered into his soul.
It is one of the greatest of the many services that were
rendered to mankind by the Troubadours, that they cast
246 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
é
such a flood of ridicule upon the visions of hell, by which
the monks had been accustomed to terrify mankind, that
they completely discredited and almost suppressed them.’
Whether, however, the Catholic mind, if unassisted by the
literature of Paganism and by the independent thinkers
who grew up under the shelter of Mahommedanism, could
have ever unwound the chains that had bound it, may well |
be questioned. The growth of towns, which multiplied
secular interests and feelings, the revival of learning, the
depression of the ecclesiastical classes that followed the
crusades, and at last, the dislocation of Christendom by
the Reformation, gradually impaired the ecclesiastical
doctrine, which ceased to be realised before it ceased to
be believed. There was, however, another doctrine which
exercised a still greater influence in augmenting the
riches of the clergy, and in making donations to the
Church the chief part of religion. I allude, of course, to
the doctrine of purgatory.
A distinguished modern apologist for the middle ages
has made this doctrine the object of his special and very
characteristic eulogy, because, as he says, by providing a
finite punishment graduated to every variety of guilt, and
adapted for those who, without being sufficiently virtuous
to pass at once into heaven, did not appear sufficiently
vicious to pass into hell, it formed an indispensable
corrective to the extreme terrorism of the doctrine of
eternal punishment.” This is one of those theories which,
though exceedingly popular with a large and influential
class of the writers of our day, must appear, I think,
almost grotesque to those who have examined the ac-
tual operation of the doctrine during the middle ages.
1 Many curious examples of the way in which the Troubadours burlesqued
the monkish visions of hell are given by Delepierre, p. 144. — Wright's’ Pur-
_gatory of St. Patrick, pp. 47-52.
2 Comte, Digs positive, tome v. p. 269.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 247
According to the practical teaching of the Church, the
explatory powers at the disposal of its clergy were so
great, that those who died believing its doctrines, and
fortified in their last hours by its rites, had no cause
whatever to dread the terrors of hell. On the other
hand, those who died external to the Church had no
prospect of entering into purgatory. This latter was
designed altogether for true believers; it was chiefly
preached at a time when no one was in the least disposed
to question the powers of the Church to absolve any
crime, however heinous, or to free the worst men from
hell, and it was assuredly never regarded in the light of a
consolation. Indeed, the popular pictures of purgatory
were so terrific that it may be almost doubted whether
the imagination could ever fully realise, though the reason
could easily recognise the difference between this state
and that of the lost. The fire of purgatory, according to
the most eminent theologians, was like the fire of hell—a
literal fire, prolonged, it was sometimes said, for ages.
The declamations of the pulpit described the sufferings
of the saved souls in purgatory as incalculably greater
than were endured by the most wretched mortals upon
earth.’ The rude artists of mediavalism exhausted their
_ + “Saint-Bernard, dans son sermon De obitu fumberti, affirme que tous
les tourments de cette vie sont joies si on les compare & une seconde des
peines du purgatoire. “ Imaginez-vous done, délicates dames,” dit le pére
Valladier (1613) dans son sermon du 3™¢ dimanche de lAvent, “d’estre au
travers de vos chenets, sur vostre petit feu pour une centaine d’ans: ce n’est
‘Tien au respect d’un moment de purgatoire. Mais si vous vistes jamais tirer
quelqu’un 4 quatre chevaux, quelqu’un brusler a petit feu, enrager de faim
ou de soif, une heure de purgatoire est pire que tout cela.” ’—Meray, Les.
libres Précheurs (Paris, 1860), pp. 130-131 (an extremely curious and sugges-
tive book). I now take up the first contemporary book of popular Catholic.
devotion on this subject, which is at hand, and read, ‘Compared with the.
pains of purgatory, then all those wounds and dark prisons, all those wild
beasts, hooks of iron, red-hot plates, &c., which the holy martyrs suffered,,
are nothing.’ ‘ They (souls in purgatory) are in a real, though miraculous
50
248 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
efforts in depicting the writhings of the dead in the
flames that encircled them. Innumerable visions detailed
with a ghastly minuteness the various kinds of torture they
underwent,! and the monk, who described what he pro-
fessed to have seen, usually ended by the characteristic
moral, that could men only realise those sufferings, they
would shrink from no sacrifice to rescue their friends
from such a state. A special place, it was said, was
reserved in purgatory for those who had been slow in
paying their tithes.? St. Gregory tells a curious story of
a man who was, in other respects, of admirable virtue;
but who, in a contested election for the popedom, sup-
ported the wrong candidate, and without, as it would
appear, in any degree refusing to obey the successful
candidate when elected, continued secretly of opinion
that the choice was an unwise one. He was accordingly
placed for some time after death in boiling water?
Whatever may be thought of its other aspects, it is im-
possible to avoid recognising in this teaching a masterly
manner, tortured by fire, which is of the same kind (says Bellarmine) as our
element fire.’ ‘The Angelic Doctor affirms “that the fire which torments
the dammed is like the fire which purges the elect.”’ < What agony will
not those holy souls suffer when tied and bound with the most tormenting
chains of a living fire like to that of hell? and we, while able to make
them free and happy, shall we stand like uninterested spectators?’ ‘St.
Austin is of opinion that the pains of a soul in purgatory during the time
required to open and shut one’s eye, is more severe than what St. Lawrence
suffered on the gridiron;’ and much more to the same effect, (Purgatory
opened to the Piety of the Faithful. Richardson, London.)
* See Delepierre, Wright, and Alger.
* This appears from the vision of Thurcill. (Wright's Purgatory, p. 42.)
Brompton (Chronicon) tells of an English landlord who had refused to pay
tithes. St. Augustine, having vainly reasoned with him, at last convinced
him by a miracle. Before celebrating mass he ordered all excommunicated
persons to leave the church, whereupon a corpse got out of a grave and
walked away. The corpse, on being questioned, said it was the body of an
ancient Briton who refused to pay tithes, and had in consequence been
excommunicated and damned.
° Greg. Dial. iv. 40.
oa ee
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 249
skill in the adaptation of means to ends, which almost
rises to artistic beauty. A system which deputed its
minister to go to the unhappy widow in the first dark
hour of her anguish and her desolation, to tell her that
he who was dearer to her than all the world besides was
now burning in a fire, and that he could only be relieved
by a gift of money to the priests, was assuredly of its
own kind not without an extraordinary merit.
If we attempt to realise the moral condition of the’
society of Western Europe in the period that elapsed be-
tween the downfall of the Roman empire and Charle-
magne, during which the religious transformations I have
noticed chiefly arose, we shall be met by some formidable
difficulties. In the first place, our materials are very scanty.
From the year a.p. 642, when the meagre chronicle of
Fredigarius closes, to the biography of Charlemagne by
Eeinhard, a century later, there is almost a complete
blank in trustworthy history, and we are reduced to a
few scanty and very doubtful notices in the chronicles of
monasteries, the lives of saints, and the decrees of Councils,
All secular literature had almost disappeared, and the
thought of posterity seems to have vanished from the
world.’ Of the first half of the seventh century, how-
ever, and of the two centuries that preceded it, we have
much information from Gregory of Tours, and Fredi-
garius, whose tedious and repulsive pages illustrate with
considerable clearness the conflict of races and the dis-
location of governments that for centuries existed. In
Italy, the traditions and habits of the old empire had in
some degree reasserted their sway, but in Gaul the
* As Sismondi says, ‘ Pendant quatre-vingts ans, tout au moins, il n’y eut
pas un Franc qui songeat 4 transmettre & la postérité la mémoire des événe-
ments contemporains, et pendant le méme espace de temps il n’y eut pas
un personnage puissant qui ne batit des temples pour la postérité la plus
reculée.’—Hist, des Francais, tome ii. p. 46.
250 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
Church subsisted in the midst of barbarians, whose native
vigour had never been emasculated by civilisation and
refined by knowledge. The picture which Gregory of
Tours gives us is that of a society which was almost abso-
lutely anarchical. The mind is fatigued by the mono-
tonous account of acts of violence and of fraud springing
from no fixed policy, tending to no end, leaving no
lasting impress upon the world.1. The two queens Fré-
dégonde and Brunehaut rise conspicuous above other
figures for their fierce and undaunted ambition, for the
fascination they exercised over the minds of multitudes,
and for the number and atrocity of their crimes. All
classes seem to have been almost equally tainted with
vice. We read of a bishop named Cautinus, who had
to be carried, when intoxicated, by four men from the
table;? who, upon the refusal of one of his priests to
surrender some private property, deliberately ordered:
that priest to be buried alive, and wlio, when the victim,
escaping by a happy chance from the sepulchre in which
1 Gibbon says of the period during which the Merovingian dynasty
reigned, that ‘it would be difficult to find anywhere more vice or less
virtue.’ Hallam reproduces this observation, and adds, ‘ The facts of these
times are of little other importance than as they impress on the mind a
thorough notion of the extreme wickedness of almost every person concerned
in them, and consequently of the state to which society was reduced.’— Hist.
of the Middle Ages, ch.i. Dean Milman is equally unfayourable and em-
phatic in his judgment. ‘It is difficult to conceive a more dark and odious
state of society than that of France under her Merovingian kings, the de-
scendants of Clovis, as described by Gregory of Tours. In the conflict of
barbarism with Roman Christianity, barbarism has introduced into Chris-
tianity all its ferocity with none of its generosity and magnanimity ; its
energy shows itself in atrocity of cruelty, and even of sensuality. Chris-
tianity has given to barbarism hardly more than its superstition and its
hatred of heretics and unbelievers. Throughout, assassinations, parricides,
and fratricides intermingle with adulteries and rapes,’—History of Latin
Christianity, vol. i. p. 865.
* Greg. Tur. iv.12. Gregory mentions (v. 41) another bishop who used
to become so intoxicated as to be unable to stand, and St. Boniface, after
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 251
he had been immured, revealed the crime, received no
greater punishment than a censure.!' The worst. sove-
reigns found flatterers or agents in ecclesiastics. Frédé-
gonde deputed two clerks to murder Childebert,? and
another clerk to murder Brunehaut ;° she caused a bishop
of Rouen to be assassinated at the altar—a bishop and
an archdeacon being her accomplices ;* and she found
in another bishop, named Aigidius, one of her most de-
voted instruments and friends.® The pope, St. Gregory
the Great, was an ardent flatterer of Brunehaut.6 Gun-
debald having murdered his three brothers, was consoled
by St. Avitus, the Bishop of Vienne, who, without inti-
mating the slightest disapprobation of the act, assured
him that by removing his rivals he had been a providen-
tial agent in preserving the happiness of his people.” The
bishoprics were filled by men of nctorious debauchery,
or by grasping misers.* The priests sometimes celebrated
the sacred mysteries ‘gorged with food and dull with
wine.’° They had already begun to carry arms, and
describing the extreme sensuality of the clergy of his time, adds, that
there are some bishops ‘qui licet dicant se fornicarios vel adulteros non
esse, sed sunt ebriosi et injuriosi,’ &c.— Zp. xlix.
1 Greg. Tur. iv. 12.
* Id. viii. 29. She gave them Inives with hollow grooves, filled with
poison, in the blades.
3 Greg. Tur. vii. 20. * Id. viii. 31-41.
5 Idav.cld;
® See his very curious correspondence with her.—Ep. vi. 5, 50, 59; ix. 1l,
117; xi. 62-63.
* Avitus, Zp. v. He adds, ‘ Minuebat regni felicitas numerum regalium
personarum.’
* See the emphatic testimony of St. Boniface in the eighth century.
‘Modo autem maxima ex parte per civitates episcopales sedes tradite sunt
laicis cupidis ad possidendum, vel adulteratis clericis, scortatoribus et
publicanis seculariter ad perfruendum.’—Epist. xlix. ‘ad Zachariam.’
The whole epistle contains an appalling picture of the clerical vices of the
times.
° More than one Council made decrees about this. See the Vie de St.
Léyer, by Dom Pitra, pp. 172-177.
252 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
Gregory tells of two bishops of the fifth century who
had killed many enemies with their own hands.1 There
was scarcely a reign that was not marked by some atro-
cious domestic tragedy. There were few sovereigns who
were not guilty of at least one deliberate murder. Never,
perhaps, was the infliction of mutilation, and prolonged
and agonising forms of death, more common. We read,
among other atrocities, of a bishop being driven to a dis-
tant place of exile upon a bed of thorns;? of a king
burning together his rebellious son, his daughter-in-law,
and their daughters ;8 of a queen condemning a daughter
she had had by a former marriage to be drowned, lest
her beauty should excite the passions of her husband ;4
of another queen endeavouring to strangle her daughter
with her own hands ;® of an abbot, with the assistance of
one of his clerks, driving a poor man by force out of his
house, that he might commit adultery with his wife, and
being murdered, together with his partner, in the act ;®
of a prince who made it an habitual amusement to torture
his slaves with fire, and who buried two of them alive,
because they had married without his permission ;7 of a
bishop’s wife, who besides other crimes, was accustomed
to mutilate men and to torture women, by applying red-
hot irons to the most sensitive parts of their bodies ;* of
1 Greg. Tur. iv. 43. St. Boniface, at a much later period (A.D. 742),
talks of bishops ‘Qui pugnant in exercitu armati et effundunt prepes manu
sanguinem hominum.’—J£p, xlix.
. Greg. Tur. iy. 26. 3 Id. iv. 20.
4 Id. iii, 26. tog > Id. ix. 34,
§ Greg. Tur. viii. 19. Gregory says this story should warn clergymen
not to wicdldle with the wives of other people, but ‘content themselves with
those that they may possess without crime.’ ‘The abbot had previously
tried to seduce the husband within the precincts of the monastery, that he
might murder him.
: Greg. Tur. vy. 3.
° Id. vill. 39. She was guilty of many other crimes, which the _his-
torian says ‘it is better to pass in silence.’ The bishop himself had been
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 253
great numbers who were deprived of their ears and noses,
tortured through several days, and at last burnt alive or
broken slowly on the wheel. Brunehaut, at the close of
her long and in some respects great, though guilty career,
fell into the hands of Clotaire, and the old queen, having
been subjected for three days to various kinds of torture,
was led out on a camel for the derision of the army, and
at last bound to the tail of a furious horse, and dashed to
pieces in its course.}
And yet this age was, in a certain sense, eminently
religious. All literature had become sacred. Heresy of
every kind was rapidly expiring. The priests and monks
had acquired enormous power, and their wealth was
inordinately increasing.? Several sovereigns voluntarily
abandoned their thrones for the monastic life. The
seventh century, which, together with the eighth, forms
the darkest period of the dark ages, is famous in the
hagiology, as having produced more saints than any
other century, except that of the martyrs.
guilty of outrageous and violent tyranny. The marriage of ecclesiastics
appears at this time to have been common in Gaul, though the best men
commonly deserted their wives when they were ordained. Mnehes bishop’s
wife (iv. 86) was notorious for her tyrannies.
* Fredigarius, xlii. The historian describes Clotaire as a perfect paragon
of Christian graces.
> ‘Au sixiéme siécle on compte 214 établissements religieux des Pyrénées
‘a la Loire et des bouches du Rhéne aux Vosges. !_Ozanam, Etudes germa-
niques, tome il. p. 93. In the two following centuries the Eachinietnat wealth
was enormously increased.
° Mathew of Westminster (A.D, 757) speaks of no less than eight Saxon
kings having done this,
* “Le septiéme siécle est celui peut-étre qui a donné le plus de saints au
calendrier.’—Sismondi, Hist. de France, tome ii. p. 50.‘ Le plus beau titre
du septiéme siécle & une réhabilitation c’est le nombre considérable de
saints qu'il a produits... . Aucun siécle n’a été ainsi glorifié sauf lige
des martyrs dont Dieu s tbe réservé de compter le nombre. Chaque année
fournit sa moisson, chaque joura sa gerbe. . . . Si donc il plait 4 Dieu et au
Christ de répandre 4 pleines mains sur un siécle les splendeurs des saints,
qu’importe que histoire et la gloire humaine en tiennent peu compte ?’—
204 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
The manner in which events were regarded by his-
torians was also exceedingly characteristic. Our principal
authority, Gregory of Tours, was a bishop of great
eminence, and a man of the most genuine piety, and of
very strong affections: He describes his work as a
record ‘of the virtues of saints, and the disasters of
nations, * and the student who turns to his pages from
those of the Pagan historians, is not more struck by the
extreme prominence he gives to ecclesiastical events, than
by the uniform manner in which he views all secular
events in their religious aspect, as governed and directed
by a special Providence. Yet, in questions where the
difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy are con-
cerned, his ethics sometimes exhibit the most singular
distortion. Of this, probably the most impressive example
is the manner in which he has described the career of
Clovis, the great representative of orthodoxy.? Having
recounted the circumstances of his conversion, Gregory
proceeds to tell us, with undisguised admiration, how
that chieftain, as the first-fruits of his doctrine, professed
to be grieved at seeing that part of Gaul was held by an
Arian sovereign; how he accordingly resolved to invade
and appropriate that territory ; how with admirable piety,
he commanded his soldiers to abstain from all devastations
when traversing the territory of St. Martin, and how
several miracles attested the Divine approbation of the
expedition. The war—which is the first of the long
series of professedly religious wars that have been under-
taken by Christians—was fully successful, and Clovis
proceeded to direct his ambition to new fields. In his
Pitra, Vie de St. Léger, Introd. p. x.-xi. This learned and very credulous
writer (who is now a cardinal) afterwards says that we have the record of.
more than eight hundred saints of the seventh century. (Introd. p. Ixxx.)
* See, e.g. the very touching passage about the death of his children, v. 35,
* Lib. ii. Prologue. ® Greg. Tur, ii, 27-48,
te ae a al I AE a cad
et ag chores SO Seite a alle as ~
View
oe
bs)
2:
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 2655
expedition against the Arians, he had found a faithful
ally in his relative Sighebert, the old and infirm king of
the Ripuarian Franks. He now proceeded artfully to
suggest to the son of Sighebert the advantages he would
obtain if his father were dead. The hint was taken.
Sighebert was murdered, and Clovis sent ambassadors to
the parricide, professing a warm friendship, but with
‘Secret orders on the first opportunity to kill him. This
being done, and the kingdom being left entirely without
a head, Clovis proceeded to Cologne, the capital of Sighe-
bert; he assembled the people, professed with much
solemnity his horror of the tragedies that had taken place,
and his complete innocence of all connection with them ;?
but suggested, that as they were now without a ruler, they
should place themselves under his protection. The pro-
position was received with acclamation. The warriors
elected him as their king, and thus, says the episcopal
historian, ‘ Clovis received the treasures and dominions of
Sighebert, and added them to his own. Every day God
caused his enemies to fall beneath his hand, and enlarged
his kingdom, because he walked with a right heart before
the Lord, and did the things that were pleasing in his
sight.’* His ambition was, however, still unsated. He
proceeded, in a succession of expeditions, to unite the
whole of Gaul under his sceptre, invading, defeating,
capturing, and slaying the lawful sovereigns, who were
for the most part his own relations. Having secured
himself against dangers from without, by killing all his
relations, with the exception of his wife and children, he
1 He observes how impossible it was that he could be guilty of shedding
the blood of a relation: ‘ Sed in his ego nequaquam conscius sum. Nec enim
possum sanguinem parentum meorum effundere.’-—Greg. Tur. ii. 40.
