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THE FOUNDATION OF
MODERN RELIGION

THE COLE LECTURES
igi6
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The Cole Lectures for igi6
delivered before Vanderbilt University
The Foundation of
Modern Religion

A Study in the Task and Contri
bution of the Mediaeval Church

By
HERBERT B. WORKMAN, D. D., LL. D.
Senator London Ifniversity, President of West
minster Training College, London

New York

Chicago

v Toronto

Fleming

H.

Revell

Company

London

and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1916, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

XN\o

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

THE COLE LECTURES
THE late Colonel E. W. Cole of Nashville, Ten-
nessee, donated to Vanderbilt University the sum
of five thousand dollars, afterwards increased by
Mrs. E. W. Cole to ten thousand, the design and con
ditions of which gift are stated as follows :
" The object of this fund is to establish a foundation
for a perpetual Lectureship in connection with the Bib
lical Department of the University, to be restricted in its
scope to a defense and advocacy of the Christian re
ligion. The lectures shall be delivered at such inter
vals, from time to time, as shall be deemed best by the
Board of Trust ; and the particular theme and lecturer
shall be determined by nomination of the Theological
Faculty and confirmation of the College of Bishops of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Said lecture
shall always be reduced to writing in full, and the man
uscript of the same shall be the property of the Univer
sity, to be published or otherwise disposed of by the Board
of Trust at its discretion, the net proceeds arising there
from to be added to the foundation fund, or otherwise
used for the benefit of the Biblical Department."

Contents
I. The Church and Its Task in the
Middle Ages  1 1
II. The Dawning of the Missionary Con
sciousness of the Church . . 55
III. The Ideals and Antagonistic Forces
of the Middle Ages . . . 101
IV. The Dawning of the Modern Social
Consciousness  141
V. The Monks and Their Work . .183
VI. MedijEval Educational Ideals and
Methods  213

LECTURE I
THE CHURCH AND ITS
TASK IN THE MIDDLE, AGES

LECTURE I
THE CHURCH AND ITS TASK IN THE
MIDDLE AGES

WITH the fall of the Eoman Empire in its
western section we enter upon a new
chapter in the history of humanity. The
former things had passed away ; but it was rather the
coming of a new hell than of a new earth or a new
heaven that seemed, at first, to be the result. An
optimistic faith may assert that it was necessary to
remove the things that were shaken, even though the
removal should be by consuming fires, that there
might be laid the abiding foundations of a new City
of God. As in a ruder age the foundations were laid
in blood, but the nature of the superstructure is not
so clear. One thing, however, is certain, that but for
the Church, foundations and city alike would have
been of the devil.
The student would do well to obtain some idea of
the task which awaited the Church in the six cen-
turies between the sack of Eome and the conclusion
of the wanderings of the nations. He should turn to
the map of the Empire and realize its meaning ; the
majesty of its unity, the diversity of nations and of
tongues which had lost their differences in the proud
consciousness of a common citizenship, the reality of
the law and order which bound the ends of the earth
11

12 THE CHURCH
to one common centre, the peace 'which was Rome's
greatest gift to a suffering world, the extent and
depth of her civilization, the wide diffusion of the
arts, culture, philosophy, and science of the old
world. The darker sides of the picture he would do
well, for the moment,' to neglect; the dark super
stitions, the religious rottenness, the financial ruin,
especially of the middle classes, the limited few for
whom the culture and civilization existed, the vast
hordes of slaves, the social and political cancers
which had eaten out the hear|i of the Empire. These
things should be abstracted ; the majesty of Borne and
her civilization is so incontestably great that a world
in which that force was lost, or even in danger of
being lost, seemed to Christian and heathen alike a
ruined world. Prom his realization of the greatness
of the Empire, and of the debt under which she had
laid humanity, let the reader now turn to the results
of the wanderings of the nations. In place of the old
unity of speech, religion, law, and civilization, we
find a babel of languages, ^a_jihaos_Qf__canflicting
barbarisms, anarchy written large on all life, litera
ture dead, art unknow<n, a darkness that might be
felt covering the face of the deep.
A brief survey of the extent of the ruin is necessary
if my hearers would apprehend the greatness of the
Church's task. The invasion of Greece by the West
Goths under Alaric (396) began the series of move
ments which resulted in the breaking up of the
Western Empire. Driven from their original home
round the Aral by the pressure of the Huns, the
West Goths swept through Thrace, Greece, and
Illyricum, and under Alaric captured Borne itself

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 13
(408). The death of Alaric terminated for a while
their onward march ; but this deadly blow at the
heart of the Empire had already been accompanied
by the loss of outlying provinces. In 407 the
Bomans retired from Britain ; fifty years later such
civilization as there they had established was swept
away before the inroads of Saxons, Angles and Jutes.
In 409 a mixed band of Vandals, Suevians and Alans
— the last a race, probably, of non- Aryan origin —
crossed the Bhine, ravaged Gaul, and occupied Spain,
though many of the towns still remained in Boman
hands. In 413 the West Goths, retiring from Italy,
advanced to the Pyrenees, and established in North
east Spain a kingdom with Barcelona as the capital ;
in Southern Gaul a second kingdom round Toulouse.
From these centres they slowly extended1 their do
minion over almost the whole of the peninsula. In
consequence of their pressure, the Vandals in 429
abandoned Spain and invaded Africa. Under the
leadership of Gaiseric their conquest was rapid ; the
loss of Carthage in 439 marked the beginning of the
end of Boman dominion. Thirty years later Sar
dinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands surrendered
to the Vandal fleets.
Northern Gaul had already fallen before the Salian
Franks. This German tribe, from the regions be
tween the Scheldt and Bhine, throughout the fifth
century slowly consolidated their conquests, until in
507 Chlodovech (Clovis) drove back the West Goths
beyond the Garonne. Meanwhile in Southeast Gaul
another Teutonic tribe, the Burgundians, established
themselves in Savoy (439) ; while in Italy the great
Theodoric founded an Ostrogothic kingdom which

14 THE CHURCH
stretched from Pannonia (Hungary) to Sicily (489-
493). Even more dreaded in their ravages than Vandals,
Ostrogoths, or Pranks were the Huns, Asiatic nomads
akin to the Turks, who in the fifth century estab
lished under Attila an empire which reached from
the Volga to the Bhine, from the Danube to the
Baltic. Their defeat at Mery-sur-Seine in 451 alone
saved Gaul from their devastations ; while their in
vasion of Italy, in 452, is said to have led to the
foundation of Venice by the Christian fugitives,
who, after the sack of the great city of Aquileia,
took refuge in the islands of the lagoons.
In the sixth century, a temporary revival of the
Empire under Justinian (576) led to the disappear
ance of the kingdoms of the Vandals and Ostrogoths ;
but other races were ready to take their place. In
565 the Lombards, whose original home was probably
near the Weser, descended into Italy from Pannonia,
and within four years won for themselves the coun
try which still bears their name.
The first irruptions of barbarians had broken upon
the Boman Empire only to be assimilated by its
higher civilization. Many of them were already
Arian Christians; others were speedily converted.
Not so with the hordes that in later years swept
across the continent already exhausted by earlier
struggles, and whose powers of assimilation had van
ished through satiety. In the East, Slavonic tribes,
Chrobats, Serbs, Sorbs and others, were slowly occu
pying what had once been imperial soil, bringing
with them political problems that have dyed the soil
of Europe with blood ; while in Northern Europe,

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 15
Slovenes. Wends, and Czechs were establishing them
selves in their permanent homes, attempting to hem
in Teutonic expansion on the East. As if this med
ley of Teutonic and Slavonic races were not sufficient,
we find in the seventh century non- Aryan races of
Turanians swarming over parts of Europe. In 679
the Bulgarians crossed the Danube and occupied
their present kingdom. Another oriental tribe, the
Ugrian Magyars, a race very different in origin from
the Huns, with whom they are so often confused,
were for many years the terror of Europe. But in
955, after their great defeat at Lechfeld by Otto the
Great, they settled down in Pannonia, a district
afterwards known, through this mistake in identifi
cation, as TJngaria or Hungary.
The Turanian invaders, Magyars and Bulgarians,
did not long resist the influences of Christianity. A
more serious blow to the Church, the effects of which
are still felt in every continent of the Old World,
came from the Semitic East. ¦ When Gregory the
Great died (604) Muhammad (b. 570) had not yet be
gun to believe in his own mission. Serious as was
the outlook for the Faith in the West at the dawn of
the seventh century in its struggle with the bar
barians, consolation might still have been found in
the vitality, apparent alas ! rather than real, of the
churches in Egypt, Syria, Northern Africa and the
Mediterranean basin in general. Even Spain, which
under her Visigothic conquerors had embraced
Arianism, in the year 589 had renounced her heresy
at the council of Toledo and proclaimed her return to
the Boman unity. As so often happens it was in the
districts of seeming strength that disaster came.

16 THE CHURCH
Begions in which for centuries the Gospel had been
supreme were lost to the Cross, and the original
centres of Christianity were swallowed up in the
vortex of Islam. There is no evidence that Muham
mad contemplated the extension of his creed beyond
the confines of Arabia. Immediately after the death
of the prophet, Islam had to fight for its very exist
ence ; yet such was the spell it cast over its reluctant
converts that before a century was completed, Syria,
North Africa, Egypt, the moat fertile districts of
Spain, exchanged their Christianity for the creed of
their Muslim masters.
Christianity was assailed along its whole frontier,
and in the East the ruin was complete. Christian
indifference and discord were no match for the new
fanaticism. "The sword," cried Muhammad, "is
the key of heaven and of hell ; a drop of blood shed
in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more
avail than two months of fasting or prayer ; whoso
ever falls in battle his sins are forgiven, at the last
day his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion
and odoriferous as musk." "Eemember," said the
Caliph, Abu Bekr, to his Syrian army, "that you
are always in the presence of God, on the verge of
death, in the assurance of judgment, and the hope of
Paradise. When therefore you fight the battles of
the Lord, quit you like men." At the siege of Da
mascus, Khalid, the "Sword of God," was urged to
rest. " O Derar," he replied, as he mounted a fresh
horse, "we shall rest in the world to come ; he that
labours to-day. shall rest to-morrow." When Mu
hammad proclaimed war on the Emperor Heraclius,
some of the more timid, who had not yet discerned

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 1 7
so clearly as their leader the splendid weakness of
the Eomans, pleaded the intolerable heat : "Hell is
much hotter," cried the indignant Prophet, as he ex
communicated the cowards. "Paradise is before
you, the Devil and hell fire in your rear," echoed
his generals at the fatal battle of the Yermuk (634).
Such promises and threats cried havoc and let
slip the dogs of war. Eeligion became an intrepid
fanaticism ; a heaven of black-eyed houris, the
reward of carnage. Before his death Muhammad
had seen the conquest of Arabia ; under his im
mediate successors Arabia threatened to overwhelm
the world. In the ten years of the reign of Omar,
the Saracens conquered thirty-six thousand cities
and castles, and destroyed four thousand churches.
"The Arabs dwell," sings one of their poets, "be
neath the shadow of their lances ; they cook their
food upon the ashes of conquered towns." Within a
few years their zeal had crushed Persia (633-642) and
overthrown the religion of Zoroaster. In the North,
Khalid swept all before him, captured Damascus,
Jerusalem, and Antioch, and drove back Heraclius
and his veterans in flight to Constantinople (636 ?).
In the West, Amr (Amrou), by the help of the Coptic
Christians, overran Egypt, turned Memphis, the city
of ancient Pharaohs, into a solitude, and captured
Alexandria, the first city in the world for trade, the
second in population.
The ambition or selfishness of Borne might pos
sibly view with indifference the fall of the three
ancient patriarchates that had so often disputed her
preeminence and opposed her claims. But when
Okba swept Africa from the Nile to the ocean (669-

18 THE CHURCH
683), while Hasan delivered Carthage to the flames
(698), she realized the danger at her own doors.
"Great God," cried Okba, as he spurred his horse
into the Atlantic, "if my course were not/stopped
by this sea I would go on to the unknown kingdoms
of the West, preaching the unity of Thy holy name,
and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who
worship any other God than Thee. " The ocean was
impassable, so the Saracens turned aside into Spain,
intent like Hannibal on the conquest of Europe and
Borne from the West. By the fatal victory of Salado
(Guadalete) (711), the Gothic monarchy was ruined ;
Boderic, the last ignoble successor of Alaric, perished
in his flight ; and Spain, which had resisted for two
hundred years the arms of the Eomans, yielded her
self in a few months to the victorious Saracens. Only
in the valleys of the Pyrenees and amid the moun
tains of the Asturias could a remnant of the Goths
maintain their faith and freedom, and under the lead
ership of Pelayo (+737) repulse the forces of Islam,
and lay the foundation of the future kingdom of
Spain. By the end of the first century after the Hegira J
the empire of the caliphs was the greatest empire on
the face of the earth. They reigned by the right of
conquest from the Atlantic to the Indus; in the West,
they threatened to cross the Alps, and conquer the
Eternal City ; in the East, Constantinople had already
suffered two sieges at their hands.2 Muhammad had
1 The Hegira, or Flight of Muhammad, from Meooa to Medina,
took place September 20, 622. But the Arabs date from July
16th. slst, 67<t-676; 2d, 716-718.

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 19
declared war on the human race, and the human race
and the Christian religion seemed destined to be
crushed by his sword. The world must make peace '
with the stronger, they must surrender to , Allah.
" Te Christian dogs," cried Khalid, " ye know your
option, the Quran, the tribute, or the sword." All
along the coast of Africa, where once five hundred
sees had gloried in the faith of Augustine and
Cyprian, the light of the Gospel was totally ex
tinguished. Church bells rang no more ; in the
early dawn, instead of the chanting of priests, the
cry of the mueddhin rose in the sleeping cities :
God is most great, God is most great,
I testify there is no God but Allah.
I testify Muhammad is God's messenger,
Come ye and pray, come ye and pray ;
For prayer is better than sleep,
There is no God but Allah. '
In Spain, though toleration and half the churches
had been granted to the Christians, six hundred
mosques in the royal city of Cordoba proclaimed the
dominant religion. In 718 the Arabs crossed the
Pyrenees, and in successive swarms spread over the
southern regions of France. But Abd-ar-rahman,
their general, was not satisfied with these narrow
limits. In 731 he invested Aries, and overspread
Burgundy as far as Lyons and Besancon, slaughters
ing the Christians by thousands, and delivering their
churches to the flames. In further campaigns he
would carry the Quran to the Northern Ocean, and
1 Mam and Muslim are the infinitive and participle of the
causative form of the verb slm, which connotes peace.

20 THE CHURCH
teach its doctrines to the dwellers in Ultima Thule.
But in a seven days' fight between Tours and
Poictiers, which changed the history of the world
(October 732), Charles the Hammer (Martel) and his
Franks drove the nations of Africa and Asia before
him in headlong flight, and wrested Southern France
from their grasp. The Christianity of Europe was
saved ; never again would the caliphs have such an
opportunity. The victors had been vanquished by
the splendour and luxury of their conquests ; their
great empire was falling to pieces by its sheer weight.
Unity was lost in a loose confederation ; fanaticism
extinguished in the greater hatred of contending
dynasties, and in the bitter schism, which has rent
Islam to this day, of Sunnee and Shiah.
In the West the Saracen attacks were henceforth
rather the raids of pirates than the organized, far-
reaching schemes of the early caliphs. Nevertheless,
the light corsairs of the Saracens swept the Mediter
ranean, reduced Palermo (831), and gradually con
quered the whole of Sicily (827-878). Throughout the
island Christianity was almost uprooted. In 846 the
Arab fleets entered the Tiber and sacked the churches,
destroying the sepulchre of St- Paul, and breaking
up the huge bronze coffin in which, according to uni
versal belief, lay the mortal remains of St. Peter.
A more formidable attack in 849 would have es
tablished their power in the heart of the Christian
world, had not the vigilance of Pope Leo IV formed
an alliance of the maritime republics of Gaieta,
Naples, and Amalfi. By the naval battle of Ostia
and the storm which completed the work of destruc
tion, Borne was delivered from their dread. The

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 21
Papacy was saved ; but the freedom of Italy was yet
to be wrought. The Greeks, the Franks, and the
Lombards contended together for the mastery, while
Saracen fleets put out annually from Palermo and
ravaged impartially the territories of all.
The West had scarcely begun to recover from the
first shock of the barbarians, succeeded by its strug
gle with the Saracens, when the thirst for plunder
woke again in North and East. Swarms of Vi
kings, secure in their command of the sea, descended
on every coast, swept up the rivers to burn the in
land towns, and destroyed with indifferent ferocity
church, castle, monastery and village. For three
centuries piracy became the common means of live
lihood for a whole nation. " Deliver us, OLord,"
ran the litany of the times, "from the frenzy of the
Northmen." This was echoed in Germany and Italy
by a similar prayer : " Deliver us, O Lord, from the
frenzy of the Huns " (Magyars). Heathenism in the
ninth and tenth centuries hurled itself in a last des
perate rally on the Christian world. Thor, the
favourite God of the wilder Norwegians, and Woden,
in whose worship we recognize the more cultured
notes of the south Germanic races, and misshapen
Asiatic monsters struggled to overthrow the Cross.
II
The changes produced by the inrush of the bar
barians were more than territorial. Many of the
earlier invaders, it is true, of whom Theodoric the
Goth may be taken as the noblest example, had been
anxious to rule the Boman Empire rather than to
destroy it. They were conscious still of the majesty

22 THE CHURCH
of Boman civilization. The rude peoples whom they
led were still under the spell of her influence ; they
were prepared, at least nominally, to adopt her
name, her religion, and her civilization, with such
changes as might be necessary to meet their needs.
The result was seen in the speedy if superficial con
version of such earlier invaders of the Empire as the
Vandals and Franks. Their kings realized the need
of consolidating their rule by assimilating the re
ligion and civilization of the lands they had con
quered. Possibly they might have succeeded in
thus saving the older civilization had they not in
their turn been exposed to attacks from new swarms.
Successive onslaughts of the barbarians swept away
not only Boman rule, but Boman civilization ; this
last in some lands, as for instance France, partially
only, In others, for instance England, absolutely and
forever, unless indeed the contention of some modern
historians be correct that London persisted through
all the changes, never losing her Boman character
and importance. Boman law gave place to the
customs of the tribes ; Boman schools survived only
in a few sheltered towns ; the old Boman unity of
speech gave place to a babel of languages ; classic
culture became lost for centuries ; above all the
"Pax Eomaila," the greatest gift which Borne had
conferred on humanity, was exchanged for the con
fused struggle of tribe with tribe. Life everywhere,
in all its forms, whether social or political, tended to
slip back into barbarism. ' But for the Church the
ruin would have been complete.
~ When in 482 the terrible Attila, after his defeat by
the Visigoths at the battle of the Catelaunian fields

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 23
(Chalons), flung himself on Italy, the Eomans, in
their despair, sent the foremost of their citizens to
implore the Hun to make peace and withdraw.
With their senators they associated the venerable
Leo, their bishop. The mission was successful ;
Attila and his Mongolian hordes retired to Pan
nonia. Later legends have claimed all the credit
of this deliverance for the bishop of Borne. Leo is
represented, for instance, in the paintings of Baffaele,
as standing, with the great figures of St. Peter and
St. Paul at. his back, menacing with drawn sword
and unutterable woes the trembling Hun. Which
things are an allegory. In Leo, for whose person
Attila probably felt little more reverence than for
that of his fellows in the deputation, we salute the
representative of the force which alone could subdue
the barbarian. For we may boldly claim that the
Church saved civilization ; but for her missions and
her influence this would have perished. To the
same effect is the judgment of Harnack : " No
flight of imagination can form any idea of what
would have come over the ancient world had it not
been for the Church." *
For, save in the Church, where shall we find, in
the general welter of the times, a force sufficient to
save civilization ? Shall we turn to the new nations
— Franks, Huns, Northmen and the like ? Or, since
this is unthinkable, shall we fall back upon the cul
ture introduced into Europe by the Arabs ; the arts
and sciences which we owe to their inspiration!
But unless we misread the whole history of the
West, Eastern culture must always have formed an
1 "Expansion of Christianity," Vol. I, p. 158.

24 THE CHURCH
alien element, the mark, at best, of Saracen con
querors. Its philosophy, potent though it became
as an heretical force in the schools of Toledo and
Paris, was too essentially Eastern in its pantheism to
influence the West. As one of the elements absorbed
by the awakening intelligence of Europe, Saracen
culture had its value, though this has often been
exaggerated ; as a foundation for Western civiliza
tion and moral life it was impossible. Nor shall we
rest on firmer ground if we seek for our sources of
civilization in the scanty survival of the old Greek
and Boman culture.
As a matter of fact the tragedy of the Church's
task lay in the fact that not only had the political
framework of life perished, but the very foundations
of the older civilization had crumbled away. In the
West the fall of Hellenism was complete. By Hellen
ism we understand that subtle pervasive influence of
Greek thought and life, that emphasis of a Greek
Icultur, which, from the days of Alexander the Great
until the sack of Borne, had been the most potent
force in the higher life of the world. In its earlier
days Hellenism had come into conflict with the racial
and sacerdotal exclusiveness of Judaism, and, in the
upshot, Judaism had been worsted. The Christian
Church had been permeated with Hellenic thought ;
its theology interwoven with Hellenic strains. But
that which the Jew could not succeed in doing the
Barbarian accomplished. Slowly but surely Greek
thought perished both in the Western Empire and
from the Western Church, and the large compre
hensive outlook of Greek theology became lost in a
rigid Latin legalism. Here and there we find a soli-

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 25
tary witness to the old culture — John Scotus Eriugena
in the 'ninth century, Grosseteste in the twelfth — but
for all practical purposes they may be disregarded.
The chief part of Greek culture which survived were
a few fragments of somewhat hard and formal logic,
and on these dry bones early Scholasticism was
driven to subsist until the later rediscovery of
Aristotle. May we note in passing one evidence of the de
struction of Greek culture! An essential part of
Hellenism had been the care of the body, with its
motto the mens sana in corpore sano. In every Hellen-
ized town, even in Jerusalem itself, we find the Greek
gymnasium, the centre and symbol of the Greek value
of the body as such. The bath, and all the conse
quent cleanliness of home and person, was part of
this culture, and had passed over to the Eomans as
an essential part of their life. But all this most valu
able side of Hellenism was now destined to be lost.
In place of the exaltation, oftentimes excessive, of the
worth of the body we find its depreciation : — "this
vile body," though a mistranslation, is a fairly accu
rate description of early mediaeval thought. In place
of the gospel of cleanliness we find the squalor and
filth of early Monasticism. We may add that this
lost conception of the value of cleanliness and the
worth of the body, so prominent a feature in Greek
culture, was never recovered by the mediawal Church.
Great and many were her accomplishments, but this
part of her task she left severely alone, or, rather, she
showed herself altogether unconscious of any loss
sustained. If from Hellenism we turn to Boman civilization

26 THE CHURCH
we find a similar if lesser destruction. The extent of
the survival of the Boman culture has often, it is true,
been underestimated. In the darkest days of barba
rian triumph there were still here and there, in Italy
at least, Boman schools, and the traditions of Boman
culture and law. These, like Boman roads, Boman
aqueducts and bridges, were built too solidly to be
swept away easily. But though surviving, their ef
fect upon the life of the surrounding barbarians was
but slight. We may take, for instance, Boman law,
the codification of which by Justinian was the great
legacy of the later Empire. The key to the existence
of Lombard cities and Lombard schools lies in the
continued recognition through the darkest ages of the
old Boman system of jurisprudence. But the effect
of Boman Law upon barbarians was almost nil until
they had been Christianized^ Only when the age of
iron gave place to the first rude attempts at order
could Boman Law reassert herself. Then indeed, as
we shall see later, her influence was tremendous, both
upon the common law of the new nations, and espe
cially in the formation of the Canon Law of the
Church. But this influence was secondary, not
causal, the result of a suitable environment prepared
by the Church. Without the civilization fostered
by the Church the nations would never have turned
from their rude codes to the more scientific jurispru
dence of Justinian. For the question of the influence
of Boman Law resolves itself into the struggle be
tween the surviving Bomanized and Christianized
civic communities and the surrounding barbarian
and heathen populations with their own codes. But
for Christianity the struggle would have been unto

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 27
death ; it was really the Christianity of the towns
that won over the country pagans, and finally im
pressed upon them the need of law.
This reasoning is still more correct when applied
to Boman schools and all the culture that Boman
schools might be supposed to have fostered. The
task of the Church in the matter of mediawal educa
tion is of such importance as to demand a lecture in
itself. For the present it will suffice to note that, as
might be expected, here and there the traditions of
the old schools lingered on, in a few cases even the
actual schools themselves. But the influence of this
old culture as a civilizing element was lost, until the
Church had done the spade-work which alone made
it fruitful.
The loss of Boman schools and Boman education
was not so serious as the loss of Boman discipline.
With the incoming _of_ the ^barbarian there, passed
away out jrfjBurope all that solidarity, of which, the
"basis^was the consciousness of unity in the one great
empire, the result the great discipline of life which
had worTEome her marvellous triumph. In place of
the Empire, with its ordered life and its emphasis on
the unity of every part, we have the struggle of in
numerable clans whose only consciousness of unity
was that which came from a common instinct of de
struction. The most marvellous thing in the old
world had been the enormous assimilative power of
Latin culture and Boman institutions, by which
whole races of barbarians had been Bomanized and
united. But that assimilative power was now ex
hausted, while barbarism had burst upon the world
with a positive energy for creating the local and un-

28 THE CHURCH
assimilated. In the Middle Ages, as we shall see
later, we find a complex mass of diverse laws and
customs, written and unwritten, Eoman, Gothic,
ecclesiastical, all struggling together, or dividing out
their several spheres just as if no such thing as unity
either in administration or ideal was either desirable
or possible. Every attempt to give unity by political
means, on the part of such great leaders as Charles
the Great, always failed when the strong hand was
removed. In the Church alone could the warring
clans find the reality of unity ; through the Church
alone did the political unities that were attempted
find a shadowy basis of fact in the concept of a Holy
Eoman Empire.
We have claimed that the idea of finding the great
new civilizing factor in the life of the barbarian na
tions is unthinkable. The statement needs a certain
qualification. In the successive swarms of barbari
ans the keenest eye can detect little but savagery,
mitigated by frankness and bravery, and by a certain
absence of the corruptions of the dying Boman world.
Nevertheless the new nations formed a fine soil for
the growth of a new culture ; but the new culture
was in every case planted there by the Church, in no
case the product of internal, latent powers. We may
take as an illustration the case of the Northmen. At
the commencement of the ninth century they were
still the terror and scourge of Christendom. Their
drinking cups were oftentimes human skulls ; their
amusement to throw children into the air and catch
them on the points of their spears. Human sacri
fices were riot unknown. Of one king we are told
that he purchased long life by offering one of his sons

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 29
to Woden. But by the end of the tenth century the
Norman pirates had forgotten their native land, its
language and rough customs, and abandoned the wor
ship of Woden for that of " the white Christ." The
result was marvellous, both in the facts themselves
and in the rapidity of their accomplishment. The
new faith chastened and transformed into the begin
nings of a new poetry the dreamy temperament which
had thought of the thunder as the hammer of Thor,
and heard in the wind the war-cry of Woden. Hence
it is jn-Nor-mandy that we first see the breaking of
light in the_dark ages.- There the new and nobler
spirit became a national enthusiasm. The adventur
ous "spirit of the Northmen led them to send forth a
gallaSitr procession of soldiers of the Church. The
deeds of daring of their forefathers were repeated on
a nobler stage. Cruelty which had thought nothing
of death became changed into a heroism that counted
life itself to be but part of the necessary renuncia
tion of the soldiers of Jesus. dSDmasteries-arose- in
the densest forests, while the schools of Bee and
Avranches might well be called, for a while, the uni-'^
versities of the West. f Thus the energy of the Viking
'pirates, "5E'1ffie~calI of the Church, aroused Europe
tfrom the sleep of the Dark Ages, and ushered in a
new dawn. But the force that made for civilization
was the transforming touch of the Church.
One other matter should be noticed in this connec
tion. The barbarian invasions roughly divide them
selves into two distinct periods, in both of which it
was a life and death struggle for civilization. But
the first conflict would have been fatal had it not
been that to some extent the barbarians had become

30 THE CHURCH
Christians before they burst in upon the Empire.
Europe has not sufficiently recognized the debt she
owes to the intrepid missionary Ulfilas (+380). The
story of his labours falls outside the limits that we
have assigned to our survey, but their results were
lasting for centuries after his death. Through his
devoted toils, above all by his translation of the
Bible into their native language, Ulfilas won over
the Goths and Visigoths beyond the Danube to al
legiance to Christ. When therefore there took place
the great migration of the Goths, which led ulti
mately to the overrunning of Italy, Spain, and
Northern Africa, the conquerors, though still bar
barians, were yet Christians. Though they were
Arians, through the political accidents of the time
rather than by any lapse on the part of Ulfilas, when
they overturned the Empire they had no intention of
overturning Christianity. Thus the invasions which
produced the fall of the Empire to some extent
strengthened the Church. But for the labours of
Ulfilas the result would have been far otherwise.
The Church, surviving its first struggle against ex
termination, would have been so weakened that she
would not have had the strength — we speak after the
manner of men — to overcome the great heathen in
vasions of the eighth and ninth centuries.

Ill
Before we close this introductory lecture there is a
question to which we should do well to attempt an
answer. The more the student ponders the fall of
the Boman civilization, the more perplexed he is to

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 3 1
account for it. By this we do not refer merely to its
external causes for those, whether internal or external,
are plain. We allude to something more fundamen
tal ; what part did the Fall of the Empire play in the
moral evolution of the world ? Was the Fall a mere
catastrophe of evil, a throw-back of civilization to
primitive barbarism ; or was the Fall after all an
event in which we may see traces of the moral gov
ernment of the Universe ! Such a question is of the
highest importance. Upon the answer we give to it
depends the whole view we take of history. For the
Fall of the Empire is, undoubtedly, the greatest
event in human annals, the most tragic in its cir
cumstances, the most momentous in its results.
Either the Fall must have some moral justification,
or else we must hold with Gibbon that history is but
the record of the crimes and follies of humanity. In
other words the Fall of the Empire brings us sharply
face to face with the problem of Divine Government.
That the greatest catastrophe of history should be
wholly unrelated to moral causes would be a prac
tical dethronement of God from a sovereign place in
human affairs.
Now not many years ago, under the influence of
German scholars, it was customary to give a some
what glib answer to the difficulty thus raised. The
Fall of the Empire was necessary, it was said, for
only by the infusion of the new Teutonic blood could
Europe find her higher self and the Church develop
her true power. This crude Germanic optimism, or
self-esteem, scarcely appeals to modern scholars ; it
savours too much of the doctrines of Treitschke, the
superman of Nietsche, and the attempts made to

32 THE CHURCH
prove that all greatness comes from, over the Ehine.
We do not recognize in the hordes of Germans and
other barbarians the saviours of the world. We are
too deeply conscious to-day of all that they destroyed.
No doubt new blood was necessary, and the bar
barian invasions were not wholly evil. But consid
ered as a surgical operation the price paid through
long centuries for their rude cautery was altogether
excessive. The answer to the question is exceedingly difficult ;
the more so as the causes of the Fall itself are so ob
scure that there is still, in spite of the researches of
recent years, no agreement among scholars. At
present, under the influence of Schiller, the tendency
is to dwell upon the financial causes, the accumula
tion of wealth in the hands of a few, the disappear
ance of a middle class, the vast masses of slaves, the
depopulation of the country by slave labour driving
out the free farmer and the yeoman, the sapping of
the vitality of the lower free classes by a system of
doles and largesse and the like. All these were prob
ably correct, and as contributory causes their im
portance cannot be exaggerated, especially the prac
tical disappearance of the middle classes, and all the
weakness thereby involved.
Further investigation is certainly needed of the
economic issues of the age. Was the Fall of the Em
pire one of the results of that massing of men in
towns which was one of the most remarkable results
of the centuries of the Boman Peace! When a na
tion is cut off from the soil that nation is in peril of
its existence. That such massing in the towns of free
population was one issue of the slavery which con-

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 33
centrated estates in few hands, working the farms
from gigantic ergastula, would explain at least one
moral cause of the Fall. In the towns also what was
the place of what the Americans call, as the result of
a similar problem, "the poor white " ! It is difficult
to see how such vast cities as Carthage and Milan, —
to say nothing of Borne — could have had an adequate
economic basis. The industrial development which
would have relieved the strain had been thwarted by
the paramount fact of slavery. The problem of the
idle rich is bad enough ; the problem of the idle poor
which slavery brings with it, especially when the
slaves are freed, is worse.
Among the financial causes of weakness must also
be noted the vast expenses of civic office in the
second, much more in the third century of the Em
pire. To hold office with the cost it involved in pro
viding games, gladiators, or other spectacles, was to
involve oneself in financial ruin for all except the
wealthiest. Others besides Christians caught at any
means of escape from the intolerable burden. Some
went so far as to unfit themselves for office by con
tracting marriage with a freed woman ; others bought
themselves out at a price. But the general result
was the dropping out of the middle classes, and all
the financial instability thereby involved. Granting
however to the financial causes the fullest weight,
nevertheless they seem utterly inadequate as a suffi
cient explanation of the greatest catastrophe in his
tory. We must refuse to own that the dollar is the
decisive factor in human affairs.
Neither do we find a solution if we turn to moral
causes. At one time it was the custom, especially of

34 THE CHURCH
preachers, to paint in blackest colours the moral
degeneracy and unbridled luxury of both the early
and later Empire. The common mistake was made
of taking the outpourings" of satirists and moralists
at their face value. For we must always remember
that it is inevitable in the chronicles of an age that
vice should be singled out, especially rare vice, and
that virtue, especially commonplace virtue, should
be neglected. The many glorious nights of summer
have slight place in our memories or gratitude ; one
devastating storm stamps itself indelibly. So in
history. There is not a century or epoch in which it
is not possible to draw the blackest picture of moral
decay and ruin, by concentrating attention upon the
vice that obtrudes itself, and neglecting to discover
the virtues which have neither annalist nor herald,
but which were not the less real because silent.
This is especially true in the case of the Empire.
Those who were discontented with the present were
driven into satire, and, inasmuch as through political
reasons they could not sketch a happier future with
out running the risk of treason, they were forced to
contrast the sordid features of their generation with
the fabled happiness of an age in the past that never
existed. Even Nero himself, to say nothing of Ti
berius, could scarcely have been quite so low and
wicked as he is usually painted ; if so it is difficult
to account for the popularity he enjoyed, and the per
sistent belief among the people, alluded to by the au
thor of the Apocalypse, that he would some day return
to reign. We must discount therefore much of the
positive evidence of moral disorder, especially in the
cases where we are solely dependent on persecuted,

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 35
and consequently embittered, Christian writers, or
upon political satirists; while, on the other hand,
there are many indications of the existence of a
normal moral life among the people at large. The
recent discoveries in Egypt and elsewhere give no
support to the idea of a vast moral degeneration
among the people at large.
The difficulty of accounting for the Fall of the
Empire is further increased when we remember that
the Fall followed hard upon a distinct spiritual
revival in the old Boman world. By this we do not
refer to the growth of Christianity, but to the fact
that the attempt of Christianity to obtain the mas
tery of the Empire coincided, it would appear, with
an upward spiritual movement among mankind at
large. The old heathen conceptions strove in many
ways to adapt themselves to the enlarged Spiritual
and human outlook of a world which was no longer
local in its instincts but imperial. The search of the
philosophers for the universal principle in. knowledge
and thought had resolved itself, among the more
thoughtful laity, into the desire to find some uni
versal object of faith. The spirituality and high
calling of Stoicism, as exemplified in Marcus Aurelius,
or the slave Epictetus, is a commonplace of history.
Less familiar is the growing spirituality which
students have discovered, especially in the second
century, in the three great rivals of the Christian
faith : the worship of the Great Mother, the worship
of Isis, and, above all, the worship of Mithra. These
three religions, with the stress they laid on atone
ment, vicarious sacrifice, immortality, and mystic
rapture, prepared the old world in more ways than

36 THE CHURCH •
one for the religion which was to satisfy, at last, the
hunger and thirst of humanity. At the same time
they make it more difficult to account for the fall of
the Empire. The influence of Stoicism upon the
people may have been but slight, but Mithraism
numbered its devotees by the thousands, even as far
north as the Boman Wall in Northumberland, and
was the special cult of Boman soldiers.
The Fall of the Empire remains the great mystery
of history. But to acknowledge this is not to allow
that history reveals that there may be cataclysms and
catastrophes, unrelated to moral causes, whose up
shot was the destruction of thriving civilizations.
The Christian is necessarily an optimist ; for him
the watchword of humanity is progress; "it doth
not yet appear what we shall be" is the inspired
declaration of his hope. Progress, probably, is al
ways in cycles, attended by times of reaction, but to
believe that these cycles are without goal or moral
direction is the negation of the Cross and the proc
lamation of chaos. The Fall of the Empire, there
fore, just because it is the greatest catastrophe in
history, cannot be unrelated to moral causes or
government. We are bound by the convictions of
our faith to assert that it was neither accidental nor
without sequence of good, though we must at the
same time confess that for our belief there is no
sufficient demonstration.
Possibly the causes of the Fall may never be
satisfactorily known. Doubtless there were factors
in that fall the existence of which in that unscientific
age were unnoticed or unrecorded, but which were
absolutely vital in their consequences. One or two

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 37
of these may be indicated. What position for in
stance did the women of the age take up towards the
burden of motherhood! That the nation which,
under dreams of woman's emancipation or equality,
or through love of ease, refuses that burden, is a
doomed nation, is the accepted verdict of history;
but we have no evidence sufficient for us to decide
whether Borne fell because its women, especially in
the governing classes, refused the burden of their
sex. Then again we have no records which would enable
us to estimate the part played in the Fall by epi
demics and other physical causes. The possible im
portance of this cause cannot be exaggerated. Only
in the last thirty years have historians discovered the
tremendous consequences, social, economic, political,
and religious, of the Black Death of 1349. This ap
palling catastrophe not only swept away half the
population of Europe, but left its mark on every
aspect of the national life. In England, for in
stance, it contributed more than any other cause to
the destruction of the old mediaeval system of land
tenure, while the monasteries never recovered from
the burden of debt and depleted numbers which it
inflicted upon them. We may safely say that but for
the Black Death Henry VIII could not have carried
out his policy of monastic destruction. Bearing in
mind therefore the consequences which without ex
aggeration may safely be traced to the Black Death,
we may ask whether or not there were similar events
in the Boman world which have not perhaps received
from historians their due attention. Take for in
stance malaria. The Campagna of Italy bears wit-

38 THE CHURCH
ness to this day of awful devastation caused by this
plague, but in the days of Bome's greatness the
Campagna was a smiling garden. Whence came the
malaria? Was it due to preventable causes of a
moral nature, as for instance the substitution of,
sheep farming and slave labour for the petty tillage
of the old free yeomen, or did the malaria arise from
general ignorance! Whether from one or the other,
it is at least a tenable surmise, that has recently found
strenuous advocates, that malaria may have played
no small part in the destruction of both the Greek
and the Boman cultures. What part also should be
assigned to the plague which in the middle of the
third century ravaged the provinces of the Empire
for fifteen years in succession, carrying off in Alex
andria and other cities more than half the population.
Seasons of scorching drought followed by terrific tor-N
nadoes, famine, earthquakes and huge tidal waves
completed the ruin. The struggle with nature is hot
new. Nor is it fatal unless the national will has
been weakened by luxury or bad government, or,
as is the case in Mesopotamia, the fatalism of Islam
has extinguished effort.
We may frankly own that the problem of the Fall
of the Western Empire is incapable of solution with
the existing materials. It may perhaps lessen the
problem, at any rate for the Christian, if we enquire
what would have been the fate of the Church had the
Empire survived, not as a mere ghost of its former
self, but in its old majesty and power. The Papacy,
of course, would have been condemned to play a part
in the world of much the same importance as the
bishops of Antioch or Alexandria. But with all its

ITS TASK- IN THE MIDDLE AGES 39
defects the historian must own that for long centuries
thd Papacy was the greatest force that made for
righteousness that the world knew. More pertinent
is it to ask whether Christianity itself could have ac
quired any real hold in the Eoman Empire, whether
for instance there was not an essential antagonism
between Caesar and Christ, between the fundamental
concepts of the Empire and the Church. We believe
it may be legitimately argued that in a strong Em
pire true to itself and its leading principles, Chris
tianity was impossible, unless indeed it were willing
to reduce itself to the level of a mere philosophical
opinion which, like Stoicism or Neoplatonism, might
be held by the cultured few, but which made few at
tempts to proselytize the masses, or to alter radically
the structure of society. For Christianity, at any
rate in its earlier and purer days, the fashionable
syncretism of philosophy, in which Plutarch and
other thinkers found solace, was a sheer impossi
bility. With sublime audacity the followers of
Jesus proclaimed that Christ must be all in all.
Christianity emblazoned on its banners its loathing
and disdain for the cults around. But toleration for
local cults of every sort, provided they were not
harmful to the State or detrimental to morals, was
an essential principle of Boman policy. Boman
toleration in fact was merely a matter of political
expediency. For the Church in the Empire tolera
tion was an impossibility. A Christianity that was
willing to accommodate itself to the heathenism
around would never have conquered the world.
The reader will not fail to notice one result. The
imperial toleration was a local matter, if only for the

40 THE CHURCH
simple reason that polytheism was essentially a local
matter. Each god had his rights, within certain
areas ; but each god must be careful to respect the
rights of his neighbour. To ignore this rule would
lead to chaos, or rather to the end of the whole
system. Now a universal faith, provided it makes
any real demands on its devotees, must come into
conflict with polytheism. The claims of the local
and of the universal cannot be conciliated. We see
this in later days in the case of Muhammad. The
same thing was illustrated even more abundantly in
the rise of the Church. The Christians were not
persecuted because of their creed, but because of
their universal claims. For monotheism, viewed
merely as a philosophy, the Eomans had some sym
pathy. But a monotheism which, refused to allow
place for others must be brushed aside as a political
nuisance or an " atheistic " monster. This univer
sality of claim, this aggressiveness of temper, this con
sciousness from the first of world-wide dominion — in
a word, all that in later days was summed up in the
title of Catholic — was the inevitable cause of the im
perial persecution of the Christians. Neither the
Church nor the Empire could act otherwise save by
running contrary to their true genius. The failure
to understand this essential opposition lies at the
root of the constant complaints of Christian apolo
gists as to the different treatment measured out to
them and " to the men who worship trees and rivers
and mice and cats and crocodiles." It has also
obscured for many church historians the real meaning
of persecution itself, as a matter rather of political
necessity than of mere love of cruelty.

