Part 16 (1/2)

The Arian, Manichaean, Marcionite, and Monothelite heresies spread, during this century, through the Greek Church, and, where the Arabians ruled, the Nestorians and Monophysites also flourished. In the Latin Church a phase of the Nestorian heresy made its way, under the name of Adoptianism, a name given because its adherents regarded Christ, so far as his manhood was concerned, as the Son of G.o.d by adoption only.

CENTURY IX.

Christendom, during this century, as during the preceding one, was threatened and hara.s.sed by the inroads of Mahommedan powers, and the first gleams of returning light began to penetrate its thick darkness--light proceeding from the Arabians and the Saracens, the restorers of knowledge and of science. It is not here our duty to trace that marvellous work of the revival of thought--thought which Christianity had slain, but which, revived by Mahommedanism, was destined to issue in the new birth of heretic philosophy. While this work was proceeding among the Saracens, the Arabians, and the Moors, Christendom went on its way, degraded, vicious, and superst.i.tious; only here and there an effort at learning was made, and some few went to the Arabian schools, and returned with some tincture of knowledge. John Scotus Erigena, a subtle and acute thinker, left behind him works which have made some regard him as the founder of the _Realist_ school of the middle ages, the school which followed Aristotle, in opposition to the _Nominalists_, who held with Zeno and the Stoics. Erigena taught that the soul would be re-absorbed into the divine spirit, from which it had originally emanated; from G.o.d all things had come--to Him would they ultimately return; G.o.d alone was eternal, and in the end nothing but G.o.d would exist. Some of Erigena's works naturally fell under the displeasure of the Church, and were duly burned: he was a philosopher, and therefore dangerous.

While this slight effort at thought was thus frowned upon, vice made its way unchecked and unrebuked by the authorities. ”The impiety and licentiousness of the greater part of the clergy arose, at this time, to an enormous height, and stand upon record in the unanimous complaints of the most candid and impartial writers of this century. In the East, tumult, discord, conspiracies, and treason reigned uncontrolled, and all things were carried by violence and force. These abuses appeared in many things, but particularly in the election of the Patriarchs of Constantinople.... In the western provinces, the bishops were become voluptuous and effeminate to a very high degree. They pa.s.sed their lives amidst the splendour of courts, and the pleasures of a luxurious indolence, which corrupted their taste, extinguished their zeal, and rendered them incapable of performing the solemn duties of their function; while the inferior clergy were sunk in licentiousness, minded nothing but sensual gratifications, and infected with the most heinous vices the flock whom it was the very business of their ministry to preserve, or to deliver from the contagion of iniquity. Besides, the ignorance of the sacred order was, in many places, so deplorable that few of them could either read or write, and still fewer were capable of expressing their wretched notions with any degree of method or perspicuity” (p. 193). ”Many other causes also contributed to dishonour the Church, by introducing into it a corrupt ministry. A n.o.bleman who, through want of talents, activity, or courage, was rendered incapable of appearing with dignity in the cabinet, or with honour in the field, immediately turned his views towards the Church, aimed at a distinguished place among its chiefs and rulers, and became, in consequence, a contagious example of stupidity and vice to the inferior clergy. The patrons of churches, in whom resided the right of election, unwilling to submit their disorderly conduct to the keen censure of zealous and upright pastors, industriously looked for the most abject, ignorant, and worthless ecclesiastics, to whom they committed the cure of souls” (p. 193). Of the Roman pontiffs, Mosheim says: ”The greatest part of them are only known by the flagitious actions that have transmitted their names with infamy to our times” (p. 194). And ”the enormous vices that must have covered so many pontiffs with infamy in the judgment of the wise, formed not the least obstacle to their ambition in these memorable times, nor hindered them from extending their influence and augmenting their authority both in church and state”

(p. 195). Among the vast ma.s.s of forgeries which gradually built up the supremacy of the Roman see, the famous Isidorian Decretals deserve a word of notice. They were issued about A.D. 845, and consisted of ”about one hundred pretended decrees of the early Popes, together with certain spurious writings of other church dignitaries and acts of synods. This forgery produced an immense extension of the papal power. It displaced the old system of church government, divesting it of the republican attributes it had possessed, and transforming it into an absolute monarchy. It brought the bishops into subjection to Rome, and made the pontiff the supreme judge of the clergy of the whole Christian world. It prepared the way for the great attempt, subsequently made by Hildebrand, to convert the states of Europe into a theocratic priest kingdom, with the Pope at its head” (Draper's ”Conflict of Religion and Science,” p.

