Volume I Part 26 (2/2)

The ecclesiastical influence of St. Augustine has so completely eclipsed his political biography, that but little attention has been given to his conduct in the interesting time in which he lived. Sismondi recalls to his disadvantage that he was the friend of Count Boniface, who invited Genseric and his Vandals into Africa; the b.l.o.o.d.y consequences of that conspiracy cannot be exaggerated. It was through him that the count's name has been transmitted to posterity without infamy. Boniface was with him when he died, at Hippo, August 28th, A.D. 440.

[Sidenote: Propitious effect of Alaric's siege.]

When Rome thus fell before Alaric, so far from the provincial Christians bewailing her misfortune, they actually gloried in it. They critically distinguished between the downfall of the purple pagan harlot and the untouched city of G.o.d. The vengeance of the Goth had fallen on the temples, but the churches had been spared. Though in subsequent and not very distant calamities of the city these triumphant distinctions could scarcely be maintained, there can be no doubt that that catastrophe singularly developed papal power. The abas.e.m.e.nt of the ancient aristocracy brought into relief the bishop. It has been truly said that, as Rome rose from her ruins, the bishop was discerned to be her most conspicuous man. Most opportunely, at this period Jerome had completed his Latin translation of the Bible. The Vulgate henceforth became the ecclesiastical authority of the West. The influence of the heathen cla.s.sics, which that austere anchorite had in early life admired, but had vainly attempted to free himself from by unremitting nocturnal flagellations, appears in this great version. It came at a critical moment for the West. In the politic non-committalism of Rome, it was not expedient that a pope should be an author. The Vulgate was all that the times required. Henceforth the East might occupy herself in the harmless fabrication of creeds and of heresies; the West could develop her practical talent in the much more important organization of ecclesiastical power.

[Sidenote: The fate of the three great bishops.]

Doubtless not without interest will the reader of these pages remark how closely the process of ecclesiastical events resembles that of civil. In both there is an irresistible tendency to the concentration of power. As in Roman history we have seen a few families, and, indeed, at last, one man grasp the influence which in earlier times was disseminated among the people, so in the Church the congregations are quickly found in subordination to their bishops, and these, in their turn, succ.u.mbing to a perpetually diminis.h.i.+ng number of their compeers. In the period we are now considering, the minor episcopates, such as those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Carthage, had virtually lost their pristine force, everything having converged into the three great sees of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome. The history of the time is a record of the desperate struggles of the three chief bishops for supremacy. In this conflict Rome possessed many advantages; the two others were more immediately under the control of the imperial government, the clas.h.i.+ng of interests between them more frequent, their rivalry more bitter. The control of ecclesiastical power was hence perpetually in Rome, though she was, both politically and intellectually, inferior to her compet.i.tors. As of old, there was a triumvirate in the world destined to concentrate into a despotism. And, as if to remind men that the principles involved in the movements of the Church are of the same nature as those involved in the movements of the state, the resemblances here pointed out are sometimes singularly ill.u.s.trated in trifling details. The Bishop of Alexandria was not the first triumvir who came to an untimely end on the banks of the Nile; the Roman pontiff was not the first who consolidated his power by the aid of Gallic legions.

CHAPTER X.

THE EUROPEAN AGE OF FAITH.

AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.

_Consolidation of the Byzantine System, or the Union of Church and State.--The consequent Paganization of Religion and Persecution of Philosophy._

_Political Necessity for the enforcement of Patristicism, or Science of the Fathers.--Its peculiar Doctrines._

_Obliteration of the Vestiges of Greek Knowledge by Patristicism.--The Libraries and Serapion of Alexandria.--Destruction of the latter by Theodosius.--Death of Hypatia.--Extinction of Learning in the East by Cyril, his a.s.sociates and Successors._

[Sidenote: The age of Faith.]

The policy of Constantine the Great inevitably tended to the paganization of Christianity. An incorporation of its pure doctrines with decaying pagan ideas was the necessary consequence of the control that had been attained by unscrupulous politicians and placemen. The faith, thus contaminated, gained a more general and ready popular acceptance, but at the cost of a new lease of life to those ideas. So thorough was the adulteration, that it was not until the Reformation, a period of more than a thousand years, that a separation of the true from the false could be accomplished.

[Sidenote: Subdivision of the subject.]

Considering how many nations were involved in these events, and the length of time over which they extend, a clear treatment of the subject requires its subdivision. I shall therefore speak, 1st, of the Age of Faith in the East; 2nd, of the Age of Faith in the West. The former was closed prematurely by the Mohammedan conquest; the latter, after undergoing slow metamorphosis, pa.s.sed into the European Age of Reason during the pontificate of Nicholas V.

In this and the following chapter I shall therefore treat of the age of Faith in the East, and of the catastrophe that closed it. I shall then turn to the Age of Faith in the West--a long but an instructive story.

[Sidenote: The paganization of Christianity.]

[Sidenote: Discovery of the true cross and nails.]

The paganization of religion was in no small degree accomplished by the influence of the females of the court of Constantinople. It soon manifested all the essential features of a true mythology and hero-wors.h.i.+p. Helena, the empress-mother, superintended the building of monumental churches over the reputed places of interest in the history of our Saviour--those of his birth, his burial, his ascension. A vast and ever-increasing crowd of converts from paganism, who had become such from worldly considerations, and still hankered after wonders like those in which their forefathers had from time immemorial believed, lent a ready ear to a.s.sertions which, to more hesitating or better-instructed minds, would have seemed to carry imposture on their very face. A temple of Venus, formerly erected on the site of the Holy Sepulchre, being torn down, there were discovered, in a cavern beneath, three crosses, and also the inscription written by Pilate. The Saviour's cross, being by miracle distinguished from those of the thieves, was divided, a part being kept at Jerusalem and a part sent to Constantinople, together with the nails used in the crucifixion, which were also fortunately found.

These were destined to adorn the head of the emperor's statue on the top of the porphyry pillar. The wood of the cross, moreover, displayed a property of growth, and hence furnished an abundant supply for the demands of pilgrims, and an unfailing source of pecuniary profit to its possessors. In the course of subsequent years there was acc.u.mulated in the various churches of Europe, from this particular relic, a sufficiency to have constructed many hundred crosses. The age that could accept such a prodigy, of course found no difficulty in the vision of Constantine and the story of the Labarum.

[Sidenote: Political causes of paganization.]

Such was the tendency of the times to adulterate Christianity with the spirit of paganism, partly to conciliate the prejudices of worldly converts, partly in the hope of securing its more rapid spread. There is a solemnity in the truthful accusation which Faustus makes to Augustine: ”You have subst.i.tuted your agapae for the sacrifices of the pagans; for their idols your martyrs, whom you serve with the very same honours. You appease the shades of the dead with wine and feasts; you celebrate the solemn festivals of the Gentiles, their calends and their solstices; and as to their manners, those you have retained without any alteration.

Nothing distinguishes you from the pagans except that you hold your a.s.semblies apart from them.”

[Sidenote: Relative action of faith and philosophy.]

[Sidenote: The emperors resist their ecclesiastical allies.]

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