Volume I Part 28 (1/2)
[Sidenote: Murder of Hypatia by Cyril.]
Cyril at length determined to remove this great reproach, and overturn what now appeared to be the only obstacle in his way to uncontrolled authority in the city. We are reaching one of those moments in which great general principles embody themselves in individuals. It is Greek philosophy under the appropriate form of Hypatia; ecclesiastical ambition under that of Cyril. Their destinies are about to be fulfilled.
As Hypatia comes forth to her academy, she is a.s.saulted by Cyril's mob--an Alexandrian mob of many monks. Amid the fearful yelling of these bare-legged and black-cowled fiends she is dragged from her chariot, and in the public street stripped naked. In her mortal terror she is haled into an adjacent church, and in that sacred edifice is killed by the club of Peter the Reader. It is not always in the power of him who has stirred up the worst pa.s.sions of a fanatical mob to stop their excesses when his purpose is accomplished. With the blow given by Peter the aim of Cyril was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by sc.r.a.ping the flesh from the bones with oyster-sh.e.l.ls, and casting the remnants into the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of the righteous indignation of posterity.
[Sidenote: Suppression of Alexandrian science.]
Thus, in the 414th year of our era, the position of philosophy in the intellectual metropolis of the world was determined; henceforth science must sink into obscurity and subordination. Its public existence will no longer be tolerated. Indeed, it may be said that from this period for some centuries it altogether disappeared. The leaden mace of bigotry had struck and s.h.i.+vered the exquisitely tempered steel of Greek philosophy.
Cyril's acts pa.s.sed unquestioned. It was now ascertained that throughout the Roman world there must be no more liberty of thought. It had been said that these events prove Greek philosophy to have been a sham, and, like other shams, it was driven out of the world when detected, and that it could not withstand the truth. Such a.s.sertions might answer their purposes very well, so long as the victors maintained their power in Alexandria, but they manifestly are of inconvenient application after the Saracens had captured the city. However this may be, an intellectual stagnation settled upon the place, an invisible atmosphere of oppression, ready to crush down, morally and physically, whatever provoked its weight. And so for the next two dreary and weary centuries things remained, until oppression and force were ended by a foreign invader. It was well for the world that the Arabian conquerors avowed their true argument, the scimitar, and made no pretensions to superhuman wisdom. They were thus left free to pursue knowledge without involving themselves in theological contradictions, and were able to make Egypt once more ill.u.s.trious among the nations of the earth--to s.n.a.t.c.h it from the hideous fanaticism, ignorance, and barbarism into which it had been plunged. On the sh.o.r.e of the Red Sea once more a degree of the earth's surface was to be measured, and her size ascertained--but by a Mohammedan astronomer. In Alexandria the memory of the ill.u.s.trious old times was to be recalled by the discovery of the motion of the sun's apogee by Albategnius, and the third inequality of the moon, the variation, by Aboul Wefa; to be discovered six centuries later in Europe by Tycho Brahe. The ca.n.a.l of the Pharaohs from the Nile to the Red Sea, cleared out by the Ptolemies in former ages, was to be cleared from its sand again. The glad desert listened once more to the cheerful cry of the merchant camel-driver instead of the midnight prayer of the monk.
CHAPTER XI.
PREMATURE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.
THE THREE ATTACKS, VANDAL, PERSIAN, ARAB.
THE VANDAL ATTACK _leads to the Loss of Africa.--Recovery of that Province by Justinian after great Calamities._
THE PERSIAN ATTACK _leads to the Loss of Syria and Fall of Jerusalem.--The true Cross carried away as a Trophy.--Moral Impression of these Attacks._
THE ARAB ATTACK.--_Birth, Mission, and Doctrines of Mohammed.--Rapid Spread of his Faith in Asia and Africa.--Fall of Jerusalem.--Dreadful Losses of Christianity to Mohammedanism.--The Arabs become a learned Nation._
_Review of the Koran.--Reflexions on the Loss of Asia and Africa by Christendom._
[Sidenote: Three attacks made upon the Byzantine system.]
I have now to describe the end of the age of Faith in the East. The Byzantine system, out of which it had issued, was destroyed by three attacks: 1st, by the Vandal invasion of Africa; 2nd, by the military operations of Chosroes, the Persian king; 3rd, by Mohammedanism.
Of these three attacks, the Vandal may be said, in a military sense, to have been successfully closed by the victories of Justinian; but, politically, the cost of those victories was the depopulation and ruin of the empire, particularly in the south and west. The second, the Persian attack, though brilliantly resisted in its later years by the Emperor Heraclius, left, throughout the East, a profound moral impression, which proved final and fatal in the Mohammedan attack.
[Sidenote: The Vandal attack.]
[Sidenote: Conquest of Africa.]
No heresy has ever produced such important political results as that of Arius. While it was yet a vital doctrine, it led to the infliction of unspeakable calamities on the empire, and, though long ago forgotten, has blasted permanently some of the fairest portions of the globe. When Count Boniface, incited by the intrigues of the patrician aetius, invited Genseric, the King of the Vandals, into Africa, that barbarian found in the discontented sectaries his most effectual aid. In vain would he otherwise have attempted the conquest of the country with the 50,000 men he landed from Spain, A.D. 429. Three hundred Donatist bishops, and many thousand priests, driven to despair by the persecutions inflicted by the emperor, carrying with them that large portion of the population who were Arian, were ready to look upon him as a deliverer, and therefore to afford him support. The result to the empire was the loss of Africa.
[Sidenote: The reign of Justinian.]
It was nothing more than might have been expected that Justinian, when he found himself firmly seated on the throne of Constantinople, should make an attempt to retrieve these disasters. The principles which led him to his scheme of legislation; to the promotion of manufacturing interests by the fabrication of silk; to the reopening of the ancient routes to India, so as to avoid transit through the Persian dominions; to his attempt at securing the carrying trade of Europe for the Greeks, also suggested the recovery of Africa. To this important step he was urged by the Catholic clergy. In a sinister but suitable manner, his reign was ill.u.s.trated by his closing the schools of philosophy at Athens, ostensibly because of their affiliation to paganism, but in reality on account of his detestation of the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato; by the abolition of the consulate of Rome; by the extinction of the Roman senate, A.D. 552; by the capture and recapture five times of the Eternal City. The vanis.h.i.+ng of the Roman race was thus marked by an extinction of the instruments of ancient philosophy and power.
[Sidenote: His reconquest of Africa.]
The indignation of the Catholics was doubtless justly provoked by the atrocities practised in the Arian behalf by the Vandal kings of Africa, who, among other cruelties, had attempted to silence some bishops by cutting out their tongues. To carry out Justinian's intention of the recovery of Africa, his general Belisarius sailed at midsummer, A.D.
533, and in November he had completed the reconquest of the country.
[Sidenote: Dreadful calamities produced by him.]
This was speedy work, but it was followed by fearful calamities; for in this, and the Italian wars of Justinian, likewise undertaken at the instance of the orthodox clergy, the human race visibly diminished. It is affirmed that in the African campaign five millions of the people of that country were consumed; that during the twenty years of the Gothic War Italy lost fifteen millions; and that the wars, famines, and pestilences of the reign of Justinian diminished the human species by the almost incredible number of one hundred millions.