271). We note during this century a remarkable growth of saints.

Everyone wanted a saint through whom to approach G.o.d, and the supply kept pace with the demand. ”This preposterous multiplication of saints was a new source of abuses and frauds. It was thought necessary to write the lives of these celestial patrons, in order to procure for them the veneration and confidence of a deluded mult.i.tude; and here lying wonders were invented, and all the resources of forgery and fable exhausted to celebrate exploits which had never been performed, and to perpetuate the memory of holy persons who had never existed” (p. 200). The contest on images still raged furiously, success being now on the one side, now on the other; various councils were called by either party, until, in A.D.

879, a council at Constantinople, reckoned by the Greeks as the eighth general council, sanctioned the wors.h.i.+p of images, which thereafter triumphed in the East. In the West, the opposition to image-wors.h.i.+p gradually died away. The _Filioque_ contest also continued hotly and widened the breach between East and West yet more. The final separation was not long delayed. The ever-increasing jealousy between Rome and Constantinople had at last reached a height which made even nominal union impossible, and the smouldering fire burst into sudden flame. In A.D. 858 Photius was made Patriarch of Constantinople, by the Emperor Michael, in the room of Ignatius, deprived and banished by that prince.

A council, held at Constantinople in A.D. 861, endorsed the appointment of the emperor; but Ignatius appealed to Rome, and Pope Nicholas I.

readily took up his quarrel. A council was held at Rome, in A.D. 862, in which the pontiff excommunicated Photius and his adherents. It was answered by one at Constantinople, in A.D. 866, wherein Nicholas was p.r.o.nounced unworthy of his office and outside the pale of Christian communion. Yet another council of Constantinople, A.D. 869, approved the action of Basilius, the new emperor, who recalled Ignatius, and imprisoned Photius. When Ignatius died, Photius was reinstated (A.D.

878), and he was acknowledged by the Roman pontiff, John VIII., at another council of Constantinople, A.D. 879, on the understanding that the jurisdiction over Bulgaria, claimed both by Pope and Patriarch, should be definitely yielded to Rome. This, however, was not done; and the Pope sent a legate to Constantinople, recalling his declaration in favour of Photius. The legate, Marinus, was cast into prison; and when he was later raised to the pontificate, he remembered the outrage, and anew excommunicated Photius. A.D. 886 saw the fall and imprisonment of Photius, and union might have been maintained but for the extravagant demands of the Roman pontiff, who required the degradation of all priests and bishops ordained by Photius. The Greeks indignantly refused, and at last the great schism took place, which severed from each other entirely the Eastern and the Western Churches.

The ancient heresy of the Paulicians had not yet died out, spite of having suffered much persecution at Catholic hands, and under the Emperors Michael and Leo, a fierce attack upon these unfortunate beings took place. They were hunted down and executed without mercy, and at last they turned upon their persecutors, and revenged themselves by murdering the bishop, magistrates, and judges in Armenia, after which they fled to the countries under Saracen rule. After a while, they gradually returned to the Greek empire; but when the Empress Theodora was regent, during her son's minority, she issued a stern decree against them. ”The decree was severe, but the cruelty with which it was put in execution, by those who were sent into Armenia for that purpose, was horrible beyond expression; for these ministers of wrath, after confiscating the goods of above a hundred thousand of that miserable people, put their possessors to death in the most barbarous manner, and made them expire slowly in a variety of the most exquisite tortures” (p.

212).

In addition to the heresies inherited from the previous centuries, three new ones, important in their issues, arose to divide yet more the divided indivisible Church. A monk, named Pascasius Radbert, wrote a treatise (A.D. 831 and 845), in which he maintained that, at the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine became changed, by consecration, into the body and blood of Christ, and that this body ”was the same body that was born of the Virgin, that suffered upon the cross, and was raised from the dead” (p. 205). Charles the Bald bade Erigena and Ratramn (or Bertramn) draw up the true doctrine of the Church, and the long controversy began which is continued even in the present day.

The second great dispute arose on the question of predestination and divine grace. G.o.deschalcus, an eminent Saxon monk, returning from Rome in A.D. 847, resided for a s.p.a.ce in Verona, where he spoke much on predestination, affirming that G.o.d had, from all eternity, predestined some to heaven and others to h.e.l.l. He was condemned at a council held in Mayence, A.D. 848, and in the following year, at another council, he was again condemned, and was flogged until he burned, with his own hand, the apology for his opinions he had presented at Mayence. The third great controversy regarded the manner of Christ's birth, and monks furiously disputed whether or no Christ was born after the fas.h.i.+on of other infants. The details of this dispute need not here be entered into.