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 41
We should thus err greatly if we looked upon the
dissolution of the old Boman world as altogether loss.
With the Fall of the Empire there had passed away
much that was harmful, as well as more that was valu
able! Gone for instance was the apotheosis of Caesar,
and in the worship of Caesar the Church ever recog
nized^ its most potent foe. I need scarcely remind
you of what was meant by this, and of its results.
Augustus, the better to work out those ideas of uni
versal citizenship, equality, and government for which
the Empire stood, had found it necessary to institute
or rather develop a common religion to give a unity
to provinces otherwise diverse in creed, language and
custom. This common worship of Borne and Augus
tus was the beginning of a universal Church with a
priesthood, sacrifices, and temples of its own, very
similar and yet very different in conception and aim
from the Catholic Church with which it was destined
to come into conflict. The development of this wor
ship had speedily become a fixed part of the imperial
economy. Against this worship the Christians alone
had stood out with unvarying hostility. No patriotic
words as to the Genius of the Empire, no sophisms of
the elder Pliny that " for a mortal to help mortals is
the essence of deity," no philosophic subtleties about
the divine life of the State and its connection with an
unseen order, could deceive the Christian into for
getting the degradation for God and man alike of this
system of apotheosis. He saw clearly the insult to
God ; the putting the Genius of the Empire in the
place of Divine Providence, the attributing to man
prerogatives which belong solely to the Almighty.
He realized the degradation of man resulting from

42 THE CHURCH
thus fixing the worship of men upon one of them
selves, however exalted. He knew that in all ages a
man's views of his god are the measures of his ideals
for himself and his neighbour. He was aware of all
that could be said in its favour by Plutarch and other
philosophic writers ; that it was a symbol of unity,
the "keystone of the imperial policy," an incarna
tion of the race's solidarity, the recognition of a
divine foundation for order and empire, and the like.
Such specious arguments did not move him. For
the Christian there was but one Lord and Master to
whom he owned supreme allegiance ; this he was
prepared to prove by the renunciation of all things,
even lifeitself^_\ For the Christian the unity of)
~ffie~~race was symbolized, not by a Tiberius or a
Marcus Aurelius, but by the incarnation of Jesus
Christ ; in the Man Christ Jesus alone was the hope
of humanity. This apotheosis of Jesus, to look at
the matter for the moment from the standpoint of the
heather* philosopher, he claimed to be on a different
footing from the apotheosis of Claudius or Vespasian.
Leaving on one side all question of character, the one
was the^jtpotheosis. of a supreme- renuBeiatiar^ the
otherJheWolatry of success. And there is nothing
so fatal in the long "run to all higher instincts and
aspirations as the idolatry of success, whether in the
form of a second-century emperor or a twentieth-
century millionaire.
But with the Fall of the Empire all this, in the
West at least, passed away, though it still lingered
on in spirit in the Eastern Empire. The gain to hu
manity was immense. Mere local heathenism could
be destroyed or overcome ; the worship of Borne and

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 43
Augustus was a policy based upon political necessi
ties; its overthrow could only be accomplished by
the destruction of the Empire itself. The results
of the overthrow may be deplored, until we remem
ber that no future of progress and hope could lie
before a world whose unity was still based on the
worship of Caesar, or any other mortal all-highest.
Another gain for the world from the Fall of the
Empire lay in the dethronement of the Eoman idea
that the State as such was absolute and supreme,
above all law, and with a complete claim upon the
souls as well as the bodies of each of its citizens. By
Eoman theory the State was the one society which
must engross every interest of its subjects, religious,
social, political, humanitarian, with the one possible
exception of the family. There was no room in Eo
man law for the existence, much less the development
on its own lines of organic growth, of any corpora
tion or society which did not recognize itself from the
first as a mere department or auxiliary of the State.
The State was all and in all, the one organism with a
life of its own.
This Eoman concept — almost identical in expres
sion and aim to its modern imitation, the German
JcuUur — had worked marvels in the reducing chaos to
order, and bringing in efficiency, but in the process
it had reduced the individual to a valueless unit,
just as does its modern representative, however effi
cient and orderly may be the other results of the
system. The elimination from the ideas of Europe
of this conception of a state above law was a priceless
gain. In its place there arose, it is true, the struggle
of individual nations striving to express themselves

44 THE CHURCH
in their own way, but it was through this very strug
gle that we can trace the rise of individual liberty.
So little was the State as such above law, irresponsi
ble, that the fundamental conception of the dominant
State, the Holy Boman Empire, was a responsibility,
not the less real because ill-defined, of its secular head
or emperor to its spiritual head, the pope. How
deadly was the Boman idea of an irresponsible State,
an end of worship in itself and as such to be treated
as divine, how great the deliverance of Europe by its
overthrow we may see in the woes that have resulted
from the revival in a new form of the old Boman idea
by Machiavelli at the Eenaissance, its enthusiastic
adoption in modern Germany by Treitschke and
other professors. All the evils which have come to
Europe from the logical carrying out of a theory
which puts the State uber alles, even above law and
God, only demonstrate how right were the early
Christians when they chose death itself rather than
acknowledge for one moment the divinity of Eome
and Augustus. The cycle of time has brought back
once more with added horrors the Boman state-
kultur; once more, through the martyrdom of na
tions and not as of old of individvals only, must the
world be delivered from this fatal barrier to individ
ual liberty. IV
If the problem of the fall of the Western Empire is
insoluble for those who would demonstrate adequate
moral causes, still more difficult is the problem of
the fall of the Eastern Empire and the triumph of
Islam. How was it, the reader may ask, that the

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 45
original centres of Christianity so speedily succumbed
to the unitarian, that Alexandria, Carthage, Antioch,
Ephesus, Constantinople, — names forever illustrious
for the one-time virility of their Christian thought,
and their lasting contributions to the Christian faith
— became both lost to the Cross and in some cases
lost to civilization as well. No satisfactory answer
is possible : Even more than the Fall of the Western
Empire the devastation of the Eastern and African j
^churches is a mystery that taxes faith. Nevertheless;
historical enquiry will reveal certain causes for the
conquest of Islam.
Islam conquered because the caliphs who succeeded
Muhammad in spite of their burning zeal exercised
a shrewd " toleration," taking care, of course, not to
read into this word modern English or American
ideas, but to understand it relatively to the age. By
the laws of the faith polytheists and idolaters might
be exterminated, but as a matter of fact the Muham-
madan conquerors of India have always spared its
temples. In all countries also, except in Arabia
itself where no faith was permitted but Islam, the
Muslims, however much they might despise, always
tolerated the Jew or the Christian. On the payment
of a moderate tribute the conquered who refused to
conform were entitled to the freedom of conscience
and religious worship. In Syria their churches were
not taken from them. After the conquest of Damas
cus in 635 half of the churches were allotted to the
Christians ; it was not until eighty years later that
the gre^tjcathedralwas jnade a mosque through the
gradual decline of the Christian population. There
were other causes of the extension of Islam. As

46 THE CHURCH
Gibbon has pointed out "in a field of battle the
forfeit lives of the prisoners were redeemed by the
profession of Islam ; the females were bound to con
fess the religion of their masters, and a race of sincere
proselytes was gradually multiplied by the education
of the infant captives. But the millions of African
arid Asiatic converts who swelled the native bands
of the faithful Arabs must have been allured rather
than constrained to declare their belief in one God
and the apostle of God. By the repetition of a
sentence and the loss of a foreskin, the subject or the
slave, the captive or the criminal, arose in a moment
the free and equal companion of the victorious Mos
lems. Every sin was expiated, every engagement
was dissolved ; the vow of celibacy was superseded
by the indulgence of nature ; the_jiCtiy^spjTits_who
sleptjn^the -cloister, were awakened by the trumpet
of the Saracen ; and, in the convulsion of the world,
eyeEy_member-oLa newsoeiety^iseeHded io-the natural
level of his capacity and courage." *
Now these causes cannot be regarded as moral ;
they made their appeal to the unregenerate man. It
is only when we come to contrast this easy-going
proselytism with the deadly intolerance of the Church
in the East, that we see wherein lay a great weak
ness. In the East the controversies that raged round
the various symbols of the faith bad degenerated into
obstinate and sanguinary struggles, in which one
party pillaged and murdered another in the name of
the profound mysteries of the Incarnation and of the
Trinity. From the secular point of view the Council
of Chalcedon (451), with its seeming settlement of a
1 Gibbon, Vol. V, p. 487.

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 47
long theological controversy, was a great misfortune
for the Empire. The disunion of the East to which
it led was one of the immediate causes of the tri
umph of Islam. Whole provinces of the Empire
were driven by persecution into disaffection. Men,
wearied by the endless struggles concerning meta
physical niceties, with the ready fatalism of the East,
accepted, if they did not welcome, a creed forced
upon them from without, which ended the conflict by
remorselessly reducing all to acquiescence in a new
doctrine whose rigid monotheism admitted of no
debate. Islam conquered because of the weariness
of a world which had lost the living Christ in end
less controversies as to His Person. When the great
Justinian, whose whole ecclesiastical policy was as
great a series of mistakes as his Church of Santa
Sophia at Constantinople was a masterpiece of
architecture, undertook to establish the unity of the
Christian faith with fire and sword, he really pre
pared the way for the destruction of the faith itself.
The same mistake was made at a later date by the
emperor Heraclius. Heraclius, one of the greatest
generals the world has ever seen, saved the East from
the Persian invasion. In victory after victory he
wrested Egypt and Palestine from Chosroes (620),
but when the greater peril of Islam arose, Heraclius
had estranged Egypt by becoming the persecuting
tool of Sergius the patriarch of Constantinople.
In a word the grave of the Empire was dug by
a fanatical, persecuting Orthodoxy. The powerful
Monophysites and Monothelites of the East might be
compelled by the forces of the Empire nominally to
renounce their heresies ; in reality they clung to them

48 THE CHURCH
still, and only awaited their opportunity. The Fall
of the Eastern Empire, the direct result of eccle
siastical disunion, gave to these sects a continued if
struggling existence. They found under the aegis of
Islam a rest and protection that had been denied
them by the dominant Greek Church. The Mar-
onites, Jacobites, Nestorians, Armenians and Copts
of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Egypt are not only
the feeble survivals of once powerful theological
schools ; they are the constant reminder by their ex
istence in the midst of Muhammadan peoples of the
disintegrating forces of religious intolerance. In
Egypt, for instance, where theological feuds raged
fiercest, thousands of turbulent Coptic monks were
prepared to lay down their lives for a clause or a
word in the definition of a dogma, yet accepted,
almost without a struggle, the Muslim conquerors —
even if we reject the story of the treachery of a mys
terious Christian ruler called the "Mukaukas,"
whom some writers have identified with the Melchite
patriarch of Alexandria. Whatever the truth of this
tale, for the Coptic or native Egyptian Church the
Arab invasion was almost a relief from the intolerant
tyranny of Constantinople, abetted by the dominant
Greeks of Alexandria.
Nor must we overlook in this connection the fatal
effects, especially in Egypt, of Monasticism. With
the undoubted services of Monasticism to civilization
in the Western world we shall deal in a later lecture,
but in the East the services were few, the mischievous
effect without question. In Egypt, especially, the
strongly-marked individualism of Monachism not
only led it into excesses and extravagances of as-

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 49
ceticism that disgraced human nature itself, but also
into a fatal indifference if not antagonism to the in
terests of the State. To account for this is not diffi
cult. In its first origins Christianity had lain over
against the State because of its parousiau conceptions.^
In the first enthusiasm of their chiliastic hopes the
Christians had a tendency to forget the duties they
owed to the State. The claims of the old "world"
that was " passing away, with the fashion thereof,"
and of the new world that men " greeted from afar "
were not easy to adjust. Synchronizing with the
decay of parousian belief we have the rise of Mon
asticism, in which the adjustment was even less suc
cessful. In Monasticism, in fact, we find antagonism
to the State one of the primal elements, an indiffer
ence or hostility at which we need not wonder, if we
remember the then circumstances of the State against
which it revolted. For the Empire, whatever may
be said as to the causes, was slowly sinking into ruin,
both from weakness within, bad methods of finance, a
poverty-stricken middle class, the concentration of
all wealth in the hands of a few, a hopeless bureau
cracy, the stereotyping of all society into hereditary
castes, an army of hireling barbarians — more terrible
to its masters than to its -enemies — and by attacks
from without. The despotism of the Empire " as it
grew old became at once feebler and more vexatious,
exhausting a world which it could not even defend.
It weighed upon all, and protected none."1 "The
ancient world," writes Harnack, "had arrived, by
all the routes of its complicated development, at
the bitterest criticism of and disgust at its own ex-
•Montalembert, " Monks of the West," Vol. I, p. 197.

50 THE CHURCH
istence. » ' ' The fabric of Boman society and adminis
tration in the fourth and fifth centuries was honey
combed by moral and economic vices. Christianity
had not as yet cured evils, so much as made the
more thoughtful conscious of their presence, and of
the tremendous organized system which seemed
bound up with them. Of the fourth and fifth cen
turies, equally with the first, is the description of
Arnold true :
" On that hard, pagan world
Disgust, and secret loathing fell ;
Deep weariness, and sated lust,
Made human life a hell."
A protest was bound to come and when it came to
take the form of a reaction from the State to the
individual. We see a similar revolt in the early
days that followed the break tip of Greek civic inde
pendence, and the substitution of imperialism. Phi
losophers despaired of the republic, and found a new
subject for thought in the individual man. So once
again a protest was made, no longer by schools of
Stoics and Epicureans, but by the noblest souls
within the Church. Unfortunately the protest be
came a counsel of despair. That serviceable men
were withdrawn from the service of the army might
have been viewed with indifference ; that so many
men of brains and character were withdrawn from
civic and domestic life, at a time when their services
would have been invaluable in the defense of civili
zation and Christianity itself, was a disaster nowhere
felt more than in Egypt and Syria. There the rush
1 Harnack, " History of Dootrine," Vol. Ill, p. 127,

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 5 1
to the monasteries, or to the solitudes of the desert,
ultimately resolved itself into the suicide of a nation.
Another unfortunate cause of weakness in the
Eastern Empire, explanatory therefore of the tri
umph of Islam, was the iconoclastic controversy.
After the loss of Syria and Egypt the further en
croachments of Islam were arrested by one of the
greatest of Eastern emperors, Leo the Syrian,1 by
birth a rough peasant of Asia Minor, and by Leo's
son Constantino V. Unfortunately Leo was not con
tent with his military task. Like Heraclius, and
with the same fatal results, he plunged into ecclesi
astical controversy. The crusade of Leo against the
" eikons " or sacred pictures was only part of his
general programme for infusing new life into the
realm, driving back the Saracens, and recovering the
lost provinces of the Cross. To attribute to Leo
heretical notions, e. g., the denial of the humanity
of Christ, is a charge without proof. On the other
hand it is probable that he considered that the vic
torious career of Islam was due to her hatred of
idolatry. Islam would neither allow images nor
even copies of natural objects. Leo determined to
make use of the same secret of strength. But Leo
was before his age, alike in his desire for a less super
stitious Christianity, in his abolition of serfdom, and
his efforts to develop a strong yeomanry by a reform
of the land laws. The evils sanctified by time could
not be corrected even by his master hand. His at
tempted religious reforms were mere personal move
ments, antagonistic to all popular feeling; nor did
he attempt to substitute a living enthusiasm in the
1 Commonly bat erroneously called the Isaurian.

52 THE CHURCH ,
place of the superstition he destroyed. After a long
struggle iconoclasm failed, and the images were re
stored, chiefly through the agency of female sover
eigns. The consolidation which had been the work
of the great iconoclasts produced its results in large
acquisitions from the Saracens, by the Basilian dy
nasty (867-1057), of lost territories both in Asia and
Europe. But the persecuting tyranny of the Icono
clasts had estranged the people from sovereigns who
might otherwise have consolidated the forces of the
Empire. The Empire was torn asunder just at a
time when it most needed its full strength.
In Spain also — another great centre of Islam con
quest as Dr. Hodgkin has pointed out — the Church
had drawn to itself the whole power of the State
and was chiefly concerned with uprooting Judaism.
"Shem was to take a fearful revenge. True the
revenge came not from the race of Isaac, but from
their kinsmen of the deserts. But there can be no
doubt that the rapid success of the Saracens was due
in part at least to their secret understanding with the
Jews. The soil was mined under the feet of its
Gothic lords."
Thus the victory of Islam, though still a mystery,
is not yet wholly unrelated to moral causes. Broadly
stated, it was the triumph in a new debased form of
the old Jewish monotheism against a church which
had buried the living Christ in a grave of words ; at
the same time it was the accommodation of religion
to the common man. Such accommodation could
never have been won in a Church which had not al
ready lost touch with the spiritual realities. The
victory was completed when Muhammad granted to

ITS TASK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 53
his Christian subjects the security of their persons,
the freedom of their trade, and a limited toleration of
their worship. By this astute, though temporary,
move Islam secured the mastery over the divided and
warring creeds of the Cross greater than any that
could have been purchased by the sword. And it is
still the divided state, as in the days of the crusade,
tha^gives Islam such power as she still possesses.

LECTURE II
THE DAWNING OF THE
MISSIONARY CONSCIOUS
NESS OF THE CHURCH

LECTURE II
THE DAWNING OF THE MISSIONARY
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH

IN our last lecture we dwelt at some length upon
the extent of the task which awaited the Church
as the result of the barbarian invasions, and of
the fall of the Empire. In our present lecture we
shall confine ourselves to the efforts made by the
Church to bring the heathen within her fold. For it
is the chief glory of the Church, both in the East and
West, that amid all weakness and faults her sons
have never forgotten the last commission of Jesus.
Nor will the student inquire too carefully what meas
ure of self-seeking and political aggrandizement may
have been mixed with her purer motives. He will
recognize that in the harvest-field of Christ the tares
and the wheat grow together ; that not all is good,
while all is far from being evil. We will rejoice over
the conquests of the Cross, that notwithstanding every
way Christ is preached ; though he may mourn over
the wide difference which separates the holiest of the
soldiers of the Church from the one Divine Pattern.
You will not expect from me any detailed study of
the various missions, or of the heroes of the Cross
whom they produced. The subject alone would de
mand a book ; a single lecture would be absurdly
57

58 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
inadequate. We must content ourselves with point
ing out the main features and results of the mission
ary movements of the early Middle Ages.
The first matter that we should note is this. In
the mission-field, as in life in general, thetide of ad
vance is invariably followed by periods oTebTK The
Church, as much as the individual, seems incapable
of living for long in a state of intense spiritual ear
nestness, without suffering the inevitable reaction.
But for this reaction there is another cause besides
the psychological. The periods of missionary advance
are periods of picturesque acfiyity which arrest atten-
tion^by their 'great personalities. Such advance is
useless unless followed^ by a period of consolidation,
none the less valuable because monotonous. The pio
neers who first blazed their way through the virgin
forests of your mighty continent, crossed the moun
tains to the blue grass of Kentucky, or caught sight
of the great Father of Waters, have left names behind
them enshrined forever on the pages of history. Not
so with those who following in their steps settled the
country, turning the wilderness into a garden, and
the prairies into cities crowded with culture. So
with the Church. The great missionary pioneers are
immortal, nor do we lessen their renown when we
point out the centuries of more humdrum work which
necessarily followed their activity. But the toilers
in these centuries are for the most part voiceless and
unknown. Yet their works do follow them.
- -Christian missions form themselves into certain well-
defined epochs. There was first of all the great effort,
which we owe above all to the genius of St. Paul, to
win the Boman Empire for the Cross. But that mis-

OF THE CHURCH 59
sion falls outside our period. Suffice to note in pass
ing one matter that will arise in our consideration of
other missions. Christianity conquered the Empire
by weapons that were not altogether spiritual. When
Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of
the State, the Christians, relatively speaking, were
few in number. If we estimate the population of the
Empire as between fifty and sixty millions, the Chris
tians in the Empire at the moment of their triumph
did not form one-tenth of the whole. They were, in
fact, less numerous than the Jews. But that great
opportunist Constantine made the religion of this
small section the religion of the whole Empire be
cause it was the only religion, except the outworn
apotheosis of Borne and Augustus, that was capable
of becoming universal. But vast as might seem to
be the gain of the Church, there was corresponding
loss. Hitherto Christianity had been a church of
martyrs and enthusiasts, and the key-note had been
pitched accordingly. Now it became the cult of a
multitude of conformists upon whose life and morals
it had little real hold. If the new Constantinople
was from i the first a Christian city, yet in Borne her
self, for long years after the nominal conversion of
the Empire, paganism was still the professed creed
of the majority of the Senate, while in the country
parts paganism, nominally abandoned, entrenched
herself, with little change, in the Church itself.
Turning away from the Empire to our proper sub
ject we note that the first missionary successes of the
Church were won by heretics. We have already re
ferred to the work of Ulphilas the Arian apostle of
the Goths (c. 360). He was the forerunner of those

60 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
missionaries who won over to the faith the Burgundi-
ans in Gaul, the Suevi in Spain, the Vandals in Af
rica, and the Ostrogoths in Pannonia. These mis
sionaries for the most part, whether from conviction
or from political pressure, were Arians, and Arian
ism was thus adopted as the national faith of the
warlike converts who had overthrown the Western
Empire. The success of these Arian missionaries is not
difficult to explain. The temper and understanding
of the new converts were not adapted to the meta
physical subtleties of the so-called Athanasian Creed.
Arianism with its reduction of Christ to a demi-god,
with its popular methods of appeal, including much
use of song, with its facile logic that seemed to ex
plain the unthinkable, found as quick a response
among the heathen as it had already achieved in the
Empire, among the thousands of nominal converts to
Christianity. For the barbarian it was a half-way
halting place in their conversion to Christianity.
Arianism was really an accommodation to heathen
conceptions. For the pagan of culture the question
at issue was whether two weaker and subordinate
gods, holding their existence precariously at the will
of the Father, very little different from the philo
sophical triad or duad of Philo, Plotinus and .the
Neoplatonists, should be interposed between the dlre'ty
and mankind. For in plain English that was really
the meaning of the Arian formula as regards Chris
tianity ?jv 6re Sute %v "there was when He was not"
— with its necessary consequence as to the Holy
Spirit, in spite of all refinements about leaving out
the conception of time and the rest. Now such a

OF THE CHURCH 6l
conception did not differ fundamentally from the
heathen idea of a supreme Zeus or Woden with their
lesser attendant deities. Carlyle, certainly no preju
diced observer, was right when he stated : "If
Arianism had won, Christianity would have dwindled
into a legend. " Nevertheless, just because it was a
half-way house, Arianism had its mission. When
that was accomplished it vanished.
For this supersession of Arianism there were many
causes. We may believe that just as the Church of
the Empire was driven in spite of herself to eradicate
the Arian taint, so sooner or later any Arian nation
had to purge itself of heresy or vanish from the earth.
Certain it is that though Arianism has again and
again in diverse forms laid its spell on the thought
ful, yet it has never succeeded in holding the
allegiance of the many. Nations and congregations
which have embraced it have for the most part
withered away.
Historically we may trace the decay of Arianism
to the power of the Salian Franks. At the age of
twenty the precocious genius of Clovis (Chlodoweg)
oVerthrew the last remains of Eoman power in Gaul,
then turned to carry on a great war with the Alemanni
of the southeast. He vowed to accept the faith if the
White Christ would give him the victory. The
victory came, the "White Christ" was evidently the
mightier God. So on Christmas Day 496 Clovis and
three thousand of his warriors were solemnly received
into the Church at Eheims. The eloquent Eemigius
held up before him the cross: "Adore," said he,
"that which you have hitherto burned, burn the
idols that you have hitherto adored.' ' As the Bishop

62 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
enlarged on the passion and death of Jesus, Clovis
could restrain himself no longer. " Had I," he burst
out, " been present at the head of my valiant Franks,
I would have revenged his injuries."
The baptism of Clovis was the result of supersti
tion. He had embraced Christianity because of its
stronger supernatural support. His orthodoxy was
a matter of political calculation. By the help of the
Catholic Church he determined to overthrow his
rivals, Visgoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Burgun-
dians, all of whom were Arians. When in 507 he
attacked the Visgoths, "it is a shame," he is re
ported to have said, " that these Arians should hold
a part of Gaul ; let us attack them with God's help
and take their land. " Thus a religious sanction was
given to his ambition, while his restless but orthodox
sons and grandsons extended his rule from the forests
of Thuringia and Bavaria to the ocean. But the
supreme triumph of the Franks, as well as their
greatest service to Christianity, was when in 732
Charles Martel brought the green standard , of the
Prophet to a halt upon the Loire, and so saved
Europe from the Muslim domination.
The successful missions of other unorthodox
branches of the Church besides the Arian must not
be overlooked. Prominent among these we place
the Nestorians. Persecuted in the Greek^ Empire
they turned to the EasTTand scattered missionary sees
over a vast area of Central and Eastern Asia. In
Syria, Armenia and Arabia, on the shores of the
Caspian, in Great Tartary where in 1274 Marco Polo
found two Nestorian churches still existing, and in
distant China itself, they established centres of Chris-

OF THE CHURCH 63
tianity that have long since been swept away in the
deluge of Mongolian invasions, or stamped out by
the Muslim. The most important of the Nestorian
missions that still exist is the ancient Christian
Church of Malabar, the origin of which is assigned
by local tradition to St. Thomas the Apostle, but
which really was the work of a Nestorian missionary
of the same name. In the sixth century a noted
traveller, the merchant Cosmas of Alexandria, found
in Ceylon, to his surprise, another congregation of
Persian Christians, i. e., of exiled Nestorians. Even
more interesting is the testimouy to their activity in
China. In 1625 the Jesuits discovered a large tablet
at Signanfu, the old capital of China, which, set forth
in Syriac and Chinese the story of a Nestorian mis
sion. From this tablet we learn later that in 636 a
missionary named Olopan came from Syria, was
lodged in the imperial palace, and established a
church which met with much success. Sixty years
later there arose a great persecution which lasted for
fourteen years. Then again there was peace, and a
period of considerable prosperity. But of all that
early Chinese Christianity there is now no survival
save this tablet. The great work of the conversion
of China, which made so fair a start, more than 1,000
years ago, has still to be accomplished. n
In the more orthodox conflict of Christ and
heathenism we note three centres of missionary ac
tivity. Constantinople claimed the East, and Borne
the West, but for a while Eome was forced to share
her conquests with Armagh. The story of the Irish

64 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
missions is one of the most interesting pages of sacred
history. In Italy, France, and Spain, Christianity
¦had almost exhausted itself in its struggle with bar
barian and Saracen. Ireland, whose miseries were
yet to come, alone seemed to preserve unimpaired the
light and life of the early faith. This was her golden
age ; her familiar title was the island of " the saints."
But the "saints," whether of the First, Second, or
Third order, almost without exception were hermits
and monks. Irish Christianity was essentially " mon
astic " Christianity, in which the bishop as such had
little authority, and where "monasticism" was but
another name for the community life of the clan
turned religious, with the head of the clan as the
abbot of the monastery or group of monasteries, e. g.,
Clonmacnoise or Glendalough — for the clan could not
dwell in one building or place, especially with the
lapse of years. But just because of this very " mon
asticism ?' the Irish Church was essentially a mission
ary Church. The enormous number of inmates in
these grouped monasteries, 2,000 at Bangor, 5,000 at
Clonfer, and so on, compelled them to leave. Just
as in later years the Irish were driven over the seas
as emigrants to the New World by the narrow exi
gencies of life in the old home, so these huge clan-
monasteries, unable to support their numbers, shed
their more adventurous spirits.
This emigration of the saints was possible through
a special feature of Celtic Monasticism. In the Mon
asticism of the West there was no law upon which
greater insistence was placed, especially after Bene
dict, than that of "stability," i. e., the fixed domicile
of the monk. The wandering monk was sternly sup-

OF THE CHURCH 65
pressed— until, indeed, he reappeared with papal sanc
tion in the wandering friar. But in Celtic Monasti
cism we are struck from the first with its extraordi-
nary^restlessness— in many respects, no doubt, the
reflection of the general restlessness of the Celtic
populations, especially in Ireland. A nomad at
home, the Scoto-Irish colonized the northern parts
of Scotland in the fifth and sixth centuries, giving
to that land, hitherto known as Caledonia, his own
Irish name, while traces of his wanderings a thou
sand years before the Christian era are found in the
burial mounds of Scandinavia. Of this restlessness
the typical hero is the monk Brendan (+577), who
crossed the ocean " through a thick fog " that he
might find an earthly paradise " beyond which
shone an eternal clearness."1 Fronf the greater
monastic settlements of Wales and Ireland there
poured forth a succession of Celtic enthusiasts who
carried their religion and their monasticism to far-off
places the names of which still preserve vtheir mem
ories. Chief of these we may instance St. David, by
whom, it was believed, twelve monasteries in succes
sion were founded ; to whom, above all others, has
gone forth the reverence of the Welsh.
In this restlessness Celtic Monastieism was power
fully assisted by a current political movement. In
the fifth century, owing first to Pictish and Irish in
vasions, followed at a later date by pressure from the
'It may interest an American audience to know that the tale of
Brendan's two voyages was worked up into a popular romance by
Irish monks on the Lower Rhine in the early part of the eleventh
centnry. As this became very popular in Spain it may have in
spired Columbus.

66 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
Saxons, and from the distress caused by a great
plague in 547, we find a steady emigration of the
British to Armorica, a land henceforth to be known
under its new name of Brittany. The leaders in this
emigration were monks, and the witchery of their
lives — that constant witchery of Monasticism, to us,
perhaps, so inexplicable, to the early and mediaeval
Church so real — drew others after them. The emi
grating saints were usually accompanied by numer
ous followers. They found Armorica largely a desert,
almost wholly heathen, its cities burned without in
habitant, made desert by the Empire itself, owing to
many years of crushing imperial taxation extorted
by selfish officials, and because of the ravages of bar
barian hordes. In the dense forests that ran down to
the coast the British monks established their clear
ings or lans, in which their rude huts and chapels
mark the beginning of later villages that bear to this
day the names of these first settlers.
Even more conspicuous than Britain in its mission
ary and monastic enterprises was the Celtic Church
in Ireland. In the sixth century we find the Irish
Church, untroubled by the disasters which were over
whelming the sister island, full of activity and re
source. Embracing Christianity with Celtic ardour,
the Irish monasteries became, for a while, the centres
in the West of ancient civilization and learning, re
taining even some knowledge of Greek, a language
almost unknown elsewhere. In the early years of the
ninth century whoever knew Greek on the Continent
was either an Irish monk or taught by an Irish monk.
The last representative of the Greek spirit in the
West and one of the earliest torch-bearers in the

OF THE CHURCH 67
long line of Christian mystics, by his very greatness
unintelligible to the men of his generation, was John
Scotus Eriugena the 1 Erin-born, who about the year
847 drifted from Ireland and settled at the court of
that patron of scholars, Charles the Bald.
In the middle of the sixth century, especially, we
note a wonderful outburst of Irish enthusiasm. Mon
astery after monastery was founded, and from these
there poured out a succession of daring missionaries.
In their flimsy coracles they crossed the stormy seas
to Brittany, where, among the Breton saints of the
sixth and seventh centuries, we find more than a
dozen whose names are Irish. Others sought for
seclusion from the world by escaping to the barren
islands off the western coast of Ireland where the
roar of the Atlantic and the screams of the gulls
alone would disturb their devotions. When these
became crowded with devotees they put out into
northern seas that they might find some new desert
in the ocean. The Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Shet-
lands, even lonely St. Kilda and distant Iceland it
self were all reached by these adventurous wan
derers, who carried everywhere their Irish monasti
cism as well as their Irish culture and their Irish
manuscripts. Some of these wandering Irish missionary-monks
deserve the passing tribute of our mention. From the
Faroe Islands and Iceland to the plains of Italy, fromi
the shores of the ocean to the sources of the Bhine
and the Danube, we find them everywhere, working
with an enthusiasm that must not be judged by the
absence of permanence in their results. The re
puted pioneer of the host was Pridolin, whose Irish

68 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
birthplace is unknown. From Poictiers, his first
halting-place, he passed by the Moselle and Stras-
burg, founding churches dedicated to St. Hilary, first
to Glarus, a canton in Switzerland which still retains
in its coat of arms the trace of his presence, and
finally to Sackingen, near Basle, where he built a
double monastery of monks and nuns of the usual
Celtic type.
Towards the close of the sixth century we come
across the greatest of these missionaries, Columba and
Columban. Columba, the descendant of Irish kings, in
whose character we see at all times the imperiousness
of his high birth, was born at Gartan, among the
mountains of Donegal (7th Dec. 521). On his bap
tism he changed his name of Crimthann or "wolf"
for that of Colum or "dove." After founding sun
dry monasteries in the north of Ireland, Columba,
desiring to go into exile for the sake of Christ, set off,
in 563, with a band of twelve companions to preach
the Gospel to the emigrant Scots. Crossing the seas
in a currach of wickerwork covered with hides, Co
lumba finally landed on the barren shores of Hi or
Iona, a small island on the border-line between the
kingdoms of the Scots and Picts. There he founded
the famous monastery which was destined to become
the centre of Christian missions in the north of Brit
ain. There, after thirty years of arduous life, the
call came. As Columba climbed for the last time the
little hill above the monastery he lifted up his hands
in blessing. "This place," he said, "is small and
of no reputation ; yet even the rulers of strange na
tions with their subjects shall confer great honours on
it." During the brief watches of the night he gave

OF THE CHURCH 69
to his disciples his last message " to be at peace and
have sincere love one to another." At daybreak he
arose with the rest, and on his knees passed quickly
away amidst a blaze of summer light (June 597). A
week before his death, the baptism of the Kentish
king Ethelbert, away down in the far south, marked
the success of the Boman mission of Augustine.
From Hi the Irish monks carried the Gospel as far
south as the Humber. Their organization, as usual,
was monastic rather than episcopal, the various mon
asteries they founded all looking upon Iona as their
head. In 635 their leader, Aidan, fixed his bishop-
stool on the island-peninsular of Lindisfarne. From
this monastery monks journeyed far and wide. For
a few years the spell which Ireland cast over Eng
land, especially in the north, was almost irresistible.
One Scoto-Irish monk, Dicul, made his way with five
comrades to where the South Saxons still clung to
their paganism, severed by the dense forests that
clothed the Wealds from the forces that were redeem
ing the rest of England. Another, the son of a prince
sf Munster, established amongst the East Saxons
the monastery, Fursey, the village of which still
bears his name. A third Irish scholar, Maildulf, set
up his hermitage and school in the midst of the forest
that cut off the latest conquests of the West Saxons
from the then borders of Welshland. His name is
still preserved in the " Maildulf 's burgh" (Malmes-
bury) which gathered round his monastery. It was
also from the Irish mission-station of Old M"eTrose
that Cuthbert, Eimself~a~'peas"arit ^nffie'JLowlM^ij
than w^omTno saint has leftTa deeper impression on
the memory of the northern English, set off to pro-

•JO DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
I claim the story of the Cross in the remoter villages of
vthe Cheviots, as yet unreached in their heathenism.
What Columba did for Britain, the masterful and
overbearing Columban attempted to do for Gaul ;
and for Columban as for Columba the final result was
the same. Columban was born in Leinster in 543.
At the age of forty he was inflamed with missionary
zeal, and with twelve companions crossed over to
Gaul (585). There, after several years of wandering,
he built a monastery, first in a ruined Boman fort
(Anagray) where oftentimes the monks had nothing
to eat. But soon the numbers so grew that he was
forced to build a larger monastery amid the extensive
ruins of an old Boman town, Luxeuil in the Vosges,
reduced by Attila to ashes, and overgrown by the
jungle. There he organized a service where night
and day the voices of the brethren "unwearied as
those of the angels" arose in unending song.
As Columban maintained the Celtic usages against
the Eoman, the jealousy of the Frankish bishops
was furnished with a suitable weapon of offense.
But his enemies could have accomplished little had
not Columban lost the favour of the royal house
by his outspoken rebukes of the infamous queen-
grandmother, Brunhild, and of what he called her
"brothel-breed." So in 610 he was banished from
Luxeuil, and after a vain attempt on the part of his
enemies to ship him back from Nantes to Ireland, he
wandered up the Bhine to Zug in Switzerland. Ban
ished thence by the people for setting fire to one
of their temples, Columban established himself at
Bregenz. There we see him, assisted by St. Gall,
with characteristic impetuosity, breaking the vats in