* “Prosternebat enim quotidie Deus hostes ejus sub manu ipsius, et auge-
bat regnum ejus eo quod ambularet recto corde coram eo, et faceret quee
placita erant in oculis ejus.—Greg. Tur. ii, 40,
256 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
is reported to have lamented before his courtiers his
isolation, declaring that he had no relations remaining in
the world to assist him in his adversity; but this speech,
Gregory assures us, was a stratagem ; for the king desired
to discover whether any possible pretender to the throne
had escaped his knowledge and his sword. Soon after,
he died full of years and honours, and was buried in a
cathedral which he had built.
Having recounted all these things with unmoved com-
posure, Gregory of Tours requests his reader to permit
him to pause, to draw the moral of the history. It is
the admirable manner in which Providence guides all
things for the benefit of those whose opinions concerning
the Trinity are strictly orthodox. Having briefly re-
ferred to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, and Dayid, all
of whom are said to have intimated the correct doctrine
on this subject, and all of whom were exceedingly pro-
sperous, he passes to more modern times. ‘Arius, the
impious founder of the impious sect, his entrails having
fallen out, passed into the flames of hell; but Hilary, the
blessed defender of the undivided Trinity, though exiled
on that account, found his country in Paradise. The
King Clovis, who confessed the Trinity, and by its assist-
ance crushed the heretics, extended his dominions through
all Gaul. Alaric, who denied the Trinity, was deprived
of his kingdom and his subjects, and, what was far worse,
was punished in the future world.’}
It would be easy to cite other, though perhaps not
quite such striking instances, of the degree in which the
moral judgments of this unhappy age were distorted by
Lib. 111. Prologue. St. Avitus enumerates in glowing terms the Chris-
tian virtues of Clovis (Zp. xli.), but as this was in a letter addressed to the
king himself, the eulogy may easily be explained.
Ce Se a ST ee
peacinct a
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 257
superstition." Questions of orthodoxy, or questions of
fasting, appeared to the popular mind immeasurably more
important than what we should now call the fundamental
principles of right and wrong. A law of Charlemagne,
and also a law of the Saxons, condemned to death any
one who eat meat in Lent,’ unless the priest was satisfied
that it was a matter of absolute necessity. The moral
enthusiasm of the age chiefly drove men to abandon
their civic or domestic duties, to immure themselves in
monasteries, and to waste their strength by prolonged
and extravagant maceration.? Yet, in the midst of all
this superstition, there can be no question that in some
respects the religious agencies were operating for good.
The monastic bodies that everywhere arose, formed secure
asylums for the multitudes who had been persecuted by
their enemies, constituted an invaluable counterpoise to
the rude military forces of the time, familiarised the
imagination of men with religious types, that could hardly
fail in some degree to soften the character, and led the
1 Thus Hallam says, ‘There are continual proofs of immorality in the
monkish historians. In the history of Rumsey Abbey, one of our best
documents for Anglo-Saxon times, we have an anecdote of a bishop who
made a Danish nobleman drunk, that he might cheat him out of an estate,
which is told with much approbation. Walter de Hemingford records, with
excessive delight, the well-known story of the Jews who were persuaded
by the captain of their vessel to walk on the sands at low water till the
rising tide drowned them.’—Hallam’s Middle Ages (12th ed.), iii. p- 306.
* Canciani, Leges Barbarorum, vol. iii. p. 64. Canciani notices, that among
the Poles the teeth of the offending persons were pulled out. The follow-
ing passage, from Bodin, is, I think, very remarkable :—‘ Les loix et canons
veulent qu’on pardonne aux hérétiques repentis (combien que les magistrats
en quelques lieux par cy-devant, y ont eu tel esgard, que celui qui avoit
mangé de la chair au Vendredy estoit bruslé tout vif, comme il fut faict en
la ville d’Angers l’an mil cing cens trente-neuf, s'il ne s’en repentoit: et
jacoit qu'il se repentist si estoit-il pendu par compassion).’—Démonomanie
des Sorciers, p. 216.
° A long list of examples of extreme maceration from lives of the saints of
the seventh or eighth century is given by Pitra, Vie de St.-Léger, Introd.
pp. Cv.—cVii.
258 _ HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
way in most forms of peaceful labour. When men,
filled with admiration at the reports of the sanctity, and
the miracles of some illustrious saint, made pilgrimages to
behold him, and found him attired in the rude garb of a
peasant, with thick shoes, and with a scythe on his
shoulder, superintending the labours of the farmers,! or
sitting in a small attic mending lamps,? whatever other
benefit they might derive from the interview, they could
scarcely fail to return with an increased sense of the
dignity of labour. It was probably at this time as much
for the benefit of the world as of the Church, that the
ecclesiastical sanctuaries and estates should remain in-
violate, and the numerous legends of Divine punishment
having overtaken those who transgressed them,® attest
the zeal with which the clergy sought to establish that
inviolability. The great sanctity that was attached to
holidays was also an important boon to the servile classes.
The celebration of the first day of the week, in commemo-
ration of the resurrection, and as a period of religious
exercises, dates from the earliest age of the Church. The
Christian festival was carefully distinguished from the
Jewish Sabbath, with which it never appears to have
been confounded till the close of the sixteenth century ;
but some Jewish converts who considered the Jewish law
to be still in force observed both days. In general, how-
ever, the Christian festival alone was observed, and the
Jewish Sabbatical obligation, as St. Paul most explicitly
* This was related of St. Equitius—Greg. Dialog. i. 4.
* Thid. i. 5. This saint was named Constantius.
* A vast number of miracles of this kind are recorded. See, e.g., Greg.
Tur. De Miraculis, i. 61-66; Hist. iv. 49. Perhaps the most singular in-
stance of the violation of the sanctity of the church was that by the nuns
of a convent founded by St. Radegunda. They, having broken into rebellion,
four bishops, with their attendant clergy, went to compose the dispute, and
having failed, they excommunicated the rebels, whereupon the nuns almost
beat them to death in the church.—Greg. Tur. ix. 41.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 259
affirms, no longer rested upon the Christians. The
srounds of the observance of Sunday were the mani-
fest propriety and expediency of devoting a certain por-
tion of time to devout exercises, the tradition which
traced the sanctification of Sunday to apostolical times,
and the right of the Church to appoint certain seasons
to be kept holy by its members. When Christianity
acquired an ascendency in the empire, its policy on this
subject was manifested in one of the laws of Constantine,
which, without making any direct reference to religious
motives, ordered that, ‘on the day of the sun,’ no servile
work should be performed except agriculture, which,
being dependent on the weather, could not, it was thought,
be reasonably postponed. Theodosius took a step fur-
ther, and suppressed the public spectacles on that day.
During the centuries that immediately followed the
dissolution of the Roman empire, the clergy devoted
themselves with great and praiseworthy zeal to the sup-
pression of labour both on Sundays and on the other
leading Church holidays. More than one law was made,
forbidding all Sunday labour, and this prohibition was
reiterated by Charlemagne in his Capitularies.! Several
Councils made decrees on the subject,” and several legends
were circulated, of men who had been struck miraculously
with disease or death, for having been guilty of this sin.
Although the moral side of religion was greatly degraded
or forgotten, there was, as I have already intimated, one
1 See Canciani, Leges Barbarorum, vol. iii. pp. 19, 151.
2 Much information about these measures is given by Dr. Hessey, in his
Bampton Lectures on Sunday. See, especially, lect. 8. See, too, Moebler,
Le Christianisme et ? Esclavage, pp. 186-187.
$ Gregory of Tours enumerates some instances of this in his extravagant
book De Miraculis, ii. 11; iv.57; v. 7. One of these cases, however, was
for having worked on the day of St. John the Baptist. Some other miracles
of the same nature, taken, I believe, from English sources, are given in
Hessey’s Sunday (8rd edition), p. 321.
260 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
important exception. Charity was so interwoven with
the superstitious parts of ecclesiastical teaching, that it
continued to grow and flourish in the darkest period. Of
the acts of Queen Bathilda, it is said we know nothing
except her donations to the monasteries, and the charity
with which she purchased slaves and captives, and released
them or converted them into monks.) St, Germanus, the
Bishop of Paris, near the close of the sixth century, was
especially famous for his zeal in ransoming captives.?
While many of the bishops were men of gross and scan-
dalous vice, there were always some who laboured
assiduously in the old episcopal vocation of protecting
the oppressed, interceding for the captives, and opening —
their sanctuaries to the fugitives. The fame acquired by
St. Germanus was so great, that prisoners are said to have
called upon him to assist them, in the interval between
his death and his burial; and the body of the saint
becoming miraculously heavy, it was found impossible to
carry it to the grave till the captives had been released.2
In the midst of the complete eclipse of all secular learn-
ing, in the midst of a reign of ignorance, imposture, and
credulity which cannot be paralleled in history, there grew
up a vast legendary literature, clustering around the form
of the ascetic, and the lives of the saints among very
* Compare Pitra, Vie de St.-Léger, p. 137. Sismondi, Hist. des Francais,
tome il. p. 62-63.
* See a remarkable passage from his life, cited by Guizot, Hist, de la Civi-
hsation en France, xvii™ lecon. The English historians contain several in-
stances of the activity of charity in the darkest period. Alfredand Edward
the Confessor were conspicuous forit. Ethelwolf is said to have provided
‘for the good of his soul,’ that, till the day of judgment, one poor man in ten
should be provided with meat, drink, and clothing. (Asser’s Life of Alfred.)
There was a popular legend of a poor man who, having in vain asked alms
of some sailors, all the bread in their vessel was turned into stone. (Roger
of Wendover, 4.p. 606,) See, too, another legend of charity in Mathew of
Westminster, a.p. 611.
> Greg. Tur. Hist. v. 8,
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 261
much that is grotesque, childish, and even immoral,
contain some fragments of the purest and most touching
religious poetry."
But the chief title of the period we are considering, to
the indulgence of posterity, was its great missionary
labours. The stream of missionaries which had at first
flowed from Palestine and Italy began to flow from the
West. The Irish monasteries furnished the earliest, and
probably the most numerous, labourers in the field. A
great portion of the north of England was converted by
the Irish monks of Lindisfarne. The fame of St. Colum-
banus in Gaul, in Germany, and in Italy, for a time even
balanced that of St. Benedict himself, and the school
he founded at Luxeuil became the great seminary for
medieval missionaries, while the monastery he planted
at Bobbio continued to the present century. The Irish
missionary, St. Gall, gave his name to a portion of
Switzerland he had converted, and a crowd of other
Irish missionaries penetrated to the remotest forests of
Germany. The movement which began with St. Columba
in the middle of the sixth century, was communicated
to England and Gaul about a century later. Early in the
eighth century it found a great leader in the Anglo-Saxon
St. Boniface, who spread Christianity far and wide through
Germany, and at once excited and disciplined an ardent
enthusiasm, which appears to have attracted all that was
morally best in the Church. During about three cen-
turies, and while Europe had sunk into the most extreme
moral, intellectual, and political degradation, a constant
stream of missionaries poured forth from the monasteries,
who spread the knowledge of the Cross and the seeds of
1 M. Guizot has given several specimens of this, (ist. de la Ctvilis, xviime
legon.)
262 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
a future civilisation through every land, from Lombardy
to Sweden.! |
On the whole, however, it would be difficult to ex-
aggerate the superstition and the vice of the period
between the dissolution of the Empire and the reign of
Charlemagne. But in the midst of the chaos the elements
of a new society may be detected, and we may already
observe in embryo the movement which ultimately
issued in the crusades, the feudal system, and chivalry.
It is exclusively with the moral aspect of this movement
that the present work is concerned, and I shall endeavour,
in the remainder of this chapter, to describe and explain
its incipient stages. It consisted of two parts—a fusion of
Christianity with the military spirit, and an increasing
reverence for secular rank.
It had been an ancient maxim of the Greeks, that no
more acceptable gifts can be offered in the temples of the
gods than the trophies won from an enemy in battle.
Of this military religion Christianity had been at first
the extreme negation. I have already had occasion to
observe that it had been one of its earliest rules that
no arms should be introduced within the church, and
that soldiers returning even from the most righteous
war should not be admitted to communion until after a
period of penance and purification. A powerful party,
which counted among its leaders Clement of Alexandria,
Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, and Basil, maintained that
* This portion of medizval history has lately been well traced by Mr.
Maclear, in his History of Christian Missions in the Middle Ages (1863).
See, too, Montalembert’s Moines d' Occident; Ozanam’s Etudes germaniques.
The original materials are to be found in Bede, and in the Lives of the
Saints—especially that of St. Columba, by Adamnan. On the French
missionaries, see the Benedictine Hist. it. de la France, tome iv. p.5; and on
the English missionaries, Sharon Turner’s Hist. of England, book x. ch. ii.
* Dion Chrysostom, Or. ii. (De Regno).
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 263
all warfare was unlawful for those who had been con-
verted, and this opinion had its martyr in the celebrated
Maximilianus, who suffered death under Diocletian solely
because, having been enrolled as a soldier, he declared
that he was a-Christian, and that therefore he could not
fight. The extent to which this doctrine was dissemi-
nated, has been suggested with much plausibility as one
of the causes of the Diocletian persecution. It was the
subject of one of the reproaches of Celsus, and Origen, in
reply, frankly accepted the accusation that Christianity
was incompatible with military service, though he main-
tained that the prayers of the Christians were more
efficacious than the swords of the legions.? At the same
time, there can be no question that many Christians, from
a very early date, did enlist in the army, and that they
were not cut off from the Church. The legend of the
thundering legion, under Marcus Aurelius, whatever we
may think of the pretended miracle, attested the fact,
which is expressly asserted by Tertullian The first
fury of the Diocletian persecution fell upon Christian
soldiers, and by the time of Constantine the army ap-
pears to have become, in a great degree, Christian. A
Council of Arles, under Constantine, condemned soldiers
who, through religious motives, deserted their colours ;
and St. Augustine threw his great influence into the same
scale. But even where’ the calling was seldom regarded as
sinful, it was strongly discouraged. The ideal or type
of supreme excellence conceived by the imagination of
the Pagan world, and to which all their purest moral
enthusiasm naturally aspired, was the patriot and soldier,
The ideal of the Catholic legends was the ascetic, whose
? Gibbon, ch. xvi. ? Origen, Cels. lib. viii.
* ‘Navigamus et nos yobiscum et militamus.’—Tert, Apol. xlii. See tow
Grotius De Jure, i. cap. ii,
51
264 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
first duty was to abandon all secular feelings and ties,
In most family circles the conflict between the two prin-
ciples appeared, and in the moral atmosphere of the
fourth and fifth centuries it was almost certain that every
young man who was animated by any pure or genuine
enthusiasm would turn from the army to the monks.
St. Martin, St. Ferreol, St. Tarrachus, and St. Victricius,
were among those who through religious motives aban-
doned the army.’ When Ulphilas translated the Bible
into Gothic, he is said to have excepted the four books
of Kings, through fear that they might encourage the
martial disposition of the barbarians.?
The first influence that contributed to bring the military
profession into friendly connection with religion was the
received doctrine concerning the Providential government
of affairs. It was generally taught that all national cata-
strophes were penal inflictions, resulting, for the most part,
from the vices or the religious errors of the leading men,
and that temporal prosperity was the reward of orthodoxy
and virtue. A great battle, on the issue of which the
fortunes of a people or of a monarch depended, was there-
fore supposed to be the special occasion of Providen-
tial interposition, and the hope of obtaining military
success became one of the most frequent motives of
conversion. The conversion of Constantine was profess-
edly, and the conversion of Clovis was perhaps really,
due to the persuasion that the Divine interposition had
in a critical moment given them the victory; and I have
already noticed how large a part must be assigned to this
* See an admirable dissertation on the opinions of the early Christians
about military service, in Le Blant,. Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, tome
1. pp. 81-87. The subject is frequently referred to by Barbeyrac, Morale
des Peres, and Grotius De Jure, lib. i. cap. il.
2 Philostorgius, ii. 5.
4
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 265
order of ideas in facilitating the progress of Christianity
among the barbarians. When a cross was said to have
appeared miraculously to Constantine, with an inscription
announcing the victory of the Milvian bridge; when the
same holy sign, adorned with the sacred monogram, was
carried in the forefront of the Roman armies; when the
nails of the cross, which Helena had brought from Jeru-
salem, were converted by the emperor into a helmet, and
into bits for his warhorse, it was evident that a ereat
change was passing over the once pacific spirit of the
Church.?
Many circumstances conspired to accelerate it. North-
ern tribes, who had been taught that the gates of
the Walhalla were ever open to the warrior who pre-
sented himself stained with the blood of his vanquished
enemies, were converted to Christianity ; but they carried
their old feelings into their new creed. The conflict of
many races, and the paralysis of all government that fol-
lowed the fall of the empire, made force everywhere
dominant, and petty wars incessant. The military obli-
gations attached to the ‘benefices’ which the sovereigns.
gave to their leading chiefs, connected the idea of mi-
litary service with that of rank, and rendered it doubly
honourable in the eyes of men. Many bishops and abbots,
partly from the turbulence of their times and characters,
and partly, at a later period, from their position as oreat
feudal lords, were accustomed to lead their followers in
battle ; and this custom, though prohibited by Charle-
magne, may be traced to so late a period as the battle of
Agincourt.?
* See some excellent remarks on this change, in Milman’s History of
Christianity, vol. ii, pp. 287-288.
* Mably, Observations sur ? Histoire de France, i, 6; Hallam’s Middle Ages,
ch. il, part ii.
266 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
The stigma which Christianity had attached to war was
thus gradually effaced. At the same time, the Church -
remained, on the whole, a pacific influence. War was
rather condoned than consecrated, and, whatever might
be the case with a few isolated prelates, the Church did
nothing to increase or encourage it. The transition from
the almost Quaker tenets of the primitive Church to the
essentially military Christianity of the Crusades was chiefly
due to another cause—to the terrors and to the example
of Mahommedanism.
This great religion, which so long rivalled the influence
of Christianity, had indeed spread the deepest and most
justifiable panic through Christendom. Without any of
those aids to the imagination which pictures and images
can furnish, without any elaborate sacerdotal organisa-
tion, preaching the purest Monotheism among ignorant
and barbarous men, and inculcating, on the whole, an
extremely high and noble system of morals, it spread
with a rapidity and it acquired a hold over the minds of
its votaries, which it is probable that no other religion
has altogether equalled. It borrowed from Christianity
that doctrine of salvation by belief, which is perhaps the
most powerful impulse that can be applied to the cha-
racters of masses of men, and it elaborated so minutely
the charms of its sensual heaven, and the terrors of its
material hell, as to cause the alternative to appeal with
unrivalled force to the gross imaginations of the people.
It possessed a book which, however inferior to that of
the opposing religion, has nevertheless been the consola-
tion and the support of millions in many ages. It taught
a fatalism which in its first age nerved its adherents with a
matchless military courage, and which, though in later
days, it has often paralysed their active energies, has also
rarely failed to support them under the pressure of inevi-
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 267
table calamity. But, above all, it discovered the oreat,
though fatal secret of uniting indissolubly the passion of
the soldier with the passion of the devotee. Making the
conquest of the infidel the first of duties, and proposing
heaven as the certain reward of the valiant soldier, it
created a blended enthusiasm that soon overpowered the
divided counsels and the voluptuous governments of the
East, and within a century of the death of Mahomet, his
followers had almost extirpated Christianity from its ori-
ginal home, founded great monarchies in Asia and Africa,
planted a noble, though transient and exotic civilisation in
Spain, menaced the capital of the Eastern empire, and, but
for the issue of a single battle, they would probably have
extended their sceptre over the energetic and progressive
races of Central Europe. The wave was broken by Charles
Martel, at the battle of Poictiers, and it is now useless to
speculate what might have been the consequences had
Mahommedanism unfurled its triumphant banner among
those Teutonic tribes who have so often changed their
ereed, and on whom the course of civilisation has so
largely depended. But one great change was in fact
achieved. The spirit of Mahommedanism slowly passed
into Christianity, and transformed it into its image. The
spectacle of an essentially military religion fascinated men
who were at once very warlike and very superstitious.