CENTURY X.

”The deplorable state of Christianity in this century, arising partly from that astonis.h.i.+ng ignorance that gave a loose rein both to superst.i.tion and immorality, and partly from an unhappy concurrence of causes of another kind, is unanimously lamented by the various writers who have transmitted to us the history of these miserable times” (p.

213). Yet ”the gospel” spread. The Normans embraced ”a religion of which they were totally ignorant” (p. 214), A.D. 912, because Charles the Simple of France offered Count Rollo a large territory on condition that he would marry his daughter and embrace Christianity: Rollo gladly accepted the territory and its enc.u.mbrances. Poland came next into the fold of the Church, for the Duke of Poland, Micislaus, was persuaded by his wife to profess Christianity, A.D. 965, and Pope John III. promptly sent a bishop and a train of priests to convert the duke's subjects.

”But the exhortations and endeavours of these devout missionaries, who were unacquainted with the language of the people they came to instruct [how effective must have been their arguments!] would have been entirely without effect, had they not been accompanied with the edicts and penal laws, the promises and threats of Micislaus, which dejected the courage and conquered the obstinacy of the reluctant Poles” (p. 214). ”The Christian religion was established in Russia by means every way similar to those that had occasioned its propagation in Poland” (p. 215); the Greek wife of the Russian duke persuaded him to adopt her creed, and he was baptized A.D. 987. Mosheim a.s.sumes that the Russian people followed their princes of their own accord, since ”we have, at least, no account of any compulsion or violence being employed in their conversion” (p.

215); if the Russians adopted Christianity without compulsion or violence, all we can say is, that their conversion is unique. The Danes were converted in A.D. 949, Otto the Great having defeated them, and having made it an imperative condition of peace, that they should profess Christianity. The Norwegians accepted the religion of Jesus on the same terms. Thus the greater part of Europe became Christian, and we even hear a cry raised by Pope Sylvester II. for the deliverance of Palestine from the Mahommedans--for a holy war. Christianity having now become so strong, learning had become proportionately weak; it had been sinking lower and lower during each succeeding epoch, and in this tenth century it reached its deepest stage of degradation. ”The deplorable ignorance of this barbarous age, in which the drooping arts were entirely neglected, and the sciences seemed to be upon the point of expiring for want of encouragement, is unanimously confessed and lamented by all the writers who have transmitted to us any accounts of this period of time” (p. 218). In vain a more enlightened emperor in the East strove to revive learning and encourage study: ”many of the most celebrated authors of antiquity were lost, at this time, through the sloth and negligence of the Greeks” (p. 219). ”Nor did the cause of philosophy fare better than that of literature. Philosophers, indeed, there were; and, among them, some that were not dest.i.tute of genius and abilities; but none who rendered their names immortal by productions that were worthy of being transmitted to posterity” (p. 219). So low, under the influence of Christianity, had sunk the literature of Greece--Greece Pagan, which once brought forth Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, Zenophon, and many another mighty one, whose fame rolls down the ages--that Greece had become Greece Christian, and the vitality of her motherhood had been drained from her, and left her without strength to conceive men. In the West things were yet worse--instead of Rome Pagan, that had spread light and civilization--the Rome of Cicero, of Virgil, of Lucretius--we have Rome Christian, spreader of darkness and of degradation, the Rome of the Popes and the monks. The Latins ”were, almost without exception, sunk in the most brutish and barbarous ignorance, so that, according to the unanimous accounts of the most credible writers, nothing could be more melancholy and deplorable than the darkness that reigned in the western world during this century....

In the seminaries of learning, such as they were, the seven liberal sciences were taught in the most unskilful and miserable manner, and that by the monks, who esteemed the arts and sciences no further than as they were subservient to the interests of religion, or, to speak more properly, to the views of superst.i.tion” (p. 219). But the light from Arabia was struggling to penetrate Christendom. Gerbert, a native of France, travelled into Spain, and studied in the Arabian schools of Cordova and Seville, under Arabian doctors; he developed mathematical ability, and returned into Christendom with some amount of learning: raised to the papal throne, under the name of Sylvester II., he tried to restore the study of science and philosophy, and found that his geometrical figures ”were regarded by the monks as magical operations,”

and he himself ”as a magician and a disciple of Satan” (p. 220).