OF THE CHURCH

71

which the heathen brewed their beer for Woden, and
throwing the gilded idols into Lake Constance.
When driven thence by the fury of the priests, or
by the revenge of Brunhild, his faith did not falter.
"The God whom we serve," said he, "will lead us
elsewhere. " So Col umban crossed the Alps and spent
the last two years of his life in building his monas
tery of Bobbio in a gorge of the Appennines, near
Genoa, and in writing tracts against the Lombard
Arians. There he died and was buried (23d Nov. 61 5) .
The labours of Columban were followed up by
those of other evangelists. From their monastery of
Luxeuil, the Irish missionaries spread everywhere.
Onejjf-ikesey^^ehujJA^jo^^ through the
forests of Burgundy to where now stands the"townof>
LaftgT the outgrowthpf 'm§JMl _that Jie^jfirst es-
tabljished. NbTTalrTtwayanother monastery, under
the modern form of St. Die, still preserves the name
of this Irish saint. Another monk, Bupert, whether
Irish by birth, or Frank of the royal house brought
up under Columban, is uncertain, after settling for a
while at Worms, struck across the Danube and es
tablished himself at Salzburg, while another Irish
man, Kilian, crossed jthe Bhine, to Wurzburg, and
was thereswur tiered witK"Eis two Companions (July
689). Disen (+674) an Irish-abbot-bishop, after
preaching for some time down the Bhine, settled near
Mainz in a monastery that has given his name to the
present town of Disemberg. No monastery of the
Middle Ages was more noted than that of St. Gallen,
in Switzerland, whose Jjbrarj stillj^mamsunsuj-
:>assgd_|or thejggaljih of its Ins^^^ns^iptsrits
name commemorates an Irishman, tnefriend of

72 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
Columban, brought up in the same monastery of
Bangor, who accompanied him to Luxeuil, and fol
lowed him, when driven out thence, to Zug and
Bregenz. Before his preaching in the native dialects
of Swabia, the spirits of flood and fell fled wailing up
the mountains, crying, as with the voices of women,
"Where shall we go? for he prays continually, and
never sleeps." When in 612 Columban left Bregenz,
Gall remained behind, for he was sick of a fever.
On his recovery he commenced once again his mis
sionary journeys in Swabia. One evening he arrived
at the place where the torrent of the Steinach hollows
for itself a bed in the rocks. As Gall was about to
kneel in prayer, he was caught by a thorn bush, and
fell. The deacon ran to his assistance. "No," said
the saint ; "here is my chosen habitation, here is my
resting-place forever." So he arranged two hazel
boughs in the form of a cross, passed the night in
prayer, and began the next day to build a monastery,
which in later times gave its name to a Swiss canton,
and a great town.
Ireland indeed at that time, as one of its own
chroniclers puts it^was "full of saints." But, un
fortunately, the enthusiasm of these Celtic missionaries
was not combined with equal resources of administra
tion. Within a century of their establishment all
but a few of the Irish monasteries had been driven
to capitulate to Borne and to adopt the rival Rule
of St. Benedict. In 818 Louis the Fair forced' those
which still clung to Celtic usages to fall into line
with the others. The fate which thus attended
Celtic monasticism in its missionary efforts abroad
was followed by the disasters at home of the Viking

OF THE CHURCH 73
invasions. Plundering hordes of Norse and Danish
heathen marked down the monasteries of Britain and
Ireland as their prey, the more easily inasmuch as,
especially in Ireland, the greater number lay within
easy access from the coast. With untiring patience
the monks again and again rebuilt their monasteries,-
only once more to see them destroyed by fire. When
at length in 943 Christianity was once again nominally
introduced into the Norse kingdom which the Vi
kings had established round Dublin, it was too late.
The golden age of the Irish Church had passed away
in an era of blood and fire. Her libraries had been
burnt, her education ruined, and the cultured monks
of the seventh and eighth centuries displaced by a
clergy inferior both in ability and enthusiasm. Such
monasteries as survived had become the centres of
fierce tribal feud. The promise of the early morn
had passed into the storm-clouds that have ever
since overshadowed the "ancient land of saints and
sages." ni
In the long struggle of Borne and Armagh the
victory was won by Borne, a victory so complete that
in later years the original St. Patrick, and the
church he had founded, became lost in legends in
vented for her own purpose by Borne herself. What
ever may have been the influence of the Celtic

Church it^wasITSome alone that_m,,t^_longf*fun
reaped the harvest jjjLcredit and reward. Others
may have toiled ; she alone entereoT into their
labours. Into the story of the Eoman missions it is needless

74 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
that we enter in any detail. It must suffice that we
point out the main factors of her task and the re-j
suits. In the first place we may note that the later
strength of the medieval papacy really rested upon
the missionary activity of Eome. No abstract doc
trine of the primacy of Peter would have established
her spiritual supremacy had she not furnished in its
support true soldiers of the Cross, Following the
lead of Dean Milman historians are wont to speak of
Gregory the Great as "the real father of the Mediaeval
Papacy." The title is indirectly a tribute to his mis
sionary zeal, for the greatest of his works were his
projects for the conversion of the heathen. Never,
in fact, was the need for missions so great as in ,the
three centuries which followed the death of this
Pope. Gregory's enterprise came only just in time.
If Christianity, humanly speaking, was to be saved,
it could only be by persistent aggression. On every
hand her dominion was threatened, her borders
straightened. Only by the vigorous missionary en
terprise of her sons could Christianity win a new
empire in place of the kingdoms she had lost. Nor
is it any discount from the gain of civilization to re
member that in thus enlarging the borders of the
Church Eome was also establishing her wider au
thority. Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, had per
ished ; Constantinople was too much absorbed in her
own defenses ; of the ancient centres of Christianity
Eome alone remained to wage war with both pagans
and Muslim, and to gain as a reward new dominions
for her spiritual Caesars.
The story of Gregory's conversibn of England is too
well known to need repetition. We have already

OF THE CHURCH 75
noted the influence and share in this good work of
the Celtic Church. In the upshot Borne appropriated
to herself the labours of others. We cannot deplore
the result. Alone of all the countries of the West,
Ireland, had formed no part of the Boman Empire.
Her life, laws, and customs, thus still stagnated in
the hopeless clan system from which the genius of
the Empire might have saved her, as it did the Celts
of France. Irish Christianity was without Bome's
two great gifts of cohesion and law ; Celtic enthusiasm v
was more than balanced by Celtic anarchy. If
Armagh had won, England would have suffered the
fate which in after years befell Ireland. She would
have been hopelessly cut off from those civilizing
influences which contact with a wider and more
organized world alone can give. The struggle of
Eome with her Celtic rival was ended by the Synod
of Whitby (664). The one side appealed to Columba,
the other to St. Peter. "You own," cried King
Oswiu, wearied with the interminable arguments,
" that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom
of heaven ; did He give any such power to Columba ? "
On hearing the reluctant "No," "Then," said
Oswiu, "I will obey the porter of heaven, lest when
I reach its gates he should shut them against me. "
The Irishmen, in disgust, sailed back to Iona, and
the English Church, hitherto divided in allegiance
and usage, was henceforth one within herself and in
her obedience to Eome. The arrival as archbishop
of Canterbury of the Greek monk Theodore of Tarsus
(669) completed> the conquest. He arranged her sees,
brought to an end the free wanderings of her earlier
bishops, made episcopal supervision a living thing,

76 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
and established national synods, whose annual meet
ings for consultation and direction showed lines of
national unity and development that led in later days
to one kingdom under one Council of the Wise. The
unity of the Church in England, in fact, antedated by
many centuries the unity of the realm. The triumph
of Eome was complete when Theodore ordered the
reconsecration of churches that had been blessed by
other than her bishops, and the reordination of those
admitted to orders by their hands.
Equally great in its results was the conquest by
Christianity of unkempt Teutondom beyond the
Bhine. Here again the first pioneers were Irish
monks. Through her disordered and immoral con
dition the Gallic Church had done nothing for the
conversion of her neighbour. This was left, as we
have already seen, to the labours of the saintly
Columban and Gall. But more lasting and impor
tant was the mission work of the English. No sooner
had they received the Gospel themselves than they
hastened to spread its knowledge in their native
German forests. "Thus," in the enthusiastic words
of Montalembert, " the Christianity of half the world
has1 flowed, or will flow, from the fountain which first
burst forth on English soil." The first of these
apostles was Willibrord (+741), who by forty years
of devotion assisted politically by the enterprises of
Pippin of Heristal, the father of Charles Martel, won
for the Church the Frisians round Utrecht, where he
founded his see (736). Greater than he was a Devon
shire man, Winfrith, the apostle of Thuringia, better
known under his name of Boniface. Born, probably,
at Crediton (680) of wealthy parents, and famous for

OF THE CHURCH 77
his learning, he lived until middle life in the Bene
dictine abbey of Nutsall, or Nursling, near Win
chester. While engaged in teaching, there came to
him the call to carry the Gospel to the land of his
forbears. He went first to Frisia and worked with
Willibrord, but was already planning a larger task.
After his first fruitless effort to carry the Gospel to
Germany he made his way to Borne to seek aid from
Pope Gregory H. Armed with the Papal commis
sion, and promising obedience to the Boman See, he
then returned to his task (722). For five-and-thirty
years we see him in labours more abundant and
journeyings oft, now hewing down the sacred oak at
Geismar amid the terror of the heathen ; now
struggling with the opposition of the Irish mission
aries in Thuringia ; preaching, baptizing, founding
schools and monasteries, chief of which was the
famous Fulda (744), and dividing into bishoprics his
vast territory from the Bhine to the Elbe. In all
this he was zealously aided by his English com
panions, while English ladies not a few crossed the
Channel that they might share in the perils and joy
of his missionary labours. Such was his success that
in one year he is said, with characteristic mediaeval
exaggeration, to have baptized one hundred thou
sand converts. In 738 he was sent by Pope Greg
ory III to Bavaria, to bring that disorganized
Church "into harmony with the traditions of the
Eoman See."
His work in Germany for the time being ac
complished, Pope Zacharias in 744 appointed Boni
face his vicar to take in hand the reform of the
Church in Gaul. The condition of that Church,

78^ DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
which had hitherto maintained a certain independ
ence of Borne, was deplorable. We have already
noted the conversion of the Franks to the orthodox
faith, under the lead of Clovis, and have marked the
extraordinary political and ecclesiastical results of
this baptism. Henceforth the Franks were nominally
Christians, defenders of the orthodox faith ; in reality
they were still heathen, no longer bound by the
taboos and restraints of the heathenism they had dis
carded, and as yet uninfluenced by the ethics of
Christianity. Painful centuries must necessarily
elapse before Christianity could more than touch the
surface of the lives of the many, or uproot the customs
and superstitions of heathenism. Only slowly can a
nation be cleansed of its devils ; they may be driven
out with lash, but if the place be left empty they will
return again, with new spirits, to their old habitation.
The period of consolidation that follows all mission
ary enterprise is necessarily prolonged and painful. '
A later generation tends to forget the pit from which
it was drawn, and the toil with which the task was
accomplished. In five great councils at which he presided Boniface
with the assistance of Pippin and Carloman dealt
firmly ' with these evils. At the same time he ex
acted from all " unity and obedience to Borne." He
thus ruled the Church on both sides of the Bhine ; in
Germany as metropolitan of Mainz, in France as the
vicar of the Pope. In his seventy -fourth year Boni
face abdicated his office. By a singular privilege
granted to him by Pope Zacharias, he was allowed
to choose his successor. He appointed Lullus, an
Englishman from Malmesbury (753). Freed now

OF THE CHURCH 79
from official cares, he determined to devote the rem
nant of his days to the humble labours of a mission
ary, the perils of which he deemed nobler than the
honours of his crosier. Murdered by the pagans of
Friesland (June 5, 755), he thus obtained the fitting
crown of his devoted service. The work begun by
Boniface was completed by that great statesman, law
giver, and conqueror, Charles the Great. With his
sword he compelled the heathen Saxons to accept his
rule and Christianity, while his genius for organiza
tion reduced realm and Church alike to order. Thus
were the lands of Luther, Grotius, and Melancthon
won for the Gospel. For the time being, also, in
spite of the independence of Charles the Great, they
were won for Borne. There is exaggeration in the
statement that with Boniface " began the conquest of
the episcopate by the Papacy," but, like other ex
aggerations, it witnesses to a truth. Boniface was
the first missionary bishop in the realm of the Franks
to take the oath of allegiance to Eome. One result
of his work was to hand over the organization and
control of the new German Church to the Papacy.
It was through Boniface that, as Dollinger confesses,
"the German Church excelled not only the French
but all other Churches in submissiveness to Eome.
At the Synod of Tribur (895) the German bishops
declared ' The Eoman Church is our master in church
discipline ; therefore let us patiently endure the yoke
laid upon us, although it be scarcely tolerable.' "
What the legions of Varus had failed to do was
more than accomplished by the spiritual soldiers of
the new Empire.

80 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
IV
We have referred to the devastations of the
yikings. Bishop Wordsworth has pointed out that
the ravages and rapines of the Vikings were largely
" the sure punishment " of the early neglect of Scan
dinavia by itsy Christian neighbours, especially the
Franks, Angles and Irish.1 Just as the neglect of
Arabia by the Eastern Church permitted the up
growth of the power of Islam, so the neglect of Chris
tian duty and opportunity in Scandinavia led to the
sufferings and destructions of the eighth and ninth
centuries, when the Northmen swept all before them.
Be this as it may this much is certain, that the terror
of the Northmen did not cease until the aggression of
the Vikings had been met by the counter aggression
of the Church. Intrepid missionaries, with their
lives in their hands, sought out the Arabs of the sea
amid their own forests and fiords. The noblest of
these was Anskar, well named the "Apostle of the
North." Born (801) not far from the great mon
astery of Corbie near Amiens he grew up within its
walls until transferred, about 825, to the northern
colony of that house, called in consequence Corbey
or Corvey, in Westphalia. His life was devoted to
study and prayer. For him the heavens were ever
open. One day, he tells us, he beheld the ranks of the
angelic host, while from the midst of immeasurable
light there came a voice, " Go and return to me again
crowned with martyrdom. " The opportunity came
when in 826 a Danish prince, Harald Klak, desiring
'J. Wordsworth, "National Church of Sweden" (London,
1911), p. 30.

OF THE CHURCH 8l
alliance with the emperor, Lewis the Pious, was bap
tized with his wife at Mainz. On Harald's return to
Denmark he requested Anskar to accompany him.
So with a single companion Anskar set off for
Schleswig, ransomed a band of native youths out of
slavery, and established a school. The school was a
failure, and Anskar retired to a little port near
Utrecht (Wyk te Duerstede) which carried on a large
trade with Scandinavia. In 829 he crossed over to
Sweden, where Christian slaves, carried off by the
pirates, had spread some knowledge of the truth.
After a perilous journey he arrived at Birka (Bjorko),
not far from Sigtuna (Upsala), the chief seat of the
heathenism of the country, Anskar' s real objective.
Two years later (831) he returned to the Frankish
court in order to report his progress to the emperor.
Manifestly the opportunity had arisen for the carry
ing out of the old scheme of Charles the Great for the
establishment of the Church in Northern Germany
and in the regions beyond. So Anskar was conse
crated the first archbishop of Hamburg, the place
which had been selected as a convenient centre for
the new missions. The next year he betook himself
to Borne, promised allegiance to Gregory IV, received
the pallium and ecclesiastical authority over the na
tions of the North.
Anskar returned to his work to find that the pirates
had ravaged his see and burnt Hamburg, while his
missionaries in Sweden had been expelled by the
heathen (837). " The Lord gave, the Lord hath
taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord : " so
saying the intrepid monk set to work to build up
once more his annihilated labours. " Be assured, " he

82 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
said to his heart-broken companions, "that what we
have undertaken to do among these nations will not
be lost, but will thrive more and more, until the
name of the Lord extends to the uttermost bounds of
the earth." Such faith deserved success. But seven
years of further toil carried on by Gautbert, the first
Swedish bishop, and a hermit called Ardgar, failed
to gain the ear of the Swedes, though in Jutland the
hostility of King Horic was disarmed. With in
creased funds, obtained by annexing the older see of
Bremen (847), aided also by a timely nomination as
imperial ambassador (legatio), he set off (848) for the
court of King Olaf of Sweden. He arrived at a crit
ical moment ; tales were rife of the power of the " white
Christ " ; a growing scepticism was preparing the way
for the overthrow of polytheism. So Olaf and his
nobles determined that the toleration of the new faith
should be allowed if confirmed by an appeal to the
heathen gods. Lots were cast in the open air, after a
ritual similar to that described by Tacitus. A bowl
of blood with twigs in it was taken from the temple
table, and the twigs invoked for the answer. Provi
dence watched over this curious transaction, and,
henceforth, in Sweden, after the further consent of
the people had been obtained from an assembly in
Upsala, there was an open door for the preaching of
the Gospel. Before he died, Anskar saw the triumph
of the Cross, not the less sure because it was slow.
On 3d February, 865, this intrepid warrior of God
passed to his reward. Disappointed in his long hope
of dying a martyr, he welcomed as some compensa
tion his severe bodily pains. "Have we not," he
said, "received good from the hands of the Lord,

OF THE CHURCH 83
and shall we not receive evil?" He prayed much
" for thisone miracle, that out of him, by His grace,
God would make a good man." His last words, re-
peated as long as he could speak, were these : "Lord,
be merciful to me the Binner."
Anskar's last letter was a touching appeal to the
German bishops not to slacken in their missionary
labours. But in spite of the efforts of his successor
and biographer Bimbert no progress was made in
Sweden ; while in Denmark the good work was al
most destroyed by the violent reaction under Sweyn
Forkbeard. In early life Sweyn had been baptized,
along with his father Harald Blaatand, King of Den
mark, as part of the conditions of peace dictated by
the emperor Otho (965). But the influence of the
great pirate settlement of Jombburg, where he was
educated, proved too strong, and Sweyn relapsed into
heathenism. He made war on his father, drove out
the priests, and destroyed the churches. On the 3d
February, 1014, the conqueror died at Gainsborough,
after a campaign in which he had ravaged England,
burning the churches, and violating the women. In
his last hours he is said to have beheld the martyred
king, Edmund of Bury, advancing towards him in
full armour. Sweyn shouted for help, but the saint
pierced him with his spear. Which things are an
allegory ; for his son, the great Cnut (1014-1035),
with zeal stimulated by the crimes of his father,
never rested until Denmark as a nation was won for
Christ, largely by the help of missionaries whom, as
Adam of Bremen tells us, "he brought from Eng
land." By his pilgrimage to Eome in 1027, Cnut,
who had hitherto been looked upon by Christendom

84 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
at large as a heathen, brought his northern realms
Into union with Latin Christendom ; while his treaties
with the masters of the Alpine passes secured safety
for English and Danish pilgrims to the papal city.
In spite of the cruelty and craftiness of his character,
Cnut had done much, both by the temper of his laws
and by his benefactions, to increase throughout his
domains the influence of the Church. At the same
time Olaf Skotronung, the first Christian king of
Sweden (993-1021), busied himself with the con
version of his subjects, he also making much use
for the purpose of English missionaries.
From England, also, had the Gospel first penetrated
into Norway. Its introduction arose from the educa
tion at the court of Athelstan in England of Haakon
the Good, the youngest son of Harald Fairhair. On
his succession to the throne (934-961) Haakon quietly
attempted to introduce Christianity into his country,
but was compelled by public opinion to take part in
heathen sacrifices. The attempt was renewed during
the short reign of Olaf Tryggvason (995-1000), the
hero of the Sagas, who, while travelling in Germany,
had been baptized by a priest of Bremen. After his
defeat of the English at Maldon Olaf and Sweyn had
attacked London together (8th September, 994), but
had been driven off by the stout defense of its citi
zens. Peace was made with Ethelred, and Olaf was
confirmed at Andover (994) by iElf heah, later known
because of his martyrdom as St. Alphege of Canter
bury. After his confirmation Olaf promised that he
would never attack England again ; and on his re
turn to Norway he tried hard to introduce Christian
ity, taking with him the priest of Bremen who had

OF THE CHURCH 85
first turned his thoughts to the Gospel. Olaf s defeat
and death, when attacked by Sweyn, put an end to
his plans. The forces of evil were too strong. After
years of struggle, in which violence was the common
refuge of both sides, little real good had been accom
plished. At length Olaf the Holy (1017-1033) broke
the foreign yoke of his country, hitherto the chief
obstacle to the spread of the religion of its masters,
demolished every stronghold of the pagans, and
effected their conversion either by violence or by
his English missionaries and their schools. Olaf s
foundation of the mother church of Trondjhem was
followed later by the organization of the country into
sees, still nominally subject to the archbishop of
Hamburg-Bremen. But only slowly during the next
three centuries did this wild country soften down
into Christianity ; for its persuasion was rather of
the sword than the Spirit. In Scandinavia " con
version demanded an extremely difficult change in
life and habits, even when it did not penetrate very
deeply into the character, especially among the men.
A man had to give up the Viking life. He was for
bidden to follow the old law of private vengeance,
and to have more than one wife. The Church's
rules as to marriage with near relations and others,
as to penance, fasting, observance of holy days and
Sundays, and in particular the prohibition to eat
horse-flesh, were all burdensome." But the chief
difficulty lay in the fact that " hitherto the laws had
been of the people's own making. Now they had,
in part at least, to be accepted from outside." 1
Nothing is so remarkable in the history of the
1 Wordsworth, op. cit., p._86.

86 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
Church as the way in which new converts at once
seek to win others to the faith. The struggle in
Norway was still in the balance when, in 996, Olaf
Tryggvason sent the Gospel to Iceland. Within
three years an Icelandic convert — Leif — set off as
an apostle to Greenland. In the twelfth century
the king of the Sveas, or Upper Sweden, afterwards
honoured as St. Eric, was doing his best to Chris
tianize Finland, by means of a missionary crusade
conducted, however, with more humanity than the
majority of such expeditions. Eric left behind him
as bishop in Finland an Englishman called Henry
who had come with Nicholas Breakspear — whom you
will remember as the only Englishman who ever be
came a pope (Hadrian IV) — to the Swedish council
of Linkoping. Some years later Henry perished as a
martyr. Thus were the glad tidings carried from
one country to another, and the wild men of the
North brought within the fold of tho Church. In
Scandinavia, by the middle of the twelfth century,
the public worship of Woden was dead, the cross
everywhere triumphant. V
Among the Slavs also the Gospel proved the power
of God unto salvation. In Moravia the work was
begun by two remarkable Greeks, natives of Salonika,
a Greek town entirely surrounded by Slav people,
Cyril, whose original name was Constantine (b. 827),
and Methodius. They were both men of consider
able experience. Cyril had been sent in 859 to
labour among the pagan Chazars of the Crimea.
There he discovered and brought back to Eome (861)

OF THE CHURCH , 87
the remains of the martyr pope Clement I, while
Methodius had taken some part in the conversion
of the Bulgarians (860). In his work among this
Turanian people — next to tho Huns the most hated
of the Asiatic invaders of Europe— he had used a
method to reach their consciences not singular to his
age. By his skill as a painter he represented the
Last Judgment with such horror of the damned that
Bogoris the king was literally frightened into bap
tism. In 863, Methodius and Cyril arrived in
Moravia, whose king, Bastislav, had quarrelled
with Borne, and, leaned towards connecting his
Church with that of the East, more, perhaps, be
cause he would thereby cut himself off from German
dependency than because of any theological prepos
sessions. But owing to the envoy of the metro
politan of Constantinople, Photius, Cyril accepted
the invitation of Nicholas I and set off to Eome to
seek recognition (867). There he died February 16,
869, and lies buried in the Church of St. Clement,
in whose wonderful lower church is a fresco of his
funeral with Nicholas I, who had died two years
earlier, walking in the procession ! Meanwhile
Methodius (+885) returned to his labours in Pan
nonia and Moravia. [ The first labour of Cyril had
been to invent an alphabet known as glagolitic for
the yet unwritten Slavonic^ and then render into the
Slavonian tongue the New Testament and the Psalter.
Half a centnry later it was superseded by the so-called
Cyrillic alphabet, really invented by St. Clement of
Drenoviza, on the basis of the glagolitio. A hundred
years later, on the conversion of Vladimir (988), this
version of Cyril, with its quaint Greek letters, was

88 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
at once adopted by the Greek teachers of Eussia as
the national Scriptures. But though Methodius had
thus put himself under the jurisdiction of the Latins,
he used to the end of his life the creed and ritual of
the Greeks, nor would he abandon the reading of
the Scriptures in the vernacular in spite of the op
position of the German bishops. John VIII, who
had at first forbidden the service of God in a bar
barous tongue, was convinced by his argument from
the Psalms that God had made other languages than
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. He was possibly more
influenced by the dread that the Moravians should
attach themselves to Constantinople. A compromise
was passed — in the mass the Gospel and Epistle were
first read in Latin, and then translated into the lan
guage of the people.
The last years of Methodius were embittered by the
attacks of his German fellow workers, who desired to
reduce the Moravians into dependence on the see of
Passau. Twice they branded Methodius as a heretic,
and drove him to vindicate his faith and authority at
the Lateran. As a result the church in Moravia was
linked with the Bohemian. Its fate, however, was to
be linked with Bohemia. There also the first seeds
of the truth had been scattered in 871 by the active
Methodius. The ensuing struggle with heathenism
was long and severe, and was intensified by the Hun
invasion of 908 which destroyed the Slavonic power
and left German influences supreme. In 936 the
saintly King Wenzel was murdered. During the
eight years of his reign he had founded churches in
every city of his realm, and shown forth a religion
pure and undefiled, by visiting the fatherless and

OF THE CHURCH 89
widow in their affliction, redeeming the slave, and
clothing the poor. His brother, Boleslav the Cruel,
was at the head of the heathen conspirators, one of
whose objects was to tear Bohemia away from depend
ence on the Empire. ' ' God forgive thee, my brother, "
cried Wenzel, as they cut him down. But the years
of heathen reaction could not stamp out the work
which he had accomplished. Three years later Bole
slav tried to atone for his murder by enshrining the
bones of Wenzel at Prague. With Boleslav the Pious
(967-999) there was the dawn of brighter days. The
Bohemian Church was organized in the Latin form
(983) under the learned Adalbert, the first bishop of
Prague. His zeal against polygamy and the slave-
trade stirred up the wrath of the heathen ; while
within the Church his Germanizing spirit, which had
forbidden the Slavonic ritual, imported from Moravia,
and substituted the Eoman, led both parties to unite
in his expulsion. But Borne had won ; and in 1080
Hildebrand forbade all further use of the vulgar
tongue. A few years later the monks who adhered
to it were expelled and their service-books destroyed.
But the national feeling, so strong among the Slavs,
one side of which is the age-long hatred of Czech
and German, could not be crushed. Three centuries
later, Hus and Jerome found a country ripe for re
volt. But the motive of their so-called Beformation
as of recent Czech revolts against the Eoman Church
was as much nationalism as the Gospel. For the
tragedy.^ Bpliemia is that of a Slavonic race, sur
rounded by alien Germans, cut c5"from other Slavs
by itsTreligious dependence upon Eome. How differ
ent would have been its history as also the history of

90 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
i
Central Europe if Methodius, its apostle, had hot
been driven from the Eastern Church and subsequent
connection with Eussia by the heresy of Photius !
The conversion of the Poles presents few features
of interest. This was accomplished through/the co
ercion of its dukes (966). Here it' is sufficient to
mark that from the first it had a strong leaning to
Eome, thus emphasizing in years to come the breach
between the Polish and Bussian branches of Slavdom.
Under Casimir I (1034-1058), who was educated at
the famous French monastery of Clugny, the Slavonic
ritual was abolished, and Boman liturgies and cus
toms introduced in its place. Here again, as in the
case of Bohemia, we witness under forms of grievous
wrong the tragedy of religion and race-instincts pull
ing different ways.
In one district of the North alone was the hold of
paganism more lasting. We refer to the districts that
now form the main centres of the Prussian Junkers.
The savage Wends, who dwelt between the Elbe and
the Oder, obstinately refused until the middle of the
twelfth century to forsake their idols. Here the work
was hindered for a reason, common elsewhere, but to
which as yet we have not alluded. In all the mis
sions we may detect the presence of political influ
ences, and the evils of national strifes. Through
political compulsion nations had beeri born into the
Church in a day ; to political causes also must be
attributed, especially in Denmark and Norway, the
strength of heathen reactions. The King of Denmark
put his finger on the weakness as well as the strength
of many of the Teutonic missionaries when he said that
' ' they were accompanied by those whose mind was more

OF THE CHURCH 91
keen on the gathering of tribute than the conversion
of the Gentiles. " The Wends, like the Saxons in the
days of the great Charles, ill brooked their subjection
to the Holy Boman Empire. They looked on their
missionaries as the allies of oppression. They con
sidered that their ulterior purpose was to extend
eastwards (Drang nach Osten) the domain of the marks
or marches — the frontier lands of Teutondom — Bran
denburg, Altmark, Neumark, Austria (Ocoterreich,
i. e., the Eastern realm) and the like. It was to little
purpose that bishoprics and monasteries were founded
with a centre at Magdeburg (967). At every oppor
tunity these were destroyed by fire and sword.
Equally fruitless were the efforts at a later date of
Gottschalk their king, who had been brought up in
a monastery and who, for fifteen years, laboured for
the conversion of his people. In 1060 he and his
missionaries were beaten to death with clubs, and
sacrificed to their war-god Eadegost. Their heads
were then fixed on poles in tbe._temple of Eethre.
Not until 1133 did Albert the Bear, of the Altmark,
who from 1144 onwards called himself Margrave of
Brandenburg, beat down into a reluctant Christianity
these dwellers round the modern Berlin. Their chief
apostle was the saintly and indefatigable Vicelin
(1125-1154). About the same time also Pomerania
was compelled by its Polish overlords, the Duke of
Poland, to accept Christianity which on its spiritual
as distinct from its political side was chiefly the work
of the gentle Otto of Bamberg.
A further step in the conversion of the Wends^
especially in the Baltic provinces east of Berlin, was
taken when in 1190 German democracy, under one

92 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
Walpot von Bassenheim, a trader of Bremen, stung
by the enthusiasm of the crusades, established a union
of ship captains from Lubeck for the succour of the
sick and the dying at Acre in Palestine. In 1199
this was turned into the military order of the Teutonic
Knights. "This Walpot," we read, "was not, by
birth a noble, but his deeds were noble." The new
order obtained vast possessions in Germany. In
1227 it united with the order of the Brothers of the
Sword who had compelled the Livonians to be bap
tized in a body, and in 1228 commenced a crusade
against the heathen Prussians, who, since their
massacre in 997 of St. Adalbert of Prague, had
steadily resisted all attempts at conversion. Hence
forth their history — to quote the summary of Carlyle
— is "a dim nightmare of unintelligible marching
and fighting, " but the results at any rate are lumi
nous still. In a fifty years' war they subdued the
pagans by the argument of the sword, and laid the
foundations of modern Prussia. We may note that
the Gospel and the Sword went hand in hand, and to
this we owe the foundation in 1201 of the German
trading city of Biga, now the great Baltic port of
Bussia. In 1255 Eiga was made the metropolis of the
Prussian and Livonian Church. This was followed
in 1256 by the foundation of Konigsberg, where in
later years the kings of Prussia should be crowned,
and in 1276 of the great castle of Marienburg, hence
forth the centre of the Teutonic OrderJ The modern
h^storjTof PrussTa, and~ofT!]urope to-day, is only
rightly appreciated when we thus grasp the savage
origins of Prussian Christianity, and the recent de
velopment of all her culture.

OF THE CHURCH 93
Even in Eastern Europe the enthusiasm of her mis
sionaries won for Borne a province that, geograph
ically, should have fallen to the see of Constantinople.
From the close of the ninth century until Otto the
Great, by his victory at Lechfeld (955), shut them up
within their present boundaries, the Magyars were
the terror of Europe. They swept over the West like
a stream of fire, uttering cries that none could under
stand, and massacring the Christians by thousands,
especially in Bavaria, which suffered frightfully from
their ravages. Their slaves were countless ; through
them, also, the glad tidings was first carried to their
masters. The work thus strangely begun by the
ravages of war was furthered by the toils of German
missionaries, the forerunner being a certain Wolf
gang, a monk from Einsiedeln in Switzerland, cen
turies later the home of the reformer Zwingli.
Wolfgang was followed by the vigorous Adalbert of
Prague and the work was completed by Stephen,
their first king (997-1038), who had married the
Christian princess, Gisela of Bavaria. To him it was
given to found alike both Church and State. From
the first he drew close to Borne, from whose pope,
Sylvester II, he had received his title (1000). Again
we note that the persuasion of the people was not of
the spirit. Every ten villages were forced to build
and endow a church ; whoever would not become a
Christian was degraded into a serf. Thus again a
race of Tartars, whom the legions of the Ceesars had
never conquered, recognized the spiritual dominion of
Eome, while hordes of grim warriors, so long the ter
ror of the Church, became in the coming centuries the
bulwark of Europe against the advance of the Turks.

94 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
The standing reproach cast by the Latin Church in
the teeth of her sister of the East is her barrenness ;
that Constantinople andj.ts dependencies can show no
missionary operations comparable to^those jpo_iaze
aT^^^^milneaTanaolhers that in every age have
emanated from Eome and its subject Churches. The
reproach is true, though its cause lies deep in the mys
teries of human nature itself. The Eastern Church,
like the brooding^East, has ever been stationary and
Immutable. Thoughlt wouTd~be flattery*tO"§ay~ffiaT
it has "plunged in thought again," nevertheless its
title of Orthodox reveals its ideal ; on the other hand
the Western Church, like the West, is aggressive,
flexible, and comprehensive or Catholic. It is
characteristic of the East that for centuries, in the
Church of Alexandria, the dead hand of its first
bishop St. Mark was employed as the instrument of
consecration. It is characteristic of the West that
the Latin Church, entering on her career amid the
crash of a falling empire and lilieT wiicT chaos of
barbarianMJb.ordes1_ should realize that for herthe
method ofsatvation lay in a constant aggression,
controlled and organized by a new imperialism, or
rather the old imperialism under a more spiritual
form. One great difference between tije Eastern and
Western Churches should be noted. In_JheEast
there_is^no_period that caji_he-£alled Mediaeval. For
centuries, until tfuffall of Constantinople, the Eastern
Church was Greek in name and character, conserving
the old spirit, usages and rites almost without change.
Nothing in fact in history is more remarkable than
the vitality of the Eastern portion of the Eoman

OF THE CHURCH 95
Empire, its repeated emergence after defeat and
disaster, and the unchanging civilization which so
long centred itself in Constantinople. No doubt the
Eastern Church had its struggles and difficulties, but
they were wholly different from those of the West.
L2_Jhe^WesMtvrasthestrug^le of assimilation of
oiiscoTdanTdements^nTuchthe same problem"Tn"the
spiriiiuaTsphere as that of ;AmerTcaHE^aTy"lri the
political.- In the~East"11rwas^flre~repjulse-ef an alien
religion. The work of the Greeks in the salvation
of Europe has been well described by the great states
man William Gladstone who through life loved their
nation and pleaded their cause :
" It was those nations who broke the force of the
advancing deluge, and left of the deluge only so much
as the rest of Europe was able to repel. They were
like a shelving beach which restrained the ocean.
That beach, it is true, is beaten by the waves, it is
laid desolate, it produces nothing ; it becomes noth
ing, perhaps, but a mass of shingle, of rock, of almost
useless seaweed ; but it is a fence behind which the
cultivated earth can spread, and escape the incoming
tide ; and so it was against the Turk — the resistance
of Bulgarians, of Servians, of Greeks, a resistance in
which one by one they succumbed."
The student even of liberal culture fails to realize
the tremendous debt which the common Christianity
of Europe owes to this resistance of the Eastern
Church to the Islam conquerors. Had Constanti
nople fallen to the Turks four centuries earlier than
it did it is difficult to see how the Christianity of the
West could have been saved from the fate which
overwhelmed the East. To this resistance also we

96 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
owe that unchangeableness in the Eastern Church
which has saved it from all the follies and also all the
glories of mediaevalism. For the problems of resist
ance and assimilation are utterj^ different". """" The "one
demand's* conservation and "conservatism, the other
constant growth. We may reproach the Eastern
Church for its unprogressive character ; but if so our
reproach should be with understanding of the great
part which " unprogressiveness " often plays in the
development of civilization.
To this fact of the different problems that the East
ern and Western Churches had to solve we may also
trace the tremendous catastrophe of their separation.
To-day these sister churches stand aloof
Like cliffs, which had been rent asunder
A dreary sea now flows between.
The shallow historian is accustomed to sneer at the
causes of their separation, to speak of the addition
of a word in a creed (filioque) and the like. As a
matter of fact the separation, though its ostensible
causes were trivial, was almost inevitable, and was
the direct result of the different experiences through
which each had passed. No church which had
passed through the tremendous crises, which to-day
we sum up in the phrase the Middle Ages, but would
fail to understand the special characteristics which
the age-long resistance of Constantinople to Islam, as
well as her Greek origins, was impressing upon her.
In the West, by her necessary development, the
Church was led to claim a position of equality with,
if riot superiority to, the State. In the East, on the

OF THE CHURCH 97
contrary, from causes just as political and inevitable
as those in the West, the whole drift was towards an
identification of Church and State that was in due
time to pass into subordination. In the West the
"conception of nationalism has slowly shed the con
ception of inevitable uniformity of creed and religion ;
nationalism is a matter of race, boundaries, or polit
ical associations. In the East from time immemorial
Rationalism and religion have ever Jjeeji4me, i. e., in
ultimate issues political events are determined not by
national boundaries or race affinities but by common
religious instincts. As we see in India to-day where
there is no common religion there can be no common
nation. On the other hand Islam binds together
Albanian, Turk, Arab and Afghan.
In the one great addition to the Greek Church, the
conversion of the Eussians, we see almost completely
this identification of nationalism and religion. Eussia
is the only country of Europe Christianized by the
sole command of its prince, though not without some
previous efforts on the part of Greek missionaries.
In place of Augustine of England, Patrick of Ireland,
and Boniface of Germany, we have its Tsar ; Vladimir
Isapostolos, " Vladimjr _equal. to an apostle," Vladi-;
mir, the prince of Kiev and Novgorod, of the Norse!
house of Eurik, who through the influence of his'
mother Olga determined not only to adopt Christian
ity himself, but to make it the State religion for his
people (988). An elaborate tale is told of the
reasons which led to his choice of the Greek Church.
Vladimir in making his decision may have been im-,
pressed by the gorgeous ceremonies of Santa Sophia ;
he was probably more convinced by the complete

98 DAWNING OF MISSIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
identification of Church and State. So he issued his
decree that all Kiev should flock to the Dnieper to
receive baptism, "and whosoever on the morrow
should not repair to the river, whether rich or poor,
he would hold him for an enemy ! " In the West
the Pope rose to imperial supremacy because men
turned in despair from a world of warring kings and
princelets to the one independent power that stood
for righteousness. In Bussia where men faced for
centuries the overwhelming peril of the Tartar
hordes, everything depended upon the strength of
the Crown ; thus autocracy after a brief trial of na
tional patriarchs with the rights of the former
patriarchs of Constantinople strictly subordinated
the spiritual power to the secular, or rather, invested
both in one supreme head, the Tsar. Any other
course would have led to the destruction of the na
tion in her fight with her enemies. If Eussia had
come under the sway of Eome, it is possible that she
would have passed through a similar historical evo
lution to the Tartar Hungarians or the Slavs of
Bohemia and Moravia. Possibly the political re
sults might also have been similar ; the Empire of
Eussia might never have emerged from her Tartar
dependence. But here we verge upon speculations
which would carry us far beyond the limits of the
mediaeval Church and its great missionary efforts.
We must bring this hurried survey to a close. In
Western Europe the victory of the Cross over the
heathen was complete. But in the East the future of
the Muslim, and the recovery by the Church of the
conquests of the crescent is still a problem of the fu
ture. The method of that recovery and its times

OF THE CHURCH 99
knoweth no man ; whether by some gigantic struggle
of the eagles over the carcass, or by the peaceful and
enlightened methods of the missionary. But its cer
tainty is the comfort of every believer. In the words
of one of your own poets we may say
Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,
The eternal years of God are hers ;
But Error wounded writhes in pain,
And dies amid her worshippers.
" On the bronze gates of St. Sophia at Constanti
nople may still be seen — at least it might be seen
some years ago — the words placed there by its Chris
tian builder, and left there by the scornful ignorance
or indifference of the Ottomans — I. X. NIKA, Jesus
Christ conquers. It is the expression of that un
shaken assurance, which in the lowest depths of hu
miliation has never left the Christian races of the
East, that sooner or later theirs is the winning
cause."1 > Church, "Influence of Christianity Upon National Charaoter."