The panic that had palsied Europe was after a long in-
terval succeeded by a fierce reaction of resentment. Pride
and religion conspired to urge the Christian warriors
against those who had so often defeated the armies and
wasted the territory of Christendom, who had shorn the
empire of the Cross of many of its fairest provinces, and
profaned that holy city which was venerated not only
for its past associations, but also for the spiritual bless-
ings it could still bestow upon the pilgrim. The papal
268 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
indulgences proved not less efficacious in stimulating the
military spirit than the promises of Mahomet, and for
about two centuries every pulpit in Christendom proclaimed
the duty of war with the unbeliever, and represented the
battle field as the sure path to heaven. ‘The religious
orders which arose united the character of the priest with
that of the warrior, and when, at the hour of sunset, the
soldier knelt down to pray before his cross, that cross
was the handle of his sword.
It would be impossible to conceive any more complete
transformation than Christianity had thus undergone, and
it is melancholy to contrast with its aspects during the
crusades the impression it had once most justly made
_ upon the world, as the spirit of gentleness and of peace
encountering the spirit of violence and war. Among the
many curious habits of the Pagan Irish, one of the most.
significant was that of perpendicular burial. With a
feeling something like that which induced Vespasian to
declare that a Roman emperor should die standing, the
Pagan warriors shrank from the notion of being prostrate
even in death, and they appear to have regarded this
martial burial as a special symbol of Paganism. An old
Irish manuscript tells how, when Christianity had been
introduced into Ireland, a king of Ulster on his death-
bed charged his son never to become a Christian, but to
be buried standing upright like a man in battle, with his
face for ever turned to the south, defying the men of
Leinster." As late as the sixteenth century, it is said
that in some parts of Ireland children were baptised by
immersion; but the right arms of the males were carefully
* Wakeman’s Archeologia Hibernica, p. 21, However, Giraldus Cam-
brensis observes that the Irish saints were peculiarly vindictive, and St.
Columba and St. Comgall are said to have been leaders in a sanguinary con-
flict about a church near Coleraine. See Reeves’ edition of Adamnan’s
Life of St. Columba, pp. Uxxvii. 253.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 269
held above the water, in order that, not having been
dipped in the sacred stream, they might strike the more
deadly blow.!
It had been boldly predicted by some of the early
Christians, that the conversion of the world would lead
to a cessation of all war. In looking back, with our
present experience, we are driven to the melancholy
conclusion that not only has ecclesiastical influence had
no appreciable effect in diminishing the number of wars,
but that it has actually and very seriously increased
it. We may look in vain for any period since Con-
_ stantine, in which the clergy, as a body, exerted them-
selves to repress the military spirit, or to prevent or
abridge a particular war, with an energy or a success the
east comparable to what they displayed during several
centuries in stimulating the fanaticism of the crusaders,
in producing the atrocious massacre of the Albigenses,
in embittering the religious wars that followed the Re-
formation. Private wars were, no doubt, in some degree
repressed by their influence; for the institution of the
‘Truce of God’ was for a time of much value, and when,
towards the close of the middle ages, the custom of duels
arose, it was strenuously condemned by the clergy; but
we shall probably not place any great value on their
exertions in this field, when we remember that duels
were almost or altogether unknown to the Pagan world;
that, having arisen in a period of great superstition, the
anathemas of the Church were almost impotent to dis-
courage them; and that in our own century they are
rapidly disappearing before the simple censure of an
‘industrial society. It is possible—though it would, I
imagine, be difficult to prove it—that the mediatorial
office, so often exercised by bishops, may sometimes have
Campion’s Historie of Ireland (1571), book i. ch. vi.
270 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
prevented wars ; and it is certain that during the periods —
of the religious wars, so much military spirit existed in
Europe, that it must necessarily have found a vent, and
under no circumstances could the period have been one
of perfect peace. But when all these qualifications have
been fully admitted, the broad fact will remain, that,
with the exception of Mahommedanism, no other religion
has done so much to produce war as was done by the
religious teachers of Christendom during several centuries.
The military fanaticism they evoked by the indulgences
of the popes, by the ceaseless exhortations of the pulpit,
by the religious importance that was attached to the
relics at Jerusalem, and by the extreme antipathy they
fostered towards all who differed from their theology, has
scarcely ever been equalled in its intensity, and it has
caused the effusion of oceans of blood, and has been pro-
ductive of incalculable misery to the world. Religious
fanaticism was a main cause of the earlier wars, and
an important ingredient in the later ones. The peace
principles, that were so common before Constantine, have
found scarcely any echo ‘except from Erasmus, the
Quakers, and the Anabaptists;1 and although some very
important pacific agencies have arisen out of the in-
dustrial progress of modern times, these have been, for
the most part, wholly unconnected with, and have in
some cases been directly opposed to, theological interests.
But although theological influences cannot reasonably
be said to have diminished the number of wars, they have
had a very real and beneficial effect in diminishing their
* It seems curious to find in so calm and untanaticat a writer as Justus
Lipsius the following passage: ‘Jam et inyasio queedam legitima videtur
etiam sine injuria, ut in barbaros et moribus aut religione prorsum a nobis
abhorrentes.’—Politicorum sive Civilis Doctrine libri (Paris. 1594), lib, iy.
ch. il. cap. iv.
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 271
atrocity, by improving the condition of the vanquished.
On few subjects have the moral opinions of different ages
exhibited so marked a variation as in their judgments of
what punishment may justly be imposed on a conquered
enemy, and these variations have often been cited as an
argument against those who believe in the existence of
natural moral perceptions. To those, however, who
accept that doctrine, with the limitations that have been
‘stated in the first chapter, they can cause no perplexity.
Yn the first dawning of the human intelligence (as I have
said) the notion of duty, as distinguished from that of
interest, appears, and the mind, in reviewing the various
emotions by which it is influenced, recognises the unsel-
fish and benevolent motives as essentially and generically
superior to the selfish and the cruel. But it is the general
condition of society alone that determines the standard of
benevolence—the classes towards which every good man
will exercise it. At first, the range of duty is the family,
the tribe, the state, the confederation. Within these
limits every man feels himself under moral obligations to
those about him; but he regards the outer world as we
\regard wild animals, as beings upon whom he may
justifiably prey. Hence, we may explain the curious
fact that the terms brigand or corsair conveyed in the
early stages of society no notion of moral guilt.1_ Such
* “Con I’ oceasione di queste cose Plutarco nel Teseo dice che gli eroi si
recavano a grande onore é si reputavano in pregio d’armi con!’ esser chiamati
ladroni ; siccome a’ tempi barbari ritornati quello di Corsale era titolo riputato
di signoria ; d’ intorno a’ quali tempi venuto Solone, si dice aver permesso
nelle sue leggi le societa per cagion di prede ; tanto Solone ben intese questa
nostra compiuta Umanita, nella quale costoro non godono del diritto natural
delle genti! Ma quel che fa pit maraviglia é che Platone ed Aristotile
posero il ladroneccio fralle spezie della caccia e con tali e tanti filosofi d’ una
gente umanissima convengono con la loro barbarie i Germani antichi; appo
i quali al referire di Cesare i ladronecci non solo non eran infami, ma si tene-
vano tra gli esercizi della virtt siccome tra quelli che per costume non appli-
272 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS. —
men were looked upon simply as we look upon hunts-
men, and if they displayed courage and skill in their
pursuit, they were deemed fit subjects for admiration.
Even in the writings of the most enlightened philosophers
of Greece, war with barbarians is represented as a form
of chase, and the simple desire of obtaining the barbarians
as slaves was considered a sufficient reason for invading
them. The right of the conqueror to kill his captives
was generally recognised, nor was it at first restricted by.
any considerations of age or sex. Several instances are
recorded of Greek and other cities being deliberately
destroyed by Greeks or by Romans, and the entire
populations ruthlessly massacred.!_ The whole career of
the early republic of Rome, though much idealised and
transfigured by later historians, was probably governed by
these principles.” The normal fate of the captive, which,
among barbarians, had been death, was, in civilised an-
tiquity, slavery; but many thousands were condemned
to the gladiatorial shows, and the vanquished general
was commonly slain in the Mamertine prison, while his
conqueror ascended in triumph to the Capitol.
cando ad arte alcuna cosi fuggivano I’ ozio.’—Vico, Scienza Nuova, ii. 6. See
too Whewell’s Elements of Morality, book vi. ch. ii.
+ The ancient right of war is fully discussed by Grotius De Jure, lib. iii,
See, especially, the horrible catalogue of tragedies in cap. 4. The military
feeling that regards capture as disgraceful, had probably some, though only
a very subordinate influence, in producing cruelty to the prisoners.
* Le jour ou Athénes décréta que tous les Mityléniens, sans distinction de
sexe ni d’age, seraient exterminés, elle ne croyait pas dépasser son droit;
quand le lendemain elle revint sur son décret et se contenta de mettre & mort
mille citoyens et de confisquer toutes les terres, elle se crut humaine et indul-
gente. Aprés la prise de Platée les hommes furent égorgés, les femmes
vendues, et personne n’accusa les vainqueurs d’avoir violé le droit... .
C’est en vertu de ce droit de la guerre que Rome a étendu la solitude autour
d’elle ; du territoire ot les Volsques avaient vingt-trois cités elle a fait les
marais pontins; les cinquante-trois villes du Latium ont disparu; dans le
Samnium on put longtemps reconnaitre les lieux o& les armées romaines
avaient passé, moins aux vestiges de leurs camps qu’A la solitude quirégnait
aux environs.’—Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique, pp. 263-264. 3
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 273
A few traces of a more humane spirit may, it is true,
be discovered. Plato had advocated the liberation of all
Greek prisoners upon payment of a fixed ransom,! and
the Spartan general, Callicratidas, had nobly acted upon
this principle ;* but his example never appears to have
been generally followed. In Rome, the notion of inter-
national obligation was very strongly felt. No war was
considered just which had not been officially declared;
and even in the case of wars with barbarians, the Roman
historians often discuss the sufficiency or insufficiency of
the motives of the wars, with a conscientious severity a
modern historian could hardly surpass. The later Greek
and Latin writings occasionally contain maxims which
exhibit a considerable progress in this sphere. The
sole legitimate object of war, both Cicero and Sallust
declared to be an assured peace. That war, according
to Tacitus, ends well which ends with a pardon. Pliny
refused to apply the epithet great to Cesar, on account
of the torrents of human blood he had shed. Two Ro-
man conquerors* are credited with the saying, that it is
better to save the life of one citizen than to destroy a
thousand enemies. Marcus Aurelius mournfully assimi-
lated the career of a conqueror to that of a simple robber.
Nations or armies which voluntarily submitted to Rome
were’ habitually treated with extreme leniency, and nu-
merous acts of individual magnanimity are recorded.
The violation of the chastity of conquered women by
soldiers in a siege was denounced as a rare and atrocious
1 Plato, Republic, lib. v.; Bodin, République, liv. i. cap. 5.
* Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. vill. p. 224, Agesilaus was also very hu-
mane to captives.—Ibid. pp. 365-6.
$ This appears continually in Livy, but most of all, I think, in the Gaulish
historian, Florus.
* Scipio and Trajan.
274 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
crime." The extreme atrocities of ancient war appear at
last to have been practically, though not legally, restricted
to two classes.” Cities where Roman ambassadors had
been insulted, or where some special act of ill faith
or cruelty was said to have taken place, were razed to
the ground, and their populations massacred or delivered
into slavery. Barbarian prisoners were regarded almost
as wild beasts, and sent in thousands to fill the slave.
market or to combat in the arena.
The changes Christianity effected in the rights of war
were very important, and they may, I think, be comprised
under three heads. In the first place, it suppressed the
gladiatorial shows, and thereby saved thousands of cap-
tives from a bloody death. In the next place, it’steadily
discouraged the practice of enslaving prisoners, ransomed
immense multitudes with charitable contributions, and
by slow and insensible gradations proceeded on its path
of mercy till it became a recognised principle of inter-
national law, that no Christian prisoners should be reduced
to slavery. In the third place, it had a more indirect
* See some very remarkable passages in Grotius, de Jwre Bell. lib. iii. cap.
4, § 19.
” These mitigations are fully enumerated by Ayala, De Jure et Officiis
Beluicis (Antwerp, 1597), Grotius, De Jure. It is remarkable that both
Ayala and Grotius base their attempts to mitigate the severity of war chiefly,
Ayala almost entirely, upon the writings and examples of the Pagans. There
is an interesting discussion of the limits of the right of conquerors and of
the just causes of war in Cicero, De Offic. lib. i.
* In England the change seems to have immediately followed conversion.
‘ The evangelical precepts of peace und love,’ says a very learned historian,
‘did not put an end to war, they did not put an end to aggressive conquests,
but they distinctly humanised the way in which war was carried on. From
this time forth the never-ending wars with the Welsh cease to be wars of
extermination. The heathen English had been satisfied with nothing
short of the destruction and expulsion of their enemies; the Christian
English thought it enough to reduce them to political subjection. . . . The
Christian Welsh could now sit down as subjects of the Christian Saxon.
The Welshman was acknowledged as a man and a citizen, and was put
under the protection of the law.’—Freeman’s Hist. of the Norman Conquest,
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE, 275
but very powerful influence, by the creation of a new
warlike ideal. The ideal knight of the Crusades and of
chivalry, uniting all the force and fire of the ancient
warrior, with all the tenderness and humility of the
Christian saint, sprang from the conjunction of the two
streams of religious and of military feeling; and although
this ideal, like all others, was a creation of the imagina-
tion, although it was rarely or never perfectly realised in
life, yet it remained the type and model of warlike excel-
lence, to which many generations aspired ; and its soften-
ing influence may even now be largely traced in the cha-
racter of the modern gentleman.
Together with the gradual fusion of the military spirit
with Christianity, we may dimly descry, in the period
before Charlemagne, the first stages of that consecration
of secular rank which at a later period, in the forms of
chivalry, the divine right of kings, and the reverence
for aristocracies, played so large a part both in moral and
in political history. We have already seen that the
course of events in the Roman empire had been towards
the continual aggrandisement of the imperial power.
The representative despotism of Augustus was at last
succeeded by the oriental despotism of Diocletian. The
senate sank into a powerless assembly of imperial nomi-
nees, and the spirit of Roman freedom wholly perished
with the extinction of Stoicism.
vol. i. pp. 88-34. Christians who assisted infidels in wars against Chris-
tians were ipso facto excommunicated, and might therefore be enslaved,
but all others were free from slavery. ‘ Et quidem inter Christianos lauda-
bili et antiqua consuetudine introductum est, ut capti hine inde, utcunque
justo bello, non fierent servi, sed liberi servarentur donec solvant precium
redemptionis.’—Ayala, lib. i. cap. 5. ‘This rule, at least,’ says Grotius,
‘(though but a small matter) the reverence for the Christian law has en-
forced, which Socrates vainly sought to have established among the Greeks.’
The Mahommedans also made it a rule not to enslave their co-religionists.—.
Grotius de Jure, iii. 7. § 9. Pagan and barbarian prisoners were, however,
sold as slaves (especially by the Spaniards) till very recently.
276 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
It would probably be a needless refinement to seek
any deeper causes for this change than may be found in
the ordinary principles of human nature. Despotism is
the normal and legitimate government of an early society
in which knowledge has not yet developed the powers of
the people; but when it is introduced into a civilised
community, it is of the nature of a disease, and a disease
which, unless it be checked, has a continual tendency to
spread. When free nations abdicate their political fune-
tions, they gradually lose both the capacity and the desire
for freedom. Political talent and ambition, having no
sphere for action, steadily decay, and servile, enervating,
and vicious habits proportionately increase. Nations are
organic beings in a constant process of expansion or
decay, and where they do not exhibit a progress of
liberty they usually exhibit'a progress of servitude.
It can hardly be asserted that Christianity had much in-
fluence upon this change. By accelerating in some degree
the withdrawal of the virtuous energies of the people from
the sphere of government which had long been in pro-
cess, it prevented the great improvement of morals, which
it undoubtedly effected, from appearing perceptibly in
public affairs. It taught a doctrine of passive obedience,
which its disciples nobly observed in the worst periods
of persecution. On the other hand, the Christians em-
phatically repudiated the ascription of Divine honours to
the sovereign, and they asserted with heroic constancy
their independent worship, in defiance of the law. After
the time of Constantine, however, their zeal became far
less pure, and sectarian interests wholly governed their
principles. Much misapplied learning has been employed
in endeavouring to extract from the Fathers a consistent
doctrine on the subject of the relations of subjects to their
sovereigns ; but every impartial observer may discover
FROM CONSTANTINE TO CHARLEMAGNE. 277
that the principle upon which they acted was exceedingly
simple. When a sovereign was sufficiently orthodox in
his opinions, and sufficiently zealous in patronising the
Church and in persecuting the heretics, he was extolled as
an angel. When his policy was opposed to the Church,
he was represented as a demon. The estimate which
Gregory of Tours has given of the character of Clovis,
though far more frank, is not a more striking instance of
moral perversion than the fulsome and indeed _blas-
phemous adulation which Eusebius poured upon Con-
stantine—a sovereign whose character was at all times of
the most mingled description, and who, shortly after his
conversion, put to a violent death his son, his nephew,
and his wife. ‘If we were to estimate the attitude of
ecclesiastics to sovereigns by the language of Eusebius, we
should suppose that they ascribed to them a direct Divine
inspiration, and exalted the Imperial dignity to an extent
that was before unknown.t But when Julian mounted
the throne, the whole aspect of the Church was changed.
This great and virtuous, though misguided, sovereign,
whose private life was a model of purity, who carried
to the throne the manners, tastes, and friendships of a
philosophic life, and who proclaimed, and, with very
slight exceptions, acted with the largest and most gene-
rous toleration, was an enemy of the Church, and all the
vocabulary of invective was in consequence habitually
lavished upon him. Lcclesiastics and laymen combined
in insulting him, and when, after a brief but glorious
reign of less than two years, he met an honourable death
on the battle-field, neither the disaster that had befallen
the Roman arms, nor the present dangers of the army,
nor the heroic courage which the fallen emperor had
* The character of Constantine, and the estimate of it in Eusebius, are
well treated by Dean Stanley, Lectures on the Eastern Church (Lect. vi.).
278 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
displayed, nor the majestic tranquillity of his end, nor the.
tears of his faithful friends, could shame the Christian
community into the decency of silence. A peal of brutal
merriment filled the land. In Antioch the Christians
assembled in the theatres and in the churches, to cele-
brate with rejoicing, the death which their emperor had
met in fighting against the enemies of his country.’ This is noticed by Plautus. § Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 4.
818 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
a nurse the duty of suckling her child.’ Sumptuary laws
regulated with the most minute severity all the details of
domestic economy.” The courtesan class, though proba-
bly numerous and certainly uncontrolled, were regarded
with much contempt. The disgrace of publicly professing
themselves members of it was believed to be a sufficient
punishment,’ and an old law, which was probably intended
to teach in symbol the duties of married life, enjoined that
no such person should touch the altar of Juno. It was
related of a certain edile, that he failed to obtain redress
for an assault which had been made upon him, because
it had occurred in a house of ill-fame, in which it was dis- :
graceful for a Roman magistrate to be found.> The sanctity
of female purity was believed to be attested by all nature.