The vice of the clergy was something terrible. ”These corruptions were mounted to the most enormous height in that dismal period of the Church which we have now before us. Both in the eastern and western provinces, the clergy were, for the most part, composed of a most worthless set of men, shamefully illiterate and stupid, ignorant, more especially in religious matters, equally enslaved to sensuality and superst.i.tion, and capable of the most abominable and flagitious deeds. This dismal degeneracy of the sacred order was, according to the most credible accounts, princ.i.p.ally owing to the pretended chiefs and rulers of the universal Church, who indulged themselves in the commission of the most odious crimes, and abandoned themselves to the lawless impulse of the most licentious pa.s.sions without reluctance or remorse--who confounded, in short, all difference between just and unjust, to satisfy their impious ambition, and whose spiritual empire was such a diversified scene of iniquity and violence as never was exhibited under any of those temporal tyrants who have been the scourges of mankind” (p. 221). Such is the verdict pa.s.sed on Christian rule by a Christian historian. In the East we see such men as Theophylact; ”this _exemplary_ prelate, who sold every ecclesiastical benefice as soon as it became vacant, had in his stable above 2000 hunting horses, which he fed with pignuts, pistachios, dates, dried grapes, figs steeped in the most exquisite wines, to all which he added the richest perfumes. One Holy Thursday, as he was celebrating high-ma.s.s, his groom brought him the joyful news that one of his favourite mares had foaled; upon which he threw down the Liturgy, left the church, and ran in raptures to the stable, where, having expressed his joy at that grand event, he returned to the altar to finish the divine service, which he had left interrupted during his absence” (p. 221, note). We shall see, in a moment, how the ma.s.ses of the people were housed and fed while such insane luxury surrounded horses. In the west, the weary tale of the Roman pontiffs cannot all be narrated here. Take the picture as drawn by Hallam: ”This dreary interval is filled up, in the annals of the papacy, by a series of revolutions and crimes. Six popes were deposed, two murdered, one mutilated. Frequently two, or even three, compet.i.tors, among whom it is not always possible by any genuine criticism to distinguish the true shepherd, drove each other alternately from the city. A few respectable names appear thinly scattered through this darkness; and sometimes, perhaps, a pope who had acquired estimation by his private virtues may be distinguished by some encroachment on the rights of princes, or the privileges of national churches. But, in general, the pontiffs of that age had neither leisure nor capacity to perfect the great system of temporal supremacy, and looked rather to a vile profit from the sale of episcopal confirmations, or of exemptions to monasteries. The corruption of the head extended naturally to all other members of the Church. All writers concur in stigmatizing the dissoluteness and neglect of decency that prevailed among the clergy. Though several codes of ecclesiastical discipline had been compiled by particular prelates, yet neither these nor the ancient canons were much regarded. The bishops, indeed, who were to enforce them, had most occasion to dread their severity. They were obtruded upon their sees, as the supreme pontiffs were upon that of Rome, by force or corruption. A child of five years old was made Archbishop of Rheims. The see of Narbonne was purchased for another at the age of ten” (”Europe during the Middle Ages,” p. 353, ed. 1869).

John X. made pope at the solicitation of his mistress Theodora, the mother-in-law of the sovereign, and murdered at the instance of Theodora's daughter, Marozia; John XI., illegitimate son of the same Marozia, and of the celibate pontiff, Sergius III.; Boniface VII.

expelled, banished, returning and murdering the reigning pope: what avails it to chronicle these monsters? Below the popes, a clergy as vicious as their rulers, squandering money, plundered from the people in dissoluteness and luxury. And the people, what of them?

As late as A.D. 1430 the houses of the peasantry were ”constructed of stones put together without mortar; the roofs were of turf--a stiffened bull's-hide served for a door. The food consisted of coa.r.s.e vegetable products, such as peas, and even the bark of trees. In some places they were unacquainted with bread. Cabins of reeds plastered with mud, houses of wattled stakes, chimneyless peat fires, from which there was scarcely an escape for the smoke, dens of physical and moral pollution swarming with vermin, wisps of straw twisted round the limbs to keep off the cold, the ague-stricken peasant with no help except shrine-cure,” i.e., cure by the touching bone of saint, or image of virgin (Draper's ”Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 265). Even among the wealthy, the life was coa.r.s.e and rough; carpets were unknown; drainage never thought of. The Anglo-Saxon ”'n.o.bles, devoted to gluttony and voluptuousness, never visited the church, but the matins and the ma.s.s were read over to them by a hurrying priest in their bed-chambers, before they rose, themselves not listening. The common people were a prey to the more powerful; their property was seized, their bodies dragged away to distant countries; their maidens were either thrown into a brothel or sold for slaves. Drinking, day and night, was the general pursuit: vices, the companions of inebriety, followed, effeminating the manly mind.' The baronial castles were dens of robbers. The Saxon chronicler [William of Malmesbury, from whom the quotation above]