LECTURE III
THE IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC
FORCES OF THE MIDDLE AGES

LECTURE III
THE IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC
FORCES OF THE MIDDLE AGES

IN the last lecture we dealt with the task of the
Church in reclaiming the heathen for the Cross.
We surveyed in hurried outline the great mis
sionary campaigns of early mediaeval Europe. We
noted the missions of the Eastern Church, but saw
that from the standpoint of the historian of the
Middle Ages they stand really outside his scheme,
inasmuch as in Bussia and the East there is no period
that can strictly be called mediaeval. The Middle
Age of Eussia, its struggle with the Tartars, came at
a time when in the rest of Europe the Middle Ages
with their characteristic development was dying out.
Hitherto we have confined our attention to the ex
ternal side of these heroic enterprises. We have
looked solely at their extension, the provinces and
kingdoms won for the Church. In our present lec
ture we propose to look at their intension, to dis
cover the causes of the Church's power as a civi
lizing factor, then to pass to an analysis of the effects
of the mission efforts upon the social and ethical de
velopment of the people.
At the very outset of our investigation it may be
well to meet an objection and point a conclusion.
These wholesale conversions, it may be urged, were)
103

104 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
but nominal, formal and external, as we have al
ready noted in the case of the Franks. In its con
flict with the barbarians Christianity had conquered ;
yet at times it might seem as if the chief result were
to make barbarism more superstitious, and cruelty
more ingenious. The new faith scarcely cleansed
the outside of the cup and platter ; within, it was as
of old, full of extortion and excess. An adversary
might argue that the only elements of Christianity
which the barbarians made their own were its rites,
magic, miracles, above all the belief in the super
natural assistance of its saints. All this is true and
more. Nevertheless, it is one of those half-truths
which are more false than any lie. Let us hear in
this matter the wise words of Sir James Stephen :
"Where is that country and what is that time in
which Christianity has been more than this amongst
the great nrnltitude of those who have called and pro
fessed themselves Christians ? The travellers in the
narrow way, who are guided by her vital spirit, have
ever been the 'chosen few.' The travellers along the
broad way, wearing her exterior and visible badges,
have ever been the 'many called.' And yet he who
should induce any heathen people to adopt the mere
ceremonial of the Church, to celebrate her ritual, and
to recognize, though but in words, the authority of
her Divine Head, would confer on them a blessing
exceeding all which mere human philanthropy has
ever accomplished or designed. For such is the
vivifying influence of the spirit of the Gospel that it
can never be long otherwise than prolific of the high
est temporal benefits to all, and of the highest spiri
tual benefit to some in every land which acknowledges

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 105
it as a rule of life, and receives it as a system of wor
ship.'!1 To the same effect also is the verdict of a modern
thinkeV : "Christianity," says Eitter, in his " History
of Christian Philosophy," " offered itself and was ac
cepted by the German tribes as a law and as a disci
pline, as an ineffable, incomprehensible mystery.
Its fruita were righteousness and works, and belief
in the dead word. But in a barbarous people this is
an immense advance, an inestimable benefit. Eitual
observance is a" taming, humiliating process ; it is
submission to law ; it is the acknowledgment of
spiritual inferiority ; it implies self-subjection, self-
conquest, self-sacrifice. It is not religion in its high
est sense, but it is the preparation for it." However
external or superstitious the rites of the new faith
they could not fail to impart in some way the sense
of human sinfulness, and this, after all, is the basal
fact in human progress. Even superstitions and
crude beliefs, which to-day we reject, deepened the
conviction that crime brought divine vengeance.
But this consciousness of responsibility to God, after
all, is the sole foundation of political amelioration.
A thousand times better the most superstitious tribe
that believes that beyond itself and higher "than it
self is God's moral government and retribution, how
ever imperfect may be this conception, than the most
cultured realm which believes that there is no moral
authority higher than the State. Moreover we must
remember that there is an evolution in the world of
religion as there is an evolution in the world of na-
1 "The Founders of Jesuitism," in Stephen's " Collected Es
says," p. 130.

106 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
ture. " When I was a child I thought as a child "
is a truth that applies with the widest sweep. The
stages of growth in the religious life of nations and
individuals are ever the same — " first the blade, then
the ear, then the full corn in the ear ; " but before
all this there must be the casting of the seed in the
earth. Another result of this nominal and rudimentary
conversion must not be overlooked. Its very super
ficiality rendered easy the supremacy of Borne.
Superstition is ever the characteristic of the heathen ;
conversion and civilization but slowly destroy its
hold. Upon its follies and terror, as well as upon
reverence and awe, Eome securely founded her fast
system of sacerdotal privilege and pretension. It
was superstition that added lightning to her spiritual
thunders ; it was this that made men invest the ac
tions of the saints, and the possession of their relics,
with the constant recurrence of the miraculous.
Moreover if the Church influenced the barbarian,
the barbarian was not without his reaction on the
Church. We see this in the growth in the ritual of
the Church of materialized superstitions. If these,
to the modern mind, seem to differ but slightly from
the grossest idolatries, we must remember the wilder
practices and beliefs from which the heathen were
weaned. We have an illustration in the "Dia
logues" which Gregory the Great sent to the Bava^
rian princess, Theolinda. , The excuse for the wild
legends with which they are filled is not only that
Gregory as well as his readers profoundly believed
them ; he succeeded by their means in weaning the
Arian Lombards to the true faith.

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 107
Thus the history of Latin Christianity is the demon
stration that childishness, as well as wisdom, is justi
fied by her children. Borne grew because she was, in
fact, as the modern biologist would phrase it, both in
creed, organization, and ritual perfectly adapted to an
imperfect environment. She ruled the age because
she represented in herself its weakness as well as its
strength. Unlike the early Church she took refuge
in a policy of syncretism or accommodation. A pre
mature Protestantism, with its spiritual methods, its
independence of material aids, its appeal to the indi
vidual intellect and conscience, would have been the
flinging of pearls before swine. Protestantism is, in
fact, the triumph of the individual, conscious of his
supreme value and his direct relation to God. In
Protestantism, as in the theology and ethics of St.
Paul, the individual becomes a law unto himself
because he has become conscious of the unity of that
self with a higher self. But we must not forget that
a St. Paul is both inexplicable and impossible unless
we remember the discipline of the Judaism which
preceded him. So also with Protestantism and Bo-
manism. To the thoughtful historian they are not
,s6~ much opposed systems of truth as different stages
of development. Eomanism tends to merge the indi
vidual in the organized society ; her way to the king
dom is rather through obedience than through the
development by the individual of his full powers.
But every thoughtful man will own that in the nurs
ery, whether of the world or the home, obedience to
organized authority must come first ; only through
such obedience, mechanical even and formal, will the
child or the nation attain, in the fullness of times,

108 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
to the higher growths of intellect and soul, to that
.obedience which comes from the inner constraint of
conscience, and to that freedom which is the follow
ing out with gladness the unhindered development of
one's highest self as well as the complete recognition
of the claims of the larger whole of which the indi
vidual is but a part.
So important, in our judgment, is this line of argu
ment, especially for the historian surveying with
philosophic and yet reverend mind the progress of
humanity, that we wouldMinger upon it. We would
claim that our debt to the mediaeval Church must not
be measured only by such ethical results, much less
by the means of their attainment, as commend them
selves to the twentieth Century. The reader too often
forgets the evolution, slow and painful, of society and
morals, and in consequence neglects, in reading his
tory, to look at progress from the standpoint of that
which was attainable iri the age in question. When
thus considered relatively, forces and tendencies which
to-day we should condemn as mischievous, are seen
to have been, at their time and for their purpose,
potent for good ; though the good was not unmixed
with evil, and was often pregnant with coming catas
trophe. We may illustrate by the mediaeval doctrine
of penitence, especially the corollaries of this mediae
val doctrine, the system of indulgences and the peni-
tentials. As regards indulgences — the great abuse of
the system, — the chief errors sprang up in the four
teenth and fifteenth centuries, largely as an outcome
of the Crusades. The penitentials and their effects
were of an earlier age. This great instrument for
Christianizing barbarian tempers, the doctrinal basis

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 109
of which may be found in the acts and teaching of
Ambrose, was probably the creation of the Irish
Church and, in special, of Columban. Thence
through the great English archbishop, Theodore of
Tarsus, the penitentials passed into general use in
the Church of the West. An attempt at codification
of the different systems in vogue formed part of the
reforms of Charles the Great ; their use was one of
the forces on which he relied for reducing his empire
to order. In due time the older penitentials gave
place to the scholastic sacrament of penance, and
were forgotten.
In condemnation of the principles and methods of
the whole system historians are nowadays substan
tially agreed. As Dr. Plummer truly remarks in his
Introduction to his classic edition of Bede's " Historia
Ecclesiae," "The penitential literature is in truth a
deplorable feature of the mediaeval Church. Evil
deeds, the imagination of which may perhaps have
dimly floated through our minds in our darkest mo
ments, are here translated and reduced to system. It
is hard to see how any one could busy himself with
such literature and not be the worse for it. ' ' And yet
such a view, though perfectly correct, may be an in
stance of the difficulty of thinking historically. For
the student should never forget the great law illus
trated on every page of ecclesiastical history, " that
those beliefs or institutions which seem irrational or
absurd, or unworthy of the Christian spirit, have
come into vogue in order to kill some deeper evil,
not otherwise to have been destroyed." x The peni
tentials were a necessity if the Church was to bring
1 Allen, " Christian Institutions," p. 408.

IIO IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
the masses that had nominally passed into the king
dom of Christ yet remained in many respects heathen
in heart and practice, ihto a working acquaintance
with the elementary laws of decency and hygiene, let
alone into any real experience of religion. They were
a rough method of enforcing obedience to moral law
upon a rough people, and of holding down the usages
and reminiscences of heathenism. In the mediaeval
Church, unlike the Church of the first four centuries,
baptism came first, oftentimes the baptism of whole
races received as they were into the Church of the
Empire which they had conquered ; training and
discipline must needs follow. The catechumen work,
which had once been preparatory to admission into
the Church, had now to be done for those who were
already nominally Christians, and who, intellectually
and morally, were much less able to understand it.
Penance, to adopt for this system of discipline the
familiar title nowadays somewhat restricted in its
application, was thus no mere creation of a greedy
sacerdotalism, but a response to popular needs, the
outcome of the revolution produced by the barbarian
invasions. In the world in transition no state save
the Church was either strong enough or civilized
enough to enforce obedience to moral law, or hold
down the usages and reminiscences of heathenism.
In her capacity as the guardian of conduct and
morals the Church's punishments were at first limited
to those sanctioned by the pains or fears of the
wounded conscience. Unfortunately the Church soon
yielded to the Teutonic custom of commuting mis
deeds by a money payment, or by means of sub
stitutes. Hence the opening of the door to the abuse

OF THE MIDDLE AGES III
of indulgences. In the earlier age the chief defect
of the system lay in the fact that punishment bore
more hardly on the poor than on the rich, while
above all it made sin something arbitrary and ex
ternal to the soul. The priest also who could release
from the punishments of the Church on earth, or
whose prayers had power with God in the mysterious
other world of retributiori, took the place of the
Christ who could purify the heart. Thus the pope
and not the Holy Spirit became the administrator
of mercy and pardon. The human race became afraid
of dealing directly with God, and sacerdotalism won
its long triumph.
The other evils of the system of penance have been
often exposed; and are sufficiently familiar. On its
theoretical side it was a complicated system that
needed a trained intelligence to understand or ex
plain, upon some details of which Eoman theologians
were always sharply divided. As usually happens
with such a system it was speedily perverted by the
people. The student of ethics will point out the
tendency, always natural to the Eoman spirit, to
stiffen all morality into legal restrictions, and to
confound the inner law with the regulations of the
Church. Or he may dwell on the worst effects of the
system as seen in the development of the penance of
flagellation and the sudden apparition in the middle
of the thirteenth century of the Flagellants. Of the
former the classic example is St. Elizabeth of
Thuringia (+1231), a woman of the rarest self-
abnegation and spiritual aspirations, whom the
fanaticism of Conrad of Marburg sought to break
into perfect obedience by constant scourging, stripped

112 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
to her shift. He may instance the madness of that
typical hermit of the eleventh century, Dominicus
Loricatus, who with a broom in each hand and sing
ing psalms, could wipe off, as his friend, Peter
Damiani, relates with pride, a century of guilt
within a week. In the outbreak of the Flagellants
(1259), this rude form of penance became a danger
ous, contagious disease. Tens of thousands of all
ranks and ages in the cities of Northern Italy walked
in solemn procession, scourging themselves until the
blood ran. Thence the movement spread to the
Ehinelands and Germany, but disappeared as rapidly
as it had arisen. A century later, as the result of
the Black Death, Europe was again covered with
bands of Flagellants, stripped to the waist, scourg
ing themselves with thongs knotted with iron spikes.
They believed that this torture, continued for thirty-
three days and a half, would deliver the soul from all
taint of sin. The theologian, finally, in condemna
tion of the system will point to the constant haggling
and bargaining over the degree of sin and the value
of merit, or he may relate the numberless instances
of desperate abuse, a chicken or a pint of wine pur
chasing absolution for the foulest deeds.
These evils should not be minimized ; nor should
their exaggeration obscure the real inwardness to the
mediaeval mind of the doctrine and its corollaries.
As Harnack allows, its first effect was the deepening
of the sense of sin, though the deepening was counter
balanced in time by the! stupefying readiness with
which men confessed that they were sinners.
Through the doctrine of penance men learned that
love and suffering are one. Another effect was the

OF. THE MIDDLE AGES 1 13
formation side by side with the sacramental Christ
of the image of the historical Jesus, in the con
templation of whose sufferings Bernard and others
found their most passionate exaltation. In the
doctrine, first suggested by the English doctor
Alexander of Hales, and developed by Thomas
Aquinas, of the common treasury of merit out of
whose inexhaustible store the pope could dispense to
the spiritually destitute, we see another instance of
the dominant mediaeval conception of solidarity so
unintelligible to nineteenth century individualism.
In everything the social aim predominates ; the
duties of life spring out of our unity as a race ;
humanity on earth is one in its sufferings with
humanity in the invisible world. All this formed
part of the education of the race for better things to
come. II
By a natural transition we pass from the study of
the penitentials, as an illustration of the nature of
mediaeval conventions, to the consideration of an
other matter, the right understanding of which lies
at the root of insight into all mediaeval matters. We
allude to the discrepancy in mediaeval life between
its ethical and spiritual ideals and the spotted
actualities of its daily life. Practice, it is true, in
every age must always drop below the ethical stand
ard, unless indeed the ethical standard is of a low
average. Certainly Christian practice, save for the
saint, can never attain the ideal as it is in the great
Exemplar. Even in Greece and Eome we see the
contrast of practice and precept. But in neither
Greece nor Borne could there exist the abysmal con-

114 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
tradictions which we find abound in mediaeval Chris
tianity. The reason, of course, is obvious. The ethical
standard of Greece and Borne were finite and human.
They were the results of the introspective thoughts
of its philosophers, and could not rise higher than
their own source. But the Christian ideal of con
duct involved the supernatural and infinite ; the
source and example was the perfection of the one Di
vine Life on earth. With the Greek time was of the
essence of the ideal ; the ancient demanded a standard
that could be fulfilled on earth. With the Christian
the ideal was from the first brought into relation
with the great Beyond ; the will of God as it is done
in heaven is the daily rule for men's will on earth.
With the Greek or Eoman, — for instance, the noblest
stoic of them all, Marcus Aurelius, — ethics were lim
ited to present-day duty ; the other world bad no
message of hope. With the Christian this life was
but the schoolhouse. For him, as for Browning's
grammarian, " Actual life comes next.
Man has Forever."
He sums up its possibilities both for the now and the
hereafter in the golden thought : " Beloved now are
we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what
we shall be. But we know that when it shall be
made manifest we shall be like him."
Contradiction therefore between the ideal and the
actual in Christianity was sharp and inevitable, and
only could have been avoided by a Christianity that
came down to the level of human nature itself. The

OF THE MIDDLE \AGES 115
gospel of salvation was necessarily, both for the in
dividual and the race, a gospel of contradiction be
tween the ideal upheld and life's common cravings
and passions. Such contrast every man feels within
his own heart ; and this law of the microcosm has
ever been the law of the world at large. But never
has the contradiction between the ideal and the
actual been more vivid than in the Middle Ages.
And this for a double reason. The contradiction
would have been less sharp and painful had the ideal
been lowered, or had human nature been worthier. 1
But, to the eternal glory of the mediaeval Church,
whatever its practice, it never lowered its standard. |
On the contrary, the very simplicity of an age that
knew nothing of introspection or higher criticism
gave to the ideal a literal sharpness of outline, inex
plicable to a more complex generation. Neverthe
less this literalness produced such mighty saints as
St. Bernard, St. Francis, or St. Catherine of Siena.
The mediaeval saint, in fact, towers above all other
saints, simply because he knew nothing of twentieth
century adaptations of the Gospel to the need of busi
ness, pleasure, knowledge, politics, and imperialism.
But while the mediaeval saint thus set before himself
an ideal far more difficult and transcendent than
those in vogue to-day, on the other hand the ethical
capacities of the average mediaeval man were far
lower than those of to-day. For it is the weakness
of the twentieth century, as well as its strength, that
between the ethics of the street and the pew there is
not an overwhelming difference. In the twentieth
century, therefore^we" are not troubled by the glar
ing contradictions between ideal and practice ; if

Il6 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
anything it is the ideal that needs raising ; it is too
much smirched v with the dust of what is deemed
practicable. I But in the Middle Ages the average
man was out a savage once removed, the long cen
turies of whose superstition and vicious practices'
could not be eradicated by a few years of sacraments
and teaching. The student, therefore, will make but
"little progress in the understanding of the early
mediaeval Church who does not sympathetically bear
in mind the inevitable contradiction between the
ideals, sublime beyond measure, of the saint, and the
pit, noisesome, dark and barbarous, from which the
actual life of men was digged. Eeligion, in fact, was
reverenced as a thing external, the special concern
of a priestly class whose merits the community
vicariously shared. The application of inward re
ligion by the laymen to the round of life in the castle,
in the camp, in the shop or in the field, was an ideal
of whose realization the Church only slowly began to
dream. Not until St. Francis founded his order of
Tertiaries do we find it taken up in any organized form.
Another matter should be noted. To the twentieth
century contradiction between ideal and practice is a
difficulty which for the mediaeval mind does not seem
to have existed. The Middle Ages sought; of course,
to reconcile belief and practice, but their failure led
neither to subtle questionings nor rebellion. The
more deeply they outraged the one, the more tena
ciously they clung to the other. This was not wholly
the homage paid by vice to virtue but was partly due
to the consciousness of solidarity. Laxity of practice
was the concern of the individual. It might involve
the loss of his soul ; but laxity of belief or in ideal

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 117
meant the downfall of the social structure. So in an
age when an individual did not recognize himself
save in so far as he formed part of State or Church, the
theories and ideals of social and ecclesiastical economy
were everything, the facts of private life of little mo
ment. Men were saved both in this world and in the
life to come by their fitting in with the whole through
correctness of dogma and doctrine. It were the
easiest of tasks to find illustrations of vice that
would have brought a blush to the pagans of Eome,
yet coupled with an astonishing religious scrupu
losity. Ferocious and sensual, the Middle Ages wor
shipped humility and asceticism. There has never
been a purer ideal of love than in the romances of its
chivalry, as purified by Walter de Map and others,
nor a grosser profligacy of life.
Of the illogicalness of the age there is, perhaps, no
greater illustration than the extraordinary case of
Honorius. The fact that in 680 the sixth Ecumenical
Council publicly anathematized this pope for mono
theistic heresies formed no bar to papal claims of
infallibility. When facts would not square with doc
trine, then so much the worse for the facts. The
very recollection of the circumstance undoubtedly
faded away in the eighth century, until revived by
the controversialists of the sixteenth. But the whole
history of the papacy supplies similar contradictions.
Let the student, for instance, turn over the annals of
Borne in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. For
Europe at large the pope was the vicar of God.
Mighty kings, Cnut among them, journeyed from
afar that they might receive his blessing. He dwelt
in an Eden of beauty where the gates of heaven were

Il8 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
never shut. His spiritual thunders were more potent
than legions of armed warriors. But as an actual
fact in Eome herself for a couple, of centuries the
pope was the sport of faction, raised, deposed, rev
erenced or murdered, according to the varying mood
and largesse of the hour. At the confmencement of
the tenth century in eight years several popes were
elected and overthrown. The greatest of all the
popes, Hildebrand, who claimed that he "alone held
the keys of heaven and hell, alone was able to bind
and loose on earth as in heaven, to give and to take
away according to the merits of each man, empires,
kingdoms, marquisites, duchies, countships and the
possessions of all men," who made the papacy the
dominant force in the system of the Middle Ages,
died in exile, driven away from his own city.
In the same spirit men treated the Holy Eoman
Empire — pope and emperor were supposed to be like
the Siamese twins, two and yet one. Severance be
tween the two was impossible ; they must work to
gether for the one common good of the one common
flock. They were the sun and moon which lightened
the world's darkness. But this complete accord of
the papal and imperial powers, as Dr. Bryce points
out, was never attained but three times in the history
of the centuries : in the time of Charles the Great and
Leo ; under Otto III and his two popes, Gregory V
and Sylvester II ; thirdly under Henry III ; certainly
never thenceforth. At all times pope and emperor
were seeking to subordinate the other to himself ; the
pope declaring that he made the emperor as the vicar
of God and that the temporal power was his gift ; the
emperors seeking to get the election of popes into

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 119
their own hands and to subordinate the spiritual to
the civil authority. This battle of the two forms the
centre round which revolves the churchmanship and
politics of the Middle Ages, especially in Italy and
Germany. But the battle could never have arisen
had it not been for the extraordinary influence upon
the mediaeval mind of ideas and ideals, and its
equally extraordinary capacity to overlook dis
crepancy. The illustrations of the essential contradictoriness
of the Middle Ages are endless. The contrast between
its ideal and practice is the cause of its endless at
tempts at reform, and the secret of the extraordinary
fascination of mediaeval history in general. In me
diaeval Christianity there is no dull, drab plain of
featureless, logical uniformity that the historian
traverses with respect but fatigue ; peaks tower into
the clear blue with bewildering abruptness from
pestilential swamps. Take Monasticism, for in
stance ; to the mediaeval mind the highest possible
mode of Christian living. Its story, as we shall see
more fully in a later lecture, is a long record of alter
nate swamp and mountain top ; of an ideal so tran
scendent that men inevitably fell away, until some
new reformer once more restored the lost vision.
But the constant, glaring contrasts between the ideals
and the actualities of monastic life never caused the
mediaeval mind to question the worth of the ideal
itself.
in
We should do well to inquire what it was in the
life and thought of the mediaeval Church, apart from

120 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
its undoubted spiritual power, that especially made
for civilization in its relations with the rough ma
terial left by the barbarian conquests. One word of
caution is advisable at the outset. In our discussion
we shall deal with the matter in an abstract fashion,
examining the forces and processes of society much
as the anatomist examines an organism or bodily
framework. From such examination much may be
learned. But we must never forget that more impor
tant far than organic framework is the life of which
this frame is but the outer shell. And it was neither
the logic of its theology, the strength of its organiza
tions, the fascination of its religious rites, nor even its
multitudinous charities and social activities, but the
life of Christ manifesting itself abundantly in the
mediaeval Church — poor, incomplete, inconsistent,
as may at times have been its expression — that saved
the world from the deluge of barbarism and restored
civilization. For, in spite "of all shortcomings, there
has never been a time when the Church has forgotten
its divine mission as the representative of Him who
came not to be ministered unto but to minister. Even
in the dreariest days God has not left Himself without
His witnesses ; men and women not a few, whose
lives, made radiant by the Cross, have filled with
light the darkest places. In every age, even in those
in which the life of the Church has seemed at its
lowest, the greatest force that has made for civiliza
tion and uplifting has been the continued vitality of
the great principles of the Gospel ; its insistence, in
season and out of season, upon self-sacrifice and re
nunciation ; its abounding altruism ; the value given
to the poorest and meanest as the brother for whom

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 121
Christ died ; the stress laid upon sin as the blot on
human life, the hindrance to further progress, the
cause of inevitable retribution ; the revolution effected
by the teaching of a future life, the bringing in of a
new world to redress the balance of the old, with its
doctrine of judgment and consequent rewards and
punishments. In our enumeration of the factors in Christianity
that have made for the regeneration of mankind we
must not overlook its optimism. The crude doctrine
of total depravity enunciated by St. Augustine has
never succeeded in banishing, in practice, the belief
of the Church that the latent powers which make for
righteousness exceed those which are evil ; that even
in the far country man is not far from the kingdom
of God ; and that human nature, on the whole, is on
the side of the angels. The great uplifting forces of
humanity have always manifested this abounding
optimism, and have demonstrated that Pessimism is
of the evil one. Illustrations abound, but nowhere
is this radiant optimism more conspicuous than in the
Franciscan revival. Brother Buffiuo, of whom we
are told that " whether asleep or awake his mind was
always with the Lord," narrates that when he saw
the Saviour His sign to him was this : "As long as
thou shalt live thou shalt no more feel sadness nor
melancholy : he that made thee sad was the devil."
In the optimism of Calvary the friars everywhere
made common life with the poor, choosing for their
houses the most neglected quarters — in London the
stinking lane and shambles of Newgate, — helping the
labourers to gather the olives or strip the vineyards ;
ministering to the lepers, and undertaking the coars-

122 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
est toils imposed by charity ; singing the while their
hymns of joy, or making merry, like children at a
feast, over the broken scraps tossed to them from the
rich man's table. The servants of God, said St.
Francis, are really "jugglers" and "must revive
the hearts of men " and lead them to spiritual joy.
He called himself " God's troubadour"; he deemed
perfection and joy equivalent terms. The astonish
ing thing is that St. Francis made thousands to feel
the truth of this transcendent optimism.
With these necessary cautions we are now in a po
sition to approach the abstract question : what was it
in the mediaeval Church that especially enabled it to
fulfill its task as the formative factor in mediaeval
civilization? We shall best obtain an answer by
asking the further question : what were the essential
features of the barbarians whose taming fell to the
lot of the Church T By this we do not intend a cata
logue of vices — cruelty, lust, bloodshed, and the like.
These, it might fairly be contended, were as marked
characteristics of the Eomans as of the barbarian
victors. We would look deeper ; can we find in
barbarism a general formula of which its various
aspects are in the main the expression f Can we find
a similar general formula that is characteristic of the
life of the mediaeval Church ? We think we can.
The great central principle of barbarism, as we see
it at work in the Western world on the break up of
the Empire, is its essential individualism. The limit
of outlook is the local tribe ; neighbour and enemy
are almost interchangeable terms. The one bond of
solidarity is the great chief, and the usages, customs
and taboos that centuries of superstition had turned

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1 23
into bonds more unbreakable than steel. The state
as state — a collective fact, not the mere expression
of loyalty to or fear of the individual chief— is un
known. In consequence all political matters are in
constant flux. As in the lower organisms, kingdoms
divide and subdivide, or reunite their fragments,
with amazing facility. Generalizations are often
dangerous, but we shall not err widely in summing
up the inner spirit of barbarism as unregulated in
dividualism, or anarchism.
One illustration of this position must suffice. The
Viking, sailing from his Northern home, thinks
little or nothing of the spread of his empire, casts
few looks behind, is bound by no links of loyalty.
The sentiments which in a later age were an excuse
or justification for conquest were wholly lacking.
He sails hither and thither — Normandy, Ireland,
Constantinople itself, no matter where, — indifferent
to all save the impulses of the moment. If he
settles, it is not as a colonist pushing forward the
frontiers of his native state. Whether as Varangian
in Eussia, or Norman in France, he forgets the old
and founds a new home. The very intensity of his
individualism, unfettered by national or local out
look or lasting tradition, enables him rapidly to
adapt himself to his new environment. Even lan
guage, the one feature, besides his religion, which
links him to his former associates, is to him so
essentially an individual matter that he is willing,
under pressure, to cast it aside for the tongue of the
people he has conquered, as he had already cast
aside his rude religion. The Frank in Gaul, the
Norman in France or Apulia, the Varangian in

124 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
Bussia, the Lombard in Italy are but a few of the
illustrations of this principle that we could furnish.
In Eussia the house of the Norseman, Burik, became
the ruling family of a Slav people.
Nor was it only among the barbarians that we find
particularist tendencies. We see the same fatal proc
ess at work in states at one remove from barbar
ism, e. g., in the Carolingian Empire. Or, perhaps,
it would be more accurate to look upon the Empire
founded by Charles the Great as itself the interlude.
By his genius he had knit together for a while a dis
membered Europe. With his death a fictitious order
once more gives place to natural anarchy, and his
empire dissolves into its primitive units. For cen
turies this seemed to be the law of politics. The
kingdom, whose unity has been painfully accom
plished by the labours of some hero, ever tends to
fall back into an aggregation of counties loosely
bound together by shadowy ties, which are yet too
weak to prevent constant, internecine strife. The
period of the Heptarchy followed in the eleventh
century by the great Saxon earldoms was not pe
culiar to England; what was peculiar was the
speedy deliverance of our country, through the
great blessing of the Norman Conquest, from the
centrifugal forces which on the Continent, especially
in Germany, wrecked all attempts at political unity.
Not until three hundred years later was France
enabled to establish a centralized authority, while
even then such great fiefs as Brittany, Burgundy,
and Toulouse ever threatened disintegration. The
student of to-day is apt to be misled by such modern
.facts as Spain, Italy and Germany into forgetting

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1 25
that in the Middle Ages these countries were split
up into an indescribable number of semi-independent
duchies, counties, bishoprics, and the like. In Ger
many, for instance, at the Beformation there were
5,000 different states, only loosely held together in
the unity of the Holy Eoman Empire. Spain, after
suffering much from its Saracen invaders, only be
came one at the dawn of the Beformation. Italy
has had to wait for its unity until a time within
recent memory. But for the assistance given by
the Church the forces of disintegration might have
become supreme.
In contrast to this unregulated individualism of
the barbarian, we find, when we proceed to examine
the mediaeval economy, that its essential fact is the
principle of solidarity. The effort of human society
in the Middle Ages is to fit itself in with great in
stitutions, or rather with the governing ideas of such
institutions, by the sinking of the individual in
some form of corporate life. This it was that gave
its strength to feudalism, which, on one side of its
theory, is the attempt to give every man his place
in the social economy. But feudalism was but the
half-way house to an ideal still higher. Instead of
the struggle of clan with clan we find the conception
of a world-empire and a world-Churchy each so
organized and planned that every part falls nat
urally into its own place. Of these two the second
is the more important ; the unity of all in one
Catholic Church under one spiritual head, the pope,
the representative of Christ, lies at the root of the
notion of one Holy Eoman Empire under an em
peror or representative of Caesar. But this concep-

126 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES

/

tion of the Holy Boman Empire, linked up as it was
with the supremacy of the papacy, is too important
to be dismissed in a paragraph, and will demand
further investigation. Suffice for the present that
we note that by how much more Christ is greater
than Caesar by so much more must the unity of all
in one Church exceed the unity of all in one Em
pire ; let alone that the first was real, the second
but a dream. .
The absorption of the individual into a corpora
tion, primarily spiritual but with a secondary out
look upon the political, is thus the key to mediaeval
life arid thought. We have an illustration of this in
the greatest and most characteristic of all mediaeval
poems. Dante's " Divine Comedy" represents for us
the salvation of the poet, but that salvation is only
achieved, by a scheme which brings within its com
pass universal man, and which takes us for its ac
complishment through all the circles of earth, heaven
and hell. The religious life of the individual was
but in a slight sense a matter of his own experience.
The value and place of experience, in fact, was re
discovered by Luther, though wrapped up by him
in his cryptic watchword : the just shall live by faith.
"But from first to last the mediaeval man and the life
of his soul was conditioned and determined by his
..corporate relations ; his baptism into the corpora
tion ; his participation in her sacraments ; his de
pendence upon a priestly caste, and the like. . Just
as in the secular mediaeval state the life of the indi
vidual was conditioned by his guild, rank, occupa
tion or city in a way and to a degree of which we
have to-day illustrations only in the dreams of

\ OF THE MIDDLE AGES 127
socialists, so, even more strictly, in the mediaeval
spiritual life. In fact, it was the training in the
consciousness of solidarity, given from cradle to
grave by the Church, that alone made possible the '
emphasis placed upon corporate life in the civil
estate. We are, at length, in a position to answer our
question : What was the characteristic force in the
mediaeval Church that made for civilization, leaving
aside for the moment its definite spiritual activities ?
We find it in this consciousness of solidarity. This
it was, as we shall see later, that was the strength of
the papacy, and that gave to the greatest of mediaeval
institutions, Monasticism, its persistent vitality. But,
in reality, this principle is none other than the
translation into new spiritual terms of the root
principles of the old Boman Empire, into whose
dominion the Church had stepped, whose genius for
administration she had inherited, whose work she
was destined to carry on to still higher issues. This
consciousness of solidarity, enforced by all the sanc
tions and fears of another world of which he was ever
reminded that he was already a part, subdued the
individualism of the barbarian, with its vagaries and
divisions, and forced him slowly to adapt himself to
the needs, limitations and service of a society with
a wider outlook than the clan and its struggles.
Through the same consciousness he slowly learned to
realize both what he owed to posterity and his in
debtedness to the past. As we might naturally ex
pect this last came first. The intellectual work of
the Dark Ages, until the dawn of Scholasticism, was
the laborious, often unintelligent appropriation of

128 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
the patristic and classical material that had survived
destruction. Furthermore in this emphasis of solidarity we see
the force which prepared the new races to receive the
inheritance of law and order which had come down
to them from Borne. The Church by its great
essential ideas made ready the soil, dug about the
roots, rendered possible in different ways the renewed
vitality of the withered but undying principles of
Boman and Hellenic civilization. The secret of
civilization is growth combined with continuity;
progress is never the result of cataclysm. The
Church by its unity of organization and ritual, as
well as by its insistence upon one common language,
not only supplied the element of continuity with older
cultures, but added the stimulus to development and
growth. It took the disjecta membra of its antique
and patristic heritages and by a synthesis of its own
gave them new life and meaning.
The student should not forget that the emphasis
laid by the Church upon solidarity was not material
only ; it demanded from all the apperception of cer
tain ideas. The gross materialism of much of the
corporate life of the mediaeval Church cannot be
denied ; but even the most superstitious devotee
could not fail to be conscious at sundry times and in
divers ways of the existence of a great spiritual so
ciety the bounds of which, both past and future,
were in the infinite distances. For the mediaeval
man, glorious saint or desperate sinner alike, the all
important aim was salvation, though the sinner often
times ventured upon a mighty gamble in futures,
with his soul as the stake. By many differing ways

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1 29
(superstitious or otherwise need not now detain us),
saint and sinner alike were forced to realize that this
salvation depended completely upon union with a
Church visible and invisible, upon forces spiritual,
far-reaching, infinite, that transcended the little circle
of his immediate sensations. The central rite of his
worship, though full of crude, materialistic interpreta
tions, nevertheless ever impressed upon him that the
cardinal fact was the real presence of Christ. Even
the worship of the saints, harmful as it may have
been in some of its expressions, linked the wor
shipper with the great cloud of witnesses, and re
minded him that the faith of the present had its roots
in the historic past. The solidarity of the Church
Triumphant with the Church Militant was more than
an article in the Creed ; it was daily brought home
to the believer by symbol, usage and superstition.
For whatever the superstition or ignorance of the
Middle Ages — and we are not careful to minimize
these matters — underlying all we may find the pres
ence of potent ideas that drove men to look before
and after to realize the circles beyond circles of life
and thought, past, present and future, that were
concerned about him, and of which his life formed a
part. But it is precisely the absence of such ideas
that constitutes barbarism — or its modern equivalent,
bourgeois Philistinism — with its concentration upon
the needs, appetites and pleasures of the moment ; it
is the presence above all else of such ideas that makes
for civilization and the higher life of the soul, in
spite of all imperfection in the medium in which the
ideas work.
This consciousness of solidarity, so fundamental in

130 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
the mediaeval Church, was of immense social as well
as spiritual significance ; it took the disintegrated
units of life and society that survived the barbarian
invasions and built them up into a new order, draw
ing strength even from the prevalent decay. By its
more spiritual conceptions, above all by the homage
which in the worship of the Crucified it ever paid to
renunciation, the Church slowly broke up the mili
tary ideas of feudalism, and for brute force and pas
sion substituted law and order. Its doctrine of the
unity of the human race, both in Adam and in Christ,
was destined to prove fatal to all serfdom and sla
very. Even the mediaeval doctrine of sin, strangely
destitute as it generally proved in the more spiritual
elements, by its essentially social rather than indi
vidualistic outlook, its human rather than Godward
content, became, as we have already seen, through
the social sanctions imposed, a powerful instrument
in the suppression of barbarian tempers and customs.
One objection to this generalization is so obvious
that it needs to be met. Neglecting for the moment
the spiritual forces, we have emphasized the solidarity
of the Catholic Church as the root idea which gave
her power to tame the individualism of the barbarian.
But historians have pointed out that the Beformation
was the protest of the individual against an organiza
tion which gave the individual as such little or no
place. How then, it may be asked, can the Befor
mation be looked upon as a factor in advancing civ
ilization, when it appears to be a set-back to ideas
from which humanity had been emancipated by the
mediaeval Church ?
The answer is clear. The individualism of the

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 131
Beformation was not the individualism of the bar
barian ; it was an individualism of thought, not of
action. Unregulated individualism in action, whether
in the fifth-century Vandal or the twentieth-century
manufacturer, leads to inefficiency and anarchy ; in
dividualism in thought, however ill regulated, makes
for liberty, and thus, in the long run, for righteous
ness. A true individualism may rightly be claimed
to be the highest and rarest product of human devel
opment, but such individualism does not come first
in the order of time, for we cannot claim to discern
its roots in the anarchic selfishness of the barbarian.
In the historical order solidarity comes first, alone
making possible the civilization in which this higher
individualism — genius, personal magnetism, leader
ship, lofty thought, the artist's touch, the poet's
vision — call it what we will — shall have its truest
chance. Moreover the historian is bound to confess
that a true development of individualism is so rare
and difficult that society is ever being driven back
once again upon the principles of solidarity to supply
the necessary correction. In the great crisis through
which Europe is now passing we see the exaggeration
of each of these principles, and the correction in both
which the conflict between them is bound to produce,
unless indeed the world shall have suffered in vain.
Moreover, the protest of individualism was not the
only feature of the Beformation. Side by side with
it we see the revolt of nationalism, the determination
of the Western nations to work out their own life on
their own lines. Not without cause was it that the
Free Cities of Germany, almost without exception,
embraced the Beformation, even when surrounded

132 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES ,
with a hostile population, as in the case of Geneva
and the Savoy. But nationalism and individualism
necessarily contain contradictory elements. In the
play of these two principles — the greater opportunity
of the individual as such, the expression of the
necessary solidarity in the development of the na
tional rather than in the insistence upon unity of
creed, ritual and organization — united only in their
protest against the common tyranny of Borne, we
discern the cause and trace the varying phases of the
Beformation. But to this phase of the matter we
shall return again. IV
We have reserved for our conclusion the supreme
instance of mediaeval solidarity. We refer to the
papacy, with its twin conception of the Holy Boman
Empire. For the unity of all in one Catholic Church
under one head, the pope, was but the counterpart
of the unity of all in one Empire, under one emperor.
Of both unities the necessary centre was Borne.
The student who would investigate the part that
the papacy has played in the evolution of society
should realize at the outset that the mediaeval Church
was not so much a Church, in the modern sense of
the word, as a State. "Convenience," writes Pro
fessor Maitland, "may forbid us to call it a State
very often, but we ought to do so from time to time,
for we could frame no acceptable definition of a State
which would not comprehend the Church. What
has it not that the State should have ? It has laws,
lawgivers, law courts, lawyers. It uses physical
force to compel men to obey its laws. It keeps

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 133
prisons. In the thirteenth century, though with
squeamish phrases, it pronounces sentence of death.
It is no voluntary society. If people attempt to
leave it they are guilty of the crimen Iwsce majestatis,
and are likely to be burnt. It is supported by in
voluntary contributions, by tithe and tax. That
men believe it to have a supernatural origin does not
alter the case. Kings have reigned by divine right,
and republics have been founded in the name of God-
given liberty. " l But the constitution of this State,
as developed by the great architect of the papacy,
Hildebrand, was unique in one all-important respect.
The Church was a State within a State, or rather a
State within which all other states existed, a State
which had neither boundaries nor limits ; which ex
isted in, was part of, and yet distinct from every
other State, over the which in fact it claimed priority
and preeminence. They were particular and indi
vidualistic ; the Church alone was Catholic and uni
versal, the realization in life of the principle of
solidarity. Herein will be found the secret both of the growth
and downfall of the papal supremacy. For the pa
pacy was no gigantic upas tree of fraud and super
stition reared by the enemy of mankind, but a nec
essary factor, so far as we can see, in the evolution of
society. But as is invariably the case in history this
factor was no isolated force, without correlation with
the past. On the contrary the patriarchate of Borne
became the supreme power in the mediaeval world
because Western Europe had been cradled in the
belief of the necessity of one world-power, to which
1 Maitland, " Canon Law in Church of England/ ' p. 100.