The most savage animals became tame before a virgin.®
When a woman walked naked round a field, caterpillars
and all loathsome insects fell dead before her.? It was
said that drowned men floated on their backs, and
drowned women on their faces; and this, in the opinion
of Roman naturalists, was due to the superior purity of
the latter.3
It was a remark of Aristotle, that the superiority of the
Greeks to the barbarians was shown, amongst other things,
in the fact that the Greeks did not, like other nations,
regard their wives as slaves, but treated. them as help-
mates and companions. A Roman writer has appealed,
* Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxviii. * See Aulus Gellius, Woct, ii. 24,
* ‘More inter veteres recepto, qui satis poenarum adversum impudicas in
ipsa professione flagitii credebant.’—Tacitus, Annai. ii. 85.
* Aul. Gell. iy. 3. Juno was the goddess of marriage.
> Ibid. iv. 14.
° The well-known superstition about the lion, &c., becoming docile before
a virgin is, I believe, as old as Roman times. St. Isidore mentions that
rhinoceroses were believed to be captured by young girls being put in their
way to fascinate them. (Legendre, Traité de 1 Opinion, tome ii. p- 35.)
* Pliny, Hist. Nat, xxviii, 28, 8 Ibid. vii. 18,
on
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 319
on the whole with greater justice, to the treatment of
wives by his fellow countrymen, as a proof of the superi-
ority of Roman to Greek civilisation. He has observed
that, while the Greeks kept their wives in a special quarter
in the interior of their houses, and never permitted them
to sit at banquets except with their relatives, or to see any
male except in the presence of a relative, no Roman ever
hesitated to lead his wife with him to the feast, or to
place the mother of the family at the head of his table.
Whether, in the period when wives were completely sub-
ject to the rule of their husbands, much domestic oppres-
sion occurred, it is now impossible to say. A temple
dedicated to a goddess named Viriplaca, whose mission
was to appease husbands, was worshipped by Roman
women on the Palatine,” and a strange and improbable, if
not incredible story, is related by Livy, of the discovery,
during the Republic, of a vast conspiracy by Roman wives
to poison their husbands.? On the whole, however, it is
probable that the Roman matron was from the earliest:
period a name of honour ;* that the beautiful sentence of
a jurisconsult of the empire, who defined marriage as a
lifelong fellowship of all divine and human rights,’ ex-
pressed most faithfully the feelings of the people, and that
female virtue shone in every age conspicuously in Roman
. ° ; 6
biographies.
* “Quem enim Romanorum pudet uxorem ducere in convivium ? aut cujus
materfamilias non primum locum tenet «dium, atque in celebritate versa-
tur? quod multo fit aliter in Grecia. Nam neque in convivium adhibetur,
nisi propinquorum, neque sedet nisi in interiore parte edium que gyne-
contis appellatur, quo nemo accedit, nisi propinqua cognatione conjunctus,’—
Corn. Nepos, preefat.
+ Val. Max. ii. 1. § 6. $ Liv. viii. 18.
* See Val. Max. ii. 1.
* ‘Nuptiz sunt conjunctio maris et femine, et consortium omnis vite
divini et humani juris communicatio.’—Modestinus.
° Livy xxxiv.5. There is a fine collection of legends or histories of
heroic women (but chiefly Greek) in Clem, Alexand. Strom. iv. 19.
820 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
I have already enumerated the chief causes of that
complete dissolution of Roman morals which began shortly
after the Punic wars, which contributed very largely to
the destruction of the Republic, and which attained its
climax under the Cesars. There are few examples in
history of a revolution pervading so completely every
sphere of religious, domestic, social, and political life.
Philosophical scepticism corroded the ancient religions.
An inundation of Eastern luxury and Eastern morals sub-
merged all the old habits of austere simplicity. The civil
wars and the empire degraded the character of the
people, and the exaggerated prudery of republican man-
ners only served to make the rebound into vice the more
irresistible. In the fierce outburst of ungovernable and
almost frantic depravity that marked this evil period, the
violations of female virtue were infamously prominent.
The vast’ multiplication of slaves, which is in every age
peculiarly fatal to moral purity; the fact that a great
proportion of those slaves were chosen from the most
voluptuous provinces of the empire; the games of Flora,
in which races of naked courtesans were exhibited ; the
pantomimes, which derived their charms chiefly from the
audacious indecencies of the actors ; the influx of the Greek
and Asiatic hetseree who were attracted by the wealth of
the metropolis ; the licentious paintings which began to
adorn every house; the rise of Bais, which rivalled the
luxury and surpassed the beauty of the chief centres of
Asiatic vice, combining with the intoxication of great
wealth suddenly acquired, with the disruption, through
many causes, of all the ancient habits and beliefs, and with
the tendency to pleasure which the closing of the paths of
honourable political ambition, by the imperial despotism,
naturally produced, had all their part in preparing those
orgies of vice which the writers of the empire reveal.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 821
Most scholars will, I suppose, retain a vivid recollection
of the new insight into the extent and wildness of human
guilt which they obtained when they first opened the
pages of Suetonius or Lampridius; and the sixth Satire
of Juvenal paints with a fierce energy, though probably
with the natural exaggeration of a satirist, the extent to
which corruption had spread among the women. It was
found necessary, under Tiberius, to make a special law
prohibiting members of noble houses from enrolling them-
selves as prostitutes! The extreme coarseness of the
Roman disposition prevented sensuality from assuming
that esthetic character which had made it in Greece
the parent of Art, and had very profoundly modified its
Influence, while the passion for gladiatorial shows often
allied it somewhat unnaturally with cruelty. There have
certainly been many periods in history when virtue was
more rare than under the Cxsars; but there has probably
never been a period when vice was more extravagant or
uncontrolled. Young emperors especially, who were sur-
rounded by swarms of sycophants and pandars, and who
often lived in continual dread of assassination, plunged
with the most reckless and feverish excitement into every
variety of abnormal lust. The reticence which has
always more or less characterised modern society and
modern writers was unknown, and the unblushing, un-
disguised obscenity of the Epierams of Martial, of the
Romances of Apuleius and Petronius, and of some of the
Dialogues of Lucian, reflected but too faithfully the spirit
of their time. »
There had arisen, too, partly through vicious causes,
and partly, I suppose, through the unfavourable influence
which the attraction of the public institutions exercised on
' Tacitus, Annal. ii. 85. This decree was on account of a patrician lady
named Vistilia having so enrolled herself,
322 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
domestic life, a great and general indisposition towards
marriage, which Augustus attempted in vain to arrest by
his laws against celibacy, and by conferring many pri-
vileges on the fathers of three children! A singularly
curious speech is preserved, which is said to have been
delivered on this subject shortly before the close of the
Republic, by Metellus Numidicus, in order, if possible, to:
overcome this indisposition. ‘If, Romans,’ he said, ‘ we
could live without wives, we should all keep free from that
source of trouble; but since nature has ordained that
men can neitherlive sufficiently agreeably with wives, nor.
at all without them, let us consult the perpetual endur-
ance of our race rather than our own brief enjoyment.’?
In the midst of this torrent of corruption a great change
was passing over the legal position of Roman women.
They had at first been in a condition of absolute subjec-
ion or subordination to their relations. They arrived,
during the empire, at a point of freedom and dignity
which they subsequently lost, and have never altogether
regained. The Romans admitted three kinds of mar-
riage—the ‘confarreatio,’ which was accompanied by the
ost awful religious ceremonies, was practically indis-
soluble, and was jealously restricted to patricians; the
coemptio,’ which was purely civil, which derived its name
1 Dion Cassius, liv. 16, lvi. 10.
* «Si sine uxore possemus, Quirites, esse, omnes ea molestia careremus ; sed
quoniam ita natura tradidit, ut nec cum illis satis commode nec sine illis
ullo modo vivi possit, saluti perpetuze potius quam brevi voluptati consulen-
dum.’—Aulus Gellius, Noct. i. 6. Some of the audience, we are told, thought
that, in exhorting to matrimony, the speaker should have concealed its
undoubted evils. It was decided, however, that it was more honourable to
tell the whole truth. Stobzeus (Sententie) has preserved a number of
harsh and often heartless sayings about wives, that were popular among the
Greeks, It was a saying of a Greek poet, that ‘marriage brings only two
happy days—the day when the husband first clasps his wife to his breast,
and the day when he lays her in the tomb ;’ and in Rome it became a pro-
verbial saying, that a wife was only good ‘in thalamo vel in tumulo.’
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 3235
from a symbolical sale, and which, like the preceding form,
gave the husband complete authority over the person and
property of his wife ; and the ‘usus,’ which was effected by
a simple declaration of a determination to cohabit. This
last form of marriage became general in the empire, and
it had this very important consequence, that the woman
so married remained, in the eyes of the law, in the family
of-her father, and was under his guardianship, not under
the guardianship of her husband. But the old patria
potestas had become completely obsolete, and the prac-
tical effect of the general adoption of this form of mar-
riage was the absolute legal independence of the wife.
With the exception of her dowry, which passed into the
hands of her husband, she held her property in her own
right ; she inherited her share of the wealth of her father,
and she retained it altogether independently of her hus-
band. A very considerable portion of Roman wealth
thus passed into the uncontrolled possession of women.
The private man of business of the wife was a favourite
character in the comedians, and the tyranny exercised by
rich wives over their husbands—to whom it is said they
sometimes lent money at high interest—a continual theme
of satirists.?
A complete revolution had thus passed over the consti-
tution of the family. Instead of being constructed on the
principle of autocracy, it was constructed on the principle
of coequal partnership. The legal position of the wife
had become one of complete independence, while her
social position was one of great dignity. The more
1 Friedlander, Hust. des Mours romaies, tome i. pp. 360-3864. On the
great influence exercised by Roman ladies on political affairs some remark-
able passages are collected in Denis, Hist. des Idées Morales, tome ii. pp. 98-
99. This author is particularly valuable in all that relates to the history
of domestic morals. The Asinariusof Plautus, and some of the epigrams of
Martial, throw much light upon this subject.
324 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
conservative spirits were naturally alarmed at the change,
and two measures were taken to arrest it. The Oppian
law was designed to restrain the luxury of women; but,
In spite of the strenuous exertions of Cato, this law was
speedily repealed. A more important measure was the
Voconian law, which restricted within certain very
narrow limits the property which women might inherit ;
but public opinion never fully acquiesced in it, and by
several legal subterfuges its operation was partially
evaded.” |
Another and a still more important consequence re-
sulted from the changed form of marriage. Being looked
upon simply as a civil contract, entered into for the hap-
piness of the contracting parties, its continuance depended
upon mutual consent. Either party might. dissolve it at
will, and the dissolution gave both parties a right. to
remarry. ‘There can be no question that under this
system the obligations of marriage were treated with
extreme levity. We find Cicero repudiating his wife
Terentia, because he desired a new dowry ;? Augustus
compelling the husband of Livia to repudiate her when
she was already pregnant, that he might marry her him-
self;* Cato ceding his wife, with the consent of her father,
to his friend Hortensius, and resuming her after his
death ;° Mzcenas continually changing his wife ;° Sem-
pronius Sophus repudiating his wife, because she had
* See the very remarkable discussion about this repealin Livy, lib. xxxiv.
vap. 1-8.
2 Legouvé, Hist. Morale des Femmes, pp. 23-26. St. Augustine denounced
this law as the most unjust that could be mentioned or even conceived.
‘Qua lege quid iniquius dici aut cogitari possit, ignoro.’—St. Aug. De Civ,
Dei, iii. 21—a curious illustration of the difference between the habits of
thought of his time and those of the middle ages, when daughters were
habitually sacrificed without a protest, by the feudal laws.
° Plutarch, Cicero. * Tacit. Ann. i. 10,
* Plutarch, Cato; Lucan, Pharsal, ii. ® Senec. Ep. exiy.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. | 526
once been to the public games without his knowledge ;!
Paulus Aimilius taking the same step without assigning
any reason, and defending himself by saying, ‘My shoes
are new and well made, but no one knows where they
pinch me.’ Nor did women show less alacrity in repu-
diating their husbands. Seneca denounced this evil with
especial vehemence, declaring that divorce in Rome no
longer brought with it any shame, and that there were
women who reckoned their years rather by their husbands
than by the consuls.? Christians and Pagans echoed the
same complaint. According to Tertullian, ‘divorce is
the fruit of marriage.’* Martial speaks of a woman who
had already arrived at her tenth husband; Juvenal, of
a woman having eight husbands in five years.* But the
most extraordinary recorded instance of this kind is re-
lated by St. Jerome, who assures us that there existed at
Rome a wife who was married to her twenty-third.
husband, she herself being his twenty-first wife.’
These are, no doubt, extreme cases; but it is un-
questionable that the stability of married life was very
seriously impaired. It would be easy, however, to ex-
aggerate the influence of legal changes in affecting it. In
a purer state of public opinion a very wide latitude of
divorce might probably have been allowed to both parties,
without any serious consequence. The right of repudia-
tion, which the husband had always possessed, was, as we
have seen, in the Republic never or very rarely exercised.
Of those who scandalised good men by the rapid recur-
rence of their marriages, probably most, if marriage was
1 Val. Max, vi. 3.
* Plutarch, Paul. A'mil. It is not quite clear whether this remark wae
made by Paulus himself.
° Sen. de Benef. iii. 16. See, too, Ep, xcv. Ad Heiv, xvi.
* Apol. 6. 5 Epig. vi. 7.
° Juv. Sat. vi. 230, Lip =) res
326 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
indissoluble, would have refrained from entering into it,
and would have contented themselves with many informal
connections, or, if they had married, would have gratified
their love of change by simple adultery. A vast wave of
corruption had flowed in upon Rome, and under any
system of law it would have penetrated into domestic life.
Laws prohibiting all divorce have never secured the
purity of married life in ages of great corruption, nor did
the latitude which was accorded in imperial Rome prevent
the existence of a very large amount of female virtue.
I have observed in a former chapter, that the moral
contrasts which were shown in ancient life surpass those
of modern societies, in which we very rarely find clusters
of heroic or illustrious men arising in nations that are in
general very ignorant or very corrupt. I have endea-
voured to account for this fact by showing that the moral
agencies of antiquity were in general much more fitted to
develope virtue than to repress vice, and that they raised
noble natures to almost the highest conceivable point of -
excellence, while they entirely failed to coerce or to
attenuate the corruption of the depraved. In the female
life of Imperial Rome we find these contrasts vividly dis-
played. There can be no question that the moral tone
of the sex was extremely low—lower, probably, than in
France under the Regency, or in England under the
Restoration—-and it is also certain that frightful excesses
of unnatural passion, of which the most corrupt of modern
courts present no parallel, were perpetrated with but little
concealment on the Palatine. Yet there is probably no
period in which examples of conjugal heroism and fide-
lity appear more frequently than in this very age, in which
marriage was most free and in which corruption was so
general. Much simplicity of manners continued to co-
exist with the excesses of an almost unbridled luxury.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 327
Augustus, we are told, used to make his daughters and
erand-daughters weave and spin, and his wife and sister
made most of the clothes he wore.!' The skill of wives in
domestic economy, and especially in spinning, was fre-
quently noticed in their epitaphs.? Intellectual culture
was much diffused among them,’ and we meet with seve-
ral noble specimens in the sex, of large and accomplished
minds united with all the gracefulness of intense woman-
hood, and all the fidelity of the truest love. Such were
Cornelia, the brilliant and devoted wife of Pompey ;*
Marcia, the friend, and Helvia, the mother of Seneca.
The Northern Italian cities had in a great degree escaped
the contamination of the times, and Padua was especially
noted for the chastity ofits women.? In an age of extra-
vagant sensuality a noble lady, named Mallonia, plunged
her dagger in her heart rather than yield to the embraces
‘of Tiberius. To the period when the legal bond of |
marriage was most relaxed must be assigned most of those
noble examples of the constancy of Roman wives, which
have been for so many generations household tales among
mankind. Who has not read with emotion of the tender-
ness and heroism of Porcia, claiming her right to share in
the trouble which clouded her husband’s brow: how,
doubting her own courage, she did not venture to ask
Brutus to reveal to her his enterprise till she had secretly
tried her power of endurance by piercing her thigh witha
* Sueton. dug. Charlemagne, in like manner, made his daughters work:
in wool, (Eginhardus, Vit. Kar. Mag. xix.)
® Friedlinder, Meeurs romaines du régne d' Auguste & la Jin des Antonins:
(trad. frang.), tome i. p. 414.
* Much evidence of this is collected by Friedlander, tome i, pp. 387-395.
* Plutarch, Pompeius.
» Martial, xi. 16, mentions the reputation of the women of Padua for:
virtue. The younger Pliny also notices the austere and antique virtue of
Brescia (Brixia).— Zp. i. 14.
® Suet. Tiberius, xlv.
55
328 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
knife ; how once, and but once in his presence, her noble
spirit failed, when, as she was about to separate from him
for the last time, her eye chanced to fall upon a picture
of the parting interview of Hector and Andromache?!
Paulina, the wife of Seneca, opened her own veins in
order to accompany her husband to the grave; when
much blood had already flowed, her slaves and freedmen
bound her wounds, and thus compelled her to live; but
the Romans ever after observed with reverence the sacred
_ pallor of her countenance—the memorial of her act2
When Petus was condemned to die by his own hand,
those who knew the love which his wife Arria bore him,
and the heroic fervour of her character, predicted that she
would not long survive him. Thrasea, who had married
her daughter, endeavoured to dissuade her from suicide
by saying, ‘ If I am ever called upon to perish, would you
wish your daughter to die with me?’ She answered, ‘ Yes,
if she will have then lived with you as long and as hap-
piy as I with Petus.’ Her friends attempted, by care-
fully watching her, to secure her safety, but she dashed
her head. against the wall with such force that she fell
upon the ground, and then, rising up, she said, ‘I told you
I would find a hard way to death if you refuse me an
easy way.’ All attempts to restrain her were then aban-
doned, and her death was perhaps the most majestic in
antiquity. Psetus for a moment hesitated to strike the
fatal blow ; but his wife, taking the dagger, plunged it |
deeply in her own breast, and then drawing it out, gave it,
all reeking as it was, to her husband, exclaiming, with
her dying breath, ‘ My Peetus, it does not pain.’
The form of the elder Arria towers grandly above
her fellows, but many other Roman wives in the days of
1 Plutarch, Brutus, 2 Tacit. Annal. xv. 63-64,
9 ‘Pete, non dolet.’—Plin. Zp, iii. 16 ; Martial, Zp. i. 14,
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 329
the early Cxsars and Domitian exhibited a very similar
fidelity. Over the dark waters of the Euxine, into those
unknown and inhospitable regions from which the Roman
Imagination recoiled with a peculiar horror, many noble
ladies freely followed their husbands, and there were
some wives who refused to survive them.! The younger
Arria was the faithful companion of Thrasea during his
heroic life, and when he died she was only persuaded to
live that she might bring up their daughters? She spent
the closing days of Domitian in exile,’ while her daughter,
who was as remarkable for the gentleness as for the dig-
nity of her character,* went twice into exile with her hus-
band Helvidius, and was once banished, after his death, for
defending his memory.’ Incidental notices in historians,
and a few inscriptions which have happened to survive,
show us that such instances were not uncommon, and in
the Roman epitaphs that remain, no feature is more re-
markable than the deep and passionate expressions of
conjugal love that continually occur.6 It would be diffi-
cult to find a more touching image of that love, than the
medallion which is so common on the Roman sarcophagi,
in which husband and wife are represented together, each
with an arm thrown fondly over the shoulder of the other,
united in death as they had been in life, and meeting it
with an aspect of perfect calm, because they were com-
panions in the tomb.