records how men and women were caught and dragged into those strongholds, hung up by their thumbs or feet, fire applied to them, knotted strings twisted round their heads, and many other torments inflicted to extort ransom” (Ibid, p. 266). When the barons had nearly finished their evil lives, the church stepped in, claiming her share of the plunder and the wealth thus ama.s.sed, and opening the gates of paradise to the dying thief. The cities were as wretched as their inhabitants: no paving, no cleaning, no lighting. In the country the old Roman roads were unmended, unkept; Europe was slipping backwards into uttermost barbarism. Meanwhile things were very different where the blighting power of Christianity was not in the ascendant. ”Europe at the present day does not offer more taste, more refinement, more elegance, than might have been seen, at the epoch of which we are speaking, in the capitals of the Spanish Arabs. Their streets were lighted and solidly paved. The houses were frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wa.s.sail orgies of their northern neighbours, the feasts of the Saracens were marked by sobriety. Wine was prohibited.... In the tenth century, the Khalif Hakem II. had made beautiful Andalusia the paradise of the world. Christians, Mussulmans, Jews, mixed together without restraint.... All learned men, no matter from what country they came, or what their religious views, were welcomed. The khalif had in his palace a manufactory of books, and copyists, binders, illuminators. He kept book-buyers in all the great cities of Asia and Africa. His library contained 400,000 volumes, superbly bound and illuminated” (Ibid, pp. 141, 142). When the Christians in the fifteenth century seized ”beautiful Andalusia,” they erected the Inquisition, burned the books, burned the people, banished the Jews and the Moors, and founded the miserable land known as modern Spain.

There was but little heresy during this melancholy century; people did not think enough even to think badly. The Paulicians spread through Bulgaria, and established themselves there under a patriarch of their own. Some Arians still existed. Some Anthropomorphites gave some trouble, maintaining that G.o.d sat on a golden throne, and was served by angels with wings: their ”heresy” is, however, directly supported by the Scriptures. A.D. 999, a man named Lentard began to speak against the wors.h.i.+p of images, and the payment of t.i.thes to priests, and a.s.serted that in the Old Testament prophecies truth and falsehood are mingled.

His disciples seem to have merged into the Albigenses in the next century.

The year A.D. 1000 deserves a special word of notice. Christians fancied that the world was to last for but one thousand years after the birth of Christ, and that it would therefore come to an end in A.D. 1000. ”Many charters begin with these words: 'As the world is now drawing to its close.' An army marching under the emperor Otho I. was so terrified by an eclipse of the sun, which it conceived to announce this consummation, as to disperse hastily on all sides” (”Europe during the Middle Ages,”

Hallam, P. 599) ”Prodigious numbers of people abandoned all their civil connections, and their parental relations, and giving over to the churches or monasteries all their lands, treasures, and worldly effects, repaired with the utmost precipitation to Palestine, where they imagined that Christ would descend to judge the world. Others devoted themselves by a solemn and voluntary oath to the service of the churches, convents, and priesthood, whose slaves, they became in the most rigorous sense of that word, performing daily their heavy tasks; and all this from a notion that the Supreme Judge would diminish the severity of their sentence, and look upon them with a more favourable and propitious eye, on account of their having made themselves the slaves of his ministers.

When an eclipse of the sun or moon happened to be visible, the cities were deserted, and their miserable inhabitants fled for refuge to hollow caverns, and hid themselves among the craggy rocks, and under the bending summits of steep mountains. The opulent attempted to bribe the Deity and the saintly tribe, by rich donations conferred upon the sacerdotal and monastic orders, who were looked upon as the immediate vicegerents of heaven” (p. 226). Thus the Church still reaped wealth out of the fear of the people she deluded, and while fields lay unsown, and houses stood unrepaired, and the foundations of famine were laid, Mother Church gathered lands and money into her capacious lap, and troubled little about the starving children, provided she herself could wax fat on the good things of the world which she professed to have renounced.