134 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
all other powers should give adherence and form a
part. ^Fo this legacy of the Caesars the popes became
the heirs. The city of Eome, indeed, had fallen, but
in popular conception its former power still con
tinued, though expressing itself in new relations of
Christ to Eome and of Eome to the world. We see
this new relationship clearly brought out in a Norse
poem, written somewhere about the year 1000 A. D.
by one Eilif, who seems to have been hesitating be
tween the claims of Christian and Thor. But of
Christ he writes :
They say Christ sits upon a mountain throne
Far to the south beside the well of Fate :
So closely has the Lord whom angels own
With Rome and Roman lands entwined His state.
In such a verse as this we see the forces which trans
ferred the sanctity and majesty of the imperial city,
as also of the "White Christ," to the person of one
whom men deemed to be His vicar. ^Amid the chaos
and welter of the great upheaval the papacy offered
unity of administration and law, and won the grati-
' tude of Europe by never flinching from the task of
beating down anarchy into order, and asserting the
supremacy of moral ideas over brute force. The
popes prospered because they stood for the solidarity
of Europe in one world-state, whereas the Empire
was but a dream with occasional breaks of reality.
To this mediaeval conception of the solidarity of
Europe in one world-state historians are accustomed
to give a technical title. They speak of it as the
Holy Boman Empire. This concept was the most
important contribution which the Church made to

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 135
the political development of the Middle Ages. As
such it deserves the fullest examination ; without the
understanding of this concept the Middle Ages are a
sealed mystery.
As is invariably the case with all living concepts
this idea had its roots in the historic past. This
point, to which we have already alluded, is of the
highest importance. In spite of her sack by Alaric
Borne was still to all men the imperial city ; the idea
of her empire had become a necessary part of the
world's order. The traveller might tell how Eome
lay in ruins, with a population reduced to less than
fifty thousand, with a trade that was almost limited
to dealing in relics, but men never doubted that her
dominion was still universal. To her divinely ap
pointed sway there could be neither bounds nor bar
riers. In her alone could the proud prophecy of the
poet attain reality —
His ego, nee metas rerum, nee tempora pono,
Imperium sine fine dedi.
The mother of martyrs, the home of the apostles, the
city of consuls and tribunes, she was still the source
of all power. Though a widow, she was none the
less a queen. Her barbaric conquerors might beat
down her walls and destroy her palaces, yet they
bowed before the memory of her mighty deed, and
were not unwilling to hold their countries as fiefs of
Eome. As the successive swarms of Goths, Burgun-
dians, Lombards, Franks and Teutons swept over
Italy and Gaul, they one and all sought to identify
themselves with the system they were thoughtlessly
destroying. Not one of them dared to establish his

136 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
seat in the ancient capital, or inhabit the palace of
the Caesars ; they asked and received the consular
office, and reigned as the titular vicars of the em
peror at Constantinople. Even the greatest of the
barbarians, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, ruled from his
palace at Verona as the nominal lieutenant of Justin
ian. In the Sagas he is known merely as Dietrich of
Bern — no higher title could be his. The instincts of
man went deeper than historical fact. The Empire
had not ceased ; by the nature of things that was im
possible. Her foundations were the immutable de
crees of God ; she could not die, nor could the sceptre
depart from between her feet. So when on Christ
mas Day 800, as Charles the Frank was hearing mass
in the Basilica of St. Peter, the reading of the Gospel
ended, the pope, Leo III, rose from his chair, and,
crossing over to where Charles knelt in prayer at the
high altar, placed on his brow the diadem of the
Caesars, barbarians and Eomans alike felt that the
dream of years was accomplished. The Eternal City
had risen from her long sleep to enter upon a new
era of life and power.
The Eoman Empire which Charles the Great and
Leo thus restored was another empire, and yet not
another. It was not another, in that it was the heir to
such assets as survived of the old empire of the Caesars ;
inheriting, though with sadly diminished strength,
its traditions of supremacy, the majesty of its laws,
its elaborate system of municipal government, and its
unrivalled powers of organization. It was not an
other, in that there was supposed to be no break of
continuity. For four hundred years the legal head
of the world had resided at Constantinople ; now the

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 137
throne was vacant, for the Empress Irene had deposed
and blinded her son, Constantine VI, and vascended
the throne herself. But by what right, it was asked,
did a woman grasp the sceptre of the Caesars?
Surely, also, elections at Borne were as valid as those
at Constantinople : the daughter-city was not above
her mother. So the act of Constantine the Great was
reversed, and Old Borne once more assumed to her
self the civil and ecclesiastical headship. Charles
the Great was proclaimed as the legitimate successor,
not merely of the extinct line of the West, but of
Justinian, Arcadius, and the emperors of the East.
He is, said men, in the abundant controversial
literature which at a later date the West poured forth
in justification of its conduct, the sixty-eighth in
direct descent from Augustus; the Boman Empire
is one and indivisible and has once again been
" translated back " to its earliest seat of authority.
The old order thus passed away, giving place to
new aims and larger hopes. The former empire had
been founded on paganism. But with the conversion
of Constantine there had come a change in more than
the official professions of religion. All her civiliza
tion, perfectly developed after its kind, from its
original Italic or Hellenic sources, had been de
liberately renounced for new forms that to a Julian,
blinded by the glamour of the past, seemed retro
grade, incomplete and ugly. The pagan city of the
ancients with its literature, art and methods was
buried ; new Borne had risen from the catacombs.
Christianity was alike its bulwark and its basis.
From the days of Constantine onward the Church and
the State were but two names for the same thing.

138 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES

\

The limits of both were determined by the same
causes ; on the one side the ability of the State to
conserve its frontiers, on the other by the power of
the Cross to subdue the barbarians. In the older
Boman Empire also the two issues had tended to be
come one. From the days of Augustus onward the
secret of imperial unity lay in the development of a
common religion which was but the State under a
religious form. In the first century this had taken
the form of the worship of Eome and Augustus, the
beginning of a universal church with a priesthood,
sacrifices, and temples of its own, in conception and
aim very similar and yet very different from the
Catholic Church with which it was destined to come
into conflict. But such as it was the worship of
Borne and Augustus undoubtedly supplied something
which the local polytheism has failed to give, a
common religious link holding together the in
numerable races and creeds of a dominion that
stretched from the Irish Sea to the Euphrates. To
the ancient world, as in the East to this day, a
common religion was the basis of all nationalism.
The conversion of Constantine was not therefore the
introduction of a new principle, only a change in the
content of ideas — the unity of the race no longer
symbolized by the worship of a Tiberius or Marcus
Aurelius, but by the profession of one Lord, one
faith, one baptism, with one Church, one creed, and
one pope.
Hitherto we have dealt with the rise of the papacy
as the expression of solidarity, the head of a world-
state, the heir of the Empire in its universalism and
claims. We have noted the benefits which Europe

OF THE MIDDLE AGES 139
obtained, the gain to civilization which the world-
state brought. But there came a time when this
conception of the Church as a world-state, forming a
part of, and yet embracing and containing every
other state, became the weakness of the Church
instead of as hitherto its strength. The virtual
downfall of the papacy at the beginning of the
fourteenth century was due to this cause. Men did
not throw over the yoke of Boniface VIII at the
commencement of the fourteenth century because
they had ceased to believe in the pope's spiritual
pretensions, or would not acknowledge his infalli
bility in matters of the soul but because they con
ceived that such spiritual supremacy did not involve
secular supremacy as well. The Beformation, also,
in its beginnings was political even more than
religious ; social rather than moral ; a protest against
an all-centralized yet omnipresent world-power, in
theory spiritual, in practice secular, which had out
lived the conditions of its birth. The imperial idea,
which originated in Greece — the mother of all ideals
— with Alexander, but was completed in Italy by the
Caesars, was at last exhausted. World-wide admin
istrative centralization, whether secular or spiritual,
had ceased to be the ideal. The building up of the
nation had begun to be revealed as the goal of
history, at any rate so far as the next three centuries
were concerned. But to one who writes amid the
welter of a war that has arisen from the extravagant
ambitions of uncontrolled nationalism the question
presents itself whether nationalism and individualism
alike must not find salvation by adopting, in a
changed and purified form, the conceptions of

140 IDEALS AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES
solidarity and authority which gave the papacy its
moral influence in days still darker even than the
present. But such solidarity must not be the welt-
macht of imperialism, but the constraint of a common
law and a common conscience, and the authority
and sanctions of a common judgment of united
civilization. For the bringing in of this new and
higher solidarity we look with hope to the United
States of America, at whatever cost, to be in the van.
The New World will then have redressed the balance
of the Old.

LECTURE IV
THE DAWNING OF THE MOD
ERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

LECTURE IV
THE DAWNING OF THE MODERN
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

ABEIEF survey of our Argument may not be
inopportune. In our first lecture we sur
veyed the task which lay before the Church
in the reconstruction of a ruined world. In a second
lecture we noted the heroic enterprises whereby the
barbarians were won for the faith. In our last lec
ture we attempted to answer the question as to the
real inwardness and content of mediaeval life and ideal
in relation to the Church. We emphasized, the con
ception of solidarity as opposed to the individualism
of barbarism, and especially noted its supreme ex
pression in the papacy and the Holy Boman Empire.
In our present lecture we propose to pass from ab
stract generalizations and to examine in broad outline
the Church's contribution to the social and ethical
development of the Middle Ages.
In any survey of the civilizing work of the medi
aeval Church we may claim the value assigned to
human life as the result of the doctrine of the sanctity'
of every immortal soul ; the mitigation of the horrors
of war ; the impulse given to the manumission of
slaves and serfs. The mediaeval Church provided
143

144 THE DAWNING OF
the one power that could successfully oppose the
reign of force, that could uphold and maintain dis
cipline over the passions of the greatest. To the
Church also we owe the formation of a loftier ideal of
womanhood, the beginnings of education, the resur
rection of art, the noblest achievements of archi
tecture. Art, it is true, soon left the service of the
Church to serve pagan masters ; Fra Angelico with
his angels all blue and gold gave place to painters
with more sensuous forms. But architecture in me
diaeval times still remained the true child of the
Church, the interpreter in symbols of stone and form
of her mystic teaching. Again in the coming of the
friars, to a lesser extent also in the earlier monas
tic movement, we note the most successful effort ever
made towards constructive socialism. While hostile
to the liberty of thought the Church in her official
teachings yet demanded a certain measure of political
liberty, and thus ministered to the growth of democ
racy. Lastly none may deny the superabounding
charity of the Church. Harmful as may have been
the extravagancies of this charity, none can deny, in
the absence of wiser and more organized efforts to
deal with poverty, that it was the charity of the
Church alone that saved the poorest from the grind
ing tyranny of the powerful and wealthy. Many of
these matters are so self-evident that they need not
detain us. Others will demand fuller explication.
The emphasis of the greater value of human life is
observed in the formation of public opinion against
the common sins of the Eoman Empire, abortion and
infanticide ; and in the growth during the Middle
Ages of foundling hospitals. That this last move-

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 145
ment became in time a source of danger to chastity
must not blind us to its value as its first origin in
teaching charity and humanity. As regards infanti
cide, the Church from the first refused to recognize
the old patria potestas, the right of the father to de
cide which of his children should be allowed to live,
and which should be cast into the street or exposed
on the island in the Tiber. "If it proves a girl, "
writes a father in Alexandria to his expectant wife,
as we read in recently found papyri, "throw it out."
The enthronement of the Babe of Bethlehem — the
Madonna and Child — was the destruction of the sanc
tion of such crimes. Nor should we overlook, as
instance of the great law of compensation that runs
through all history, that the compassion of the Church
for infants was largely the result of its extreme
doctrine of Baptism. The hell which in common
belief awaited the unbaptized led the Church to insist
on the saving of life. But from the serfdom or slavery
into which the children thus saved were too often sold
the mediaeval Church only slowly effected deliverance.
From the credit due to the Church on this matter
of the greater value attached to life, the crown of
which was the abolition of the gladiatorial shows,
one deduction, though alas ! a most serious one, must
be made. The Church in the Middle Ages did little
or nothing to mitigate the barbarity of the penal
code. This is the more remarkable when we re
member that the early Church excluded its members
from holding office in the State because their judicial
duties could not be carried out, as Tertullian claims,
"without chaining and torturing." Unfortunately
the persecuting zeal of the intolerant led not only to

146 THE DAWNING OF
the abandonment of this early spirit, but, in the later
Middle Ages, to a decided retrogression. In 1252
Innocent IV, reversing the previous teaching of the
Church, made torture legal for the hunting of
heretics, and forced its use on the secular courts.
Not the least of the many crimes of the mediaeval
Inquisition, the most abiding in its results was the
way in which she thus poisoned the administration
of justice and the methods of evidence. Henceforth
on the Continent a prisoner was held to be guilty
until he could prove his innocence. Moreover, every
species of deceit was justified, if profitable for
conviction. Innocent III emphatically stated that
" faith is not to be kept with him who keeps not
faith with God." No trick was too base, no false
hood too false, no evidence too tainted, if only
thereby confession could be wrung from the ac
cused, or the denunciation secured of others. The
secular courts soon learned to follow the Church's
example. To this sin against justice and civiliza
tion the Inquisition added studied hypocrisy and
systematic self-deceit. By her own law torture could
only be administered once ; her agents tricked the
canons by the device of successive adjournments.
When at last relentless cruelty had extorted con
fession, the mangled victim was carried into another
room, his ravings read aloud, the oath administered,
and careful record entered that "the confession was
free and spontaneous, made without the pressure of
force or fear." On handing over the "relaxed " to
secular judgment, the Inquisition, to avoid " coarse
talk of flames and faggots," solemnly admonished the
authorities that punishment should not imperil life

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 147
or limb, or cause effusion of blood, though woe to
the secular prince that took the Inquisition at her
word. In the Middle Ages the Inquisition wrapped
herself round with deceit and fear ; to-day she stands
self-revealed in all the horrors of a system whose
cruelty pagan tyrants may have surpassed, but
whose resources of hypocrisy and deceit they would
have envied in vain.
In this matter of the mediaeval Inquisition it may
be well to point out that the mediaeval Church con
tributed almost nothing to the idea of toleration.
The great mediaeval thinker — Marsiglio 1 of Padua, —
the inspirer of Ockham and Wyclif did indeed claim
that heresy ,must be unpunished in this world, ex
cept in so far as it may prove dangerous to society.
Even in this case the punishment should only be in
flicted by civil courts. Errors of opinion, "howso
ever great they be," must on no account be punished.
Of these Jesus is the judge in a world to come, the
reality of whose terrors it is the business of the
priests to uphold before offenders. But Marsiglio
apart, — and Marsiglio was condemned as a hopeless
heretic! — we may fairly claim that toleration is es
sentially a modern notion, repugnant both to the
statecraft and piety of preceding centuries. To the
Church of those days, for that matter to all Churches
until Oliver Cromwell pointed the way to better
things, toleration was a crime against God and truth.
In the Eoman Empire, as we have already noted,
toleration of a sort existed, in reality indifference
due to political expediency. A wise recognition of
local usages and cults was desirable, provided always
1 For Marsiglio see infra, p. 174.

148 THE DAWNING OF
that the interests of the State were duly conserved ;
a toleration founded upon the claims of conscience
and the rights of the individual soul was a matter too
absurd for philosophers even to discuss. The perse
cution of Christianity was political, the result of the
antagonism of rival claims.1 We may even claim
that Christianity was persecuted because of her in
tolerance of heathenism. If, like the rival cult of
Mithraism, she had been content to live and let live,
to bow the knee in the house of Eimmon, she would
not have drawn down upon herself the wrath of
Boman governors. The Church suffered because of
her necessary aggressiveness of temper. We could
not have wished it otherwise. An unaggressive
Christianity would never have conquered the Em
pire. Unfortunately when Christianity became the re
ligion of the State the aggressiveness of temper was
turned inward. As theological strife, especially the
Arian and later the Donatist controversies grew more
bitter, Christianity forgot, if indeed she had ever
learned, the incongruity between persecution and the
Gospel. Moreover Christianity had now become the
religion of the Empire and in an imperial Church
there could be no right of the sects to separate exist
ence. That was deemed to be as impossible as the
right of nations to be independent kingdoms. The
world-power, secular or spiritual, must crush all re
volt. To its credit be it said, the Latin Church was
somewhat backward in actual persecution ; she lacked
alike the passions and heresies of the East. In the
1 On this whole matter I may refer to my work " Persecution
in the Early Churoh."

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 149
profound stupor of the Dark Ages the persecuting
spirit died out. Orthodoxy and heresy were stag
nant ; the West was too absorbed in her struggle for
existence. The few who disturbed the Church with
their deeper questionings — Felix of Urgel with his
Adoptionism (794), and the monk Gottschalk (+869)
with his doctrine of predestination — were not severely
treated. But in the eleventh century conscience and
reason awoke from their long sleep and began to rend
the unity of the Church. At first the Church was
slow to resort to extremities. Some burnings there
were but they were in all cases the result of lynch
law and popular fanaticism. But the growth of
heresy, especially the dangerous anti-social heresy
of the Cathari or Albigensians in Southern France
and Northern Italy, compelled the Church to resort
to her older weapons. Council after council urged
the bishops to stamp out error by using their powers
of parochial inquisition. But such inquisition was
local and uncertain. So Innocent HI determined to
deliver it from the whims and irregularities of the
prelates and hand it over to the greater zeal and cer
tainty of the Boman Curia. Hence the centraliza
tion of persecution by the establishment of the papal
Inquisition under the guidance, as a rule, of trained
friars. To the twentieth century the Inquisition is the in
carnation of spiritual despotism. Even the impar
tial historian finds a difficulty in so detaching him
self from current ideas as to deal fairly with this ter
rible blot on the record of the mediaeval church.
Nevertheless we should endeavour to estimate the
Inquisition from the standpoint of the age in which

150 THE DAWNING OF
it was established. To the people at large, heresy
was the greatest of all crimes because the most dan
gerous. We must once again remember the excess
ive mediaeval conception of solidarity, the convic
tion that the unity of the State rested on the unity of
faith. Heresy was no mere matter of individual
opinion ; on the contrary the heretic perished not
alone iri his iniquity. To the mediaeval thinker, in
dividualism in thought or religion was a thing im
possible ; for religion and thought were both ques
tions, of society. In the maintenance of uniformity
men found the basis and bond of continued social
existence. Whatever therefore tended to destroy
this unity of uniformity — the two terms were re
garded as identical — was as much a hurt to the State
as the work of thief or coiner. These exalted indi
vidualism into the license for crime ; the heretic
turned it into a lever for overthrowing society itself.
So the Church must take care that charity work not
evil to others. Caiaphas was the prophet of medi
aeval intolerance; it was expedient that one man
should die than that the fires of heaven should over
whelm both city and nation. Better still if the rack
and stake could not only avert the vials of wrath,
but save the soul of the sinner. For the horrors of
hell were ever before the eyes of all, a hell where in
fants not a span long writhed in eternal flames while
the blessed in heaven found satisfaction in contem
plating the miseries of the damned. All human in
terests therefore sank into nothingness in comparison
with the duty of keeping the flock from straying, or
of preventing an infected sheep from communicating
his poison to his fellows. To hew Agag in pieces

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 151
was the call of God ; to neglect was the ruin of peo
ple and king. Dominic, St. Francis, St. Louis,
Thomas Aquinas, and Innocent III, were types of
men of whom in their several ways humanity in any
age might well feel proud, and yet where heresy
was concerned they were ruthless. Said St. Louis,
" Clerks may dispute, but the layman who hears the
Christian faith spoken against ought to defend it
only with his sword, which he should drive home
into the gainsay er." Heretics, claims Thomas Aqui
nas, must not be endured. The tenderness of the
Church allows them to have two warnings ; after
which they must be abandoned to the secular power.
This, he argues, shows the mercy of the Church, for
it is much more wicked to corrupt the faith on which
depends the life of the same than to debase the coin
age which provides merely for temporal life. Where
fore if coiners are doomed at once to death, much
more might heretics be slain as soon as they are con
victed. The crime of the Inquisition, therefore, does not
consist in a new departure of intolerance and cruelty,
nor in its outrage of popular conviction. Its punish
ments were merciful in comparison with those which
until recently disgraced the secular codes, while in
theory its procedure was hedged round with safe
guards of justice. Nevertheless, when every excuse
has been made that fairness or leniency may demand,
when too the number of victims has been reduced
from popular exaggerations to the more merciful
actualities, the Inquisition will forever stand out as
a great retrograde step in the civilizing mission of the
Church. We blame it not that in the days of its

152 THE DAWNING OF
origin it failed to rise superior to the moral con
sciousness of Europe. Its damnation lies in its
stereotyping of all that was most evil in popular
passion, in its fatal crippling of development, in its
smothering of aspiration, and in the deterioration it
induced of all the higher aspects of life. Its gigantic
structure overshadowed Christendom, terrorizing
laity and clergy alike. Her officers were irrespon
sible save to the pope ; they could judge all yet be
judged by none. Even its familiars, bravoes and
spies were shielded with inviolability. From its
unceasing vigilance no heretic could hope for es
cape ; a long arm reached across the seas ; a sleep
less memory treasured up the records of any heret
ical family for generations ; kindly death brought no
release. Half a century might have elapsed since
the heretic's decease in the full odour of sanctity,1
but the sleuth-hounds of Borne will at last trace out
his crime, burn his bones, confiscate the property of
his grandchildren, raze his honour to the ground,
and dedicate it forever as a public receptacle of filth.
Her net was everywhere, and no prey so small that
it could elude her meshes. She entered into the
home, breaking up the peace of families, holding out
rewards to the father who should betray his son, to
the wife that would denounce her husband. In one
case a lad of ten was allowed to incriminate his
father, his sister, and seventy others ; while the
wretch denounced by the bigotry or malice of her
spies knew neither the names nor the evidence of the
witnesses against him. Suspicion was accepted as
1 See the remarkable story of Armann Pongilnps in Lea, " In
quisitions," Vol. II, pp. 240-242.

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 153
proof, and every doubtful point decided in favour of
the faith. To defend a heretic was itself heresy. As
Sir John Fortescue, the Chancellor of Henry VI, de
clared the system placed every man's life in the
hands of his enemy. As no heretic could convey a
legal title, or contract a debt, all alienations subse
quent to his heresy were void and fell without re
dress to the State, no matter through how many
hands the property might have passed. Where the
Inquisition flourished, as in Spain and in the regions
of the Southern Cross that lay under her domination,
industry and commerce were of necessity paralyzed,
social intercourse threatened, the home destroyed.
But in dealing with the Church's task in the Middle
Ages we must not forget that, historically speaking,
the Inquisition was characteristic rather of the later
years of the Middle Ages than of an earlier age when
the Church wielded her maximum power.
n
As regards slavery the progress made in the Mid
dle Ages was somewhat slow. We must remember
that the Church did not at first recognize the great
ness of St. Paul's Epistle to Philemon, that no slave
question existed in the early Church, and that the
legitimacy of slavery was generally acknowledged in
theory.1 But in practice, the doctrine of the value
of " the brother for whom Christ died " slowly tri
umphed. The freedom of serf or slave in testa
mentary bequest was inculcated as the most accept
able gift that could be made "for the benefit of the
1 On this matter the author may refer to his "Persecution in
the Early Church," pp. 149-152.

154 THE DAWNING OF
soul." In Europe, by the end of the fourteenth cen
tury, slavery of Christian people was almost un
known, though the slavery of non-Christian people,
if thereby they secured baptism, was looked upon as
almost a charity — temporary labour as the price of
their soul's deliverance from eternal torment. Serf
dom, on the contrary, lingered long — in Eussia until
times within the memory of those still living. Its
abolition was hindered by the great number of serfs
attached to the estates of the Church, especially to its
greater monasteries. Many of these, no doubt, orig
inally were free peasants who had bartered their lib
erty for the greater security and protection which the
spiritual overlord could afford. Like many other
movements commendable in their origin this, in
time, became a disaster both for civilization and the
Church. The serfs of the Church were among the
last to secure their liberty just as the towns which
grew up under the shadow of the great monasteries —
for instance Bury St. Edmund's or St. Albans — were
the last to secure their municipal freedom. The
Crusades also, which largely assisted in the emanci
pation of the ordinary serf, did nothing for the serf
of the Church. Needy barons, equipping their re
tainers for the East, were glad to obtain money by
selling the people rights and privileges hitherto with
held. But the Church remained at home and loos
ened not her purse-strings. But it is fair to remem
ber that in its practical working mediaeval serfdom
was not quite so evil as it seems to us to-day. We
may well doubt whether a landless peasantry, though
nominally free, is in reality much better off than the
mediaeval villain whose land was secured to him by

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 155
custom or copyhold. We may add, in passing, that
one of the most evil effects of the peasant being tied
to the soil was its effect upon the position of woman.
Leaving out altogether such a hideous abuse of serf
dom as the law of the first night — claimed in Prussia
as late as the middle of the last century — the woman
who lost her husband must find another almost at
once, or else lose hearth and home. The whole sys
tem left no place for the growth of finer feelings.
But in this matter mediaeval serfdom is by no means
the greatest sinner — there are worse still existing
among us.
Closely connected with the abolition of slavery
was the constant effort of the Church, throughout
the Middle Ages, to redeem Christian captives from
bondage. This movement had been begun in the
days of persecution ; one of the objects of the monthly
collection allowed by Boman Law in the churches,
as in all other recognized guilds, was the redemption
of brethren banished to the mines of Sardinia. With
the barbarian invasions such a fund became still
more necessary ; and the leaders of the Church, St.
Ambrose, St. Augustine, and others, distinguished
themselves by their efforts in this matter. Caesarius
of Aries (+542) was not the only bishop of his times
who sold the gold and silver ornaments of his church
to purchase back the captives of his flock. When
money failed, Eligius of Noyon (b. 588), in his con
stant work of manumission, sold even his clothing.
The Muslim conquests and the terror of the Algeriue
pirates led the Middle Ages to found societies
specially devoted to this object, the chief of which
was that of the Trinitarians or Maturines. But in

156 THE DAWNING OF
all such movements the Church took the foremost
part ; to the mediaeval mind a philanthropy not eccle
siastical in origin and control was almost incon
ceivable. With the abolition of slavery there came into
greater prominence the evils of poverty. From the
firstl the Church sought to meet these by constant
charity. Collections for the poor always formed part
of the Eucharist services, and at an early date charity
was elevated into one of the saving graces of life.
The Church at Eome, as early as the year 251, sup
ported no less than 1,500 poor people, and a similar
charity was manifested elsewhere. The effects of
this zeal for the poor were even more apparent in the
Middle Ages, as soon as the first terrors of the in
vasions were passed. All over Europe the rude bar
barity of the times was mitigated by a deep pity, the
results of which we find in the foundation of hos
pitals, lazar-houses, and almshouses in almost every
city and village. Nor were the claims of the poor in
the matter of education altogether forgotten. But
to this we shall return in a later lecture.
One effect of the mediaeval habit of charity was to
break down the barriers which separated the classes.
Of Aletta, the mother of St. Bernard, we are told
that "she was accustomed to go personally from
house to house, searching out the poor and weak
. . . preparing food for them, niinistering to the
sick, cleansing their cups and vessels with her own
hands, and performing for them the humblest offices
usually discharged by servants." Such records
might be multiplied ; they witness to a kindliness of
sympathy between rich and poor that did much to

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 157
counteract the evils of feudalism, and to redress eco
nomic inequalities. But such kindliness was wholly
restricted to the pious ; outside the Church it had no
existence. The call to fraternity and to the works of love
which spring from brotherhood reached its climax
in the thirteenth century in the coming of the friars.
In the great revival ushered in by St. Francis of
Assisi no religious life seemed to be complete which
did not devote itself to the care of the outcast or
leper or give of its substance to the relief of the sick
and the aged. ' Nor were such ministrations confined
to clerics. By his foundation of his Tertiaries or
Third Order, St. Francis claimed the allegiance of
the laity for his ideal. In an age when all men were
seeking to enter a guild in some form or other,
Francis sought to enroll all classes in his guild of
"The Brothers and Sisters of Penitence." The
obligations of this lay fraternity were peace and
charity, while the rich were to distribute their
surplus wealth to the poor. The foundation of this
Order, soon imitated by all the other Mendicant
orders, was the beginning of a social revolution, the
depth of which was hidden from our older historians.
For centuries the laity had had little active place in
the organization of the Church. Now Europe was
filled with a host of earnest laymen, bound together
in social service and church work ; for Francis pro
claimed that the life and labour of love was open to
every Christian. Of this call to service we see the
influences in the rapid rise in the thirteenth century
in France alone of the number of leper hospitals from
a few to over two thousand, as also in the formation

158 THE DAWNING OF
of other societies for social work. By nothing is the
success of St. Francis' attempt to bring the classes
together more clearly brought out than in the famous
tale of the Little Flower :
"Sow St. Louis, King of France, went in person in
the guise of a pilgrim to Perugia for to visit the holy
Brother Giles. . . . So the porter went to Brother
Giles and told him that at the door was a pilgrim
that asked for him. ... And being inspired of
God it was revealed to him that it was the King
of France : so straightway with great fervour he left
his cell, and ran to the door, and without further
questioning, albeit they ne'er had seen each other be
fore, kneeling down with great devotion they em
braced and kissed each other, with much signs of
tender love as though for a long time they had been
close familiar friends ; but for all that they spoke
not, the one nor the other, but continued in this em
brace in silence."
Let us hear the comment of one of our own
prophets. " Of all which story not a word, of course,
is credible by any rational person. Certainly not :
the spirit nevertheless which created the story is an
entirely indisputable fact in the history of mankind.
Whether St. Louis and Brother Giles ever knelt
together in Perugia matters not a whit. That a king
and a poor monk could be conceived to have thoughts
of each other which no words could speak . . .
this is what you have to meditate on here." J
We must not pass away from this question of the
relation of the Church to poverty and suffering with
out pointing out one of the factors in mediaeval life
'Raskin, "Mornings in Florence," p. 89.

THE MODERN SOCIAL 'CONSCIOUSNESS 1 59
which made for charity. The Middle Ages, unlike
the twentieth century, were not afraid of poverty ;
poverty was not the one evil of life which more than
any other must be shunned, whatever the price in
ideals or other currency of the soul which must be
paid. ' So far from looking upon poverty as a crime
or stigma, the mediaeval Church erred rather in the
opposite direction ; in elevating poverty, provided
it was voluntary, into the mark of saintliness. But
as a distinguished American professor has well
pointed out, the old monkish poverty worship was
the mediaeval form of the strenuous life "without
brass bands or uniforms or hysteria, popular applause
or lies or circumlocutions," 1 the moral equivalent in
the social sphere of that school of discipline which
hitherto in the world at large had been chiefly found
in the pursuit of war. Mediaeval practice, we must
confess, was not always in accord in this matter with
mediaeval theory, even among the regulars ; but the
Church of the Middle Ages was at any rate true to
its Founder in refusing to recognize the ideal life in
the successful millionaire. The mediaeval saints and
leaders never forgot the great lesson taught us in the
Old Testament that God is always on the side of the
poor and suffering, against the rich and strong.
Great wealth and great piety were deemed incom
patible ideas. Benunciation of riches lay at the root
of all holiness, and in such renunciation the poor
were not forgotten. Again and again we find that
the precept of Christ, "Go, sell all that thou hast
and give to the poor, and come follow Me," is
elevated into the obligatory rule for all who would
1 W. James, "Varieties of Religions Experience," p. 367.

160 THE DAWNING OF
seek the higher life. In the records of the saints no
text is so fruitful in producing the great crises of
the soul, or in leading through the narrow gate to
emancipation and light. At one time even no small
party in the Church — though for the most part classed
as hopeless enthusiasts, Waldensians, Spiritual Fran
ciscans, Lollards, and the like — sought to make
absolute poverty the sine qud non of all true spiritual
life. They overstrained, perhaps, their theory of the
absolute poverty of Jesus, but at any rate they never
sinned by reducing the Saviour to a bourgeois re
former preaching from velvet cushions to those more
needy than himself.
Moreover, in its doctrine of merit by works, as
distinct from justification by faith alone, the Church
possessed a potent weapon for reducing charity into
more than a pious sentiment. We must own that too
often this charity sprang from selfish, fearful motives.
Nevertheless, instances abound of attempts to win
salvation by deeds of love of the highest benefit to
wider circles than the clergy. On all hands, in the
Middle Ages, even before the coming of the friars we
see the rise of institutions of mercy — hospitals, lazar-
houses, almshouses, orphanages — absolutely unknown
to the pagan world. The number of mediaeval holi
days, saint days and the like have often received the
animadversions of Protestant writers. No doubt they
were excessive ; but they did much to sweeten toil
arid to save it from that hopeless monotony which is
the curse of the modern factory. Even the mediaeval
almsgiving, though, doubtless, indiscriminate and
wasteful, oftentimes productive of the very miseries
it was intended to cure, must not be wholly judged

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS l6l
by the rules of Political Economy. The cultivation
of a habit if not a sense of pity, especially in a society
that was in many respects coarse and brutal, is worth
more than the accumulation of capital. The con
tempt of the Middle Ages for the " Economic Man,"
whose interests so strangely twisted the moral life of
the early nineteenth century, would justly have been
unbounded. And, after all, we must allow that the
life of one humble, sincere follower of St. Francis has
done more for the uplift of humanity than all the
writings of Eicardo and the Manchester School of
Economics. Ill
As regards the effect of the Church upon war our
conclusion is not altogether satisfactory. History
alas ! shows us that in the Middle Ages the Church
stirred up ' many wars, some of especial ferocity.
Nothing could be more appalling in its bloodshed
than the struggles over the question of Investitures,
which began with Hildebrand, and which were not
settled until fifty years later, at the Concordat of
Worms (1122). More ferocious still were the Cru
sades, whether waged by the flaming zeal of a new
born Europe against the Muslim, by Teutonic Knights
against the heathen Wends of Prussia, or by catholic
orthodoxy under Simon de Montfort and others
against the Albigensian heretics of France. The
ideal of peace so characteristic of the early Church,
the disinclination to have anything to do with war
or the soldier's calling, which led to many martyr
doms in the days before Constantine,1 gave place in
1 See my " Persecution in the Early Church," pp. 181-188 for
a full discussion.

1 62 THE DAWNING OF
the Middle Ages to a delight in war, one cause of
which was too often the fanatical spirit of ecclesias
tical interests. Against this it is but a slight offset
that the Church instituted in the eleventh century
the "Truce of God," at ohe time of some value in
repressing private wars. This Truce forbade all
" neighbourly raids " from Thursday to Monday and
at certain holy seasons of the year.
The whole problem of war is the most difficult
which civilization and the Church have yet to solve,
and alas ! at the present moment, we seem further
from obtaining a solution than ever. For the Middle
Ages dreamed of a papacy sufficiently strong in its
righteousness to curb the ambition of kings. This
was the ideal of Hildebrand. Before his soul there
arose a vision of a vast United States of the World,
at the head of which, supreme over kings and gov
ernors, should be the Vicar of God. To the several
states of this gigantic Federation should be left the
maximum of home-rule consistent with the full con
trol and responsibility of an infallible sovereign who
should answer "on the dreadful Day of Judgment
before the Just Judge" not only for the right dis
charge of his own spiritual duties, but also for the
conduct of the royal underlings through whom he
ruled the world. But this splendid conception of a
great central power raised above the disturbances of
worldly life, judging monarchs and nations alike by
the dry light of truth and righteousness, dispensing
justice and mercy on the evil and on the good, has been
found wanting. It has faded with the common light
of day, or rather has been found to hide beneath its
dreamy splendours, corruptions, and abuses of its

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 163
own. And Europe, bereft even of its dream of a
coming Pope Angelico, now fills its belly with the
husks of Machiavelli and his modern interpreters,
Treitsche and von Bernhardi. For many millions
of the most enlightened peoples of Europe the dream
of an all-highest War Lord has displaced the vision
of one supreme spiritual head. A Supreme Court
of the nations is still an airy fancy. And the cry of
the Man of Sorrows still rises in vain: "They will
not come unto Me, that they may find peace and
life." But to return to our theme. Though it is impossi
ble to plead that the Church diminished the number
of wars, we may yet contend that the Church secured
a real diminution in their atrocity. Throughout the
Middle Ages the rights of the enemy over his con
quered foe were savage enough at best, nevertheless
we see the slow growth of better things. " The evan
gelical precepts of peace and love," writes Freeman,
"did not put an end to war, they did not put an end
to aggressive conquests, but they distinctly human
ized the way in which war was carried on. From
this time forth the never-ending wars with the Welsh
ceased to be wars of extermination. The heathen
English had been satisfied with nothing short of de
struction and expulsion of their enemies ; the Chris
tian English thought it enough to reduce them to
political subjection." l We have an illustration of
this greater humanity of war in the way in which
the Church secured the recognition of a principle,
utterly unknown in the Boman world, that Christian
prisoners of war — Paynim and other heathen were
1 Freeman, " Norman Conquest."