* Tacit. Annal. xvi. 10-11; Hist. i. 3. See, too, Friedléinder, tome i.
p. 406.
* Tacit. Ann. xvi. 34, |
* Pliny mentions her return after the death of the tyrant (Zp. iii. 11),
* *Quod paucis datum est, non minus amabilis quam veneranda.’—Plin.
Ep. vii. 19.
° See Plin. Zp. vii. 19, Dion Cassius and Tacitus relate the exiles of
Helvidius, who appears to have been rather intemperate and unreasonable.
* Friedlander gives many and most touching examples, tome i. pp.
410-414,
830 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
In the latter days of the Pagan Empire some measures
were taken to repress the profligacy that was so prevalent.
Domitian enforced the old Scantinian law against un-
natural love.* Vespasian moderated the luxury of the
court; Macrinus caused those who had committed adul-
tery to be bound together and burnt alive.? A practice
of men and women bathing together was condemned by
Hadrian, and afterwards by Alexander Severus, but was
only finally suppressed by Constantine. Alexander Se-
verus and Philip waged an energetic war against pandars.®
The extreme excesses of this, as of most forms of vice,
were probably much diminished after the accession of the
Antonines; but Rome continued to be a centre of very
great corruption till the combined influence of Christianity,
the removal of the court to Constantinople, and the im-
poverishment that followed the barbarian conquests, in a
measure corrected the evil.
Among the moralists, however, some important steps
were taken. One of the most important was a very
clear assertion of the reciprocity of that obligation to
fidelity in marriage which in the early stages of society
had been imposed almost exclusively upon wives.4 The
legends of Clytemnestra and of Medea reveal the feel-
ings of fierce resentment which were sometimes pro-
duced among Greek wives by the almost unlimited
indulgence that was accorded to their husbands;® and
1 Suet. Dom. viii. * Capitolinus, Macrinus.
5 Lampridius, A. Severus,
* In the oration against Newra, which is ascribed to Demosthenes, but
is of doubtful genuineness, the license accorded to husbands is spoken
of as a matter of course: ‘We keep mistresses for our pleasure, concubines
for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children, and to be
our faithful housekeepers.’
* There is a remarkable passage on the feelings of wives, in different
nations, upon this point, in Athenzus, xiii, 8. See, too, Plutarch, Cony.
Pree.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 331
it is told of Andromache, as the supreme instance of
her love of Hector, that she cared for his illegitimate
children as much as for her own.! In early Rome, the
obligations of husbands were never, I imagine, altogether
unfelt, but they were rarely or never enforced, nor were
they ever regarded as bearing any kind of equality to
those imposed upon the wife. The term adultery, and all
the legal penalties connected with it, were restricted to the
infractions by a wife of the nuptial tie. Among the
many instances of magnanimity recorded of Roman wives,
few are more touching than that of Tertia Aumilia, the
faithful wife of Scipio. She discovered that her husband
had become enamoured of one of her slaves; but she bore
her pain in silence, and when he died she gave liberty to
her captive, for she could not bear that she should remain
in servitude whom her dear lord had loved.?
Aristotle had clearly asserted the duty of husbands to
observe in marriage the same fidelity as they expected
from their wives,’ and at a later period both Plutarch and
Seneca enforced it in the strongest and most unequivocal
manner.* The degree to which, in theory at least, it won
1 Kuripid. Andromache. °
2 Valer. Max. vi. 7,§ 1. Some very scandalous instances of cynicism
on the part of Roman husbands are recorded. Thus, Augustus had many
_ mistresses, ‘Que [virgines] sibi undique etiam ab wrore conquirerentur’—
Sueton. Aug. Ixxi, When the wife of Verus, the colleague of Marcus Au-
relius, complained of the tastes of her husband, he answered, ‘Uxor enim
dignitatis nomen est, non voluptas.’—Spartian. Verus.
3 Aristotle, Econom. i. 4-8-9,
* Plutarch enforces the duty at length, in his very beautiful work on
marriage. In case husbands are guilty of infidelity, he recommends their
wives to preserve a prudent blindness, reflecting that it is out of respect
for them that they choose another woman as the companion of their intem-
perance. Seneca touches briefly, but unequivocally, on the subject: ‘ Scis
improbum esse qui ab uxore pudicitiam exigit, ipse alienarum corruptor
uxorum. Scis ut illi nil cum adultero, sic nihil tibi esse deberé cum pel-
lice.’ —Ep. xciy. ‘Sciet in uxorem grayissim m esse genus injurie, habere
pellicem.’—L£p. xcv.
332 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
its way in Roman life is shown ‘by its recognition as
a legal maxim by Ulpian,' and by its appearance in a
formal judgment of Antoninus Pius, who, while issuing,
at the request of a husband, a condemnation for adultery
against a guilty wife, appended to it this remarkable con-
dition: ‘ Provided always it is established that by your
life you gave her an example of fidelity. It would be
unjust that a husband should exact a fidelity he does not
himself keep.”
Another change, which may be dimly descried in the
later Pagan society, was a tendency to regard purity
rather in a mystical point of view, as essentially good,
than in the utilitarian point of view. This change resulted
chiefly from the rise of the Neoplatonic and Pythagorean
philosophies, which concurred in regarding the body,
with its passions, as essentially evil, and in representing
all virtue as a purification from its taint. Its most im-
portant consequence was a somewhat stricter view of
pre-nuptial unchastity, which in the case of men, and
when it was not excessive, and did not take the form of
adultery, had previously been uncensured, or was looked
upon with a disapprobation so shght as scarcely to
amount to censure. The elder Cato had expressly justi-
fied it,’ and Cicero has left us an extremely curious
judgment on the subject, which shows at a glance the feel-
ings of the people, and the vast revolution that, under the
influence of Christianity, has been effected in at least the
professions of mankind. ‘If there be any one,’ he says,
* ‘Periniquum enim videtur esse, ut pudicitiam vir ab uxore exigat,
quam ipse non exhibeat.’—Cod. Just. Dig. xlviii. 5-18. :
* Quoted by St. Augustine, De Conj. Adult. ii. 19, Plautus, long before,
had made one of his characters complain of the injustice of the laws which
punished unchaste wives but not unchaste husbands; and he asks why,
since every honest woman is contented with one husband, should not every
honest man be contented with one wife? (Mercator, Act iv. scene 5.)
$ Horace, Sat. i. 2.
chain
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 333
‘who thinks thats young men should be altogether re-
strained from the love of courtesans, he is indeed very
severe. Jam not prepared to deny his position; but he
differs not only from the license of our age, but also from
the customs and allowances of our ancestors. When,
indeed, was this not done? When was it blamed? When
was it not allowed? When was that which is now law-
ful not lawful?’!- Epictetus, who on most subjects was
among the. most austere of the stoics, recommends his
disciples to abstain, ‘as far as possible, from prenup-
tial connections, and at least from those which were
adulterous and unlawful, but not to blame those who were
less strict.” The feeling of the Romans is curiously exem-
plified in the life of Alexander Severus, who, of all the
emperors, was probably the most energetic in legislating
against vice. When appointing a provincial governor,
he was accustomed to provide him with horses and
servants, and, if he was unmarried, with a concubine,
‘because,’ as the historian very gravely observes, ‘ it was
impossible that he could exist without one.’ 3
What was written among the Pagans in opposition to
1 The efforts of the
saints to reclaim courtesans from the path of vice created
a large class of legends. St. Mary Magdalene, St. Mary
of Egypt, St. Afra, St. Pelagia, St. Thais, and St. Theodota,
in the early Church, as well as St. Marguerite of Cortona,
and Clara of Rimini, in the middle ages, had been cour-
tesans.* St. Vitalius was said to have been accustomed
every night to visit the dens of vice in his neighbourhood,
to give the inmates money to remain without sin for that
1 See Ceillier, Hust. des Auteurs ecclés. tome iii. p. 523.
* Thid. tome viii. pp. 204-207.
5 Among the Irish saints St. Colman is said to have had a girdle which
would only meet around the chaste, and was long preserved in Ireland as a
relic (Colgan, Acta Sanctorum Hibernic. (Louvain, 1645), vol. i. p. 246) ;
and St. Furseus a girdle that extinguished lust. (Ibid. p. 292.) The
girdle of St. Thomas Aquinas seems to have had some miraculous pro-
perties of this kind. (See his life in the Bollandists, Sept. 29.) Among
both the Greeks and Romans it was customary for the bride to be girt
with a girdle which the bridegroom unloosed in the nuptial bed, and hence
‘zonam solvere’ became a proverbial expression for ‘ pudicitiam mulieris
imminuere.’ (Nieupoort, De Ritibus Romanarum, p. 479; Alexander's
History of Women, vol. ii. p. 300.)
4 Vit. St. Pachom. (Rosweyde). * See his Life, by Gregory of Nyssa.
6 A little book has been written on these legends by M. Charles de
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 339
night, and to offer up prayers for their conversion.! It js
related of St. Serapion, that as he was passing through
a village in Egypt a courtesan beckoned to him. He
promised at a certain hour to visit her. He kept his
appointment, but declared that there was a duty which
his order imposed on him. He fell down on his knees
and began repeating the Psalter, concluding every psalm
with a prayer for his hostess. The strangeness of the
scene, and the solemnity of his tone and manner, overawed
and fascinated her. Gradually her tears began to flow.
She knelt beside him and began to join in his prayers.
He heeded her not, but hour after hour continued in
the same stern and solemn voice, without rest and with-
out interruption, to repeat his alternate prayers and psalms,
till her repentance rose to a paroxysm of terror, and as
the grey morning streaks began to illumine the horizon,
she fell half dead at his feet, imploring him with broken
sobs to lead her anywhere where she might expiate the
sins of her past.’
But the services rendered by the ascetics in imprinting
on the minds of men a profound and enduring conviction
of the importance of chastity, though extremely great,
were seriously counterbalanced by their noxious influence
upon marriage. Two or three beautiful descriptions of
this institution have been culled out of the immense
mass of the patristic writings;* but in general, it would be
Bussy, called Les Courtisanes saintes, There is said to be some doubt about
St. Afra, for while her acts represent her as a reformed courtesan, St. Fortu-
natus, in two lines he has devoted to her, calls her a virgin, (Ozanam,
Etudes german. tome ii. p. 8.)
? See the Vit. Sancti Joannis Eleemosynarit (Rosweyde).
* Tillemont, tome x. pp. 61-62. There is also a very picturesque legend
of the manner in which St. Paphnutius converted the courtesan Thais.
* See especially, Tertullian, 4d Uxorem, It was beautifully said at a
later period, that woman was not taken from the head of man, for she was
not intended to be his ruler, nor from his feet, for she was not intended
340 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,
difficult to conceive anything more coarse or more repul-
sive than the manner in which they regarded it! The
relation which nature has designed fot the noble purpose
of repairing the ravages of death, and which, as Linneeus
has shown, extends even through the world’ of flowers,
was invariably treated as a consequence of the fall of
Adam, and marriage was regarded almost exclusively in
its lowest aspect. The tender love which it elicits, the
holy and beautiful domestic qualities that follow in its
train, were almost absolutely omitted from consideration.?
The object of the ascetic was to attract men to a life of
virginity, and as a necessary consequence, marriage was
treated as an inferior state. It was regarded as being
necessary, indeed, and therefore justifiable, for the propa-
gation of the species, and to free men from greater evils;
but still as a condition of degradation from which all
who aspired to real sanctity could fly. To ‘ cut down by
the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage,’ was, in the
energetic language of St. Jerome, the end of the saint;
and if he consented to praise marriage, it was merely
because it produced virgins. Even when the bond had
been formed, the ascetic passion retained its sting. We
to be his slave, but from his side, for she was to be his companion and his
comfort. (Peter Lombard, Senten. lib. ii. dis. 18.) ?
‘ The reader may find many passages on this subject in Barbeyrac, Morale
des Peres, ii. § 7; iii. § 8; iv. § 81-85; vi. § 31; xiii. § 2-8,
* “It is remarkable how rarely, if ever (I cannot call to mind an
instance), in the discussions of the comparative merits of marriage and
celibacy the social advantages appear to have occurred to the mind. . . . It
is always argued with relation to the interests and the perfection of the indi-
vidual soul; and even with regard to that, the writers seem almost uncon-
scious of the softening and humanising effect of the natural affections, the
beauty of parental tenderness and filial love.’— Milman’s Hist, of Christianity,
vol, ill. p. 196.
* “Tempus breve est, et jam securis ad radices arborum posita est, quae
silvam legis et nuptiarum evangelica castitate succidat.’—Ep. exxiii.
' ‘Lando nuptias, laudo conjugium, sed quia mihi yirgines generant,’—
Ep. xxii, |
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 341
have already seen how it embittered other relations ot
domestic life. Into this, the holiest of all, it infused a
tenfold bitterness. Whenever any strong religious fervour
fell upon a husband or a wife, its first effect was to make
a happy union impossible. The more religious partner
immediately desired to live a life of solitary asceticism,
or at least, if no ostensible separation took place, an un-
natural life of separation in marriage. The immense
place this order of ideas occupies in the hortatory
writings of the fathers, and in the legends of the saints,
must be familiar to all who have any knowledge of this
department of literature. Thus—to give but a very few
examples—St. Nilus, when he had already two children,
was seized with a longing for the prevailing asceticism,
and his wife was persuaded, after many tears, to consent
to their separation. St. Ammon, on the night of his
marriage, proceeded to greet his bride with an harangue
upon the evils of the married state, and they agreed, in
consequence, at once to separate.” St. Melania laboured
long and earnestly to induce her husband to allow her to
tlesert his bed, before he would consent.’ St. Abraham
ran away from his wife on the night of his marriage.‘
St. Alexis, according to a somewhat later legend, took
the same step, but many years after returned from
Jerusalem to his father’s house, in which his wife was
still lamenting her desertion, begged and received a
lodging as an act of charity, and lived there despised,
unrecognised, and unknown till his death.’ St. Gregory
1 See Ceillier, Aetews ecclés, xiii. p. 147. 2 Socrates, iv. 23.
> Palladius, Hist. Laus, cxix. * Vit. S. Abr. (Rosweyde), cap, i.
* I do not know when this legend first appeared. I know it from two
sources. M. Littré mentions having found it in a French MS. of the
eleventh century (Littré, Les Barbares, pp. 123-124); and it also forms
the subject of a very curious fresco, imagine of a somewhat earlier date,
which was discovered, within the last few years, in the subterranean church
342 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
of Nyssa—who was so unfortunate as to be married—
wrote a glowing eulogy of virginity, in the course of
which he mournfully observed, that this privileged state
could never be his. He resembled, he assures us, an ox
that was ploughing a field, the fruit of which he must
never enjoy ; or a thirsty man, who was gazing on a stream
of which he never can drink; or a poor man, whose
poverty seems the more bitter as he contemplates the
wealth of his neighbours; and he proceeded to descant
in feeling terms upon the troubles of matrimony.
Nominal marriages, in which the partners agreed to shun
the marriage bed, became not uncommon. The empe-
ror Henry II., Edward the Confessor, of England, and
Alphonso II. of Spain, gave examples of it. A very
famous and rather picturesque history of this kind is
related by Gregory of Tours. A rich young Gaul, named
Injuriosus, led to his home a young bride to whom he
was passionately attached. That night, she confessed to
him with tears, that she had vowed to keep her virginity,
and that she regretted bitterly the marriage into which
her love for him had betrayed her. He told her that
they should remain united, but that she should still ob-
serve her vow; and he fulfilled his promise. When, after
several years, she died, her husband, in laying her in the
tomb, declared with great solemnity, that he restored
her to God as immaculate as he had received her; and
then a smile lit up the face of the dead woman, and she
said, ‘Why do you tell that which no one asked you?’
The husband soon afterwards died, and a wall, which had
been built to separate his tomb from that of his wife, was
removed by the angels.”
of St. Clement at Rome. An account of it is given by Father Mullooly,
in his interesting little book about the Church.
' De Virgin. cap. iii. * Greg. Tur, i, 42,
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 343
The extreme disorders which such teaching produced
in domestic life, and also the extravagancies which orew
up among some heretics, naturally alarmed the more judi-
cious leaders of the Church, and it was ordained that
married persons should not enter into an ascetic life,
except by mutual consent! The ascetic ideal, however,
remained unchanged. To abstain from marriage, or in
marriage to abstain from a perfect union, was regarded
as a proof of sanctity, and marriage was viewed in its
coarsest and most degraded form. ‘The notion of its im-
purity took many forms, and exercised for some centuries
an extremely wide influence over the Church. Thus, it
was the custom during the middle ages to abstain from
the marriage bed during the night after the ceremony, in
honour of the sacrament.? It was expressly enjoined that
no married persons should participate in any of the ereat
Church festivals, if the night before they had lain together,
and St. Gregory the Great tells of a young wife who was
possessed -by a deemon, because she had taken part in a
procession of St. Sebastian, without fulfilling this condi-
tion.’ ‘The extent to which the feeling on the subject was
carried is shown by the famous vision of Alberic in the
twelfth century, in which a special place of torture, con-
sisting of a lake of mingled lead, pitch, and resin is repre-
sented as existing in hell for the punishment of married
people who had lain together on Church festivals or fast
days.4 hes
Two other consequences of this way of regarding
marriage were a very strong disapproval of second mar-
riages, and a very strong desire to secure celibacy in the
clergy. The first of these notions had existed, though in
* The regulations on this point are given at length in Bingham.
* Muratori, Antich. Ital. diss. xx. ° St. Greg. Dial. i. 10.
* Delepierre, L’Enfer décrit par ceux qui Vont vu, pp. 44-56.
56
o44 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
a very different form, and connected with very different
motives, among the early Romans, who were accustomed,
we are told, to honour with the crown of modesty those
who were content with one marriage, and to regard many
marriages as a sign of illegitimate intemperance! This
opinion appears to have chiefly grown out of a very deli- —
cate and touching feeling which had taken deep root in
the Roman mind, that the affection a wife owes her
husband is so profound and so pure, that it must not
cease even with his death; that it should guide and con-
secrate all her subsequent life, and that it never can be
transferred to another object. Virgil, in very beautiful
lines, puts this sentiment into the mouth of Dido;? and
several examples are recorded of Roman wives, sometimes
in the prime of youth and beauty, upon the death of their
husbands, devoting the remainder of their lives to retire-
ment, and to the memory of the dead. Tacitus held up
the Germans as in this eda a model to his countrymen,'
and the epithet ‘univiree’ inscribed on many Roman tombs
shows how this devotion was practised and valued.5 The
family of Camillus was especially honoured for the absence
of second marriages among its members. ‘To love a
wife when living,’ said one of the latest of Roman poets,
‘is a pleasure; to love her when dead is an act of reli-
gion.’“ In the case of men, the propriety of abstaining
from second marriages was probably not felt as strongly
as in the case of women, and what feeling on the subject
existed was chiefly due to another motive--afaenee for
* Val. Max. ii. 1. § 3.
2 ‘Tile meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit; ille habeat secum, servetque sepulchro. '__ Ain, iv. 28,
° E.g., the wives of Lucan, Drusus, and Pompey.
Tacit, German. xix.
Friedlander, tome i. p. 411. 6 Hieron. Lp. liv.
