Volume II Part 47 (1/2)

537 In England the change seems to have immediately followed conversion.

”The evangelical precepts of peace and love,” says a very learned historian, ”did not put an end to war, they did not put an end to aggressive conquests, but they distinctly humanised the way in which war was carried on. From this time forth the never-ending wars with the Welsh cease to be wars of extermination. The heathen English had been satisfied with nothing short of the destruction and expulsion of their enemies; the Christian English thought it enough to reduce them to political subjection.... The Christian Welsh could now sit down as subjects of the Christian Saxon. The Welshman was acknowledged as a man and a citizen, and was put under the protection of the law.”-Freeman's _Hist. of the Norman Conquest_, vol. i. pp. 33-34. Christians who a.s.sisted infidels in wars were _ipso facto_ excommunicated, and might therefore be enslaved, but all others were free from slavery. ”Et quidem inter Christianos laudabili et antiqua consuetudine introductum est, ut capti hinc inde, utcunque jus...o...b..llo, non fierent servi, sed liberi servarentur donec solvant precium redemptionis.”-Ayala, lib. i. cap.

5. ”This rule, at least,” says Grotius, ”(though but a small matter) the reverence for the Christian law has enforced, which Socrates vainly sought to have established among the Greeks.” The Mohammedans also made it a rule not to enslave their co-religionists.-Grotius, _De Jure_, iii. 7, -- 9. Pagan and barbarian prisoners were, however, sold as slaves (especially by the Spaniards) till very recently.

538 The character of Constantine, and the estimate of it in Eusebius, are well treated by Dean Stanley, _Lectures on the Eastern Church_ (Lect. vi.).

539 Theodoret, iii. 28.

540 They are collected by Chateaubriand, _etudes hist._ 2me disc. 2me partie.

541 See St. Gregory's oration on _Cesarius_.

542 Sozomen, vi. 2.

_ 543 Ep._ xiii. 31-39. In the second of these letters (which is addressed to Leontia), he says: ”Rogare forsitan debui ut ecclesiam beati Petri apostoli quae nunc usque gravibus insidiis laboravit, haberet Vestra Tranquillitas specialiter commendatam. Sed qui scio quia omnipotentem Deum diligitis, non debeo petere quod sponte ex benignitate vestrae pietatis exhibetis.”

544 See the graphic description in Gibbon, ch. liii.

545 Baronius.

546 Mably, ii. 1; Gibbon, ch. xlix.

547 There are some good remarks upon the way in which, among the free Franks, the bishops taught the duty of pa.s.sive obedience, in Mably, _Obs. sur l'Histoire de France_, livre i. ch. iii. Gregory of Tours, in his address to Chilperic, had said: ”If any of us, O king, transgress the boundaries of justice, thou art at hand to correct us; but if thou shouldest exceed them, who is to condemn thee? We address thee, and if it please thee thou listenest to us; but if it please thee not, who is to condemn thee save He who has proclaimed Himself Justice.”-Greg. Tur. v. 19. On the other hand, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, strongly a.s.serted the obligation of kings to observe the law, and denounced as diabolical the doctrine that they are subject to none but G.o.d. (Allen, _On the Royal Prerogative_ (1849), pp. 171-172.)

548 The exact degree of the authority of the barbarian kings, and the different stages by which their power was increased, are matters of great controversy. The reader may consult Thierry's _Lettres sur l'Hist. de France_ (let. 9); Guizot's _Hist. de la Civilisation_; Mably, _Observ. sur l'Hist. de France_; Freeman's _Hist. of the Norman Conquest_, vol. i.

549 Fauriel, _Hist. de la Poesie provencale_, tome ii. p. 252.

550 Ibid, p. 258.

551 Le Grand D'Aussy, _Fabliaux_, pref. p. xxiv. These romances were accounts of his expeditions to Spain, to Languedoc, and to Palestine.

552 The ?d?a of the Greeks.

553 Legouve, _Histoire morale des Femmes_, pp. 95-96.

554 Gen. xxix., x.x.xiv. 12; Deut. xxii. 29; 1 Sam. xviii. 25.

555 The history of dowries is briefly noticed by Grote, _Hist. of Greece_, vol. ii. pp. 112-113; and more fully by Lord Kames, in the admirable chapter ”On the Progress of the Female s.e.x,” in his _Sketches of the History of Man_, a book less read than it deserves to be. M. Legouve has also devoted a chapter to it in his _Hist.

morale des Femmes_. See, too, Legendre, _Traite de l'Opinion_, tome ii. pp. 329-330. We find traces of the dowry, as well as of the ?d?a, in Homer. Penelope had received a dowry from Icarus, her father. M. Michelet, in one of those fanciful books which he has recently published, maintains a view of the object of the ?d?a which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere, and which I do not believe. He says: ”Ce prix n'est point un achat de la femme, mais une indemnite qui dedommage la famille du pere pour les enfants futurs, qui ne profiteront pas a cette famille mais a celle ou la femme va entrer.”-_La Femme_, p. 166.

556 In Rome, when the separation was due to the misconduct of the wife, the dowry belonged to her husband.

557 ”Dotem non uxor marito sed uxori maritus offert.”-Tac. _Germ._ xviii. On the Morgengab, see Canciani, _Leges Barbarorum_ (Venetiis, 1781), vol. i. pp. 102-104; ii. pp. 230-231. Muratori, _Antich.

Ital._ diss. xx. Luitprand enacted that no Longobard should give more than one-fourth of his substance as a Morgengab. In Gregory of Tours (ix. 20) we have an example of the gift of some cities as a Morgengab.

558 See, on this point, Aul. Gellius, _Noct. Att._ xv. 20. Euripides is said to have had two wives.

559 Aristotle said that Homer never gives a concubine to Menelaus, in order to intimate his respect for Helen-though false. (_Athenaeus_, xiii. 3.)

560 aeschylus has put this curious notion into the mouth of Apollo, in a speech in the _Eumenides_. It has, however, been very widely diffused, and may be found in Indian, Greek, Roman, and even Christian writers. M. Legouve, who has devoted a very curious chapter to the subject, quotes a pa.s.sage from St. Thomas Aquinas, accepting it, and arguing from it, that a father should be more loved than a mother. M. Legouve says that when the male of one animal and the female of another are crossed, the type of the female usually predominates in the offspring. See Legouve, _Hist. morale des Femmes_, pp. 216-228; Fustel de Coulanges, _La Cite antique_, pp. 39-40; and also a curious note by Boswell, in Croker's edition of Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ (1847), p. 472.