164 THE DAWNING OF
regarded as outside the pale of this charity — should
not be reduced to slavery.
Moreover the ideal of chivalry — that fine flower of
mediaeval honour growing in the unpromising soil of
feudalism — which the Church fostered and conse
crated, contained within itself many softening ele
ments which could not fail to mitigate the effects of
war. True, as in most things mediaeval and human,
the gap between the ideal and the actual was not less
in the warrior class than in the monastery, the priest
hood, or the papacy itself. To Froissart the Black
Prince was the very flower of chivalry, yet no horror
could be more awful than the story of his cruel sack
of Limoges, or his purposeless exploits in Spain.
Knights and ladies were just as inconsistent as all
other mediaeval men and women, nevertheless their
ideals, as expressed in abundant romances of chiv
alry, were not altogether without effect, in spite of
, the actuality of cruelty, greed, and lust. Through
the Church feudal troth was broadened into largesse,
courtesy, and pity. The ceremony of investiture of
the knight was sanctified by religious rites, the all
night vigil of the candidate over his arms laid by the
altar, his bath as the symbol of purification, the early
morning mass and the blessing of the sword. By the
Christian knight haughtiness and boasting were to
be held as vices.
The slaughter of the Paynim was still, of course,
the main end of knightly warfare, but in addition
faith and obedience were inculcated as necessary vir
tues. In the ideals of the thirteenth century, the
"perfit knight" is no longer an ignorant brutal
warrior — a Front de Boeuf, the berserker fighting for

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 165
lust and gain — but the Cid rescuing Spain from the
infidel, Godfrey of Bouillon who sometimes lingering
at prayer forgot the hours of food, nor would he wear
the crown where Christ had worn the thorns, or that
saintly king and veritable knight, St. Louis of
France, whose portrait shines out forever from the
stately pages of the Sire de Joinville, and who
" wished for leprosy or any other bodily evil rather
than mortal sin should come into his soul. "
Of Tescelin, the father of St. Bernard, it is related
that though " noble in descent and rich in possessions,
he was yet a great lover of the poor, with an extraordi
nary love of justice, so thajb he was accustomed to
wonder that it should seem hard for any to observe
justice towards others, especially that they should
desert the justice of God by either fear or love of
gain. He was the bravest of soldiers, yet shrank
from the praises which others sought. He never
took up arms except in defense of his own territory,
or at the call of his feudal lord." Such men as
Tescelin were not so rare as we are accustomed to
think. But, as the chronicler adds, this knightly
temper was all due to his " magna pietas."
But nowhere does the new conception of the dig
nity that religion can give to manhood come out more
completely than in the poems that centre round the
English Arthur, and in the contrast they present to
Archbishop Turpin's older romances of Charlemagne
and Boland. The king, Lancelot, Galahad, Percival,
and their quest of the Grail are the immortal crea
tions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But
when Walter de Map — if indeed it was he — and his
German followers Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von

166 THE DAWNING OF
Eschenbach, and others, purified the coarse songs of
animal strength and passion by putting into them
the heavenly mysteries, they did more than write a
romance. They created a new ideal. Lancelot —
noble, true, the "perfit knight" in bravery and
courtesy, but the lover alas ! of Arthur's queen — and
Tristram, in whose love for Iseult we see resistless
passion struggling vainly with loyalty and honour,
representatives of a chivalry without purity, cannot
sit in the Siege Perilous or see the Holy Grail. This
is reserved for Sir Galahad, "thehaut Prince," the
"servant of Jesus Christ," who "bore the crown of
gold . . . and had about him a great fellowship
of angels," or for Percival, "as the tale telleth one
of the men of the world at that time that most be
lieved in our Lord Jesus Christ."
IV
That the Church uplifted the ideal and status of
woinan cannot be denied. This she accomplished in
directly rather than of set purpose. Whatever else
may be said about the mediaeval cult of the Virgin
this much must be acknowledged, the immense in
fluence it exerted upon the whole conception of
womanhood. More than dogmatic teaching, the cult
of the Virgin, under its different aspects, more espe
cially as Mater Dolorosa, or as Virgin and Child,
taught men the sacredness of the mother, and the
majesty of suffering gentleness. The perfect type of
the pure woman was given a place in heaven that
was but little lower than God.
Herein we see another of the abounding contradic
tions of the mediaeval Church. For writers not a

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 67
few have sometimes urged that the mediaeval Church,
by it^ exaggeration of the value of a celibate life, by
the reverence it paid to those who abandoned the
cares ^,nd duties of motherhood and fatherhood for
the contemplative life of the cloisters, lowered the
ideal of the home and of woman in special. There
is in this indictment considerable truth. No doubt,
as the Reformation felt, the monastery is opposed to
the home, and an exaggerated emphasis upon conse
crated virginity is inimical to the best interests of
the State. Nunneries, two centuries before the
Beformation, had outlived their usefulness ; a suffi
cient proof of this may be found in their general
neglect and reduced numbers. Nevertheless, in
earlier ages the nunnery had a part to play in civ
ilization of the utmost importance. Only in the
monastic life was the solitary woman safe from the
unbridled lust of the powerful ; or, if she possessed
property, from being forced into a marriage that was
hateful to her. Into the retreat of the monastery,
guarded by sacrosanct terrors, none dare break.
Barbarians who ventured to insult "the brides of
God " soon experienced, or thought they experienced,
His avenging wrath. Hence the ideal of virginity,
though exaggerated, was not without value in coun
teracting the lustful realities of the world around.
But this must not blind us to the evil side of the
monastic ideal. The monkish vilification of the
woman who did not become a nun was altogether
harmful. In the phrase of Tertullian woman was
looked upon as the janua Didboli, the source of all evil,
the temptress without whose baleful influences man
would never have lost his Eden. In the most popular

1 68 THE DAWNING OF
handbook of mediaeval sermons, the "Speculum Eccle-
siae " of Honorius of Autun (+1130), we are expressly
told that "nothing so estranges man from God as the
love of women." That this love might be to a man
the wings of his soul was a truth that was in the main
hidden from the mediaeval Church. On the contrary,
nothing- is more common in the literature of the
mediaeval Church, following the example set by Ter
tullian and the Fathers, than discussions on the rela
tive merits of marriage and celibacy. But we are
never left in any doubt as to the side on which the
verdict will be given. Marriage is only a secondary
good for those otherwise unable to preserve their
continence. The unclean beasts, said Jerome, in a
sentence that mediaeval preachers loved to quote,
went into the ark in pairs ; the clean by sevens.
"Marriage," said St. Martin, "belongs to those
things which are excused, but virginity points to
glory." And yet, by another mediaeval contradic
tion, the very Church, whose most powerful section
thus vilified women and marriage, exalted marriage
into a sacrament and proclaimed its indissoluble
character. Moreover, against the lowering of woman
by the monk we must place the constant refusal of
the Church to tamper with the binding character of
the marriage vows. She would have nothing to do
with loose laws of divorce. How great the debt civ
ilization thereby incurred can only be realized by
those who try to picture the effect upon the bar
barians for evil if the Church had given to the un
curbed passions of man facilities for divorce which
are the disgrace and weakness of many modern states.
Henry VIII would have been a paragon of self-re-

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 169
straint in comparison with some of the results that
would have followed.
The ^contradictions in mediaeval teaching as regards
woman) and marriage are capable of explanation.
When we examine the matter in detail we find that
the vilification of woman and marriage was the work
of the monk ; the exaltation of marriage as a sacra
ment and the proclamation of its indissoluble char
acter was the teaching of the secular Church. Now
Monasticism was essentially individualistic, and in
its discussion of marriage we see this individualism
in its most anarchic expression. Social claims and
social instinct are altogether overlooked. The ut
most concession that some of the monkish writers
will grant to the argument that their principles if
carried out would destroy the race is to fall back
upon the ability of God, if needful, to provide other
means of propagation. Such a view7 in its individ
ualistic selfishness, differs from anarchism merely by
the absence of every ray of hope. Opposed to this
individualism of Monasticism we have the Catholic
Church, whose great strength as we have seen lay in
its emphasis of solidarity. But such a principle in
volved, of necessity, that she should assert the sacred
indissoluble character of marriage, while at the same
time she allowed the anarchist individualism of Mon
asticism to have full play. But such contradictions,
though puzzling to the more logical modern, excited
neither comment nor surprise in the mediaeval mind.
Though the new woman is altogether a modern
creation, whose ethical and civilizing value time
alone can determine, the reader should not forget the
important place which woman often attained in the

170 THE DAWNING OF
mediaeval Church, and, in consequence, in the medi
aeval State. Few nobler types of womanhood have
ever appeared than Joan of Arc or Catherine of
Siena. The one delivered France from her invaders ;
the other was the virtual ruler of Northern Italy, the
trusted adviser and correspondent of popes. Few
prophets secured more attention than was given
Elizabeth of Schonau (+1165), Hildegard of Bingen
(+1179), or Bridget of Sweden (+1373) ; few mystics
whose direct and utter passion realized more intently
the love of God than Mechthild of Magdeburg
(+1277) — the forerunner of the more logical Eck-
hardt, Tauler, and Suso, — or Juliana of Norwich. But
these characters, so beautiful and rare, were largely
dependent on their mediaeval environment. That no
Joan of Arc could deliver France to-day is a certainty
that lies altogether apart from Krupp guns and trench
warfare that touches rather the change from the
mediaeval to the modern mind. But an age which
could produce a Joan of Arc, a St. Catherine, or that
rare type of womanly gentleness and self-abnegation,
Elizabeth of Thuringia (+1231), may be forgiven, for
their sakes, many monastic exaggerations.
The noblest place of woman is in the home, and
mediaeval home life was oftentimes more beautiful
than we are wont to allow. Again and again in the
lesser known annals of the age we find records of de
voted mothers who trained up their children for
service in the Church and State with an intensity of
consecration which influenced their whole subsequent
life. Of such were the mother of St. Anselm, and
the mother of St. Bernard, and many other illustri
ous examples in cottage and castle. In the Middle

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 17:
Ages, as in every age, the germ-cell of all that was
best in the social system of the times lay in the purity
and consecrated zeal of Christian motherhood.
V
Our limits of space forbid us to treat, as we should
desire, of the place of the Church in the development
of the concepts of the Law. We must pass by this
subject and turn to the assistance given by the
Church to the cause of civil liberty. As liberty
depends upon law the development of liberty was of
course later than the emphasis of law. In the early
Middle Ages the Church threw its influence into the
scale of authority, and abandoned her appeal for
liberty — one great source of her power in the Boman
Empire, in the days when she was a persecuted rebel
— for reliance upon the rulers of the new nations.
To this change, no doubt, the Church was driven
through the struggle with the barbarians. To re
store order where all was chaos and ruin needed not
so much liberty as force, the authority of such men
as Charles the Great, or of William the Conqueror.
In this matter the Church of the Dark Ages was on
the side of the legions.
But in the later Middle Ages, when the peril of the
new nations had passed away, the Church returned,
to some extent at least, to its former attitude, stripped -
of all the license and anarchism of her rebellious
days, and became once more, though grudgingly,
the friend of liberty. We may frankly own that her
assistance was rather accidental than deliberate ;
that the object of the Church was to obtain authority
for herself by the subjection or depreciation of the

172 THE DAWNING OF
rival State, especially of the Empire ; the liberty of
the individual was her last concern. Nevertheless,
but for the Church, the nations of the West would
have been ground between the upper and nether
millstones, the competing tyrannies of local magnates
and absolute monarchs. The influence of the pa
pacy, from the days of Hildebrand onward, was
always cast against the claim of kings to exercise
authority by an indefeasible title, if only because
such a claim would have been fatal to the Hilde-
brandine idea of a papal overlord. As a matter of
fact the doctrine of the divine right of kings was an
invention of the autocrats of the Beformation, spe
cially devised as an answer to the claim of Borne.
So little was it accepted by the mediaeval Church that
ecclesiastical lawyers and theologians were firm in
their assertion of the right not merely of the papacy
but of the people "to root out and pull down, to
build and to plant," to quote a phrase often on the
lips of Hildebrand, princes and governors.
"Kings and dukes," wrote Hildebrand to Bishop
Hermann of Metz, in words that remind us of a
Jacobin of the French Bevolution, "owe their origin
to men guilty of every crime, ignorant of God, and
swayed by the devil."
"A king," said Thomas Aquinas, "who is un
faithful to his duty forfeits his claim to obedience.
It is not rebellion to depose him, for he is himself a
rebel whom the nation has a right to pull down."
"A king," we read, "is not a name of nature, a
title of office, nor do the people exalt him so high
above it in order to give him the free power of play
ing the tyrant in its midst, but to defend it from

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 73
tyranny. If one should engage a man for a fair wage
to tend swine," — the simile as Dr. Poole observes is
not flattering, — "and he find means not to tend but
to steal them, would one not remove him from his
charge? " The words are the words of Manegold, a
priest of Alsace, but the voice seems the voice of
Eousseau. Manegold may be dismissed as an extravagant, but
John of Salisbury (+1180) cannot be so regarded.
The pupil of Abailard, the secretary of Becket, the
intimate friend of Adrian IV, the agent by whom
Henry H obtained the latter' s sanction for his con
quest of Ireland, John of Salisbury was one of the fore
most scholars and thinkers of his age/ In his " Poli-
craticus" John makes the first real attempt since
Augustine to frame a theory of politics, but his basis
is the strict subordination of the secular to the spiri
tual. " The prince," he claims, " is the servant of
the priesthood." " Vain is the authority of all laws
except they bear the image of the divine law ; and
useless is the decree of a prince unless it be conform
able to the discipline of the Church." But, starting
from these premises, in some respects he is a more
advanced Jacobin even than Manegold and lays
down, with peculiar emphasis, the duty not only of
deposing but even of slaying tyrants. The greater
part of his work would have commended itself fully
to Cromwell's Ironsides ; any difference of opinion
would have centred round the nature of the spiritual
power that is supreme.
We see how these doctrines, originally formulated
by the Church for her own purposes, and with limi
tations that guarded her own interests, could minister

174 THE DAWNING OF
in other hands to the growth of liberty, when Thomas
Aquinas goes on to add to his claim of the nation's
right to depose its ruler : " But it is better to abridge
the king's power that he may be unable to abuse it.
For this purpose the whole nation ought to have a
share in governing itself. The Constitution ought to
combine a limited and elected monarchy with an
aristocracy of merit, and such an admixture of
democracy as shall admit all claims to office by
popular election. No government has a right to
levy taxes beyond the limit determined by the
people. All political authority is derived from
popular suffrage, and all laws must be made by
the people or their representatives." There was
in fact no concession that Hildebrand and his school
would not have made to democratic theory, provided
democracy would acknowledge his claims and do his
bidding. The assertion of the great principles of liberty from
a standpoint other than the supremacy of the spiri
tual is clearly found in the " Defensor Pacis" (1324)
the magnum opus of the great mediaeval political
thinker, Marsiglio of Padua, to whose bold views on
the liberty of thought we have already alluded.
Than Marsiglio no seer ever had a clearer vision of
the new order towards which the world was slowly
moving ; no prophet ever glanced deeper into the
future. In his principles the modern Constitutional
statesman, the modern Protestant finds little to alter ;
he has only to develop and fill in the outline. Mar-
siglio's writings give us the ideals which now regu
late the progress of Europe, though many of them
are still unrealized. So far is he above his age in

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 75
the breadth of his outlook that the truths he pro
claimed have had to be rediscovered by the political
thinkers of modern times, without even the knowl
edge of the mediaeval prophet who had thought them
out in bygone days.
In his first book Marsiglio discusses the origin and
principles of governors. Sovereignty, so Marsiglio
held, rests with the people, "from whom, or the
majority of them, determining by their choice or
will, expressed by speech in the general assembly
of citizens, proceeds all right and power." For the
purposes of action "the rule of the king is perhaps
the more perfect," but the king, as the officer of the
people, must be directly elected. Marsiglio will
have nothing to do with either divine right or the
hereditary principle. Such elected monarch is re
sponsible to the people, whose instrument he is, and
by whom he may be deposed if he override the na
tional will. Equally remarkable is Marsiglio's an
ticipation of certain modern social movements. He
would give to the civil power the right of determin
ing the number of men to be employed in every trade
or profession. In his second book Marsiglio pro
ceeds to examine the nature of the priesthood and its
relation to the State. He sweeps away the preten
sions of a sacerdotal order, and would treat the
clergy, in all but their strictly spiritual functions,
exactly the same as all other members of the civil
society. With Marsiglio the State is supreme, or
rather, State and Church — this last he defines as the
corporation of the faithful — become one. Ecclesi
astics, even the pope himself, must be subject to the
State's tribunals; their number be limited by its

176 THE DAWNING OF
pleasure. To the State also belongs all patronage,
which should as a rule be exercised by the free elec
tion of the parish itself, with which also should rest
the power of dismissal. The ecclesiastical property
must be vested in the State which can at any time
secularize superfluities to other uses.
The student, pondering over these extracts from
Thomas Aquinas and Marsiglio, cannot fail to note
the fundamental opposition of these two great writ
ers. Thomas was, and- is still the chosen advocate
of Borne, its supreme doctor ; Marsiglio, the leader
of revolt, from whom Ockham, Wyclif and other
rebels , gained all that was most characteristic and
daring in their doctrines. Nevertheless these two
writers are united, for purposes completely contra
dictory, in laying down principles that were fatal
to the absolutism of feudal society. The churchman
and the doctrinaire philosopher are one in asserting
the rights of democracy, and the criminal nature of
absolute power. The lawfulness of insurrection was
not only admitted by both, but defined as a duty
sanctioned by religion. The representative character
of all offices and institutions, both in Church and
State, was also clearly laid down by both. The re
sult of these ideas, thus widely promulgated, was
seen in the struggle in the fourteenth century be
tween democracy and privilege, between the guilded
and the unguilded. But Bienzi, Wyclif, Artevelde,
John Ball and other champions of freedom were be
fore their age. The story of the unfortunate circum
stances through which the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries saw the set-back of the principles of liberty
and the triumph of absolutism over the nascent in-

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 77
stitutions of democracy, does not belong to our pres
ent purpose. But we must not forget the debt which
democracy will always owe to the churchmen and
heretics, who, in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen
turies for opposite reasons, so clearly enunciated the
main principles of freedom.
As regards liberty of thought there is less to be
said. The whole conception as we have pointed out
in our discussion of the Inquisition was alien to the
times and to the predominant emphasis of solidarity.
But we should do well to avoid exaggeration.
Scholasticism, at least in its earlier developments,
was by no means the crude, unreal, hair-splitting ap
peal to mere logic and authority which in its later
days it tended to become. The thoughts of Anselm
and Abailard move in spheres far above the narrow
controversies of the pedants. Though modern science
cannot sufficiently express its contempt for the vast
superstructure which the schoolmen raised on their
narrow and flimsy foundations, nevertheless that
strange system was in a true sense preparing the way
for better things. And, within the limits provided,
there never was a time, until the Beformation, when
considerable liberty of thought and expression was
not allowed, especially in the universities. As a
rule, this liberty of individual judgment always ad
justed itself in the last resort to certain fundamental
positions of the Church, though the method of adjust
ment is often violent. Differences rarely touched the
deeper centres, for, at bottom, the diverse schools,
however apparently opposed, were one. Viewed
from the standpoint of these latter days the matters
which separated Gersom from Hus, to take a noted

178 THE DAWNING OF
illustration of antagonism, were as nothing compared
with the doctrines in which they were agreed. Here
and there, as in the case of Marsiglio and Wyclif, the
unity of mediaeval thought was broken, but such
breach was more often political than theological.
But with the development of mediaeval thought from
the fall of the Empire to the Beformation I have
dealt elsewhere.1
A last matter to which we would direct your at
tention is the Church's contribution to the growth
of democracy through her encouragement in the later
Middle Ages, especially in the fourteenth century,
of social guilds and fraternities. In England at any
rate, though originally founded in imitation of the
successful craft or trade guilds of London, Bristol,
and other great cities, the new guilds had little con
nection with trade. Their object was the furtherance
of neighbourliness and mutual help. They combined
the advantages of a social club with the benefits of
insurance and assurance against fire, water, thefts,
poverty, disease and death. They undertook for
their members the duties now discharged by burial
clubs, by hospitals, by almshouses, and by the
guardians of the poor. By steadying the price of
labour, or by obtaining work for their members, they
discharged the function of modern trades unions.
They discouraged judicial strife by insisting upon
their members submitting to arbitration. In some
towns, for instance Coventry and York, the guilds
found lodgings and food for poor strangers. In
times of special need, when the bridge was broken
'See the author's " Christian Thought to the Reformation "
(New York, 1911).

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 79
down, or the steeple in need of repair, the guilds of a
town united to carry out the object. They provided
dowers for portionless girls ; they furnished school
fees for promising lads ; in some places, as for
instance at Stratford-on-Avon, they maintained
guild schools of their own ; on the coast they insured
against loss at sea ; above all, they made the " Merry
England " of our fathers, by reason of their incessant
Church ales and other festive "mummings," miracle-
plays, "mysteries," and the like. To this joyous-
ness of life they largely contributed by the attention
they paid to singing, in many places maintaining a
special song-master.
From the first the guilds were strictly associated
with the Church. Each guild linked itself on to
some special saint, whose feast-day it kept with
processions and banquets, and for whose service it
provided priests, candles, and funds. The wealthier
guilds even maintained chaplains of their own, at
the cost of ten marks a year — the salary in those
days of the headmaster of Eton — to offer masses for
the quick and the dead. On Corpus Christi day the
guilds of a town, especially in a cathedral city, united
in a gigantic procession. On the death of any mem
ber the whole guild attended the funeral, and saw to
it that the family was not left without support.
The popularity of these guilds, if we may judge
from their number and rapid growth, was extraordi
nary. In London there were at least ninety of them
connected with parish churches. There were fifty-
five at Lynn. Nor were they confined to the larger
towns. There were eight guilds in the little parish
of Oxburgh in Norfolk, twelve at Ashburton — a

180 THE DAWNING OF
small town in Devonshire, and forty-two at the
equally small town of Bodmin in Cornwall. By the
beginning of the fifteenth century there was scarcely
a town or village in England of any importance
without them. Some of these, as for instance the
great Guilds in York and Boston, possessed large
endowments. Many included women as well as
men. By one of the greatest crimes in history nearly
all these guilds were swept away at the Beformation ;
in a few places a pitiful fragment of the spoils being
handed over to the people to establish a school,
though more often as for instance at Birmingham the
existing endowments of the guild school were seized,
and a small portion handed back to the "new
foundation." Even the endowments for the poor
were greedily appropriated by men who built up
/princely fortunes by the robbery of the parish. But
for this great pillage of social funds England to-day
in many districts would have needed no poor-law,
and no school-rate. Only slowly are we waking up
to the great loss to the life and well-being of the
people which has followed the divorce of religion
from the corporate life, the. reduction of insurance
and assurance to mere commercial transactions bereft
of all human elements, of all care for the poor to a
matter for the guardians. In all these matters the
nineteenth century in its early years was a night
mare, not the less hideous because of the smug self-
satisfied blindness with which it looked down upon
ages that it deemed benighted and "dark." To the
ideals and practice of the mediaeval guilds, whose
centre, in all their attempts to realize brotherhood,
was the Church, the twentieth century delivered, as

THE MODERN SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS l8l
we trust, from a degrading and selfish political
economy, and from the dominance of capitalism
would do well to return; though, of course, such re
turn must be on new lines adapted to a new age.

LECTURE V
THE MONKS AND
THEIR WORK

LECTURE V
THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK

IN any estimate of the Church's task in the Middle
Ages and the means whereby she accomplished
it it is impossible to ignore the work of Monas
ticism. In our present lecture we propose to touch
briefly upon the origins and development of Monas
ticism in mediaeval times, and then to dwell more
fully upon its effects and teaching.
In the religious life of the Middle Ages the two
distinguishing features are the power of the papacy
and the strength of Monasticism. The two were
mutually dependent. It was by no accident of his
tory that the political fall of the papacy coincided
with the dissolution of Monasticism. But for the
help of Eome the monasteries could not have resisted
the attacks of covetous kings ; but for the monks the
pope would not have succeeded in building up his
universal dominion. This was the political side of
their work, in reality the least part of their mission.
Judged from tne standpoint of Monasticism' s contri
bution to religion the monk, as we have seen already,
was the pioneer missionary of the Church. When the
zeal of the Benedictines and Cistercians grew cold this
missionary work was taken up by the new orders of
185

1 86 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
friars, who as early as 1308 reached Persia itself and
in" 1326 established themselves in Ceylon. Apart
from this in the tenth and eleventh centuries the hope
of Monasticism lay in the monastery. The monk
and not trie secular represented all that was vital
and progressive. On the social side it was given
to Monasticism to show forth in the early Middle
Ages in the midst of barbarism an ordered, if one
sided, life, and moral ideals above the age ; and to
lay, in the midst of rude and opposing forces, the
foundations of a noble civilization. To this we shall
return ; our first care is to gain some insight into the
place in the economy of Church and State of the
monastic orders.
Of the mediaeval papacy the real founder was
Gregory the Great ; nor is it by accident that he was
the first monk to ascend the papal throne. With the
steps and processes whereby the see of St. Peter
slowly secured its domination over the Western
Church we are not here concerned ; suffice that we
point out the essential features of that primacy in
their relation to Monasticism. First and foremost
is the fact that this primacy was founded, whether
rightly or wrongly, upon imperialism or Catholicism
as over against nationalism in the Church. In the
ordinary course of events the leaders of revolt against
this oppression of nationalism would have been the
great national primates, Canterbury, Aries, Eheims,
Mainz, Hamburg, Lund, and the like. If they had
been left to themselves the natural tendency of these
great metropolitans would have been to turn the
Church in the West into a federal republic under the
headship rather than under the autocracy of Borne ;

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 187
much in the same way as we see in the early Church
the great patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria, Jeru
salem, and, later, Constantinople, successfully claim
ing equality with Borne itself, save only the acknowl
edgment that the successor of St. Peter was primus
inter pares. But this tendency in the West was de
feated, in part by the need of these great metropoli
tans for papal support in their constant warfare with
the civic authority, and in part by the endeavours of
the Crown, especially in the Empire, in the constant
struggle of Church and State to divide the forces of
the Church by securing the help of Eome against its
own clergy, especially against its prince-bishops.
Now in this struggle of Eome with nationalism,
whether in Church or State, the monk was the ally
of the papacy. This alliance was made absolute
when the greatest of all the popes, Hildebrand, though
not himself a monk, deliberately adopted as his own
the monkish ideal and forced celibacy upon a reluc
tant priesthood.
The reasons for this alliance are so important as to
warrant more detailed examination. Of the three
elements in the ecclesiastical framework — bishop,
pope, and monk — the place and power of the episco
pal office was the first established. The means
whereby this was accomplished fall without our
scope. We may say, in brief, that on its external
side it was in part largely due to the ruling ideas
of the Eoman Empire. Imperial Borne, character
istically, added little to doctrine except, indeed, the
emphasis of apostolic succession ; her work was to
translate Christianity into the terms of her civil serv
ice, abandoning theology to the more subtle Greek.

188 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
Even before the formal union of Church and State by
Constantine, the Church had organized itself, espe
cially in the West, on the lines of the Empire. The
conquering Church took its weapons from the arsenal
of the enemy. In its hierarchy of religious pretors
and pro-consuls, each in strict subordination to those
immediately above them, in its rigidly defined ec
clesiastical provinces, each1 divided into districts
(bishoprics) and communes (parishes), we have the
civil organization adapted to religious purposes. So
closely did the ecclesiastical organization follow the
civil organization, and so firm was its hold upon
society, that in the France of the present day, with
hardly an exception, there is a bishop wherever there
was a Eoman municipality, and an archbishop wher
ever there was a provincial metropolis.
With the break-up of the civil administration un
der the onrush of the barbarians the ecclesiastical or
ganization gradually tended to take its place. The
bishop was not only an officer of the Church, he
became one of the higher magistrates of the new
State; by his race, speech, and legal training pre
serving its continuity with the vanished Boman Em
pire. A further development should be noticed.
The rise of feudalism, the increasing wealth of the
sees, above all the system of investitures, with its ac
companying military services, its homage, its implied
control by the sovereign, tended more and more to
make the bishop a national prince. In general he
owed his election to the sovereign ; he became through
his feudal relationships the king's man. In the seeth
ing of the nations which led to the foundation of
modern Europe the bishop, as the count, would have

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 189
drifted off into local independence had not the popes
made the bishops feel that the unity, orthodoxy, nay
the very existence of the Catholic Church depended
on the due recognition of the claims of Eome.
If, on one side of their work, the tendency of the
episcopate was thus towards nationalism, on another
the bishops and secular clergy were the representa-.
tives of individualism and wealth. When the en
thusiasm or policy of Constantine first allowed the
churches to hold property (321), the Church became
a kind of universal legatee. Hitherto the funds of
the clergy had consisted almost wholly of voluntary
offerings. They now received not only fixed reve
nues, in some cases charged on the land of munici
palities, but also the ever-growing estates which
superstition or piety bequeathed for their enjoyment.
In the chaos of the times they alone were not troubled
by forfeiture or violence, while alienation was ren
dered impossible by a perpetual curse. The lands
of the conquered were divided by the barbarians,
but the estates of the Church were guarded by the
terrors of superstition. This wealth the bishop or
incumbent regarded as his own. It was his for life ;
had it not been for the enforcement by Hildebrand
of celibacy, there was some danger lest it should have
become his to bestow on his children as an hereditary
possession. Furthermore the lesser bishops were in perpetual
revolt against their metropolitans. This office and
power, swept away in Spain and Gaul by the decay
of religious life or the whirlwind of conquest, had
been revived by Charles the Great as a check upon
the growing disintegration of the Church. In their

190 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
efforts to elude this metropolitan interference the
bishops flung themselves at first into the arms of
Borne. The purpose of the False Decretals, the re
sponsibility for which later research has shown must
be laid at their door, was to provide an escape from
the "tyranny of local tribunals by an appeal to an au
thority to which they trusted that distance would
give disinclination for vexatious interference. By a
just retribution, this stupendous forgery delivered
the episcopate, it is true, from metropolitan tyranny
only to hand it over to the stronger control of the
papacy. Nevertheless, the decentralizing forces of
feudalism and racialism would have proved stronger
even than Borne, had it not been that in every land
the leanings of the bishops towards independent na
tional churches were more than balanced by the cos
mopolitanism of the monasteries.
To the monks, at any rate in their earlier enthu
siasms, nationalism made no appeal. When they
fled to the desert they were anxious to leave State
and Church behind them, not to develop their powers.
Fronj, the first also the monasteries were distrusted
by the episcopacy, whoever sought to bring them
under their visitation and control. Little, therefore,
was needed of papal encouragement to turn the monks
who had now passed out of the first rude hermit-stage
into organized communities into the watch-dogs in
every land for the pope, ever ready to pick a quarrel
with the bishop and to proclaim against him the su
premacy of their papal protector. With Gregory
the Great the granting to monasteries of exemption
from episcopal oversight became a settled policy, and
was continued by his successors, in spite of the efforts

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 191
of Charles the Great to check this growth of a "pe
culiar" within the Church. So the lists were set:
on the one side the individualism of wealth and the
feudal localism of a semi-national episcopacy ; on the
other side the monks, by their very constitution
socialists and cosmopolitans. Until the reforms of
Benedict the political or ecclesiastical influence of
the monks was but slight. But with the formation
of the world-wide Benedictine Order we leave behind
the age of individual monasteries each fighting for its
own hand. Henceforth the monks formed a state
within a state, an ecclesiastical internationalism
whose head centre, under the subtle guidance of the
papacy, was Borne. If the bishop was the king's
man, the monk was the pope's ; the course of events
all tended to make him such. If the interests of the
one were more national or local, the sole care of the
other was the welfare of his monastery, the spread of
his order, and the supremacy in the Church at large
of his three vows, of community of goods, — the
technical name' was "poverty," — obedience, and
celibacy. We need not wonder that, apart from all
other causes, the inner mood of the two orders was a
radical antagonism. II
Monasticism in its origin was the struggle after
two ideals, asceticism and isolation. By birth it was
the child of the East, but there it was not confined to
Christianity alone. In the Church it first appears in
Egypt, where the great heathen Serapeum of Memphis,
as well as the numerous Jewish ascetics called Thera-
peutae, had for centuries familiarized the people with

192 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
its principles. From the East it was introduced to
the West by Athanasius in a work of extraordinary
popularity called "The Life of St. Anthony," and
naturalized by" Jerome, who in this as in much else
formed the connecting link between East and West.
But the Monasticism of the West was altogether dif
ferent from its parent. In the East the ideal life was
too often a dreamy and barren quietude. Her typ
ical saint was Simeon Stylites (+459), "the glory of
Antioch," who lived for thirty-seven years on a
column and died without the sin of descending. Em
perors crouched at the foot of his pillar while Simeon
performed his devotions, touching his feet with his
forehead 1,244 times in succession ; at this figure the
admiring eye-witness lost count. Feebler successors
of Simeon penetrated deserts hitherto inaccessible, or
buried themselves in the darkest caves. They aspired
to reduce themselves to the level of the beast : of
some the naked body was only covered by their long
hair ; the glory of others, called Soskoi or grazing
monks, was their imitation of the madness of Nebu
chadnezzar. They could be only roused to activity
by some subtle theological argument, or for the joy
of breaking down the temples and monuments of the
heathen, and killing the prophets of its culture.
Though Eastern Monasticism contained a larger
number of well-regulated, if at times indiscreet, ad
herents than is often supposed, nevertheless we may
be thankful that it was never successfully trans
planted to a colder Europe. In the Monasticism of
the West we meet, it is true, with madmen not a few,
but as the years passed on the useless life of the
frenzied recluse gave place everywhere to the rule

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 193
and discipline of the convent. For the West the
"patient deep disdain" of a "brooding East" for
the actual facts of social life proved an impossibility.
In the West, in fact, the monk (monachos) ceased to
exist save as the occasional hermit or anchorite. He
passed into the brother of the common life, the chief
feature of whose existence was not so much his isola
tion as his socialism, and whose vows of celibacy and
obedience to a spiritual father were the foundations
upon which rested the life of the brotherhood.
The emancipation of Western Monasticism from
the baleful influences of the East was the work of
Benedict of Nursia (543). A Boman of the Eomans
Benedict was destined to give another illustration of
the Boman genius for organization and of its power
to produce ordered welfare out of chaos. Benedict
at the age of twenty began his religious life as a
hermit in a cave of Subiaco, but his austerities and
conflicts with Apollyon soon drew to him ardent dis
ciples. These he, formed into twelve communities.
Driven from Subiaco by an irruption of shameless
women, he transferred his flock to Monte Oassino.
There he desecrated the temple of Apollo, cut down
the sacred grove in which rude peasants still sacri
ficed to demons and built in its place the most illus
trious monastery of Christendom. To this he gave
in 529 his famous Bute. Its virtues were abstinence,
silence, humility, and obedience ; its duties, worship,
reading, and manual labour. A fundamental law
was the absolute community of all property. He
who reserved for himself even one gold piece was
looked on as a new Simon Magus. Attachment to
the order was to be the one earthly passion, an at-

194 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
tachment which was rendered the stronger by the
vow which tied the monk to his first monastery (sta-
bilitas), thus putting an end to the vagrancy and
lawless individualism which had so often brought
discredit upon the movement in the past. Benedict
survived but a few days his sister Scolastica, who
had adapted to her own sex the work and Bule of
her brother. His whole character is summed up in
the inscription which the traveller may still read
on the old Boman tower at Monte Cassino in which
he dwelt ; Inspexit et despexit — " He saw the world
and scorned it." Within two centuries of Benedict's
death (21 March, 583) his order had swarmed like
bees into every land of the West. Even the older
foundations embraced his Bule, whether voluntarily
or under pressure from the papacy, in preference to
their own as a more perfect expression of monastic
life. The success of the Bule was deserved. It
was not only a masterpiece of clearness and discre
tion, but marks the transition from vague impulses
to the reign of law. Its quickening impulse was
attested by the founding of an enormous number of
new monasteries. From these monasteries there
poured out in turn a stream of missionaries who not
only carried Christianity into the heart of heathen
dom, but at the same time took their monastic ideals
with them. Thus every new conquest of the heathen
was marked by the further rise of Benedictine ab
beys, the frontier posts, as it were, of the new king
dom. At one time the total number of Benedictine
foundations in Western Europe was not less than five
thousand. With Benedict the Monasticism of the East and

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 195
West split off forever. In the East to this day, as
for instance on Mount Athos or in the Coptic settle
ments on the Nile, Monasticism, untouched by the
vivifying influence of Benedict, remains much as it
was in the earlier centuries, only more formal and
less* an affair of the heart. It still lies, a stereotyped
institution, outside the Church. In the East, in
fact, the separation between the two ideals became
complete, a married clergy * over against a celibate
Monasticism ; a divorce of ideals that in the West
was prevented by Hildebrand. In the East also the
lower place of the secular a ideal is sufficiently evi
denced by the fact that the government of the
Church is altogether reserved for the monks ; the
married priests or popes, as they are called, are the
hewers of wood and the drawers of water. But in
the West, monk and priest alike were under the con
trol of one supreme head of the Church, who was,
qua ruler, neither monk nor priest nor even bishop,
but the representative, as it was held, of the Ee-
deemer. In the East, the breach of Monasticism with cul
ture, and even with human society, became com
plete. Perched on the summits of precipitous rocks,
to which oftentimes thoonly access is by means of a
1 The reader should distinguish between a married olergy, t. e.,
married before ordination, and the marriage of the olergy. This
last was prohibited in the East at an early date.
* The early use of the word secular for the parish clergy shows
the influence of Monasticism. Whoever was not a monk under
a -rule (regula, regulars), even though a priest, was "of the
world." In the Middle Ages "religion" means the monastio
life, and " conversion " is its adoption.