‘Uxorem vivam amare voluptas ;
Defunctam religio.’—Statius, Sylv. v. in procemio,
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 346
the children, whose interests it was thought might be
injured by a stepmother.1
The sentiment which thus recoiled from second mar-
riages passed with a vastly increased strength into ascetic
Christianity, but it was based upon altogether different
grounds. | The first change, we may observe, is that an
affectionate remembrance of the husband has altogether
vanished from the motives of the abstinence. In the next
place, we may remark that these writers, in perfect con-
formity with the extreme coarseness of their views about
the sexes, almost invariably assumed that the motive to
second or third marriages must be simply the force of
the animal passions. The Montanists and the Novatians
absolutely condemned second marriages.” The orthodox
pronounced them lawful, on account of the weakness of
human nature, but they viewed them with the most em-
phatic disapproval,’ partly because they considered them
manifest signs of incontinence, and partly because they
regarded them as incompatible with the doctrine of mar-
riage being an emblem of the union of Christ with the
Church. The language of the Fathers on this subject
appears to a modern mind most extraordinary, and, but
for their distinct and reiterated assertion that they con-
sidered these marriages permissible, would appear to
* By one of the laws of Charondas it was ordained that those who
cared so little for the happiness of their children as to place a stepmother
over them, should be excluded from the councils of the State. (Diod. Sic.
mii.3 12.) :
* Tertullian expounded the Montanist view in his treatise, De Monogamia.
* A full collection of the statements of the Fathers on this subject is
given by Perrone, De Matrimonio, lib. iii. See. I.; and by Natalis Alexander,
List. Eccles. Seec. II. dissert. 18,
* Thus, to give but a single instance, St. J erome, who was one of their
strongest opponents, says: ‘Quid igitur? damnamus secunda matrimonia ?
Minime, sed prima laudamus. Abjicimus de ecclesia digamos? absit; sed
monogamos ad continentiam provocamus. In arca Noe non solum munda
sed et immunda fuerunt animalia.’—Zp, cxxiii,
346 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
amount to a peremptory condemnation. Thus—to give
but a few samples—digamy, or second marriage, is de-
scribed by Athanagoras as ‘ a decent adultery ;’* ‘ fornica-
tion,’ according to Clement of Alexandria, ‘is a lapse
from one marriage into many.’? ‘The first Adam,’ said
St. Jerome, ‘had one wife; the second Adam had no
wife. They who approve of digamy hold forth a third —
Adam, who was twice married, whom they follow.’
‘Consider,’ he again says, ‘ that she who has been twice
married, though she be an old, and decrepit, and poor
woman, is not deemed worthy to receive the charity of the
Church. But if the bread of charity is taken from her,
how much more that bread which descends from heaven !’ 4
Digamists, according to Origen, ‘are saved in the name
of Christ, but are by no means crowned by him.’® ‘By
this text, said St. Gregory Nazianzen, speaking of St.
Paul’s comparison of marriage to the union of Christ with
the Church, ‘second marriages seem to me to be re-
proved. If there are two Christs there may be two
husbands or two wives. If there is but one Christ, one
Head of the Church, there is but one flesh—a second is
repelled. But if he forbids a second, what is to be said
of third marriages? The first is law, the second is pardon
and indulgence, the third is iniquity ; but he who exceeds
this number is manifestly bestial.’* The collective judg-
ment of the ecclesiastical authorities on this subject is
shown by the rigid exclusion of digamists from the priest-
hood, and from all claim to the charity of the Church, and
by the decrees of more than one Council, which ordained
that a period of penance should be imposed upon all
who married a second time, before they were admitted to
1 In Legat. 2 Strom. lib. iii.
3 Contra Jovin. i. 4 Ibid. See, too, Lp. exxm.
5 Hom. xvii. in Luce. © Orat, xxxi,
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 347
communion.! One of the canons of the Council of Tliberis,
in the beginning of the fourth century, while in general
condemning baptism by laymen, permitted it in case of
extreme necessity; but provided that even then it was
indispensable that the officiating layman should not have
been twice married? Among the Greeks fourth mar-
rages were at one time deemed absolutely unlawful, and
much controversy was excited by the emperor Leo the
Wise, who, having had three wives, had taken a mistress,
but afterwards, in defiance of the religious feelings of
his people, determined to raise her to the position of a
wife?
The subject of the celibacy of the clergy, in which the
ecclesiastical feelings about marriage were also shown, is
an extremely large one, and I shall not attempt to deal
with it, except in a most cursory manner.! There are
two facts connected with it, which every candid student
must admit. The first is, that in the earliest period
of the Church, the privilege of marriage was freely
accorded to the clergy. The second is, that a notion of
the impurity of marriage existed, and it was felt that the
clergy, as pre-eminently the holy class, should have less
license than laymen. The first form this feeling took
* See on this decree, Perrone, De Matr. iii. § 1, art. 1; Natalis Alex-
ander, Hist. Eccles, § ii, dissert. 18. The penances are said not to imply
that the second marriage was a sin, but that the moral condition that made
it necessary was a bad one.
* Cone. Illib. can. xxxviii. Bingham thinks the feeling of the Council
to have been, that if baptism was not administered by a priest, it should at
all events be administered by one who might have been a priest.
* Perrone, De Matrimonio, tome iii. p. 102.
* This subject has recently been treated with very great learning and with
admirable impartiality by an American author, Mr. Henry C. Lea, in hig
flistory of Sacerdotal Celibacy (Philadelphia, 1867 ), which is certainly one
of the most valuable works that America has produced. Since the great
history of Dean Milman, I know no work in English which has thrown
more light on the moral condition of the middle ages, and none which is
848 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS.
appears to have been the strong conviction that a second
marriage of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a
widow, was unlawful and criminal.! This belief seems
to have existed from the earliest period of the Church,
and was retained with great tenacity and unanimity
through many centuries. In the next place, we find, from
an extremely early date, an opinion prevailing first of all,
that it was an act of virtue, and then that it was an act of
duty, for priests after ordination to abstain from cohabiting
with their wives. The Council of Nice refrained, at the
advice of Paphnutius, who was himself a scrupulous celi-
-bate, from imposing this last rule as a matter of necessity;?
but in the course of the fourth century it was a recognised
principle that clerical marriages were criminal. They
were celebrated, however, habitually, and usually with
the greatest openness. The various attitudes assumed by
the ecclesiastical authorities in dealing with this subject
form an extremely curious page of the -history of morals,
and supply the most crushing evidence of the evils which
have been produced by the system of celibacy. I can at
present, however, only refer to the vast mass of evidence
which has been collected on the subject, derived from the
more fitted to dispel the gross illusions concerning that period which
Positive writers, and writers of a certain ecclesiastical school, have conspired
to sustain.
* See Lea, p. 36. The command of St. Paul, that a bishop or deacon
should be the husband of one wife (1 Tim. iii. 2-12) was believed by all
ancient and by many modern commentators to be prohibitory of second —
marriages; and this view is somewhat confirmed by the widows who were
to be honoured and supported by the Church, being only those who had
but once married (1 Tim. v. 9). See Pressensé, Hist. des trois premiers
Siécles (1** série), tome ii. p. 233. Among the Jews it was ordained that
the high priest should not marry a widow. (Levit. xxi. 18-14.)
* Socrates, H, #.i.11. The Council of Iliberis (can. xxxiii.) had or-
dained this, but both the precepts and the practice of divines varied greatly.
A brilliant summary of the chief facts is given in Milman’s History of
Early Christianity, vol. iii. pp. 277-282.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 349
writings of Catholic divines and from the decrees of Catho-
lic Councils during the space of many centuries. It is a
popular illusion, which is especially common among writers
who have little direct knowledge of the middle ages, that
the atrocious immorality of monasteries, in the century be-
fore the Reformation, was a new fact, and that the ages
when the faith of men was undisturbed, were ages of great
moral purity. In fact, it appears from the uniform tes-
timony of the ecclesiastical writers, that the ecclesiastical
immorality of the eighth and three following centuries was
little if at all less outrageous than in any other period, while
the Papacy, during almost the whole of the tenth century,
was held by men ae infamous lives. Simony was nearly
universal.* Barbarian chieftains married at an early age,
and, totally incapable of restraint, occupied the leading
positions in the Church, and gross irregularities speedily
became general. An Italian bishop of the tenth century
epigrammatically described the morals of his time, when he
declared, that if he were to enforce the canons against
-unchaste people administering ecclesiastical rites, no one
would be left in the Church except the boys; and if he
were to observe the canons against bastards, these also
must be excluded.? The evil acquired such magnitude,
that a great feudal clergy, bequeathing the ecclesiastical
benefices from father to son, appeared more than once
likely to arise.®
Marriage, how regarded by the Jews,
Greeks, Romans, and Catholics,i. 106,
107. Statius’ picture of the first night
of marriage, 111, ote. Reason why
the ancient Jews attached a certain
stigma to virginity, 112. Conflict of
views of the Catholic priest and the
political economist on the subject of
early marriages, 118. Results in
some countries of the difficulties with
which legislators surround marriage,
-151. Early marriages the most con-
spicuous proofs of Irish improvidence,
151. Influence of asceticism on, ii.
339. Notions of its impurity, 343.
Second marriages, 343
Marseilles, law of, respecting suicide, 1.
230, note, Epidemic of suicide among
the women of, ii. 58
Martial, sycophancy of his epigrams, i.
204
volence to
411
MIR
Martin of Tours, St., establishes mona-
chism in Gaul, ii. 113
Martyrdom, glories of, to the early
Christian, 1. 415. Festivals of the
martyrs, 415, note. Passion for, 416,
Dissipation of the people at the fes-
tivals, ii. 159
Mary, St., of Egypt, 1. 118
Mary, the Virgin, veneration of the, 11,
389, 390
Massilians, wine forbidden to women
by the, 1. 96, note,
Maternal affection, strength of, 11. 27,
note.
Maurice, Mr., on the social penalties of
conscience, i. 62, note.
Mauricius, Junius, his refusal to allow
gladiatorial shows at Vienna, i. 303
Maxentius, instance of his tyranny, il.
49,
Maximilianus, his martyrdom, ii. 263
Maximinius, Emperor, his persecution
of the Christians, i. 472
Maximus of Tyr, account of him and
his discourses, 1.331. His defence of
the ancient creeds, 343. Practical
form of his philosophy, 349
Medicine, possible progress of, i. 166,
167
Melania, St., her bereavement, ii. 10.
Her pilgrimage through the Syrian
and Egyptian hermitages, 128
Milesians, wine forbidden by the, to
women 1. 96, note ;
Military honour pre-eminent among the
Romans, i. 181,182. History of the de-
cadence of Roman military virtue, 284
Mill, J., on association, 25, note et seq.
Mill, J. S., quoted, i. 8, 30, 49, 92, 105
Minerva, meaning of, according to the
Stoics, i. 171
Miracles, general incredulity on the sub-
ject of, at the present time, i, 368,
370. Miracles not impossible, 368,
Established by much evidence, 369.
The histories of them always decline
with education, 370. Illustration of
this in the belief in fairies, 370. Con-
ceptions of savages, 371. Legends,
formation and decay of, 372-374.
Common errors in reasoning about
miracles, 880. Predisposition to the
miraculous in some states of society,
385. Belief of the Romans in mi-
racles, 386-391. Incapacity of the
Christians of the third century for
judging historic miracles, 899. Con-
temporary miracles believed in by
the early Christians, 401. Exorcism
412 INDEX.
MIS
401. Neither past nor contemporary
Christian miracles had much weight
upon the pagans, 401
Missionary labours, ii. 261
Mithra, worship of, in Rome, i. 411
Molinos, his opinion on the love we
should bear to God condemned, i. 19,
note
Monastic system, results of the Catho-
lic monastic system, i. 111. Suicide
of monks, ii. 55. Exertions of the
monks in the cause of charity, 89.
Causes of the monastic movement,
108. History of the rapid propaga-
tion of it in the West, 194. New
value placed by it on obedience and
humility, 196, 285. Relation of it
to the intellectual virtues, 200. The
monasteries regarded as the recep-
tacles of learning, 212. Fallacy of
attributing to the monasteries the
genius that was displayed in theology, -
221, Other fallacies concerning the
services of the monks, 221-225,
Value attached by monks to pecuniary
compensations for crime, 226. Causes
of their corruption, 230. Benefits con-
ferred by the monasteries, 257.
Monica, St., i. 96, note
Monogamy, establishment of, ii. 294
Monophysites, the cause, to some ex-
tent, of the Mohammedan conquest of
Egypt, ii. 152
Montanists, their tenets, ii, 109
Moral distinctions, rival claims of intu-
ition and utility to be regarded as the
supreme regulators of, i. 1
Moral judgments, alleged diversities of,
i, 93. Are frequently due to intel-
lectual causes, 94. Instances of this
in ‘usury and abortion, 94. Dis-
tinction between natural duties and
others resting on positive law, 95.
Ancient customs canonised by time,
95. Anomalies explained by a con-
fused. association of ideas, 96, ,97.
Moral perceptions overridden by posi-
tive religions, 98. Instances of this
in transubstantiation and the Augus-
tinian and Calyinistic doctrines of
damnation, 98, 99. General moral
principles alone revealed by intuition,
102. The moral unity of different
ages is therefore a unity not of stan-
dard but of tendency, 103. Applica-
tion of this theory to the history of
benevolence, 103. Reasons why acts
regarded in one age as criminal are
innocent in another, 104. Views of
MUT
Mill and Buckle on the comparative
influence of intellectual and moral
agencies in civilisation, 105, mote.
Intuitive morals not. unprogressiye,
105, 106. Answers to miscellaneous
objections against the theory of natural
moral perceptions, 118. Effect of the
condition of society on the standard,
but not the essence, of virtue, 114.
Occasional duty of sacrificing higher
duties to lower ones, 114 e¢ Seq.
Summary of the relations of virtue
and public and private interest, 121.
Two senses of the word natural, 123
Moral law, foundation of the, according
to Ockham and his adherents, i. 17,
and mote. Various views of the
sanctions of morality, 20. Utilitarian
theological sanctions, 54. The reality
of the moral nature the one great
question of natural theology, 58.
Utilitarian secular sanctions, 59. The
Utilitarian theory subversive of mo-
rality, 68. Plausibility and danger
of theories of unification in morals,
73. Our knowledge of the laws of
~ moral progress nothing more than
approximate or general, 142
‘Moral sense,’ Hutcheson’s doctrine of
age
Moral system, what it should be, to go-
vern society, i. 204 ene
Morals, each of the two schools of, re-
lated to the general condition of so-
ciety, 1.127. Their relations to me-
taphysical schools, 128,129. And to
the Baconian philosophy, 130. Con-
trast between ancient and modern
civilisations, 180-132. Causes that
lead societies to eleyate their moral
standard, and determine their pre-
ference of some particular kind of
virtues, 185. The order in which
moral feelings are developed, 135.
Danger in proposing too absolutely
a single character as a model to which
all men must conform, 163. Remarks
on moral types, 164. Results to be
expected from the study of the rela-
tions between our physical and moral
nature, 167. Little influence of Pagan
religions on morals, 169
Moralists, business of, i. 2. Their dis-
position to resent any charge against
the principles they advocate, 2
More, Henry, his doctrine of the motive
to virtue, i. 78
Musonius, his suicide, i. 232
Mutius, history of him and his son, ii.133
a
INDEX.
MYS
Mysticism of the Romans, causes pro-
ducing, i. 337, 338
Myths, formation of, i. 373. The age of
myths closed by education, 374
APLES, mania for suicide at, il.
58
Napoleon the Emperor, his order of the
day respecting suicide, i. 230, note
Nations, causes of the difficulties of
effecting cordial international friend-
ships, 1. 164
Natural moral perceptions, objections to
the theory of, 1.121. Two senses of
the word natural, 123. Reid, Sedg-
wick, and Leibnitz on the natural or
innate powers of man, 125, note.
Locke’s refutation of the doctrine of
a natural moral sense, 129.
Neoplatonism, account of, i. 345. Its
destruction of the active duties and
critical spirit, 350
Neptune, views of the Stoics of the
meaning of the legends of, i. 171. His
- statue solemnly degraded by Augustus,
178
Nero, his singing and acting, 1.274. His
law as to slaves, 326. His persecn-
tion of the Christians, 456
Newman, Dr., on venial sin, i. 115, and
note on pride, ii. 199
Nicodemus, apocryphal gospel of, ii. 224
Nilus, St., deserts his family, ii. 341
Nitria, number of anchorites in the
desert of, ii. 112
Nolasco, Peter, his works of mercy, ii.
77. His participators in the Albi-
gensian massacres, 202
Novatians, their tenets, ii. 109
Numa, legend of his prohibition of idols,
1.175, note
ATH, sanctity of an, among the
Romans, i. 176
Obedience, new value placed upon it by
monachism, ii. 196, 197, 285
Obligation, nature of, i. 66-68
Ockham, his opinion of the foundation
of the moral law, i. 17 and note
Odin, his suicide, ii. 57
O’Neale, Shane, his charity, ii. 102
Opinion, influence of character on, i.
180, 181
Oracles, refuted and ridiculed by Cicero,
i, 178. Plutarch’s defence of their
bad poetry, 173, note. Refusal of
Cato and the Stoics to consult them,
418
PAS
174. Ridicule of the Roman wits of
them, 174. Answer of the oracle of
Delphi as to the best religion, 175.
Theory of the oracles in the ‘ De
Divinatione’ of Cicero, 391, and note.
Van Dale’s denial of their super-
natural character, 398. Books of
oracles burnt under the republic and
empire, 476, and note
Origen, his desire for martyrdom, i. 415
Orphanotrophia, in the early Church, ii.
34
Otho, the Emperor, his suicide, i. 231.
Opinion of his contemporaries of his
act, 231, note
Ovid, object of his ‘Metamorphoses,’ i.
174. His condemnation of suicide,
224, 225, note. His humanity to ani-
mals, ii. 175.
Oxen, laws for the protection of, ii. 172
Oxyrinchus, ascetic life in the city of,
i1..112.
ACHOMIUS, St., number of his
monks, ii. 112
Peetus and Arria, history of, ii. 328
Pagan religions, their feeble influence on
morals, i. 169
Pagan virtues, the, compared with
Christian, i. 200
Paiderastia, the, of the Greeks, ii. 311
Pain, equivalent to evil, according to the
Utilitarians, i. 8, note
Palestine, foundation of monachism in,
ii. 1138. Becomes a hot-bed of de-
bauchery, 161
Paley, on the obligation of virtue, i. 14.
On the difference between an act of
prudence and an act of duty, 16, note.
On the love we ought to bear to Ged,
18, note. Of the religious sanctions
of morality, 20. On the doctrine of
association, 1.25, note. On flesh diet,
1. 50, note. On the influence of health
on happiness, i. 90, note. On the
difference in pleasures, 92, note
Pambos, St., story of, 128, note
Pammachus, St., his hospital, 11. 85
Panetius, the founder of the Roman
Stoics, his dishelief in the immorta-
lity of the soul, i. 193
Pandars, puvishment of, ii. 835
Parents, reason why the murder of, was
not regarded as criminal, i. 104
Parthenon, the, at Athens, i. 108
Pascal, his advocacy of piety as a mat-
ter of prudence, 1. 17, ote. His ad-
herence to the opinion of Ockham as
414 INDEX,
PAT
to the foundation of the moral law,
17, note. His thought on the humi-
liation created by deriving pleasure
from certain amusements, 1. 88
Patriotism, period when it flourished,
1. 142. Peculiar characteristic of
the “virtue, 186; 187. Catises of
the predominance occasionally ac-
corded to civic virtues, 211. Neglect
or discredit into which they have
fallen among modern teachers, 211.
Cicero’s remarks on the duty of every
good man, 212. Unfortunate relations
of Christianity to patriotism, ii. 149.
Repugnance of the theological to the
patriotic spirit, 154.
Paul, St., his definition of conscience,
1. 85
Paul, the hermit, hig flight to the desert,
i. 109. Legend of the visit of St. An-
tony to him, 167
Paul, St. Vincent de, his foundling hospi-
tals, 11. 86
Paula, story of her asceticism and in-
humanity, ii. 141, 142
Paulina, her devotion to her husband,
ll. 828
Pelagia, St., her suicide, ii. 49. Her
flight to the desert, 129, and note
Pelagius, ii. 236
Pelican, legend of the, ii. 171
Penances of the saints of the desert, ii.
114, et seq ’
Penitential system, the, of the early
church, ii. 7, 8
Pepin, his compact with Pope Leo, ii. 283
Peregrinus the Cynic, his suicide, i. 282
Pericles, his humanity, i. 240
Perpetua, St., her martyrdom, i. 415,
472: ii: 336
Persecutions, Catholic doctrines justify-
ing, 100, 101. Why Christianity was
not crushed by. them, 420. Many
causes of persecution, 420-422, Rea-
sons why the Christians were more
persecuted than the Jews, 428, 431,
433. Causes of the persecutions, 432,
et seg. History of the persecutions,
456. Nero, 456. Domitian, 458.
Trajan, 465. Marcus Aurelius, 467,
669. From M. Aurelius to Decius,
470, e¢ seg. Gallus, i. 482. Vale-
rian, 483. Diocletian and Gale-
rius, 487-492. End of the persecu-
tions, 492. General considerations
on their history, 492-498,
Peter, St., his married life, ii. 109
Petronian law, in favour of slaves, i.
825
PLA
Petronius, his scepticism, i. 171, His
suicide, 226. His condemnation of
the show of the arena, i. 803
Philip the Arab, his fayour to Chris-
tianity, i. 473 |
Philosophers, efforts of some, to restore
the moral influence of religion among
the Romans, i. 178. The true moral
teachers, 180
Philosophical truth, characteristics of,
1.145, 146. Its growth retarded by
the opposition of theologians, 146
Philosophy, causes of the practical cha-
racter of most ancient, i. 212. Its
fusion with religion, 382. Opinions
of the early Church concerning the
pagan writings, 364. Difference be-
tween the moral teaching of a philo-
sophy and that of a religion, it. 1.
Its impotency to restrain vice, 4,
Phocas, attitude of the Church towards
him, ii. 279
Phocion, his gentleness, i. 240
6s, used for ‘man,’ i. 349
Phrynicus, cause of his exile, i. 241
Physical science affects the belief in
miracles, 376, 377
Piety, utilitarian view of the causes of
the pleasures and pains of, i. 9, and
note. A matter of prudence, according
to theological Utilitarianism, 17
Pilate, Pontius, story of his desire to en-
rol Christ among the Roman gods, i.
456
Pilgrimages, evils of, ii. 161.
Pior, St., story of, ii. 137
Pirates, destruction of, by Pompey, i.
247
Pity, a form of self-loye, according to
some Utilitarians, i. 9, 10, note. Adam
Smith’s theory, 10, xote. Seneca’s
distinction between it and clemency,
199. Altar to Pity at Athens, 240,
241. History of Marcus Aurelius’
altar to Beneficentia at Rome, 241,
note
Plato, his admission of the practice of
abortion, i. 94. Basis of his moral
system, 109. Cause of the banish-
ment of the poets from his republic,
169, 170. His theory that vice is
to virtue what disease is to health,
188, and note. Reason for his advo-
cacy of community of wives, 211,
His condemnation of Suicide, 228,
224, note. His remarks on universal
brotherhood, 255. His ineuleation of
the practice of self-examination, 262
Platonic school, its ideal, i. 342.
pe
a
‘2
i -
ee ee
ae ee ee) oe ee
INDEX.
PLA
Platonists, their more or less pantheistic
conception of the Deity,i.171. Prac-
tical nature of their philosophy, 349.
The Platonie ethics again in the
ascendant in Rome, 351.
Pleasure the only good, according to the
Utilitarians, 1. 8. Illustrations of
the distinction between the higher
and lower parts of our nature in our
pleasures, 85-87. Pleasures of a
civilised compared with those of a
semi-civilised society, 89. Compari-
son of mental and physical pleasures,
89, 90. Distinction in kind of plea-
sure, and its importance in morals,
92,93. Neglected or denied by uti-
litarian writers, 92, note.
Pliny, the elder, on the probable happi-
ness of the lower animals, i. 89, note.
On the Deity, 172. On astrology
179 and note, 172, note. His dis-
belief in the immortality of the soul,
192. His advocacy of suicide, 227.
Never mentions Christianity, 357.
His opinion of earthquakes, 392.
‘And of comets, 392. His facility of
belief, 398. His denunciation of
finger rings, 157.
Pliny, the younger, his desire for post—
humous reputation, i. 194 note. His
picture of the ideal of Stoicism, 196.
His letter to Trajan respecting the
Christians, 464. His benevolence,
256, i. 82
Plotinus, his condemnation of suicide,
i, 225. His philosophy, 351
Plutarch, his defence of the bad poetry
of the oracles, 173, note. His mode
of moral teaching, 183. Basis of his
belief in the immortality of the soul,
215. His denunciation of the effect
of the superstitious terrors of death
upon the people, 217. His letter on
the death of his little daughter, 256.
May justly be regarded as the leader
of the eclectic school, 256. His philo-
sophy and works compared with those
of Seneca, 256, 257. His treatise on
‘The Signs of Moral Progress, 263.
Compared and contrasted with Mar-
cus Aurelius, 267. How he regarded
the games of the arena, 303. His
defence of the ancient creeds, 342.
Practical nature of his philosophy,
349. Never mentions Christianity,
357. His remarks on the domestic
system of the ancients, 445. On
kindness to animals, ii. 175,177. His
picture of Greek married life, 306
415
PRO
Pluto, meaning of, according to the
Stoics, i. 171
Po, miracle of the subsidence of the
waters of the, 1. 406 note
Peemen, St., story of, and of his mother,
11.137. Legend of him and the lion,
179
Political economy, what it has accom-
plished respecting almsgiving, ii. 96
Political judgments, moral standard of
most men in, lower than in private
judgments, i. 158
Political truth, or habit of ‘ fair play,’
the characteristic of free communities,
i. 145. Highly civilised form of
society to which it belongs, 146. Its
growth retarded by the opposition of
theologians, 146
Polybius, his praise of the devotion and
purity of creed of the Romans, i. 175,
176
Polycarp, St., martyrdom of, i. 469
Polygamy, long continuance of, among
the kings of Gaul, ii. 363
Pompeii, gladiatorial shows at, i. 292
Pompey, his destruction of the pirates,
i. 247. His multiplication of gladia-
torial shows, 289
Poor-law system, elaboration of the,
il. 103. Its pernicious results, 103,
105 }
Poppa, Empress, a Jewish proselyte, i.
410
Porcia, heroism of, ii. 327
Porphyry, his condemnation of suicides,
1. 225. His description of philosophy,
1.346. His adoption of Neoplatonism,
1. 351 3
Possevin, his exposure of the Sibylline
books, i. 401
Pothinus, martyrdom of, i. 470
Power, origin of the desire of, i. 24,
26
Praise, association of ideas leading to
the desire for even posthumous, i,
27
Prayer, reflex influence exercised by,
upon the minds of the worshippers, i.
36, 37
Preachers, Stoic, among the Romans, i.
327, 328
Pride, contrasted with vanity, i. 205.
The leading moral agent of Stoicism,
1. 205
Prometheus, cause of the admiration be-
stowed upon, 1. 35
Prophecies, incapacity of the Christians
of the third century for judging pro-
phecies, i. 399, 400
416 INDEX,
PRO
Prophecy, gift of, attributed to the vestal
virgins of Rome, i.110. Andin India
to virgins, 110, note
Prosperity, some crimes conducive to
national, i.60. Cases of Rome and
Prussia, 60, note
Prostitution, ii. 299-303.
garded by the Romans, 334.
Protagoras, his scepticism, i. 170
Protasius, St., miraculous discovery of
his remains, i. 403
Prudentius, on the vestal virgins at the
gladiatorial shows, i. 291
Purgatory, doctrine of, ii. 246-249,
Pythagoras, his saying as to truth and
doing good, i. 54. Chastity the lead-
ing virtue of his school, 109. On
the fables of Hesiod and Homer, 169.
His belief in an all-pervading soul of
nature, 170. His condemnation of
suicide, 223. Tradition of his jour-
ney to India, 242, note. His inculea-
tion of the practice of self-examina-
tion, 262. His opinion of earthquakes,
392. His doctrine of kindness to
animals, ii. 176.
How re-
Qe compared with some of
the early Christians, ii. 12, and note
Quintilian, his conception of the Deity,
iy by
ANK, secular, consecration of, ii.
275, et seq.
Rape, punishment for, ii, 335
Redbreast, legend of the, ii. 238, note
Regulus, the story of, i. 224 j
Reid, basis of his ethics, i. 78. His
distinction between innate faculties
evolved by experience and innate
ideas independent of experience, 125,
note .
Religion, theological utilitarianism sub-
verts natural, i. 56-58. Answer of
the oracle of Delphi as to the best,
175. Difference between the moral
teaching of a philosophy and that of
a religion, ii. 1. Relations between
positive religion and moral enthu-
silasm, 150
Religions, pagan, their small influence
on morals, i. 169. Oriental, passion
for, among the Romans, 337
Religious liberty totally destroyed by
the Catholics, ii. 206-212
Repentance for past sin, no place for,
in the writings of the ancients, i, 205
ROM
Reputation, how valued among the Ro-
mans, 1. 194, 195
Resurrection of. souls, belief of the
Stoics in the, i. 173
Revenge, utilitarian notions as to the
feeling of, 1.42, and mote. Circum-
stances under which private vengeance
is not regarded as criminal, i. 104
Reverence, utilitarian views of, i. 9, and
note. Causes of the diminution of
the spirit of, among mankind, 148,
149
Rewards and punishments in a future
life, doctrine of, destroyed by theo-
logical utilitarianism, i. 55
Rhetoricians, Stoical, account of the, of
Rome, i. 329.
Ricci, his work on Mendicaney, ii. 104
Rochefoucauld, La, on pity, quoted, i.
10, note. And on friendship, 10, 11,
note
Rogantinus, his passive life, i. 350
Roman law, its goldenage not Christian,
but pagan, ii, 44
Romans, abortion how regarded by the,
1. 94. Their law forbidding women
to taste wine, 95, 96, note. Reasons
why they did not regard the gladia-
torial. shows as criminal, 104. Their
law of marriage and ideal of female
morality, 107. Their religious reve-
rence for domesticity, 109. Sanctity
of, and gifts attributed to, their vestal
virgins, 109,110. Character of their
cruelty, 140. Compared with the
modern Italian character in this re-
spect, 140. Scepticism of their philo-
sophers, 170-176. The religion of
the Romans never a source of moral
enthusiasm, 176. Its character-
istics, 176, 177. Causes of the dis-
appearance of the religious reye-
rence of the people, 177. Efforts of
some philosophers and emperors to
restore the moral influence of reli-
gion, 178. Consummation of Roman
degradation, 178. Belief in astrolo-
gical fatalism, 179, 180. The Stoical
type of military and patriotic enthu-
slasm pre-eminently Roman, 181-183,
187. Importance of biography in
their moral teaching, 183. Epicu-
reanism never became a school of
virtue among them, 184. Unselfish
love of country of the Romans, 187.
Character of Stoicism in the worst
period of the Roman Empire, 191.
Main features of their philosophy,
194, e¢ seg. Difference between
ee ee ate ot ase an aa ak, ee
—
INDEX. 417
ROM
the Roman moralists and the Greek
poets, 206. The doctrine of suicide
the culminating point of Roman
Stoicism, 234. The type of ex-
cellence of the Roman people, 236,
237. Contrast between the activity
of Stoicism and the luxury of Roman
society, 238, 239. Growth of a
gentler and more cosmopolitan spirit
in Rome, 240. Causes of this change,
240, et seg. Extent of Greek influence
at Rome, 240. The cosmopolitan
spirit strengthened by the destruction
of the power of the aristocracy, 244,
245. History of the influence of
freedmen in the state, 246. Effect of
the aggrandisement of the colonies,
the attraction of many foreigners to
Rome, and the increased facilities for
travelling, on the cosmopolitan spirit,
246, et seg. Foreigners among the
most prominent of Latin writers, 248.
Results of the multitudes of emanci-
pated slaves, 248, 249. Endeayours
of Roman statesmen to consolidate
the empire by admitting the conquered
to the privileges of the conquerors,
251. ‘Lhe Stoical philosophy quite
capable of representing the cosmopo-
litan spirit, 253. Influence of eclectic
philosophy on the Roman Stoics, 258.
Life and character of Marcus Aurelius,
263-269. Corruption of the Roman
people, 270. Causes of their depra-
vity, 270. Decadence of all the con-
ditions of republican virtue, 271.
Effects of the Imperial system on
morals, 272-276. Apotheosis of the
emperors, 272. Moral consequences
of slavery, 277. Increase of idleness
and demoralising employment, 277.
Increase also of sensuality, 278. De-
struction of all public spirit, 279. The
interaction of many states which in
new nations sustains national life pre-
vented by universal empire, 280. The
decline of agricultural pursuits, 281.
And of the military virtues, 284. His-
tory and effects of the gladiatorial
shows, 287. Other Roman amuse-
ments, 292. Effects of the arena upon
the theatre, 293. Nobles in the arena,
300. Effects of Stoicism on the cor-
ruption of society, 309. Roman law
greatly extended by it, 312. Change
in the relation of Romans to proyvin-
cials, 315. Changes in domestic le-
gislation, 315. Roman slavery, 318-
827. The Stoics as consolers, ad-
SAI
visers, and preachers, 327. The Cy-
nics and rhetoricians, 328, 329. De-
cadence of Stoicism in the empire, 337.
Causes of the passion for Oriental re-
ligions, 337-339. Neoplatonism, 345.
Review of the history of Roman phi-
losophy, 352-356. History of the
conversion of Rome to Christianity,
357. State of Roman opinion on the
subject of miracles, 388. Progress of
the Jewish and Oriental religions in
Rome, 410, 411. The conversion of
the Roman empire easily explicable,
418. Review of the religious policy
of Rome, 423. Its division of reli-
gion into three parts, according to
Eusebius, 429. Persecutions of the
Christians, 432, e¢ seg. Antipathy of
the Romans to every religious system
which employed religious terrorism,
447, History of the persecutions,
456. General sketch of the moral
condition of the Western Empire, ii.
15. Rise and progress of the go-
vernment of the Church of Rome,
15, 16. Roman practice of infanti-
cide, 29. Their relief of the indi-
gent, 78. Distribution of corn, 78.
Exertions of the Christians on the
subversion of the empire, 87. Inade-
quate place given to this movement,
90. Horrors caused by the barbarian
invasions prevented to some extent by
Christian charity, 87-90. Influence
of Christianity in hastening the fall
of the Empire, 149, 150. Roman
treatment of prisoners of war, 272,
273. Despotism of the pagan empire,
275. Condition of women under the
Romans, 315. Their concubines, 370
Rome, an illustration of crimes con-
ducive to national prosperity, i. 60,
note. Conversion of, 3857. Three
popular errors concerning its conver-
sion, 360. Capture of the city by the
barbarians, 11. 88
Rome, modern, main object and results
of its paternal government, 118 note
Romuald, St., his treatment of his
father, i1. 144
Rope-dancing of the Romans, i. 308
ABINUS, Saint, his penances, i,
116
Sacrament, administration of the, in the
early Church, i, 6
Saints, the seventh century the age
li, 2 3
418 INDEX,
SAL
Salamis, Brutus’ treatment of the citi-
zens of, i. 204
Sallust, his Stoicism and rapacity, 1. 204
Sanctuary, right of, accorded to Chris-
tian churches, ii. 42
Savage, errors into which the deceptive
appearances of nature doom him, i. 56.
First conceptions formed of the uni-
verse, 371. The ethics of savages,
125, 126
Scepticism of the Greek and Roman
philosophers, i. 170-174. Influence
of, on intellectual progress, ii. 205.
The tendency of character to govern
opinion always recognised by the
Church, 206
Scholastica, St., the legend of, ii. 145,
note
Scifi, Clara, the first Franciscan nun, ii.
144
Scotch Puritans, their tolerance of amuse-
ments compared with that of French-
men, 1. 119
Sectarian animosity, chief cause of, i.
140
Sedgwick, Professor, on the expansion
of the natural or innate powers of
men, 1. 125, note
Seducer, character of the, ii. 366, 367
Sejanus, treatment of his daughter by
the senate, i. 110, note
Self-denial, the utilitarian theory unfa-
vourable to, i. 68
Self-examination, history of the practice
of, i. 261-263
Self-sacrifice, asceticism the great school
of, 11. 164
Beneca, his conception of the Deity, i.
171, note, 172. His distinction be-
tween the affections and diseases, 198,
note. And between clemency and
pity, 199. His virtues and vices, i.
204, His view of the natural virtue
of man and power of his will, 208.
His remarks on the Sacred Spirit
dwelling in man, 208, 209. His view
of death, 216. His tranquil end, 218.
Advocates suicide, 225, 232. Hig
description of the self-destruction
of a friend, 234. His remarks
on universal brotherhood, 254. His
stoical hardness tempered by new
doctrines, 258. His practice of self-
examination, 262. His philosophy
and works compared with those of
Plutarch, 256, 257. How he regarded
the games of the arena, 302. His ex-
hortations on the treatment of slaves,
324, Never mentions Christianity,
SIS
857. Regarded in the middle ages
as a Christian, 362. His remarks on
religious beliefs, 430
Sensuality, why the Mahommedans peo-
ple Paradise with images of, i. 112.
Why some pagan nations deified it,
112. Fallacy of judging the sensual-
ity of a nation by the statistics of its
illegitimate births, 150. Influence of
climate upon public morals, 151. Of
large towns, 152. And of early
marriages, 153. Absence of moral
scandals among the Irish priesthood,
153, 154. Speech of Archytas of
Tarentum on the evils of, 211, note.
Increase of sensuality in Rome, 278.
Abated by Christianity, ii. 163. The
doctrine of the Fathers respecting
concupiscence, 298 :
Serapion, the anthropomoryhite, i. 53.
Number of his monks, ii. 112. Legend
of him and the courtesan, 339
Sertorius, his forgery of auspicious
omens, i. 174
Severus, Alexander, refusesthe language
of adulation, i. 274. ’ His efforts
to restore agricultural pursuits, 283.
Murder of, 472. His leniency to-
wards Christianity, 472. His bene-
volence, ii. 82
Severus, Cassius, exile of, i. 476, note
Severus, Septimus, his treatment of the
Christians, i. 471
Sextius, his practice of self-examination,
i. 262
Shaftesbury, maintains the reality of
the existence of benevolence in our
nature, 1.20. On virtue, 78
Sibylline books, forged by the early
Christians, i. 400, 401
Silius Italicus, his lines commemorating
the passion of the Spanish Celts for
suicide, i, 218, note. His self-de-
struction, 233
Silvia, her filthiness, ii. 117
Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem, his mar-
tyrdom, i. 465
Simeon Stylites, St., his penance, ii.
119. His inhumanity to his parents,
ii. 138
Sin, the theological doctrine on the sub-
ject, i. 115, 116. Conception of sin
of the ancients, 205. Original, taught
by the Catholic church, 220, 221.
Examination of the utilitarian doc-
trine of the remote consequences of
secret sins, 44, 45
Sisoes, the abbot, stories of, ii, 134,
135
INDEX.