196 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
windlass, a handful of monks live out monotonous
lives ignorant of the treasures which the accidents of
time may have left stranded in their libraries, push
ing their antagonism to sex to such a degree that
female animals of every kind are excluded from
Mount Athos. In the West, Benedictine monasteries
became the centres of civilization and of education,
the intellectual saviours of Europe. In the East,
Monasticism became a stereotyped institution, a bar
ren asceticism without history or contribution to
history, except in so far as its existence is the proof
that mere asceticism is not a progressive factor and
leads to no higher results of life and service. In the
West, Monasticism was for centuries the bulwark
and rampart not only of the Church but of society
itself. Monasticism in the East retained its individ
ualistic basis, and remained little more than an ag
gregation of units, even where, as in Bussia, ecclesi
astical government is handed to it, its basis is still so
individualistic that the episcopate is practically
powerless against an autocratic Holy Synod. In the
West, through the influence of Benedict, it became
an organic whole wherein were maintained those
fundamental virtues without which society itself
must dissolve. Ill
From this brief survey of the position of Mon
asticism in the ecclesiastical and political framework
we pass to an estimate of its contribution to the
civilization of the Middle Ages. One matter which
will present itself at once to your mind, the influence
of Monasticism upon education, will be more con
veniently deferred to our next lecture.

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 197
In the spread of Western Monasticism we see two
strangely contrasted influences working together to
change the aspect of Europe. The one was the her
mit's passion for solitude ; the other the desire for the
communion of saints. The passion for solitude drove
the monk into the wastes and forests ; the love of the
saints, the desire to imitate the life of some famous
recluse or to gain the protection which his founda
tion and reputation could afford against tyranny and
barbarism, turned the lowliest hermitage into a
crowded monastery surrounded by a thriving de
pendency of serfs and tenants. The illustrations of
this law would be almost as numerous as the mon
asteries themselves. Everywhere it was the same ;
whether by the slopes of the Vosges or the Jura, in
the forests of Bavaria, or amidst the wastes of North
umberland. Europe does not always remember the
debt which she owes to those who in their longing to
escape from the haunts of men, that they might the
better save their souls, cleared the densest jungle,
drained pestilent swamps, and by the alchemy of in
dustry turned the deserts into waving gold. The
Banctity of the hermit drew after him against his
will a brotherhood of disciples, who, as at Coventry,
laid the foundation of our busiest towns, broke the
silence of waste and fen with a chain of religious
houses (Crowland, Peterborough), established agricul
tural colonies in the midst of profound forests (Ever-
sham), or planted on some dreary coast, as at Whitby,
the forerunner of a busy haven.
The results of Monasticism in thus reestablishing
the civilized life of Europe have often been described
and need not now detain us. But this result was itself

198 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
the effect of the new conception of the dignity of toil
which Monasticism, as developed by St. Benedict,
had introduced into the West. In the degenerate
Boman world, as among the rude barbarian con
querors, manual labour had been exclusively re
served for slaves. In Eastern Monasticism, though
systematized work was not unknown, as for instance
in the monasteries founded by Pachomius in Egypt,
where the inmates were organized on the basis of
their trades, there was too great a tendency to identify
religious contemplation with laziness. Manual labour,
where it existed, was generally sedentary. But in
the Bule of Benedict, manual labour formed an indis
pensable part in the life of every monk, however
noble his birth. "Indolence," he said, "is the
enemy of the soul." So he laid down that in his
"school of divine servitude" six hours each day
should be given to manual toil, and two to reading.
Even on Sundays " any who shall be unable or un
willing to read or meditate shall have some work im
posed upon him." The sons of Benedict, generally
freemen be it remembered, — for it was long before
slaves or serfs won the right to escape to the mon
astery — often men of high degree, as they laboured
in the field clad in the dress familiar to the pagan
world as the dress of slaves, or took their share in
the work of the house, cooking the meals or cleaning
the rooms, sanctified industry by consecrating it to
the lowliest taskS. "This is a fine occupation for a
count," sarcastically exclaimed Duke Godfrey of Lor
raine when he found his brother Frederick washing
dishes in the kitchen of a monastery. "You are
right, duke," was the answer. " I ought indeed to

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 199
think myself honoured by the smallest service for
the Master." Such tales might be multiplied in
definitely ; we may smile at them, but their value
is not the less great in the witness they give to a
new ideal in the world. They foreshadow the ele
vation of labour into new esteem, the commencement
of that organized social industry which in centuries
to come was to destroy feudalism itself and shift the
centre of power to the producer and toiler.
The mere glorification of toil — ' ' laborare est orare, ' '
— the religious significance which Benedict wished to
give to all work, was not all. In one respect the
modern world has swung back in its moral stand
point from the higher ideal of the monks. For theirs
was toil from which they had eliminated the gain of
the individual ; from first to last it was toil for others ;
for a corporation, if you like, but after all toil for a
corporation is more noble, because more altruistic,
than toil for self. Toil was no mere scramble for
pigs' -wash, to use the contemptuous phrase of Carlyle ;
it was not that feverish hustling of modern life — ,.
" each for himself and the devil take the hindmost,
O ! " — which is eating out and destroying the best
elements of civilization. The toil of the monk was
socialistic both in method- and aim ; though its
socialism, it is true, in practice did not look be
yond the corporation. But in this limitation the
socialism of Monasticism was not less advanced than
that of modern Trades Unionism.
This socialism — an aim in all the rules, however
individualistic in other respects — Benedict, by his
superior genius for organization, turned into a factor
of immense importance in the history of civilization.

200 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
For a thousand years Europe witnessed the spectacle
of organized communities where the individual profJ
ited nothing, the community of which he was an in
mate gained all ; to the present writer a higher moral
ideal than that which glorifies to-day the "Beef-
kings," "Oil-kings," and other vultures of moderh
society, whose appetite for amassing, for the mere
sake of amassing, is as cruel as it is insatiable.
Of almost equal value with the exaltation of labour
was the emphasis laid by Monasticism upon the virtues
of humility and obedience ; from the monastic stand
point the two tend to become one, related as cause
and effect. The man who has nailed his inner self to
the Cross cannot be otherwise than humble, and will
show his humility by his perfect obedience. Hitherto
obedience had been learned in one school alone — for
,we may neglect the obedience of the slave, — the school
of the army. Now men were taught by a discipline
other than military that the highest type of life is
that which learns both to endure hardship (poverty),-
to deny oneself, and to obey. With humility and
obedience life in a brotherhood either becomes im
possible or degenerate. It is difficult to exaggerate
the value of this lesson in the peculiar circumstances
of the times. Monasticism was the emphasis of the
truth that without discipline there can be no holiness.
Amid the dissolution of old society and the ascend
ency Of the barbarians, the lesson was once more en
forced of the old obedience which had made Borne
great, but in a purer, spiritual form. "If thou art
truly the servant of Christ," said Benedict, "let not
the iron fetter be thy chain, but the chains of
Christ." But the "chains of Christ" are always

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 201
the inner constraint of a heart which can do no
other. With all deductions that may be made for an
exaggeration of obedience into a servile degradation
of will or a negation of self-respect — a tendency that
assumed repulsive forms in Eastern Monasticism,
and that finally issued in the West in Jesuitism — we
should not ignore the value to civilization, in its
turbulent youth, of the Church proposing for the
reverence of mankind as the highest ideal of virtue
the life of obedience of the soldier of Christ.
Viewing the Church as a corporation the ultimate
influence of Monasticism was not beneficial. The
reason for this takes us back to its first principles.
The earlier monks were generally laymen. The move
ment, in fact, on one of its sides was the protest of the
individual soul against a salvation conditioned by
sacerdotalism. In its earliest forms the ideal of
Monasticism lay outside, even opposed to, that of
the Church. We see this clearly brought out in the
work which more than any other popularized Mon
asticism, Athanasius' ' ' Life of Anthony. ' ' Anthony,
the father of all monks, is not only a mere layman.
As Duchesne owns, he neither goes to church nor re
ceives the Eucharist for years, and yet continues in
the closest intercession with God. As another illus
tration we may mention the provision of Gregory the
Great that no monk could obtain the cure of souls
without thereby losing all his rights as a monk. The
opposition extended even to entrance into the priest
hood. That stout advocate of Monasticism, Jerome,
for instance, was ordained against his will. Accord
ing to some accounts he always refused to consecrate
the elements. Martin of Tours refused all the efforts

202 THE MONKS AND1 THEIR WORK
of Hilary of Poictiers to make him a presbyter. He
was only captured and ordained by a stratagem.
But in the course of time this primitive distinction
or opposition was lost, and the monk became the
rival of the parochial clergy. The first cause of this
was probably pressure from without. The bishops
felt the danger of communities of laymen growing up
within the Church which proclaimed to the world
by their very existence an opposite, possibly even in
popular repute a higher, ideal of religious life to that
sacramental and sacerdotal theory on which their
episcopal authority depended. But the need of ordi
nation became absolute when the monasteries found
Ithemselves confronted, through the labours of their
^missionaries, with the task of bringing the new con
certs within the organization of the Church. It is
one of the ironies of Monasticism that though its inner
mood was opposition to the episcopate, yet through
its toils the episcopate was saved from stagnation
and received its largest extension. Nevertheless the
monk who became a bishop rarely forgot that he was
first a monk, and was oftentimes more anxious for
the welfare of his order than for the well-being of the
seculars entrusted to him.
Though at first the monks had entered into compe
tition with the seculars against their will, in the
course of centuries they did more than compete : they
set themselves, as far as the episcopate would allow,
to cripple the seculars. By appropriating tithes, by
stealing and even pulling down the parish church
when they had the chance, by substituting for the
rectors or parsons entitled to the tithes the cheaper
service of curate or vicar, entitled only to a bare

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 203
maintenance, they built up alike the endowment and
fabric of their abbeys at the expense of the parish
and the seculars. In England every ancient vicarage
is a memorial of this monastic spoliation. Though
the friars were not guilty of such thefts yet by their
intrusion into the parishes, the greater zeal of their
preachers, they drew away the people from their
parish priests in all the larger towns. In the struggle
of the two orders of seculars and regulars the cor
porate society, whether monastery or friary, as usual
proved stronger than the individual, whether bishop
or parish priest. Thus Monasticism grew, crippling
alike the episcopate and the parochial clergy. In
one of its many aspects the Beformation was the
struggle of the secular clergy against the regulars,
an attempt to get back their own, even at the cost of
the destruction of the most characteristic ecclesiastical
institution of the Middle Ages. The student should
note that this revival of the influence and dignity of
the seculars first began in the characteristic institution
of the secular church, the mediaeval university. The
annals of Oxford and Paris for long years are made
up of the struggles of the seculars with the regulars,
chiefly the friars, and the growing success of the
seculars in holding their own. Of this conflict the
typical representative at Oxford was John Wyclif.
IV
A word should be added about the scandals and
corruptions which sully the monastic record. Inci
dentally the inquiry is of value inasmuch as it intro
duces the student to the different orders in Mon
asticism. That corruptions often existed it were

204 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
foolish to deny, though their frequency and serious
ness have been largely exaggerated by popular imagi
nation, aided by the circumstances of their suppres
sion. Nevertheless, it is incontestable that until the
end of the fourteenth century the monks as a body
were far better than their age, better also for the
most part than the regular clergy. But if the reader
desires to stir up the cesspool of evil, he will find
that the decay of monasteries seems to obey certain
general rules. The first of these laws is this : Every
thing depended, as it depends in similar corporate
institutions to-day, upon the character of the head,
be he prior or abbot. We shall have an illustration
of this in the case of the famous Clugny. The second
and greater cause of monastic decay was the corrupt
ing influence of wealth. The curse of wealth was
the greater in that its possession was manifest dis
loyalty to the monastic spirit. The first of their
three vows was poverty, the total renunciation of the
world, whether the lust of the eyes or the pride of
life. But in spite of their vows, from wealth there
seemed nq escape. No regulations which the wit of
man could devise seemed able to save a brotherhood
of saintly toilers from entering into their labours.
The history of Monasticism is, in fact, the constant
repetition of the same tale. First we have the burn
ing enthusiast, seeking salvation in self-denial, plung
ing into the wilderness that he may find a solitude
where he may pray alone. There he draws to him
self by his reputation others of like mind, who place
themselves under his direction. Or if he is already
a monk, inmate perhaps in some lordly abbey, rich
in its vineyards and granaries, we see him, pricked to

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 205
the heart by the memory of the poverty of Christ,
setting off to found some new convent where
he may carry on in stricter fashion the primitive
rule, where the good seed shall no longer be choked
by the multitude of riches. In a few years his lonely
and humble abode becomes too strait for the multi
tudes who have sought out this Jacob's ladder.
Wealth pours in ; the rude huts of wattle and mud
give place to the stately abbey ; the humble church
becomes the soaring minster. By their care and
toil the desert blossoms as the rose, their fats over
flow, while serfs and hinds, attracted by the security,
build up outside its walls the future town which per
petuates its name. The first dreams of poverty are
once more forgotten ; all things are ripe for some
new saint to make a new effort towards that primi
tive simplicity — the dream and the despair of Mon
asticism during the long centuries of its existence.
Thus Monasticism falls into certain cycles of fall and
decline, invariably followed by a corresponding rise ;
the ebbs of the monastic spirit always lead to the
flowing tide of a great revival. On these revivals it
were well to linger for a moment, not only because
of the light which they shed upon Monasticism itself,
but also because in them we find the origin of certain
subdivisions whose names and special place in the
ecclesiastical economy are not always understood.
The first of the great reforms originated with Bene
dict of Aniane (d. 821). He found the Benedictine
monasteries in a deplorable state. Because of their
wealth many had been alienated as fiefs to laymen,
while in all the monks were a law unto themselves,
though often cruelly oppressed by their superiors.

206 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
With great zeal, and still greater talent for organiza
tion, he set himself to revive and enforce the forgot
ten Bule of the founder. As superintendent-general
of the monasteries of France, and with the help of
Louis the Pions he succeeded, in spite of the opposi
tion of the dissolute, in realizing his dreams. Un
fortunately he attempted a rigid uniformity which
turned even prayer and praise into the products of a
mechanical mill. As the mechanical can never be
anything else than short lived, within a hundred
ygars reform was once more needful.
At the beginning of the tenth century the monas
teries of Europe had once more sunk into the lowest
sloughs of degradation — the ideal discipline and en
thusiasm lost. The inroad of the Danes and Huns,
the uncertainty of the times, the seething of the na
tions, all this had affected for evil "the existing mon
asteries. In some the ancient rule had given place
to the law which seems to come uppermost in times
of insecurity — " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die." To counteract this decay, Duke William
of Aquitane, about the year 910, founded his new
monastery of Clugny, in Burgundy. Its rule was the
strictest interpretation of the Bule of Benedict, at first
almost an unbroken silence. In a few years it be
came, next to Borne, the greatest centre of influence
in Europe, less because of its wealth and splendoifr,
though these were enormous, — two hundred and
seventy estates were given to it in thirty years alone,
— than because of true saints whom it gave to the
Church and the series of able abbots by whom it was
governed. It was Clugny that led the reform party
of the eleventh century ; to Clugny was due the rescue

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 207
and elevation of the papacy from the awful abyss
into which it had fallen. Two of its monks passed
from its cloisters to the chair of St. Peter. More im
portant than these was the influenpe it exerted upon
one who so completely adopted the ideal of Clugny
as the ideal he would impress upon the whole Church
that historians have been misled into supposing that
at one time he had been an inmate ; we refer to the il
lustrious Hildebrand. Popes and kings vied with each
other in conferring honours on this centre of reform.
The convent was acknowledged to be second only to
that convent on Monte Cassino where Benedict had
lived and died. Her abbot took his rank with kings ;
he was ex officio a Eoman cardinal ; he minted his
own coin ; by the end of the fifteenth century 825
abbeys looked up to him as their head ; by the middle
of the twelfth century three thousand monks gath
ered in his chapter ; while nearly twenty thousand
poor people were relieved annually at his gates.
Prom the Cluniac honses in England alone a tribute
equal to £20,000 was annually sent to the mother
abbey. Her church was the pride of Burgundy, the
largest in the world, and its massive magnificence
was in keeping with its colossal dimensions. Its
four hundred columns and hundred windows mark
the beginning of a new era in art.
The secret of the Cluniac reform lay in the intro
duction into Monasticism of a new idea. The weak
ness of monasteries lay in their lack of responsibility
to some external authority. Such power as there
was had been sadly weakened by the papal policy
of granting exemption from episcopal supervision.
Each convent was a law to itself. As a consequence,

208 THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
there were few checks to prevent the fall of a convent
into evil when once the enthusiasm within had been
lost. Thei Cluniacs remedied this by the introduction
of what we should call to-day the connexional prin
ciple. They formed so-called ' ' congregations ' ' under
the leadership of Clugny, monasteries united to guard
the common maintenance of the Bule. Thus Mon
asticism passed through the third stage of its develop
ment. The solitary monk had given place to the
solitary community ; this in turn became an affilia
tion of communities in one international organiza
tion that looked to the pope for support and in
return gave him their aid.
By the beginning of the twelfth century, Clugny
had followed the common round, and fallen from its
high estate through its wealth and magnificence. Iu
their laziness they reduced their daily worship to
meagre proportions. Added to this was the rule of
the evil Pontius (1109-1122), who, on being dis
possessed by Pope Calixtus II, scrupled not to make
war on the monastery itself, and to melt down its
gold and silver plate, that he might pay his hirelings.
By the decay of Clugny all things were ready for a
new reform. In 1098 Eobert, a nobleman of Cham
pagne, disgusted with the loose and frivolous life of
the monks of Molesme, a monastery he had founded
himself, had retired with twenty companions to
Citeaux, in the stubborn desert of Champagne.
There he formed a settlement of seven hermits,
bound to the strictest observance of the ancient rule.
Eobert himself was compelled by the command of
Urban II to return to his original convent, but after
a short struggle Citeaux won its freedom from the

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK

299

bishop, and was placed under immediate papal
authority. His successor as abbot was an English
man, one Stephen Harding of Sherborne, who had
wandered as a pilgrim to Eome, but could not satisfy
the hunger of his soul for a more intense asceticism
until he retired to the desolate Citeaux, which took
its name from its stagnant pools or cisterns. Stephen
was the real founder of the order, though apart from
his drawing up of its usages his success was due not
so much to himself as to another. While he was
still abbot there knocked at the door of his austere
monastery, in the year 1113, a youth of twenty-two,
with thirty companions. That youth was the great
mediaeval prophet and preacher St. Bernard, by
whose extraordinary enthusiasm the order so grew
that within forty years it had founded one hundred
and sixty abbeys, chief of which was St. Bernard's
own foundation at Clairvaux. The Cistercians from
the first resolved to dwell alone. To secure this end
their Bule forbade the erection of a house of their
order within a certain distance of any monastery.
This isolation resulted in England in the preserva
tion of their ruins. When the Dissolution came there
was no neighbouring town to use the abbey as a
granary. In the matter of polity Cistercians or white
monks represent the fourth development of the mon
astic system. The Cluniacs had fallen away because,
they had centralized authority in the abbot of
Clugny. With the Cistercians each foundation was
an independent abbey, and not as in the other orders
a subject priory of its parent. But theykept up the
connexional spirit by enforcing everywhere a unity
of usage, by an annual conference of all the abbots

2IO THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK
each September at Citeaux, and by making the
abbot of Citeaux the visitor of the order. To further
guard their discipline, though independent almost
from the first of episcopal authority, they yet bound
themselves to the pope by oaths of direct obedience.
They were thus the first of the militant spiritual
orders whose definite object it was to bring the
spiritual world under the government of Eome.
Within a hundred years this order, too, began to
suffer the inevitable internal decay, and, like the
others, to grow content with the common fate of
wealth and prosperity. In Burgundy they owned
the most famous vineyards ; in Yorkshire the great
est sheep-farms. So one monastic reform gave place
to another, each adding in its turn to the vast number
of monasteries, but accomplishing little permanent
change in the life and character of the monks them
selves, let alone of the people at large, all alike wit
nessing to the fact that Monasticism had outlived its
day. We must bring this short study of a great sub
ject to a close. Monasticism as the great expression
of renunciation has passed away, along with the
Middle Ages, of which it was the most characteristic
feature ; nor were its latter days days of success. Into
the causes of this downfall we cannot now inquire.
Suffice that, whether merited or otherwise, the down
fall, in England at least, was complete. We stand
on another shore, and watch the " tired waves " of a
different ocean here and there gain some "painful
inch." For us other suns of hope, a different night
of darkness. Eenunciation and solitude are not
fashionable ; the gospel of Work is in our marrow ;

THE MONKS AND THEIR WORK 211
we are hitched on to a mighty fly-wheel ; rest and
contemplation are vanished arts. The world moves
on for good or ill, yet every age, and not by any
means least the Monastic Age, has some lesson for
all time, souls in whom there glowed the eternal fire.
That the dead should bury their dead is a sound rule
of life ; nevertheless, we should be careful lest, in
the pride of life, we reckon as dead
" The choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
. . . in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self."

LECTURE VI
MEDLEVAL EDUCATIONAL
IDEALS AND METHODS

LECTURE VI
MEDLEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
AND METHODS

WE propose in this concluding chapter to
deal with the task and work of the Church
in the Mediaeval World in the sphere of
education. The difficulty was twofold. For educa
tion as such, the mediaeval Church at the outset had
little zest. The driving force in the Church at the
dawn of the Dark Ages was too completely monastic
for the Church to undertake, except with reluctance,
a task which brought her into contact with a van
ished world. Then again in educational work the
Church had neither experience nor equipment. Only
slowly, and through many mistakes, did she master
her difficulties. The record of the Church and edu
cation, in fact, is the record of an immense loss
which it took a thousand years to make good. Even
then the loss was only made good by falling back
upon the older Boman and Greek culture which the
Church had discarded or failed to use.
At the outset of our study it is important that we
should remember that education was altogether a new
duty for the Church. In the days of the Empire this
had not been cast upon her. Only by a due recog-
215

216 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
nition of this fact will the student appreciate rightly
the Church's task in mediaeval times. There were
other educational influences at work beside the
Church, many of them of a very interesting kind.
But these we must pass by and confine ourselves
strictly to our theme.
In the day before its fall the Empire possessed a
splendidly organized system of schools, probably
much better than anything to be found in(our own
schools down to the time of Dr. Arnold! This system
atic endowment of education was begun by Vespa
sian (+79), and extended to the provinces by Antoni
nus Pius (+162). Grammar-schools, distinguished,
as we gather from stray passages of Horace and
Juvenal, by early hours and a liberal use of the cane
(ferula), the tawse (scutica) and the birch (flageUum),
were to be found in every town of importance. If
we may trust Suetonius, the masters in these schools
received the astonishing salary of 100,000 sesterces,
or 4,000 dollars, while we know that in 376 the em
peror Gratian fixed the salaries of schoolmasters in
Gaul at twelve times the yearly pay of a day
labourer. Provision also for what may 'be called
university education was made at Athens, Alex
andria, Borne, Bordeaux, Carthage, and, at a later
date, in Constantinople. A system of exhibitions
established by Alexander Severus (+212) enabled the
"sons of the free-born poor" to avail themselves of
those opportunities.
In all these schools, in the West as well as in the
East, Greek was taught, though it would appear that
Latin was not always taught in the Eastern schools.
There should have been, therefore, no difficulty in

AND METHODS 21 7
the Greek Scriptures, of the Old and New Testament,
securing its immediate readers, without need of
translation into either Latin or a vernacular. No
doubt the grammar-schools of the Empire would
thus conduce to the understanding of St. Paul, and
the spread of the Gospel. But we must remember
that in the schools of the Empire, as in the schools
of to-day, there was a wide difference between the
curriculum professed and the results. Greek might
be taught everywhere and have a place on the pro
spectus, but schoolboys are the most conservative of
all human beings, and the majority would profit
little by the exercises, at any rate if we may judge
from the confession by St. Augustine of his hatred
of "Greek literature in which I was dipped as a
little lad." In all probability the Greek taught
would rank with the- French taught in English
schools in the last century — it would enable men to
transact business, read correspondence or literature,
indulge in travel, but would not give any real in
sight into, or relish for, Greek philosophy or the
Greek spirit. Thus the West, unlike the East, was
never hellenized and remained essentially Latin.
The value of the Greek tuition of the schools of the
Empire is therefore doubtful. On the other hand
there can be no doubt of the serious consequences for
the Church, of the fact that the teachers in the im
perial schools, until the time of Constantine, were
nearly all heathen. The names of but few Christian
schoolmasters have come down to us — I believe that
only one occurs in the catacombs at Borne, an ele
mentary teacher called Gorgonus. Tertullian in fact,
though he did not suggest that Christian children

218 MED LEV AL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
should be withdrawn from the schools, expressly
rules out the profession of a teacher as one eligible
for Christians. "Studying literature," he writes,
"is allowable, but not teaching," advice equivalent
to handing over the schools to uncontrolled pagan
influence. The Canons of Hippolytus, on the other
hand, of the same age, probably, as Tertullian, are
more practical in allowing the convert to teach on
condition of reciting a sentence of his Creed before
the lessons : " Non est deus nisi Pater et Filius et
Spiritus Sanctus." The writer also urges that the
Christian teacher should use his influence, if pos
sible, to win over some of his heathen pupils to the
faith of Christ.
As a matter of fact the difficulties in the way of
Christians becoming teachers in the imperial schools
were almost insuperable. The difficulties in part
arose from the subjects taught. As the name shows
the chief object in the curriculum was "grammar,"
i. e., literature in the higher forms dominated by
Ehetoric. In consequence the Christian teacher was
face to face with the problem what to do with the
indispensable declamations on mythological subjects.
To Augustine these seemed "a hellish torrent of use
and custom which sweeps away the sons of Eve into
that vast and stormy sea which scarcely they who
have embarked upon the tree (i. c, the cross) can
pass in safety." Nor were the difficulties confined
to the school lessons — the shower of gold in the lap
of Danae and the like, "the wine of error held to our
lips by drunken teachers." Holidays and payment
were alike associated with heathen rites and deities.
The first fee was the due of Minerva : at the feast of

AND METHODS 219
Flora the schoolroom must be adorned with garlands,
and so forth. The necessary aloofness of the Chris
tian teacher from most of his boys, both in the social
and the religious life, would not make things easier.
To many of you it may seem strange that the
Church made no attempt to supply a school system
of its own. You forget the age of persecution. Such
an attempt would have involved the very identifica
tion which the most part of Christians were anxious
to avoid. The schoolmasters were practically civil
servants ; they would have brought the power of the
State to their rescue, if any effort had been made to
supplant them. In any case the school system of the
Empire was too well established and endowed for
any rival system to succeed unless supported by
larger resources than the Church could command.
Whatever the cause the fact remains that the Church
grew up amidst a wholly pagan system of education.
This it continued to use with more or less reluctance.
The so-called catechetical schools, of which we hear
at Alexandria and elsewhere under such scholars as
Clement and Origen, were of course not schools in
any modern sense of the word, but merely lectures
to adult catechumens on the rudiments of the faith
given in the church itself, or in the baptistery. One
set of these catechetical lectures — the famous Didache
or Teaching of the Apostles, is still extant. But at
any rate until the year 362, when the emperor Julian,
in his hatred of the Galilian, closed the public schools
of the Empire to all Christians, we hear nothing of
any attempt of the Church to set up a rival system
of her own.
From these facts certain consequences followed of

220 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
the greatest moment. In the first place the Church
when called upon to face the problem of education
was altogether without the guide of experience.
This, perhaps, would not have mattered had it not
been for the growing divorce between the Church
and the culture of the ancient world. Through this
antagonism she cut herself off from making the use
she might have done of the past. . At a very early
date, as we see from that stout opponent of Christi
anity, Celsus, many Christians began to doubt the
wisdom of studying pagan literature. In the third
century Clement of Alexandria and his friends were
almost alone in their plea for Greek culture. Greg
ory of Nazianzus, in his oration on his friend
St. Basil, delivered about 382, speaking of the life
that he and his friend had led when at Athens, is
forced to own that "many Christians abhor external
culture as mischievous and dangerous, and keeping
us afar from God." Even the plea of St. Augustine
that "all branches of heathen learning contain also
liberal instruction adapted to the use of the truth "
was unable to stem the tide that had set in strong
against the former culture. In the fifth century the
hostility of the Church to pagan literature became
fixed. We have all heard of Gregory the Great's
famous letter to Bishop Desiderius of Vienne :
" A report has reached us which we cannot mention
without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to
certain friends; whereat we are so offended and filled
with scorn that our former opinion of thee is turned
to mourning and sorrow. The same mouth singeth
not the praises of Jove and Christ. ... If, here-

AND METHODS 221
after, it be clearly established that the rumour which
we have heard of thee is false, and that thou art not
applying thyself to the idle vanities of secular learn
ing, we shall render thanks to God, who hath not
delivered over thy heart to be defiled by the blas
phemous praises of secular men."
We must beware unless we either unduly exag
gerate or whittle away the significance of this letter.
The influence of the grammar-school was too deep
and permanent not to leave its mark on the Church.
To the Fathers of the Western Church Vergil, gen
erally speaking, was familiar, while in the East the
same might be said of Homer. Gregory himself had
been brought up in a grammar-school, and always
recognized the advantages of classical studies for the
young. What he objected to was that a bishop should
teach Vergil instead of attending to his spiritual
duties. Nevertheless the letter shows that among
the clergy of the Church, even before the worst del
uge of the barbarians, the standard of education was
not high. Culture was looked upon as something
external from, and alien to, spirituality. As the
Didascalia informs us, even bishops in the third
century were often unlearned men, while according
to Sir W. Bamsay "the Greek of the Christian in
scriptions is undoubtedly worse than that of ordinary
pagan epitaphs." But it is not so much in the
enumeration of special instances of illiterateness that
we notice the effects of this divorce, as in the growth
in the Church itself of an atmosphere, largely monas
tic in origin, that was fatal to the survival of the old
culture. So when the barbarian flood overwhelmed

222 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
Europe, though the Church survived, classical culture
for the most part perished. Only here and there in
the waste of waters was there found some islet, an
enlightened monastery or collegiate church, where
the older civilization still maintained a precarious
existence. If the Church and the school system of
the Empire had been less antagonistic or more cor
related, the triumph of the Church over the barbari
ans would have carried with it the triumph of the
classical heritage of humanity, and the story of the
Dark Ages would have been strangely different. As
"it was when in the eighth century Charles the Great
once more began to reconstruct the school system of
his new Empire, he could find little outside the
Church on which to build. So there grew up a new
system of clerical education which retained the name
of grammar-schools, but which had few other survi
vals in common with the classical system that had
been destroyed.
In another direction there was less. In addition
to the grammar-schools there were also, in the chief
cities of the Empire a few advanced schools, — second
ary schools would not be a correct designation — in
which the curriculum was confined to rhetoric. These
rhetoric schools set the standard for all, so that the
great object of the schoolmaster became the turning
out of orators and barristers. Music was regarded
by Quintilian as chiefly a form of voice training ;
mathematics were of value to the barrister as enabling
him to deal with sums of money, while the use of the
fingers in calculating would train him in a graceful
use of the hands. History was studied as a form of
narrative rhetoric; pedantic accuracy was but of

AND METHODS 223
secondary moment compared with a pleasing style
— a conception of history that was only slowly elimi
nated, if indeed in some quarters it has not still a
hold. The consequences for the Church of the
predominance of these rhetoric schools, with their
windy and unreal declamations, — "talk-markets,"
as St. Augustine called them, "in which boys buy
lies and tricks for the war in the courts," — were as
serious as they were lasting. When the school sys
tem of the Empire was destroyed, the spirit of its
curriculum lived on and dominated, under another
form, which was yet not another, the revived learn
ing of the Middle Ages. The result was fatal. In
all ages theological imagination needs the careful re
straint of a scientific spirit ; in the early years of the
Church there was nothing whatever to hinder rhet
oric, both in pulpit and pamphlet, running away
with reason. If only the school systems of the Em
pire had laid more insistence upon observation the
literary and theological writings of the early Church
might have been less rhetorical ; on the other hand,
they would have been more living because more real.
To this absence of contact with reality, the fatal, per
sistent heritage of Eoman education, we owe both the
unreality of much Scholasticism as also the later an
tagonism between Eeligion and Science.
n
Hitherto we have dealt with the loss of the world
in the sweeping away of Eoman schools and educa
tion. We have noted that this loss was accentuated
by the inexperience of the Church in all scholastic
matters, and above all by the growth in its ranks,

224 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
under the stress of Monasticism in its earliest, un
regulated forms, of a spirit antagonistic to culture.
We now turn to the constructive task of the Church.
Any study of the Church's influence in mediaeval
education divides itself into three parts : Monasteries
and education ; the cathedral and collegiate school ;
and the rise of the universities. These were the
three successive phases in which the Church's edu
cational activities found their chief expression. Our
scanty survey must of course be limited to the main
outlines of a vast topic. Extraneous influences of
much interest must be passed by, and our attention
fixed upon the work of the Church.
We begin with the monasteries. In the dark ages
of the world, from the sixth to the tenth centuries,
when schools were few and learning almost extinct
in Western Europe the Benedictine and Irish mon
asteries supplied the place. Probably this was the
last thing that Benedict of Nursia dreamed, of, in
spite of the provision that he made for daily reading
"for edification," especially during meals. As
Montalembert owns, "Benedict never dreamed of
regenerating anything but his own soul." The close
connection which for so many centuries existed be
tween the Benedictines and learning was really due,
in the first place, to a contemporary of Benedict,
Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus. This remarkable
man, at one time chief minister to the Ostrogothic
princess of Italy, was born at Squillace in 470. His
grandfather had delivered Sicily from the Vandal in
vaders under Genseric ; his father had been employed
by Pope Leo in the embassy in 451 which diverted
Attila fromt his purpose of marching on Borne. He

AND METHODS 225
himself for many years served Theodoric the Goth as
tutor and minister. On the triumph of Belisarius,
Cassiodorus finally withdrew, about 540, from public
life and founded the monastery of Viviers in Brut-
tium. " It is more noble," he cried, "to serve Thee,
O Christ, than to reign over the kingdoms of the
world." But the energies of Cassiodorus were not
satisfied with the ordinary pursuits of monastic life.
As minister of the Goths he had watched, with the
bitter grief of the Boman, the splendours of antiquity
falling into hopeless decay ; as a private man he
would do what he could to save what he might. So
while he built a home for his hermits on the summit
of the mountain, at the foot there sprang up under
his guidance a colony devoted to learning. This
colony he endowed with his own fine library, at the
same time training monks in the transcription of
manuscripts. The date of his death is uncertain
(575 ?) ; itself a sign of the neglect by posterity of one
of the greatest benefactors of civilization. For the
system of which he was the founder took root and
spread beyond the boundaries of Italy, so that the
establishment of a Scriptorium and the multiplication
of manuscripts became gradually as much a recog
nized employment of monastic life as prayer or fast
ing or the tilling of the fields ; nor is it too much to
say that on this account alone a statue of Cassiodorus
deserves an honourable niche in every library.
To Cassiodorus and the impulse he gave, more than
to any other man, must we assign the credit for show
ing the new Benedictine monasteries, which so rap
idly sprang up all over Europe, the more excellent
way of serving in the preservation and dissemination

226 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
of such learning and culture as had survived the
welter of the times. The story of the services to
Europe in this matter of the Benedictine monasteries
is an oft-told tale. The schools they founded, the
libraries they gathered together, the writers on every
branch of knowledge and culture then known to the
world that they furnished1, the manuscripts they
copied, thus preserving priceless treasures that
would otherwise have been assuredly lost, the chron
icles of contemporary history they compiled, all this
is a familiar theme, — by none told more eloquently
or with an enthusiasm which almost excuses his in
accuracy, than by Count Montalembert — upon which
we cannot dwell. Ignorance may scorn, but a more
humble wisdom will ever, realize the debt it owes in
the preservation of culture to the mediaeval monks
from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, especially in
the days when the enthusiasm of their piety was as
yet unspoilt by their wealth.
But we must equally beware of rushing to the other
extreme, and so attribute to mediaeval monasteries,
especially in later ages, educational activities which
were altogether alien to them. Monasteries were
never university colleges, either in intention or prac
tice. Monte Cassino might be rebuilt by Greek
artists and furnished with a great library ; St. Gall
and other monasteries might boast of their wealth in
manuscripts, but these treasures were for their own
use. Much nonsense also has been written about
monastic schools. Lechler, for instance, in his monu
mental " Life of Wyclif" spends many pages in the
search for the monastic school at which Wyclif might
have been educated. By some writers the origins of

AND METHODS 227
Cambridge have been traced to the monks of Ely, of
Oxford to the monks of St. Frideswide's. The stu
dent must not be misled by these current exaggera
tions. It is true that from the seventh to the eleventh
century such intellectual light as there was had been
confined, in the main, to the regulars, if among them
we count the new colleges of canons instituted by
Charles the Great. But that light was rather the
shining of a few stars in a waste of darkness than the
flush of dawn. In the majority of monasteries the
monks for the most part were illiterate, and the mon
astic school a small and very restricted affair. With
the eleventh century the spirit of new hopes moved
on the face of the waters. Here and there amid the
welter, dry land began to appear ; here and there a
keener eye might discern the first shoots of verdure.
As the nations emancipated themselves from the
struggle for existence, as the roving spirit of the
Normans, then later the influence of the Crusajdes,
brought the West into contact with the East, men
discovered some of the buried treasures of the past.
Prom the Jewish schools of Spain, and the Arabic
culture of Bagdad and Cordova, travellers like
Adelard of Bath (1140) brought back the first rudi
ments of the physical and mathematical sciences,
while Salerno revived once more the study of medi
cine. Italy, where the break between antique civili
zation and mediaeval development had been less dis
astrous, asserted her humanistic influences. Every
where men roused themselves from the long night of
darkness, and with the vigour of the newly awakened
flung themselves into the pursuit of truth, or, rather,
into the study of the survivals of the past. Chris-

228 . MEDLEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
tendom hailed with enthusiasm the new power of
mind, as the hope of a world hitherto ruled by brute
force tempered by superstition.
The new intellectual activity at first concentrated
itself round the old centres. Some of these were
secular churches; others were famous Benedictine
monasteries. But the defect of Monasticism was its
essential selfishness. Educational usefulness was no
part of its real programme ; though the education
provided was generous in its way, nevertheless it
bore the stamp of being an "extra." The school for
the monks (sehola interior) and for outsiders (schola
exterior) were kept strictly apart, and of course the
first concern of the monastery was for its own in-
mates. The majority also of those who attended the
schola exterior were desired to become secular priests,
though a few laymen of rank might be admitted.
During the twelfth century, for various causes, the
monasteries one by one closed their schools to all but
their own novices, a course for which they might
seek justification in the rapid rise of the more un
restricted schools of the cathedral and other collegiate
foundations, though the real reason was the loss of
their vital force. The rapidity Of the change was
remarkable. In Anselm we have the greatest of
monastic teachers ; half a century later in Abailard
higher education had abandoned the monastery for
the cathedral school of Notre Dame. A few years
later, after the death of Abailard, we see the rise in
Europe of the universities, which owed nothing to
the monks, to whose whole spirit they were opposed
and alien. In the thirteenth century, it is true, the
intellectual leaders of Europe were the friars ; but

AND METHODS 229
the great wave of enthusiasm and culture of which
they were both cause and result, passed the older
houses by. The Cistercians, for instance, never made
any provision for schools at all, except for their own
novices. In the fourteenth century the monasteries
contributed nothing to the intellectual work of the
age ; they neglected their chronicles ; in some cases,
as we know from the reports of Leland, they even
sold their libraries. All monastic schools for out
siders had been closed, though sometimes the monks
continued to be the trustees of certain educational
endowments. Of the new universities they made
little use, save to send a few selected inmates to
study law with a view to the control of their
properties or their interminable lawsuits with bishop
or townsman. At the time of the Beformation
monasteries were characterized, with rare exceptions,
with a complete intellectual stagnation, which was
one cause of their fall. But three centuries before
the Dissolution they had outlived their educational
usefulness. Ill
The educational work of the Church was by no
means confined to the monastery, even in the Dark
Ages, though the cathedral school has rarely re
ceived adequate recognition. In England, at any
rate, the introduction of Christianity and the rise
of the cathedral school were coeval events. The
reason for this should be clearly understood. What
ever other institutions in Boman Britain may have
survived its conquest by the Saxons, churches and
schools were swept away. So when the work of the