SIX
Sixtus, Bishop of Rome, his martyr—
dom, 1. 484
Sixtus V., Pope, his efforts to suppress
mendicancy, i. 108
Slavery, circumstances under which it
has been justified, i. 104. Origin of
the word servus, according to the Jus-
tinian code and St. Augustine, 104,
mote. Crusade of England against,
161. Character of that of the Ro-
mans, 248. Moral consequence of sla-
very, 277. Three stages of slavery
at Rome, 318. Review of the con-
dition of slaves, 318-324. Opinion
of philosophers as to slavery, 324.
Laws enacted in favour of slaves,
325. Effects of Christianity upon
the institution of slavery, 65. Con-
secration of the servile virtues, 72.
Impulse given to manumission, 74.
Serfdom in Europe, 74,75, note. Ex-
tinction of slavery in Europe, 76.
Ransom of captives, 76
Smith, Adam, his theory of pity, quoted,
i. 10, note. His recognition of the
reality of benevolence in our nature,
20. His analysis of moral judgment,
77
Smyrna, persecution of the Christians
at, 1. 469
Socrates, his view of death, i. 216. His
closing hours, 218. His advice to a
courtesan, 11. 313
Soul, belief of the Stoics in the resur-
rection of the, i. 173. The immortal-
ity of the soul resolutely excluded
from the teaching of the Stoics, 191.
Character of their first notions on the
subject, 192. The belief in the re-
absorption of the soul in the parent
Spirit, 192. Belief of Cicero and
Plutarch in the immortality of the,
215. But never adopted as a motive
by the Stoics, 215. Increasing belief
in the, 351. Vague belief of the
Romans in the, 176
Sospitra, story of, i. 397
Spain, persecution of the Christians in,
i. 491. Almost complete absence of
infanticide in, ii. 27, note. The first
lunatic asylums in Europe established
in, 94, 95
Spaniards, among the most prominent of
Latin writers, 1. 248. ‘Their suicides,
ii. 57
Spartans, their intense patriotism, 1.
187. Their legislature continually
extolled as a model, 211. Condition
of their women, ii. 307
419
STO
Spinoza, his remark on death, i. 218.
Anecdote of him, 306
Speculating character, characteristics of
the, i. 146, 147
Stael, Madame de, on suicide, ii. 62
Statius, on the first night of marriage,
i. 111, note
Stewart, Dugald, on the pleasure de-
rived from the knowledge or the pur-
suits of virtue, 1. 33, ote
Stilpo, his scepticism and banishment,
i. 170. His remark on his ruin,
201
Stoics, their definition of conscience, i.
85. Their view of the animation of
the human fetus, 94. Their system
of ethics favourable to the heroic
qualities, 133, 134. Historical fact
in favour of the system, 134. Their
belief in an all-pervading soul of
nature, 170. Their pantheistic con-
ception of the Deity, 171. Their con-
ception and explanation of the pre-
vailing legends of the gods, 171.
Their opinion as to the final destruc-
tion of the universe by fire, and the
resuscitation of souls, 173. Their
refusal to consult the oracles, 174.
Stoicism the expression of a type
of character different to Epicurean-
ism, 180, 181. Rome pre-eminently
the home of Stoicism, 181. Ac-
count of the philosophy of the Stoies,
186. Its two essentials—the un-
selfish ideal and the subjugation of
the affections to the reason, 186. The
best example of the perfect severance
of virtue and interest, 190. Their
views concerning the immortality of
the soul, 191-193. Taught men to
sacrifice reputation, and do good in se-
eret, 195. And distinguished the obli-
gation from the attraction of virtue,
196. Taught also that the affections
must be subordinate to the reason,
197-201. Their false estimate of
human nature, 202. Their love of
paradox, 202. Imperfect lives of
many eminent Stoics, 203. Their
retrospective teachings, 203. Their
system unfitted for the majority of
mankind, 204. Compared with the
religious principle, 205. The cen-
tral composition of this philosophy,
the dignity of man, 205. High sense
of the Stoics of the natural virtue of
man, and of the power of his will,
205, 206. Their recognition of Pro-
vidence, 206, 207. The two aspects
420 INDEX,
STR
under which they worshipped God,
208. The Stoics secured from quie-
tism by their habits of public life,
210-212. Their view of humanity,
212. Their preparations for, and
view of, death, 213. Their teaching
as to suicide, 223, 225, et seg. Con-
trast between the activity of Stoicism
and the luxury of Roman luxury,
238, 239. The Sioical philosophy
quite capable of representing the cos-
mopolitan spirit, 252, 253. Stoicism
not capable of representing the sof-
tening movement of civilisation, 255.
Influence of the eclectic spirit on it,
258. Stoicism becomes more es-
sentially religious, 259. Increas-
ingly introspective character of later
Stoicism, 261. Mareus Aurelius the
best example of later Stoicism, 263-
269. Effects of Stoicism on the cor-
ruption of Roman society, 808, 309.
It raised up many good Emperors, 309.
It produced a noble opposition under
the worst Emperors, 310. It greatly
extended Roman law, 312. The Stoics
considered as the consolers of the
suffering, advisers of the young, and
as popular preachers, 327. Rapid
decadence of Stoicism, 336, 337. ’ Ditf-
ference between the Stoical and Egyp-
tian pantheism, 344. —Stoical natu-
ralism superseded by the theory of de-
mons, 3851. Theory that the writings
of the Stoics were influenced b
Christianity examined, 352. Domi-
tian’s persecution of them, 459
Strozzi, Philip, his suicide, ii. 59
Suffering, a courageous endurance of,
probably the first form of virtue in
savage life, i. 136
Suicide, attitude adopted by Pagan
philosophy and Catholicism towards,
i. 223, e¢ seg. Eminent suicides,
226. Epidemic of suicides at Alex-
andria, 227. And of girls at Miletus,
227, note. Grandeur of the Stoical
ideal of suicide, 228. Influences con-
spiring towards suicide, 228. Seneca’s
touching remarks on self-destruction,
229, 230, 232. Laws respecting it,
230, note. Eminent instances of self-
destruction, 231, 233. The concep-
tion of, as an euthanasia, 233. Neo-
platonist doctrine concerning, 351.
Effect of the Christian condemna-
tion of the practice of, ii, 46-65.
Theological doctrine on, 48, note.
The only form of, permitted in the
THE
early Church, 50. Slow suicides,
51. The Circumceelliones, 52. The
Albigenses, 63.
Jews, 53. Treatment of corpses
of suicides, 53. Authorities for the
history of suicides, 53, note. Reac-
tion against the medisyal laws on
the subject, 54. Later phases of
its history, 57. Self-destruction of
witches, 57. Epidemics of insane
suicide, 58. Cases of legitimate sui-
cide, 59. Suicide in England and
France, 62
Sunday, importance of the sanctity of
the, ii. 258, 259. Laws respecting it,
259
Superstition, possibility of adding to
the happiness of man by the diffusion
of, i. 52-54. Natural causes which
impel savages to superstition, i. 56.
Signification of the Greek word for,
1. 216
Swan, the, consecrated to Apollo, i. 217
Sweden, cause of the great number of
illegitimate births in, i. 151
Swinburne, Mr., on annihilation, i, 192,
note
Symmachus, his Saxon prisoners, i. 304
Synesius, legend of him and Evagrius, *
li, 227. Refuses to give up his wife,
351
Syracuse, gladiatorial shows at, i. 291
ACITUS, his doubts about the ex-
istence of Providence, i. 179, note
Taste, refining influence of cultivation
on, i. 81
Taylor, Jeremy, on hell, ii. 239
Telemachus, the monk, his death in the
arena, 11. 39
Telesphorus, martyrdom of, i. 474
Tertia Amilia, story of, ii. 331
Tertullian, his belief in deemons, i. 406.
And challenge to the Pagans, 407
Testament, Old, supposed to have been
the source of pagan writings, i. 366
Thalasius, his hospital for blind beg-
gars, ii. 86
Theatre, scepticism of the Romans ex-
tended by the, i.178.. Effects of the
gladiatorial shows upon the, 293
Theft, reasons why some savages do not
regard it as criminal, i. 104. And
for the Spartan law legalising it, 104
Theodebert, his polygamy, ii. 363 -
Theodoric, his court at Ravenna, ii.
214, and note
Suicides of the
INDEX.
THE
Theodorus, his denial of the existence
of the gods, i. 170
Theodorus, St., his inhumanity to his
mother, ii. 136
Theodosius the Emperor, his edict for-
bidding gladiatorial shows, il. 37.
Denounced by the Ascetics, 148. His
law respecting Sunday, 259
Theological utilitarianism, theories of,
i. 15-17
Theology, view which it takes of
‘plagues of rain and water, and of
epidemics, i. 378. Sphere of induc-
tive reasoning in theology, 379
Theon, St., legend of, and the wild
beasts, 11. 177
Theurgy rejected by Plotinus, i. 351.
All moral discipline resolved into, by
Iamblichus, 351
Thrace, celibacy of societies of men in,
i. 109
Thrasea,mildness of his Stoicism, i. 259
Thrasea and Arria, history of, 11. 329
Thriftiness created by the industrial
spirit, i. 146
Tiberius the Emperor, his images in-
vested with a sacred character, 1. 275.
His superstitions, 390, and note
Timagenes, exiled from the palace by
Tiberius, 1. 476, note
Titus, the Emperor, his tranquil end, i.
218. Instance of his amiability, 304
Tooth-powder, Apuleius’ defence of, ii.
158
Torments, future, the doctrine of, made
by the monks a means of extorting
money, ii. 229. Monastic legends of,
233
Tracy, M. de, his argument for the moral
importance of a good system of police,
i. 135, note
Tragedy, effects of the gladiatorial shows
upon, among the Romans, i. 293
Trajan, the Emperor, his gladiatorial
shows, i. 304. Letter of Pliny to,
respecting the Christians, 464. Tra-
jan’s answer, 465. His benevolence
to children, ii. 81.
Gregory and the Emperor, 223
Transmigration of souls, doctrine of,
of the ancients, 11. 176
Travelling, increased facilities for, of
the Romans, i. 247
Trinitarian monks, their works of mercy,
ply br
Troubadours, one of their services to
mankind, ii. 245
‘Truce of God, importance of the, ii.
269
Legend of St.
421
VIC
Truth, possibility of adding to the hap-
piness of men by diffusing abroad,
or sustaining, pleasing falsehoods,
i. 54. Saying of Pythagoras, 54.
‘Growth of, with civilisation, 148.
Industrial, political, and philosophi-
cal, 144-146. Relation of monachism
to the abstract love of truth, ii. 200.
Causes of the medieval decline of the
love of truth, 225
Tucker, his adoption of the doctrine of
the association of ideas, i. 26, note
Turks, their kindness to animals, i.
306
Types, moral, i. 164. All characters
cannot be moulded in one type, 166
LPIAN on suicide, i. 230, note
Unselfishness of the Stoics, i. 186
Usury, diversities of moral judgment
respecting, i. 94
Utilitarian school.
Vice
Utility, rival claims of, and intuition to
be regarded as the supreme regula-
tors of moral distinctions, i, 1, 2.
Various names by which the theory
of utility is known, 3. Views of the
moralists of the school of, 3, e¢ seq.
See Morals ; Virtue;
ALERIAN, his persecutions of the
Christians, i. 483
Valerius Maximus, his mode of moral
teaching, i. 183
Vandals, their conquest of Africa, ii.
150
Varro, his conception of the Deity, i.
171. His views of popular religious
beliefs, 176
Venus, effect of the Greek worship of,
on the condition of women, ii. 308
Vespasian, his dying jest, i.274. Effect
of his frugality on the habits of the
Romans, 310. Miracle attributed to
him, 369, His treatment of philoso-
phers, 476, note
Vice, Mandeville’s theory of the origin
of, 1. 7. And that ‘private vices
were public benefits, 7. Views of
the Utilitarians as to, 13. The de-
erees of virtue and vice do not cor-
respond to the degrees of utility, or
the reverse, 41-43. The suffering
caused by vice not proportioned to
its criminality, 59-61. Plato’s ethical
theory of virtue and vice, 188. Grote’s
summary of this theory, 188, note.
422
VIR
Conception of the ancients of sin, 205.
Moral efficacy of the Christian sense
of vice, ii. 3, 4 ;
Virgil, his conception of the Deity, i.
172. His epicurean sentiment, 203,
note. His denunciations of suicide,
224. His interest in animal life, ii.
175
Virginity, how regarded by the Greeks, |
1.108. A%schylus’ prayer to Athene,
108. Bees and fire emblems of vir-
ginity, 111, note. Reason why the
ancient Jews attached a certain stigma
to virginity, 112. Views of Essenes,
112 Tene ee
Virgins, Vestal, intense sanctity and
gifts attributed to the, i. 109, 110,
and ote. Executions of, 433, and note.
Reasons for burying them alive, ii.
44. How regarded by the Romans,
old
Virtue, Hume’s theory of the criterion,
essential element, and object of the
pursuit of, i. 4. Motive to virtue
from the doctrine which bases morals
upon experience,6. Mandeville’s the
lowest and most repulsive form of
this theory, 6, 7. Views of the
essence and origin of virtue adopted
by the school of Utilitarians, 7-9.
Views of the Utilitarians of, 13.
Association of ideas in which virtue
becomes the supreme object of our
affections, 28. Impossibility of vir-
tue bringing pleasure if practised
only with that end, 36, 37. The
utility of virtue not denied by intui-
tive moralists, 40. The degrees of
virtue and vice do not correspond to
the degrees of utility, or the reverse, _
4, The rewards and punishments of
conscience, 61, 62. The self-compla-
cency of virtuous men, 67, and zote.
The motive to virtue, according to
Shaftesbury and Henry More, 78.
Analogies of beauty and virtue, 79.
Their difference, 80. Diversities ex-
isting in our judgments of virtue and
beauty, 80, 81. Virtues to which we
can and cannot apply the term beauti-
ful, 84. The standard, though not the
essence, of virtue, determined by the
condition of society, 113. Summary of
the relations of virtue and public and
private interest, 121. Emphasis with
which the utility of virtue was dwelt
upon by Aristotle, 129. Growth of the
gentler virtues which are the natural
product of civilisation, 137. Forms
INDEX,
WAR
of the virtue of truth, industrial, poli-
tical, and philosophical, 144, Each
stage of civilisation is specially appro-
priate to some virtue, 154. National
virtues, 159. Virtues naturally grouped
together according to principles of
affinity or congruity, 161. Distinctive
beauty of a moral type, 161. Rudi-
mentary virtues differing in different
ages, nations, and classes, 162, 163.
Four distinct motives leading men to
virtue, 187-189. Plato’s fundamental
proposition that vice is to virtue what
disease is to health, 188. Stoicism the
best example of the perfect sever-
ance of virtue and self-interest, 190.
Teachings of the Stoics that virtue
should conceal itself from the world,
195. And that the obligation should
be distinguished from the attraction
of virtue, 196. The eminent charac-
teristics of pagan goodness, 200. All
virtues are the same, according to the
Stoics, 202. Horace’s description of
“a just man, 207. Interested and dis-
interested motives of Christianity to
virtue, ii. 8. Decline of the civic
virtues caused by asceticism, 148.
Influence of this change on moral
philosophy, 155. The importance of
the civic virtues exaggerated by
historians, 156. Intellectual virtues,
200. Relation of monachism to these
virtues, 200, et seg.
Vitalius, St., levend of, and the courte-
san, ll. 338, 339
Vivisection, ii.187. Approved by Bacon,
187, note
Voleanoes, how regarded by the early
monks, ii. 234
Vultures, why made an emblem of
nature by the Egyptians, i. 111, note
Ws its moral grandeur, i. 97. The
school of the heroic virtues, 182.
Difference between foreign and civil
wars, 244, 245, Antipathy of the early
Christians to a military life, ii. 263.
Belief in battle being the special
sphere of Providential interposition,
264, Effects of the military triumphs
of the Mohammedans, 266. In-
fluences of Christianity upon war
considered, 269. Improved condition
of captives taken in war, 271
Warburton, on morals, i. 16, note, 17,
note
INDEX. 423
WAT
Waterland, on the motives to virtue
and cause of our love of Gud, quoted,
1. 9, note, 16, note
Wealth, origin of the desire to possess,
i. 24. Associations leading to the
desire for, for its own sake, 26
Western Empire, general sketch of the
moral condition of the, ii. 15
Widows, care of the early church for,
li. 388
Wigs, Clemens of Alexandria and Ter-
tullian on, ii. 158
Will, freedom of the human, sustained
and deepened by the ascetic life, ii.
131
Wine, forbidden to women, i, 95, 96,
_ note
Witcheraft, belief in the reality of,i.
386. Suicide common among witches,
i. 57
Wollaston, his analysis of moral judg-
ments, i. 78
Women, law of the Romans forbidding
women to taste wine, i. 95, 96, note.
_ Standards of female morality cf the
Jews, Greeks, and Romans, 106, 107. ‘|
Virtues and vices growing out of the
relations of the sexes, 150. Female
virtue, 150. Effects of climate on
this virtue, 151. Of large towns,
152. And of early marriages, 153.
Reason for Plato’s advocacy of com-.
munity of wives, 211. Plutarch’s
high sense of female excellence, 258.
Female gladiators at Rome, 298, and
note. Relations of female devotees
with the anchorites, ii. 127, 136,
160. Their condition in savage life,
292. Cessation of the sale of wives,
292. Rise of the dowry, 293. Es-
tablishment of monogamy, 294. Doc-
trine of the Fathers as to concu-
piscence, 298. Nature of the problem
of the relations of the sexes, 299,
Prostitution, 299-301. Recognition
in Greece of two distinct orders of
womanhood — the wife and the
hetera, 303. Condition of Roman
women, 315, e¢ seg Rise among
them of an indisposition to mar-
riage, 222. Legal emancipation
of women in Rome, 322. Un-
bounded liberty of divorce, 324.
Amount of female virtue in Imperial
61
7" NTE
ZEU
Rome, 326-330. Legislative mea-
sures to repress sensuality, 330. To
enforce the reciprocity of obligation in
marriage, 330. And to censure pros-
titution, 334. Influence of Christianity
on the position of women, 335, et seq.
Marriages, 389. Second marriages,
343. Low opinion of women pro-
duced by asceticism, 357. The canon
law unfavourable to their proprietary
rights, 358, 359. Barbarian heroines
and laws, 861-364. Doctrine of
equality of obligation in marriage,
366. The duty of man _ towards
woman, 368. Condemnation of tran-
sitory connections, 371. Roman con-
cubines, 372. ’ The sinfulness of
divorce maintained by the church,
871-373. Abolition of compulsory
marriages, 874. Condemnation of
mixed marriages, 374, 375. Educa-
tion of women, 375. Relation of
Christianity to the female virtues,
379. Comparison of male and female
characteristics, 379. The Pagan and
Christian ideal of woman contrasted,
383-385. Conspicuous part of
woman in the early Church, 385-387.
Care of widows, 388. Worship of the
Virgin, 389, 390. Effect of the sup-
pression of the conventual system on
women, 391. Revolution going on
in the employments of women, 393
ENOCRATES, his tenderness, ii.
ti 173
Xenophanes, his scepticism, i. 170
Xenophon, his picture of Greek married
life, 11. 805
ADOK, the founder of the sect of the
Sadducees, his inference of the non-
existence of a future world, i. 193,
note
Zeno, vast place occupied by his system
in the moral history of man, i. 180.
His suicide, 224. His inculcation
of the practice of self-examination,
.262
Zeus, universal providence attributed hy
the Greeks to, i. 169