230 MEDLEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
Church was begun afresh it was necessary to re
establish the school. For the language of the Church,
in^which all its ceremonies were performed, its sacra
ments administered, its laws and Scriptures written,
was Latin, hallowed by five hundred years of use.
The modern missionary makes it his first task to
translate his Scriptures, prayers, hymns, and usages,
into the vernacular of the heathen — but Augustine,
the apostle of England, imposed upon the Saxons
the Eoman service in the Boman tongue. We may
rejoice that he did so. The barbarians who had
invaded Gaul and Italy had adopted the Latin
language ; the Saxons in their conquest of Eoman
Britain had retained their Teutonic speech. If
therefore St. Augustine, after the modern method,
had adapted himself to the people England would
have been cut off from all the culture of Gaul and
Italy, and enclosed within its sea-walls would have
remained a barbarian race. The example of St.
Augustine was followed at a later date by the pioneer
English and Irish missionaries in Germany and other
Teutonic lands.
The imposition of the Latin tongue in the service
of the Church was not the only result of England's
conversion by a Boman monk. The Church in
England or Germany was faced with exactly the
same problem as now confronts the missionary in
India or China. If the Church were not to remain
altogether an alien institution, native converts must
be educated for its ministry, and some of the upper
classes, at least, be taught the language of the Church
and of Western culture. Thus the missionary, who
brought his service-book or Vulgate in one hand,

AND METHODS 23 1
was bound to bring the Latin-grammar of Priscian or
Donatus in the other. So the grammar-school be
came in theory, as it often was in fact, the necessary
ante-room of the Churchf The oldest"schooTin Eng-
land, still flourishing at Canterbury under the title
of the King's School, is the grammar-school con
nected with the first English Cathedral, and probably]
established by Ethelbert the king and Augustine the
missionary in the spring of 598. This school, as Bede
infqrms us, became the model upon which other
grammar-schools were founded in connection with
new missionary sees. Some of these schools, e. g.,
Aldhelm's school at Sherborne, founded in 705,
survive to this day though often under titles that
hide their antiquity. The most noted of these^
schools was the school at York of which the famous
Alcuin was the master, until he was persuaded by
Charles the Great to become the head of his palace
school at Aachen. This school at York Alcuin's
successor, Ethelbert, turned into the first English'
boarding-school. But the activity of the Church was not confined to
the establishing of a few grammar-schools. Even
more numerous were their song-schools. As early as
the year 635 we hear of a certain James the Deacon
at York who, according to Bebe, "acted as master
to many, chanting after the Eoman or Canterbury
fashion " — in other words James established at York
a song-school in which converts were taught to chant
the services after the Georgian as distinct from the
Ambrosian manner. We hear also of a song-school
at Bochester in Kent, established by one Putta, who
in 675 went about Mercia, "teaching the songs of the

232 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
Church, wherever he was asked." A greater in
fluence than Putta's was that of one of the mbst
eminent of the archbishops of Canterbury, the learned
Greek, Theodore of Tarsus. Soon in all the greater
churches we find established side by side the twin
schools of grammar and song. The two schools,
though sometimes united in small places under one
master, in the larger towns were distinct in teaching
and government, the song-school being the elemen
tary school, and trie grammar-school the secondary
school. Nor must we forget that the cathedral
grammar-school, through the duties imposed upon it
of the education of candidates for the priesthood,
performed also many services now discharged by the
university of the ecclesiastical seminary.
We have mentioned the schools attached to collegi
ate churches. In these churches, for the most part
established in the larger towns, the clergy lived to
gether, or formed a guild or club (collegium), in part
for the sake of discipline, in part for the concentra
tion of resources, in part to secure the training of the
younger clerics. The members of these communities
were called "canons," from a late Latin word for a
fixed contribution of corn available for distribution,
and the portions which such canons received were
called "prebends." They lived together under rules
based in the main on certain sermons written by St.
Augustine in which he described the common life he
lived with his clergy at Hippo. Hence the name by
which they were called of Austin Canons. At the
close of the eighth century, under the influence of
Chrodegang, bishop of Metz (+766), these collegiate
churches were multiplied and reformed. Charles

AND METHODS 233
the Great determined to make these colleges of clergy
educational centres, and one of the canons was desig
nated "chancellor" or schoolmaster for this very
purpose — a name now limited to the educational
heads of our universities and to great politicians.
One of the chancellor's duties was " to correct the
reading books," to see to their binding and recopy-
ing. With the death of Charles the Great many of
these collegiate churches disappeared, but others sur
vived to do good educational work. In some of the
larger collegiate churches, the school of the chancel
lor became a school of theology, — for whose teaching
the chancellor was primarily responsible, — existing
side by side with the grammar-school and the day-
school. We may add, in passing, that in schools of every
sort, whatever else was retained or lost of Boman
methods, the use of the cane was regarded as essen
tial. Thus we are told of St. Hugh of Lincoln that
when only seven years of age "the pedagogue's
scourge in such wise plied upon his back that his
virtues outstripped his vices." When Heloise's
uncle entrusted her to Abailard' s tuition — with the
fatal consequences which have made her immortal —
he particularly enjoined Abailard to flog her well if
she proved lazy ! Anselm of Canterbury was almost
alone in pleading for gentler methods of instilling
knowledge. The story is well known of his inter
view with the prior who had come to Bee to pour out
his woes. He could make no impression on the lads
who were being trained at his monastery. "What
are we to do with them 1 " he cried in despair ; " we
do not cease beating them day and night but they get

234 MEDLEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
worse." "What do your scholars turn into under
this ceaseless' beating ? " asked Anselm. ' ' They turn
only brutal," was the reply. "You have bad luckj"
was the keen answer,
" in a training which only turns men into beasts.
You try blows and stripes alone to fashion them to
good. Did you ever see a craftsman fashion a fair
image out of a plate of gold or silver by blows alone ?
Does he not with his tools now gently press and strike
it, now with wise art still more gently raise and shape
it ? Tell me, my lord abbot, if you planted a tree
in your garden, and tied it in upon all sides so that it
could not stretch forth its branches, what sort of a
tree would it turn out when you gave it room to
spread ? Would it not be good for nothing, full of
tangled and crooked boughs? And whose fault
would this be but yours, who had put such constant
constraint upon it? Adapt yourself," he concluded,
"to the weak as well as the strong, and by Divine
grace you will win them all to God."
But many generations of schoolboys were condemned
to groan before educational reformers attempted to
put into practice Anselm's methods.
IV
From the establishment by the Church of the
cathedral school, we pass by a natural transition to
the universities. Until recent years it was custom
ary with historians to attribute not merely the
schools of Europe but the rise of the universities to
the influence of the monasteries. The recent re
searches, especially of Denifle and Bashdall, have

AND METHODS 235
shown that such a view is as baseless as the myth —
solemnly recognized by English law courts— which
attributed the origin of Oxford to Alfred the Great..
We now know that the universities of Europe, when
not the result of " migration," always rose in connec
tion with a great collegiate but secular Church ; they
are never the offspring of a monastery. St., Gall,
Fulda, Bee, Malmesbury, Jarrow, might have re
tained to this day, in new and changing forms, their
once proud position as the intellectual centres of
Europe ; that they lost it forever to later rivals must
be entered against them, as we have seen, as the pun
ishment of monastic self-centeredness.
We may best illustrate the stages of growth of a
university by the history of Paris, the most famous
mediaeval university of Europe. We have first the
cathedral school of the Notre Dame, the education at
which would be confined to grammar and song. But
with the widening intellectual activity the curriculum
broadened, while the fall of Monasticism as the ideal
life led to a demand for the better education of the
secular clergy. These the great Parisian monasteries
of St. Victor and of St. Genevieve were reluctant to
admit to their lectures unless they would first turn
paonk. In accordance with the legislation of Charles
the Great, to which we have already referred, the
chapter appointed certain of their number under the
license of their "chancellor" to give instruction in
theology in addition to the usual course of "arts."
At first the school at Paris had little repute ; it was
overshadowed by the cathedral schools at Chartres
and Laon where two noted masters were drawing
students from all parts. To Abailard, and the sue-

236 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
cessors he trained in his logical method, Paris owed
the foundation of her prestige. The width of Ab-
ailard's genius attracted students by hundreds from
castle and town to the new species of tourney, where
the partisans of hostile principles encountered one
another in the lists of controversy with all the bitter
ness of feudal warfare.
The cathedral authorities naturally took steps to
secure permanence for their prosperity. There was
ever the danger lest the school should be broken up
by the death of some famous "master," or migrate
elsewhere through the growing fame of some new
teacher. Both perils would be avoided if masters
and scholars could be attracted to Paris by solid ad
vantages. Whether through foresight or the instinct
of preservation, the chapter, therefore, flung open to
all the profession of teaching instead of restricting it
to those in orders. The one condition imposed was
that " masters " should receive a license from their
"chancellor." The chancellor, of course, before
issuing his license, would satisfy himself that the
master possessed the needed acquirements. As a re
sult of these measures we find that, within a genera
tion of the death of Abailard, the school of Paris
had acquired European fame. To the crowded streets
of the "Latin quarter," as to a new Mecca, scholars
crowded in their thousands, stirred by the same spirit
of impatience with the older traditions of Europe
that at the beginning of the century had hurried a
ruder feudalism to recover the tomb of its Lord.
A school which attracted students from different
nations received the technical name of a studium
generale. Like the English "public school," this

AND METHODS 237
title was at first very vague. Only gradually did it
come to denote a university. At the end of the
twelfth century there were two schools which had
obtained international reputation ; Paris, for arts
and theology ; Bologna for law. Their masters were
held in such esteem that custom had granted them
the right of teaching in any school without fresh
license. This last privilege led to important de
velopments. When in 1224 Fredric II founded the
Studium Generele of Naples, he granted to its masters
the jus docendi ubique, to give the technical name by
which this much prized right of Paris and Bologna
was known to the jurists. The pope, of course, could
not submit to this claim of his rival to be the edu
cational head of Europe, so when Gregory IX founded
his "spiritual garrison" at Toulouse (1233), a bull
conferred on its masters a similar privilege. As other
schools eagerly competed for the same advantage, it
became the law that a true stuflium generale must have
obtained charter from one of the world-powers, either
pope or emperor, preferably the former — the license
of the local sovereign was not sufficient to grant a
right that extended beyond his own dominions —
conferring the coveted jus docendi ubique.
The reader may ask why in the last paragraph we
used the cumbrous title studium generale instead of
the familiar "university." 1 It were well, therefore,
to explain what precisely this last term represents.
"University" is simply the common late Latin term
for any corporation or guild. In the eleventh and
twelfth centuries the instinct of association swept
like a great wave over the towns of Europe pro
ducing, as a result, that strong guild life which was

238 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
one of the most valuable features in mediaeval life.
Everywhere we witness the struggle of the " lesser
folk" (minores) against the " greater folk " (majores),
of the unenfranchised mass against the "guilded"
few. On the Continent the struggle was protracted
through a century of bloodshed. Even in more
peaceful England the conflict was bitter and pro
longed. But whether in England or on the Conti
nent, the weapon of the oppressed was the same — the
unenfranchised united in "guilds" which slowly
wrested the franchise from the older oligarchies.
Every such guild would be called a universitas l for
the classical word collegium had already been ap
propriated for a special purpose. The university,
therefore, was simply a guild, in Bologna of stu
dents, at Paris of masters, banded together to secure
their rights. But when a new studium generale was
founded, the students and masters either copied or
carried with them the "universities" of the two
great mother institutions. Thus the "guild" be
came so inseparable an accompaniment of these
schools of learning that by the fifteenth century the
older title of studium generale had become extinct save
in charters, codes, and other official documents.
1 Perhaps the most curious instance of the meaning of "uni
versity " is the following : " When in 1284 the Pisans were de
feated by Genoa, a large body of Pisan captives were kept in
prison for eighteen years. While in their miserable jail they as
sumed the right to using a common seal whioh bore the legend
' The seal of the University of the Captives at Genoa ' " (Rashdall,
"Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages," 303, n.). The
reader will not henceforth need to be warned against the com
mon delusion that a university is a universitas facultatum, an in
stitution professing universal knowledge.

AND METHODS 239
The University of Paris was a guild of " masters,"
i. e., of those who had completed their training in
arts. The masters were at first under the absolute
control of the chancellor of Notre Dame as the repre
sentative of the bishop. He could not only grant or
refuse a license, he could take away licenses already
given. Evidently a guild was needed for mutual
defense. The object was twofold: to protect the
masters against the arbitrary authority of the chan
cellor,1 and to raise their emoluments by restricting
new licenses, in other words by seeing to it that the
standard was maintained. Such a "university,"
which at first differed but little from a superior
trades union, in its beginnings. had no legal rights
whatever. Like our modern trades unions, it slowly
won its emancipation in spite of law, chiefly by a
free use of boycotting, furthered by appeals to the
papal authority which in this matter corresponded
to Parliament or Congress. Bome's help was readily
given. She was ready at all times to exert her claims
to local interference. But we may also credit her
with loftier motives. For from the first the papacy
— with that unerring instinct which marks its earlier
history, sided with the power of the future against
the efforts of a local hierarchy to keep education in
leading strings. Borne saw that it would avail her
nothing that she had crushed the independence of
1 At Oxford the chancellor soon ceased to be the offioer of his
distant bishop at Lincoln, and became one in interest with the
university. This development was assisted by the fact that in
the early years of the university the see of Lincoln was vacant,
and that the first chancellor of Oxford, the illustrious Grosseteste,
was not the man to be the tool of anybody.

240 MEDLEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
the bishops, if the control of the new learning should
pass into their hands. So when in 1212 the chan
cellor of Paris, as the bishop's representative, sought
to compel all masters to take an oath of obedience to
himself, Innocent III interposed. When at a later
date bishop and chancellor again attempted to
strangle the growing guild, furbishing up for the
purpose, like English manufacturers at the begin
ning of the nineteenth century, an old ordinance
against "conspiracies," Gregory IX again stepped
in. Henceforth at Paris, even more so at Oxford,
the guild was free to develop on its own lines. The
bishop had lost the control of his own studium ; the
"university" had usurped both name and power.
At Bologna the University was a guild not of mas
ters, but of students. For the origin of this extra
ordinary difference we must look to the different
conditions which gave rise to the intellectual move
ment in Italy. In the north of Europe the complete
overthrow by barbarian or Saracen of the old Boman
civilization had flung upon the Church the task of
educating the people. But in Italy the educational
traditions, and to some extent even the educational
machinery, of her old Boman civilization, still sur
vived. In France until after the times of Abailard
all teachers were ecclesiastics, at any rate were
1 ' clerks. " But in Italy, where the race of lay teach
ers never died out, they were not subject more than
other laymen to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, nor en
titled like their brethren of Paris to the special privi
leges of the priestly caste. At Bologna, in fact, the
"doctor "was simply a private adventurer — in this
resembling the sophist of ancient Athens, or the Cam-

AND METHODS 241
bridge "coach" of to-day — whom a certain number
of students hired for their instruction. Each doctor
lectured in his own room, and depended for his fees
and pupils upon his reputation or powers of canvass
ing. In Italy the chief factor in the transformation
of such a school into a studium generate was not so
much the Church as the rivalry of the same vigorous,
civic spirit which in other spheres has shed immortal
lustre on Florence, Genoa, and Venice. As an illus
tration of this independence of the Church we may
note that in Borne for all , practical purposes no
mediaeval university existed. Higher education in
Italy, both in the Middle Ages and at the Benais-
sance, if not in open antagonism to the Church, yet
possessed none of the devout spirit so characteristic
of the North. Humanism in Italy has always been
tinged with ancient paganism, though a pagan dis
position seldom prevented an Italian from counting
himself a good churchman.
Of more weight in the formation of the student-
universities of Italy was the nature of the chief study.
At Paris the military ardour of the North manifested
itself in tournaments of logic. But the key to the
history of Lombard cities and Lombard schools lies —
as we have already noted in a previous lecture — in
the recognition of the continued existence through
the darkest ages of the old Boman system of juris
prudence, though much mixed with barbarian addi
tions. When the age of iron gave place to order,
Eoman law, especially the newly discovered juris
prudence of Justinian, was bound to reassert itself,
while appeal to its authority was furthered by the
struggle between Empire and Papacy. In a land

242 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
more conscious than any other of the root-ideas of
the Holy Boman Empire, both sides anxiously
searched in the records of the past for the evidence
of their claims. The schools of Paris were distracted
by endless questionings concerning the reality of
universal ideas; for Italy the solution of the vital
problems of liberty and imperial politics lay in the
study of law, both Eoman and Canon. Now the law
is a superior faculty. While, therefore, "the artist "
of Paris or Oxford was a mere lad whom the masters
compelled to sit on the floor — the straw was changed
only twice a year ! — " that all occasion of pride may
be taken away," who herded in bare lodging houses
run by one of their masters, the student of Bologna
was a man, an "artist" already of some other
studium generate, who for the sake of advancement in
Church or State had found it necessary to obtain a
knowledge of Boman or ecclesiastical jurisprudence.
Such men were of all nations and from many differ
ent cities and dwelt in their own hired lodgings.
Nor were they adventurous lads for whom politics
had little meaning save the riot of town and gown,
the breaking of heads in the battle of "nations."
They were generally men of rank in Church or State,
men who could not afford to be outlawed, though
often given as much as the youthful artist to drink
ing and dicing. Now in Italy, as in ancient Greece,
the citizens of one town had no civil rights in an
other, for Bepublic and Empire never gave birth to
an abiding Kingdom of Italy until times well in the
memory of some of my hearers. The students, there
fore, of Bologna found themselves compelled to form
themselves into a guild, not so much to defend, like

AND METHODS < 243
the "masters" of Paris, their educational rights
against the chancellor, much less to resist the en
croachments of their lay teachers, as with the object
of creating an artificial citizenship which should save
them from the perils of the alien, and give them the
law and tribunals of a privileged caste.
To the reader acquainted only with universities on
the model of Paris, a "university of students" will
seem an extraordinary anomaly. It may be of inter
est, therefore, to note the development of this rival
type. The "university" or the Guild of Foreign
Students at Bologna did not at first seek a charter
any more than an international or intercollegiate
rowing club at Oxford or Harvard. Like any other
club, they passed their own rules, none of which had
legal validity. But by threats of migration they
wrung the recognition of these by-laws as statutes,
binding alike on citizen and student. By judicious
boycotting they also acquired control of all matters
relating to landlords, and over all tradesmen engaged
in the production of books, whereas in Oxford and
Paris these matters passed into the control of the
university of masters. By slow steps we see the ex
pansion of the power of the " rector " or elected head
of the students until he was formally recognized as
ranking in Bologna above all cardinals and arch
bishops. Two liveried servants testified to his dig
nity, while during his year of office he could on no
account leave the city without giving security for his
return. At his inauguration he must provide a ban
quet for all the students, the wine at which must be
of a certain quality. Another expense was a tourna
ment, for which he furnished two hundred spears.

244 MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
But if the financial burdens of the rector were excess
ive, the powers he wielded as the representative of
the students were almost unlimited. All doctors
were compelled to swear obedience to the regulations
of the- Student University. If a professor desired
leave of absence, he must obtain it from his pupils ;
if through lack of ability he failed to draw five to his
lectures, he was treated as absent and heavily fined ;
a weapon of use against other than incapable teach
ers. He was fined also if not punctual, or failed to
finish to the tick of the clock. To postpone a diffi
culty to the end of the lecture, when opportunity of
heckling could not be given, was an unpardonable
offense. The law texts were divided into portions
called puncta, and a time-table made to which the
doctor must keep. Nevertheless, such was the repu
tation of a "master" of Bologna, so valuable also
the emoluments, that we find no lack of candidates.
Space forbids us from entering into details of the
"rigorous and tremendous examination," and the
ceremonial whereby he was made free of the Doctors'
Guild : how he delivered his thesis in the cathedral,
how the gold ring was put on his finger, and the
book of the law into his hands, how he was then es
corted through the town in triumph, preceded by the
three university pipers and the four university
trumpeters, and how he ended the day by giving a
banquet to his colleagues, not forgetting the students.
Whether the " university " was a guild of masters
or of students, its freedom was won by the same
means. Our universities rest for their privileges
and immunities, not so much on the Church as on
the new power that was sapping feudalism and

AND METHODS 245
destroying tyranny — the power of the purse. The
Church, it is true, put these immunities into form,
but it was the purse that won them. The schools of
Bologna and Paris brought in no small gain to the
craftsmen of those cities; neither magistrates nor
court dare do anything that would drive them away.
In vain did the authorities seek by various devices
to crush the guilds, and as a first step to take away the
right of migration. Such measures were wholly in
operative, for the " university "—as apart from the
various colleges in which the student lived— had
neither buildings, nor wealth, nor other hostages of
fortune. Its sole property, the common chest and
seal, was kept for safety in the sacristy of some
friendly and inviolable convent; for its "congrega
tions" it would borrow a neighbouring church.
With these powers of flight, in the days before the
colleges had been established, when men still lived in
hired hostels, its wings could not be clipped, more
especially as every city of Europe would have wel
comed with valuable privileges such profitable guests.
Universities, in fact, fattened upon their misfortunes ;
riots generally ended in new charters and further
powers ; " migrations " * in triumphant returns with
sheafs of bulls and privileges. But with the rise of
stately colleges the older turbulence and stir of life, —
democracy first discovering itself— gave plape to the
1 To the frequent " migrations " Europe owes the majority of
her older universities. Oxford (probably) by a migration from
Paris about 1169 ; a brawl at Oxford in 1209 led to a migration
to Cambridge. Similar migrations to Beading, Stamford, and
Northampton, unfortunately, ended in failures to establish new
university centres.

246 MEDLEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
ordered and stately universities to which we now are
accustomed. Migrations and other outbursts of the
untutored spirit were no longer possible when every
scholar was obliged to live in some hall, hostel or en
dowed foundation under the care of some member of
the university.
In the rise of the universities the student can dis
cern mediaeval internationalism, so largely the out
come of the Catholic Church, strangely blended with
the growing consciousness of the new nationalism
that in the long run proved so fatal to the papacy.
Of these two forces we have a striking illustration in
the history of the University of Prague. Up to the
middle of the fourteenth century Germany possessed
no university at all. Through political causes — in
part depending upon the fascination of the imperial
idea, in part upon the change made from its old
Teutonic jurisprudence to that of Justinian — German
scholars were chiefly attracted by the study of the
law. They therefore crossed the Alps to Bologna.
There their special privileges gave rise to the system
of "nations," which in different ways formed a fea
ture, more or less real, in evfiry university. With
the loss of her more intimate connection with Italy,
through the fall of the Hohenstaufen, Germany re
alized that the old internationalism of letters would
no longer supply her needs. So, in 1347, Charles IV
of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, the son of the King
John who was taken captive at Crecy, who had been
elected to the crown of the Empire, founded the Uni
versity of Prague. There from the very first the new
nationalism manifested itself in constant quarrels be
tween the Czechs and Germans. That an opinion

AND METHODS 247
was embraced by the Teutons was sufficient reason
for its rejection by the Czechs. The Teutons were
Nominalists ; the Czechs must needs, therefore, be
the champions of Bealism. When therefore, in 1403,
the condemned doctrines of the realist Wyclif were
defended by the realist rector, John Hus, the Ger
mans flung themselves into the defense of Eome with
all the ardour begotten of national hatred united
with the odium philosophicum. The end of inter
nationalism was seen when, in 1409, the Germans at
Prague, to the number of five hundred 1 migrated in
a body and founded the strictly Teutonic university
of Leipzig. The old international life, the strength
of which was due to the consciousness of unity and
solidarity, when the students of Oxford and Paris,
especially the more distinguished friars, journeyed
freely from one to the other, had given place to the
new national but divisive spirit so triumphant in the
Beformation. Henceforth every separate state sought
to establish its own universities, and by pains and
penalties to forbid its students from journeying to
foreign centres. But a triumphant spirit of national
ism in what should be the republic of letters leads
inevitably, as alas ! we have seen recently to our
1 The numbers as a rule have been greatly exaggerated, and
are usually given even by historians who should know better as
5,000. As a matter of fact, as Erler has shown by his publica
tion of the Leipzig rolls, the total entrances at Leipzig were 507.
Wyclif speaks of " once sixty thousand students " at Oxford.
How absurd the figure may be gathered from the fact that the
population of Oxford " town," over fourteen years of age, in 1379
was but 2,035. Probably even at Paris the students were never
more than six thousand. By 1438 they had fallen off at Oxford to
a thousand, a number still further reduoed by the Beformation,

248 MEDLEVAL EDUCATIONAL IDEALS
sorrow, to the warring conflict of nationalism in
other spheres. Europe and America must revive
in a new form the old university internationalism of
the early Middle Ages, as the first step in the inaugu
ration of a new age in which nations shall better
understand and respect each other's different ideals.
We must bring these lectures to a close. We have
touched merely the fringe of an inexhaustible and
fascinating subject. In reality the secret of the
mediaeval Church must always remain unexpressed,
since to-day it is incapable Jof expression. With all
its defects — and the reverse side of the page may well
fill us with amazement and indignation — the medi
aeval Church and the task she accomplished presents
a noble spectacle of moral grandeur. Pages of her
historyare~wnEten in letters of living light, of more
than golden glory. Where can we point to a sacrifice
so deep, so abiding, so sacred as that of her sons?
Who have climbed to higher peaks of spiritual ex
perience? We may oondemn the claims of her
papacy as unjustifiable in origin, impossible, nay
hurtful, in execution, yet cannot but admire the
earnestness with which the great pontiffs believed
themselves to be the ministers of a higher than human
righteousness. We may despise the theology of her
saints, but we cannot deny that they had learned the
secret of the Cross. We may mourn over their
superstition, but cannot refuse that they had an
anointing from the Holy One. We may point out
the depth of their errors, their limited vision, their
rude methods, |their warped ideals, but these things
are but the rough externals which veil but do not

AND METHODS 249
conceal the inward nobleness of their characters.
That they without us should not be made perfect is
not the condemnation of their hope, but the provi
dential law of evolution. Considering, therefore,
the issue of their life, let us imitate their faith :
Jesus Christ
The same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

Printed in the United States of America

SERMONS— LECTURES— ADDRESSES ^
JAMES L. GORDON, D.D.
All's Love Yet All's Law
iamo, cloth, net $1.25.
"Discloses the secret of Dr. Gordon's eloquence — fresh,
and intimate presentations of truth which always keep close
to reality. Dr. Gordon also seems to have the world's litera
ture at his command. A few of the titles will give an idea
of the scope of his preaching. 'The Law of Truth: The
Science of Universal Relationships'; "The Law of Inspiration:
The Vitalizing Power of Truth'; 'The Law of Vibration';
The Law of Beauty: The Spiritualizing Power of Thought';
The Soul's Guarantee of Immortality." — Christian Work.
BISHOP IRANCIS J. McCONNELL Cole Lectures
Personal Christianity
Instruments and Ends in the Kingdom of God.
l2mo, cloth, net $1.25. '
The latest volume of the famous "Cole Lectures" delivered
at Vanderbilt University. The subjects are: I. Ihe Per
sonal in Christianity. II. The Instrumental in Christianity.
III. The Mastery of World-Views. IV. The Invigoration
of Morality. V. The Control of Social Advance. VI.
"Every Kindred, and People, and Tongue."
NEWELL DWIGHT H1LLIS, D.D.
Lectures and Orations by Henry Ward
Beecher
Collected by Newell Dwight HilHs. i2mo, net $1.20.
It is fitting that one who is noted for the grace, finish and
eloquence of his own addresses should choose those of his
predecessor which he deems worthy to be preserved in a
bovnd volume as the most desirable, the most characteristic
and the most dynamic utterances of America's greatest pulpit
orator. W. L. WATKINSON, D.D.
The Moral Paradoxes of St. Paul
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
"These sermons are marked, even to greater degree than
is usual with their talented preacher, by clearness, force and
illustrative aptness. He penetrates unerringly to the heart
of Paul's paradoxical settings forth of great truths, and^ il
lumines them with pointed comment and telling illustration.
The sermons while thoroughly practical are garbed in strik
ing and eloquent sentences, terse, nervous, attention-corn*
pelling." — Christian World.
LEN G. BROUGHTON, D.D.«,
The Prodigal ahd Others
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
"The discourses are vital, bright, interesting and belp'ul.
It makes a preacher feel like preaching once more on this
exhaustless parable, and will prove helpful to all young people
— and older ones, too. Dr. Eroughton does not hesitate to
make his utterances striking and entertaining by the intro
duction of numerous appropriate and homely stories and illus
trations. He reaches the heart." — Review and Expositor,

CHURCH WORK

HARRY F. WARD
A Year Book of the Church and Social
Service in the United States
Prepared for The Commission on the Church and
Social Service, Federal Council of the Churches of
Christ in America. i2mo, paper, net 30c. ; cloth*
net 50c.
ERNEST EUGENE ELLIOTT
The Problem of Lay Leadership
A Companion to "Making Good In The Local
Church." i2mo, cloth, net 50c.
"What Christian ideal should guide our men's work?"
"What methods may we safely use in realizing it?" "What
must we do?" "What must we undo?" These are some of
the problems pressing insistently on the minds and hearts1 of
ministers and religious leaders of the present day. This
timely book of Mr. Elliott's suggests some eminently workable
methods of awakening the interest of men, some lines of
study by which it, is hoped, they may advance materially in
the knowledge of the Kingdom of God, together with some
"pointers" for such as may aspire to leadership. The pro
grams suggested are not theoretical. All have been tried, in
whole or in part, in some local church with profit and success.
HARLAN L. FEEMAN Prof, of Practical Theoloey West-
— "- - — - - - - — - — - - ¦ minster Tkeolosical Seminary
The Kingdom and the Farm
The Problem of the Country Church. Cloth, net 75c.
In compact form this timely book presents the problem of
the country church and its attendant difficulty. Dr. Feeman
was born on a farm, knows his subject well and ^ writes with
' precision and authority. His suggestions have vision, breadth
and sanity and offer a real scientific study of this vastly im
portant subject.
D. C. TREMAINE Church Efficiency
A Study of Methods. i6mo, cloth, net 50c.
A plan of procedure whereby methods ef business efficiency
may be applied to the work of the churc'a. Mr. Tremaine is
a layman and what he here presents is the result of special
and careful study. Most of his suggestions have already
been adopted and none are submitted untried. The con
clusions are calculated to help lift the burdens of pastors,
and in solving some of the problems of church life and ac
tivity.

HOMILETICS AND CHURCH WORK

CHARLES SILVESTER HORNE Yale Lectures at
Preaching
The Romance of Preaching
With an Introduction by Charles R. Brown, D.D.,
Dean of Yale Divinity School, and a Biographical
Sketch by H. A. Bridgman, Editor of The Congre
gationalism With Portrait. i2mo, cloth, net $1.25.
"From the days when Henry Ward Beecher gave the first
series of lectures on the Lyman Beecher Foundation in Yale
University . . . the task of inspiring young ministers to
nobler effort in their high calling, has been well performed.
But among all the lecturers few have ever so gripped the
divinity students, the larger audience of pastors in active
service, as did Silvester Home. The intellectual distinction
which marked his utterances, the fine literary form in which
they were phrased, the moral passion which gave to their
delivery that energy which belongs to words which are 'spirit
and life,' together with the rare spiritual insight displayed
all combined to make notable the service rendered by Mr.
Home to Yale University."— Charles R. Brown, D.D., Dean
of Yale Divinity School.
The last message of a leader of men.
BISHOP THOMAS B. NEELY, Of the Methodist
 ' Episcopal Church
The Minister in the Itinerant System
121110, cloth, net $1.00.
"Bishop Neely discusses frankly the fact that large num
bers of strong men eagerly accept official service, leaving the
intinerant pastorate. He states .the system itself briefly, but
the burden of the book is a full discussion of the bearing of
it all on the minister himself. It was to be presumed /of
course that a Methodist bishop would conclude that 'the sys
tem should be maintained' and even that 'the appointing
power should be untrammelled*; but it is none the less in
teresting to follow the argument. We do not know any other
book which states the whole case with such eminent fair
ness." — The Continent.
EDMUND S. LORENZ, B. D.
Practical Church Music
A Discussion of Purpose, Methods and Plans. Nevli
Popular Edition. i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
"Mr. Lorenz has had thirty years' active experience with'
both the theoretical and practical sides of church music in
all its forms. This is one of the most practical books on the
subject of church music we have ever^ read. Every page is
suggestive and every suggestion is eminently practical. The
book closes with a worthy appendix dealing with musical and
hymnological books worth owning, choice church music for
choir, and solo use, and suggestive outlines and subjects for
swig sermons aad song services." — Advance.

QUESTIONS OF THE FAITH

IAMES H. SNOWDEN, D.D.
The Psychology of Religion
8vo, cloth, net $1.50.
Psychology is one of the most rapidly advancing of modern
sciences, and Dr. Snowden's book will find a ready welcome.
While especially adapted for the use of ministers and teach
ers, it is not in any sense an ultra-academic work. This is
evidenced by the fact that the material forming it has been
delivered not only as a successful Summer School course, but
in the form of popular lectures, open to the general public.
WILLIAM HALLOCK JOHNSON, Ph.D., D.D.
Professor of Greek and New Testament Literature in Lincoln University, Pa.
The Christian Faith under Modern
Searchlight
The h. P. Stone Lectures, Princeton. Intro
duction by Francis 1,. Patton, D.D. Cloth, net $1.25.
The faith which is to survive must not only be a traditional
but an intelligent faith which has its roots in reason and ex
perience and its blossom and fruit in character and good
works. To this end, the author examines the fundamentals
of the Christian belief in the light of to-day and reaches the
conclusion that every advance in knowledge establishes its
sovereign claim, to be from heaven and not from men.
ANDREW W. ARCHIBALD, D.D.
Author of "The Bible Verified," "The Trend of the Centuries" etc.
The Modern Man Facing the Old
Problems
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
A thoughtful, ably-conducted study in which those prob
lems of human life, experience and destiny, which, in one
form or another, seem recurrent in every age, are examined
from what may be called a Biblical viewpoint. That is to sajr,
the author by its illuminating rays, -endeavors to' find eluci
dation and solution for the difficulties, which in more or less
degree, perplex believer and unbeliever alike.
NOLAN RICE BEST Edit„ * « Th, c.»«w<»
Applied Religion for Everyman
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
Nolan Rice Best has earned a well-deserved reputation in
the religious press of America, as a writer of virile, trench
antly-phrased editorials. The selection here brought together
represent his best efforts, and contains an experienced edi
tor's suggestions for the ever-recurrent problems confronting
Church.members as a body, and as individual Christians. Mr.
Best wields a facile pen, and a sudden gleam of beauty, a
difficult thought set in a perfect phrase, or an old idea in
vested with new meaning and grace, meets orie at every 'turm
of the page."— The Record Herald.

 QUESTIONS OF THE FAITH
LEWIS SPERRY CHAFER
The Kingdom in History and Prophecy
Introduction by C I. Scofield. iamo, cloth, net 75c.
"Anything that comes from the pen of this writer and
Bible teacher may be accepted as thoroughly sound and in
telligent in its presentation of truth. This is a study of the
historical and prophetic aspects of the kingdom of God in
their relations to the present age and that which is shortly
to come." — Christian Worker's Magazine.
REV. D. M. CANRIGHT
The Complete Testimony
The Testimony of the Early Fathers, Proving the
Universal Observance of Sunday in the First Cen
turies. i2mo, paper, net 20c.
The author of "Seventh Day Adventism" gives in concise,
connected form the testimonies of all the early Christian
Fathers from the Apostles down to A. D. 400. a Invaluable
to pastor and people — there is no other booklet like it.
C. F. WIMBERLY, B.A.

Behold the Morning!
The Imminent and Premillennial Coming of Jesua
Christ. l2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
R A. Torrey says: "I am sure the book will interest a
great many in the subject, who have not been interested in
the ordinary discussions of the subject. The book is one of
the three books that I would recommend to any one who
wishes to take up a study of the subject."
HENRY T. SELL, D.D.
Bible Studies in Vital Questions
l2mo, cloth, net 60c ; paper, net 35c.
The new volume of Sell's Bible Studies is prepared for adult
Bible and pastors' classes and for use in schools, colleges and
private study. It deals, in a plain, concise and constructive
'way, with the vital questions of the Christian faith about the
Bible, God, Man and the Church. I. Vital Questions About
the Bible. II. Vital Questions About God. III. Vital Ques
tions About Man. IV, Vital Questions About the Church.
EDWARD LEIGH PELL
Author of tfPelVs Notes on the Sunday School Ltsson"
Our Troublesome Religious Questions
i2mo, cloth, net $1.25.
A frank, earnest inquiry into, and discussion of, the prob
lems of religious creed and conduct which vex and perplex
believer and unbeliever alike. The author displays a marked
ability to take up these questions and examine them with
sagacity, impartiality and an optimistic, triumphant faith.

ESSAYS, STUDIES, ADDRESSES
fROF. HUGH BLACK
The New World
i6mo, cloth, net $1.00.
"The old order changeth, bringing in the new." To a r««
view of our changing world — religious, scientific, social — Hugh
Black brings that interpretative skill and keen insight which
distinguishes all his writings and thinking. Especially does he
face the problem Of the present Jay unsettlement and a unresij
in religious beliefs with sanity and courage, furnishing in thisj
as in other aspects of his enquiry, a new viewpoint and clarw
fied outlook. ,
S. P.. GORDON
Quiet Talks on John's Gospel
As Presented in the Gospel of John. Cloth, net 75c.
Mr. Gordon halts his reader here and there, at some pre
cious text, some outstanding instance of God's tenderness,
much as a traveller lingers for refreshment at a wayside
spring, and bids us hearken t as God's wooing note is heard
pleading for consecrated service. An enheartening book, and
B restful. A book of the winning Voice, of outstretched
Hands. ROBERT F. HORTON, D.D.
The Springs of Joy and Other Addresses
i2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
"Scholarly, reverent, penetrating; human. The product of
a mature mind and of a genuine and sustained religious ex<
perience. The message of a thinker and a saint, which win-
be found to be very helpful." — Christian Intelligencer.
BISHOP WALTER R. LAMBUTH
m— — ¦¦— - — ¦ .1 ¦¦ 1 11 ,.M
Winning the World for Christ
A Study of Dynamics. Cole Lectures for 1915.
i2mo, cloth, net $1.25.
this Lecture-Course is a spirited contribution to the dy
namics of Missions. It presents a study of the sources of in
spiration and power in the lives of missionaries, native and
foreign, who with supreme abandon gave themselves utterly
to the work to which they were called.
FREDERICK F. SHANNON, D.D.
The New Personality and Other Sermons
i2mo, clotty, net $1.00.
Mr Shannon, pastor of the Reformed Church on the
Heights, Brooklyn, is possessed of lofty ideals, is purpose
ful, more than ordinarily eloquent and has the undoubted
gifts of felicitous and epigrammatic expression. This new vol
ume by the popular preacher is a contribution of distinct value
to current sermonic literature.

YALE UNIVERSITY I

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